ba2006: I am so glad that you are enjoying this story! Hopefully you will like it to its end. :D Thank you for the review!

PART FIVE

"I'm not going back there."

A glass slams against the counter, and Angel is surprised to see his hand attached to it. He is also quite shocked that, when he glances out the window, the next day has already started to dawn.

In retrospect, it might have been a bad idea to allow Spike to open the liquor cabinet.

"Sure you are." Spike's voice sounds heavier than usual. Three bottles of straight whiskey will do that to a vampire.

"She doesn't need me there."

Angel cannot remember when he started sharing about his trip to Portland. Now that his head is clearing, he hopes Buffy's secret is still safe.

Spike nods, seizing a new bottle and pouring its contents into both their glasses. "She doesn't need anyone." He tips his head back, and the amber liquid vanishes down his throat. Then he stares at Angel. "Why are you surprised?"

Because she once made him feel - more than needed - wanted. "When did she change?"

Spike snorts. "Did she?"

Angel remembers a seventeen-year-old accepting his ring at the docks, a teary-eyed girl of eighteen begging him to stay. Even the year after, as their romance was being bludgeoned into nothing but a bittersweet memory, she had clung to him, refusing to believe that their perfect day could end.

"She did," he confirms, swirling his glass in slow circles.

"Aw, shit," comes Faith's slurred voice from behind them. She yawns as she stretches, and finishes with a scathing glare whose only weakness is the ruined makeup around it. "Bad enough that I can't go through half the alcohol I used to. Now I have to hear you bitch about B?"

Spike shrugs. "'S not bitching if it's all true."

Faith rolls her eyes. "I heard it all in Sunnydale –" She points at the blond, not bothering to repress a scoff. "- though who'd guess you'd get involved?"

"Ugh. Don't remind me." Spike buries his head in his hands, but flicks a thumb in Angel's direction. "At least I'm not jonesing for a repeat."

"Hey, don't mock. You mope in the middle of my celebration -" Nobody can deny that without her help, there would be no signed treaty now. "- I get dibs to the mocking."

"Please don't," Angel moans. Thoughts of dealing with an exasperated ex-Slayer make the ache of an oncoming headache throb warningly. When Connor comes out of the spare room, yawning widely and wearing lipstick smears all over his face and neck, Angel decides he wants to be anywhere but here.

Or Portland.

But at least his son's presence derails Faith's focus. "Hello, stud," she says, stepping closer for a kiss.

Connor complies happily, then grunts something and heads over to the bathroom.

Faith looks after him, a smile on her face, and turns back to Angel. "Actually, don't save me a place in this pity party. We're out." After her announcement, she collects her coat and grabs some bills from the hiding place in the freezer. It's not as if Angel keeps the blood bags there. "If either of you decides to greet the sun, don't call us. My husband and I just kept Jahu warriors at bay until Dad came and threatened to slice through the whole clan if they didn't behave, and looked ticked off enough to carry it out, too." She frowns. "I should have guessed you'd been in Oregon right then."

"Don't worry." Angel stares at his full glass and sets it aside. "I'm not going back."

"I'll worry about whatever I feel like," she snaps, walking by him to slap the back of his head. "And of course you're going. You're Angel; you'd explode if you didn't fix whatever you left broken."

"I don't want to go back."

Both of his companions break into laughter.

"Did I hear right? Because, honestly –" Faith gets interrupted by her own chuckle.

Spike is quick to take up the post. "When has that ever stopped you?"

Half an hour later, in his efforts to get his home back to its impeccable order, Angel ends up lifting a stained couch cushion and staring at what he finds underneath. "How did a sword get here?"

Spike's eyebrows knit together. "Sword-carrying fairy?"

"Not likely to leave their weapons here."

"Right." Spike squints as he aims one of the empty bottles at the trashcan. His way of helping with the clean-up, Angel figures. "I'd forgotten."

How Spike can forget fighting against winged fairytale creatures – with gorgeous faces and sharp teeth – is a mystery. "It's not mine." The design is unfamiliar, far rougher than anything he'd pick for his personal arsenal.

"Maybe we stole it?"

Angel's impulse to deny such a thing is nowhere to be seen. Must be hiding behind memories of other nights with Spike, Faith, and too much alcohol. "Last time we only broke into Caritas." Lorne was appalled that they'd brought Connor along. Angel still has the feeling his son suggested the whole thing.

"Your own fault, for not restocking before we started."

Every bad decision in his life, Spike hasn't stopped chalking up to Angel.

One day, Angel will get tired of it. But for now, throwing the cushion at Spike's face seems like the perfect answer.

Maybe he's not as sober as he thought he was.

Spike catches the soft projectile in mid-air, of course, but the face he makes as his hand closes on the sticky stain is satisfaction enough. "Bugger off, Angel. It's not as if -"

Silence is enforced when Angel flips on the vacuum cleaner. In full daylight, the room looks more hopeless than it had when Faith left. There's confetti everywhere, and dried mounds of mud going from the front door into every room of the house. Vaguely, he remembers Connor proposing a Hunt & Hunted game, and Faith seconding him with drunken enthusiasm. They must have decided that the front yard was part of the game.

While Angel passes the floor brush down the same spot for the tenth time, Spike chooses to snap his fangs whenever Angel happens to glance in his direction.

It's a miracle neither of them has thrown the other through the window yet.

At last, the room is clean. That sadly means he's stuck with Spike in the house with nothing else to do, as there's no sewer connecting directly to Spike's place.

Spike abandons the childish antics and comes to join him on the couch, stuffing the cushion with the dirty side downwards. "How is she?"

Even more sadly, there isn't enough liquor to get plastered again. His one consolation is feeling confident that he didn't mention Buffy's state. Overprotective as she is, Faith wouldn't have left without warning him not to get tangled up in that mess.

Not that he's tangled up in anything. Or that it's a mess.

Or that Spike's patient look is niggling at him.

Angel leans back and stares at the ceiling. He doesn't want to know how they got confetti stuck there, though. "She's doing okay."

Spike chuckles. "For someone who booted you out of her town, you mean."

"She didn't –" He notices the smug smirk. "I said that, didn't I?"

Infinitely pleased isn't an accurate description of Spike's expression. Sheer gleefulness comes closer. "Come on, big guy. Don't take it personal." Glee morphs into a mix of amusement and pity. "Bloody hormones won't wear off for another eight weeks or so. That you braved them anyway…." He whistles. "No wonder you're the fearless lead– Angel?"

Angel's body has jumped up from his seat, and rounded over to face Spike before the shock catches up with him. He hasn't been this unsettled since… well, since he caught sight of Buffy's body earlier that week.

But that was a special circumstance.

"I didn't tell you that," he growls, hoping he's got the right of it. Buffy may not be his favorite person at the moment, but he made a promise to her. He's always at least tried to keep those promises.

Spike starts laughing. "She really thought she kept it a secret? From me?" The mirth comes to a sudden halt, as Spike's eyes widen in realization. "She must think I'm deaf. Or stupid." With a scowl, he pushes himself off the couch and stalks back toward the kitchen area, grabbing a new bottle of whiskey and a glass before settling at the counter. "You know how that bit has a knack for stomping on your dignity without even noticing?" Angel's face must have set on an expression of profound confusion, because Spike snorts and takes a long swig from the bottle, without bothering to reach for the glass. "Lucky bastard."

Rages like this turned entire city blocks into cinders, and their inhabitants into a high body count. Instinct says to goad Spike on, see what Drusilla's boy has to offer. Reason makes him speak in a soft tone, "You knew, then."

"Before she did. Or before she got over the denial, at least." Spike's voice calms slightly, and he raises the bottle in a wordless toast. "When it got to the point I could hear the heartbeat from across the room, she slapped a de-invite spell on her doorstep. Guess she got tested that week."

"And you just… left?"

A corner of Spike's lips twists into a mockery of a smile. "Best for both of us that I don't keep her secrets. Didn't work out last time."

The less he knows about the years Spike spent chipped in Sunnydale, the better for their working relationship.

Angel closes his eyes. "We make poor friends for her."

"Nuh-uh. I'm a great friend, one who knows when his welcome wears off. I'm amazing, and I have ready all sorts of compliments for her spawn once she gets over the paranoia." Spike points the tip of the half empty bottle towards him. "You, on the other hand, never got the gist of just being the Slayer's friend. Poor sod."

"Not that again," Angel groans.

Spike throws him a look. When Angel doesn't explain (and he won't, he'd never live down remembering that little speech from a decade ago), the blond shrugs it off. "'Sides, it must be rankling you that she didn't tell you herself – what?"

"She called me." He frowns. "After a fashion."

"She called?"

"There was a message…."

"'Course she did," Spike huffs. "I was putting too much faith in your ability to detect increased demon activity outside your city."

"Hey." Of course he heard the rumors. But the unsaid agreement says to keep their efforts to their own towns. "Hellmouths act up every other weekend. I assumed she was taking care of things."

Portland might as well be in a different dimension, for all he's intervened in that city.

He knows nothing about it. Finding a convenience store that first night had taken half an hour of driving around, and they still didn't have a decent bar of soap. Discovering demon lairs had been impossible without Buffy's guidance. And driving... Without any knowledge of which streets to avoid at what time, he ended up stuck in more traffic jams than during a holiday weekend in L.A.

He also missed his team; he's grown unused to working on his own. With Buffy keeping herself in her apartment and refusing to call in someone else, he had nobody to rely on in battle.

For three days, he's felt like a fish out of water.

No wonder Buffy left him gasping for breath.

"I never planned to go." His only contact in Portland was the woman he paid to keep an eye on Buffy, and he told her to keep the updates on Buffy's personal life to herself. "I never considered she'd need help."

Spike glares at him. "You do suck as a friend. At least I knew for sure she didn't want me around."

"She doesn't want me around, either." Now he wishes for a bottle of his own. "She wants to do things her own way, by herself."

"Right. That's why she called you."

"After a fashion," Angel points out again. "That message? She ended it by telling me to stay away."

After a pause, Spike starts nodding his head with the air of an experienced authority. "She likes her mixed signals."

Angel remembers her dancing with Xander, that time after she killed the Master. Taking care of him at the mansion, while making clear that she was dating someone new. Basking in a kiss and babbling about cookies – just to send him back to L.A. in the next breath. "She does."

But he also remembers never being mixed up by her contradictory behavior.

Back then, he knew when Buffy was scared, or worried, or stressed. He knew when she acted one way though she felt otherwise, out of fear that if she gave into her insecurities, she would be made weaker by them.

When did he forget to watch for her reasons, instead of focusing on her actions?

"I'm a dolt."

There's a long moment of silence.

An irreverent snicker breaks through it. "Show of hands for those surprised," Spike drawls, making a show of sticking his hands into his coat pockets.

Angel doesn't pay him any attention. "I'm going back."

Spike's wrists disappear down the pockets.

"Right. You'd already guessed."

Spike smirks back.

Grabbing the car keys from the coffee table, Angel heads for the hallway leading down to the garage. He's already disabling the alarm when he hears Spike's shout.

"And remind the Slayer that 'William' is a perfectly fine, strong name!"

TBC...