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Angel had gotten out of the habit of tasting the blood he consumed; not much to savor in a pint of pig. And there were a lot of things he'd forgotten in a century, but the taste of Spike's blood was not among them.

He stole a sideways glance at the blond. Spike sat huddled into himself, looking naked as he always did without his duster, his head still bowed. His clothes and bare arms were covered with patches of purple-black demon blood, and the drying tear-tracks left streaks down his face. The bites had mostly clotted, but there were dried rivulets of blood all down Spike's neck and back, and one fang-puncture was still seeping. The smell would have been making Angel crazy, except that he was still rolling a mouthful of that same blood over his tongue, like a wine connoisseur sampling a fine vintage.

Contrary to all expectation, this particular bottle was swill. Angel had had better blood from a three-days corpse. He had tasted Spike in a thousand humors, rage and fear and hunger and sorrow and lust and pain, any or all of them singing in his blood, but he'd never tasted anything like this. He'd never tasted Spike and gotten a mouthful of ashes, like he was already dust and just hadn't fallen apart yet.

But sweet or bitter, running wild or frozen still, Spike was blood of Angel's blood, and clearly, now was not the time to shirk that uncomfortable responsibility.

He pulled up near a side entrance to the Hyperion, and got out of the car, reaching into the backseat to pull out Spike's duster. Spike followed suit, and was standing beside the car when Angel straightened up. The blond still didn't raise his head, and Angel was made uncomfortably aware of how small he was, in the absence of his usual ten feet of attitude. *God, I broke him*.

Angel circled around the car, and laid his hand lightly on a clean spot on Spike's shoulder, turning him toward the door. "Why don't you go in here, spare everybody thinking you're hurt when they see you. My rooms are on the second floor. Go in there and take a shower, and I'll tell everyone we're back."

Spike looked up at him without actually raising his head, a familiar cautious flick of the eyes that made him want to scream that it wasn't like that anymore, except that there were the bites and a half-pint of Spike's blood outside his body to say otherwise. "Don't let Dawn worry about me, right?"

Angel nodded, and Spike took his duster in hand and headed inside. Angel checked that he had his company face on, licked his teeth again, and turned toward the lobby entrance.

Cordelia, Wesley, Fred and Gunn were sitting on the couches, trying not to be obviously waiting for him to get back; Dawn was nowhere to be seen. As he crossed the room, his "Where–-?" collided with Cordelia's. He nodded, and she went first.

"Dawn's upstairs, getting ready for bed, nothing wrong except..." She winced a little at her choice of words. "She was just tired." Angel nodded, and Cordelia waited for a moment, then said, "Angel? What's the deal with Spike? Where is he?"

Angel swept a glance over the others, but they were all watching him with the same polite expression of uncertainty, and, he suspected, concealed weapons. Just in case. "Spike's upstairs, getting cleaned up. Messy kill." Angel paused again, but continued without prompting this time. "I don't know whether it's clear to all of you from talking to Dawn, but she and Spike seem to be a package deal. He'll stay as long as she does, probably whenever she does, and any time you're unkind to Spike, you're unkind to Dawn, so keep that in mind."

Fred, Gunn, and Wesley were taking that with various degrees of aplomb, but Cordelia looked a little horrified. Angel sighed. "I can't tell you not to hate him, if that's how you feel, but don't hate him for my sake. I'm not the wronged innocent here. And I don't hate him."

"Fine," Cordelia said softly, "great. You don't hate him. You didn't hate Darla, either, to start with."

Yeah, he'd had that one coming. He sucked in a breath, and thought about the way Spike looked at Dawn, and went out on a limb. "He wants to change. It's not just the chip, he's out there fighting the good fight, without a soul, without the Powers telling him to, because he wants to. He's helping Dawn because he wants to. And if he wants to change, I can't be the one who turns him away."

And they were nodding, even Cordelia, like they bought it. He wondered what Spike would say, and whether he'd dare to say anything at all.

Spike took his boots off in the hallway, then cautiously opened the door to his sire's rooms. The smell of the space engulfed him as he stepped inside, and he let himself feel a little pleasure at being in a place where everything belonged to Angel. Including, apparently, himself. A moment's internal debate over the merits of tidiness versus the sin of presumption had him hanging his duster on an empty hook by the door. Tidiness would probably carry more weight, and Angel had handed him the coat and sent him here, so hanging it up would probably be acceptable.

After a brief glance around to familiarize himself, he headed directly to the bathroom; Angel hadn't sent him up to admire the decor. He turned on the shower and held his boots under the spray while he waited for it to warm up, rinsing them clean of demon blood. When they were as clean as they were going to get, he set them on the corner of the bath mat where no one would trip over them and they wouldn't make a puddle on the tile.

The water was nice and hot, just the way he liked it, and Spike wondered, not for the first time, whether his hot showers would seem lukewarm to a human, or unbearably hot, whether his sense of temperature had become completely unreliable in the past hundred twenty years. It was like wondering what he looked like, and what his voice really sounded like outside his head. After a moment he realized he was just standing there with one hand in the shower, shook his head and stepped in.

He stood facing the spigot, working quickly to scrub the demon blood off his skin, as he wasn't sure how it might react to water, and didn't want to find out. With his arms mostly clean, he looked down at his bespattered, and now warmly damp and blood-smelling, clothes. He frowned, noticing a small hole in the sleeve of his t-shirt that he'd never seen before. When he touched it, it widened, and at the same moment a half-dozen other holes appeared on his shirt, and more on his jeans. Spike bit back a pointless stream of obscenities and pulled the shirt off over his head, and held it directly under the water as he tried to see what was happening, but the greater wetness sped up whatever the demon blood was doing, and the shirt was shortly just a handful of cotton scraps. While he was distracted, his jeans had undergone a similar process; the cloth was so weakened that it pulled off in his hands, one leg sliding down, detached, to puddle around his foot. Spike tossed the lot into the far end of the tub, mustering up only enough energy to mutter, "Bloody stupid sodding demon," before stepping fully under the water, finally naked.

The wounds on the back of his neck burned as the spray pounded directly onto the broken skin. The water, sliding down his back to swirl around his feet and into the drain, ran an impressively bright red at first. When there was only the faintest thread of blood in the water and the sting of the spray had faded into a sort of tingling numbness, Spike reached back and scrubbed his fingers over the bites, until the blood ran bright again. But the red just ran down the drain, and didn't tell him any more this time than it had done before, and it was mostly gone again in a couple of minutes.

Time to wash, like he'd been told, and Spike stared stupidly at the assortment of bath products. He tried to remember the last time he'd taken a proper shower like this, with all the fixings, though his body seemed more curious about the last time he'd had a good day's sleep. Not that he didn't know the answer to that question: seventeen broken and dream-filled days, plus the long blur of fear and fighting before that, before the end of the world came and went and left him behind with his promises.

Spike reached out and took the shampoo, turned it around to read the instructions. Very important to follow instructions. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. He poured shampoo into his hand, flipped the cap back on, and started lathering. He didn't wonder about why it should be necessary to repeat, if the stuff was doing its job, just like he didn't wonder about other things. Like the bite he couldn't see on the back of his neck, and what it meant. Like the fact that his sire, all soft-voiced, had sent him up here to shower, knowing he'd know which room without being told. Like the way he'd driven back, Spike's blood in his mouth and making a full and complete stop at every sign, faces slipping back and forth under the streetlights. It was Angel the soul-boy who had claimed him, that much was clear, but what it meant was anyone's guess.

So Spike didn't think about it, just lathered his hair, thoroughly, and stared at the tile. He ducked his head under the water, to rinse, and his head shot up almost instantly. "Bloody motherfucking c–-aagh." Shampoo suds, rinsing over broken flesh, burned like undiluted holiness. When he tossed his head back, a dollop of lather landed on one eye, and as he tried to bat it away, he rubbed it in. That stung nearly as badly, and Spike bit off further curses; unproductive, and Angel might hear, and he didn't think about why, but he thought that would be bad. He forced himself to be quiet and still, cracking his eye open to let the clean water run over it, and maneuvering around to finish rinsing the shampoo from his hair. When that was done, he elected to skip the 'repeat' part, and after a moment's wary consideration, decided not to condition for best results, either. Instead he reached out for the bar of soap, but as he set his fingers on it, his body reminded him that he'd skipped a step. Spike stared down balefully at his dick, and he didn't have to wonder how many days it had been. Not bloody likely, he thought, tired and tired, but of course his body had other ideas.

Dawn wasn't exactly sure of it, but she thought that her room in the hotel counted as a public space, no invitation required for a vamp to enter. Still, when somebody knocked on her door after she'd crawled into bed, she got up and went to see who it was before telling them to come in.

Angel stood in the hallway, looking tired. Dawn tried not to be obvious about looking, but Spike wasn't anywhere around. She opened the door the rest of the way, and stepped back. "Come on in."

She went and got back into bed–-her feet were cold–-and Angel followed, sitting down by her feet. "Spike's fine," he said, when they were both settled, and she couldn't help smiling in relief. "He killed the demon, but he was all covered in its blood and needed to clean up."

"Oh. That's good."

Angel smiled for just a second, like it was too much work to hold the expression, and settled his hand on her blanket-covered foot. "It's okay, Dawn. You don't have to pretend that you don't care if Spike lives or dies."

Dawn looked down, shifting awkwardly. "I wasn't..."

"I know," he said softly. "I'm sorry about that, in the lobby. I just wasn't expecting to see him again. I know you and Spike are close, and I'm not going to spend the weekend being a jerk about it. It's okay."

Dawn looked up at him carefully, but he seemed sincere. "So, you're sure you can be around each other and *not* fight? Did you make up over demon-slaying?"

"Uh," Angel looked suddenly faintly nervous, and his mouth moved oddly, like he was licking the inside of his lips. "We didn't really talk, but I think we understand each other. No more fighting, I promise."

"Oh." Oh. Ohmigod. She tried not to stare at Angel's mouth, looking back down at her hands on the bedspread. Angel? And Spike? And not really talking? Ohhh. "That's cool. I'm glad that you... Um... Understand each other."

When she risked another look, Angel was almost smiling. Not like Buffy used to smile when she was talking about him, or thinking about him, or doodling his name in her notebooks, but something like it, faraway and confused but a little bit happy. "Me too," he said finally, while Dawn looked down at her hands again, because Buffy was never going to smile like that again, and she didn't want Angel to see the tears, because she was glad, that he and Spike were not-really-talking, and she didn't want him to be sitting here trying to comfort her when he could be going and finding Spike and making up some more. She was tired of crying in front of everyone, tired of being out of control like this.

He sensed it, though, of course. Vampire, he must have been able to smell the tears or hear the change in her breathing. He hugged her without saying a word, and tucked her in, brushing his thumb across her cheek where the tears hadn't spilled yet.

He switched off the light, and hesitated in the doorway. "I'm just around the corner, if you need anything. Just call, I'll hear you."

She nodded, because she knew he would see, even in the dark, and when he closed the door behind him she turned her face into her pillow and sobbed.

Angel closed the door behind him, trading the muffled sound of Dawn's grief for the sound of Spike in the shower; he made out a few curses, abruptly bitten off. Unbidden, a small smile worked its way onto his face.

He went on listening as he took off his shoes and socks, unbuttoned his shirt, and wandered around the room, vaguely bathroom-ward. He needed to brush his teeth. Spike was quiet now, and Angel listened to the sound of water falling in the intermittent way that meant someone was moving around under the spray. He had his hand on the door when he heard it, barely detectable under the sound of water. Spike was breathing.

It wasn't an enormously unusual occurrence; Spike, like Angel himself, tended to breathe under stress. Angel was a little startled by how badly he wanted to burst through the door and fix whatever it was that was upsetting Spike, soothe his pain or comfort his fear.

Or stand very still and consider that Spike breathed during sex, too, and maybe Angel should just give him a few more minutes of privacy before wandering in there. But nothing could make him stop listening to his boy's breathing; Angel found himself on edge with the long-neglected drive to protect his own, and the soft sound was all wrong. So steady, so even and controlled, with none of the excited raggedness of sex or the hint of an animal whine, inaudible to human ears, that would signal pain or fear. He was just breathing, in and out and in and out, with no end in sight, as if he needed the air as a human would, as if he couldn't go on without it. Finally Angel couldn't bear it anymore and eased the door silently open, slipping inside and closing it again behind him.

Spike, never a master of such niceties, had neglected to pull the shower curtain shut, and Angel found himself catching an unnecessary breath as well. Spike stood with his back to Angel, pressed into the far corner of the shower, the water falling mostly on his back. His skin and hair were pale and shining, bright only in contrast to the whiteness of the tiles, and the red parentheses of his bite, bracketing the crudely carved A, stood out starkly on his otherwise perfect flesh. Spike's right arm was braced up against the wall, his head leaning on it, and he breathed evenly, the motion readily visible in the long tense lines of his back. His left hand was in front of him, down near his hip, but motionless.

Angel inhaled through his nose, studying Spike with every sense, and what he smelled, mostly, was his own shampoo. Despite the circumstances, something warm unfurled in his stomach, at the thought that Spike smelled like him right now. Then, blood, of course. Arousal was almost entirely lacking, and if there were tears they were lost in the stronger smells.

It was the shoulders that told the tale, finally, made Angel see the shameful futility of trying to get your rocks off when the object of your fantasies is lying dead and rotting in a hidden grave. The sense of betrayal when you realize that your body doesn't belong to you anymore, that some little blonde girl owns your dick even though she's never seen the damned thing, and now she's gone and there's just nothing to be done.

It wasn't a tale entirely unfamiliar to Angel, and the need to fix this, to help Spike, nearly choked him in its intensity. He considered, for half a second, getting undressed the rest of the way, but he couldn't stand there and look at Spike's shoulders shaking in slow motion for the amount of time it would take.

He crossed the space in one stride, stepped into the shower with the next. Spike startled when he registered Angel's presence, would have fallen, but Angel was right behind him. He locked his left arm around Spike's stomach, holding him close and still. Shower-wet, Spike felt warm as life in Angel's arms. Spike's breathing was all ragged now, mostly with fear and uncertainty. "Shh. Let me."

Spike's left hand returned, hesitantly, to rest over Angel's, and his right hand went back to the wall. Angel nodded, his forehead sliding against Spike's wet hair, where he would feel it, to let him know that was right, as he set his right hand on Spike's cock. A little shudder went through Spike at the contact, and Angel tightened the hand on his belly in response, pausing just a breath before beginning to stroke.

It was nothing fancy, one-handed, but what Spike liked hadn't changed, and he was rock hard and on the edge, had only just needed a little help. His breathing quickened, and Angel noticed that Spike's eyes were closed, and he wondered briefly what he was thinking about. Another pull, and Spike gasped, and his hips rocked helplessly, though he'd been holding himself still in Angel's grip. Angel lowered his head, and in time to his next stroke, flattened his tongue across the nape of Spike's neck, and licked straight up, across his mark, right up to the hairline. Spike arched back against him and stopped breathing altogether as he came, shuddering.

When he was still, and more or less steady on his feet, Angel said softly, in his ear, "Finish washing up, now," and stepped out of the shower. He glanced back, from the doorway, and Spike was leaning bonelessly against the wall, his whole body sagging against the tiles. As if he felt Angel's gaze, Spike straightened up and reached for the soap, and Angel stepped out and closed the door, heading for his dresser to change out of his wet clothes.

Spike stood on the bath mat, mostly dry and with a towel tucked around his hips. He had managed to use the towel he was currently wearing to mop up the worst of the puddles on the bathroom floor. His damp boots were safely out of the way, and he'd decided to refrain from agonizing about whether to leave them there–-tidiness versus presumption, again, with the added conflict of whether Angel would rather have the bathroom's impervious floor cluttered, or water dripping on the carpet of the larger room–-in favor of staring at what remained of his clothes. The t-shirt had vanished entirely, and of his jeans there remained a few threads and a handful of hardware: rivets, button, zipper, and the key to the motorcycle. Spike hadn't packed anything for this impromptu road trip, which meant he now had nothing to wear but his duster. He was entirely at Angel's mercy, and the skin on his back crawled at the thought of the last time he'd had to go to his sire and explain how he'd ruined his clothes.

And all of this agony just saved him from thinking about what had happened in the shower, and what the hell that was supposed to mean. That helping hand wasn't Angelus' style, but then if he'd considered it at all before this, he would have expected the soulboy to steer clear of sex entirely.

Spike ran one hand through his hair, scowling at his own idiocy. He was thinking again, and that was where he was going wrong. He wasn't supposed to think, he was supposed to follow instructions. Angel had told him to take a shower; a few minutes ago, before leaving the bathroom, Angel had told him to finish washing up. He had done those things. All else was not his business. It wouldn't keep his sire from doing exactly as he pleased with Spike, but that was the point. Nothing would.

Closing his hand around his pitiful handful of copper and steel, Spike opened the door and walked out of the bathroom.

Angel was sitting on the bed, wearing dark blue pajamas of some silky material. He had a big, leather-bound book in his lap, and Spike just had time to see him frowning intently at it before Angel looked up at him. After a moment of being stared at, keeping his gaze carefully cast so that he wasn't looking away but wasn't meeting his gaze directly, Spike stepped hesitantly forward, opening his hand again. "My clothes disintegrated. Water and that thing's blood don't mix, apparently."

Angel looked startled, but that didn't keep Spike from flashing on the possibility that he'd set this up, told him to attack that demon, told him to take a shower, for the amusement of this moment. The thought went away quickly, and meanwhile Angel was nodding. "I didn't think of that. Were they your lucky pants?"

Spike blinked, and debated trying to explain that none of his pants seemed particularly lucky, this year, but he said only, "No, nothing special."

Angel nodded again. "We'll see about getting you something else in the morning, then. In the meantime, there's a pair of pants on the dresser there."

Spike looked, and sure enough there was a pair of pajama bottoms, similar to the ones Angel was wearing but a deep blood red, folded on top of the dresser. He walked over and picked them up, shaking them out, buying himself a moment in which he didn't think about how he had to think about not thinking about this. His head was starting to hurt.

He turned away a little from Angel as he dropped his towel and stepped into the trousers. Time was he'd been a prodigy in the calculus of their bodies, when he could effortlessly figure from the tilt of his sire's brows how many degrees he ought to turn while changing in his presence, how much to shake his ass, what sort of sly remark would be most welcome. Now, he had no idea, and it was like being an idiot fledgling again, except that this time he knew exactly how much he didn't know.

The pants had a drawstring at the waist, and Spike hauled it in and tied it so that they wouldn't actually fall off his hips when he walked, just dangle enticingly. The hems puddled on the floor around his bare feet, nearly tripping him as he returned to the bathroom to hang up his towel, but he quickly mastered the ankle-flick required to keep them clear of his feet. When he was again standing by the dresser, hands at his sides, Angel was back to looking at the book, but this time it was the brooding frown rather than the trying-to-remember-what-the-squiggly-lines-mean frown. Spike cleared his throat. "I was just going to, uh, is Dawn...?"

Angel looked up sharply, but didn't appear to be actually displeased. "She just went to bed, but I doubt she's asleep yet. Her room's just around the corner."

Spike nodded, and when Angel returned his stare to his book he headed out of the room, listening for the sound of Dawn's heart beating somewhere nearby. He found it promptly, and then he could hear her breathing, too, and he felt a cold rush of panic when he realized she'd been crying, and was only just tailing off. He'd do anything for Dawn, but he dreaded the day when she needed to cry on his shoulder. So far, they'd simply ignored each other's crying jags, maintaining some semblance of dignity and the illusion of stiff upper lips all round. He suspected that this wouldn't always be the case, but even as he stood there, she was winding down; tonight was probably not the night. Spike shook himself into motion, walked up to her door and knocked softly. "Bite-size? It's me."

Rustle of covers as she wiped her face, sat up. "Come on in, Spike." He smiled a little, at the eternal thrill of being invited, and opened the door.

She was sitting up in bed, had turned on the bedside lamp just as he opened the door. Her hair was already a little tumbled, her eyes red but dry. Her pajama top said 'Princess' on it. She startled a little at the sight of him, and Spike glanced down at himself and realized that sufficiently dressed for Angel's company was not the same as sufficiently dressed for Dawn's. He felt suddenly awkward and stupid, and half-covered himself. "Spike," she said, her voice dry and a little amused, and that brought him abruptly back to reality. "It's cool."

He raised his head and smiled, suddenly sure again. He wasn't anybody's second in this room. Spike sat down facing her on the bed, and Dawn sat up a little more, leaning comfortably against her pillows. "I'm glad you're okay," she said, a little slowly. "I'm glad you're here." She didn't say I feel safe with you, but they both heard it anyway.

Spike gave her a medium-evil look. "I'm a bad, wicked man, Little Bit. I've done all kinds of horrible things to little girls like you."

That earned him a smile and both eyebrows. "Yeah? Wanna tell me about it?"

He rolled his eyes.

"Oh, come on, Spike. Angel's way too broody to tell stories, and I won't be able to sleep without one." She pouted, and that was all put-on, just trying to work him, but there was something in her eyes that wasn't. She needed him, needed to pretend that things were okay. Spike took a breath. She needed him, and he'd made a promise, and he'd do whatever Dawn needed.

Within reason. He couldn't be responsible for giving his girl nightmares, after all. "All right, then, you'll have your story. Lie down, now, get comfy."

She grinned triumphantly as she snuggled down into her pillows, and they shifted around so she could stretch her legs out. Spike made sure to stay facing her, feeling no desire to try to explain, or lie about, the marks on the back of his neck. He turned off the light, and sat in the dimness, tapping an absent counterpoint to her pulse on the night stand as he cast about for a suitable beginning.

"Southampton," he said softly, just when Dawn was about to goad him to get on with it. "1887. Me and Dru and Angelus and Darla were leaving for America. It was my first trip. Dru had been before, but most of her stories about places she'd been were about the stars and the fairies and that. We had to keep inside for the first part of the trip, because it was daytime, but night fell just as we were reaching Land's End. That's where England runs out, and the Channel turns into open sea. It was an amazing thing, to watch the land disappear and look around and see only darkness, water all around, and the stars."

He kept his voice low and steady, rocking ever so slightly so she'd feel the rhythm, and while he was still setting the scene, going on and on ad infinitum about wind and waves and stars and sky, Dawn's breathing evened out, and she was asleep.

Angel looked up when Spike came back into the room. He'd been gone just long enough for Angel to give up on worrying things over and go back to brushing up on K'rathi poetics.

Spike closed the door behind him and then just stood there, head slightly bowed, eyes in Angel's direction but not raised enough to be construed as a challenge. He looked small, in Angel's clothes, and thin, and tired, and Angel knew Spike had no more idea what they were doing here than he did, but he knew too that Spike needed him, needed this, desperately. Nothing else would have driven him to lower his head, to expose the nape and submit, and Angel couldn't let him down, couldn't ask for a timeout to negotiate the rules.

Still, he could refrain from letting him stand in the door like that. He pushed back the covers and patted the sheet beside him, and Spike moved, graceful and quick but somehow not hurrying, to the bed. He crawled across, to the spot Angel had indicated, and with a quick confirming glance, curled up beside him. Angel was leaning against the pillow, so it wasn't really in a position for Spike to lay his head on it. He was flat on the mattress in the fetal position, drawn into an impossibly small curve, facing toward Angel. Angel shifted a little, so that the top of Spike's head was against his hip, and laid one hand on the damp silkiness of his hair. He ruffled it absently, and the familiar smell of his shampoo drifted up to him. Spike closed his eyes when Angel touched him, and a moment later he was asleep.

Angel went on reading, turning pages awkwardly with his free left hand, playing idly with Spike's hair whenever he seemed restless. It was getting on toward sunrise, and the words were starting to blur in Angel's inhumanly perfect vision, when Spike suddenly pulled away, sitting bolt upright, one open hand reaching out toward nothing. His chest was heaving, his eyes wide and staring. Angel didn't know what he was seeing, but he had a pretty good idea. He set his hand on Spike's back, ran it up and down his spine until his frantic breathing slowed and his eyes slipped shut. "I didn't save her," he whispered raggedly, shoulders slumping with fresh defeat.

Angel couldn't say a word to that. He turned out the light, set his book aside, and used both hands to tug Spike down to lie on the bed. Spike automatically curled up again, and Angel wrapped himself around the smaller body, absorbing Spike's silent shuddering into his own stillness. "Sleep," he murmured into Spike's hair, putting a hint of command into his voice. Spike obeyed, like he knew he would, leaving Angel to hold him close and stare into the dark, watching the girl he didn't save.

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end 2/6