Author: Mithril

E-mail: taptap@mn.rr.com

Title: Most Favored

Pairing: Angel/Spike

Rating: Adult

Summary: The Aurelius Clan chooses a new Master

DISTRIBUTION: Various S/A friendly lists.

Spoilers: Post NFA. Angel slays the dragon, and the battle is won with Illyria's manipulation of time, which also results in Wesley's return. Angel, Spike, Wesley, Gunn, and Fred/Illyria are now back in the 'Angel Investigation' business. All live in the Hyperion.

Disclaimer: I don't own Angel or Spike or anything else from ME.

Feedback: Always welcome.

Part 29:

Spike never got a chance to finish. The fist that knocked him cold came so hard and so fast he never knew what hit him.

* * *

Awareness came slowly. The first sensation was a contradictory one; he felt both heavy and light. A moment later the iron shackles about his wrists made themselves felt, and the contradiction was resolved. When he opened his eyes he saw what he'd already ascertained a moment since; that he hung suspended in the center of a barred cage, manacles around ankles and wrists. The heaviness was the weight of his body on said wrists, and the lightness was the complete lack of any other support or touch to the rest of his body. He was as naked as he had been in Angel's bedroom before, though he wasn't exactly sure when 'before' now was.

The cage was the one discovered so recently in the basement, in a room several doors down from the workout space. This was where Angel was kept when he'd become a bit too Angelusy for his humans' comfort.

Spike shook off the last dregs of lassitude and stood up, relieving the stress from his arms. Luckily the chains were long enough to allow this, though barely. The shackles on his ankles were connected to chains hooked to D-rings on the side, with the other end hooked to similar D-rings embedded in the floor, several feet away from each foot. He could stand with his legs spread open a bit wider than his shoulders, but that was about it - there was very little maneuvering room left to him. Now that his immediate physical state was known, he focused on his surroundings.

Angelus. The smell of him was strong here; oil and cinnamon, blood and wildflowers. As difficult as he found it to believe that Angel and Angelus were, with very little difference, one and the same, in this regard he had to admit the logic; the scent of Angel and Angelus was essentially indistinguishable. More than anything else, this similarity haunted him and kept him circling the entity that both was and was not his Sire, even when he was almost one hundred percent convinced that that entity wished him elsewhere.

When it came right down to it, there were two things that always clued him in; Angel's physical stature, and his eyes. Physical stature was always his first bet, because let's face it - it was never too smart to get so close you could see the whites of his eyes before you were sure about wanting to be that close. Assessing his physical state could be done at a distance, even if said distance, regardless of what it was, was rarely as safe as some might think it to be. That held true whether it was Angelus or his supposedly milder persona.

But it was generally true that Angelus stood taller than Angel, shoulders back, even when hunting. If he didn't want to be seen, he wasn't, and his physical stature had nothing to do with that. Angel folded in upon himself, slouched down to be less noticeable among a group, though that was virtually impossible to Spike's way of thinking. The big dog was the big dog, no hiding that, and another inarguable similarity between the two of them was that both Angelus and Angel were the big dogs compared to pretty much all others, human, vampire or otherwise. When Angel left a room, he led. When he entered, all eyes were on him. Try as he might, he couldn't fully succeed in hiding his true nature.

But if the saying was true, that the eyes were the windows to the soul, then it appeared that it was just as true without a soul as well. Angel's eyes told the whole story, or so Spike had thought, until he'd seen that strange effect that left him totally incapable of telling which was truly in control. Was it one or the other, both or neither? No matter the answer, the potential scared the hell out of him.

"Finally awake, I see."

The voice came from the shadows, and Spike's head flew up immediately to see the dark figure step away from the wall and into the wedge of light cast by the bare bulb overhead. Predators keyed in on motion, and Angel had been so still that, combined with the overwhelming scent of him everywhere in the cage, Spike had not noticed his presence until then. He scanned the figure as it approached; tall, broad, unbent, and then, as he stepped up to the bars, looked deep into his eyes. Just as before; dark brown, almost black, but sparkling with pinpricks of golden light. He drew in a deep breath and let it out again with a heavy sigh of relief. The scent of blood was there - it always was with their kind - but it was not that of their humans, or indeed of any human. It was his Sire's own blood-scent, and it made his mouth water.

"I give up," he finally said. "Angel?"

"Yes, it's me, Spike. How many times do I have to say it?"

"Well, since you've got me strung up, bullocks to the wind, I guess maybe one more time," his Childe returned sarcastically.

Angel laughed, and Spike rethought his theory on stature and eyes, carefully adding 'laughter' as a third item. Angelus laughed all the time, Angel almost never. Shit, now he was really scared.

"Not doing a whole lot to reassure me here, mate," he added, eyes narrowed as he carefully observed the vampire on the other side of the bars.

The door swung open and Angel sauntered in. Posture, check. Laughter, check. Eyes. He looked again, and still couldn't make the call.

"Bloody hell, would you say something, ya pouf!"

The blow that came this time was just as fast, but slightly less forceful. He didn't lose consciousness, though his head rocked back and blood squirted from his shattered nose.

"Surely you've not forgotten about the little session I promised you earlier, my boy?"

Angel leaned in and licked from jaw to cheekbone, clearing a path of blood with one long swipe of his tongue. He smacked his lips with delight, and then proceeded to clean up the rest, licking like a kitten at a bowl of cream. When the bleeding had stopped and the blood was all gone, he calmly reset the broken bone. Spike cried out hoarsely, then shook his head, trying to free himself from the hand that still held him. Angel obligingly stepped back.

"I was willing to delay it a bit, to give you a something a bit more pleasant to keep in mind before we began, but it seems that wasn't meant to be just yet. I was going to give you such a treat, Will, but you surprised me - didn't think you had it in you to deny yourself in that way. Hmmm. Maybe the soul has made us more alike than I realized."

Angel left the cage and opened a trunk sitting on a crate against a wall. Spike knew that trunk intimately. So Angel had hauled it with him during his travels, eh? Well that was a telling bit of information. He wondered if the contents were the same. That thought bothered him a bit more than he cared to admit.

"Stop now, Angel. I'm not playing any more. We've got bigger fish to fry right now than posturing over who's stronger than who."

Angel didn't turn from his inspection of the trunk's contents when he answered. "I'm not playing, Spike, and I'm not posturing. As to who's stronger, we both know who that is, don't we?"

"Weren't me ass down before the cup, mate," Spike reminded him grimly.

Angel finally turned, and when he did he had a multi-tailed flogger in one hand, a strip of leather in the other, and a wicked gleam in his eye. He walked up to the suspended vampire and stared deep into his eyes.

"You're good, Spike, I'll give you that. You've very good, in fact. I like to think I played a pretty important role in how strong you are, though I can't take all the credit, being absent for as long as I was. So yeah, I can admit how strong you are, and I can even admit how proud I am of your strength. But one thing you're not, Spike, and that's stronger than me. Don't get me wrong; you will be this strong one day, I can see that, but today's not the day. Maybe it will even happen before you're my age now. Hell, you mastered the thrall in your nineties when it took me almost fifties years longer. I'm proud of that, too, Spike. I want you to know that before we begin. None of this has anything to do with jealousy or bitterness or anger. It has nothing to do with what happened between you and Buffy, though that did make me angry. And it has nothing to do with your denying me as your Sire these past years, though I'll admit that hurt. You've been running free a long time, and are a Master in your own right, but that doesn't change the fact that you're my Childe. You need to be reminded of what that means before we go before the Order."

Spike jerked helplessly against the chains, really angry now, but they were obviously magically enhanced and remained unbroken. He quickly gave up on that to conserve his strength, knowing what was to come.

"The hell I do, Angel. You think I don't know what it means to be the great Angelus' Childe? I know it only too well. It used to mean being beaten and buggered daily, whether I wanted it or not. Now it means being ignored on a good day, and being ridiculed in front of your pets on a bad one. So, yeah, I know what it meant then, and I know what it means now, so don't act so surprised that I haven't exactly sought out that honor during the last few years."

Angel walked up to him until he stood just inches in front of him, then reached up to stroke his cheek once more. Spike gritted his teeth but didn' t pull away.

"I'm sorry it's come to this, Will, to the point where I was too afraid to acknowledge you, and you were too angry to acknowledge me. It's hurt us both. Maybe it's too late, but I've got to try and fix it. Remember that this is my intent. Not to ignore, abuse or ridicule. Remember that, Will."