blueonblack

Summary: Dark, angsty fic inspired by hanging out with Jess, and needing some vamp brooding and fighting in the face of the DOOUL fluff. (which WILL be continued, thanks to everyone for all the lovely mail! :} )

There is no moon tonight. Standing on the rooftop, looking into the abundant fog, the night is reminiscent of Ireland, or England. An Olde Country where there is never enough light, in daytime or in darkness. I know that it should not matter to me, the lack of shine. And sometimes, it doesn`t. Sometimes the simulated, pulsing, multicolored neon of this city is just bright enough that I don`t notice the lack of moon. Other times, I fear I might smother from the foolish, despairing need of it.

Time is a peculiar concept to hold onto when one is immortal. There are evenings when I can`t recall what I did earlier that morning, whom I spoke to, what I wore. Then there are memories that are so keen and lucid, it startles me that in them, I am wearing breeches and hair ribbons.

Despite the darkness of the sky, it is all spread out before me, a radiant ribbon of folly, vice and absurdity, of longings, confidences and betrayals, of passion, death and utter stupidity. All the sweet pain it has taken two centuries to inflict, to collect, an unfurling flight of stars across the infinite night.

He is here now, inside, downstairs; there are countless layers of steel and concrete and hundreds of mortal bodies between him and I, but none of that matters. I can feel him. I can hear him. I can *smell* him. The faint scent of whiskey and dust, clean, white soap, and accursed licorice.

He`ll drink my beer, and the blood I keep in my fridge and the blood which lies still in my veins, he`ll occasionally help me fight some apocalyptic disaster, he`ll sleep in my bed, and some nights, for reasons I can never predict or fathom, he`ll even swallow, but he won`t ever fucking talk.

He has to know, doesn`t he? That I'm not *him*...that I'm not the one who turned him on a whim, hurt him for sport, left him for nothing. That *he* would never have tolerated the arrogant comebacks, the cruel humor, the carelessly hidden deceit. Spike would have been a bloody pulp at the foot of the bed for much simpler infractions than those.

And certainly, Angelus never would have acquiesced to anything remotely resembling surrender in bed. How stupid does a boy have to be not to realize *who* he is screwing nightly into the down mattress?

He still calls me `Sire` when we are in bed. `Sire`...as if he cannot bear to say my name, even in the most intimate of moments. Even when his flesh is cleaved to mine, and his fingers are wound into my fist so tightly that his blunt, black nails draw tiny crimson droplets, and his scent is all over me, and his eyes are bright with the coming... It's still never Angel.

During the day it's `Peaches, ducks, love, pet...` an endless barrage of names which sound sweet to the untrained ear, but are far more insulting to mine than any slur he may come up with in his finest moment. And I want to grab him and shake him and shout in his insolent, beautiful face, ``Who am I, damnit? Who am I? Don't you know?``

An available substitute for a smaller, softer frame, a lyrical feminine voice, a childlike need? She's been gone so many years, but I have no wonder if he still dreams of her. Of course he does. Time is such a useless abstraction.

But that is not the case. Instead, to him, I am some pale, sorry shadow of a demon who Sired him in his own blood and cum in an alleyway some two hundred years ago. A pathetic replacement for myself.

A self that I loathe with every shred of humanity I cling to, a self that I wish to all the Powers had never existed, a creature that for some twisted, grotesque reason he continues to worship like some malevolent god.

Does he think that my demon would tolerate him anymore, the way he is now, impotent, alone, needful? Angelus wanted Spike culled from the herd when he was in a wheelchair, what makes the foolish boy think he would sanction a Childe unable to *feed*? Does he think his Holy Father would hunt for him? Is he that blind, is his memory that selective?

And still the insolent, senseless boy taunts me just enough, always pushing just a bit more, one more jab, one more kick in the shorts; it's all one long, demented seance to conjure his long lost demon lover. And *I* have to stay focused, stay vigilant, stay *responsible* so that never happens in his presence. Because I don't think he can spell the word responsible, let alone comprehend its meaning. Not my boy. He lets everyone else clean after his messes, lets everyone else take care of him, and he damn well *expects* it.

His birthright was eternal life, the rest I *chose* to give him. How dare he act like he deserves it? How dare he impel me toward what he thinks he wants, when in reality he wasn't able to make a rational decision before I turned his arrogant, scrawny behind?

He has no grasp of the battles I have to fight everyday. The demons he helps me annihilate are petting zoo material compared to what lives inside of me. He thinks I am `playing Batman`, working for some reward, be it humanity or the pleasure of Heaven. Idiot boy. I am doing this just to survive another hideously pointless day. Where it's all blue on black, and no matter what I do, no matter what I give up, no matter what I slay or who I save, it doesn't tip any grand scale. I know this! I know it and I still play the game, hoping against ...hope. That's what my soul did for me. It gave me hope. And let me assure you, sometimes that is the most consummate punishment of all.

Damn him. No one else in my entire existence has ever been able to spur such perpetual rage in me. Or such regret. He is an encapsulation of everything I have ever thought, felt, *been* since I Became.

I would take it all back, I swear I would. I would die human this time, I would die unloved and childless and in grisly agony rather than have become what I did, and do all the things I have done. If I could change the horrors that transpired through the centuries at these hands I would trade, without question, peace of mind and the scattered pieces of my flesh. I regret them all, and with all my unbeating heart, and I would undo the psychotic nightmare that was Penn, and god help me, the sweet innocence that was Druscilla.

Because for all my moral intentions, dear god, I can`t regret William. I want to, I try to, and I just fucking can`t. I can`t regret the way his eyes shift subtle shades of blue with his ever changing moods, the way he never ties his shoes, the way his one scarred brow raised carries more message and meaning than most people's genuine smiles, the way he is never at a loss for words, his toughness, his softness, his ability to recreate himself flawlessly and adapt to any situation, no matter how godawful or painful. I should know. I put him in most of them. I can`t regret that such a man is still walking this Earth.

And I can`t bring myself to want to take it back. Not one moment. Not even the harsh and horrid ones. Certainly not the ones which when I conjure, despite the passing of two centuries, I feel a seizing in my chest and my eyes drift shut at the illusory sensation of yesterday. The way his head would rest on my shoulder in slumber, and his kisses were always both eager and demanding, the way he always knew what I wanted, and gave it, without question. I'm selfish and I'm weak, and he adored me unconditionally, and I reveled in it.

I don't know how to live without him, even now, even when he hates me. We have been tangled in each other like the thorniest of vines for centuries and across continents. Shaken by the storms of lovers and liars and secrets and plots of world destruction, and still, the downpour has never once faded the brilliance of the colors.

It was as much perverse as hauntingly beautiful, I know this... And I can`t help but want it still. I want to be the blood sweat on his brow, and the sharp exhale in his sleep. I want to crawl inside of him, and exist there. Maybe then this damnable emptiness will disappear, and maybe when he's gone, I won`t feel like I've lost a limb, lost custody of my heart to someone who couldn't care less what became of it.

I know mortals could never ken bonds like these. They fancy that being married for ten years is an epic event. Which, I suppose when one only lives 75 years, it is. Now imagine living twice that long, now three, and imagine having only one other creature truly connected to you for that entire span of time. Imagine everyone else leaves, dies, is brutally sacrificed in the name of justice, is ripped away by the fickle Powers that dangle carrots of mortality in front of you while making every goddamned day a living Hell in one way or the other until it's almost, but not quite yet... not just quite yet, not worth waiting for anymore. Imagine you miss the sunshine so damned much that the absence of the moon makes you want to weep like a child.

I'm not strong enough. I'm just not. It took everything I had to leave Sunnydale, to leave Buffy, whom I loved with everything good and decent in me, those parts that are getting smaller and smaller every stinking day. It took every ounce of my strength and resolve, and I only knew her three years. I have known Spike, in one incarnation or another, for most of my ten-score existence.

And I'm not an idiot, I know he's only here because he's chipped, because he has nowhere else to go, because he can pretend I'm someone else when the lights are out, and he only sees me in shadow, and he doesn't have to hear me talk.

I know it's not me he's fucking, and I know damn well it's not me he's making love to. And I'm just pathetic enough to allow him to live out his fantasy at my expense.

Then suddenly it's not enough for him, and he disappears for days at a time, and when he comes home, he showers until all I can smell on him is soap, and his breath stinks of licorice, and I know. Of course I know. Why does he bother to hide it, as if he's ashamed, when he's so obviously not? So I bought him a case of licorice, and I left it on his side of the bed one morning. I dare you, boy, I dare you to tell me...but he didn't. The package is long gone, the conversation has yet to be spoken.

One day, perhaps he won`t come back at all. And I dread that beyond the telling. So I don't ask what he wants, because maybe it would drive him away, and because it's probable he wouldn't tell me anyhow. He won`t say much of anything really, when our clothes are on, unless it's a joke, or an insult, or a shout of ``duck!`` right before some demon is about to take my head off.

So if what it takes to get him to stick around is me on my knees with a strap in his hand, so be it. I know I will achieve atonement in the eyes of god long before I can ever hope to see something remotely resembling forgiveness in his. And, Christ help me, I would trade the two. I would go back to Hell again, and I would let them inflict the worst torment they could imagine on me, if I could go with the memory of him once, just once, looking at me, calling me by name, and telling me he loves me, and all is forgiven.

Because *I* have always loved him; the demon, the man, the soul, the monster, all of me has always.... And I try, I try so hard not to, I try so hard to make it just *stop*, because he can`t return that favor, and it's killing me, and it's killing him, and I don't want to be responsible for another one of his deaths, but I can`t,

And then my fist is through the brick ledge around the rooftop patio, and my blood is spilling down the twenty stories onto the streets below. And I wonder if he can smell it.

Angel's on the roof. There's some joke in there..something about a cat and someone's grandmother...but I can`t remember it right now. The punch line is pretty much that whoever is on the roof is really dead...and hey, that's bloody well fitting, ain't it?

He's been physically dead for over a couple centuries, and the rest of him is dying at his own stupid hand. Misplaced sorry frigging angst, working for redemption, trying to be human.

He has a deep seated dislike for humans, for all his `Shanshu` crap. He loathed them as Angelus, and he doesn't trust them now. They make him uncomfortable, they make him angry, they make him soddin` *hungry*, and that, my dear children, is the real reason why he *still* hates them. They are reminders, all of them, with their sweet smell, and their soft skin, and their souled eyes. And he can`t bloody well stand to be reminded of who he really is.

The real Angelus always hated the lot. He didn't just kill; he maimed, he tortured, he fucking broke them like toys. That's the difference between he and I. I don't hate them; the humans. I stalk them, I eat them, I drain them dry. That's who I *am*. That's what I *do*. But I don't hate them anymore than a lion hates the half-witted zebra it tears to shreds. What's there to hate? Their entire existences burn out in the span of time it takes my goddamn nailpolish to dry. They're the bottom of the food chain; I don't hate plankton, I don't hate humans.

In fact, I damn well like the world the way it is, the way it is unfolding, the way humans are getting so bloody comfortable and blasé about death that I barely had to hide my kills anymore. I'm glorified, I'm the anti-hero, just read the books, watch the movies. I'm an effin *star*. But give Angelus-unsouled half a chance, and he'd suck us all back to the days where demons ran this poxy planet. How conveniently he forgets that vamps were not exactly uppermost on the evolutionary ladder back then. Beastmeat, that'd be us.

But he doesn't care. He doesn't give a damn about anything or anyone but himself. And it doesn't matter if he's calling himself Angel or Angelus these days, he's still an egotistical, self-centered, arrogant bastard who wouldn't give a rats ass to help anyone that really matters. But he would walk into the bloody sunshine to save some sorry ass bitch he'd never even met, if it would earn him his precious fucking redemption.

He fed off his freakin girlfriend for pity`s sake, he left me and Dru to die so many times I've lost count, he staked his Sire *and* his Childer. He's broken every unwritten, unspoken undead code there is..and you know why they're unspoken? Cause who the fuck thought anyone would be dumb enough to actually *do* them? But, my Sire, oh yea, he's racked up quite the list.

He has no loyalty to those he is bound to. But are you a human damsel in distress? O well then, put up the friggin Bat signal, and he`ll move mountains to rescue your goddamned kitten.

Hypocrite. That's what he is. An effin hypocrite. He accepts responsibility for everything from the death of Elvis to fucking urban blight, hoping against hope it will buy his sorry ass a one way ticket to Heaven, but he doesn't accept responsibility for the things that really matter.

No, he tells me I have *choices*. Oh yea? If I'm not mistaken, those *choices* were pretty well stolen from me along with my blood and my mortality in a filth covered alleyway in London about two century ago.

All right, I'm not complaining about that part. I fucking love being immortal. He's the one wishing everything was different. His whole damn past, and his whole damn future...wishing he was worm food, wishing for Eternal Rest, wishing for a million things he can never have, because there are a million things he can never undo.

He went to Hell; big effing deal, he *was* my Hell. He adored me, he hated me, he fucked me, he fucked me over, he ripped my head off and pissed down my neck for so friggin long, it became a bore and he had to move on to someone else, and well, whatdya` know *that* just happened to be the only woman I ever loved.

So yea, tell it to me again, Sire. Tell me again how beating the living shit out of you with the cat o` nine tails you so conveniently have stashed in your weapons cabinet can make up for all that. Tell me again; lie to me again. You've lied so long to so many you couldn't even find the truth anymore if it bit you on your immortal demon ass.

But I'll do it, damn straight I will. I'll do all those lovely things you taught me to do to your beautiful hide, and I'll inhale the scent of your blood as it splatters against my chest, and I'll lick the flying bits of torn flesh from my face, and I'll damn well swallow it all. And I'll get off on it. `Cause that's who I am now. That's what I Became, and you had a big fucking hand in it.

And I can channel all that rage and all that hate, and I can ignore the blood tears on my face, and the regret gnawing at my cold, dead heart `cause I'm really fucking good at ignoring the pain, aren't I? Yea, I had a great teacher for that. And maybe, just maybe, this time, it will make it all worth it.....

Oh, it works for him, it'll always fucking work for him. He`ll sit there, or kneel there, or stand there with arms outstretched, and he`ll take his sodding punishment with gritted teeth and a furrowed brow, never once calling out, never once making that little noise in the back of his throat like I used to make, like Dru used to make, because for him, this is *it.* This is his goddamned atonement, his goddamned redemption, and it may as well be the Slayer, or the Watcher, or any of the neurotic band of those mortals, shit it may as well be Scooby friggin Doo swinging the sodding leather at him, cause he doesn't know or care. And I want to holler at him, scream it in his insufferably beautiful face, "It's me! You sorry sonofabitch, pay attention cause this isn't about *you*, this is about *me*, this is about *us!*``

This is about the fact that you wish you had never Become, which means you wish none of the past two hundred plus years had ever happened, which means you wish *I* never happened. You regret *me*, you asshole, *me*, the Favored Childe, the favored brother, the favored fucking demon lover. *Me*.

Mortals can`t bloody well get this. You have sex with someone, and in theory, you're doin` them, maybe their past one or two lovers, maybe their first lover, the one who fucked `em up real good, left `em bruised and open and raw. Maybe you're doin` their mommy or their daddy too. Whoever wounded `em the deepest and the best.

Still, little incested mortal girls lie for their daddies in court, and little mortal boys with iron burns and broken legs lie for their mommies to the judge. Of course they do. Now magnify that misplaced, eager loyalty by centuries, and the adrenaline rush of the kill in dead veins, by immortality and blood and blood and blood, and it just don't matter what they do to us, does it? Cause, in the end, they're all we fucking have.

I mean, they're gods, aren't they? I know he's mine. He's beautiful and he's dark and he's Eternal. And I can curse his name, I can blaspheme him all I want, cause he's fucking Omnipotent and he`ll always come back. I can forsake him all I care to, he's *my* god. You know what they say, there are no atheists in a foxhole.

And we all crucified Jesus, isn't that what the Priests teach? He dies for all of us. Osiris, the Christo, the gods of the Sun and the gods of destruction, that's what they're supposed to do; die. They were born to bleed and to suffer to make us all whole again, but *he* can`t do it enough, cause it's never enough is it? It's not near enough for me, not enough to make up for Druscilla, or Penn or Darla, not enough for his goddamn Slayer, and certainly it can never be enough to make up for all the idiot mortals he killed.

And that's what keeps him intact. His soul is bound to him by his fucking misery and his fucking sorrow and his fucking struggle for an absolution he can never hope to attain.

Oh, bloody hell... I wanna shout it at him, I wanna make him wonder...Where`s the balance, Sire, where is it? Maybe one of those mortals whose jugular you tore out one hundred years ago was to birth a Nobel Peace Prize winner, maybe one of them was to Grandfather someone who would invent the cure for an epidemic not even named; how do you *know*? How do you know that the one useless chit you saved today isn't just that, useless, a streetwhore, whose only gift to the world will be a crack addicted punk who'll murder twelve people before shooting himself in the head?

You don't know, you can *never* know, so where's the balance, huh? Where's the fucking balance and where's the score sheet and who's keeping track of it all? And why do you trust them anyway, some unknowable, unseeable Power, when you could never trust me, your own flesh and blood, your own kin?

But I can`t ask him that. I can beat the piss out of him, and I can *try* to kill him, and I can taunt him with images of his slutty ex, and I can play every head game he ever taught me, and a few he's never even imagined, but there's still a line I can never, ever cross.

Cause he's Sire, he's god, he's all. And truth be told, he's more than that just by virtue of being... Angelus. You think I would have let just anyone Make me? Some ugly sot like Penn, or a cloven hooved freak came after me offering immortal existence, and I'd have kicked em in the nuts and waited happily for death. But he..Angelus...he was always fucking grand, divine, beautiful, a Prince of Darkness.

Yea, I noticed. Of course I noticed. You'd have to be blind not to *notice* him. Shiny curtain of cinnamon hair covering flawless, ivory skin, black eyes, that sing song voice, and the largest hands...When he Sired me, he whispered to me with that lilting Irish, and he held me against his chest with those hands, and I swear to you, I heard his heart beating when he drained me.

He's always there, even when he's not. No matter how many times I cut or bleed, his blood never quits me. He's an affliction, a soddin disease of the blood. He's an addiction, and I keep telling myself just one more hit, just one more will be enough, but it's never fucking enough, it can never *be* fucking enough. When he's gone, it's like I lost a limb, but I can still feel it there, the itch of it, the annoying sensation of something just bloody *missing.*

And when he's here it's worse, the temptation of him. He's fucking heroin, and I need more and more and it's banging my head into the wall just because I know at least when I stop it will feel good.

And still I can`t get enough....never enough ..of his hands, those hands that made me, wrapped around my waist, tearing at my hair, clawing at my back, or his psychotic preference of late, tied helplessly to the ceiling. And I can`t get enough of his voice...his sighs and screams, his whimpers and whispers, that carry me back to the days before Souls and Slayers. Those years that all the time in the world will never dim the memories of, when everything was simple, and pure, and on fire.

And I want to tell him, bugger all I do, that I'm not interested in being his angel of punishment anymore, that what I want is more..always more...but how can I? I know I'm just a convenient substitute for the one chit he can *never* have, because soulboy picked the sole person on the face of this dumb earth with the sworn duty to *kill* him. Right bright, Angelus. In fact, the only time he's even remotely likable nowadays is when we're shagging, and even that ain't no guarantee.

I'm not a fool. I know the only reason he allows me near him at all is because I'm neutered, and the only reason we haven't come to death blows is because he still has his sodding soul.

And I want to tell him too that *I* didn't need a soul to learn about love, and devotion, did I? No, Sire, I learned it all in your hands, clasped to your chest, kneeling at your feet, cowering under your bloody belt. And souls have nothing at all to do with bonds like these, the ties of the begotten, and this hopeless, fucked up, delusional obsession that we are.

I want him to look at *me*, and see *me*, just once. Without assuming I'm below him in stature because I don't have a friggin soul, or because I *know* who I am, because I *love* what I am. I want him to know who he's bedding, and not to regret it the way I watch him do every fucking morning after.

Still I can`t help it sometimes... Christ, I hate myself for how weak I have become...but what else can I do? When he's wound around me, and I can`t tell where I end and he begins, what else can I do? It just falls from my lips before I can pull it back, and it happens every goddamn time...it`s the name, its the link, its *Sire*, because that's who he is, that's the *all*, and he is *all*, and I just want to recapture one precious moment of that....

Every time I call him that, he gets that same goddamn look in his eyes, that look of disgrace, and disappointment and disgust, and I want to fucking stake him, but I don't. I swallow the rage just like I've always done, and we play the same deranged game the next night. And shit, I hate him more for making me want to hate him that way.

Then he`ll disappear for two days and come home with someone else on his clothes, on his breath, on his skin. Men, women, both, he doesn't care, apparently he's not too picky of late, and not too discreet about any of it either. At least I have the decency to bathe afterward, to eat some candy, to change my godamn clothes. But not him; no, he returns reeking of sex, and blood, and I'm surprised his pet mortals don't smell it.

And then it's always the same sodding sport, he`ll stare at me with those big doe eyes, daring me,. Challenging me to say something about it. Well, what do you want me to say, Angelus? Has anything I've ever said or done made a goddamn bit of difference to you? If I'd have said something would you *not* have fucked Penn? How `bout Dru? Would me saying something have stopped you from leaving me for months at a time to fuck Darla? What could I possibly have said or done to make you not fuck the Slayer? No, it's never mattered to you what the hell I thought, nothing I have ever felt has ever mattered to you one bloody whit, you do what you want to do, Angel, and to hell with who your insufferable, stupid *choices* hurt.

I don't know what the fuck he wants from me; he doesn't talk, he just sits up there on the roof and broods, and I can`t right guess what he wants from the three vaguely similar facial expressions he graces us all with. On rare occasion, he`ll lower himself to speak to me when we actually have our shorts on, and if it's not about business it usually ends up in a screaming match.

I am not going to bloody well humiliate myself in front of him *again*. I am not going to tell him what I want, what I fucking *need* so he can lecture me again about him `not being that demon anymore`.

Well bullfuckingshit! You are that demon, I don't care what you call yourself. Does having a soul make you any less angry at me? Does it make you want less sex, less blood, less kill? I see the look on your face when you fight, I see it when we fuck, and I *know* who you are.

I'll always know, you're bound to me, and bugger it all, I'm bound to you, and this *need* this horrible, desperate, ache that steals my sleep and my sanity, I blame you for it, you, Angel, Angelus, Liam, the fucking antichrist, whatever you want to call yourself these days. It doesn't matter.

But you will never admit the same to me. You'll go to your grave denying it, denying this, denying me. So bloody stupid, after all these years, you still haven't changed. You'll never change. Your soul makes no difference at all. Not to me. I still look at you and I see the stars dimming, I taste my last breath in the winter alleyway, and I smell your blood welling up under my blunt teeth. I still love you, Sire. And that's the sorriest fucking thing about it all. For all my talk, that pretty well makes *me* the idiot.