Some part of Spike had believed that Angel was permanent. Even out of sight, Angelus was always there. Somewhere. But in the end Spike dusted and came back, and Angel just dusted, and Spike was still standing. Wesley dead, Gunn dead, Illyria – who the fuck knew?

L.A. still standing too.

L.A. was Angel's city. He couldn't stay in it. Not with the ache in his chest where Angel had somehow always been, damn him.

Spike went to Rome. He wandered the streets and thought about the Immortal. About Angelus.

He found Buffy. She opened the door and stared at him. Her skin was tawny with sun, hair streaked with lighter blond. She'd filled out a little, rich food doing her good. She smelled like the Immortal, and Spike found that he didn't particularly care.

"You're alive," said Buffy. "I've been…the news."

Angel never said, but he hoped you would come, he didn't say. "Angel's dust," he did say.

Buffy's eyes widened. Her mouth moved, no.

"Thought you should know," said Spike, and turned to go. Buffy grabbed his arm, fingers digging into flesh.

"Wait," she said. "Spike. Come inside."

He never really had said no to her. Now didn't seem like the time to start.

"What happened?" she asked. "What about the others?"

"You're looking at the last man standing," Spike said dully. All of Angel's people, and then Angel himself. "Apocalypse, you know how it is." There was a great big…hole in the middle of his existence. He wondered if Buffy felt it too. He had owned so much of both of them.

Buffy glanced away. "Why didn't you call me?"

"Would you have come?" Spike could feel the wounds in his eyes spilling over.

Buffy whirled on him, indignant. "Of course I would have!"

Spike laughed, feeling almost drunk. "Angel didn't think so, love. Thought you were too busy fucking evil incarnate to help its CEO, I guess."

Buffy punched him. That was familiar, like the tears on her cheeks. Neither were really meant for him. "Between you and me," Spike went on heedlessly, "I don't think the old man ever meant to make it through the night. Just like him to make a fucking martyr, when nobody bloody cares."

Except for you, unsaid. Except for me.

"You could have called," Buffy accused. Spike shrugged.

"Pet," he said. "Angel wasn't the only one who thought you wouldn't come."

For a moment, he thought she was going to punch him again, beat him bloody and bruised, and he thought he would welcome it.

She kissed him instead.

~.~

Just like old times, they fucked hard and fast and vicious on the kitchen table. Her heels dug into the backs of his thighs and her nails plowed furrows down his back. Her hips ground up against his and she sang him a sweet song of sighs and moans amid the tart tang of her arousal. Once spent, Spike looked at her neck and thought of Angel, drinking deep of that forbidden font, the scar still livid on her neck. Imagined himself doing the same, in exactly the same spot.

He rolled off her. "You smell like him," he said. Buffy looked sated, but there were tears leaking from her eyes. Those were no more his than the rest of her.

"Like who?" Buffy said, and Spike nearly hated her. (Nearly hated himself, too, for searching her scent for any trace of his. Irony: who's trying to fill the whole now, huh?)

Spike stared up at the ceiling. "The Immortal." With his smile and his deft fingers and nimble tongue. Spike wanted to howl. "I can smell him all over you." He'll smell me too, and probably laugh. He'd laugh to hear about Angel, too. The thought made him want to snarl. He stood up.

"Got any alcohol?"

Buffy sat up, rumpled and disheveled, and unashamed. "No," she said, shortly. "Why, you want to get drunk?" She said the last word with disdain.

"No," Spike corrected her. "I want to get smashed." I want to forget about his dark eyes and big hands and stupid smile. He pulled on his pants. "I'll go find a bar, then. Get something Irish."

Buffy's expression spasmed. "He's really…"

"Yes," said Spike, harshly. "He's really." And walked out.

He heard her muffled wail from halfway down the stairs. Imagined her dialing a number and listening to it ring, and ring, and ring.

"Damn you," Spike whispered, when he found his fist through the drywall.

~.~

The bar was easy. The Irish whiskey wasn't bad. Going looking for a fight, in retrospect, was probably not one of his better ideas. He won, of course, but now he just hurt both inside and outside.

He hadn't meant to go back to her, never had, but he ended up slumped by her front door anyway, and she hauled him inside and stuck him back together. She'd been crying, he could tell. She shoved him into bed and a moment later she lay down next to him.

"Buffy," he slurred, drunk and bloodless. "I miss him." Quieter, "I didn't want him to die."

Buffy said nothing, her lips pressed together in a thin white line, but she leaned her head against his shoulder. He slept.

And dreamed Angel on his knees, mouth wrapped around his cock and tongue flickering down its length. Spike wound his hands into that thick, dark hair and moaned. "Angel, Angel, fuck, Angel," slipped from his lips, and his grandsire slid off him with a pop and lifted his head.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm so sorry," and then dissolved into dust. Something hung bright in the air – it's his soul – and Spike reached out to take it in, keep it safe, but there were burned, mutilated hands bursting from the ground, tearing Angel's soul apart and dragging it down-

-into hell.

Spike woke with a scream in his throat and a raging hard on. Buffy was still asleep, her nose wedged behind his ear, and for a moment he resented her body's warmth.

~.~

"You came back," she said the next morning, while she made an omelette and pushed a cup of blood across the counter.

"So I did." He wanted a smoke, but didn't think Buffy would like it. He remembered other hands snatching the cigarette from his fingers, stubbing it out, how many times do I need to tell you…

Spike felt tired all over again. Buffy was staring at him as she might at a ghost. "I don't plan to stay, pet," he said. "Expect Wolfram and bloody Hart'll be following me."

Buffy's expression changed in a flash to one of fury. "Don't even start," she said. "If you leave, it's not going to be for me."

Spike couldn't help a sneer. "Fine, then. You have a life here. I'm not in it."

"This is about the Immortal?" Buffy sounded incredulous, and for the first time in a long time he really, really wanted to hit her. Instead he got up and crossed the room to a painting on the wall.

"Maybe it is." It wasn't, not really. It was about the other one, and feeling lost all over again. Abandoned, but this time there would be no resurrection or reappearance.

"You should have talked to me when you were in Rome. Both of you." Buffy sounded annoyed, now. He wasn't surprised, and wondered what Andrew had told her.

Spike snorted and paced over to a window, the curtains drawn to keep the sun out. "I only came here to tell you he was dead."

"I'd believe that if you hadn't come back," she said, and, "Spike…"

You don't understand, he wanted to say. We're both just going to end up fucking his ghost if I stay here. It should be both of us, fighting for your hand like stupid fucking cavaliers. This isn't how it's supposed to be. The apartment was bright and open and not his place.

He turned on her instead and this time it was him kissing her and he would be pissed later at her for ripping his shirt, except probably not. And Spike thought grieving sex is the best sex as he moved inside her and then hated himself a little for it.

~.~

"You still love him?" He asked, afterward, lying on the floor.

"Spike," she said, and he shook his head.

"I'm not mad, pet. Just asking."

"Yes," she said, finally, in a small voice. "I don't think I'll ever…not. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," Spike said. "Gets to all of us, the fucker." He could hate Angel and hate Angel and hate Angel, after all, and he wouldn't, in the end, love him any less.

Maybe he would stay here, for a little while. What was wrong, after all, with fucking a few ghosts? Especially the ones he'd never leave behind. "Three's company," he murmured, and then shook his head when Buffy glanced at him. She wasn't his, never would be, and he wouldn't take that forever, but for a little while…

He'd always been stupid, but maybe he was growing up.

Angel would have been proud.