Digressions - Nihilistbear's Writings

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Under The Bridge Author's Note: Starts seventy five years after ‘Not Fade Away’; Angel POV, goes back into the past a lot, hence the really messed up tenses. Title and Lyrics from ‘Under The Bridge” by The Red Hot Chillie Peppers Many thanks to Estepheia for doing an amazing beta job. Any mistakes, especially in grammar and tense, are mine, not hers. Rating: Hard R – NC-17, I guess; I suck at these things. ~~~~~~ Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner Sometimes I feel like my only friend ~~~~~~ Seventy-five years, and the world hasn’t changed much. He’d really expected better, to be perfectly honest. All those promises at the beginning of each century, and even though the world has changed since he was turned in an alley in the eighteenth century, progress seems to have slowed. Spike said it best, like always. He’s always had a better handle on the here and now, ever since the gypsies cursed Angel and made him lose track of the world around him. “Supposed to have flying cars and space colonies and all we’ve got is more pollution and even more horrifying music. It’s enough to drive a man to drink,” Spike muttered once as they basked in the sunlight, necro-tempered glass covering the apartment Angel still held in the now-defunct offices of Wolfram and Hart. The last battle, the end of the Senior Partners, the battle he still can’t believe they actually won, had thrown the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram and Hart into permanent disuse. They’d done it, stood in the mouth of the beast and survived. Hooray for them. ~~~~~~ Spike’s the only one left. He’s still there, still in Angel’s sorry excuse for life, and even if Angel had often wished him as far away as possible, he’s thankful Spike’s a stubborn bastard who won’t be shooed off like an annoying puppy. They don’t talk much; after three quarters of a century, they’ve stopped thinking of new ways to drive each other insane. Instead, Angel mourns his dead - alone, as he prefers it – and Spike mourns in the best way he knows how. He gets drunk, or stoned, starts bar brawls and comes home seconds before sunrise reeking of alcohol and someone’s cheap perfume. He crawls into their huge bed, wakes Angel up - sometimes with kisses but usually with some rough shoving and, once in a while, a blowjob – and they fuck. It’s always hard, and desperate, and he’s never really sure if Spike knows it’s him or pretending he’s someone else. Sometimes after, if Angel’s very lucky and Spike’s in a great mood, he’ll relive for Angel whatever fight he’d gotten into, complete with jabs that hover just on the edge of pain, and Angel listens silently and pretends he’s still got a mission of sorts. He’s not lucky all that often, though. Usually Spike rolls away, lights a cigarette and gets trapped inside his head until he falls into a restless sleep. Angel usually stares at the ceiling and stays awake. He doesn’t bother sleeping much anymore; he doesn’t need to rest. He doesn’t really do much but think about the past anyway. To sleep, perchance to dream? To be or not to be? Fuck you, Hamlet. ~~~~~~ It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, there had been a lot of work to do. They’d gotten Wolfram and Hart out of the picture, but there was still a battle to be fought. Gunn had made it, through some miracle that Angel still feels he owes God over. Wesley hadn’t and it took a while to get past that. A long while, and he’s pretty sure Illyria never really recovered, even as she denied her grief to them all. The final battle with the Senior Partners had been… harrowing. Angel had figured if they could get to the dragons the rest would fall away. He’d been wrong, but somehow they’d made it. He’s not sure how they pulled it off, actually. In fact, he doesn’t remember much about the fight except battle cries and lots of blood, some belonging to the demon army, more belonging to them. He figures the Powers That Be stepped in for once and offered some kind of help, something that kept them all standing until they’d beaten back the army. So the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart, who’d looked more like a dragon, a raptor and a three-headed dog, left Los Angeles for good. Then their ragged band had the clean up; Gunn to a hospital first and foremost, where they cleaned him out, stitched him up and sent him on his way. Then the lesser battles; he, Spike and Illyria had rampaged through Los Angeles, killing everything that might threaten their world. And eventually, the city was really his. He remembers saying that to Buffy, once. He remembers Buffy. ~~~~~~ Spike’s a slut. Oh, Angel knew that already. Drusilla may have picked sweet William because he was her knight, but Angelus let her keep him because he could see the boy was made to be a whore, made to fuck anything and everything and love it. He’d liked that quality back then. He’d liked watching Will prowl the room and make all the girls giggle, make all the boys glance at his ass and look away quickly, blushing furiously and avoiding Will’s coy glances. He’d sit at the parties, watch Will talk up the girls and worry the boys, and every so often, Will would look at Angelus and wink. Just a wink, a tiny one, but Angelus would begin planning their departure. Then Will would coax some pretty thing, boy or girl, into the alleyway. Angelus would wait a bit, just a short while, long enough to catch Will fucking the person before eating him or her. He’d done it on purpose of course; testing Angelus’ limits. Knowing he’d get beaten then fucked hard and wanting exactly that. And he’s still doing it now, except Angel tries to pretend there’s no limits left to test. He refuses to speak about Spike’s nightly trips, refuses to even acknowledge Spike when he says he’s going out for the night, refuses to admit he’s followed him from time to time and watched Spike pick up the little blondes and the tall, slender brunettes, the cute redheads and sometimes the overgrown boys with black hair, and fuck them anywhere he can get a free place. Of course, it doesn’t bother him – much. Because Spike means nothing to him - less than nothing - and he can fuck whomever he pleases. Because everyone important is gone, and Angel can’t find it in himself to care. Because Spike’s just trying to recreate a past that never happened. Besides, in the end, Spike always comes back. ~~~~~~ Sometimes Spike leaves, though. Really leaves, not just wandering out for the night and coming home with his hair a little singed. No note, no explanation, just... gone. Nowhere to be found, no number Angel can call, not that he would, because that would imply he misses Spike and he doesn’t. Angel had been struck by overwhelming panic that first time. He’d sat up suddenly and realized Spike hadn’t woken him up that morning. Realized Spike hadn’t even come home. He’d stormed through Los Angeles that night, hitting up what was left of the demon population – usually literally – and trying to get a lead on where Spike had gone. No one knew. No one could tell him anything beyond Spike wasn’t in L.A. anymore. And no one knew if he was coming back. And so the apartment suffered a little redecoration as Angel destroyed it, cursing Spike’s name before collapsing on a couch and wishing himself dead. Spike had come back, though, a month later. He leaves regularly now, takes the car and just disappears. He always comes back about a week later, worn out, but oddly content. Angel tries to subtly sniff the air around him and figure out who had the nerve to make Spike so goddamn happy. It’s never anyone he knows. There’s a tinge of the familiar, like something or someone he might have known once, but he can’t grasp it. Angel could just ask; push the whole Sire thing and make Spike tell him, but that would put pressure on this thing they have, make it a relationship instead of what they are; two vampires who live together because they’ve nothing better to do. Living together because they’re the only ones left who remember. ~~~~~~ Seventy-five years. It should mean nothing to him – the first hundred and fifty years of his life are an erotic and blood-filled blur - but it does. It’s the passage of his life, really, his second life or something. The passage of everyone he loved. He never saw Lorne again; he’d heard things about green empath demons in various bars across the country, but he'd respected Lorne’s wishes for once and never followed up on them. Illyria was the first to go, shockingly. They’d figured she was more eternal than anyone, more eternal than them, definitely. But even with all the power Wes had suctioned off her, she was too much for Fred’s body. Three years after the wars were over, and L.A. was theirs, Illyria hit self-destruct. She left town, left a note saying she had come undone or something, and disappeared. They heard of an earthquake in Death Valley three weeks later, and they knew it was her. Far away from anyone who could get hurt; even if she didn’t care for humanity much, she’d learned the rules. Gunn found Anne, started helping out at the shelter. Not many demons to fight in L.A. anyway, so he’d left that to Spike and Angel while he experienced normal life for the first time since his mother died. He’d come around regularly at first, less and less as the street kids and Anne had taken up his life. He’d died… twenty-five years ago? No longer, forty almost. Heart attack or something. He and Spike had parked by the cemetery and watched the funeral. Held during the day, of course; Gunn had long forgotten that vampires cared about him too. After, they’d gone back to the place and Angel had destroyed everything in sight as Spike stood near a window, smoking and drinking endlessly. “Bit different than the last ones, eh, Angel,” Spike had said twenty four hours later, when they’d run out of household amenities and liquor in any form. “Last ones were me ripping the world to shreds and you watching.” He’d stared out the window again. “That’s it, I suppose. The passage of memory and such.” And he’d gotten so mad that Spike could dare co-opt his pain, dare use Gunn as an excuse to be upset, because Gunn had been his to mourn, not Spike’s. “Fuck off!” he’d yelled, and there’d been nothing left to break so he’d launched himself at Spike, pummeling Spike, slamming his fist into the other man as hard as he could, bent on destroying him. Ten minutes, and he’d noticed his knuckles were covered in blood. Some his own, but mostly Spike’s, who was lying quietly on the ground, covered in gore, his pretty face battered and misshapen. He’d rolled off Spike, shaken and disgusted with himself. “Why the hell didn’t you fight back?” he snapped as he stood, then hauled Spike up and half carried him to the bed. “Cos,” Spike had mumbled as Angel carefully deposited him on top of the sheets. “You needed it.” He’d coughed a little, spat out the blood in his mouth. “‘Sides,” he continued. “Owed you one.” He’d smiled painfully. “And you’re not the only one who’s done this, so don’t feel too bad.” They never mentioned that night again. ~~~~~~ The ones from before had been what was left of the Sunnydale gang. In a stunning break with tradition, Buffy didn’t go first. No, Xander had been the first to go; too drunk to care about anything. He’d been in Africa, and no one had really been paying attention in all the insanity of rebuilding the Council to see his messages came fewer and further between, and finally stopped. Three weeks after the last e-mail everyone forgot to read, two African women had showed up on the Council’s doorstep with Xander’s coffin. He’d tangled with the wrong demon and been ripped apart; either forgetting or not caring that he wasn’t a superhero. They’d brought what was left with them. It had been pretty tragic. Xander dead, so young, less than twenty-six, and while Angel hadn’t thought much of him, it had reminded him that humans were pretty damn mortal. Not something he’d particularly enjoyed thinking about. Surprisingly, Spike had been really torn up, and Angel had wondered what happened between the two of them. He’d asked and Spike had punched him hard and walked out to get drunk. Standard coping policy, Angel figured. So, a tragedy, but it had had the benefit of putting the L.A. group back in the Council’s good graces. Buffy had called L.A. to tell Angel, to cry on his shoulder or something, because she must have known he couldn’t care less about Xander. They’d gone to England, him and Spike. Buffy had freaked; he remembered that fondly now. Screamed and yelled and almost fainted, then thrown a punch at each of them. They hadn’t bothered to dodge; they’d known it was best to take the first hit rather than avoid it and catch the next eighteen or twenty. And once she’d realized Andrew had known, she’d thrown a punch at him too. He’d dodged. Silly boy. It had been pretty funny, actually. After the theatrics, they’d worked out a compromise, a plan of sorts. He and Spike handled the Slayer search in the States, gathered them up and shipped them to England. One of them would always go on the flight; they traded off at Buffy’s request. And she’d always had something brief and passionate and bittersweet with whoever showed up each time. It was another one of those things they never really talked about. ~~~~~ Giles, then Willow, then Andrew, and finally Buffy, nine years after she’d made all the Slayers. Spike had reacted to each one a little worse. When Buffy died, some battle that she should have won but didn’t, Spike had ripped the apartment to shreds and left L.A. Angel heard - through the newspapers occasionally, when Spike did something big enough to attract the attention of the local news, and always through the demon network - that Spike had hit the highway from L.A. to the crater that used to be Sunnydale, killing every demon in his path along the way. He came back a month later, slammed the door of the apartment against the wall so hard both door and wall buckled a little, and threw Angel across the room. Didn’t ask about Angel’s month, didn’t notice the bruises around his eyes or ribs, didn’t even think that maybe Angel had been in pain as well. Then the violent kisses and rough hands, and Spike grabbing lube and slicking Angel up a little before shoving inside and riding him. No words, barely any noise. Nothing but a soft grunt when Spike came. When Spike rolled off, he’d mumbled, “Thanks. I needed that.” And it became another thing never mentioned again ~~~~~~ Dawn disappeared the same day Buffy died. For two years Spike tore everything apart, following any lead he could get, trying to find her. Two years, and Angel watched as Spike went through every stage of anger every day. Even more fights, even more broken houseware, darker bruises and more broken bones, locator spells and witches, all for nothing. And still Spike wouldn’t give up. One night, half asleep, Angel heard someone at the door. Next to him, Spike awoke, sniffed the air. Then his eyes widened and he jumped out of bed, crossing the room quickly to fling the door open. It was Dawn. Spike dragged her inside and held her tightly while Angel lay on the bed and felt left out. Angel knew he should get up, knew he should go over, knew he should say something to the girl, but he didn’t think there were any words between them. Their entire history was fake, invented by some monks, and all those trips to London to see Buffy had been too busy to see anyone else, especially a girl he’d never actually met. Spike was excited and overjoyed, touching her frantically to prove she was real. Dawn just stared at him. Her eyes were empty, a look Angel recognized easily from way back before, when he’d served a purpose on this planet. “Where the hell have you been?” he heard Spike ask. “Jesus Christ, Dawn, I’ve been insane looking for you.” “I heard,” she said distantly. “So I came by. Just to let you know.” “Let me know… let me know what?” Spike asked, But Angel already had an idea of what Dawn was here to say; you didn’t hide from the only person you had left on the planet for two fucking years when you wanted to see them. “I’m leaving,” Dawn said. Angel had known she was going to say that, and he knew there wasn’t going to be a happy ending to this conversation. “I’m going to go for a walk,” he announced, getting off the bed and pulling a shirt over his head. Neither person acknowledged him. He stepped out of the apartment, paused for a moment, wondering if it was worth fighting this course of events. It was a lost cause – he knew that – so he left the building. Spike was going to leave. Maybe with Dawn, maybe following her trail, but he was going to leave. Angel knew it. He knew it, just like he knew that one day Spike would come back. Probably. Maybe. Possibly. Spike would always gravitate back to him; they had blood between them, right? He spent at least an hour wandering the allies debating Spike’s departure and return inside his head. Worried and unwilling to let Spike see how he felt, he returned, walking slowly to postpone the moment. The huge apartment was going to be unlivable without someone else in it. But Spike would come back. He always came back. He had to. The moment Angel walked in, he knew that Spike was leaving with Dawn, not following after her. He could read it in Spike’s relieved stance, in Dawn’s inability to look at Angel. And he may have talked himself into being ready for it, but that didn’t make any it easier. Nothing ever got easier. “Taking off?” he said lightly, schooling his face and voice to hide any fear, any jealousy, but apparently not well enough, because Spike glanced at him and frowned. “Dawn, go wait in the car. I’ll be there shortly.” Dawn nodded and she walked out, still unable to catch Angel’s eyes and he was glad for that because if she had, he might have killed her. Even if he didn’t give a damn about Spike’s whereabouts. After Dawn closed the door behind her, Spike walked to the dresser and threw all his clothes into a pile. Nothing much, some extra jeans and tee shirts. Angel stood quietly, arms crossed, eyes averted. He didn’t care if Spike was leaving, he didn’t care if the bastard never came back and just drove off into the sunset with Dawn forever because being alone was his thing. He did it for a hundred years before Sunnydale, and he could do it again. Spike stood in front of him, clothes bundled on the bed. “I’m off,” he said unnecessarily. “I got that,” Angel replied coolly. “Have fun.” Spike wrapped his hands around Angel’s face, kissed him hard, biting and nipping, bleeding him and drinking. “I’ll be back,” he promised. “I’ll come back.” He grabbed his clothes and headed for the door. “It’s not like I want you here anyway!” Angel shouted at his retreating back. Because he didn’t want Spike around. It was just a reminder of everything he’d lost, and Spike being gone was just. fucking. fine. ~~~~~~ A month. Three months. Six months, eight, a year. And every day Angel pretended he wasn’t waiting for Spike to come home. The insomnia started then; without Spike to keep him company there was point to patrolling for demons that didn’t exist anymore, no point in taking out the occasional vampire with a burning desire to take over L.A. and an obvious death wish, no point in doing anything but lying in bed or slouching on a couch and staring into the past. Sometimes the past was so tantalizingly close; he could hear Darla’s sweet laugh as she tempted yet another stupid man into her web, see Drusilla dancing under the stars and Will sitting there, mesmerized, watching her with an adoration he’d never bestowed on Angelus. And newer memories; the tears in Buffy’s eyes as she promised not to forget just before she did, the lust that was never quite blocked out by hate when Xander looked at him, Dawn’s frightened face between the slats of a banister, Giles calling him and Buffy poetic, Willow’s stutter when he asked to enter her room. And later still, Wes polishing his glasses as he forced himself to step back from research, Faith crying in his arms and begging to be saved, Gunn hefting the axe his crew made for him with that satisfied little half smile, Fred looking at him like he was a hero, Cordelia ordering him to cheer up because he was messing with her happy vibe. The best things; Darla's proudly possessive hand on his arm as she walked beside him sedately, whispering wicked things only they could hear, Drusilla singing nursery rhymes in her littlegirl voice while brushing her doll’s hair, Will reciting poetry as he stripped off his clothes, Buffy looking at him like he was a god, back before Angelus, Doyle handing him a beer and spinning a tale about Ireland, Cordelia joking with him like he was someone normal. And the worst things; Kathy’s sob before he drained her dry, Drusilla begging for mercy as he slaughtered the nuns and raped her next to their dead bodies, calling her Satan’s whore when she prayed for salvation, Darla clawing his face when she sensed his soul, Spike asking why he’d taken Drusilla away and roaring in frustration as Angel ignored him and fucked her while he watched, stuck in that chair he’d hated so much, Buffy shoving a sword in his gut, the pillow over Wes’ face, slashing Connor’s throat. Their faces, their voices, the lives they hadn’t gotten to actually live, haunted him, but they no longer made him crazy with guilt. He was past that. He’d done enough guilt for one lifetime and had gotten nothing but a lonely existence in return. They were all gone, anyway. He hadn’t been able to save them from the vagaries of humanity. He hadn’t made them immortal so he could keep them forever, and maybe that had been an oversight he should have corrected. ~~~~~~ Fourteen months, three weeks and two days after leaving, Spike returned. He reeked of Dawn and sex and unshed tears, requited lust and unrequited love. Loss. He walked in as though he’d been gone moments rather than over a year, dammit, and Angel wouldn’t say a thing about it, because it would seem he’d been counting the days and he hadn’t. “Ran into thirty-three vampires on my way here.” Spike said casually, stuffing his clothes back into drawers that Angel wouldn’t admit to leaving empty for him, in case he came back. “Been slacking, pet?” “Go fuck yourself,” Angel snapped. “They can have the place. I don’t care.” He stepped closer. “And I am not your pet.” “Oh, are you feeling useless?” Spike taunted. “Feeling as though you have no place in this world after a quarter century at the center of it?” “Don’t push me,” Angel growled. “Not right now.” “Or you’ll what?” Spike replied. “Hit me? Yell at me? Move your fat ass off the goddamn couch and act like you care about something?” “Spike – “ teeth clenched, and he was barely holding on to the demon. “Don’t.” “C’mon Angel. When’s the last time you hit something? G’ahead, hit me. Hurt me, you bastard. Hurt me.” A cruel twist of Spike’s mouth as he shoved him a little. “Do it.” He stepped closer, right in Angel’s face. “You used to have balls, Angelus.” And it was too far, the words and the smell of Dawn deep in Spike’s skin, there forever, and the loneliness and the memories and all of it. He shoved Spike against a wall, ripped at his shirt and tossing it aside. “You want to get hurt?” he snarled as he slammed Spike’s head back against the wall, hard, cutting the scalp a little. “Yeah,” Spike replied. “Make it hurt, Angel. Take me back.” He punched Spike hard then, fist cracking a cheekbone, then he dragged him back from the wall and hauled him close. “You. are. mine,” he growled, tossed Spike facedown across the bed, ripping at his jeans and tossing them aside. “Mine,” and he grabbed the lube from the bedside table. “You don’t walk away from me, you fuck.” Slicked Spike only a bit, because this had to hurt. He had to make Spike bleed and make him raw so he’d never walk away again. “You don’t disappear for a fucking year and say nothing,” shoving inside, grabbing Spike’s hair and pulling his head back, “you don’t go anywhere that I can’t find you,” baring his neck. Spike keened and Angel chuckled. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” “Yes,” Spike hissed. “Make it hurt more. Please, Angelus.” “Not him,” he replied, yanking Spike’s head back further and twisting so Spike had to look up at him. “I’ll never be him again, William, and you need to fucking get that.” Thrusting harder now, and he could feel Spike tear, feel the blood flood Spike’s ass, making moving inside him easier. “Same face,” Spike panted. “Same voice, same cock, doesn’t matter,” and he started pushing back against Angel, faster and harder, “none of it matters anymore you bastard, nothing,” and Angel didn’t want to see the tears on Spike’s face so he just didn’t. He buried his fangs in Spike’s neck as he came, took him back, made him his. “You’re not leaving again,” Angel growled. Spike just sighed in response. The next night, the very next fucking night, Spike went out on one of his pub crawls. Angel followed, saw him talking up a pretty girl with giant blue eyes and long brown hair. He stood there and thought about dragging Spike out by his hair and taking him in an alley. He thought about it then turned around and left the bar. He just couldn’t be bothered anymore, not with Spike and his bullshit, not with any of this. It ended up being another one of those things they didn’t talk about. ~~~~~~ Angel woke up one morning to Spike humming one of those godawful songs he claimed to hate so much. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Seventy-five years, and nothing but more pollution and even more horrifying music, Spike said, and now he was humming a song he hated and he was… “What the hell are you on?” he asked shortly. “Something this pretty chit gave me. You’d have liked her; all tiny and blonde with these red streaks though it,” Spike said dreamily as he gestured languidly around his shoulders. “Not sure what it was, but one thing I have to say about the future. The drugs have definitely improved.” Angel snorted. “Drugs. You’re stoned.” He laughed, and there was something bitter in it. “You go out every night, you get messed up, and you come back here.” “Not like you’re worth staying sober for, mate,” Spike replied as he tugged off his boots. “You never speak anymore anyway. You hardly leave this apartment. You never do anything. You’ve taken the idea of the walking dead to a whole new level.” He stripped to his jeans and flopped onto the bed. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t want to fuck tonight,” he murmured as he drifted into sleep. “I’m in much to good a mood.” And Angel had no idea what to say to that, so he just didn’t waste the words. ~~~~~~ Seventy-six years now. Seventy-six since the battle. Forty-one since Gunn. Sixty-seven since Spike left with Dawn, sixty-five since Buffy died, and there’s nothing left on this planet for him but a vampire who plays human in his state of the art retro turn-of-the-millennium-faux-denim jeans and doesn’t give a damn about Angel. A vampire who walks out on him all the time, who fucks other people, who never tells him the truth and who could leave tomorrow and not care. And he’ll never admit it to Spike, but half of what keeps him from sleeping is fear that one day he’ll wake up and find out Spike’s left for good. Like that first time, that month of hell, only this time it won’t be a month, it’ll be eternity. “Ever think about what’ll happen when you turn human?” Angel asks as they lay in the sunlight on their bed. “Going to stick with one of the girls or the boys you pick up every night, or just become a dirty old man at the bar?” Spike chokes on the cigarette smoke in his mouth. Such a pointless, human gesture; he was always clinging to humanity. “When I turn what?” he shouts. “What the hell are you nattering about?” “I gave up the shanshu to get in with the Circle,” Angel says, shrugging. “That means you’re the only candidate for getting to live again.” “Well, take the fucking thing back,” Spike snaps. “I certainly don’t want it.” He crushes the cigarette butt and gets out of bed. He pulls on his clothes, his movements jerky. “Don’t want to be some simpering human.” “Funny,” Angel says as he lies in bed, watching Spike pace around the room, agitated. Good. It was nice to see. “You fought me awful hard for the chance at it back in the day.” “Chance at nothing but warm Mountain Dew,” Spike mutters in reply. “And anyway, that was then when - ” he stops himself, swallows the words, and Angel watches as a hundred possible responses flit though Spike’s head. “That was then,” he finally says. But Angel knows what Spike means. That was then, when there was someone left to live out life with, when there was a Buffy or a Cordelia or a Dawn or a Wes. When there were people worth living with and growing old with and dying with, one day. But now there’s no one, and neither of them wants to contemplate life alone. “Well, as soulled vampires go, we’re it,” he says. “No one else to get the reward, and like the morons we are, we keep stopping apocalypses.” “I like this life,” Spike says. “I like this world. Don’t want to see it gone.” He comes back onto the bed, above the covers, clothes still on, stretching out on the spread and resting his head in his arms. “But I’m not doing it for any sodding redemption. I like living forever.” “Then you’re screwed,” Angel says. “Because you’re the only one left.” “Not necessarily,” Spike says slyly. “Ran into Harmony the other night. She’s still around. She could get the stupid reward; poor girl’s biggest wish is to sunbathe on the beach one last time.” “She doesn’t have a soul,” Angel says, looking over at Spike. “It says a vampire with a soul in the prophecies.” Spike rolls his eyes at him, and Angel has to restrain himself from either slapping him or kissing him. “She could never withstand the trials, but I could convince her to get cursed.” Unspoken that Spike could convince her to do anything and Angel fought to stop the clicking noise of his teeth coming together at the thought. “Just have to cut up her credit cards or something, else a sale at a shoe store could loosen the bond.” “Harmony has credit cards?” Angel says, shocked. “That’s… that’s insane. Who on earth would give her a credit card? She’s dead.” “Our Harmony was always better at playing human than anyone else,” Spike replies, and there’s almost pride in his voice. “She has this guy, he gets her really convincing ID and such. ‘Sides, not like she has to worry about credit history. She just ‘dies’, gets a new last name and starts all over. Since she quit with eating people, she needs the money anyway.” “She's still off humans?” Angel asks, and wonders how the hell Harmony of all people managed to stick with being fairly decent. He’d always figured it was posturing, but maybe Harmony had been right. She might have stood by him if he’d trusted her enough. “Yeah,” Spike replies. “She hates the mess, apparently.” “All right. You do what you have to do, and she can win the humanity,” he finishes. Because he knows the prophecy probably isn’t real; half the prophecies they come across aren’t, or they’re real in a way that has nothing to do with what you thought they meant. But it isn’t about that; it’s about being alone, and not wanting to be alone, and being too scared to kill himself and too disinterested to try and get himself killed. And he knows Spike thinks the exact same way, and that’s nice. Nice to have someone here who’s always going to be around, because Spike can fuck off a hundred times over, but he’ll come back to whatever is really permanent. Angel watches Spike drift off and realizes this may have been the longest conversation he’s had with Spike in over a decade. ~~~~~~ He wakes up three months later with a funny thought. He rolls over slightly and nudges Spike. “Wake up,” he growls. “Lazy bastard.” “What?” Spike asks, his face still buried in his pillow. “If the world isn’t ending, leave me be. I’m tired.” “Maybe if you didn’t go out every night, you wouldn’t be,” Angel says peevishly. “And I want to talk, so get up!” He shakes Spike a little more forcefully. Spike rolls over and eyes him. “Feeling all right, Angel?” he says with just a hint of a sneer. “You want to talk?” “Yeah,” Angel replies. “Why is that so surprising?” “Because,” Spike drawls, sitting up in bed, “you don’t talk. You haven’t for ages.” “That’s not true,’ Angel says sulkily. “I talk. I talked to you about Harmony. How’d that go anyway?” “That was months ago, and fine,” Spike says shortly. He gets out of bed, starts searching around for clothes. “She’s all cursed and doing good deeds and what have you. So that problem’s averted. Are we done here?” “You’re leaving?” Angel asks unnecessarily. Spike was always leaving; its one real constant in Angel’s existence. The world’s changed while he’s ignored it, but Spike’s always going to leave and Spike’s always going to come back. It’s almost comforting. Almost. “Yeah, I have plans for the evening,” Spike says with shrug. “But I’ll be in later.” “Spike…” He’s pulling on his boots, and Angel’s kind of grasped that this is probably the last time he’ll try this, because putting himself out there, letting Spike know that he’s important in some way, is crossing a line. And for some reason he woke up in just the right state of screwball to give it a shot. “Where do you go when you go away for days?” Spike looks at him, shock warring with the ever-present smirk that says Angel’s done something that he finds completely hilarious. “Why?” he asks slyly. “Want to come next time?” Angel has to think about that for a bit. He’s spent the last sixty years on the edges of reality, going to a nearby butcher’s shop for blood and ignoring the constant change in staff –they get progressively younger while he stays the same. Wearing clothes that look similar to what he’s worn since he had some kind of life and pretending the fabric hasn’t changed. Clinging stubbornly to the music of the nineteen seventies, which was over a century ago while ignoring the move from vinyl to eight track to tape to cd to computer files that Spike downloads for him while sniggering. But now it’s time to move on, or something. Time to jump into this century, like Spike so clearly has, time to drop the past and accept that it’s over and gone and in the past, like it should be. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Maybe I do. So?” And Spike, who must have gotten used to mood shifts after a hundred years with Drusilla, must have gotten used to irrational and inexplicable behaviour, shrugs. Just shrugs and says, “Fine. Get packed. We leave in an hour.” Angel scrambles out of bed. “I thought you had plans,” he says snidely. Another shrug. “This is more important. Hurry up, it’s a long drive.” “Drive to where?” Angel asks as he pulls a shirt over his head. “Oregon,” Spike says shortly. “We’re gonna see family, at least as close to family as we’ll get.” He grabs a bag, shoves some extra clothes for the both of them inside and zips it hastily. “Gonna see Dawn’s kids.” “Dawn has kids?” Angel asks, surprised. “How?” “I expect the usual way,” Spike says dryly. “Now hurry. It’s a long story so I’ll tell you in the car.” And he hustles them both out the door, into some flashy car with that new anti-UV tint that’s almost see-through. No more ugly impossible to use ultra dark tint; some thing really have gotten better, at least for vampires. Odd. And as they drive up the old highways, made wider because there’s still more people than needed on the California coast, Spike tells him about the year he was gone, the year of Dawn, and Angel realizes that maybe living in the now doesn’t mean letting go of the past. Maybe he can pull this off. ~~~~~~ Go Back to Other Stories 09 December 2004