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Man's Best Friend 4b
continued from part 4a
*
When Angel got off the phone with Faith, and shared the news of her pregnancy the next day, he was surprised to hear that Spike hadn't heard already.
Spike just stared at him for a while. "Are you daft? Of course you'd be first to know."
"Because she likes me better."
Spike looked away.
Angel hadn't actually meant it to sting.
"Trisha?" Spike said, standing up. "You okay? Everything alright?"
Angel stared at the golden skinned, short Filipino teenager who had just entered their office, and tried to remember whether he'd ever seen her before.
"Great Spike," she said.
"The nightmares?"
"Mostly gone, since talking to you about it. Thanks a lot."
Angel now vaguely remembered. The case about the abducted teenager. The father had reported her missing; it had happened shortly after the mother's death and he'd thought she'd run away. It turned out the mother had actually been a vampire had captured her living daughter for some terrible scheme of her own. Whatever it was, before she could affect it, Nina and Illyria had located her hideaway. They'd all come in to free her, but it happened to have been Angel who staked the mother. Angel hadn't been able to look Trisha in the eyes, afterwards.
She'd come in several times since then. Spike had always handled her, talking to her patiently and sometimes at length about her nightmares. If it had been anyone but Spike, Angel would've thought he was being saved from having to deal with her.
Spike tilted his head at Trisha. "What do you need?"
"Um." Trisha looked over towards Angel's desk.
Spike stood there dumbly for several seconds. Then: "Right." Spike turned on his heel toward Angel, and began speaking blankly. "Angel, this is Trisha. You might remember her from such rescue missions as--"
"Of course I remember," Angel said, standing up.
He walked over to take Trisha's hand. "I just--just always wanted to thank you," she said, and hugged him instead. Angel looked cluelessly over her shoulder at Spike.
"For killing her mum," Spike said helpfully.
"Spike," Angel said sharply. Trisha pulled away, eyes very round. "His mom died the same way," Angel said, trying to speak softly.
"Sure." Spike voice was falsely bright. "But jolly for me, when me own mum was turned, she wanted a spot of the old in and out. Twisted, innit?"
"Are you alright?" Angel asked Trisha. "Did you want to talk?" He glanced over at Spike again, and almost recognized that look.
Spike used to revel in tearing things apart. Angel used to revel in watching him.
"We could go in here," Angel said, guiding Trisha towards Illyria's office.
Later, after Angel had talked about her mother and yes that vampires were real and no he would not go out with her, Trisha left, and Angel said to Spike, "Why would you do that? She's just a kid."
"I don't like being used," Spike said shortly, heading for the door.
"Hey," Angel said. "Where are you going? We still have to get that spawn blood." The other night had proven a bust.
"That," Spike said vaguely. "I have a source. Super secret, on the QT. Tell Dog Girl, yeah?" And then he was gone.
Spike kept leaving early, arriving late. It was different than when they'd first started. Spike had always been around. You couldn't seem to get rid of him even when he was quitting once a night. He'd even made Nina lose it; she'd sent him on a wild goose chase of epic proportions, just to get Spike out of her hair. The thing was, Spike had succeeded, brought in a small load of cash, and earned the respect of an entire previously semi-hostile demon race. Some of whom began bleaching their hair out of respectful emulation. Nina didn't accuse him of idling after that.
But these days Angel couldn't accuse him of it either because he wasn't around as much any more. And he made cryptic comments like the one he'd just made, and brought in magical tibias and special crystals from Broodmothers without saying how he got them.
All of which just seemed extra evidence that Spike was doing something to the dog.
"Spike isn't doing anything to Rufus," Nina said. She sounded tired. Maybe it was the demon hunt from the night before. Maybe it was all the sex afterward. Maybe it was that he'd mentioned his theory about Spike and the dog during the hunt and after the sex and again this morning.
She put her head on his chest, and he wrapped his fist in her hair without really thinking about it. He was staring at the opposite wall, frowning. "He's up to something."
"What is it about this dog?" Nina said. "You worry about it too much. Let's just think about how nice this is."
Angel looked down at her and smiled a little. "Perfect."
"Well, not perfect. Obviously."
Her tone was meant to be light and teasing, but it made Angel take his hand out of her hair. "Nina. We've discussed it before. It's not because I don't--"
"I know," Nina said hastily. "I wasn't complaining. I mean, how could we be perfect? I'm all wolf-girl and you're all, 'I von to suck'. Um, not that . . . I bet perfection is boring, anyway."
Angel thought it prudent not to mention that Buffy hadn't been any kind of normal either, and that it had been the furthest thing from boring he'd ever known.
"I love you," Angel said, because he did. Not in the way he loved Buffy, but then again, not in the way he had love Cordelia, either.
"That's nice," Nina said, because she never said it back.
He looked at her hair spread out on his chest, like ribs of gold. It's lustre almost made his skin look gray, like dust and ash, giving life and vibrance to the woman. He thought about the dog again, and realized he didn't know how to tell her he worried about it so much because maybe if he wasn't human enough for a dog, he wasn't human enough for her, either.
She might take it the wrong way and think he was comparing her to a dog.
He kissed her and said, "I'll make you breakfast."
She wandered out in her t-shirt and panties when the sausages were half done and he was getting his blood out of the refrigerator. She often fixed their blood sometimes at the office, and never seemed to mind it. She even tried to surprise Spike by adding different things (he loved the Lucky Charms and the pickle like a Bloody Mary, but told her she was barking mad when she put in tapioca). But Angel didn't like to add anything and didn't like to call attention to it and didn't like to drink in front of people. He'd been comfortable with it for a while there, but then he'd drunk down Drogyn and after that bite everything else tasted kind of flat, and made him hear human heartbeats when all he had to swill was pig's blood.
Nina poked the sausages. "Mm. Now how would I explain to any of my other boyfriends that I like intestine sausage?" Her voice was light, both apologizing for and begging not to mention that she had brought up the perfection thing.
"How many other boyfriends do you have?" Angel asked, following her lead.
"Three, but don't tell them."
"Just the casing is intestine. Lots of people like it. You can get it at any grocery store."
"You can get raw meat at the grocery store, too," she pointed out. "This smells really good."
It did, but mostly Angel was smelling the blood he was taking out of the microwave. But he was also thinking about Nina and raw meat, about how she had looked at the restaurant, eating so primly with her silver fork, and the things Spike had said. And Angel realized that with her werewolf senses she could smell the blood, too, even if she didn't know that was accenting the sausage smell, what was making her small, pink tongue dart out and leave a wet swash over her shapely lips.
Angel got down a clear glass and poured the warm blood into it. He speared the sausages onto a plate for her and dumped half the fruit salad he'd made onto it also.
Nina touched the inside of his wrist, making him pause in the midst of filling the second plate. "You don't have to."
"I know," he said, and put the rest of the fruit on his plate.
They ate together at the table. "I like that," Nina said after a while, nodding at the glass his blood was in. "Makes me feel more normal. For you know, my intestine fetish."
"I know," Angel repeated.
"Kind of makes you feel like every couple could be vampires and werewolves, just going about their lives like it's nothing really strange. Domesticity." She popped a strawberry into her mouth, sucking on her finger. "Except for the whole part where you don't even have a kitchen."
"I have a kitchen."
"A hot plate and a microwave does not a kitchen make."
"It's a bachelor kitchen." Because that sounded wrong, and because he'd been thinking so much about that stupid dog, he said suddenly, "I've been thinking about moving."
She stopped everything she was doing, which left her finger hanging in her mouth. Hastily she pulled it out and wiped it on her napkin, swallowed, and said, "Really?"
It had started with things Spike had said about training the dog, about how it couldn't stay in the office all day. Of course Spike was wrong about everything, except that it really couldn't stay in the office all day. Angel thought maybe it'd be nice if the puppy had a yard it could run around and do dog things in. He'd never thought of ever having a yard. But then he did, and he thought of Connor in it throwing a frisbee and the dog chasing after it. Then he had to stop looking at the picture in his mind because the picket fence in it was lodging somewhere down near his chest.
But then after that he'd got to thinking about how Nina said where he lived right now was cold. He'd picked it because it was the first place he could find away from that building where Illyria and Spike knew how to grieve and he didn't. He hadn't ever meant to live here any more than he had there, for the simple fact of life that he wasn't living. He hadn't thought he'd need a place with kitchens that had convection ovens, guest rooms for having people over, and picket fences. But even if he'd stayed in the same place, he had come a long way since then. Now he had Nina and Connor, who came to visit often enough to keep Angel satisfied he was safe. And he also had a puppy.
After that he thought again about something Spike had said, about the stupid dog, about man's best friend. About living a little. So Angel said, "Yeah. I could move. Somewhere closer to the office, maybe."
Nina deflated some. "Oh. You mean a better location."
"No. I mean . . . a better everything."
"I think that's wonderful." Nina smiled, and it was really beautiful. Angel thought her lips must taste like orange juice. Because she'd been drinking it, but mostly because he couldn't really taste orange juice. He thought it must be like that, that bright morning sharpness, crisp and clean and fresh. "Want me to hook you up with Illyria's real estate agent?" she asked.
"Illyria's real estate agent is still in business? Illyria's real estate agent is still alive?"
"Specimen Four Fifty Seven?" Nina frowned. "Sure she is, why wouldn't she be?"
"I . . . we . . . Spike and I thought Illyria might have . . . sort of . . . pinned her to the basement floor."
"Of course not!" Nina quickly got over her shock. "Or if she did, it was by mutual consent."
"Um. Maybe I don't want that agent."
"Don't be so squeamish. Drink your blood."
Angel laughed.
Nina spoke to Illyria about the real estate agent, so by the end of the day Spike also knew about Angel's thoughts about moving. "You can't," was Spike's response. "You just can't."
"Thought you didn't like it?" Angel said.
"'Course. It had a you living in it." Spike waved a hand airily. "But people grow into their living spaces. Comes to suit them in time, echo their personality. You can't move out, Angel."
"You think my living space reflects me?" Angel didn't know why, but the thought made him feel strangely smug.
"Let's see." Spike peered at him keenly. "Big, wooden, empty. Check, check, and check. Place was obviously made for you."
"I think it's great Angel wants to move," Nina said firmly, as Angel opened his mouth to tell Spike he was an idiot.
"What kind of place are you looking for?" Illyria asked. "Olga says she's not sure there's such a market for homes with basements where the neighbors don't mind strange smells, in case you want to know."
"Strange smells?" Angel wrinkled his nose, remembering his and Spike's single foray into Illyria's basement.
"She means the pot," Spike enlightened him.
"Oh," Angel said. "Right."
"And the formaldehyde," Illyria added.
No one was brave enough to ask what she needed formaldehyde for.
"Well, a house with a kitchen," Angel began. "And a guest room."
Spike scoffed. "You have guests? Who would guest you?" He had his legs up on his desk, and he was tossing a rubber ball around, making it bounce off the floor and walls before catching it again. Angel didn't see how he could stand to touch it; it had to be drenched with puppy slobber. "Unless you mean your pretty boy," Spike continued blithely. "In that case I don't see why you need a separate--"
"It'd be nice to have a patio," Angel said. "And a yard."
"For sunbathing?" Illyria smiled her small, sarcastic smile.
"I thought maybe the dog . . ."
They looked over at the crate. The sound of the rubber ball stopped abruptly.
Angel shrugged. "It could have a place to run around."
"Bloody hell." For some reason, Spike's voice was very soft. He put his chair down on all four legs, and stared at Angel intently. "You're serious."
"What?" Angel was immediately suspicious.
"You honestly want to take that mutt home with you."
Angel wasn't really interested in custody battles over the dog. "I don't care. It's just a dog."
Spike didn't say anything.
"Your house could be a very fine house," Illyria said suddenly. "With two cats in the yard."
Everyone turned to look at her.
"Bob asked me to move in with him."
"Are you going to?" Angel said after a moment of surprised silence.
"I don't know," Illyria said.
"And Faith is having a baby." Even though it came out of the blue, everyone knew what Nina meant.
"Yeah," Spike said, sounding strange. "Two, three, four big happy's. That's just wonderful." He stood up and went for his coat. "Got an appointment," he said gruffly, and stalked out.
*
After a few more minutes of fighting Gunn's demon and vampire cohorts, Angel got a chance to look around for the first time. The grenade had taken out three demons and injured a vampire who was hopping around on one leg. The wall was blackened but intact, with a mess of rubble around it. Angel was startled to recognize Uncle Li's son, whom he knew because he had made the deliveries, watching big eyed from over in that direction. That was fine; he appeared unhurt and was staying out of the action. Faith was taking on three vampires, also fine. Nina was on defensive, as he'd taught her, sticking close to Faith and only putting herself out for clean shots with the broken chair leg in her hand. Spike was taking on two of the leathery huge demons, also fine, and Fred had Gunn, which wasn't fine at all.
Angel hadn't taught Fred to fight defensively. Not like Cordy, who hadn't taken her defense lessons well anyway. Cordy had been all fire and couldn't bide her time, just like Gunn. Couldn't think tactically and plan things out, like Fred, like Wesley. Could set those fires in him and water them down with her sweat when he trained her, and Fred hadn't been like that for him at all, which was why Gunn had been the one to teach her.
Gunn to light the fires, move with her in sync, teach her patiently--sweating and hot and so full of life--how to move. Angel had heard them training, knew how Gunn had shown her to hang back with the cross-bow, then if confronted to always keep a watch on how to slip away, not land a blow, use speed and dexterity to exhaust, not defeat.
In the night, Angel had heard him showing her other things, too.
Gunn knew the way she moved now, too, overwhelming Fred so completely that Angel remembered Spike was not the only one who had played a part in this ploy to save him and Faith. Maybe Illyria was just biding her time.
But when Illyria flickered back into existence, Angel saw that she had not expected Fred any more than he had. The former god regained her composure, beating back at Gunn without the gangly grace of exposed elbows and rosebud lips. But Gunn still knew that body, and held his own better than it seemed he should have, and Illyria kept blinking off and on into Fred. Different parts of her--her hair, half a shirt, and back again, flash of thigh under a jean skirt, flash of brown-eyed regret.
Then Fred was a heap of limbs on the floor and Gunn . . . Gunn hesitated.
Looking down through yellow eyes at awkwardly bent knees and hands that had known his body in the dead of night, Gunn looked like he saw light. Saw sun and smiles and the South, and like it pained him, not because the sunlight burned but because it made him a man again.
Then Gunn's face changed, not literally with forehead and ridges, but just as well, into an expression Angel knew he had seen before. And Gunn lunged at Fred fangs bared.
Angel made it there in time to throw Gunn off and begin their own remembrance of things past.
"Just telling Fred there," Gunn began, trying to knock Angel's stake away and succeeding. His tone was friendly, his face smooth. "How I was so glad I killed her. How badass it is to keep going in your old body, but see the world with new eyes." His irises fazed to yellow again.
"Fred is dead," Angel said through grit teeth.
"Well damn, you're right." Gunn circled him slowly, then moved in, feinting to the right then dodging up around the left, catching Angel off guard. "But is it just me," he continued, locking Angel's head with his arms, "or does that girl need some killing again?"
"It's just you," Angel said, and threw him back with an elbow in the chest.
"Dunno." Gunn laughed as he toppled backwards. "Cordy left life on earth as we know it, then coma'ed and up and died again. With Wes it was just the once, except he done went and got his throat cut and you wanted to just leave him there to bleed, that's right. How could I forget? Even Spike's died twice. The only one we're missing is Lorne, and you know, there was that time his head got offed in Pylea, and what you made him do to Lindsey . . . got to as good as killed him." He laughed again, practically dancing among Angel's blows, faster than he'd ever been alive, faster than he should be. "And me--well damn, I died every night until you all saw fit to come and get me, which makes Lindsey a motherfucking hero too."
Angel grabbed his arm and swung him over toward an upturned chair.
"The best of us die twice, Angel," Gunn said. "That's why you're going to live forever."
And that's when Angel remembered where he'd seen the look on Gunn had had on his face as he stood over Fred.
He'd seen vampire after vampire face down ones they had loved in life. He himself had faced them and knew how it felt--the blood and the power lust, every resentment and hurt boiling to the surface, the way you had to kill them to define yourself, even if you were the sort who killed them to bring them back to be with you, which Angel hadn't been. That had not been the look on Gunn's face.
It was not a look of desire. It was of acceptance and determination, of fate dropping down onto your face and shoulders and pulling you down with it.
It was how Gunn had looked when he had staked his baby sister.
Angel held Gunn two inches above the upturned chair and faltered.
It gave Gunn enough time to surge back up and push him away, and then he was gone.
Angel looked around and Gunn's lackeys were all gone, too. What was left was only aftermath. Faith and Spike began an animated discussion about grenade launchers, staged enactments of multiple faux betrayals, and Istanbul being Constantinople. Nina, cut and bruised but look otherwise fine, started trying to convince Li's son out of the fetal position. Illyria was . . . scalping demons.
Angel thought maybe he should go over there and tell her to stop, but he realized he might very well go over there and tell her to carve out the hearts, also, if they had any. He even worried he might tell her to carve out his own heart, if he had one. Fred had done it once, in a dream. There had been a walnut and a fish bowl and bolts and screws. Angel wondered if she had found any splinters in there, too. Then he realized what he was thinking. Quickly subsequent to that realization he realized he needed to be gone from here.
Without saying anything, careful to slip around Faith lest she notice him again, Angel left.
He spent a good part of the night in Fred's old room at the Hyperion. He wanted to bang his head against the wall, like Spike had sometimes after the alley, repeating his conjugations. Maybe it would loosen the paint. He wanted to read the part about how he had saved her, saved her from inhumanity and madness and death, like he had not Drusilla. He wanted everything to stop and he wanted not to be alone.
Most of all, he guessed, he wanted to kill things. He could do it, too. It wasn't like it had been after the alley, with that internal damage laying him up. In fact, the splinters were probably just in his imagination.
He had to tell himself that several times before he could pick himself up and go down to Spike's.
It wasn't because he wanted Spike. It was because he wanted destruction, a lot of it, and Spike was good at ruining things.
Which just goes to show that sometimes you can be too right, because Angel walked down the stone church steps, knocked on the wooden door to the crypt, and heard an eruption of raucous laughter. "Don't touch my banana!" a muffled voice said.
He hadn't expected Spike would have company. He had thought he would be alone like him.
Angel then thought about leaving, but it was too late, and Spike was at the door. "Angel." Spike hung on the door frame, leaning too close. "Wondered where you got to. Join the party?" Spike touched his hand, as if to take it and draw him in, but then seemed to remember something and turn away. Angel followed.
Faith and Illyria had video controllers and were making big apes move on the screen. Open Chinese take-out boxes, empty beer bottles, and Faith's bra were strewn in various locations on the floor.
Angel didn't know what to say, really. It was the first time he'd ever been to Spike's place. So he told Spike, "How can even you make all this mess? You're disgusting."
Spike frowned, scratching the back of his head. "Wasn't just me, was it? Those two, Dog Girl, and General Li, too."
"You brought Li's son here?"
"Also by name of Li." He looked around in that way he had, as if Nina and Li were still there also, then at last found his coat and pulled out his cigarettes and lighter.
"Jeffrey," Faith elucidated, putting the game on pause. "Said he couldn't sleep anyway, have to rebuild half the restaurant. And we saved his life and shit, so--that's how we all felt."
"You all felt saved?" Angel couldn't help snapping sarcastically.
Spike shrugged. "That's what Dog Girl said. But I'm sure you picked up on how she talks utter shite. Said we weren't in that alley any more or that building, as if it wasn't patently obvious and something about Blue's fern and shiny new windows in the office. Ever think you date the dottiest girls, mate?"
Spike might've been ever so slightly calling the kettle black. Spike might've been ever so slightly drunk.
"I'm not dating Nina, don't call her Dog Girl, and she was here?" Angel said finally, after watching Spike fumble a bit before lighting up.
"She left early," Illyria said, putting down her controller and standing up. "She was not interested in pre-hominid examples of primal aggression and the fierce, often deadly competition in the political hierarchy of tribe-like primates, which no doubt was the eventual cause of their triumph in the broader scheme of the evolutionary hierarchy itself."
Faith smiled bemusedly at Illyria. "Otherwise known as she didn't want to play Donkey Kong."
"Didn't want to play strip poker was the real reason," Spike groused. "Some blondes, you know, can't even loosen up for a bloody game of five card draw and kittens, even with tequila. You ever noticed that?"
Later Angel would think about this, Faith's bra on the floor, and the way Faith had smiled at Illyria and Illyria's solemn smile back, and conclude that this was the night Illyria had dubbed Faith Specimen Six Hundred Sixty Nine. "Strip," Angel repeated dumbly, forgetting how stupid it was to repeat anything Spike said.
"Not right now, Angel," Spike said in a gloating undertone. "I have company."
"I am leaving now. The hour grows late and I am tired." Illyria wasn't using contractions again, Angel noticed. Otherwise she appeared fine, without a trace of Fred or what had happened as she fought Gunn earlier that night. At the door, she offered Spike her hand. It looked strange there, strong and pale between Spike and Fred's bodies. Angel thought he saw the hand tremble, but he could've been mistaken. Spike took it before he could be sure. "Nina was right," Illyria said cryptically. "This was better than using your brain for a pin cushion and your scalp as a door mat would've been. Probably."
"Well, that's neat." Spike shrugged but strangely seemed to mean it. Once Illyria had gone, he caught Angel looking at him and scowled, shoving his hands in his pockets and smoking furiously. "Something Dog Girl said," he said after a while. He turned to Faith. "Right. So it's just you, me, and--"
"Pancho Villa?"
"I was improvising." It didn't sound like the first time Spike had said it.
"'K," Faith said, and didn't sound like it was the first time she'd pretended to go along.
Angel stepped back. "I'm not staying."
"'Course," Spike said, and turned away.
"Then vamanos, vampiro." Faith grabbed some stakes half hidden under and assortment of fortune cookies. "Still got three hours before dawn. Time for some quality action ass kicking."
"Okay." Angel waited as she got her jacket.
Spike pretended not to watch her also.
"Be back in a jiff," Faith told Spike. "With bells on. And extra sticky on the rolls."
"Right," Spike said again, but didn't add, "So it's just me."
Instead he stalked off into one of the grottos and didn't even say goodbye.
Once outside, Angel made a move towards his car, but Faith waved him ahead. They walked in silence along the sidewalk, Faith holding her stake and not seeming to be very careful watching the streets. "I'm not cheating on Robin," she said suddenly.
Angel wanted to ask why she was coming back to Spike in the morning with sticky rolls, then, but instead said, "It's not my business."
"Yes it is." She thwapped her stake against her thigh. "Well, okay, it's not, but I'm making it yours."
Angel stared straight forward. "Why?"
"Because I'm a different person. I would've cheated. Tonight, with Spike, with Illyria, with Jeffrey, who knows. I would have because there was a lot of fighting tonight and it gets me horny, and because everyone looked so goddamn depressed it made me want to shoot my foot or beat someone to death with an IV stand."
"With an IV stand?"
"Try waking up from a coma one day. Anyway, I wanted to and I didn't do it because I'm a different person. And you helped me be that, and I think it's important, and I wanted you to know."
Angel knew she wasn't talking up the great principle of fidelity, really. She was talking about forbearance. About wanting something, and not taking it. Not having it.
Angel thought sometimes that if he was alive, the heartbeat would push the splinters out. They'd travel through the blood down somewhere else, where they wouldn't sting so much, and he would feel a lot better. He wondered if he held Faith right now, held her close enough, whether her heartbeat would be enough for both of them. Whether she would push the ache down, all the way down into his feet. It would be fine. There he was already made of clay.
Instead he said, "I let him get away. Gunn," he added, when Faith looked at him with raised brows.
"Is that it?" Faith's brows were still raised. "The best can fail. And seeing as how neither of us is the best I'll take this lovely little moment to point out that even Buffy had to die a time or two before bagging some of her big bads."
The best ones died twice.
"It wasn't that," Angel said. "I think--I think he might have been asking me to stake him. And I didn't."
"You're a real A-hole that way. Never killing people when they ask you."
"That was different." Angel looked about uncomfortably. "You're a person. You had a soul."
"Oh, like if you're a vampire you can't have a soul. Right, throw me another."
"I'm unique."
Faith stopped at the corner, went to the brick wall along the side walk. Leaned back against it, a booted foot up on it, and just looked at him. Angel realized she'd left him standing under the street lamp. "Okay, Spike," Angel admitted sourly, stepping out from the spotlight. "But he just did it for Buffy."
"Angel." Faith's leather-clad leg slid to straight. Her arms stayed crossed, an aggressive stance, but Angel guessed it was more about protection now. "Which of us isn't doing it for her?"
"Me. I love her, but I'm not all about her. And she's not all about me. That's why . . ." That was why he loved her, in the end. Because she didn't need him for her to be his hero, after all this time. "I do what I do because . . ." Of snow and Doyle and the Powers and Cordelia's last kiss and Connor, but that was beside the point. "Because it's right."
"And that makes you a better person than me?" Faith started walking again. Angel moved beside her. "I do it for her. I do it for Robin, and for you. Sometimes I think I might even do it for my--for the mayor. How fucked up is that? But it might be for Kit or Laine. Maybe my mom. I don't know. But I sure as hell don't do it because it's right. I don't know what that is."
"Gunn's not like that," he said finally. "Gunn won't get a soul."
Faith hooked a smile at him. "So you're saying Spike's unique?"
"Spike is . . ." Angel's mouth tightened, his jaw clenching. "Spike's an idiot."
"Really.
"You're staying at his crypt."
It was a sudden accusation, and Faith looked over at him in surprise. "Needed a place."
"What's wrong with mine?"
He was afraid for a moment she would say that it was too cold, but instead she paused for a moment, looking at him. "You didn't ask me," she said, and started walking again.
Angel walked next to her in silence, and he was thinking about mercy. About the way he had told his employees at Angel Investigations that if he was ever to escape as Angelus, they should stake him on sight. About the way he had escaped, and they had brought in Faith. Who Faith was now, this woman beside him, she was for partly for him. Wesley had broken her out of jail because he knew she would have mercy.
Mercy, they would all have mercy, and one day standing outside of Caritas Gunn had told him they were not friends, and he would stake him in a heartbeat if he felt he had to.
But Gunn hadn't done it and neither had Angel. And Angel didn't know if that was mercy or memory or weakness.
Weakness, it had to be. Weakness in the way that Wesley had become so invested in Illyria--because she bore Fred's face, Fred's frame.
Mercy, after all, was about death. It was killing Connor and Darla dying in an alley; it was what laying down to die in another alley later would've been for Angel. Angel hadn't spared Gunn out of mercy.
It was to punish him.
*
After the others had gone for the evening, Spike came back. After pacing around a while, annoyingly, he had started doing the hovering thing again around Angel's desk. Probably wanted to think of more clever insults about how Angel was empty just like the place he lived in.
Angel ignored him.
"Angel." It was kind of like having a mosquito buzzing around you. "Angel," Spike said again, this time louder.
Or like an annoying kid tugging at your sleeve. Spike even reached a hand out, but it dropped before it alighted on Angel's shoulder.
"What?" Angel snapped.
Spike looked disconcerted. He took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth, seemed to remember how much grief Nina would give him, and sat there with it in his mouth, opening and closing his lighter. "You're an idiot," he said at last.
"So are you. Are we done?"
"That dog," Spike began, then tried again. "It's about the dog. How you treat it."
"Fine. Fine, okay," Angel said, his voice hard. "You were right about it. It respects me now."
"Okay." Spike spoke very slowly, as if soothing a rabid and stupid animal. "What exactly did you do to it?"
"Showed it who was boss. What you said. Is that what you want to hear?"
"Did you--did you hit it?"
"Oh, great." Angel rolled his eyes. "Now you're the thing's champion or whatever? Because you just try so hard with it, don't you. No, I didn't hit it."
"Okay," Spike said again. "Angel, that dog is terrified of you."
"What? No it isn't."
"I'm not--" Spike broke off, sounding frustrated. "'S the truth," he insisted instead. When Angel went back to ignoring him, Spike said, "Fine. Go on making your plans to get it a little doggy play yard and wee doggy house, and let it flinch every time you even go near it. See if I care."
"It doesn't."
Spike went over to the crate. He said something in low tones, and the puppy came trotting out, panting so wide it looked like it was grinning. Spike said something again, that same soft, deep voice. Spike started scratching the dog behind its ear. It's tail thumped madly. "Come on, boy," Spike said, after several minutes of this.
The dog happily followed him until they were at Angel's desk and it saw Angel.
It didn't flinch.
But its tail quickly folded back between its legs, and it wasn't the same dog.
Angel stood up, looking down at Spike. "How nice for you, Spike," he said coldly. "At least you can get a dog to love you."
Spike did flinch.
Angel felt the splinters in his chest, so sharp and immediate in response he wondered whether Spike not only left them there but had control over them, could make them hurt whenever he wanted that place in Angel to sting, tight and aching and painful. "Spike," he said.
"At least I can get a dog to love me," Spike hissed. "Tell me, how are you and Nina?"
"Spike," Angel said again.
"Oh don't tell me. You two are perfect."
"That's not--" Angel expected to be cut off, but he wasn't. "That's not fair," he finished lamely.
"Yeah, nothing's fair. They all love you. Everyone does. And lucky you, the only thing you need to worry your pretty head about it the fact you don't deserve any of it. Not the slightest bit."
He stormed out. Angel thought about chasing after him and slugging him in the face, but saw the puppy cowering, and didn't. Instead he sat down heavily and thought about the yard and Connor and the frisbees and the picket fence being hammered out in his chest.
For all that he felt guilty, he also decided it wasn't his fault. He wouldn't've growled at the dog if he knew how the hell he was supposed to treat it. And maybe he would've known how to treat it if he'd wanted it at all, but he hadn't. It was just . . . here, for no other reason probably than that he'd spent a century and some nailing puppies to walls, and this was fate's fuck you.
Luckily it was a dog and he could make it bacon and talk to it in the same tone of voice Spike had used, and hold it down and touch it until it knew he wasn't going to hurt it. "I'm sorry," he told it, feeling stupid for talking to it. And yeah, because it was just a dog, it wouldn't laugh in his face for saying it.
TBC
*
When Angel got off the phone with Faith, and shared the news of her pregnancy the next day, he was surprised to hear that Spike hadn't heard already.
Spike just stared at him for a while. "Are you daft? Of course you'd be first to know."
"Because she likes me better."
Spike looked away.
Angel hadn't actually meant it to sting.
"Trisha?" Spike said, standing up. "You okay? Everything alright?"
Angel stared at the golden skinned, short Filipino teenager who had just entered their office, and tried to remember whether he'd ever seen her before.
"Great Spike," she said.
"The nightmares?"
"Mostly gone, since talking to you about it. Thanks a lot."
Angel now vaguely remembered. The case about the abducted teenager. The father had reported her missing; it had happened shortly after the mother's death and he'd thought she'd run away. It turned out the mother had actually been a vampire had captured her living daughter for some terrible scheme of her own. Whatever it was, before she could affect it, Nina and Illyria had located her hideaway. They'd all come in to free her, but it happened to have been Angel who staked the mother. Angel hadn't been able to look Trisha in the eyes, afterwards.
She'd come in several times since then. Spike had always handled her, talking to her patiently and sometimes at length about her nightmares. If it had been anyone but Spike, Angel would've thought he was being saved from having to deal with her.
Spike tilted his head at Trisha. "What do you need?"
"Um." Trisha looked over towards Angel's desk.
Spike stood there dumbly for several seconds. Then: "Right." Spike turned on his heel toward Angel, and began speaking blankly. "Angel, this is Trisha. You might remember her from such rescue missions as--"
"Of course I remember," Angel said, standing up.
He walked over to take Trisha's hand. "I just--just always wanted to thank you," she said, and hugged him instead. Angel looked cluelessly over her shoulder at Spike.
"For killing her mum," Spike said helpfully.
"Spike," Angel said sharply. Trisha pulled away, eyes very round. "His mom died the same way," Angel said, trying to speak softly.
"Sure." Spike voice was falsely bright. "But jolly for me, when me own mum was turned, she wanted a spot of the old in and out. Twisted, innit?"
"Are you alright?" Angel asked Trisha. "Did you want to talk?" He glanced over at Spike again, and almost recognized that look.
Spike used to revel in tearing things apart. Angel used to revel in watching him.
"We could go in here," Angel said, guiding Trisha towards Illyria's office.
Later, after Angel had talked about her mother and yes that vampires were real and no he would not go out with her, Trisha left, and Angel said to Spike, "Why would you do that? She's just a kid."
"I don't like being used," Spike said shortly, heading for the door.
"Hey," Angel said. "Where are you going? We still have to get that spawn blood." The other night had proven a bust.
"That," Spike said vaguely. "I have a source. Super secret, on the QT. Tell Dog Girl, yeah?" And then he was gone.
Spike kept leaving early, arriving late. It was different than when they'd first started. Spike had always been around. You couldn't seem to get rid of him even when he was quitting once a night. He'd even made Nina lose it; she'd sent him on a wild goose chase of epic proportions, just to get Spike out of her hair. The thing was, Spike had succeeded, brought in a small load of cash, and earned the respect of an entire previously semi-hostile demon race. Some of whom began bleaching their hair out of respectful emulation. Nina didn't accuse him of idling after that.
But these days Angel couldn't accuse him of it either because he wasn't around as much any more. And he made cryptic comments like the one he'd just made, and brought in magical tibias and special crystals from Broodmothers without saying how he got them.
All of which just seemed extra evidence that Spike was doing something to the dog.
"Spike isn't doing anything to Rufus," Nina said. She sounded tired. Maybe it was the demon hunt from the night before. Maybe it was all the sex afterward. Maybe it was that he'd mentioned his theory about Spike and the dog during the hunt and after the sex and again this morning.
She put her head on his chest, and he wrapped his fist in her hair without really thinking about it. He was staring at the opposite wall, frowning. "He's up to something."
"What is it about this dog?" Nina said. "You worry about it too much. Let's just think about how nice this is."
Angel looked down at her and smiled a little. "Perfect."
"Well, not perfect. Obviously."
Her tone was meant to be light and teasing, but it made Angel take his hand out of her hair. "Nina. We've discussed it before. It's not because I don't--"
"I know," Nina said hastily. "I wasn't complaining. I mean, how could we be perfect? I'm all wolf-girl and you're all, 'I von to suck'. Um, not that . . . I bet perfection is boring, anyway."
Angel thought it prudent not to mention that Buffy hadn't been any kind of normal either, and that it had been the furthest thing from boring he'd ever known.
"I love you," Angel said, because he did. Not in the way he loved Buffy, but then again, not in the way he had love Cordelia, either.
"That's nice," Nina said, because she never said it back.
He looked at her hair spread out on his chest, like ribs of gold. It's lustre almost made his skin look gray, like dust and ash, giving life and vibrance to the woman. He thought about the dog again, and realized he didn't know how to tell her he worried about it so much because maybe if he wasn't human enough for a dog, he wasn't human enough for her, either.
She might take it the wrong way and think he was comparing her to a dog.
He kissed her and said, "I'll make you breakfast."
She wandered out in her t-shirt and panties when the sausages were half done and he was getting his blood out of the refrigerator. She often fixed their blood sometimes at the office, and never seemed to mind it. She even tried to surprise Spike by adding different things (he loved the Lucky Charms and the pickle like a Bloody Mary, but told her she was barking mad when she put in tapioca). But Angel didn't like to add anything and didn't like to call attention to it and didn't like to drink in front of people. He'd been comfortable with it for a while there, but then he'd drunk down Drogyn and after that bite everything else tasted kind of flat, and made him hear human heartbeats when all he had to swill was pig's blood.
Nina poked the sausages. "Mm. Now how would I explain to any of my other boyfriends that I like intestine sausage?" Her voice was light, both apologizing for and begging not to mention that she had brought up the perfection thing.
"How many other boyfriends do you have?" Angel asked, following her lead.
"Three, but don't tell them."
"Just the casing is intestine. Lots of people like it. You can get it at any grocery store."
"You can get raw meat at the grocery store, too," she pointed out. "This smells really good."
It did, but mostly Angel was smelling the blood he was taking out of the microwave. But he was also thinking about Nina and raw meat, about how she had looked at the restaurant, eating so primly with her silver fork, and the things Spike had said. And Angel realized that with her werewolf senses she could smell the blood, too, even if she didn't know that was accenting the sausage smell, what was making her small, pink tongue dart out and leave a wet swash over her shapely lips.
Angel got down a clear glass and poured the warm blood into it. He speared the sausages onto a plate for her and dumped half the fruit salad he'd made onto it also.
Nina touched the inside of his wrist, making him pause in the midst of filling the second plate. "You don't have to."
"I know," he said, and put the rest of the fruit on his plate.
They ate together at the table. "I like that," Nina said after a while, nodding at the glass his blood was in. "Makes me feel more normal. For you know, my intestine fetish."
"I know," Angel repeated.
"Kind of makes you feel like every couple could be vampires and werewolves, just going about their lives like it's nothing really strange. Domesticity." She popped a strawberry into her mouth, sucking on her finger. "Except for the whole part where you don't even have a kitchen."
"I have a kitchen."
"A hot plate and a microwave does not a kitchen make."
"It's a bachelor kitchen." Because that sounded wrong, and because he'd been thinking so much about that stupid dog, he said suddenly, "I've been thinking about moving."
She stopped everything she was doing, which left her finger hanging in her mouth. Hastily she pulled it out and wiped it on her napkin, swallowed, and said, "Really?"
It had started with things Spike had said about training the dog, about how it couldn't stay in the office all day. Of course Spike was wrong about everything, except that it really couldn't stay in the office all day. Angel thought maybe it'd be nice if the puppy had a yard it could run around and do dog things in. He'd never thought of ever having a yard. But then he did, and he thought of Connor in it throwing a frisbee and the dog chasing after it. Then he had to stop looking at the picture in his mind because the picket fence in it was lodging somewhere down near his chest.
But then after that he'd got to thinking about how Nina said where he lived right now was cold. He'd picked it because it was the first place he could find away from that building where Illyria and Spike knew how to grieve and he didn't. He hadn't ever meant to live here any more than he had there, for the simple fact of life that he wasn't living. He hadn't thought he'd need a place with kitchens that had convection ovens, guest rooms for having people over, and picket fences. But even if he'd stayed in the same place, he had come a long way since then. Now he had Nina and Connor, who came to visit often enough to keep Angel satisfied he was safe. And he also had a puppy.
After that he thought again about something Spike had said, about the stupid dog, about man's best friend. About living a little. So Angel said, "Yeah. I could move. Somewhere closer to the office, maybe."
Nina deflated some. "Oh. You mean a better location."
"No. I mean . . . a better everything."
"I think that's wonderful." Nina smiled, and it was really beautiful. Angel thought her lips must taste like orange juice. Because she'd been drinking it, but mostly because he couldn't really taste orange juice. He thought it must be like that, that bright morning sharpness, crisp and clean and fresh. "Want me to hook you up with Illyria's real estate agent?" she asked.
"Illyria's real estate agent is still in business? Illyria's real estate agent is still alive?"
"Specimen Four Fifty Seven?" Nina frowned. "Sure she is, why wouldn't she be?"
"I . . . we . . . Spike and I thought Illyria might have . . . sort of . . . pinned her to the basement floor."
"Of course not!" Nina quickly got over her shock. "Or if she did, it was by mutual consent."
"Um. Maybe I don't want that agent."
"Don't be so squeamish. Drink your blood."
Angel laughed.
Nina spoke to Illyria about the real estate agent, so by the end of the day Spike also knew about Angel's thoughts about moving. "You can't," was Spike's response. "You just can't."
"Thought you didn't like it?" Angel said.
"'Course. It had a you living in it." Spike waved a hand airily. "But people grow into their living spaces. Comes to suit them in time, echo their personality. You can't move out, Angel."
"You think my living space reflects me?" Angel didn't know why, but the thought made him feel strangely smug.
"Let's see." Spike peered at him keenly. "Big, wooden, empty. Check, check, and check. Place was obviously made for you."
"I think it's great Angel wants to move," Nina said firmly, as Angel opened his mouth to tell Spike he was an idiot.
"What kind of place are you looking for?" Illyria asked. "Olga says she's not sure there's such a market for homes with basements where the neighbors don't mind strange smells, in case you want to know."
"Strange smells?" Angel wrinkled his nose, remembering his and Spike's single foray into Illyria's basement.
"She means the pot," Spike enlightened him.
"Oh," Angel said. "Right."
"And the formaldehyde," Illyria added.
No one was brave enough to ask what she needed formaldehyde for.
"Well, a house with a kitchen," Angel began. "And a guest room."
Spike scoffed. "You have guests? Who would guest you?" He had his legs up on his desk, and he was tossing a rubber ball around, making it bounce off the floor and walls before catching it again. Angel didn't see how he could stand to touch it; it had to be drenched with puppy slobber. "Unless you mean your pretty boy," Spike continued blithely. "In that case I don't see why you need a separate--"
"It'd be nice to have a patio," Angel said. "And a yard."
"For sunbathing?" Illyria smiled her small, sarcastic smile.
"I thought maybe the dog . . ."
They looked over at the crate. The sound of the rubber ball stopped abruptly.
Angel shrugged. "It could have a place to run around."
"Bloody hell." For some reason, Spike's voice was very soft. He put his chair down on all four legs, and stared at Angel intently. "You're serious."
"What?" Angel was immediately suspicious.
"You honestly want to take that mutt home with you."
Angel wasn't really interested in custody battles over the dog. "I don't care. It's just a dog."
Spike didn't say anything.
"Your house could be a very fine house," Illyria said suddenly. "With two cats in the yard."
Everyone turned to look at her.
"Bob asked me to move in with him."
"Are you going to?" Angel said after a moment of surprised silence.
"I don't know," Illyria said.
"And Faith is having a baby." Even though it came out of the blue, everyone knew what Nina meant.
"Yeah," Spike said, sounding strange. "Two, three, four big happy's. That's just wonderful." He stood up and went for his coat. "Got an appointment," he said gruffly, and stalked out.
*
After a few more minutes of fighting Gunn's demon and vampire cohorts, Angel got a chance to look around for the first time. The grenade had taken out three demons and injured a vampire who was hopping around on one leg. The wall was blackened but intact, with a mess of rubble around it. Angel was startled to recognize Uncle Li's son, whom he knew because he had made the deliveries, watching big eyed from over in that direction. That was fine; he appeared unhurt and was staying out of the action. Faith was taking on three vampires, also fine. Nina was on defensive, as he'd taught her, sticking close to Faith and only putting herself out for clean shots with the broken chair leg in her hand. Spike was taking on two of the leathery huge demons, also fine, and Fred had Gunn, which wasn't fine at all.
Angel hadn't taught Fred to fight defensively. Not like Cordy, who hadn't taken her defense lessons well anyway. Cordy had been all fire and couldn't bide her time, just like Gunn. Couldn't think tactically and plan things out, like Fred, like Wesley. Could set those fires in him and water them down with her sweat when he trained her, and Fred hadn't been like that for him at all, which was why Gunn had been the one to teach her.
Gunn to light the fires, move with her in sync, teach her patiently--sweating and hot and so full of life--how to move. Angel had heard them training, knew how Gunn had shown her to hang back with the cross-bow, then if confronted to always keep a watch on how to slip away, not land a blow, use speed and dexterity to exhaust, not defeat.
In the night, Angel had heard him showing her other things, too.
Gunn knew the way she moved now, too, overwhelming Fred so completely that Angel remembered Spike was not the only one who had played a part in this ploy to save him and Faith. Maybe Illyria was just biding her time.
But when Illyria flickered back into existence, Angel saw that she had not expected Fred any more than he had. The former god regained her composure, beating back at Gunn without the gangly grace of exposed elbows and rosebud lips. But Gunn still knew that body, and held his own better than it seemed he should have, and Illyria kept blinking off and on into Fred. Different parts of her--her hair, half a shirt, and back again, flash of thigh under a jean skirt, flash of brown-eyed regret.
Then Fred was a heap of limbs on the floor and Gunn . . . Gunn hesitated.
Looking down through yellow eyes at awkwardly bent knees and hands that had known his body in the dead of night, Gunn looked like he saw light. Saw sun and smiles and the South, and like it pained him, not because the sunlight burned but because it made him a man again.
Then Gunn's face changed, not literally with forehead and ridges, but just as well, into an expression Angel knew he had seen before. And Gunn lunged at Fred fangs bared.
Angel made it there in time to throw Gunn off and begin their own remembrance of things past.
"Just telling Fred there," Gunn began, trying to knock Angel's stake away and succeeding. His tone was friendly, his face smooth. "How I was so glad I killed her. How badass it is to keep going in your old body, but see the world with new eyes." His irises fazed to yellow again.
"Fred is dead," Angel said through grit teeth.
"Well damn, you're right." Gunn circled him slowly, then moved in, feinting to the right then dodging up around the left, catching Angel off guard. "But is it just me," he continued, locking Angel's head with his arms, "or does that girl need some killing again?"
"It's just you," Angel said, and threw him back with an elbow in the chest.
"Dunno." Gunn laughed as he toppled backwards. "Cordy left life on earth as we know it, then coma'ed and up and died again. With Wes it was just the once, except he done went and got his throat cut and you wanted to just leave him there to bleed, that's right. How could I forget? Even Spike's died twice. The only one we're missing is Lorne, and you know, there was that time his head got offed in Pylea, and what you made him do to Lindsey . . . got to as good as killed him." He laughed again, practically dancing among Angel's blows, faster than he'd ever been alive, faster than he should be. "And me--well damn, I died every night until you all saw fit to come and get me, which makes Lindsey a motherfucking hero too."
Angel grabbed his arm and swung him over toward an upturned chair.
"The best of us die twice, Angel," Gunn said. "That's why you're going to live forever."
And that's when Angel remembered where he'd seen the look on Gunn had had on his face as he stood over Fred.
He'd seen vampire after vampire face down ones they had loved in life. He himself had faced them and knew how it felt--the blood and the power lust, every resentment and hurt boiling to the surface, the way you had to kill them to define yourself, even if you were the sort who killed them to bring them back to be with you, which Angel hadn't been. That had not been the look on Gunn's face.
It was not a look of desire. It was of acceptance and determination, of fate dropping down onto your face and shoulders and pulling you down with it.
It was how Gunn had looked when he had staked his baby sister.
Angel held Gunn two inches above the upturned chair and faltered.
It gave Gunn enough time to surge back up and push him away, and then he was gone.
Angel looked around and Gunn's lackeys were all gone, too. What was left was only aftermath. Faith and Spike began an animated discussion about grenade launchers, staged enactments of multiple faux betrayals, and Istanbul being Constantinople. Nina, cut and bruised but look otherwise fine, started trying to convince Li's son out of the fetal position. Illyria was . . . scalping demons.
Angel thought maybe he should go over there and tell her to stop, but he realized he might very well go over there and tell her to carve out the hearts, also, if they had any. He even worried he might tell her to carve out his own heart, if he had one. Fred had done it once, in a dream. There had been a walnut and a fish bowl and bolts and screws. Angel wondered if she had found any splinters in there, too. Then he realized what he was thinking. Quickly subsequent to that realization he realized he needed to be gone from here.
Without saying anything, careful to slip around Faith lest she notice him again, Angel left.
He spent a good part of the night in Fred's old room at the Hyperion. He wanted to bang his head against the wall, like Spike had sometimes after the alley, repeating his conjugations. Maybe it would loosen the paint. He wanted to read the part about how he had saved her, saved her from inhumanity and madness and death, like he had not Drusilla. He wanted everything to stop and he wanted not to be alone.
Most of all, he guessed, he wanted to kill things. He could do it, too. It wasn't like it had been after the alley, with that internal damage laying him up. In fact, the splinters were probably just in his imagination.
He had to tell himself that several times before he could pick himself up and go down to Spike's.
It wasn't because he wanted Spike. It was because he wanted destruction, a lot of it, and Spike was good at ruining things.
Which just goes to show that sometimes you can be too right, because Angel walked down the stone church steps, knocked on the wooden door to the crypt, and heard an eruption of raucous laughter. "Don't touch my banana!" a muffled voice said.
He hadn't expected Spike would have company. He had thought he would be alone like him.
Angel then thought about leaving, but it was too late, and Spike was at the door. "Angel." Spike hung on the door frame, leaning too close. "Wondered where you got to. Join the party?" Spike touched his hand, as if to take it and draw him in, but then seemed to remember something and turn away. Angel followed.
Faith and Illyria had video controllers and were making big apes move on the screen. Open Chinese take-out boxes, empty beer bottles, and Faith's bra were strewn in various locations on the floor.
Angel didn't know what to say, really. It was the first time he'd ever been to Spike's place. So he told Spike, "How can even you make all this mess? You're disgusting."
Spike frowned, scratching the back of his head. "Wasn't just me, was it? Those two, Dog Girl, and General Li, too."
"You brought Li's son here?"
"Also by name of Li." He looked around in that way he had, as if Nina and Li were still there also, then at last found his coat and pulled out his cigarettes and lighter.
"Jeffrey," Faith elucidated, putting the game on pause. "Said he couldn't sleep anyway, have to rebuild half the restaurant. And we saved his life and shit, so--that's how we all felt."
"You all felt saved?" Angel couldn't help snapping sarcastically.
Spike shrugged. "That's what Dog Girl said. But I'm sure you picked up on how she talks utter shite. Said we weren't in that alley any more or that building, as if it wasn't patently obvious and something about Blue's fern and shiny new windows in the office. Ever think you date the dottiest girls, mate?"
Spike might've been ever so slightly calling the kettle black. Spike might've been ever so slightly drunk.
"I'm not dating Nina, don't call her Dog Girl, and she was here?" Angel said finally, after watching Spike fumble a bit before lighting up.
"She left early," Illyria said, putting down her controller and standing up. "She was not interested in pre-hominid examples of primal aggression and the fierce, often deadly competition in the political hierarchy of tribe-like primates, which no doubt was the eventual cause of their triumph in the broader scheme of the evolutionary hierarchy itself."
Faith smiled bemusedly at Illyria. "Otherwise known as she didn't want to play Donkey Kong."
"Didn't want to play strip poker was the real reason," Spike groused. "Some blondes, you know, can't even loosen up for a bloody game of five card draw and kittens, even with tequila. You ever noticed that?"
Later Angel would think about this, Faith's bra on the floor, and the way Faith had smiled at Illyria and Illyria's solemn smile back, and conclude that this was the night Illyria had dubbed Faith Specimen Six Hundred Sixty Nine. "Strip," Angel repeated dumbly, forgetting how stupid it was to repeat anything Spike said.
"Not right now, Angel," Spike said in a gloating undertone. "I have company."
"I am leaving now. The hour grows late and I am tired." Illyria wasn't using contractions again, Angel noticed. Otherwise she appeared fine, without a trace of Fred or what had happened as she fought Gunn earlier that night. At the door, she offered Spike her hand. It looked strange there, strong and pale between Spike and Fred's bodies. Angel thought he saw the hand tremble, but he could've been mistaken. Spike took it before he could be sure. "Nina was right," Illyria said cryptically. "This was better than using your brain for a pin cushion and your scalp as a door mat would've been. Probably."
"Well, that's neat." Spike shrugged but strangely seemed to mean it. Once Illyria had gone, he caught Angel looking at him and scowled, shoving his hands in his pockets and smoking furiously. "Something Dog Girl said," he said after a while. He turned to Faith. "Right. So it's just you, me, and--"
"Pancho Villa?"
"I was improvising." It didn't sound like the first time Spike had said it.
"'K," Faith said, and didn't sound like it was the first time she'd pretended to go along.
Angel stepped back. "I'm not staying."
"'Course," Spike said, and turned away.
"Then vamanos, vampiro." Faith grabbed some stakes half hidden under and assortment of fortune cookies. "Still got three hours before dawn. Time for some quality action ass kicking."
"Okay." Angel waited as she got her jacket.
Spike pretended not to watch her also.
"Be back in a jiff," Faith told Spike. "With bells on. And extra sticky on the rolls."
"Right," Spike said again, but didn't add, "So it's just me."
Instead he stalked off into one of the grottos and didn't even say goodbye.
Once outside, Angel made a move towards his car, but Faith waved him ahead. They walked in silence along the sidewalk, Faith holding her stake and not seeming to be very careful watching the streets. "I'm not cheating on Robin," she said suddenly.
Angel wanted to ask why she was coming back to Spike in the morning with sticky rolls, then, but instead said, "It's not my business."
"Yes it is." She thwapped her stake against her thigh. "Well, okay, it's not, but I'm making it yours."
Angel stared straight forward. "Why?"
"Because I'm a different person. I would've cheated. Tonight, with Spike, with Illyria, with Jeffrey, who knows. I would have because there was a lot of fighting tonight and it gets me horny, and because everyone looked so goddamn depressed it made me want to shoot my foot or beat someone to death with an IV stand."
"With an IV stand?"
"Try waking up from a coma one day. Anyway, I wanted to and I didn't do it because I'm a different person. And you helped me be that, and I think it's important, and I wanted you to know."
Angel knew she wasn't talking up the great principle of fidelity, really. She was talking about forbearance. About wanting something, and not taking it. Not having it.
Angel thought sometimes that if he was alive, the heartbeat would push the splinters out. They'd travel through the blood down somewhere else, where they wouldn't sting so much, and he would feel a lot better. He wondered if he held Faith right now, held her close enough, whether her heartbeat would be enough for both of them. Whether she would push the ache down, all the way down into his feet. It would be fine. There he was already made of clay.
Instead he said, "I let him get away. Gunn," he added, when Faith looked at him with raised brows.
"Is that it?" Faith's brows were still raised. "The best can fail. And seeing as how neither of us is the best I'll take this lovely little moment to point out that even Buffy had to die a time or two before bagging some of her big bads."
The best ones died twice.
"It wasn't that," Angel said. "I think--I think he might have been asking me to stake him. And I didn't."
"You're a real A-hole that way. Never killing people when they ask you."
"That was different." Angel looked about uncomfortably. "You're a person. You had a soul."
"Oh, like if you're a vampire you can't have a soul. Right, throw me another."
"I'm unique."
Faith stopped at the corner, went to the brick wall along the side walk. Leaned back against it, a booted foot up on it, and just looked at him. Angel realized she'd left him standing under the street lamp. "Okay, Spike," Angel admitted sourly, stepping out from the spotlight. "But he just did it for Buffy."
"Angel." Faith's leather-clad leg slid to straight. Her arms stayed crossed, an aggressive stance, but Angel guessed it was more about protection now. "Which of us isn't doing it for her?"
"Me. I love her, but I'm not all about her. And she's not all about me. That's why . . ." That was why he loved her, in the end. Because she didn't need him for her to be his hero, after all this time. "I do what I do because . . ." Of snow and Doyle and the Powers and Cordelia's last kiss and Connor, but that was beside the point. "Because it's right."
"And that makes you a better person than me?" Faith started walking again. Angel moved beside her. "I do it for her. I do it for Robin, and for you. Sometimes I think I might even do it for my--for the mayor. How fucked up is that? But it might be for Kit or Laine. Maybe my mom. I don't know. But I sure as hell don't do it because it's right. I don't know what that is."
"Gunn's not like that," he said finally. "Gunn won't get a soul."
Faith hooked a smile at him. "So you're saying Spike's unique?"
"Spike is . . ." Angel's mouth tightened, his jaw clenching. "Spike's an idiot."
"Really.
"You're staying at his crypt."
It was a sudden accusation, and Faith looked over at him in surprise. "Needed a place."
"What's wrong with mine?"
He was afraid for a moment she would say that it was too cold, but instead she paused for a moment, looking at him. "You didn't ask me," she said, and started walking again.
Angel walked next to her in silence, and he was thinking about mercy. About the way he had told his employees at Angel Investigations that if he was ever to escape as Angelus, they should stake him on sight. About the way he had escaped, and they had brought in Faith. Who Faith was now, this woman beside him, she was for partly for him. Wesley had broken her out of jail because he knew she would have mercy.
Mercy, they would all have mercy, and one day standing outside of Caritas Gunn had told him they were not friends, and he would stake him in a heartbeat if he felt he had to.
But Gunn hadn't done it and neither had Angel. And Angel didn't know if that was mercy or memory or weakness.
Weakness, it had to be. Weakness in the way that Wesley had become so invested in Illyria--because she bore Fred's face, Fred's frame.
Mercy, after all, was about death. It was killing Connor and Darla dying in an alley; it was what laying down to die in another alley later would've been for Angel. Angel hadn't spared Gunn out of mercy.
It was to punish him.
*
After the others had gone for the evening, Spike came back. After pacing around a while, annoyingly, he had started doing the hovering thing again around Angel's desk. Probably wanted to think of more clever insults about how Angel was empty just like the place he lived in.
Angel ignored him.
"Angel." It was kind of like having a mosquito buzzing around you. "Angel," Spike said again, this time louder.
Or like an annoying kid tugging at your sleeve. Spike even reached a hand out, but it dropped before it alighted on Angel's shoulder.
"What?" Angel snapped.
Spike looked disconcerted. He took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth, seemed to remember how much grief Nina would give him, and sat there with it in his mouth, opening and closing his lighter. "You're an idiot," he said at last.
"So are you. Are we done?"
"That dog," Spike began, then tried again. "It's about the dog. How you treat it."
"Fine. Fine, okay," Angel said, his voice hard. "You were right about it. It respects me now."
"Okay." Spike spoke very slowly, as if soothing a rabid and stupid animal. "What exactly did you do to it?"
"Showed it who was boss. What you said. Is that what you want to hear?"
"Did you--did you hit it?"
"Oh, great." Angel rolled his eyes. "Now you're the thing's champion or whatever? Because you just try so hard with it, don't you. No, I didn't hit it."
"Okay," Spike said again. "Angel, that dog is terrified of you."
"What? No it isn't."
"I'm not--" Spike broke off, sounding frustrated. "'S the truth," he insisted instead. When Angel went back to ignoring him, Spike said, "Fine. Go on making your plans to get it a little doggy play yard and wee doggy house, and let it flinch every time you even go near it. See if I care."
"It doesn't."
Spike went over to the crate. He said something in low tones, and the puppy came trotting out, panting so wide it looked like it was grinning. Spike said something again, that same soft, deep voice. Spike started scratching the dog behind its ear. It's tail thumped madly. "Come on, boy," Spike said, after several minutes of this.
The dog happily followed him until they were at Angel's desk and it saw Angel.
It didn't flinch.
But its tail quickly folded back between its legs, and it wasn't the same dog.
Angel stood up, looking down at Spike. "How nice for you, Spike," he said coldly. "At least you can get a dog to love you."
Spike did flinch.
Angel felt the splinters in his chest, so sharp and immediate in response he wondered whether Spike not only left them there but had control over them, could make them hurt whenever he wanted that place in Angel to sting, tight and aching and painful. "Spike," he said.
"At least I can get a dog to love me," Spike hissed. "Tell me, how are you and Nina?"
"Spike," Angel said again.
"Oh don't tell me. You two are perfect."
"That's not--" Angel expected to be cut off, but he wasn't. "That's not fair," he finished lamely.
"Yeah, nothing's fair. They all love you. Everyone does. And lucky you, the only thing you need to worry your pretty head about it the fact you don't deserve any of it. Not the slightest bit."
He stormed out. Angel thought about chasing after him and slugging him in the face, but saw the puppy cowering, and didn't. Instead he sat down heavily and thought about the yard and Connor and the frisbees and the picket fence being hammered out in his chest.
For all that he felt guilty, he also decided it wasn't his fault. He wouldn't've growled at the dog if he knew how the hell he was supposed to treat it. And maybe he would've known how to treat it if he'd wanted it at all, but he hadn't. It was just . . . here, for no other reason probably than that he'd spent a century and some nailing puppies to walls, and this was fate's fuck you.
Luckily it was a dog and he could make it bacon and talk to it in the same tone of voice Spike had used, and hold it down and touch it until it knew he wasn't going to hurt it. "I'm sorry," he told it, feeling stupid for talking to it. And yeah, because it was just a dog, it wouldn't laugh in his face for saying it.
TBC
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