FAMILY

AUTHOR: Little Mouse (elf_night@hotmail.com)

DISCLAIMER: Once again, Joss', not mine. Still a lucky man.

WARNINGS: For explicit m/m stuff, and violence, and remembered abuse, and language, and lots of other stuff.

ARCHIVE: Please ask first.

SUMMARY: AU! Spike isn't in 'love' with Buffy, but has told Giles' the story of Drusilla turning him. He has the chip, but no soul. Angel's in LA. Anya doesn't exist. I moved forward the 'meltdown' of Spike's chip a bit.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There was more discussion after that - a lot more, and quite a bit of it sounded like arguing - but Spike was starting to get sleepy. His head ached - not that it ever really stopped any more - and he’d fed, had an orgasm and a nice hot bath... he was too tired to keep his eyes open, after the humor of listening to the Slayer plead for help in finding her precious Farm Boy had faded. He dozed, his head leaning against Tomas’ sturdy shoulder, letting the rumble of voices break over him like waves.

The fire was warm, the room was dim, and even if he didn’t trust his Brother and Sister, at least there was someone here with him, pressed close against him and giving him the illusion of security. He ignored the irritating sharpness of Buffy’s voice, the smug tones of Giles’ voice, and the occasional little twinges from his chip and just drifted, feeling, for the moment, perfectly content.

He didn’t pay any attention to the change in the voices around him until gentle fingers touched his face and he blinked up at his Sire, sleepy and confused.

"Is the chip shocking you?" Angelus asked, his voice soft, too soft for the humans to hear, Spike thought.

"Huh?" was his own whispered reply.

"Your nose is bleeding," Angelus said gently, running his fingertip above Spike’s top lip and then showing him the redness.

"Shite," Spike whispered back, his own fingers going up to touch the lukewarm wetness.

"What’s going on?" Giles’ voice spoke from behind Angelus’ bulk.

"More reason to find that Initiative doctor quickly," his Sire sighed. He reached out toward Spike, apparently ready to lift him off the couch.

Spike glared. There was no way he wanted to be carted around like some fainting maiden - not in front of the Scoobies and the Slayer. He’d never hear the end of it.

Angelus paused, looking thoughtful, and Spike hoped that the mush his Sire called his brain could figure out what was going on.

Apparently it could - Angelus turned to Penn. "Gabriel, my First, will you entertain our guests while I take William back to my room?"

"Of course, Sire."

"Why’s he in your room?!" Buffy shrieked at the same time as Giles asked, "Why do you call him your First?"

"He’s my Firstborn Childe," Angelus answered the Watcher, ignoring Buffy.

"Shouldn’t you say First-Turned?"

Angelus gave him an exasperated look. "Don’t try to make everything so literal. You end up sounding ridiculous."

"Do you call the others Second, Third, Fourth, and all?" Dawn piped up again, ignoring the nudge Buffy gave her.

"That would sound just as silly," Angelus gave her a smile to soften his response, "or like we were in some odd fantasy world - don’t you think?" He took Spike’s upper arms and lifted him carefully to his feet.

"I guess so. Do you have other nicknames for them, then?"

"Dawn, shut up! Vampires don’t give each other nicknames; don’t be stupid!" Buffy looked like she’d like to gag her sister.

"I have pet names for all my Childer," Angelus was still ignoring the Slayer. "I don’t consider it stupid. You don’t constantly call your own family and friends by their full names, do you?"

"Nope!" She was smiling now. "So, what’s Spike’s nickname?"

Spike, who had found his balance, pulled away from his Sire, and was trying to mop up his nosebleed with the sleeve of his expensive robe, stopped and gave her as strong a glare as he could manage to give his Bit. "Oh, no, Nibblet. Let’s not go there!"

"Aw, c’mon!" She grinned broadly at him. "I wanna know!"

"No!"

"Pleeeeeze?"

"No!"

"Prettttyyyyy pleeeeze?"

"No." Spike weakened a little, but knew that if she found out his Sire used to - okay, still - called him ‘Little One’, that it would be worse than if the humans saw his Sire carrying him around like he’d formed the habit of doing lately. They seemed to have missed the fact that Deb had called him that once before. He gave Angelus a desperate look, and for the first time in a long time, in his opinion, his Sire took pity on him.

"You can argue about this later," he said firmly, pushing Spike gently toward the hallway. "William needs to rest."

"But..." It was Buffy who protested, not Dawn - she didn’t give Dawn the chance. "We need to talk to all of you about what we’re going to do! With the doctor, and Riley!"

"William won’t be involved," Angelus said firmly, "not with anything - not until his health improves."

"How long is that gonna be?" Dawn asked, scowling a little at her sister’s interruption.

"And what, exactly, are you doing to improve it?" Giles was back to fascinated-Watcher mode. "Besides trying to remove the chip, of course. Do vampires have specific ways of helping one another heal?"

"Surely you don’t expect us to admit it if we do?" Penn sounded highly amused.

"Do you need help, Sire?" Tomas whispered, he and Drusilla both getting up from the couch and following Angelus, moving to walk on either side of Spike as if they expected him to drop over in a dead faint.

Of course, Spike reasoned, with all the namby-pampy, sissy-boy things his body’d done to him lately, he wouldn’t be at all surprised if he didn’t pass out cold just from a little walk. After all, who every heard of a vampire with a nosebleed?! It was ruddy well embarrassing.

"I would rather you stay with Penn, Tom," Angelus replied, his voice still pitched low. "I don’t trust any of them except the two children, and I don’t trust them when the rest of that lot is around. Drusilla can keep William company after I get him settled."

"I don’t need you to get me ‘settled’, whatever the hell that means," Spike grumbled as Tomas went back to the sitting room, "and I don’t need a babysitter. If you lot don’t stop treating me like a fledge, I’m gonna start kicking your mphf!"

Drusilla giggled at him, keeping her hand firmly over his mouth. "Musn’t use bad language with guests in the house, you know. It’s rude."

Spike glared at her.

She giggled again. "Besides, you want to set a good example for our children, don’t you?"

"Our children?" Angelus asked the question Spike would have liked to ask, leaning around his youngest Childe to stare at his youngest Daughter.

"The new baby Penn’s going to get," Drusilla smiled, looking delighted, "and the adopted ones!"

"Penn isn’t going to get a new ‘baby’, Princess," Angelus frowned at her, "we discussed this, remember? None of us will be Turning anyone, not for a very long time..."

"He’ll have no choice," Drusilla’s voice took on the far-away, dreamy quality of a vision. "Death will try to snatch him, but Penn will never give him up."

"Who is ‘him’, Drusilla?"

Angelus’ daughter giggled at him. "Spikey knows!" she laughed, exchanging a telling look with her Brother.

Spike couldn’t help but grin, remembering the way Penn had been watching Xander. Wonder how Angelus was gonna react to Donut-Boy Harris being his next Grand-Childe? Not in any good way, he was sure - but it was gonna be funny as hell!

Angelus heaved a sigh, looking back and forth between them. "Never mind - I suddenly don’t want to know," he said. "Go on - get in the room," and he pushed both of them gently inside. Once there, he took off the bracelet he’d been wearing, and fastened the chain to Spike’s ankle before his youngest had time to react. "There - William, lie down."

"No," Spike set his jaw stubbornly, then yelped when both his Sire and his Sister grabbed an arm and shoved him down onto the bed. He opened his mouth to yell at them and found it full of Angelus’ bleeding wrist. The taste of Sire’s blood, as always, immediately captivated him and he stopped struggling, gripping tightly to Angelus’ arm and feeding voraciously.

*

Angelus smiled down at him, pleased to see William’s appetite returning. That bloody nose had frightened him - he’d never seen that happen to a vampire before unless someone had struck them. When he’d looked up from the asinine arguing with Giles and Buffy, and seen blood trickling down his Childe’s face, it had taken several seconds and some very hard blinking before he believed what he saw.

William’s blue eyes were half-closed in bliss, and his thin, shockingly pale face took on a bit of more of a natural skin tone. Angelus knew it probably wouldn’t last - William looked better after every feeding, but within a few hours, he was back to greyish-white and looking like he’d shatter if someone slammed a door nearby - but it still helped him relax a little, for now. It wasn’t easy - on his demon or his own mind - to see his Childe looking like this, to know that he might lose him at any time if that chip malfunctioned, and to know that right now there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it.

Well, beyond stuffing him full of all the Sire’s blood he could swallow and treating him like a fragile piece of antique porcelain.

The first was heartbreaking because William couldn’t swallow much Sire’s blood - Angelus expected his current voracious feeding to stop any moment - and the second was annoying because William wouldn’t cooperate.

"Drusilla," he turned his gaze away from the mesmerizing sight of William’s eyes going smoky and dark with pleasure, and looked at his Princess instead. He had to, he wanted William to feed, and if he looked at him much longer he was going to pounce on him.

"Yes, Daddy?" Drusilla had been watching William feed with all the delight of a little girl with a new kitten.

"I want you to watch him carefully - come and get me at once if anything happens."

"I will, I promise," she said, kicking off her shoes and snuggling up close to William, whose eyes glanced to her for only an instant before spacing out into bliss again.

Angelus was relieved; he’d expected William to stop feeding and start yelling again that he didn’t need babysitting.

Pleased, he reached out with his free hand to stroke William’s curls, which got him a half-hearted glare, but still no reduction in the speed of William’s feeding.

"He’s not going to get sick from eating this much?" Drusilla whispered. "He couldn’t before."

Angelus smiled at her reassuringly. "I don’t think so." He knew that Drusilla, even though she hadn’t watched him feed before and had only been told, like the others, that William had fed ‘a little’, would know to the milliliter just how much her Brother had been swallowing at every feeding since they’d found him. She always knew things like that - she was just able to express them more easily now. Still a little hazy, with odd references they had to work out, but much better than the old nursery-rhyme bits that hadn’t made a damn bit of sense until after whatever she was predicting had already happened.

William’s feeding stopped abruptly - he just let go of Angelus’ wrist, gave it a single swipe of his tongue, turned away from Drusilla and was asleep.

Just like that.

"He doesn’t want to cuddle with me," Drusilla sighed, reaching out to stroke William’s shoulder while their Sire was still just staring in surprise. "He’s still angry with me."

"He’s angry with all of us," Angelus tried to soothe her a little by claiming some of the guilt.

"He’s angry with you and me the most, Daddy," she corrected him gently, snuggling up tight against William’s back and putting an arm around him in blatant disregard to William’s ‘not wanting to cuddle’ with her. "We hurt him the most."

"I hurt him the most, Princess."

"No," she shook her head stubbornly, "we share, you and me. You were supposed to take care of him but you left, and I was supposed to let him take care of me, but I left. The others never were either one of those, and our Spikey needs someone to take care of, and someone to take care of him. Those are the two biggest things his heart wants."

Angelus sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "All right, Princess. You’re probably right - you know him even better than I do." And wasn’t that hard to admit? "We can fix it though - I’ll take care of him now - from now on. And you..."

"No," she interrupted, her eyes going vision-dreamy, "no, my Tomas and my Lucy will take care of me, Daddy. Spikey will have to take care of the new babies. Penn will be so busy, and the others won’t have a Sire of their very, very own. And Spikey will take care of you."

"Of me?!"

"Yes, Daddy - you’re going to need our Dark Prince more than you can ever imagine. The night will rain down sorrow and blood and the lightning will strike you - it will chase you wherever you go, and only our sweet William will be able to save you," she said, tears beginning to roll down her face.

"Princess..." he sat on the bed beside her, reaching out to hug her, but she only tightened her hold on William.

"No, Daddy, it has to be William. You have to make him the most important - the best of all of us to you."

"Drusilla, you know I love you all - all my beautiful Childer..."

"No," she snapped, glaring at him, "you don’t understand, Daddy. Listen to me - he has to be the most special. We’re your Childer and we always will be, but he has to be special. Ariel has already told you part - right?"

"Um..." Angelus found himself amazed at how often his words were just trailing off, unable to come up with the right words to answer his Daughter. Especially not about what Ariel had been telling him. He’d embraced most of her ‘truths’, and while he was more than eager to accept most of what she’d said about William, some of it made no sense at all.

"You have to take what Ariel said, and double it and triple it and fold it over and keep it in your pocket," Drusilla went on, utterly confusing him. "It has to be like Spikey; it has to be the most important of all. Otherwise, Daddy..." it was her turn to trail off, into a silence filled with her huge, all-knowing eyes.

"Otherwise, what?" He asked, mesmerized, unable to look away.

"Otherwise, Daddy - you’ll die."