Friday, Part 3 of 4
Jun. 15th, 2007 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlpireTitle: Friday
Author: girlpire
Rating: NC17... this part is somewhat lacking the smex, though.
Pairing: Angel/Spike (Spangel)
Disclaimer: This story is based on the "Angel" series, with which I am not affiliated in any way. Joss Whedon is my master, etc.
Distribution: Please no. kthnxbye. :)
Summary: It's Friday I'm in love.
Warnings: This part - a tiny bit of self-mutilation, and a whole bunch of schmoop and angst. Also, the two main characters are kinda gay. (Oh, and there's something that happens in this chapter that most people warn for, but I'm not going to warn you about it because I don't want anyone spoiled. You'll forgive me, I promise.)
Author's Notes: This is part three of a story written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spring_spangel. The first part is [here]. No beta because I'm so terribly impatient. ALSO, in my last entry, I alluded to the smex of this chapter. This was before I decided the smex belonged in the last chapter instead, which means... it isn't in this one. Making this chapter a couple thousand words shorter than the first two. But hey, it means I can post today instead of later, which is generally of the good, yes?
*
Friday
Part Three
*
You're standing in an alley. No, you're kneeling. There's thick purple liquid everywhere, all over the ground, the brick buildings, your hands. Your shoes. There's a demon head lying on the ground off to your right, a demon body off to your left. And you're looking down at your hands, and you're thinking about all the lives these hands have taken, and about all the lives they've saved. You're looking at your hands, and you're thinking about all the things you've done, the choices you've made, the people you've loved and the ones you tried to love but couldn't, not enough to make a difference. You're thinking about the people you've failed.
You're thinking about all of these things, and you feel so helpless, so small. So inadequate.
Gradually, the alley starts to become lighter. You're looking at your hands and they're turning white; the purple is starting to fade from them. The alley is disappearing into light, and suddenly you know what's about to happen again.
You wake up to the sun on your face.
Like always, you flinch.
This is how you start the day.
*
You take your mug of blood from Harmony's desk. She hands you a manila folder from Wesley - etiquette notes for the Ri'ipki meeting this afternoon. She asks for permission to go home early today, and you give it to her. When you go into your office, Spike is standing there. “Leave,” you tell him simply as you walk past.
He opens his mouth to respond but hesitates. Then, for the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, he turns around and does exactly what you asked him to, without arguing.
Well, that was a lot easier than you'd expected.
You sit at your desk and spend the morning going over the notes from Wesley, along with contracts and case files and other things that you hate doing but have to be done. Around lunchtime, Gunn calls your office to ask if you're still joining Wesley, Lorne, and himself for lunch (Fred is too busy in her lab to take a break). You go to Gunn's office and eat with your friends, listen to them talk about all the good things going on at Wolfram and Hart. Everyone seems really tired, but that's normal considering all the hard work they're putting in. You're tired too, but you try not to let it show.
The meeting at two o'clock doesn't go well. It's already late by the time you and your friends trudge out of the conference room. You have a pretty bad headache, and all you can think about is getting back up to your penthouse for a drink, followed by a nap maybe, or relaxing on the roof. You'll bring a book.
Spike is there when the elevator doors open into your apartment. He's looking out the window in your living room, his back to you, but he turns around when you walk in.
"What are you doing here?" you ask. You’re immediately annoyed. He probably just came to steal something and lost track of time, didn't know when you'd be back.
He shrugs, then says quietly, "Wanted to see you, I guess." Suddenly, a concerned look appears on his face, and he takes a step toward you, then stops. "Are you hurt?" he asks.
You blink. "Am I... what?"
"You're bleeding."
"No I'm..." As soon as you start to deny it, you smell your own blood. You hadn't even noticed before, must have been distracted. But it's definitely blood, and it's definitely yours, and... your thigh kind of hurts. Huh, that’s weird. You don’t remember injuring yourself.
"What happened?" asks Spike.
You don’t know, so you just shrug. "Paper cut. Why'd you want to see me?" You head toward your bedroom, removing your jacket as you walk. "Wait, let me guess - you came up with some brand new way to annoy me and wanted to try it out right away?" You hang up your jacket in your closet. Spike has followed you and is standing in your doorway watching. You turn to face him, cross your arms. "Good start, by the way. Breaking into my apartment. It’s already working."
"Just wanted to talk," he says.
"And I just wanted to be the only one here when I got home. Looks like no one’s getting what they want today." You push past him in the doorway and head toward the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. You might have some pain killers. Your head really hurts. “Whatever it is, it can wait until tomorrow.”
He follows you. “No,” he says, “it can’t.”
You open the cabinet and take the medicine down, twist off the cap. You pop a few of the pills, then cup your hand under the faucet and drink some water. When Spike makes no move to leave, you glare at him for a moment before shutting the door in his face.
You hear him sigh on the other side of the door.
You dry your hands on a towel and suddenly notice you've got some blood under your fingernails. Yours. You must have scratched yourself pretty hard, but you don’t remember. Maybe that’s why your thigh hurts. You unbutton and unzip your pants, push them down to your knees to look at your leg.
Holy shit.
"Angel," Spike tries again. "Angel, just... open the bloody door, alright?"
When did this happen? You don’t remember. Why can’t you remember? There’s a tear in your pocket, big enough to fit your hand through. Did you... No, there’s no way you did this to yourself. That’s ridiculous. But who could have... This wound can’t be more than an hour old. You would have been sitting in your meeting when it happened. Why can’t you remember?
“There are... things,” says Spike. “That need to be said.”
You finally reach over and open the door. The elaborate pattern of red scratches is prominent on your thigh just beneath the hem of your boxers, and Spike glances down reflexively. You watch his reaction. Judging by the look on his face when he sees the message scrawled into your skin, he has no idea where it came from either. But that doesn’t make any sense. It’s got his name in it.
“Alright,” you say evenly. “Let’s start with you explaining to me what the hell is going on.”
*
There’s purple liquid everywhere. You’re kneeling in the dust in an alley looking at your hands, hating yourself. You’re blinking back tears, but you can’t smell them; you can’t smell anything. It must be a dream. It feels so real, though. Like a memory.
Gradually, the purple on your hands starts fading into white. There’s light creeping into the alley. You look up, but you can’t see anything except the light, and suddenly, you know what’s about to happen. You’re so relieved.
You wake up to the sun on your face.
Like always, you flinch for a fraction of a second before you remember where you are.
You lie in bed for five more minutes with your eyes closed. Did you dream something? You can’t remember now.
You get up, shower, dress like always. All black. How is it that you’re already tired? Must not have gotten enough sleep.
You touch your hair one more time before pushing the button for your elevator. Straighten your collar.
This is how you start the day.
*
You're eating lunch with Gunn, Wesley, and Lorne in Gunn's office when Spike comes in. "Angel, need to talk to you," he says. "It's important."
"What is it?" you ask.
"Come out here." He walks out of the office, and your friends look at you with raised eyebrows.
You put down your blood. "I'll be right back," you say, and you follow Spike out into the hallway. "What?" you ask him.
He just leans toward you and sniffs.
Startled, you push him away. "Spike, what are you doing?" He takes your right hand and sniffs your fingertips. "What the... let go of me!"
"Haven't done it yet," he murmurs, letting go. "Then it does happen in the meeting."
"What are you talking about? Did you come here to smell me?" You glance down at your fingers. They look normal.
"Just had to make sure," he says.
You stare at him. "Make sure of what?"
"Tell you later," he says. "After you do it." He takes your hand again and squeezes it. "I'll be waiting." And then he walks away. You watch him leave.
"Everything alright?" Wesley asks when you come back into the office.
"Everything's fine," you say. "Spike's lost his mind. What were you saying?"
The meeting with the Ri'ipkis begins at two, and Fred shows up just in time to join the rest of you before you meet them in the lobby, walk into the soundproof conference room together. As you close the door behind you and move around the table to your seat, the five Ri'ipkis begin muttering something in unison. You glance over at Wesley, who looks back at you with an expression that says he doesn't know what they're doing either but just go with it. So you sit down politely and wait. It's probably some sort of greeting ritual.
The sudden rush of memories is like a stampede in your brain. It hurts. Fred’s clutching the sides of her head like she’s afraid it’s going to explode, and Gunn and Wes both have a hand up to their foreheads, eyes closed tight. Only Lorne seems physically unaffected, but the look of horror on his face confirms that he’s experiencing the same thing the rest of you are.
It takes a moment to get your bearings. The Ri’ipki ambassador sits down and waits patiently while the other four demons begin another quiet chant with their arms raised, keeping you in your seat. When you finally look up, the ambassador begins his speech again from the beginning. It’s the same thing you’ve heard a million times. The strategy of these demons seems to be repetition - maybe they think the more times you hear their demands, the more likely you are to give in. But they obviously don’t know who they’re dealing with here. They don’t know what you’ve been doing.
Spike got your message.
Your expression almost gives you away when you think about that. You quickly glare at the Ri’ipki ambassador as usual, but inside your chest, your heart feels suddenly light with hope. Spike got your message. He got it; it actually worked. This is exactly what you’ve been waiting for – this is how it’s going to end. You can see it all playing out already: smuggling secret messages on your thigh to tell him what’s going on, working out a plan of action together, a surprise attack on the Ri’ipkis, your inevitable victory, and then –
Saturday. You can already feel it waiting for you, your light at the end of the tunnel, a day full of promise, endless possibilities, a gift box big enough to hold absolutely anything. Anything could happen on Saturday!
But you’re getting ahead of yourself. It will still be days, possibly weeks before you and Spike can get everything sorted and planned.
You and Spike.
God, what are you going to say to him when this is over? How could you even begin to... You don’t know whether you want to kiss him or punch him in the face for what he’s put you through. Your emotions have never gotten such a workout: fear, hope, anger, pleasure, frustration, peace, confusion, lust, shock. And in between smashing up your cars and giving up trying to rescue you, between seducing you into meaningless sex and disappearing for days on end, between overdosing on God knows what and draining your blood until you nearly pass out, somehow, inexplicably, he’s also managed to make you fall in l...
To make you care for him.
When all of this is over, what could you possibly say to Spike? Will you have words at all? Are there words for this?
When you see him, will you even remember how you feel?
That’s the question weighing the most heavily on your mind. Here, right now, in this room, you care for Spike. You won’t when you walk out of that door. What if the spell is broken and you go back to being the you who doesn’t know, permanently? What if you then go on living your forever, never knowing how much you cared for Spike today, this very second? Would it be possible to not know, or would some part of you still remember, even if your mind didn’t? Maybe you would just feel sad and not know why. Maybe you would feel like you were missing something very important, but never figure out what it was. Or maybe your forgotten memories would surface at night, lurking in the shadows of your dreams like a very lonely vampire.
Spike would never know.
He needs to know. Spike needs to know now, today. You have to tell him how you feel before the spell is broken. You have to tell him that you think about him every second in here, that he’s the only thing that’s kept you sane, that he’s given you hope. You have to tell him how much he means to you, how worried you’ve been for him, how you wish you could take away what he’s going through, make it better somehow. You need to tell him that you’re so, so sorry about what happened, that you’re so grateful for him, for everything that he is. That you admire the way he tries, his persistence, his strength, that you can only hope you would be as strong as he’s been if your situations were reversed. That the memory of finding him on the floor of his apartment scares you to death, almost as much as...
All of this isn’t going to fit on your thigh. You slide your hand inside your pocket under the table and start picking at the material, slowly breaking the threads to begin making a hole for your hand. You’ll have to decide on something short to tell him today; you can add more tomorrow.
By the time you’re able to touch your fingernails to bare skin, you’ve already worked out what you’re going to say, so you set your jaw and start cutting. Anyone would think your grimace is directed at the Ri’ipki ambassador. He stares back at you, unflinching, explaining calmly why you should give in. Chump. You sort of hope you get to be the one to kill him.
It's already late by the time you and your friends trudge out of the conference room. You've got a headache. Spike is standing there waiting, and you notice that the Ri'ipki ambassador glares at him disapprovingly as he walks by. Now there's a demon after your own heart.
"What do you want, Spike?" you ask tiredly.
He glances at the retreating backs of your friends, then at the open door of the conference room. "Come in here," he says, going into the now-empty room.
You follow him inside, and he shuts the door behind you. "What's this about?" you ask. "You're not going to smell me again, are you?"
Spike ignores the question. "You're bleeding," he says.
His voice is so quiet that at first you don't think you heard him right, but then you realize that you can smell your own blood. You hadn't even noticed, must have been distracted. It's this damn headache. Why are you bleeding?
"Does your leg hurt?" Spike asks. He’s standing very close to you. "Here?" He brushes his hand lightly over your right thigh, and you can feel a sting, like something cut you there. "Does it... maybe, feel as though you've been scratched?"
It does. You narrow your eyes at him. "What did you do to me?" you demand, immediately angry.
"Wasn't me," he says. "But I need to see it. Alright?"
Great. What the hell has he gotten you into now? You clench your jaw and start unfastening your pants, glaring at him. If this is just another one of his stupid games, you're really going to put up that ward around the building so he can't come back, like you keep threatening to do. You shove your pants down to your knees and look at your leg.
Holy shit.
You read the message several times, trying to make sense of it. It's obviously for Spike, but there's no way of knowing what it actually means unless you know who wrote it. When you look up at Spike, he's got a hand over his mouth, and he's looking at you with this expression like he's seeing a ghost, or else he's seeing you for the very first time. Before you can ask him what's going on, though, your arms are suddenly full of him, and he's got his arms wrapped around your shoulders and his face pressed into your neck, and he’s murmuring to you that he didn’t know, that he would have done something sooner. What the hell?
"Spike, what's--"
"Don't worry," he whispers urgently into your ear, ignoring your startled question. "I'm coming for you, understand? Soon as I can. I'll put this right, Angel. Promise you."
You don't understand. "Spike, what are you--"
And then he kisses you on the mouth, hard. And you're so shocked you don't even think to try and push him away; you just let it happen. And somewhere, distantly, you almost believe you can hear yourself thinking that kissing Spike is just what you want to do right now. And before you know it, you can feel your lips parting for his tongue.
And a few seconds later, just before you can shatter the moment with one of the questions buzzing around in your head, Spike ends the kiss and lets go. Without pausing to look at you, he opens the door and walks swiftly out of the conference room, successfully avoiding any awkward aftermath, leaving you behind with your pants pushed down to your knees and the start of a hard-on that you can't really explain.
And on your right leg, just below the hem of your boxers, the words "Spike - I remember" are already beginning to heal.
*
You tear the head off of the demon and its body drops to the alley floor, purple blood spewing out across your shoes. You look at the head for a while, then let it fall out of your hands and hit the ground with a dull thud. There's purple everywhere, all over you, the walls, the ground. Your hands. You take a few slow steps and then sink to your knees in the alley, look at the purple smeared on your palms. When you blink, tears fall to your cheeks and then roll down, but you don't really feel them. Can't smell them either. Can't smell anything. Must be a dream.
It feels so real.
You're looking at your hands, and they're getting lighter while you watch; the purple is starting to fade from them. Light is flooding the alley, and suddenly you know what's about to happen. You've never been more relieved.
You wake up to the sun on your face.
You flinch, then relax when you remember where you are. Honestly, who puts an east-facing window in a vampire's bedroom? Whoever designed this place ought to be shot.
You're so tired. Did you dream something? You can't remember now.
You get ready for work, then jab the down button on your private elevator.
This is how you start the day.
*
You take your mug of blood from Harmony's desk. She hands you a manila folder from Wesley and asks for permission to leave early, which you give her. When you go into your office, there's a smallish throwing knife lying on your desk with a note. It isn't a gift; you know because you recognize it from your own collection. But the note says to keep it in your pocket today, that you will know what to do with it when the time comes. It looks like Spike's handwriting, but you could be wrong. You haven't seen his handwriting in a long time.
You slip the knife into your pocket, figuring that it couldn't hurt, although you have no idea what it's for. All morning you feel the slight weight of it against your leg, and you think a couple of times that you might call Spike, ask him about it. But you don't know his phone number, and you're too embarrassed to ask Harmony for it, so you don't.
You eat lunch in Gunn's office with Wesley, Gunn, and Lorne. Fred joins the four of you in the lobby at two o'clock to meet the Ri'ipkis, and you all go into the soundproof conference room together.
The rush of memories is like a stampede in your brain. It almost feels like you should grab the sides of your head to keep it from bursting open.
You’ve made a mistake.
That’s the first thought you have when you’re able to think again. You messed up. You shouldn’t have told Spike that you remember. It just seemed so important at the time for him to know before anything happened... But now he’s going to do something reckless – and you already know that he’s going to do it today.
Shit. Why does he have to be so impulsive? You haven’t even worked out a plan yet; you haven’t even told him about the magic, about the things these demons are capable of! Damn it, you should have done that first. Who cares what you remember - if Spike bursts in suddenly and tries to save you, he’s likely to get himself killed!
Oh God, he's probably on his way right now. What are you going to do?
You tell yourself that you must be underestimating Spike. If he's guessed that these demons are the ones making the day repeat, surely he understands how much power they have. Right? Surely he understands that you can’t just hack at them with a sword and hope they die.
Then again, he only armed you with a throwing knife for this battle.
You're all screwed.
The Ri’ipki ambassador starts his speech. Wesley clears his throat softly, and you glance over at him. The ambassador doesn't seem to notice; at least, he doesn't stop talking. Wesley makes eye contact with you, then looks down at his lap significantly, then back at you again. He's got something. A weapon maybe? Did Spike leave something for each of you? You glance down at your own lap, then back up at Wesley with a nod, confirming that you also have something. The corner of his mouth twitches up, but he makes no other movement. Then Fred clears her throat. When you look at her, she also glances down at her lap, then at you with a tiny determined nod. She's got something too? Good girl.
The three of you then look at Gunn, who signals in the same silent manner that he also has a weapon. By the look on his face, he can't wait to use it, whatever it is. Lorne, however, has nothing, as evidenced by his slight shrug and helpless look. Well, four out of five isn't bad. When you look back at Wesley, he raises his eyebrows. He wants to know when. You shake your head slightly. Not yet. You wonder how any of you are going to be very effective fighters when you can’t even move your legs.
Spike, you think, you better know what you're doing. But you just can't shake the feeling that something very bad is going to happen here. You try to come up with a short-notice plan. Which Ri’ipki is the priority? Your first instinct would be to go for the ambassador because he seems to be the most powerful, but the other four demons are the ones keeping you in your seat. They’re working together... maybe if you take one out, you and your friends would have a better chance at fighting the others?
You haven’t planned any further than that when the conference room door suddenly crashes inward, startling everyone in the room except you. Well, here we go, you think, and you catch a brief glimpse of Spike barreling in with a sword before you’re already throwing your knife at one of the four Ri’ipki minions. Just before it reaches him, the knife freezes in the air, and your heart sinks a little bit before you realize that he’s had to divert his attention in order to stop the knife, and he’s no longer helping the other minions hold you down. In an instant, you’re out of your seat and across the room, and you’ve broken his neck before anyone else has even realized that you’ve moved.
One down. You catch your knife before it hits the floor and glance up to see what you should do next.
A series of loud pops draws your immediate attention toward Wesley, who’s firing a handgun at one of the other minions. The Ri’ipki is frowning and stopping each bullet as it nears his chest, not noticing the small, round object rolling towards his feet. You see Fred crouching beside the table with her fingers in her ears barely half a second before the tiny bomb explodes, taking most of the demon’s left side with it. That’s two. You hear the frozen bullets tap softly on the carpet as they fall.
Meanwhile, Gunn’s three throwing stars are floating harmlessly in front of the face of a third minion, who suddenly sends them flying back at Gunn. He manages to dodge two of them, but the third cuts his shoulder pretty badly. The Ri’ipki isn’t paying any attention to you, though, so while Gunn distracts him you throw your knife, easily embedding the blade in the demon’s neck from your position several feet away. When this third body falls to the ground, Gunn snatches the knife out of its neck with his uninjured arm and turns, throwing it directly toward the fourth minion, who is having trouble freezing Wesley’s second volley of bullets and is already bleeding in two places, looking panicked.
And you’re thinking, wow. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
And then you turn and look for Spike.
*
There's noise coming from an alley. Two demons fighting. One of them is Spike.
You approach silently and lean against the wall, watch them for a while. You know the moment when Spike notices you watching because, even though he doesn’t acknowledge your presence, his technique suddenly becomes much more careless, and he starts taunting the demon more. You roll your eyes. He’s showing off, drawing out the fight because he knows it bothers you. You’ve always thought it a good idea to end a battle to the death as quickly as possible – drawing it out could be dangerous, even if you’re sure you can win, because you never know when you might lose your advantage. But Spike thinks it’s fun.
You’re tempted to step in and end the fight yourself, but Spike’s obviously much better than the demon, even when he’s being sloppy, so you’re not really worried. You just watch. He’ll probably come up with some showy way of killing it, then smirk at you while you just shake your head, secretly impressed. Either one of you could have ripped the thing’s head off a dozen times by now, but that’s not inventive enough for Spike when he’s in a mood like this. You glance around the alley. What will he use? There’s a soggy cardboard box, a few broken crates... maybe he’ll do something creative with the metal trashcan lid?
You guessed right. He backflips neatly, kicking the demon in the face, and comes up right beside the trashcan, grabbing the lid off of it in one fluid motion. But just before he makes his final move, he pauses for less than half a second to glance at you and make sure you’re still watching.
That’s when Spike loses his advantage.
It happens very fast. These things - they're not supposed to happen as fast as they do. There should be more production, more drama, more... reverence? Something, somehow, should be more. Not this being here one second and the next second being gone. Living for nearly a hundred and thirty years and then just not being there anymore... it's wrong. It's just... it can't happen like this. Not like this. This isn't how someone like Spike... It can't be.
And yet, you're watching his dust sink to the ground like a heavy snow, and you know that this is how it happens; it must be, because it has. And you saw it happen - you watched the demon twist Spike's head away from his neck - but for a moment you're so shocked that you still somehow expect Spike to get up like he always does, to knit himself back together and to do something impressive with a trashcan lid. You're looking at his dust, and you're waiting for it to be him again.
And then the demon puts its hoof down right in the dust and pivots to look at you, grinding what's left of Spike into the alley floor, smirking. And it still hasn't exactly sunk in yet what's happened, but you know distantly that you've never in your life hated anything more than you hate this demon right now, so you rip its head off. Just like that, its head is in your hands - you don't even remember moving - and there's purple blood everywhere, all over you, spilling out over the floor of the alley, over your shoes. And you find yourself thinking that it's not fair that this dead demon has blood, has a body, has a head, and all Spike has is...
You drop the head and feel yourself sink to your knees in the alley. This isn't right. It's not... this can't be right... And a slight breeze starts to move the dust gently, and you hear yourself make a sound in your throat, but you can't stop the dust from moving - you try to catch it, try to hold it together with your hands, but it slips through your fingers... and when you look down so much of it is already gone that you can't even be sure that anything you're holding was actually part of Spike at all. So you finally just let go and watch it blow away.
Then you look down at your hands. They're stained purple. And you find yourself thinking about all the lives these hands have taken, and about all the lives they've saved. You're looking at your hands, and you're thinking about all the things you've done, the choices you've made, the people you've loved and the ones you tried to love but couldn't, not enough to make a difference. You're thinking about the people you've failed. And you feel so hopeless.
You blink, and a tear rolls down your cheek. You can't smell it, though. Can't smell anything. And that's when you realize that it must be a dream. You always realize right at the end. It's the same dream, the one you have every night - because every night is the same night. Every night is the night that you watched Spike die.
You look at your hands and wait for the purple to fade. You wait for the alley to start getting light, for the sun on your face to wake you up from your nightmare.
But this time you don't wake up to the sun on your face.
You wake up to the ping of your elevator, heavy footsteps running through your penthouse, a familiar voice calling your name urgently.
When you open your eyes, it's still dark outside. You sit up slowly in your bed. The door to your bedroom flings open and Spike rushes in, still calling your name. When he sees you sitting there, he stops dead in his tracks and stares at you with this completely shocked expression - like he wasn't expecting you to really be there, like you're a ghost, or like he can't tell if it's really you in the bed or not. And you look back at him in what is probably the same way.
The two of you just look at each other for what seems like a very long time, although it's probably only a few seconds. And you know this isn't what happens, so for a moment you wonder if you're still dreaming maybe, or if you got hit in the head and you're seeing things. But no, he's real, and he's standing here alive, and you're so relieved you don't even know what to say.
His eyes are shiny. He’s staring at you with this lost look and you just want to gather him up in your arms and hold him, feel the solidness of him, be reassured that he’s here, that he’s not really dust. And it’s all running through your head again, how much you care for him, all the things you want to say, and it occurs to you that today must be the real thing, Saturday, because you remember everything... except the end of yesterday’s meeting. You’re not exactly sure how it all went down, but it must have worked – Spike must have killed the Ri’ipki ambassador. That’s the only way you could be sitting here in bed looking at him and knowing how much he means to you.
Then he comes forward slowly, reaching out his hand in the dark. When his fingertips brush across your shoulder, he breathes in sharply like he thought his fingers would pass through you and he’s surprised that they didn’t. “You’re really here,” he whispers. And when he blinks, you see a tear roll down his face and you have the sudden urge to kiss it away. But before you can move, he asks, “Am I dreaming?”
“No,” you tell him quietly. And you hope very hard that you’re right.
He trails his hand across your skin, touches your cheek, touches your hair. His fingers are cold. "Thought I'd never..." He pauses and swallows. Suddenly he takes his hand back, stands up a little straighter. "It's good to see you, Angel," he says. "Go back to sleep if you like. Just had to make sure you were..." His voice trails off.
You blink. What? Did Spike really just tell you to go back to sleep? When it's finally Saturday, and you're together, and you remember everything? "You've got to be kidding me," you say. "You honestly think I could just go to sleep after all of... everything?"
Spike doesn't look at you. He shrugs one shoulder. "Sorry to burst in here, the middle of the night and all," he says. "Had to... check something." He clears his throat. "I'll just be going now. We can talk later." As he turns to walk away, he passes the back of his hand quickly over his eyes.
"Spike!" you say. He stops but doesn't turn around. "If you seriously walk out that door right now, I'm gonna kick your ass." You watch his back tense at your words. This definitely isn't what you had planned to say to him, but you're so confused you don't really know what to do. Why isn't he kissing you right now? Why aren’t the two of you celebrating?
His voice sounds strained when he replies quietly, "Don't."
"Don't what? Don't kick your ass?" Your fists are clenched in your sheets. He can't possibly be thinking of leaving. Right?
"Don't do this," Spike says softly. "Don't hate me, Angel. Please. Not today. Not after..." He swallows.
“What are you talking about?” you demand.
"Just... pretend I'm someone else,” he says. “Pretend I'm Charlie, or Percy, or your green demon friend with the ambiguous sexuality. But don't hate me today, Angel. I don't think I could stand it."
You’re shaking your head. “Spike, what–” you start again, but he’s already walking away, his arms crossed tightly in front of him, hugging his duster to his body. You get out of bed quickly and go after him. “Spike,” you say. “Wait.” You put a hand on his shoulder and turn him to face you, the moonlight coming through your window casting a bluish tint on his face. His eyelashes are wet. “Spike, I don’t hate you,” you say. “I...”
But suddenly, standing here with him, every word you’ve ever learned has abandoned you, and you don’t know how to finish. Spike’s waiting for the rest of the sentence, looking at you, and it’s the moment you’ve been hoping for, and it’s actually kind of perfect with the bluish light and the rumpled bed nearby and your hand on his shoulder holding him there, his attention focused on you. But you can’t even think what you want to say. It’s all running together in your head, images you can’t put words with – you and Spike watching the boats in the L.A. Harbor, sitting in a dark theater together, wearing matching jerseys, kissing on the beach. Spike alone on the floor of his apartment, Spike curling into your side and fitting so perfectly, Spike showing off for you, Spike turning to dust. You want to wrap your arms around him and crush him to your chest and never let go, but you also want to put him away somewhere safe and never let anything touch him. How can you tell him these things? You want to say something about how strong he is, how you want to be like him, but you’re standing here looking at him and thinking about how fragile he can be, how beautiful and intricate, like the inside of a leaf, how you want to take care of him. Would he resent that? What do you say? Oh God, you don’t have time for it all, for any of it; you don’t have words...
“Stay,” you finally manage. “Just stay here with me. Please.” And he looks sort of confused, like maybe he didn’t hear you right, so you whisper again, “Please.” And you lean down and kiss him softly on the mouth, because it’s the only thing you can think of to do.
He’s startled at first. He makes a sound in his throat that sounds like a question, but you don’t stop to answer him; you just kiss him harder, hoping that maybe he can read the answer in your lips, and after a moment you think he must have been able to because he doesn’t ask again. The kiss lengthens, deepens, and one by one the images in your head start to disappear, or else they swirl into each other, combining into a singularity and clearing your mind of everything except Spike’s mouth, and his hands where they’re touching your back, where you can feel his cold fingers and his rings, a contrast to the warmth of his lips and tongue. And in the space that’s left in your mind, you try one more time to think of what you wanted to say, but it’s all gone – there’s no hope of getting it back while you’re so close to him. You only know from very far away that it was something about death and life and memory, and something about... love.
It’s a thing that you're only just now realizing, although it feels like you've known it for a very long time. You haven’t wanted to give it a name because it didn’t feel right, not falling in love with a person but falling in love with the memory of a person, a person who has no idea that you even remember at all. It didn't seem like it could be real, but right now you can't think of a realer thing in the world than the feeling you're finally discovering while you kiss him. It makes you feel like a whole different man.
Spike kisses with his entire body. It feels suddenly very new, and at the same time as familiar as opening your eyes or swallowing or making a fist. You’ve just never paid attention before. Your hand is curved around the back of his neck, holding him to you, your fingers sifting through his hair, and your other hand is touching him, feeling him all over to reassure yourself that he’s solid and not dust, that the universe has finally, finally given you a break. And you’re thinking about how lucky you are to be standing here just before dawn on a Saturday morning, kissing Spike and remembering everything and knowing that everything will be okay.
Then Spike puts a hand on your chest. Very slowly, gently, he pushes you back, ending the kiss. He looks into your eyes, and from his expression you could swear he’s never seen you before in his life. “What’s wrong?” you ask him. You touch his cheek, wipe away a stray tear with your thumb. God, he’s beautiful.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “Why—” He pauses. His lips are dark pink. He clears his throat and starts again. “You’re not usually this happy to see me, is all.”
You lean down and kiss him again, once. "That's going to change from now on," you tell him.
He's looking at your mouth. "Oh," he says. "Well, that's good, then."
He's thinking about kissing you again. It makes you smile. "I missed you, Spike," you say.
"Missed me?" he repeats. "When?"
"Every day. Sitting in that damn meeting, when they made us remember everything for a little while, then forget again. The whole time, all I thought about was you."
You're about to kiss him again when he suddenly takes a step back. "You mean... you remember?" He looks confused. "Today, right now? You remember right now?"
"Yeah," you say. "I was so scared I wouldn't, but I remember everything." You start to kiss him again, but he turns his head and quickly pulls you into a tight hug instead. So you kiss his hair.
"I'm so sorry, Angel," he murmurs. You feel his breath on your neck. "Don't think I could tell you how sorry I am."
"I'm just glad it's over," you tell him.
"Over...?" he asks softly.
"You know. Friday," you say. "Aren't you glad it's over?"
But you can tell by the way his body tenses in your arms that Spike is about to say something that you don't want to hear. And suddenly you know what it is, and you can't bear to hear it, not after everything. Not when you've been through so much. You just want to pull Spike into your bed with you and forget everything else, be with him and celebrate and pretend it's Saturday just a little while longer.
It takes everything you have not to cover your ears or stop his mouth with yours.
His arms tighten around you. You can see the sky beginning to turn light outside your window, and you already know even before Spike says it that this light is the same light that woke you up yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. You swallow. Don't say it, you think. Your eyes fall closed. Please don't say it.
"Angel..." Spike finally whispers to you, "it isn't over yet."
No. Of course it isn't over. Of course. You should have known it wouldn't be that simple. And when the sun starts coming up, you can feel it on your face, and it makes you flinch. You press your cheek against Spike's and don't open your eyes. Try not to think about your dream.
Today is Friday.
This is how you start the day.
*
Continued [here].
*
Author: girlpire
Rating: NC17... this part is somewhat lacking the smex, though.
Pairing: Angel/Spike (Spangel)
Disclaimer: This story is based on the "Angel" series, with which I am not affiliated in any way. Joss Whedon is my master, etc.
Distribution: Please no. kthnxbye. :)
Summary: It's Friday I'm in love.
Warnings: This part - a tiny bit of self-mutilation, and a whole bunch of schmoop and angst. Also, the two main characters are kinda gay. (Oh, and there's something that happens in this chapter that most people warn for, but I'm not going to warn you about it because I don't want anyone spoiled. You'll forgive me, I promise.)
Author's Notes: This is part three of a story written for
spring_spangel. The first part is [here]. No beta because I'm so terribly impatient. ALSO, in my last entry, I alluded to the smex of this chapter. This was before I decided the smex belonged in the last chapter instead, which means... it isn't in this one. Making this chapter a couple thousand words shorter than the first two. But hey, it means I can post today instead of later, which is generally of the good, yes? *
Friday
Part Three
*
You're standing in an alley. No, you're kneeling. There's thick purple liquid everywhere, all over the ground, the brick buildings, your hands. Your shoes. There's a demon head lying on the ground off to your right, a demon body off to your left. And you're looking down at your hands, and you're thinking about all the lives these hands have taken, and about all the lives they've saved. You're looking at your hands, and you're thinking about all the things you've done, the choices you've made, the people you've loved and the ones you tried to love but couldn't, not enough to make a difference. You're thinking about the people you've failed.
You're thinking about all of these things, and you feel so helpless, so small. So inadequate.
Gradually, the alley starts to become lighter. You're looking at your hands and they're turning white; the purple is starting to fade from them. The alley is disappearing into light, and suddenly you know what's about to happen again.
You wake up to the sun on your face.
Like always, you flinch.
This is how you start the day.
*
You take your mug of blood from Harmony's desk. She hands you a manila folder from Wesley - etiquette notes for the Ri'ipki meeting this afternoon. She asks for permission to go home early today, and you give it to her. When you go into your office, Spike is standing there. “Leave,” you tell him simply as you walk past.
He opens his mouth to respond but hesitates. Then, for the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, he turns around and does exactly what you asked him to, without arguing.
Well, that was a lot easier than you'd expected.
You sit at your desk and spend the morning going over the notes from Wesley, along with contracts and case files and other things that you hate doing but have to be done. Around lunchtime, Gunn calls your office to ask if you're still joining Wesley, Lorne, and himself for lunch (Fred is too busy in her lab to take a break). You go to Gunn's office and eat with your friends, listen to them talk about all the good things going on at Wolfram and Hart. Everyone seems really tired, but that's normal considering all the hard work they're putting in. You're tired too, but you try not to let it show.
The meeting at two o'clock doesn't go well. It's already late by the time you and your friends trudge out of the conference room. You have a pretty bad headache, and all you can think about is getting back up to your penthouse for a drink, followed by a nap maybe, or relaxing on the roof. You'll bring a book.
Spike is there when the elevator doors open into your apartment. He's looking out the window in your living room, his back to you, but he turns around when you walk in.
"What are you doing here?" you ask. You’re immediately annoyed. He probably just came to steal something and lost track of time, didn't know when you'd be back.
He shrugs, then says quietly, "Wanted to see you, I guess." Suddenly, a concerned look appears on his face, and he takes a step toward you, then stops. "Are you hurt?" he asks.
You blink. "Am I... what?"
"You're bleeding."
"No I'm..." As soon as you start to deny it, you smell your own blood. You hadn't even noticed before, must have been distracted. But it's definitely blood, and it's definitely yours, and... your thigh kind of hurts. Huh, that’s weird. You don’t remember injuring yourself.
"What happened?" asks Spike.
You don’t know, so you just shrug. "Paper cut. Why'd you want to see me?" You head toward your bedroom, removing your jacket as you walk. "Wait, let me guess - you came up with some brand new way to annoy me and wanted to try it out right away?" You hang up your jacket in your closet. Spike has followed you and is standing in your doorway watching. You turn to face him, cross your arms. "Good start, by the way. Breaking into my apartment. It’s already working."
"Just wanted to talk," he says.
"And I just wanted to be the only one here when I got home. Looks like no one’s getting what they want today." You push past him in the doorway and head toward the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. You might have some pain killers. Your head really hurts. “Whatever it is, it can wait until tomorrow.”
He follows you. “No,” he says, “it can’t.”
You open the cabinet and take the medicine down, twist off the cap. You pop a few of the pills, then cup your hand under the faucet and drink some water. When Spike makes no move to leave, you glare at him for a moment before shutting the door in his face.
You hear him sigh on the other side of the door.
You dry your hands on a towel and suddenly notice you've got some blood under your fingernails. Yours. You must have scratched yourself pretty hard, but you don’t remember. Maybe that’s why your thigh hurts. You unbutton and unzip your pants, push them down to your knees to look at your leg.
Holy shit.
"Angel," Spike tries again. "Angel, just... open the bloody door, alright?"
When did this happen? You don’t remember. Why can’t you remember? There’s a tear in your pocket, big enough to fit your hand through. Did you... No, there’s no way you did this to yourself. That’s ridiculous. But who could have... This wound can’t be more than an hour old. You would have been sitting in your meeting when it happened. Why can’t you remember?
“There are... things,” says Spike. “That need to be said.”
You finally reach over and open the door. The elaborate pattern of red scratches is prominent on your thigh just beneath the hem of your boxers, and Spike glances down reflexively. You watch his reaction. Judging by the look on his face when he sees the message scrawled into your skin, he has no idea where it came from either. But that doesn’t make any sense. It’s got his name in it.
“Alright,” you say evenly. “Let’s start with you explaining to me what the hell is going on.”
*
There’s purple liquid everywhere. You’re kneeling in the dust in an alley looking at your hands, hating yourself. You’re blinking back tears, but you can’t smell them; you can’t smell anything. It must be a dream. It feels so real, though. Like a memory.
Gradually, the purple on your hands starts fading into white. There’s light creeping into the alley. You look up, but you can’t see anything except the light, and suddenly, you know what’s about to happen. You’re so relieved.
You wake up to the sun on your face.
Like always, you flinch for a fraction of a second before you remember where you are.
You lie in bed for five more minutes with your eyes closed. Did you dream something? You can’t remember now.
You get up, shower, dress like always. All black. How is it that you’re already tired? Must not have gotten enough sleep.
You touch your hair one more time before pushing the button for your elevator. Straighten your collar.
This is how you start the day.
*
You're eating lunch with Gunn, Wesley, and Lorne in Gunn's office when Spike comes in. "Angel, need to talk to you," he says. "It's important."
"What is it?" you ask.
"Come out here." He walks out of the office, and your friends look at you with raised eyebrows.
You put down your blood. "I'll be right back," you say, and you follow Spike out into the hallway. "What?" you ask him.
He just leans toward you and sniffs.
Startled, you push him away. "Spike, what are you doing?" He takes your right hand and sniffs your fingertips. "What the... let go of me!"
"Haven't done it yet," he murmurs, letting go. "Then it does happen in the meeting."
"What are you talking about? Did you come here to smell me?" You glance down at your fingers. They look normal.
"Just had to make sure," he says.
You stare at him. "Make sure of what?"
"Tell you later," he says. "After you do it." He takes your hand again and squeezes it. "I'll be waiting." And then he walks away. You watch him leave.
"Everything alright?" Wesley asks when you come back into the office.
"Everything's fine," you say. "Spike's lost his mind. What were you saying?"
The meeting with the Ri'ipkis begins at two, and Fred shows up just in time to join the rest of you before you meet them in the lobby, walk into the soundproof conference room together. As you close the door behind you and move around the table to your seat, the five Ri'ipkis begin muttering something in unison. You glance over at Wesley, who looks back at you with an expression that says he doesn't know what they're doing either but just go with it. So you sit down politely and wait. It's probably some sort of greeting ritual.
The sudden rush of memories is like a stampede in your brain. It hurts. Fred’s clutching the sides of her head like she’s afraid it’s going to explode, and Gunn and Wes both have a hand up to their foreheads, eyes closed tight. Only Lorne seems physically unaffected, but the look of horror on his face confirms that he’s experiencing the same thing the rest of you are.
It takes a moment to get your bearings. The Ri’ipki ambassador sits down and waits patiently while the other four demons begin another quiet chant with their arms raised, keeping you in your seat. When you finally look up, the ambassador begins his speech again from the beginning. It’s the same thing you’ve heard a million times. The strategy of these demons seems to be repetition - maybe they think the more times you hear their demands, the more likely you are to give in. But they obviously don’t know who they’re dealing with here. They don’t know what you’ve been doing.
Spike got your message.
Your expression almost gives you away when you think about that. You quickly glare at the Ri’ipki ambassador as usual, but inside your chest, your heart feels suddenly light with hope. Spike got your message. He got it; it actually worked. This is exactly what you’ve been waiting for – this is how it’s going to end. You can see it all playing out already: smuggling secret messages on your thigh to tell him what’s going on, working out a plan of action together, a surprise attack on the Ri’ipkis, your inevitable victory, and then –
Saturday. You can already feel it waiting for you, your light at the end of the tunnel, a day full of promise, endless possibilities, a gift box big enough to hold absolutely anything. Anything could happen on Saturday!
But you’re getting ahead of yourself. It will still be days, possibly weeks before you and Spike can get everything sorted and planned.
You and Spike.
God, what are you going to say to him when this is over? How could you even begin to... You don’t know whether you want to kiss him or punch him in the face for what he’s put you through. Your emotions have never gotten such a workout: fear, hope, anger, pleasure, frustration, peace, confusion, lust, shock. And in between smashing up your cars and giving up trying to rescue you, between seducing you into meaningless sex and disappearing for days on end, between overdosing on God knows what and draining your blood until you nearly pass out, somehow, inexplicably, he’s also managed to make you fall in l...
To make you care for him.
When all of this is over, what could you possibly say to Spike? Will you have words at all? Are there words for this?
When you see him, will you even remember how you feel?
That’s the question weighing the most heavily on your mind. Here, right now, in this room, you care for Spike. You won’t when you walk out of that door. What if the spell is broken and you go back to being the you who doesn’t know, permanently? What if you then go on living your forever, never knowing how much you cared for Spike today, this very second? Would it be possible to not know, or would some part of you still remember, even if your mind didn’t? Maybe you would just feel sad and not know why. Maybe you would feel like you were missing something very important, but never figure out what it was. Or maybe your forgotten memories would surface at night, lurking in the shadows of your dreams like a very lonely vampire.
Spike would never know.
He needs to know. Spike needs to know now, today. You have to tell him how you feel before the spell is broken. You have to tell him that you think about him every second in here, that he’s the only thing that’s kept you sane, that he’s given you hope. You have to tell him how much he means to you, how worried you’ve been for him, how you wish you could take away what he’s going through, make it better somehow. You need to tell him that you’re so, so sorry about what happened, that you’re so grateful for him, for everything that he is. That you admire the way he tries, his persistence, his strength, that you can only hope you would be as strong as he’s been if your situations were reversed. That the memory of finding him on the floor of his apartment scares you to death, almost as much as...
All of this isn’t going to fit on your thigh. You slide your hand inside your pocket under the table and start picking at the material, slowly breaking the threads to begin making a hole for your hand. You’ll have to decide on something short to tell him today; you can add more tomorrow.
By the time you’re able to touch your fingernails to bare skin, you’ve already worked out what you’re going to say, so you set your jaw and start cutting. Anyone would think your grimace is directed at the Ri’ipki ambassador. He stares back at you, unflinching, explaining calmly why you should give in. Chump. You sort of hope you get to be the one to kill him.
It's already late by the time you and your friends trudge out of the conference room. You've got a headache. Spike is standing there waiting, and you notice that the Ri'ipki ambassador glares at him disapprovingly as he walks by. Now there's a demon after your own heart.
"What do you want, Spike?" you ask tiredly.
He glances at the retreating backs of your friends, then at the open door of the conference room. "Come in here," he says, going into the now-empty room.
You follow him inside, and he shuts the door behind you. "What's this about?" you ask. "You're not going to smell me again, are you?"
Spike ignores the question. "You're bleeding," he says.
His voice is so quiet that at first you don't think you heard him right, but then you realize that you can smell your own blood. You hadn't even noticed, must have been distracted. It's this damn headache. Why are you bleeding?
"Does your leg hurt?" Spike asks. He’s standing very close to you. "Here?" He brushes his hand lightly over your right thigh, and you can feel a sting, like something cut you there. "Does it... maybe, feel as though you've been scratched?"
It does. You narrow your eyes at him. "What did you do to me?" you demand, immediately angry.
"Wasn't me," he says. "But I need to see it. Alright?"
Great. What the hell has he gotten you into now? You clench your jaw and start unfastening your pants, glaring at him. If this is just another one of his stupid games, you're really going to put up that ward around the building so he can't come back, like you keep threatening to do. You shove your pants down to your knees and look at your leg.
Holy shit.
You read the message several times, trying to make sense of it. It's obviously for Spike, but there's no way of knowing what it actually means unless you know who wrote it. When you look up at Spike, he's got a hand over his mouth, and he's looking at you with this expression like he's seeing a ghost, or else he's seeing you for the very first time. Before you can ask him what's going on, though, your arms are suddenly full of him, and he's got his arms wrapped around your shoulders and his face pressed into your neck, and he’s murmuring to you that he didn’t know, that he would have done something sooner. What the hell?
"Spike, what's--"
"Don't worry," he whispers urgently into your ear, ignoring your startled question. "I'm coming for you, understand? Soon as I can. I'll put this right, Angel. Promise you."
You don't understand. "Spike, what are you--"
And then he kisses you on the mouth, hard. And you're so shocked you don't even think to try and push him away; you just let it happen. And somewhere, distantly, you almost believe you can hear yourself thinking that kissing Spike is just what you want to do right now. And before you know it, you can feel your lips parting for his tongue.
And a few seconds later, just before you can shatter the moment with one of the questions buzzing around in your head, Spike ends the kiss and lets go. Without pausing to look at you, he opens the door and walks swiftly out of the conference room, successfully avoiding any awkward aftermath, leaving you behind with your pants pushed down to your knees and the start of a hard-on that you can't really explain.
And on your right leg, just below the hem of your boxers, the words "Spike - I remember" are already beginning to heal.
*
You tear the head off of the demon and its body drops to the alley floor, purple blood spewing out across your shoes. You look at the head for a while, then let it fall out of your hands and hit the ground with a dull thud. There's purple everywhere, all over you, the walls, the ground. Your hands. You take a few slow steps and then sink to your knees in the alley, look at the purple smeared on your palms. When you blink, tears fall to your cheeks and then roll down, but you don't really feel them. Can't smell them either. Can't smell anything. Must be a dream.
It feels so real.
You're looking at your hands, and they're getting lighter while you watch; the purple is starting to fade from them. Light is flooding the alley, and suddenly you know what's about to happen. You've never been more relieved.
You wake up to the sun on your face.
You flinch, then relax when you remember where you are. Honestly, who puts an east-facing window in a vampire's bedroom? Whoever designed this place ought to be shot.
You're so tired. Did you dream something? You can't remember now.
You get ready for work, then jab the down button on your private elevator.
This is how you start the day.
*
You take your mug of blood from Harmony's desk. She hands you a manila folder from Wesley and asks for permission to leave early, which you give her. When you go into your office, there's a smallish throwing knife lying on your desk with a note. It isn't a gift; you know because you recognize it from your own collection. But the note says to keep it in your pocket today, that you will know what to do with it when the time comes. It looks like Spike's handwriting, but you could be wrong. You haven't seen his handwriting in a long time.
You slip the knife into your pocket, figuring that it couldn't hurt, although you have no idea what it's for. All morning you feel the slight weight of it against your leg, and you think a couple of times that you might call Spike, ask him about it. But you don't know his phone number, and you're too embarrassed to ask Harmony for it, so you don't.
You eat lunch in Gunn's office with Wesley, Gunn, and Lorne. Fred joins the four of you in the lobby at two o'clock to meet the Ri'ipkis, and you all go into the soundproof conference room together.
The rush of memories is like a stampede in your brain. It almost feels like you should grab the sides of your head to keep it from bursting open.
You’ve made a mistake.
That’s the first thought you have when you’re able to think again. You messed up. You shouldn’t have told Spike that you remember. It just seemed so important at the time for him to know before anything happened... But now he’s going to do something reckless – and you already know that he’s going to do it today.
Shit. Why does he have to be so impulsive? You haven’t even worked out a plan yet; you haven’t even told him about the magic, about the things these demons are capable of! Damn it, you should have done that first. Who cares what you remember - if Spike bursts in suddenly and tries to save you, he’s likely to get himself killed!
Oh God, he's probably on his way right now. What are you going to do?
You tell yourself that you must be underestimating Spike. If he's guessed that these demons are the ones making the day repeat, surely he understands how much power they have. Right? Surely he understands that you can’t just hack at them with a sword and hope they die.
Then again, he only armed you with a throwing knife for this battle.
You're all screwed.
The Ri’ipki ambassador starts his speech. Wesley clears his throat softly, and you glance over at him. The ambassador doesn't seem to notice; at least, he doesn't stop talking. Wesley makes eye contact with you, then looks down at his lap significantly, then back at you again. He's got something. A weapon maybe? Did Spike leave something for each of you? You glance down at your own lap, then back up at Wesley with a nod, confirming that you also have something. The corner of his mouth twitches up, but he makes no other movement. Then Fred clears her throat. When you look at her, she also glances down at her lap, then at you with a tiny determined nod. She's got something too? Good girl.
The three of you then look at Gunn, who signals in the same silent manner that he also has a weapon. By the look on his face, he can't wait to use it, whatever it is. Lorne, however, has nothing, as evidenced by his slight shrug and helpless look. Well, four out of five isn't bad. When you look back at Wesley, he raises his eyebrows. He wants to know when. You shake your head slightly. Not yet. You wonder how any of you are going to be very effective fighters when you can’t even move your legs.
Spike, you think, you better know what you're doing. But you just can't shake the feeling that something very bad is going to happen here. You try to come up with a short-notice plan. Which Ri’ipki is the priority? Your first instinct would be to go for the ambassador because he seems to be the most powerful, but the other four demons are the ones keeping you in your seat. They’re working together... maybe if you take one out, you and your friends would have a better chance at fighting the others?
You haven’t planned any further than that when the conference room door suddenly crashes inward, startling everyone in the room except you. Well, here we go, you think, and you catch a brief glimpse of Spike barreling in with a sword before you’re already throwing your knife at one of the four Ri’ipki minions. Just before it reaches him, the knife freezes in the air, and your heart sinks a little bit before you realize that he’s had to divert his attention in order to stop the knife, and he’s no longer helping the other minions hold you down. In an instant, you’re out of your seat and across the room, and you’ve broken his neck before anyone else has even realized that you’ve moved.
One down. You catch your knife before it hits the floor and glance up to see what you should do next.
A series of loud pops draws your immediate attention toward Wesley, who’s firing a handgun at one of the other minions. The Ri’ipki is frowning and stopping each bullet as it nears his chest, not noticing the small, round object rolling towards his feet. You see Fred crouching beside the table with her fingers in her ears barely half a second before the tiny bomb explodes, taking most of the demon’s left side with it. That’s two. You hear the frozen bullets tap softly on the carpet as they fall.
Meanwhile, Gunn’s three throwing stars are floating harmlessly in front of the face of a third minion, who suddenly sends them flying back at Gunn. He manages to dodge two of them, but the third cuts his shoulder pretty badly. The Ri’ipki isn’t paying any attention to you, though, so while Gunn distracts him you throw your knife, easily embedding the blade in the demon’s neck from your position several feet away. When this third body falls to the ground, Gunn snatches the knife out of its neck with his uninjured arm and turns, throwing it directly toward the fourth minion, who is having trouble freezing Wesley’s second volley of bullets and is already bleeding in two places, looking panicked.
And you’re thinking, wow. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
And then you turn and look for Spike.
*
There's noise coming from an alley. Two demons fighting. One of them is Spike.
You approach silently and lean against the wall, watch them for a while. You know the moment when Spike notices you watching because, even though he doesn’t acknowledge your presence, his technique suddenly becomes much more careless, and he starts taunting the demon more. You roll your eyes. He’s showing off, drawing out the fight because he knows it bothers you. You’ve always thought it a good idea to end a battle to the death as quickly as possible – drawing it out could be dangerous, even if you’re sure you can win, because you never know when you might lose your advantage. But Spike thinks it’s fun.
You’re tempted to step in and end the fight yourself, but Spike’s obviously much better than the demon, even when he’s being sloppy, so you’re not really worried. You just watch. He’ll probably come up with some showy way of killing it, then smirk at you while you just shake your head, secretly impressed. Either one of you could have ripped the thing’s head off a dozen times by now, but that’s not inventive enough for Spike when he’s in a mood like this. You glance around the alley. What will he use? There’s a soggy cardboard box, a few broken crates... maybe he’ll do something creative with the metal trashcan lid?
You guessed right. He backflips neatly, kicking the demon in the face, and comes up right beside the trashcan, grabbing the lid off of it in one fluid motion. But just before he makes his final move, he pauses for less than half a second to glance at you and make sure you’re still watching.
That’s when Spike loses his advantage.
It happens very fast. These things - they're not supposed to happen as fast as they do. There should be more production, more drama, more... reverence? Something, somehow, should be more. Not this being here one second and the next second being gone. Living for nearly a hundred and thirty years and then just not being there anymore... it's wrong. It's just... it can't happen like this. Not like this. This isn't how someone like Spike... It can't be.
And yet, you're watching his dust sink to the ground like a heavy snow, and you know that this is how it happens; it must be, because it has. And you saw it happen - you watched the demon twist Spike's head away from his neck - but for a moment you're so shocked that you still somehow expect Spike to get up like he always does, to knit himself back together and to do something impressive with a trashcan lid. You're looking at his dust, and you're waiting for it to be him again.
And then the demon puts its hoof down right in the dust and pivots to look at you, grinding what's left of Spike into the alley floor, smirking. And it still hasn't exactly sunk in yet what's happened, but you know distantly that you've never in your life hated anything more than you hate this demon right now, so you rip its head off. Just like that, its head is in your hands - you don't even remember moving - and there's purple blood everywhere, all over you, spilling out over the floor of the alley, over your shoes. And you find yourself thinking that it's not fair that this dead demon has blood, has a body, has a head, and all Spike has is...
You drop the head and feel yourself sink to your knees in the alley. This isn't right. It's not... this can't be right... And a slight breeze starts to move the dust gently, and you hear yourself make a sound in your throat, but you can't stop the dust from moving - you try to catch it, try to hold it together with your hands, but it slips through your fingers... and when you look down so much of it is already gone that you can't even be sure that anything you're holding was actually part of Spike at all. So you finally just let go and watch it blow away.
Then you look down at your hands. They're stained purple. And you find yourself thinking about all the lives these hands have taken, and about all the lives they've saved. You're looking at your hands, and you're thinking about all the things you've done, the choices you've made, the people you've loved and the ones you tried to love but couldn't, not enough to make a difference. You're thinking about the people you've failed. And you feel so hopeless.
You blink, and a tear rolls down your cheek. You can't smell it, though. Can't smell anything. And that's when you realize that it must be a dream. You always realize right at the end. It's the same dream, the one you have every night - because every night is the same night. Every night is the night that you watched Spike die.
You look at your hands and wait for the purple to fade. You wait for the alley to start getting light, for the sun on your face to wake you up from your nightmare.
But this time you don't wake up to the sun on your face.
You wake up to the ping of your elevator, heavy footsteps running through your penthouse, a familiar voice calling your name urgently.
When you open your eyes, it's still dark outside. You sit up slowly in your bed. The door to your bedroom flings open and Spike rushes in, still calling your name. When he sees you sitting there, he stops dead in his tracks and stares at you with this completely shocked expression - like he wasn't expecting you to really be there, like you're a ghost, or like he can't tell if it's really you in the bed or not. And you look back at him in what is probably the same way.
The two of you just look at each other for what seems like a very long time, although it's probably only a few seconds. And you know this isn't what happens, so for a moment you wonder if you're still dreaming maybe, or if you got hit in the head and you're seeing things. But no, he's real, and he's standing here alive, and you're so relieved you don't even know what to say.
His eyes are shiny. He’s staring at you with this lost look and you just want to gather him up in your arms and hold him, feel the solidness of him, be reassured that he’s here, that he’s not really dust. And it’s all running through your head again, how much you care for him, all the things you want to say, and it occurs to you that today must be the real thing, Saturday, because you remember everything... except the end of yesterday’s meeting. You’re not exactly sure how it all went down, but it must have worked – Spike must have killed the Ri’ipki ambassador. That’s the only way you could be sitting here in bed looking at him and knowing how much he means to you.
Then he comes forward slowly, reaching out his hand in the dark. When his fingertips brush across your shoulder, he breathes in sharply like he thought his fingers would pass through you and he’s surprised that they didn’t. “You’re really here,” he whispers. And when he blinks, you see a tear roll down his face and you have the sudden urge to kiss it away. But before you can move, he asks, “Am I dreaming?”
“No,” you tell him quietly. And you hope very hard that you’re right.
He trails his hand across your skin, touches your cheek, touches your hair. His fingers are cold. "Thought I'd never..." He pauses and swallows. Suddenly he takes his hand back, stands up a little straighter. "It's good to see you, Angel," he says. "Go back to sleep if you like. Just had to make sure you were..." His voice trails off.
You blink. What? Did Spike really just tell you to go back to sleep? When it's finally Saturday, and you're together, and you remember everything? "You've got to be kidding me," you say. "You honestly think I could just go to sleep after all of... everything?"
Spike doesn't look at you. He shrugs one shoulder. "Sorry to burst in here, the middle of the night and all," he says. "Had to... check something." He clears his throat. "I'll just be going now. We can talk later." As he turns to walk away, he passes the back of his hand quickly over his eyes.
"Spike!" you say. He stops but doesn't turn around. "If you seriously walk out that door right now, I'm gonna kick your ass." You watch his back tense at your words. This definitely isn't what you had planned to say to him, but you're so confused you don't really know what to do. Why isn't he kissing you right now? Why aren’t the two of you celebrating?
His voice sounds strained when he replies quietly, "Don't."
"Don't what? Don't kick your ass?" Your fists are clenched in your sheets. He can't possibly be thinking of leaving. Right?
"Don't do this," Spike says softly. "Don't hate me, Angel. Please. Not today. Not after..." He swallows.
“What are you talking about?” you demand.
"Just... pretend I'm someone else,” he says. “Pretend I'm Charlie, or Percy, or your green demon friend with the ambiguous sexuality. But don't hate me today, Angel. I don't think I could stand it."
You’re shaking your head. “Spike, what–” you start again, but he’s already walking away, his arms crossed tightly in front of him, hugging his duster to his body. You get out of bed quickly and go after him. “Spike,” you say. “Wait.” You put a hand on his shoulder and turn him to face you, the moonlight coming through your window casting a bluish tint on his face. His eyelashes are wet. “Spike, I don’t hate you,” you say. “I...”
But suddenly, standing here with him, every word you’ve ever learned has abandoned you, and you don’t know how to finish. Spike’s waiting for the rest of the sentence, looking at you, and it’s the moment you’ve been hoping for, and it’s actually kind of perfect with the bluish light and the rumpled bed nearby and your hand on his shoulder holding him there, his attention focused on you. But you can’t even think what you want to say. It’s all running together in your head, images you can’t put words with – you and Spike watching the boats in the L.A. Harbor, sitting in a dark theater together, wearing matching jerseys, kissing on the beach. Spike alone on the floor of his apartment, Spike curling into your side and fitting so perfectly, Spike showing off for you, Spike turning to dust. You want to wrap your arms around him and crush him to your chest and never let go, but you also want to put him away somewhere safe and never let anything touch him. How can you tell him these things? You want to say something about how strong he is, how you want to be like him, but you’re standing here looking at him and thinking about how fragile he can be, how beautiful and intricate, like the inside of a leaf, how you want to take care of him. Would he resent that? What do you say? Oh God, you don’t have time for it all, for any of it; you don’t have words...
“Stay,” you finally manage. “Just stay here with me. Please.” And he looks sort of confused, like maybe he didn’t hear you right, so you whisper again, “Please.” And you lean down and kiss him softly on the mouth, because it’s the only thing you can think of to do.
He’s startled at first. He makes a sound in his throat that sounds like a question, but you don’t stop to answer him; you just kiss him harder, hoping that maybe he can read the answer in your lips, and after a moment you think he must have been able to because he doesn’t ask again. The kiss lengthens, deepens, and one by one the images in your head start to disappear, or else they swirl into each other, combining into a singularity and clearing your mind of everything except Spike’s mouth, and his hands where they’re touching your back, where you can feel his cold fingers and his rings, a contrast to the warmth of his lips and tongue. And in the space that’s left in your mind, you try one more time to think of what you wanted to say, but it’s all gone – there’s no hope of getting it back while you’re so close to him. You only know from very far away that it was something about death and life and memory, and something about... love.
It’s a thing that you're only just now realizing, although it feels like you've known it for a very long time. You haven’t wanted to give it a name because it didn’t feel right, not falling in love with a person but falling in love with the memory of a person, a person who has no idea that you even remember at all. It didn't seem like it could be real, but right now you can't think of a realer thing in the world than the feeling you're finally discovering while you kiss him. It makes you feel like a whole different man.
Spike kisses with his entire body. It feels suddenly very new, and at the same time as familiar as opening your eyes or swallowing or making a fist. You’ve just never paid attention before. Your hand is curved around the back of his neck, holding him to you, your fingers sifting through his hair, and your other hand is touching him, feeling him all over to reassure yourself that he’s solid and not dust, that the universe has finally, finally given you a break. And you’re thinking about how lucky you are to be standing here just before dawn on a Saturday morning, kissing Spike and remembering everything and knowing that everything will be okay.
Then Spike puts a hand on your chest. Very slowly, gently, he pushes you back, ending the kiss. He looks into your eyes, and from his expression you could swear he’s never seen you before in his life. “What’s wrong?” you ask him. You touch his cheek, wipe away a stray tear with your thumb. God, he’s beautiful.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “Why—” He pauses. His lips are dark pink. He clears his throat and starts again. “You’re not usually this happy to see me, is all.”
You lean down and kiss him again, once. "That's going to change from now on," you tell him.
He's looking at your mouth. "Oh," he says. "Well, that's good, then."
He's thinking about kissing you again. It makes you smile. "I missed you, Spike," you say.
"Missed me?" he repeats. "When?"
"Every day. Sitting in that damn meeting, when they made us remember everything for a little while, then forget again. The whole time, all I thought about was you."
You're about to kiss him again when he suddenly takes a step back. "You mean... you remember?" He looks confused. "Today, right now? You remember right now?"
"Yeah," you say. "I was so scared I wouldn't, but I remember everything." You start to kiss him again, but he turns his head and quickly pulls you into a tight hug instead. So you kiss his hair.
"I'm so sorry, Angel," he murmurs. You feel his breath on your neck. "Don't think I could tell you how sorry I am."
"I'm just glad it's over," you tell him.
"Over...?" he asks softly.
"You know. Friday," you say. "Aren't you glad it's over?"
But you can tell by the way his body tenses in your arms that Spike is about to say something that you don't want to hear. And suddenly you know what it is, and you can't bear to hear it, not after everything. Not when you've been through so much. You just want to pull Spike into your bed with you and forget everything else, be with him and celebrate and pretend it's Saturday just a little while longer.
It takes everything you have not to cover your ears or stop his mouth with yours.
His arms tighten around you. You can see the sky beginning to turn light outside your window, and you already know even before Spike says it that this light is the same light that woke you up yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. You swallow. Don't say it, you think. Your eyes fall closed. Please don't say it.
"Angel..." Spike finally whispers to you, "it isn't over yet."
No. Of course it isn't over. Of course. You should have known it wouldn't be that simple. And when the sun starts coming up, you can feel it on your face, and it makes you flinch. You press your cheek against Spike's and don't open your eyes. Try not to think about your dream.
Today is Friday.
This is how you start the day.
*
Continued [here].
*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 05:10 am (UTC)Then as I read it was wonderful he was remembering and then he wasn't...
I just rode an emotional rollarcoaster and I love you...
*grins*
so I liked it...
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 05:26 am (UTC)But I wonder if any of these ugly demons still alive? In this case our guys lose the advantage of the unexpected attack. *worries*
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 05:47 am (UTC)I have an idea of where you're heading, and I like it.
This is another great fic, my dear. ::hugs::
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 06:06 am (UTC)This was so worth waiting for!
Loved how you changed the beginning of the repeat, and then revealed why...
Every night is the night that you watched Spike die.
So, so painful!
Loved the messages and every one of the Spike/Angel interactions... and the ending! *wah!*
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:17 am (UTC)although you probably shouldn't tell me that it's worth the wait, because now i'll be like -- i can take as much time as i want and people won't mind because i can still make them cry! heh heh.
oh, and thanks so much for the pimp. a couple people have dropped by and said they came because of you. :D
(no subject)
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Date: 2007-06-15 06:40 am (UTC)So so sweet, absolutely beautiful, I love the way you wrote Angel's feelings about Spike. Just excellent.
*dreamy sigh*
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 07:04 am (UTC)Mithril
no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 08:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
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Date: 2007-06-15 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:27 am (UTC)you know, when i first glanced at your icon, i thought it said anus instead of arms. and i was like, whoa... that's blunt. :D
(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 08:21 am (UTC)But it was over!!! They were happy!
*flails more and falls over*
Seriously, the last half really put me straight in Angel's mind, with the desperation and growing horror and need to deny the reality of the situation. This whole story has been really superb but this chapter was *intense*. I shall now quietly go crazy waiting for part 4 ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:30 am (UTC)i'm so glad you're enjoying the story. it would be a shame for you to go crazy before the last part is posted...
no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 08:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 10:04 am (UTC)I have the feeling that somehow or other Angel is going to have to figure this out for himself but I have no idea how. Can't wait to find out.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:41 am (UTC)i'm so glad you like the writing. that really, really makes me happy. :)
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Date: 2007-06-15 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 11:25 am (UTC)Thanks for sharing
Lily
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Date: 2007-06-17 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 01:24 pm (UTC)It wonderful! sad, and desperate...I want more!!;)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 07:14 pm (UTC)mwahaha. :D
well worth the wait
Date: 2007-06-15 01:44 pm (UTC)Re: well worth the wait
Date: 2007-06-17 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 06:53 pm (UTC)You did an excellent job conveying the growing swell of emotions in Angel. His love and yearning are palpable. In all of Angel's emotional soul searching this line made me laugh out loud: "All of this isn’t going to fit on your thigh."
This was another densely detailed, emotional chapter. It deftly moved the story forward and brought the growing relationship forward, too. Do you mind if I friend you to keep up with the finale?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 10:28 pm (UTC)heh! i found that part kind of amusing too. :)
At least Spike and Angel are getting somewhere, though I'm afraid they may have shown their hand to the Ri'ipkis too soon.
*claps a hand over her mouth to avoid spoiling you for the last chapter*
i'm so glad you're liking this story! i don't mind at all if you friend me. in fact, yay! :D
no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 08:02 pm (UTC)What a cool idea, to start with—the Groundhog Day premise but from the pov of someone who doesn't remember. I love the careful, slow reveal of what's going on, and the pain of realizing that Angel's going to forget each and every time. The subtle clues, too, like Spike commenting in some puzzlement that the meeting ran long on a given day.
And wow am I ever on the edge of my seat now. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 10:32 pm (UTC)anyway, i'm so glad you like it! and i'm very impressed that you read all three parts in one sitting. :D i hope you stick around for the conclusion.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 09:43 pm (UTC)Friending you so I can read the last of this, cause if I don't find out how this ends my head will explode.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 10:34 pm (UTC)