Archive of Our Own

Angel resists the urge to rub his forehead. Cordie used to - does - yell at him for that. Says it makes him look like he’s being sarcastic. The urge is very hard to resist though. They’ve been having this argument on repeat for a week now, just going around and around, and it’s not like he doesn’t understand why they’re worried...

Not like he isn’t painfully aware that basically all of them have a better track record than him when it comes to making sensible decisions...

Not like he doesn’t know he can be credulous sometimes. He always has been; in life he’d been a spoiled arrogant bastard, but he’d never been a liar, had always been proud to boast of his many sins. He can lie when he has to, but it doesn’t come naturally to him and that makes him slow to spot lies from other people.

He should probably count that as one of his few virtues, but mostly it’s just annoying.

The point is, he’s provably bad at spotting when he’s being played, and he has a tendency to make decisions without thinking them through, and basically everyone else in this room is cleverer than him, so if they’re worried, maybe he should...

Shit, he’d promised himself he was going to stop talking himself out of his decisions.

The idea of getting turned back into Angelus terrifies him so much it makes him sick to even contemplate, but the thing that he’s never told anyone, not even Buffy, not even Cordie, is that sometimes he misses it, just a tiny bit. Not the killing, or the casual cruelty, but the decisiveness. When he’s Angelus, he never doubts himself for a second. When he’s Angel he owns four of the same shirt because actually deciding what to wear each morning stresses him out so much he ends up just wearing the same thing every day and hoping no one notices.

But he’s promised himself, this time he won’t talk himself out of it.

“We’re going to change things. We came to Wolfram and Hart because it’s a powerful weapon.” They all turn to look at him, and he picks up the top item on the pile of post on his desk and starts to open it, just to have something to do with his hands. He never knows what to do with his hands. He’s sure other people don’t have that problem. “Whatever comes next, we’ll-“ he’s opened the envelope upside down, because of course he has. An amulet of some kind falls from it, hitting the carpet with a surprisingly heavy thud. He tries to look like he’d done that on purpose. “We’ll deal with...”

Lorne frowns, and Angel hears it only a second later, a noise he can only describe as unnatural. And he’s fully aware of how unhelpful that is, given where they are.

It sounds like the wind does in the desert, where there’s nothing for miles around to slow it down, except a thousand times more unsettling.

A moment later he feels it, blowing burning hot, taking his breath away as it catches up the papers from his desk, blowing them up into a whirlwind, the papers catching fire from the sheer oppressive heat, creating a tornado of ash and sparks right there on his office carpet.

It’s certainly not natural, and almost certainly dangerous, but it’s also wind, nothing he can do to stop it except wait for it to burn itself out.

Gradually the ash begins to form a shape, something like a jellyfish, a ball of matter with long trailing tentacles, and it’s only when the skeleton begins to form around it that he realises it’s a central nervous system, brain and nerves.

As muscles and then skin begin to form over the ashen skeleton, another noise joins the howling of the wind, a scream, starting far away and getting closer and closer until the figure is complete, solid, and it collapses onto its knees with a final agonised scream.

Not it. Him.

A him he recognises.

Wesley is the first to speak. Nothing ever really throws him, not for long. Sometimes Angel thinks if you cut him open, you’d find the words ‘stiff upper lip’ written through the middle of him like a stick of rock, and he’s not sure if he means that as a complement or an insult.

“Spike?”

Spike, of all the... Even dead, he can’t leave Angel alone. “Spike, what the...?”

Spike stares up at him, and if it was anyone else, Angel’s heart would ache for how lost and scared he looks. “What... what...?”

Harmony, with an usual prescience, is the one to ask the question Angel is too shocked to verbalise. “What the hell are you doing here, Spike?”

“Harm?”

Lorne, always the compassionate one, reaches out a reassuring hand as Spike stumbles to his feet. “Easy, slim, easy. Take your time. No one’s going to hurt you.”

Gunn sneers. “Speak for yourself, green jeans. Is this really Spike? The Spike?”

“Who’s Spike?” Fred asks, exasperated.

“William the Bloody,” Wesley says, in the cold hard tone that means he’s slipped into what Faith calls Watcher-mode. “He’s a vampire. One of the worst ever recorded. Second only to...” He trails off, and Angel finishes for him.

“Second only to me. Spike, how are you here? You’re dead.”

Harmony rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, who isn’t around here?”

Spike is staring at her, like he’s seen a ghost. “What are you doing here, Harm? Are you dead too? Is this hell?”

“Los Angeles, actually,” Lorne says. “But a lot of people make that mistake.”

“This is fun and all, but where the hell did he come from?” Gunn asks.

“From that,” Wesley says, pointing at the amulet.

“What is it?”

Wesley picks it up, and now Angel can see it clearly, he recognises it. “Something I gave to Buffy to help with...”

“Buffy!” Spike almost yells the name. “Is she okay?! Did she get out, did Dawnie...?”

“She’s fine. So’s Dawn, as far as I know.” Why the hell is Spike, of all people, asking about Dawn?

“And the others? Did they all... Amanda was hurt pretty bad. Did she make it? And the others?”

“The others?”

“The girls! The potentials! And Red, and Anya, and Andrew, all them lot. Faith’s sexy principle? Did they make it out okay?”

“I... I don’t know. Willow is okay, and Xander, and Giles. Faith too. Buffy didn’t mention the others.”

“Shit. I need to talk to her. Where is she? Have you got her number?”

“She’s in Europe, last I heard. I don’t... Why do you care?”

Spike gives him a look of absolute loathing. “Just because you failed to form a single genuine friendship the entire time you were in Sunnydale... God, you are such a fucking prick. They’re my friends, you cunt. We fought the fucking First Evil together. Of course I-”

“I thought you said he was bad,” Fred says, confused.

“Ah, well, that’s... I heard he was an ally of Buffy’s, but I didn’t expect...”

“Wait, so he’s a good-guy vampire?” Gunn asks. “Like Angel?”

“He is nothing...!”

Spike cuts him off. “No, because he’s only good because he’s being forced. I chose to get my soul back.”

The others all turn to stare at Angel, and he thanks any divine being that happens to be listening that vampires can’t really blush. It’s not like he’d been deliberately keeping the information from them. It’s just that...

Saying it’s just that being an ensoulled vampire is his thing, makes him sound like a spoiled child, but that’s what it really boils down to. The soul, and everything that goes with it, including the Shanshu prophecy, is his thing.

He’s a little bit disgusted with himself for thinking it, and that makes his next words come out harsh and bitter, crueller than he intended. “So desperate for anything to make Buffy look at you...”

Spike lunges for him, fangs dropping, and Angel feels the rush of adrenaline that precedes a really good fight, and just a little of that old familiar ache he associates with family. He braces himself, prepared to take anything Spike throws at him and give it back twice as hard, but instead...

It feels a bit like walking in through the door of an air conditioned building, that sudden burst of cold, and when he looks down, Spike’s arm is sticking right through his chest like he’s not even there.

Or like Spike isn’t.

Harmony, with that incredible talent for saying exactly the wrong thing that she seems to have been born with, says, “Wait, you and the Slayer?! You mean you actually...? Oh my God, that is so gross!”

They don’t take Harmony with them down to Fred’s lab, thank God.

Spike had responded to her question with a surprisingly dignified “that’s no one’s business except Buffy’s”, and Angel would appreciate the chivalry if it wasn’t all but outright confirmation that yes, he and Buffy really had... God, he can’t even form the words in his own head.

He’s jealous, obviously. He’s never going to admit it out loud, but in the privacy of his own thoughts, he knows it’s true.

The really sickening thing is that he’s a little bit jealous of Buffy as well.

He doesn’t want Spike, he’s not... Angelus had fucked Spike because he was willing, and because he’d let Angelus do things to him that Darla wouldn’t. (Dru let him, but she had this way of going somewhere else in her own head if he hurt her too badly, and playing with a limp doll was no fun at all). He’s not attracted to Spike, he was never... But all the same, Spike was his. Finding out Buffy had really— It feels like when you’re a kid and someone takes a toy you weren’t even playing with, but suddenly it’s the only one you care about.

God, and he just knows the joke Spike would make if he guessed what Angel was thinking about, and it’s not helping the situation one bit.

Fred is scanning Spike with some kind of... doohickey. It looks a bit like an electric razor, but presumably does something extremely clever and sciency he wouldn’t understand.

“Hell of a story,” Lorne says to Wes, in the whisper he thinks is too quiet for Angel to hear and isn’t. “Two vampires, both in love with their destined enemy. Both men loved, both men lost. I could sell that to any studio in a heartbeat.”

Angel doesn’t like that he’s right. Put like that, it’s almost poetic. Except putting it like the assumes you believe Spike’s “love” for Buffy is anything more than infatuation and a desire to copy Angel, just like he’s been copying for the last century and change.

The truth would make a better horror story than a romance.

“So, is anyone going to introduce themselves?” Spike asks. “Who’re you, scanner girl?”

Fred gives him that sweet smile that makes Wesley need to go and have a lie down any time it’s directed at him. “I’m Fred. I head up the Science Department here at Wolfram and Hart.”

“I thought that was a law firm.”

“Oh, it is, among other things.”

“I also heard they only worked for the worst of the worst. No offence, but you don’t exactly look like an agent of primordial evil, and trust me, I’m an expert on that at this point.”

“Oh, no, I’m not. I mean, thank you. Angel’s in charge now. He’s changing things to be a bit less... icky.” She sets down the razor-looking thing and scribbles a couple of quick notes. “Weird. I’m getting electromagnetic readings consistent with spiritual entities, but there’s no ectoplasmic matrix.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, ectoplasm’s what makes ghosts visible to the human eye. If he’s a ghost, technically, we shouldn’t be able to see him. And I’m detecting brainwave activity.”

It’s low hanging fruit, but Angel’s feeling petty. “On Spike? That is weird.”

Fred ignores him, as she tends to do when she thinks he’s being childish. He wishes it wasn’t as effective as it is at making him feel like he’s five years old and being scolded by his nanny. “Also, ghosts generally absorb light and heat energy, making the area around them a few degrees cooler. Spike’s radiating heat.”

Spike grins at her. “So you’re saying I’m hot.”

“Lukewarm. Just above room temperature.”

“Okay, so I’m not a ghost. What the hell am I?”

“Whatever you are, it’s clearly tied to the amulet,” Wesley says. “Do you have any memory of a strange sensation when it released its energy?”

“What? You mean my skin and muscle burning away from the bone? Organs exploding in my chest? Eyeballs melting in their sockets? No. No memory at all. Thanks for asking.”

Bloody drama queen. “OK, so he’s connected to the amulet. Last I heard, it was buried deep inside of the Hellmouth. How did it end up here?”

“Maybe he’s here for a reason,” Fred suggests. Always the optimist. “You know, some higher purpose or something he’s destined for. Sent to us by the powers that be to help us or—”

“No, no way, fuck that. I’ve had my destiny, I’ve saved the world, that should be enough for anyone, I’m not taking on any more cursed fucking destinies, thank you very much! I’m more than...” His words trail off as he begins to fade, turning translucent.

Tentatively, Fred reaches out, and then seems to remember at the last moment that she won’t be able to touch him and pulls her hand back. “Spike?”

Spike looks down at himself, now barely more than an outline, and Angel just makes out the words, “oh bollocks” before he vanishes completely.

Fred, never one to miss the chance for more data, starts to scan the space where he used to be.

“So what now?” Gunn asks.

Fred shrugs. “I don’t know, he just...” She turns to look at Angel, eyes accusing. “What did he mean, saving the world?”

There’s absolutely no way he can answer that question without making himself look like a dick, and he knows it. “Well, Buffy did most of it. He just... helped.”

Fred narrows her eyes, and Gunn looks like he’s considering cussing him out, and for the first time in one hundred and twenty-three years, Angel’s actually glad to see Spike, who rematerialises in the same spot he’d vanished from, eyes wide and wild. “What the-?”

“Where did you go?” Gunn asks, but Spike just shakes his head, and Angel sort of hates that he recognises the expression on Spike’s face. It’s the look he’d always get when he didn’t want to admit something hurt too much to bear.

“Do you not know?” Fred asks, gently. Angel wants to grab her, pull her away. He’s got a soul, and he’s not even corporeal, but he’s still Spike, he’s still not safe. But she’s her own woman, and he knows that what he thinks of as chivalry just looks like misogyny to modern eyes. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Fred. He’s just seen too much of the havoc Spike can wreak when he really puts his mind to it.

“The desert.”

“What?”

“It was... no, it couldn’t have been...” He turns on Angel. “This is all your fault, you cunt!”

“How is this my fault?”

“That amulet was given to you. It was supposed to be your gods-damned destiny, not mine! If you hadn’t chickened out, this would never have happened!”

“What do you-“

“You heard me! Soon as the killing starts for real, you’re off like a shot. Leave all those girls to die! Kids! Amanda is, was, fuck, I don’t even know if she’s alive or dead, and she’s fucking seventeen! She could stand and fight with Buffy, but not you? Not the man who claims to love her?!”

“It was Buffy’s call. You know that. It wasn’t my choice.”

“And you think this was mine?! I had a life, you bastard. John... Oh fuck, John thinks I’m dead!”

“I’m so out of the loop,” Fred says. “Who’s John?”

“Don’t look at me,” Wesley says.

“John’s my boyfriend, who currently thinks I’m dead, and fuck, he might even be right! He might... Shit, what the fuck am I supposed to tell him, huh? Don’t worry honey, we’ve established I’m not a ghost?!”

“Wait, you have a boyfriend?” Gunn sounds disbelieving rather than revolted, but Spike still prickles like a hedgehog.

“You got a problem with that, mate?”

“No, I... I thought you were with the Slayer?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It’s my business,” Angel snaps. “You cheated on her with...”

“She knows about him. He knows about her. What, did you think you invented polyamory? Or wait, no, there’s no way you actually know that word. What did you call it when you were hooking up with Cordelia while promising Buffy she was the only one for you, exactly?”

“Oh, I am loving this,” Lorne says, to no one in particular. “It’s like having our very own soap opera.”

“I never... At least I never dated Harmony!”

To his shock, Spike doesn’t raise to the bait. Instead he wrinkles his nose like Angel’s done something disgusting, and says, “I’m sorry, did no one tell you hating women went out of fashion with Victoria? If you have a problem with me, you take it up with me. Leave her out of it.”

“Oh my God, you don’t even like her!”

“What the hell’s that got to do with anything? You can dislike someone without being a misogynist prick to them, you know.”

“Who are you, and what the hell did you do with Spike?”

“See, this is how I know we’re not the same. You think having a soul forced on you magically makes you the arbiter of morality, but you didn’t do a thing to earn it. You’ve got everyone fooled, Daddy, but you’re no better than you ever were. You’re just more sanctimonious about it now.”

“I’m sorry,” Gunn says, “time out, did you just call him daddy?!”

“Angel is Spike’s grandsire,” Wesley says.

“Oooh,” Lorne says, nodding like everything makes sense now. “They’re family. That explains it.”

“Explains what?!” Spike and Angel demand at the exact same time, and this isn’t the worst day of Angel’s life, it’s not even top ten, but it’s still up there. Top twenty, for sure.

Spike is following him, and it’s childish and irritating and achingly familiar.

William had followed him around like a puppy, any time he wasn’t following Dru, and it had been irritating then too, and then Angel had got his soul back, and he’d left, and he’d found himself constantly turning to address someone who wasn’t there. He’d think of a joke, and there’d be no one to tell it to, or, in the early days, he’d see something that might have been a hallucination and turn to ask if Spike could see it too, and it would hit him all over again that he’d lost his entire family. They weren’t a good family, they were monsters, and they’d fought as much as they’d got along, but they’d been all he had.

“Running away again,” Spike calls after him. “Nice new M.O. you’ve got. I can see why heroes like you get given cushty office jobs!”

“I’m not responsible for what happened to you!” His conscience whispers that maybe he is, maybe this is all his fault, but he ignores it. If Spike wants to bring up the past, Angel can damn well channel Angelus.

Harmony jumps up from her desk as they pass, saying something about meetings, and Angel absolutely cannot deal with her right now. He’s not a misogynist! He’s allowed to just not like Harmony, it doesn’t mean he hates women!

“You’re a sell out, is what you are. Doing the real heroing got too hard, so you took the first deal that looked easy, and damn the consequences.”

“Little tip, Spike: Try not to talk about things you don’t understand.”

“This isn’t 1880 any more, Daddy, and growling at me isn’t going to stop me seeing what a rube you are. I know what happened. Someone offered you a devil’s bargain, and you jumped right in without checking the small print. Thought you’d use it to fight the evil of the world from inside the belly of the beast. Trouble is, you’re too busy fighting to see you and yours are getting digested.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Oh, you think you’re in control here? Guess again, mate. You’re no more in control than I am. Except I’m not gonna bloody stand for it, while you’re just a blind...” He pauses, glancing over Angels shoulder, and then says in a much less strident tone of voice, “Grox’lar Beast.”

“What?” Even for one of Spike’s rants, that’s a nonsensical leap, and then he turns around, and coming out of the lift behind him is a Grox’lar Beast, all eight scaley feet of him.

To his credit, painful as it is to give him anything, Spike does try to hit it, but his fist goes right through its face, leaving Angel to be the one who takes the relatiatory punch, hard enough to knock him down and leave him breathless.

Grox’lar are strong, and they’re fast, but Angel’s been doing this for two-hundred and fifty years, so even with Spike and Harmony just standing around watching, it doesn’t take him long to knock the thing out.

“Somebody want to tell me how a Grox’lar Beast got past security? I don’t have time for this.”

A proper sneer is something that takes practise, but Spike’s had a century to get good at them. “Of course not. Man’s got to stay focused on profit margins and power lunches.”

“Oh yeah? I’ve got a business to run. That means responsibilities, appointments to keep. Nothing you’d know-“

“Angel!” Harmony’s yell echoes oddly in the mostly empty lobby. He and Spike both turn to stare at her. “That was your three o’clock.”

“That...” Spike is laughing at him, the bastard. “I’m meeting with Grox’lars?! They eat babies!”

“Just their heads. You were supposed to open negotiations with his clan.”

“Negotiations for what?!”

“Get ‘em to stop eating baby heads,” Gunn says, strolling up with his hands in his pockets. It’s so strange to see him in a suit. A fancy suit, even. He looks like he belongs here, and Angel can’t make up his mind if that’s a good thing.

“Shit, sorry. I’m guessing this is bad?”

Gunn waves a dismissive hand. “It’s fine. The Grox’lar clan respects someone who takes a strong opening position.” When Angel shoots him a questioning look, he grins and taps his temple. “Wolfram & Hart didn’t just jack me up with the human laws. I’ve got demon laws from every dimension up here. Probably should have briefed you about the Grox’lar, but we got a little sidetracked. Plus, I’ve been implementing our reforms. Mostly staff overhaul. I’ve fired 40 employees in the past 2 days.”

Angel heads for his office, figuring this isn’t a conversation they should have in the suspiciously echoey lobby, and Gunn follows him. “How’s that going?”

“As expected. Anger, tears, venomous death threats.”

Behind him, he hears Harmony say, “Listen, Spike, I know I was a little crabby before. I mean, hello?! A little awkward, seeing you at my work. But if you want to talk or something, you know, about us or...”

He’s expecting Spike to ignore her, or at least cut her expectations off at the knees, but instead Spike says, “You know what? That actually sounds good,” and Angel’s so surprised he walks into the door frame.

Harmony has a lot of feelings. Both generally, and about Spike specifically.

Apart from being a ghost, he looks good. He always looks good, the bastard, even standing in the empty staff room with one leg half through a chair he hasn’t noticed.

“Do you mind if I...” She raises the thermos of blood, by way of explanation. “I’d offer you some, but... well, you know.”

“Knock yourself out.”

She pours herself out some blood and pops it in the microwave to heat up.

“That is not pig blood.”

“No, otter. It’s nice. I mean, not as nice as human, but what can you do?”

“Not much blood in an otter, you’d think. Must be expensive.”

“Yeah, I think it is. This is Angel’s, technically, but he never finishes the whole bottle and there’s one delivered every day, so I treat myself sometimes. Don’t tell him.”

“Cross my heart,” he says, with that lopsided smile that used to make her weak at the knees.

Okay, maybe scrap the ‘used to’.

Desperately she searches around for something to talk about, and what comes out of her mouth is, “So, you and the Slayer...”

“It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking it’s gross. She’s the Slayer! She kills us!”

“Not me. Not directly, anyway.”

“She really does have the thing for vampires, huh?”

“Everyone likes a bit of forbidden passion. Always have. That whole Romeo and Juliet, they love but they can never be together stuff. It’s the plot of half the romance novels ever written, in one form or another.”

“What about you, though? And Angel?”

“Angel wants what he can’t have. Always has. He used to take no as a challenge, now he gets off on being denied, but it’s the same thing, really. Someone should really introduce the man to cock-rings, they’d probably make him at least 10% more bearable.”

“Ewww, that’s my boss you’re talking about!”

“Not thinking of trying to sleep your way to the top? Not that you need to.”

“Hey, I... wait, what? Did you just compliment me? What do you want?” There’s always an angle with Spike, she knows that, it’s just that he was always very good at making her forget, when it suited him.

“Nothing. To talk.”

“Okay, but you never say nice things to me unless you want something. Not ever. So come on, what is it? Because your dick currently passes through solid objects, so I know it’s not the usual.”

“Christ, I really was a dick to you, wasn’t I? I really do just want to talk. And to...” He pulls a face, like it’s hard for him to get the words out. “And to apologise.”

She freezes, staring at him with her mouth open, completely unable to find any words. Spike, apologising, to her?! She’d think this was a dream, except she never dreamt of him just apologising. Grovelling, yes, dying slowly and painfully, absolutely. But never just awkwardly saying sorry.

“I treated you like shit. I know I did, and you didn’t deserve it. You were shit at being evil, but that’s not a bad thing, and it’s not ‘cos you’re stupid. I was in a bad place, and I took it out on you, and that wasn’t fair. And I’m sorry.” He shifts his shoulders, and cracks his neck the way he always does when he changes his face, and says, “God, having a soul is bullshit sometimes.”

“Wait, so you only said that because you feel guilty?” He should, he should feel guilty, so why does she feel so disappointed?

“I always knew I owed you an apology. Having a soul just made me actually man up and say it out loud. Angel talks a lot of bullshit about souls, but they don’t actually change who you are.”

“What happened? I mean, was it Willow who cursed you, or who?”

“No one cursed me. I chose it.”

“For Buffy?”

“No. For me. I had the offer of getting the chip removed, but only if I got my soul back at the same time. No pressure, no life or death situation, just an offer, and as long as I wanted to think it over. In the end, I picked the soul.”

“Didn’t it, like... hurt?”

He huffs out a little joyless laugh. “More than you could possibly imagine.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Yes. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when it sucks, but... feeling other people again, falling in love, really in love, the way humans do, feeling things all the way through...”

She’s never heard anyone talk about souls like that. It’s always being a good person instead of a bad person. Stopping killing. All... churchy stuff. Sacrificing yourself for other people. But Spike talks about it like it really is something he did for himself.

“Wow”, is all she can think to say, because she doesn’t have the words for how she feels about that. Something... something kind of tender, like an old bruise, except it’s her heart that’s aching.

“Yeah. That isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about, though.”

Oh, here it goes, she thinks, bitterly. All that sweet talk, but he hasn’t changed a bit. There’s still an angle.

“It’s nothing b... It’s... Look, I just didn’t want you to hear it from Angel or one of them first. I have a boyfriend. Had a boyfriend, I don’t know. He probably thinks I’m dead, so who the fuck knows? But assuming he hasn’t moved on and forgotten in however the fuck long it’s been since I died - wait, what’s the date?”

“October 8th, but...”

“Two-thousand three, still?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so I’ve been dead three months. That’s not so bad.”

“Can we go back to the thing where you have a boyfriend?! Oh my God, are you gay? That would explain so much!”

“I’m bi, and the crap sex was because we are not even slightly compatible in the bedroom, not because I’m also attracted to men.”

“What do you mean, not compatible?”

“You know how you think it’s hot when someone strong and forceful pushes you down and has their way with you?”

“Yes.”

“So do I.”

“Well, yeah, I mean...” Her brain catches up to his words. “Ohhhhh, oh, you mean... Well, I guess the Slayer thing makes more sense now.”

“You could say that.”

“Okay, but you’re telling me we could have been talking about boys this whole time?”

“I mean, technically, yeah. Not sure how much I’d have to add to the conversation, mind.”

“Oh, is this your first boyfriend? That’s so cute! You’re, like, discovering yourself!”

“I guess he is, technically. Angelus sure as shit doesn’t count.”

“Wait, wait, wait, you slept with Angel?! Oh my God, you have to tell me everything!”

“I thought it was gross because he was your boss.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know all the details. And I mean all the details.”

“You don’t want all the details, Harm. Trust me.”

She’s not good at people, she knows that, but she spent enough time watching Cordie that she knows how to hit for a person’s weak spots when it matters. “How about just the bits that make Angel look bad?”

Fred doesn’t drop the test tube she’s holding when Spike walks through the wall beside her, but it’s a near thing.

“Oh, Spike, hi. Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” he says, sticking his hands into the pocket of his coat. She wonders, idly, how that works, whether the fabric moves according to his own self-image, or if it’s somehow the ghost of a coat. “I need to make some phone calls, but I find myself mysteriously unable to operate a phone.”

“You want me to do it for you?”

“If you don’t mind. You...” He looks down at his feet, shifts slightly, and says, “there’s no one here I can trust, but you at least don’t seem to want to do me harm.”

“No, of course I don’t! But the others...”

“Wesley knows me of old, and the dark chap hates all vampires. Harmony is my ex, and I guess technically Angel is too, when you get right down to it. And I make it a rule not to trust demons if I don’t know what their agenda is.”

“I don’t think Lorne has an agenda.”

“Everyone’s got an agenda.”

“What about me, then?”

“You don’t smell like magic, and you don’t look at me like I’m a monster. That’s good enough to be going on with.”

“Alright, fair enough. I suppose it can’t hurt. You want me to call your boyfriend?”

“No. I... I want to know more than I do about what’s going on before I call him in. He’ll want to fix things, and I care about him too much to want him meddling in this. No, I want to know who survived the last battle in Sunnydale. Whether they’re all alright.”

“I can do that. I don’t have the Slayer’s number, but I have Willow’s.”

“Perfect.”

She places the test tube back in the rack, fixes its position in her mind for later, and walks up the stairs to her office.

Having an office at all feels very strange, but not bad. It feels very grown up, and things like that always make her heart ache, just a little, because there’d been a time when she’d been so certain she’d never have the opportunity to grow up.

“What should I tell her about you?”

“Tell her... Fuck, I don’t even know. The truth, I guess. At least I know she’s not going to abandon her girl and come tearing down here to try to fix it herself. If you tell her you’re handling it, she’ll believe you.”

“Alright.”

There’s a Rolodex on her desk, and somehow it had already been filled out with all the numbers from her cell phone before she ever sat down at the desk, including Willow’s. For now, she’s not thinking about that, because she’s worried the answer to the question of how is going to be mundane and horribly invasive.

She makes the call on her work phone, because it has a better speaker system than her cell, and because the international charges will fall on Wolfram and Hart’s account rather than her own.

It rings for a long time, almost long enough that she thinks no one’s going to answer, and then there’s a click on the line and a woman’s voice she doesn’t recognise says, “Willow’s phone.”

She hits the button to switch it over to speaker. “Hi, this is Fred. Fred Burkle, from Angel Investigations.”

“Oh, hi,” the woman says, in that tone of voice people use when they don’t want to admit they have no idea who you are.

“That’s Kennedy,” Spike says, helpfully. “Willow’s girl.”

“Wait, is that- Spike?”

“She can hear me?” Spike asks. When Fred nods, he says, “Hi Kennedy. Yeah, it’s me.”

“What?! How?!! We thought you were dead!”

“I was. Am. I have no idea what tense I’m in, but I seem to be some kind of ghost.”

“Holy shit. Hold on, I’m going to get Willow, she’ll definitely want to hear this.”

They only have to wait a minute before a more familiar voice asks, “Spike?”

Just hearing her voice is enough to make Spike smile, and Fred has no idea how Wes and Angel can be so suspicious of him. “Hi, Red.”

“Oh my God, this is amazing! What happened?!”

“No idea. It’s something to do with that amulet doohickey, so far as we can tell. Someone found it in the ruins and posted it to Angel, but all I remember is dying, and then suddenly I’m standing in Angel’s swanky new office and my fist went right through his face when I tried to punch him.”

“Oh wow. Do you need my help? Things are busy, but I can get someone to cover for me if you need me to fly out.”

“I appreciate the offer, but Fred here’s got it handled. I was calling to ask... To ask who made it out. Did Amanda...?”

“She’s okay. She’ll never walk the same, but she made it. All of us did, except... Except Anya.”

“Oh God.”

“Yeah, it was... it was bad. Andrew was with her, but he couldn’t get to her in time.”

“Shit. But everyone else? Dawn’s okay?”

“She’s... well, I don’t know if fine is the word, but she’s coping. She’s getting better. We all are.”

“Andrew?”

“Has a boyfriend. He’s a dick, you’d hate him, but Andrew seems happy.”

“Oh thank fuck. I took 150 years to officially come out and even I thought he was too repressed. Speaking of, how’s Ripper?”

“Apart from slowly loosing his mind over how many books he lost, he’s good.”

“Serves him right for keeping valuables on top of a Hellmouth. Any fool could have told him that was a stupid idea. What about...?”

He doesn’t say the name, but Fred guesses he must mean the Slayer. “She’s okay. She’s doing that ‘focus on work to avoid talking about her feelings’ thing she does, but we’re not letting her push herself too hard.”

“Good.”

“You know I have to tell her?”

“Yeah, I know. That’s fine. She could stand to get some good news for a change.”

“How did John react?”

“I haven’t told him yet. There’s something... There’s something behind all this, something bad. I don’t want him involved.”

“Fuck that!”

“Red...”

“No, I’m serious. If even half the things you told me about him are true, loosing you has got to be driving him crazy. Call him, text him, fucking ghost-teleport to London, I don’t care, but tell him. And if you don’t, I will.”

“You don’t have his number.”

“Dawn’s got your phone.”

“What?”

“It was in your go-bag. She’s got all your stuff. Even the brass knuckles. God, she’s going to be so excited when I tell her you’re alive. Or, not alive. You know what I mean. She’s lost too much family.”

“I’m not her family.”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course you are.”

“Huh,” Spike says, like that’s news to him, and then, “It’s been a long time since I had family I’ve never fucked.”

Willow makes a horrified noise, and faintly Fred hears Kennedy say, “why are vampires always so fucking gross?”

Fred knows she’s gone pink, the way she always does when she’s embarrassed. She’s not prudish, she isn’t, but there’s a difference between being sex positive and having absolute proof that Spike and Angel used to...

For her own sanity, she’s just going to choose not to think about that.

“How’s Faith?” Spike asks, changing the subject.

“Travelling, thank God. Her and Robin had the room next to us for a bit and there are some things I really really don’t need to hear.”

“So her and Buffy still haven’t...?”

“There’s been a lot of that thing I think is Faith’s idea of flirting, but might just be threats? But no actual moves.”

“God, at this rate they’ll both be drawing their pensions before they get anywhere. Can’t you give one of them a bit of sage lesbian-ly advise?”

“They’ll figure it out in their own time. Anyway, you’re not one to talk, Mr 150 years in the closet.”

“Yeah, but I’m immortal. Was immortal. I had time. And it’s not like I wasn’t shagging blokes for a lot of that, I just never actually said the words ‘I like cock’.”

“Tell them yourself, if you care so much,” Kennedy calls.

“I tried, didn’t I? Faith denied everything and Buffy genuinely didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.”

“We just have to give them time,” Willow repeats. “Anyway, Faith and Robin seem happy.”

“I’m sure the sex is amazing, but that’s beside the point.”

“You can’t live people’s lives for them. If we could, you’d already have called John by now.”

“I want to. But not more than I want him safe. As soon as I know what’s going on, I will.”

“You’d better. I’m not above siccing Giles on you both.”

“Ouch. I will, I promise. Say hi to the girls for me, would you? If anyone needs me, I’ll be at Wolfram and Hart, Angels new monkey’s paw, for the foreseeable.”

“I’ll tell them. Buffy’s probably going to want to speak to you, and Dawn. Probably some of the potentials, Slayers I mean, as well.”

“Well, I can’t exactly operate a phone at the moment, being as I’ve got no hands. Fred, do you...?”

“You can leave messages on this number,” Fred says. “I’ll make sure he gets them.”

“Thanks. And thank you for calling us. I’m glad you’re... not as dead as we thought.”

That makes him laugh, a low pleased chuckle. “Yeah, me too. I’m glad you made it out okay. The sacrifice doesn’t seem quite so stupid, knowing how many of you survived.”

“It was never stupid,” Willow says, her voice warm. Fred doesn’t know why it surprises her, how fond of him they seem to be, except maybe that Wes and Angel’s reactions had primed her to expect him to at least be a dick, even if he’s not actually evil any more. “Bye, Spike.”

They ring off, and Fred hangs up the phone, and spends a few minutes randomly moving things around on her desk to give Spike some privacy. He’d looked like he needed it.

Eventually he says, “Thank you,” quiet and sincere, and she smiles at him.

“Any time. It was nice to be able to give someone such good news.”

“Yeah,” Spike says, doubtfully, and when she shoots him a look, he says, “no, it is good, it just surprised me. I’m not used to people... well, caring, I guess.”

“Not John?”

“Oh, John cares, and Dawn, but that’s different.” He doesn’t specify how or why it’s different, and she doesn’t feel like she knows him well enough to ask.

Instead, she asks, “Is there anyone else you’d like to call?”

“Yes,” he says, but when she reaches for the phone, he shakes his head. “No, I can’t. I want to tell Zee, and my friends from work, but they’d all tell John.”

“Are you sure you can’t tell him? It sounds like he’d want to know.”

“Of course he would. But I don’t want him mixed up in whatever’s behind all this. And... I don’t want to see him and not be able to touch him. To hold him.”

If Lorne were here, he’d already be calling script consultants. “That’s very romantic.”

“Thanks,”

“And very very dumb.”

“Well, I never claimed to be smart. It... If it turns out I’m stuck like this, that there isn’t any cure, then I’ll tell him. But I don’t want to get his hopes up, or mine, if there’s nothing to be done.”

Fred still thinks that’s dumb - Wesley never so much as hugs her, but she still wants to see him every day - but she can’t exactly force them to talk, so she just nods. “What are you going to do now?”

“Now, I’m going to test the limits on this curse. The more information you have, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to fix it, right?”

‘I’ve never seen anything like this, and there’s no guarantee I can fix anything’ isn’t exactly comforting, so she just nods. She can’t take away his hope, not when he’s already lost so much.

Angel doesn’t see Spike again until after sunset, and he wishes he could appreciate the quiet, but instead he spends the whole time worrying about what he might be getting up to.

What he might be telling people.

Spike would probably sneer at him for being ashamed, as though being ashamed of the things Angelus did makes him weak somehow.

As far as he can see, shame is the only possible reasonable reaction. When Spike had called him, all those months ago, to ask about souls, he’d told Angel that the sex wasn’t the thing he needed to be sorry for, as though what they’d had, what Angelus had done, had been something consensual. Mutually pleasurable.

God, the noises Spike would make, when Angel hurt him the right way, the way he’d move, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to push into the sensation or shy away...

When Angelus had hurt him. Angel doesn’t... Only once, and he doesn’t think about that.

God, he’d hurt him so badly, and he doesn’t know if it says worse things about him or Spike that Spike had gotten hard for it, every time, or that Angel had kept coming back for more.

He wishes he didn’t miss Darla quite as much as he does. Not the human with Darla’s face and none of her memories, or even the vampire version of her who’d returned from beyond the grave. The Darla who’d sired him, and taught him, and been, however begrudgingly, the mother of their fucked up little family. He can’t help thinking she’d know what to do.

Even if she didn’t, she’d look like she did, and that’s still more than Angel’s managing.

He needs to know what game he’s being roped into, or even just who’s doing the roping, but he’s got nothing to go on. No clues, no theories, no particular enemies who might prefer fucking with him over killing him.

Behind him, he hears someone enter, smells Wes’s aftershave and just a hint of his blood. He’d cut himself shaving this morning, so small he doubts Wes had even really noticed it, but Angel can smell it.

“Do you think he’s really gone?” he asks, without turning around. The city is laid out before him, artificial lights twinkling in the gloom. Seeing the city in daylight is a pleasant novelty, but it doesn’t feel like home the way it does once the sun’s gone down.

“Is that what’s on your mind?”

“It could have been me, Wes. It was supposed to be me.”

“You’re not feeling guilty?” Wes asks.

Angel can’t hold back a snort. “About Spike? He’s not-“ My grandchilde, my brother, my boy, the only man I’ve ever wanted to fuck. The only other person Buffy looks at that way. “That’s not... Wolfram and Hart gave me the amulet. They must have expected me to use it, and presumably, they expected it to do to me what it’s done to Spike, so why-“

“Why bother giving you the keys to the kingdom?”

Wes finally takes a seat at one of the chairs by Angel’s desk, and as much as he’d like to keep hiding his face, Angel tries to only be rude when it’s necessary, so he joins him. “It doesn’t make sense. What game are the senior partners playing?”

“Maybe there’s dissent in their ranks,” Wesley suggests. “Or maybe there’s another player in the game they, and we, don’t know anything about. Then again, maybe they got exactly what they were after.”

Angel’s just deciding what he can say to that, when Spike appears through the wall. He’s got his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and he’s walking with that exaggerated swagger he’d first picked up in Moscow. The one that always means something’s wrong. “I thought you left.”

Wes cranes behind him to see, as Spike shrugs. “Don’t think I didn’t try. Every time I get as far as the city limits I keep popping back here like my insides are getting yanked.”

“I suspected as much,” Wesley says. “The amulet is Wolfram & Hart’s property. It’s bound to this place, and since Spike’s connected to it...”

“Hey! I’m nobody’s bloody property, Percy,” Spike protests, and Angel has to bite back a sarcastic retort that would have revealed far too much about his own past. Spike had been Angel’s boy once, and Drusilla’s willing slave. “So what? I’m just stuck here forever? I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you, Daddy?!

Angel really really wishes Spike would stop calling him that. Especially in front of Wes, who probably thinks woman on top constitutes wild kink.”Knowing you’ll be haunting me till the end of time? Oh yeah, it’s a dream come true.”

Harmony knocks before Spike can reply, sticking her head around the door without waiting for him to call her in. “Oh, hi Spike. Boss? That lawyer you sent over to tell the wizard he’s not our client any more... well, he’s back.”

“OK, send him in.”

Harmony gives him a sceptical look, but she nods and gestures to someone out of Angel’s eyeline.

Two men Angel doesn’t recognise walk in. They’re wearing suits, so they probably work for him. Given that they’re carrying three buckets of, according to Angel’s nose, extremely finely minced human, he probably doesn’t pay them enough.

They put the buckets down on his desk, and you’d think he’d be used to it by now, but the smell makes him hungry and for a moment the guilt for that is so intense he can’t breathe. He sent this man to his death, this man who presumably had friends and family and a life, and it’s making his mouth water.

“Wow,” Spike says, and sticks an incorporeal hand through one of the buckets. “You’re really getting the hang of this people management thing.”

When humans have a relative they hate, they like to say you can’t choose your family, but Angel literally had, so what the hell does that say about him?

“A little respect, please. Harmony, get me Novac’s emergency contacts, next of kin, and please be discreet about it.”

“So you mean... don’t tell people about the bucket of lawyer?”

Her tone makes it clear that ship has already sailed, and Angel sighs. “Just get me the contacts, please. And take the buckets away.”

“What do you want we should do with them?” one of the men asks.

“Dispose of them. Respectfully.” He considers the general moral character and species make up of his staff. “Please don’t let anyone eat them. Oh, Gun, did you find anything?”

Gun pauses in the doorway to let the men pass, eyeing the buckets suspiciously, and then passes Angel a file. “This is everything we have on Magnus Hainsley. He’s a sorcerer, big time. Rich, old money and older mojo. Owns a respectable block of shares in Wolfram & Hart and he’s connected up the wazoo. Carries influence with power players in the entertainment industry, politics—”

Angel flips over the first page and considers the words ‘post-mortal medical provider’. God, he hates lawyers sometimes. “He’s a necromancer.”

“Hence the supply of corpses the previous management was sending him,” Gun agrees.

“I don’t see why he needs them, though,” Wesley says. “Most necromancers prefer to make their own, as it were. Unless he’s operating on a terrifying scale.”

“Or he’s too rich and lazy to put the work in,” Gun suggests. “I’m sorry, I was trying to decide if I wanted to ask or not, but I’ve got to know. What the hell was in those buckets?!”

“Novac,” Angel says.

“Angel’s liquidating staff,” Spike says, gleefully.

Wes looks appropriately horrified, and Angel lets himself be comforted by the fact that even if he’s too jaded to be shocked, he has at least managed to surround himself with good people.

“It’s a message from Hainsley,” Angel explains. “I’m going to respond. Personally.”

“You can’t take him on yourself.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to risk him turning anyone else into chowder.” Was that callous? Spike’s smirking, so the answer is almost certainly yes.

Gunn sighs. “You have a multi-billion dollar company at your disposal, including some of the best trained security personnel in the business.”

And doesn’t Angel know it. “They cramp my style.”

“Your style’s hardly going to cut it with a necromancer,” Wes argues. “We should probably avoid an eye-for-an-eye escalation here.”

“Not going for his eyes, Wes.”

“I know what you should go for,” Gun says, and for the first time since they moved into W&H he actually sounds like his old self again. That’s his ‘someone’s going to die tonight’ voice, and it’s probably not good that Angel’s missed it. “It’ll hurt him. Bad.”

There’s nothing Angel can do to stop Spike from following him to Hainsley’s. As much as he hates to admit it, they know one another too well. The family - the whirlwind, the Watchers had called them, and Darla had taken to the title - hadn’t been together all that long, at least not by the standards of Angel’s life, but for fifteen years they’d lived in one another’s pockets, especially him, Spike, and Drusilla. They might not like one another these days, but there’s nothing he can do about the fact that they know one another’s habits and preferences.

He doesn’t want to think about what that means, that his habits are so similar to Angelus’s that Spike can still predict him. Especially when Spike’s surprised him so many times today.

Whatever the rules are for Spike’s existence now, he travels in the car without any difficulty, which makes no sense when he’d walked through the door to get in, but magic rarely makes logical sense.

It’s probably something to do with the power of belief. Spike expects to move with the car, and so he does. Idly, Angel wonders what would happen if he distracted him, but he can’t think of anything suitably distracting that doesn’t require Spike to be corporeal.

At least he’s quiet for most of the journey, staring out at the city with interest.

“First time in LA?” Angel asks eventually, when he realises he’s spending more time watching Spike than the road. It’s not like him to be so quiet, and it’s making Angel antsy.

“No,” Spike says. “But I haven’t been since the 70s, and we didn’t stop long then. Didn’t trust Dru not to eat a movie star, you know what she’s like.”

“Yeah,” Angel agrees. “Remember Sankt-Peterburg?”

“God, that was a close one. I really thought she was going to have the little tsarina, or princess, or whatever they call them.”

“Duchesses, I think.”

“Then what did they call their Duchesses? Oh well, don’t s’pose it matters much. It’s been a long time since there was royalty in Russia. Long time since the city was called Sankt-Peterburg as well. What is it now, Leningrad, Stalingrad?”

“Just Saint Petersburg, I think,” Angel says.

“Bit unimaginative, but I suppose it’s easier to remember than just naming it after whoever’s president. Speaking of Hollywood though, did I ever tell you I nearly turned Bela Lugosi?”

Despite his better judgement, Angel’s amused. “Why didn’t you?”

“We were trying to keep a low profile. And I liked his performance as Dracula. Seemed a shame to end his career for the sake of a joke.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Doesn’t it? I’ve never been what you’d call paternal.”

“That’s because you liked being the baby of the family,” Angel says. “Darla spoiled you.”

“Well, she was probably pleased to have some halfway sane conversation for a change.”

Angel doesn’t want to concede the point, but he does anyway. Spike is - was - a monster, but he was always sane about it. He enjoyed causing death and destruction, but it didn’t get him high the way it did Angelus. And Dru... Spike used to say she was the sanest of all of them, and Angel never knew if it was a joke, or if he was just too love-struck to see what was in front of him, or if maybe Dru showed him a side of herself she never showed to Angel.

His little girl. The worst monster he ever met. The most perfect masterpiece he ever created. If he lives to be a thousand, he doesn’t think he’ll ever actually figure out how he feels about her. He’s not sure he’d ever known, even as Angelus.

He’s glad when he sees Hainsley’s mansion up ahead. The conversation has been surprisingly easy, but that just serves to put him even more on edge. Spike is only pleasant company when he wants something. (Or when he’s too fucked out to speak, but Angel does his best not to think about those memories).

Hainsley lives in a McMansion at the expensive end of town, a roofline that’s probably supposed to look like turrets but doesn’t and too many windows in cheap plastic frames. He keeps telling himself he needs to learn to be less of a snob about American buildings, since he’s got no intention of returning to Ireland any time soon, but most of the time when he visits one of these monstrosities it’s because someone evil lives there, which isn’t helping him get over his native dislike.

The door is opened by a man who looks like he’s on his way to a Halloween party, and his costume is Batman’s butler from the old TV show. He’s even got the neatly trimmed moustache.

There’s a strong smell of formaldehyde and decay, and Angel can’t tell if it’s coming from the butler, or if it’s just soaked into the bones of the house.

“Do you have an appointment?” the butler asks, which seems like the kind of thing you should ask before inviting two vampires into the house. Well, one vampire and one ghost, but still.

“Let’s just say he sent us an invitation,” Spike says, in his best ‘if you tell me no I’m going to kill you and everyone you love’ voice.

“We’re - I’m - from Wolfram and Hart,” Angel says.

“I’m his date.”

Angel considers denying it, but they should probably present a united front, since they’re both here, so he settles for just rolling his eyes.

“Mr. Hainsley is with a customer at the moment,” the butler says. “I’m afraid he does not suffer interruption lightly.”

“I’m not particularly worried about his suffering. Go ahead and interrupt.”

A momentary expression of consternation passes over the butler’s face, the first actual sign of life Angel’s seen from him, before his face settles back into calm blankness. “As you wish. Please wait here, gentlemen.”

“Oh, so this is life among the power elite, is it?” Spike asks, when the butler has left. “It’s all so civilized. Hainsley grinds up one of your people into chum, and you drop by for tea.”

“I’m hoping to avoid a body count here.”

“Hmm.” Spike strolls across the atrium, and sticks his head through one of the doors. “Oh, no worries. Looks like this Hainsley keeps one on hand.”

“What are you...” Against his better judgment he follows Spike, and pulls open the door.

The room on the other side is a parlour. The furniture is a mix of different eras, but nothing more recent than 1920, so far as Angel can tell from a glance. He’s not really paying attention to the furnishings.

Arrayed around the room, posed to look like a party has been frozen in time, are corpses.

Their skin is waxy, and from the smell of the room, there’s as much formaldehyde as there is magic keeping them from rotting. He wonders who dressed them, and how, and then decides he never ever wants the answer to that. If Hainsley’s as powerful as he’s beginning to suspect, it’s possible they dressed themselves.

Spike leans in close to the face of one of the women, and pulls a revolted expression. “Man likes to play with dollies.”

“This isn’t for him,” Angel says. “It’s a showroom.”

“I don’t know,” Spike says. He reaches as if to poke the corpse in the forehead, but his finger passes through her - it - as though it was made of air. “Maybe the bastard’s just lonely. Throws himself a surprise party every night. Picks out one of these painted pigeons and shows her a good time, if you know what I mean.” Angel can’t keep from pulling a face, even though he knows Spike’s just trying to get a rise out of him. “What? I’m sure they don’t mind.”

“I mind.”

Spike looks honestly surprised. “Why? They’re not like me and you. Dead means dead, to them. Nice and clean. All this-“ his gesture takes in the room “-is so much meat. There’s no one home. Almost enough to make a fellow jealous, that. One death, nice and clean, and it’s all over. None of this hanging around.”

“I still mind.” He doesn’t like to see the dead disrespected. He’d done enough of that himself, before he got his soul back.

The look Spike gives him is strange, almost... almost fond, which can’t be right. They might be family, but they’ve never been friends.

Angel’s almost relieved to see the butler return, except that he says, “Mr. Hainsley has asked that I send you back to Wolfram & Hart, gentlemen,” and pulls a cleaver out of his jacket.

Spike laughs, the bastard. “Looks like it’s buckets for you, Daddy.”

Angel grabs blindly for the nearest thing he can use as a weapon, and ends up with a teaspoon, which wouldn’t have been his first choice, but any port in a storm.

It turns out to be surprisingly well balanced. It doesn’t quite fly straight, when he throws it, but it still embeds itself in the butler’s skull, just a little off center.

“A spoon?” Spike asks, incredulous, while the butler gropes for the end of it. “Is that really...” The butler pulls the spoon out, and Spike and Angel watch as he examines it, and then, so stiffly it looks like a cartoon, collapses forward. “Damn, I thought he was going to keep going. Disappointing, really.”

“I know you can’t help me, but could you maybe not root for the other team?”

“You know me better than that. I’ll root for anyone with half a chance of taking you down a peg.”

Angel tells himself he doesn’t feel hurt. Just because they’d been getting along, that doesn’t actually mean anything. They’re still the same Spike and Angel they’ve always been, and they’ve never gotten along before, so why should now be any different.

Why should now be the moment he cares?

“What is your problem?”

“You are!” Spike says, throwing his hands up like it’s the most ridiculous question he’s ever been asked. “You’re my problem, you’re always my problem! You didn’t even ask for your soul, and here you are, king of the fucking castle, all the comfort and power and fancy cars your shrivelled little heart could want!

“Meanwhile, I actually chose my redemption, I worked for it, and then I throw myself on the proverbial bloody grenade out of the actual goodness of my actual heart, and what do I get? Less peace than a necromancer’s bloody sex dolls, that’s what. It’s not fair!”

“Fair? You want to talk to me about fair? You keep telling me you asked for your soul, well I didn’t! I had it forced on me, and it almost fucking killed me. I have spent a century trying to come to terms with everything I did, meanwhile you spend what, two weeks fucking your boyfriend and feeling sorry for yourself, and somehow you’re just fine? You might not have been as big and as bad as me, but you were a monster, and yet somehow it’s been a year and you’re walking around like it doesn’t even fucking hurt. How is that fair?!”

“Don’t talk about shit you don’t understand, granddad. You think just because I’m not wallowing in pity I’m fine, you think it didn’t hurt, you think... Are you getting blurry or is it-“

He vanishes, pops out of existence like he was never there, and Angel probably shouldn’t be relieved, but he doesn’t think he’d have wanted to hear what Spike said next.

He hadn’t meant to say any of that stuff, hadn’t even known he’d been thinking of it, but now it’s out in the open, he can’t deny it. It had taken him years to get back on his feet, years before he stopped talking to people that weren’t there and jumping at shadows, but Spike seems... normal. Alright, not normal, the Spike he remembers would never have defended Harmony or admitted to having a boyfriend, but sane. Saner than Angel had felt for decades.

Thinking about it hurts, but the nice thing about that is, there’s someone real close by for him to take it out on.

Kicking in the door of Hainsley’s workroom is unnecessary, but satisfying. He’s in the mood to break things tonight.

“Come in, it’s open,” Hainsley says, with, Angel has to admit, impressive aplomb. “Well, well, didn’t know it was the head cheese himself. I thought for sure you were another lackey. You should show more respect.”

The woman on the... altar seems too fanciful for such a businesslike set up, but workbench doesn’t really capture the horror of the situation - sits up. “Oh, uh, I can see you guys have some business going on. Don’t wanna get in your way. I’ll let myself out.”

Angel grabs her as she tries to pass him. Up close she smells of sulphur, strong enough to overpower even the stink of death, and her eyes flash red when she realises she’s trapped. He’s sure there’s nothing living in that body now, not in any of the ways that matter, but he still can’t bring himself to be too rough when he punches her out.

“So how much do you charge, exactly? For installing the average demon in a human body?”

Hainsley smiles. “Believe me, friend, the average demon can’t afford it.”

“I’m not your friend, and I’m cutting off your supply. As of now your body shop is—”

It feels like... like nothing Angels’ ever felt before, like he’s being restrained but from the inside out, all his muscles locked up tight, nothing he can do to fight it.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Hainsley demands. He twists his hand, and a bolt of pure agony shoots through Angel’s chest, the kind of pain he hasn’t felt since he was in Hell. The kind of pain that drowns out everything else. “I eat the dead for breakfast, son. And you’re just another plate of bacon and eggs.”

Something behind Angel distracts him, and the pain finally begins to ease, enough that Angel can at least think, even if there’s still nothing he can do to fight. “A ghost, huh? You brought a ghost as your backup, vampire?”

“Oh, I’m not here to back him up,” Spike says, walking into Angel’s peripheral vision. “I just haunt the bastard.”

“Stay out of this, Spike.”

“Oh, stick it. You go ahead, wiz. Do what you want.”

“What I want is to turn him inside out, like a shirt,” Hainsley says, conversationally. He meets Angel’s eyes, and grins. “I could dust you right now, boy. Wouldn’t even need a stake.”

For a moment Angel is actually afraid, hanging there, no way to know if Hainsley’s actually going to follow through or not, and then all at once the pressure eases, and Angel stumbles as control is suddenly returned to him.

“Sadly, that would be too big an insult for the senior partners to overlook. Seems that they’ve got plans for you.”

He’s honestly proud of himself for how even his voice is when he says, “I’ve got plans of my own.” Gunn is in his speed dial, number 4, and he’s been waiting for Angel’s call. “Do it.”

“And what was that? Just call in an air strike?”

“I just froze all your bank accounts, terminated your paper assets, and turned your books over to a very motivated contact we have at the IRS,” Angel says, and God the look on Hainsley’s face is satisfying. It’s almost as good as actual violence. “5 minutes from now, you’ll have nothing but this house. 10 minutes from now, that’ll go into foreclosure.”

“You can’t do that!”

Angel grins. “I’ll let myself out, shall I?”

“It’s not legal! You think you can get away with that? I’ll sue you to hell!”

“Good luck with that. We’re your lawyers.”

Spike following him out slightly ruins the drama of his exit line, but then Hainsley yells, “this isn’t over, vampire!” and he decides that maybe it’s not so ruined as all that.

And then, of course, Spike has to go and open his mouth.

“That’s how you’re gonna fight the forces of evil now; by calling the revenue on them?!”

“Whatever works.”

“Hello, Mr Tax-Man? Will you fight my battles for me? And while you’re at it, will you wipe my fucking-“

He vanishes again, and this time Angel doesn’t feel conflicted about it in the least. Hopefully he’ll be able to make the whole drive home in peace.

“Oh, you’re back.” Fred sounds surprised, and Angel wonders why she and Wes had been coming to his office if they thought he was still out.

Does him being the boss mean his office is more or less bugged than theirs?

“Hainsley out of business?” Wes asks, taking the seat next to Gunn.

“Yeah, for the time being.”

“So he’s not going away?” Fred looks worried, which always makes him want to do something ridiculous like pledge to defend her from all harm.

He can’t, and she’d laugh at him if he tried, or think it was romantic, which would be even worse.

“Well, I think ‘this isn’t over yet, vampire’ may be the tip-off. Look, guys, can we get back to my, uh, spiritual crisis?”

“Spike.”

“He popped out on me at Hainsley’s place. But we all know that he’ll be back and back and back, and I really don’t want that happening again, so explain to me how we’re going to get him out of here.”

“Angel...” Fred has the look of someone about to deliver terrible news. “He can’t get out of here.”

“Please don’t tell me that.”

“OK, then Wesley, you tell him.”

Wes sighs. “I’ve had my entire department doing thorough research on the amulet. There’s not much. Not in the way of releasing Spike from it, anyway. At least not in the conventional sense.”

“And what’s the unconventional sense?”

“We... lay him to rest.”

Angel had known it was coming, deep down, but the words still take him aback. Maybe it’s Wesley’s polite idiom. Spike is one of the least restful people Angel has ever met, and he doesn’t even mean that as a criticism. He’s just... interested in the world, always got some scheme or other, always got something driving him.

He thinks he’d have been less shocked if Wesley had just said they were going to murder him.

“It’s what we’d do in any other haunting, isn’t it?” Wes asks, his voice bizarrely gentle. “An... exorcism, of sorts.”

“We’re talking about killing him,” Fred says. She sounds distressed, because she has the biggest heart of anyone Angel knows, and there’s room in it even for Spike. “I mean, I know he’s already dead, but... he’d be gone-dead. Forever. It just doesn’t seem right.”

“I agree,” Wesley says, with a sigh. “But neither is leaving him here, trapped between realms, with no control over his fate, not able to touch anything, affect anything. Unable to fight. Letting him cross over seems the most merciful thing.”

“Right, mercy.” Angel feels like he should probably be pleased. He’d asked for a permanent solution, after all. But a part of him was already getting used to having his shadow back. “Just... tell me how we do it.”

“The amulet’s protected, invulnerable, but we think that the magic that’s protecting it will fail if you take it to hallowed ground.”

“Like a church?” Gunn asks.

“Or cemetery, yes. It has to be taken there and destroyed.”

“Destroyed how?”

“Without the magic, hitting it with a rock would probably do the trick. The amulet itself isn’t made of any special material, it’s just the vessel for the magic.”

Gunn looks at him, and it can be easy to forget, especially when half the words that come out of his mouth where put there by the senior partners, just how sharp he can be. How good he’s always been at detecting Angel’s bullshit. “So, what do you think?”

He can’t make that choice. Not now, not with... He needs space. “I think I want to sleep on it.”

He doesn’t see Spike again until he’s in bed, failing to sleep because he’s had two-hundred and fifty years to get used to being nocturnal and a week to adjust to office hours.

He prefers to sleep naked, since night-shirts went the way of the dinosaur, but the apartment at the top of W&H doesn’t feel like home, yet, and wearing pyjama pants helps ease a little of his anxiety. At least if anyone breaks in, he won’t have to fight them in the nude.

And at least when Spike steps out of the shadows by the window and says, “hello, Daddy,” he doesn’t have to worry about whether Spike is looking at his dick.

Which isn’t a lot of comfort, as these things go, but it’s still infinitely better than the alternative.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” He’d done it occasionally, when the family were still together, but only if Dru was with them. It was always her pet-name for him, not William’s.

“Makes you squirm. Makes everyone who hears it ask all the questions you were hoping no one ever would about your past.”

“It’s your past too.”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m out and proud, these days. And I’m dating a guy who’s physically, if not temporally, thirty years older’n me. They were going to ask the question anyway.”

“And is he?” Angel’s not sure how he feels about some stranger being Spike’s... whatever the fuck they used to be.

“Who, John? He’s barely more of a dom than I am. Surprisingly sadistic if you catch him in the right mood, though. And he’s sure as shit not my sugar-daddy, because he was born broke and he’ll die broke, and in between all his mates are the ones footing the bill.”

He sounds so... fond isn’t strong enough, but Angel’s not sure he’s ready to use anything more accurate. Whoever this John is, Spike’s almost as gone for him as he was for Dru.

Certainly more gone than he’s ever been for Angel.

“Doesn’t sound like much of a catch.”

Spike laughs. “To you, maybe.”

“Well, he doesn’t treat you, you don’t trust him enough to tell him you’re a ghost, and he doesn’t even fuck you right-“ Angel doesn’t clap a hand over his own mouth, because that would only draw even more attention to what he’d just said, but he does bite back the words, clenches his jaw to stop any more escaping.

He’s not even attracted to Spike. He’s never been attracted to any man, not the way he has been to women. Spike had been a convenient hole, and now really isn’t the moment to think about how saying shit like that was always a sure-fire way to drive Spike out of his head on shame and lust. They’d been family, once upon a time, but they hadn’t been lovers, not really.

So why does the idea of another man touching Spike bother him so much more than if it had been a woman?

“Like you did, you mean?” Spike asks, that hard note in his voice that always means trouble. “Did you really think you fucked me so good I’d never want any other man?”

Angel’s never wanted any other man, but if he says that, he might as well just throw himself out of his big fancy windows and have done with it. “No.”

“Oh my God, you did. That’s adorable. Does this mean you’re admitting to Angelus being the same person as you?”

“I never denied it.”

“Never denied it my arse. You even use different names, you great wazzock, did you really think no one was going to notice?” Spike sits down on the edge of Angel’s bed, and sighs. “I didn’t come here to fix your budding mental health problems, or to argue about how good a lay you were.”

“Well I hope you’re not here to fight, because your fangs currently pass through solid objects, remember?”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Spike smiles at him, small and tired and bitterly amused. “I know what you look like when you’re thinking about hurting me, remember? The Kalderash couldn’t change that.

“No. I... I heard your little conference about me.”

Angel freezes, all the denials dying on his tongue. “How much?”

“Enough.”

“Look, Spike-“

“That necromancer tried to make a deal with me.”

“Wait, what?!”

“After you left. Said he could bring me back - body and soul - if I used our close personal relationship to double-cross you.”

He’d known Hainsley was a snake. He hadn’t thought he was a worm. “He’s trying to pimp you out?”

That actually makes Spike laugh, and it still sounds bitter, but maybe a bit less than he had before. “I knew you still wanted in my knickers. No, I don’t think he meant sex, although fucking someone you couldn’t even touch sounds right up your masochistic alley.”

Angel is not the masochist in the room, but he’s trying to steer the conversation away from their sexual history, not straight towards it. “So what did you say?”

“You see, right there, that’s the problem. You having to ask me that. I don’t play for that side any more, or haven’t you heard? Besides... even if Mr. Death could do what he promised, I trust him about as much as you trust me.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Trust, for once in your stupid self-centred life. I want you to trust me, the way you never did when we were actually family.”

Angel wasn’t aware they’d ever stopped being family, and the implication makes something in his chest pull tight and painful. It’s the same feeling he’s had every time Darla betrays him, every time Dru proves herself to still be the vicious blood-soaked monster he’d made her. The kind of deeply intimate pain only kin can cause you.

“Tell me your plan.”

“Sure you want to do this?” Angel asks, and he means more than just taking down Hainsley. This, the two of them working together, Spike cutting off a possible avenue for resurrection in the name of the greater good, it feels big, somehow. More momentous than a worm like Hainsley deserves.

“What, you think I could really stand hanging out with you and your lot, now and forever? Being your wisecracking ghost sidekick? Not on your nelly. Come on. You know as well as I do, it’s for the best.”

Carefully, closer to reverentially than he’s entirely comfortable with, Angel sets the amulet down on top of a tomb, and picks up a chunk of white marble from the edge of one of the tackier graves.

“I’m glad it’s you, though,” Spike says suddenly, and Angel nearly drops the damn thing. He really really hates this new emotional openness Spike’s got going on. He feels strongly that emotions exist to be bottled up, somewhere deep inside you, and let out only under the direst of circumstances, which frankly, pretending to be suicidal in order to lure in an evil wizard, doesn’t qualify as. “I’m glad it’s you, finally doing me in. Feels right, you being my grandsire and all.” He grins, like he knows exactly how uncomfortable he’s making Angel. “Circle of death, and all that.”

“Good-bye, Spike.”

Spike blows him a kiss, the bastard. “See you around, Daddy.”

Angel hefts the stone in his hand, and for a moment, thinks very seriously about doing it for real. One hard blow, and he’d never have to hear Spike call him that ever again.

He wouldn’t actually have done it, he knows he wouldn’t, but it doesn’t even matter. The minute he begins to lower the rock, he feels that tight feeling he knows now is Hainsley’s control, and his hand jerks back, the rock hitting him in the chin.

“I think you missed,” Spike says, and Angel hopes Hainsley is either very arrogant or very stupid, because it’s hard to miss the amusement in Spike’s tone.

Resignedly, Angel raises the rock again.

This time, it hits him in the forehead, and then before he can make a third attempt, he feels Hainsley’s control snap tight around his entire body, lifting him up off the ground as the necromancer steps dramatically out of the shadows.

“And the dead shall rise! Just ‘cause I say so.”

Angel has to make this look good, so he struggles as best as he can, growls out Hainsley’s name in his most intimidating tone of voice.

“Vampires,” Hainsley says smugly, “should think twice before messing with a man who wields power over all things lifeless, if you ask my advice.”

Spike slouches, sticking his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and it takes Angel a second to remember that it doesn’t mean what he’s used to that pose meaning; Spike can’t be reaching for a weapon, because he’s still incorporeal. “Took your sweet time stepping in, Hainsley. I came this close to getting a one-way to the great beyond.”

“Relax, son. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you. You’re the linchpin of my plan.”

“Our plan. And you’d damn well better hold up your end of it. I’m not gonna be used by you.”

“Yes, you are. But afterwards, I’ll give you your reward, just as you asked. I’ll put you back in the driver’s seat of your afterlife. Control. That’s all anyone really wants, isn’t it?”

Spike grins, the way he does when he’s thinking of a dirty joke. “Really depends on the person, in my experience.”

He comes too strapped to the table, or altar, or whatever it’s called, in Hainsley’s work room.

He tries to sit up, but he’s woozy, and Hainsley pushes him back down with barely any effort. “No, don’t get up. You’ve had a rough day. And you know, so have I, thanks to you.”

“Yours is about to get a hell of a lot worse.”

“I don’t think so. Me necromancer. You...dead. You can’t lay a finger on me.”

“Maybe not. But what do you think the senior partners are going to do to you when I turn up missing?”

“Oh, you’re not going to be missing. You’re going to show up to work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow morning, when you’ll reverse the seizure of my personal assets and reinstate the Internment Acquisitions Department.”

“And why would I do that?”

Spike, for all his many many faults, knows a good entrance line when he hears one. “Not you. Me. Wearing your body.”

This is the point that anyone who’d actually met Spike would know this was a set up. Angel is tied up, apparently helpless, with Spike preparing to enter his body, and Spike hasn’t even made a sex joke about it. Fortunately, Hainsley is both a stranger and an idiot.

“And to think I didn’t trust you.”

“Come on, Angel. What choice did I have? Bloody exorcism? Letting you and yours banish me to oblivion? No, thanks. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz here’s gonna give me my body back... after I take yours for a test drive, fix his little cash flow problem. And here’s the kicker: I go in, and you go pfft! Off to never-never-come-back land. And then yours very truly will be running the show. Your cars, your fancy digs, everything—everyone—I deserve will be mine.” He grins at Angel, upside down. “Maybe I’ll have a go with that Fred. She looks like a right little goer, and she seems to really look up to you.”

He knows it’s fake, knows that this new weird ensoulled version of Spike wouldn’t talk about her like that even if he was being serious, but he still has to fight to keep his face human. “Shut up!”

“You know what? You’re right. Enough talk. Let’s do this, already. I’m itching to get... physical.” He winks at Angel, because even playing a part he’s still Spike, and Angel hopes Hainsley will assume his groan is from despair, rather than exasperation.

“I’ve never installed anyone in a conscious dead body before,” Hainsley says, rubbing his hands together. “I imagine this is going to be extremely painful.”

“Things worth doing generally are,” Spike says, just a little too honest.

Hainsley places a hand on Angel’s chest, and the other approximately where Spike’s chest would be, if he had a body. He throws his head back, a sickly orange light wreathing him, and then his hand begins to sink into Angel’s body, which might actually be one of the most unpleasant things that’s ever happened to him.

He can’t feel it, beyond a sort of distant heat, but it still feels like a violation.

Spike begins to glow as well, and then he vanishes, the light that had been surrounding him being absorbed into Hainsley.

It takes Hainsley a minute to realise what’s happening, but when he does he rears back, the hand not inside Angel’s body flailing. “What? What are you doing?”

“Spike, do you mind?”

Spike pulls Hainsley’s hand out of Angel’s body, moving slowly enough that he guesses Hainsley is fighting him every step of the way.

Angel breathes a sigh of relief, and steps off the table. Kicking Hainsley across the room is one of the most satisfying things he’s ever done.

He was hoping Spike could turn off Hainsley’s powers completely, but he feels that tightness and finds his body is frozen, unmoving. “Think you’re clever, eh? But... Ah! No. Your ghost can’t control me for long. I hold the power. I rule the dead!”

He twists his hand, and Angel braces himself for pain, but nothing happens. Instead, he feels Hainsley’s power shed off him.

“Not today.”

Hainsley turns out to be a surprisingly effective combatant, even without his powers, and even manages to get a couple of good hits in. Angel throws him bodily against the edge of the altar, and he hits it with a sickening crunch, but he’s angry enough that he gets back up, and keeps coming for Angel.

Angel ducks a punch aimed at his face, takes one to the gut, and finally manages to get his hands on one of the scalpels lying on a side table.

He steps back out of Hainsley’s reach and throws it, and this time the weapon flies perfectly, embedding itself in Hainsley’s throat.

There’s a noise like rushing wind, and Spike reappears, floating above Hainsley’s fallen body. “Oh bollocks. I was just getting warmed up.”

“That was you hitting me?”

“The last bit, yeah. Hainsley’s been dead since he hit the table.” Angel frowns at him, and he assumes the ‘what did I do’ expression unique to younger siblings everywhere. “Oh, come on. Had to get a few licks in, didn’t I?”

“We were supposed to be working together.”

“And we did! Made a pretty decent team, even.” He moves to prod at Hainsley’s body with his boot, but it passes right through the corpse. “You going to eat that? He’s more human than not.”

“I don’t drink human blood, Spike.”

“Don’t see why not, when it’s going begging. Well, each to their own I suppose.” He meets Angel’s eyes, and grins. “Wait till I tell your little friends you got fisted by a wizard.”

It’s stupid, and childish, and Angel doesn’t actually want to fight right now, so he goes for the answer he knows will make Spike laugh. “Like you’ve never tried it.”

Sure enough, Spike sniggers. “Well, not recently. I’ve been dead three months.”