a.connor  a.doyle  a.lindsey  a.oz  a.spike  a.wesley  a.xander  a.other  three.somes  het.fic  character.study           
Title: Interlude in a Mineshaft
Author: Mad Poetess
Pairing: Angelus/William
Rating: NC-17
Setting: Fanged Four Days


Yorkshire, 1880

William was getting rowdy again, just when Angelus thought he'd verbally smacked the boy down enough to get some peace and quiet. A few bedtime horror stories of the Slayer to put the fear of something or other into the brat. A few hours sleep before the four of them tried to sneak out of the mineshaft, just before dawn, when the villagers wouldn't be expecting them to be up and about. William, no, Spike, he wanted to be called now, was at it again, though. Kicking walls and getting snarky, and saying as how they'd be better off just blazin' a trail through the night ripping out the throats of whoever got in their way.

He'd been like that once himself, ninety or so years ago, but you'd think the brat would learn some subtlety quicker than Angelus had, with Darla and Angelus himself around to lead the way. God knew sweet Dru was no fit teacher for anything but madness, but she had other uses. Her seeing eyes, and her willing body, and her childish wickedness...and she melted into pain from Angelus' hands like it and he were mother, father, lover and god in one.

That sort of thing might teach the brat, if nothing else, Angelus thought as he glared at Dru's offspring. He'd never laid hands on the boy, not really, save for a few scuffles, an assertion of dominance that never seemed to last, though the older male always got the younger to look down, for a while. This was Dru's pet, and he'd been too distracted with Darla, as Drusilla had accused when he suggested she go find a playmate in the first place, to pay much attention to him early on. Not much beyond the observance that Dru had as fine a taste in flesh as he himself did, and that the boy was almost as crazy as his little dark mate.

Enough was enough, though. William-- Spike, that is, pushed too far. He barely tolerated Darla's leadership, and she, in turn, had whispered more than once to Angelus that she was tempted to stake Spike herself, and find Dru a new toy. He'd had the gall to cheek Darla, just now, calling her 'Granny' to her face, because he knew how much she hated being reminded of anything mortal like old age, and she was close to going into one of the cold rages that meant nobody would get any sleep, or any of anything else, for a nice long while.

"That's enough, boy," Angelus growled, and grabbed Spike by the collar, hauling him away from Darla before she calmly clawed his eyes out, as the younger vampire struggled and spat, to no avail. Oh, he could play about a bit, when Angelus was too annoyed with his antics to give in to what he obviously wanted, and squash him like a bug. If the Irish Bastard (and he knew Spike called him that behind his back) was serious, though, there was nothing this little whippet could do to a vampire who was over a hundred years his senior, four inches taller, a foot wider, and aeons worth of experience smarter than him. "Ladies, stay here. I'll take care of this little problem."

Wide eyes from Drusilla, who looked at the struggling Spike with concern, and then, going off into one of her little faerie worlds, she laughed. "Oh, yes, Daddy, you'll have such fun with my Spike."

Darla nodded her approval. She'd been at him to lay down the law to Spike for a while, so no surprise to see the look of smug superiority on her face now. She reveled in her own power over Angelus, and it was half of what drove him wild about her. Angelus pulled Spike deeper into the mineshaft, until they were out of sight of the females, and possibly out of hearing as well.

"Knew it'd come to this, you great poofter," Spike ground out, arms flailing, trying to land a punch on somebody he couldn't even see properly. "Couldn't keep your fairycake hands off me, then? You won't take me without a fight, you bloody bog-trottin' ponce."

Angelus laughed, then. Long and loud. Spike was behaving like a five year old, like Liam's living sister Katherine, when she got into a snit... before things changed in Galway, and she never got into anything again. Right then and there, he threw over all his plans to cow the younger vampire into submission through the sort of torture that Dru loved so much, delicate and rough in turns, or even by just shoving him up against the wall, one animal to another. No, he knew just how to get to this one.

"I'm not gonna bugger you, boy. Not yet, anyhow. You want to act like an infant, I'll treat you like one." Turning over a wooden minecart that lay next to the tracks they were standing on, he sat down, hauling the smaller vampire with him-- and over his lap. That got a reaction, as Spike kicked and cursed and squirmed, and even tried to bite his hand. A cuff on the head got that last notion out of Spike's skull, at least, and returned him to snarling and growling.

"Who d'you think you are, arseface?" Spat out of a fang-filled mouth, from the sound of it, which meant he'd changed after being turned over Angelus' knee, and punctuated by another kick and a twist of the lower-back muscles that got him absolutely nowhere, while Angelus was unfastening the braces from the back of Spike's trousers.

"Who d'you think you are, boy? D'you even know?" Angelus countered. "You play the guttersnipe so well, but we four of us know ye're naught but a soft clark with delusions of literary grandeur. Why the accent? Why throw yerself at everythin' like a little banty rooster? Why this need to prove you're as bad as you think I am, eh?" He finished with the back of the braces and reached round beneath to undo the clasps in front, Spike's hands struggling to push him away, until he grabbed one and pinned it behind the younger man's back.

"Don't fucking flatter yourself." And that emerged in as pure an accent as God ever granted to an upper-middle-class mother's boy from the Home Counties, which had Spike hissing and spitting even louder when he caught himself at it.

"Not me? Who then?" as he tugged the woolen trousers down, and stared appreciatively at the bare white backside that lay before him. He had to laugh--the lad had stopped wearing underclothes. Anything to make him look as dangerous as possible, when he was really just a willful child. "Who? Drusilla? Y'don't need t'impress her, lad, and you don't care a tinker's damn for Darla. Which is your business, but you'll show respect when you're around her. She's the head of this little family, and you could be dust on her whim. Or mine."

Spike mumbled into Angelus' trouser leg, against which his hanging face was pressed, dark blonde hair pulling loose from the bit of cord that bound it behind his neck. "Sod off. Dust me if y'like, but yer not my idol, and yer not my bloody father. Let me go, you bastard."

"Not y'r father, no," Angelus agreed, shoving the shirttail out of the way and at last bringing his hand down hard on the tight, pale flesh on his lap. "What, he never do you this little favor? Or maybe he did, and you liked it just a bit too much, eh?"

Spike snapped out a quick, "Fuck you..." as he tried to pull away again. No such luck. He wasn't going anywhere.

"Not your father, William, but I am your Sire, and you'll do well to remember that." He continued smacking away at that truly lovely bottom. Harder, now.

"You're not my Sire. Dru's my Sire," Spike said clearly, dangerously.

"Dru couldn't Sire a wee rabbit, boy. She's a child, and she'll always be a child. She's your lover, an' that's fine. Keeps y'both out of our hair, but she's not your Sire. She may've made you, but I'm your Sire. William." Smack. Slap. Smack.

"Spike. My name is Spike. And you can hit me all you want, ponce. You'll still never be anything to me but..." He'd lost his accent again, and he cursed fluently now, those street-rat words in that delicate, educated inflection. A child playing at being a man, losing his dignity in the oldest possible manner.

Angelus could feel what he was to this brat, feel it against his thigh, feel it in the way Spike, William, was twisting towards him now, instead of away. Could smell it, too, and it'd been years since he'd scented that: aroused male vampire musk, desperate and mixed with fear. An animal's cunning, a man's intelligence, both subservient to the demands of body and emotion. Not since Penn, his proud little Puritan, with whom he'd never done this, and Spike's scent was even stronger. Headier.

Spike liked this, Angelus realized. Wanted it. He'd been begging for it, or something like it, since the first time he'd played the strutting cockerel for Dru, pushing Angelus, faking punches at him while the dark vampire looked at him with something between annoyance and amusement. He hadn't really been grandstanding for Drusilla-- Dru wanted him anyway, like she always did with a new plaything. He'd been showing off to impress Daddy. Or push him into doing something just like this.

"Why didn't he do this for you, Will? Didn't love you enough?"

"Piss off..." came the hoarse reply. Angelus sped up his rhythm again.

"Not the right answer, my boy. " Spike groaned, half in pleasure, he could tell, and half in real pain now. If Spike had circulation, that rump would be as rosy as Kathy's had been after Liam had caught her playing alone on the rotted bridge over the deepest part of the stream.

"You think y'need to prove you're a man, then? That what the accent an' the gutter talk an' all that rot about me bein' a poof's about? 'Cause let me tell you boy, we're vampires. Like y'said. That don't mean we have to tear through the night like Saint feckin' Vigeous..." As he got a bit over-excited himself, Angelus' own accent slipped into the thicker brogue he'd used with his lower-class playmates when he was alive. "It does mean there's no such thing as somebody it's wrong to fuck, since there ain't any right nor wrong, no more."

"Y're a soddin' poof, vampire or not," Spike gasped, finding his street-boy accent again. Angelus gave him a hard smack, and he bucked fiercely--up, towards the hand that had just hit him.

"I'm still your Sire, boy. You'll say it if I have to flay the skin off your arse."

"Fine. You're my Sire. It don't make you anything to me at all. S'just a word."

"He didn't, did he. Love you enough to do this," Angelus said with sudden understanding. "Well..." and he laid into the slender cheeks that were being thrust up at him, "I do. Will."

"Spike. My name is..."

"William. There's nothin' wrong wi' it. T'was my name once. Close enough."

"It was his bloody name, too!" Spike shouted at him. "Much good may it do him in hell or wherever he buggered off to."

Ahh. There was that then.

"Right, so you want your own name. One that means nothin' to nobody, least of all you. But who the hell's named after a railroad peg? Me, now, I like William. Means 'resolute protector,' did y'know? And I'll call you William when I please. B'cause I can."

Spike was silent for a moment, just kicking his feet and still writhing under the unending stream of steady smacks. "Call me what y'want. You will anyway. " Then, after a few seconds, "You don't love me. You don't even know me." Slipping in and out of his lowerclass accent now.

Angelus considered this. Spike was right. He didn't love the boy, though he could, so easily. It was just frustration and attraction at this point. A little concern, maybe. But he still had to sling the pretty words. Blarney and bollocks. A gift he'd had at his disposal for years, with his sister, his mother, in the pubs, in the streets, with girls and men, living and dead. Spike saw through it. Bright, this one. Not the first idiot who came along, after all.

"No. I don't love you. You try my patience, you infuriate my woman, you come close to gettin' us killed every time you decide you have to toss off with one of your damn fool schemes. I won't let you destroy my family." He accompanied this little confession with a rain of blows that sent cracks as loud as gunshots echoing off the mineshaft walls, and must have left no doubt in the minds of the women as to exactly what he was doing with the boy.

"Y'won't make me cry, y'know. Never gonna cry again," Spike muttered. Angelus gave him one last hard smack, and rested his hand there, smoothing the soft skin. Feeling the temporary body heat engendered by his touch, which had been something less than loving, though close, something more than punishing. The slim body ground itself into him, and he firmly turned Spike over, so he could look down into the tear-streaked face that gave the lie to Spike's words. Human again. Beautiful. They called him the demon with the face of an angel?

"Nothing wrong with crying, boy. Don't mean you're no' a man," he said, pulling the other man up, so that Spike was sitting gingerly on his lap, for all the world like Dru would when she'd come running to him for a treat or a story or something a great deal more grown up. He studied that face, the sharp angles of it, the blue eyes wet, muddied with confusion, and realized Dru had chosen far more wisely, or more madly, than he'd given her credit for. Spike wasn't trying to move off his lap, just glaring sullenly at him, and he couldn't resist brushing the tangled strands of hair off the high brow. Tracing the track of one of those tears the lad hadn't been crying.

"I don't love you," Angelus said again, and Spike's lower lip jutted out, before being sucked back in. Which was good for Angelus, otherwise he might just have sucked it into his own mouth. "But I will. If you'll let me. If you don't let somebody take care of you, you'll end up as lost as Dru. Wanderin' off into the sun on a whim, drinkin' holy water for tea, because you don't bloody know any better. You can go, if y'want. Even take Dru, since she'd follow you anyway, if I said no. But if y'stay...You're my boy."

"I don't need a soddin' father," Spike answered, all trace of William the well-bred poet vanishing.

"I don't want to be your father. Fathers don't do this," Angelus explained, pulling Spike's face to his and kissing the still-red lips with as much heat as the walking dead can generate, which was much more than any fool Watcher ever dreamed of writing in his precious journals. He plunged his tongue into Spike's mouth, and tasted the salt of those nonexistent tears, which had trickled their way even that far down. Unsurprised, but far more pleased than he expected, when Spike began to return the kiss, sucking at him, demanding something from him that he was all too willing to give.

When they broke apart, aeons later, Spike frowned at him.

"At least my father didn't do that," Angelus added with a leer. Still frowning, Spike was. William. He could be both, surely? Angelus held the stubborn chin in his fingers, and talked softly. "I don't want to be your father. I want to be your Sire."

"You're still a bloody poof."

Angelus lowered a hand to Spike's lap, where the evidence of Spike's arousal at the spanking, and the kiss, and the continued contact between the two of them, was rigidly poking up at him. He wrapped his large hand around the hardened shaft, almost covering it, though it was by no means small, and Spike hissed, drawing in air that he would never need again.

"And this makes you what?" Angelus asked archly.

"A vampire," Spike answered, suddenly transforming, flashing fangs, before darting his head to Angelus' neck and...just kissing him, hotly. Running a raspy tongue over the skin.

Bright move, boy, because you'd have been across the room with your head smashed into the wall if you'd dared try to drink my blood without permission... Angelus drew Spike back, forced him to lock eyes. Playing at dominance, yes, but with the understanding that it was accepted, here, now, or there was nothing. "And this makes you what?"

Spike rolled his eyes. "Yours, poofter. Your bloody boy. You gonna shag me, or what?"

"Oh, aye. Til' y'scream. Then the fun really starts." With his free hand, Angelus reached around behind, slipping just one finger between the cheeks that Spike wasn't quite resting on. Just one finger. No more rolling eyes now--they were opened wide, pupils dilating enough to almost fill the shadowed gold orbs. And the look on Spike's face... if it weren't beaming out from behind those too-real tear-tracks, that happy-smug toothy smile would lead the older vampire to believe he'd been manipulated, here.

"You sure you haven't done this before?" he teased with a serious glare.

"In Barking ?" Spike answered, untying the knot at Angelus' collar.

"Why am I not surprised you're from Barking?" Angelus muttered, coming ever closer to losing the straight face. "No, in London, puppy. Y'managed to pick up that awful bloody accent in a month's time, after all."

Fingers across his now-bared chest, and it was like a thousand spider- touches on him, and he was supposed to be the one in control here. He moved that one finger just so, and the hands on his chest were scrabbling at him.

"Dru... said I should wait for you. Gonna...make it worth my while?"

It was more than he could do not to give in, and the laughter rolled out of him like thunder, bouncing off the walls and surrounding them both. That returned the pout to the boy's sculpted demonic countenance, and Angelus stopped himself, though he couldn't keep the amusement from his face.

"Sorry lad, but you looked just like Dru when I tell her I've got a chocolate for her in my pocket." Or a dead pigeon, or a leftover eyeball... Blink, and the pout disappeared. The eyes lit up with a ferocious glee that he'd only glimpsed on that face in the middle of a particularly bloody killing spree.

"Y'mean there's chocolate in this deal?" And Angelus would almost swear the younger vampire was more aroused by that concept than anything else.

Shite. He'd adopted a chocolate fiend. Was it too late to get out of it now? That stuff was bloody expensive. He freed his...less busy...hand, grasped Spike's shirt-collar and yanked the other man's face roughly close to him, their eyes inches apart. Looking.... Aye. Too bloody late. Well...there were things you could do with the stuff, though he'd never much cared for it himself. He saw the slim body on his lap stepping into a bath filled with melted chocolate, dark ripples spreading out around white skin. Drusilla dipping in a finger and licking it off. There were things you could do with chocolate.

"There might be chocolate. If you're good..." And since his Sire's voice left no confusion as to what he meant by that, Spike set about proving that he could, indeed, be quite, quite good when he had a mind to. Just not in public. So, with the women out front probably finding their own sort of mischief to get into, Angelus did his best to show the younger one what it meant to be a vampire, and a man, in a cold mineshaft lit with flickering candles.

Spike, for his part, showed Angelus that he'd gotten into far more than he bargained for when he dragged this wayward bratling off to teach him a lesson. Those teeth were sharper than Dru's, and the fingers got into all sorts of interesting places, and the tongue was sharper than the teeth. When it felt right, though, Angelus called the man in his arms "William," and never got an argument. Not on that score. If there was anything else he could argue about, though... Honestly, the boy never bloody shut up.


-End

Feedback