Rather Be In Copenhagen
Down below, waiting and fucking waiting in the damp and the cold, Spike'd thought it couldn't get much worse. He'd been in too many scrapes to count in the last forty-odd years, all the way from old Shanghai, which, actually, wasn't too bad a spot to wait out the Great War, to the Swiss Alps, even back on the London streets for a bit in the 20s before heading back to the continent and stumbled into the riotous, gorgeous, utterly-fucking-fabulous gin-scented whirling air of Weimar.
That was some good times, those days in Berlin, with all the pansy boys in smudged kohl and tuxedo'd birds with curves busting out all over, and he and Dru, they had themselves a time.
So, yes, there were scrapes but more than that, there was fun, everything gone slippery and saturated with sex and booze, like everyone and their sexed-up little sister was a vamp, and it was all dancing and political theater and the blood, the blood tasted like ichor and ambrosia and the sweat of good old randy gods.
When things started to change, Spike'd been too busy to notice, and wasn't that just the way things always went. Dru vanished one Friday morning on a tramp steamer to Denmark, and he'd've gone along, only Copenhagen gave him the willies, all gray and damp and Lutheran-sober.
Right now, though, stuck on this fucking beach, huddling away from the sun and fire, he's homesick for those feudal old streets and the bitter ale and the pinched look on all those pale faces. He'd rather be in Copenhagen or down in the hatch of that damn sub than up here with --
"You really don't shut up, do you?" Angelus asks, drawing the canvas more snugly to the ground and shaking out his hair. "Stupid to think you might've grown up."
"And you, too," Spike says, hugging his knees to his chest. "Thought it was bad down there, all that sweat and the gasping and dark. Startin' to seem like paradise."
"Anything's paradise," Angelus mutters. He pokes the fire with his long stick -- no getting close to danger for the old man, never would if he could help it -- and rocks a little on his heels. "You want to help me with this, or are you happy like that?"
"Happy like what?"
"Like a half-drowned rat-baby screeching for his mam," Angelus says smugly.
"Didn't want to swim. Your idea to swim," Spike says and kicks the fire with the toe of his soggy boot. He's wearing one of the sailors' jumpers and it weighs approximately two stone now that it's wet, and it's starting to steam since the fire's finally picking up. "Could've been nice and snug down there. Plenty of air once your new boy got the engines going, plenty of --"
"Firm young flesh?" Angelus looks over his shoulder and Spike grinds his teeth at the knowledge silkening out that jibe, at the way a flash of big dark eyes under that stupid brow that's heavier than Alley Oop's and the stretch to those Atlas-shoulders can still, after forty years and countless curses to his name, makes Spike's hollow chest wrench approximately 15° around. Never mind how well the prat still seems to know him.
"Firm young flesh, hot fresh blood, all that," Spike says morosely, balling his hands into fists and drawing them up under the sodden cuffs of the jumper. Christ, his tongue's going thick and dry just talking about it.
Angelus sits back heavily next to Spike and checks the damn tarp again, then the fire, then the tarp.
"Christ, man, we're stuck here til nightfall," Spike says, slapping Angelus's hand away from the tarp. "If the sun was gonna come in, it'd have done it by now."
"Can't be too careful."
"You're fussier than an wrinkled old biddie." Spike wants to edge away, but this lean-to that Angelus whipped up isn't exactly generous in layout. Stuck in here for hours and hours with the Great Vanishing Sire: Yeah, he'd much rather be in Copenhagen. Jammed up against the great meaty bulk of the man Spike had sworn he'd stake on sight, soaked to the bone and then some, hiding from the only thing that could dry them out. Paradise.
"Why'd you get to turn him, anyway?" Spike asks, the injustice of it all slapping him straight to the gut. "You're, what, souled and working for the war effort, and you get to taste him?"
Angelus frowns so deeply that if he's not careful, he might get wrinkles in the next century. "Had to be done."
"So you say," Spike says, resentment waking him up out of his morose gloom and tingling like St. Elmo's fire down to his toes. "Selfish, is what I'd say."
"Shut yer flap, William."
Oh, now there's some good old Mick fire in the belly. Spike shakes the curls out of his eyes and squares his shoulders before slinging his arm familiarly around Angelus's neck. "You want me to keep quiet? Eh, Liam?"
He's cheating, skipping right to the final poker in the side, but Spike doesn't care. He doesn't have much time, all things considered, before Angelus hits the road again and leaves him, and he's stuck in a lean-to on the rocky beach of...he doesn't know where. Maine, Canada, maybe Virginia. It all looks the same in the dark. There're rocks under his arse and rocks in Angelus's head and Spike's cold and hungry and bored.
And now he's splayed out on his back, a little too close to the fire even for his derring-do and he's got one very large, very angry sire kneeling over him and ripping at the wet jumper and grunting and cursing.
"Need a little help?" Spike asks, feeling his mouth curl into its familiar defensive smirk. "The American Navy doesn't dress its boys in anything but the finest --"
But those big hands are successful, splitting open the jumper, and they're cold and damp now on Spike's colder skin, sliding around as Angelus closes his eyes and grunts at Spike to shut up, just shut up, fucking shut up, you piece of shit --.
"See your vocabulary hasn't improved either," Spike says before his arms are shoved over his head and one ragged cuff stuffed in his mouth.
Most likely, Angelus is feeling the feeding. No turnings in nearly fifty years, Spike heard that -- and that's a shame and a misery and an entirely suitable punishment for the blubbering, buggering git -- but Spike prefers to believe -- and who's going to stop him, on a rocky beach in the arse-end of America, under a lean-to, from believing whatever he damn well pleases? -- that it's history and memory at work in Angelus's hands. In his mouth, raggedly- fanged, and in his eyes, brass-bright and gleaming in the low firelight, and he's yanking down the fine Nazi leather trousers over Spike's hips like he's hungry and can't wait.
Because it's them, and the scrape of fangs and the eager dumb hands tell him that he's right, it's them, and Angelus was always going to come back.
Spike spits out the gag and raises his head, meeting Angelus's eyes as the big git's mouth descends over Spike's dick, fangs and all, and the pain of it is brighter than the fire and hotter, too, and Angelus reaches up, slapping Spike before wrenching him around, pushing him onto his hands and knees.
"Always knew you'd be back," Spike gets out before there's a hand over his mouth and another prodding at his hole, barely slicked with seawater and spit and his own blood.
Just like it ought to be, pebbles and shells grinding into his bare knees and Angelus's wrist to his mouth as he pushes his fat dick up and inside, tearing out forty years and replacing it with the sharp glowing present. Spike bites down on the wrist and tastes the new boy's blood, apple-pie innocence twining through the old, perfect taste that's all Angelus, peat and tears and grandeur.
"Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth --" Angelus gasps out, a word per deep, breaching thrust, hot words in Spike's ear that flicker and die like sparks off the fire. "William, shut --"
And Spike's quiet, gnawing and suckling at something he never thought he'd taste again, and Angelus leaves his wrist there, gives it to him, as much as he wants, while he fucks Spike open and down, grinding him into the pebbles and shell-shards, open and wide and tight, so deep the head of his cock must be nudging at Spike's useless lungs, and then Angelus is roaring, king of the fucking forest, pulling at Spike's own cock and telling him to come, ordering and urging, and the spasms break out down Spike's back, chasing Angelus's orgasm, and they come together.
For the crackling instant it takes a twig to brighten, burn, and fall away to ash, they are quiet. Shuddering here like two animals, locked together and united, and quiet.
It'll be dark soon and Spike would rather be anywhere but here on this godforsaken beach, watching Angelus walk away. But that's not here yet, the twig's still alive with light, and all is right with the world.