show and tell
The street noise jack-hammered its way into Spike’s brain long before he was ready to be dug out of his comfortable sleep. There were a lot of things Spike appreciated about the celebrity lifestyle—free booze everywhere he went, being chief among them—but this habit everybody had of being up before dawn was just bloody inhuman.
He unglued his eyelids, setting off an explosion of pain behind them. He had a mouth full of cotton and an arm slung across his back heavier than all the hardware at all the awards shows in town put together.
And just as cold.
“Geddoff,” he mumbled into the pillow. Angel merely grunted and tightend his fist around Spike’s shoulder. As if his sleeping self were afraid someone else would try to walk off with his prize. I’d like to thank the Academy for honouring me with the finest piece of arse this side of Bette Davis’s husband.
Spike pried himself away from the triumphant limb and rolled out of bed. Hit the carpet with a thump and a “bloody hell” loud enough to wake the hungover dead.
Angel kept on snoring.
Spike rubbed his face. Sat up, groped around the bedside table for his smokes. Came up empty. He wandered off into Angel’s tiny kitchen, half-blind from last night’s after-party. Hauled open the fridge door. There was blood, but his stomach rebelled at the idea of food. He opted for coffee instead.
It took all his super-powered hand-eye coordination to make the damn stuff without spilling it all over his tender bits.
He missed Angel’s old digs at Wolfram & Hart. After a night spent hob-nobbing with Hollywood’s A-list—tossing back the finest cocktails at the finest establishments, flirting with starlets in the finest designer gowns—Angel’s humble, heavily curtained apartment felt a bit of a let-down.
Still. The shagging was A-list, and Spike didn’t feature stumbling home drunk alone. Stumbling home drunk with Angel was always much funnier.
He poured the coffee without managing to spill any. Wrestled himself into the kitchen chair as if it were demonically possessed. It might very well have been, the way it skidded and tilted at unnatural angles.
The coffee couldn’t get into his gullet fast enough.
There was a stack of magazines on the corner of the table. Harm was always sending them over as part of her new gig. Brainless fluff, had all the dirt on who was shagging who, who was cuckholded, who’d been abducted and inseminated by aliens. Hollywood must be crawling with alien babies, by now. It would explain every one of David Lynch’s movies.
Spike’s cup was halfway to his lips when he spied two eerily familiar faces staring back at him from atop the pile.
“BLOODY HELL!”
He bolted up out of his chair. The coffee ended up in his lap after all.
Angel wandered into the kitchen, blurry and grumpy. The nest of ferrets on his head made his scowl easier to take.
“Damnit, Spike, how many times do I have to tell you to—what the hell are you doing?”
Spike looked up from the pile of magazines he’d been growling at. Somehow, they weren’t intimidated by his demon face. Apparently, neither was Angel.
“Spike! Why is there—”
Spike wordlessly held up yesterday’s Excess Hollywood. He reckoned it’d be hard to read, what with the claw marks he’d just left in it. But the headline was still visible.
Angel grabbed the thing out of his hands, dropped into the chair across from Spike. “Oh no. Oh HELL and no. How—who—did you do this?”
Spike sputtered. More coffee flung its way around the kitchen.
“ME!? You think I want everyone in town to know I’m shagging your fat arse? Got beautiful birds throwing themselves at my feet every night! No way I’m gonna fuck that up with,” he shook the magazine in Angel’s face, “THIS!”
Spike dropped the offending tabloid on the table, thumped himself back into the chair. Cradled his head in his hands. It throbbed like cartoon heart. He looked down at his naked lap, covered with rapidly cooling coffee, and went to fetch a tea towel.
He could hear Angel shuffling through the papers. Pictures of him, pictures of Angel; every one of them with little captions containing witty puns. Mostly about stakes. And a bunch of exclamation points.
Spike turned around. Angel stared at his dick. “I don’t get why anybody would think we were having sex.”
“Can’t you now?” Spike rolled his eyes. “Maybe it’s because I’m always showing up at parties with your teeth marks in my neck? Or maybe because every time we go out in public, you can’t keep your mitts off me for more than five minutes.”
“I’m hitting you every five minutes!”
“Exactly my point.” Spike poured himself another cup. Swallowed it all in one gulp. Sometimes, Angel was denser than gravity.
He stalked back over to the kitchen table, flipped open a page and pointed at a blurry photograph of two figures humping a wall.
“Or maybe it’s because after every patrol, you fling me up against whatever hard surface happens to be handy without thinking that this is Los Angeles and we’re bloody celebrities!”
Angel squinted down at the picture.
“I don’t even think that’s us,” he said. He turned the page. “And this one! What the hell is that? It’s like your face is pasted onto someone else’s body. You’re not nearly that tall.” Angel cocked his head. “Or that bendy.”
“Hey now! I’ll have you know I’m good and bendy!” Spike managed a smirk behind his headache. “You oughta know it after last night.”
He didn’t remember much about last night, but there was definite bending going on. He was pretty sure he’d been upside-down at one point. Or maybe that was just because the room had been spinning.
He leaned in closer over Angel’s shoulder, squinting at the photo. “Maybe it’s not us,” he mused. “Your wang’s not nearly that big.”
Angel growled. Then surreptitiously checked the page again.
“I think that’s actually his...” he turned the picture sideways, “arm.”
Spike dropped down into the chair next to him. “Missing the point,” he said, patting down his non-existent pants for his equally non-existent cigarettes.
Angel had the balls to smirk. Spike poked him in the chest. “Point is, now half the bleeding country thinks I can’t keep my hands off’a you!”
Angel looked down at his own chest. Spike quickly pulled his finger away.
“Fine,” Angel huffed. “I’m not any happier about this pack of lies than you are. So what are we gonna do about it?”
“You’re the one who hired a PR agent,” Spike sneered. “Get her on the case. Lord knows she’s such a bright light, she oughta be smart enough to figure a way out of this.” He rolled his eyes again.
Angel slumped against the back of his chair. “We’re doomed.”
Spike sighed. Levered himself up, patted Angel on the shoulder. “Buck up, Gramps. We beat the apocalypse. Sure we can come up with some way to outwit the media.”
“At least they’re not lawyers,” Angel nodded.
“Could even be good for your image, being seen with me.” Spike touched the point of his tongue to his teeth. “Maybe next time we patrol, we can put on a real show for ’em.”
“I am not putting on a—hey!” But Spike was already gone, headed towards the bliss of a hot shower.
By the time Angel shoved open the bathroom door, Spike had already brushed his teeth and washed his face. The headache had mercifully started to recede.
Angel shook his head. “I am not putting on a show for anyone. Ever.” He was doing his damndest to sound all Sire-ful, but the idea had clearly got him—animated—enough to follow the argument down the hall.
Spike grinned at him. “Come on, Liam.” He put on his best come-hither voice. Prowled two steps closer. Only Angel would rent such a tiny apartment with such a huge bathroom. “All those years we spent, back in the day?”
Spike ran a finger slowly up Angel’s cock. Felt it twitch under his touch. “Parties? Train stations?” His voice dropped to a near-whisper. “Back of a carriage, where you ate any cabbie who opened the door on us?”
Angel’s eyes were half-lidded, misted over with distant London fog.
“Those innocent eyes, all shocked and horrified,” Spike rumbled. “Can’t tell me you don’t miss it.”
“I don’t miss it,” Angel said, in that same stupid deep voice.
Then he slammed Spike back against the wall. Held him fast there, one hand on each shoulder. Dragged his tongue up Spike’s neck.
Whispered, “Do you?”
Well, hell.
The rough wet of Angel’s tongue swarmed like wildfire down Spike’s back and up his cock. Angel might as well have been licking his balls.
“Yeah, Da,” he murmured. “Do miss it.”
Angel’s hands roamed long and slow down over Spike’s chest, across his ribs, down around his hips. Spike’s voice shuddered.
“All those prim and propers, spying on us? Taking the air after dinner so they could watch us fuck in the garden. Thinking we couldn’t see them in the dark.” He licked up the side of Angel’s neck. Felt that stone-still tremor that only Angel could muster.
“Pretending they were horrified, when all they wanted was to get in between us. Faint away like a proper Victorian and let us have our way with ’em.”
Angel’s fingers slipped further down, around the cheeks of Spike’s arse. Splayed across the tops of his thighs, brushing vulnerable skin.
Sometimes, it was like this:
Angel’s hands, unchanged as the rest of him (trousers or jeans, waist coats or hero coats—all window dressing, none of that actually mattered) lifting and moving him, manhandling the goods like stolen treasure. Spike closing his eyes and time stripped away like their clothes.
They could have been anywhere with a hard surface. And Angel’s teeth closing around his shoulder as tight as Spike’s legs wrapped around his waist.
Angel grunted, shoved Spike further up the wall, shoved two fingers up inside him. “You always loved an audience, William.”
Spike fluttered his eyelashes. “Well, what can I say? When you got it flaunt it, right?”
Angel’s fingers twisted inside him in response, forcing a gasp of air past Spike’s lips. Angel’s mouth covered his, then, kissing him hard, knocking the back of Spike’s head against the tiles.
Warm lips against his, greedy tongue in his mouth, and the kissing did more to make Spike writhe and moan than even Angel’s hands could do. Sucking on his tongue, teeth scraping nerves that jittered up Spike’s spine. Spike tilted his head back, let Angel’s mouth roam away from his, over his cheekbone, nipping at his ear, sliding down his neck. Angel took his time there, human teeth digging against Spike’s jugular, wet tongue against his skin, until Spike’s blood was swarming with need.
“Christ,” he whispered, eyes closed, mouth open. “Fuck me, Angel.”
Angel held Spike open with both hands, shoved himself inside on just leftover slick and beads of sweat.
Spike let his head fall back, neck exposed.
Angel grinned at him. “No one watching now,” he said, voice scratching low. “Cept me.”
Spike wriggled himself further down on Angel’s cock. Got a satisfying hitch of breath for his troubles. Angel’s arms were strained and solid, trees holding up the sky. His grin was moonlight and shadow, hide-and-seek with sharpened pinpoints of light.
“Always were my best audience.” Spike grinned back at him, tongue against the corner of his lips. “Want me to put on a show for you, then?”
Wrapped together like vines, entangled thorns hitting all the right spots. Spike’s feet were going to leave bruises in Angel’s back.
Angel smiled, narrowed his eyes. “Are there funny hats involved?”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Git. Can make faces if you like.” He stuck out his tongue. Angel nipped at it.
“I was thinking more like the time Darla brought that aristocrat out to ‘spy’ on us. Who was it now? Some earl or queen or something?”
“Think he was a bit of both.” Angel twisted his hips, sending sparks up behind Spike’s eyes.
“Right.” Spike’s voice dropped to its lowest register, molten and thick with memory. “She led him out to the garden after dinner, and you had me up against the brick, just like this.”
One of Angel’s hands snaked its way up Spike’s torso, eyes following the path of his fingers, smoothing over hard muscle and solid bone. Spike let his eyes close, let his head drop back. Let Angel drink in the sight of him, just as he’d done that night in the dark, lit by moonlight and the glow of Darla’s gaze.
Angel wrapped one hand behind Spike’s neck, scratched at his nape. Made Spike squirm. “Your hair was longer,” he said.
Spike grinned in reply, sarcastic and amused: you remember.
“You were a damn sight more obedient then, too,” Angel muttered, tugging Spike’s hips down down, turning Spike’s grin into a moan he couldn’t help.
“And you’re getting senile in your old age. Never did a damn thing you told me, then or now. Would’ve saved myself a passel of bruises if I had.”
Angel’s fingers twisted around Spike’s bicep. “You looked pretty in bruises.”
Spike grinned. “Why d’you think I always disobeyed?”
Angel smiled back, secret and rare. It made Spike’s dick jump.
“Disobeyed that night, as I recall.” Spike closed his eyes again, inhaled Angel’s scent, the same as it was back then: darkness and clean earth. “Told me to turn around, face the terrace. Put on a show for the mark, you said. But I wanted to see your face.”
He faltered, realizing he’d never mentioned that part before. Never told Angelus why he’d been so stubborn about dragging him towards the wall, climbing up on him. Wrapping his legs around Sire’s waist and hanging on, just like he was now.
It felt too intimate to share. So of course, Spike did the stupidest thing he could think of. He picked that exact moment to open his eyes. Realized his mistake too late, and looked away, afraid of what he’s see.
But Angel took hold of his chin. Turned Spike’s face back towards him. Looked him in the eye and didn’t look away.
“That right?” Angel smiled, small and wicked, and Spike relaxed. Grinned back.
“Darla always said I didn’t beat you enough,” Angel whispered against Spike’s neck. Pressed his nose and blunt teeth over taut skin. Didn’t bite.
“Darla always was a sadistic bitch,” Spike muttered, shivering.
“Mmmm.” Now Angel stilled his hips. Pulled back a bit to see Spike’s face. “So. Where’s my show, then?”
Fucker had learned a lot from Darla.
“Let’s see,” Spike whispered. “As I recall, it went something like this.”
Spike tipped his head back, eyes still on Angel’s, and ran one hand slow, slow, down the center of his chest. Pushed just far enough away from the wall for his back to arch, enough to get his fingers around his cock. Stroked, long and smooth, letting Angel get a nice, long look.
“Pretty,” Angel muttered, and Spike’s vision swam, his eyes struggling to stay focused.
“Show me your face,” Spike whispered, barely hanging on. “Please.”
Then Angel bared his fangs, nuzzled at Spike’s neck, almost gentle, as if he couldn’t be held accountable in moments like these.
“Wanna hear you when you come, boy,” Angel said, and Spike was lost. “Then we’ll see how long it takes for you to get it up again so you can fuck me.”
It was enough to make Spike’s back arch, make his vision white out even before Angel’s fangs pierced his skin. Then there was blood and teeth and howling (his own), and he was bucking against Angel’s chest, head thumping the tiles, coming hard and loud and fucking endless.
It was rarely the words that got Spike off. More often it was Angel’s hands pawing at him, rough and bruising like calloused leather. Words were Spike’s department, and Spike knew well enough which ones to use, how to pitch his voice, how to beg pretty enough to make daddy buck and growl and come hard the way he was now.
But every once in a while, Angelus reminded him that there was a bit of the bard in that lilted voice, that it could be just as much fun to let Spike put on a show and let Angel take care of the tell.
They slumped down the wall together, landing in a dizzied, boneless mass. Spike let the cold of the tiles soak into his heated skin. Let it slowly knit up his unravelled muscles, wake up his pleasure-addled brain.
“Hope the neighbors are off to work already,” he muttered after a minute. “Reckon we’d’a woke them good and proper with that show.”
“In this neighborhood?” Angel said, resting one hand on his still sticky lap. Spike slung one leg over his. “We could dance naked on the roof and no one would notice. Even when we caught fire.”
Spike slouched comfortably against the wall, wishing for a smoke but too shagged out to go get one. “Wouldn’t bet on it,” he said. “Likely to be some news hounds from that stupid magazine parked on our doorstep, waiting to snap our picture as soon as we show our faces.”
Angel merely nodded, eyes closed. The two of them sat quietly for a minute, listening to the plumbing hiss.
“Oh, bugger.” Spike sat up. Angel’s eyes opened.
“Dawn used to read that rag all the time. You don’t think Buffy...?”
“No way,” Angel said, maybe a little too quickly. “I mean, she’d have called one of us—right?”
Spike snorted. “Killed one of us, more like. Although there was that one weird comment she made about oil.”
Angel frowned. “Shit!”
“What? There’s no way she could actually know about the oil.”
“No... Connor.”
“Connor and oil?” Spike frowned. “Woulda thought your soul prevented that kinda thing, but if—”
Angel thwapped Spike upside the head. “Ass. I mean I don’t want him reading those papers. I don’t want him thinking—you know.”
He made a hand gesture obviously meant to encompass himself, Spike, and a hundred or so years of gay vampire sex. It was a very complicated hand gesture. Spike was almost impressed.
“What? That his old man has sex?” He shrugged. “Can’t blame the lad, really. Who wants to picture your arse if they don’t have to?”
Angel thwapped him again.
“Now, the idea of Connor and oil... that’s something worth picturing.”
Angel let out a growl like a bull elephant belching.
Spike grinned, but let the matter lie. “Don’t expect he’ll much care. Long as you don’t go all fangy, he’ll prob’ly be happy you’re getting some. Makes you much less cranky.”
Spike wriggled his fingers underneath Angel’s thigh. Stroked his skin as much as he could with fingertips mashed between the floor and Angel’s massive leg. “Guess your arse ain’t always so bad.” He smiled, the one that always got Angel’s dick jumping, and waited to see the results. Now that was impressive.
Angel levered himself up off the floor. “Bed, now,” he grunted. “If I’m gonna roll over for you, I wanna have a soft surface.”
“Baby,” Spike snorted, but hurried after him.
*
Outside, as the dawn painted the sky, a lonely figure crouched in her hiding place among the bushes, just outside the bathroom window. She looked down at the video camera in her hand; played it back to make sure the picture quality was clear. It was. She’d caught it all, the whole beautiful show, live on DV for all the world to see.And she knew just where to start. There was a certain publication that would pay big, big money for this treasure.
The fan smiled to herself. Not only was she about to strike it very rich, she’d have wanking material for years to come.