Cordelia falls wearily into a chair. "Angel," she whines, "can you turn up the air conditioning again?"
I grimace. We really can't afford the air conditioning, given the Credit Card Incident and a few Public Indecency fines I've had to pay lately due to Spike's... errr... inventive behavior. The fountain outside Barnes & Noble, you see, was just the beginning. Due to the holiday season, Spike has been in an, um, festive mood lately. To put it lightly, he wants to fuck. Constantly. Anywhere and everywhere. Public places an extra plus. Public places hung with greenery and lights, super-plus. I asked him once how Dru had made it through a hundred and seventeen holiday seasons with him in one piece; he simply gave me a lewd grin and mentioned a tryst to Israel in 1972: "You know their Christmas lasts for *eight days* over there, Peaches? I mean, *wow.* That was *great.*" I rolled my eyes, tried briefly to explain Hanukkah to him, and gave up.
How come *I'm* the one who ended up in Hell? Because even at my worst, I was never half so offensive as Spike.
Spike, at the moment, is making an absolute mess in the big kitchen right next to the hotel's lobby. I can hear him in there, tossing things around in his crazed determination to mix together some bizarre iced alcoholic drink. For his credit, he isn't bitching about the current heat wave like my employees are. Then again, he doesn't have a body temperature.
Wesley suddenly tosses the book he's reading halfway across the room. "It just isn't *right*!" he shouts in frustration.
I turn to him with what I pray is a placid expression. "What isn't right, Wesley?" I say calmly. It could be anything. The book. His tea. Foreign affairs. The problem with Wes is that he thinks even more than I do- if you can believe that- and doesn't provide listeners with any prelude when his internal dialogue suddenly metamorphoses into spoken word.
He gestures emphatically at the sunny day outside. "This. This- warmth. At Christmastime! It's just *wrong.*"
I remind myself that this is only his second Christmas in California. "We're in L.A., Wesley. What did you expect? Snow?"
"Snow would be *great,* Cordelia sighs, grabbing a file off the desk and fanning herself with it. "I used to spend Christmas in Aspen-"
"It *would* be nice." Spike appears in the doorway, sipping on his obnoxious, brightly colored concoction. "Weasley's right, for once. Can't have a heat wave at Christmastime. It's right unseemly."
Gunn looks up from his magazine at the roomful of displaced Europeans and former Aspen-visitors as if we're all insane. "I've *never* seen snow," he says flatly. "Not at Christmas, not ever."
Cordelia gasps in shock. "*Never?*"
He shrugs. "Well, on T.V."
"That's terrible," she exclaims. "Snow is so wonderful- it's pretty and it's-"
"-cold, and wet, and miserable, and inconvenient," I interject. No one, deep down, really likes snow. Especially Spike. If you think he's cold-natured now, you should have seen him in Austria back in the days before central heating. "It makes the roads dangerous, destroys the power and phone lines, and kills homeless people. Let's be honest here."
"Ebenezer Scrooge," Spike mutters, sidling over to the tree to nab a candy cane.
"Don't touch the tree." After the last incident, Kate gave Angel Investigations an early Christmas present of a roll of "Police Line- Do Not Cross" tape. The bright yellow tape is now strung merrily around the latest incarnation of the Angel Investigations Christmas Tree. I'm not taking any chances.
"Wanker." Spike ignores my command, unwraps the candy cane, and begins to go down on it.
Really.
He sits across from me, where Wesley with his book, Gunn with his magazine, and Cordelia with her daytime television will not notice his exploits, and performs the kind of oral act that gets U.S. presidents into trouble on the defenseless candy cane. He pushes the stick of peppermint slowly past smirking lips and wiggles his eyebrows at me suggestively, then torturously pulls it out again, working his tongue around the end. I shift uneasily in my chair. Oh, to be that candy cane.
"Angel?"
I start suddenly and realize that Cordelia has been talking to me. "Huh? What?"
She rolls her eyes. "I *said,* you can turn off the air now. It feels like it's cooled off some."
"Or maybe you could just learn how to work the air conditioner," I mutter, standing up and making my way over to the thermostat. Spike glances over his shoulder, watching my every move, and slides the candy cane between his lips again. I swallow nervously. I've expressively forbidden him to give me a hardon in front of my employees, but does he listen? Of course not.
"Angel," Cordelia snaps, "the air? It's getting cold in here."
"Uhhuh," I murmur absently, reaching up to adjust the temperature without taking my eyes off Spike. Spike and that candy cane. Spike, ravaging that cady cane with his exquisitely talented tongue-
"Umm," I say nervously, "I'm, ah, gonna go up to my room for a minute, and, uh, look for the Critical Analyses of Blood Rites of Outer Pavro Demons-" I start towards the stairs. Spike will get the hint.
He stands up quickly. "Right. And I'm gonna go-"
"If you're gonna go have sex, just say so," Cordelia interjects, flipping through his magazine. "We're already as emotionally scarred as we're gonna get."
"Right," Spike retorts. "As I was saying, I'm gonna go shag the Great Poof now."
"Spike!" I exclaim, horrified. Cordelia makes a disgusted face, Wesley cringes in embarrassment, and Gunn simply chuckles. In response, my insolent Childe brings his teeth down on the end of the candy cane, breaking off the end and causing me to wince.
"Aren't you glad you don't have a circulation?" he snickers as he pulls me into the bedroom and shoves me on the bed. "Or you'd be as red as a beet around those wankers all the time."
I pull him down on top of me and capture his mouth in a bruising kiss. "Shut up and do all those things that you've been practicing on helpless confectionery to me."
He grins and tugs off my trousers, then begins to wrok his way slowly up my thighs with his tongue. I moan in frustration. Spike is, under most circumstances the master of the quickie. He doesn't waste time on romance or foreplay; he's too impatient. If I even try to stretch things out a bit, he rolls his eyes and snaps, "Can we get to the fucking now, Peaches? If that's not too much to bloody well ask?" But when he gets in his mind that he wants to tease, he's merciless, and no amount of begging will make him hurry up. And so it takes him nearly ten minutes- a ten minutes that feels like an eternity- before he reaches my-
"Angel!" Cordelia's startled scream echoes up the stairs. "Hurry! Come quick!"
I leap to my feet in alarm and rush downstairs, barely getting my trousers fastened in time. What is it this time? Demons? Vampires? More evil Christmas ornaments?
I survey the lobby. No noticeable damage; my employees are standing by the window. Spike bounds down the stairs behind me. "Bloody hell," he says grumpily. "What's going on?"
Cordelia turns towards us and claps her hands in delight. "It's snowing!"
*~*~*~*~*
I'm actually out the door before my Sire grabs the back of my shirt and hauls me back inside. "Get back in here."
I stare at him in amazement and point at the open door. "But- but- SNOW!!!"
"Yes, I noticed."
Christ on a cross! Does *nothing* change the bastard's expression?
"Let go of me, you wanker!"
"Coat."
I roll my eyes and grab my duster off the coat tree.
"Scarf."
"Angelus-"
"And gloves."
"For crying out-"
"You wanna go out in the snow or not?"
With a pout, I find my scarf and gloves and put them on. "Poofter."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
"Well, come on, then!" I cry, tugging on his sleeve.
"It's cold out there," he retorts. "And I'm not brain-damaged like you."
*~*~*~*~*
An hour later there is an inch of snow on the ground and Spike is nowhere to be found.
I race around the periphery of the hotel and am about to go get the car and start driving through the now-icy streets of L.A. looking for him when a sharp, cold pain suddenly blossons on the back of my head. *Great,* I think, clutching the back of my head in surprise, *just what I need, another head injury, and why is my hair all cold and wet?*
I look behind me. And then I look up. And then I sigh in resigned frustration.
Spike is on the roof.
And so I climb the fire escape. I don't even *know* how many floors the Hyperion has, but there are literally hundreds of steps to climb before I reach the hotel's roof. And every step of the way, the same word echoes through my brain. Why? Why? Why?
Why is Spike on the roof?
Why is Spike on the roof in the snow?
Why the hell is it snowing in L.A.?
And why the hell am I out in the snow going after him?
I finally reach the roof, where I find Spike constructing a village of snowpeople. Or, it would appear, a demon dimension of snowpeople. Some of the snowpeople- which are, on closer inspection, actually snowvampires- appear to be draining a hapless group of snowhumans. A few snowdemons are ransacking a miniature snow-town, the architectural layout of which seems to closely resemble Sunnydale. And a few of the snowfigures appear to be engaging in pornographic acts.
Spike, meanwhile, is smoking a cigarette and putting the finishing touches on a snow-vampire with a bottle of food coloring.
"Took ya long enough, old man," he quips. "Ya like?" He gestures to the carnage rendered in ice around us.
I sigh. "I wish you'd tell me next time you plan on disappearing on top of a building. I was worried."
He rolls his eyes. "Oh, don't start."
"Fine." I turn around and start back towards the fire escape
...when I feel that frozen numbness on the back of my head again.
*~*~*~*~*
He turns around just in time for me to peg him in the overhanging brow with yet another snowball, and the look on his face is fucking priceless. Bemused and slightly aghast. He attempts to brush the scattered snow out of his hair, but ice and hairgel apparently don't work well together and soon it's just a mess. Leaving him distracted and discombobulated enough to pelt him with a snowball in the ass.
"Gotcha!" I laugh maniacally and hide behind the snowfort I've already constructed.
"Why, you little-" he leans down to gather up a handful of snow and opening himself to attack again. This one goes down the back of his collar.
Damn, I'm good.
I duck behind the fort again, but it's too late; he's spotted me, and soon I'm knocked flat on my back by a lump of snow that, only moments before, had been a rather impressive (if I may say so myself) recreation of Sunnydale High School. He takes advantage of my position quickly, pinning me to the snow-covered rooftop, messing up my hair with a handful of slushy ice, and-
"Hey! No fair feelin' me up during a snowball fight, ya bleedin' toff!" I leap to my feet and hit Angel with snowdemon smack in the face. He grimaces, spits snow out of his mouth, and- swear to God- growls at me. Then, with a determined look in his eyes, he begins to chase me across the roof, a snowball in each hand.
That's when his feet hit a patch of ice and he plummets to the ground, cracking his head on the rooftop.
Oh, shit.
*~*~*~*~*
"Angel?" I look up and Spike is kneeling beside me. He pulls off his glove and tenderly runs his thumb over the cut that has opened in my cheek. "You okay?"
I nod weakly, amazed at his change in demeanor. Ten seconds ago he was determined to bury me beneath a mountain of snowballs; now-
"You sure?"
Ohhhh. Uggggh. I don't wanna be the one who gets knocked unconscious anymore.
"I'm sure." I reach up to pull his hand back from the now-bleeding cut. His hands are so cold. He laces his fingers through mine and leans forward to lap the trickly of blood from my face with a cool tongue. When he pulls back, I can see snowflakes caught in his long eyelashes, his blue eyes glimmering against the gray sky. I trace a fingertip down his pale cheekbone, then draw his face forward and press my mouth against his. He moans deep in his throat and starts to fumble with the buttons on my coat.
My impatient, insufferable boy.
I chuckle and respond in kind, pulling open his duster to unfasten his jeans and reaching inside. He's already hard and he moans when my fingers brush against his cock. He falls back gently to the ground, his duster protecting him from the snow-covered rooftop, and pulls me down on top of him, his eager hands pulling my pants and boxers to my ankles.
"Is this why you brought me up here?" I whisper in his ear, stroking him with one hand and tugging his jeans off with the other.
He laughs, a delightful, sparkling sound in the cold air. "I've nothing against public displays of affection, mate. The change of scenery's for your benefit. Your pet humans'll never find us up here."
I find the tube of lubricant I carry in my coat pocket and quickly put it to use. That's right, I'm prepared. If life with Spike has taught me nothing else, it's taught me that sex can and will happen in any place, at any time. I enter him slowly and he lets out a soft moan. Tugging the collar of his t-shirt back with one hand, I sink my fangs into his throat and thrust. Hard.
"Ohh!" he cries out, clenching his fingers around my back hard enough to leave bruises. Fastening my mouth to the wound in his throat, I swallow my fill of his tangy-sweet blood and then lick away the lazy trickle that flows down his neck, the friction building to a white heat between us. That's when I hear Spike's voice, so soft I can barely hear it, so soft he himself probably does not realize what he's just said.
"Love you."
I blink in surprise and pull back slightly to stare at him. His bright eyes gaze earnestly back at me, eyelashes fluttering. He hardly ever says it. Even during sex. Even during really great sex. It's not that he doesn't *feel* it; I truly believe that he does. But to say it, to him, seems to be a gesture of submission which he is not willing to perform.
I reach between our bodies, wrap my fingers tightly around his cock, and murmur the same words in return. He gasps aloud and thrusts into my hand, his rhthym matching my own. He digs his fingertips deeper into my back, wraps his legs tightly around mine, and elicits a strangled scream when he comes in my hand. A few strokes more and I'm gone as well, pulling him close to me as I climax, pressing my face to the side of his neck and moaning, a wonderful shudder passing through my entire body.
A few minutes later, he reaches up and tugs at a strand of my ice-encrusted hair.
"Oi," he says, "it's cold. Can we go inside now?"