All That's Left

The Adventures of Captain Peroxide and Deadboy

The Angel/Spike Zone of the BtVS Writer's Guild

Title: All That's Left

SYNOPSIS: Vampire grief is a very strange thing. (*BID - Buffy Is Dead. Everybody gets laid. *g*)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: After I wrote "Stages of Grief", where I explored what I thought canon Angel might actually go through (and... you know... with the fluff. *g*), I started thinking -- but what if he *didn't*go through a 'normal" grieving process? What if he went totally batshit? Which led to this. Plus the fact that my slashy muscles have gotten all rusty, and I needed to do some flexing. Excuse if it's sucky. *g*

IMPORTANT: In my twisted reality, Angel is Spike's Sire. *stomps foot* Everything else is more or less canon.

FEEDBACK: I'd love some, thank you.

CONTENT: slash, explicit m/m sexuality, language

He traces the letters slowly, like a prayer... a ritual that begs for this ugly rock to vanish, and for the person buried beneath to reappear. Threaten him. Make a bitchy comment. Maybe kick his ass... just a little.

Those two numbers look so wrong. Twenty years. Two decades. A tiny fraction of the time that he has lived, and that just doesn't seem right in a way that he can barely articulate, even in his head.

BELOVED SISTER. DEVOTED FRIEND. SHE SAVED THE WORLD. A LOT.

Niblet picked the words, he thinks. They're a travesty, really-- ten words are supposed to tell the tale of an entire person? "Beloved sister" doesn't say a word about how one died for the other... sacrificed every damn thing for a girl that was only questionably real to begin with. "Devoted friend" doesn't even scratch the surface of a bond that's left a whole bunch of living dead people shuffling about without her.

And he can't even begin to think about the saving the world part. The world he loves, loathe as he is to admit it. She gave and gave and gave to this sorry rock, and most of the creatures crawling around on its face never even knew she existed.

Lately, he finds that he doesn't like the world quite so much as he used to.

So that's all that's left. A chiseled stone and a mound of fresh flowers... a letter in little girl handwriting, a sweater borrowed years ago and now returned too late, a Wonder Woman comic book in plastic wrapping, and a bronzed stake.

Plus the continued existence of the Big Rock, of course... the one that keeps on turning under his feet, growing or shrinking or whatever the Hell the physics geeks insist it keeps doing. But she's dead, gone forever, and it seems to Spike that stars should fall or the moon should explode or *something*, just to acknowledge her passing.

But nothing like that ever happens. He waits here, night after night once the chit's gone to bed. He waits for some sign... some clue to just what the Hell he's supposed to do next when the only thing he had been sure of was gone.

Well... one of the only things, anyway. He's gained something else, since... something old and new all at once, but that's something he hasn't quite wrapped his brain around yet. Buffy, he was certain of.

Sure, she was once his arch-nemesis. He'd whiled away entire days dreaming of the million ways he'd like to kill her. But in the end, those fantasies didn't make any difference, really. That one of them should, by all rights, be dead at the other's hand didn't matter one damn bit. And whatever he is supposed to do next, right this particular moment, all he manages to do is sit and drink and cry, waiting for the ragged edges of his shattered heart to finally disintegrate and turn the rest of his miserable carcass to dust.

He's thinking about kissing the sunrise when he smells Angel coming. Not serious thoughts. Spike knows he doesn't really want to die. But the past few months since Buffy went, the vision in his head of cascades of goldsilk hair falling on tiny shoulders and a sunshine smile that was never bestowed on him have almost become beacons, calling to him from the other side.

The last thing he feels like dealing with right this moment is the eternal groaning angst machine that is his Sire. No matter what the current bizarre, twisted state of their relationship.

"Is this a private bender, or can anyone join in?" the poufter drawls.

Spike frowns a little, but can't even seem to find the energy to growl. "Sod off, wanker."

A low chuckle, and the fat ass he knows almost better than his own plunks down in the newborn grass beside him. Angel claims the bottle he's left sitting there, taking a long, hard pull of the whiskey and punctuating the drink with a satisfied hiss. Spike can't really be bothered to look at the bastard. He knows exactly what he'll see: big, puppy dog brown eyes wet with memory and loss and longing, and he's got quiet enough of that himself already, thank you very much.

Besides, they've been doing this every couple of nights for months, now... sitting and drinking, moping and not talking... or chit-chatting about inane bullshit together, staring at this stupid rock and wondering why. So his appearance isn't exactly a surprise.

Spike invents a thousand explanations why Angel hasn't tried to dust him all this time. Why the past hundred years of resentment and animosity -- the last five, especially -- just vanished, and it's easy and comfortable like it was way back when. His best guess is that Angel thinks more about that first night than he ever lets on.

Grief does funny things to people. Spike had been watching the Slayer's friends all shuffle around, faded ghosts of their former selves ever since That Night. It's like they shirked their personalities and put on new ones for the occasion. Xander, who used to run his mouth pretty damn constantly, a low drone white noise in the background of everything they did. But these days, the boy hardly makes a sound. Even walks quiet, like he's scared somebody will notice him, realize that he's the one supposed to be dead, and take him out, too. And little Willow, who was always a glass-half-full sort of bird, walks about wearing a right creepy bewildered look, like her brain dribbled out her ears or something. And Giles will be lecturing about some demon or another they're supposed to kill, and he'll just stop in mid-sentence and gaze at the door, like he's expecting the Slayer to march through it any second... and looks like his heart breaks all over again when he realizes that she won't. The whole lot of them are a mess in their own special human ways. They've got their rituals, the mortals do. Little things they do to mourn their dead, not that he gives a tosser's damn about them.

Vampires just have different ways of coping... or not coping, in Angelus' case.

It all started the night that Red went to LA to tell the old sod that Buffy was dead. Spike had been hanging about in the Magic Box like he usually did, just sort of soaking up their misery -- because, honestly, the only thing that really made him feel better was seeing the lot of them feel worse. Excepting Dawn, of course.

So they were all there, not reading the books they held in their laps, or staring vacantly out into space, when the phone rang.

Anya jumped up to answer it, naturally, because she was currently obsessed with the notion of denial, steadfastly and cheerfully refusing to change her routine in any way just because the Slayer was ("Allegedly!") dead. She picked up the phone with her trademark chirpy yapping, but frowned and handed it over to the Watcher after a second, saying Willow needed to talk to him. Now.

Spike watched the exchange with great interest as Giles took the phone. Willow was in LA with Angel. What would she need to talk to Giles for?

He imagined a dozen theories in less than a minute. Like, maybe Angel wanted to try and raise Buffy from the dead. Or maybe she crashed the Beemer or something.

But the Watcher's eyes went eerily wide, his mouth dropped open in apparent shock, and Spike knew it wasn't anything that simple.

Aw, Hell, if he had to admit it, Spike knew full well his old Sire's reaction would be pretty much anything *but* simple. And way, way down in his little fledgling heart, some part of him wanted to go to LA himself, 'cause he'd thought more than a few times about begging Angel to hold him like he used to when he was new-made.

But he only entertained those thoughts briefly before he shoved them away, and repeated his handy mantra for just such occasions: Angel is not Angelus. Angel will not touch you, other than to stick something pointy and wooden through your heart.

That particular night, though... now Angel knew about the Slayer. Now Willow was calling, and now, he figured, all bets were off.

Giles hung up the phone and looked from one curious set of eyes to the next, until their weepy blue finally landed square on Spike himself. And stayed there. That expression sent a shudder rocking down the vampire's spine.

"Spike, may I speak to you for a moment?"

The collective attention of the Scooby Gang then turned to him. He shrugged and got up, following the Watcher into the back. It was just "The Back", now -- a place where they stored supplies and let dust gather on the equipment, because nobody wanted to clean it and have to admit that it was nothing more than a Slayer gym without a Slayer.

"It would seem there is a bit of a problem," Giles informed him.

Spike snorted. "What, Angel go nutters and trash the joint?"

It was meant to be a joke... mostly. But the comment was met with a dark frown from Giles.

"Yes, rather. Willow says that he... 'lost it' and went tearing out of there in a rage."

Spike cocked an eyebrow at him. "And what the Hell do you think I'm going to do about it?"

The Watcher sighed deeply, tugging his glasses off and wiping them on the edge of his shirt before putting them back.

"They're quite concerned about Angel's... emotional state. They believe he's on his way here, and..."

He trailed off, leaving a great many things unspoken. But Spike heard every word of them-- Giles wanted him to hunt Angel down, decide if he was dangerous, and do what had to be done, if he was.

Spike thought about telling him to do it his damn self. Or send the cavalry out. He never signed up to have anything to *do* with Angelus-related bullocks.

But then... out of all the creatures in that shop, only Giles and Spike understood what grief could really do to a vampire. And nobody else would be strong enough to do anything about it. Or maybe... in memory of Buffy, they just wouldn't be able to bring themselves to.

So he begrudgingly went straight for the Slayer's graveyard. Yeah, of course, that was what it was, now. Once, all the graveyards had been hers, and she haunted them on silent hunter's feet. But now there was only this one, where her body lay rotting.

That was where Angel would go, no doubt about it. Because, of course, his Sire was both human and demon --more so than most. The demon would be in a blinding blood rage over the death of its mate, and the guilt-ridden, noncy soul would be equally crazed, half-mad from the loss and resisting all the perfectly natural vampire urges to hunt, maim, destroy... kill, rend, drink and howl for relief. Proper grieving.

Yeah. Angel would be good and fucked up right about now, he figured.

So Spike slung a crossbow across his back and stuffed a pocket full of stakes, each one with the stupid fucker's name on it. He could hardly wait, and a good chunk of him hoped he'd find his Sire rabid and deadly. Dusting Angel had once been his second favorite fantasy... after chopping the Slayer up into little pieces...

But when he got to Buffy's grave, what he found was so shocking even to his jaded eyes, that all he could to was stand there, frozen, and gawk.

Now, Spike was a monster. He'd seen a good goddamn bloody lot of disturbing things in his day. Hell, most of them, he'd perpetuated himself. And he wouldn't really call them 'disturbing' so much as 'good, clean vampire fun.'

But what Angel was doing made even his skin crawl, and his stomach lurch fit to bring up the bucket of KFC he'd shared with Little Bit earlier.

There he was, the great undead Superman himself, in full demon face, snarling and howling, grunting and snorting and sobbing all at once, down on his knees at the foot of the Slayer's gravestone.

The big vampire plunged his hands into the earth, tossing fistful after fistful of it away, apparently oblivious to the shovel that he'd brought, abandoned on the ground right next to him... and the blood coating his hands from the biting rocks. Digging like a dog lost his favorite bone, drooling and snorting and whimpering like a wounded beast, consumed with the frantic effort of moving all that dirt.

In a moment, Spike snapped to his senses. "WHAT THE BLOODY GOOD, HOLY FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" he shrieked in horror at his elder.

Angel didn't stop the exhumation, only now he seemed to gain some vague awareness that Spike was there, because some semblance of speech not quite lost in all the feral noises he was making began to manifest.

"I have to get her out. I have to. Shecan't bedownthereallalone andcoldand whatifshe' snotdeadnadshecan't BREATHE? SHE'LL SUFFOCATE! I HAVE TO GET HER OUT!!!"

Spike flinched and swallowed hard, torn by a billion conflicting urges... and still in no small part stunned and fascinated by the scene unfolding before him. So for a while, he continued to just stand there and watch helplessly.

"I have to. Have to get her out. Have to get her out," Angel went on jabbering, the muttering rising in pitch until he was shrieking, "Sheneedsmesheneedsmesheneedsme I have to HELP HER! DON'T JUST STAND THERE! **HELP HER**!"

Okay, so this wasn't exactly the sort of nuts Spike had been imagining. Shaking his head, he marched over to the crazed vampire, grabbing him firmly by his now-filthy leather, and hauled him bodily from the shallow depression he'd worked into the grave dirt, tossing him into the grass a few feet away.

Wouldn't do to have the idiot defiling Buffy's resting-place.

Angel got to his hands and knees, head hung low, panting madly.

Spike shuddered again. Nasty business, this. "What are ya doing, ya stupid wank?" he barked.

His Sire stared up at him, wild-eyed, for a heartbeat, then with a roar was suddenly up on his feet, shoving Spike out of the way, and plunged right back into his work, resuming his creepy mantra as he did.

"Havetohelphersheneedsmehavetogetherout..."

The younger demon snarled, shifting to game face himself, and tackled the enormous nutbag. The last thing he wanted to deal with was Slayer parts all over the place. Angel roared in protest, struggling beneath him as they crashed to the earth, Spike perched on his chest.

"GET OFF ME! I HAVE TO HELP HER!" he screeched.

Spike punched him hard in the face. Once... twice... and again, before his Sire finally stopped thrashing.

"She's dead, you bloody stupid, fucking GIT!" he shouted. "LET HER BE!"

The dark-haired vampire laid there, looking dazed and lost, tears streaming down his cheeks. "No. No. No! NO!! NONONONONONONO!"

"YES!" Spike railed at him, "She's bloody well GONE! Digging up her fucking CORPSE ain't gonna CHANGE THAT! What the fuck is the *matter* with you???"

For a moment, he thought maybe he'd gotten through. Angel went still and slack, squeezing his eyes shut tight and making quiet whimpering noises in his throat as he continued to shake his head. His prettyboy human features returned, and Spike finally got up, fixing to replace the dirt in Buffy's grave.

Mistake. The moment his back was turned, Angel body slammed him... 225 lbs. of dead flesh sending him flying a good 20 feet across the graveyard. The other vampire was instantly back up and gone right back to digging up the Slayer.

"SON OF A STINKIN' BITCH!" Spike thundered.

Enough of this bullshit. He snatched the shovel up from where Angel had left it, and without hesitation, pulled back and swung, hitting the larger man square upside his thick skull, making a "CLONK!" sound that reverberated through the still night air.

Angelus dropped like a really big, fat, idiotic stone.

Spike stared down at him, wiping the blood from his split lip. "Fucking donkey's arse," he muttered, scooping the limp vampire up in a fireman's carry and trekking off toward his crypt.

It had always been Spike's firm opinion that no self-respecting vampire with half a brain in his head should ever be without a set of magically enhanced manacles somewhere nearby.

As he watched his unconscious Sire dangling from the ceiling of his crypt, he had to give himself a good, hearty pat on the back for being right yet again.

After all, when Angelus woke up, he was gonna be *pissed*.

But it looked like that wouldn't be for a good while yet, and Spike could feel the sunrise urging him to sleep, so he decided to rest his eyes for a bit.

Of course, "a bit" turned out to be a good chunk of the day, and he woke from the same nightmare he'd been having a lot lately -- the sight of the Slayer's body plummeting from the sky, and then crashing into that pile of construction debris with a dramatic cloud of dust, playing over and over again on the movie screen in his mind-- to the distinct sensation that someone was watching him.

When he opened his eyes and found Angelus' cold, mad glare set firmly on him, he almost jumped out of his skin. He sat bolt upright in his makeshift bed with a yelp.

Angel's deadly expression didn't falter at this outburst.

"What the fuck are you starin' at?" he snapped at the bound vampire.

Said vampire spoke very slowly. Deliberately. The same tone he'd always used when he was whelping young William -- cold, smooth, and full of promise of blood and pain.

Sort of made Spike horny, actually... in a nostalgic sort of way.

He cocked his head at the ponce and lit up a smoke.

"Don't look to me like you're in any position to be giving orders, *mate*."

He wouldn't have believed that such a thing was possible at that moment, but the elder demon's expression darkened still further. For a moment, he hung there, glaring, silent and trembling with rage.

Then, he roared. "LET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, BOY, OR I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU REGRET THE NIGHT I TURNED YOUR SORRY HIDE!"

Spike snorted. "Too late. And... the cold stare's a whole lot damn scarier, just so you know." He got up from the bedroll and headed for the mini-fridge, pulling out a pint of Cold & Dead, and sucked it down in a couple of gulps.

His Sire snarled behind him. Spike couldn't be sure if it was hunger or fury... or insanity... and didn't much care. He tossed the empty bag in the garbage and snatched a Guinness out of the fridge before clicking on the telly and taking a seat in his new (or at least, new from the dump) recliner.

Angel renewed his struggles against the chains, grunting and snarling with the effort.

Spike watched him surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye. He'd stripped Angel of his filthy clothes, not wanting to take any chances that the undead MacGyver might have a spot of plastique or a stake up his sleeve for just such an occasion. Not that he'd probably been doing a whole lot of planning on his way here.

Or at least, that's what he kept telling himself as he'd stripped him...

It didn't matter much why he'd done it. Just that now his Sire was completely naked but for his faggy navy silk boxers, leaving his bulging, glistening, straining muscles wide open to Spike's view. The cords in his neck... the tight curves of muscle in his chest, shoulders, and bloody tree-trunk arms and legs... even his abdomen was pulled tight into a perfect six pack cut as he used every last iota of vampire strength to free himself.

It didn't work, of course. But his efforts made Spike have to shift in his chair a couple of times to stay comfortable.

After a few hours, Angel finally gave up. Spike heard the telltale clinking of the chains as the big man went limp with exhaustion and defeat. He finally turned to look at him full on.

"You done being a fucking psycho now?" he commented snidely, almost as pissed off about how goddamn horny looking at the bugger made him as anything else.

Angel hung his head, chin resting on his chest, and said nothing.

He got up and grabbed another beer and sucked it down while he considered his mostly naked, completely insane, Sire. His primary question? Just what the fuck was he gonna do with him now?

"I was there, you know," he found himself saying, "I saw the whole thing. So believe me when I tell you... she's dead, and there's nothing buried under that soddin' rock that you'd wanna dig up."

He wasn't sure if the little speech was meant to be a comfort or a lecture. He just didn't know what the Hell else to do, so he let his mouth run. Served him well in the past... usually.

"She was a champ in the end, you know. You woulda been proud of her. Okay, so... you more likely woulda done something stupid to try and stop her, but... she did what had to be done, mate. She bloody well saved us all, and this sorry arsed planet besides. So... I'm not gonna let you..."

He was going to say 'desecrate her resting place', like some soddin' funeral home director, but chomped his jaw shut to stop the idiotic words from escaping.

Angel didn't bother with the effort of trying to raise his head.

The blond vampire scowled. "Why, so you can go running out into the lovely afternoon sunshine and hope your soul's clean enough to join hers on the other side or some such? Bullocks on that bloody noble Romeo and Juliet shit, mate. You're stayin' right the fuck where I've got you."

At that, his Maker's head snapped up, his expression the same unstable one he'd worn last night, but now his big, dark eyes were flooded with agonized tears.

"Why do you care so much? You don't give a damn about me. Or her. So whatever your game is, you're wasting your time. Let me go. NOW!"

Spike stared at the old sod, flooded with a hundred emotions at once, and wondered if he knew the answer to Angel's first question.

"No can do, Pet," he mumbled, taking a half step closer, but remaining out of kicking range. "Look, the bloody ironic fact is this -- I loved her. Sounds stupid, but there it is. She took me in when I had nowhere else to go. Gave me something to do with my sorry hide. And she always treated me fair. So I figure... I owe her. I watch after the kid, and..." he swallowed stiffly, hoping his next words would convince himself just a little, as well as his Sire, because right now he was feeling particularly squishy and affectionate toward the rotten bastard, and he didn't figure either of them were ready for that. "I know she wouldn't wanna see you off yourself."

At that, he shut his yap before the 'and neither would I' could come out, snatched another beer from the fridge, pretended not to see Angel's baffled look, and plunked back down in front of the TV.

This time, he didn't look back at him, and for a while, Angel was still and quiet.

But not halfway through Oprah, Spike heard him start to cry. It was soft... so soft, in fact, that if Spike had been human, he wouldn't have heard it. But he wasn't human, and he not only heard it... he felt Angel's grief in his blood.

He clenched his hands over the edges of the armrests of his chair, refusing to follow the call he could feel echoing deep inside him to comfort his old lover... the one who raised him... the one who had comforted him through too many trying nights to count, when they were young. Who taught him how to hunt... how to drink... how to fuck.

Spike growled softly to himself. No... he was already doing enough, just by keeping Angel from poofing himself into a nice, tidy ashtray-sized mess. Wasn't his job to comfort the fucker. Wasn't his fault his Sire was as stupid as he was, and fell in love with the fucking shortest shelf-lifed mortal on the planet. It wasn't his damn duty to take him in his arms... stroke his soft, thick hair or whisper nonsense in his ear to soothe him, or kiss his cool lips until he could taste the salt of Angel's dead, hopeless tears. Crying with him... mourning with him... certainly weren't his deepest desires in the soddin' universe right that second...

"Bloody, stinking Hell," he grumbled, and got up.

Spike had managed not to totally break down after that first time, when he'd seen her corpse and felt the loss of her... his failure to save her... washing through him like a storm of ice, leaving a gaping cavern in his chest. He cried a bit those times when he got drunk, sitting by her grave. But mostly... he forced his chin up and kept going. Humans died... that was a simple fact. One of the central pleasures and certainties of vampire existence, most times.

But looking at his Sire... Angelus, the legendary Scourge of Europe... his deepest love and most formidable enemy in one, reduced to sobbing like a wounded child, his big body silently hitching against his chains as the tears splashed into the dust under his feet...

Well, damn if that didn't break him, too.

Spike took the space between them in two long strides, and frantically worked to undo the manacles. Some small part of him stood back, cautious, and waited for Angelus to reveal the trick -- snap to his feet and punch his Childe in the face or kick him in the nuts, or pull some damn hidden action hero weapon from the waist band of his skivvies and behead him in short order.

But none of those things happened. When his Sire fell from the chains, he crumpled, boneless and wailing wretchedly, into Spike's arms.

He had forgotten, in recent years, how strong the pull of blood ties really were. How powerfully emotions could be transmitted from Sire to Childe and back again. His bond with Dru had been different... closer to human than demonic, most times. He had simply *adored* her. And when last he had shared space with Angelus, he was too full of other things to notice or care about the call -- rage, mostly. Incoherent, insensible anger for slights too numerous to mention.

Now suddenly, he was full of it all again... his Maker's soul-tearing pain, even when he lacked a soul... the agony of it mixed and melded with his own grief for the fallen warrior they had both loved, and like a tidal wave loss and sorrow, knocked him to his knees.

And again, that tiny cynic inside of him stood back and snorted derisively at the two pathetic creatures, who shared some almost 400 years of "life" between them, on their knees in the dirt, clutching each other like scared kids.

Spike told his inner cynic to go fuck itself.

"Oh God! How could she die? She wasn't supposed to die!" Angel keened, his high-pitched cry ripping through Spike's sensitive ears like a shard of broken glass.

That pain though, was just lost in all the rest.

"I know, luv, I know..." he choked in reply.

Looking back on that moment later, Spike couldn't for the unlife of him figure out what made him decide to do what the Hell he did next. He imagined it was some kind of instinctual response... part demon and part human, when faced with death or destruction not perpetrated by his own hand. An uncontrollable, completely irrational urge to reach out and connect... prove that *he* was still there... still whole and "alive", even when such a central part of him had been torn out by force. Maybe in that maelstrom of agony, the whelp in him reached out for comfort from the only source of it he'd ever really known. Reached back through centuries to when life was simple and fun and good, and the pleasures of the flesh were the only sensations that were real...

Or... he might have just been horny and lonely, and the feeling of the familiar cold flesh of his first lover against him was just too much to resist.

Whatever it was, it made Spike pull back from their embrace and take his Sire's tear and grime-stained face between his hands...

And made him kiss the sorry sod.

Of course, at that point, Spike was just as bloody pitiful as Angel, because that gentle, comforting contact sent a rush of warmth through his bloodstream. The first time in a week... or maybe a century... that he'd felt much of anything but empty and lost.

That was enough to wipe away any small shred of sanity he might have managed to retain. The kiss grew deeper, terrifyingly, passionately frantic. Tongues tangling and blunt teeth bruising and tearing tender lips. Those small drops of blood were devoured with a consuming hunger that fed on itself, and in a moment, exploded into an inferno of want. Spike's hands were suddenly all over the rolling hills and valleys of Angel's hard body, and his Sire's hands were tearing off his clothes in order to do the same. Every point where cool flesh met cool flesh was like another new fire igniting, reminding them both that mortals may die... human love may be crushed, but the bonds of blood and their kind's infinite existence could never be defeated.

Of course, that knowledge in itself was, more likely than not, part of the problem.

Spike pushed Angel backward into the dust and grit that coated the crypt's floor, never once losing contact with his body... hands and mouth continuing to both comfort and devour in a blinding haze. He took huge, gulping mouthfuls of his Sire's flesh, kissing inches of form he'd thought long forgotten. But as his lips closed over Angel 's Adam's apple... his thick clavicle... the bulging curves of chest and lateral muscles... the tight, quivering cut of abdomen... the hard lines of pelvic bone... the wiry pubic hair and the silken skin of inner thighs, he realized... he remembered every square millimeter of it. Still knew this body as well as he knew his own. It naturally hadn't changed a bit, and that in itself was both a torture and a comfort.

Angel's weeping quickly changed to shivering moans and sighs, his big hands clutching Spike's bare shoulders, tangling in his hair as his mouth finally closed over his Sire's raging cock. Suckled with such familiarity, it was heartbreaking for both of them.

Spike remembered the taste of him... cool and clean... the feeling of the foreskin pulling back against his pallet. The sticky sweet taste of the moisture gathered on its head. It was like being a child taking comfort at mother's breast... trailing his tongue in long, lingering spirals up the turgid length, circling the head, suckling it fiercely, and then deep throating it once more, one hand on Angel's broad hip, the other tenderly caressing his balls, his ass...

And suddenly, the larger man was pulling him upward... dragging the aching lengths of their bodies together, until he claimed his Childe's lips once more. Spike closed his eyes at the sensation of Angel's hands sliding down his back, grasping his ass hard and driving their pelvises tightly together. Spike cried out when Angel began to move, the friction of their cocks too sweet to bear, and he felt the change come over him. He looked down into mahogany eyes now turned to shining amber. With a snarl, he dove for his Sire's throat, his fangs sinking in at the same moment that Angel leaned up and did the same to him.

And that, Spike remembered best of all. The heady ambrosia of Sireblood -- food of *his* God. And they drank one another with abandon, ramming and arching their bodies into one another in this most ancient dance of demon emotion.

Angel whimpered and grunted softly as he fed, thrusting upward against him. Spike lifted his hips only enough to reach a hand between them and take a firm grip on his lover's cock once more. Angel released his chokehold on Spike's throat, and gave out a shout that echoed through the darkness of the catacombs, slamming into his lover's fist as he came.

Spike kept stroking him hard and fast, until Angel gave one last shudder, and went completely limp below him. But the younger vampire felt no human urge to stop and cuddle... his demon was awake and roaring with the blood rushing through his dead veins.

With a growl he reached down, and rising to his knees, flipped Angel over and pulled him to all fours with one graceful motion. Coating his hands with semen and blood, Spike slicked up his own hard-on... the crack of his Sire's round ass, and without any other preamble, rammed himself inside.

Angel screamed at the violation, but Spike didn't hold back. Couldn't. He pistoned into his Master's tight channel over and again, and in moments, Angel was slamming himself backward, impaling himself with a violence that matched his own.

"CHRIST! Fuck, SIRE!" the younger demon bellowed.

Angel roared in response, grunting with the force of each rending thrust. Spike bent fully over his broad back, the dampness on his belly from Angel's first orgasm making the contact slippery and smooth. He reached beneath them, only to find his elder hard once more, and took up the same stroking rhythm with which he relentlessly fucked him.

"Yes. Yes! SPIKE!" Angel hollered, arching into his grip.

Spike felt the end coming fast... waves of ecstasy crushing him as he jackhammered home... hard, fast and deep. And when it finally took him, he went rigid, and let out a scream that shook the very foundations of the crypt. As he shot his dead seed deep into his very foundation, he heard Angel cry out once more in return as he too plunged over the edge into oblivion.

Shocked senseless by the fury of it... the ridiculous irony of the whole damn situation, Spike collapsed on top of Angel, utterly unable to withdraw or move away for several minutes while he recovered his bearings. His Sire was completely still beneath him, not even bothering with his usual habit of breath.

That stillness scared him almost more than anything so far, and Spike forced himself up... gathered Angel's limp form in his arms, and dragged them both to the bedroll nearby, where they finally gave way to their mutual exhaustion.

As they laid down together, his Sire once again began to weep.

Spike pulled him close, spooning him chest to back, tangling their legs together, and just let the poor bastard cry.

They never talk about that night. About Angel's pathetic attempt at grave-robbing... or the desperate, lonely shag, or the weeping. They just meet here every few nights and drink and stare at Buffy's gravestone. Sometimes they talk about other things... stupid things. Cars and the weather... politics.. movies... demon species and how to kill them. Sometimes they talk about her -- sometimes laughing, and sometimes having to choke back tears. Sometimes, they drag themselves back to Spike's crypt near dawn, drunk and lost in a pain that never seems to fade, let alone end... and times like that, they go home and fuck each other bloody.

But sometimes they just fall asleep in one another's arms, drained from their sobbing.

They don't talk about it, but they both know. This is a new bond that they've forged on old, crumbled foundations. A bond based on demon grief... their own mourning ritual.

And Spike figures, as he takes the bottle of scotch back and downs the last few swallows...

Hey, as long as it makes it just that little bit easier, for at least this small while, to be forced to continue to walk around on this rock without her...

"Got hold of a Favrilishk the other night," he begins.

Angel looks at him, interest piqued, as evidenced by the quirking of one side of his Cro-Magnon brow. "Really. I thought you could only kill them with acid?"

Spike snorts. "Tell you what. Sod those bloody demon manuals, mate. You can do miracles with a chainsaw."

His Sire chuckles. "I believe that's wisdom for the ages, my boy."

Demons have different ways to grieve than humans, and this is theirs.

"So... ya wanna go back to the crib and shag?" he asks with a grin.

Angel smiles in return and gives a little shrug. "I'm not doing anything."