(Author's Note: I have to warn you guys again: There is an element of slash to this one. Now they aren't actually doing anything but I don't want to freak anyone out. So if homoeroticism in any way shape or form makes you uncomfortable then you probably didn't watch Angel Season Five... and you shouldn't read this chapter.)
Angel sat at the island counter in a very cheery kitchen. There were herbs and flowers hanging from the ceiling to dry and they added to the perfume in the air, the smell of spices and garlic from the recent cooking mixed with sweet ginger as Buffy took a bite of her cookie.
It was a beautiful place and he most certainly wasn't welcome.
Everyone kind of ate around him, avoiding both eye contact as well as conversation. He didn't think Spike could get further away from him while still being in the same room.
Xander, after polishing off a bowl of chili, a plate of jambalaya and two pieces of lasagna, finally made a conversational effort, if it could be called that.
“So, Dead Boy, when are you shipping out again? I'll help you pack.”
“Xander!” This came rather half-heartedly from Willow and Buffy. No one else said anything.
Angel shifted on the chair and winced, a sharp pain lacing out from his collarbone to his hip.
“Angel isn't healed up yet, Xander. Give him a few days.” Buffy said concentrating rather closely on her ice cream.
“And where exactly is he going to stay. And don't say with me because forget it. I helped you get him out of the Presidio, I'm done.” Xander shoveled another spoonful of Phish Food into his mouth seemingly as a method of informing everybody the conversation was closed.
Buffy looked over at Giles, but before she could even get a proper pout going he shut her down, “No. Out of the question and not in this or any other life time.”
Buffy stirred her ice cream with irritation. She wanted to go to bed. With Spike. But now she had to deal with the Angel situation before the happies could begin. She dismissed her mother as an option before it was even considered. That was a world of 'no, never going to happen.'
Angel kept quite mum about his recent stay at the decrepit mansion. It was best not to bring up these things when you were trying to spend some time with someone you needed to make up with. So far Spike had said absolutely nothing. He sat next to Buffy, eating the food and drinking his blood making it clear that he had nothing to say regarding the matter and further more implying that he didn't care.
Buffy bit her lip. Spike would not like this. Tara would not like this. She didn't like this, “Spike?”
Spike looked up from his lasagna, “Yeah, pet?”
“No.” Tara said from across the table. She had apparently already made the logical leap where Buffy's mind had gone.
“But it would only be for a few days and I promise I'll be here the whole time and you can go stay with Willow at the dorm if you want. Please, Tara? You have that other bedroom that no one's staying in.” Buffy worked her way into the pout as quickly as possible.
Tara weakened because her Southern hospitality was warring with her good sense, “Alright. IF it's only for a few days and he has nowhere else to go. And I'm not going anywhere.”
* * *
Xander helped Spike unwrap the mattress from it's plastic. The room was furnished but it had never been used, “Man, I can't believe you're letting him stay here.”
Spike looked up distractedly, “What?”
Xander stared at him for a few seconds, “Are you O.K?”
Spike shook his head, “Yeah, I'm just still coming down off the rush, you know?”
Xander shifted the mattress, “Yeah. O.K. If you say so.”
* * *
Giles went home after writing a plethora of cryptic notes. Xander, in the spirit of male solidarity, convinced Anya they should bunk it out of the pullout sofa.
They lay staring at the ceiling, Xander could feel his mind whirring with unwanted thoughts. We kill demons, the soldiers kill demons, but the soldiers are evil because they do things other than killing demons. It was all pretty confusing.
Xander preferred the Scoobies previous attitude: Demons bad destroy, destroy.
Well, except for Angel. When he had the soul.
And Spike as of three months ago.
Of course, Xander preferred Spike to Angel to the degree of infinity plus one, even if he was all with the Buffy mackage.
He would prefer an animated lawn gnome with Buffy so long as it wasn't Angel.
And now he was thinking about Spike and Angel again. What was with that? It wasn't that he didn't understand Spike's hatred of Angel, because he was totally in agreement with him on that.
It was the things Willow had vaguely alluded to when Xander had quizzed her about the Angel badness last week. Xander had a pretty good imagination and it had been fuelled by years of desensitizing media violence. He'd seen Pulp Fiction at a young age and he could imagine things that made his blood run cold. What he couldn't figure out was why Spike was even helping the guy at all if anything even close to what he was imagining was true.
It all made his head hurt and Anya was now demanding a distraction of another kind.
* * *
Buffy lay next to Spike staring at the ceiling and cursing Angel's name. Spike was curled up on the other side of the bed with his back to her. He wasn't sleeping either Buffy could tell he was faking.
Part of her was creeped out by what she wanted to do. Which was Spike, in everyway imaginable and right now.
But Angel was on the other side of the wall. Angel was a vampire with a vampire sense of hearing and smell. He would completely know what they were up to.
It wasn't the fact that it was Angel that bothered her it was that ANYONE would know she was having sex. The though made her face flush and even her thoughts start to stammer.
Spike had made no advances and Buffy wondered what he was thinking. It couldn't possibly be that he didn't feel safe with Angel in the house. She was right there next to him, the Slayer, as in of vampires! Like she would ever let Angel in twenty feet of him if she thought the older vampire was a threat.
Of course, he might not appreciate the fact that she was so adamant about protecting him. He had the strange idea that he could take care of himself. Which was true, but it didn't mean that he would ever be facing Angel or Angelus or whatever on his own. No, if anyone was going to be taking down the gelled wonder (great, now she had Spike-thoughts invading her brain) it would be Buffy herself.
She was feeling a bit bolder now. Maybe if she could try to keep it down Angel… and Willow and Tara… and Xander and Anya might all sleep through the whole thing? She boldly slid one hand under the covers and cupped Spike's ass.
He jerked back from her so forcefully he fell out of the bed.
Buffy immediately realized her mistake and felt like crying at the expression on his face, “Oh, Spike I'm sorry I was trying to be all Seductive Buffy and I just screwed it up.”
Spike stared at her for a few seconds before automatically slipping into comfort mode and getting back into bed, “It's all right, precious thing. Was just startled is all. You didn't screw anything up, I'm the one with the problems.” He ran his hands along her arms in a soothing motion and managed a smile.
Buffy smiled back and grew bold again. She could distract him from any nasty thoughts, she decided kissing him deeply until he let out a soft groan and his hips began moving of their own accord.
* * *
Anything imagining Buffy might have had about Angel sleeping through anything was dead wrong. Especially since he'd had one ear pressed against the wall since they'd all retired.
He swallowed thickly listening to the soft moans and heavy breathing. He could smell them both even in here. He could only imagine what the room was like.
He was as hard as a rock almost immediately, his soul protested briefly about the morality or lack there of behind voyeurism but his libido silenced it almost before it began.
He'd had them both and they were the best he'd ever touched.
He knew how they looked bare and writhing and he could imagine it as clear as day. Spike would be all silver in the moonlight, fine-boned beauty moving in the ancient rhythm of love. Buffy would be beneath him, a golden California princess all soft girlishness and womanly mystique.
His hand found it's way between his legs before he'd even given it a thought. He had to see them.
He slipped out into the hall a spotted the door ever so slightly ajar. He wasted no time it letting the well-oiled hinges fall further open.
He'd been wrong about the positions, but little else. Buffy was riding Spike with abandon, she pinned his arms playfully spread eagle and she was staring into his face with purpose.
Spike's body, all fine lines planes and angles that sculptures had searched for in their models shifted on the bed. He looked to be halfway between strained to keep himself in place and straining to rise up to meet her.
They were the most beautiful things Angel had ever seen.
Buffy came at once, a choked cry bursting forth despite her efforts to suppress it and Spike flipped her at once onto her back.
Angel's motions sped up at the sight before him. Spike's ass, a more perfect creation never seen under the sun or moon, was in perfect view. Angel remembered well what it was like to be inside it, buried to the hilt and to never want to leave.
The echoes of screams and pleading filled his ears at once and he remembered at last, the circumstances of such an experience.
They were both reaching climax when Angel slipped hurriedly from his position in the hall. To his shame, his erection had not gone down, even with the horrific memory of committing rape.
He lay flat on his back for the rest of the night, as hard as nails and refusing to touch himself. He deserved the suffering. He deserved the isolation. He deserved the sweet torture of knowing the two beings he most longed for had each other and needed nothing from him.
* * *
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