bloodstains

~Throw me to the wolves
Because there's order in the pack.~
-The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Angel walks more slowly these days. It's not like his appointment-book is filled with anything crucial since he fired his staff; abuse Merl, torment Lilah, abuse Merl some more. Dragging steps back to the hotel, collapse into twisted sheets and broken sleep and blood-soaked, ash-scattered dreams. He's forgotten what excitement feels like: the warning shock of vision, the adrenaline-paced alert of sudden danger that almost felt like heartbeat again. And he certainly wasn't expecting anything different today.

Until the stench of blood catches his nostrils as he trudges tiredly into the Hyperion.

Not human; he doubts that human blood would excite his attention these days, although it might excite his hunger. No, this blood is cold, and it is ancient, and it is oh. so. familiar.

Familiar //familial// like dusty corsets and rotten apples and strong whiskey, like cheap tobacco, like communion wine, like the temples of Aurelius. He has smelled it in his spent seed and he has smelled it in the flakes of ash when their clothes and hair went up in flames and he could smell it, now, beneath the surface of his own skin. He has buried his face in Darla's hair and in the crook of William's neck and in the secret places beneath Drusilla's thighs and he knows that scent better than any other. It's Family. It's Home. He bites down hard on his tongue and coats the inside of his mouth the coppery-salt taste of his own blood. One of Them is here. One of Them is hurt.

He dashes up the stairs, tripping over his feet as he runs, and the smell of blood is all around him //as if it were pooling on the floor and running in lazy trickles over the wallpaper// but he can't tell which one it is, isn't close enough, doesn't know until he pushes open the door to his empty room, breaks down the locked bathroom door, and then it hits him: leather and nicotine and vodka, fragile subtext to blood, and he knows.

The boy is bleeding.

--------------------------

//My heart expands/ 'Tis grown a bulge in't...//

Rips and tears, poetry falling to the ground in tatters and shreds. //Effulgent? What the bloody hell were you thinking?//

"And I wonder," whispered the Voice, "what possible catastrophe came crashing down from heaven and brought this dashing stranger to tears."

"Nothing," he snapped defensively. "I wish to be alone."

//I'll stick with what I'm good at, thank you very much//

"Oh, I see you."

//i know i'm a bad poet but i'm a good man and all i ask is that you try to see me//

//i do see you that's the problem//

"A man surrounded by fools who cannot see his strength, his vision, his glory. That-" A dark smile. A knowing. "And burning baby fish, swimming all around your head."

"That's quite close enough."

//You can't touch me//

"I've heard tales of London pickpockets. You'll not be getting my purse, I tell you." Babbling, meaningless, stupid syllables. Words scattering around him in tatters and tears.

A sly smile. "Don't need a purse." Hands on his chest, his temple. He drew in a sharp breath.

//touching me//

"Your wealth lies here and here... in the spirit and imagination. You walk in worlds the others can't begin to imagine."

She didn't pull away from him, didn't laugh in his face of scream in revulsion like other girls if he so much as stood near them- didn't coldly turn away or look through him as if he didn't exist, and that didn't make any *sense.*

"Oh, yes!" he sighed, and then caught himself- "I mean, no. I mean... mother's expecting me-"

//as if mother even noticed i was gone//

Her fingers were at his shirt collar, brushing against his throat. He began to shake violently.

"I see what you want."

//i wish to be alone//

"Something glowing and glistening," she murmured silkily. "Something..." Her hand drifted near his face and her eyes widened. "Effulgent."

His breath caught in his throat. "Effulgent..."

He wasn't absolutely sure that it was even a real word, but it hardly mattered now.

"Do you want it?" she whispered.

"Oh, yes..." he gasped, with a sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his soul. Trembling fingertips against her breast. "God, yes..."

Gentle hands at his throat and he trembled under the pressure of her fingers.

//twenty-four and never been touched//she's so close and i'm so afraid//she'll hurt me//she'll hurt me//

As her sharp fangs pierced his skin, he cried out in pain.

At first.

--------------------------

The stench //remembrance// //childer// //blood// is
almost overwhelming: spatters on the floor,
fingerprints on the walls, the sink stained with
streaks of dark red. Spike lies huddled and
motionless in the foot of the shower, fully clothed,
covered in the liquiddarkred that runs in steady
rivulets from the cuts in his arms. The shower
spatters over him, washing his insides down the drain
and tattooing his skin in dark crimson lines. Angel
rushes to his side, unable to pull his tightly locked
form out of a fetal position- dragging him from the
shower and finally wrenching his arms free, his hands
coated in the blood that gushes from Spike's wounds,
blade tumbling from nerveless fingers and clattering
loudly to the floor.

Angel realizes with a sickening horror that the cuts
are not random slices at all, but carefully carved
characters. DRUSILLA, screams his left arm in thick,
jagged gashes. BUFFY, cries the right in solemn,
dark, painfully deep wounds. "Oh, Christ," he
whispers hoarsely, and his hands are shaking.
"Spike-"

//cold i feel so cold as if i were the one bleeding//

//why the hell should i feel that way? just because
blood that took its genesis somewhere in my veins is
running all over the floor, just because i've wanted
to tear flesh in the name of both of those women at
one time or another, what the fuck does it
have to do with me?//

"Spike, what the fuck are you doing?"

Pale blue eyes seek him out, blink once, twice,
slowly.

"I did them in the sink," Spike replies in a dull,
lifeless voice. "I did them in the sink at first but
they kept closing. Kept healing. I knew they
wouldn't scar. They have to scar. I have to
remember." He scrubs silent tears off his cheeks with
the back of one hand, smearing the side of his face
with blood. "So I kept them under the water. That
worked." He lifts his head and looks up at Angel with
misplaced hope. "What do you think?" he asks. "D'you
think it'll work? Or do you think I'll wake up and
they'll be gone again?"

Angel traces his hand down the side of Spike's face,
leaving a trail of bloody fingerprints in his wake.
"Come on," he says hoarsely. "Let's get you cleaned
up."

--------------------------

He didn't know anything of the boy's life before they
found him, although Dru spoke vaguely of poetry and
tears. Only knew that William left the house the
evening after his making and returned moments before
dawn, trembling and blood-covered, his eyes filled
with a dark fury. He laid his head on Drusilla's lap
and didn't move for hours. Angelus later discovered
that the boy had killed his parents, most of his
extended family, several acquaintances, and the better
part of his class at the nearby university.

"He's a quick learner," Angelus said.

"He's a liability," Darla snapped in reply.

"Ours now," Drusilla murmured in a singsong voice,
running her fingers through his bloodstained hair.
"He's ours. Those naughty people were mean to our
William and they can't play with him anymore. He
belongs to us."

Angelus shook his head sadly. "Honestly, Drusilla, I
don't understand what you see in that useless child."

William's eyes filled with tears then, and he bit down
on his lower lip so hard that he drew blood. His Sire
lifted his head tenderly and lapped up the dark
trickle that ran down his chin. "Come here, Daddy,"
she whispered, and Angelus bent down. She pressed her
lips to his, and he could feel the sweet, coppery tang
of the boy's blood flowing over his tongue. Tasted
the
willful bravery and the passion and the rage and hurt
there. Tasted fragile feelings and breakable bones.
"Do you understand now?" she murmured, amusement
flashing in her dark eyes.

"Yes," he whispered hoarsely. "I understand."

--------------------------

He pulls Spike from the bathroom and begins to bandage
the gaping wounds in his arms. Spike tries to push
him away, but he is too weak from blood-loss and his
head falls tiredly against Angel's shoulder.

"Spike," Angel says patiently, "what happened?"

"Can't remember."

"Don't give me that shit, Spike." Angel's voice
trembles, almost imperceptibly. "Tell me what
happened."

"Dru." A shocked whisper. "Dru came back. I let her
leave." He runs his hands compulsively through his
hair, absentmindedly working blood into the strands,
and begins to rock back and forth fervently, his
breath coming in harsh, panicked gasps. "I let her
leave, she wanted me back and I let her leave, I can't
fucking believe that I let her leave, what the hell
was I thinking?"

"Did you want her back?" Angel asks. He's confused.
He wants to understand, he knows he should understand,
but he's very often clueless, and he doesn't.

Spike looks up in surprise. "That's not the point."

"But she hurt you." He remembers. Remembers
Sunnydale, his head still aching with memories of
Hell, and a screaming, drunken Grandchilde who wore
his wounded pride like a badge of honor. //I can
bleed more freely than you, I can love more
unwisely than you, I can get my heart crushed better
than *anyone.*// Wasn't that always his greatest
talent; now, his only remaining vice? Sure, Angel's
last girlfriend sent him to Hell, but that's nothing
compared to Spike's track record.

"Yeah, she hurt me," he mutters with a shrug. "I'm
not sure if that was my reason for leaving or for
coming back, but I
remember that she hurt me."

It all makes a certain kind of sick, stupid sense, and
Angel closes his eyes against the sudden ache and
nausea that understanding brings. He knows he never
intended *this*- this fucked-up, Pavlovian chaos, the
vampiric conditioning of blood and bruise, a hundred
years of Spike's own masochistic brand of arithmetic:
pain equals attention equals sex equals love and
back 'round to pain again, the jump of logic that
Spike's mind has to take in order to link laceration
to affection. Angel assumes, as he so often does,
that he is clearly to blame for this, but he isn't
quite sure how. The soul feels guilt for the
bleeding, quivering mess on his bathroom floor- second
nature after so long- but he somehow cannot shake the
feeling that this is never what he *planned.* Never
worked Will and his ever-expanding collection of
issues into Angelus's two-hundred-year-long daily
planner. Never made provisions for the youngest
coming home to bleed to second death in his shower.

Still, he's gotten used to everything else in the last
two and a half centuries, and surely he can get used
to *this*- the rising and falling cadence of tears,
the hoarse sobs that wax and wane, the scent of
Spike's blood. Get used to the nagging certainty that

the sins of the Childe are delivered unto the Father.
The understanding that this is Family, Spike is blood
it's *always* his fault.

But he doesn't want this. He didn't make the boy, he
never wanted the boy, and he doesn't want this
responsibility. Doesn't want these bloodstains on his
floor.

--------------------------

A few days after his turning, they began to seriously
contemplate the wisdom of remaining in London.
Everyone the boy had known was now mysteriously and
violently deceased, and he himself was now no longer
to be found at home or school. Darla demanded that
they pack everything and be gone by nightfall.
William rolled his eyes and laughed in her face. She
checked him with a slap, and Dru's tongue darted out
briefly to collect the trickle of blood from where her
fingernails had sliced open his cheek.

"No one's looking for me," he said flatly. "No one
will even notice that I'm gone."

And indeed, no one did.

--------------------------

He tugs the boy's shirt off, checking for other
injuries: his lip is cut, his torso decorated in a
network of bruises. "The Slayer did most of 'em," he
whispers. "Y'know, she keeps telling me she doesn't
love me. I don't understand. It must be love because
I bleed so well for her."

Angel bites down on his lip hard and swallows back the
urge to scream, or to sob, or to beat the boy
senseless, or to bolt from the room. Nothing hurts
quite so much as loving Buffy. He remembers that, at
least.

"You told her how you feel?"

"She hit me, didn't she?" Spike snaps tiredly. "Pay
attention."

--------------------------

The first time that Drusilla refused his bed in favor
of her new Childe, Angelus said nothing. The second
time, he fumed, raged, and fucked Darla in her stead.
The third time, he ripped Drusilla's bedroom door off
the hinges, tossed her into the hallway, and proceeded
to break every bone in William's body.

When he was done, the boy lifted his eyes as best as
he was able and smirked at his grandsire.

"It's not enough, y'know," he murmured. "It's not
enough to make me leave." He gave a sick chuckle. "I
belong here. I belong to you- to all of you."

--------------------------

He wakes in the middle of the night to a low humming
and opens his eyes again to the sight and smell of
blood. Spike has scraped the healing scabs open again
with his short fingernails and is found scribbling all
over the walls with bloodied fingertips. He can see
the wild pattern of letters on the wall: one single
word, over and over again.

William.

When Angel tries to pull him away, Spike dashes his
own forehead brutally against the wall: once

//father//

twice

//lover//

three times

//slayer//

He lays still as an icepack is pressed to the bruises,
and weeps silently.

The next day, as Spike sleeps, Angel scrubs away at
the walls for hours. But the name traced there in
bloody letters won't go away.

--------------------------

Darla never liked the boy.

He was too pale, dammit. Too fair, too frail, too
blue-eyed. Too violent, too sarcastic, too easily
offended. He was too much like Darla and it drove her
insane.

But he bled so pretty, dangling there in his chains,
didn't he? He wouldn't scream for her, no matter what
she did, but he bled pretty nonetheless. She didn't
like him, but that didn't mean that he didn't have his
uses.

Her lover was fucking the boy. She *knew* her lover
was fucking the boy. She'd known since the third
night after his turning, when Angelus, clad only in
his dressing gown, had shut the bedroom door hurriedly
in her face. She barely caught a glimpse of
the younger one: naked, chained to the bed, shivering
in delighted anticipation. She was disappointed, of
course, and she was hurt, but she was not truly
furious until she heard her Favored Childe's
open-throated scream of pleasure.

Angelus never screamed for her, either.

--------------------------

Weary and sore from scrubbing at the stains, Angel
falls into an exhausted sleep. He dreams.

//a pack of wolves rip one another to shreds with
sharp fangs tear each other into broken bloody ragged
pieces and howl with pain and fear and rage and then
the fucking begins, and when it's all over they lick
one another's wounds//

He wakes to find Spike huddled at the end of the bed;
his features shift briefly into gameface and he sinks
his teeth into his own palm before resuming his human
features again. Draws his teeth from the flesh and
watches in fascination as blood pools into his palm
before lapping it away slowly with his tongue.

"What did Dru's blood taste like to you?" he whispers.
"To me it always tasted like cloves." He puts his
lips to the gash and sucks hard.

"What are you doing?"

"Tasting," he says, as if it should be the most
obvious thing in the world.

"Oh," Angel replies stupidly.

"It should taste the same," Spike says with a certain
amount of determination. "Shouldn't it? It's her
blood, after all. I don't understand why it doesn't
taste the same." He works at the edges of the cut
with blunt teeth, tonguing the wound. "It felt so
warm. Drinking her. That doesn't make any sense,
does it? She was cold and I was fast becoming colder
but when she opened her veins for me I felt so *warm.*
The bite is already healing; Spike mutters a
frustrated curse and sinks his teeth in again. "I
can't remember what it felt like anymore. That warmth.
Do you think it's still there? Somewhere still- in my
veins-
the blood she put there? That same taste, lurking
inside me? It's got to be."

"I don't know."

"Can you still taste Darla?"

"I try not to."

"I hear you set them on fire," Spike murmurs.

No point lying. //Yes, I staked my Sire. Yes, I
incinerated her, along with my only remaining Childe.
Yes, I let Penn die. Hell, I even helped. Yes, I'm
sitting here in dull silence, wordless, useless,
watching as Spike loses his mind and takes himself to
pieces. No, I'm not any better at being a vampire
than I am at being a human. And I m sorry, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, except for when I'm not.//

"I did."

The boy gives a sick chuckle and begins to rock back
and forth rhythmically. "Did they like it?"

--------------------------

He was young, he was willful, he was independent.
Angelus understood all this. But he was late-
*again*- and that simply would not do.

"When he gets home, I'm going to chain him to the
ceiling," he fumed, pacing around the room, "and I'm
going to run his skinny little body through with hot
pokers until he learns to show some *respect* for me."
He turned to face Drusilla, who was methodically
binding Ms. Edith's hands together with a silken
ribbon and driving pins into her chest. "For God's
sake, didn't the boy's father provide any *discipline*
when he was alive?"

Dru began to giggle hysterically.

"Drusilla," Angelus snapped with labored patience,
"would you mind telling me just what's so damned
funny?"

"Of course he didn't, silly," Dru snickered. "Our
William was invisible."

Angelus raised one eyebrow disbelievingly.
"Invisible."

"Like the stars on a black night that no one can
see... the stars are prettier, but the clouds are so
big. No one ever saw his sparkling." Dru tipped her
head from side to side, humming. "Like mice in the
forest, scurrying about, but no one can see them
and no one hears until they step on their tails, and
then they cry out in pain. Nipping at ankles. No, he
never hurt him- not the way yours hurt you, because he
*saw* you. But not our invisible boy. I was the
first, you know." She cradled Ms. Edith to her breast
and rocked back and forth. "I could see him when no
one else could. I was the first."

He beat Dru for mentioning his father.

But when William finally got home, Dru was allowed to
watch.

--------------------------

He finds the blade.

Burying it in the bottom of the trashcan wasn't good
enough; he finds the blade and is caught only moments
before he can replace healing cuts with fresh ones.
Angel loses it then, sorrow and worry and rage
exploding uncontrollably into the screaming of curses
and the shaking of shoulders. Spike's head rocks back
and forth on his neck as if he were a broken doll
under the force of Angel's hands.

"Are you going to hit me?" Spike asks dully.

Angel drops his head in exhaustion, fingertips
trailing off bruised shoulders, down slender, bandaged
arms. "No," he murmurs, swallowing back tears. "I'm
not going to hit you."

"Damn."

Angel bites back screams, reaches up to thumb a silent
tear off Spike's pale cheek. He's not sure how much
longer this can go on. Perhaps he should simply give
the boy whatever it is he wants. A kick in the ass.
A stake in the chest. Whatever. Get it over with.

"I always bruised so easily. Do you remember?" Spike
whispers. "Your fists were so good at what they
did... Dru always got
to watch. Watch and sing songs about pretty patterns
of purple and blue- flowers blooming on my skin. You
could grab my arm- like so-" He clamps his hand
painfully around his own upper arm; Angel reaches up
and wrenches it away. "Just the slightest pressure of
your thumb would cause the flesh to bruise. I would
watch in fascination for hours afterward, lay on the
bloodspattered sheets and watch the bruises fade from
black to purple to blue to green to yellow and finally
into nothing. I always wept when that happened
because the bruises and the bleeding were the only way
I could convince myself that you had ever really been
there."

//of course i was there// Angel almost says, but
doesn't.

Wonders, briefly, which version of himself he'd be
referring to.

Wonders if that would make any difference.

--------------------------

If Dru went to William's bed instead of Angelus',
William was punished. If Angelus went to William's
bed instead of Darla's, William was punished. And if
he had dared refuse either, he would have been broken
into little pieces. But it never occurred to him to
refuse.

And sometimes the four of them didn't bother with
separate beds, or, indeed, with beds at all. Sometimes
he got lost in the tangle of limbs and fangs and
fingernails and he couldn't tell who was fucking or
being fucked. He always came away with cuts and
bruises and tears in his flesh. And he always slept
so peacefully afterwards.

--------------------------

On the third day Spike shatters every breakable object
in the room. Angel watches the mass destruction
unblinkingly from his vantage point on the bed,
unconcerned by the crash of broken china and the rip
of torn upholstery. Meaningless objects. Just things.
*Human* things, and therefore never his to begin
with.

Spike ends up in the bathroom again, staring in
confounded horror at the blank mirror.

"Where is that child, Angelus?" he murmurs softly,
tracing his fingertips across empty glass. "You
remember? The small, frightened child that you all
took and broke into tiny pieces and pasted back
together again into a half-assed excuse for a
vampire?" He runs a fist violently through the glass
and turns to Angel in a blind rage. "Where the fuck
is William, Angelus, what the fuck did you do with
him, you brutal, ruthless, merciless son of a bitch?"

"I don't know," Angel whispers helplessly as Spike
collapses into his arms. "I don't know. I don't
understand how it happens."

"I was innocent," he insists. "Wasn't I? I remember
being innocent. Not of violence or sex, I mean... oh,
I was innocent of all those, too, you know that...
but, the blood, Angel... the wanting... I didn't know
what it was like to want like this, didn't know I
could hurt this way, and *you* gave me that. You and
Darla and Dru- you taught me how to love and you
taught me how to ache and you taught me how to bleed
for you and then you all fucking left me. Left me out
in the cold and now all I've got are these two stupid
fucking blonde chits and one of them fucks me and the
other one bruises me and between the two of them it's
almost like being home again." He positions his head
in the crook of Angel's elbow and speaks with a
weighted sadness. "You don't want me here." And Angel
doesn't dispute this. Doesn't deny it. Doesn't try to
cover it up with "it's all right it's what I do"
because it's *not* what he does anymore and doesn't
say "you were always one of us" because he might have
enjoyed the boy but he very often hadn't liked him and
he doesn't say "Dru chose you for a reason" because
Dru never had a good reason for a single goddamn thing
she did. Fortunate coincidence was all. The boy was
a skilled hunter and a good fuck and Angelus never
really minded having him around, but that has nothing
to do with it. There was never any question of
putting up with Spike. He was Dru's boy.

But indifferent tolerance isn't the affection that
Spike is craving. He needs something more from him.
Deserves something more. And he *is* family.

So Angel runs his fingers absentmindedly through the
boy's hair and says the only true thing he can think
of. Echoes Spike's own words. "That's not the
point."

--------------------------

Muscles aching from kicks and punches and the
post-killing shag; flesh scorched when, blissfully
unaware of the building burning down around them, the
flames had grown too close. Dru combed her fingertips
through the long strands of his hair, matted with
sweat and blood and ash. Blood trickled into his
eyes, the cut already swollen and sore.

"I guess that makes you one of us," Angelus said.

Spike punched his Grandsire playfully on the arm to
mask the sudden, overwhelming rush of pride.

"Do you think he meant it?" he asked Dru later, as she
mopped his injured brow and combed dried blood from
his tangled locks.

"I'm sure he did," she replied, humming softly under
her breath. "You're so pretty when you're bleeding."

--------------------------

Crushing kisses and tangling fingers and the tear of
clothing and he thought, for a moment, that everything
was all right until he reached into the drawer. Spike
snatches the lubricant from his hand and hurls it
angrily across the room and sickening realization
dawns on Angel. The boy is taking masochism to a
whole new level and he is *not* going to be a
party to *that.* "You never bothered with my comfort
before, so there's no goddamn reason why you should
now-"

Angel seizes the boy's face between his hands, tracing
his thumbs along the sharp lines of cheekbones.

"I am not a blade for you to impale yourself on," he
whispers harshly. "I am not your means to destruction.
I will not be your beheading or your sunlight or your
stake. I am not the bleeding that makes your bruises
fade and I *cannot* hurt you any
more than you can hurt yourself. Do you understand
me?"

Spike nods weakly, his eyes filling with tears. "I'm
afraid. I'm so afraid I'll forget. What if I forget,
Angel? I can remember belonging to you, to her, but I
can't remember what it felt like anymore. And next
week, when I'm alone in my crypt and all the cuts have
healed, it won't be enough. I wouldn't be in the sorry
state I'm in right now if memory were enough. And if
I forget everything, what's left of me then?"

Nothing, Angel realizes. He wonders if Spike would
simply fade away, dissipate into dust, if not for the
aches and remembrances that he carries under his skin.

"I could mark you."

He finds himself shoved away with angry hands. "You
spent twenty bloody years marking me. You branded me
with your fists and fangs and cock and tongue and
stupid Alpha Male bullshit for two fucking decades.
Where are those scars now?"

And Angel thinks, briefly, that it's really a stupid
question. Stupid when he can practically see those
scars slithering across the surface of Spike's mind,
lining the insides of his ribcage and trembling at the
ends of his fingers. Spike is made up entirely of
scars.

But the only one he ever kept was from the damned
Slayer, and Angel still isn't entirely sure how that
happened- magic sword? preternatural power? a token
of bitter, begrudging remembrance? Doesn't matter; he
can't see it in mirrors anyhow. All he has is flawless
flesh and the memory of bruises. Spike hasn't come
home, because there's no home left to come to, no
real shelter beneath bandages and gentle hands
weighted with guilt and time and half-assed notions of
responsibility. He's come back for the memory of
Belonging, and Angel can sell him that lie if he's so
inclined. He doesn't even mind- just one
more falsehood to add to the ever-growing list these
days. It not like Spike's still going to be here in
the morning, sticking around to test it out. Broken
and self-deluded as he is right now, he knows better.
Knows that Angelus wasn't very dependable even under
the best of circumstances, and Angel doesn't give a
fuck about much of anything these days.

Maybe there is no Belonging, he thinks, and the horror
of it is enough to freeze his blood. Maybe there was
never any Belonging, and the dreams, the scars, the
horror of tossing down cigarettes and watching Family
go up in flames, maybe all that doesn't matter. Maybe
it's all just blood and pain and sex and the
half-assed longings of a poet.

Maybe nothing lasts.

--------------------------

There were a few things that he never told Dru. That
he was the one that led Darla to the Gypsy camp that
night, pointing out all the prettiest girls. That in
the nights after Prague, when she lay whimpering atop
bloody bedclothes, eyes blind behind bruised, swollen
lids, he had positioned the tip of a stake over her
heart and prayed for the strength to press down.

And that sometimes, *he* wanted to be the one tied up.

Wanted to feel the cold clink of manacles or the soft
whisper of red silk scarves against his skin, feel
that entrapment and loss of control, feel the sharp
sting of the whip against his flesh as he twisted his
eyes shut tight and drowned in the sensation of pain
and memory and //Angelus//

But the memories that Dru nursed were even stronger
than his own and she always preferred being the effect
to being the cause and it was a moot question now that
she was too weak to leave the factory, wasn't it? So
he went to the high school and faced the Slayer, and
he did it for her. Took his beating like a man and
did it all for *her,* like the helluva guy he was.
And her fists were sharp and her tongue was sharper
and

//no spike it's gonna hurt a *lot*//

he hadn't hurt that way since Angelus.

He returned with a fading bruise marring his cheekbone
and a nearly healed laceration decorating his lower
lip.

"Spike," Dru said, with a touch of envy in her voice,
"did she hurt you?"

He got used to carrying bruises again after that.

--------------------------

Sharp-bladed kitchen knife; permanent black marker.
"Lay still," he whispers, and Spike complies,
tightening his fingers around the bedsheets as Angel
slices carefully into his skin. Tries not to hurt him
any more than necessary; the pain isn't the point
anymore; it's the marking that's important. That
which remains. The scars.

The blade cuts through layers of flesh, exposing
muscle and bone. Working the dark stain into torn
edges of skin. He carefully licks away streaming
layers of blood and ink as he works, unsure of his
motions but trying not to show the boy his
nervousness. He's never done this before, although he
bears marks of the same nature on his own back. His
fingertips leave dark smudges across the pale expanse
of Spike's body, and he shivers beneath Angel's touch,
his chest starting to heave with unnecessary breath.

"Lay *still*-"

"I can't." Spike blinks his eyes rapidly, hips
squirming into the mattress, fingers rapidly clutching
at the coverlets. Angel puts one hand between Spike's
legs, feels the stiffness there.

"Please."

Yes. Of course. Puts down the knife, half-done with
the task, and unzips Spike's jeans.

"Angel-"

"Sshhh." He doesn't want excuses. Doesn't want
justifications- there aren't any- doesn't want any
more of Spike's guilt and sorrow than what is already
coating the inside of his mind in thick, cold layers.
He just wants the boy to lie still so that this can
be over with.

He's tired. They're both tired.

Reaches inside, closing his eyes. Spike puts his cold
hands over Angel's, a choked sob dying somewhere in
the back of his throat. Guides Angel's hands, shaking
all over, tears streaming soundlessly from the corners
of his eyes. Cries out when he comes.

Lays back down and lets Angel resume his work.

He pauses, for a moment, before finishing- wonders if
he should feel some remorse for marking him for life,
scarring him for what might come damn close to
eternity. But Spike's very nature is nothing so much
as a complex web of scar tissue... and he needs some
comfort to help him sleep. And Angel will do this.
Angel will do what is Needed.

When he is done, he sits back and observes the result.
Four letters, perfectly preserved in black and red in
the flesh over Spike's heart.

MINE.

His. Not because he ever wanted him or ever promised
to take good care; he wasn't given a choice in this
matter any more than William was. His through grief
and rage and blood-ties. His because Dru got bored
one night and always had the strangest taste in men.
His because this slayer of slayers was Made in his
image. He presses a finger to the boy's lips before
he can hear Spike's earnest "thank you." Doesn't want
to hear his gratitude; it's not a gift. It's his
responsibility. His blood.

He runs his fingers silently through the boy's hair
until he falls asleep, and then leaves him alone in
the bed.

~Finis