The After Party

by Lesera128

L.A. 2003. After Angel's romp with Eve at the Wolfram & Hart Halloween Party, an expected but unanticipated visitor from Washington D.C. ends up in his penthouse and asks where he's been. Set at the end of Angel episode 5x05-"The Life of the Party." Bones/Angel crossover. Very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In," "Making Him Beg" & "Comfort on the Edge of Reason." Complete.

1. Part I: The Late Arrival

The After Party

By: Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

Rated: M

Disclaimer: Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yes, we're wrecking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then, moving on―

Summary: After Angel's romp with Eve at the Wolfram and Hart Halloween Party, a surprise visitor from Washington D.C. ends up in his penthouse and asks where he's been. Set at the end of Angel episode 5x05 - "The Life of the Party." Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In," "Making Him Beg" and "Comfort on the Edge of Reason." Complete.

Logistical Notes: For those who are wondering, in Bones chronology, this story would take place two years before season 1...or one year before Brennan worked the Gemma Arrington case with Booth.

A/N: In case you might've forgotten, welcome to piece number five in what's a scheduled nine-piece story arc about Angel(us) and Brennan. Like it's older siblings, if you haven't read the other four pieces in this series yet before you tackle this one, we can most certainly guarantee you you'll be a very confused and unhappy reader. Once again, not that it's a suprise, but dharmasera got wordy. You'd think we'd just give up and admit that we don't do not wordy, but...well, what can we say? We're just stubborn like that. Anyway, once again, what was supposed to be a one-shot standalone will post as three parts (hopefully, spread out over approximately 24 hours). The good news for our loyal readers in the UK and Ireland, one half of your writing duo is sojourning in Jolly Ole England for work right now, so that means since some monkey told Lesera128 that she's the brains of our little operation, that means we're posting on the UK GMT clock. Still, for readers back home ::waves at US:: we hope the odd posting schedule won't detract you too much from sharing a comment or two. We can't really stress this enough...feedback on pieces like this are so important. We do this (i.e., write fan fic) mostly because we are trying to tell some type of story. But, with the time, energy, and effort that goes into a piece like this (and, really, all our writings), it really sucks when people read it, but don't say anything. So, please...share your thoughts. We won't be greedy and ask for reviews for each chapter, but it would mean more to us than we can say if even half of the people who are reading this speak up and chime in with some feedback. Now, without further adieu...on with the story.

UNF Alert: This piece has some very serious unfness. Go figure. Nothing too edgy or deviant, but nonetheless, if you're not into reading about the steamy side of life, or really shouldn't be, we ask that you take a pass and find another story, because this will have some pretty steamy stuff of the seriously unf variety. However, if you're like most of our readers and dig that kind of thing, tee up that triple-grande latte and get ready for a real zinger. Enjoy!

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Part I: The Late Arrival

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As he walked out of the private elevator that led to the floor on which his penthouse was located, there were only three things that Angel really wanted to do in that moment. The first was to find out if the Flyers had actually managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (answer: probably not, as it had been a bit of a rough season so far...or, at least, the last few games had been since the season was only a few weeks old). The second was a long and hot shower. The third was to fall into bed to sleep uninterrupted for five or six solid hours of rest. As he went over the list in his mind, he couldn't help but feel as if he was forgetting something important. But, after he'd gone over the list twice: (check hockey, get clean, go to bed), he couldn't think of any other pressing responsibilities or obligations that he needed to take care of besides eating. And, since he wasn't hungry and could get some blood to feed on in the morning, he'd already crossed that one of his list of possible to-dos. Stifling an exasperated groan of exhaustion, Angel moderated it to a loud grunt as he approached his front door.

The evening's festivities had taken more out of him than he'd thought they would, not the most unexpected happening being when he'd ended up on the floor of his office naked and horizontal with Eve of all people.

"What a friggin' bone-headed idea that was," he muttered to himself as he unlocked the front door to his penthouse and walked towards his bedroom. "Well, at least I don't have to do a walk of shame..." Angel had already tossed the jacket of his black pinstripe suit on the chair in the outer room as he padded in the direction of his bedroom. His rumpled burnt orange sateen shirt was wrinkled from the number of times he'd already taken it on and off that evening as he unbuttoned it once more. On autopilot, he wasn't really paying attention when he walked by his king-sized bed, discarding his shoes and socks as he went straight into the bathroom and immediately into his walk-in shower. He'd already turned on the faucet in the shower when his lagging mind suddenly processed the significance of the image he'd seen just a minute earlier.

"Oh, fuck!" he grunted as he slowly turned off the water, leaned out of the shower, and straightened his back before turning around and walking back out into his bedroom. You stupid fucking son of a bitch, he growled at himself. What the fuck did you do, you stupid fuck, to forget the one damn thing you were supposed to remember today? He scowled as he wracked his mind for an explanation of how he could have managed to so colossally screw up this time. How the fuck could I have forgotten? He wondered if his brain was still hazy from the lingering effects of being the spell of Lorne's empathic demands. Angel nibbled the inside of his lip and noted that he did still feel a bit heavy-headed and slow-witted, like the way he vaguely remembered feeling when he was still human and had a bad head cold. Dammit. He blinked. Wait a minute. What is today? Oh, shit, he cursed silently. Lorne and the lawyers decided that even though Halloween fell on a Friday this year, they wanted to have the party on Thursday the 30th to allow clients traveling in from out of town...some bullshit, bullshit, whatever...so, wait, if the party was tonight, or...ummm...last night...the 30th...wait, when was she supposed to come in again? Angel sighed. Dammit. Fuck me.

She was sitting in the middle of his bed, her back resting against his headboard, her legs half bent as her hands rested casually palm down on top of the comforter. He couldn't help himself as he pursed his lips and furrowed his brow as he lingered in the doorway that separated his bathroom and bedroom.

For her part, her face was completely devoid of emotion, which Angel knew—after a hundred forty-odd years of reading her sometimes unreadable expressions—meant that, in fact, she was anything but. I am in such deep shit, he thought. I can see it in her eyes, in the way they get all glassy, with that little flash of blue. That particular shade of blue is usually a sign that things are never gonna end well for me. Fuck. I am in some serious kimchee here.

As he looked at her, Angel once again admired that she looked very pretty. But, then again, in the entire hundred and fifty years that he'd known her, she'd always been gorgeous. Tonight, it appeared, even though they hadn't seen each other much in the past ten years except for a few random, if intense, encounters besides their one three-day tryst at Halloween five years before. He remembered one particularly mind-ripping encounter, after arguing about his relationship with a certain blonde vampire slayer, whom Angel didn't want to think of by name just in case Brennan had developed some telepathic whammy that she hadn't told him about so he didn't get in any deeper trouble than he already had. They'd fought back and forth, volleying verbal salvo after verbal assault at one another until she'd given him a choice: take her, on her terms, or leave. Such an ultimatum had given him really little choice, and so Angel had taken Brennan against her stainless steel refrigerator, pounding into her as hard as he could while he drank her sweet blood from the pulse point at the base of her slender white neck. Judging by how things had already started, Angel began to wonder if tonight would be no different.

It had been some time since he'd seen her, and he could tell she'd changed the way she wore her hair since the last time he'd seen her. It was still the same auburn color that she'd favored since the day he'd met her after a boxing match that he'd won in Covent Garden more than a century earlier. However, it wasn't as wavy as it once had been. She'd obviously cut and straightened it, as her hair fell loosely about her shoulders with less curl to it than it once had. Hmm, he mused. I kinda liked the curl—it had a certain wild, sexiness to it—but, sure, fashions change, I guess, especially for girls. She better never change the color, though—that wonderful reddish auburn. I love it. If she changed that, that would so fucking suck. I love that about her. I don't want it to ever change. Her creamy skin and piercing blue eyes were the same, however, as she sat looking at him with an arched eyebrow being the only indication of what she was thinking, and, in some more important ways, what she was thinking.

The low, square-cut neckline of her sleek A-line black dress accentuated her upthrust breasts while the bottom hem ended at mid-thigh. If he'd bothered to look at the floor, Angel would've seen a very sexy pair of three-inch stiletto black heels on his side of the bed. However, in that moment, the smoky grey and silver eye makeup accentuated her already mesmerizing blue eyes as they stared back at him with an unspoken question that made him squirm as his mind raced to answer it.

At last, he sighed and figured that a direct approach was the best one to take, given the blank, emotionless expression on her face. He felt her stare drilling into him as he stood there, feeling much like a condemned man watching the executioner tying the last coil on the noose and testing the hitch one last time before looping it over his head at the base of the gallows. Angel swallowed, withering a little beneath her gaze as her eyes watched him, silent and still, her face like marble, cold and rigid, with only the slightest twitch on the side of her jaw and the occasional blinking of her eyes giving any indication of the fury simmering underneath her blank expression.

"I'm so sorry, Bren—"

Raising her hand from the top of the bedspread, Brennan suddenly showed the first sign of emotion that she'd displayed since he'd entered the penthouse apartment. She didn't give herself the luxury of letting her eyes skim up and down his body as her simmering anger, that had continued to smolder for the couple of hours that she'd been waiting for him, threatened to bubble up in her chest at hearing his weak apology.

"Six months," she said sharply. "Six months we've been planning this...longer, actually, in some ways...and the best you can say is you're sorry?" She stared at him expectantly, waiting to see what else he'd say.

His brow furrowed again as he put his hand on his hip and said, "I-I...I'm really sorry, Bren...it's just that...I'm sorry...Fuck..." His stammering trailed off as he watched her jaw shift from side to side and he knew she was as angry as he could remember he being in a long time. "Look, lemme make it up to you, and—"

"Two hours," she suddenly gestured with her fingers. "I've been sitting here for over two hours...all by myself...waiting for you." She stopped and then reached to the side of the bed. She grabbed a rectangular piece of black plastic and threw it at him as hard as she could.

Angel didn't have to move too far to be able to move from the direction of what he saw was his own TV remote that she'd thrown at him as he heard it clatter to the wooden floor as it skated past him, and even as he concentrated on her anger, somewhere in the back of his male mind he hoped that she hadn't broken it.

"Bren, wait," he said, unsure in that moment what he was asking her to wait for. "What are you doing?" he asked.

He turned around with a furrowed brow to see his remote in the corner by the baseboard, the batteries rolling across the floor as he looked to see where the battery door cover had flown off and landed. After so many years, and having been attacked with all sorts of unusual hardware—most notably being clocked over the head with an ancient Egyptian jade vase from the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom period, never mind the numerous times she had threatened him with her ninth-century bejeweled silver dagger— he was surprised to see her resort to using such ordinary weaponry.

"By the way," she told him with a slightly pleased look on her face as she took some pleasure in being able to deliver unhappy news about what she knew to be one of his favorite sports teams, "in case you're wondering, the Flyers lost."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Angel immediately became distracted and made a face. "Oh, no, really? Did you get a chance to catch any of the game? Was it any good? I was hoping that I caught a few minutes of the first period before all hell started to break loose downstairs, but I couldn't see the last two periods. Hackett wasn't doing that bad a job on goal at the start of the game, but the Devils have some nasty offensive capabilities. Fuck. Was it a good game? I bet it was. They really lost? Damn it, that sucks. They've been battling for first in the Atlantic Division, but they've dropped three of the last four games. The firm actually was able to get me tickets last week when they were in town to play the Kings at the Staples Center. I went with Gunn and Wes. The seats were friggin' awesome, but—"

His excitement in talking about one of his favorite sports was suddenly soured as he watched Brennan cross her arms and stared at him in a particularly antagonistic manner.

"You probably don't care about that right now," he finished lamely, swallowing heavily as his Adam's apple bounced when he wondered how much his unintentional ramble would further piss her off given how angry she already was.

"No, I don't really give a shit if the Flyers won or not," Brennan said, radiating hostility at him as she continued speaking. "I don't even like hockey, for fuck's sake. I grudgingly, with an emphasis on grudgingly, don't mind baseball if I have to pick a sport. But, the only reason I was watching the fucking Flyers/Devils game is because that was the only thing that was on beside professional bowling, a replay of the WCG-American Express Championship golf tournament, and a competitive poker tournament. So, it was really the lesser of the evils with which I'd been presented since I knew I'd be able to take some small measure of pleasure out of being able to tell you that the Flyers had lost. Of course, I only had to do that because I've spent the better part of two hours waiting for you, and the only channels that seem to come in on your damn cable package are every incarnation of every sports station that's broadcast worldwide so I've been stuck watching SportsCenter on loop for a while now. I couldn't even get the Weather Channel, for fuck's sake!"

Walking towards the bed, he gave her a sheepish look, trying to appease her as he said, "I'm sorry you had to deal with that," he said. "Poker shouldn't be on ESPN anyways. It's not like it's a sport." With a shrug, he added, "I know you don't really like sports." I need to make sure to show her how to work the programming guide on the Dish Network 'cause there's like a thousand channels, he thought. And those are just the ones in English. I mean, even she should be able to find something to watch that she won't complain about too much. Brennan arched an eyebrow and stared at him with a blank, unimpressed look. "I'll give you a lesson on how to navigate the TV menus later, okay? It's really not too hard once you get the hang of it—"

The look that Brennan shot him as he tried to tell her about what he'd teach her about working the TV guide stopped him mid-sentence. Umm, okay, he thought. Not helping. Shit.

"Don't worry about the weather, Bren," he said hopefully. "If worst comes to worst, I, uhh...well, you know you don't need to fly commercial back to D.C. if you don't want to, right? I mean...all I have to do is say the word, and the firm's jet can take you wherever you want to go."

Angel's eyes narrowed as he listened to his own words, and he shook his head quickly as he stood at the foot of the bed and looked at her with a soft smile on his lips and a twinkle in his warm chocolate eyes.

"Not that that matters much now, I know," he said sheepishly. "I-I...I mean, I've got to admit, I'm sorta surprised here that your flight managed to get into LAX because of the weather back east. When you texted me earlier and said your flight was delayed, well, I sorta got distracted by this stuff that was going on in the office, and I didn't think you'd get here—"

Rolling her eyes at him, Brennan said, "Uhh, hello? Almost five hundred year old witch here, Angel, in case you've forgotten. It's Halloween. Do you really think I need a ticket on United or American to get from D.C. to Los Angeles if I really wanted to fly tonight?"

He stared at her for a minute and then shook his head. "No, I guess not," he conceded. "Then, again, I know you may not believe this, but sometimes I almost forget what you are...what you can do since you usually lay off the mojo since you know I don't like it—unless you're pissed off at me...or horny...or both." He stopped and then asked, "So, do I even want to guess which one it is tonight?"

"And, I think that's also the answer to your other question," she told him with a sharp nod as she saw his eyes swivel over to the penthouse door and back to her again, smirking as she watched him blink and chew his lip as he appeared to be reconstructing how she managed to get through after-hours lobby security and two sets of access-controlled elevators without an RFID card and into his double dead-bolted suite without a key. "Multidimensional evil law firm or not, I've yet to find a security system that I can't beat if I'm really challenged, Angel, so don't be silly." Somehow, he knew, even as she said it, that it had taken her more effort to get into his penthouse undetected than Eve had earlier that day.

What's it with women barging into my apartment today? he grumbled silently to himself. First Eve, then Bren. Angel grunted and smirked, remembering how he'd managed to sneak into Brennan's terraced, wattle-and-daub home in Cheapside nearly a century and a half earlier and then promptly made himself at home there, slipping into her bed before she finally awoke to find him hovering over her, hard and horny, demanding her attentions. Not that it's like I really mind that it was Bren who was barging in this time, but still. It's the principle of the thing. But Eve isn't Bren, that's for sure. That whole Eve thing creeps me out. Never mind what happened tonight, which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish entirely. I should've known it was gonna be a fucking weird day when she walked in on me in the shower. What. The. Fuck.

She stopped and paused for a moment as she tilted her head and took in the sight of him. The burnished orange shirt hung loose on his chest, completely unbuttoned, and for a minute, Angel thought that the flash of interest he saw in her eyes might mean the night was more salvageable than he'd thought just a couple of minutes earlier. As she tilted her head at him, she asked, "What happened to you?"

Angel tried his best to give her what he hoped was a suitably charming smile as he said, "Oh, you know...normal stuff that happens to the CEO and president of said multidimensional evil law firm when he gets roped into going to a Halloween party for the corporate types the night before the big holiday. Mystical enchantments, visiting demon nobility, drunken benders, kicking ass, taking names, etc. etc."

"Is that so?" she asked.

"Yup," he nodded. "Just a normal day in the office." He paused and then gave her a shyly sly smile. "You know, I've got something for you."

Brennan's eyes narrowed as she tilted her head and tried to discern if he was teasing her with a lewd reference or was being more sincere in his statement. After a moment, curiosity won out over suspicion as she asked, "Okay. What is it?"

Unable to help himself, Angel chuckled. "What? No guesses?"

"No," Brennan said, shaking her head. "I don't like guessing about things. It's extremely imprecise and tedious—"

"And yet you make me do it all the damn time," he said with a playful arch of his eyebrows.

Brennan paused and then chuckled. "Well, yes. I do. But, then again, when I'm the one asking the questions, I'm already in possession of the answers so I don't have to guess. Watching other people guess is something else entirely. I find it to be quite stimulating—"

"To watch me squirm," he interrupted her, nodding his head with pursed lips and a snort. "That's why you really do it, and you know it, Bren. You love it. You totally get off on watching me do the dufus shuffle, don't ya? I've been playing checkers to your chess for a century and a half, yet you never tire of shooting off one of your brainiac mental flares and watching my eyes glaze over as it burns its way to the ground before I even figured out what the hell you were talking about." He laughed. "That's okay. You don't want me for my mind. Just my muscle, right?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Brennan bit her bottom lip to avoid the large smile that was threatening to crack her face. Instead, she merely responded, "I don't know what you're talking about in the slightest, Angel."

"Riiiight," he said with a faint snicker.

"So, you mentioned something about having something for me?" she asked, attempting to steer the conversation back to his earlier comment. "What is it?"

"You know what I have for you," he replied, his voice dropping a half octave as his brown eyes twinkled. "But you really gotta ask? It hasn't been that long, has it?" He laughed at his own joke. "What would you like me to give you, Bren, mmm?" Angel's eyes skim over her shapely form, pausing momentarily at the plunging neckline of her black before moving on down over her flat belly to the curve of her hips. "You know, 'cause, if you need some suggestions, I can help."

Angel arched an eyebrow as he watched for some indication—a curve of the lips, a twitch of the eye, a blink, anything—that she was going to play.

Seeing her eyes narrow with that skeptical look he'd seen her give him a thousand times before, when she remained silent but for her quizzically skeptical look, he turned around with a smirk and made his way into the apartment's galley kitchen as he called over his shoulder, "Hold on a second. It's in the kitchen. Be right back."

On the counter, he had a dozen white and yellow daffodils in a glass vase, and, glancing over briefly in the direction of the bedroom, he pulled one of the yellow daffodils out of the vase, then made his way back towards the bedroom.

He held the flower loosely in one hand as he leaned casually against the doorjamb. "Hey," he said with an easy grin. "I'm sorry I was late, but I'm glad you're here. It's been too long, Bren." Angel raised the long-stemmed bloom up to his nose, taking a whiff as he brought his gaze up to meet hers with a sly smile. "Here," he said, holding the flower out to her. "Consider it a peace offering. Penance for being late."

Brennan stared at the proffered flower, almost as if it were a strange specimen that she'd never seen before. She then lifted her gaze to meet his, and some of the hard skepticism that had colored her face during their teasing banter fell away. In its place, a softer—and more vulnerable—expression took it's place as she swallowed once and then asked, "You remembered?"

Angel cocked his head to one side and smiled. "Of course," he said with a slight lilt to his voice. "I remember everything about you, Bren. About us."

She swallowed again, her eyes flickering towards the flower, before she said. "Of course, I know that. It's ummm...well, it's just that it's been a long time since you gave me one of these."

He stood there, leaning against the doorframe and saw the openness in her expression, a gentleness and a vulnerability he had seen in her only a few times over the years, but which he adored when it surfaced. "I've been remiss," he said. "It's long overdue." He paused, glanced down at his bare feet, then looked up at her again. "Do you still like them?"

"They're my favorite flower," she answered simply.

Angel's eyebrows flew up and he grinned. "Oh good," he said, sighing with relief as he glanced over his shoulder towards the kitchen. "Because there's the rest of the dozen this one came from out there waiting for you."

"Where?" Brennan asked with another tilt of her head. "Where are they?"

He pursed his lips, trying to suppress his smile as his mind fluttered at her response. "Out here," he said. "Let me get them. One sec."

Angel disappeared into the dimly-lit living room and, a few moments later, came back with the vase and its myriad of white and yellow blooms, holding it in the crook of his arm as he absently plucked at the stems, rearranging the flowers so that the colors were more evenly distributed. Looking up at her with a bright gleam in his eyes, he asked, "Do you like them?" He turned the vase in his hand and, judging it to be suitable, held it out as he walked towards her.

Brennan scooted off of the bed and stood up. Taking the vase, she nodded with a small smile. "Very much so," she said. "Although, I assume that such flowers are easier to come by than they once were since this is California and not England. Much more sun and warmth and less of a need for expensive greenhouses I'd imagine."

"True," Angel said with an amused grin. "The best flowers in this part of the country come from Oregon, actually. There are some wonderful farms in the south-central part of..." His voice trailed off. "But you don't care about that," he chuckled. "And, to be honest, neither do I." He took a couple of steps closer and reached out, stroking his finger down the flared curve of the vase. With a smile, he said in a low voice, "You look really great tonight, Bren. I shouldn't be surprised, but everytime I see you, you look better and better."

She considered his words and then turned around, and set the vase on a nearby table. Coming back towards him, her pace made it clear that she had no fears about encroaching on his personal space as she said, "I would say you're just saying that, but since we both know it's highly unlikely that I traveled over three thousand miles just to say hello and go to the La Brea Tar Pits to do a bit of touristy sightseeing and that you are probably going to be getting laid at some point while I'm here, I suppose you're being sincere, hmmm?"

Angel's eyes widened in feigned hurt. "Lass, you wound me," he said, "to even suggest the faintest possibility that I'm being insincere." He paused, then added, "Because the fact of the matter, Bren, is that you look great. And while there may be some stickiness goin' on tonight, I daresay it's got nothin' to do with any tar pits."

Rolling her eyes at him, she shook her head, "Why am I not surprised that, despite the upgrade in your tailored wardrobe, living space, and corporate persona, you can still sling lewd double entendres and innuendo with the best of them?"

"Because you know me pretty well, lass," he said, letting his long-shed Galway brogue embroider the edges of his speech as a lazy grin hung on his face. "And, if I have anythin' to do with it, we'll be gettin' even more reacquainted tonight."

"So, is that your way of saying you missed me or just missed having sex with me?" she asked him, a bit of teasing still present in her voice as she sat back down on the bed and made herself comfortable again, telling him even if her words were teasing, that she didn't mind if either or both were true.

"Yes," he said with a snicker. "You know I've missed you," he said, his voice suddenly a bit more serious before lightening again. "I've been beside myself for a month thinking about getting to see you again. I'm missed you like crazy, woman."

As she saw him take another step towards her, she tilted her head and leveled an assessing look at him as she said, "So it really just was an honest mistake, you being late? What...did you just get the dates mixed up again or something?"

"Well," Angel said, biting the inside of his lip. "I did screw up the dates. The damn corporate Halloween party was originally supposed to be tomorrow, but...anyway...ugh." He shrugged and dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "But I don't want to talk about that," he said with a smile. "I've had enough of parties and social obligations for now."

"So," Brennan asked, looking at him with another interesting light in her eyes. "You'd take offense then if I imposed on you with one more social obligation since I'd like to accept your apology and thank you for my flowers?"

"Oh," he said with a smile. "No, that's okay. I don't mind that kind of social obligation. I meant the hanging-out-with-people-you'd-rather-not-see-at-all-never-mind-spend-a-whole-evening-schmoozing-with kind of social obligation."

Brennan didn't have a verbal response aside from a small throaty chuckle. Slowly, she rolled over from where she sat on the bed and straightened her legs, giving him what she knew to be a good view of her ass as she moved towards the edge of the bed and slithered off of it. She could feel his stare on her body—something that had stayed consistent over the last hundred years. Where she was concerned, it didn't seem to matter much whether it was Angelus or Angel who looked back at her on the occasion when their paths had crossed, which, truth to be told, had been more frequently since she'd struck a bargain with him on the cold night she'd stumbled across him in Chicago almost eighty years before and had changed the nature of their relationship from that point forward. In either case, simply being in his presence made her body hum.

Angel licked his lips as she stood up and he saw the slight, soft curve where the top of her thighs met the bottom of her apple-shaped ass, and he felt a slight tug behind his navel as he noted the black lace trim of her panties. He shifted his weight from one hip to the other as he felt the raw tingle at the base of his spine that radiated through his limbs and signaled the onset of his growing arousal. Sweet hell, lass, he thought, making no effort to keep from leering at the line of her long, slender legs as she stood up. He blinked away the image of her lacy black panties and licked his lips again as he wondered how quickly he'd shuck them off as soon as his hands got anywhere near her hips. Fucking crazy, he smirked. You drive me fucking crazy, lass. He smiled at the way the hem of her black dress fell halfway down her thigh, hugging her curves just snugly enough to be suggestive and yet still tasteful. And we're gonna fuck 'till neither of us can even remember our damn names.

Once she was upright and stood on her bare feet, she prowled towards him with a sharp look in her blue eyes.

"Well, it's a good thing then that you don't mind dealing with a social obligation such as myself because getting time away from the Jeffersonian isn't that easy to do..at least, going away somewhere where everyone doesn't think they all know where I'm supposed to be," she said. "I've got three days before I have to be back—Halloween through the night of All Soul's. That's it, Angel, between your schedule and mine, I don't want to waste any more time. You can see, right, why I'm more than a tad irate that upon my arrival here, you were nowhere to be found?"

"You're right," Angel said with a crooked grin, dodging her question. "No sense wastin' another second, aye?" He winked as he unfurled his brogue again, knowing its lilting rhythm evoked in her the memory of the many delicious, decadent nights they shared over the century and a half of their acquaintance. "I'm all about makin' the most of every moment." He pressed his lips together in a firm line, a low hum sounding from his throat as he felt himself harden a little more with each step she took. "Especially if I can make it with you, lass."

As she stepped towards him, backing him slowly up against his bathroom door, Brennan's voice lowered and became distinctly softer as she said, "So, now that you're done being in charge for the evening, why don't we make up for some lost time and—"

Angel's face cracked with a wide smile as Brennan stalked towards him, and his nostrils flared with the smell of her—the warm, sweet and spicy smell of her that he'd grown to love and to recognize from a mile away in the nearly century and a half since he'd first met her, which scent was a bit muskier in light of her arousal and somewhat tangy as her anger had oozed from her pores. He felt a crackle at the base of his spine and a vague tightening in his gut as he felt her body heat come into contact with his own cool skin. He felt his stomach flip at having her so close to him again and for a few seconds, his excitement over being with his longtime lover again made him forget the surreal night he'd endured.

Brennan didn't even bother to finish her sentence as she herself felt a familiar flash of desire when he looked at her cause a slight flutter in her stomach that quickly made its way downward. Her heart rate subtly began to increase as she swiftly closed the distance between them as she pressed her body up against his and leaned in for a kiss with happy and desirous expectation. However, as soon as she opened her mouth to inhale what she'd hoped would be a deep breath of his smell, a tart and offensive scent wafted into her nostrils and her body tensed in revolt. She felt a twisting in the bottom of her stomach quickly extinguish what had been the beginnings of her arousal as she realized why she had caught an unexpected scent on him.

How could he...? a voice of righteous indignation echoed in her head, the only place where she let her emotions beside anger swirl as she processed the significance of her realization. He...another woman? Tonight? He was with her and not me? Why? Why would he do this? Unless...he wanted to hurt me? After almost a hundred and fifty years, and after everything we've been through, he's decided that he's done with me? Or, does he just think he can do whatever he wants and that I won't care because of where he lives and who he works for now? Has Wolfram and Hart really changed him that much? He can't be that naive...can he? Or...does he just not care anymore? Is that it? Is that what's really going on here? Fuck!

Grabbing two fistfuls of his unbuttoned shirt, she suddenly pulled him towards her then slammed him hard back against the wall of his bathroom entryway. "You son-of-a-bitch!" she snarled, as her earlier anger returned and flashed in her eyes with a renewed and very healthy vigor. "You weren't...you weren't late because you were conducting any official business tonight, were you? The only business you had was...the reason you weren't here was because you were busy fucking someone else, weren't you?" Opening her eyes wide, she blinked at him and insisted, "That's what you were doing, weren't you?"

Angel winced as he withered under her hard stare, and the warm, flipping sensation he'd felt in his gut just seconds earlier suddenly left him with the sickening feeling that a trapdoor had just opened up below him. "Bren, wait," he said, his voice heavy with dread and contrition as he didn't even try to deny her question. His nostrils flared as he remembered the last time she'd rose up in fury after he'd come to her with the smell of another woman clinging to his skin—back in 1860, about a week after they'd first met back in London. Sweet hell, he thought. Oh, man, she's pissed. Just like last time. But she better not get any ideas about throwing me off the balcony this time, because this is no first- or second-floor penthouse. Then again, if it were, that would sorta defeat the purpose...but, yeah. Forty-six stories—even as a vampire, I don't think I'll survive that fall. I probably wouldn't make it. My head'd probably pop off the second my sorry ass hits the pavement, which'd be enough to do me in. At the very least, I'll wish I was dead. And not just because I'm sure she's got other things she's gonna do to me in that so not-hot/so not-good way. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Cringing at the thought, he pleaded, "Come on, please. Let me explain..."

Rolling her eyes in disbelief, Brennan shook her head, her pale eyes flickering with a cold fire. "You've got to be kidding me," she spat. "I mean, I know I used to be a bit inflexible back when we first started this...well, this thing that's between us, that's always been between us. But, come on, Angel. This is a bit much, don't you think? Even Angelus had the smarter sense to schedule his fucks in a less tight schedule than this because he knew it was a dangerous thing to piss me off and that was before—"

She let her voice trail off as she met his level gaze, leaving her thought unspoken, even though they both knew that she was going to reference the point in their relationship that had changed everything that had come after it once she'd given a part of her very self, her soul, into his keeping. Swallowing once, she vowed that she'd be damned if she was going to cry in front of him. Instead, she searched for and clung to her anger, knowing that if she was angry, he wouldn't see how much he'd hurt her.

"Well, you know what I mean," Brennan finally muttered as she looked away from him. "Because we're not talking about some female that coughed on you in the elevator, one of your co-workers that you patted on the back, or some client that you shook hands with, are we? It was much more than that. I can tell." She tilted her head as she muttered, "You'd think I'd have recognized the freshly fucked look on your face when you came in the door, but I guess I'm not used to seeing it when I don't look the same way around you. Goddamn it!" She stopped, pursed her lips again, and then shook her head as she added, "Whatever you were fucking an hour ago, I can still smell the half-demon taint on you...ughhh. You reek of it. God, I think I'm going to be sick."

She shook her head again, her lips twisted into a snarl of disgust as she moved away from him, and quickly walked over to the bed, bent down, and retrieved her heels. Balancing first on one foot, and then on the other as she hastily put on the heels, she grabbed her purse with a huff and was halfway out the door before she even heard him start to move behind her.

Angel blinked at her retreating form, momentarily surprised that she'd turn tail and walk out on him—after all the times he'd seen her lash out in anger, always with a stinging tongue-lashing and often with the one-two punch of a brutal verbal undressing combined with physical aggression—and, shaking off his puzzlement, muttered, "Oh, shit."

His brows furrowed as he realized she was reacting with more more than anger because she was more than angry. He heard it in the way her voice wavered. She's hurt, he thought. She wouldn't...she's just leaving. She wouldn't do that if this weren't bad. She—Bren doesn't do that. She doesn't just give up and leave...unless dammit. I hurt her. I hurt her that badly, and now she doesn't want me to know that I hurt her. She doesn't want me to see her that way. So she's letting her anger flag fly. Fuck. That's not good. That's definitely not good. It means this is bad. So very bad. More bad than I even thought...which was very, very bad. Not good. So not good. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Dammit, Angel. You stupid son of a bitch.

Sighing, he moved quickly, following after her as he called out, "Bren, please, I wasn't...that is, I didn't...I-I just...well, it's not like I chose her over you, Bren. I didn't. I swear to God I didn't. I never even had a choice, but if I did, you know I'd never choose anyone but you. It's just that—"

"Go away, Angel," she called over her shoulder. "I'm leaving so you can get back to whatever half-demon slut you were fucking before I interrupted you. My apologies."

"Bren," he pleaded, recognizing her tone as he approached her from behind and reached for her shoulder. "Come on, don't...it's not what you think." He swallowed nervously as he felt the pain radiating off of her in waves. He remembered the furious argument that they'd had a couple of years earlier when she'd railed at him about his relationship with the young Slayer, and how she'd been so livid she'd very nearly used her magic to rescind her invitation to allow him into her dwelling. He felt that same hurt emanating from her now, so much so he swore he could smell it, souring the otherwise sweet scent of her. "It's not...I know you think I'm an ass but it's not what it looks like. It's...please, Bren. Please stay. I didn't...you're the one I want...not...not her. You know I..." His mouth hung open as he struggled for words. He squeezed her shoulder gently and said in a deliberately calm, even voice, "Look, you came all this way, so please at least let me explain?"

"What's there to explain, Angel?" she said, suddenly turning around on her heels and batting his hand from her shoulder. He knew from the way she slapped his hand away that she was more hurt than angry. Were she angry, she would have hit him with something other than the back of her hand. They stood there, just staring at one another, for a couple of seconds before her eyes flashed and she snapped, "You were busy, I interrupted. End of story."

"No," he said with a slow, almost sad shake of his head. "You didn't interrupt You didn't interrupt anything, Bren. I swear. I just...look...please. Let me—" He looked away and sighed, his mind swirling as he felt the situation, and Brennan's rising anger, spinning rapidly out of his control. "I just—"

Taking the opportunity to cross her arms, she thrust out her hip as she stared at him for a few seconds before she said, "Fine. Explain. Or, at least, try to because I can't see how all of your stuttering in any way equates to your way of trying to tell me that less than an hour ago you weren't fucking another woman?"

"Umm, no," he said, placing his hands on his hips as he stared down at his bare feet. Angel felt a tightening in his chest and saw her pale eyes smoldering as he looked up at her from beneath a firmly knit brow that hung low and hard over his eyes. "I mean, I was," he said lamely, "but—"

"Fine," she said with a hard, sarcastic edge to her voice and she leveled a blistering stare at him, apparently having heard all she needed to hear. "Fine, then it appears as if my original assessment was correct then. You were busy fucking some cheap date because I suppose you lost track of time, weren't you? Thought you had a few more hours to fuck around since you thought I wasn't going to be here until later and so you decided to have some fun before I got here? I mean, what? Were the flowers even for me? Or, were they really for her?" She saw his eyes widen a bit in surprise at her question, but she didn't bother to wait for a response. "In either case, I don't care. The bottom line is, you were with another woman while I was here twiddling my thumbs waiting for you!" She stopped and then said, "You know, I'm sure I could apply some anthropological axiom here that would be quite appropriate even if you are a vampire, but since the significance of it would probably be lost on you, I think I'll save my breath."

Sighing heavily, Angel shook his head. "I think I liked you better before you started messing around with all this anthropological shit," he muttered. "I don't remember you being like this before you decided to start digging in the dirt. Lording me over with all of this hyperintellectualized crap just to make me feel like an idiot." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his brow furrowed again and he frowned, sorry that he had let the frustrations that had been building all night get the better of him. He rubbed his eyes and took a step towards her. "Bren, look, it's—" He had barely opened his mouth to speak when Brennan's eyes again lashed with rage and she cut him off.

"Stop it," Brennan interrupted him. "Just stop it." She paused and then huffed, "You know what? I have changed, Angel, just like you have. But, you know what the main difference is between us? I know what I am. With me, you see what you get and get what you see. At least I have the ability to be honest and not hide behind excuses like my job and whatever other goddamn cop-out you want to use to try to rationalize the fact that you not only fucked up in a major way, but you were caught, and I'm calling you on it." She stopped, her eyes darted past him towards the bedroom, and then she muttered, "I suppose I should just be glad that I didn't walk in on the coup de gras. I'm sure you thought you were being quite considerate by at least fucking whatever trollop you found to dip your wick in someplace other than the bed where you'd planned on fucking me in tonight. I suppose you think I should be thank you for that bit of thoughtfulness on your part, right?"

"So wait," he said, taking a step closer. "So you're suggesting I've got some kind of revolving door to my bedroom? That's B.S., and you know it." He paused and then shook his head, "Come on, Bren. I guess I'm kind of confused here. I mean, setting aside whether what happened tonight was something I even wanted, what gives you the right to call me out about being with another woman? It's not like you've been living a life of strict celibacy yourself these last eighty years."

Brennan pursed her lips for a minute, and then sighed, "You're right, Angel. You aren't my only lover. Just like I'm not yours. But this isn't just about the fact that you had sex with another woman. The big thing that really pisses me off the most is that you had sex with another woman when, as we'd agreed, you were supposed to be with me. And, that, I'm sure you'll agree is something I've never done to you. I've never pushed you over to fuck another man while you were waiting for me. And, that's why I'm pissed here."

Angel closed his eyes for a second and sighed, trying to tamp down his mounting frustration before he said something he would regret for at least the next two centuries. "Look, okay? I get your points. I do...but if you really wanted to make certain that something like this never happened to either one of us, then there's a simple way to handle it."

"Meaning?" she asked.

"Well," he responded. "It's not like we're in a traditional relationship here. We never really laid down any ground rules about how this exclusively non-exclusive thing was gonna work."

"I didn't know we needed to," Brennan said.

"Well, I'm just saying," He covered his eyes with his hand and rubbed them with the heel of his palm, sighing heavily. "This thing of ours is so confusing I don't know what to call it or to know what it is. But, if we did, then yeah, I think it would make things easier for us both. It would let us know exactly where we stand with one another."

"You want to do that?" Brennan asked, her eyes widening a bit. "You really want to have that discussion...right now...of all the times we could chose to have it?"

"Fuck, Bren," he muttered. "I'm trying here. So, yeah, I do since we've never really had 'the Talk.'" He paused when he saw a look of confusion crease her brow. "You know, the 'what are we' talk?" He paused and shrugged. "Not because I haven't wanted to. I mean, because...well, to be honest, I've thought about it. A lot, actually, over the years. But...well...I never brought it up, Bren, because, to be honest, I didn't think you were ready to...you know, to give this thing of ours a name. To set some rules. To be clear about what we are to one another. I know I want to, because that would make my life so much easier if we were clear about what each of us can or can't do. But it's all on you Bren. You've gotta be ready finally to come clean about us and what this thing is before we can do that. Then, if you did that, we could see how things go and then maybe things like this fuck up with Eve wouldn't have happened, or at least—"

Although he wasn't quite sure what he'd done wrong, as her eyes continued to widen, he knew he'd fucked up again and somehow inserted his foot into his mouth. His suspicions were confirmed when Brennan said, "Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare, Angel!"

"What?" he blinked at her in confused surprise. "What did I say?"

"You are a selfish and self-centered bastard," she muttered at him, her voice taking on an even harder edge as she spoke. "I can't believe this. You're actually trying to place the blame for the fact that you fucked another woman when you were supposed to be with me at my feet? Seriously?" Shaking her head, she clenched her fists by her side as she said, "Then, you asshole. This isn't all about you, Angel. It's not just about what you want and what you need. I know you think it is, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that since you've always thought the world revolved around you, but fuck. It's not my fault you fucked Eve, and I have every goddamn right to be majorly fucking pissed about it, you bastard!"

"Bren," he tried to cut in and get a word in edgewise with her but failed miserably when he saw that she'd misconstrued what he said. "Please. I—"

"Oh, please," she muttered. "Spare me. Because if I have to hear one more goddamn word about how tonight is all my fault, I think I'm going to seriously have some type of spontaneous aneurysm burst in my brain from the sheer lack of incredulity and ludicrousness of such a statement." Unable to believe what she thought he'd said, and because he'd hurt her—whether intentionally or not—she lashed out and wanted to cut him in at least the same manner, if not worse and so chose the one thing to bring up that she knew would cause him pain. "You know what, Angel? You may've liked me better before I became an anthropologist, but I think I liked you better before you got the soul," she told him.

Angel stood there for a couple of seconds, his mouth hanging open in shock as he squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, quite sure that he hadn't actually heard her say what he thought she did. But as he replayed her words in his head like an old newsreel, he felt his chest and shoulders tighten, the muscles of his forearms harden with unsprung tension and his fingers curl into tight fists. He was so furious, the first words out of his mouth weren't words at all, but a sharp growl that sounded from behind gritted teeth.

"What the fuck, Bren!" he snarled, his cool skin flushing with anger. "I can't believe you, woman. Why the fuck would you say something like that, after..." He shook his head and jutted his lower jaw out as his brown eyes darkened to the color of pitch. "After everything you and I have been through."

"Why would I say that?" she repeated his question. "Because, it's true! At least I could always count on Angelus' hedonism. When he wanted to fuck me, he knew the terms, and either agreed to them or didn't. It was nice and simple. At least then I didn't have to worry about this stupid prevarication that you've taken on since the Gypsies cursed you."

"Okay, wait a fucking minute," he grunted as he closed the distance between them and shot his arm out, slamming the door shut with a loud clank that echoed through his spartanly-furnished room as he glared into her angry, glimmering eyes. Angel felt every muscle in his body tense as her words sank into the layers of his mind and took root there. "Now that's a low fucking blow," he said, his hands clenching into fists so tight that his fingernails dug into his palms. "That's a low fucking blow, Bren, and you know it." He gritted his teeth and growled in his throat, then took a deep breath as he shoved his hands into his pockets with a sharp huff.

"You know," he continued. "You make it seem like you're the one taking the high road here. All straightforward and honest. 'What you see is what you get,' huh? What a crock of fucking shit. You know what? All I see right now is a grown woman acting like a petulant child. Pitching a little temper tantrum, calling me names." He leveled a hard stare at her. "'I never liked you, anyway'," he said, raising the pitch of his voice in imitation of a whiny child. "For fuck's sake, Bren. I mean, really. I know you're hurt and upset right now, I do. I get that. I know I fucked up, and I want to make it right. But if and until you're willing to let me do that, it doesn't mean you need to act like an immature bitch. You know you're better than that. So why would you even say something that stupid?" He lifted his hand to the back of his head and ran his fingers through his spiked hair in clear frustration. "Why would you even bring him up?"

"If you recall," Brennan responded sharply, "I wasn't the one who brought up how one of us used to be. You were the one who made allusions to a time in my life when, may I remind you, had I been the woman tonight that I was then, I would've taken my silver dagger and probably gutted you just for fun before I staked you through the heart because of the goddamn insult after goddamn insult that you keep thinking you have some right to hurl at me and expect me to take like I'm some sad Oliver Twist wannabe who's holding her bowl out and asking 'Please, Angel, sir, can I have some more?' Because, we both know that the woman I used to be wouldn't have put up with about five minutes of the shit you've put me through tonight, Angel. She wouldn't have done that, and we both know it."

"Yeah, well," Angel shrugged. "You may not be the same woman you used to be, and I am glad for that, okay, no matter what asinine comments I may spew in anger, Bren. But, we also both know that if I'm glad you're not the woman you used to be, you should be fucking ecstatic that I'm not the man I used to be."

"Oh, and why's that?" she retorted as she thrust her hip out at him and stared him down. "You think I wouldn't find some way to handle Angelus if he ever tried to use the part of my soul that you have in your keeping against me?"

"No," he said with a little shake of his head. "I'm not even talking about that, Bren, although you're a fool if you don't think he'd eventually get around to trying to see how he could use that to his benefit."

"Really?" Brennan muttered. "You think I'm the fool here where Angelus is concerned? Because, do I really need to remind you, once again, that I'm not some teenaged Slayer twit that doesn't know how to handle the demon inside you?"

"I don't think you understand what I'm saying here, Bren," Angel said, a hard edge to his voice. His lower jaw shifted forward as he leveled a dark stare at her. "Angelus had been trapped inside of me for almost a hundred years—almost double that time if you want to be completely accurate and count the time I spent in hell. But let's not complicate things too much, so we'll just say it's been a century during which he'd tasted the sweet tingle of human blood just a few times. A hundred years he's lain inside of me, for the most part silent and ignored, while I took only what was offered to me, and not a bit more."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" she asked as she nodded at him with a small smirk on his face. "I seem to recall that Angelus got paroled a couple of times."

"Yeah," Angel nodded. "He did. Twice in the last six years. Four months the first time, fifty days the second."

Brennan looked at him for a minute and then rolled her eyes. "If this is another chance for you to tell me that I need to send the erstwhile Slayer a thank-you card for keeping Angelus occupied so that I wouldn't have to be bothered to see if I could still handle him, save it, Angel. It's not happening this time anymore than it did the first time you tried to get me to believe that raft of bullshit."

"Believe it or not," Angel told her. "Buffy didn't have anything to do with why Angelus didn't come knocking on your door last year. Although, believe me, if he'd been free just a little bit longer before Willow managed to free my soul from where Cordy had stashed it and restored it, you definitely would've gotten the chance to test your little theory about how well you could handle Angelus in the twenty-first century, Bren."

"Oh?" Brennan asked with an arching of her eyebrow even as she knew Angel was trying to bait her. "And, why's that precisely—since I know you want me to ask?"

He cocked his head to one side and took a long, deep breath. "Angelus never asked for anything," he said grimly. "He took. He took what he wanted, when he wanted it, from whomever he wanted, and he took as much of it as he wanted, and when he was done with whomever he'd taken it from, he was done and that person could consider themselves lucky if they lived to tell the tale."

"I know that already," Brennan muttered. "There's nothing new in that. Angelus is as Angelus always was. Tell me something I don't know, Angel, or get to the fucking point."

"Okay, Bren," Angel nodded at her. "How's about this then? Why don't I get to the fucking point and tell you something you don't know?"

"Fine," she responded. "Fine by me. Dazzle me, Angel."

"After a hundred years inside of me, and sharing that space inside my soul with yours for most of the decades of that century—even if he never really could understand what it was or why it was important—do you know what Angelus wanted more than anything?" Angel asked her. "Huh? Do you?"

Brennan shrugged noncommittally in response to his question, clearly unimpressed by what he'd said so far.

Angel, however, knew the seriousness of his point even as he raised his chin, blinked, and answered his own question. "He wanted you," he told her.

Laughing at what she took to be his grand reveal, Brennan responded, "That's hardly a surprise. Nor would it be the first time he wanted me. So?"

"So," he said, his voice low as he clarified his earlier statement. "So...there was a bit more to it than just fucking you, Bren."

"Really?" she blinked at him, still unimpressed. "And, what's that?"

"He wanted you the way he'd never had you before, in ways you'd never offered yourself up to him, not in all the thirty-eight years you knew him and shared your bed with him," he replied.

Angel took a couple of steps forward, standing so close to her that he could feel her warm breath on his chin.

"It's true. He wanted to fuck you, Bren. But it was more than just about you spreading your legs and him pounding out an epic grudge fuck. He wanted to fuck the living daylights out of you. He wanted nothing more than to throw you against the wall, jerk your skirt or dress or whatever other bit of female finery you had off that beautiful, round, juicy, delicious ass of yours. Then he wanted to rip your panties off—hard enough that those pretty string bikinis that you've favored in the last few years would've left angry red marks on your skin, right there on your curvy hips, before they gave way with a tearing sound that just would've made him even harder than he already was."

He stopped for a time, starting to feel himself get turned on again as he painted the picture for her. He gritted his teeth, unable to ignore the dark, burning sensation of want that hummed inside of him, tugging at his groin from deep in his gut as he tried to rein in control of himself. As ever, he tried to push the jeering voice in his head away even as his jaw tensed and he swore he could feel an unexplainable heat singe the fine hairs on his arms. The jeers eventually dulled to their normal whisper until only the normal mocking laugh remained echoing faintly in the foreground of his consciousness.

After a minute, he grunted quietly and continued. "Angelus is a skilled lover—I know you remember how good he was and the way he'd make you scream his name when he got you all the way up to the point you were about to come like a fucking dam breaking, then he'd stop, pull out and turn you around, then slowly start up again and bring you back again, a few times until you thought you'd lose your goddamn mind. Remember that?"

"I remember," she muttered at him. "I remember everything, Angel. Unlike some people, I can't forget the past even if I really, really want to. But, again, I remind you—I'm more than perfectly capable of handling myself...against Angelus or anyone else who thinks he could just show up, knock on my door, and expect me to fall down so he could fuck me because he'd finally penciled me into his schedule."

"You think he would've been nice?" Angel snorted. "All charming and suave and debonair, bringing you daffodils and calling you 'lass' to charm his way into your bed, Bren? Because if that's what you think, I can tell you, you're wrong...dead wrong. That's not how this was gonna go. He wasn't gonna wait to see if you were wet and ready. Fact is, he could give a flying fuck whether you were ready or not, or how wet you were. He wanted you, and he was gonna have you, and he was so hard from wanting you, he was gonna be like carbon steel, so it didn't matter whether you were wet or ready or what you wanted. This would've been about him, and not you. Angelus and what Angelus wanted were all that would've mattered. So, you know what? Do you know what he would've done next?"

He leaned in and whispered the next words in her ears so that she alone could hear him.

"He was gonna push your face into that wall, push those legs of yours apart with his knee, and he was gonna ram himself into you as far as he could go. Then he was gonna fuck you as hard as you've ever been fucked, but he was never gonna touch you the way I know you like to be touched to get you wet and slick and ready before pushing you over the edge. Nope, 'cause he didn't care whether you came or not. He was gonna fuck you until you were screaming for him to stop, then he was gonna come inside of you barely waiting a minute before he whirled you around and threw you down on bed. Your voice would still be hoarse from your screaming when he'd straddle your face and make you suck his dick until you made him hard again."

Angel hesitated, then shook his head. "No," he said. "That's not right. It wouldn't have been a question of you sucking his dick. Nope—he'd have fucked your face until he was hard as a fucking rock again, and he was tired of your mouth. Having already greased the skids, so to speak, by coming in you the first time, the second time he was gonna fuck you and it might've been a bit less painful for you, but since he still wasn't gonna do anything to make you feel good, he'd just as soon as you resist him, since it'd make your already tight-as-all-fuck pussy even tighter, which was just as well for him. He'd spread your legs as wide as he could and fuck the hell out of you again, only this time, he was going to take from you what you never gave him...only me. That second time, he was gonna feed on you while he was fucking you."

Angel hesitated for a moment, a wicked grin tugging at the corners of his mouth as he saw Brennan's cheeks flush.

"Yep," he said with a sardonic laugh. "He wouldn't have stopped for a minute the furious pace at which he was fucking you. He'd have leaned over with his game face on and sank his teeth into you, and he'd have picked up a bit of his come from where it'd dribbled down your legs before and he'd use it to lube up that tight, hard little clit of yours before he starting rubbing you off. That's right, but not because he wanted you to come, just in case you were wondering, but because he wanted you to taste as sweet as possible when he sucked you to the very edge of death. He'd be fucking your pussy the whole time, rubbing your clit, and driving you crazy with pleasure because when a woman's like that, she tastes so good, better than ever."

He hesitated again as he searched her face for a sign. His nostrils flared as he inhaled the smell of her ever-increasing want, but he needed something else—something else, a clear signal of some kind—to confirm what he knew in his gut to be true: that she wanted him, and that she wanted to be taken by him. Angel saw a glimmer in her pale blue eyes, a bright flash that came and went in an instant, but revealed more than just a subtle flicker of interest on her part.

"Yeah, your blood would start tasting sweeter and sweeter the closer and closer you got to coming, and the moment before you came, you'd taste like fucking ambrosia," he continued, becoming enraptured himself by the picture he was painting. "Then he'd let go of you with his teeth, having damn near drained you dry, and he'd finish fucking you, and explode in you again. And he'd do it to you all night long, pounding into you and shooting his load into you until you couldn't walk without a sore ache nor opened your mouth and so much as whimpered a single word without your throat hurting from how much you'd screamed."

Angel swallowed, then shook his head as he reached down in the narrow space between her back and his waist and adjusted his slacks, trying to give himself a bit more room as he felt his trousers becoming uncomfortably tight as he continued his diatribe. "Nope, the Angelus you'd have gotten had he gone after you like he'd wanted to when he was on the loose that second time—it wasn't the Angelus you'd come to enjoy as your lover for nigh forty years back in England. This was an Angelus starved for at least a hundred years of sex and blood and the glee of causing pain and the tangy smell of human fear, and he wasn't stopping until he'd gotten every bit of what he'd missed those hundred years or more, and he'd gotten it from you...especially since he was so pissed off that he got put back in the cage the first time before he could make a go at finding you. Had he gotten a bit more time, and gotten out of LA and away from all that bullshit with the Beast, all bets would've been off. So don't tell me you think you could have handled him. You have no fucking idea, Bren. No fucking idea at all."

She tilted her head, coming to realize that he'd almost molded his entire body against hers as he'd painted the lewd picture of what Angelus would've tried to do to her if he'd had the chance. She could feel his hard-on pressing into the softness of her ass through the thinness of her dress's material. Knowing that by allowing him to remain in contact with the warmth of her body and letting him stay close enough that he'd be drowning in her scent, she didn't pull away so that such sensations could be a punishment in themselves if she wanted them to be. Turning her head ever so slightly, she let her pink tongue dart out of the corner of her mouth as it swept across the full arc of her bottom lip that seemed even more pouty than normal because of the red lipstick she still wore.

"You know what, Angel?" she breathed. "I have more ideas than you've ever given me credit for."

"Is that so?" he snorted. "And what are you trying to say? I'm not creative enough for you?"

"I'm saying that," she told him. "I have a pretty good idea that the reason your cock is stiff and pressing into my ass right now doesn't have shit to do with that little spiel you just rattled off about Angelus and what he wanted to do to me. No, I think it has less to do with him and more to do with what's going on between me and the ensouled vampire who's been hard for at least the last ten minutes."

Jerking his hips into her backside, he leaned his chin over her shoulder and said, "Really? So, you're saying you think I wanna take you like that? I can smell you, Bren, and it's no less obvious to me how fucking horned up you are than my hard dick is pressed up against your tight little ass. You're dripping already. So tell me, is this your way of saying that I'm forgiven after all and that you want it rough? Rougher than I've been giving it to you?"

She laughed at him in that moment, a deep throaty laugh as she obviously found merriment in his words. "First, you're deluded if you think I'm going to let your prick anywhere near my hole tonight, whether my body chooses to respond to your efforts or not. Second, as I recall, I've been the one who's spent the last eighty some-odd years goading you into letting loose and not treating me like some goddamn bit of spun Venetian glass that has to be coddled and coaxed into an amenable mood when it comes to fucking, Angel. I've never been the one who's had a problem with facing my darkness or yours, for that matter, but—" She suddenly spun on him and once she was turned around and facing him, she jabbed her index finger hard into the muscle of his upper chest as she said, "You're fucking crazy if you think I'm going to let you ever have the opportunity to come at me like that ever again. Fucking me and/or sucking on me has always been a privilege where I'm concerned, Angel. And, you know what? I think with what bullshit you've pulled tonight, it'll be a cold day in hell before you ever get that privilege back."

"First off, Bren," he growled. "What do you mean 'privilege,' huh? Hell, you make it seem like I'm the only one who gets off on the fuck-and-suck routine, and you sure as hell know that's a total crock of shit. You've admitted that the best sex we've ever had was when I was laying into you, top and bottom, with my fangs on one end and my cock on the other while I was draining you dry at the same time I was filling you up. So, get a grip." He narrowed his eyes, then added, "And about the 'bullshit' tonight, you haven't yet considered hearing my side of what happened. You don't care. You're pissed and that's all that matters, right? You could give a fuck about my side of the story, which is pretty much par for the course, isn't it?"

She widened her eyes as she stared at him in abject disbelief. "You know that's not true, you selfish, self-centered, stupid bastard!" she snapped at him. "How can you even—" She bit her lip, her nostrils flared, and she tried again. "Why do you even think—" Again, her words choked in her throat as she left her sentence unfinished a second time. Forcing herself to take another breath, she tried for a third time as she said, "We were always supposed to be equals, remember, Angel? But, we're only equals because I let us be. Now, I know you and your huge fucking male ego like to forget that part. But, here's something that's really important that you shouldn't forget. Ready? Because here it is. You're delusional if you think that because whatever fucking pseudo-cookie baking demon tart gave it to you that way so that you've suddenly got rough sex on the brain means you can come and enjoy that privilege with me...well? It's not happening, Angel. So maybe you should see if you still have the slut's phone number to help you out with your little problem there, because I sure as fuck am not going to do a damn thing about it."

Angel growled in frustration at the infuriating woman before him, then looked up at the ceiling and sighed as he tried to tamp down his own emotions. "Cookie baking demon tart?" he grunted. "What are you talking about?" He paused as he saw her anger recede a bit and the flash of vulnerability that she let come through her eyes immediately diffused some of his rapidly mounting frustration. "Look, alright? I know, after what's happened so far tonight that it may not seem like it, but I don't want anyone but you, Bren. Okay? I just want you. Just you."

"Well, if that's true," Brennan said, "you've certainly got a funny way of showing it."

"Look," he sighed. "Have I made mistakes over the years, letting myself get tangled up with other women, because I was thinking with my dick or maybe just being prideful or even letting myself get caught up in the consequences of an empath demon's insomnia? Yeah. Okay. I did. And I'm sorry, alright? You and I have been amazing together for a hundred forty-odd years, Bren. You've been a part of me for eighty years. You saved my life and made me who I am today. No one can replace you, Bren. And I wouldn't ever try to replace you." He paused, his voice dropping both in pitch and in volume. "You know that, Bren. And I'm sorry about...about what happened tonight, believe me...and...if you'll let me explain, and if you're really willing to listen, then I will. Because you know what you mean to me. You know that. We wouldn't still be here, you and me, after this many years, if we didn't mean something to each other. If what we have wasn't still something incredible. Right?"

She swallowed heavily once and then said in a very small voice, "You were with her...instead of me. I-I...you threw me over for some second-rate fuck."

"Bren," he said, his voice even softer than before. "It wasn't like that. It didn't happen that way, and I didn't want it to—"

"You know how I feel," she interrupted him, her voice rising sharply. But, even as she said the words, she chewed down on the inside of her mouth to stopped herself from finishing yet another sentence. She bit down hard on her lip to keep from finishing the sentence in the way in which they both knew she'd originally planned to complete it. "You're damn right that I'm pissed off because I'm jealous because it really hurts me to know that you were banging some slut—that's apparently, what, some kind of law firm office perk?—downstairs when I was up here ready, willing, and waiting...for you."

"Look," he told her, the bit of the edge that had been in his voice earlier having all but disappeared. "Bren, believe it or not, there's actually a really good explanation as to why I was down there with her instead of up here with you...especially when there's no damn doubt that if I could've made the choice, I would've been you and not Eve." He spat the other woman's name in disgust as he thought about what had transpired in his office downstairs and hoped Brennan could see how repulsed he was at what he did.

Brennan considered his words for a moment and then asked as her voice became a bit more soft once again, "You're not making that name up, right? This isn't you trying to be metaphorical in some religiously allegorical way?"

"No," he groaned, cringing as the very mention of her name made his stomach turn. He felt revulsion at the idea that he'd put himself inside of her and that her mouth had clasped his own. Fuck. I'm gonna have a hard time forgetting that one, and that's saying something, he thought. Ugggh. He felt his arousal wilt a little as the bile bubbled up in his throat . "Her name actually is Eve. She's my liaison to the Senior Partners at Wolfram and Hart and—"

She took a step towards him and lifted her hand to his chest. Gently, but with a firmness in her efforts, she lifted her index finger and tapped on his chest. "How many times?" she questioned him.

"What?" Angel coughed, wishing that he didn't know what she was really asking him, but fairly certain he knew exactly what she meant. Oh, Bren—why are you doing this? he asked silently. What are you doing to me here? To yourself? This isn't the way to handle things. God...just let me explain...but not like this. No good will come of this. Don't you understand that? Please don't do this. He blinked but did not answer.

"I asked, how many times did you fuck her?" Brennan clarified. She leaned in towards the crook of his neck—her hair brushing his chin as she did so—and took a deep breath just to make certain that what she already knew to be true was, in fact...well, fact. "I can smell her on you still...strongly enough that this wasn't just a quick fuck up against a wall somewhere."

"Uhhh, no," he conceded. "We, uhhh, that is—we didn't, ummm, well..."

Angel closed his eyes and sighed. As he sensed her emotions rolling off of her in waves, he recalled standing hunched over in a small subterranean tunnel underneath a German fortification, soaked in his own sweat, covered in mud and grime, as he'd laid high-explosive charges every twenty yards and ran detonating cord between them, linking them together in a daisy-chain, during World War I. Working by the light of a single candle held over his shoulder by a bantam-sized coal miner from Cumberland, he knew one poorly-considered or clumsily-executed move would have set off tens of thousands of pounds of explosives and blown them both to smithereens. Slowly opening his eyes again, he saw Brennan glaring at him, her square jaw rigid as her pale eyes glimmered with a cold, smoldering fire, and he knew he had to tell her something—enough to reassure her somehow—but not too much that would push her over the edge.

"How...many...times?" Brennan asked again as she pulled away from him and tilted her head so that he could see her normally crisp blue eyes had hardened into a dullish grey.

"Twice," he finally choked. Fuck, he cursed silently. She made me blink. She fucking made me blink. Shit. He saw a her hard-staring eyes flicker for a moment as she registered his admission. Dammit. He remembered crouching outside the gaping maw of the mining tunnel at Beaumont Hamel and waiting for the fuse to burn and light off the daisy-chained explosives. He arched an eyebrow at her surprisingly contained and most calm response. Why isn't she blowing a gasket?

"Angel..." Brennan ground out, the warning clear in her tone.

"I swear," he told her. "It was just twice for me...but, uhhh, well, I think there might've been an extra one in there for her." His brow wrinkled as he struggled to remember. "I think."

Stepping away from him, Brennan remained silent as her eyes scanned the outer room. When her gaze fell upon the haphazardly folded black pinstripe suit jacket that he'd randomly tossed on one of the chairs as he'd trudged into into the bedroom earlier, her curiosity was piqued. Not saying another word to him, she walked over and picked the jacket up up. Bringing the garment to her nose, even though she knew what she would find, Brennan took a deep breath, inhaling the garment's scent. At first, the soothingly familiar smell of Angel—menthol, sandalwood, and a faintly metallic tinge—greeted her nose. Then, almost as if it were a part of a guerrilla sneak attack, a cloyingly and sickly sweet female odor assaulted her nostrils. When she sniffed the pungent watermelon and patchouli mixture, she had to refrain from gagging as she balled the jacket in her hand and tossed it as hard as she could at Angel.

"She was wearing this at some point, wasn't she?" Brennan asked him, her voice dangerously cutting as she spoke.

Thinking back to when Eve had pulled the jacket on when they'd first been interrupted by Wesley, Fred, Lorne, and Gunn, he could only nod wordlessly.

"Never wear that again," Brennan ordered him. "As a matter of fact, burn it."

Pursing her lips, she stared at him for another minute, making certain he knew that she was deadly serious and then suddenly turned around and walked back into his bedroom.

Angel couldn't help but follow as he jogged after her and was somewhat surprised when he saw her bypass the bedroom and head straight to the bathroom. His brow creased as he watched her walk past his bed without a backward glance and into the bathroom. He hesitated, standing at the foot of his bed, puzzled. Angel raked his fingers through his hair and scratched his head, wondering what she was up to but having an idea that, whatever it was, it wasn't probably good. No. I don't see how this could be any good. So if it's not any good then that means it's gotta be bad, right? Damn, that woman...you're killing me, lass. You're always keeping me on my toes, huh, Bren? he smirked. Now, for your next trick...

"Bren?" he asked, close on her heels and wincing as he realized that his fight with the huge, brutal manifestation of Lorne's subconscious left him a bit more battered and bruised than he had at first realized.

He heard her making very familiar sounds as he heard her stiletto heels click against the gray slate floor of his bathroom. He saw her round the corner and step into his walk-in shower, and he knew by the way she extended her arm that she was turning on the faucets. When the water was turned on as high and to as hot a temperature as it could go, she spun on her heels and saw him standing in the doorway once again watching her.

"Do you want me to stay?" she asked, staring at him expectantly.

Daring to take a step closer to her, he nodded slowly, smiling faintly at hearing her offer, but quite sure that it even if it came with conditions—since Bren had always been about making the deal—he didn't really care in that moment since he'd finally managed to keep her from walking out the door, no matter what the fine print said. "Yes," he said. "I do. Please, Bren. I don't want you to go. We've been planning this for so long, and I know you may not think it's true, but I've been looking forward to seeing you for weeks...I-I...please, don't leave. Please...just stay. I want you to stay, okay?"

Brennan stared at him for a long time, and then slowly nodded her head. "I won't go," she said.

"Great," he said, his shoulders suddenly relaxing as some of the tension went out of his body. "That's great. Awesome, even."

"But," she continued, causing Angel to tense a bit more as she set up the conditions that he knew would always accompany any deal she struck...even with him. "There are two things that have to happen if you want me to say," she replied.

"Yup. It's always a bargain," he muttered under his breath, quiet enough that his utterance was inaudible to her. But it's not like it hasn't always been that way with her. In any case, fine, whatever, he thought. "I don't want you to go, Bren. Stay with me. Please. I'll do I need to do to get you to stay, okay. So just tell me what you want me to do."

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-TBC-

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A/N2:Okay, there's part one of three. Part two will be posting in approximately eight hours. Until then, feel free to occupy yourselves with images of Angel naked and dripping wet in his bathroom, as that's what up next. Stay tuned!~