New fic! Post-NFA Spike/Angel wackiness!

Everyone squeeing about the new Farscape has been making me feel left out - I miss having a show. So I wrote some fic. A continuation of deus ex machina, which you should probably read if this is going to make any sense, and the first part hopefully of many. No sex yet, but then, nobody's perfect. ;-)

Oh, and for the two of you who might remember the little not-even-a-ficlet with the same title that I posted in the early days of this journal, this is completely unrelated. It's just such a good title, I had to steal it twice. *eg*

Title: Men of Good Fortune
Sequel to: deus ex machina
Pairing: Spike/Angel
Summary: It's a beautiful day. Don't let it get away.

Men of Good Fortune I

Three thoughts upon waking: first, that he is warm; second, that he is naked; third, that he is not alone.

Spike starts, hastily putting distance between himself and Angel’s sleeping form. In quick succession he panics, mentally laughs off his panic, panics about his own inappropriate reaction to panic, and then rapidly, before another wave of panic can hit, decides, Oh, fuck it. And not a moment too soon, as he abruptly realizes that he has many other, more important, things to panic about.

First among them, he has no idea where he is.

A quick survey of the room reveals that it is a. girly, b. dusty, and c. (his heart - oh yeah, that - settles heavily in his chest) Fred’s. He pauses for a moment, holding the framed photograph of Fred and two kind-looking people he assumes are her parents. Then, setting it gently back down, he turns and finds himself face to face with her mirror image.

“Bloody hell!” The words erupt from his throat. Illyria regards him with impassive eyes. He lowers his voice (Angel still sleeps) and says, “Don’t sneak up on people like that. You’re liable to get your head torn off.”

Illyria looks down her nose at him, and Spike is suddenly uncomfortably aware of his nakedness. “You could not damage me,” she says. “You are weak.”

He does feel weak - tired like he could sleep for a million years - but it’s not something he’d ever acknowledge. Instead, he calmly returns Illyria’s gaze and asks, “You brought us here?” She nods. “And removed our clothes?”

“Your garments reeked of filth.” Her eyes rake over him; Spike finds her difficult to read, but he thinks he’s getting better at it. Indeed, when her next words are, “Do not be concerned: I have no interest in your maleness,” he is very amused to realize that she is lying.

His panic is ebbing away, replaced by the peace he felt when he first opened his eyes and saw what he and Angel had accomplished. A small, rational part of his brain points out that he has lots to worry about, things he’d never imagined or hadn’t contemplated for over a hundred years. But right now, standing naked in a dead girl’s room, he feels shockingly good.

So of course Angel chooses that moment to wake up.

Spike is instantly glad that he awoke first, in part because Angel would almost certainly have reacted with violence upon finding Spike naked in his bed, but mostly because he now has the pleasure of watching an exhausted, confused Angel bumble around and try to figure out what the hell is going on.

Angel is lying face down on the pillow; his eyes flutter open and groggily, he pushes himself up on his elbows, groaning. Then his breath catches; Spike can see realization dawning, and he waits expectantly for Angel to leap out of bed, or perhaps emit a loud, girly scream. Instead his face goes slack, and with a pained sigh, he retreats back under the covers.

Next to him, Illyria makes a sound that in a lesser creature would be described as “huh.”

“Angel?” Spike says, tentatively. There is no response. Annoyed, Spike takes a step forward and smacks Angel on the ass.

This, at least, gets his attention. Whirling around, he growls, “Fuck off!”

Spike finds he is vaguely hurt. “Don’t you want to get up? See the world? After all, we did such a nice job redecorating.” He walks over to the window, and throws open the drapes with a dramatic flourish. Sunlight floods the room. “See?” he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “It’s a beautiful day!”

The response from the bed is simple and to the point: “Go. Away.”

“He finds your cheerful manner irritating,” Illyria points out helpfully.

Spike rolls his eyes. “Suit yourself,” he says. He’s halfway to the door before he realizes that he’s still not wearing any clothes.

“Illyria, when you say you got rid of our clothes...”

She regards him coolly. “I burned them.”

“And my coat?”

She points to a chair in the corner, over which he is pleased to see his duster is neatly draped. “You learn fast, luv,” he says. Disturbingly, Illyria preens.

Spike picks up his coat and strokes it fondly. “I am going to need something to wear under it, though.”

She appraises him again, then turns sharply and leaves the room. She returns a moment later carrying a pair of men’s khaki trousers and a blue Oxford. Spike regards them with distaste before realizing with a pang that they had probably been Wesley’s. “Thank you,” he says, taking the clothes from her. He quickly changes into them; they fit surprisingly well. He suddenly feels very small.

He shakes off the unease and pulls on his boots, which had luckily been spared Illyria’s blaze. They’ve seen better days: the left boot has a brightly-colored green stain on the tongue, and the right heel seems to have been eaten away by something acidic. The physical evidence of the battle comes as somewhat of a shock to Spike; that he is a walking piece of physical evidence doesn’t really cross his mind, or if it does, it’s quickly supplanted by the feel of sunshine on his back. “Look after him,” he says quietly to Illyria and leaves the apartment with the same sense of excitement building in his chest that he felt the first time he boarded a train as a small boy.

* * *

Spike loves his coat. He really does. But, he quickly discovers, it’s not really the best thing to wear in May in Southern California. In less than ten minutes, the leather feels glued to his back. Thankfully, the area around Fred’s apartment is dotted with lots of friendly looking coffee shops. He enters one and sits down, realizing almost simultaneously that he’s starving and that he has not one red cent.

He briefly considers flirting with the cashier, but Spike, unfamiliar with the modern barista, takes one look at her bright orange hair, multiple piercings, and surly disposition and quickly abandons that plan. He wavers for a moment, then turns and heads back out into the sunshine. His eyes immediately beginning to water again. Sunglasses, he thinks, Definitely going to need sunglasses. And then, I bet I'd look pretty cool in sunglasses. And finally, No money, no sunglasses. No anything.

“Bugger,” says Spike, standing on the corner of Vermont and Fountain with watery eyes, an empty belly, and his coat like an uncomfortable shell around him. “Bloody buggering hell. Sorry, ma’am,” he adds, as a woman wheeling a stroller shoots him a dirty look. He feels his cheeks redden in embarrassment: the final straw. With a sigh, he turns and walks back toward Fred’s apartment. It’s still a beautiful day, but beautiful days aren’t much fun with nowhere to go and, Spike privately reflects, with no one to share them with.

* * *

Angel is not really asleep. He wishes he were. Sleep seems like a pleasant escape - and not simply because he can vaguely remember having dreamt something...comforting. Sleep would mean an end to all the thoughts rolling around in his head, an end to all the feelings churning around in his gut. An end. But he can't sleep. Not if Illyria keeps staring at him like that.

Also, he kind of has to pee.

But one problem at a time. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” he mumbles into the pillow.

He can feel Illyria’s eyes burning into his back. “What is your current definition of ‘better’?”

He thinks about this. “Can’t you go bother Spike?”

“Spike has gone out.” He hears her get to her feet and opens one eye wide enough to watch her walk across the room. She draws to a halt in front of the window, looking out. “He asked you to accompany him. You declined.” Cold, inhuman eyes fix themselves on his face. “Do you ever intend to get out of that bed?”

“You sound like my father,” he says without thinking, and then several things happen at once. His stomach does something...strange, and Angel suddenly finds himself with all the incentive he could possibly need to get up. He throws back the covers and stumbles to the bathroom. He just makes it. When he is finished, he stays on his knees by the toilet, panting as he tries to regain his breath. The porcelain is cold against his bare arm. He tries not to notice that the contents of the toilet bowl are the deep crimson of blood.

“This seems like an odd sort of reward.”

He jumps. Illyria is standing in the doorway, watching him like an insect in a jar. “I do not see the benefits,” she adds.

“Go away,” he croaks. His voice is rough and the words taste bitter on his tongue. “Leave me alone!” This much louder. Illyria blinks at him, then turns and disappears down the hallway. He hears a door close, softly.

He sits for a while longer on the cold bathroom floor. Then he stands, flushes the toilet, relieves himself, and flushes a second time. He makes a move toward the sink, intending to wash the taste of sickness out of his mouth, but he catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror and recoils. His head down, he walks out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. Seconds later, he is back in bed, the covers pulled tightly over his head.

But he isn’t asleep.

* * *

The apartment is so quiet when Spike gets back that he thinks for a moment that Angel and Illyria have cleared out. He can’t blame them - frankly, the place gives him the creeps. “Too many ghosts,” he mutters and then emits the type of shriek he was very much hoping to hear from Angel earlier. Illyria is beside him - seriously invading personal space beside him. He pushes past her with a glare. “You have got to stop doing that,” he says.

“Why? It amuses me.”

The impish grin on her face, disturbing though it may be, makes him almost proud. “Well, practice on Angel, then,” he says, and then, more quietly, “He gotten up yet?”

“Once,” she says. “He purged his stomach. It smelled of cucumber.”

“Cucumber? Your descriptive powers astound me.” He runs a hand carelessly through his hair. “Give me awhile alone with him, will you?”

She nods and retreats back down the hall. He wonders for a moment what she’s doing down there, but doesn’t dwell on it. He’s got bigger problems. “Angel,” he shouts, slamming into the bedroom, “for Christ’s sake, get your fat arse out of bed.”

Angel, face-down and still buried under the covers, says nothing. Spike finds himself feeling both angry and worried - and then angry for being worried and guilty for being angry. “I mean it,” he says. “Don’t make me drag you out of there.” When Angel still doesn’t respond, Spike reaches down, grabs the other man’s thick, white ankle, and tugs. This accomplishes nothing besides sending Spike sprawling backward onto his ass. Forget worry and guilt: his anger is now like a flame inside him, but as it flares up, he grits his teeth and forces himself to count to ten. He only makes it to seven, but that’s enough. “I’m not going to leave until you talk to me,” he says. “Don’t care how long it takes. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

Silence for a minute that stretches into two that stretched into ten. Spike picks at the fraying carpet and listens to Angel breathe. It’s unsteady and uneven, like the breathing pattern of someone who’s been crying or holding back tears. Spike doesn’t get it. He thinks back to how he felt that morning, waking up and walking to the window, feeling the sun on his face. Not stolen sunlight, the gift of tacky jewelery or evil law firms, but sunlight he’d made, sunlight he’d earned. How could Angel, Lord of the Brood though he may be, not get even a little bit excited about that? Even factoring in anxiety about the future - and Spike is certainly feeling his fair share of that - what good does hiding away in bed do? And it’s especially odd coming from Angel, whom Spike has always thought was a rather take-charge kind of guy. It was one of the most irritating things about him, actually.

Angel and his band of merry men. Spike snorts to himself, but the snort brings a lump to his throat that doesn’t leave with the expelled breath. ‘Cause that’s all over now, isn’t it? Wes dead, Lorne vanished, Gunn unconscious in the hospital somewhere... Spike has a sudden burst of inspiration. “Hey, Angel,” he says, getting back to his feet. “Howzabout you and I go pay Gunn a visit? Bet you and me showing up in the middle of the day’d be just the sorta shock he’d need to get him back on his feet. What do you say?”

Silence. Spike, used to filling long patches of quiet with the sound of his own voice, is not deterred. “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he says, sitting down at the foot of the bed and kicking off his boots. “Be good if we were rested first. World-saving’s tuckered you out, eh? Me, too. Think I’ll catch a nap with you.” He lies down next to Angel, taking up far more space than is strictly necessary. He moves his mouth close to Angel’s ear. “Sometimes I have a bit of trouble nodding off,” he says. “Mind if I try a few soothing lullabies?” He waits a mere fraction of a second before launching into a loud, off-key rendition of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” It takes until the second repetition of “bring baaaaack...” before Angel stirs. “Spike,” he growls. “Just...please. Shut. Up.”

“Will if you get up.” He pauses. “Or talk to me. I do make an excellent sympathetic ear. Buffy always said...”

“Now you’re just trying to make me angry,” Angel says, rolling over to look Spike in the eye. He seems to realize for the first time how close they are to each other, and he starts back. Spike laughs. This elicits another glare. “I can’t talk to you like this. Go...sit over there. And we’ll see.”

Spike gets out of bed and repositions himself in the chair by the window. He crosses his legs and folds his hands over his knees, affecting a serious expression. “Obviously,” he says, “you have latent homosexual tendencies and issues with your mother.”

Angel says nothing. The return to silence causes anger to once again spark in Spike’s gut. He’s on his feet in a second; on his feet and pacing. “What the hell is wrong with you, Angel?” His voice is almost a hiss. “You upset that you didn’t get your prize all to yourself, that you have to share it with me?” But even as he says this, Spike realizes that it is both self-absorbed and untrue. He takes a deep breath and tries again. “Or are you just sorry that you came out of it at all?” He looks at the huddled form on the bed and feels a stab of pity. “We’ve both done heroic deaths before, Angel. We know they’re not all they’re cracked up to be.”

A hoarse whisper: “It’s not that.”

“Well, what, then? I haven’t seen you this bad since you were souled.”

And then Angel begins to laugh. It’s a horrible sound, low and wispy, almost hysterical, almost a sob. Spike knows he’s close. He’s close, but he still can’t see it.

“Just tell me, Angel,” he says, quietly. He hasn’t exhibited this kind of heroic patience since his days with Dru.

But Angel just shakes his head. “This is what really gets me,” he says. “This is what really stings. That you - you are so fucking oblivious.”

Patience, patience. Spike clenches his hands into fists. “Well, I wouldn’t be oblivious, would I, if you would just bloody tell me!”

At that Angel lets out another pained snort and his briefly raised head sinks back against the pillow. Then in a croak, so quiet that Spike has to strain to hear, he says, “He’s still here.”

Spike’s first thought is of Wesley, but he knows that’s not what Angel means. “Who?” he says. “Who, Angel?”

One word: “Angelus.”

A beat, another second stretched like taffy. Then Spike, who has clearly spent too much time in Southern California, says, “Well, duh.”

Angel sits up. “What did you say?”

“I said of course he’s still here, you bleeding dimwit. What, did you think you’d get some sort of magic un-demonizing as a gift with Shanshu?”

Angel’s look says very plainly that yes, that’s exactly what he expected he’d get.

“What the hell for? You earned the prize, not--” Spike twists up his face and affects a very poor Irish accent, startlingly reminiscent of Angel’s own “--Liam o’ Galway.” And then, clearly anticipating Angel’s protest, “And for the last time, you and Angelus - and Liam, when you get right down to it - are the same person. Sure, the demon and the soul make a difference, but really? The only thing that separates you is time.”

Angel narrows his eyes. “Whatever you say - William.”

Spike meets his glare head on. “That supposed to faze me?” He shrugs. “Well, maybe it would have, once, but I’ve had a long time to think about this stuff. What did you think I was doing while you were spending your days plotting to take over the world, one piece of boring litigation at a time?”

“Annoying me?”

“Well, that, too. But a man needs variety. Spice of life and all that.”

Another period of silence descends. This time, Angel is the one to break it, by saying, rather ponderously, “Life.”

“Yeah,” says Spike, seriously. “Hell of a thing.”

Angel looks down at his hands, clenched tightly around a dead girl’s flowered comforter. “I don’t deserve this life.”

“It’s not about deserving,” Spike says. He suddenly feels very tired. Without looking at the other man, he lowers himself onto the end of the bed, next to Angel. “It’s about what you do with it once you’ve got it.” He smiles, thin-lipped, glancing at Angel out of the corner of his eye. “Or at least, so this poncy git with bad hair who I used to know led me to believe.”

More silence, but it’s not so awkward anymore, not so strained. And again, Angel is the one to break it. “Thanks,” he says.

Spike shifts, uncomfortable and trying to to look it. “Stop it, you’re making me blush.”

“And you’re sitting on my foot,” Angel says.

“Could sit on your face if you prefer,” mutters Spike, standing up. Then he turns and drums his fingers on his crossed arms theatrically until Angel swings his own legs off the bed and gets shakily to his feet. This earns him several seconds of elevator eyes: he’s still stark naked. Blushing, he reaches for the sheet. “Oooh, modest.”

“Shut up, Spike.”

Those words have never been so magnificently reassuring, but with effort, Spike doesn’t let it show. “Once you get your kit on, you wanna go for a walk?”

Angel takes a deep breath and tries to calm his racing heart, his racing, restless soul. Then he looks up and glances out the window, where the western sky is just beginning to turn pink. “Sure,” he says, staring out. “After all, it’s still a beautiful day.”