The Soulmate Series

Brutus Aurelius (Chapter Twenty-One of Soulmates)


A night alone, reading by firelight.

While it’s not nearly as welcome to Angel as an evening by his hearth with Willow would be, it’s a blessing, nonetheless. Buffy is off doing whatever it is she does when she’s not alternating between crying about Willow and mooning over him. Volumes of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli have been engaging him. All in all, he’s as close to content as is possible with things being as they are and he’s determined to make the most of his solitude. Reading and reflection are the order of the vampiric version of day.

But that’s not to be. His senses suddenly apprehend a visitor, and not just any visitor, but his wayward grand-childe, his Brutus. The boy is just outside. Spike has come back to Sunnydale - to his patriarch - and Angel can just catch the scent of alcohol, but nothing to alert him to the presence of Drusilla. Whatever could have happened to make Spike leave his dark goddess in order to return to the home of the man he betrayed without a second thought?

He’s eager to know, but his instincts tell him to wait. So he stays focused on his book, remembering to turn the pages regularly, to maintain the illusion that he is so lost to the written word that he doesn’t sense the presence of one of his own. Spike must be well and truly drunk to believe that Angel’s soul has neutered him that thoroughly, but he plays along, instincts sharp and keen-functioning as he portrays the oblivious intellectual.

Moments pass and he hears the murmur of Spike’s voice, though he cannot quite distinguish the words being spoken. He does owe something to the fact that flimsy boards rather than glass bar the broken window he can’t have fixed too quickly lest he arouse Buffy’s suspicions as to where he comes by such a large sum of money. It’s easier to hear through the less sturdy material, though he hates the unsightly and dilapidated look of his home. Living like this...well, at least now there’s some good in it, that’s all he can think.

More time passes, the murmuring grows a bit louder, and Angel is able to pick up a fragment of the dialogue here and there: “not afraid,” “I’ll show you,” more of the same. Spike’s too-familiar drunken braggadocio.

It’s when he hears Spike’s heavy footsteps in retreat that he decides that the game is over. He’s off to pursue the sot when a crash alerts him to the likelihood that it won’t take much effort to catch him.

He’s right, of course, Spike has tripped and passed out on the derelict, stone-bordered flower beds outside his door. Even a human would have heard the racket he made and he marvels at Spike’s luck in Buffy not being here tonight. That boy’s had a stake with his name on it waiting for at least a century, yet it never seems to find purchase.

Sighing heavily, he picks him up and carries him into the house.

Should he dump him on the floor or on the couch? The floor beckons, but Angel’s instincts tell him that the couch would be better. He’d like to mollify Spike a bit, get him to open up. So honey it will be and he’ll save the vinegar to pour on any wounds he may manage to open. He lays his burden gently on the sofa and jostles him lightly. He’d rather not wait around for Spike to awaken on his own. From the stench of him, that could be many a long hour.

“Spike?” He keeps his voice soul-tinged, human. He’d rather not have Spike realize that he’s not quite as soft as he used to be.

Mumbling and incoherent nonsense sounds are his immediate answer. He wonders if Spike knows how much like a cranky toddler being roused from sleep he seems. Probably not something he should point out anytime soon.

“Spike.” More emphatic this time. Pre-Hell or post-Hell, Angel would never be patient and he knows that tolerance might well evoke suspicion in spite of Spike’s heavily-marinated thought processes.

“Angel. What are you doin’ here?” And maybe Angel has less to worry about than he thought. Once again his mind boggles at Spike’s good fortune at evading the treats he so richly deserves in his less-than-aware state.

“It’s my house, Spike.”

Angel watches as blue eyes blink repeatedly before deciding to remain open and begin to take in their surroundings.

“That it is.” He looks around before focusing on the boarded-up window. “Love what you’ve done with the place, Peaches.”

Great. Obviously not too drunk to sneer at his betters. Spike will never change.

“Did you come all the way back to Sunnydale just to critique my decor? Or is there some other reason you decided to pass out on my doorstep?”

“Didn’t pass out.” Spike is surly now, and defensive.

“Okay. So is there a reason you decided to have a narcoleptic seizure on my doorstep?”

What is it about Spike that pushes his buttons? Any idea Angel had of playing it cool has gone right out the window. Oh well. He’s dealt himself this hand and he’ll just have to win the game with it.

“Heard you’d come back from Hell; wanted to see if you’d got a tan.”

“So where’s Dru?” Angel’s actually pretty sure he knows the answer to that question already, but there’s pleasure in the idea of forcing Spike to pony up with it.

“Don’t know, don’t care. For all I know, she went looking for you in Hell. Hope she stays there, faithless bint.” The last words are mumbled and Angel’s sure they weren’t meant for him to hear.

He almost pities Spike. Angel is, in a way, in an uncomfortably analogous predicament, scorned by the woman he loves. Of course, there are distinct differences. Willow, after all, is Angel’s soulmate and deep down, she knows it. Their story is far different from that of Spike and Angelus’ fickle creation, Drusilla. Still, there’s enough fellow-feeling in him to smooth the sharp edges that Spike always seems to give to his temper.

Anything he can think of to say right now would probably come off as insulting no matter what he intends, so he keeps his mouth shut, deciding to wait for Spike to make the next verbal move. It doesn’t take long.

“So where’s your Slayer, then? Why’s she not here flaunting those wares you’re not allowed to sample anymore?”

For reasons he can’t begin to fathom, Angel elects to answer honestly. “She’s not my Slayer, she’s not my anything. Not anymore.”

His words are greeted with a loud guffaw. “Dumped you, did she? Good on her!”

The edges are sharpened again, fast as lightning, and Angel can hardly wait to burst Spike’s bubble. “Not quite, William. I’m the one who ended us.” He’s going to say something else - some sort of lone wolf, not-wanting-a-girl-who’d-send-him-to-Hell something, but Spike surprises him.

Sniffing the air rather intently, Spike’s face goes through some rather dramatic changes of expression. It’s then that Angel remembers that he’s been sleeping under the same unwashed sheets (the ones on which he’d made love to Willow) for several weeks and he hasn’t showered yet today. His failure to adhere to his once-fastidious habits has become a bit of a sticky wicket. Spike now knows that someone’s been sleeping in Angel’s bed, someone whose scent is all over him. He’s going to have to come a great deal closer to the whole story than he’d intended. Somehow, he’s almost glad. It will feel good to say it out loud. Even to Spike.

“That smell...I know that smell. Bloody hell It’s that cute little chit who pals around with your Slayer.” Spike smirks at him, his expression both cocky and knowing. “Can’t fault your taste; she’s a delicious little piece. But I didn’t know you had it in you, or rather, in her.” Spike chortles merrily at what passes in his condition for a bon mot.

His expression conveys far more interest than Angel is willing to let him get by with. “She’s all mine, Spike. Keep your thoughts, and everything else, off of her.”

“What’s the matter, Peaches? Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s good manners to share?”

That’s it. His hand is around Spike’s throat in a trice. Not that it matters as much as it would to a creature who needed to breathe, but it makes a statement and that’s what counts.

“She - is - mine. Got that, William? Of course, given the example Drusilla’s always set for you, I guess you can’t be expected to understand exclusivity.”

This time, Spike is the one aroused to aggression. Angel lets go of his throat in time for the push against him and the thrown punch to send Spike sprawling to the floor. Guess Spike was going to wind up there one way or another.

Spike tries to get up, but his arm slips out from under him, leaving him still sprawled on the cold stone. Not for the first time, Angel pities someone in this room, by this fire. Spike may well be pathetic, but he has pride, and Angel decides to be charitable and leave him with some of it.

He helps him up in silence, figuring that way, once Spike is back on the couch, they can pretend this contretemps never happened.

Which is exactly what they do.

Angel goes to a cupboard and retrieves a bottle of whiskey; that’s as good an ice breaker as any. They begin to talk, to share their heartache.

Spike, of course, is first. The tale he has to tell...well...Angel’s not terribly surprised at what he learns. Dru’s always been rather catholic in her tastes.

“A chaos demon! Can you believe it? The slime...the antlers. How could she prefer that to me? I loved her, I did. I gave her everything. And where did it get me? Thrown over for a bloody chaos demon.” Spike downs a healthy swig from the bottle and passes it to Angel; he pretends to take a sip and passes it back. Spike fails to notice the ruse.

“Cheers.” He downs another slug. The bit of Liam left within Angel is admiring and even a bit envious of Spike’s capacity for drink. But Angel has no desire to attempt to compete with him. He’ll keep his wits about him, thank you very much.

“She flirted right in front of me. Can you believe that? Right in front of me. And when I left...do you know what she said? She said we could still be friends...friends! She didn’t even have the decency to cut my head off or set me on fire. Just says we can be friends. And she thinks I’ve gone soft? Since when are vampires supposed to be friends?”

Angel has to admit that Dru’s behaviour is wrong. After everything Spike’s done for her, that “friends” line is a bit of an over-the-top slap in the face. But then again, Dru’s never really understood love. Not even when it comes to her Daddy. So Angel is not terribly surprised that she’s such an inept paramour to Spike.

But he doesn’t really know how to say anything sympathetic to someone who always brings out his harshest words, so he keeps silent and lets Spike script the answers in his own head. It works. Spike is acting as if Angel’s saying all the right things. He feels very eloquent and comforting right now...without having to actually be either.

“What about you, Angelus?” Well, that stands head and shoulders above Spike’s usual monikers for him and Angel’s more than willing to let the name serve as his mode of address. “Where’s your girl?”

How to answer that. On the one hand, he’s not inclined to give Spike any ammunition to use against him. But on the other hand...on the other hand...he longs to unburden himself. To share his loneliness and confusion with the one creature in the world who might actually understand and see things clearly, even when inebriated. He takes the chance.

The words pour out. He describes it all: from those first terrifyingly feral moments when he wasn’t sure if he was in some new realm of torture to Buffy’s arrival and her chaining him up to...Willow.

He might not be the poet his boy once was, but he’s not doing badly. Spike seems almost sober and he’s listening raptly, with more than a hint of empathy colouring his expression. Angel leaves out nothing: not Willow’s fright, not the frenzied confusion of their first coupling, not her inability to accept the truth about their destiny - none of it. It hurts, speaking it out loud, but there’s something healing about the pain.

“The chit still thinks you raped her, eh? That’s the way with humans. Don’t understand a thing about passion. They think it’s all supposed to be hearts and flowers and soft words and sugar. We know better.” Spike’s voice is comradely without a hint of sarcasm and Angel is glad he made this choice, the choice to open up. “Have you thought of turning her?”

He can forgive Spike for that question because he actually has, for a few brief moments, actually considered it. It would, in a way, bring Willow to her senses once and for all. But reason, and love, always prevail. Were she a demon, she would no longer be the girl who holds his heart. And then there would be the matter of her soul and his anchor to it. So much might be in peril were she to be turned. Still, he can see Spike’s logic.

And oddly, Spike can see his, because he answers his own question. Typical Spike. “Nah. Guess that would be no good, would it. Well, you just have to keep after her. Don’t give up until she realizes that she’s yours and that’s all there is to it.”

Hard to believe that Spike, of all creatures, is in his corner. Angel’s worried that his shock at Spike’s support and utterly sincere sympathy will show in his face. But Spike is still lost in his own thoughts and doesn’t catch the brief loss of control.

There are wheels turning behind those eyes, Angel can almost hear them. A thought seems to have suddenly occurred to him, one Angel both wishes he hadn’t conceived and wonders why it hadn’t come to him earlier. “What about that soul of yours, by the way? I’m figuring you were pretty happy with the girl. So why are you still on the side of the angels?” He is obviously distracted by his own pun as he bursts into drunken giggles. Angel wonders if he even has to answer.

But no, Spike’s mind eventually comes back to the topic at hand, he can see it in his eyes. So he makes his mind up. Tell the truth again. Why not? Spike knows everything else.

“I don’t know, honestly. I haven’t had access to Giles’ books, so research has been out of the question. I don’t know that I care. All I know is that I’m pretty sure that if I could have lost it, I would have already. Anything more is idle curiosity.”

Spike looks almost sober, his eyes peering into Angel’s in a way that’s disconcertingly acute. Angel doesn’t drop his gaze, however. He won’t show fear.

“You’ve changed.”

He laughs bitterly. Yeah, Spike. You think so?

“Hell has a way of doing that.”

“Guess it would at that.” Spike’s eyes close. They stay that way, much to Angel’s surprise. This display of awareness seems to have exhausted Spike’s reserves. He’s passed out again.

Angel stares at the man as he lies unconscious on the sofa: head leaning back, mouth now slightly open. He misses the blue of those eyes, no longer able to see much of anything of the William who’d once been his stolen creation.

He remembers.

He remembers nights spent meting out gruesome death and days lost in frenzied, animalistic pleasure. He remembers a stubborn boy with brown hair and a softness in his eyes it had taken all of Angelus’ brutality to sharpen into cruelty. He remembers a poet with a mouth too gifted to be left to spout doggerel.

Though he doesn’t now want to reclaim his fey childe’s foundling for his own, he wishes he’d never allowed Drusilla to come between them, to cast herself as the focal point of a misbegotten triangle. What might have been had his ego and the desperate pride of artistic creation not written his role?

The world of nostalgia and regret, however, is not a safe place to rest. His memory opens up to him once more, unfolding before him with more recent events, and ones which offer potent, if harsh, lessons for the present.

Opening a blanket trunk, he removes the contents and walks over to the unconscious figure on the couch. His eyes rake over him once more, drinking in the cheekbones and lithe limbs that are the only visible remnants of William and the blond hair that was never his boy.

He thinks of Spike. He thinks of Buffy. He thinks of all the things Spike now knows and all the danger that he poses. He thinks of everything Spike said tonight...and how little it will mean when morning comes and it is the traitor who awakens.

Yes, there has been a stake with William’s name on it for at least a century and tonight, it finally finds its mark. One last time has he seen those blue eyes and Angel is sure he can still see rage and betrayal glimmering in the dust that now swirls before him.

Et tu, Brute?

Tbc...