What Next Chapter 4

Setting: Post season 4 of Angel, season 7 of Buffy. Spike is brought back by the PTBs only to discover he has no meaning to his life, and no way to support himself, so he turns to his grandsire, Angel, for help. There will be no spoilers for season five of this fic, it goes completely AU after the episodes 'Home' and 'Chosen'. Rated NC-17 eventually for naughty people doing naughty things. So all young children should go back to playing with their legos.

A loud crash startled Angel out of his latest bout of brooding. His head shot up, eyes searching for the source of the disturbance. Spike. Standing in the doorway, beaten to a bloody pulp. Pouting at the smashed bottle he'd dropped.

Heart sinking, he wished that he didn't know what Spike was referring to. But he knew. It was never far from the surface of his mind; it was one of the many things that his soul was constantly nagging him about.

He had tortured and twisted his Childe, forming him into the ideal plaything. Then, when he had tired of the game, he'd created a companion, one whose appetite for death and destruction rivaled his own. They had killed, fucked and fed together for sixteen years... Then came his soul, and ultimately, abandonment.

He didn't even know what to apologize for anymore... He knew with a painful sense of clarity that he alone held the blame for abandoning his Childe, but the other...

Spike laughed bitterly, a harsh sound that echoed through the lobby. "You... you're the same, the both of you..." He sloppily tapped an index finger against his temple in a drunken attempt at a knowing gesture. "Soul's not as clear-cut as you'd like to claim, Peaches." Stumbling towards Angel, he clutched at his heart with one hand. "It tells you... It gives you... a choice, that's all it does. But it will never get rid of the monster inside."

I know I had a choice. I took it and left. You can't blame me for before... We're different, not the same. I'm nothing like that... Angelus was evil, is evil. I could never be like him... And I can't do anything about before, he realized with a sinking sensation. How could Spike expect him to take responsibility for the actions of a demon? How dare he, when he had no control at the time, and couldn't change things now?

"You don't know the first thing about having a soul, Spike." I am not anything like Angelus.

"You're just pissed that I won my soul. That my demon wanted it. No pesky curse... And no pretending that I'm better than everyone else."

"Having a soul doesn't get you anywhere, Spike." So, who cares if you won it? You had a fucking choice. I didn't. I've done the best I could, but it's never enough, is it? I'll never make things right, is that what you want to hear? Do you really think that you can do better?

"Now actually using your soul, there's a concept. Haven't tried that yet, have you? Oh, right, you did. Cried all over Buffy, told her how hard you worked to get that soul of yours... Didn't work out too well, did it? Seeing as you're here, and she's...not."

He was going to rip his Sire's head off. Make him pay. But two steps inside the hotel, and he'd dropped his drink. Pity. Was damn good whiskey, that. And there went his element of surprise; the poof was staring at him, with a blank expression on his face. Spike had always envied his Sire's ability to appear so cold and unfeeling. Then again, maybe he really didn't feel anything... Not even when...

...and insert Angel's patented "Angelus made me do it" response... Bloody semantics. Who did he think he was fooling, anyway? Didn't Angel feel it, the constant pull of the demon... Screaming to rip and tear, to maim and kill... The soul's just window-dressing, a fancy mask to hide the monster that's still living inside you. How can you pretend it isn't there, waiting for a chance to get out... And that sometimes, you secretly want to give it that chance.

And then he had the nerve to say that Spike didn't know anything about souls. Oh, right, haven't met the brooding requirement yet, have I? Just because he didn't moan and groan about his soul to anyone who would even halfway listen to him didn't mean that he didn't get it.

But apparently, if you didn't make some big, outward show that you were in constant agony over the conflicting influences of the soul and the demon, then you weren't souled enough to count. And now his Sire had to go and drag the Slayer into it.

Full circle, once again. It always came down to a game of Kick the Spike, whether it be physically or figuratively. But he'd be damned if he'd just stand there and take what the poof was dishing out.

"Ever thought about exchanging yours for a bloody heart?" He took a swing at Angel before his Sire could even attempt an answer. The crunch of bone under his fist was the sweetest sound he'd heard in ages. And the fact that he could still catch the much-older vampire by surprise... A bit of heaven, that was.

Why was it, every time that he had ever been on the verge of apologizing to Spike, his Childe never failed to do something to piss him off? He had been ready to start over with Spike, to say, "let's forget the past, we're both different people now." He'd wanted to move on, maybe even become friends... And somehow, they'd ended up fighting instead. Deep down, Angel knew it would be wrong to give into his demon's urges to beat his Childe senseless, but Spike was just so...

Drunk. And beaten. He couldn't even stand up straight. For a split second, Angel felt a stab of pity for the blond, and guilt for provoking him... Then Spike punched him, knocking him to the ground. Looks like Angelus is going to get to play after all...

Just as Spike's foot came crashing down towards his face, Angel rolled out of its path and sprang to his feet, watching, waiting for his Childe's next move. Incensed at Angel's timely evasion, Spike once again went for his Sire's face. This time, however, Angel managed to catch his fist before it landed, and gave it a quick pull, bringing his knee up into his Childe's ribs.

Gasping for unneeded air, Spike staggered back. Spotting a nearby chair, he picked it up. Eyes narrowing into dark blue slits, he viciously swung the chair at his Sire.

They fought for over an hour, completely trashing the lobby. Chairs were broken, tables overturned, and splatters of blood decorated the floor and walls. Both vamps were tiring, but neither was willing to submit to the other.

Then Angel tripped. Dodging a kick to the face, he had backed right into an overturned sofa. Losing his balance, he fell, cracking his head against the floor. Stunned slightly by the impact, it gave Spike just the opportunity he had been seeking.

He walked over to his Sire and rolled him over, roughly grabbing hold of the older man's shirt, holding him several inches above the floor. Seeing that Angel was still a bit out of it, Spike roughly shook him, carelessly allowing his head to connect with the floor. He was finally in a position to tell the wanker off once and for all, and wanted his Sire fully aware for the main event.

But while waiting for Angel to come around, Spike found himself growing hard. He tried to tell himself it was just a side-effect of the fight, built up emotions and all that... But his inner monologue was strangely unconvincing. With a growing sense of dread, he realized that his body was just reacting the way it had been conditioned to. Always hard for my Sire, must always... No.

His Sire had never loved him. His Sire had left him, without word, without warning. He'd be damned if he was ever hard for that Irish bastard again.

He had been surprised to find that Spike still had quite a bit of fight left in him, considering he looked like he had spent the better part of the night as a punching bag.

Then again, Spike was angry, and combined with his inherent stubbornness, that always made for a good fight. He wouldn't stop until he was dust. Which was turning out to be a bad thing, as Angel had no intention of staking him, but had little desire to be dusted himself.

Then he tripped. If he hadn't been trying so hard to figure out how to end the fight in a way that would leave them both still standing, it might not have happened. But it did. And now Spike was holding him by the shirt, and was banging his head into the floor. Not. Good.

His eyes widened in surprise as he felt a distinctive hardness brush against his leg. No. He tried to convince himself it was just his imagination, that it was absolutely impossible that his Childe was hard; Spike hated him. Passionately. Then again, he always did get off on violence...

And fuck that hurt. He'd hit his head pretty badly when he fell, and Spike banging his head against the floor was only making it worse. Angel tried to tell him to stop, but he was having trouble relaying the message from his brain to his lips. So he settled for closing his eyes and just wishing the pain away.

He slammed Angel down against the floor one last time, then lowered himself down until his face was only inches away from his Sire's. Angel couldn't even begin to distinguish all the drinks that Spike's breath reeked of, and the fumes alone were making him lightheaded. Or it could've been the repeated blows he had taken to his head; at that point, he wasn't really sure. Wincing, he closed his eyes.

"Look. At. Me. Look at me!" Spike was screaming, crying, shaking... Angel didn't want to, but he knew that it would be far worse if he didn't...

Up close, Spike's injuries looked even worse. Both of his eyes were blackened and swollen. His nose was broken, and there was a huge gash across his right cheek, which was covered in blood. Fresh tears cut paths down his face, making watery red tracks. Angel gave a slight shudder at the sight. It would take ages for Spike to heal on a diet of pig's blood.

"You made me wrong." His Childe's voice sounded dead, robbed of all inflection. "All wrong. Broke me, used... You wanted to play with the boy. But he was meant to be hers. Only hers." Spike tilted his head, contemplative, then slammed his Sire against the floor again.

"Wrong, all wrong! You made me...feel! Worked me up, worked me over, until I was begging... Nothing. You took it all away..." Spike's cold, calculating look in shades of midnight blue pierced right through Angel, chilling him down to his soul.

Shivering involuntarily, Angel hoped Spike was going to sober up soon. This was not a good conversation to be having with AngrySlightlyCrazedDrunk Spike. Then again, he wasn't entirely sure that a sober Spike could handle things much better...

Love? What did any of this have to do with love? Angel must've voiced his thoughts out loud, because the next thing he knew, Spike was growling and slamming him into the floor again.

"Tell. Me. You. Loved. Me." Spike slammed his Sire against the floor to the timing of his words.

Angel groaned, thinking that he'd acknowledge Spike as the Queen of England if only he'd stop with the head-hitting. Then it finally occurred to him. Angelus. For some insane reason, Spike wanted Angel to acknowledge that Angelus had loved his Childe. I can't do that, it just wasn't that simple...

"Angelus...was a soulless demon, Spike. He was incapable of love." He tried not to wince when Spike slammed his fist into the floor next to Angel's head, cracking the tile.

"Demons can love." Spike's voice was deceptively calm, belying the inner rage lurking just beneath its surface.

"It was...an obsession, Spike. Never love." And for the first time in a century, Angel began to doubt those words. They'd kept him safe, all these years. It had been so much easier to believe that Angelus was incapable of feeling any emotions that were even remotely human. But Spike was screwing all that up now, forcing him to look back on Angelus' motives and feelings. I don't want to remember.

He didn't know what he wanted anymore. He knew it had all started with bad memories... And deciding at some point on his way back to the hotel to take out his frustrations with the past on his Sire.

But he had ended up right back where he had started, begging Angelus to love him. And somewhere in the background his soul was keening in horror over the night's events, but it was only so much noise. He'd tried everything, and still his Sire denied him the only thing he had ever wanted.

Angel had tried for an easy out, saying that demons couldn't love... But Spike knew better. They both did. So he reminded his Sire of that very fact. And what did he get in return?

On some level, he supposed he should've been grateful to receive the truth. It was a question that he'd been dying to get the answer for. But it hurt, mostly. To be told point-blank that he had never, not for one second, been anything more than just a toy, a way for Angelus to pass the time. No. He'd show Angel who was wrong.

With an angry snarl, he picked his Sire up and threw him against the wall, rendering him unconscious, leaving behind a bloody streak on the paint as he slid down to the floor. Grinning, he began to hum as he made his way over to Angel, a single thought on his mind. Gonna make him love me.