Underneath the Grief - Part 4

Angel turned and squeezed himself between me and the shower, back against the door next to me. His head, resting back, rolled to face me and he smiled again. There was blood all around his mouth. My blood. I rubbed my thumb under his lip, trying to clean him up, but the blood was already drying. I licked my thumb and tried it again, successful this time. I showed Angel my thumb before slipping it in his mouth. He twirled his tongue around it, sucking a little. I shuddered in memory of how his mouth felt in other, naughtier places. He chuckled softly around my finger, biting it lightly with blunt teeth as I drew it from his mouth.

I leaned in and licked around his lips, cleaning him up and kissing him simultaneously. When I pulled back, wiping his mouth with my sleeve, I asked him, "How?"

"How what, Spike?"

"How are you so good at that?"

His smile disappeared and he turned from me, leaning back against the door and staring straight ahead. He sighed, and said softly, "Darla."

"Huh?" His explanation didn't make any sense. Unless there was something about Darla that I didn't know. But I had seen her naked a few times, and she appeared to be all woman.

"She would bring men to our bed."

"Oh." Less salacious than what I had been thinking, but still surprising.

"She liked to watch while I…" He paused, as if he were searching for the right word, and had found it, but didn't want to use it.

"Raped them?" I finished for him. There wasn't much Angelus wouldn't have done if it meant tormenting some soul.

Angel laughed humorlessly. "No," he cringed. "She would find the ones who thought they were having the best night of their lives. Darla would watch, and then she would join us. We would show him ecstasy all night until we drained him dry and killed him."

"Did she ever bring you women?"

"Of course. The victim didn't matter as much as the manner of the kill. Whoever it was, she wanted to watch me take them, pleasure them. She got off on it. The blood, with all that sex in it, tasted almost as sweet as when they're scared to death."

"How come I never knew about this?"

"It was a phase she went through. By the time you were made, she had gotten bored of the game."

"When I end up in hell, remind me to thank Darla."

"Doesn't it bother you? That what I can do comes with such a price?"

I scoffed. Angel was the master of the self-inflicted guilt trip, barely ever living in the moment. Except those few moments this past week we had been together. "Pet, everything you are came at a much higher price, dinnit? If I can deal with all the other things you've done, I can live with how you learned to suck a guy off. God knows I've my share of skeletons."

Angel looked, really looked at me, his eyes flashing back and forth to focus on either of mine. "Have you always been so insightful and wise?"

Holy shit. That was a complement that had nothing to do with how I look! It was something real, not a sarcastic jest. "Uh," I stammered, not sure how to react to him acting this way.

"You have been," he said, looking at me with his temple resting on his knees. "And I was so obsessed with what you were, I missed it."

"Yeah? I don't feel very wise. I'm impatient and obsessive and a right git."

"You can't be all those things?"

"Luv, how do 'wise' and 'impatient' mesh?" I reached a hand out to him, brushing my hand up and down the back of his neck to let him know the conversation wasn't bothering me. Much.

"Because you tell the truth about what you see, what people should do. You even know what you should do, but you don't often take your own advice. Either that or you purposely don't think things through."

"Huh."

"You were right about me and Buffy never being able to be friends."

I bristled a little at the mention of Buffy. "I said that?"

"Mmm. When you came back to Sunnydale after Dru left you. Called yourself love's bitch."

"Hah! That was then? I was really drunk that month!"

Angel laughed and kissed me.

Angel's unexpected kindness got me thinking. I opened my mouth to ask him a question when someone rapped loudly on the door. Angel's eyes widened and he scrambled to his feet. I followed, fumbling to fasten my trousers.

"Just a sec," said Angel in a loud voice. Then quietly to me, he said, "Quick! What are we doing in here?"

"Pet, Lorne knows, and so does Harmony, would it be so bad if everyone else did?"

"Yes," he hissed, panic in his eyes. Well didn't that make a bloke feel special?

"Angel," called Fred from the hallway, "I really need to get in there."

I turned on the tap and cupping my hands, splashed some water all over Angel's front. He was still huffing indignantly when I opened the door. Fred was standing outside, hair and clothes rumpled with sleep and brow furrowed.

"Sorry, luv," I said, giving Fred my most innocent smile. "The great ponce here spilled blood all down his front, yeah? Been helping him get it out 'fore it sets."

"Alright," she drawled curiously as we passed her.

"What d'ya think, Captain Forehead?" I said loudly as we made our way back to the main room. "Has this farewell gone on long enough?"

Gunn sat up at the sound of my voice, bumping his head on the underside of the table and Lorne stopped snoring. Angel shot me a look that said 'thank you', and I pretended to be annoyed at him for making me lie. Truth is, I don't mind lying and I minded less doing it for him. But this secrecy was going to be a pain in the ass eventually.

We rounded up the troops and Fred brought the car around to the west side of the building so Angel and I could get in without fear of singeing. Angel was the last to leave Wes' apartment, saying, "Goodbye, Wes," so softly that I wasn't even sure I heard it while standing right next to him. I squeezed his shoulder in sympathy and we went back to Wolfram and Hart for another day of morally ambiguous work.