Man's Best Friend, 2

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PG-13, post-NFA, gen-ish, Angel, Spike, Nina, Illyria, and a puppy.



Angel couldn't seem to get it through anyone's head that that auction had been evil. "I nailed a puppy to a door once," he told Faith irritably over the phone. "Doesn't anyone remember that?"

"You wouldn't do that to Fluffy!" Faith said with mock panic.

"It's not Fluffy."

"Rex. Whatever. You know all you want to do his hug it and love it and squeeze it to death."

"I do not want to hug it and squeeze it."

"Sure, Elmyra," Faith said. "The point is, you wouldn't nail it. Necrophilia is more your thing. Or is that Nina's thing? Angel! You are into dogs!"

"Nina is not a dog."

"But Rover is."

"I used a hammer," Angel said. "It was a border collie. It belonged to a little girl, and it was her very best friend. Nails. Right through the skull." Angel stared down at the puppy at his feet menacingly. It was crying and Angel couldn't stop thinking about hammers. It was five in the morning and no one was around to see him do it, so he picked it up and started petting it. It quieted immediately. "It can be about atonement," Angel said. "But it isn't because I like dogs."

"Face it. You're a dog person. You should put an ad in the paper. Say you like kids, too. They'll want you to baby-sit."

"Doesn't anyone care about my atonement?"

"You're petting it right now, aren't you," she said.

Angel hung up.

He was stuck with the dog, but he figured he didn't have to like it. In fact, he did not like it at all. As it turned out, puppies were hard work. The dog was unhouse-broken. It apparently would've liked to've remained unhouse-broken. It liked to chew. It liked to cry.

And it liked Spike better.

Angel couldn't figure it out. Spike would kick the dog as soon as look at him. But it never peed on Spike. It never chewed Spike's shoes. And when it was with Spike, it seemed to be playing happily. It had that dumb panting puppy smile on its face, even. The second Angel came in, the puppy began to cry.

Angel tried everything. He bought it toys, equipment, food. He took it for walks and cleaned up its waste. He held it and pet it and even talked to it, when no one was listening. Once he tried singing. Nothing worked. The puppy was impossible to please.

At least Connor had liked his vamp face.

That was it, really. The universe had seen how he couldn't even hold onto a baby, so they'd downsized considerably. A puppy, he could handle. Angel could see them all now, the Powers That Be up on Mount Saint Full Of It, saying, "Oh, you know that Angel. Have to take baby steps with him. See what he did in that alley?" And if he failed to be responsible for the puppy, then what? They'd probably depreciate completely and expect him to be responsible for Spike.

As he had told Faith, Angel figured it was karma. He'd done so many terrible things in his past; Fate saw fit to punish him. Maybe that was why he was trying so hard.

More likely it was just because he hated Spike being better at it than him.

"What are you doing to it?" Angel demanded, after the puppy had been at the office about a week. Spike took his cigarette out of his mouth, and Angel knew that look. That was the gearing up to innocence look, the, "who me? Doing to what?" look. "The dog," Angel said, before he could say anything.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Angel. Her name is Nina. Say it with me, Neee-nah. We don't go around calling her a dog unless it's that time of month. 'Cause then, of course, she's a total bitch."

"Nina is not--"

"Oh. Were-bitch. My bad." Spike put the cigarette back in his mouth.

"Your bad," Angel repeated incredulously.

"To the bone," Spike agreed, and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

Angel closed his eyes. "What did you do to the dog? The puppy."

"That mutt?" Spike frowned. "Tried really hard not to bash its skull in?"

"You're feeding it," Angel said. "Aren't you. You're feeding it that junk you always eat. People food isn't good for dogs."

"Poison. Now there's an idea."

"You're trying to make it like you."

Spike looked like he thought maybe Angel should try on a straight jacket for size. "Like me?" His voice was full of disgust. "What the hell would I want it to like me for?"

"I don't know," Angel said, then used his secret weapon. "But I know you stayed up with it the first night I brought it here."

Spike looked blank for a moment. Angel felt like he had made a hit, a very palpable hit.

"No I didn't," Spike said finally.

"I called Faith; I went to Petsmart; I came back; you were here with it." Angel felt triumphant.

"Doesn't mean I stayed with it."

"Did to. There were half a dozen butts in your tray, and no urine anywhere. Since it has to take a piss about every twenty minutes, you must've let him out or cleaned him up."

Spike chomped on his cigarette, vaguely resembling a freight engine. Angel felt superior in his powers of deduction.

"I was trying to train it to piss on your leg on sight," Spike said at last. "Didn't work."

"Maybe because you're always kicking it around." Angel felt heady with victory.

"Fucking menace hairball, it's always under my bloody feet," Spike muttered.

The puppy trotted up. Seeing as how Spike always called it that, and the puppy only answered to Spike, it was to be expected. Angel felt his moment of glory dissipate.

The puppy was panting from its quick scuttle across the floor, its mouth pulled back in a way that made it look ecstatic to see Spike. The latter looked down at it, expression flickering, then resolving into a fierce scowl. "Go away," he told it, and gave it a shove with his boot.

The puppy looked like it was laughing and trotted back over.

"Don't do that." Before Spike could put a boot-shaped dent in it, Angel picked the puppy up. It promptly began to cry.

Spike puffed away like a freight engine again.

"Why does it do that?" Angel resisted the urge to throw the puppy across the room. Or to give it to Spike, because it never cried with Spike.

Spike shrugged and sat back down at his desk. Began to shuffle through some papers. "You should take it to the vet," he said, without looking over.

"There's something wrong with it?" Angel held the puppy out to look at it, feeling kind of relieved.

Spike seemed to think he was very important with his papers. "No, it needs shots."

"Why does it need shots if nothing's wrong?"

Flinging down his stapler, Spike suddenly turned on him. Maybe his papers weren't so important after all. "Don't you know anything?"

Angel took the dog to the vet. It did need shots. Angel wondered whether Spike had also known it needed a license and one of those dog tag things. Then the vet told him the dog should be neutered, and the vague, sort of bitter resentment over Spike knowing more about it than him faded into a vague, sort of bitter resentment over a dog's lot in life.

"I can't believe you did that to Piddles," Spike said when Angel brought it back. "I may want to tie its legs together and throw it in a river, but I'm not bloody cruel."

"It's not Piddles," Angel said tiredly.

The dog was crying again, but listlessly, without the energy of before. It lay stretched out on the floor, its little puppy belly a soft, concave shell. He had to have a plastic shield around his neck so he wouldn't chew.

"He had to," Nina said, looking up from her To Do clipboard. "I mean, or else there'd be a thousand little Rufuses running around getting run over." She looked at the dog thoughtfully. "Unless he takes after the real Rufus. Then there might not be a problem."

"Specimen Number One Thousand Five Hundred Sixteen has unwillingly exchanged his masculinity for domestication," Illyria said. "Angel, you must identify."

"That's not funny," Angel said sharply.

Spike snorted. He was working something out with rope and bits of what looked like plastic on his desk. Angel never asked what he was doing; it was better that way. "Angel The Eunuch is always funny."

"Anyway," Angel said, "I thought it was Three Thousand Something."

Illyria regarded him levelly. "He's half the man he used to be."

"Who let the god listen to the radio? Illyria don't," Spike admonished. "It's a health hazard."

"It was supposed to be Tanto," Angel said to anyone who might listen.

"It was supposed to be Throat Ripper," Spike said. "But no one listens to me." The puppy hauled itself off the floor and limply padded over to Spike. Spike looked down at it and frowned. "Except you."

"I said I didn't mind having a dog in the office," Nina said, who still acted like she ran the place. Which she did, because Angel was more interested in killing things than filing things. Spike would've never listened to him anyway, and Illyria didn't follow anybody. Except for sometimes people interested in things she was interested in, which right now happened to be radical feminism. "But he needs to be house broken," Nina went on, scribbling on her list on the clipboard.

"I was intrigued to learn he still has a penis," Illyria said.

"Don't know about the dog's name," Spike said, pushing the puppy around again absently with his foot. He wasn't really paying attention, absorbed in his little rope project. "But we'll call you Lorena," Spike told Illyria.

"Of course he still has it," Angel said, offended on the dog's behalf.

"As long as Lorena doesn't bob it," Spike muttered, bending over the thing on his desk.

"House breaking." Nina waved around her clipboard as if it would do them all some good. "It's got to get better or we've got to get rid of it."

"I've been trying," Angel said. "He just doesn't seem to learn."

The puppy licked Spike's shoe. Spike kicked it harder. It let out a squeal and happily trotted off to find a toy. "Stuff it in a crate," Spike said, tightening a knot.

Nina grimaced. "That's awful."

"Why?" Spike turned away from the heap on his desk. "We do it with you every month."

Angel stiffened. "Shut up, Spike."

Nina just rolled her eyes. "That's different. Rufus is just a puppy. He doesn't need a kennel. He can't hurt anyone."

"Would if you'd named him Throat Ripper." Spike went back to his project. The puppy went back, too, dropping its toy at Spike's feet. "Go away," Spike told it.

The puppy sat down, looked up at Spike, and did that smiling thing again.

"Okay," Nina said. "So, hourse breaking. That's a top priority. We've also got the nest down on Ventura Avenue, the missing teenager, the Grath'nar Fold, and that creepy demon with the teeth." Nina squinted down at her list. "And the fangs, and the canines, and the choppers, and the . . . dentures; Illyria, were you using the thesaurus to write your report again?"

"I was mining the depths of my self-expression," Illyria said. "I deserve a room of my own."

"Hear you roar," Nina said.

"Beware the vagina dentata." Spike went on tinkering with his ropes and things, but looked over. "Sometimes I regret her solving her gender identity crisis."

"I am womanifold," Illyria said with dignity.

"The Grath'nar Fold is our top priority," Angel said, trying to scrape the sound of Spike talking about incisored vaginas from the insides of his ear drums. Angel had been through way too many portals for those thoughts. "There needs to be a plan."

"Sort of like this." Spike held up what he'd been working on. It was six ends of thick rope, knotted together in the middle. Each of the six ends were bound with more, slightly thinner rope, knotted so they created little knobs. The knots almost hid the bits of the plastic stuff tied to it, but Angel knew they were there.

"Um," Angel said. "You're going to kill them with bad crafts?"

"Problem with the Fold is they have to be killed all at once, right?" Spike said. "Any one left, other five instantaneously regenerate. So even if we trap them and try to cut their heads off all at once, they die at different times and the others regenerate as we chop."

"We know all that," Angel said, annoyed. "We tried it." The necks had been pretty thick to get through and the demons hadn't stayed in their magic manacles. Killing an individual of the Fold was hard enough; six at once bordered on impossible.

"Closer they are to each other the more important timing is," Spike went on, ignoring Angel, "so we want to kill them all remotely, makes it hard to coordinate, doesn't it. So we capture them like we did before," Spike said, holding up his rope thing, "and trap them here, here, here, all that." He pointed to the knots. "Metal boxes, maybe dumpsters. Connect each trap with a cable, or something like," he said, drawing a finger from the end knots with their plastic to the big center knot, "to a thing in the middle here where they all hook up. Set up an electric current, pretty bloody instantaneous."

"That . . . could work," Nina said, sounding surprised.

"Why did you have to make it so abstract?" Angel asked. "Is this trash sculpture week?"

Spike looked at him as if he didn't understand.

"Why didn't you use wire?" Angel persisted.

Spike looked at him as if he wasn't speaking English. "What . . . for?"

"For your little model," Angel said. "Wire would've made more sense. And you could've made little boxes, instead of just big knots with plastic bits inside them."

Spike looked at him as they would never speak the same language, ever. "It's just a stupid visual aid, Angel," he said finally, and looked away.

"I just meant it could've been more representational."

"You were sitting there planning this," Nina asked Spike, "and didn't tell us?"

Spike looked at her then, too. "No," he said moodily, and put the rope thing back on the desk. "Angel would've wanted me to use pipe cleaners."

"This is a good plan," Illyria said suddenly.

"Gee, really?" Spike said. "Thanks."

"There remain several holes in the logic," she continued. "Most importantly, how could we generate that kind of current?"

Spike began to smirk. "That's where Gwen comes in."

*

Three months after the alley, the four of them had settled into working at the office Nina had rented for them quite nicely. Of course, it wasn't really broken in until it got broken into.

The office had easy front street access, with a wall of windows facing the road. From the back, it was trickier to get to. You had to go through a hall that split off into various shops and offices: cramped bike repair place, the creepy taxidermist, and a postal service. One of the offices seemed to be an apartment where an old lady lived with her cats and about a thousand figurines. Then the hall led straight through a furniture repair man's place. They got to know him because they came through there so often; his name was Bob and he wanted to carve furniture. Mostly he got by by replacing table legs, framing things, and repairing desks for the investigations outfit down the hall.

Angel, Spike, Illyria, and Nina usually came through the hall, were very silent as they crept by the creepy taxidermist, and through Bob's, because while the front entrance was more convenient foot-wise it was impossible car-wise. The parking on the street was scant and they didn't want to block their clients, so they used the parking lot behind the complex and had to enter from the back.

After the first month, Nina said they were breaking even, and they all got incomes; that was how they afforded vehicles. Well, Angel afforded his. He was pretty sure Spike found his beat up Rabbit piece of junk somewhere, and that Illyria stole her Harley, klepto that she was. Spike told her a former god on a Harley was a health hazard, sort of like the Sartre, but Illyria didn't let him take this one away. She also hadn't let him take back the Pirsig when she stole it from Spike (who had stolen it from Angel, who'd gotten it as another gift from Nina), which was possibly where Illyria got her ideas about motorcycle maintenance. Illyria seemed to have great affection for the vehicle and named it Specimen Number Two Hundred Six.

They had to have their modes of transportation, because they all had their separate living spaces. Angel had been the first to move out of the burned out building Nina called a cess-pit. They'd been working out of the office about a month, and Nina was helping Illyria set up a bank account. Spike said he didn't want one; he only dealt in cash. Angel, of course, already had one. After the Black Thorn thing, Wolfram and Hart had liquidated the assets he held through them, but he had some other ones. Cordelia had set up investment portfolios back in the days of Angel Investigations.

So Angel had a little money already; maybe that was why he was the first to move out. But, like the vehicles, he was pretty sure Spike wasn't paying for his and Illyria somehow bullied her way into hers. Maybe Angel just got his place first because he couldn't stand to be around them any more, them and their grief.

He rented a loft above a large warehouse, having gotten used to space and height at Wolfram and Hart. The warehouse was unused, so he had that space too, big and empty, with high up windows that illuminated every mote of dust.

Illyria eventually found a townhouse, which Angel thought, like the Harley, didn't really suit her personality. Then he saw the place and changed his mind. The house was on the end of the row and looked like it was about to fall off. Nina said its sagging, shingle-dropping crookedness made it Tim Burton-esque. No one else would take the house because they thought it was haunted; Angel couldn't figure out whether it wasn't haunted after all, or was and Illyria just scared the ghosts into hiding. She also scared the real estate agent, which was why Angel thought maybe Illyria hadn't had to pay for the place. Angel also thought maybe the agent was one of the specimens pinned to the basement floor. This began to worry him after a while, until he snuck down there once with Spike. They found some dead demons, but nothing living and no humans. Then he got the hell out of there, because it was creepier than the taxidermist's, and Spike kept yammering about Edgar Allan Poe.

Spike got a crypt under an abandoned church. There were stone steps leading down to it and a wooden door. Inside there was a main antechamber and then separate tunnels that led to different buried people. Angel guessed Spike slept in one of the grottos; he didn't know. The few times Angel had been there, he'd kept to the antechamber, where Spike had put in an old, beat up couch, a recliner, a television, a mini-fridge, an old Nintendo 64, a shoe box kept closed with a rubber band, and lots of empty bottles, dirty dishes, and random refuse Angel found incomprehensible.

"I don't understand how you stand that old place," Spike told Angel. It was early evening, before work really got started. Nina was still hanging around and Illyria wasn't there yet. Spike had just moved into his crypt, and kept talking like he had the corner on home ownership. "It's so big and drafty.

"Yeah, and you're a cave dweller."

"Cavemen would win."

"Don't start that," Nina said. "Spike, you can't even talk."

Angel was surprised. Nina didn't like his loft at the warehouse, either. She said it was cold, which he knew didn't really refer to temperature. The fact that she was coming to his defense even though she didn't like it made him feel felt kinda like he did when he looked at the pot Nina had given him. Obviously she still liked him, even though he had told her shortly after she found them again that he didn't want a relationship. Wesley had told him she was worth the risks involved, but Wesley was dead. So was Angel.

Nina was going on, "You live under a church. What kind of vampire does that?"

Angel opened his mouth. Spike said, "You say one bloody word, I'll kill you."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Angel said.

"Good."

"About your bald, ugly, fetal rodent of a Sire."

"Thrice removed!" Spike fumed. "You're way closer to him than me."

"But I don't take after him," Angel pointed out smugly. "I'm the pretty one of the family."

"Dru's the pretty one."

"You're biased."

"Um, hello?" Nina said, waving. "Dru I know, but who's a fetal rodent?"

"Darla's Sire," Angel said.

"Darla's twice a year hot love affair," Spike clarified.

Angel shuddered. "Don't ever say that again. Cordy used to have a chart in the files," Angel said, turning to Nina. "It's kind of complicated."

"You mean the Master?" Nina said. "Or your Sire, who you staked, and came back to life? And got sired again by Drusilla--who you sired, and who sired Spike--and as a vampire wreaked havoc for a while until you burned her up, then disappeared for a while, but then came back to L.A. only to die again under mysterious circumstances no one knows about? Or was there something else?"

"No," Angel said, a little dazed. "I think that pretty much covers it."

Nina nodded. "Spike actually talks to me."

Angel glared at Spike. "How do you even know all that?"

"Fred and Gunn actually talked to me," Spike said, repeating Nina. "It wasn't all just wild orgies we were having."

Nina turned to Spike. "You didn't tell me the Master was a fetal rodent. Besides the Slayer thinking he had a fruit punch mouth."

"He's the relative we don't really talk about," Spike said, sounding apologetic.

Angel began to get angry. "Okay, how did you know she said that?"

"Buffy actually talks to me, too," Spike said, echoing Angel's smug tone from earlier. "It wasn't all just wild--"

"You finish that sentence and I will shove your liver down your esophagus." Angel's voice was low.

Nina rolled her eyes. "Don't start this, either. Last thing we need is a Buffy brawl in this office. You'll break something, and I don't think we can afford any--"

The Powers That Be had always had a sense of ironic timing. There was that time it started snowing, and the time Groo showed up at the hotel, and the time Connor--well, everything about Connor, really. Actually, considering Sahjhan could move through time all that stuff with Holtz maybe wasn't so ironic.

But it still sucked.

The glass windows that were the street-side wall of their office crashed just as Nina was saying, "damage," and somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen vampires rushed in, wielding axes.

"Oh, come on," Spike said, and burst into action.

Angel checked on Nina, first, who was running away, just like she should. Then he ran over to his desk, and swept a couple stakes off of it before an axe chopped it in half. He threw a stake at Spike and got to work.

He almost said that, those exact words. He felt like he could be back in that alley.

"Wild orgies Buffy and I were having," Spike said suddenly, jovially, just exactly as if they were continuing the conversation they'd been having. A vampire moaned and fell to dust before him.

Angel grit his teeth, kicking one in the ribs as he whirled to stake the guy behind him. Illyria had stolen his goddamn dragon.

"Wild two-person orgies," Spike clarified. He grabbed the pipe on an axe, pulling the vampire holding it toward him, onto his stake. "She would never've shared me."

Angel flipped the vampire he was fighting onto the broken desk, where the broken desk leg, sticking up, went through him and split him to dust. Buffy hadn't sent anyone to help; wishes weren't horses, and L.A. would never be the same after that night.

"Don't my liver and esophagus have a date?" Spike called. He crunched a vampire's neck under his foot as he dived at the chest of the next one, head first.

Lorne left, and Gunn and Wesley died.

"You're so full of empty promises," Spike quipped, rolling in dust on the floor.

"Don't you ever just shut up?" Angel asked. He had to crunch over the desk and the broken shards of Nina's vase to get the next vampire.

"I don't think so," the vampire Angel had in his arms, who kept making malicious threats to his person, said.

Angel staked him. "Not you."

"Oh," the vamp said, and fell to dust.

Nina shot the last one with the company cross-bow.

Angel stood there and looked at their ruined office.

"Angel," Spike said, and Angel walked over there and punched him in the mouth.

Spike, who had been struggling to stand, now slumped back down. He wiped his lips, which were bloody, with the back of his hand. He looked at the blood, looked at Angel. "So then," he said quietly, and thrust out a leg and knocked Angel off of his.

"You're an idiot." Angel tried to knee him, roll him over on his back so he could punch his face again. "Always fucking making light, you never even cared, you fucking idiot."

Spike stayed silent, weirdly, eerily intent. He fought viciously, as if possessed, as if driven by some force Angel couldn't guess at. Slammed down into the ground again, the thought flashed through Angel's head--almost too quick to be acknowledged--that he was going to lose to Spike. Again.

"I can't believe you guys are fighting about Buffy now."

Angel and Spike stopped mid-tussle and looked over at Nina.

Spike rolled off of Angel. "Buffy," Spike muttered incredulously, as if he didn't know who that was.

Angel got to his feet, frowning.

"Who would do this?" Nina asked him, looking up at him. "Why?"

Angel wanted to tell her it was alright. They would fix the windows and the furniture. They might have to work from another location for a while, but the business would go on. They could still help people, and no one had died. But he saw the gleam of moonlight on the axe that'd chopped his desk and the vase, and didn't say those things. Just put his hand on Nina's shoulder, and squeezed.

"Who's a better question than why," Spike was saying, sounding normal again. He stood, brushing himself off.

"What?" Nina said, turning to him.

"They weren't trying to kill us. Or they were," he added, sticking a cigarette in his mouth, "but not very well."

Nina made a small, aborted movement under Angel's hand, then fell still. She had made a firm rule about no smoking in the office, but Angel guessed no that there were no windows to hold the smell in, she didn't think it mattered. That Nina wasn't telling off Spike made Angel feel that much worse. She was so bossy and beautiful and really strong. She had great tits and she told Spike he was full of crap a lot. She made Angel want to sweep her up and kiss her. And also lock her up, far, far away, where he would never have to be with her or look at her again.

His hand dropped from her shoulder.

Spike lit the cigarette and inhaled, then took it out to punctuate his words with expressive whorls of smoke. "If they knew who we were, they'd know it'd take a little more organization. If they don't, why'd they attack?" Spike shrugged. "They were sent by someone. Send a message, destroy this place. They've got a grudge." Spike appeared to have forgotten his cigarette. He was looking down at the ruins of his desk. "So, find out who sent them, we can better guess why."

Angel had moved over to his own desk. Gripping the handle of the axe wedged in it, he pulled up, freeing the blade. "I already know who," Angel said. "And I know why."

"What?" Nina said. "Why?"

"Because," Angel said, hefting the axe, which was made out of a pipe and half a hubcap. "We killed him."

*

Spike's plan to electrocute the Grath'nar Fold worked like a dream. Gwen did her part perfectly, and afterwards they had six dumpsters full of fried demon.

It hadn't been such an amazing plan. Anyone could've thought of it, and of course Spike only did first just for the attention. But it had worked, and that made Angel feel a little weird. At first he thought it was the splinters poking his ribs again, but it didn't feel bad. Just weird.

Watching Spike haul one of the demons out of one of the dumpsters to liquefy it with acid, Angel wanted to go over there and say something like, "You're not always stupid, Spike." Gwen started at the same time and got there faster. She laid a smacking wet one right on Spike's mouth, just as if she did it every day. Spike didn't seem as used to it, but after that Angel caught him looking at her as if he might like to see under her gloves. As if that would ever happen.

Angel shook off the thought and went over to Spike after all. "Hey," he said.

"What, too good to help?" Spike grunted. He was hauling out another demon. Angel got inside the dumpster and grabbed the demon's legs and lifted. "No, I mean really, stand and delegate," Spike went on. "Not all of us're cut out for it. Me, I like hands on."

"I don't stand and delegate."

The demon fell to the pavement with a wet smack, and Spike climbed out of the dumpster. "That's nice. I don't smoke."

"Nina does that," Angel said, climbing out as well. "Look, Spike. It was--it was a good plan."

Spike paused for a moment, frowning, holding the acid about to tip onto the demon. Then he said bitterly, "Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. Dog Girl delegates, sure."

Angel didn't see what he meant, actually, but instinctively replied, "Don't call her that."

"Was worried there." Spike's tone blended with the hissing from the disintegrating demon. He moved on to the next. "Such a relief you're back to telling me what to do."

"What's your problem?" Angel said, grabbing his elbow, turning him around. "I was just trying to be . . ."

Spike waited.

". . . nice."

Spike's mouth tightened; his eyes went hard. Wrenching out of Angel's grasp, he said, "You're not nice. You're a vampire and a killer and you weren't built to be nice in the first place. Stick to hurting people; it's what you know best. Save acting for the people who know how, yeah?"

Spike's plan might've worked, but he was still better at ruining everything.

Angel and Nina had a nice date planned that night. Angel had made the reservation a week ago to make up for the puppy thing, but finally defeating the Grath'nar Fold should have made it feel celebratory. They got champagne. But Angel was annoyed at Spike; the spot between his ribs hurt, and he disliked eating.

"Think Spike and Gwen have a thing?" Nina was asking.

"What?" Angel said, distracted. "No."

"She kissed him."

"Gwen kisses people; it's a thing she does. No reason, out of the blue."

Nina blinked a lot. "She kissed you?"

"Guess I never mentioned it," Angel said, and gulped champagne.

"I thought she and . . ." Nina's voice dropped away. She drank some more champagne, too. "You know, Gunn. Had a thing. With Gwen."

"Maybe she's a slut. It's not because she likes Spike." At Nina's open, wet mouth and shocked expression, Angel mentally reviewed what he had just said. "I mean, she's not. Probably not."

Nina shut her mouth, frowning down at her glass. "It wasn't . . . after we started dating. Was it?"

"What? No." Angel touched her hand. "I haven't kissed anyone but you since then. Promise." Except for that time he'd shoved his tongue down Spike's throat, but that hardly counted, seeing as how he'd been Angelus at the time. "It was when we first met. I was the first person she could touch without killing, so she--well, touched."

"You mean she took advantage?" Nina was blushing. She took her hand out from his to sip more champagne. "How scandalous."

"You can hardly blame her." At Nina's incredulous look, he said quickly, "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant--"

"I got it. It's just fun to make you backtrack being arrogant."

"I'm not arrogant."

Nina rolled her eyes. "Gwen did help us out," she said, flipping the topic back. "Wonder what that means."

Angel shook his head. "Don't know. So far she hasn't given us a reason to distrust her, but . . ."

"She still disappeared." Nina shrugged. "I still wonder how Spike found her. Whether he was looking, or she just showed up, and why Spike?"

Yeah, why Spike? The eternal question. Of all the evil law firms in all the world, Lindsey had to send Spike to Angel's. The evil hand must've posted the mail that day. "Who knows?" Angel said. "It's Spike."

Their food came, Nina's filet mignon, asparagus in hollandaise, and garlic mashed potatoes, and Angel's exact same order because he never knew what to get. He'd never really had filet mignon back when he could taste it. Plenty of potatoes, though. He took some bites of that and carefully cuts some bits of steak. He didn't watch Nina; she didn't like him to.

Generally, he liked to watch humans he liked eat their meals. It was a vicarious enjoyment. Possibly punishment also. He had liked to watch Buffy wolf down tuna, Fred lick her ice cream, Connor pour hot sauce on everything. Even when Connor put hot sauce on his cereal, Angel liked it, and he'd used to buy Cordelia lunch just to see her lips move. Not that Cordy's lips weren't always moving, but moving silently was kind of rare. Because it wasn't like she'd ever kiss him.

But Angel stole a glance at Nina over their filets to see her lips move too, and realized it was different. It was more like watching Spike eat, which Angel hated, than watching Cordy or Connor. At least outwardly, unlike Spike, Nina was all dainty politeness. But that made it almost worse, because it was an act. Watching carefully now, he noticed the little details: the way she pushed around the asparagus, but had to force herself to slow down over the steak, and the way she used the potatoes to suck up the blood. She had such sexy, pouting lips, and small, nimble hands that he knew were talented and agile at pulling pleasure from him, but behind it all was a ravening hunger for flesh that was quite different than desires he associated with Nina. It was in her eyes, if not her hands and mouth. She held the fork so politely; he'd never even thought about how silver it was, how unnatural that might be for her.

It made Angel feel a little bad, remembering what Spike had said about Nina and rare steaks and werewolf things, and about how he'd tried to give her a puppy. "I'm sorry," he said suddenly.

"For what?" She looked up, found him watching, and frowned. Putting down her fork, she wiped her mouth, and drank more champagne. "Is everything alright?"

"About the dog."

"That's okay," Nina said hastily. "We don't have to talk about it."

They didn't have to talk about it the same way he didn't have to watch her eat. "No, I meant . . ." Angel searched for words. "I should've gotten you an iguana."

"An iguana?" Nina's brow furrowed in puzzlement. "What for?"

Angel frowned down at his steak, wishing the cut up pieces were bits of Spike. "Uh, I thought you liked prickly things?"

"You mean, for a pet?" Nina's frown dissolved into a smile. "Really? That's sweet. I do, by the way." She picked up her fork and took a bite of asparagus. "Like prickly things. I never would've picked that out as a common trait, but now that you say that--I do. That's really insightful."

Angel shifted a little in his chair. He did not stop wishing Spike was in little pieces. "Well, I noticed . . . You gave Illyria a cactus," he said suddenly, happy to have thought of it on his own.

"Yeah." She was still smiling, even eating her steak again, now. "But she tore it to bits."

"Still has the fern."

"Specimen Number Five," Nina said, and laughed.

"I don't get why everything has to be a specimen," Angel complained, not for the first time.

"Poor Angel. You're her number one specimen but she treats you like number two."

"At least I'm higher up than you." Nina laughed again. It was a much better sound than the silver dings against the china plates and the tinkling of wineglasses, all the background noises. It was a soft sound, rich, and he didn't understand why on earth she'd like pointy things, why she liked them, why she fought instead of having a lawn with roses, a husband with a heartbeat and a career as a world famous artiste. Or possibly living as an empress in an exotic land where she laid on furs in front of a fire, people oiling her all over and rubbing her feet and feeding her red wine and chocolate, worshipping her yellow hair. "You have cactuses on your desk, too," he said, finally.

"Yeah. They're my favorite kind of plant."

"Because they're so easy to take care of?"

Looking slightly taken aback, Nina turned her glass, as if to see it catch the light differently. "Actually, that's not it at all. I mean, you would think . . . but no. It's that everyone thinks that, thinks they don't need taking care of. They probably think that too. Cactuses, I mean."

"I don't think cactuses think."

Nina didn't smile. "But they do have needs. I mean, sure, they're resilient. They'd get on without me, probably, just from the moisture in the air. But maybe they wouldn't be as . . . happy."

Angel thought about telling her cactuses couldn't be happy, either, but decided against it.

"And they're vicious," Nina went on, caught up in her thoughts. "That's what everyone thinks about, that they sting and stab you, that they're dangerous. And they do. But inside--well, some have the power to do good, too. Aloe vera, for instance. Heals burns."

"I thought you had to break off the spines to get to the resin stuff," Angel said. "So it only does anyone any good if its wounded. Still not a very nice plant."

"That's it exactly. You don't see all the good inside unless it's broken. I think it's sad."

Angel pushed the steak around on his plate. If this filet was Spike, he was thinking, he would wish it was Spike's hands most of all. He hated Spike's hands, with their small, ugly chewed-on nails, the veins visible in the pale skin, the girl's wrists. Wolfram and Hart should've just left them off when Dana took them, then Spike would've never been able to reach inside to take that piece of wood out of Angel, and never could've left these splinters here to torment him. "Spike said that's why you like Illyria," he said finally.

"Spike?"

Actually if the steak could be any part of Spike, maybe it should be his voice box. "Um," Angel said. "We were talking. About you liking pointy things."

"Oh. Right." Nina sighed a little. "Spike."

"Things like crossbows and swords and stuff," Angel added hurriedly, just because he hated when Nina sounded disappointed like that.

"Angel," Nina said slowly. "I . . . don't really like crossbows. Or swords."

"But you like helping people," he urged.

"Of course I do. That's why we have the business."

The way she said it made Angel think she wasn't talking about fighting demons and their distressed clients, but something else entirely. He thought about Spike saying, "Does she, really?" when Angel had said Nina liked fighting evil. He changed his mind again and imagined the steak was Spike's forehead, so he could cut it to pieces when Spike's brows arched like that, like he knew something Angel didn't.

"What's your favorite color?" he asked suddenly.

"Um, ochre? Why?"

"Who's your favorite singer?"

Nina stared at him a little strangely. "Uh, didn't I name the dog after him?"

"Oh yeah," Angel said, and tried not to tap his fork against his plate.

"And the purpose of these questions was . . .?"

"I was just curious. I realized I didn't know. Well, obviously I knew about the singer. Rufus. Guy. I . . . didn't know he was your favorite."

Nina kept looking at him like that. They all seemed to have adopted this straight jacket stare from Spike. All of Spike should be the steak, really. "Your girlfriend's only going to marry him."

Angel dropped the fork with a clatter. "Huh?"

She chuckled a little. "It's okay; he won't have me. Don't get jealous, now."

"I don't want you to marry anyone." That was why she didn't have a lawn with roses; he didn't want her to.

Spike was right. Angel really wasn't nice.

Nina looked disappointed again. Maybe she agreed with Spike, but instead she smiled, and stretched her leg out so her ankle touched his. "Okay," she said, "I won't marry anyone. Just yet."

Angel was going back over what Spike had said earlier, when they'd been cleaning up the demons. He'd been thinking about it all night. "Is that why you like Spike, too?" he asked suddenly. "The prickly thing, I mean."

Nina took her foot away. "I don't know. Spike is easy to like," she said slowly, "So, I guess not."

"Easy to like?" he repeated dumbly.

She rolled her eyes again. "I know you two don't get along. And he can be a jerk--"

"He calls you Dog Girl, Nina."

"Well, I know. And I know he can also be dark and evil, or whatever. But sandwiched in between he's just . . . he needs people; he wants them; he reaches out."

"He's just looking for attention. What Spike needs is to grow up."

Nina was making a little crater of her left-over mashed potatoes. "You're the one who pushes people away," she said finally, and made a little river over to the hollandaise.

"What? No I don't."

"You think you don't need people."

Angel was starting to get annoyed, and Nina was starting to remind him of the way that damn puppy liked Spike better. "I told you I need you," Angel said tightly. He knew she couldn't know how hard that was; he didn't know what else to say.

"Exactly," Nina said, gently, but sounding triumphant all the same. Or maybe that was just more disappointment. It was hard to hear, for some reason. Nina's voice was blending in now with the silver dings and wineglass tinklings. Delicate and harsh. "You tell me because you think you should," Nina said. "Maybe 'cause it's true. But you don't act like it."

"What are you saying?" Angel said. "Is this about that puppy? I was just giving it to you to get rid of it."

"I don't care about the puppy," Nina said, sounding tired. "I'm not saying anything. Let's just eat, okay?"

Angel ate, but everything had even less taste than before.

*

Fate had ironic timing, with Groo, everything with Connor, with the vampires destroying their office right when Nina was saying they couldn't afford damage. Maybe that was why David Nabbit walked in the morning after Gunn's lackeys attacked.

"Gunn's Goons," Spike kept calling them. Since the attack on the office, he hadn't stopped joking around.

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

"Gunn's Gory Gangsters?"

Since the attack on the office, Angel hadn't stopped wanting to tear Spike up into smaller than the pieces of the dragon Illyria had stolen.

"Gory Gangsters did this?" Bob, the furniture repair guy from down the hall, asked. He was repairing a leg of Spike's desk for them. Angel's desk would need to be replaced. "With guns? There aren't bullet holes."

Spike snickered. "Vila has a point."

"It is called a nail," Illyria told Spike. Since learning about the attack on the office, she had stopped using contractions again. She turned to Bob. "He is referring to Charles Gunn. The former colleague of these." She waved a hand at Spike and Angel. Nina was out trying to find the best prices on glass.

"Former colleague, huh?" Bob said. "Did you fire him? Must have some grudge."

"Gunn's Grudging Gangsters," Spike suggested.

Bob was still looking at Illyria. "Do you mind me asking whether you're--"

"A natural blue?" Illyria mocked.

"That was next on the list," Bob assured her, banging in a nail. "Whether you're single."

Spike accidentally choked on air.

"I was once the most single destructive force in the universe." Since learning about the attack on the office, Illyria hadn't stopped talking about how she used to be Master Of Chaos or whatever.

"Do I just walk in, here," a voice said, "or are these here for a reason?" The voice was speaking from behind the tarps they had hung up over the broken windows facing street-side, mostly to block the sunlight because the blinds had been ruined. "Some kind of secret reason. Secret ritual? Secret ritual sacrifice?" There was a pause. "Could I help?"

"Don't build robots, do you?" Spike asked, when he had determined the full extent of Nabbit's character completely from the two words the man had spoken. "Knew some nerds who built robots. They're not very . . . living, shall we say. Find out where he keeps his Fetts," he muttered out the corner of his mouth to Angel. "Then I can make some real threats."

"What for?" Angel asked.

Spike stared at him incredulously. "For his cash, of course," he said, in a regular voice. "You said he's a millionaire."

"Mr. Nabbit already wants to give us cash," Angel said. "Don't you?"

"Oh, yes," Nabbit said. "Very much. Call me David. I've been having these demon attacks, see, and--"

"Demons." Angel gave a great big fake laugh, looking unobtrusively at Bob, who seemed to be looking obtrusively at Illyria. "Kinda like our vandals. Our very human vandals. Teenagers can be such demons, destroying property, graffiti, breaking vases . . . Um. Can we go into this office over here?"

Angel, Spike, and Nabbit went into the tiny office adjoining the main room, leaving Illyria outside to crush the hopes and dreams of Bob.

As it turned out, Nabbit was developing three super secret electronic components in three different tightly secure, heavily surveillanced facilities. Two of the facilities had been attacked, and the components in each stolen. Nabbit wanted to protect the last component for everything he was worth, to prevent the thieves from constructing the complete super secret electronic device. Once Nina returned and Bob had left Illyria (possibly in exchange for life-long therapy), the team watched the surveillance videos to see if they recognized the thieves.

As it turned out, the thief was Gwen.

"Gwen?" Nina asked, frowning. "Who's that?"

Spike, slacking off the wisecracks now that he'd been given something to do, just as he had when Angel hit him after the attack, only said, "How do we kill her?"

Illyria, appending to Spike's question, only asked, "When?"

"Soon," Angel said flatly. "She's working with Gunn."

Of course, he had no way of knowing that. The surveillance tapes revealed groups of sickly green, vaguely lizard-like demons breaking into the facilities. Gunn obviously had people working for him, Angel thought, considering the attack on the office, and completely ignoring that the lizard guys had no discernable connection to Gunn (quite unlike the vampires swinging around Gunn's signature axes). Gwen was a discernable enough connection for Angel. She was only visible for a few frames of the attack on the second facility, and not at all on the first. It must have been her experience with thieving keeping her under the radar, because she wouldn't care if her lizard cronies got caught. She couldn't just be in the same place of the lizard attack by coincidence. It also couldn't just be coincidence that Gwen was causing trouble now, and that Gunn was trying to break them. Gwen and Gunn had had a thing. Everything fit.

Maybe everything didn't fit. But Angel couldn't seem to fit the pieces of the pot Nina had made for him back together again, either. He couldn't fit anything together; it was all in pieces. He just wanted to kill things.

Luckily Spike and Illyria seemed of the same mind.

Nina seemed to think they'd lost their minds in general. "You guys help people. Help people," she repeated, "not kill them."

"Couldn't help this place getting trashed," Spike said, tapping his cigarette out on the broken shell of a desk lamp. He was researching about the lizard demons; Illyria was preparing weapons, and Angel was poring over the schematics for the facility Nabbit had given them.

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

She'd said the exact same thing when she first started bringing them cases, after the alley.

"Look, from what Angel says, she's just a girl," Nina went on. "A really scary electric girl, but that's not the point."

"Then what is your point, exactly?" Angel asked, looking up from the maps.

"I'll throw you a new vase."

"Keep it," Angel snapped. "Spike, you'll be here, with an eye on the monitors and the eastern half of the complex. I'll be west, but closer central, so I can get to this north wing quickly if necessary. Illyria, you'll need to patrol the perimeter during the day, as obviously, we can't."

"During the day?" Nina said. "They won't attack during the day. She needs sleep!"

"No she doesn't."

"You guys do, too. You've been up since early last night," Nina went on. It was the middle of the afternoon. "You haven't left this place all day."

"She is correct," Illyria said, albeit grudgingly. "I do not think the shell can withstand prolonged awareness through to tomorrow if the attack on the facility does not come tonight."

"Fine," Spike said. "Then I'll be over here." Spike walked over to a wall and slid down against it.

"No." Nina's sharp command didn't crack his eyes open. "You're not sleeping here. You all have homes; you need to--"

"I have a cave," Spike snapped, eyes still closed. "It's where I sleep, not my home. Now this is just where I sleep, too."

"No," Nina repeated. "I won't let you guys turn this place into that building you lived in. I won't let you."

"We didn't live," Spike said, and went to sleep.

They need not have worried about sleeping. The attack on the facility came that night. Angel, Spike, and Illyria killed a lot of the lizard demons. They did not kill Gwen.

Spike saw her first, just the glimpse of her glove on a monitor. He alerted Angel and Illyria through the ear pieces Nabbit had lent them, but went to take her on his own because she was in the eastern corridor.

When Angel got there, covered in green slime, holding a sword, Gwen was standing over Spike. Spike was slumped against the wall, looking up at her. His hand was over his heart, and his eyes had never been bluer. They flicked to Angel. Gwen, seeing the angle of Spike's gaze change, glanced over. She paused in surprise when she realized it was Angel. They were still, the two of them. Angel looked from one to the other.

"She," Spike croaked, sounding as if he had never spoken before. Spike was looking back up at Gwen now, sick and uncertain and hating and pleading all at the same time. His hand convulsed on his chest. "She made my . . ."

Then Angel understood. He went into game face.

"Angel," Gwen said, straightening. "Fancy meeting you here. Do you break up every girl's heist, or just mine?"

"It's not just yours," Angel grit out.

"That's right." She frowned. "There's those green guys. Thanks for taking care of them, by the way. You'd think I'd be faster than them, but there're just so many."

Angel didn't know what she was talking about. He didn't really care. He walked over and punched her in the eye.

She landed with a skid of leather. Pulling herself half up, she touched her eye. "That's not nice," she said, and flew at him.

He was stronger, but she was faster, dodging his fists and landing a knee against his hip. "What about your other guy?" she asked, jumping one of his kicks. "You've gotta have at least one more; there were too many lizards for just you and heart of gold, here." Angel got her in a headlock, but she managed to flip him over her back. He rolled and came up swinging. "Is it Gunn? You guys still not letting him in on the party?"

"Angel," Spike said, still against the wall.

Angel kept fighting, stepping into the follow through of her roundhouse to uppercut her jaw. "You guys don't work very well as a team," Gwen was saying. "What if he's still fighting lizards? He's only human, after all. What'll you do without me to jump start him again?"

"You killed him first," Angel snarled, pulling her arm up behind his back.

She grabbed his balls, and said tightly, "First?"

He hit the back of her skull with his chin, and she let go, staggering away.

"Angel," Spike said again, struggling to stand upright. "I really think she doesn't know."

"Don't know what?" Gwen asked. "Don't know what?" And came at Angel harder than before.

"We know you're working with Gunn," Angel said, throwing her down, trying to get on her before she kicked him down as well. "Him and his little army." She was sitting on his chest, beating on his face. He grunted and rolled her over. She kicked him off. "What, happy with a whole selection of undead to fuck?"

"Undead?" Gwen said, and stood.

"Gunn's dead," Spike told her.

Gwen looked up at Angel. She kind of had to, as Angel was grabbing her by the throat. Her eyes were wide and multi-colored. Angel tilted her chin and bit down into her neck.

Gwen put both hands on his neck, almost a lover's embrace, and let loose.

It happened when he was flying through the air, that single heartbeat, that thick, lethargic thud of something that shouldn't be alive, but was.

Then Angel slammed against the wall, and slid down it, clutching at his chest in a mirror of how Spike had been posed when Angel found him.

"That's one way to fix your hair," he heard Spike mutter.

Angel shuddered as the last bit of electricity Gwen had hit him with buzzed and slid away.

"What, want me to make your heart beat too?" Angel heard Gwen ask in a low, furious voice. Opening his eyes, Angel saw Illyria, her blue nothing like Spike's eyes, nothing like the sky, nothing like hope at all. Just like a bruise, smeared against the shadows.

"I have no heart," Illyria said, and attacked.

"Don't," Spike said, rushing in. Illyria was already on Gwen, a position it had taken Angel several minutes of fighting to get Gwen into. Illyria was going to slaughter her, and when Spike tried to pull her off, the former god threw him against the wall again.

She had made his heart beat, but for some reason, it wasn't until Angel noticed that Gwen was crying, letting Illyria best her, thinking of Gunn, that Angel felt the splinters in his chest begin to act up again. "Illyria," Angel said. When she did not look up, he said wearily, "Spike," and together they pulled Illyria away.

They took Gwen back to the office, along with the stolen component. She had some bruises, cuts that would need stitches, a few broken bones, but she would survive and her body would function properly. Sort of like their office.

Angel wondered about the internal damage.

"I didn't know he died," Gwen said, when she came to. By that time, Nina was there, and had patched up most the wounds she could. "It's not like he told me."

"I'm so sorry," Nina said.

"What?" Gwen frowned. "Did you kill him?"

"Uh, no." Nina looked uncertainly at Spike, Angel, and Illyria, who remained silent.

"Well. I'm sorry I never told him to drop me a memo in case he died." Gwen looked around. "Didn't know I cared, I guess."

"How come Nina can touch you?" Angel said.

"Gunn never said? Did you even ever talk to him?" Her voice was bitter. "Hey, did you know that guy had a brain?"

Angel was thinking about killing her again.

Spike was probably thinking sure, he talked to Gunn, it wasn't all wild orgies.

Illyria was saying, "The shell had residual feelings for him. I do not like this."

"If you mean Fred, former girlfriend, that chick was an idiot. Let him slip through her fingers."

"You let him slip through yours," Illyria said, her tone changing strangely--almost flickering, if tones could do that. There was Illyria's low, almost monotone, and then something higher, softer, with bitterness in it, and maybe something southern. There was no heart inside Illyria, just the outside part, the shell. But maybe Gwen had charged that up somehow, same way as with electricity.

Angel wondered if Illyria would go back to using contractions. Since Gwen had made his heart beat, Spike had stopped making fun of every single little thing. Angel's chest hurt but he guessed that was from getting electrocuted. Still, Nina seemed a little relieved. Maybe because they weren't going to kill Gwen after all.

"Why were you stealing that component?" he asked finally.

"Not stealing. Protecting. Where is it, by the way?" Gwen looked almost apologetic. "Hate to lose it."

"Protecting?" Spike repeated. "What the hell? And you got the Gekkonid demons to attack the labs with you, why?"

Gwen rolled her eyes. "Hello, wasn't with the gecko people. Listen, I don't care what Nabbit does with the device, but the lizardmen get it, and there'll be hell to pay."

"You knew they were stealing it, so you wanted to get to the last one before they did," Angel guessed.

"The last two, actually," Gwen said. "But like I said, there were too many, and I wasn't fast enough. But as long as they don't get the third part, it should be alright."

They didn't find out why until David Nabbit got there. The three components made up a device that worked as a remote, targeted electromagnetic pulse. You could target a very specific electronic device from miles and miles away--"your best friend’s Wii from all the way across L.A.," Nabbit said, and added, "Uh, like Nintendo?" when they all stared at him blankly--and cause it to malfunction for specified lengths of time.

"But you're not really electronic, are you?" Spike said, looking at Gwen with new interest.

"That thing on her back is," Nina said. "That's why I can touch you, isn't it? And that's why you didn't want the lizards to get the component. They're your enemies, aren't they?"

"Maybe, kinda, sorta." Gwen squirmed.

Illyria still looked like Gwen was maybe kinda sorta still her enemy, too. "You were protecting yourself," she said, still with a touch of Texas in her tone. "You had selfish motivations."

"Well, duh, blueberry." Gwen rolled her eyes again. "My inhibitor inhibits, it doesn't kill my power. It helps me control the energy, direct it. In fact, that thing is so busy inhibiting the majority of my juice, I'm building up a life-time charge. You take it off now, or cause it to malfunction, and I'm a walking lightning storm. So, yeah, I'm selfish. The lizard guys want to use me as their weapon, and I don't want to. I don't want to be just muscle," she said pointedly, glaring at Angel.

"Wow, that's kind of poignant," Nabbit said. "You have all the power of Jubilee and then some, with all the tragic life consequences of Rogue."

Everyone turned to look at him. "God," Spike muttered. "Where's Willow around to flay someone when he needs it?"

"Oh, don't mind me," Nabbit said. "I'll be over here."

"It's your property," Angel reminded him. "The component and the facility. You want us to . . . turn her over to the police?"

Nabbit looked at Gwen. "That doesn't seem right. Maybe . . . my people could look at your inhibitor. Maybe we could put on a second power source, like a surge protector, or back up system, so if someone aims the device directly at your inhibitor, that kicks in. No one would have to know about it, so people trying to use you, if they ever did get the device--we'll try to assure they won't--won't know what's going wrong."

Illyria perked up at that. "You are going to experiment on her?"

"No," Nabbit said hastily. "Not experiment. Help."

"I just want to be left alone," Gwen said.

Nina looked at Angel, Spike, and Illyria, and turned back to Gwen. "You have to help yourself first," she told her, "before you can do anything else."

"I can get by."

"Getting by isn't living, actually," Nina said, a little sharply, and looked back and the rest of them again.

On the force of that argument, or more likely because she really did want to be left alone and saw it as the quickest means of escape, Gwen went with Nabbit. Three days later, Nabbit came back around to give them an enormous check, and tell them that Gwen had skipped out. Angel, Nina, and Illyria did not see her again until a couple years later, when she helped them toast six demons in six dumpsters, and kiss Spike as if she was not alone any more.

*

A week after they'd made such good use of it, Angel found the puppy chewing on Spike's plan to electrocute the Grath'nar Fold. He took it away, and when Spike got there, thrust the bunch of knotted rope in Spike's face. "Why would you leave this laying around?" Angel demanded.

"Thought you might want to improve on it," Spike said, sneering, "seeing as how it didn't come up to your standards."

"The dog's been chewing on it."

Spike shrugged, setting a hand full of stakes on his desk. "Puppies chew; it's what they do."

"He got inside to the plastic stuff. It's chewed on; he ate some. He could've choked. It could make him sick."

"Doubt it." Spike began taking papers out from his desk, the files for that night's work.

"You really don't even care," Angel said in a derisive tone. "You don't care about anything."

"Yeah." Spike reached into his coat. Angel knew he was checking to make sure his lighter was there; Spike got OCD about that thing sometimes. "You got that right, genius."

"Don't do it again," Angel growled, and turned away.

"Angel."

Angel froze, but didn't turn around.

"It's not plastic," Spike said. "Look at things a little closer, why don't you. You don't always know everything."

"Shut up," Angel said, and walked away.

Back at his desk, he inspected the rope thing more closely. Spike was right; it wasn't plastic. Angel looked down at the puppy, who was crying at his feet, and let him have the rope thing back.

Angel watched it worry the rope, suddenly happy, suddenly all better, no longer crying. Some things were so very simple.

Angel realized he sort of liked the dog, after all.

*

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