Title: The Babysitter

Author: Azure K Mello

Part: 3?

Pairing: Angel/Spike

Rated: R

Type: AU

Summery: Will hates civil conversations. Willow hates to watch her friend get hurt.

Thank you to Snowpuppies for the plot bunny inspired by the glorious and frightening On the Other Side. You're the bestest Craft Macaroni and Cheese.

Disclaimer: I don't own BtVS or The Well of Loneliness which was written by Radclyffe Hall.

Angelwent back down to check on Liz and tell her that she had an hour until bedtime. Will went back to his room. After the odd conversation with his brother's sitter he had gone up to practice. Not wanting to wake Xander he had opted for his acoustic guitar. And the first song that popped into his head was a miserable. He had heard Angel on the stairs but continued to play. Resolutely he had finished the song before going to find out what Angel was doing. As soon as he had left his safe bedroom Will had wished he hadn't. Xander's room was directly across from his own. The door was ajar and Will watched Angel sit on his brother's bed. Watched as the man kissed the child's face. Saw the look of sad resign. He didn't want to feel for, to like, Angel. He liked hating the man. He didn't want this to happen again. He didn't want to want someone who was too good for him.

As he put his guitar away he revisited both of their civil conversations. It was bad. He had been so prepared to hate the older boy. Angel came into his house, was his mother's prodigy, his sister's god, his brother's favorite. It should have been easy to hate him. And he had tried to be as offensive as possible. If Angel had hated him then Will could have focused on that and hated in return. It had always worked before. If no one liked you then no one could hurt you. And in the past people had been very obliging by hating him for all the right reasons and not knowing anything about the real him. But Angel had never given up on being pleasant, annoying but pleasant enough. He hadn't written Will off. Why not! Angel had always been pretty much nice, condescending, but nice. . . Angel was straight.

Will's heart always fucked him over. He had the amazing talent of falling for the wrong person. It was Liz's job to want Xan's babysitters, not his. And for Chrissakes, Will had a girlfriend! Cordelia loved him. . . and he liked her a lot. She was his best friend and he didn't want to lose her. Angel wouldn't want him; he was a little boy. And Angel wouldn't want a child.

As Will stripped he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Why would anyone in their right mind want him? He pulled off his boots after unzipping, unbuckling, and untying all of the fastenings. Violently he threw them across the room where they were quickly joined by his shirt and leather pants. Naked, he stood in front of his mirror. If he were Angel, he wouldn't want the guy he saw in the reflection. He sat down at his desk and pulled the studs out of his eyebrow and lower lip. With skilled hands he deftly removed all of his make-up. It had been an awfully long time since he had looked at himself without his mask on. Not since. . . not since Cecily Adams had kicked him in the teeth when he was 15. He didn't like himself; nobody liked him. When he wore his mask it gave people a reason to hate him. They hated him for looking different. They weren't judging him for being gay, for being stupid, for being who he actually was. He liked that, wore the title of "freak" proudly. It was safe.

"I wouldn't want me," Will said softly as he looked away from the mirror. With a sigh he wiped his face clean of the tears he wouldn't admit to shedding. His head dropped to the desktop with a bang. There was a soft knock at the door. It wasn't his sister's knock. Looking around he found black flannel pants. He flipped the three locks on his door into being open and slid the deadbolt back as he tied up his drawstrings. Angel was standing in the doorway, looking daunting. "Yes?"

"You're banging."

"Excuse me?"

"Liz is going to bed and if Xan wakes up you're in charge of him," Angel said in the low, even voice he used when he was slightly peeved.

"Sorry, I-"

Angel cut him off, "Are you alright? Only, you look miserable."

Tiredly Will said coldly, "'M fine."

"Are you upset about practice being canceled? Is Cordelia ok?"

"Angel, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, fuck off. You aren't my sitter."

"No, but I could be your friend."

"Bloody hell, man, can you be any more condescending? Piss off. I don't need a bleedin' mentor, I've gotten this far without one."

Angel was silent and he cocking his head to one side asked, "Why do you wear so much make-up when you look so good already? Haven't you ever heard of gilding the lily?"

". . . Are you comparing me to a flower? How much poofy-er can you get?"

"I'm just saying. . . keep the banging noises to a minimum." Angel turned and walked silently away.

Will swallowed harshly and went back inside his room. After relocking the door he picked up his phone. For once Liz wasn't prattling to one of her idiot friends. Within minutes a monotone voice answered, "Yeah?"

"Oz, it's me, Spike."

"Yeah?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Um. . . ok. Not sick."

"So can I talk to you about something heavy?"

"Yeah."

"I've fallen in lust with my brother's male babysitter."

"Cordy?"

"Doesn't know."

"So. This is a Cecily repeat?"

"Yeah. . . But Angel's not likely to tell me I'm beneath him. He's likely to laugh. Or worse, he's be nice."

There was a long silence and Oz finally said, "Fuck."

"Willow, what am I doing?" Angel asked dejectedly over the breakfast table at his best friend.

"Well you aren't studying for your test."

"I'm seeing Joyce tomorrow."

"Maybe you should talk to her about this," said Willow as she sipped her coffee.

"Great idea, Wills. 'Joyce, thanks so much for the help. B.T.W. do you mind if I seduce your underage son who is as straight as the roads to Rome?' That'll go well. 'Oh, Angel,' Joyce'll say, 'great idea. While you're at it would you teach Liz to freebase? And maybe I could rent Xander to you for drug smuggling, no one would suspect a man with a baby of carrying cocaine!'."

"You might want to say "by the way" instead of "B.T.W." That'll make it more formal."

"You are a total bitch, Willow." Angel was in a genuine bad mood now. "I just don't see a point in pursuing him," he said sadly.

"I don't think he's all that straight," said Tara walking into the kitchen and kissing the top of her girlfriend's head.

"He freaked out when I made some comment about him wanting me. And when I went up later he'd been crying." Angel dropped his head into his hands, "Idiot."

"No you aren't," Tara assured him. "When boys fight they don't defend themselves: they just attack each other. So the normal response would have been to say that he would rather bed your mom. The way he reacted?" She paused and considered her words, "Me thinks the lady doth protest to much."

Stunned Angel gave an eloquent, "What?"

"He's thought about you. He wants you. And he got scared and defensive when you called him on it. He likes you."

"What?" Angel shook his head trying to sort out the facts, "I have a chance?"

"You aren't going to study are you?" Willow sighed. She cut off her own question. "Are you ever going to want someone normal?"

"He's normal," Angel felt slightly hurt be her insinuation.

Rolling her eyes Willow said, "I walked you there one night. I've seen him: he's not normal."

Defending the boy Angel said, "You're right. He's not normal. He's amazing; he's so good looking and when he takes off all the make-up he looks so young and vulnerable. I want to take care of him. He's so smart and quick witted. And he can be so wickedly malicious when he makes his sister cry. Questions he has Xander ask me are so funny and awful. He sings like. . . like something good but not an angel. There is too much anger for his voice to be considered pure. But it's sinful and dark and I would bathe in it if I could. All that anger scares me and I want to be the one to make him happy."

Unconvinced and worried, Willow said something stupid. "You've made unwise choices in the past." Upon seeing the hurt reflected in her friend's eyes she instantly regretted her words. Tara left the room quickly. "I'm sorry. That was out of line and came out wrong."

Angel was silent for close to a minute before he spoke quietly. "Darla was an abusive bitch. But she promised to show me a new world and she did. Admittedly, I wish I'd never seen that world."

"She killed your parents."

"And I killed her. All's fair in love and war. There's a war between us and the dead and I killed her. She killed them, I murdered her, we're square."

"Penn-"

"Loved me. He was psychotic and did evil things but he did love me."

"He was obsessed with you. Not love."

"What do you want me to say, Wills? What are you driving at? That my parents died when I was ten and left me emotionally stunted? That I went on to lose my virginity six years later to the thing that killed them? That I'm a slut who doesn't remember most of the sex he's had because he was drunk at the time, and only really did it because he didn't want to be alone in his own bed? That the only person who made me feel good again was a psychotic kid who would have killed me had he not fancied me? That I've never been loved? That no one normal would want me because I spend my time studying, working, and killing things that are dead already? We don't all meet our Taras when we're 16. Most of us need to get fucked over a few times. I just want someone who I can love without being completely broken by it. Is that all right?" His words ran out and he was left miserable. "I know it's your job to worry for me but please don't judge him before you've even met him."

Feeling terrible, Willow rounded the table and gave her usually quiet friend a tight hug. "I'm sorry. I am being a bitch. You know that I love you? And my parents love you."

"That's different," Angel smiled slightly. The Rosenburgs had taken him in as a child and raised him as their own, excepting religion of course. They had always been distant with their daughter. But when her best friend's family was slaughtered they had reevaluated life and become much more intimate with their own child. Angel had saved their family in his own way.

"Yeah, well. I want to meet Will. I worry about you. When you love someone you give them your soul. Sometimes I wish I could keep you grounded. Wish I could affix your soul to you with a spell. An Orb of Thesulah." The witch in her started thinking.

"That new age paper weight on your desk?" Willow rolled her eyes. Angel had been hunting the forces of darkness since he was 13, the minute a boy in their class had been turned and it finally clicked in Angel's mind about what had truly happened to his parents. Yet he had never embraced the beautiful side of the occult. Only focused on the negative. "You can meet him," he said finally with a slight nod. As he looked at his watch he said, "I'm gonna go to work, then the library. Come clubbing with me tonight?"

"No! No, please don't kill me!"

"Are you gonna eat them or just torture them?" asked Oz as he watched Will repeatedly stab his pancakes and squeak in a high pitched voice. "Spike, you're exactly like your little brother."

As he pushed his plate over Will asked a redundant question, "I should dump her, shouldn't I?" sighing he said, "She's going to skin me alive for this. . . Let's go clubbing tonight. Not the Bronze, she may be there."

"How about the Well?" asked Oz with an eyebrow raised minutely.