Counting the Days

Series: Alpha I

Author: Dira Sudis

Feedback: Always welcome!

Spoilers: post BtVS S5 & AtS S2

Summary: Dawn needs to get out of the house, so Spike takes her to L.A.

Content: Angel/Spike, Spike/Dawn friendship, blood, sex, violence

Rating: NC-17

Disclaimer: Not mine, not hurting, (hopefully) not getting sued.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
 
 

Count the days, one by one.

But how, good lad,

since you never see the sun?
 
 

~Part: 1~

Spike was spectacularly drunk.

Somewhere beneath the numbness that had overtaken him the first moment he saw Willow, Angel was angry at him, but more than that he was jealous.  Spike, at least, had found some escape from this quiet horror. Only a day before, Angel had been walking in sunlight, surrounded by his friends.  Now the sun had been boxed up and buried, and even a vampire had to fear the night to follow.  He felt cold, and utterly alone. Cordy and Wes, who had accompanied him to Sunnydale and stood nearby, seemed miles distant.  Buffy's friends and her Watcher, standing on the opposite side of the grave, might have been on other planets.  Dawn, who stood perfectly still, clutching her arms around her stomach and never raising her eyes from the ground, looked as chilled and distant as the moon, and Spike, staggering in his inebriate restlessness, orbited erratically about them all.

Giles had just finished saying a few halting words--more than any of the rest of them could seem to muster, in the face of this oppressive silence, this impossible loss--when Spike's rambling took on direction and brought him stumbling up to Angel, leading with an accusatory finger, which he jammed against Angel's chest.

"This is your fault, you know."  In the total absence of volume control, the slurred assertion rang out, readily audible to everyone.

From a long way off, Angel felt his anger stirring, but he said quietly, "Is it?"

Spike lurched closer, now almost leaning on Angel, blue eyes narrowed as he concentrated on forming the words.  "*You* loved her?" Spike snorted.  "I *loved* her."

Angel pushed Spike back with an open hand.  "Yeah, Spike, you did a real good job."

Spike's face settled into a scowl as he reversed his momentum, and his words emerged in a low, venomous hiss.  "At least I tried.  At least I was here with her when--"

Angel growled, and at almost the same instant, Spike punched him squarely in the nose.  Thought fled before the bright pain of it.  Angel's eyes locked on Spike's, anchored by the honest belligerence shining up at him, whiskey-bright.  Grief and rage and jealousy and history and the last tatters of what had been numbness and distance all rushed together and found outlet in Angel's fist, delivering a punishing blow to Spike's side.  Ribs cracked under the impact, and Spike staggered back a step, clutching at Angel's coat hard enough to drag him along.  Spike's glare never wavered, and with a wordless snarl, Angel struck him again, in exactly the same spot, hardly noticing that they fell to the ground, Spike's wild and uncoordinated struggles rolling them over as Angel hit him, over and over, in that same sweet spot.  The ribs gave way, and Angel's fist sunk into the resulting softness with a sick thud.  A fine mist of aspirated blood appeared on Spike's gritted teeth and stained the pale lips drawn back in a mad dog grin.  The smell woke something deeper than rage in Angel, and he felt his face beginning to shift just as a dire voice rang out behind him.  "Separate!"

Spike's grip on him was broken, and they were thrown apart.  Angel closed his eyes as reality rushed back in; when he put down a hand to push himself up, it sank easily into the freshly-turned earth covering Buffy's grave.  He looked around cautiously from where Willow's spell had tossed him.  She was rubbing tiredly at her face, already turning to her girlfriend for reassurance.  Giles' silent weariness was momentarily enlivened by a ferociously controlled displeasure, aimed, Angel thought, mainly at him, while Xander looked ready to start a fight of his own, glowering impartially at him and Spike both.  As he pressed a hand to his nose, bloodied by Spike's first punch, Angel wondered whether Xander ever registered unhappiness as something other than anger, or if it was a sort of vampire-specific observer effect.  He looked quickly away from the boy to Dawn, who dropped her gaze back to the dirt before he could make eye contact.  Wes and Cordy likewise averted their eyes, and Angel gave a mental wince.  *Way to demonstrate that you can act rationally around your kin, idiot*. That left only Spike, and Angel's eyes turned to the smaller vampire reluctantly, a little afraid of what he might see.

Spike was still on the ground, not yet even sitting up as Angel was.  His left arm was wrapped around his battered side, and as Angel watched, he slowly pulled himself together and rolled over, turning his back on everyone else.  It was only then, pushing himself up and watching Spike, that Angel realized that Spike had never thrown a second punch.

Then Angel was standing, turning to face Giles, who seemed likeliest to say something.  He heard, behind him, the small sounds of Spike getting painfully to his feet, though he knew that the others would see only further drunken staggering.  He went on holding his nose as Giles berated them both in a weary, disappointed voice, the secret weapon of father figures everywhere; the effect was somewhat wasted on him, focused as he was on Spike's minute movements behind him.  He doubted Spike heard a word either. When Giles stopped, Angel said quietly, "I'm sorry. You must know I meant no disrespect to Buffy or any of you."

Spike slurred something unintelligible, even to Angel's practiced ears.  Angel turned to look at him, and found him with his gaze fixed on the ground.  He looked up only once, in Dawn's direction, but she didn't meet his eyes and Spike turned away, stumbling into the trees.

Angel looked toward Cordy and Wes, but they were headed for Dawn, to offer their condolences and, he thought, their goodbyes.  Spike had the right idea about that.

Angel took a moment to discreetly wipe his face and lick his hand clean--waste not, want not, and anyway he didn't have anywhere to wipe it--before cautiously approaching Willow.  She looked up as he did so, and he said quietly, "I'm sorry, Willow.  For. Everything."

She nodded, eyes filled with tears, and Angel nodded awkwardly back.  That seemed likely to be the extent of the conversation, so he turned toward Xander, who was scowling at nothing in particular.  "Xander.  I'm sorry."

Xander shot him a dark glance, but nodded stiffly. "Aren't we all," he muttered, as Angel turned away, and Angel chose to leave that where it was.

That left Dawn.  He watched, hesitating, as Cordelia gave her a hug, and Wes squeezed one tightly bowed shoulder.  She nodded, wordlessly, in response to whatever they said, not looking up at either of them. Then they stepped away, headed for the car, and it was Angel's turn and he had no idea what to do.  Finally, remembering Buffy and the night of their mother's funeral, he edged closer and put his arms around the small, forlorn figure of the orphaned girl.

To his surprise, Dawn seemed to unfreeze in his hesitant embrace, her arms wrapping quickly around his neck.  He let her go after a moment, and felt her hesitation to return the favor, but she went back to hugging herself, and raised her eyes to something like chest-height.  "I'm sorry about that, Dawn."

She shrugged, and a watery smile crossed her face, vanishing quickly.  "It's okay," she whispered, as though she couldn't break the quiet of the night.  "I kinda wish someone would say it was my fault, so I had an excuse to say it isn't."  And by so saying, persuade herself, of course.  Angel bit back the automatic impulse to tell her so; it wouldn't do any good, and it was hardly his place when he still didn't quite know what had happened.  He wished he could say *something* to comfort her.  He wished she would look at him.

Angel set his hands on her shoulders, bending so that his face was on a level with hers, and for a moment she looked back at him.  "Dawn, listen.  If you need anything, if there's ever anything I can do, I want you to call me.  Anytime."

He tightened his grip, as if he could keep her attention by the strength of his hands, glancing uneasily over his shoulder to make sure that none of the humans were turning a disapproving ear.  "And if you feel like you have to get out of here, out of your house, out of Sunnydale, call me.  You can come to L.A. to visit, anytime you want, just don't go off on your own, all right?  Promise me."

Dawn looked up again, meeting his eyes squarely, revealing the tears on her cheeks.  She flung herself back against him, and Angel automatically closed his arms around her.  "Promise me," he repeated, and Dawn nodded against his shoulder.  It would have to be enough.

Spike ran all the way from his crypt to the house on Revello Drive, not to escape the sun, which was already down, but to catch the time already lost.  He had somehow overslept, of all the stupid human mistakes to make, and today, the seventeenth day, was the first time they'd trusted him to be there waiting for Dawn when she got home at sunset.  His lungs pumped needlessly, spurred by his panic, as he tried not to think of the hundred ways his tiny, stupid failure might bring harm to Dawn.  He slowed to a walk when he reached the front yard, walked briskly up the stairs to the door as he forced his lungs under control.

He opened the door, and Dawn was just standing in the doorway to the living room, her arms clutched around her stomach.  She wasn't crying, and he didn't smell blood or sickness, but something was nonetheless very, very wrong.

"Bit?" He went straight to her, and reached out, his hands hovering a bare inch from her folded arms; she looked as if an uncareful touch would break her.  "I'm sorry, pet.  Didn't mean for you to be by yourself like that."

She was shaking, and didn't look up at him even when he was right in front of her.  "Can we go, Spike?"

*Yes, of course, anything you want*. "Where?"

"Angel.  He said I could go there if I needed to and I have to, Spike, I have to get out of this house, out of Sunnydale.  Tomorrow's Saturday, and I don't have anything to do and I can't just stay here, all weekend, in the house, it's not, I can't--"

"Shh," Spike shifted slightly closer, wishing he had some more immediate comfort to give her.  "All right, then, all right."

"Because, he said to call and he'd come get me, but I can't wait, I can't, I have to get out of here, now, I can't.  And I promised not to just go off by myself."

"That's good."  Spike's mind was racing.  The bloody DeSoto was down, or they'd already be on their way. He had to get wheels, had to get her out.  She had that fey desperate look about her and he didn't really blame her, left alone in this houseful of loss. Bloody hell.  "All right, Dawn, we're gonna do this. I'm gonna take care of it, but I have to go get transport.  You need to pack a bag, right, just one, nothing huge." He lowered his head, moving so that she had to look him in the eye.  "Can you do that, if I leave?"

Her face screwed up, eyes shut tight, but she nodded, and he nodded back in unseen brisk approval.  "That's right.  You can do it.  I want you to pack a bag, write a note for Willow, make sure the rest of the house is locked up, and then wait for me, right inside the front door.  All right?  I'll be back in ten minutes, no more than that."

Dawn nodded, and he said, "Go, go get packed, then."

She brushed past him, running up the stairs, and he went to the weapons chest and pulled out a pair of gauntlets, stuffing them into the pocket of his duster as he headed out the front door.

Dawn's backpack was at her feet, and she was taping the sloppily handwritten note to the bannister where Willow would be sure to see it, when she heard the motorcycle pull up outside.  The engine cut off, and an instant later Spike was opening the door, moving to stand at her back.  He paused for a moment, reading over her shoulder.

      Willow--
Sorry to go so suddenly, I needed to
get out of the house and Angel said I could visit
so Spike is taking me down to LA.
Love, Dawn.

"Yeah, that'll do.  Right."  She turned around, and he made no mention of the tears all over her face, so she didn't mention his either.  He pulled a pair of leather gloves out of his pocket instead, and handed them to her.  They were Buffy's, she could tell though she'd never seen Buffy wear them, and just a little too big.  They went halfway to her elbows, with little straps to tighten them.  Spike helped her snap them securely in place and then shrugged out of his duster and helped her into it.  Dawn didn't even question him, just put her arms through the sleeves and let him button it up, since the gloves would have made her own fingers too clumsy.  It was clownishly huge, but the smell--cigarettes and leather and blood and dust--was comforting, and the weight of it made her feel a little less like she was going to fly to pieces.  And, of course, motorcycle.  Spike gestured for her to turn around again, and when she had done so he pulled her hair back, braiding it with quick motions, firm but never pulling, and tucking it down the back of her shirt.  He picked up her bag and ushered her out the door, locking it behind them, and Dawn finally let out a tiny sigh of relief.

The bike was in the driveway.  She'd never seen it before, but then Spike must have just stolen it in the last nine minutes, so that made sense.  He strapped her bag down on the back, and then hesitated.  "I couldn't get a helmet for you, Niblet.  We could--"

"I don't care, Spike.  I trust you, let's just *go*."

His shoulders slumped a little, maybe with relief, maybe feeling a little of her need to leave.  Spike climbed on the bike, and helped her up behind him.  He tucked the bottom of the duster around her legs, then reached behind him and pressed her head down behind his shoulder, her face to his back, and pulled her hands around his waist.  "Don't move, all right?  You hold on and you keep your head down."

She nodded, a minute motion against the thin black cotton of his t-shirt, and Spike started the bike, and they were going, going, gone.

It was the fastest trip to L.A. he'd ever made, and Spike spent the whole time concentrating on not getting into an accident or pulled over and simultaneously running through exactly how he'd throw his arms back as they both flew off the bike to make sure Dawn was shielded from the impact by his body. Every second, he was waiting for her grip on him to loosen, waiting to catch her, but somehow, for once, nothing went wrong.  Under the white roar of road noise and wind, he could feel her heart beating, the pulses in her wrists muffled by the leather, her breath against his back.  Alive, alive, alive, safe, with him, not lost, not bleeding, not crying.  He was doing this right, for once.  Keeping her safe, doing the job.  Keeping his promise.

All of which meant that it wasn't til he was parking the bike in front of the Hyperion that he thought about the fact that they'd come all this way so Dawn could have quality time with the bloody poofter.

He helped her off the bike and she just stood for a second, wobbling, and he realized that this was maybe not the best way to have a first motorcycle ride.  She looked toward the door, and back toward her bag, and he said softly, "Go on, pet, I'm right behind you."

She nodded and started slowly for the door, and he took a long slow breath and steeled himself for what was to come.

Dawn's arms and legs ached from holding on, and she felt like her whole body was still trembling in harmony with the vibration of the bike beneath her. But somehow she managed not to stagger, not to trip over the duster that went right down to her shoes, and made it to and through the front doors of the huge old hotel.

She was in a big lobby area, and there was a desk, with a young woman sitting behind it.  Dawn didn't think she'd met her at the funeral.  She was sort of staring at Dawn like she wasn't sure whether to run away screaming or not, and Dawn figured that if you hung around with Angel enough, that's the kind of thing you'd never be sure about.

"Hi," Dawn said as she made her way to the bottom of the stairs, aiming for the nearest piece of furniture she could collapse on, "I'm here to see--"

"*Dawn*!"  Angel came tearing out of another room, and he had that uber-parental hug/throttle look on his face.  "My God, I told you to call," and he had his hands on her shoulders, squeezing tight, a breath away from shaking her.  "How did--" And it was about then that he noticed the soft black leather he was gripping.

Spike was talking as he came in, but got no further than "Niblet, didn't I," when he saw her and Angel standing there.  He walked over, his boots making quiet little tapping noises on the marble floor.  He didn't say anything when he got to her, either, just ran a hand over her hair, loosening it from its makeshift restraint, and then began unfastening the gloves from her wrists.  Angel let go of her shoulders, but didn't move away, so that Dawn was pretty much sandwiched between the two vampires.

Spike tugged the gloves off, tucking each one into the pocket on that side, and then unbuttoned the duster and took hold of the collar so that she could step out of it, holding out her bag for her to take in exchange.  He pulled the coat on quickly, as soon as she had it off, and then they were all just standing there.

Dawn was reminded of the first time her dad had come to pick them up for a visit.  Long before the divorce was finalized, before all the bitterness had been exhausted by the intricacies of the legal process, her parents had stood there, kind of like this, both looking at the girls instead of each other, the possessiveness thick in the air.  Except this time Buffy wasn't here to help, and her parents were both gone, too, and, oh yeah, that had never actually happened to her because she hadn't existed at the time.  Dawn forced herself to keep still, staring at the far wall, breathing evenly, because if she puked or started to cry, it would just set them off, screaming at each other over whose fault her unhappiness was, and she really didn't need the screaming.  Not while she was standing between them, anyway.

And then Spike stepped back, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and waved them in explanation.  "I'm just going to step outside, Dawn. Back in a sec."

She nodded, finally daring to look at him, and he winked, the way he had sometimes behind Buffy's back, and walked out.  Dawn pulled together a wavering smile and looked up at Angel.  "I couldn't wait for a ride, so Spike brought me down."

Angel nodded, like the last three minutes of misery hadn't existed, and slipped his arm around her shoulders, turning her around.  "Dawn, this is Fred, she works with us.  Fred, Dawn."

Fred smiled nervously at her, and Dawn could see that she knew that Dawn was the tragic sister of tragic Buffy, but she didn't say anything about that, just, "Hi there."  It was sort of nice.

"Anyway, Dawn, it so happens that this is a hotel, so you have your choice of almost three different habitable rooms to sleep in."  Angel started toward the stairs, and Dawn followed.  "So, how long were you planning to stay?"

Dawn shrugged.  "Well, I've got school on Monday, but..."

Spike smoked the world's fastest, most desperately needed cigarette while waiting for Dawn and the nance to clear the lobby.  As soon as they were on the stairs, he headed back inside.  The mouse-girl, Fred apparently, looked startled, by his quick reappearance or maybe just by the fact that he walked, fast and silent, directly up to the desk.  She cast a quick glance over her shoulder, in the direction Angel had gone.

"S'all right, pet," he murmured, hating to smell her fear when there wasn't a bloody thing he could do about it, since, chip or no chip, she belonged to Angel, and there were certain rules of hospitality to be respected.  "Just need to use the phone."

She nodded, swallowing hard, and pushed it over to him.  He dialed the number quickly, and it picked up on the first ring.

"Willow?"

"Uh, Spike."  He'd thrown her by speaking before she did, but at least she didn't sound like she had a pitchfork or a torch in hand.  "Where are you?  Is Dawn okay?"

"We're at the Hyperion, Angel's helping her pick out a room.  She just couldn't stay in the house anymore, and I.  Didn't want to make her wait."

Willow seemed to hear what he didn't say.  "Oh. Yeah."

"I'll have her call, right?  And I'll have her back Sunday night, so she won't miss school."

"Okay, yeah.  Good."

Spike had it on the tip of his tongue to tell her to go hug her girlfriend or something, and hung up before that kind of disgusting sentimentality could cross his lips.  Pushing the phone back to Fred, he said quietly, "Ta," and settled himself against the desk for a good long lean.  Fred scooted away slightly.

He was a bit distracted--trying to hear Dawn's heartbeat, figure out where she was in this monstrous heap of a building--when the front doors opened again to admit Cordelia, the junior watcher, and a black guy who Spike was fairly certain he hadn't seen at the funeral.  All three of them stopped dead at the sight of him, expressions ranging from rage to curiosity to ignorant amusement.  Spike reminded himself that Cordelia had been at the funeral, so the last time she'd seen him he'd only been drunk and brawling with her boss, instead of trying to torture him to death, which he thought might be an important distinction. Then the bitch queen whipped out a stake and started toward him, and he thought it might not.

"Spike?  What the hell are you doing here?"

He held up his hands, all placating and harmless. "Don't get your knickers twisted, I'm just driving Miss Dawnie.  She's upstairs with your ponce of a boss right now."

Cordelia's gaze went over his shoulder, but whatever she saw there must have backed him up, because she lowered the stake.  "Oh," and her face changed, thinking of Dawn, and Buffy.  "Well.  Isn't this nice, then."

Spike gave her a judiciously civil nod, and resumed leaning, hands in pockets and eyes on the middle distance.  Dawn and Angel were on their way back to the lobby, he could hear them approaching from upstairs.  He watched in silence as the L. A. version of the Scooby Gang dumped weapons and filled in Fred on their demon-hunting adventures, which had apparently begun hours ago, before sundown, hence leaving the poof behind.

And then Himself and Dawn were walking down the stairs, and Cordelia was hugging Dawn, and Dawn was almost sort of smiling.  They introduced the kid to the other guy, Gunn, so apparently he really hadn't been around before.  Fred scurried out from behind the desk to join the little party, and Spike noticed, faintly, from a great distance, that Angel didn't really join in either, standing near the stairs, watching the humans, maybe in the same sort of cotton-wool silence that enveloped Spike.

They were telling Dawn about the little detective outfit they ran here, and also asking her what she'd like to do in L. A. while she stayed, Cordelia recalling that the kid had lived here the first ten years of her life.  None of them apologizing, no one crying, and Spike knew this was the right thing, getting her out of Sunnydale, away from the others. Everyone there loved her, sure, but they were every one of them completely in pieces after losing Buffy. Well, maybe Tara and Anya would be all right, but they had their respective hands full with Willow and Xander, which left just him and Giles besides to look after Dawn, and all of them were equally destroyed right now.  Everyone was walking wounded, blind leading the bloody blind, up there, but looking around Spike thought that he and Dawn had not, at least, ended in a ditch.  It would be good for her to be near people not as broken as she was, at least for a little space. It had made her the center of attention, and there had to be something good  in that.  There, she'd smiled.  Spike smiled faintly in echo, pleasantly aware of having not fucked up too much tonight.

The phone rang just then, practically under his hand, and Angel lunged over and answered it.  The little party fell silent while Angel took information, but Spike didn't really pay any attention--busy watching Dawn be not-exactly-scared by the familiar atmosphere of minor crisis--til Angel came around the desk and grabbed him by the arm, saying, "No, no, it's nothing, we'll handle it."

Spike considered arguing for all of half a second before sending a wink in Dawn's direction and following the great poof out.  They were going hunting.  Angel towed him all the way across the lobby, out of the hotel and over to a car, shoving him none too gently in the direction of the passenger door and  climbing in the other side himself.

Spike slumped comfortably in his seat and didn't bother asking where they were going or what was up. Pretty soon, he'd be pointed in the direction of some bloody thing he could attack, and attack it he would. That was his job, and whether he was patrolling with the Scoobies in Sunnyhell or being bossed by the big fluffy puppy here in L.A., he'd do it.  Hell, it might even be fun.

The car was awfully silent, no radio and definitely no small talk, but Spike kept his fingers still, let the tunes that rolled around his mind stay put inside.  He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, and his window went down with a faint mechanical whine.  He snorted, but obediently tapped ash outside of the car.

One leisurely smoke later, Angel rolled his own window down as well, and two turnings after that, Spike caught the smell of their prey on the breeze, faintly heard it.  Sharp smell, something snaky, and big.  Not menacing anyone at the moment, but it wouldn't wait long.  Then they were stopping at the mouth of an alley, and Spike could hear it clearly, inside one of the abandoned buildings.  They both got out of the car, Spike just standing by his door, listening, while Angel went around to the trunk.  The trunk slammed, and then Angel was standing before him, holding a single wicked-looking axe.  "Here, you'll need this."

Spike gave him the eyebrow.

"What, you don't think you can handle him on your own?"  Stupid-haired smirk.  "I'll hold your hand if you want."

"All I need you to hold, Peaches, is my coat."  He shrugged out of the duster--no sense getting it dirty--and tossed it toward him, plucking the axe from his grasp at the same time.

He headed toward the most promising entrance, but before he'd gotten there the demon burst out into the alley.  The bastard was big, a good nine or ten feet tall, all tentacles and teeth.  Spike felt the ghost of a madman's smile cross his face, raised the axe, and charged, screaming.

The bugger was fast, too, forcing Spike to jump back, dodging as he slashed at it, missing the first cut and, all right, the second as well, but the third swing whacked off a good yard of tentacle.  The demon was really pissing mad after that, making a gurgly sort of roaring sound, but Spike screamed louder, dodging and then darting in to smash away with the axe.  It was a good weapon with some heft to it, nice sharp blade, shearing away another tentacle.  The thought occurred to him, as the demon's teeth snapped an inch from his belly and he twisted and kicked and slashed, that this thing could probably kill him if he fucked up, and no Slayer would bounce in at the last second to save his worthless hide--hell, Angel would probably give the bastard a round of applause--and it was all his fault and he was crying, tears running so thick he could barely see when the vibration of the axe in his hands told him he'd landed a good solid body-blow on the thing.  He just kept on screaming, sobbing, thrashing and hacking at the demon, even after it stopped fighting back, even after some last bastion of numbness and rationality told him he was only making a mess and a fool of himself, spattering himself with demon blood as he hacked it into tiny pieces.  Not even the prospect of the poof's mocking laughter could make him stop, not now he'd got going. Nothing was going to make him stop.

Except, wrong again, because he hadn't even heard him move, but suddenly Angel was right behind him, grabbing the axe out of his hands and throwing it away.  Before he'd quite registered that, there were arms around him, pinning his arms at his sides, crushing him back against a body bigger than his own, immobilizing him.  He couldn't stop the convulsive sobs, the shudders running through him, but he didn't struggle.  He remembered this, remembered his sire forcing him under control the only way he could sometimes, by being bigger and stronger and more patient than Spike ever would.  His head dropped, leaving his neck exposed, from the low collar of his shirt up to the hairline.  Exhaustion or submission, it was all the same in the end.

He felt Angel's game face come out, and his sobs stuttered to a stop as his body, with the instincts of prey undiluted by a century as a predator, tried to go completely still, completely silent, tried to escape the notice of the demon at his back.  Far too late for that.  Angel's lips brushed over his skin, and his hair stood on end for the instant before he felt the fangs sink in, uppers and lowers bracketing his spine.  The pain flashed like lightning from the punctures on his neck through his arms and legs.  Spike remembered the time Angelus had snapped his neck from this position with a leonine toss of his head, severing his spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed for days before he'd relented and let him feed enough to recover.  It had stopped his eternal fidgeting.  But Spike wasn't the only one under control here, and it was his good Angel at his back, drawing only a mouthful of blood and then pulling back.  Still the fangs lingered, only to make the quick delicate motions that lacerated an A in between the teeth marks, and when he recognized the shape of the pain, something locked tight somewhere inside Spike suddenly eased.  The cuts wouldn't scar, would in fact vanish within a day or so, but for now he knew that his sire cared, enough to still him, enough to mark him.  37,455 days, and he could finally stop counting.

~Part: 2~

Angel had gotten out of the habit of tasting the blood he consumed; not much to savor in a pint of pig.  And there were a lot of things he'd forgotten in a century, but the taste of Spike's blood was not among them.

He stole a sideways glance at the blond.  Spike sat huddled into himself, looking naked as he always did without his duster, his head still bowed.  His clothes and bare arms were covered with patches of purple-black demon blood, and the drying tear-tracks left streaks down his face.  The bites had mostly clotted, but there were dried rivulets of blood all down Spike's neck and back, and one fang-puncture was still seeping.  The smell would have been making Angel crazy, except that he was still rolling a mouthful of that same blood over his tongue, like a wine connoisseur sampling a fine vintage.

Contrary to all expectation, this particular bottle was swill.  Angel had had better blood from a three-days corpse.  He had tasted Spike in a thousand humors, rage and fear and hunger and sorrow and lust and pain, any or all of them singing in his blood, but he'd never tasted anything like this.  He'd never tasted Spike and gotten a mouthful of ashes, like he was already dust and just hadn't fallen apart yet.

But sweet or bitter, running wild or frozen still, Spike was blood of Angel's blood, and clearly, now was not the time to shirk that uncomfortable responsibility.

He pulled up near a side entrance to the Hyperion, and got out of the car, reaching into the backseat to pull out Spike's duster.  Spike followed suit, and was standing beside the car  when Angel straightened up. The blond still didn't raise his head, and Angel was made uncomfortably aware of how small he was, in the absence of his usual ten feet of attitude.  *God, I broke him*.

Angel circled around the car, and laid his hand lightly on a clean spot on Spike's shoulder, turning him toward the door.  "Why don't you go in here, spare everybody thinking you're hurt when they see you.  My rooms are on the second floor.  Go in there and take a shower, and I'll tell everyone we're back."

Spike looked up at him without actually raising his head, a familiar cautious flick of the eyes that made him want to scream that it wasn't like that anymore, except that there were the bites and a half-pint of Spike's blood outside his body to say otherwise. "Don't let Dawn worry about me, right?"

Angel nodded, and Spike took his duster in hand and headed inside.  Angel checked that he had his company face on, licked his teeth again, and turned toward the lobby entrance.

Cordelia, Wesley, Fred and Gunn were sitting on the couches, trying not to be obviously waiting for him to get back; Dawn was nowhere to be seen.  As he crossed the room, his "Where--?" collided with Cordelia's.  He nodded, and she went first.

"Dawn's upstairs, getting ready for bed, nothing wrong except..." She winced a little at her choice of words.  "She was just tired."  Angel nodded, and Cordelia waited for a moment, then said, "Angel?  What's the deal with Spike?  Where is he?"

Angel swept a glance over the others, but they were all watching him with the same polite expression of uncertainty, and, he suspected, concealed weapons. Just in case. "Spike's upstairs, getting cleaned up. Messy kill."  Angel paused again, but continued without prompting this time.  "I don't know whether it's clear to all of you from talking to Dawn, but she and Spike seem to be a package deal.  He'll stay as long as she does, probably whenever she does, and any time you're unkind to Spike, you're unkind to Dawn, so keep that in mind."

Fred, Gunn, and Wesley were taking that with various degrees of aplomb, but Cordelia looked a little horrified.  Angel sighed.  "I can't tell you not to hate him, if that's how you feel, but don't hate him for my sake.  I'm not the wronged innocent here.  And I don't hate him."

"Fine," Cordelia said softly, "great.  You don't hate him.  You didn't hate Darla, either, to start with."

Yeah, he'd had that one coming.  He sucked in a breath, and thought about the way Spike looked at Dawn, and went out on a limb.  "He wants to change. It's not just the chip, he's out there fighting the good fight, without a soul, without the Powers telling him to, because he wants to.  He's helping Dawn because he wants to.  And if he wants to change, I can't be the one who turns him away."

And they were nodding, even Cordelia, like they bought it.  He wondered what Spike would say, and whether he'd dare to say anything at all.

Spike took his boots off in the hallway, then cautiously opened the door to his sire's rooms.  The smell of the space engulfed him as he stepped inside, and he let himself feel a little pleasure at being in a place where everything belonged to Angel. Including, apparently, himself.  A moment's internal debate over the merits of tidiness versus the sin of presumption had him hanging his duster on an empty hook by the door.  Tidiness would probably carry more weight, and Angel had handed him the coat and sent him here, so hanging it up would probably be acceptable.

After a brief glance around to familiarize himself, he headed directly to the bathroom; Angel hadn't sent him up to admire the decor.  He turned on the shower and held his boots under the spray while he waited for it to warm up, rinsing them clean of demon blood.  When they were as clean as they were going to get, he set them on the corner of the bath mat where no one would trip over them and they wouldn't make a puddle on the tile.

The water was nice and hot, just the way he liked it, and Spike wondered, not for the first time, whether his hot showers would seem lukewarm to a human, or unbearably hot, whether his sense of temperature had become completely unreliable in the past hundred twenty years.  It was like wondering what he looked like, and what his voice really sounded like outside his head.  After a moment he realized he was just standing there with one hand in the shower, shook his head and stepped in.

He stood facing the spigot, working quickly to scrub the demon blood off his skin, as he wasn't sure how it might react to water, and didn't want to find out. With his arms mostly clean, he looked down at his bespattered, and now warmly damp and blood-smelling, clothes.  He frowned, noticing a small hole in the sleeve of his t-shirt that he'd never seen before. When he touched it, it widened, and at the same moment a half-dozen other holes appeared on his shirt, and more on his jeans.  Spike bit back a pointless stream of obscenities and pulled the shirt off over his head, and held it directly under the water as he tried to see what was happening, but the greater wetness sped up whatever the demon blood was doing, and the shirt was shortly just a handful of cotton scraps.  While he was distracted, his jeans had undergone a similar process; the cloth was so weakened that it pulled off in his hands, one leg sliding down, detached, to puddle around his foot.  Spike tossed the lot into the far end of the tub, mustering up only enough energy to mutter, "Bloody stupid sodding demon," before stepping fully under the water, finally naked.

The wounds on the back of his neck burned as the spray pounded directly onto the broken skin.  The water, sliding down his back to swirl around his feet and into the drain, ran an impressively bright red at first.  When there was only the faintest thread of blood in the water and the sting of the spray had faded into a sort of tingling numbness, Spike reached back and scrubbed his fingers over the bites, until the blood ran  bright again.  But the red just ran down the drain, and didn't tell him any more this time than it had done before, and it was mostly gone again in a couple of minutes.

Time to wash, like he'd been told, and Spike stared stupidly at the assortment of bath products.  He tried to remember the last time he'd taken a proper shower like this, with all the fixings, though his body seemed more curious about the last time he'd had a good day's sleep.  Not that he didn't know the answer to that question: seventeen broken and dream-filled days, plus the long blur of fear and fighting before that, before the end of the world came and went and left him behind with his promises.

Spike reached out and took the shampoo, turned it around to read the instructions.  Very important to follow instructions.  Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.  He poured shampoo into his hand, flipped the cap back on, and started lathering.  He didn't wonder about why it should be necessary to repeat, if the stuff was doing its job, just like he didn't wonder about other things.  Like the bite he couldn't see on the back of his neck, and what it meant.  Like the fact that his sire, all soft-voiced, had sent him up here to shower, knowing he'd know which room without being told.  Like the way he'd driven back, Spike's blood in his mouth and making a full and complete stop at every sign, faces slipping back and forth under the streetlights. It was Angel the soul-boy who had claimed him, that much was clear, but what it meant was anyone's guess.

So Spike didn't think about it, just lathered his hair, thoroughly, and stared at the tile.  He ducked his head under the water, to rinse, and his head shot up almost instantly.  "Bloody motherfucking c--aagh." Shampoo suds, rinsing over broken flesh, burned like undiluted holiness.  When he tossed his head back, a dollop of lather landed on one eye, and as he tried to bat it away, he rubbed it in.  That stung nearly as badly, and Spike bit off further curses; unproductive, and Angel might hear, and he didn't think about why, but he thought that would be bad.  He forced himself to be quiet and still, cracking his eye open to let the clean water run over it, and maneuvering around to finish rinsing the shampoo from his hair.  When that was done, he elected to skip the 'repeat' part, and after a moment's wary consideration, decided not to condition for best results, either.   Instead he reached out for the bar of soap, but as he set his fingers on it, his body reminded him that he'd skipped a step.  Spike stared down balefully at his dick, and he didn't have to wonder how many days it had been. Not bloody likely, he thought, tired and tired, but of course his body had other ideas.

Dawn wasn't exactly sure of it, but she thought that her room in the hotel counted as a public space, no invitation required for a vamp to enter.  Still, when somebody knocked on her door after she'd crawled into bed, she got up and went to see who it was before telling them to come in.

Angel stood in the hallway, looking tired.  Dawn tried not to be obvious about looking, but Spike wasn't anywhere around.  She opened the door the rest of the way, and stepped back.  "Come on in."

She went and got back into bed--her feet were cold--and Angel followed, sitting down by her feet. "Spike's fine," he said, when they were both settled, and she couldn't help smiling in relief.  "He killed the demon, but he was all covered in its blood and needed to clean up."

"Oh.  That's good."

Angel smiled for just a second, like it was too much work to hold the expression, and settled his hand on her blanket-covered foot.  "It's okay, Dawn.  You don't have to pretend that you don't care if Spike lives or dies."

Dawn looked down, shifting awkwardly.  "I wasn't..."

"I know," he said softly.  "I'm sorry about that, in the lobby.  I just wasn't expecting to see him again. I know you and Spike are close, and I'm not going to spend the weekend being a jerk about it.  It's okay."

Dawn looked up at him carefully, but he seemed sincere.  "So, you're sure you can be around each other and *not* fight?  Did you make up over demon-slaying?"

"Uh," Angel looked suddenly faintly nervous, and his mouth moved oddly, like he was licking the inside of his lips.  "We didn't really talk, but I think we understand each other.  No more fighting, I promise."

"Oh." Oh.  Ohmigod.  She tried not to stare at Angel's mouth, looking back down at her hands on the bedspread.  Angel?  And Spike?  And not really talking?  Ohhh.  "That's cool.  I'm glad that you. Um.  Understand each other."

When she risked another look, Angel was almost smiling.  Not like Buffy used to smile when she was talking about him, or thinking about him, or doodling his name in her notebooks, but something like it, faraway and confused but a little bit happy.  "Me too," he said finally, while Dawn looked down at her hands again, because Buffy was never going to smile like that again, and she didn't want Angel to see the tears, because she was glad, that he and Spike were not-really-talking, and she didn't want him to be sitting here trying to comfort her when he could be going and finding Spike and making up some more.  She was tired of crying in front of everyone, tired of being out of control like this.

He sensed it, though, of course.  Vampire, he must have been able to smell the tears or hear the change in her breathing.  He hugged her without saying a word, and tucked her in, brushing his thumb across her cheek where the tears hadn't spilled yet.

He switched off the light, and hesitated in the doorway.  "I'm just around the corner, if you need anything.  Just call, I'll hear you."

She nodded, because she knew he would see, even in the dark, and when he closed the door behind him she turned her face into her pillow and sobbed.

Angel closed the door behind him, trading the muffled sound of Dawn's grief for the sound of Spike in the shower; he made out a few curses, abruptly bitten off.  Unbidden, a small smile worked its way onto his face.

He went on listening as he took off his shoes and socks, unbuttoned his shirt, and wandered around the room, vaguely bathroom-ward.  He needed to brush his teeth.  Spike was quiet now, and Angel listened to the sound of water falling in the intermittent way that meant someone was moving around under the spray.  He had his hand on the door when he heard it, barely detectable under the sound of water.  Spike was breathing.

It wasn't an enormously unusual occurrence; Spike, like Angel himself, tended to breathe under stress. Angel was a little startled by how badly he wanted to burst through the door and fix whatever it was that was upsetting Spike, soothe his pain or comfort his fear.

Or stand very still and consider that Spike breathed during sex, too, and maybe Angel should just give him a few more minutes of privacy before wandering in there.  But nothing could make him stop listening to his boy's breathing; Angel found himself on edge with the long-neglected drive to protect his own, and the soft sound was all wrong.  So steady, so even and controlled, with none of the excited raggedness of sex or the hint of an animal whine, inaudible to human ears, that would signal pain or fear.  He was just breathing, in and out and in and out, with no end in sight, as if he needed the air as a human would, as if he couldn't go on without it.  Finally Angel couldn't bear it anymore and eased the door silently open, slipping inside and closing it again behind him.

Spike, never a master of such niceties, had neglected to pull the shower curtain shut, and Angel found himself catching an unnecessary breath as well.  Spike stood with his back to Angel, pressed into the far corner of the shower, the water falling mostly on his back.  His skin and hair were pale and shining, bright only in contrast to the whiteness of the tiles, and the red parentheses of his bite, bracketing the crudely carved A, stood out starkly on his otherwise perfect flesh.  Spike's right arm was braced up against the wall, his head leaning on it, and he breathed evenly, the motion readily visible in the long tense lines of his back.  His left hand was in front of him, down near his hip, but motionless.

Angel inhaled through his nose, studying Spike with every sense, and what he smelled, mostly, was his own shampoo.  Despite the circumstances, something warm unfurled in his stomach, at the thought that Spike smelled like him right now.  Then, blood, of course. Arousal was almost entirely lacking, and if there were tears they were lost in the stronger smells.

It was the shoulders that told the tale, finally, made Angel see the shameful futility of trying to get your rocks off when the object of your fantasies is lying dead and rotting in a hidden grave.  The sense of betrayal when you realize that your body doesn't belong to you anymore, that some little blonde girl owns your dick even though she's never seen the damned thing, and now she's gone and there's just nothing to be done.

It wasn't a tale entirely unfamiliar to Angel, and the need to fix this, to help Spike, nearly choked him in its intensity.  He considered, for half a second, getting undressed the rest of the way, but he couldn't stand there and look at Spike's shoulders shaking in slow motion for the amount of time it would take.

He crossed the space in one stride, stepped into the shower with the next.  Spike startled when he registered Angel's presence, would have fallen, but Angel was right behind him.  He locked his left arm around Spike's stomach, holding him close and still. Shower-wet, Spike felt warm as life in Angel's arms. Spike's breathing was all ragged now, mostly with fear and uncertainty.  "Shh.  Let me."

Spike's left hand returned, hesitantly, to rest over Angel's, and his right hand went back to the wall. Angel nodded, his forehead sliding against Spike's wet hair, where he would feel it, to let him know that was right, as he set his right hand on Spike's cock.  A little shudder went through Spike at the contact, and Angel tightened the hand on his belly in response, pausing just a breath before beginning to stroke.

It was nothing fancy, one-handed, but what Spike liked hadn't changed, and he was rock hard and on the edge, had only just needed a little help.  His breathing quickened, and Angel noticed that Spike's eyes were closed, and he wondered briefly what he was thinking about.  Another pull, and Spike gasped, and his hips rocked helplessly, though he'd been holding himself still in Angel's grip.  Angel lowered his head, and in time to his next stroke, flattened his tongue across the nape of Spike's neck, and licked straight up, across his mark, right up to the hairline.  Spike arched back against him and stopped breathing altogether as he came, shuddering.

When he was still, and more or less steady on his feet, Angel said softly, in his ear, "Finish washing up, now," and stepped out of the shower.  He glanced back, from the doorway, and Spike was leaning bonelessly against the wall, his whole body sagging against the tiles.  As if he felt Angel's gaze, Spike straightened up and reached for the soap, and Angel stepped out and closed the door, heading for his dresser to change out of his wet clothes.

Spike stood on the bath mat, mostly dry and with a towel tucked around his hips.  He had managed to use the towel he was currently wearing to mop up the worst of the puddles on the bathroom floor.  His damp boots were safely out of the way, and he'd decided to refrain from agonizing about whether to leave them there--tidiness versus presumption, again, with the added conflict of whether Angel would rather have the bathroom's impervious floor cluttered, or water dripping on the carpet of the larger room--in favor of staring at what remained of his clothes.  The t-shirt had vanished entirely, and of his jeans there remained a few threads and a handful of hardware: rivets, button, zipper, and the key to the motorcycle.  Spike hadn't packed anything for this impromptu road trip, which meant he now had nothing to wear but his duster.  He was entirely at Angel's mercy, and the skin on his back crawled at the thought of the last time he'd had to go to his sire and explain how he'd ruined his clothes.

And all of this agony just saved him from thinking about what had happened in the shower, and what the hell that was supposed to mean.  That helping hand wasn't Angelus' style, but then if he'd considered it at all before this, he would have expected the soulboy to steer clear of sex entirely.

Spike ran one hand through his hair, scowling at his own idiocy.  He was thinking again, and that was where he was going wrong.  He wasn't supposed to think, he was supposed to follow instructions.  Angel had told him to take a shower; a few minutes ago, before leaving the bathroom, Angel had told him to finish washing up.  He had done those things.  All else was not his business.  It wouldn't keep his sire from doing exactly as he pleased with Spike, but that was the point.  Nothing would.

Closing his hand around his pitiful handful of copper and steel, Spike opened the door and walked out of the bathroom.

Angel was sitting on the bed, wearing dark blue pajamas of some silky material.  He had a big, leather-bound book in his lap, and Spike just had time to see him frowning intently at it before Angel looked up at him.  After a moment of being stared at, keeping his gaze carefully cast so that he wasn't looking away but wasn't meeting his gaze directly, Spike stepped hesitantly forward, opening his hand again.  "My clothes disintegrated.  Water and that thing's blood don't mix, apparently."

Angel looked startled, but that didn't keep Spike from flashing on the possibility that he'd set this up, told him to attack that demon, told him to take a shower, for the amusement of this moment.  The thought went away quickly, and meanwhile Angel was nodding. "I didn't think of that.  Were they your lucky pants?"

Spike blinked, and debated trying to explain that none of his pants seemed particularly lucky, this year, but he said only, "No, nothing special."

Angel nodded again.  "We'll see about getting you something else in the morning, then.  In the meantime, there's a pair of pants on the dresser there."

Spike looked, and sure enough there was a pair of pajama bottoms, similar to the ones Angel was wearing but a deep blood red, folded on top of the dresser. He walked over and picked them up, shaking them out, buying himself a moment in which he didn't think about how he had to think about not thinking about this. His head was starting to hurt.

He turned away a little from Angel as he dropped his towel and stepped into the trousers.  Time was he'd been a prodigy in the calculus of their bodies, when he could effortlessly figure from the tilt of his sire's brows how many degrees he ought to turn while changing in his presence, how much to shake his ass, what sort of sly remark would be most welcome.  Now, he had no idea, and it was like being an idiot fledgling again, except that this time he knew exactly how much he didn't know.

The pants had a drawstring at the waist, and Spike hauled it in and tied it so that they wouldn't actually fall off his hips when he walked, just dangle enticingly.  The hems puddled on the floor around his bare feet, nearly tripping him as he returned to the bathroom to hang up his towel, but he quickly mastered the ankle-flick required to keep them clear of his feet.  When he was again standing by the dresser, hands at his sides, Angel was back to looking at the book, but this time it was the brooding frown rather than the trying-to-remember-what-the-squiggly-lines-mean frown.  Spike cleared his throat.  "I was just going to, uh, is Dawn...?"

Angel looked up sharply, but didn't appear to be actually displeased.  "She just went to bed, but I doubt she's asleep yet.  Her room's just around the corner."

Spike nodded, and when Angel returned his stare to his book he headed out of the room, listening for the sound of Dawn's heart beating somewhere nearby.  He found it promptly, and then he could hear her breathing, too, and he felt a cold rush of panic when he realized she'd been crying, and was only just tailing off.  He'd do anything for Dawn, but he dreaded the day when she needed to cry on his shoulder.  So far, they'd simply ignored each other's crying jags, maintaining some semblance of dignity and the illusion of stiff upper lips all round.  He suspected that this wouldn't always be the case, but even as he stood there, she was winding down; tonight was probably not the night.  Spike shook himself into motion, walked up to her door and knocked softly. "Bite-size?  It's me."

Rustle of covers as she wiped her face, sat up.  "Come on in, Spike."  He smiled a little, at the eternal thrill of being invited, and opened the door.

She was sitting up in bed, had turned on the bedside lamp just as he opened the door.  Her hair was already a little tumbled, her eyes red but dry.  Her pajama top said 'Princess' on it.  She startled a little at the sight of him, and Spike glanced down at himself and realized that sufficiently dressed for Angel's company was not the same as sufficiently dressed for Dawn's.  He felt suddenly awkward and stupid, and half-covered himself.  "Spike," she said, her voice dry and a little amused, and that brought him abruptly back to reality.  "It's cool."

He raised his head and smiled, suddenly sure again. He wasn't anybody's second in this room.  Spike sat down facing her on the bed, and Dawn sat up a little more, leaning comfortably against her pillows.  "I'm glad you're okay," she said, a little slowly.  "I'm glad you're here."  She didn't say I feel safe with you, but they both heard it anyway.

Spike gave her a medium-evil look.  "I'm a bad, wicked man, Little Bit.  I've done all kinds of horrible things to little girls like you."

That earned him a smile and both eyebrows.  "Yeah? Wanna tell me about it?"

He rolled his eyes.

"Oh, come on, Spike.  Angel's way too broody to tell stories, and I won't be able to sleep without one." She pouted, and that was all put-on, just trying to work him, but there was something in her eyes that wasn't.  She needed him, needed to pretend that things were okay.  Spike took a breath.  She needed him, and he'd made a promise, and he'd do whatever Dawn needed.

Within reason.  He couldn't be responsible for giving his girl nightmares, after all.  "All right, then, you'll have your story.  Lie down, now, get comfy."

She grinned triumphantly as she snuggled down into her pillows, and they shifted around so she could stretch her legs out.  Spike made sure to stay facing her, feeling no desire to try to explain, or lie about, the marks on the back of his neck.  He turned off the light, and sat in the dimness, tapping an absent counterpoint to her pulse on the night stand as he cast about for a suitable beginning.

"Southampton," he said softly, just when Dawn was about to goad him to get on with it.  "1887.  Me and Dru and Angelus and Darla were leaving for America. It was my first trip.  Dru had been before, but most of her stories about places she'd been were about the stars and the fairies and that.  We had to keep inside for the first part of the trip, because it was daytime, but night fell just as we were reaching Land's End.  That's where England runs out, and the Channel turns into open sea.  It was an amazing thing, to watch the land disappear and look around and see only darkness, water all around, and the stars."

He kept his voice low and steady, rocking ever so slightly so she'd feel the rhythm, and while he was still setting the scene, going on and on ad infinitum about wind and waves and stars and sky, Dawn's breathing evened out, and she was asleep.

Angel looked up when Spike came back into the room. He'd been gone just long enough for Angel to give up on worrying things over and go back to brushing up on K'rathi poetics.

Spike closed the door behind him and then just stood there, head slightly bowed, eyes in Angel's direction but not raised enough to be construed as a challenge. He looked small, in Angel's clothes, and thin, and tired, and Angel knew Spike had no more idea what they were doing here than he did, but he knew too that Spike needed him, needed this, desperately.  Nothing else would have driven him to lower his head, to expose the nape and submit, and Angel couldn't let him down, couldn't ask for a timeout to negotiate the rules.

Still, he could refrain from letting him stand in the door like that.  He pushed back the covers and patted the sheet beside him, and Spike moved, graceful and quick but somehow not hurrying, to the bed.  He crawled across, to the spot Angel had indicated, and with a quick confirming glance, curled up beside him. Angel was leaning against the pillow, so it wasn't really in a position for Spike to lay his head on it. He was flat on the mattress in the fetal position, drawn into an impossibly small curve, facing toward Angel.  Angel shifted a little, so that the top of Spike's head was against his hip, and laid one hand on the damp silkiness of his hair.  He ruffled it absently, and the familiar smell of his shampoo drifted up to him.  Spike closed his eyes when Angel touched him, and a moment later he was asleep.

Angel went on reading, turning pages awkwardly with his free left hand, playing idly with Spike's hair whenever he seemed restless.  It was getting on toward sunrise, and the words were starting to blur in Angel's inhumanly perfect vision, when Spike suddenly pulled away, sitting bolt upright, one open hand reaching out toward nothing.  His chest was heaving, his eyes wide and staring.  Angel didn't know what he was seeing, but he had a pretty good idea.  He set his hand on Spike's back, ran it up and down his spine until his frantic breathing slowed and his eyes slipped shut.  "I didn't save her," he whispered raggedly, shoulders slumping with fresh defeat.

Angel couldn't say a word to that.  He turned out the light, set his book aside, and used both hands to tug Spike down to lie on the bed.  Spike automatically curled up again, and Angel wrapped himself around the smaller body, absorbing Spike's silent shuddering into his own stillness.  "Sleep," he murmured into Spike's hair, putting a hint of command into his voice.  Spike obeyed, like he knew he would, leaving Angel to hold him close and stare into the dark, watching the girl he didn't save.

~Part: 3~

He woke the instant Dawn set foot out of her room, tore himself from the comfort of his sire's embrace and the wide soft bed and was out in the hall before he'd quite registered what he was doing.  Dawn blinked sleepily at him, standing with her bag dangling from her hand, her hair everywhere, still in her pajamas. "Spike?"

"D'you need anything, pet?"

She shrugged and rubbed her eyes.  "Just a bathroom with a towel in it."

Spike ran a hand through his hair.  "Right, I'll get you one, shall I?"

"Okay."  She turned and went back to her room, and Spike slipped back into Angel's.  Angel was still asleep, his hand outstretched over the spot where Spike had been lying a moment before.  Spike went quickly to the bathroom and fetched a clean towel.

Dawn was sitting on her bed, pulling what she needed from her bag with the sort of concentration that suggested she wasn't yet firing on all cylinders. Spike handed her the towel.  "Big plans for the day?"

She yawned.  "Cordelia's taking me and Fred shopping. I guess Fred's sorta their project-person.  She was in a demon dimension for five years."

Spike blinked.  "Oh.  D'you need money?"

Dawn shook her head.  "Cordelia's got a card of Angel's, she said he couldn't object if she was buying things for me with it."

Spike nodded.  "Good.  Good."

Dawn smiled.  "Spike.  It's daytime.  You should be sleeping.  Go back to sleep."

Spike rubbed the back of his neck--mostly healed, he noticed--and nodded vaguely.

She pointed to the door.  "That way.  Sleep.  I'll be fine, I won't buy anything crazy."

"Get a helmet, okay?  A good one."

Dawn rolled her eyes and stood.  "I will.  Just go on, don't worry."

Spike nodded and turned and headed back out.

Angel was awake when he got back, lying there watching the door.  Spike hesitated at the edge of the bed, and Angel said softly, "Thought I told you to sleep."

"She needed me," he replied sturdily, which was stretching things a bit, but not more than he could get away with.  He crawled across the bed, and found himself tucked firmly against his sire's body.

"I mean it this time," Angel muttered into his hair, but Spike didn't need any prompting.

Angel woke up in the afternoon, with Spike still asleep in his arms.  It was a pleasant contrast from the startlingly bereft feeling of waking up alone a few hours before, and Angel pressed his face into the soft shock of bleached hair and enjoyed the momentary contentment.

Soon enough, reality intruded; a stray glance around the room lighted on the forlorn bits of metal on the dresser, and Angel recalled that Spike needed clothes.  Loosening his grip on Spike, Angel rolled onto his back and reached for the phone at the bedside, punching in Cordelia's cell phone number.

Three rings, and then it picked up.  "Hello?"

Dawn's voice, and Angel felt an immediate pang of guilt; he'd promised to be here for her, and yet here he was snuggled up to Spike, while Cordelia entertained Dawn.  On the other hand, he was almost certainly financing their shopping trip.  "Dawn. Isn't this Cordy's phone?"

"Yeah, but as soon as it rang, she said she had a premonition that it was you, calling to check up on me."

Pang.  "Are you having fun, then?"

Dawn giggled.  "We're shopping, Angel.  Dumb question."

Angel felt a little relieved.  As long as Dawn was happy.  "I was wondering if you ladies could do me a favor.  Well, for Spike, really."

"Sure.  What's he need?"

Well, now there was a question.  Angel forced himself to stick to the simple answer.  "Clothes.  His got wrecked by that demon's blood.  Pair of jeans, t-shirt, you know the stuff he likes."

"Yeah, no problem.  Don't worry, I won't let Cordelia buy anything pink."

Angel blinked, as much silenced by the thought of Spike in pink as by his immediate certainty that Cordelia would never try it because it wouldn't flatter his skin tone.  "Would she?"

"She tried.  We were getting helmets, and she seemed to think Spike's should be pink."

"Oh.  That's.  A joke."

"Good.  I got him a black one.  There's no point buying him one if he won't wear it."

"Yeah."  Angel frowned.  They'd gotten to the part of the phone conversation where he normally hung up, but this was Dawn, and he suspected different standards of phone etiquette applied.

"Gotta go, Angel, we're at the shoe store.  Hey, what sizes?  For Spike?"

Angel rattled them off and listened, nodding pointlessly, as Dawn repeated them back, then said goodbye.  Mission accomplished, he hung up the phone and rolled back over to enjoy a few more minutes of peace before Spike woke up.

On the way into the shoe store, Dawn was busy relaying Angel's request to Cordelia, listening to her monologue debate over which thrift stores were most likely to be able to furnish an appropriate punk wardrobe for Spike.  That segued immediately into Cordelia exclaiming wildly over a pair of sandals that were obviously perfect for Fred.  Fred took the shoes gingerly in her hands, and stared down at them with the same dubious expression she'd turned on all of Cordelia's selections so far.  Dawn sank down onto one of the benches and settled in to watch the show.

"At least try them on," Cordelia coaxed.  "They're really comfortable, practical--"

"--and versatile, Buffy, you'll love them."

Dawn leaned against her father's side, and they exchanged identical rolls of their blue eyes.  This was shoe store number three in the great end-of-summer shopping expedition before Buffy's first year of high school.  Dawn had already gotten two pairs of shoes, in the very first store they visited, but of course Buffy had to try on every pair of sandals in Los Angeles, possibly every pair in Southern California, before she could choose one.  Or three, probably. Dawn smiled as her dad slipped his arm around her in a loose hug, and wiggled her toes in her new sneakers. Buffy was refusing to even look at the sandals her mom suggested, though Dawn knew she totally would have tried them on if she'd seen them first.  Teenagers were so lame.  Dawn hoped there wasn't some magical change that came over you when you turned fourteen, that made you stupid and forced you to stop listening to your parents.  She'd chosen the shoes she was wearing because Daddy had said they were the prettiest, and she never wanted to have to hate something when Daddy liked it.  Dawn looked up at him again and smiled, because he wasn't watching Buffy; he was watching her.

"Whaddya say, sweetie," he whispered, "could we go and get ice cream and come back before they even noticed?"

Dawn grinned and nodded, but just then, Buffy whirled around.  "Did you say ice cream?" she asked, and she didn't look lame and stupid anymore, just sort of tired and excited at the same time.  "I could totally do ice cream."  Buffy looked at Mom, who just shook her head, smiling, and set down the sandals.

"I think we could all stand a break.  Ice cream it is."

Dawn jumped to her feet and was running, running, straight past Cordy and Fred, who stared at her, maybe even called her name, out of that store and out of the memory and away into the blinding sunlight.  She ran until the tears overtook her, and then she stumbled to sit on a bench, shaking and crying so hard her throat burned, her chest ached, her face tingled.  The whole world was constricted down to her sobs, and when she finally had a second to wonder what she was crying for, her dead sister or her dead mom or her deadbeat dad or the fact that none of that had ever happened, Dawn thought that maybe she was just crying because somewhere along the way she'd lost the blue sneakers with the butterflies on the sides.

By the time the headache had kicked in and she'd run out of tears and her breathing settled back to something resembling normal, Cordelia was sitting beside her on the bench.  Fred stood a little way off, watching nervously.  Dawn wiped futilely at her face. "Sorry," she whispered, and even that much came out broken, and she had to work to get her breathing under control again.

Cordelia just smiled sadly, and stroked her hair. "It's okay, Dawn.  Why don't we just," and for a horrible instant Dawn thought she was going to suggest ice cream, and she knew that even though she didn't think she had the energy to go on breathing, she'd be up again and running if Cordy said it, "go back to the hotel and show Angel our loot."

Dawn rubbed at her eyes, and wished for Kleenex. "We've gotta get stuff for Spike.  Unless you want him wandering around naked for the rest of the weekend."

"He can borrow some stuff from Angel.  Dawn, we don't have to go now."

"No."  Dawn heard it, strangely distinct, in her own voice: the patent Summers stubbornness.  "I told Angel we'd take care of it.  We'll just go get some stuff for Spike, and then we'll go back.  Please, Cordy."

Cordelia sighed.  "All right, all right.  Twist my arm, we'll keep shopping.  Come on, the car's back this way."

Angel was petting him.  One hand ran lingeringly up and down Spike's bare side, from hip to armpit and back, over and over.  When Angel began to speak, it was in the offhanded tone that suggested he might just as well be addressing the bedside lamp as Spike; it meant Spike had tacit permission to go on pretending to be asleep for the foreseeable future.

"I think I'm going to get up and take a shower in a second.  It's after three now, and even if Cordelia and Dawn want to shop all day, they'll have to have mercy on Fred and come back pretty soon."

The hand on his side stilled, prodded gently at his ribs, an assessing touch rather than a caress. "You haven't been feeding well, have you?  I know you must hate butcher's blood at least as much as I do, but you shouldn't starve yourself."  Angel's voice stayed in the same tone that assured him the question was rhetorical, but the little nuzzle in his hair let Spike know that he was meant to pay attention all the same.  "You ought to eat something.  Dawn and Cordy are going to get you some clothes, so you'll be all set once they get back."

Angel fell silent, and lay still at Spike's back for a moment, then got up and went to the bathroom.  Spike didn't move, didn't even open his eyes, until he heard the shower turn on, and the sound of his sire's tuneless humming heralded the beginning of a hygiene-and-song-fest.  He rolled onto his back then, stared up at the ceiling until Angel started to form words.  When he recognized Manilow as the artist to be mangled, Spike rolled quickly off the bed and headed for the hallway.  Best to follow instructions; he was supposed to go and eat.

He located the fridge stocked with blood packs, and quickly divined which shelf held the blood mugs, and which were kept for human use.  He took one already visibly red-stained inside; mustn't upset Angel's pet humans by wrecking a beloved coffee cup.  He put the full mug into the microwave and stood licking absently at the empty packet, listening to the hum of the microwave, trying to keep his preternatural senses from creeping back to the sound of his sire's tone-deaf maundering.  By the time his meal was warmed to his satisfaction, Spike had begun tapping out a beat on the counter, muttering more than humming along with it.

When the microwave chirped, he plugged his nose before opening the door, sparing the bubbling contents only a quick wary glance before knocking it back in one continuous gulp, like a child taking some noxious tonic.  He rinsed the mug quickly, before the dregs had time to get all clotted on the porcelain-- he'd spent forty-three straight nights at the Watcher's flat, and at least half of them had featured sustained bitching about the washing up.  If her ladyship Cordelia had to do as much, she might break a nail, and Angel would surely hear about it.  For years.

When the water was turned off and the mug was in the sink, Spike stood staring at the counter, tapping one bare foot on the floor, half-consciously muttering punk beats as antidote to Angel's almost-audible warbling.  It was otherwise very quiet in the hotel, just the faint creaks of a building getting on in its years, settling down.  Spike had never been good with quiet, and never good at keeping still.  He was also never good at being alone, and yet here he was, his sire sure to be sequestered with his primping and singing for the better part of the next hour, and Dawn, his charge, off enjoying the eminently human and female pursuit of shopping, learning at the feet of a master, no doubt.  Just as she must have been learning from Buffy, up to three weeks ago, and Spike choked that thought back with a will.  He was good at not thinking about things; it had kept him not-dead for quite some time now.  He could manage the not-thinking, as long as he could have motion, and sound.  He started singing to himself, screamy and a little off-key, just the way it was meant to be, though he kept it improperly quiet.  Just loud enough to keep his own ears occupied, as he set off for a good wander round the hotel.

He chose the stairs furthest from the occupied rooms, and went up to the third floor before he ventured out of the stairwell.  He didn't know what he'd been expecting, exactly, but it was just an old, quiet, dusty, creaky hotel.  Some of the doors along the corridor stood open, and those that were closed weren't locked.  Spike wandered among them, making his way up to the fourth floor and then the fifth, letting his a capella punk medley grow louder as he became confident that Angel couldn't hear him.  Peering into the ninth room on the fifth floor, he broke off in mid-shout and smiled.  The room was filled with cast-off furniture from at least three decades, including an end table covered with a scattering of knickknacks.  One was an elephant, carved of ivory, with gilt tips on its tusks.  Spike picked it up, hefting it gently in one hand.  "It's so very queer, cousin Colin," he murmured.  He closed his hand around the little curio, and it wasn't until his knuckles brushed the silky material of his borrowed pajama bottoms that Spike remembered he didn't have a pocket to tuck it into, nor anyone to give the pilfered gift to who'd understand.  He was pretty certain Dawn hadn't read the book, or even seen the movie.  He touched the cold ivory to his lips, and replaced it among the others.  Back out in the corridor, he was looking around for something else to explore, when he heard light, quick steps in the stairwell.

He went onto the landing and peered down.  "Dawn?"

She looked up at him from two floors below and raised a paper bag.  "I come bearing gifts."  She almost managed the smile, and Spike hid his cringe as he hurried down to meet her.  If the mere thought of her going shopping had reminded him of Buffy, he couldn't imagine that the reality had gone easier for Dawn. When they met on the fourth floor landing, he hesitated, standing at arm's length, trying not to stare at her reddened eyes.  "Buy lots of pretty things, then?"

She shrugged, looking down at the bag in her hands. "Got a helmet for each of us, and some decals for mine.  Sparkles and stuff."

Spike nodded.  "Fred do all right?"

The expression could only be called a grimace, and he hated to see it on Dawn's face.  "Better than I did, by the time we were done."

"Well.  Looks like you got back in one piece, anyway."

Dawn mustered up a half-convincing smile for him, finally raising her eyes.  "Yeah, I guess I did."  She held out the bag.  "Anyway, I hope this stuff is okay.  Cordelia thinks you should try wearing blue.  She says it'll bring out your eyes."

"Well, ta for the fashion advice."  Spike glanced around, and Dawn rolled her eyes and headed for the hall door.  As soon as it had closed behind her, Spike shucked off the overlarge poncy pajama trousers and pulled a pair of black jeans out of the bag and quickly on.  They were fresh-laundered by the smell, soft with age and exactly the right size, thank all gods.  There was a t-shirt folded beneath, black, faded slightly lighter than the jeans, thin but with some wear left.  He doubted Dawn had the sort of thrift-store acuity this haul suggested, and made a mental note to find a suitably backhanded way to compliment Cordelia on her selections.

He folded the discarded trousers neatly, and dropped them into the paper bag on top of the extra t-shirt, which was gray.  Then, with only a very small sigh of trepidation, he headed after Dawn.

Dawn hurried down the hallway.  Spike would follow her as soon as he was dressed, and she didn't want to cry in front of him.  She came to the place where, two floors below, the hallway formed a T, leading off to her room on the right and Angel's up ahead.  Here, the space widened into an odd little lounge, filled with sheeted furniture, looking like the ghosts of a living room set.

The nearest piece was a love seat.  Dawn peeled back the dust cover to reveal faded green velvet upholstery, and dropped the cloth in an untidy heap before curling up on the far side from the stairwell, facing away from the direction Spike would come.  She laid her head against the low back of the sofa, rubbing her cheek lightly over the worn luxury of the velvet as she stared at the wall before her, trying to get herself under control.  Spike was going to think she was totally pathetic.

He'd be about right, too.

Dawn didn't hear a sound, just felt the shift of the cushion beneath her as a weight settled behind her, on the other side of the seat.  She closed her eyes, flushing hot as tears leaked onto the softness beneath her cheek, trying to breathe evenly despite the weight that seemed to press in on her sternum.

Finally, Spike said, "Should I go away, then, Droplet?"

Dawn couldn't stifle a smile at that, despite everything.  She shook her head, not trusting her voice, and felt the movement of the couch cushions as Spike shifted closer to her.  A brief stillness, and then she felt what might have been his fingers, ghosting along her hair, not quite touching.

"D'you want to go back home?" he offered after another few minutes.  "Maybe Willow . . ." would know what to do with a perpetually hysterical teenage girl, Dawn filled in silently.  She shrugged, and Spike snorted, though it sounded more amused than impatient.  "Yes or no, ducks.  Home?"

Dawn tried to actually think about what she wanted, then, but all she could think of was the dead dark silence she'd walked into last night, and then she really did feel like she couldn't breathe.  Even before she could shake her head, Spike's hand was on her shoulder.  "Easy, easy.  I'll take that as a no."

Dawn took a couple of breaths, and practiced shaping the words before she actually spoke them.  "What if I can't?"

Spike let go of her shoulder and touched her hair again, lightly, almost like he was petting her. "Can't face going home, you mean?"

Dawn nodded, and Spike said, "Well, you will go back to Sunnydale tomorrow, because I don't break promises to witches as powerful as your new housemates, and I said you wouldn't miss school.  But if the house is too difficult, we can crash at Rupert's flat.  I can vouch for his sofa, it's fine for sleeping."

At the word *we*, some of the tightness seizing her lungs eased, and Dawn found she could draw a breath. "You won't . . ." God, stupid crushing little girl, she couldn't believe she was about to say this, but she had to know.  "You won't leave me?  Because I think, if you were there.  I could."

Spike made a throat-clearing noise that Dawn thought might just mean embarrassment, or something else mortal and beneath his dignity, and it was probably a good thing they couldn't see each others' faces.  "I won't leave you, Dawn.  I know I've let you down, but I'll do this.  I won't leave you alone when you need me."

His hand tightened on her shoulder, and Dawn reached back to touch her fingers to his.  "It's scary," she whispered.  "It's my house, but it's like it's not home without Mom and Buffy, it's just this empty place where they used to be, and I can't think of anything except they're not there."  Quite an accomplishment; her voice had only cracked about three times.

Spike scooted closer again; if he had body heat she would have felt it against her back, and as it was he was practically spooning her.  "Dawn, I know it's hard, and there's a lot of memories in that house, but it's still your home.  You've got to hold on to that. I know you don't want to remember the past at all right now, but all the good things belong in that house.  All the happiness is there.  You belong there, do you understand?"

Dawn could only shrug, and hold on to his hand.  Spike maybe sort of sighed, vampire-quiet, and snaked his other arm around her waist, pulling her back against him.  "We'll manage it, Dawn.  You'll see."

Angel sensed them as soon as he stepped out of the stairwell, and froze.  He'd meant to find both Spike and Dawn, but if they'd found each other so quickly, it probably wasn't because Dawn couldn't wait to tell him about the shoes she'd bought.  He knew, from the first step he took toward the sound of one heartbeat and two low voices, that he was intruding.  But still, it was Spike, and Dawn, and he had to see.  Angel made his way carefully down the hall, employing every ounce of vampiric stealth he'd ever possessed, since he had to keep hidden not only from Dawn, but from Spike.  It took a little careful maneuvering to find a decent vantage point, crouching in the partially-open door of an empty room, but finally he was able to watch them. They were sitting sideways on an old green love seat, the only uncovered piece of furniture in the lounge. Both of them were facing his direction, but Spike was intent on Dawn, and Dawn seemed intent on not crying.

Angel tried not to hear the words they murmured between them; it felt like less of an invasion if he was only watching.  He imagined sketching this scene, the diffuse light of late afternoon filtering in from windows at the ends of the branching corridors, the sharp angles of the sofa giving way to the echoed curves of two sets of hunched shoulders.  Two tilted heads, mirroring each other.  Dawn's head canted left, leaning against the cushions, while Spike's leaned right, giving him a more informative angle of view on the back of her head.  Two crumpled faces, sharing the same grief, the same frustrated loneliness in different guises.  Both hurting, but separated by the invisible divide down the middle of the seat.

He observed with something bigger and warmer than approval the arm that spanned the abyss, and then obliterated it.  When he saw the way that touch eased them both, Angel wanted to cheer.  At the burial, two weeks past, Dawn and Spike had seemed like strangers, for all the comfort they could offer one another, but now...

Spike's words, muttered against Dawn's shoulder, suddenly cut through.  "Is it helping any, pet?  Being here?"

Angel felt himself grow still, inside and out, as Dawn's silence stretched, her grip on Spike tightening.  "I think," she said finally, pausing for a fortifying breath, "I think Angel pretty much saved my life."

When he saw Spike's nod, more than acknowledgment, commiseration, Angel closed his eyes and slipped away, leaving his own to each other.

Spike kept his eyes on his toes, concentrating on working them underneath the bottom laces of Dawn's pristinely white sneakers.  She wriggled her feet under his, and he glanced up and returned her tentative, tired smile.  He wasn't sure how long they'd been sitting here together, alternating conversation and comfortable silence, but Dawn was starting to have the look of a tot up past her bedtime, and Spike knew the sun wasn't even down yet.

"Spike?"

He arched an eyebrow; that careful smile had turned to a suppressed giggle, and her eyes had taken on a mischievous glitter.

"What's going on with you and Angel?"

Spike did several things at once, covering the nervesick twist of his guts with a smirk as he reached out his senses for the first time in hours, trying to locate his sire.  He was downstairs, allowing Cordelia to present Fred's new wardrobe, all his attention taken up in making 'ooh' noises at the appropriate intervals, and Spike felt only slightly better; at least he wouldn't know *immediately* if his child said the wrong thing here.

*I'm not the one who's supposed to think about it*, he most certainly couldn't say.  *He's in charge and I just follow instructions*, while it was true as far as it went, would only confuse Dawn, and what if Angel didn't want him saying anything?  Dawn was Buffy's baby sister, and Buffy had been something huge to Angel, and Spike had no right to interfere there.

His palms were damp; he knew his heart wasn't racing, but still his chest felt constricted, his head light. And all the time he was just smiling coolly at Dawn. She shoved lightly at his knee.  "Oh, come on, Spike. You're not Riley, you can't pull that 'not at liberty to say' routine on me."

*Hand job* also probably wasn't the right answer. "Just trying to figure what I can say to an innocent little girl like yourself."

Eye roll; he was on the right track.  "Oh, please, Spike.  They taught us about anal sex in fifth grade sex ed."

Spike frowned, sidetracked.  "Fifth... what grade are you in now?"

"*Ninth*."

He realized that, as an evil being, he should be delighted, but Spike found himself as horrified as any soul-carrying Victorian.  "They teach little ten-year-old girls about that?"

Dawn shrugged, seeming suddenly older than he'd thought she was.  "They try to get to us before we're actually tempted to try it.  But that doesn't answer my question, Spike.  You and Angel, are you..."  The amusement had faded; she was serious now, truly curious instead of just teasing, which was ever so much more dangerous.  Spike's hands clenched into fists, out of sight against the cushions, and his mind raced.  He'd never had to answer questions before, especially not from a little mortal girl who really, no matter what she'd been taught in school, shouldn't know about these things, didn't know nearly as much about them as she likely thought she did. "It's complicated," he hedged, and that earned him a little one-eyebrow arch that gave him the strangest sensation of being able to see his own reflection.  He sighed, choosing words carefully.  There were things that were true no matter what, that had to be safe to say.  "He's my sire, Dawn.  Him and Dru, they made me who and what I am, and we were family, and still are and always will be."  He'd lost her, by the blank intentness of her gaze, but he thought maybe he was finding something, too.  He kept talking, feeling his way.  "The thing about being immortal is... we accumulate years, but we don't actually grow, or change.  And that means, other things don't change either.  Angel will always be my sire, my family, no matter about the soul, or the chip, or destiny, or any of it.  That's immortal, and it doesn't change.  But what it means is complicated."  Spike stopped, frustrated; the words were so inadequate, so opaque and small.  The things that could be expressed in words, he didn't dare say, and the things he was certain of, he couldn't find words for, except stupid ones like 'complicated'.

"It's the blood," he said after a moment, trying not to feel Dawn's steady and inhumanly patient gaze. "When you're turned, all your mortal blood is drained, and you take in a vampire's blood.  Your sire's.  And it's always in you, after that, it's part of your new immortal body, making you what you are.  So as much as I'm a vampire, I belong to Dru and through her to Angel.

"The thing is, blood has tastes in it, it's not all the same.  Every person has their own flavor, and it changes every moment.  In the blood, you can taste their fear, their pain, you can taste happiness and anger and lust and life and death and everything.  And the thing is, it's all there together when you drink it in.  Complicated."  He looked, but Dawn had the same expression she usually wore during a particularly gripping story; she was hanging on every word, but she had no idea what he was talking about.

He took a breath and tried again, wondering briefly why he was so determined to explain it to her. She probably didn't actually want to know anything other than *Do you like him?*  *Have you kissed?*  But then, he couldn't answer those questions.

"It's different for humans," he said quietly, and that did catch Dawn's attention for real.  "You don't have the blood, not the same way, not the knowing of it. You can only know each other with words, and words can't be complicated, not really.  You have to say just one word at a time, and it can only be one thing at a time, and that's how you learn to think about everything.  You're alive, or you're dead.  You like a person, or you don't.  You love, or hate, or don't care.  You're angry or afraid or sad or happy.  Other people are family or friends or lovers or teachers or mortal enemies or strangers.  For you, things are simple.  You give a thing a name, a word, and that's what it is.  For us, there's just the blood, and the blood all runs together, and it's."  He frowned fiercely at his knees, as one of Dawn's small warm hands crept over his.  She squeezed gently, but he couldn't meet her eyes.  "Complicated."

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