Trick For Your Treats: A Maypole Dance Around Spike
October 31st, 1997
Part 2: It happened like this
Angel: Spike!
Spike: Hey there, Peaches! Home early, aintcha? What'sa matter? Slayer kick ya outta bed before the sheets dried?
Angel: Shut Up! You ass--
Spike: Tisk tisk! Watch yer--
Angel: You imbecilic! Of all the stupid, thoughtless things you've ever done!
Spike: Language Love!
Angel: This just takes the cake!
Spike: What'd I do anyway?
Angel: ARRRRRRRR!
Hands extended, Angel flew through the air toward Spike, achieving that surreal vampire suspension. Angel reached his target and wrapped his hands firmly around Spike's throat, wrenching the younger vampire from the black leather armchairThe chair tilted, dumping the pair of vampires to the floor, where they rocked and rolled in a tangle of limbs.
"So you got into a fight with Buffy, and what? Developed terminal stupidity and forgot to tell me?" Angel demanded, loosening one hand from Spike's throat in order to punch him in the face. "Oh, that's right! You're an idiot with a sub-zero IQ already! You must be dumping the bleach directly into your holes!"
Spike grabbed hold of Angel's hands and pried them free enough so that he could respond. "Don't go projecting your own inadequacies onto me, micro-cock!"
Teeth gnashing, temples throbbing, Angel literally seethed. There was absolutely nothing inadequate about the size of his penis! As Spike damn well knew – presuming… presuming… Do not go there.
The outraged, aborted thought inspired Angel to give his boy a vigorous shaking of the nature that one should never give a baby due to retinal detachment and infant death. Oh, but OH, if Angel should only be so lucky!
Spike didn't croak; he cackled. "You're teeny little thing's probably what the slayer's mad 'bout. You know how passive aggressive birds get when they're diss-"
Angel's fist ended that unsavory speculation, connecting with Spike's jaw with a painful crack. Angel seized hold of his boy's throat again, intent upon choking the blonde into submission. Spike, in turn, made pleasing gagging sounds, and then grabbed hold of Angel's forearm and squeezed until he forced the tendons to release, freeing his throat.
"Where's a stake?" Angel demanded, entirely serious. If he'd had one in hand right that very second, he'd have used it, and the true intention must've showed on his face.
"Hey! I didn't go picking the fight, alright? Slayer attacked me!" Spike protested, suddenly seeming to arrive at a clear understanding of just how upset Angel is, because the mockery has stopped.
The mockery. Not the violence.
"It's wasn't my fault!" Spike landed a punch to Angel's face, and the pair of male vampires locked together, jockeying for advantage.
Spike would. Make excuses. But that wasn't the real issue.
"Why the hell didn't you warn me?" Angel demanded. "You told her you know me, and then didn't see fit to pass that along? I got blind-sided Spike! Walked right into it!"
"Yeah, so did I," Spike replied with a grin, rubbing his jaw. "Slayer packs one helluva punch."
Spike always talks about Buffy with such genuine affection and familiarity that it sets Angel's teeth on edge. Damn it, Buffy is his honey-bun. Quite unintentionally, Spike has let on that there was more between him and alterna-world Buffy than has ever been directly alluded to, and just the thought pisses Angel off to no end.
Angel roared his outrage, and dove at Spike with both fists swinging, venting his frustration upon the Brit. Spike responded in kind, kicking and punching, never hesitating to give as good as he got.
What is said. What isn't said. Around the factory, there is a pandemic truth: a future known to one.
More than a casual wrestling match ensued. Angel and Spike both approached conflict with equal fervor and gusto. Fighting is their favorite recreational activity. Angel, being larger and older, possessed the obvious advantage. However, future-alterna Spike is one tough little bugger. Every time he got put down, Spike would pop right up for more. Glutton for punishment.
They wrestled and tumbled across the factory floor, two lions at play, eyes occasionally shimmering gold. The rise of bumpies. The flash of fangs. Angel is an irascible battle scarred lion king who has successfully defended his pride and his territory from interlopers time and again. Spike is his impudent cub.
"Youshould'vewarnedme," Angel grated out scrambling on all fours in order to keep up with Spike who is on his back in retreat, pushing along with his legs. Angel managed to land a solid punch to the solar plexus that caused Spike to snarl in pain and anger.
"Not my fault that you can't be honest with your sixteen-year-old pubescent girlfriend!" Spike hissed, coming round at Angel with a punch to the throat that caused the Irish vampire to momentarily lose his ability to speak. "I can't really see the appeal of a teeny-bopper who's barely gotten past the acne and training bras, you sick pervert. But hey, whatever gets your rocks off. Me, I like older women myself. Ones where statutory rape isn't an issue."
Zing.
The worst of it is that it is true. 'Sick pervert' is a very apt description for a two-hundred-year old man who is dating a teenage girl. It is sick, and perverted, and Angel knows it.
But Angel can't help it. He loves Buffy. So much that it hurts.
Worse, it isn't entirely true, because Angel isn't getting any. He wishes that he were, because he might as well be reaping the benefits if he's gonna be called the dirty names.
But Buffy is a virgin. There are some hot-n-heavy makeout sessions with plenty of tongue and even some groping, but the only action that Little Angel is seeing these days is hand-n'-shower. Angel is twerked so high that he's ready to explode, and hitting Spike is about his only outlet.
The pair of wrestling vampires collided with the base of a shelving unit, slamming into it so hard that the structure creaked and groaned. Two-thousand pounds of welded metal designed to support manufacturing processes once went on in the factory, screeching in protest under their combined assault. Intuiting the danger, they changed directions and rolled away.
"Cept, the slayer isn't putting out, is she?" Spike continued with vile accuracy, sneering so that his lower lip curled toward Angel's eye, their proximity is so close. Spike is a hyena, mocking the lion king.
"Buffy is a virgin," Angel spat, so consumed with emotion that he failed to register the relief in Spike's eyes, to realize that he'd been baited into revealing the truth of his intimacy with the slayer.
"Just checkin'," Spike said almost too softly to be heard. "Your post-it note soul."
"What?" Angel demanded, scowling.
Spike recovered with a click of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "I said, can't believe you haven't nailed her yet. What's wrong, Angelus, lost yer touch?"
That name. Combined with the untarnished truth spewing from Spike's mouth, made Angel all that much more furious. The Irish vampire hauled off and hit Spike again, attempting to feed the smaller vampire his fist. They set to tumbling across the floor again, and finally hit a wall.
Angel grabbed hold of Spike's muscular body, pinning the Brit to the factory floor with his greater bulk, their bodies cleaving together. Angel literally rode Spike who tried to buck him off. They grappled for dominance, back-to-chest, ass-to-crotch, both of them deliberately ignoring their raging hardons. Panting, Angel got Spike in a neck lock, thinking that he'd finally won, rubbing his erection appreciatively against that tight rear. God, he just loves sexy little blondes.
An alarm went off in the back of Angel's skull, a shrieking alert warning him of just how close he is to the edge. Literally straddling a perpice of lust that leads in a direction where he does not wish to go.
When Spike's lithe body twisted and squirmed out of his arms, Angel let him go, acknowledging that the fight was over.
"Was it good for you?" Spike teased with a pouty lower lip and hooded bedroom eyes. Laughing. Because he knows exactly what almost happened.
Angel's fist lashed out for one final punch and slammed into the pavement where Spike's laughing face had been. However, the rascal had ducked and rolled away. Grinning, Spike leveraged his head with one elbow, rolling onto his side.
They lay sweaty and gasping, side-by-side on the factory floor. Both of their bodies bore bruises and broken bones. Movement hurt, and it was easier to just remain prone while vampire regeneration kicked in. Angel cushioned his head with his bicep and stared at the chiseled perfection of Spike's profile. The blonde's blue eyes are glinting with wicked humor as if it's all just one big joke, and maybe to Spike it is.
It had been a good fight. Almost but not quite as satisfying, as a hard fuck would've been, but Angel is not going to go there. He has a girlfriend. He loves Buffy.
There is a trickle of blood coming from the corner of Spike's mouth, and Angel quells the desire to lean over and lick it clean. Spike turns his head to the side, and returns Angel's languid stare. Then, he deliberately licks his own blood away. Message clear: they fight. They don't fuck.
"While we're on the subject, the slayer busted my cell phone. I'm gonna need a replacement," Spike said, out of the big blue, leading Angel to blink. Subject? What subject? They were just lying here in peace. Bleeding!
"WHAT?" Angel exploded. "I just bought you that phone and you've broken it already?"
Spike grunted in irritation. "Didn't break it. Told you: slayer busted it when she attacked me It wasn't my fault!"
Spike hasn't changed. It's always the same. Nothing, but nothing, is ever Spike's fault.
Angelus' favorite stallion? Rabid badgers.
Darla's gilded carriage? Drusilla drove it off the cliffs of Dover.
The mansion in Kent? Unruly mob of cuckolded Watchers. It'd been thrall, according to their plump neglected wives. Never mind that young William couldn't muster so much as a glimmer of mind-control.
Cell Phone? Brassed off Buffy.
Yada yada yada.
"I'm not made of money," Angel snapped. "You're just gonna have to wait until we can afford it." Which, considering their current state of perpetual unemployment, might be a damn long time.
Spike fumed, but didn't make any further demands. Didn't whine. Angel scowled, perplexed, but gradually relaxed. Though, the current turn of conversation had gotten him to thinking about Buffy again. Worrying the matter like a dog with a bone.
"Buffy and I don't last, do we?" Angel asked, the question torn from him.
"What makes you say that?" Spike asked, wearing an aura of faux innocence that is so pathetically transparent that Angel wonders why he even bothers. The way Spike says it, bright blue eyes flickering first to Angel and then away, is a dead give away. Angel has his answer.
"The way you talk about the future sometimes, and then don't," Angel said, hurting inwardly for a loss that hasn't even happened yet. Anger toward the messenger curled his lips back from his teeth, but he suppressed the growl/snarl. Not actually Spike's fault for once. Angel has always known in his heart that he's not meant to be with Buffy. Besides the whole vampire/slayer, he knows that he's just not good enough for her.
A ripple of irritation caused Angel's leg to move slightly to the side and his foot brushed the base of the shelf.
Spike sat up, crossing his legs. "Fuck, Angel. Don't go asking me questions if you don't like the answers, alright? No, you and Buffy don't stay together, but that's only the world where I come from. I don't know your future for sure, and I can't say that anything is set in stone. I don't think it's smart for you to go asking me these sorts of questions. A man accepts that his future is fixed and it leads to a sense of futility. You're already bloody depressing enough as it is."
"So where does that leave you?" Angel demanded, suddenly somber. "Knowing the future to come for the next seven years?"
Spike shot Angel a dirty look, clearly hating the question. "Me? I'm fucked. But that doesn't mean you have'ta be too. 'Sides, I'm not like you. I live in the now. Don't think too much 'bout the future or the past." This too is a bald faced lie, but Angel lets it go. He's learned something from Spike about the kinds of ribbing that are okay between buddies, and the thing that hits you where you live.
Spike's hand shot out, grabbing Angel's shoulder, his fingers digging into the meat beneath cool pale skin. The unexpected action caused Angel to tense, expecting a renewal of hostilities. His leg jumped, kicked the shelf, which groaned like an old iron hound dog.
Instead, Spike swore, "Ballocks Angel, you're emaciated! You must be down what- thirty, forty pounds?"
The blonde vampire leaned forward, those bright blue eyes penetrating Angel's soul while those curious fingers continued to flex, feeling Angel up like he's a fattened calf presented for inspection and found wanting.
Angel cringed and looked away. "Something like that," he muttered. Truth be told, it's closer to fifty, but those final ten don't count. Angel has a tendency to put on a little extra weight when he's eating well... But the last time that happened to be a problem was sometime in the 1950's.
"Why're you off your feed?" Spike demanded, refusing to be put off by Angel's rebuff. Spike baffles Angel. The blonde acts like he's only just discovered Angel's anorexic leanness even though they've been hanging out together for well over a month. So WTF? No one as astute as Spike can be so utterly obtuse? Can they?
"Blood for the four of us costs a fortune," Angel said instead of confessing to the dirty little secret, which left him an inebriated mess, lying about in alleys, eating rats, for almost five decades.
However, it is true that money is an issue too. Drusilla barely eats, and they only give their nanny vampire enough to keep her alive, but Spike is a pig. He consumes enough for three vampires his size and yet never seems to put on a spare ounce. Angel can't figure where the hyper blonde puts it all.
Spike stared without blinking, seeing right past Angel's facades, straight to the ugly truth at the heart of the matter. Of course, the paranoia is entirely in Angel's head, because Spike can't read minds. However, the fear persists, and Angel nearly collapses in relief when Spike allows the moment to pass without further comment.
"Why didn't you say so?" Spike said. "I can get money."
"Robbery doesn't conflict with your soul?" Angel snapped.
"I've been down in the dirt eatin' rats," Spike said, looking at Angel with so much pity that the elder vampire longed to crawl away in shame. "I know what it's like."
"When? When in the last two years since you got your soul have you been that low?" Angel's bitterness spelled over the levee of his self-control.
"Have been," Spike said slowly, refusing to be put off. "At first I was crazier than a bag of hammers, livin' in a basement, half starved, raving mad, cutting into myself. Tried to claw out my own heart." His hand touched his breastbone with a swift flutter of fingers.
"I've had a soul a lot longer than two years," Angel muttered, and they were speaking at the same time, over one another, only half listening.
"Took a good friend to pull me up, help me back onto my feet again," Spike confessed.
"Look, can we just let this drop!" Angel exclaimed, shouting now. Because he's never had a real friend. "I'm not eating rats, alright!"
Abruptly, they both shut up, staring. Epic silence.
"I can get money," Spike said. "You're forgetting I know things about the economy for years to come. The Internet. The tech boom. When the bloody bubble will burst. Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, Google," he chanted. Most of it sounded like gibberish to Angel. What bubble? And why would it burst?
Angel's jaw clenched, because he doesn't need a stock fortune ten years from now. He needed cash tomorrow. And he wants to refuse Spike's offer, but he's not that stupid. Angel knows enough to recognize when he's in over his head. He needs help. He is going to have to trust Spike.
God help him.
"If you could get some cash, that'd help out a lot," Angel conceded, nodding, feeling the terrible burden of being the sole provider lifting. Suddenly he is remembering that Spike isn't a fledging anymore. He's old enough to be considered a master vampire, and he somehow managed to take care of himself and Drusilla just fine for decades. It's no longer necessary to treat him like a cub. Maybe it never was.
"Don't sweat it, Angel. I'll take care of it tomorrow." Spike stared at him with his toddler soul shining out of the countenance of a demon who is a century cynical. The contrast is sharp and startling, and the combined pity and sympathy in Spike's regard makes Angel squirm.
Angel is no longer friendless. The lion king has a buddy.
Despite his lies to the contrary, it is perfectly clear that Spike regards Angel as a friend. The blonde vampire has years of something – interaction? – with some other future version of Angel, which culminated in a tragic but heroic last stand. It boggles the mind: the image of the two of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder, facing certain death together.
Angel lacks Spike's experience. He isn't entirely comfortable with his new Spike-shaped friend anymore than he is comfortable with how easy it has been to return to the familial companionship of other vampires. If only Darla were here. It'd have been just like old times, only without the murder and mayhem.
Of course, Darla would ruin it, because that was her thing.
But he has Dru and Spike, and takes consolation in that knowledge. In a dark secret little corner of his soul, Angel can admit that he's missed his vampire family. More than he cares to admit. He'd never have left them if Darla hadn't been so damn insistent that he give up his steady diet of rat for human infant.
However, ailing Drusilla and soulful Spike don't make such demands on him. Spike even drinks pig's blood most of the time even though human can be bought for a price. The blonde does so with plenty of complaining about the taste, mixing in a noxious variety of herbs. Spike pours his blood over Wheatibix, and creates other disgusting concoctions, which make Angel nauseous. But for all of his whinging, Spike never pressures Angel about eating people.
Having a family again makes Angel aware of just how desperately lonely he was before, so alone that he could barely stand to be in his own skin. The companionship of his fellow vampires takes the raw edge off his isolation. Angel likes it well enough that he's begun to worry about what will happen when Drusilla's inevitable end finally comes. She is so weak that her final death can't be very far off, and Angel dreads her loss for a variety of person and disturbing reasons. Soul or no, she is his daughter. And Spike, Spike is his son and brother.
Angel fears that once Drusilla is gone, Spike will leave as well, nothing left to hold him.
Spike isn't like Angel. The blonde vampire is social. He makes connections. It's only been a month, but Spike has already made friends. Not many, but there is the book club, and Joyce Summers, and the kids from his 'band' if the racket they produce can be called music.
Angel went once to watch the Dingoes perform, lurking surreptitiously in the back of The Bronze, listening to the Dingoes joyously produce terrible, nerve-jarring noise. Afterward, Angel rushed home and put on a Michael Bolton CD to clear his head.
The prospect of being alone again terrifies Angel.
While Angel has been thinking, Spike has been talking, babbling on about mostly meaningless thing. However, one topic manages to capture Angel's undivided attention. "You got plans for tonight?" Spike asked. "The Dingoes have a gig at the Shelter Club, so I'll be out late."
"What? No, tonight is Halloween." Angel explained like he was talking to an idiot.
"Yeah, I'm looking forward to it," Spike agreed.
"Tonight is Halloween," Angel reiterated. The Irish vampire started at the Brit like he'd grown two heads. Like he's crazy insane for even suggesting that any self-respecting vampire would venture out on All Hollow's Eve. Of course, it comes as no surprise that Spike isn't behaving as a respectable vampire should.
"Nothing ever happens on Halloween," Angel added as if it were necessary to justify his self-association with other vampires.
"Really? They say that, and yet every year the hellmouth manages to spit out a gob of fun, go figure."
Angel's jaw worked. He wasn't going to bite. Wasn't going to bite. Wasn't-damn... "You're kidding. This is one of your bad jokes, right?"
"Nah, it's true. I've got way better material than this if I wanted to take the piss, Angel. The great part is that I wouldn't even have to lie."
"Even setting foot out of the house is crass," Angel retorted, using his selective powers of perception to ignore the fact that they don't even have a house. Just an abandoned factory.
Spike waited, allowing the moment to drag out, no doubt savoring how his smirking face is eating at Angel's nerves. However, Angel stubbornly refuses to give him any satisfaction, statue still, staring straight ahead.
Spike stood with a serpentine smooth undulation. "Buffy's gonna need rescuing," Spike tossed casually over his shoulder.
Angel shot to his feet. "Really?"
Spike started to walk away. "Course, if you're not feeling up to being the big hero then I'm sure that I can save the slayer but it'll screw with my gig-"
Angel's meaty fist seized the scruff of Spike's trench, hauling the younger vampire backward. "Tell me more," he demanded of the smirking blonde while mentally conceding defeat. Spike had him. Angel will be going out on Halloween.
They collided with the shelf again, barely brushing it. bump, feather soft. And that's when the whole thing crashing came down on top of them. Leaving them in this predicament.
End Part 2.