FicWad

Teeth brushed, face washed, clothes in the laundry hamper, lights out, sliding between soft Egyptian cotton sheets and closing his eyes. The routine is soothing after another hard day learning the ropes--and rearranging them--at Wolfram & Hart. Sometimes Angel feels like he's trying to tie knots in jello, but he's got to keep trying or else they've won.

"Don't they ever sleep?" Spike is standing by the windows, face illuminated by a combination of the moon and the harsh lights of the city. Angel isn't surprised. This has been the pattern for the last few days: Spike invading his privacy, showing up everywhere Angel goes, even his own bedroom.

"I thought I told you to keep the haunting to business hours, Spike." Angel sticks to the script, bracing himself for the fifteen minutes of insults that will fly back and forth before Spike finally gives up and disappears for the night, leaving Angel in what currently passes for peace in his life.

But Spike's ad-libbing tonight. "You know what I miss most about home? Weather."

And that surprises Angel, because even though the illicit sunshine of California is torture sometimes, he's never really missed the cold, rainy Eire if his childhood. He must have made some kind of noise, because Spike continues, "Not any specific weather, mind, but just the idea of weather. Changing bloody seasons. Trees with leaves the color of sunshine and cognac and blood. Nights so cold and crisp you feel like your skin is going to frost over. Kew Gardens in more shades of green than there are words for in the English language. Sweltering afternoons at the shore, with your lips tasting of happiness and the sea."

It's been probably a century since Angel has heard Spike talk like this, except William's attempts at poetry had always been pathetic and overwrought, and this, this is...poetic. It suddenly strikes Angel that this is what the human soul is /for/, and maybe it took William losing his soul and Spike getting it back to unlock the words inside it and set them spilling out.

Spike is still talking, though, and somehow Angel can't bring himself to break the spell by interrupting, not even with this sudden epiphany. "Here there's just sun and rain, both filtered by the gray-brown haze of corruption that hangs over everything and neither one solid or real. The weather's just like the people."

He turns away from the window and Angel can see his expression, which is sad and wistful and a little bit angry. The shadows make Spike's eyes seem darker and more sunken than usual as he looks at Angel, who's lying in bed and feeling strangely vulnerable for all that Spike's a ghost and incorporeal and all.

"You never used to wear anything to bed." Spike says, and Angel wonders where that came from and how it relates to anything else Spike has said tonight.

"People change," he says, leaving it at that instead of picking up the threads of their script. Maybe this is what Spike's been leading up to, hanging around. Maybe he needs someone to talk to. Not that Angel really wants to play Dear Abby, but Spike is a sore spot, a little piece of guilt that he can't get away from no matter how he tries. As if it's not enough to atone for crimes he committed, there's a little voice inside him that says he's got to atone for Spike's crimes and Dru's crimes as well. No matter how much Spike irritates him most of the time.

"You know the worst thing about it?" Spike asks suddenly, eyes downcast and arms wrapped around himself like they were all that was keeping him from flying to pieces, spreading tiny shards of Spike across the room.

Angel's not sure what they're talking about now, but then Spike has always made abrupt conversational left-hand turns without bothering to signal, so he goes with it. "What?"

"Not being able to touch anything but myself. Not being able to be touched by anyone else." Angel doesn't know what to say to that, and before he can open his mouth, Spike continues, "I can stand in the sunlight now, you know, but it doesn't feel like anything. I think I'd rather burst into flame than not be able to feel."

Now Angel knows exactly what Spike's talking about, because that was how he felt after he met Buffy. He had been safe and secure wrapped in the protective cotton-and-powdered-glass of his guilt and self-recrimination, and then she'd come along and set him on fire. Much as that hurt, he hadn't wanted to let go, hadn't wanted to go back to the dull, even ache of his conscience. So yeah, Angel understands what Spike's missing, though he's carefully not thinking about Spike and Buffy in the same sentence, and not in the same context as himself and Buffy, because he'll never stop loving her and he doesn't want to think about her being anyone else's fire, even--or maybe especially--not Spike's.

And Spike's still standing there, a silent shadow in a black leather straitjacket. A damning reminder of Angel's own culpability. Even without their history, Angel's conscience tells him there are things he owes to Spike; Angel could be---was meant to be--the one who wore the amulet, who fought at Buffy's side and sacrificed himself. So he says, "Be my hands," because he knows what Spike needs, knows how to give it to him and how to take it from him, and he thinks he can even do it without damaging either of them any more than they already are. Spike looks up sharply, but he's frowning at Angel like he doesn't know what Angel's getting at. "Be my hands," Angel repeats firmly, trying for the commanding tones Angelus always used with Spike, back in the day, "and let me touch you. My palms are on your chest, pressing flat against your nipples through your shirt."

The frown doesn't change, but Spike licks his lips and his shoulders relax and Angel can tell he's recognized the game. With a slow movement, Spike draws his arms slowly back across his torso until he's rubbing and pressing against his nipples with the heels of his hands. His gaze is locked on Angel and now the darkness around his eyes looks less like shadows and more like black coals with hints of heat threading through them.

Angel knows where and how he wants Spike, but his mind is racing to work out the steps in between, to find the words that will get Spike's body and mind from here to there. "Slowly, my hands move up to your shoulders, sliding your jacket off."

Angel's cock twitches at the unselfconscious grace of the motion, the slide of supple black leather down Spike's strong, pale arms to pool on the floor around his feet. But Angel means the game to be for Spike, not for himself, so he ignores his cock for the moment.

"Come closer." The Angelus tone is coming more and more easily and he's not sure if he should be pleased or worried by that, and then it doesn't matter anymore as Spike obeys, stumbling forward until he's standing next to the bed. Angel rolls to his side, head propped up on his right hand so he can see every curve and plane of Spike's body, can watch the hunger and need move across Spike's face.

"My hands clench tight on the front of your shirt, nails scratching your chest through the fabric, and I rip it down the middle," Angel says softly.

Spike blinks at him, the spell momentarily broken. "Hey, I like this shirt!" For all that Spike has always begged--in deed if not in words--to be dominated, he's never made the task easy.

Angel wants to laugh, but that would ruin the mood he's working to build, so he just says, "Fine, I slide my hands along your stomach and up, feeling the play of your muscles under my fingertips as I raise the shirt and tug it off over your head." Angelus would've been angry, would've punished Spike for his insolence, but Angel saves his fury and his punishments for outside the bedroom.

He watches as pale hands mimic his words, remembering the feel of those strong, square-tipped fingers against his own skin, and he shivers. The shirt drops to the floor and Spike is standing there, watching Angel and waiting, so Angel makes a show of moving his free hand down and under the covers, letting his eyes fall shut for a moment as he strokes himself--down and then up--slowly. When he opens his eyes again, he can almost see the waves of tension coming off Spike's body and it makes him smile just a little. He'd forgotten the pleasure of playing with a consenting partner, bending them to your will when they wanted it as much as you did; he'd lumped those kinds of desires--consensual and nonconsensual--together in his mind as "things Angelus did that were bad" and filed the whole subject away where he wouldn't have to look at it, where he could forget that whether or not he liked it, it was as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or the fact that he was right-handed. It feels good to remember.

"On your knees," Angel orders, no longer worried that he'll go too far, ask more than Spike can give.

Spike's eyes widen and he drops soundlessly to the floor, black jean-clad thighs spread as he sits back on his heels with his hands clasped behind his back. A brief moment of eye contact and then he looks down at the floor, head bowed in submission. Angel's cock aches, and he wonders which of them has changed, or if it's simply easier for Spike to give in when Angel's control over him is illusory, as insubstantial as Spike himself.

Or maybe Spike is just desperate to be touched.

Moonlight spills in through the windows and Spike's pale skin glows with it. His nipples are hard, dark peaks, tempting against the smooth landscape of his chest, and Angel says, "I've always liked your nipples. So responsive to pain." Spike's right hand slides up to touch one nipple and Angel continues, "Can you feel me pinching it?"

Spike's only answer is a soft moan and the slight shift of his hips, as though searching for something to thrust against, and Angel knows that particular pleasure/pain/need well. Angel strokes himself again, this time for his own benefit rather than to torment, and not for the first time since the amulet reappeared, he regrets his inability to touch Spike--though it feels strange to want to caress now rather than pummel.

"I want to see your cock."

The words slip out, unplanned, but they draw a satisfying whimper from Spike and the hip thrust is much more pronounced. Spike's hands make an abortive move toward his belt and then he freezes, as though he's suddenly realized that Angel hasn't really given him an instruction to follow, hasn't described a gesture for him to mimic, and Angel takes pity on him. Just a little.

"I unbuckle your belt--" Spike's hands are shaking "--undo your pants--" the sound of the zipper is surprisingly loud in the quiet room "--and reach in to pull your cock and balls out--" white jutting out from the nest of dark hair in the vee of Spike's open jeans, one hand cupping his balls and the other wrapped around his shaft, desperately not moving, not stroking despite a need Angel thinks he can feel from three feet away.

Angel is tired of stage-managing, tired of thinking and wording things he'd rather just be /doing/, so he says, "Touch yourself, Spike. I want to watch you make yourself come," and he thinks that Spike doesn't mind the change in plans, at least not based on the sounds he's making as he starts to finally move his hand, slow and hard. And Angel can almost feel Spike's cock under his fingers, the slide of his palm over a topography almost as familiar to Angel as that of his own cock.

Spike spreads his thighs wider and leans further back on his heels, shifting his left hand to the floor behind him for support, and his right hand moves faster on his cock. He's making an almost constant series of quiet, needy sounds now--somewhere between moans and sobs--his body arching and taut, and his head thrown back, baring the long white curve of his neck.

Angel's watching, focused on every inch of Spike, his hand moving on his own cock like he's competing with Spike to see who will climax first, but Spike has a head start and with one last shouted cry he comes, thick white spurts trailing across his hand and chest. A shuddering, instinctive breath and then Spike is looking Angel in the eye, lifting his fingers to his mouth and slowly licking them clean, and Angel's body vividly remembers that tongue and what it can do to him, what it has done to him in the past, and then he's coming hard.

And when Angel opens his eyes again, he's alone.

fait accompli

A/N: It's Halrloprillalar's fault. I believe the actual quote was: "Spike's incorporeal. Ha ha ha! I said. Let's see people slash them now." So I did. :-)