Title: Rehearse My Name
Author: Willa
Pairing: Angel/Spike
Rating: NC17
Setting: Between Season 7, BtVS and Season 4, AtS.
Summary: Spike is in the basement, Angel's in the ocean, only Drusilla can bring them together.
* * * * *
Where am I?
What am I?
Is this death?
There is such a very great hole in my memory where... I feel things ought to be. Important things, ones I mustn't forget. But I have. Why is that? I should know why... things are as they are. Don't you think?
Oh... there isn't a 'you' there to speak to. I'm talking to myself.
Well, I suppose that's quite alright. Some may say it is the first sign of insanity, but I believe myself that I have already passed that limit some time ago. Otherwise...
But no, no, what do I remember?
I remember Mother. Yes, that's it, sweet Mother. So dainty, like a china doll in her caps and laces, hands sweetly together in her lap as she listens to me trot out my latest verse. I know it's bad - I am sure she thinks it is dreadful - yet she listens, and applauds, for she knows the effort put into producing even so much as that tripe.
They call me Bloody, you know. Bloody Awful. Bloody Awful poet, for my poetry. Because I was fool enough to publish some pieces. Bad enough for a gentleman to stoop so low. Worse for them to be printed as jokes.
I shall never live that name down now, shall I?
No, how can I, when I do not live now?
Why can't I remember...?
A man should know how it was he died. Unless no one ever does. Unless the atheists are right and there is neither heaven nor hell after you die, but merely nothing... or the absence of nothing.
It is dark here. I have escaped to the cellar of this dwelling with the dawn of day, unable to bear looking at my own pallid flesh. The skin of a dead man, white and drawn. Bearing marks and scars I cannot recall receiving.
My chest aches. It burns, as if I am afire. Why?
And where am I, besides a cellar? This place is strange to me. These people ever so peculiar. They screamed to see me at their door. Told me to come in and take what I wanted - only I must not kill them - then fled, leaving me alone.
Such rudeness. When I only wished to ask if they knew where we were.
How did I get here? It's not my London home, or even the country estate. I do not even believe it to be England, for the residents spoke with the accents of frontiersmen.
And this place... so full of strange things, bizarre creations I know not names for.
Here in the cellar, it is quiet. There are vegetables. I know vegetables. Canned fruits. Sacks of older clothing. Boxes, wooden boxes I can stretch myself out upon.
There are no mirrors. I count this a blessing.
For when I look in a mirror, there is no I to see.
Therefore I ask: who am I? What have I become?
Surely this is not William. Not anymore...
*
They can't leave me down here forever.
They can't.
This is a joke, right?
Connor? Jasmine?
Someone answer me!
Angel thumps and beats in vain against the walls of his prison. The water slows his movements so the strongest blow is only a weak thump, no better than a human could do. His prison is too strong to fall for that - solid metal nails, solid metal box. A casket. He guesses they found that funny. Bury the dead man at sea. Never mind that he's aware of everything they did; that's part of the joke.
He gets to live.
He gets to live forever. Stuck here deep under the salty waters of the sea. Brine has long since filled his lungs from the times when he cannot help but scream. He knows it's useless, but he's unable to stop himself from trying.
Sometimes thinks frantically about sonar, but even as little as he understands about fishing he realizes people will just glance his box over and think it's debris. Shame people have to litter, dump their junk in the ocean. Drives away the fish. Then they'll sail on, forgetting about him. Forever.
How many people have done that so far?
He's lost track of the days, the nights. The tiniest bit of light filters down to where he is, shining through the slit of a window they were kind? cruel? enough to let him have. But it's stopped meaning anything.
It hits him again and again. He's alone. Betrayed. And who's going to come looking for him? Not Cordelia, not Wesley, not Fred nor Gunn. Why would they?
He's a dead man buried.
They'd probably rather he stayed that way.
And he will.
Forever.
The only thing that he can do is close his eyes. See other places, imagine himself in a different world. Living in imagination is so much better than this. He can pretend he's dry, and clean, lungs empty of everything except air when he chooses to breathe it in. Walking the streets of LA, spring-loaded stakes on his wrists. On edge, not edgy, just waiting and watching for vampires. Loving the opportunity to kill his own kind.
He's heard - though he's not seen - that Spike does the same thing, these days.
Spike... now that's someone he hadn't thought of before. Is there any way Spike can sense what's happened to him - where he is? Like he always used to know where his family is - was. Darla, Drusilla, Penn and Spike. Darla's gone. Penn's gone. Drusilla's slipped past him somewhere; he can't feel her. But she'd just laugh and clap her hands to see "Daddy playing in the water". But Spike... would he care enough to find a way to set him free?
Probably not. Last time, hot pokers. This time, eternity in a box. Not really showy enough for Spike, but as much as he hates Angel this should satisfy him completely.
Angel beats at the door again, weak and ineffectual.
Someone?
Anyone?
Help me!
*
Far and away, Drusilla is playing. She's built herself a cozy little nest, she has, all tucked away from the wicked world that lives outside. Little snacks wander in from time to time. They like her. Coo and cry about how pretty she is, and ask if she's got the "good stuff". And no, she must shake her head and pout, for she doesn't have what they seek. She has her dollies and her mirror, her bowl of water and her cards.
But they have what she wants. And her belly is full every night, though her little treats taste of nasty dirty drugs that make her head spin. She giggles and cuddles up in her sweet blankets to watch the stars dance then, listening to the stories that they have to tell.
Last night, they spun her a story that has her head alight, like a fire, with wonder and dismay and delight and unhappiness; and oh, she's all a-twirl...
Her slender little hands lift her scrying bowl and peer down into the depths. There's a corn dollie there, not porcelain as she likes them, coming all a-frayed in the water that's clear but tastes of salt. She hesitates, then drops to her knees to peek through the slats of another box at its brother doll, hiding in the dark. "If both of these gentles should happen to fall," she murmurs. "Ninety-eight bottles of blood on the wall. They've both gone down and broken their crowns."
She can't go and find them. They're too far away, and she likes it where she is, all safe and snug and fed with her treats that make the stars dance. But she can do this...
Dipping her hand into the bowl, she pulls out the dollie and shakes it hard. "Wake up," she coos. "Up, up, and see the light; the day is over and now it's night. See through me. Be through me. Look, Daddy. Look..."
*
Angel blinks his eyes. One minute, he's sure, he was sleeping. The weight of the ocean on him. Soaking wet from head to toe.
But now he's dry.
And in a - he sniffs, placing the odor of potatoes and mildewing clothes and rotting boxes - a cellar? The skin prickles on the back on his neck. It feels so... smells... but this isn't real. This can't be happening. He's hallucinating.
The floor is dirt beneath the soles of his shoes, and makes no sound as he steps forward. Even though he feels like a complete fool, he can't help but call out: "Hello?"
And he is answered, as he least expected, with a scream that curdles every drop of chilling blood in his veins: "Go away!"
*
No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell...
There is someone down here with me. Someone like me. Another dead man, stalking the darkness. I can hear him, not breathing. Not making a sound. Does he glide across the dirt as a proper ghost should, or do his bare toes dig in and leave ugly marks in the soil, as mine do?
In the tiniest bit of light that scuds in through the crack of curtains at the window, I see him as he comes closer. A tall man, and dark, with such a plain suit on that at first I think he is a servant. Oh, how ridiculously relieved I am! Mother must have heard about... this thing... that has happened to me, and sent someone to fetch me home. Safely to her.
Surely.
But no - when he opens his mouth, he too speaks like an American, and there is something in his voice that fills me with the greatest wash of fear, yea, like nothing I have ever felt before: "Hello?"
It bursts from me before I can stop it, for I am terrified and I do not know who or what I am nor what he is and I am like a little child as I cry it loud, loud, loud: "Go away!"
*
Having tipped the wooden box over on its side, Dru frowns at the two dollies stuffed within it. "They won't play nice," she scolds her favorite ring of stars. Dainty and disdainful, she makes a moue with her mouth. "Little boys who don't get along get no cakes and mice for tea. And you're hungry, aren't you? Pretty little boys."
She picks them up and places them closer together, the one touching the other. "Little boys who play nicely get special goodies." One finger strokes the dollie that had first been in the box. "You were such fun to play with, once upon a time, but now you've gone all wrong. It burns within you. Has someone set a match to your straw, and scalded out your mind? Daddy knows how to smash and mend, mend and smash.
"Here, then." She handles the two dolls gently as a baby sweet, and lies them side by side. "There," she coos, patting her hands together. "Play tender games, as once you did, and there'll be hot sugar syrup and salty sweets to lick all off your fingers..."
*
As he moves forward, a flash of light passes over the cringing creature's face and Angel can see who it is. "Spike?"
The vampire cringes and throws its hands over its head. "Go away, please, I beg of you!" comes out, muffled by his arms. "Have mercy, good sir!"
"Spike?" Angel creeps a little closer, his eyes adjusting now to the near-total dark. "It is you."
"No, no! I am no such creature. God have mercy on my soul and damn yours to hell if you do not cease this immediately; depart from here and leave me in peace, you creature of the very devil!"
That stuns; that wounds. And that voice... though it's coming from a body encased in a red silk shirt and jeans... he last heard it speak that way in a stable, in London, over a hundred years gone. It can't be. Can it? "William?" he asks slowly. "William, is that you?"
And William cringes, setting up a piteous wail.
Angel shuts his eyes and feels ill. Spike's gone utterly mad.
*
I cannot lie to myself anymore. I must face it, I must come to this conclusion: that I am dead. My heart does not beat - I have felt and felt for it, but ever more in vain - therefore there is no blood running through me. I need not breathe, I realize, for when I am calm I forget and then remember with a great start and intake of air. But it is useless to me. It smells of mustiness and ruin but does my body neither good nor ill.
And I crave something... thought truly, I do not know what. A cheroot? But I do not smoke.
Redness fills my mind. Salty, coppery, tangy-hot...
I know what I am. Vampire.
But I am also a logical man. I cannot be dead, yet sit here hiding alive. There are no such things as vampires; ergo, I am not one.
I am mad, then.
Utterly mad.
Perhaps this is not death, but the asylum. Is this man, then, whose angelic appearance so deceives me into thinking we are alike - is he my keeper? My friend? My - I know not what?
He calls me Spike, and a part of me acknowledges that name. But it is not so. It cannot be so. I am not this man he says I am. I am me. I am William. William. William!
*
"Play nicely!" Drusilla scolds, tapping one doll upon the nose. She rubs the tip of her finger on its straw head. "Trust in me, see as I see. Believe in your mind and not in your silly brain, Sweet William..."
*
"William," Angel says softly, creeping forward. "Do you know me?"
A shake of the head is all he gets, Spike's face still buried in the protective circle of his arms.
"I won't hurt you. I swear."
That gets a muffled laugh. "How can you hurt me?" Spike raises his face and his cheeks are wet with tears, something Angel's heard about but not seen since the early days, when he was truly William still. "My brain tells me we are both dead men. What else can you possibly do to me? Bring me back to life?"
"Maybe." Angel's reached Spike's side now. He sinks down on his heels. This close, he can see the faint trembling that racks the vampire's muscles. "Spike - William - what's happened to you?"
Spike laughs again, wildly this time. "I've no idea. I can see things, remember things, horrible crimes that I cannot have committed. I'm not that sort of man! I can taste..." he raises a hand to his throat. "Bittersweet copper. It fills me, floods me with its memory."
He looks up at Angel. "My God, sir. I recall you now. You are he who taught me to do such things. You're the one who made William a bad, bad man."
"I thought you were a good man," Angel says, wondering if he dares reach out and put a hand on the shaking shoulder. "William was a good man."
"But if I am dead? William no longer? Have I become this Spike you speak of?" Spike grips at his temples. "I've lost your face in my mind. You're a stranger to me; I only thought I knew you. Who are you to me, that you act as if you know me? Have I ever known you at all? Or is this all the product of a fevered brain?"
Angel can't bear it. He does reach out then, and touch Spike's shoulder. He doesn't know how, why, or by whose hand, but being brought here to his vampire-kin has saved him from the water. Maybe the price he has to pay is saving Spike from himself. "You know me," he says quietly. "We were close for a very long time."
Spike blinks. "Did you know Mother?"
Angel has to smile. "Not to speak to."
"Oh." Spike's face crumbled. "Then what were we to each other, then, that you know me so well? Who am I, sir? What am I, that we were once upon a time and now companions?"
Images of hot pokers run through Angel's mind. Visions of torture instruments laid out in clean and shining rows on a white towel. He hears phone calls from Giles, reporting to him how Spike's betrayed them all now.
Hears another one, reporting in wonder how Spike wept at Buffy's death. As he weeps now. As if his heart were breaking.
And he remembers William, as Spike seems to think himself, and what it took to gentle him to his hand the first time around.
"We were," he says softly, touching Spike's cheek with the back on his hand. "many things to each other. Enemies. Compatriots. But sometimes, we were also this..."
*
God help me! The creature has but touched my face, and I feel the unneeded breath quickening in my lungs like a maiden's. Had I a heart, I know for certain sure that it would beat fast and faster when he begins to stroke, ever so gently, with his fingers, rubbing the angle of my cheekbones. My eyes flutter shut under that touch, lost in the pleasure of it.
But I am not one of those men. Am I?
Perhaps I must be. It seems that I can smell things in the air now, beyond the dust and mold of the cellar I have hidden in. The wonder of it - I had not known that feelings - emotions - could have a scent! His lemon-tart doubt, his vinegar-wine fear... and the heavy maple sap-smell of his interest in me.
More, most shocking, I smell the blood in him, flowing downward between his thighs, pooling in his prick. Just so do I smell my own, driven fast and hard by the aroma of his desire for me. I groan as I too grow hard, the proof of my arousal aching against the stiff trousers that I wear.
To my shame, my lips part. "Angel...?" I whisper, ashamed of my voice. It sounds as if I need him, want him. But I am afraid of him. Am I not?
"Spike," he murmurs back. Then, to my shame - my relief - my joy - he crosses the boundary between us, and seals his lips to mine in the tenderest of gentle kisses...
*
Drusilla peeks out between her fingers at the two dollies, lying innocently side by side. "Oh, naughty boys," she chortles. "Naughty, wicked boys! Such good bad boys, that you must have a reward."
She dips a finger into her scrying bowl and stirs it until it swirls wildly round and round, then draws it out and sucks. "Taste and see, for the Man is good..." she giggles...
*
It's been over a century, but the taste of Spike's lips beneath his own is sweet as ever. Honey and cream, with the last lingering bits of blood from his recent, forgotten meal clinging to them. Angel cleans them with his tongue, lapping across the smooth pink surface in short quick strokes, savoring both the taste and the shocked - but excited - gasps that Spike is making.
Once upon a time, William would have known what to do, but this creature has no idea. So gently, gently, he guides hands shaking like leaves to rest atop his thighs, interlacing the fingers with his own. So long... it's been so long, and it was so good once upon a time...
The hunger's on him now, and it's hard to restrain himself. He has to go slow and gentle with this Williamish Spike, not to frighten him. But when he gasps and his mouth falls open, Angel can't resist darting his tongue in to tangle it with Spike's own, to tickle the roof of his mouth to lave the flesh with long, smooth strokes and quick jabs both.
Spike groans again, and of his own accord his arms come up around Angel's neck, drawing him closer yet. The kiss deepens as tentatively, shyly, his own tongue begins to play.
And Angel remembers: that's exactly how it was, way back when. He came to it naturally, but skittishly as a virgin. Coaxing him, that was the trick... showing him how good it could feel.
So instead of the rough grasp that Angelus had dealt out, his hand slides smoothly up Spike's leg, rubbing small circles as he goes, until it rests over the hard bulge at his crotch. He's so stiff with blood that the tip of his cock pokes out of his jeans, foreskin drawn back and bulging spongy, wet purple. The slit winks at him as a sly, all-knowing eye, beckoning him closer.
And though he would not break their kiss for anything else, he has to have a taste...
Slowly, slowly, Angel's clever fingers draw the zipper down, letting that prick emerge with a hunger that belies Spike's shocked gasp. Yes, and also belies by how it is that when he grips it in his hand, Spike throws back his head and moans like a wanton, cords on his neck tight from tension and need.
"Angel," he says softly. "My name is Angel, and you know who I am. You know who you are."
Spike shakes his head. "I am William," he manages to grind out. "Sweet mercy, do not stop, I beg you..."
Angel dips his mouth to the meaty head of Spike's cock, running his tongue around it to catch every drop of the leaking juices. "Angel," he repeats, stubbornly. "You remember me."
"I swear to you, I do not..."
"Then let's see, my boy, if you remember this." And Angel attacks in earnest, sliding his mouth down over Spike's prick until his nose is buried in crisp brown curls, sucking fiercely at it on his way back up. Lavishly licking it with sweeps of his tongue, nibbling at the sides, kissing his way up and down - deep, wet kisses. Catching every bit of pre-come as it oozes out.
At his side, Spike's hands are curled into fists, clenching and unclenching. His breathing is fast and light as a hummingbird's wings. As his sac draws up, tight and then tighter, Angel grips the base of his cock and asks, one last time: "Who am I?"
And Spike, the light of orgasm bright in his eyes, gives a great shudder and answers...
*
Ohfuckohfuckohfuck don't stop don't stop that now -
"Angel," he gasps. "You bastard. You're Angel!"
Angel looks up at him, eyes unreadable. "That's right," he says flatly, and lets go his punishing grips. He sinks his mouth down one more time, and bites, and -
Spike explodes, pulse after pulse of sperm shooting into Angel's mouth. He thrusts his hips as he's wanted to, grips tight around the other vampire's neck, pumping hard as he can and watching Angel gag trying to take it all in.
His head is light and his mind dazed when his body shudders to a stop. "Angel," he murmurs, shaking himself lightly. "You're Angel, and I am Spike. How did I..." He stares about himself. "Where are we?"
Angel doesn't offer to clean Spike up, or to tuck him away, zip him up, none of those things. He sits back on his heels, the look in his eyes still and distant as mountain ranges.
He does allow himself one last, soft caress across that carven cheek. "Go home," he whispers. "Go home to Buffy. I don't know what happened to you, or how, but let her take care of you."
Spike's head is clouding over again. He's not William... is he? William is a bad, bad man, and he's a good vampire, he even got his soul for her... so she'd have what she deserved... "Buffy," he repeats. Stumbling to his feet, he nods roughly. "Home to Buffy."
He blinks owlishly at Angel. "What about you? Where will you go?"
"Anywhere I can," Angel answers seriously. "Anywhere but there."
Spike looks him up and down, and he knows, he's about to make the offer: come with me - when suddenly, they hear the sound of water, a great gushing of water, and Angel...
...and Angel is gone...
*
"Oops," Drusilla chortles insincerely, plopping the one corn dollie back into her bowl of water. "Not your time yet."
She prods at the other one. "But you, all poisoned with her pretty eyes and hair, you run along home to her now. I won't be seeing you, but I've a feeling that you'll be seeing me... won't you, Spike, my pretty Spike? My own Sweet William, you'll never guess what's to come next..."
* * * * *
For those Interested:
Sonnet #71
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.