Once, You Were A Right Bastard
Angel stared unblinkingly at the city he had set out to protect. The lights seemed especially bright on this most sacred of nights, but that was likely his own flight of fancy. He knew he'd come to be something of a sentimental fool over the years and living amongst humans -young humans even- for the past several decades had only increased that tendency in himself. Angel wasn't sure whether that was a character flaw or not: sentimentality.
Spike snorted as the silence was just growing more comfortable for him. Naturally he wouldn't have any respect for silence; Spike had never known how to keep his mouth shut. Angel's mouth curved upward in a sneaky smile as he reminisced on how that tendency had once been rather damaging for Spike when he was a fledgling under Angelus's tutelage.
"Staring out at it going to solve anything is it? Are you thinking that by inflicting that bloody awful brood of yours on the skyline will cause it to miraculously shift into something more pleasing for His Lordship?"
Angel rolled his eyes expressively, "Spike, can't you just appreciate the moment? It's Christmas Eve."
"I was never religious," Spike scoffed.
Angel nodded, accepting the jibe. That much, he'd always known. Angel had never been particularly religious himself until the obsession had overtaken him after he was turned. There were times, when he was feeling particularly reflective, that Angel realized that it was mostly Darla's fault that he preyed so fiendishly and so frequently on those most sacred of innocents. She had been very hard to impress and keeping her impressed had kept her happy; Angel had loved making Darla happy.
"Dru---she was," Spike offered, settling himself on top of Angel's very expensive desk.
Angel would have told him to move but there really wasn't any point in it; Spike wouldn't have obeyed him and it would have only served to either start them fighting or start Spike back to mocking him. As neither was a pleasant option, Angel kept his mouth shut and only made enough concession that he moved away from the window. Somehow, he wasn't ready to have the view sullied from Spike's mere presence.
"She was," Angel agreed without even knowing why.
The lights seemed to glow brighter as they reflected off the fake platinum of Spike's hair. Angel was mesmerized as much by this presentation of this man he'd come to know far better than he'd ever wanted to over the course of a century of association. He could still see William lingering beneath Spike's harsh, Big Bad veneer. Angel thought if he looked hard enough, he might be able to see the boy buried far, far deep on Spike's inside. The boy who had loved his mother and believed in Father Christmas until he was well into his majority. The boy who had written ardent -if awful- poetry to a woman who was as much an ideal as a reality. The boy who had fallen prey to a pretty girl who would have once been an angel herself, or at least a saint if another kind of angel hadn't found her fit to feast on.
"Was she always mad? I've wanted to know for---it's been ages since I've cared. I love her and you never did so don't you tell me otherwise. I think you owe me that much," Spike barely paused in his indignant spiel before gesticulating back towards the twinkling cityscape, "It is sodding Christmas Eve. You said so yourself. I think I'm deservin' of an answer to one simple question."
"I wasn't going to refuse to answer. She wasn't always so bad, but she always had The Sight. When I found her, she already thought she was mad. I---I just proved her right."
Angel rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously, refusing to meet Spike's gaze. He was offering an explanation without giving away anything that Spike didn't already know. It was ancient history anyway. Who cared if she'd been a complete lunatic before or after she was turned? She was a psychopath now and that was the only reason Spike still loved her. Angel had to believe that. There had to be a reason that he didn't---
"You were a right bastard," Spike spoke softly, his voice a whisper on the breeze that carried Angel back in time to Christmases filled with wicked laughter, hot blood, and even hotter passions.
"I'm not that man anymore," Angel wasn't even sure they were arguing. Talking itself always seemed like arguing with Spike, so it was hard to tell most days.
"You could be though. One moment of happiness. True happiness. How hard is that to get anyway? A good shag? A last fag? It wouldn't take so much for me, I think. You have to sacrifice a Slayer's virginity in an act of true bleeding love for the first happenstance. The second? A slip of a spell. I'm thinking this time----it might not take so much at all."
Spike was leaning in and Angel couldn't stand for their mouths to be so close and not be breathing all at the same time. He forced air into his dead lungs and the scent of Spike's infuriating, exasperating, intoxicating self nearly overwhelmed him with memories.
"Why did you ask about Dru? Why now? Why tonight?"
Someone had to say something before they both went crazier than Drusilla could ever go.
Spike looked annoyed -also not that uncommon when he was with Angel- but he answered dutifully enough.
"Was thinking how much she'd liked the lights. She had me string some up around the place we were staying at no matter what kind of place it was. We always had us lights. I even had to manage candles one year because we were living in a crypt that didn't have the luxury of air vents let alone electric sockets. You think I'm thinkin' on her now, do you?"
Angel's mouth remembered how to smile without anything more than mirth. It had just been a long time since he'd found a reason to make it do so.
"I would hope not, considering the look you were giving me."
"Look! I were givin' no such thing. You've gone momentarily blind from staring at all those lights too long, your own self. Besides, if it were a look, it was only that we've had some memories that weren't all bad."
Spike never knew when to stop defending himself, no matter whether the fight was physical or verbal; he just kept pounding away until he got taken down himself. Angel wasn't sure when that had become endearing to him, but he was beginning to think the sickening sweetness of the season was affecting him in an unexpected way. He'd never thought he was going to end up spending his Christmas Eve reminiscing pleasantly with Spike.
Maybe Angel was going a bit mad.
"We did have some good memories. Pleasant at least," Angel amended.
"We could have more," Spike leaned forward again and this time, Angel knew he was going to try to get more than information from him.
Angel could still remember exactly how Spike tasted, how he'd kissed, how he'd sucked his cock and loved it. Angel could feel stolen blood rushing through his dead system, forcing his body to remember passion even as he rejected its intoxicating allure. Things had only been so simple between them once: a kiss, a shag, a moment shared in time and away laughing on another deviant rampage, then they'd both went back to being who they had always been.
"Angel?"
Wesley paused almost audibly in the doorway; Angel tried to take in how much the former Watcher could see -or may be inferring- of the situation. Spike on the desk, leaning in, the two of them talking in hushed tones, and Angel was smiling.
"I'm so sorry. I was---that is, you didn't appear downstairs for the party, so I thought I'd---well, Fred will doubtlessly be in the laboratory. I should go. I'll find her," Wesley stammered and stuttered and startled himself back out the door with Angel calling weakly after him.
"Wes!"
Angel had half-risen from his seat, hands still pushed inches from Spike on the desk. He looked up at Spike and for once, he was the one begging silently for approval.
"I----"
Spike snorted and flapped a hand inelegantly at him.
"Get on then! I always knew you were a ponce. First the Slayer, then her Watcher? Are you sure the madness isn't in the blood?"
Angel protested half-heartedly on his way out the door, "I never went near Giles."
Looking back at the sad slump of Spike's shoulders, Angel couldn't resist adding, "The same can't be said for Dru though. Apparently, Ripper was a complete bastard himself at one point in time. That does it for her too."
Spike's eyes widened exactly how Angel had hoped they would. He shut the door behind him with a satisfying thunk and took off after one very confused Wesley Wyndham-Price.