Seven Letters

Summary: Crosswords

Our scene opens on two men in a basement apartment in Los Angeles. The noise of the city is a constant vibration; men shouting, cars wailing. The sounds of life and death.

Inside, however, the only sounds are the occasional clacking of pool balls, the scratching of a ball-point on a newspaper and voices. A deceiving image of suburbia.

"Hit me," says the slender blond at the pool table, lining up another off centre shot. The darker man glances down at his paper, pen poised.

"5 across: The Something of Casterbridge, a novel by Thomas Hardy."

"Hardy? What a melodramatic bloody ponce!" The roll of a ball falling into the corner pocket and the rattle as it goes down. A question from the chair.

"But do you know it?"

"'Course I do! It's 'Mayor', isn't it? Some yarn about a drunkard selling his wife or some such drivel. It's bollocks - you'd love it."

The dark one scribbles it in and another few minutes pass, with only uttered curses from the blond.

"Damn."

The slender one pauses his game again, snorting in exasperation, and glances over. "What is it now?"

"I'm stuck again. Who wrote 'The Three Musketeers'?"

The darker man watched a frown crease his companion's pale forehead and an expression of confusion cross his face.

"The one with the beagle in it? Dogtanian?"

". . . Doesn't matter. I've got it now: Dumas."

The only reply was vicious tear as the cue ripped felt and the rumble of a dozen curses repeated over and over, the kind especially reserved for condemning acts of stupidity.

"Buggershitshitarsefuckshittybuggercrapwanktwatbuggery!"

"Spike, shut up and help me finish the crossword." It was a command more than a request and Spike abandoned his game to sit on the floor before Angel.

"Don't know why you're bloody asking me anyway."

Angel sighed and peered over the top of his newspaper. So it was going to be one of those nights? He supposed it was about due.

"I'm asking you because it will keep you near me, and give me a little time with you outside of chasing demons and monsters. I'm asking you because you have lived long enough to have learnt six different ways of saying 'opposed' and because you once used the word 'peruse' in an everyday sentence. Because you're a fox and not a hedgehog. Because I want to. Because I can. Because,"

"Peaches?"

A metal girder dropped in front of his train of thought, Angel blinked slowly before looking down and saw Spike pulling his 'my relative's a bloody lunatic' face again.

"What?"

"I just meant that I can't spell for toffee."

Silence like the end of the world. Realisation hitting like a penny the size of a planet. Embarrassment like having a wet dream at your grandmother's house.

Angel coughed then looked to the peroxide vampire. "18 across: What is the common name of the Crotalus?"

"Bloody hell! How many letters?"

"11."

Spike's pink tongue protruded from the corner of his mouth as he thought, and Angel smothered a grin. The other vampire was so cute when he wasn't being an obnoxious brat.

Finally, as he knew he would, Spike got huffily to his feet and glared accusingly at his grandsire.

"What is it then, you great poof?"

The word came out quietly. "Rattlesnake."

Spike slapped his forehead in anger. "How the hell was I supposed to know that? I bet you rigged it, you wanker! Give it here!"

Angel held grimly on to his newspaper, speaking calmly. "Spike, it's a national paper, I didn't write it. Sit down."

"God!" Spike shouted suddenly, "You treat me like such a fucking child, like I only died yesterday! I'm over a century and change for fuck's sake! And how the hell was I supposed to know it was a bloody rattlesnake?"

Angel did like all the magazines said and counted to ten before replying. It didn't work, but he felt better for the attempt.

"Didn't you ever write a wee ditty for Cecily and use it?"

"They weren't sodding dittys! They were love poems, straight from the," Spike caught the expression of sublime amusement on Angel's face and hastily changed tack, "And I wouldn't call her a rattlesnake anyway, you bogtrotting pansy! No wonder you've still got your sanity if you call your women snakes!"

"It could just be that my partner isn't giving me 'perfect happiness'."

The blow reached its target and Angel regretted it the moment the words escaped his lips. The blond's face went first completely white, then flushed red with rage. The older man waited for the explosion but it didn't come, and instead Spike turned away from him. When he spoke his voice was perfectly composed, without a trace of anger, but Angel could see Spike's hands tremble as they searched though his pockets for a cigarette.

"So you think that's it? Do you think that's why your soul hasn't disappeared?"

Angel frowned at the slender back. "I... "

"Don't speak to me.

"How long have I been here, with you? Nine moths? Ten? And for how long have we slept in the same bed? You shower me with sounds of longing and flowery words, as if you'd been the poet, and you think I don't make you happy? What do you think happiness is?"

Angle gaped, unable to form a response. Spike hadn't sworn once! Then he realised a reply was expected but the other got there first.

"Do you miss me when I leave you, without telling you where I'm going?"

The blond had left Angel three times in their months together, with no warning before he left or an explanation when he returned. Angel had felt as if his heart had dropped from his chest every time.

"I miss you like I miss the sun."

Spike nodded. "And what do you feel when I return, time after time? Is that not derived from happiness?"

"That is relief or, or yes. Happiness."

Spike allowed a smile to grace his soft lips, but the other vampire didn't see it. Some of the initial anger was fading now, to be replaced with a fiery vein of fury and he intended to make full use of it.

"What about those moments in the middle of operas or concerts of tasteless meals in snotty restaurants when I see you relax and look at me? When I see you breathe softly and smile? Is that not happiness?"

"It is."

The blond turned back to face Angel, the newspaper now abandoned on the floor, and he advanced. In Spike, the other could see silhouettes of campfires dancing on cave walls, and his eyes reflected centuries of man's violence. A predator, this one, no matter his origin or skin. Spike was the hunter in Eden, the Victorian image of death abroad. Death reached out a pale hand and touched Angel's face with on long finger. Out of the corner of his eye, the elder could see black nail polish.

Quietly, Spike explored the other's face with his hands as if he were a sculptor, hired to reproduce the features in clay. The cool digits rested over the deep eye sockets and lingered on the lips before moving to stroke his cheeks, memorising every millimetre of flesh.

Then he lunged forward and plundered Angel's mouth, dragging his tongue across his canines and filling both their mouths with blood. Spike sucked on his lover's full bottom lip and bit down, so that Angel's blood mixed with his own. They gulped the coppery fluid and Spike pulled away, his mouth stained scarlet.

"And this? This blood is not happiness? This electricity between us is not happiness?" He inclined his head to the side and a smirk played on lips that were swollen. Again he leaned toward the other vampire, and spoke directly into his ear.

"What about that moment just before you erupt inside me? When you're surrounded by my body and all you can think about is pounding harder and faster to reach that penultimate climax? Is that not perfect happiness?"

Then he was gone across the room once more, his hand on the door. Angel gaped, trying to order his train of thought, and waved for Spike to stop in his movement.

"Spike!"

He turned so slowly Angel imagined a lifetime had been and gone before he could see those frozen water eyes again. His lover's voice was uncaring, almost withering in it's nonchalance.

"What?"

"If I have spoken rashly, forgive me. We hurt each other in ways no one else can, simply because we know each other so well. Because we love each other."

Spike treated him to a quirk of his scarred eyebrow and a curl of his lips. "I can give you perfect happiness then?"

Angel's reply was a breath of speech. "Yes."

His blond lover came back to sit on the floor before him, cross-legged and elbows resting on denimed knees, cigarette held high.

"So ask me another."