another prompt of a fic I wouldn't write

[lettered]

Prompt from jgracio won the poll: Angel buys a puppy. It might also be the Angel-falls-for-Spike fic, who the hell knows.

Angel, Spike, Illyria, Nina, and a puppy, post NFA, PG.


Angel bought it at an auction. An evil auction, he kept trying to tell everyone. An auction where they were evil, and were going to, he didn't know, do evil things to it.

"You bought a bloody puppy." Spike hadn't stopped laughing about it for--Angel checked his watch--seventeen minutes, now. Spike was inexorable. "No, wait, no, you saved it's life." Spike was full of maniacal glee. "Oh, my hero, will you climb that tree a-and, and rescue my kitten next? You brave, crime-fighting, death-defying . . . dog owner?" Spike was going to die, slowly.

Angel was standing just inside the office, the puppy still curled up in his arms. He looked down at it and realized that holding it that way didn't exactly facilitate the brave, crime-fighting, death-defying, not dog owner image he was going for. It didn't help that Spike was pointing at him and crowing, "He likes kids and dogs, ladies! Isn't he the spitting image of the man you want to meet? Take him home; he cooks; he cleans! He's the bloody Prom King!" Angel put down the dog, whose nails skittered on the slick floor.

Spike stopped laughing to eat, which Angel resented because vampires didn't need to eat, but apparently it gave Spike a second wind. Then he lit a cigarette, saw the puppy again, and began to choke on smoke and laughter. Which Angel also resented, because vampires didn't need to breathe, either; the choking and the tears at the corner of Spike's eyes were just for show. Then after the cigarette Spike laughed again about the dog and said he had to go take a piss. And yeah, resentment, because vampires don't piss.

When Angel said as much, angrily, Spike looked at him strangely and said, "Said I'm going to take the piss." He scratched his chest, started to wander off, but then turned back. "You bought a puppy, Angel. Man's best friend. Don't you think it might--what was it Dog Girl said--"

"Don't call her that," Angel said wearily.

"--make you live a little?" Spike asked, and wandered off.

Apparently "take the piss" in Britishese or whatever that was Spike spoke meant make a phone call, because Spike was back half an hour later, with further information. "You dashed in front of a high speed vehicle," he said gleefully. "You caught up the puppy in your arms--" Spike was demonstrating, with dramatic swirls of his coat--"you cradled it, placed it in some old woman's arms and said--what did you say? 'I'm just your friendly neighborhood Undead Man'?" Spike howled with laughter.

"Faith," Angel muttered darkly. He turned to go out.

"Hey," Spike said. Angel turned back, and Spike's face broke into snickers again. "She didn't just tell me all about your pupscapades for nothing, you know."

Angel's eyes narrowed. "What did you do to her?"

"Nothing." Spike managed to look righteously offended and chortle at the same time. "I promised you would call her," he said, rolling his eyes when Angel glared.

"Obviously, she'd rather talk to you."

"Not obviously, you hulking idiot. Just 'cause I'm the only one who bothers to give her a ring now and then, 'cause it's not like Buffy--"

"I'm busy," Angel snapped, and swept out of the office.

At the warehouse where he lived, he decided to call Faith after all.

"How's Fido?" was the first thing she said.

"Fido?" Angel repeated, still bitter about Spike. When he realized she meant the dog, he said, "It's not named Fido." He was thinking about naming it Spike. He had decided it was an excellent name for a dog.

"Sure," Faith said. "Is it a bitch? Spike said if it was you'd name it Darla; you had a thing for that."

Spike wasn't a good enough name for a dog, really. "It's male," Angel grunted.

"Okay, I can work with that. Astro? Mr. Peabody? Rin Tin Tin? Benji? Have you got him there? Tell me what he looks like. Lemme hear him bark, then I'll know whether Killer or Pookie works better."

"He's at the office."

"What do you mean, 'he's at the office'? You left him there?"

"What? There's food there."

"I can't believe you bought a puppy and then abandoned it."

Angel shifted uncomfortably. "Okay, I saved its life. What am I supposed to do, build it a dog house now?"

"Well, for starters!"

"It was a ploy," Angel said. "To distract the auctioneers. The evil auctioneers, alright; it wasn't about me getting a pet."

"Wittle Angel doesn't want any wittle furry friends?"

"Yeah, thank you, Spike."

"You know, I used to want a puppy when I was little. I wanted a thing that wouldn't judge, loyal, best friend, that crap." He could practically hear the creak of leather that was Faith swinging her legs, which she did whenever she got thoughtful. "I can see where something loving you for exactly who you are would scare the shit outta you."

"What is it?" Angel exploded, furious. "You and Spike decide I'm suffering from lack of company, or what? I just wanted to slaughter a lot of evil, okay? I don't need . . . this."

"Sorry," Faith said, trying to sound like she didn't mean it, because she did. "That's a lot of anger, there. Everything alright?"

"Everything's fine," he snapped. "No, everything's not fine. Spike's annoying."

"So what else is new?" He could hear her opening a package; then she was chewing on some gum. "I'm prettier than he is," she said at last.

"You have better hair," he agreed.

"Really?" She perked up. He'd forgotten how easy it was to please Faith with a compliment to her vanity. Of course, she was like Spike in this way, too; Spike was just as easily pleased. Unless you were Angel. There was that time Angel had told him he liked his poetry; ever since then Spike had blatantly written it and shared it with anyone who would listen, except, of course, Angel. At whom he sneered, whenever Angel tried to see what he was writing or hear what he was saying. Angel just--it confused him. There was so little to like about Spike, really; why did he have to be such an ass about one of the only things he did like about him? "Angel, my hair," Faith said impatiently. "Tell me I'm gorgeous. Better, tell me I'm hot. Tell me I'm jumpable."

"What?"

"I'm thinking Robin might get jealous and then you guys could duke it out and I'd have to kiss the winner or whatever."

"Does Robin get jealous?"

"No." She sounded sad about that. "Just once I wish he'd get his righteous indignation on in my behalf. Or you could kiss each other," she went on, into it now, "you know, realizing you'd been foolish and masculine and testosterone packed, fighting over little ole me. You could slip him the tongue; I wouldn't mind." She paused. "He might, though."

Angel thought about that, and something Spike had said. "I would fight for you."

Faith laughed, but she sounded pleased. "I don't need anyone to fight for me. I could kick your ass."

"But I would," Angel said doggedly. "I'll call more often."

"What? Oh, listen. I'm going to stake Spike whenever I come down L.A.-way again."

"Not if I do it first."

"You don't have to call," she said. She sounded like she was swallowing her gum. "I don't want to have to deal with your social rejectedness." She sounded like she wouldn't mind dealing with it at all.

"Okay. I should go back. The dog--I wasn't thinking. It probably needs--what does it need?" He was making a mental catalogue.

"I don't know. Not like I ever had one. Make sure and let it out sometimes. That's what I do with Robin."

"I'm not going to keep it."

"At least buy it a bone."

"What?" he said, distracted. "Does it need treats?"

Faith laughed. "Good bye, Angel. Go take care of your puppy."

"It's not my puppy."

Angel arrived at the office later that night, his arms full of Petsmart bags, feeling slightly worried. He should have gone back to the office first; what if the puppy wet itself, or got scared, or lost, or what if demons broke in through the window and used it for a ritual sacrifice; he didn't know. "Here boy. What're you doing here?"

Spike was sitting on the floor. The puppy was in front of him, jaws worrying the other end of a knotted rag angrily, growling. Spike was pulling hard at the other end, keeping it from him. At Angel's exclamation, Spike hastily dropped the rag and stood up. "Nothing."

"It wants that; why wouldn't you give it to him?" Angel said, putting down the bag and going over to examine the puppy, who was chewing happily on the rag.

Spike watched him incredulously. "Because I'm mean spirited?" he guessed.

"You'll ruin its teeth."

"Yeah," Spike said, scowling. "Whatever."

Angel kept looking at the puppy, happy at his feet. He heard Spike slam the door on the way out.

*

The battle in the alley lasted until the one human who had been fighting in it rose again. Of course there was the whole day-time part where Angel, Spike, and Illyria had to barricade themselves inside a nearby building and wait out a siege until the light wouldn't burn two thirds their forces, but the battle was definitely still on. Some time in the middle of that second night, though, the army of dragons, demons, and otherworlders were dead, or bored, or following Gunn, who when he rose seemed to think he was the boss of them and ordered them to pull out. Angel, Spike, and Illyria retreated back into another shell of a burned out building, and hoped the human army reserve, there to reinstate peace, wouldn't pick up where the demons had left off.

Or Angel was hoping. Spike was mostly whining, and Illyria seemed confused. "Was that grief?" she wanted to know.

She wavered in Angel's eyes, looking like Willow for a moment. Maybe because her hair was matted red with blood or maybe because he'd heard a story, once, of the way witches express their grief, and whether you could be human, after killing humans.

"Yeah," Spike said, pulling away the arm he'd been using to cover his eyes. He sounded angry. "Tell us, oh fearless leader. What was that?"

Angel was too exhausted to think straight. "That was . . . making an effort."

"It changed nothing," Illyria said.

"Doesn't matter," Angel said, slumped against the wall. "Wasn't supposed to change anything."

"You knew we wouldn't win," Spike hissed, sitting up. Angel didn't understand how he had the energy.

"It taught me nothing I didn't know already," Illyria repeated. "I have already experienced the definition of carnage. This was no more than that."

"I told you," Angel said, too tired to be arguing. "I told you odds were we wouldn't survive."

"You didn't say there'd be an army," Spike said.

"I didn't know."

"I thought that fighting, killing, would alleviate my grief," Illyria was saying. "But I feel no different."

"That's what grief is supposed to be," Angel said. "It makes you think if you do something, if you do enough, it'll go away. But it doesn't. It just stays."

Illyria's fist opened and closed over the spot on her chest where a human heart would have been. "Then it was for nothing."

"We get you already; stop saying that!" Spike shouted. Angel closed his eyes. "All because some lame, pathetic excuse for a champion thinks he's going to martyr himself off into the sunset with the Sundance Kid, and thinks what, that everyone's going to follow him? That they'll start a religion after him? Name a detergent after him? What did you want?"

"I wanted this feeling to go away!" Illyria's alien tone had taken on something almost human, something throbbing with need.

"I just wanted to fight," Angel said.

Spike was in a frenzy. "What, so because you're up for a barroom brawl, you gotta drag us into it? Not enough to kill yourself, that it? You're so big on bloody sacrifice, aren't you. I know that's why you left Buffy, that's why you eke out your sad little existence with life's rejects, why you're here. And what, it's because you're evil, dark desires, terrible person, not good enough? Bollocks. It's because you think you're better than us, innit, think you're more miserable and more tragic and terrible, but you're not, you're--"

"Okay, just a couple months ago you were saying I wanted to think you were just as bad as I was, but that you weren't."

"Exactly," Spike ranted, "so the ultimate sacrifice for you is dragging your betters into some battle that's just yours, some battle you'll lose--"

"You make no sense," Angel said, closing his eyes again, thunking his head against the wall behind him.

Spike leapt to his feet. "I make no sense?" he raged.

"This is grief as well," Illyria said, getting to her feet also. "And it won't make any difference either."

Spike whirled on her. "You just shut up!"

"You were the first to raise your hand," she pointed out, sounding curious. "When your leader proposed this plan. Why?"

Spike's jaw worked for a moment. He pointed an accusing finger at Angel. "I wanted to make him look like an idiot."

"What?" Angel said. For some reasons, his wounds, previously a general pain all throughout his body, began to feel like individual stings. He winced. "I thought you were with me," he mumbled. "How does that make me look like an idiot?"

"Because you're so sodding gullible," Spike snapped. "You're so sodding self-involved, you think anyone would follow you anywhere. Well I won't!" He looked around so wildly for a moment that Angel thought Spike might actually think someone was there with him. No one was, of course. Except for Illyria, who could compel loneliness for human contact out of people in a crowd. "I'm through with you. I'm done!"

"I think I understand," Illyria said. She stepped in front of Spike, who had moved toward Angel. "For the duration of a battle there is no thought to spare for grief. So you incite more battles in order to forestall the grieving period."

"Get out of my way." Spike's voice was low.

"It's hardly effective," she replied, not budging. "But I see why you do it." Then the heel of her hand came up hard under Spike's chin.

Spike spit blood, and fought back. He seemed pleased. Angel guessed any punching bag would do.

He stayed slumped against the wall and watched them fight, blearily. Illyria did not seem so alien, now. In her grief for Wesley she reminded him strangely of Wesley himself. She had been his project, anyway; Angel supposed it was fitting for a man taught by his father to suppress all feeling should be teaching a former god what real emotion was. And with a sudden acute awareness of the cut slicing him open between his ribs, below his heart, Spike suddenly and strangely reminded Angel of Gunn, who fought that way, down and dirty, who Angel thought he'd probably never understood. Gunn and Wesley were always fighting anyway.

Not any more. Seeing as how they were dead.

Angel felt something wet and cold steal over him. There was shuffling around him, a sudden cease and swirl of color. "Splinter near his heart. Put pressure on it, damn you." Then the rough voice was near his ear. "You idiot, it's not finished; you hear me; it's not finished. I'm not finished with you yet, asshole."

*

Angel tried to give the puppy away to Nina. That didn't go over well at all.

Spike laughed for another half hour or so, only interrupted by eating and smoking, but not by drinking. That came out in a sprinkler of beer all over the office files when the puppy trotted by his desk just as he took a sip, right after he'd said, "I can't believe you'd do that to Dog Girl."

"Do what?" Angel asked, irritated. "And don't call her that."

Spike hooted with more laughter, waving the files around to dry them. "I'm not the one trying to palm off puppies on her."

"I wasn't palming it off." Angel was stabbing his pen down as if it was a stake and the papers were vampires instead of files about vampires. "I thought she'd like it."

"What could even begin to give you that impression?" Spike asked, making an expansive gesture with the beer can, as if to encompass all possibilities in the world.

Except the possibility that he'd stop being annoying for once. "She's nice," Angel said pointedly. "Puppies are nice. I thought she'd like it," he repeated.

Spike stared at him blankly. "Okay," he said after a moment, setting down his beer carefully, straightening in his seat. "Alright." He held up his hands and closed his eyes for a moment, like a parent preparing to tell a child Why We Don't Throw Cell Phones Down The Potty. "Let's just say we put aside the whole point that she's a werewolf--"

"I told you, I don't see how that--"

Spike closed his eyes and held up a hand again and looked like Buddha. "Putting aside that point, do you even have the faintest clue what Nina likes?"

"What?" Angel frowned. "Of course I do. She likes . . . art."

"What kind of art?" Spike demanded, suspicious.

"Pottery," Angel said promptly.

"That's a relief."

"And woodcraft," Angel added. "And painting after the late 1800s, and architecture."

"Give the man a plaque." Spike made a face. "And?"

"Um. Tapestries?"

"The art section of the midterm is over." Spike had his hands folded philosophically, his legs spread uncouthly in his desk chair. His eyes were narrowed. "What else does she like?"

"Fighting evil."

"Does she, really?"

"Of course she does."

"Hmm."

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing."

Spike rolled his eyes. "Really? Shock me."

"You're implying I don't know her. I know her. I know what she likes better than you."

"Want to bet?"

"I don't need to bet. She's my girlfriend. Unlike you I'm able to have relationships that don't involve monetary exchange."

Spike looked away.

After that battle with the army in the alley, Spike had had to dig his hand in between Angel's ribs to grab the piece of stake that'd missed his heart and broken off inside him. That had been several years ago now, and of course there wasn't even a scar, but Angel sometimes thought maybe Spike must've missed a splinter or two (on purpose) because the spot still flared up now and again, and hurt just below his heart. "Anyway," Angel said, not liking the feeling, "she likes rare steaks, and long runs at night, and being in a crowd."

Spike shook his head. "Werewolf thing aside, I said." He just sounded tired, now.

"That's not--"

"Crowds, pack identity," Spike said, marking off a finger. "Runs at night, excess energy." Another finger. "And rare steaks? Were you born this way or did Darla suck your brains out, too?"

"Some people just like it rare," Angel said defensively.

"Don't bother me." Spike swiveled in his chair, picking up a pen. "I'm busy saving people who deserve help."

"Since when did you think anyone deserved anything?"

"I don't." He didn't turn around. "I just don't waste time with great hulking morons who don't know their tongue from their toes."

"Tongue from their--whatever. Fine, you think you're so smart, what do you think she likes?"

"Right." Spike swiveled decisively around again, templing his figures and prepared to be beneficent with his great untold wisdom. "Nina likes spiky things."

"Oh, great. Another ego trip. For the last time, Nina does not like you; Nina does not have a crush on you; Nina does not want wild hyena monkey hybrid sex with you. She wants me, and--"

"That's not what I meant. Wait." In spite of himself, Spike looked interested. His hands detempled. "Hyena monkey hybrid sex?"

Angel jabbed the pen into the next file on the stack, frowning mightily. "That's what you said."

"Oh." Spike looked as if all had been revealed to him. Spike looked placid. Spike looked like Buddha again. "So I did. And so she does. To wit, she likes horny things as well."

"We have sex!" Angel exploded, standing up, throwing down the pen and opening his arms.

"This, I do not need to hear."

"We have lots and lots of sex. Sometimes wild sex!"

"La la la!" Spike sang. "I'm your source of self destruction, leading on your death's construction--"

"It's great sex! She likes it! I satisfy her!"

"I need a better song," Spike moaned, bringing his head dangerously close to his desk. "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard; damn right, it's better than--"

"You are not a better lover," Angel was ranting. "You don't even know how to love, so you can just--"

Spike's hands dropped off his ears. He came to his feet rapidly.

The spot between Angel's ribs hurt again. Possibly because, considering the look on his face, Spike was considering shoving his hands back in there and ripping out Angel's spleen.

"Iguanas," Spike said suddenly, quietly.

"Huh?"

Spike didn't seem to realize the complete non sequitur. His voice was that same, even tone, but he was furious. "Sea urchins," he said, "crabs and starfish. Horned lizards, turtles, certain kinds of beetles. Alligators, seahorses, and armadillos. Those are the animals Nina likes. Probably why she likes Illyria, and sure, I can see why she likes you better. But don't for a second think it's because you know how to love." Spike was shoving the papers on his desk into a folder, not looking at them, not looking at Angel any more either. "She wouldn't take a puppy if you paid her. But that's right. You don't need to pay her. Your relationships are all so genuine. Which is why I consider myself lucky mine are all so very cheap." He shoved the folder in his desk, and left.

Angel sat there for a while, then went back to closing up the case they had been working on, his pen scratching angrily at the paper. He was supposed to call the client to make sure their poltergeist problem hadn't returned, but he didn't think he could sound polite. Instead he got up to put it away, and almost stepped on the puppy. "What are you still here for?" He growled.

The puppy put its tail between its legs and scuttled away, slipping once on the slick tile and its clumsy legs. It curled up under Spike's desk. Angel went over there and thought about bashing its skull in on Spike's chair, just to hear the smashing sound and stop its whimpering. "Hey," he said, sounding stiff, "I didn't mean to do that. You can come out from there." When the dog didn't obey him, he sat on the floor as he had seen Spike doing the day before.

He spent half an hour trying to coax that damn dog out from there, and even then Angel was convinced it only let him grab it because it had urinated all over itself.

He let it go and went to wash his hands. Maybe Aggie would take the dog, or maybe one of their clients would. If nothing else, he could always take it to the pound; the humane society would take it. But as he frowned and tried to wipe the piss off his shirt, he didn't think he would. Somehow it didn't sound so humane to him.

*

Nina found them a few weeks after the battle with Black Thorn in the alley.

They'd been existing in the same shell of the building, which had been abandoned before the battle and no one felt the need to renovate very quickly. No one could've said they'd been living, and Nina didn't. Someone less observant might've said they'd been living, but qualified it with, "like animals," but that wasn't true, either. After all, Nina had some animal in her. Nina could never live like this.

For one thing, they couldn't fake zoology for the smell: there was none. Humans or animals living like this, there would've been a ripe old stench. Waste and blood and tears. But there was no waste, nor any tears, and the blood was not their own. Illyria and Spike mostly washed themselves off with a spigot outside when they came back inside to Angel hobbling around, hating them for being able to kill when he couldn't. Angel should probably have smelled putrid and like rotting flesh, himself. Maybe he did for a day or two, but infection didn't hold well with vampires and the flesh had mostly closed by then. It was the internal damage that was laying him up.

He hated how those words sounded in his head, "internal damage", as if there was more that could be hurt than bones and brains and blood. He was tired and angry; that spot between his ribs hurt; he didn't want to think of Gunn or Wesley or Lorne or Lindsey and how Holland Manners had told him this was Hell on Earth, and it wasn't ever going to change no matter what he did to the face of the world, of L.A. There would always be internal damage. You couldn't ever reach right in like Spike had done and take the damage out; the few times you could, splinters would always be left behind and they could still be deadly, or cripple you forever.

But Illyria and Spike left at dusk and slaughtered straight on till morning. As if that was the way, instead of past the second star, as children went, never believing they'd never make a difference, never. Angel knew that that was not Illyria and Spike's true purpose. They had no purpose; they killed because they could and because there was nothing else and they were just as tired and angry as Angel, and that was the real reason they were nothing like animals. The latter killed for food and reasons and life. Illyria and Spike's only purpose was death. But Angel resented them still, for having that. He felt that at least they were more alive than he.

The army of the Black Thorn had mostly dispersed, but Illyria and Spike found enough to exhaust them by morning, when they crashed and slept for hours, until dusk again sometimes. That was another thing unlively-like. They didn't need food to keep them going. They didn't need anything. Nothing would ever stop them until they were dust and dead. That's what Angel had thought would happen in that alley, but the only one to die was the only one who'd lived in the first place, and he'd had the unmitigated gall to come back. Gunn had turned against them, of course, soulless, but really he had joined them. A part of Angel had hoped that no one could ever join him again. He'd be gone in a flash-pan fire of hope and purpose, and then be scattered on the wind.

Angel slept when he was tired and hobbled around moodily when he wasn't. When the other two were there and sleeping, he tried to be loud in his moodiness and hobbling, trying to wake one so he could pick a fight. He was recovered enough for that now, but Spike and Illyria were past the kill-each-other stage they'd been in right after the big battle. They looked at Angel strangely and with hollow-eyed exhaustion when he tried it. Angel felt like he was slow to catch on to the grief thing. Even Illyria was better at it.

Sometimes he was sleeping when they dragged themselves back in the morning, and didn't wake up when they threw themselves on the messy pallets they'd made for themselves. It was those times, mostly, that Angel woke to find a cup of blood by his elbow. He never knew whether it was Spike or Illyria who left it. He suspected Spike, so he never said anything about it.

That was the one thing they needed to get by, the blood--that and the killing, and in the end they were the same. All they had ever needed, he was starting to realize, when Nina pulled open the sliding barn-style door with a bam, and told them to get off their fat asses and live.

Angel didn't even look up. "Might've escaped your notice, but we're dead."

"And she's defunct," Spike added helpfully, crooking a finger at Illyria.

"I prefer the term, 'in retrograde'." Illyria had lost interest, for the time being, in learning human ways, but it hadn't slackened her propensity to apprentice herself unwillingly. With Angel barely speaking at all, and Spike speaking no doubt constantly, but always bitterly, in the midst of killing, it was no surprise, really, that the former god had learned snark.

But despite Angel's coldness, Spike's lack of interest, and Illyria's biting and surprisingly witty sarcasm, Nina kept on. She visited every day, with food and water she forgot they didn't need, with news, reports on progress in the rebuilding of certain parts of L.A., and sometimes gifts.

This won Spike over fairly quickly. Sometimes Angel thought if he gave Spike a ball of string, all the past between them would be forgot.

Nina brought Spike clothes; he sniffed disdainfully at them and wore them. She bought him comic books, because she didn't know what he liked. He waved a cigarette around dramatically and said, "Who do you think I am? Bloody Harris?" and read them, just in case she was a fan and wanted to discuss them (she wasn't). Then she lit on what he liked and brought him chips and salsa, buffalo wings and katsu don, and tacos, which Illyria looked at strangely and stole. (Angel thought of Fred, and couldn't watch her try to learn how to chew.) Nina brought fried onion, and Spike fell truly, madly deeply in love with her for a period lasting exactly five days, which he never told her about, and at the end of which Spike waved a hand and told Angel (or possibly Illyria), "You can have her. Not Slayer enough for me, anyway. Bloody women."

After several tries, Nina bought Illyria a cactus. Spike and Angel silently agreed (only time ever, aloud or not) that yes, she did talk to it sometimes. She tried to stroke it also, but when she did it pricked her and Illyria tore it to more pieces than she had that dragon. Nina bought her a fern next, with the admonishment, "be nice." And Illyria was. To the fern.

Nina bought Angel clothes, too, which were tasteful and fit him, unlike Spike's. She knew what he liked, knew his tastes. She bought him a sketch pad, pencils, some new stakes, and books. She also gave him a pot she had thrown on the wheel. It was tall, with a slender neck like a swan's, with a blue glaze inside. It made the splinters between Angel's ribs ache. He scratched his chest there, said, "Uh, thanks," and hid the pot behind Illyria's fern when Nina wasn't around, so he wouldn't have to look at it and feel that feeling.

As it turned out, Illyria was a bit of a kleptomaniac: first the dragon, then the tacos, then the Sartre Nina had given Angel. Spike told Illyria it was a health hazard, and plucked the book from her hands. It caused a brawl, but afterwards, they seemed content again, Sartre had disappeared, and Angel was silently thankful Illyria learned nothing of existentialism to add to her repertoire of annoyingly piercing repartee. It wasn't until later he realized Spike was hiding Sartre under his mattress and reading it in the corner when he thought no one was looking. His brow furrowed and he chewed his tongue when he read it, like it was hard to figure out, which made Angel feel smug. Occasionally Spike closed his eyes, put his head back against the wall, and banged it there repeatedly, muttering. Angel found the low, rough voice and the thought of Spike giving himself head trauma strangely comforting, and fell asleep to the sound of it once or twice.

The other thing Nina brought them was cases. Angel was finally mostly recovered from the internal damage, except sometimes when he caught glimpses of Nina's vase behind the fern, or the night he realized what Spike was muttering to himself were conjugations. He'd forgotten Spike knew French. So Angel went out to fight with Spike and Illyria each day, but the pickings were getting sparser. Soon every demon would be in hiding again and most people would tell themselves the world was normal. Gunn hadn't been seen since the alley. He'd be back, but Gunn was smart. He'd hit them when there was actually something there to hurt.

"You need people to help," Nina told Angel. "It's what you do. It's what you did for me."

"He's not exactly a cure-all. Don't notice your cycle being any less hairy, Dog Girl," Spike said, but with no real malice.

"We can barely even help ourselves," Angel said, more annoyed than truthful.

"I'm working on it," Nina said.

Illyria sniffed. "My, aren't we dogged."

"Thatta girl!" Spike said, and slapped the former god on the back.

For all Nina's gifts, it was her persistence that lent their lives the most humanity.

After she brought in enough cases, she started keeping files, and then started demanding checks from the people they helped. Angel, Spike, and Illyria didn't see a dime. This outraged Spike, who kept trying to put Illyria's klepto skills to work stealing his cigarettes, since he couldn't afford them. (Illyria obliged for as long as she thought was interesting. She said the shell remembered smoking, but that tobacco was not the same. She kept trying to find marijuana and getting ripped off by rolls packed more than half with tobacco because she didn't know how to deal. Spike told her it was a bloody shame and she should just hand over the joints, then.)

"The money's going to a good place," Nina told them. "I.e., my place, and not yours." She hated their building and their moth eaten mattresses and their clutter (which was the only reason why Angel kept her pot behind the fern, she pointed out once.) "I totally deserve the money. Look at the place! God, live a little."

Nina reminded Angel a lot of Cordelia, actually, which made him want to live a whole lot less.

Then Nina rented them an office, and Spike and Angel walked like men. Illyria still walked like a biped praying mantis, though.

The office was pokey with a weird shaped front room, a big floor, a little kitchen with a dishwasher that didn't wash, and a tiny office. Nina said she got the office since she did the work of finding them cases, filing, and organizing everything at first, but eventually they gave it to Illyria because she was scaring all the customers. Spike and Angel had to share the main floor, and Nina drifted between them and the weird front room where she put in a reception desk. They all had desks and donuts in the morning, which only Spike ate. Nina, with nothing like a secretarial air and everything like a maternal one, made them blood and coffee and Illyria the avocado shakes she had weirdly grown to like. Angel wanted to put up a partition between his and Spike's desk so he wouldn't have to look at him, but Spike looked so scandalized at the thought of working in a cubicle that Angel laid off it, lest he hear one more time, "I'm free! No walls for me! Free as the ruddy wind blows! Free falling, you rotten pillock, free as a goddamn bird! I don't need this, Dog Girl. You can take this job and shove it."

When Angel stopped demanding a partition, Spike didn't stop quitting. He quit at least once a day, seeming enamored of coming up with new ways to do it. "Just don't want to give the impression I'm tied down to a nine-to-five, love," he told Nina once, sitting on the edge of Angel's desk and smoking into his face.

"You don't work a nine-to-five," Nina told him patiently. "You work nights."

Spike scowled. "What kinda shit hours are those! 'S a bloody farce. You don't even have benefits!" he shouted, and stormed out.

The next night, after cleaning up some vamps, stopping three ritual sacrifices, and accidentally switching bodies with Angel, Spike stood in the middle of the office, threw down his axe, and said, "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you. I'm outta here."

"Who all was he talking to?" Nina wanted to know.

"I think he has imaginary friends," Angel confided. "He was an only child, you know."

Nina nodded. "It explains a lot."

But for all that it seemed to make Spike anxious and surreptitiously terrified, and Illyria sort of angry and confused (she kept trying to make the file cabinets bend to her will), they seemed to also want it. Angel didn't know. The office and its malfunctioning dishwasher and severely dented file cabinets and weirdly shaped front room, it made him anxious and terrified and angry and confused, but it had to be in a worse way than his . . . colleagues. They'd never helped the helpless before. He had.

There was the way it made the old internal wound flare up.

There was the way Nina kept reminding him of Cordelia, and Illyria once again of Wesley, just because she had been his, once. Which made Spike . . . when he wore his duster, from the back he looked . . . if you ignored his hair (which Angel tried to do; he still thought it was radioactive) . . . well, for some reason it made Angel think of Doyle. Which was why he ached, ardently, for the partitions, but when Spike got so ridiculous about it, it got a little easier. Doyle had been . . . like Whistler, like Buffy, a call to destiny. And more than Whistler, and just like Buffy, a connection to humanity. And more than even Buffy, in some ways, because Doyle's friendship had helped him feel as only the snow in Sunnydale, not the girl in Sunnydale, had: that there were things bigger than himself. Others worth saving, good worth fighting for. Doyle had been a reason for so long, and Spike was--Spike was nothing.

But Nina was something. He brought the vase she'd made him to the office, and kept it on his desk. It hardly hurt to look at, now that she had given him, given them, so many other things.

Another reason, most of all.

*

Angel wanted to name the dog Tanto, but no one would listen to him.

"Rufus Wainwright," Nina said, promptly.

"I don't understand why you get to name him," Angel grumbled. "You didn't even want him."

Nina looked upset. "It wasn't that I didn't want him." She crossed her arms. "Okay, I didn't want him. But I don't mind having him around. And if you're going to leave him in the office, he's an office dog, so he belongs to all of us. We get a say in the name."

"If you wished to be rid of the animal, you did not exhaust all your resources. I will gladly take him." Illyria still didn't used contractions when trying to intimidate. Or when she was trying to be polite, which was really the same thing. She picked up the puppy by the leg. "I shall call him, Specimen Three Thousand And Thirty Two."

"No," three voices exclaimed at once. Illyria had begun collecting bugs, around the time Nina got them the office. She had quite a collection, each specimen splayed, labeled, and pinned on a board of black velvet. Angel didn't think all three thousand of whatever samples she had were insects. Some, he suspected, were demons she had splayed, labeled, and pinned to the basement of the creepy townhouse she'd rented. They might not all be dead. She might be doing weird experimentations in there. That was Spike's theory, anyway. Angel took the puppy away from her quickly.

"Bad god, bad," Spike said, lazily, from the corner. He was smoking and the rims of his eyes were red, looking like he hadn't slept.

Angel had slept hard himself, exhausted from coaxing the puppy out from under Spike's desk. By the time Angel got to the office, Spike was there already, which was a rare occurrence. Spike hadn't once held Angel's tardiness over his head or mocked him for it. He hadn't even looked at him. Angel guessed he was mad about the smell of puppy piss that must be lingering under his desk.

"Spike," Nina said, appealing to the other vampire as she often seemed to when she disagreed with Angel. "What should we call it?"

"Don't know, do I?" Spike didn't look at her either.

"Come on, you must have a suggestion."

"'Course." Spike smashed his cigarette in the tray. "Scooby Fucking Doo," he said, and stomped out.

"Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed," Nina huffed.

"He didn't sleep," Angel said absently. "Tanto, and that's final."

"Rufus."

"Specimen Three--"

It never actually got decided. Angel called it Tanto; Nina called it Rufus; Illyria called it a failed experiment. Spike called it everything from, Hey-you to Fucking-menace-hairball-always-under-my-bloody-feet. David Nabbit, who dropped in from time to time, suggested Haplo, looked at all their blank faces, and slunk away. Aggie, their psychic connection, voted Rufus, which Nina took as decisive and bought a dog bowl with the name around the rim. Over the phone, Faith seemed to really get a kick out of Scooby Fucking Doo, and sometimes the clients, when they weren't trying to eat him or ritually sacrifice him, called him Rex, Fido, and Spike. The latter amused Angel endlessly, enough to consider buying a dog bowl with that around the rim. The only reason he didn't was that Nina was convinced the dog's name was Rufus and buying a new bowl would hurt her feelings.

He wanted to tread carefully. She'd been really upset about him trying to give her the puppy. "It was just insensitive," she told him later.

Spike snorted loudly from behind his desk.

Angel guessed Rufus was alright. Both the name, and the puppy himself. It was kind of nice having it in the office. Despite Spike always on the edge of kicking it, and Illyria on the edge of experimenting on it, and Nina still a little hurt about Angel trying to give it to her, they all seemed to enjoy it, too. Angel looked at the vase on his desk (a new one Nina had made, not as pretty as the old, but that one had long since broken during a demon attack), didn't look at Spike's hair, looked at Rufus, thought he might take Nina out to make it up to her, thought about keeping in better touch with Faith, and thought some things were worth it after all.

*

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