Binding Spike

by Tink

Angel is prowling again. There are long, long hallways in his hotel, hallways that carry him from floor to floor, room to room, a never ending freeway of shuttered and dark places.

He tried to sleep during the nights after Willow left. But his sleep was always brief and unrestful, waking every hour on the hour, and his dreams slipped out of his grasp before he could remember them.

So Angel prowls, all alone.

Except on the nights Spike comes.

***

One day Angel decides to look up "grief" in Webster's New Concise Dictionary. Webster tells him, in no uncertain terms, that the definition of grief is thus: "Acute mental pain resulting from a definite cause. A great sorrow or affliction."

Angel seizes on the word "affliction" and holds it close to him that night as he beats Spike to a bloody mess.

There is a belt made of black snakeskin that finds its slithering way into Angel's hand. The buckle is hard and cold and formed into a shimmering copper crucifix. After it leaves ugly red welts on Spike's flesh, Angel manages to wind the reptilian length around Spike's vulnerable neck.

Wonders if it is possible for Spike to lose consciousness even though oxygen to his brain is unnecessary.

Wonders why Spike isn't screaming. Why he is staring at Angel with those disconsolate eyes, biting his lips between his teeth, his cheekbones standing out in stark relief.

Angel wants. To. Hear. Screaming.

He hits Spike with an open palm in an effort to snap his head back, or to the side, or to any position where those endless blue eyes are not staring at him with a mix of ocean and rain and sorrow and

((angelus please just help me through it))

rage. And when Spike is no longer looking directly at him, Angel can bring his head down and pierce a hole in the expanse of white belly with one sharp fang and start the blood to flowing again. And even though he can slather himself with the redness, Angel can bathe in a lake of Spike's blood and paint pictures on the wall with it, there is not enough of it to replace the drop that fell from Dawn Summers' feet.

But as long as there is blood, Angel thinks of life. And he does not have to think of

((chocolate and peanut butter))

small but mighty Slayers hurling themselves off of towers.

But sometimes, on the bad nights, the blood only serves to remind him of that which was spilled at his first joining with Buffy.

(( i love you me too i try not to but i can't stop))

And then lucky Spike reaps the benefits of the remembrance.

***

It doesn't matter how many times either one of them has been on top. They always know when it's time to switch, the current in the air or the pull of the moon or the way of the tide has nothing to do with it, Angel doesn't believe in that bullshit anyway.

The one thing he believed in is dead.

They switch positions when the stale blood in their flat veins tells them to, and tonight is Angel's turn.

Angel's turn to play victimizer, and although he

((dreads))

relishes the role when it is first presented, he knows it's only a sham. Big boy vampire playing at dominance. Embarrassing, so embarrassing because he only wants to be submissive and hide in the place that assures him that what is happening isn't his fault.

But it isn't his turn to do that. Tonight is not his turn to go away into the soft, silent space. Instead, he flicks his eyes over the rawhide ties on the floor, the silken gag peeking out from under the bed. Ignores them all.

And especially ignores Spike's pleading eyes, begging him to be tied and chained and gagged and whipped and run through with quarterstaffs. It makes Angel feel the smallest bit triumphant that way, and maybe a shade more in control of

((himself))

the situation, which of course isn't really under either of their control at all.

There are nights Spike comes to Los Angeles and he reeks of submissive behavior, Angel can smell the stench of subservience before he even walks in the fucking door with his downcast eyes and meek posture.

Those are the nights Angel punishes him by forcing him on top.

//i'm gonna make you scream, you ignorant piece of shit soul-having sorry excuse for whatever you are. you're gonna scream the fucking walls down.//

Tonight Spike swaggered in the front door of the Hyperion and his braggadocio filled the entire lobby. Tonight Angel forces him into submission.

//insolent damned boy. i'll make you pay for thinking you're man enough to touch her.//

Whatever is within reach of Angel's grasping, bloody fingers becomes an extension of his arm, and he uses whatever he can to make deep gashes in alabaster skin.

Sweat and pain and wide-eyed gasping breaths come from useless lungs, from a dead heart, and still Angel doesn't stop the beating until Spike is a quivering heap of bloodied carcass on the bare sheet. There are ever more creative ways for Angel to hurt him, and the things he has done thus far are mild in comparison.

But he never, ever gags him. That would quiet the screaming.

Angel understands that he is punishing Spike for even coming here at all.

Somehow, Spike's castigation is related to Angel's regimented grieving. Angel hasn't figured out how.

All he knows is that there is a body in the room with him, a body that is minutely related to the one girl in all the world who had the job of twice sending a loved one into the arms of certain and painful death, but who chose the second time to sacrifice herself instead.

Angel very carefully decides not to think about the fact that the one girl in all the world had not sacrificed herself for him.

When he looks down again at the shivering body, he discovers one swollen blue eye has pried itself open, and cracked and bleeding lips are forming a ragged word.

((more))

He changes his mind about using the leathers.

***

(((Once, during the day, Angel forgets the presence of Cordelia and Wesley and absentmindedly rubs his chafed wrists. They itch, even when almost healed, which he supposes is fitting.

When he looks up from his paperwork, they are both staring at his purple scars.

Cordelia opens her mouth, but intercepts Wesley's small shake of his head and wisely closes it again.

Angel jerks his sleeves down over his wrists and lets his eyes burn a hole in the desktop. And when Spike shows up two nights later, Angel tightens the manacles on him till his wrists run rivers of blood over the pillow. )))

***

Sometimes there is the need for comfort, and to be comforted. Something paternal in Angel speaks its mind and on these

((rare))

nights no blood is spilled, no wounds are inflicted where the eye can see.

Angel takes in all Spike is, all he represents, and is awed and humbled by the beauty that Drusilla created.

Spike presents his smooth back to Angel, the muscles that flex and ripple slightly, buttocks that clench and tighten. Long, strong legs that bulge with sinew at the calf.

Shockingly white hair, mussed and sweat-dampened and maybe getting a shade too long, curls enticingly over his nape, and Angel wants to rubstroketongue the spot and leave a glistening trail of saliva.

So he does.

And then when Spike is finally straining against the soft cotton that is imprisoning his arms to the bedstead, when Spike is murmuring nothings into the pillow and grinding himself against the satin coverlet, Angel just lays himself over the taut body. Angel knows that tonight will be a night when he finds himself so deeply imbedded in his grief for what is lost that he can't bear for Spike to leave. Can't stand to think of even an hour in the future, when Angel will be left alone again to deal privately and painfully with the indescribable anguish that is becoming so familiar.

So he draws it out.

Covers Spike gently, so gently, feeling the muscle and sinew and straining fibers, and it helps a small bit.

Angel can almost pretend Spike is alive.

There are no chains or biting lashes, only the cotton ropes at his wrists and Angel wants to melt into him, wants to become one with him so that he might possibly take away from Spike whatever it was that Buffy gave him.

Angel wants what the slayer gifted to Spike.

There is a difference about the younger

((man))

vampire, and Angel doesn't know what it is but knows it is there, and he sinks himself deeply into Spike in hopes of capturing the essence of it. He kisses him with open mouthed pleasure, reveling in Spike's inaudible groan, clutching and grasping and feeling himself grow even impossibly harder while deep within him.

The nights like this, when there is only physicality for Angel, when his entire macrocosm is only Spike, he wants to ask him what Buffy gave him. He wants to know why Spike so willingly takes his punishment

((like a man))

from Angel.

He wants to know why Spike is grieving too.

But then Spike makes him forget until the next time, because he has smoothly taken Angel's hand and placed it on his own swollen shaft. Angel begins to stroke it with infinite gentleness, and Spike arches and twists and writhes on the satin sheets which will never be free of the bloodstains.

A veritable cascade of semen and blood, the givers of life.

But all Angel knows what to do with life is take it.

***

(((One night, Angel tries to talk. Tries to make the mindless act that is half-fucking, half-beating into some semblance of normalcy.

"Uh ... so you're back," he says inanely when Spike appears like a wraith in his doorway.

Spike looks startled and disgusted all at once. His eyes flick to the sterling band that has appeared on Angel's fourth finger of his left hand.

The blond gestures with a lift of his chin. "Why you wearin' that?"

//because it's something you can't have something of buffy's you'll never have//

"Does it ... bother you?" Angel says softly, using his thumb to trace the ridges of the hands, the heart, the crown, and his ultimate reward is the flaring of Spike's nostrils and the flash of utter despair in the morning-blue eyes.

Blood spatters the walls an hour later. Shadows thrown by a lone candle show outlines of a silent, tortured victim.

Spike is on top that night and the next day Angel does not get out of bed. )))

***

The night that Angel finally comes to the true understanding of the Slayer's death results in a startling moment of clarity.

He finds that understanding while straddling his partner, facing away from the demandingdemeaningdemoralizing blue eyes. Spike's cock is in his mouth and Angel lies with his chest on Spike's pelvis, the short pubic hairs roughening a rash into his skin, presenting Spike with the untouchable temptation of his ass.

He ignores the whimpers.

The sudden sharpness of comprehension thrusts itself into Angel's mind at the exact moment that he deep throats the angry red cock beneath him, the precise second that he slides his hands around to cup the tight buttocks and bring the shaft even more deeply into his mouth, and then all at once Angel is deathly still.

He knows why Spike is here.

Spike is his gift. Spike will *be* his gift when Angel is ready. When Angel is truly ready, the Powers That Be will reveal Angel's reward.

A small shift of the hips beneath him, and Angel tongues Spike lightly. Traces a finger down to the hole below, draws small circles around it.

Angel knows now with the same calm knowledge that blesses the martyrs and saints and all the sons of Christ that his humanity is ascertained. The proof is lying under him, straining, panting, reaching for climax.

This is the thing that will bring him his ultimate gift, and the ultimate gift is not the humanity but the blessed relief that will follow it. And even if it is the biggest untruth Angel has ever fabricated, somehow he will make this be about Buffy.

Somehow this dance, this ritual between himself and the childe of his childe, is about Buffy, and Angel strains and cries and damns himself to make it so. And he convinces himself in the dark, dark hours before dawn, that Spike knows it too.

The chip will come out, eventually. And the blond vampire will find Angel when it does. Angel convinces himself of it with placid assurance, the same kind of assurance he has that the sun will rise tomorrow.

And then Spike will kill him.

Still another lie, maybe, but Angel siezes it and grasps it and holds it tight to his bleeding dying heart. He knows he must die as a human. To die as a vampire does not result in the very thing that he is crying for inside, the same thing that makes him fuck and beat and hurt and bleed Spike over and over and over.

To die as a vampire will never reunite him with the Slayer.

So Angel fucks Spike. He fucks him for hope of his own death, he beats him for a promise of his own afterlife, and he bleeds him for a chance at his own salvation. And then he presses in close to him as they both lay quivering in the bed, tries to tell him without words that in the end, they'll both be all right. That there will be deliverance for both of them after the fall.

And tomorrow, the sun will rise.

-End