"Tell me where you go."

"Go?" Angel asked.

Spike brushed a stray hair out of his eyes, momentarily distracted by its length, much longer than it’d been in fifty years. "When you touch me," he started, fingers still curling in his hair, "you leave. I can see it in your eyes."

"I don’t," Angel stopped. He did leave, there was no use denying that, he couldn’t help but wander away from this dreary room, the only light coming from a dusty lamp casting hollow shadows throughout the small space. How they called this living he wasn’t sure, but it suited their needs most nights. It gave them a place to hide from whatever instrument of the apocalypse followed them that week, a place to sleep and dream of brighter times.

Spike rolled over and kissed at his lover’s neck, pushing away chestnut locks of hair, so much straighter than his own. "Just wonderin’ if it’s to a better place, or maybe worse." More gentle kisses, tired kisses, made in an effort to ignore the sun rising outside and the sense of being trapped inside four walls that would never resemble a home. "Wonder if I’d like it there."

Angel sighed into Spike’s touch. In moments like this, where there were no demons to fight or monsters to chase, Spike was almost soft. It sickened him. Spike was never meant to be soft, he was meant to be hard and violent, that was his purpose. Or at least it had been once, but no more. Maybe now he was nothing at all, just the empty space Angel filled when thoughts of lost friends and lovers overtook him. No more than a shadow of the vibrant youth who had traversed all of Europe at his heels, yet still beautiful in an almost frightening way. The perfect distraction if not the perfect companion.

Rolling over to return Spike’s kiss, Angel wondered where he did go. He knew it was far away, but even he couldn’t keep track of all the places his mind wandered to when Spike made love to him. Spike’s kisses were soft still but with a hunger that always made it feel like the first time their lips had met, scared but desperate to find a meaning there, an explanation of what they were meant to share. How many years ago was that? Angel could hardly remember anymore, decades and decades he supposed. No matter really, the hair changed, the clothes evolved, but some things never did. Blue eyes haunted him in every version of the kiss he could remember.

No. That was a lie.

Sometimes the eyes that haunted him blazed green.

*****

When he closed his eyes, letting Spike’s hands worry over his wrists and biceps as they kissed, Angel saw hazel colored eyes, frozen in terror in the forests. Unbelieving eyes stared back at him, wary above a mouth on the verge of screaming. The fingers trailing over his body now held none of the fierce grip he expected as he pulled himself back to the present. There were no chains to bind him here, no Slayer’s arms clenched at the ready, unsure of whether to reach out and touch or take a defensive stand and fight.

Spike was like that sometimes even still. Knowing they only had each other now, not trusting that either of them deserved to have any comfort at all, even comfort that came in the form of an ensouled vampire caged within a tattered roadside motel.

Angel didn’t know if they deserved it either. Angel had burned every moment he was with Buffy, after he had returned from hell he thought of her constantly. He pictured her that night, their first together; soft and wanting, skin cold from the rain. Cold like every lover he’d taken in two hundred years. He took a sad comfort in the memory. If she’d been warm or anything but timid it would have broke him, pulled him from the moment, given him time to harness the guilt that as it was didn’t come till later. Too late.

Looking back it would have been better. Better to remember that she was not like him. Instead he had wrapped himself in trembling flesh and let her guide the way, slow love making like in the movies. Air filled with I love yous and promises that in the morning the world would be the same safe place it had been when she opened her heart to him. In those memories Angel plays the fool and thinks he deserved that time in hell and more.

*****

"Is it only Buffy?" Spike asked, knowing that the sighs coming from Angel’s lips signaled memories neither of them spoke about often.

"Sorry?"

"When you close your eyes, am I even there?" Spike wondered aloud, sliding down Angel’s body, kissing each curve and dip of soft skin until he reached the object of his desire.

"You’re there sometimes." Angel answered truthfully, head lolling against the pillow as Spike’s fingers formed a curling sheath around his cock and began a lazy rhythm.

A pause to the touch warned Angel that he was expected to elaborate.

"I see us in London a lot, those first months before Darla came back." The grip tightened and Angel fought the urge to look into Spike’s eyes, not wanting to see the same crushing defeat there that he found in William’s so many times their first weeks together. "You know, after the fight, after Drusilla left to find her. The first days we were alone together. I think about that a lot."

"The first nights you mean," Spike said

The trace of a smile crept over Spike’s lips, lips so close to Angel’s body he could feel the false breath emanating over his erection.

"Nights," Angel echoed.

*****

The walls were draped in a burgundy velveteen that shimmered in the lamp light. The contrast of deep red cloth against William’s pale skin was gorgeous to Angelus’ mind. Body held against the wall by sheer will, clearly ready to drop from the exhaustion of the night’s hunt through half of London. Even as tired as he clearly was William indulged Angelus, held his body erect as long as hands kept touching him. Unrelenting hands finding each nerve within him, angelic mouth smiling each time the boy cried out, be it from pleasure or pain.

William wasn’t sure Angelus knew how to tell the difference. Any sound elicited was music to this one’s ears. William had learned that the first night Drusilla had gone and not returned. He had learned that even the smallest inconsequential tool in the vampire’s hand was enough to bring him to his knees the once and make him beg for more the second. An enviable skill that he hoped to someday attain, if only he could convince Angelus to teach him.

Angel cringed slightly at the memory of William’s myriad payments for his lessons. Scenes of come and blood drenched bodies, rutting over and under the carnage they had left in their wake. This molded man, formed with his own two hands. Hands that now, a century later wandered that same skin frantically searching for a way to apologize. Hands hoping to wrench forgiveness where his mouth dared not. Afraid to look into pale blue eyes that were never accusatory, simply questioning.

Spike didn’t really want to know where Angel’s mind wandered to, Angel knew that. It was simply bed chatter, a way to break the silence. No more meaning to it than asking a coworker how the coffee tasted that morning. No one could tell you how the liquid would taste in your own mouth any more than they could tell you how much the words of forgiveness would burn your ears if they dared be spoken.

*****

Pulling Spike back up from his task, taking a moment to search his face for some hint that he too felt the pain of all they had lost, Angel let him go, disappointed. He carried enough guilt for both of them, but mixed in were memories worth saving. Worth revisiting each night as his cock and mouth glided over Spike’s body. Visions of Spike fighting at Buffy’s side, the three of them together, the two of them on their own, always in motion. They never stand still in Angel’s mind and as each year passed he felt more free to follow them from memory to memory, watching them win and fail with equal pangs of joy and remembrance of the world that was now lost to him.

So he closed his eyes again, and as he entered willing flesh Angel thought he could see hints of green mixed with the blue that flash back at him, smiling eyes reminding him that at least he still has something to trigger the memories and open the gateway to wherever it is that he does go. Wandering in aquamarine he keeps searching for that perfect happiness once more.

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