Feedback: It makes me happy. Don't you want to make me happy?
Summary:AU. Angel O'Brien is trying his best to live a normal, safe life in L.A. But when his brother Angelus, CEO of Wolfram and Hart, forces him to return to the past he'd thought he'd escaped, Angel will have to deal with both his own inner demons and those of his friends if he wants to survive.
Author's Note: Everybody is human, and while most of the characters will stay in character, they will be different nonetheless. The timeline is obviously completely different from on BTVS and AtS. Most of this will be from Angel's point of view, but not all of it. Italics indicate thought
June 14
12: 30 AM
Capital City Airport, Lansing, Michigan
The only sound that Angel seemed to be able to make was 'Spike', repeated over and over again. It wasn't that Angel didn't have more to say. Had his brain not been frying at the implications of Spike standing in front of him in some airport in Michigan, he probably would have said a variety of different things. Things ranging from unrepeatable obscenities to a standard 'What in the hell are you doing here?' to 'So you still have that duster.' But it had been a long day, and Angel did not have the hard-wired sarcastic response that both Spike and his brother possessed. Hence the gawking and repeating.
"Yes, you absolute git, it is I. Spike. Now would you stop saying my name? It's getting on my nerves." Spike looked fairly relaxed, if not a little irritated at Angel's helpless confusion. For all of the changes that Angel had gone through mentally and emotionally since he'd last seen the blonde man, the detective was aware that he hadn't changed much.
But Spike was a completely different story. He'd taken out the piercings, for one. The bleached blonde had once seemed to get a new piercing every week or so, often because he would remove the ear/lip/tongue/eyebrow/etc. ring, get drunk, and forget to put it back in, causing the hole to close up. But now Spike was piercing free. His hair was also slicked back, whereas before it had been gelled up into spikes even taller than Angel's. People had taken to calling them the Hair Twins for a while, because their styles were so similar. That had amused both Spike and Angel to no end.
"You're…here," Angel finally managed to stammer out. His backpack had slumped to the floor and he felt as if he was also about to crumple into a heap, like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Still has observant as ever, Peaches," Spike quipped, shifting around a little. He can't hold still. He's never been able to hold still.
January 16, 1997 had found Angel sitting alone in his apartment, bottle of good Irish whiskey in one hand, TV remote in the other. He'd taken to watching his TV muted, because he had been unable to deal with people talking. But the pretty colors had been a welcome distraction. Christmas had come and passed, and four days after what was supposed to be the celebration of peace on earth and goodwill towards men, Angel had killed his first person for Angelus. Jared Keeper, client that would not pay up. A message to other clients who were considering pinching their pennies.
Angel had refused to come out of his apartment after that, instead hoping that he could drink himself into a coma. So imagine his surprise when a short man with peroxide blonde hair opened the door and stood in front of Angel, completely blocking his view of the TV.
The brunette man, drunk and guilty and very disorientated, had asked in confusion, "Billy Idol? What are you doing here?"
When Angel had regained consciousness, Spike was sitting next to him on the couch. And that had been the first fight the two of them had ever had. So began their illustrious career as partners. Apparently, Angelus had cottoned on to the fact that Angel was not so good at dealing with guilt, but did not want to lose him as an assassin. So the older twin had come up with the perfect solution (in his mind, anyway). Give Angel a partner, someone who would kick him back into shape and help him on jobs. Mostly with the actual killing parts, if they happened.
Spike and Angel had quickly realized something important. They did not get along. Anything they could disagree about, they would. Music, art, religion, books, TV. And other, less intelligent things.
Back in present day Michigan, Angel was still grasping for words at seeing his old partner here after so long. So he said the first thing that came to mind. "Astronauts win." Ah, that fight they had actually come to blows over.
Spike scowled at him. "Are you still so completely stupid? I'd have thought maybe you'd grown wiser. Cavemen kick arse, any day."
"Yeah, because guys that live in caves and bang rocks together for fire could outsmart people trained by NASA." Angel rolled his eyes, before realizing that all of the sudden, he felt normal again. Scowling to match Spike, Angel muttered, "I'm going to kill Angelus."
"Get in line," Spike snorted. "Do ya think they'd let me smoke in here?"
"No," Angel answered, still angry. Either Angelus was deliberately trying to piss him off, some sort of 'Take a long look, Angel, I still own your past' type of thing, or the CEO was trying to make his brother feel more comfortable. Both of the possibilities made Angel very upset.
Spike was giving him an amused look. "You look like you might actually kill the Chairman of the Boring, if he was here."
"I probably would," Angel sighed. "I assume you're my partner for this?"
"One of 'em anyway, yeah." Spike grinned and nudged Angel with his foot. "You 'n me, together again. Hope and Crosby. Stills and Nash. Chico and the-"
"Are you done?" Angel groused. He didn't like having people from his past just pop up like this. It was startling.
This actually caused Spike to laugh. "Still as friendly as ever. What're you waiting around for, anyway?"
"My luggage."
"Huh?" the blonde looked confused. "Why did they even need to put it through this thing anyway?" A suspicious look was turned on him. "Did you pack all the clothes you owned again?"
"That was Angelus, not me!" Angel protested hotly. "And I didn't pack all that much."
"Really? 'Cause, no offense or anything, Peaches, but you pack like a girl. Have to bring the makeup and the accessories and all that rot." Spike fluttered his eyelashes at Angel, smirking.
"At least I own more than one pair of clothing," the brunette shot back. "Your clothing never changes. You're like a comic book character or something."
Spike narrowed his eyes. "Hmph. 'Least my 'one outfit' doesn't make me look like a bleedin' fairy."
Angel rolled his eyes. "Please, you think anything that isn't denim, ripped, and held together with safety pins is gay."
"On you, it generally is."
The detective was unable to come up with a suitable reply, so he kicked Spike in the shin.
"OW! You wanker!" Spike kicked back, and Angel would have continued their fight if a nearby woman with a baby hadn't shot him a venomous glare.
Sighing, Angel held up his hands to signal peace. "Okay. No more."
"You just know I'd win."
Deep breaths, Angel. Deep breaths. "Question. Why did I have to come to Lansing, when this Redgrass place is on almost the other side of the state."
"We reckoned Lansing would be far enough away that nobody in Hamilton's pet town would get word that anyone from Wolfram and Hart had landed here," Spike responded. "Got a bloody spy network that would make the Soviet Union proud. Gonna have to take out a few of his agents if we want to get anything done." He was very calm as he said this. Angel might have been out of the game, but Spike had stayed behind, and it showed in his cool, professional demeanor
And that's when it hit Angel, hard. This was real. Oh, yes, he'd been on the verge of tears in L.A., but that was mostly at the prospect of leaving the little home he'd carved out. When Angelus had told him the situation, Angel had understood that it was serious. But now, standing here with his partner in an unfamiliar place, talking about killing people, the detective understood how deep he was in. It felt like a vise was starting to tighten in his chest as the brunette felt the beginnings of a panic attack. He used to have them all the time when he was a kid, and now, well…
Angel had been obsessive before he was old enough to pronounce the word. He always took stairs two at a time, he touched every banister on the staircase when he went up to his room in the Hyperion, and he always followed exactly the same routine when he woke up: brush teeth, shower, wash face, brush and gel hair. And although it always caused him to twitch and fidget and be unable to think of anything else when he failed to do these things, Angel considered them mostly harmless. It was the hand washing that he considered to be truly threatening.
No one would think he was too bizarre if he insisted on doing the exact same thing each and every morning. They would simply mutter that he was a control freak and move on. But someone who spent half an hour washing his hands, unable to stop? Obsessive-compulsive. Freak. Dangerous. At least, that's how Angel figured it. For the most part, he'd managed to just take a shower if he felt dirty and work out when he felt the need to self-flagellate. But even though it had been about three years since Angel had felt an attack-because that's what he thought of them as, attacks from the depths of his own mind-he could still recognize when one was coming.
"I…" he swallowed convulsively, clenching and unclenching his fists. It felt like he had bugs crawling all over his skin. Itchy, dirty bugs and if he didn't wash them off NOW, he was going to scream.
"You okay, poof?" Spike asked, actually looking concerned. "You look like you're about to heave." The bleach blonde took a step forward and Angel took a step back, nearly running into the luggage carousel. He felt like screaming not to touch him, nobody touch him, there was something wrong with him, and wasn't OCD, a massive guilt complex, and a healthy dose of self-hatred a glorious combination?
I can't breathe, Angel thought in a disturbingly rational part of his mind. I'm having a panic attack. He really couldn't breathe, though, and knew he was shaking. "I have to go to the bathroom," he muttered aloud, sidestepping Spike neatly and trying not to break out in a full-tilt run as he fled to the men's room.
The bathroom was blessedly empty, because it was twelve something in the morning and most people were trying to sleep. As the liquid soap filled his hands and the hot water scalded him, Angel reflected that things could be worse. He could be a full-blown alcoholic, instead of just an occasional one. He could be some junkie, living on the streets. He could be making a living on his back like Darla-
No, better not to go down that path. The past was the past and whatever pain he'd felt shouldn't hurt him now. It shouldn't have mattered that he still had nightmares about seeing his ex-wife standing there in Sunnydale, baby cradled in an arm covered with needle tracks, screaming 'How the hell do you think I make money, damn you, damn you!'
"No!" Angel hissed out loud, scrubbing hard. It shouldn't have mattered, but it did. Scrub scrub scrub. Scrub scrub scrub. 'It's easier if you don't fight it, Angel. Listen to me. It's easier if you don't fight. Just give in.' Oh so familiar voice, the one that had whispered poisons in his ear for his entire life.
"No," the brunette man whispered. He was so tired. He wanted to lie down and sleep forever. But he couldn't do that, because he had responsibilities and people who needed him. What he could do, though, was wash his hands. Scrub scrub scrub. Scrub scrub scrub. How many sinks in how many places had Angel tried to wash away his life in? Scrub scrub scrub.
Spike POVBloody effing hell, how many bags does the man need? The blonde Englishman wondered as he pulled yet another of Angel's bags off the luggage carousel. Spike was getting bored, sitting out in the lobby of what he considered to be a very annoying airport. All airports were annoying, but this one seemed to be going out of its way to bother him.
For a while, the Englishman had amused himself by rifling through the lame little backpack Angel had been carrying with him. Not much in there really. Pictures of two dark-haired people that Spike didn't recognize. Bird didn't look too bad though. Maybe she was Angel's newest tumble? A Barry Manilow CD, signed no less.
"You complete ponce," Spike muttered, shaking his head in legitimate pain. If he hadn't been aware that he and Angel were going to be sharing close quarters, thus making the blonde man vulnerable to Angel's vengeful wrath, Spike would have flung the CD to the farthest corners of the airport. "Barry soddin' Manilow."
Hmm, what else was in there? A little box with two rings in them. One of them looked pricey, like a wedding ring or something. But it was just tossed into the little cardboard box, not as if the Great Poof was going to propose to anyone. The other ring was just some little silver thing, with the words 'Sunnydale High' pressed into one side. The stone was a pretty shade of blue. Spike wondered where it had come from.
There was a big book with an honest-to-God lock holding it closed. The key to it was nowhere to be seen, and Angel would notice if the book had been ripped open. Spike made a mental note to remember the book though. If it turned out to be some woe-is-me diary, then it would give the blonde enough material to blackmail Angel into the next century.
Huh. A picture. Of Angel and Angelus, because there was no mistaking them, even as children. Spike felt an odd little pang as he looked the picture over. Both of the boys looked happy and innocent, having no idea what sort of darkness was going to consume their lives later on down the line. Spike had always been able to tell the twins apart and that still applied to their pre-pubescent selves as well. Angel was wearing his goofy, I'm-a-dork-but-I-don't-really-mind grin. Angelus had his arm wrapped around his brother's shoulders. Spike studied the young, pre-CEO carefully. There was still that little, bullying glint in his eyes, but it wasn't the 'I work for the Devil' glint that he possessed now.
The blonde man had often found himself wondering how people ended up the way that they were. Did one event change them completely, or was it a series of moments that subtly changed the person until they were far too different to ever return to what they had been. For Spike, it was easy to know what changed him. The turning point had been a single day in his life, when so many things had gone terribly wrong. His mother had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Terminal. Oh, sure, it would take a long time for it to kill her, but William had been able to see it in the doctor's eyes, even as he spoke of treatments. His mother was going to die, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
He had lost both parents that day. His father, never the most dependable or stable man to begin with, had taken a long look at his wife's prognosis, hugged his son hard and told him to be a good boy, and then walked out the door. Spike had never seen him again and suspected that was a good thing, because William Harrington Sr. definitely had a broken nose coming to him.
That had been the day where things had changed. The day that William had cast off his old identity and become Spike, swearing that he would never be hurt and sad and helpless again. He'd do whatever it took to keep his mum in the best hospitals, making sure she was comfortable and as happy as she could be while wasting away, medicated up to her eyeballs.
Years later, Spike still refused to look back on the deals he'd made with anything but a bittersweet pride. He would not ever regret giving his mother a few more years of life, even if he'd had to sell his soul to do it.
Feeling uncomfortable with so much reflection, Spike looked around for Angel. Christ, he'd had to have been in the bathroom for a good fifteen minutes now. What on Earth could he be doing? The blonde man scowled as all the possibilities of just what Angel could be doing ran through his mind.
"Right," Spike murmured, sighing through his nose and glancing at the bags. He didn't really care if any of them got stolen; it's not like they were his. But he grabbed Angel's little black backpack anyway, because it probably had some sentimental value to the poof and he didn't need hours and hours of whining on the drive to Redgrass.
Spike was not sure how long partners usually stayed together in the assassin business. But he and Angel had managed to hang around each other from January of 1997 to November of '98 and not cause serious physical or emotional harm to one another, which the blonde man considered a victory. Sure, at first Spike had been as annoying as humanly possible because he felt as if he was getting a vicarious revenge on Angelus, but soon it had just become about ruffling Captain Hair Gel's feathers. Spike liked to think that he helped keep Angel from brooding so much, because it was difficult to alphabetize your past sins and scream at someone in the same space of time. And, well, Angel was decent enough to him, irritation aside. They'd saved each other's lives heaps of times and trusted each other at their respective backs. So, while he and the Prince of Ponce would probably never be Best Friends Forever, there was a relationship there.
That's what kept Spike from commenting as he opened the door to the men's room and found Angel hunched over a sink, scrubbing furiously at his hands. Poor bastard, the Englishman thought, wishing hard for a cigarette. He'd had to talk Angel through a few of these episodes, and it was never pretty.
Angel wasn't looking so good. He looked wrung out, like someone had taken and squeezed all the energy out of him. Those bloody huge shoulders were slumped, and his skin was paler than normal for an L.A. resident. He's had a hard time of it.
"Hey, mate," Spike muttered.
Angel's head shot up, the look in his eyes resembling nothing more than a deer in the headlights. "Hey," he responded. At no point in time did the hand-scrubbing stop.
"Do you want to talk?" the Englishman asked delicately. Please, God, no. I do not want to be his soddin' therapist.
"No," Angel responded with a humorless laugh, "I want to wash my hands."
"Yeah, I can see that, but we have a long drive ahead of us. Might want to get on with it."
"Would if I could," Angel responded tersely, once again staring down at his never-stopping hands. Spike wondered if he'd scrubbed off the skin yet.
There was only one tried and true solution for Angel when he got like this, and Spike enjoyed it. He approached the poof quietly, trying his best to look solemn. Not that Angel took any notice of this, preferring to look at his hands. Three, the blonde man moved until he was standing right next to Angel, their shoulders almost touching. Two, Spike removed his hands from his pockets and made as if to put them on the counter. One!
Leaping upon Angel with a whoop of glee, Spike grabbed a handful of thick, brown, gel-encrusted hair and rubbed. Within seconds, the previously perfect and unmovable 'do was sticking up at odd angles and generally making Angel look like he'd been electrocuted. The poof, meanwhile, gave a decidedly un-manly shriek and whirled around, trying to dislodge Spike.
Sure he usually got covered with water and soap when he did this, but the blonde reckoned it was worth it. His sneaky little move got Angel's hands out of the water, which was usually enough to snap the crazy sod out of it, with the added bonus of messing up the Poncey One's hair.
Deciding to have mercy, Spike let go. Angel was panting like a bull about to charge, his hair looking like he'd styled it while having a seizure, covered in water from where his flailing had splashed him. The Englishman began laughing, and actually laughed so hard that passing out became a distinct possibility.
"This. Is. Not. Funny, you little shit," Angel growled out, soapy hands clenched into fists.
Spike, unable to respond through laughter, simply nodded spasmodically. The big man stood there, cursing and fuming, but the Englishman knew that he wasn't in any danger. Still growling, Angel stalked over to the paper towel machine and ripped a few sheets loose, drying his hands and trying to restyle his hair into something resembling normal.
"Spike," Angel said suddenly, going still, "you have my backpack."
"Yeah," Spike answered, nudging said backpack with his foot.
"Did you look through it?" the brunette asked, turning to glare suspiciously at Spike.
"No," the Englishman answered, straight-faced.
"Uh-huh," Angel grunted, disbelievingly. Then his brow scrunched together as a thought occurred to him. "Wait, if you're in here, who's watching my bags?"
Spike shrugged, trying not to grin. "Idiot!" Angel hissed at him, darting through the doors at breakneck speed. Shifting the backpack onto his shoulders, Spike laughed at the sight Angel made as he ran to the suitcases. Oh yeah, this was gonna be fun.
TBC