thatotherperv (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thatotherperv) wrote2006-06-26 11:26 am
thatotherperv) wrote2006-06-26 11:26 am
Entry tags:
Backup, Chapter 4
I was gonna wait another day to post this, but I can't wait.
I have such a love-hate relationship with this chapter.
Title: Backup: the Won’t Back Down sequel
Author: Mel (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
btvslover82)
Pairing: Spangel
Rating: NC-17 slash, some het elements but no more than PG-13
Summary: teen human AU sequel to WBD, the boys learn how to be men and face the world together. Um, some less pretty things are gonna happen here. I’m just sayin’.
Disclaimer: the characters belong to Joss and ME...alas, alack.
Feedback: please :)
Won’t Back Down and related ficlets are here
Angel was in full mechanic-babble mode, and Spike wasn’t following a sodding word he said about this car. But he did gather that if Angel could find a way to make love to a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere GTX, Spike would have long since gotten the boot. Angel was all ‘426 hemi’ this and ‘dual chrome exhaust’ that and Spike was beginning to eye the engine block like it was the other woman.
“Angel, luv—“
“…and what would be really sweet is if I could find…”
“Angel.” The boy in question looked up from his place on his back in the grass. “Pet, it’s hot as hell out here. Must we do this perched under a tree in California in June? You have access to a bloody air-conditioned professional garage, is all I’m saying.”
Angel grinned at him. “Bitch, bitch, bitch. I already told you, towing this thing back and forth is out of the question, and we don’t have the space for me to just leave it at the shop. It’s not so bad out here in the shade. I can’t help it if it disagrees with your delicate English constitution.”
Spike grinned and stood over him. “Pet, I’m wounded. I thought you liked my delicate English constitution.”
Angel just grinned and gave him a non-committal “Mmmm.”
Spike dropped down to straddle his hips, playfully walking his fingers up the dirty wifebeater. “I can think of better ways to get all hot and sweaty.”
Angel sighed and spared a glance at the underside of the engine. “Spike, I wanted to—“
“Cool off instead? Fine. There’s a swimming pool at my house with our names on it. Sadly, there are no swimming trunks. But that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
Angel laughed. “You are a shameless horndog.”
“Yes, but I’m your shameless horndog, and therefore it’s your job to see to me properly. Can’t blame me for getting cranky when you don’t.” Spike pouted.
A light dawned in Angel’s face and he tugged Spike closer by the wrist, smearing grease all over his lightly tanned forearm. “Say that again,” he murmured.
“I said, you can’t blame me for getting cranky—“
“The other part.”
“…I’m your shameless horndog?” Spike clarified.
“Mine…I like the sound of that,” Angel growled against Spike’s lips, and before Spike could retort, Angel’s mouth was occupied in a far more acceptable manner. Spike sighed into the kiss and braced his forearms against the ground, settling in for a nice long snog, even though body heat should not seem so attractive on a day that hot.
Spike was grinding down against him, and Angel forgot all about the car. Sometimes Spike was like a cooped-up dog…if you didn’t exercise him properly at regular intervals, he was bound to do something you’d have to rub his nose in later. Angel chuckled into Spike’s mouth, certain that he wouldn’t appreciate the analogy.
“What?” Spike asked, a smile in his voice.
“Oh, I was just thinking about how you’re such a good distraction.”
Spike grinned smugly. “Damn right, I am.” And he went on to prove this by slipping his hands between their bodies and touching Angel in a highly distracting manner. Angel groaned and clutched at Spike’s ass with both hands. Spike nipped at his lip and continued his delightfully fantastic assault on Angel’s erection.
Angel rolled them over in the grass and grinned down at Spike as he slid one hand inside Spike’s jeans and made the other boy curse and expose his throat, which Angel happily began to snack on. He could do this forever…just roll around with Spike in the shade on a pretty summer’s day.
Spike tried to claw his way closer. “Christ, Liam…yeah…”
Angel didn’t have time to respond because Spike’s welcome exclamation was drowned out by another…one that was familiar when it slurred.
“What. the Fuck. is goin’ on here?”
Angel’s heart rabbited in his chest while the rest of him froze. He desperately didn’t want to look up, but he had to—the same way you had to look when you passed a four-alarm fire. Although this felt more like he was inside the building, with burning rafters collapsing down on his head. His worst nightmare.
His father was standing perched by the still-open door of the ’89 Dodge piece of shit they called a car, and his mother was hesitating in front of the grille, her purse clutched nervously in her hands. The whole moment was freeze-frame, preserved in time by the oppressive summer heat. His parents were supposed to be at the fair. He hadn’t heard the car pull up because he was too busy—guiltily, he yanked his hand out of Spike’s pants.
That event seemed to trigger a whole lot of movement. His father came charging toward them, shaking off his mother’s desperate bid to seize her husband’s elbow. Angel kneeled up, trying to scramble to his feet, but his father reached him first and yanked him up by a fist to the undershirt.
Mike O’Connor was not really a big man, quite a few inches shorter than Angel himself, but at the moment the rage and the whiskey on his breath made him feel a whole lot bigger, and to Angel it seemed as though his dad was about to haul him right off his feet and shake him, like he used to when Angel was a boy.
“Dad?” He didn’t know what else to say, beyond the question, the plea. Both were answered with a fist to the eye that snapped his head back.
His father shoved him away suddenly, and Angel stumbled, dazed and staring, pain exploding in his face. “Don’t call me that, you little bastard.” His dad advanced on him again, shoving before Angel could gain his balance, and Angel stumbled again and fell back this time.
“Taken care of you for all these years when I should have kicked your mother out on her ass when she came home pregnant—“
The words were discordant somehow, nonsensical, and Angel’s father had dropped down by his body to haul his shoulders up again by his shirt.
“—and this is how you repay me, by fucking around with your little faggot boyfriend over there.”
A fist flew, and his father’s knuckles caught Angel over the mouth this time, and sharp pain, nerve pain, bloomed up hot from inside his mouth. He tried to sit up but his father was holding him back and Angel wiggled his tongue and found a bloody spot where most of his eyetooth should have been. The pain was so nauseatingly intense, he almost passed out.
“No son of mine would have been a fag—“
Angel registered, drunkenly, the familiarity of the phrase, from the ‘no son of mine will cook like a fairy,’ ‘no son of mine would knock that slut up,’ ‘no son of mine will sit around not earning his keep’ series of his life. But something about the tone of the words made his skin crawl as it echoed in his skull. No son of mine would have…no son of mine would have…
“But you, you, boy, are just a worthless cocksucker, and I should have known.”
The blows just kept coming, and he could feel his father’s fist depress his cheek against his broken tooth, and he almost, almost vomited. He didn’t want to, because the thought of vomit stuck in his bloody tooth made him want to vomit in itself, and he swallowed it down.
His head was spinning and he was clinging to fragmented thoughts. No son of mine would have…when your mother came home pregnant…I should have known…
No son of mine…
Oh god. Oh god. Oh godohgodohgodohgodohgod. Suddenly, the meaning of all the words came crashing down on him with startling clarity. This time, he couldn’t stop the powerful heave coming from his gut.
~*~*~*~
Spike had been barely restraining himself, this whole time, willing Liam to get up and fight back for himself. Get up, Liam. Hit the bastard. Come on, get up. Spike didn’t want to rush in if Angel could handle it himself, but Angel was just lying there, not fighting back, struggling to get up but not quite making it. And his bloody cow of a mother, who didn’t have the maternal instincts God gave a fruitfly, was just standing by, wringing her hands.
Spike had seen enough men beaten to a pulp to recognize when the moment of self-redemption had passed, and it had come and gone for Angel. Spike was stepping forward to grab the bastard off of him when Angel suddenly turned ten shades of gray and scrambled away three feet before proceeding to empty his guts all over the lawn. Spike hesitated, thinking to go to Liam instead, and that’s when Angel’s twisted excuse for a father (or, not a father, if Spike was understanding correctly) stumbled to his feet and kicked Liam right in the middle of his bum. Liam made a sick, sobbing sound and only just missed going face-down into the puddle of his own vomit.
Spike snapped. Without thinking, he grabbed some kind of heavy-looking tool off the ground—a wrench of some sort—and lobbed it into the back of the drunk’s thick skull. The man crumpled to the ground. Spike knelt next to the slob and checked his pulse. He’d live, unfortunately.
It was then that the daft bat that had birthed Liam wailed and bawled about ‘what had he done.’
Incredulous, Spike turned the evil eye on her. “You stupid bloody cow. He’s lucky he’s getting off with a sodding headache. He deserves to have his bollucks ripped off.”
That shut her up, if temporarily.
Spike crouched by his boyfriend, who was still on the ground, gasping. His boyfriend. Well, Spike reckoned that once you’d risked felony assault charges for someone, you were officially in a relationship.
He rubbed at his back. “Liam, pet, are you ok?” Angel’s head was still hanging like he might have another go, but when he tried, it was a dry heave. Spike pulled him away from the vomit and tugged him into his lap. He grabbed ahold of Angel’s chin and surveyed the damage. Beyond the blood and puffy bruises that were beginning to form, Angel did not look well at all. Spike looked around, and made a decision.
“Liam, sweets, can you do something for me? It’s important.” Angel’s eyes focused dimly on his face. “We’re going to go inside, and you’re going to gather everything you can possibly think of that belongs to you, everything that you might want. The most important things. Ok?” Angel nodded.
Spike hoisted him up, stumbling a little under his weight until Angel found his feet, and guided him to the trailer. Angel was walking funny, probably from the boot to the arse. Spike stood in the doorway of the trailer, keeping an eye on things in the yard as Angel went about that business.
Everything Angel could possibly want turned out to be one heaping boxload. Spike settled Angel and his things into the DeSoto and, pausing at his own car door, backtracked and threw the scattered automotive tools into their metal box, loading that into the backseat as well. He’d pay someone to tow away Angel’s beloved convertible later. Spike tore out of the trailer park, without so much as a glance in the rearview.
Spike stole sideways looks at Angel as he drove the familiar route to his own house. The other boy looked shocky, and he was sitting at a funny angle, as though it were painful. Spike covered one big trembling hand with his own and squeezed.
“Guess I can’t call you a Mick anymore, eh?”
Spike cringed as soon as it was out of his mouth, and he saw that Angel did as well. For a moment, he had almost seemed like a supportive human being. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Angel was looking out the window. “Guess that’s why I never looked Irish.” The statement tried to be a joke, but only managed to be a plaintive croak.
He sounded so lost that Spike’s heart broke in two. Spike lifted the large, capable hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Reckon so.”
~*~*~*~
Angel was allowing himself to be manhandled around far too easily for Spike’s liking. He was limp and complacent, limping painfully as Spike led him into the house and straight to the bathroom. When Spike pushed him to sit on the toilet so he could tend his face, Angel cried out at the effort and tears sprang forward in brown eyes.
“Pet? Does it hurt to sit?”
“Yes,” Angel choked out. His voice was thick with pain and self-pity.
“Shit. I think the bastard broke your tailbone.” Spike looked away, jaw clenching. “What else hurts?”
“My tooth,” he rasped, and Spike pried his mouth open and swore when he saw the pulpy mass that had to be painful as hell.
“Luv, we’re going to have to go to the hospital. That tooth…no way you’ll sleep tonight without drugs at least. There’s not much they can do about the tailbone but maybe there’s something internal…you should probably get x-rays.” And, Spike added to himself, he wanted the beating documented. Angel was still a minor.
Angel was too listless to even offer an opinion on that. He just stared at Spike in a vacantly miserable fashion and allowed himself to be bundled back outside.
His lack of responsiveness was creepy and unlike him, and it scared the living hell out of Spike. But, one thing at a time.
~*~*~*~
Since it was a Saturday and Angel wasn’t hemorrhaging blood all over the emergency room floor, they ended up sitting in the waiting room for five hours before they were seen by a doctor. At this rate, they should be dispensing fucking morphine drips at the check-in desk, if you asked Spike. Liam was gray-toned and silent the entire time, while Spike made stupid jokes and jittered back and forth looking for something to kill.
But once they saw him, things were top-notch, he had to admit. Pulled Spike aside to get the story and only spoke to Liam in soft tones. They had to remove the tooth—they were lucky that Sunnydale Medical offered emergency dental service. A lot of places didn’t, the nurse reminded Spike.
Yeah. Luck was on their side, today.
Spike held Angel’s hand while the coppers took photographs and his statement. The process probably would have humiliated Angel, but he wasn’t enough of himself to care.
His tailbone was indeed broken, but nothing else, thank Christ. He needed stitches above one eye, where his dad’s wedding ring had sliced him open. The hospital discharged him with some powerful pain meds, an inflatable donut for him to sit on, and instructions to return if there was additional pain or blood coming out of any imaginable orifice—stool, urine, vomit…the list went on.
When they finally arrived home, both of them were exhausted. Spike got Angel situated in bed, drugged him up, and then went downstairs to call Faith. Important to notify her of Angel’s change of address, just in case she went looking. It took him another 10 minutes to convince her that Mike had already been properly dealt with, by force and by law.
Angel was still awake. Just staring at the ceiling with his good eye, and he didn’t move in any way when Spike came in. Spike felt sick in the stomach, a giant fist squeezing at his heart, to see him so despondent. He stripped down to his boxers and carefully curled his body around Angel’s prostrate form. Angel acknowledged the gesture by curling one hand up to clasp at the arm across his chest. Otherwise, he didn’t move.
For just a moment, Spike hesitated to express himself, but his pride seemed silly, just now. When he spoke, it was a choked whisper.
“You know, I love you, pet. So much.”
The silence hugged his confession, kept it safe. Spike could see tears glittering in the one brown eye that was not swollen shut.
“Thanks,” Angel finally said.
Spike didn’t expect Angel to say it back right now. He was no longer afraid or ashamed or anxious of how he felt. He just wanted to make Liam feel better. If that was even possible.
Neither of them slept very much that night—Angel’s head too full of all the lies he’d been fed from birth, and Spike’s head too full of Angel.
A/N: I actually hinted at this a loooonnggg time ago, when they were in the car on the way to LA to pick up the part for the DeSoto. I don't think anyone caught it, but it was a pretty obscure hint--Spike just commented that Angel didn't look Irish, he looked Mediterranean.
ohmygod makeitallbetterrightnowplease, otherwise known as Chapter 5
I have such a love-hate relationship with this chapter.
Title: Backup: the Won’t Back Down sequel
Author: Mel (
btvslover82)Pairing: Spangel
Rating: NC-17 slash, some het elements but no more than PG-13
Summary: teen human AU sequel to WBD, the boys learn how to be men and face the world together. Um, some less pretty things are gonna happen here. I’m just sayin’.
Disclaimer: the characters belong to Joss and ME...alas, alack.
Feedback: please :)
Won’t Back Down and related ficlets are here
Angel was in full mechanic-babble mode, and Spike wasn’t following a sodding word he said about this car. But he did gather that if Angel could find a way to make love to a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere GTX, Spike would have long since gotten the boot. Angel was all ‘426 hemi’ this and ‘dual chrome exhaust’ that and Spike was beginning to eye the engine block like it was the other woman.
“Angel, luv—“
“…and what would be really sweet is if I could find…”
“Angel.” The boy in question looked up from his place on his back in the grass. “Pet, it’s hot as hell out here. Must we do this perched under a tree in California in June? You have access to a bloody air-conditioned professional garage, is all I’m saying.”
Angel grinned at him. “Bitch, bitch, bitch. I already told you, towing this thing back and forth is out of the question, and we don’t have the space for me to just leave it at the shop. It’s not so bad out here in the shade. I can’t help it if it disagrees with your delicate English constitution.”
Spike grinned and stood over him. “Pet, I’m wounded. I thought you liked my delicate English constitution.”
Angel just grinned and gave him a non-committal “Mmmm.”
Spike dropped down to straddle his hips, playfully walking his fingers up the dirty wifebeater. “I can think of better ways to get all hot and sweaty.”
Angel sighed and spared a glance at the underside of the engine. “Spike, I wanted to—“
“Cool off instead? Fine. There’s a swimming pool at my house with our names on it. Sadly, there are no swimming trunks. But that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
Angel laughed. “You are a shameless horndog.”
“Yes, but I’m your shameless horndog, and therefore it’s your job to see to me properly. Can’t blame me for getting cranky when you don’t.” Spike pouted.
A light dawned in Angel’s face and he tugged Spike closer by the wrist, smearing grease all over his lightly tanned forearm. “Say that again,” he murmured.
“I said, you can’t blame me for getting cranky—“
“The other part.”
“…I’m your shameless horndog?” Spike clarified.
“Mine…I like the sound of that,” Angel growled against Spike’s lips, and before Spike could retort, Angel’s mouth was occupied in a far more acceptable manner. Spike sighed into the kiss and braced his forearms against the ground, settling in for a nice long snog, even though body heat should not seem so attractive on a day that hot.
Spike was grinding down against him, and Angel forgot all about the car. Sometimes Spike was like a cooped-up dog…if you didn’t exercise him properly at regular intervals, he was bound to do something you’d have to rub his nose in later. Angel chuckled into Spike’s mouth, certain that he wouldn’t appreciate the analogy.
“What?” Spike asked, a smile in his voice.
“Oh, I was just thinking about how you’re such a good distraction.”
Spike grinned smugly. “Damn right, I am.” And he went on to prove this by slipping his hands between their bodies and touching Angel in a highly distracting manner. Angel groaned and clutched at Spike’s ass with both hands. Spike nipped at his lip and continued his delightfully fantastic assault on Angel’s erection.
Angel rolled them over in the grass and grinned down at Spike as he slid one hand inside Spike’s jeans and made the other boy curse and expose his throat, which Angel happily began to snack on. He could do this forever…just roll around with Spike in the shade on a pretty summer’s day.
Spike tried to claw his way closer. “Christ, Liam…yeah…”
Angel didn’t have time to respond because Spike’s welcome exclamation was drowned out by another…one that was familiar when it slurred.
“What. the Fuck. is goin’ on here?”
Angel’s heart rabbited in his chest while the rest of him froze. He desperately didn’t want to look up, but he had to—the same way you had to look when you passed a four-alarm fire. Although this felt more like he was inside the building, with burning rafters collapsing down on his head. His worst nightmare.
His father was standing perched by the still-open door of the ’89 Dodge piece of shit they called a car, and his mother was hesitating in front of the grille, her purse clutched nervously in her hands. The whole moment was freeze-frame, preserved in time by the oppressive summer heat. His parents were supposed to be at the fair. He hadn’t heard the car pull up because he was too busy—guiltily, he yanked his hand out of Spike’s pants.
That event seemed to trigger a whole lot of movement. His father came charging toward them, shaking off his mother’s desperate bid to seize her husband’s elbow. Angel kneeled up, trying to scramble to his feet, but his father reached him first and yanked him up by a fist to the undershirt.
Mike O’Connor was not really a big man, quite a few inches shorter than Angel himself, but at the moment the rage and the whiskey on his breath made him feel a whole lot bigger, and to Angel it seemed as though his dad was about to haul him right off his feet and shake him, like he used to when Angel was a boy.
“Dad?” He didn’t know what else to say, beyond the question, the plea. Both were answered with a fist to the eye that snapped his head back.
His father shoved him away suddenly, and Angel stumbled, dazed and staring, pain exploding in his face. “Don’t call me that, you little bastard.” His dad advanced on him again, shoving before Angel could gain his balance, and Angel stumbled again and fell back this time.
“Taken care of you for all these years when I should have kicked your mother out on her ass when she came home pregnant—“
The words were discordant somehow, nonsensical, and Angel’s father had dropped down by his body to haul his shoulders up again by his shirt.
“—and this is how you repay me, by fucking around with your little faggot boyfriend over there.”
A fist flew, and his father’s knuckles caught Angel over the mouth this time, and sharp pain, nerve pain, bloomed up hot from inside his mouth. He tried to sit up but his father was holding him back and Angel wiggled his tongue and found a bloody spot where most of his eyetooth should have been. The pain was so nauseatingly intense, he almost passed out.
“No son of mine would have been a fag—“
Angel registered, drunkenly, the familiarity of the phrase, from the ‘no son of mine will cook like a fairy,’ ‘no son of mine would knock that slut up,’ ‘no son of mine will sit around not earning his keep’ series of his life. But something about the tone of the words made his skin crawl as it echoed in his skull. No son of mine would have…no son of mine would have…
“But you, you, boy, are just a worthless cocksucker, and I should have known.”
The blows just kept coming, and he could feel his father’s fist depress his cheek against his broken tooth, and he almost, almost vomited. He didn’t want to, because the thought of vomit stuck in his bloody tooth made him want to vomit in itself, and he swallowed it down.
His head was spinning and he was clinging to fragmented thoughts. No son of mine would have…when your mother came home pregnant…I should have known…
No son of mine…
Oh god. Oh god. Oh godohgodohgodohgodohgod. Suddenly, the meaning of all the words came crashing down on him with startling clarity. This time, he couldn’t stop the powerful heave coming from his gut.
~*~*~*~
Spike had been barely restraining himself, this whole time, willing Liam to get up and fight back for himself. Get up, Liam. Hit the bastard. Come on, get up. Spike didn’t want to rush in if Angel could handle it himself, but Angel was just lying there, not fighting back, struggling to get up but not quite making it. And his bloody cow of a mother, who didn’t have the maternal instincts God gave a fruitfly, was just standing by, wringing her hands.
Spike had seen enough men beaten to a pulp to recognize when the moment of self-redemption had passed, and it had come and gone for Angel. Spike was stepping forward to grab the bastard off of him when Angel suddenly turned ten shades of gray and scrambled away three feet before proceeding to empty his guts all over the lawn. Spike hesitated, thinking to go to Liam instead, and that’s when Angel’s twisted excuse for a father (or, not a father, if Spike was understanding correctly) stumbled to his feet and kicked Liam right in the middle of his bum. Liam made a sick, sobbing sound and only just missed going face-down into the puddle of his own vomit.
Spike snapped. Without thinking, he grabbed some kind of heavy-looking tool off the ground—a wrench of some sort—and lobbed it into the back of the drunk’s thick skull. The man crumpled to the ground. Spike knelt next to the slob and checked his pulse. He’d live, unfortunately.
It was then that the daft bat that had birthed Liam wailed and bawled about ‘what had he done.’
Incredulous, Spike turned the evil eye on her. “You stupid bloody cow. He’s lucky he’s getting off with a sodding headache. He deserves to have his bollucks ripped off.”
That shut her up, if temporarily.
Spike crouched by his boyfriend, who was still on the ground, gasping. His boyfriend. Well, Spike reckoned that once you’d risked felony assault charges for someone, you were officially in a relationship.
He rubbed at his back. “Liam, pet, are you ok?” Angel’s head was still hanging like he might have another go, but when he tried, it was a dry heave. Spike pulled him away from the vomit and tugged him into his lap. He grabbed ahold of Angel’s chin and surveyed the damage. Beyond the blood and puffy bruises that were beginning to form, Angel did not look well at all. Spike looked around, and made a decision.
“Liam, sweets, can you do something for me? It’s important.” Angel’s eyes focused dimly on his face. “We’re going to go inside, and you’re going to gather everything you can possibly think of that belongs to you, everything that you might want. The most important things. Ok?” Angel nodded.
Spike hoisted him up, stumbling a little under his weight until Angel found his feet, and guided him to the trailer. Angel was walking funny, probably from the boot to the arse. Spike stood in the doorway of the trailer, keeping an eye on things in the yard as Angel went about that business.
Everything Angel could possibly want turned out to be one heaping boxload. Spike settled Angel and his things into the DeSoto and, pausing at his own car door, backtracked and threw the scattered automotive tools into their metal box, loading that into the backseat as well. He’d pay someone to tow away Angel’s beloved convertible later. Spike tore out of the trailer park, without so much as a glance in the rearview.
Spike stole sideways looks at Angel as he drove the familiar route to his own house. The other boy looked shocky, and he was sitting at a funny angle, as though it were painful. Spike covered one big trembling hand with his own and squeezed.
“Guess I can’t call you a Mick anymore, eh?”
Spike cringed as soon as it was out of his mouth, and he saw that Angel did as well. For a moment, he had almost seemed like a supportive human being. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Angel was looking out the window. “Guess that’s why I never looked Irish.” The statement tried to be a joke, but only managed to be a plaintive croak.
He sounded so lost that Spike’s heart broke in two. Spike lifted the large, capable hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Reckon so.”
~*~*~*~
Angel was allowing himself to be manhandled around far too easily for Spike’s liking. He was limp and complacent, limping painfully as Spike led him into the house and straight to the bathroom. When Spike pushed him to sit on the toilet so he could tend his face, Angel cried out at the effort and tears sprang forward in brown eyes.
“Pet? Does it hurt to sit?”
“Yes,” Angel choked out. His voice was thick with pain and self-pity.
“Shit. I think the bastard broke your tailbone.” Spike looked away, jaw clenching. “What else hurts?”
“My tooth,” he rasped, and Spike pried his mouth open and swore when he saw the pulpy mass that had to be painful as hell.
“Luv, we’re going to have to go to the hospital. That tooth…no way you’ll sleep tonight without drugs at least. There’s not much they can do about the tailbone but maybe there’s something internal…you should probably get x-rays.” And, Spike added to himself, he wanted the beating documented. Angel was still a minor.
Angel was too listless to even offer an opinion on that. He just stared at Spike in a vacantly miserable fashion and allowed himself to be bundled back outside.
His lack of responsiveness was creepy and unlike him, and it scared the living hell out of Spike. But, one thing at a time.
~*~*~*~
Since it was a Saturday and Angel wasn’t hemorrhaging blood all over the emergency room floor, they ended up sitting in the waiting room for five hours before they were seen by a doctor. At this rate, they should be dispensing fucking morphine drips at the check-in desk, if you asked Spike. Liam was gray-toned and silent the entire time, while Spike made stupid jokes and jittered back and forth looking for something to kill.
But once they saw him, things were top-notch, he had to admit. Pulled Spike aside to get the story and only spoke to Liam in soft tones. They had to remove the tooth—they were lucky that Sunnydale Medical offered emergency dental service. A lot of places didn’t, the nurse reminded Spike.
Yeah. Luck was on their side, today.
Spike held Angel’s hand while the coppers took photographs and his statement. The process probably would have humiliated Angel, but he wasn’t enough of himself to care.
His tailbone was indeed broken, but nothing else, thank Christ. He needed stitches above one eye, where his dad’s wedding ring had sliced him open. The hospital discharged him with some powerful pain meds, an inflatable donut for him to sit on, and instructions to return if there was additional pain or blood coming out of any imaginable orifice—stool, urine, vomit…the list went on.
When they finally arrived home, both of them were exhausted. Spike got Angel situated in bed, drugged him up, and then went downstairs to call Faith. Important to notify her of Angel’s change of address, just in case she went looking. It took him another 10 minutes to convince her that Mike had already been properly dealt with, by force and by law.
Angel was still awake. Just staring at the ceiling with his good eye, and he didn’t move in any way when Spike came in. Spike felt sick in the stomach, a giant fist squeezing at his heart, to see him so despondent. He stripped down to his boxers and carefully curled his body around Angel’s prostrate form. Angel acknowledged the gesture by curling one hand up to clasp at the arm across his chest. Otherwise, he didn’t move.
For just a moment, Spike hesitated to express himself, but his pride seemed silly, just now. When he spoke, it was a choked whisper.
“You know, I love you, pet. So much.”
The silence hugged his confession, kept it safe. Spike could see tears glittering in the one brown eye that was not swollen shut.
“Thanks,” Angel finally said.
Spike didn’t expect Angel to say it back right now. He was no longer afraid or ashamed or anxious of how he felt. He just wanted to make Liam feel better. If that was even possible.
Neither of them slept very much that night—Angel’s head too full of all the lies he’d been fed from birth, and Spike’s head too full of Angel.
A/N: I actually hinted at this a loooonnggg time ago, when they were in the car on the way to LA to pick up the part for the DeSoto. I don't think anyone caught it, but it was a pretty obscure hint--Spike just commented that Angel didn't look Irish, he looked Mediterranean.
ohmygod makeitallbetterrightnowplease, otherwise known as Chapter 5