Angel slowly eased off the mattress and pulled on his cotton workout pants.  No time for a shower right now if he wanted to get it done before breakfast.  A minute later he was out the door.  Spike slept on, undisturbed, his features still angelic and peaceful, content in his rest, with his sire’s soothing scent surrounding him.

*   *   *

He had to move fast, but in forty-five minutes Angel had everything prepared.  He faxed the documents and was in the kitchen fixing his crew’s normal breakfast with time to spare.  The coffee was brewing, the tea kettle set to boil (neither Wesley nor Spike would trust him with more than the boiling of the water), bacon was frying and eggs whisked and ready to go, when he heard footsteps from the stairs and the outer lobby, heralding the pets’ approach.

“Good morning,” he said quietly as the three entered a minute later – they still used the typical daytime conventions, despite their primary hours having shifted to late afternoon through the night.  Various answers floated back, though as usual Illyria simply nodded with her head tilted slightly.  He found that both oddly disturbing and strangely endearing, mainly because it was so reminiscent of his childe’s own typical behavior – minus the smirks and taunting insults, of course.  Wesley blushed a fiery red, and although it wasn’t as visible, he felt the heat emanating off his black friend as well.  That wouldn’t do.  They would have to get over their discomfort with this new aspect of their status, and soon, if they were to fit into a vampire Order.

“Wesley,” Angel said, waving the slender man over.

There was only the slightest hesitation, which Angel chose to ignore, before his friend obeyed, moving quickly to his side.  Angel poured the waiting eggs into the low-temp. frying pan, pushed the handle on the toaster to the down position, then casually reached down and undid the ex-Watcher’s button-up fly.  He slid a hand in, closed it about the prick there, then pulled it out.  A few short strokes and it was hard – he noted that more work would be required to attain the response level needed, but was sure that would happen soon.  The call to his side should be sufficient, and eventually he was determined to make it so, but for now he was willing to be lenient.  Reaching out with his free hand, he pulled a chair over, sat down, stripped the foreskin back – to an accompanying hiss from the man to whom it was attached – and inspected the cock at close range.

Of course it wasn’t as if he expected to find something new there – it was simply an exercise in acclimation.  The pets would have to get used to be handled in public, and in a cavalier manner.  After a few minutes, in which he manhandled the silky flesh and full balls while Wesley trembled and squirmed in response, he tucked it back in, did up the buttons, and with a pat to the bulge now evident behind the fly, casually dismissed him and stood up to return to the eggs simmering lightly on the range.

“Over here, Charlie-boy,” a familiar voice commanded.

Angel had known, of course, the minute Spike had entered the room, but he’d focused on the task at hand, as it were, ignoring the silent figure lounging in the doorway.  Spike had watched with interest – he’d felt his arousal instantly – and he’d made sure to position his chair in such a way as to give the younger vampire an unobstructed view.  Now his childe returned the favor.  Angel stood a bit side-ways at the stove, able to work with his materials while still watching the tableau on the other side of the room.  It was essentially a repeat of his training moment with Wes.  Spike casually manhandled the big black man, taking out his cock and inspecting it, then pushed the pet’s trousers down and turned him so that his backside was the focus on his attention.

“Spread your cheeks, pet,” Spike said.

Even from fifteen feet away, Angel felt the heat from Gunn intensify, but the black man obeyed the Master of his House and reached behind himself to spread and hold his butt cheeks open.  Spike probed at the tight pucker there, testing its firmness and resiliency, before slipping his thumb in and stroking lightly from the inside.  A small groan escaped his charge, but Spike ignored it, instead pulling his thumb free, patting him on one cheek, then tugging the pants up and sending the pet on his way.  Gunn quickly did up his fly, his face darkly flushed, as he took a seat, and Spike casually made his way to the counter to finish the more intricate portion of the tea process.

“What’s on the agenda today?” Angel asked, loud enough so that all could hear, but with a glance toward his childe that made it clear from whom he expected an answer.

“Last of the preparation of the rooms, I reckon,” the blond said.  “Will you be able to finish today?” he asked, directing his comments to the pets seated about the table behind him.

“We are approximately eighty-eight percent complete with the assigned task, and should be able to reach one hundred percent within the next four point two hours, plus or minus thirty-five minutes,” Illyria stated calmly, taking the cup of coffee that Spike handed her with a small nod.

Spike grinned, but after a short, blank stare, Angel simply nodded.  “Good.  Is there anything from the outside you need?”

“There’s the blood,” Wesley replied hesitantly, still a little off balance from his earlier encounter with the dark vampire.  “But we’ve arranged for a delivery, and that won’t come until tomorrow.  I think we have everything else we need.”

“Good,” Angel repeated, taking a sip of coffee from his own mug.  “Spike and I have an errand to run in the next few hours, but we’ll be back before training begins.  We’ll leave right after breakfast, so if you think of anything you need, make a list,” he added.

The blond turned curious eyes on him, but when Angel turned to meet his gaze, they were veiled as Spike lowered his head to his own cup and saucer.  Whether it was the presence of the pets or something else, he didn’t ask what the errand was and Angel offered no additional details, turning back to butter a plate of toast instead.

Despite how it began, breakfast was finished without too much trauma for Wesley and Gunn.  Both Masters shifted back into the familiar mode, interacting with them as the friends they had been before this all began.  The two men fell into that old pattern easily after a little coaxing, although it was easy to see that they were a little wary, and managed to maintain just enough protocol as required between pets of a Vampire Clan and their loving but stern Masters.

Illyria wasn’t left out.  In the midst of their casual morning discussions, both Angel and Spike independently took a moment to cuddle the blue God and bring her to climax.  Illyria accepted that familiarity from them, completely open to their ministrations.  She was, in fact, as shameless as young William had ever been in the pursuit of his own pleasure back in the day, spreading her legs on their laps to accept their fondling hands and fingers with equanimity, despite the audience the others represented.

Illyria was fascinating to watch, but Angel had to admit to himself that when she was with Spike, it was his childe he couldn’t take his eyes off of.  He treated her just as he had Drusilla and Fred, creatures who, to him, were both fragile and precious, even though there was nothing whatsoever fragile about the blue god, and very little that any of them could describe as precious, despite their growing attachment to her.

As Angel collected their dirty dishes – he never had to wash, but he invariably cleared the table – Spike hesitated near the door.

“Will we be taking the car?” he asked after a long pause.

“The sewers,” Angel replied, shaking his head.  “I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes.”

Spike nodded then left to collect his duster.

*   *   *

“Gonna tell me where we’re going, Peaches?” Spike said, tilting his head downward to meet the bright gold flame of his zippo.  He drew in a deep breath and the tip of his cigarette flared red in the dank darkness.

“Acquaintance of mine – owes me a favor.”

“Huh.”

Spike didn’t ask again.  He knew if his sire wanted him to know ahead of time, he would have told him by now.  Patience wasn’t one of his virtues, but he knew when to accept the inevitable.

The blond wracked his brain for something else to say, but finally decided that ‘how’s the old arse doing?’ wouldn’t sound anywhere near as solicitous as it did in his head, and gave up.  They walked in silence for ten minutes, and just when Spike thought he couldn’t take it a minute longer, and was ready to burst out with something that he just knew would make him look like a pathetic ponce, they reached a junction in the sewers with a ladder attached to the metal walls at the intersection.  The ladder began six feet off the ground and ran straight up, ending some twenty feet above them, where it ran into a metal ceiling that looked exactly like the surrounding walls.  Spike stared up as his sire climbed the twenty feet and pounded on the door above it, and as it opened, illuminating Angel from above, he jumped up to the lowest wrung and followed.

Even as Spike climbed through the trapdoor and into the room above, he was assessing his surroundings.  The room was dark and bare, and obviously part of a basement.  The creature before him looked human enough, but his sense of smell told him otherwise.  His predator radar wasn’t indicating a threat, though, so he relaxed fractionally beside his sire, who was shaking hands with the slim, red-headed half-demon.  The creature wore old jeans riding low on his hips and a threadbare white wife-beater.  His bared arms and shoulders were covered in tattoos.

“Spike, Clancy, Clancy, Spike,” Angel said by way of introduction.  “Did you get everything?”

“Yeah, came through just fine, man.  This way,” the red-head said, leading them through a door then up a short flight of stairs.

When they emerged from the stairwell, they were in a room that was dingy and bare, but beyond it was one that was well lit and quite clean compared to everything else they’d seen so far.  There were a couple of simple folding chairs along one wall, but at the center of the room was a chair that resembled a cross between those used by dentists and message therapists.  The seat area was more appropriately a padded bench that would be straddled, while the backrest could be angled straight up or further back, allowing someone to sit either forward or backward.

“Face forward, I think,” the demon said, gesturing from Angel to the chair.

Spike stood off to the side, arms crossed over his chest.

“Not me,” Angel said.  “Him.”  He gestured to Spike who frowned.

“Coat and shirt off,” he said, holding out a hand.

The blonde’s frown deepened, but he drew his coat off and handed it to the waiting vampire, then pulled his t-shirt over his head and handed it off as well.  Finally he straddled the bench so that he leaned forward on the inclined backrest, his cheek pressed to the padded plastic covering, hands gripping either edge of the wide backrest.

“Ah, this is it,” the demon said, lightly tracing the tribal blue ‘A’ on Spike’s upper arm.

“Yeah,” Angel replied, tossing Spike’s duster and shirt over a folding chair in the corner.  He straddled the bench behind his childe and felt the slim body before him tense before reaching out to trace the ‘A’ himself.

“Talons here,” he said, still touching the ‘A’.  “Head curled round the front,” and here his fingers lightly traced Spike’s chest on that side before moving to his back.  “With the wingtips here,” he finished.

Spike stared down at his arm and the fingers moving upon it, an astonished look on his face.  Was he actually…

“Got it,” Clancy said, pulling out the sketch Angel had faxed earlier.

On the paper Spike could clearly see a tracing of Angel’s own tattoo.  He began to tremble, and Angel’s hand gently closed about his upper arm, fingers massaging the flesh there lightly.

A tray of tools appeared, and a moment later the needle gun whirled into action.  The demon was good.  He worked quickly with an unerring eye, superimposing the gryphon on his arm in such a way as to fit the charmed letter ‘A’ already there exactly.  Because of its location, the gryphon’s body would curve around the arm and end on both chest and back of the upper shoulder, but in all other ways, it was an exact replica of his sire’s unique mark.

Angel stayed behind Spike the whole time, whispering softly in his ear, and the words he spoke made Spike shake even more, though he managed to hide it from the tattoo artist – or at least he pretended he did.

“I want everyone to know you’re my childe, Spike, mine.  My right hand, most trusted, most favored.”

Just then Clancy reached forward to wipe away the blood that was oozing from the fresh marks.  Angel’s hand stopped him, catching his wrist in a tight grip.  He held it away while he leaned forward and slowly licked the blood from the newly inked flesh.  Both Clancy and Spike watched with fascination, but only Angel felt the minute increase in the trembling along his childe’s muscles.

After the blood was cleared and the talons finished, the main body of the gryphon was begun.

“Christ that’s pretty,” Angel whispered in the blonde’s ear.  “I’m going to love looking at it on you, and knowing it’s there on me, too, just like that.  The two of us,” he finished, stroking a finger along the taut skin several inches below where the demon worked.  “God, I want you so bad right now.”

“Sire,” the younger vampire whimpered, unable to hold back the yearning in his voice.  He was completely overwhelmed by the event that he’d dreamt of for so long, but had given up on expecting.

“Stop,” Angel commanded.

Spike bit his lip, but when the needle gun drew away a second later, he realized that the older vampire hadn’t been talking to him.

“Wait outside,” Angel told the artist.  “Five minutes.”

“Sure,” Clancy replied, setting the gun on the tray and leaving them alone.

In an instant Angel’s fingers had undone Spike’s black jeans.  “Up,” he said.

Spike lifted his hips and Angel tugged them down, undid his own, and after pulling the plug out and dropping it into his coat pocket, quickly prepared his childe with a few well-practiced strokes of his spit-slicked fingers before pressing the head of his hard cock to the waiting hole.  It popped in, and then Angel drew the blond down into his lap.  Spike groaned as he settled back onto the hard length, glancing at the door.  It opened just then, but by the time the red-headed demon had entered again, Angel had tugged Spike’s t-shirt down to cover the opening at the front of his jeans, and drawn the edges of his own coat forward.  It probably didn’t fool the demon, who hesitated for a moment with a flare of his nostrils, but it provided enough privacy for two vampires’ who in general had little to no need for such a thing.

“You can continue now,” Angel said smugly, rubbing his hand soothingly along his childe’s arm, just below the letter ‘A’.

“Yeah, ok man, whatever you say,” the demon said, before slowly retaking his seat and picking up the needle gun again.

The tattoo took a little over an hour to complete, and during that time Angel continued to lick the blood from the wound as needed.  It added to the already overwhelming sensation of being inside his childe’s tight passage, and during that hour he came three times.  He managed to do it fairly silently, but even Clancy heard the low rumbling purr in his throat that vibrated through his chest in the aftermath of each event.  He politely kept his eyes averted, though, and continued on, never missing a beat and never making a mistake.  When he was through, they could all see that it was perfect.

“We square, man?” Clancy asked.

“Definitely,” Angel replied, holding out his hand.

The demon shook it, gathered up his tools and with a smile and a nod left them alone.

“Look at you,” the dark vampire whispered, after the door closed behind Clancy.  “My childe, my boy, for all the world to see.”  He leaned forward and licked the tattoo along the upper back shoulder-blade, tracing it to the outer arm, down to the ‘A’, then up and beyond to the upper chest.  “Who do you belong to, Spike?” he asked, still licking the raw but healing flesh.

“You, sire,” the younger vampire said hoarsely.  “Only you.”

Angel groaned and tightened his arms about Spike’s torso, lifting him up and thrusting hard three times before coming for a fourth time in the tight, grasping channel.

“Don’t cum,” Angel instructed sternly.

Spike ground his teeth together, hissing his displeasure, but he obeyed, the training from more than a century ago kicking in instantly at his sire’s use of the command voice.

Angel reached into his pocket, retrieved the butt plug, then pushed his childe forward and slid from the silky hole.  It had already started to close when the plug was reinserted.

“Turn around, childe,” Angel said,

Spike maneuvered around on the seat-bench, then yelped when he found his legs pulled up, falling back against the inclined padded rest behind him.  His jeans were yanked down to his ankles and his knees pushed back and out, leaving him spread open but constrained by the fabric gathered around his boot tops.

“Want to suck you off, boy,” Angel growled.  “Make you cum until you scream.  Want to eat you up and drink you down.”

The dark vampire’s hands pressed against the back of Spike’s knees, and in a flash he’d ducked down, engulfing the pale, hard shaft straining between his childe’s naked thighs.

Spike did scream then, the sensation of his sire’s lips, teeth and tongue upon him so intense that it was almost beyond bearing.  Sharp fangs elongated and nicked turgid flesh, causing the captive blond to buck and writhe beneath the bigger vampire, lusty growls and whimpers alternating from his hoarse throat.

“Sire, please!” the blond finally begged, unable to articulate his need in any but the most basic way.

Angel’s mouth was withdrawn just long enough for him to mutter his final command, allowing his childe to let go of his onrushing release, and then it was on him again, doing just as he’d said he would; eating him up and drinking him down.

*   *   *

Spike preceded Angel down the metal stairs into the sewer, jumping the last six feet then moving aside.  His sire landed gracefully beside him a minute later, and as they turned to head back the way they came, Angel slung an arm over the smaller vampire’s shoulder.

“We’ve an interesting time ahead of us, Will, my lad,” he said, his eyes gleaming gold in the darkness.

Spike laughed in agreement, and the rest of the walk back was filled with an easy commaraderie that had been totally absent between them for longer than either cared to remember.