Parts 14, 15, 16, and 17 of Kin of the Heart
Rated SAFE

A Slippery Leash

"Maybe I shouldn't go," Angel said as he stood uncomfortably pulling at his sweater. Christmas had never been his favorite holiday as they had gone to church and then sat in hard chairs while his father read bible lessons. Most of them seemed to center around how sinful Liam had been during the year and how disappointed his father was. Santa Clause and Christmas cards and parties were certainly not how he remembered the day. Angel much preferred Nollaig na mBan, Women's Christmas, which came twelve days later. His mother would have her friends over, and he would listen at the door and bring them treats and sometimes get a peek of some neighbor girl's leg. Epiphany they called it now, only Xander said that no one truly celebrated that day anymore. In fact, Xander would be at school. Angel pulled at his sweater again, truly disliking the red and green colors.

"We're already here, so no 'going' required," Xander said as he caught Angel by the arm.

"Maybe I should check on Faith."

"Okay, Faith is fine. How much trouble can a slayer get into hanging out with the GED folks, and wow that was a stupid thing to say." Xander flinched as he realized how he'd just hexed himself. Angel did not truly understand why the others believed in that sort of hexing, but they did. Xander shrugged, obviously realizing he couldn't take the words back. "You really do not blend into the woodwork there, so give her some space. I have specific orders from her to not let you come act all weirdly parental."

Xander started pulling Angel toward Joyce's house. "Look, Cordy has to do some party thing with her folks, and I'm stuck Christmas Day with the parentals, so we are spending Christmas Eve together at Buffy's party. Period. The end." Xander got that stubborn expression on his face, and Angel struggled to come up with a reason... any reason... for leaving. He came up blank. He never thought he would be wishing for an apocalypse. Before he could argue more, Xander was tugging him toward the front door.

With a sigh, Angel allowed himself to be pulled up the steps. "I'm not planning on being nice to Giles or that Scott boy," he growled as Xander rang the bell.

"Buffy is trying to avoid the freaky, so teachers will not be coming to her Christmas party, and she is so over Scott Hope. She's back to Devon," Xander said, and then the door flew open and Buffy was there.

"She—" Angel was cut off by a slayer-volume squeal.

"Xander! And Angel. Wow. I so did not think he would get you to come to any gathering that didn't have a potential for bloodshed, and please let there be no potential bloodshed here," Buffy's smile slipped and she gave a bit of a grimace at that thought.

"Hey, it's Christmas Eve, no bloodshed allowed. I will stand up and order any potential mayhem to come back the day after tomorrow," Xander said firmly.

"My hero," Buffy smiled as she took Xander's other arm and pulled him in. Xander jerked to a stop when Angel hit the barrier, but he didn't let go of Angel's arm.

"Oh, Angel, I’m sorry," Buffy flinched as she looked around quickly.

"You're clear; Joyce didn't see, and if she had seen I was fully prepared to introduce Angel as my mime friend."

"Your what?" Angel asked, his eyebrows going up.

"Hey, no bloodshed, remember?" Buffy laughed. "Angel, you are officially invited into my home."

The barrier evaporated, and Angel stepped through into the slayer's home. Buffy clearly had advantages that Faith and Kendra had not. He wondered how much of her remarkable survival was due to Giles' training, and how much came from the fact she had a stable home with a clearly loving parent. Speaking of Buffy's mother, Joyce walked across the room, leaving a huge bowl of chips on the coffee table as she stepped around Oz and Willow. Angel had seen her from a distance, both in Sunnydale and back in LA where he'd watched her and her husband fight over Buffy's expulsion from school, but he'd never seen her up close. She was a handsome woman.

"Hello. You must be Xander's friend, the one who's tutoring him," Joyce held out her hand, but Angel could see the suspicion in her eyes. Did every person they meet insist on assuming he had designs on Xander?

"Angel O'Connelly," he introduced himself as he shook her hand quickly and then pulled back before she could notice the lack of body heat. "I'm more than just a friend," he said and Joyce's back stiffened. "I was very good friends with Xander's uncle, Destry LaVelle. He was a bit of a mentor to me when I went to law school, and before he went to South America, he made me promise that I would keep an eye on his favorite nephew," Angel said, putting all his charm forward. He didn't like charming humans, it felt too much like stalking them, but he could if necessary. And Joyce was just too strong and too ethical of a woman to have suspicions and not act on them. So, he definitely needed to allay her fears before he had to deal with Social Services on top of what Blair assured him was normal teen angst.

"Oh, and when do you expect your uncle back?" Joyce asked Xander.

"He's dead," Xander shrugged, a dozen pretzels already in his mouth. Angel could have groaned. Xander had many skills, but lying or even obfuscating would never be one. When Joyce looked at him with horror and sadness and just a little confusion, Xander finally caught on. He swallowed, choked on pretzel crumbs, and then finally offered Joyce a sad smile. "He died a while back, and I didn't know him all that well. My dad really hated Uncle Destry, which is probably the best character reference you can get because my dad is..." Xander looked at Angel in panic as he realized that he was in over his head, but Joyce was already melting with maternal pity.

"I'm so sorry. Your uncle sounds like a wonderful man, and I'm sure he's very proud to see how you're growing up." Joyce took Xander by the arm and herded him over to the snack table, pointing out all the treats with chocolate in them with a motherly tone.

"He mentored you in law school?" Buffy asked with a conspiratorial smile.

"You spend your evenings in your room?" Angel asked right back. He wasn't the only one lying to Joyce.

"Ouch. That was point-like," she said as she slipped a hand through his arm and stepped into the living room with him. "Angel, you know Oz and Willow," she said as she waved her hand in their direction. Willow was totally focused on Oz, her hand hovering near his arm. Oz looked a little less invested in her as he looked up and gave Angel a smile. He suspected the werewolf had been bothered by Willow's wandering interests; after all, vampires weren't the only ones with superior senses.

"Hey," Oz offered. Willow gave him a quick glance and then focused right back in on Oz. She was biting her lip and he was carefully not looking at her. Angel wondered how soon he could talk Xander into leaving.

"Larry's over there. For an ex, he's really cool about it," Buffy said. "Actually, I like him more as an ex than as a boyfriend because he was a little creepy in the boyfriend department."

Angel made absolutely no comment on that. Considering the stories he'd heard from Xander and the various things he'd sniffed on her boyfriends, Angel would categorize most of her boyfriends as creepy.

"And Freddy Iverson is the editor of the newspaper." Buffy waved at a boy on the opposite end of the food table, and he waved back. Angel made an awkward wave of his own and mentally vowed revenge on Xander. Broccoli was in the boy's future. Buffy whispered to him while still smiling at a clearly uncomfortable Freddy. "I was trying to get him to write an article about the real Cordelia Chase, the one that has the morality of a really slimy demon, but strangely he has ethics. Clearly, he is not going into journalism for a career. Anyway, Willow said that his parents do the whole Jewish ignoring Christmas thing, so we invited him."

Angel tried to smile at the boy with glasses and long hair who was staking out the food table even though he was so thin Angel doubted he actually ate. "Um, okay," he said. Yes, this was clearly hell. He might actually become nostalgic about his own family's Christmases at this rate.

"And of course Devon," Buffy said, her tone of voice shifting and lust drifting from her as the singer strolled over to them. Buffy's scent made Angel's nose itch. Angel really disliked the boy with his leather coat and floppy hair and the strangle dimple in the middle of his forehead. He reminded Angel of the man in that movie with the music where a perfectly nice girl started dressing like Faith in order to sing to the male as she danced around a carnival. It was a disturbing movie.

"Hey," Devon said, his head bobbing to some music only he could hear. Buffy smiled at him. "Hey," he repeated, "don't I know you?" He frowned at Angel.

"Yes," Angel answered. Devon just looked at him for a second, his head-bopping pausing.

"Cool," he finally answered as he went back to bopping. He leaned over and nearly swallowed Buffy's tongue as his hands went to places where Angel generally didn't grab girls until after he'd paid, but she broke away with a desperate look toward her mother. Joyce was standing with her arms crossed and a frown on her face. It had been a long time since Angel had been human, but he still remembered that look. After grabbing something green from the food table, Joyce made a beeline for them.

"So, Mr. O'Connelly," she said, her eyes never leaving Devon, "you're a lawyer."

Angel looked at Buffy, and she looked as uncomfortable as he felt. In fact, Devon seemed like the only one who wasn't feeling the heat of Joyce's glare.

"What sort of law do you practice?" she asked him as she thrust the bowl of green blob in his hand. Angel took it automatically and looked over at Xander for a rescue. Xander, however, was deep in conversation with Larry... or possibly ignoring him. While he might care for the little ingrate, Angel had no doubt he would abandon Angel in the middle of hell if it amused him.

"Ah, contracts and—"

"How nice," Joyce cut him off. Angel followed the line of her glare and found Devon's hand still dangerously low on Buffy's backside. Buffy stepped forward and broke contact.

"Mom, you should listen to Freddy describe this really cool new thing he's doing with the paper. It has something to do with... paper," she finished lamely as she hurried her mother away from Devon.

"Well... damn," Devon said with a shrug before he headed over to the couch and dropped down beside Oz.

Willow was talking to both of them, but Angel ignored her.

"It's Jello. You eat it," Xander said with amusement as he came over, his own plate full of chocolate.

"You eat it," Angel said as he held the bowl and spoon out for him.

"Oh no. No, tonight I am chocolate-loyal. I am chocolate-faithful. I am planning to eat enough chocolate to make myself sick, and seeing how much food is here, I am so glad we forgot to bring anything for the pot luck."

Angel froze. "You said we were not supposed to bring anything," Angel whispered. He had wanted to bring a gift, and Xander had absolutely vetoed his suggestion.

"Okay, you do not bring wine to an underage girl's party," Xander said as he rolled his eyes. "Um, but we were supposed to bring something sugary or in any other way potentially damaging to good oral hygiene. Look, no big. Eat your Jello," Xander said and then he was smiling at Freddie and hurrying over to talk about seven out of nine somethings.

Backing away from the room full of adolescent children, Angel stood pressed to the banister, wondering if he could hide upstairs without getting caught.

"It's hard being the adult at one of these, huh?" Joyce said as she came up to stand next to him. "But I respect you for coming. So many of these parents say they will provide adequate supervision and then they don't." She nodded knowingly, and Angel shoved a spoonful of Jello in his mouth to avoid having to answer.

He disliked eating human food. The feeling of something in his stomach always triggered his hunger. The pig blood never totally satisfied him, and the additional hunger made it difficult for him to control his urges, but right now, he could handle that more than a conversation with a woman who he had been warned about not upsetting. Both Xander and Buffy had been very adamant about him not upsetting her.

"The Wells family, they have a girl two years older than Andrew--who's just a year behind Xander and Buffy--I heard from the Rosenburgs that they hosted a party and three kids were killed driving home drunk afterwards. The parents actually bought alcohol for them. It's a tragedy that the Wells girl had to die, but apparently they are much more careful now with Andrew. Sometimes, though, I do worry about the influences in this town."

She glanced over, and Angel shoved more Jello in his mouth. This... foodstuff... was like eating water.

"You really like that, don't you? I can't stand the lime," she said. "I'll get you more."

Angel opened his mouth to protest, but she had already grabbed the bowl and spoon from him and headed back to the table. Taking the opportunity, he aimed for the kitchen where he'd seen Xander disappear.

"Angel, my man, good Jello, yes?" Devon asked, cutting him off before he could get more than a single step.

"The best Jello I've ever tasted," Angel agreed truthfully. Of course, he'd also tasted horse manure that was not too far behind it in terms of things he wanted in his mouth. The texture was clearly intended to torture the eater, and it tasted more of chemicals than food. The only redeeming quality was the way it made him nauseous enough to not care about his constant hunger.

Devon gave a knowing laugh and winked at him. And then Joyce was back, that mother-glare on her face again. With one more wink, Devon retreated back to Buffy's side, but at least this time he kept his hands off her posterior. "I don't know what she sees in him," she sighed as she gave Angel the Jello. Again, eating was much preferable to talking.

"I liked that Scott boy. I don't know why Buffy dumped him."

"He was homosexual," Angel said, happy to finally have something to contribute to the conversation. Joyce looked at him oddly. "Xander told me," Angel added awkwardly. He knew about the homosexuality from smelling the boy, and Joyce was not supposed to know about the smelling of humans.

"Oh," she said weakly. "I suppose that is a reason to stop dating him."

Angel nodded and ate more Jello. He missed Christmas in Ireland where it wasn't so hot.

"But there's Larry. He seems like a very pleasant young man. Buffy, however, seems intent on dating the most inappropriate boys possible."

Angel snorted. "Oh, yeah," he agreed. And she did. She had liked him. He was a vampire, so that was completely inappropriate. Him dating anyone was inappropriate. Although he had sometimes thought about the vampires down at the suck house. He missed sex.

Heading for the table, Angel took more of that green Jello and then grabbed a pretzel. He'd seen Xander eat them all the time. Sometimes he stuck the whole thing in his mouth, and it made his cheeks bulge. It reminded him of how William's cheeks would bulge out when he was sucking Angel's cock. Angel chuckled at the thought. He liked how Xander never really let himself not have fun just because someone else might think he was strange. Angel and Liam had both spent too much time worrying about what other people might think. Angel stuck the whole pretzel in his mouth and nearly choked as a bit broke off and caught him in the back of the throat.

He swallowed and coughed and then turned to assure the room that he was fine. "Good thing I don't have to breathe, yes?" he asked. Buffy's eyes looked all weird.

Xander appeared like magic in front of him, and Angel stuck his spoon into the Jello bowl on the table and offered it to Xander. "Thanks, but again with the no. Angel, are you okay?" Xander asked.

"I feel good," Angel agreed. "But I'm hot." He frowned and picked up the large bowl of Jello as he headed for the front door. "I should go hunting." Angel stopped and turned around. "Xander, I like that you don't let other people try to tell you to not be yourself. You're a good yourself, and you should not change. Nary a bit, ye hear me, boy?" Angel headed back for the door, and suddenly Joyce was there in his way.

"Man, that is one seriously wacked out trip he's on," Devon's voice offered. Maybe it was Devon. Maybe it was Penn. It sounded a little like Penn.

"He... what? Buffy, your boyfriend got Angel stoned?!!" That was Xander. Angel knew Xander's voice.

"Buffy Anne Summers!"

"I didn't know, Mom! Devon, this is..."

"Uncool does not even cover it." At that voice, Angel turned and growled. There was a werewolf in his territory.

"Angel, okay, we need to be leaving."

"Xander, I think we should call 911."

"Whoa, hey, the cops are totally unnecessary," the Penn voice answered Joyce.

"I am so over you. I never want to see you again. I can't believe you did this at my party, only yes, I'm with the believing because seeing is believing and seeing a stoned Angel is just big with the weird and the believing that you are a big, giant, humongo jerk!"

"And time for us to go." Angel frowned as hands pushed on his back. Without moving his feet, he turned to look over his shoulder, and he could see Xander pushing for all his worth. If Xander wanted him to move, perhaps there was a reason. Angel started walking forward. He stopped when his face ran into the door.

"That's it, I'm calling 911. Poor Mr. O'Connelly. Did you see how much he ate? Devon MacLeish, you stay right there until you tell me what you put in there and exactly how much."

"Buff, help please."

"Mom, I'm sure Angel's going to be fine as soon as he sleeps this off, right Xander?"

"I actually meant help getting the door open."

"Oh. Right."

"I think you need to wait for an ambulance."

"Angel hates hospitals; he's into holistical medicine with the herbs and the... herbs. And a lawyer getting stoned is not with the good, mom." A hand reached in front of Angel and yanked the door open and he vamped out. Slayer. He wasn't going to turn to dust for some slip of a girl not as old as his record collection.

"Xander!"

"Got him!"

Angel frowned as Xander was in front of him, and the slayer was gone. And then they were outside. The smells made Angel flinch away. "Oh, we are so going home, and tomorrow, you can kill Devon for fun," Xander said to him cheerfully. Kill Devon. Yes, that might be fun. Angel smiled as he turned to go back in, but Xander was pulling him. Maybe they needed to kill someone else first. He followed.

"I am so sick of this," Angel said as Xander helped him into the passenger side of his own car. He frowned. This was wrong; he was supposed to drive.

"Sick of what?" Xander asked as he got in and started the car. There were humans gathered at the front of the house. Enough humans to slake the hunger he carried all the time. He was so tired of being hungry. "Earth to Angel, sick of what?" Xander asked again. Angel turned his gaze from the human to Xander. He would make a good vampire one day. He and William would be a good pair. Light and dark, lithe and muscled, the artist with words and the artist with his hands. Angel had a stake with a dragon Xander had carved for good luck, and the boy was good with his hands. His work was a little crude, but he would have a few hundred years to improve. He would be better than William was with his ridiculous words of love. William with all his sharp angles had always reminded him a wee bit much of Darla—a sire he adored and hated in equal amounts.

"Okay, Angel, I’m officially freaking out here, and I have no idea what the demonic equivalent of 911 is, so you need to start talking to me."

"I'm sick of being hungry." Angel stretched, feeling the bones in his back pop.

"You're hungry? Okay, vampire munchies. I can deal with vampire munchies. We'll just go home and..."

"No."

"No you're not hungry? Come on, Angel, make some sense here."

"I'm not drinking pig's blood. Did he think he could starve the demon out of him? Fool."

"Okay, random referring to self in third person... I am going to kill Devon."

Angel laughed. "Oh yes. Devon would be a fine one to start with. Thick, rich human blood finally filling the empty hole in me. I'm na fond of starvation."

"And the freaky keeps coming," Xander breathed, his hands clutching the wheel. Angel reached over and rubbed his hand over the boy's shoulder, feeling the muscles tense under his ministration.

"Too bad you don't have another six or seven years on ya," Angel said as he let his hand drift down to Xander's arm. The training had firmed the boy up. Hopefully he'd turn well and keep those skills. Some vampires turned better than others. It had taken him years to finally get William set right. Of course, he hadn't known the lad before he'd been turned so who knew what had attracted Drusilla's eye.

"Um... Angel... that would be manhandling. Manhandling bad. Not as bad as some other things I can think of, but I'm not thinking about those things. Nope. No, those are mentally off limits." Xander was starting to smell of fear now, the lovely scent drifting from him in soft threads.

"Pull over," Angel said as he leaned in and smelled the side of Xander's neck.

"Hey, I have an idea... let's go visit Clem," Xander said. Angel's hand darted out and grabbed the boy by the neck and squeezed just hard enough to cut off the air. The car jerked to the side and took out a blue mail dropbox before Xander could hit the brakes.

"I have an idea. You stop the car and let me drive," Angel suggested with a smile. He breathed deeply, relishing the fear that flowed from the boy now. Xander threw the car into park even though he still couldn't breathe. Most humans would have panicked by now and started helplessly flailing. But then he had been training this human. This human knew how impossible it was to fight him. Slowly, Angel let Xander's neck go, watching to see if the prey instinct would make him flee. The lad wouldn't get far, but it might be amusing.

Instead, Xander just rubbed his neck and stared straight ahead for a long time. Angel leaned back, smiled, and just waited. Eventually, Xander flicked a quick glance at him, and then another, and then finally he worked up the nerve to look right at Angel. Raising an eyebrow, Angel just waited to see what the boy would have to say.

"So, um, I'm guessing whatever Devon gave you made you really, really happy," Xander said as he swallowed, his fingers still rubbing his neck.

Without answer, Angel got out of the car and walked around to the driver's side. Xander scrambled to the passenger's seat without even needing to be ordered. Maybe he should make this one the way he made Penn—with encouragement and praise. Penn had certainly grown up well... at least until he annoyed Angel. However, Xander was a little smarter, and a little more creative than Penn.

Dropping into the driver's seat, Angel ran his hands over the controls. "The soul is just so pathetic. The self-hating and do gooding is enough to make me want to strangle him."

"What with soul-you and not-soul-you sharing the same body, that would kinda hurt, wouldn't it?" Xander asked, but Angel could smell the fear. He gave the boy credit for having bollocks like an Angus bull.

"Sometimes pain is to be sought after," Angel said, and the fear took a sharp spike. He smiled as he started the car. First order of business was dinner. "Not that the soul is willing to admit that. He is such a stick-up-his-ass humanitarian I'm surprised he's not sipping tea with the watcher. They're both first class prats. But you... I'm surprised that he keeps you around."

"Me? Doesn't Angel like me... the soul-having Angel, I mean, because if you're not liking me, the soul-free you, I'm not really taking offense. Unless not liking would lead to torture and dismemberment... in that case I'd prefer you like me. Only, not too much." Xander swallowed, and Angel felt nearly intoxicated with the beautiful scent of fear.

"Oh, he likes you. He just buries that so down deep that he doesn't even think about it too much." Angel reached over and rested his hand on Xander's knee. Obviously, that was the limit of Xander's ability to control his prey-instincts because he tried to scramble away. Angel tightened his hand until his fingers dug deep into the flesh. The boy would be delightfully colorful tomorrow. Again, Xander surprised him by settling down and not fighting back.

"Soul-Angel is not like that," Xander said slowly and carefully, and now the fear was spiced with the aroma of salt.

"Soul-Angel, soul-free Angel. That is really annoying." He considered the problem for a moment. "Call me Angelus. I really always did prefer Angelus over Angel. It's a grander name, one that warns people that I am not someone to take lightly. Angelus conjures images of mighty warrior angels, beautiful and deadly. Angels... angels are overgrown pixies in pink," Angelus snorted. "And Angel does think of you. He thinks of watching you grow old or turning you. He thinks of you throwing yourself on some demon like the idiotic white knight you try to be, and he thinks of having to watch you bleed out." Angelus let his hand trail up Xander's leg until he could seize his upper thigh. "He has nightmares of smelling your blood and draining you. But then the moron starves himself so much that I'm surprised he hasn't."

"Mucho with the disturbo," Xander muttered.

"Use that phone to call William," Angelus ordered as he cruised the street. He had his potential childe here, but now he wanted his two favorite childer. Unlike so many of the others he'd turned, he'd never tired of William's desperate struggle to be accepted or Drusilla's slavish attentions.

"What? Nevermind, doing," Xander quickly added. Angelus smiled at the evidence that a single frown could correct the boy. A whip would do wonders with him. "And what am I saying when I call him?"

"Whatever you like," Angelus suggested. He only had to let William know that he was back and they would both come running home and take their proper place at his feet.

"Whatever I like. Yeah, I'd like to say that we went to this really boring party with Faith's GED friend with the eye that goes all over the place and no one got stoned. Can't say that," he mumbled as the phone rang.

Angelus tightened his hold on Xander's thigh, and the boy stopped muttering with a pained hiss.

"Wot?" William finally snapped from the other end. He sounded drunk. How far he had come from that foppish poet Drusilla had dragged home.

"Spike, hey, you sound... really shitty," Xander said, his voice high and in danger of cracking.

"Xand? What's wrong, pet?"

"Sounds like I'm not the only one with the wrong. Are you okay?"

Angelus rolled his eyes. As long as William wasn't dust, he would survive.

"Not really, luv. Drusilla up and left. She's healthy, so she can tend herself, but I didn't see it coming, and she didn't even bother tryin' ta shove me out into the sun."

Smirking at that bit of information, Angelus imagined all the ways to torture his sweet William over that failure. His own sire had abandoned him. Oh yes, very amusing.

"But somethin's not right on the Hellmouth, that's for bloody sure. What's wrong, pet, and don't give me any of that 'nothing' bollocks."

"Nope, not even going to try and say 'nothing.' But guess who's back in town," Xander tried for humorous, and his voice broke, making him sound like a child. Out of patience, Angelus reached over and pulled the phone away from him.

"William, my boy, it's time for you to come home."

"Angel?" Spike sounded confused.

"To avoid confusing discussions of souls, let's just call me Angelus," he suggested. "And I had expected you to keep my beautiful girl safe. You do know how she gets, William. You will be punished for your failure."

"Bloody hell," Spike breathed on the other end, and Angelus laughed.

"You have twenty-four hours to get here, and for every hour late, I'm going to cut a pound of flesh off your body, understand?" Angelus demanded.

"Yes, sire," William quickly agreed. Angelus smiled as he tossed the phone back to Xander.

"Spike?" Xander said into the phone, and now the fear smell was nearly overpowering.

"Pet, are you alright?"

"Depending on your definition of alright, of course I'm not! But I still have all my blood inside my body, so I'm hoping for something alright-shaped if not actually alright," Xander babbled. The words made no sense to Angelus, but Spike made a little soothing noise. Making a mental note to invest some time turning the two boys against each other so they would remain devoted to their sire, Angelus turned down the main street.

"Don't argue with him, luv. Just do what he says."

"I figured that one out on my own," Xander gave a weak laugh and Angelus stopped the car at the edge of a park before grabbing the phone.

"Tick-tock, Willy. Tick-tock," he sing-songed mockingly before hitting the end button. Xander was staring at him with eyes so wide the white of them made a full circle. There were annoyingly few prey wandering around, but a young couple holding hands and staring up at the stars caught his attention. If he was lucky, he could grab and disable the girl before her mate had a chance to discover that he was outmatched. "A lesson, boy," Angelus said as he literally sprang over Xander to land beside the passenger side of the car. Xander's eyes flickered to the keys still in the ignition, and Angelus rested his hand on Xander's shoulder, digging his fingers in just enough to warn him to be good. Xander settled.

"When hunting a young pair, always go for the female first. Males are predictably arrogant and will assume they can take you out. When hunting older pairs, go for the male or a child. Women are stupidly loyal to their mates once they have made a commitment, far more so than men. I've seen men offer up their wives to try and save their own worthless hides. You should have seen the look of abject pain in the women's eyes when they realized their husband's love did not actually extend to 'death do us part'."

Xander swallowed, his gaze now falling on the couple Angelus had targeted. Xander's fingers twitched as Angelus opened the door for him. He would not leave his pet behind to get in trouble. With no warning, Xander was suddenly screaming.

"RUN... FIRE! RAPE!! POLICE RAID! RUN! No, seriously RUN!"

The couple looked over in shock, and Angelus vamped out in frustration. Unfortunately, that did make them run. Oh, Angelus could catch them, but not without losing his pet. Growling, he grabbed Xander by the shirt and slammed him onto the hood of the car. Tears leaked from the sides of Xander's eyes, but he didn't say anything as he clutched Angelus' arms and stared up.

"Do that again, and I will kill you," he growled.

"Um, you killing other people while I just stand to the side? No offense, but seriously... do you really think I'll ever do that?"

"You will if you want to live."

"Okay, I'm really liking the being alive part of living, but I won't live at the cost of someone else's life."

Angelus bared his teeth, and the stubborn little git just set his jaw. As much as he had planned to keep the boy around, Angelus had no intention of trying to break such pertinacious behavior... not just for the pleasure of a hunting companion. He bent down to take his first real meal in decades, and his teeth sank easily into the soft flesh. Unlike most victims, Xander did not even make a sound as he fisted Angelus' shirt. Three mouthfuls of blood later, Angelus was ripped away from his meal by a wave of vertigo that made him stumble and then fall to one knee. No. No. He struggled, slamming his head into the door of the car before that damnable soul rose up into his throat.

"Xander, I can't hold him. Run," Angel's pained whisper warned the boy. Angelus expected to hear footsteps fleeing, but instead a warm hand rested on his back. Despair washed over Angel, and Angelus took firm control over the body again.

Chuckling, he stood slowly and turned to consider his bleeding victim. "You're an idiot, boy," he said as he stepped forward and caught Xander by the back of his neck. Angelus' fingers smeared the blood that still leaked from the open wound. The smell of blood and of Angelus' own scent marks all over the boy made him hungry for more than the taste he'd managed to get.

"Um, yep, I'm big with the stupid," Xander nodded. "But Angel's still in there. That means that sooner or later, you're going to get stuck under him, right?"

"Not if I can find Devon. I imagine he would give me many more pills in order to save his life," Angelus pointed out.

"But then you'll have Angel always in there with the poking and the distracting, and you told me there's some big bad coming, so you probably won't live long before you're dust, and dust has to be worse than being stuck under Angel and all that hair gel."

"Do you have a point, boy?" Angelus asked, not liking the direction this conversation was going. Moronic gypsies couldn't even get a curse right. Happiness was supposed to give him his freedom, not give him some temporary reprieve marred by the presence of the damned soul. And as much as he hated to admit it, being trapped under the soul was still better than being dust. He'd gotten to threaten that watcher, he'd emotionally destroyed the man without touching him. And hunting with his William had allowed him to sometimes forget the misery the soul dragged along with him.

"I have a deal. You let me live, and I'll gang up with you against Angel," Xander blurted. The boy seemed to be regretting his decision to not run.

Angelus narrowed his eyes and considered Xander. "Why would you do that? You are so fond of your Angel, your great protector. Do you hope that one day he'll turn you? That he'll make you immortal?" Angelus moved closer, his voice soft and tempting for the prey as he brought his other hand up and ran a finger over the wound. He licked Xander's blood, and then watched as the boy's Adam's apple bobbed madly.

"No way. Seriously, I don't want to get that pathetically out of touch with reality. But you know I love Angel, and you said he's starving himself by not having human blood..."

Angelus interrupted by laughing as he stepped back. "You are willing to die to keep me from culling the human herd, and now you expect me to believe you will force Angel to take human life? You are more stupid than I had thought."

"Hey, I am stupid, but I'm not that stupid. There is a little thing called a human blood bank or a hospital, although those would be stealing, but for you, I'll do a little larceny. Or the suck houses. Spike said there are two in town, and you would be a big deal in the suck house."

"You want me to lay down in filth and drink the spoiled blood of vampire whores?" Angelus asked incredulously.

"I could clean a room, or we could go with the blood bank idea... but it's either you eat me and some random people now and then go back to pig blood, or you work with me. Or actually, you may not even get pig blood. You know, if you kill me, I'm almost sure that Angel is going to do the big old spiral of despair, and then you may be back to rat blood."

Angelus shivered at that memory. Being forced to crawl in sewers like an animal had made the torments of hell seem like a pleasant dream. But even now, he could feel the truth of Xander's words. The soul was already writhing in pain and howling. Angelus stretched as he reveled in Angel's agony.

"I could fuck one of the vamp whores," Angelus mused, his lips twisting in disgust. He wanted fresh blood, flesh never before bruised by vampire hands. But if he took what he wanted, the damnable soul would make him pay for far longer than his crimes merited. The abject humiliations he'd been subjected to because of one dead gypsy... they proved that justice was a ridiculous human notion. It didn't exist. And the universe was intent on making him suffer far more than he deserved.

"You could... wha?" Xander choked. "Okay, you and sex is a little like my parents and sex. Not good on the brain."

"I miss sex. The soul is so busy trying to prove he is human that he tries to be inhumanly perfect. It is torture. It's annoying torture," Angelus said as he grabbed Xander by the arm and shoved him back into the car.

"Angel's anal retentiveness is a little annoying," Xander admitted, and Angelus looked over in surprise.

"I thought you loved him." Angelus started the car and did a U-turn in the middle of the street.

"I do. But I'm not with the blind here. He has this whole dark knight, avenger, perfectionist thing going on. It's hard to be a good old-fashioned nice guy around Mr. Perfect... hard on the ego. And please tell me we're going to a suck house because I'm really hoping to not die tonight. I have parental weirdness with an overcompensating mother and a drunk father to deal with tomorrow."

"I should drain them," Angelus pointed out. The boy was clearly worth keeping alive to turn later, but even the soul had entertained thoughts of killing his parents.

"Oh no. No, there will be no killing of the parent units," Xander said firmly. Angelus looked over, and Xander flushed. "Please. I mean, not that I'm telling you what to do, but you don't need to go out of your way for me because you had fucking on the agenda," he quickly backtracked.

Angelus turned his attention back to the road. Xander needed some work, but Angelus did appreciate a submissive streak in his childer, and this one would train up nicely once he got a little older. So, tonight he got to feed and fuck, and at some point in the future, he would slip out long enough to turn his boy. He could already imagine it, his legs spread as William and Xander both knelt in front of him, their yellow eyes gazing up in worship as they fought for the right to suck his cock. He'd torture Drusilla into returning home and fuck her raw after his boys had worked him with their mouths. Angelus reached down and stroked his trapped erection. The day would come. The day would definitely come.

Flesh and Blood and Heart

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons. ~Johann Schiller

"Would the Master like anything else?" the skanky vamp with greasy, shoulder-length hair asked as he looked over Xander's shoulder at a now sated and sleeping Angelus. The only other vamp to survive Angelus' little visit had been a woman with long, dark hair that was tangled with bits of straw and grass, and she was out dumping the one human who had not survived her visit to the suck house tonight.

"No, no, Master is just fine. Huge with the fine. Needing some quiet," Xander assured the vamp. He bit his lip to try and just hold it together a little longer. Angelus was... Angelus was terrifying. And he felt exactly nothing for the poor woman who he had drained. Her fists had clawed at him, pulling him closer, and Xander had watched the lust on her face with disgust. Then her eyes just sort of sagged. Of course, Angelus' only concerned was that the woman's death not count as breaking the deal. And since the alternative had been dying just before Angelus went gone out on a killing spree, Xander had agreed to let just the one dead woman not count. Just one. Hey, it wasn't like one life was all that important in the face of stopping Angelus. Xander thought he might puke. He definitely wished the one lost life had been his own.

The skanky vamp looked at him strangely. "You call for me, Leander, if you need anything," he whispered as he backed out of the room.

Xander walked over to the pile of "their cleanest blankets" and sat down heavily. It would be morning soon, and he would have to go over to his parents and make nice noises, and he just didn't know how he was supposed to do it. He'd watched a woman die. He'd watched biting and sex and variations on sex and he'd watched a woman die. He might freak out more about the sex if he hadn't watched a woman die. And he was fairly sure his brain was broken.

He leaned back against the molding wall of the old house and looked around at the boarded windows, the piles of dirty blankets and quilts and the three remaining humans who'd been fucked and relieved of a few pints of blood. He watched Angelus sleep, praying that Angel would be able to take control once the drugs were out of his system. Actually, he decided, he didn't wish he had died instead of that woman, he wished it had been Devon. What a loser. What a moronic loser. He just wished he had more words for stupid because he'd use them all on that arrogant, vain, stupid pill-popper. Xander felt a cold trickle down his face, but he was too tired to even reach up and wipe the tear away.

Part of him wanted to blame Angel for this. It would be so easy seeing as how Angelus had used Angel's body. Besides, Angel took control away from Angelus long enough to tell Xander to run... not that he had. Why couldn't he pull control away long enough to save that woman? Xander's life wasn't worth more than that woman. She might have kids or a husband or parents out there looking for her. They'd never know that she died because she wanted some vampire to bite her. And Xander knew that Angelus, not Angel, had been doing the biting, but her death just hit a little too close to home.

Jesse's parents never found out. They never knew that Jesse had died and gotten vamped and then died again on Xander's stake. Every once in a while, Xander still logged on to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and looked at Jesse's face on the computer screen. For a long time, Xander hated Angel for being alive... or sort of alive, when Jesse was dead. A good deal of that hate came from guilt that his best friend had turned to dust on his stake. But then he started hanging out with Angel just to prevent the Buffster from doing the hanging, and everything changed. But now, now it was changing back. Angelus had just killed some woman, and like Jesse, that woman's family would never know why they lost her.

Two, three years ago, he would have blamed Angel and kept right on walking. Growing up sucked, though, because now Xander had to think about the fact he had played his part in both tragedies. His gut wanted to hate Angel. Hate was second only to fear in his gut. But his head was not going with the plan, and that just left him sort of stuck.

Taking a sobbing breath, Xander wondered if the sun was up. He bet Buffy had called about a million times. Faith might have even gone over to ask why the hell they weren't home. Maybe not. Faith still had a habit of sneaking the booze when she knew Angel would be out, so maybe she got drunk and then came home and passed out. God, how was he supposed to tell them? What was he supposed to tell them?

'Hey, I made a deal with the soulless version of Angel, and guess what, only one woman died.' Yep, he was a real hero. The room smelled sour and musky, and one of the humans who had stayed the night on his own pile of dirty blankets stirred in the corner. His pants had been shredded, and Xander had no idea how the guy planned to get home half-naked and walking bow-legged. Oddly, he seemed to have enjoyed the sex even if Xander thought it looked like the most painful process in the history of really painful processes.

Xander scratched his leg and studied the two women on a separate pile of blankets. It was better than looking at Angel's very naked backside as he lay sprawled, face-down on the bed. What made a person come to a suck house and let a vampire bite them and then... do what Angelus had done? He'd never felt the need to use 'ravish' outside of those stupid book Buffy read, but that did seem to be the best word for it. What had happened was way outside of how Xander traditionally defined sex. He thought he had made second base with Cordy, but now he was fairly sure he wasn't even to first yet. After last night, he needed a new definition for the bases, a whole lot of therapy, and possibly a lobotomy.

The man groaned and then went still. Yep, he was waking up and realizing what he had done. Say hello to regrets and recriminations, Xander thought as he watched the guy press his hand on the floor and slowly look around. The guy frowned, glanced at Angelus dominating the entire bed, and then looked over to Xander.

"When will he be back?" the man whispered, and instead of horror and guilt, Xander could only see hope in the man's face. Yep, Xander was giving up his spot in line at the nuthouse to this guy.

"I have no idea," Xander shrugged.

Disappointment flashed across the man's face before he pushed himself to his knees, groaning again before he bit his lip to silence himself. Pulling one old blanket free from the pile he'd slept on, he stood and wrapped it around his waist, but not before Xander saw the thin streaks of blood on the man's thighs.

"Are you okay?" Xander asked. Yep, this guy was a fruitcake. He was a fig short of a fruitcake even, but if he was hurt, Xander could call an ambulance from his cell phone. Not that he had for the woman who had died.

"Buddy, I'm fantastic. Seriously, I'll pay double for that," he said eagerly. And Xander found whole new levels of squick.

"I'll tell him," Xander smiled weakly. Okay, if Angelus was still in control, he'd probably be pissed at having humans pay as though Angelus were for sale. If Angel was in charge... hell, if Angel were in charge, that was going to be a drop in the big old guilt bucket he was going to be trying to drown himself in.

The man nodded and stumbled awkwardly to the door. A scrap of his pant leg was still caught around his ankle and long threads trailed after him. Xander watched them make a wormy trail in the dust of the floor.

One of the women opened her eyes, glanced around, and then promptly went back to sleep, leaving Xander alone with his thoughts. He just stared at the wall and tried to think about nothing... except maybe about how that wall paper was really, really ugly. He didn't even know they made wallpaper that shade of yellow. Water stains sort of blended with the design of leaves. He was exhausted, but he couldn't bring himself to close his eyes.

"Pet, you alright?" a voice interrupted his little trance. Xander jerked, gasped, and looked over to find Spike crouched next to him, all vamped out and twitching his nose like a rabbit... although he probably shouldn't point out the rabbit part since he didn't have a love of pain and bloodletting.

"Hey, me? I'm fine. Look all my fingers and toes are still attached," Xander said as he held his hand out and wiggled his fingers. Spike looked at him oddly. "And you're here."

"Right then, need to deal with the big bugger first, alright?"

"Deal away," Xander nodded. He should probably feel something about Spike showing up, but the part of him that felt things had gone on vacation and not left a contact number. Maybe it had even moved and failed to file a change of address form. Maybe... maybe his brain was really and truly broken.

"Sire?" Spike said softly as he edged closer to the bed.

That broad back stiffened, muscles rippling under the skin and then in the blink of an eye, Angel was up, his hand around Spike's throat. He snarled, showing his vampire teeth, and then dropped back into his human face. "Spike?"

"Angel?" Spike asked, his voice still sounding way more respectful than Xander had ever heard him.

"What are you—" Angel looked around with a slowly gathering expression of horror. He let go of Spike's neck and dropped back down onto the bed as though someone had cut all his leg muscles. That same woman in the corner opened her eyes and blinked owlishly at Spike.

"Get out," Spike ordered when Angel just continued to stare blankly. Xander knew exactly how Angel felt. Yep, the brain was not engaging with the world right now.

"What?" the woman asked as she frowned. She pushed herself up and woke the second woman. Spike threw Angel's pants at him, and Angel started putting them on mechanically.

"Master, do you need anything?" Leander asked from the doorway.

"Yeah, get the birds out of here," Spike said before he turned his back on them. With a respectful nod, Leander reached down and practically picked one woman up under each arm as he hauled them out of the room.

"So, wot possessed you to go after a suckhouse, Peaches?" Spike asked, his usual insolent tone back. He leaned against the wall and pulled out a cigarette.

"I... Spike, just get out of town before the slayer sees you," Angel said wearily. His pants were on and he sat back down on the bed. "I need to get Xander home.

"During the day when you own a bloody convertible? Good luck with that, luv. Soddin' idiotic, owning a convertible unless you plan a little self-immolation."

"What? No," Angel said peevishly, and if Xander knew what immolation was, he might even understand why Angel was peeved.

"At least you don't smell like you're starvin', and I know I didn't see a pile of bodies outside, so did ya decide to take up with a stable?"

"No!" Angel protested about the same time Xander pointed out, "There was a pile of one."

Spike turned and gave Xander one of those patented raised eyebrows. "Don't generally call one body a pile, pet."

"Oh god," Angel breathed. "Xander, I'm so sorry. You never should have seen that. Oh god, I'm sorry." Angel had a whole tragic face going.

"Um, I’m feeling more sorry for the woman," he said. Yeah, Xander knew he should probably be doing the supportive thing, but he didn't want to be supportive. He wanted to whine and throw a fit and have someone just undo the last twelve hours. He felt like he was four years old and his drunk father in a Santa suit was yelling about how Xander was too fucking old to believe in dumb shit like Santa anyway.

"I'm well and truly out of my depth here. Bloody hell, I ate three baggage handlers just to make it here this fast. So, I don't really know why you have your knickers in a twist over one Happy Meal."

"They aren't Happy Meals!" Xander shouted as he exploded up from the floor.

"No, they aren't," Angel said quickly. "She was a human being with a soul, and I chose to kill her," Angel said firmly as he got up to follow Xander across the room. When Xander flinched back, Angel just froze. Guilt clawed at Xander because he knew that Angel wasn't technically to blame, and hurting him wasn't going to fix any of the things that had gone wrong. Xander crossed his arms over his stomach and didn't know what to say about any of this. His brain was all twisty and fuddled, and for him to be fuddled took a lot of fuddling because he was used to a brain that was a little fuzzy on the logic bits.

"She was a human being who chose to be here," Spike pointed out as he waved at the room, his cigarette making a bright arc. "If cancer killed her, ya wouldn't be blaming cancer cells."

"I might be. I can be irrational and blaming. I'm actually really good at irrational and blaming," Xander said softly. It was easier than saying what he really thought.

"Spike," Angel sighed as he backed up a step. "It is not irrational for Xander to blame me. Xander, I understand that it's difficult for you to be around me right now, especially given what I did... and implied. I hope you will accept living money. I'm sure Blair can take you in until you get your feet under you."

"What?" Spike nearly yelped. "If you're tossin' him out with the garbage, I'm bloody well taking him with me."

"You will leave him alone," Angel snarled as he turned to face off against Spike.

"Ya think it's better to just turn 'im out? You fucking ponce. Soul, no soul, you never bloody change."

"I'm doing what's best for Xander," Angel hissed Xander's name past his fangs, and now Spike vamped out.

"Like you did for Dru? Like you did for me or Penn or anyone else you just got bloody tired of?"

"Dru? Is that was this is? One more temper tantrum over Dru? Xander is a human being, and I won't even ask him to look at me. I killed a woman in front of him. You have no idea what kind of comments I made about how I was going to turn him, about how he should plan his hunt to kill the most people, how I threatened to hold him down and... and...." Angel stumbled over his words, but Xander remembered exactly what Angelus had threatened to do while holding him down. Angelus left very little to imagination, which was probably good in the being useful way because Xander could not have imagined most of what Angelus said without very specific words and graphic demonstrations with a human volunteer. The only thing that had saved him from a more immediate demonstration was Angelus' determination to not accidentally kill Xander and apparently human bodies, virginity, and a vampire who'd been denied sex for a century were not a safe mix.

"Fucking hell." Spike dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his boot. "I've said that shite to him a thousand times, or did you have your head up so far up your underfed arse that you never heard it? And it's not like I don't kill! If the boy was as fragile as Dru was before ya turned her, he'd be a gibbering idiot already."

"You have no idea what I've done."

"I have a nose, and I can pretty much guess from there. But I don't see you out massacring nuns and laying their bodies in the street and I don't smell anything more than your bloodmark on the boy, so I'm not sure what you think you're fucking apologizing for," Spike said with a dismissive snort.

Angel's fist struck out and caught Spike just under the jawbone. Spike's arms flew wide as he crashed into the wall and a stud gave way with a thundering crack. He came back with a low flying tackle that caught Angel just above the knees and Xander slipped out of the room. They were both worked up, they probably need to try and kill each other for a while, and Xander definitely needed some space.

Scurrying out of the room, he picked through the trash and the odd bits of broken furniture that lined the halls and the staircase as he headed downstairs. It was time for him to just be somewhere else for a while.

"Can I help you?" Leander asked when Xander reached the front room, and Xander screamed and nearly jumped out of his own skin. The vamp backed away and held his palms up. "I would never poach on a true Master's territory, you are safe, young one."

"I was just... uh... practicing my yell," Xander said. Leander didn't look convinced, but the mighty crash from upstairs distracted him. Angel came thundering down the stairs first, stake in hand. Leander backed away, his hands still up and his expression panicked for that one second it took for Angel to drive a stake into his heart. The look of horror and shock was etched in dust for one second before Leander exploded.

"Geez, Angel. What part of not poaching did you not hear?" Xander demanded. Part of his brain was pointing out that Leander had been a vamp, but the other part kept wanting to think about how he'd been a nice vamp. Yep, Xander decided, he was stupid. He was huge with the stupidness and despite Spike's claim, clearly insane.

Angel just stood, Leander's dust in his hair as he looked at Xander in confusion.

"Oi, what did you do that for?" Spike asked, and he sounded as confused as Angel looked.

"He was a vampire," Angel said sharply. Spike's eyebrows rose. Yep, even Xander could spot the hypocrisy in that statement.

"He was a bloody suckhouse vamp... about as dangerous as your common field mouse."

Angel's face hardened into a frown and Xander started edging for the front door again. Human bones in the middle of vampire fighting led to breakage and pain and calls to 911, and Xander was just so not in the mood. He was almost to the door when Angel shot forward and grabbed Xander's arm. With a cry, Xander reversed direction, and Angel let go way too fast, a look of almost comical horror on his face. Stumbling back, Xander found himself caught in Spike's arms. He twisted to move away, but Spike just tightened his hold.

"Hey, thanks for the save because I really didn't need to fall on my ass today, but you can let go now. I'm fine," Xander said as he squirmed.

"Try that on someone who can't smell the blind panic on ya," Spike snorted. "Now, Peaches, you mind telling me what the bloody fuck happened?"

But it was Xander who spoke up. From the way Angel was blankly staring at the floor, they were all going to stand there for way too long if they waited for Angel to talk. "Buffy's boyfriend put drugs in the Jello and when Angel ate them, it made his soul distinctly unsoullike or untherelike or something unhelpful because Angelus came out. But now that he's sober, the soul is soullike and therelike," Xander summarized.

"You mean all it takes is—" Spike just stopped as he stared at Angel.

When the silence continued, Angel looked up, and despair turned to a narrow-eyed anger. "Don't ye think about it boy unless you want me to rip the skin from your backside," Angel warned. Xander had heard that voice before... that was the voice of angry-Angel. The Irish 'don't fuck with me' accent that meant he was close to losing it. Only now, Xander realized that voice was also Angelus.

"Okay, if I have a vote here—and, yes, I realize I so don't—I'm voting for the never bringing Angelus out again plan." Xander twisted to look at Spike earnestly, and Spike shifted his hold so he could smoke his cigarette with one hand and hold Xander with the other.

"Angel is less of a dominating bastard, anyway," Spike shrugged. "Still, I don't know how we're going to solve whatever mess you lot see. As far as I'm concerned, things are good, but you two look like someone vivisected your bloody puppies." With that, Spike leaned against the banister, still holding Xander firmly in one hand.

"You can't understand, you don't have a soul," Angel said firmly. "Now let Xander go. Xander, you can take the convertible." Angel pulled out keys, but Spike had already yanked Xander back so that Xander was now standing between Spike and the banister, very firmly pinned. In aggravation, he punched Spike's side and was promptly ignored.

"The boy is in a right funk, and you're going to give him a few thousand pounds of metal to go play with after tellin' him you're foisting him off on some git named Blair? Peaches, you're a fucking idiot."

"Watch your mouth," Angel warned as he stepped forward. Xander couldn't see Spike's face, but from the long plume of smoke that headed for Angel's face, he was guessing Spike was going for insolent and disrespectful. Oh yeah, they were going to fight, and Xander was going to get broken. Then again, broken would save him from having to explain to anyone else how much of an idiot he'd been.

"I'm a fucking monster, Spike. You are too! We're abominations that shouldna even exist, and yet we do. We walk and talk like humans but we're fucking dead things gorging off the lives of those who should be here," Angel snapped, and then he turned his back. Xander didn't know what Angel was going to do until the door was open. For one second, Angel stood in the sun, smoke rising from him, and then Spike tackled him from the side. The front door splintered under the impact and the two vampires tumbled into what used to be the dining room.

Xander was frozen for one second before he leapt after them, scrambling over the fallen door. Angel was on top now, his fangs already deep in Spike's neck, his hands on Spike's shoulder as Spike's fingers clawed at him. After a minute, Angel jumped up with his mouth stained red, and turned toward the door, but Xander was already blocking the dining room door, his arms stretched to cover the whole area.

"Xander, move," Angel said slowly. The blood on his face and the yellow eyes made Xander's stomach curl in fear.

"No," Xander said firmly.

Angel narrowed his eyes. "You know I can't risk him getting out again. He wasn't kidding--he'll rape you, Xander. He'll turn you."

"Which is a great reason to kill Devon, but not you," Xander pointed out. That surprised Angel into backing up a step and dropped back into fully human features.

"Xander, the apartments are in your name. I've left enough money in the bank that you won't be trapped into going back with your parents. It's okay to hate me for what I have inside, don't blame yourself for that." Angel said sadly as Spike slowly dragged himself to the side of the room and glared at Angel.

"Spike's right. You're an idiot," Xander said as he crossed his own arms over his chest. "I don't hate you... okay, I kinda do," Xander admitted with a grimace. "But I hate that you were this giant twit who paid for sex and had huge father issues. I hate that you had insecurities on top of your insecurities, Angel. I hate that Angelus is never going to get past that. Angelus is everything Liam secretly wanted to be and I really, really hate that this superpowered, twisted, teenage version of you is always going to be under the surface. But I don't hate you... the souled you... because you've grown up since being Liam."

Angel looked at him with a frown and then shook his head. "Xander," he said softly, "you don't understand; Angelus is a demon. He's a monster who is focused on you."

"I'm hitting the bullshit button on that one," Xander said with a snort. "Spike's a demon, only he still likes music and food and poetry." Spike gave an outraged 'Oi' at the idea of him liking poetry, but then again, Xander might be in-denial boy too if he read the old fashioned stuff Spike liked.

"Xander," Angel said with some frustration.

"Angel, look where Angelus came. Lots of sex, money changing hands, way too much drinking going on... ring any bells? Hey, if you went and got all weird about proving yourself to be just as good as your father, I'd start calling you Liam."

"Oi, boy's got your number." Spike smirked as he got slowly to his feet, one hand on the bloody bite on his neck.

"I didn't—" Angel looked around.

"And I hate you for lots of stuff... for being a normal screwed up teenager as Liam, for one," Xander nearly shouted. "I mean, if you're supposed to be some perfect superhero, dark knight type, your human roots are showing. And then I hate that you're lying to me and being big, old hypocrite boy."

"What? I'm not lying. Xander, I didn't know that drugs would affect me like that," Angel said as he took a step forward.

"Yeah, yeah, I got that. But you're starving yourself? You're playing big old martyr and making yourself all crazy hungry for human blood when I'm the closest human blood most of the time? Okay, that's officially sounding both stupid and dangerous."

"I can control the hunger," Angel said stiffly.

"And I can control my need to breathe... for about sixty seconds. But you're practicing holding your breath during deep sea diving... and I think that metaphor fell apart in the middle what with you not needing to breathe. The point is, though, that your control is going to snap and I'm at ground zero. Not feeling safe here."

"Which is why I need to do this," Angel said, his eyes going to the gaping hole where the front door had been torn down.

"You fucking ponce," Spike said from his spot still leaning on the wall. "You do that, and I'll fucking turn him myself."

"Say that again, and I'll dust you," Angel snarled as he turned on Spike.

Xander threw himself forward and grabbed Angel's arm. "There will be no dusting of Spike. And even if you did dust him, what would keep Drusilla from coming after me? Hello! She's the one who thinks I'm the puppy that peed on her daddy or something. And what about the big bad that's coming? So, you take off, and you just leave me to deal with all that? Maybe I'd be safer if Spike did turn me."

Spike smirked, and Xander had to hold on tightly to keep Angel from ripping his arm out of Xander's grip. "Not volunteering. Nope, I like myself with a heartbeat, and after seeing just how freakily terrifying Angelus is, may I say that I truly don't want my teenage issues getting immortalized into some demon. My issues have issues in here. It would not be pretty, people." Xander shuddered at the thought of what he might be like as a vampire. He had his fantasies of shooting bullies and finding his parents dead so he had to go off and live with a rich uncle and beating up Buffy in a fight because he was super-strong and no longer in need of her emasculating offers to beat up boys for him. Yep, his issues would make for a grade-A typical, homicidal vampire.

"Xander, you can't be okay with what I did," Angel said, and the anger slipped aside so that Xander could see the raw pain. While Xander had seen lots of moods on Angel, he hadn't ever seen this much pain.

"Oh, I’m so not. I'm totally not. I'm furious with you. I mean, if you weren't starving yourself, maybe Angelus wouldn't have been so..."

"Obnoxious?" Spike offered helpfully. Angel must have been upset because he ignored the jab.

"Over the top," Xander said instead. "And I'm all issues boy about that. And I'm issues boy with Devon because drugging people for fun and games is neither funlike nor gamelike. And I'm all about the issues with what I saw last night. I mean, it's one thing to have a general concept of sex, but some of those things last night... they were not in my general concept. Not in my general concept or specific concept or even the porn I look up when you think I'm doing my homework on the internet. I'm thinking either much therapy or much denial is going to be needed to deal with last night. And I'm issues boy about the fact that I talked you into going to that party and I talked you into coming here and I didn't exactly call 911 when you drained that woman, and maybe they could have helped her if they got here fast enough, but I just sat there and watched you kill her." Xander stopped, his heart pounding way to fast and his head starting to feel like it might just pop under the pressure.

Before Xander could blink, Angel's arms were around him, and for a half second, he panicked, his brain sending up images of Angelus' arms around a woman who was dying. But this was too familiar. Awkward, but familiar and familial and safe. Xander slipped one arm around Angel's bare waist. "It wouldn't have made any difference if you'd called. I killed her, you didn't," Angel reassured him.

"Angelus killed her," Xander corrected him, "so, we can blame Liam for creating Angelus, but not you."

Angel sighed, but he was obviously not willing to keep fighting over that point. "And Angelus' first plan was to drag you around town on a killing spree. He knew he didn't have much time, and he wanted to leave a trail of bodies that would make everyone notice him. You talked him out of that," Angel pointed out

"Bloody hell, the boy talked Angelus out of something? The way I remember it, the stubborn bastard did exactly what he wanted," Spike said with a snort. Xander looked over and Spike was trying to light a cigarette with a hand that shook. His neck had stopped bleeding, but it was still smeared with blood.

Angel's arms tightened around Xander for a moment, and then he let go and backed away. "Xander promised to make me drink human blood."

"And no way are you making a liar-man out of me because if Devon or anyone else does the stupid again, I am not going to face Angelus after breaking my word," Xander said as he pointed a finger in Angel's direction. "There is such a thing as bagged human blood. I saw on the news where they throw lots out when they screen it for disease, so you will not be starving yourself," he said firmly. "Because Angelus scares the shit out of me and breaking my word to the psychopathic killer is just not going to happen."

"Xander," Angel sighed again, but at least he was looking at Xander and not the sunny doorway. "I don't want you blaming yourself for any of this. You kept something truly horrible from happening last night."

"And yet, the horrible happened to one person," Xander pointed out. "But I feel like my head is going snap like a rubber band because I'm also thinking that Spike kills and I knew that, and I never got on the kill-Spike train with Buffy. I'm a worse hypocrite than anyone, and I don't know how I'm supposed to be okay with myself knowing that." The energy drained from Xander and he took a step back and leaned against the edge of the doorway. Maybe Giles was right. Maybe Xander was just being stupid. But looking at Angel and Spike, Xander couldn't see things all black and white like back when he'd first met Buffy. Clem wasn't evil at all, and Angel wasn't generally evil. Which left Spike who was definitely evil, but Xander still didn't want to kill him, which definitely put Xander on the shady side of morality.

"I don't go making a show out of killin'," Spike objected as though that make killing okay. But then as a demon, Xander really didn't expect Spike to get it. Angel looked over at Spike with an unreadable expression. Spike just leaned against the wall with his cigarette hanging from his mouth.

"He's family," Angel said, and Xander remembered those conversations from so long ago. "We don't have to like what he does, but he's still family. But you haven't done anything wrong. If you blame yourself for any part of this, therapy is probably a better choice than denial." Angel stepped forward and laid his hand on Xander's shoulder. Looking up, Xander focused on the vampire's expression, which was all Angel without even a trace of Angelus.

"Yeah, yeah, we're all more screwy in the head today than yesterday," Xander agreed sadly.

"Speak for yourself, mate. I'm willing to admit that you two are downright touched in the head, but I'm just fine," Spike said as he blew out a cloud of smoke. The cocky would have worked better if he didn't look ready to fall over.

"You need blood," Xander pointed out as he looked at just how pale Spike was.

"You offerin'?" Spike asked with a grin.

"Me? Big with the no," Xander said as he reached up and touched the sore bite mark on his neck. He was so never going to be able to hide it. Maybe he could grow his hair really, really long... within the next hour.

"I am," Angel said. It took Xander a second to catch what Angel meant. Stepping away from Xander, Angel held one arm out to the side, and Spike yanked his cigarette out of his mouth and let it hang his hand hang limply at his side as he stared in shock. One Spike eyebrow went up. "Quickly, before I change my mind," Angel said in aggravation. Spike dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his heel before quickly moving right in front of Angel. Angel bent slightly, and Xander watched as Spike eyed Angel's neck with a look that came close to how he looked at Drusilla... all devotion and focus. Vamping out, Spike slowly bit down on Angel's neck. Angel's arms came around Spike's body as Spike's eyes fell closed.

Yep, they were all family, Xander thought. Screwed up and morally ambiguous family, but family all the same. And truthfully, Xander thought he was probably about as morally questionable as the less human members of his family.

A Slender Thread of Sanity

"Willow, Ms. Calendar, Oz, fancy meeting you here," Xander said with a plastered on smile as he walked up to them in the small park where they'd set up shop. Faith was two steps behind him, and without her, he so would have turned and run for the hills, or in his case, the apartment. Trees waved in the wind, gray against the black sky and they had pentagram and crystals set out on the picnic table in the dull yellow light of a lamp that barely lit the moonless night. Add a guy with a chainsaw and they had the makings of a good horror movie started. Well, except for the freaky suitcase computer sitting on the edge of the table which seemed a little weirdly out of place to him, but with Ms. Calendar, magic and computers were sort of one and the same.

"Xander!" Willow said happily, and then her tone changed as soon as Oz looked at her. "Xander," she repeated, suddenly saying his name the way Mrs. Smythe in fourth grade said his name when he couldn't figure out how to use the dictionary. Oh yeah, unpleasantness ahead. Just great. "What are you doing here?" she asked sternly as she scooted an inch closer to Oz. For his part, Oz was looking distinctly unamused. A couple of weeks ago this would have really bugged Xander, but now he was more with the 'bigger problems' outlook. Although some days Xander officially wished everything would just explode out in the open with Willow and Oz and him. Some days, he thought about walking across and just giving Willow a big kiss on the mouth and making all the ugly just come to a head.

And then he thought of Cordy. He was so not stupid enough to do that to someone as scary as her.

"Where's Cordelia?" Oz asked with a bit of a frown. Faith gave Xander a meaningful look, so he knew he had to get to the point or she would be all point girl, and Faith and diplomacy... not really friends.

"Cheerleading practice, hence the slayerly escort," Xander shrugged.

"Xander," Ms. Calendar said as she put down a jar of something pink. "I'm really sorry, but Willow and I have some very important work to do here."

"Oh," Xander said as he saw his perfect chance to run away like the coward he truly was. He turned and Faith gave him the hairiest eyeball in the history of hairy eyeballs. She had definitely been taking Angel lessons... not that Angel had giving him the hairy eyeball in... oh... a couple of weeks. He turned back to them, and Ms. Calendar was now frowning at him with that little crease between her eyes.

"So, what ya doin'?" he asked.

Faith sighed and walked over to lean on the van where she pulled out a cigarette.

"Didn't Buffy tell you? Or actually, you already know most of it," Willow said, all of her resolve to be all cold to him obviously vanishing in the excitement because she was almost bouncing. "You know those two kids who were killed? They aren't kids. They aren't even dead. They are, however, this really old evil power that Jenny recognized right away."

"What, hunting time?" Faith asked with a sudden interest in the whole conversation.

"It can't be killed until we reveal its true form," Ms. Calendar said with a frustrated sigh. "Xander, why don't you tell us why you're here so Willow and I can get back to this spell," she suggested in that teacher tone of voice that made it clear she was more with the ordering than the suggesting.

"Oh," Xander said. "I was just going to talk to Oz. Maybe Oz and I can..."

"I'm lookout," Oz said, making it pretty clear in two words that he didn't plan on going off with Xander. Right, so Xander was going to have an audience for this. He could do this. He'd done way harder, like look at Cordelia and not think about the way a woman's... nope not thinking that.

Faith glanced over. "So, if a vampire comes up, you ask him to wait a couple of weeks until you come into your wolfy powers?" she asked with just a bit of snide in her voice. For some reason, Faith had decided to take it personally that Oz and Willow were being a bit weird with him, and there was exactly nothing he could do to stop her from being bitchy about it.

"I drive fast," Oz said as he pulled out his van's keys.

"Yep, driving fast and running fast... two survival skills that cannot be overestimated," Xander quickly agreed, and then just stood there as everyone stared at him waiting for him to say something important. He shifted nervously from foot to foot.

"Xander?" Willow asked as she got up from the table. "What's that on your neck?"

"Oh, this?" Xander asked weakly, fingering the neck of his black t-shirt and cursing Angel's name for hiding all his turtle necks. Yeah, he had to deal with this eventually, but he didn't want to be greedy and gobble up all the dealing at once. He had enough to deal with besides the biting, and he preferred to save some deal for later, like when hell froze over.

"Oh my god. That's a vampire bite. Xander, a vampire bit you!" Willow said as she pointed at his scar with one hand and covered her mouth with the other. Ms. Calendar came over and quickly put her hand on his shoulder to get a better look in the dim light and Xander took a fast step back.

"Whoa, hey, it's an old vampire bite; therefore, old news," he argued, only just totally creeped out at teacher touching.

"Not old to me, Mister. Buffy and I thought you were hiding disgusting Cordelia marks under there, not vampire bites! What happened?" Willow demanded, her hands on her hips, and Xander glanced over to see Oz looking more wolfy than he usually looked in the absence of a full moon.

"That'd be a no on the Cordy marks," Xander said clearing his throat. If anything, he was getting way less Cordy marking since her touching him tended to cause inappropriate thinkage that led to either embarrassing stains on his pants or his balls trying to climb back up into his body. And even worse, he couldn't really bring himself to explain why heavy petting was sometimes on the ick list, now. "Hey, it's really kinda a funny story," he said with a grimace.

"Hey, Oz, I hear Devon is back in town after a brief tour of hiding from the Buffster," Xander shifted his focus to Oz. Oz was much less intimidating than Willow, even with the werewolf thing. Oz stood by the open door to his van looking pretty much just confused by the whole conversation which was miles better that Willow eyes or the look of disgust Faith was giving him as she leaned on the front of the van, one boot braced on the bumper as she smoked.

"Yeah, he got in yesterday morning," Oz agreed with a confused frown.

"Um, he might want to, you know, keep touring," Xander suggested. "I hear outer Mongolia is really cool this time of year. He could take up... Mongoli-ing."

Willow crossed her arms. "Xander LaVelle Harris, you are being avoidy about the vampire bite."

Xander backed up another step and took a deep breath. "Not really, Will, it's kinda all the same story. You guys remember Buffy's Christmas party, yes? The food, the chit-chat, the drugging of the Jello?"

Willow scrunched her face up as she turned to Ms. Calendar. "Devon put something in the Jello, and we're all lucky that we didn't get drugged and do something really bad like... well, like anything really bad. But Angel decided to eat a lot of Jello, so he got really stoned and started saying things in front of Mrs. Summers like how it was a good thing he didn't need to breathe. Apparently, he also told her that Scott was gay, which is not really very truthlike, but he was stoned, so I don't think that actually counts as lying. And then Mrs. Summers called the ambulance, but Xander and Angel had already left, and the police showed up and Devon kinda broke through Buffy's window jumping out the second story and a good time was definitely not had by all."

Faith laughed. "Only you losers could make a group of dropouts look like the cool party." She rolled her eyes and took a deep drag on her cigarette so that the end glowed in the dark.

"Hey!" Willow objected. "We were not even trying to be cool, and Jenny and I are supposed to be casting spells on the Bérgan before the little murder victims turn into big old murderers and go after those of us who are practicing our constitutionally protected Wiccan religion."

"Before the... what?"

Ms. Calendar sighed and headed back to the picnic table. "The two children are really projections from a demon called the Bérgan, an ancient enemy of white witches. It mimics a ritualistic murder victim and then uses fear and anger to control a mob of people who kill anyone with magical powers so that the Bérgan can feast on those powers. Now, Xander, can you please quickly answer two questions? First, where did you get the bite, and second, why does Devon need to leave town?" She sat on the bench facing Xander, her back to the spell and her arms crossed in a way that made it clear she was not really with the joking.

"Fuck, just let me tell it," Faith said in an aggravated voice as she dropped her cigarette to the ground and crushed it under her boot.

"No!" Xander yelled. "No, I'm telling!" He took a deep breath and then just turned his brain off so he could say what he needed to say. If he thought about it too much, he would move to Timbuktu or something. "Angel was stoned when we left, and he just kept getting more stoned, and apparently stoned is a whole lot like happy because Angel was not so much soulish any more."

Xander had squinched his eyes together, and now he opened them. Willow was looking at him with horror, and Ms. Calendar was back up on her feet. "Xander," she said as she moved toward him, her face caught somewhere between disbelief and abject horror. "If his soul has been lost, we need to act now, before he can further his evil plans," she said in that same 'I am teacher, thou shalt not argue with me' voice.

Faith snorted. "If someone has to put the man down, it's going to be me. You sure wouldn't get that stick up your ass anywhere near Angel... or Angelus," Faith warned as she crossed her arms. "But that is just not happening, babe. The soul is right back where is supposed to be." It was funny... Ms. Calendar's voice was big with the authority until sixteen year old Faith came in with her slayer 'thou shalt not argue with me' version, and Ms. Calendar suddenly didn't seem so very confident.

"He... he bit you," Willow said, all horror and fear and wide eyes.

"Yes, he did," Xander agreed. "Which hurt, but no one will be doing any staking because the demon's get out of jail card had a timestamp," Xander hurried to say. This was pretty much exactly where he didn't want this conversation to go. He was doing enough freaking out all by himself, so he did not need the Willow freak on top, especially since Willow-freak was so closely followed by Buffy-freak and the closely associated Giles-judgment.

"Excuse me?" Ms. Calendar asked. "The spell doesn't work that way. If he had a moment of perfect happiness, even one, then the soul would separate from the body and return to its eternal destination since it was clearly no longer torturing the demon for his crimes."

Xander looked at her suspiciously, because she was sounding strangely expert on the subject of soul spells, way more than even Giles.

"Drugs... not so perfect with happiness," Oz offered with a shrug. "Happy, but not perfect."

"Not unless you have some seriously good shit," Faith seconded him as she stretched and scratched her bare stomach. "But Xander is off track here. Get to the point, babe."

"Right point," Xander said taking a deep breath. If he were smart, he'd figure out a good way to lie about this next part. "Okay, so Angel's soulless twin Angelus came out, and there wasn't actually as much blood as sex, which is disturbing, but way better than bodies stacked up like firewood," Xander said as he remembered one of Spike's more vivid stories of Angelus and nuns. Spike's way of making him feel better was not actually big with the feeling better.

"Angel had sex? With a girl?" Willow asked, obviously remembering last year's very awkward conversation about Angel and gayness.

"A girl, a boy, another girl, a vampire, two girls, two girls and a vampire," Xander admitted with a shudder, and Willow's horror face turned into her squick face, her arms crossed over her stomach. He totally understood the feeling, especially having had a front seat for things that he really honestly could have lived without ever knowing, although parts were... and that's one more part of the brain he was not going to be exploring tonight or ever.

"But he didn't kill anyone?" Ms. Calendar asked, still confused.

Luckily Faith jumped in before Xander could say something really stupid about a pile of one. "Sounds like Angelus was way more interested in the sex, and who can blame him after a hundred years. All that pent up sexual frustration?" She shimmied, stretching deliberately to make it oh so clear that she would not be trying out the century of celibacy plan. "I'm just seriously sorry I missed that ride," she said with a twitch of her body. Oz's eyebrow went up.

Obviously Faith's boyfriend poaching ranked higher than potential soullessness because Willow quickly hurried to Oz's side. She slipped her arm around his waist so that he draped his arm over her shoulders and looked at her. Faith had a view of the back of his head.

"Five by five, little girl," she said so softly that Xander might have thought Willow didn't hear except for the little frown on her face.

"Still not hearing about the biting," Willow said now that she was safely next to Oz.

"Obviously Angelus bit him," Faith said in a voice that made it pretty clear that she thought Willow was all kinds of stupid. Willow's face hardened into fury.

"Okay, time out!" Xander shouted. "Look, Angelus bit me, we went to a suckhouse, he had lots and lots and lotsandlots of sex while I freaked out in the corner. He called Spike and threatened him if he didn't get back here, and Spike came running because he thought Angel had slipped 'round the twist'—his words not mine—and now Spike is thinking that Devon is too stupid to live. So Oz, it would be a really, really good idea if Devon took a long tour of Siberia because Buffy may be over her mad but Spike definitely isn't. And honestly? I wouldn't mind punching Devon really, really hard myself. Really hard. Really." Xander sort of ran out of steam on the last 'really'.

Faith was smirking, offering him a thumbs up not so subtly while Willow and Oz just looked shell-shocked, and it took a whole lot to shock Oz. Looking over toward the table, Ms. Calendar had the oddest expression Xander had ever seen. He wasn't even going to try and guess on that one, but it definitely wasn't of the good.

"Angelus and William the Bloody?" she asked, sounding way Gilesy.

"Angel. Say it with me people, AAN-GEL," Xander said sarcastically as his last nerve finally snapped. "Angel with soul still attached. And *Spike* who right now is way less with the rampaging and way more with the confused about why Angel and I keep telling him he can't eat Devon. And honestly? I'm only 95% on the 'don't kill Devon bus' myself. But other than that... yeah... kinda," Xander admitted as his anger failed him when he needed it most. It was a really good thing that Ms. Calendar was standing near the picnic table because she just sort of fell backwards onto the bench. For a minute the crickets took center stage as silence fell.

"Well, this was unexpected," Oz finally commented. "So, Spike wants to kill Devon?"

Faith snorted. "Please, Spike is one name on a very long list of people who want to kill Devon, including me," she said, and then she took out a knife and started cleaning her nails, which was either a warning or just really bad timing. She shrugged as she flicked something out from under a nail. "However, Spike is the one most likely to go through with the killing."

"Oh yeah," Xander admitted. He wished he had something to lean on or sit on, but he was not sitting or leaning near either Willow or Ms. Calendar and he would probably look pretty stupid sitting on the swings and yelling across the park.

"William the Bloody?" Ms. Calendar asked weakly. "We should probably call Giles. We should definitely call Giles. We'll need patrols."

Oh great. Yeah, that's all Xander needed to make the night truly perfect. Hey, let the witch killing demon show up, and things would be pretty much perfectly sucky. He was so moving to Siberia. Unless Devon was moving there, in which case he was heading for Timbuktu, because he really was on that list of people wanting to kill the creep.

"Oi, you lot are bloody worthless," an entirely too familiar voice called out. Spike dropped from the top of the van down into the middle of the group. Willow screamed and jumped into open side door of the van while Oz just sort of blinked at him. Ms. Calendar grabbed for the stake tucked into her jeans, and ripped a big chunk of her shirt in the process. She stood there with her stake thrust out in front and a big flap of blue shirt hanging down.

Looking around, Spike was laughing like a loon, his yellow eyes shining in the dark. "Boo!" he yelled in Ms. Calendar's direction, and she jumped back, her knees hitting the bench so that she stumbled and nearly fell. It just made Spike laugh harder. He was still laughing when he passed Oz with a slap on the arm that sent Oz crashing into the side of his van before he walked to the front and leaned next to Faith. "Hand over my fags you soddin' grifter. Pinch 'em at the store like everyone else."

"You're such a sweet talker, Spike. Geez, it's not like you paid for them," Faith complained as she pulled the pack out and threw it at Spike's head. He snagged it out of the air and gave her a nasty smirk. Watching them, Xander just got the really creepy vibe going, but telling Faith to not do something, like sleep with the evil undead, was pretty much a guarantee she'd try it, so he was avoiding stupidity for once in his life and just keeping his mouth shut.

"Oz, get the computer," Ms. Calendar said as she inched forward, her stake in her hand. Spike glanced over toward Oz, but he was pretty much frozen to the spot as he just stared at them all.

Spike turned his attention to Ms. Calendar. "Bloody hell, pet, you're holding that so tight you're losing circulation in the fingers."

"Oz! Get. The. Computer," Ms. Calendar ordered, her voice shrill.

Okay, time for Xander to step in and fix this mess, even if he had been the one voice of reason arguing for just denying and ignoring the whole stupid mess. In hindsight, his plan was so much better than Angel's. Seriously, they should have just mailed Devon a horse head or something. "Ms. Calendar," Xander said, really trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. "Spike is really annoying... and evil, I'm not saying he's not evil," Xander hurried to amend himself when Spike growled at him. "Totally evil. But, he's not really likely to eat anyone here."

She stared at him like he'd lost his mind, so Xander was calling this whole idea a brilliant failure. "Oz," she said, her voice low and desperate, and Oz was still standing by the open van as he looked from Ms. Calendar to Spike and back. Xander didn't even see Spike move, but suddenly Ms. Calendar was sitting on the grass, her legs sprawled out in front. Looking down at her with amusement, Spike had her stake in hand.

"Bloody well tried ta warn you. If you go holding onto a weapon that tight, you make the fingers go numb," he pointed out. Then he tossed the stake behind him. Faith caught it and tucked it away as Spike held his hand out for Ms. Calendar. "If I was going to eat ya, I wouldn't be offering you advice. Bloody hell, pet, are all your little friends this thick?" Spike asked as he looked over at Xander with a frown.

"Um..."

"Hey, not thick. Ms. Calendar is not even close to thick," Willow objected from the dark van behind Oz. Spike cast a disgusted look over his shoulder but then he must have seen Willow in the dark interior of the van and he turned totally around.

"Got some darkness and power in that one. All insecurity and need, you'd make a lovely vampire, pet."

Willow gave a little squeak as Ms. Calendar finally scrambled to her feet without Spike's help. "I don't know what you want..."

"To get the soddin' hell out of here," Spike cut Ms. Calendar off. "The fucking minions have just about taken over the hellmouth, and I'm going to bloody well teach 'em to go disrespecting me," Spike snarled, and all of the teasing playfulness was gone. Ms. Calendar stumbled back a step and Spike smirked. "Don't go getting your knickers in a twist, luv. The boy was just trying to make a point, and I got tired of him using words. Now, me, I'm more about actions. For example, Faith doesn't try and kill me, and I don't try and kill her," he pointed out. "Although I may reconsider that if she keeps nicking my fags." He turned to glare at her.

"You and what army, babe?" Faith asked as she gave a smirk of her own and stepped forward, her hips rolling as she stalked gracefully toward him.

"That's disturbing," Oz said quietly.

Spike snorted. "The point is," he said as he turned his gaze back to Ms. Calendar, "that you and the watcher keep acting like there's some sort of war between us." Spike cracked his neck to the side and glided closer to her. "Is there?" he asked, his voice low and sultry. Ms. Calendar swallowed. "I don't remember mucking about in your business, but maybe I did and forgot and that's why you keep mucking about in mine," he suggested helpfully.

"I don't know—"

"You don't know much if ya think you can annoy me for long, especially since ya really don't have cause. I'm not out thinning the human herd around here... much," Spike shrugged. "But ya got hundreds of minions that practically crawl out of the woodwork, and the slayers can't so much as find 'em. Ya have a fucking Bérgan wandering around, some zombies, and the caves around the Hellmouth are just about empty, which usually means something really big and nasty is coming. Personally, I don't much care. World goes to hell, I'll turn Faith and Xander and we'll go on our bloody way. But Peaches is fond of humanity and his humans, and seein' as how he's likely to get more depressed than ever if the whole fucking lot of you gets sucked into a hell dimension, I figure, why not help the sod." Spike pulled out a cigarette and made a big production out of slowly lighting it and drawing in a deep drag before he blew out a cloud of smoke. Ms. Calendar looked about ready to collapse in fear. "I'm not the one you're at war with, and you and the watcher better pull your heads out your arses before you lose the show."

Spike deliberately turned his back on her, standing there for a second in a display that Xander knew another vampire would take as one seriously nasty insult. Spike had turned his back on Angel once, and broken bones had been involved. Apparently, Spike had expected and wanted the broken bones because vampire displays of affection were more than a little seriously disturbing. Of course, guilt was also involved, which Spike didn't understand as well as the broken bones part. Xander'd tried explaining the concept of guilt, but apparently guilt was one of those things that just didn't translate well without a soul.

"Wolf," Spike offered pleasantly, giving a nod to Oz. Oz nodded right back. "Oh, and the boy's right about your mate. He's a fucking waste of human flesh, and I'll break his neck if I see him or catch so much as a whiff of him around me or mine, got it?"

"Very much with the getting it," Oz agreed as he kept right on nodding.

Spike leapt up onto the top of Oz's van, the whole thing banging and shaking under the weight and then he was gone.

"Showoff," Faith proclaimed in a bored voice.

"He impressed me," Oz answered. He sat in the open door of the van. Xander watched as Willow's pale face appeared behind Oz. She scooted forward, her hands catching at him and fisting his jacket as she sat just behind him.

"It was... different," Ms. Calendar said weakly. She looked around as if expecting him to jump out again.

"Nah, that's pretty much same old, same old for Spike," Faith dismissed the whole thing. "And if I don't get going, he's going to refuse to let me play with any of the minions he finds," she said as she pulled out her stake. "Xander, you good here?"

"Um, yeah, big with the good," he agreed. He wasn't, but at least with Faith gone, the potential for bloodshed dropped significantly.

"Five by five. Wish me luck," she said with an eyebrow wiggle, and then she was off running into the darkness. Xander was so not wishing her luck because he still wasn't entirely sure she was planning on actually staking the vampires she found. Spike was not exactly what you would call a good influence.

"I guess I should leave you witchy types to the spell making, huh?" Xander asked as he backed away a step. "And really... don't go getting Giles all worked up because that soul is tacked on good and tight. They just don't make escape clauses on curses like they used to... although, technically the curse is a 'used to' since they made it so long ago." Xander cleared his throat and really wished they would all find someone else to stare at. "And this is me going."

"Xander, wait!" Willow called as she jumped out of the van. "Oz, don't let him go off into the dark," she said as she turned to him.

Oz blinked for a second. "She's right. I'll give you a ride home," he offered.

"Nah, I'm good," Xander said. He patted his leg with the blade strapped to it.

"Xander," Ms. Calendar said as she stepped forward. Her hair was going every which way, and with the ripped shirt she was looking very much unteacherish. "You can't just wander off on a hellmouth."

Xander laughed. How many times had he gone wandering off on his own that first year when he didn't even have any training? Here, here's a stake, try and hit the heart. Yep, he was officially surprised he survived. Now, not so much with the being alone... or the being defenseless. Between Angel and Spike, he could swing a mean sword, and he wasn't half bad with a Smith & Wesson double-action. "Hey, the only things on the hellmouth right now are vampires and a couple of zombies. Even Clem's family moved, which really... is big with the calm before the storm creepiness."

"But Xander, vampires," Willow said with a frown.

"Minions. I think I can take a minion or two," Xander pointed out. Why did she assume he was incompetent? "And second, I smell like a three hundred year old vamp bite. I figure the minions are going to smell me and figure..."

"That you're a consort," Jenny finished. "They'd starve themselves to insanity before touching a master vampire's consort.

Xander stared at her blankly for a second. "And again with the consort stuff. I was going to say that if I could survive a bite from a three hundred year old vampire, I must be one seriously bad badass. But yeah, they would probably run away from the Angel smell because of Angel, too. I think I should get going. You know, people to see, homework to not do," Xander said as he turned and started power walking for the far side of the park. Well, that went absolutely horribly. When he hit the swings, he started jogging, his sneakers sinking into the sand of the playground, but he ignored that to hurry toward the darkness of the trees on the far side. Even now, he could feel their eyes on him.

When had they all grown so far apart? When had Willow started being more worried about her boyfriend than a discussion of soul-stealing spells? Part of him still loved her, but part was seriously starting to consider that he was not the only one needing a little therapy. Of course, Willow's parents were big with the psycho-babble which meant they would never believe that they were therapy-inducing parents. Seriously, though, Xander was starting to think that with the exception of Buffy, he had the best parents in the group.

Even as kids, Willow's parents would only give her attention if she did something perfectly, and only if it was something that they wanted her do to. He remembered when she gave up flute after her one and only recital. Yeah, he'd been a kid, too, so his memory was probably a bit wonky, but he remembered her doing a great job. Her parents had made excuses to all their friends who had come over about how she hadn't practiced enough and how she certainly couldn't live up to some other kid that Xander didn't even know. That left way bigger scars than biting. He ducked under a tree branch and came out on Oak Avenue.

The street was quiet, a few barking dogs in the distance and faint music coming from one of the houses. It sounded like someone was mowing their lawn in the middle of the night, and that just had to make the neighbors happy. He started walking toward home, listening to the slightest rustle in the trees beside him. It could be the wind. It probably wasn't, but it could be.

And Angel... no wonder Angelus was so loose with the screws. Angel's dad may have converted to marry a good protestant woman with the right bloodline to get him a little power, but Xander had heard enough stories to know that Liam's friends had all been Catholics, and he'd been pretty well convinced he was going to hell way before he went and got demonized. Of course, it didn't help that his father had gone all Calvin on him. Xander's Catholic friends laughed about guilt being the cornerstone of their religion, and Angel had that, but at least the Catholics believed that you got forgiven. Liam inherited his father's old Catholic guilt and his newly adopted Calvin belief that he was never getting forgiven for it. No wonder Liam finally broke and decided that if he was going to hell, he might as well have fun getting there. All that damage, even without the beatings... not that Angel's dad had skipped on the beatings.

Yep, his folks were saints by comparison. Get a little drunk, scream, make random accusations about how everyone else ruined your life, and fall asleep. It wasn't exactly prime evil. Xander stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Ambush me or come out. You're going to scare some old lady to death creeping through people's yards," he told the bushes. They rustled for a second, and then Angel stood up. Angel might be way better with the one-on-one fighting, but Spike had it all over him when it came to ambushing. After many a near heart attack from Spike's version of "helping" him train, Xander had gotten pretty good at noticing stalkers.

"Xander, you shouldn't be out here alone," Angel said, his face still that weird emotionless mask he seemed to wear all the time anymore. Yep, when they went to LA this weekend, Xander was not the only one getting therapy, Angel just didn't know it yet.

"You being here makes the alone less aloney," he pointed out as he started down the street again.

He could hear when Angel started following a few seconds later. Rather than walking next to Xander, he kept his distance. Part of Xander wanted them to go back the way they had been; he missed the touches and the shoulder bumps and the slaps upside the head. But he had to admit that another part was just as happy that Angel was leaving a little distance.

"So, what's a consort?" Xander asked.

"You thought you were alone, so going off on your own was a poor decision," Angel answered, which Xander was pretty sure didn't answer the question.

He stopped and turned around to face Angel. Right away, Angel stopped, one hand coming up to hold the wrought iron fence in front of a rundown old house. "Faith let me go off alone," Xander started, and right away he could see an emotion on Angel... not a good one, but at least it was an emotion. "Which means," he said loudly, interrupting Angel's little silent pissy fit, "I wasn't alone. No way would she have gone off unless she knew you were right there. For that matter, no way would Spike have taken off and made her pick between hunting with him or babysitting me, not unless you were in the shadows doing your imitation of a stalker."

"With some demon trying to take over the hellmouth, having an escort is not the same as babysitting," Angel said with a frown.

"Yep, getting that since you won't let Faith hunt alone, although I don't know which is scarier, her hunting with Spike and picking up all kinds of bad habits or her hunting with Buffy and potentially saying things that I so do not need for Buffy to be hearing."

"Both options are equally dire," Angel agreed with a sigh.

"Yep. So, what's a consort?"

"A consort?"

"Yep, that was the word," Xander agreed. In the old days, he would have kept walking while needling Angel, but it was hard to talk to someone when they walked six feet behind you... even harder to nag them that way.

Angel frowned. "The husband or wife of a ruler. Queen Victoria's husband was Albert, Prince Consort of England. I don't think people use the word much anymore. They just call Philip, Prince Philip."

"Philip?"

"The Queen of England's husband," Angel said.

"Oh." Angel had been watching the history channel again. Xander frowned. "Okay, why would Giles and Ms. Calendar both talk about me becoming a consort? I mean, I know we call her Queen C, but Cordelia is not really much with the actual queenliness." Xander didn't add that the odds of marrying her were growing dimmer what with the avoiding touching her... and the him annoying her with his current freakiness.

"Because they're idiots who believe anything that some watcher once wrote down," Angel sighed. He turned and leaned his back into the fence. "Xander, they're making some huge assumptions that are absolutely wrong. I just think maybe this conversation should wait for another time." Angel sounded so stressed and tense that part of Xander wanted to agree. It was hard to nag Angel when he was already so depressed that all he did was stare at the floor, or in this case, the street.

"If you don't tell me, I’m so going to use my Spike-taught skills of lock picking and look it up in Giles' books and get misinformed for myself," Xander warned.

Angel didn't answer right away, but from the deep sigh, Xander knew he had won. Now he only had to wait. He walked over to the brick pillar built around the mailbox and leaned back. He could wait. He shifted to his other foot. He really hated waiting.

Luckily, Angel cracked first. "It's from a twelfth century vampire named Erlend. He was courting a witch, and he invented this whole mythology about how a vampire could take a human as a mate, a consort. He promised her long life and said they would have a mystical bond that would reach beyond the grave." Angel looked up. "It was a lie. Darla knew the man, met him years later, and he laughed about how the witch had told others the story, about how the watchers were forever looking for his blood-magicked ceremony, the one that would turn a human into a consort."

Suddenly the idea of trusting watchers to be the almighty keepers of mystical knowledge didn't seem so bright. "Wait," Xander said as a thought came to him. "They think we're married?" he yelped. Memories of Angelus and that man flooded back.

"Ye will like it well enough after I break ye in lad. I'll take my time with ya," he'd vowed, his yellow eyes on Xander as he had thrust into the man below him, holding the man's arms to the bed as the man's back arched and he screamed.

"Xander, it doesn't matter what they think. I wouldn't touch you," Angel was saying loudly. He'd taken a step closer to Xander, and Xander blinked, struggling to focus on the here and now.

"They think we're married," he meant to sound indignant, but it came out kinda squeaky.

"Calendar thinks we're married... Giles thinks we're going to be married," Angel admitted with a wince. "They also happen to think that consorts get some magical powers from a vampire. Think about it. My immortality comes from being dead. How can I share that with you without killing you?" Angel asked. He shook his head fiercely. "No. No, I will never do that do you, Xander. You have to know that."

Angel looked so pained that Xander braced himself and closed the gap between them, resting his hand on Angel's arm. "I know that. See me? This is my not worried face," Xander promised. "Okay, it's my slightly worried face, but my worry has to do with a whole bunch of things, none of which are being afraid of you turning me."

Angel looked at Xander, his eyes almost black in the dim light of the street. "I wouldna do that do you," he said seriously.

"Yep, got that," Xander agreed, and he was so not even going to deal with the Irish accent right now. Yeah, he might need therapy, but he seriously hoped this guy Clem recommended was good with multiple personality disorder because Xander wasn't even the really, really screwed up one here. He slid his arm around Angel's and pulled on him. "Come on, let's go home," he said.

For a second, Angel didn't move, his face dark and full of pain as he looked down at Xander. Then that emotionless mask slipped back in place and Angel allowed Xander to turn him toward home, their arms still entwined as they headed down the shadowed road.

The Enemy of my Enemy

Xander checked out the library through a partially cracked door before he inched into the room. He was still having trouble getting his head around Giles doing the whammy on Buffy for her eighteenth birthday, and he really had no idea what to say to the man. If Giles had gone and tried to screw over Angel, that Xander would have understood. He would have called it stupid, but he would have understood. But Giles doing the big whammy on Buff surprised him.

He could see the back of Buffy's head bent over the table as she sat on Oz watch, only without much watching of Oz. He must have fallen asleep in his cage. "Hey, Buff," he said as he got close.

"Xand! Hey, you missed a whole week of English type fun with research, only not so much with fun," she said as she turned and gave him a smile.

"It's funny, but I do better with school when I'm not in school, which makes my teachers happy on two counts because classrooms and me lead to sleeping, no matter how hard I try to not be bored," he admitted. "And I'm really sorry I missed your birthday. I mean, I know you told me it wasn't a big deal, but I'm still feeling the guilt here. I got back this morning and Willow gave me the full rundown," he said before he went to another chair and dropped into it. Angel had been livid... nearly Angelus levels of livid even, and after hours and hours and hours of therapy, Xander was only just now starting to be okay with the fact that Angel had a right to get angry.

"Hey, I wasn't kidding when I said I had a big zero planned. I didn't even do the ice show like I said," she shrugged. Xander grimaced at that admission. She had really been looking forward to some father time, but since she had the functional mother, he guessed she had to have some sort of dysfunction somewhere in the family tree if she wanted to fit in with the rest of them.

Xander gave her a crooked smile. "And here I thought you had scheduled a miss on celebratory weirdness."

"Yeah, so did I," she said defiantly. Then she gave him a wry grin. "Not so much, though."

The library was quiet as Buffy played with a page in her book. The corner finally ripped off in her fingers, and Buffy looked up toward Giles' office with panic, but there wasn't any Giles there. Xander took a deep breath and actually tried to say something real. His therapist told him that he needed to express himself without the jokes when he truly wanted other people to understand his emotions. Xander felt a need to make a therapy joke, but he had promised he was going to give this a try. "Buffy, I'm really sorry I wasn't here. Not that I could have done much, but still, I'm sorry because I guess I figure as a friend, I should have been here to be miserable with you... or cheer you up... or something." Xander just waited, watching as Buffy looked at him in surprise for a second.

"I know you had to do your thing," Buffy said quietly, and Xander squirmed at the strange emotions in the room. He was fairly sure it was sincerity, an emotion he only had a passing acquaintance with.

"I kinda did. Devon with his trick and Angelus with his creepy really did a number on me," he admitted.

Buffy flinched.

"And that came out sounding way too 'I told you so,' because that was not the emotion I was going for," Xander sighed.

"No, you have every right to 'I told you' away," Buffy said as she straightened her shoulders. "Although you were more with the making druggie jokes than actually telling, but I did get the point. I guess I just really wanted to be with someone who knew about me." Buffy leaned back and pushed her hair back from her face with a frustrated sigh. "You know, that whole thing with Owen wanting a good spanking never would have happened if he hadn't caught me with that big old knife. I really need to come up with a better excuse for carrying heavy weaponry." Buffy made a squinch face worthy of Willow.

"But on the bright side, now your mom knows," Xander pointed out. Okay, so Joyce getting kidnapped by some vamp that the Watcher's Council had set up to kill Buffy as a twisted birthday prezzie... kinda not cool, but he figured she had a right to know what happened if Buffy never came home one night the way Jesse had.

Buffy made and even squinchier squinch face. "She was not really with the happy, and I can't decide if it's the slaying or the three years of less than honesty about the slaying," she admitted.

"Ah, an unhappy parental. I'm sorry," Xander offered. Silence fell again as they both just sort of ran out of words. Buffy picked at the edge of the table. Xander tried to come up with an excuse that didn't sound excusy.

"How's Cordelia?" Buffy asked suddenly.

"Cheery," Xander said. "In that she's cheerleading a lot, so I’m not that much with the seeing her. She cornered me in the mall and yelled at me for not bringing her back a bigger present from L.A., so I guess she's good."

Buffy gave him an odd look. Finally she sighed. "Was this always so awkward?"

Xander laughed. "Not so much. I think all the avoiding is making this... really weird," he admitted.

"Oh yeah. So... no more avoidy? I mean, I can handle the big pink elephant if you can."

Xander looked at her and internally groaned at the idea of talking Giles with her. Giles was like her dad, only much more dadlike, so he wasn't sure he wanted to know just how much his betrayal had to hurt. It was weird, but on the phone Willow was way more upset with the Giles getting fired part than the Giles stabbing Buffy in the back. But he could handle this. "Hey, I'm all about dealing with the big ugly," he offered with a smile.

"Thank god," Buffy said with a sigh. "I was about to break my brain trying to avoid you and therapy and Angel."

"What?" Xander yelped. "Me and Angel is an open book in the openness if not the bookness. I was avoiding Giles and his backstabbingly tacky birthday present." Xander crossed his arms and watched as Buffy's eyes went all big.

"Oh..." she said slowly. And then she was just kind of quiet.

"Seriously? You're more with the avoid about my therapy than Giles and his Benedict Arnold impression?" Xander asked softly.

Buffy's lips pulled down into a frown. "I didn't really consider it Benedict Arnoldy until this point," she said. She closed her eyes for a second and then shook her head. "Only you could make it seem like Giles is the bad guy when it was the Council guys who made all these stupid rules."

"And yet Giles is the one who followed their stupid rules," Xander pointed out. He was so not ready to let the guy off the hook. And the fact that he had told Buffy after drugging her didn't erase the whole drugging of Buffy in the first place. And Xander was big enough to admit that maybe he was a little touchy on the subject of drugs these days, but it was still seriously creepy.

"I guess I never thought of it like that," Buffy admitted. "But he told me, and if it wasn't for that Council goon getting himself killed and letting insano-vamp loose, that would have been the end of it. So, I guess me and Giles are still okay."

Xander didn't answer since he wasn't really sure what to say. He knew that Giles had to have something really special and worthy under the tweed and stuffy or else Buffy wouldn't like him so much, but Xander sure didn't see what that something was.

"So, you and Angel? Therapy?" she asked.

Xander nodded. "Yep. The therapist is a little strange, and she has even stranger and occasionally green friends, but I don't know, I think it might help some."

"So, is that why you and Cordelia are kinda...." Buffy brought her two forefingers together and let them slowly drift apart.

"What?" he frowned.

"Drifting. You know, are you and Angel really up for tying the knot?"

Xander stared at her blankly. No. Just no. No way would Giles have said that to Buffy or Willow. No and more no because if he did, Xander was going to have to kill him.

"Xander. Are you okay?" Buffy asked as she leaned forward, waving her hand in front of his face.

He tried... he really tried to do the counting to ten in three different demon languages thing that the therapist had recommended. He tried and failed utterly. "No. Just a big old 'no'!" he snapped. Buffy sat up straight and looked at him with even more concern. "There is no marriage, no consort, no with the gay sex. Oh, sure, there were threats when Angel went all Angelusy, but even Angelus didn't have the gay sex with me. Why does everyone think I'm gay?" he demanded.

The library door came open. "Hey, everything five by five?" Faith asked from the edge of the library.

"I think I broke Xander," Buffy said with a face.

"Hey, if you broke him, you're the one telling the Big A," Faith snorted as she walked in the room.

"I am not gay," Xander insisted as he turned to Faith.

For a half second, she paused, obviously caught off guard by that little outburst, but then she gave a slow, sultry smile and swung her hips as she stalked closer. "You volunteering to prove that?" she asked as she caught her tongue between her teeth and gave him a look Xander had only seen when he had walked in on Spike and some very disturbing porn.

"Okay, ick," Buffy complained.

"Oh, I don't know. Xand's kinda cute. I'd give him a tumble. You wanta watch? Maybe join in?" Faith asked as she gave Buffy an eyebrow wiggle.

"I am officially creeped out by this conversation," Buffy sighed. "Maybe we should go back to the avoidy."

Faith shrugged, all her sexuality falling away in a second as she turned and hopped up onto the circulation counter, her boots kicking the side as she swung her legs. "What are we avoiding?"

"Giles," Xander answered at the same time Buffy said, "Angel."

Faith raised her eyebrows at both of them.

Xander held up his hand. "Okay, Angel going Angelus is definitely freak-worthy, and let me tell you, I did my share of freaking, but at least he had to be drugged into threatening me and even then, his big threats were about the teaching of gay sex," Xander said, leaving out the whole offering to turn part. He really wasn't going there... not until he had a whole lot more therapy. "But Giles went and tried to get you killed when he was sober."

"He's got a point," Faith said with a shrug before she leaned back, bracing her hands behind her on the counter with an expression Xander knew all too well. That was how she looked when she watched Spike and Angel try to kill each other.

"Giles thought he was serving the greater good... following centuries of tradition that is really seriously sucky, but I can at least see the point about not having a stupid slayer," Buffy argued.

"Okay," Xander insisted, "if a stupid slayer is such a bad thing, why test her when she's eighteen? By that time, she's already had three years to both get used to being super-strong and prove she can't be all that stupid." He stood up and glared down at her.

"Score," Faith offered from the side.

Buffy stood up, crossing her arms over her chest. "And if Angelus is no big deal, why are you always touching that scar he left on your neck?" she demanded. "A week, Xander. You were gone to your therapist for a week, and as a graduate of the 'you can't get back into a public school without therapy' plan, even I know that when a therapist wants to work with you for a week straight, you are not exactly issues-free."

"Buffy one, Xander still at two," Faith said with a flinch.

"Hey, I never said I wasn't issues boy," Xander argued. "I'm all about issues. My parents sold me, which is enough of an issue to drive anyone to therapy, and add in all the demon stuff both with the actual demons in my life and with the assumptions you guys make about the demons in my life, and my issues have issues," Xander admitted. "And yet, we're back to the fact that my issues had to be drugged into even talking about sex with me, and your issues tried to get you killed—no chemical intervention required."

"Point, set, match," Faith offered. "No offense, B, but the G-man was way off base."

Buffy sighed. "Yeah, I know. I'm just trying really hard to not think about it too much."

"You want the name of a good therapist?" Xander offered, only half joking. "She definitely would not freak out about the demon stuff."

"Demonic therapy... now that's an occupation that never came up on career day," she laughed grimly. "She isn't actually a demon, is she?" Buffy gave Xander a suddenly uncertain look.

"I don't know. But her secretary... oh yeah," Xander said with a laugh. "She had a cold, and every time she sneezed, all these little spines came out. She almost perforated Angel, and then spent two days apologizing. And Dr. Harrigan went with us for a reading, and all three of us ended up at this nightclub/ karaoke bar with this green demon who makes the best milkshake ever. Oh, and never, ever ask Angel to sing. It's not pretty," Xander said with an exaggerated shudder. If they had to go back to Lorne, Xander was going to develop a case of diarrhea or something until Angel was done.

Buffy stared at him blankly and silence reigned until the library door banged open, waking Oz and just scaring the rest of them.

"Buffy!!" Willow yelled as she came careening through the door of the library. Xander was the only one who didn't have a weapon drawn in less than a second. It took him a good two seconds to draw his sword as Willow just about crashed into the circulation counter.

Buffy stood with the tranq gun in hand and already up. She swung it from Willow to the cage where Oz was suddenly on his feet and throwing himself against the cage. "What?"

"Jenny called. Giles is coming. There are demons coming to open the hellmouth! She said the Sisterhood of Jhe is coming right now," she blurted out as she clung to the circulation desk.

"Well, fuck. Now?" Faith demanded. Xander was already digging his cellphone out. He had a strict rule to call Angel for any watchers, world-endage, or tentacled demons.

"Xander, maybe you should get home," Buffy said as Xander listened to the phone ring. He looked at her incredulously, but he didn't have time to answer as Angel picked up the phone. In the background, Xander could hear Spike complaining about something.

"Angel!" Xander shouted to get his attention.

"Xander?" Angel asked into the phone.

"We have potential world ending here. Willow said that Jenny said that Giles said that the Sister of Gee is on its way," Xander said, and suddenly that didn't sound nearly as dramatic or dangerous as it did like they'd been playing some weird version of telephone. He said that she said that he said. However, from Angel's voice, he was taking it seriously.

"The Sisterhood of Jhe?" Angel asked, putting a different accent on that last word.

The next thing Xander knew, he was hearing Spike. "Bloody hell, what the fuck are you lot mucking around with now?!"

"Get the car," Angel was ordering him. "Xander, get back from the hellmouth and find a defensible position. Spike and I are coming."

Xander thumbed the phone off, and Faith was looking at him. "Well?"

"Well, we find really big weapons until Spike and Angel show up. I don't suppose you have a sword I can borrow, Buff," he asked as she turned to look at her.

"In the cage," she said as she looked pointedly over where Oz was busily tearing away the sheets that gave him some privacy, his growls filling the air.

"Okay, I think I'll pass on the sword," Xander said as he looked at one very seriously cranky werewolf. A twang startled him, and Oz roared as the dart hit him.

"Oz!" Willow called out.

"Sorry, but if there's going to be demons coming through here, we really can't have Oz getting out and attacking us," Buffy apologized. "Willow, Xander, you should get Oz and secure him in one of the basement rooms and then get out of here," she suggested.

"I can help with the magic... that mist spell I've been working on or the line of fire," Willow objected as she turned to look at Buffy hopefully. As the other would-be exile, Xander understood the pain of getting rejected by your friend, and Willow didn't even have an Angel to fall back on.

"Do you have any of those prepared?" Buffy asked.

"Um... no, but I could get something together really fast," she argued. Buffy looked unsure.

"Hey, Will," Xander interrupted, "let's get Oz somewhere safe and then you and I can get back here and do our thing. And Buffy, I want that really big sword... the one with the red hilt," Xander said firmly. He took Willow by the arm and sort of shoved her toward the cage since she had the key in hand.

"You two hurry up," Faith said, shifting her stance nervously as she headed for the cage herself. "So, Sisterhood of Jhe, any suggestions on weapons, B?"

"I'm going with sword. There's not much a good decapitating won't stop," Buffy said firmly.

Xander exchanged a worried look with Faith. Random attacks with unknown weapons was not really the best way to handle the apocalypse, but then this one had sort of snuck up on all of them. Willow had the cage open now and was checking on Oz, her face wrinkled with worry.

"Okay, let's get this show on the road," Xander said with way more cheerfulness than he felt as he grabbed Oz by one arm and hauled him up. Willow got under his other arm and the two of them started dragging Oz toward the library exit.

"Don't lose any world-ending battles before we get back," Xander called out. Only when Willow gave him a shocked expression did it occur to Xander that not everyone shared Faith and Spike's sense of humor. He was definitely hanging out with the scary crowd too much lately.

The battle was definitely not what Xander had expected. He was used to nice orderly vampires or demons that had body parts you could cut off. The giant multi-headed snake demon... not nearly as fun. Spike had given up on weapons, darting in with claws and fangs, making the beast rear up to try and buck him off. Buffy and Faith were making a concerted effort to hit its heart and Angel and Xander and Giles had been recruited for Jhe duty, killing the members of the Sisterhood that kept appearing in clusters that would charge through the doors and immediately attack anyone in their path.

A mist was slowly filling the room as Jenny and Willow chanted together, and Xander dove for the ground as a demoness grabbed for him. Rolling back to his feet, he brought his sword up just in time to see Angel sink his sword deep into her guts as she caught him across the face with her claws. Giles flew back from another demoness' punch, and Xander could hear Buffy cry out.

He tried to cross over to Giles, and a snakehead caught him in the back, sending him slamming into the wall so hard that he committed the cardinal sin, the sin so great that when he did it in training, Spike took it as permission to draw blood. He dropped his weapon. Xander sprawled on the ground, dazed and not quite able to blink fast enough to understand that a demoness was rushing at him.

Angel roared, and then Giles was there, throwing himself into her side so they both crashed to the ground. She snarled and grabbed Giles by the throat, but Xander scrambled after his sword, shoving it deep into the demoness' back. Before Giles could roll clear, Spike was there, twisting her neck until it snapped.

In all his vampy glory, Spike was a thing of nightmare, all yellow eyes and fangs and a supernatural grace and speed that even Angel couldn't match, and Xander actually felt a little sorry for Giles when Spike seemed to lose track of which side he was on for a second and snarled at Giles. The man went pale.

"Spike!" Angel called, and Spike shook his head, his browridges vanishing although his eyes stayed yellow.

"Smell that?" Spike asked. Angel decapitated another of the Sisters of Jhe and stopped.

"What?"

Xander couldn't smell anything but blood and demon guts, and he was just really hoping that they all got out of this alive.

"Zombies," Spike said as he looked toward the library doors.

Without Spike harassing it, the snake demon took the opportunity to slam down against the floor, nearly squashing Faith and making the whole building shudder as glass tinkled down.

"Bloody fuck, no," Spike snarled before he leapt into the fight again, dodging around a head before grabbing the thing by one of its necks. Another head tried to take a bite out of him, and Spike dropped down and grabbed the main body of the demon just in time to make the demon bite itself.

"I have the zombies," Xander called. He got a firm grip on his sword and headed for the door.

"Xander, no," Angel yelled, right before two more demonesses came charging through the door.

Giles snatched a crossbow off the floor and wiped the blood from his eyes before firing.

"Hey, you handle the world ending. I can handle a couple of zombies. You trained me," Xander yelled as Angel went down under a demoness and then tossed her off long enough to get a hand around her throat. Xander didn't wait for an answer before darting out into the hallway. Zombies... zombies... if he were a zombie, where would he go?

A snake head crashed through the wall of the library, spraying Xander with drywall dust and debris. "Right, zombies then demons." He blew his breath out nervously and then hurried off to find whatever zombies Spike had smelled.

"That was too close," Jenny said as she sat on the floor of the definitely disasterized library.

"Quite. Had we been able to deal with either the Sisterhood or the opening Hellmouth separately rather than at the same time, I would have been more comfortable." Giles paused and wiped the blood off his face again. One spot on his eyebrow kept bleeding.

"Bloody good fight," Spike declared as he bounced on his toes right in the middle of the library where the hellmouth had closed again. He was looking down as though waiting for something else to come out and play. Giles looked at him like Spike was some sort of strange alien lifeform that had just beamed in. Xander smiled and then winced as the bruise on his face reminded him that facial expressions bad.

"Seriously though, warning would have been good," Buffy said as Angel felt around her injury for broken or pulled bits.

"I'm afraid that since my employment with the Council was terminated, my sources of information have largely dried up," Giles admitted.

Xander looked at the man. Before tonight, his image of Giles was as the guy who dispensed information, not the one who threw himself into a fight against demons only about a thousand times stronger than him. But for Buffy, for all of them, Giles had done that. Giles had tackled a demon of the Sisterhood of Jhe to save him. Yep, time for the brain to do that freaky rearranging thing again, although Xander was still firmly holding to the belief that Giles had acted like a complete shit with the whole Cruciamentum thing. But then Angel had acted like just as big of a shit when Angelus showed up, and Xander knew full well that his whole hyena infestation had pretty much been him doing what he wanted to do but had the good sense to not do.

"We should have heard something," Angel said. "I don't think you've broken anything, but you have some badly torn muscle. You should wear a sling for a while," Angel suggested. Of course, Angel looked way worse than Buffy. The right side of his shirt was soaked in blood and he looked paler than usual.

"I find it strange that you didn't," Giles said. Xander frowned and turned to glare. "I am not suggesting that Angel or Spike withheld information, only that someone is intentionally hiding information," Giles said, but he actually managed to not sound condescending... much.

"Yeah, well I say we find the source of all this shit lately and shove some of it right down his throat," Faith said. She was back on the circulation desk, but she was too tired to even swing her legs and drive Giles crazy by kicking it.

Buffy nodded her head. "Yep, I’m all for finding and making pay... just as soon as I've had about a week to sleep and get over the ow."

"Oh..." Xander stretched his legs out in front of him. "There's a bomb in the basement. We should probably do something before Murphy's Law catches up with us again."

"A bomb?" Willow asked, her voice small. Her hair was white with dust from the ceiling tiles... Jenny's too. They were just lucky that the bits of ceiling that had collapsed on them were cheap and light.

"Did anyone else know that Jack O'Toole was dead?" Xander asked the room.

"Mr. 'I have an attitude' O'Toole?" Buffy asked as she cradled her hurt arm with her good one. Angel was in Giles' office, probably getting a sling. Giles kept an amazingly well stocked first aid kit.

"He's the one," Xander agreed. "He and his zombie buddies were trying to blow up the school."

"And ya killed them?" Spike asked. "Good on you, pet. Can't stand those soddin' walking corpses." Not even twitching at the irony of that statement, Spike walked over to the circulation desk and felt Faith up in very inappropriate places, and places she really wasn't very likely to be injured and in need of feeling up.

"Dear lord," Giles sighed.

"Spike, not tonight," Angel sighed as he came out of the office with a sling for Buffy.

"Awww, please can I stay out late tonight, Daddy?" Faith teased, but honestly she looked more exhausted than anything else.

Angel sighed.

"What about the bomb? Is it safe?" Willow asked.

Spike left Faith and walked over to sit next to Xander on the table, which had amazingly enough survived.

"I think. Jack disarmed it," Xander shrugged. Hey, if he shrugged his left arm instead of his right he could actually do it without excruciating pain.

"Why'd he do that?" Spike asked.

"I pointed out that if he didn't, he'd be the kind of dead that janitors swept up instead of the drinking with your buddies dead," Xander said with a vague shrug. Looking around the room, he was really proud of this group. Yeah, they probably weren't ready for a sleepover, but they were all accepting each other. Okay, accept might be pushing it a little far, but everyone was in the same room, and there were no threats of violence or dismemberment. He could get used to this.

"Wait," Angel said. He had finished adjusting Buffy's sling, so he turned to pin Xander with a shocked gaze. "If you told him this, that means you were in the room when the bomb was ticking down."

"Yep. I actually played chicken with Jack O'Toole and won," Xander said proudly. He was so proud, he didn't catch the look of horror on Angel's face until Angel was right there in front of him all vamped out.

"Ye stood there in the room with a bomb?" Angel demanded.

Xander opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"Good thing he did seein' as how we'd all be blown ta hell if he hadn't," Spike pointed out. Angel glared at Spike so fiercely that the other vampire slid off the table and went back over toward Faith. Xander looked to Faith for help, but she was just smirking.

"Xander?" Angel demanded, his voice a growl.

"We're still here," Xander pointed out very reasonably. Angel's low growl didn't sound very happy about that though. "Hey, I was a good eighty... seventy... maybe sixty percent sure that he would not want to blow up, so since I was between him and the exit, I knew he'd stop the timer," Xander defended himself.

"And had he not? What wouldya have done then?"

"Not had to tell you about it," Xander said. "And like I told Jack, I like the quiet. If all of you guys are going up, I'm not going to be the one person walking out alive." Xander just looked at Angel who seemed to have lost all ability to form words. For long seconds, Angel just hovered an inch from him, his face right in Xander's before he started slowly backing away.

Angel closed his eyes, and Xander could tell he was doing the whole counting in at least three demon languages thing.

"And they wonder why we keep accusing them of being affianced," Giles said dryly.

Buffy started humming "I Just Can't Wait to be King," from the Lion King and he smiled over at her.

"Betrothed. Intended. Affianced," Willow added softly.

"Meaning...?" Buffy prompted her with a huge smile.

Willow looked first at Buffy and then at him with an expression that Xander still couldn't read, but she kept the joke going. "One day, you two are going to be married!"

"Yuck!" Xander offered with the required expression of disgust for Angel.

"Ewww," the two girls finished.

Giles and Angel were both looking at the three of them as though they'd caught some weird demon plague.

"Bloody hell, it's from the Lion King," Spike snapped. "You two wankers need to get out more often."

Jenny was smiling as she picked herself up off the ground and offered Willow her hand. "I plan to get out of here before Principal Snyder shows up and threatens to take this out of my salary," she said as she pulled Willow up.

"This kind of vandalism would look really bad on my permanent record," Willow agreed.

Buffy gave a huff of laughter as she started slowly for the door. "Speak for yourself. After burning down a building, this would be a minor incident on my disciplinary file." She looked around. "And guys, thanks," she offered to everyone.

Spike leaned back against the circulation desk and gave her his best calculating look. "Just didn't want all the happy meals getting eaten up by someone else," he said with a smirk. Buffy stopped and looked at him.

"Are you trying to pick a fight because I'm all fighted out tonight."

"I thought slayers were always up for a fight or a fuck," Spike offered, and Xander knew that expression too.

Faith jumped right on in. "You should join us, B. Work off some of that extra energy." She was still sitting on the counter, so she reached out and hooked Spike with a leg, scooting over so she could wrap her legs around him. Spike wiggled his eyebrows at Buffy.

"Giles! The vampires are creeping me out," she complained.

"They do that," he agreed. "And do not expect my truce with you to last beyond this blasted headache of mine," Giles warned Spike with a quick finger poke. Spike didn't look particularly impressed.

Angel reached over and caught Xander by the back of his arm. "Buffy, he's trying to get a rise out of you. If you ignore him..." Angel paused and glanced over at Spike. "If you ignore him he'll do something even more outrageous until you finally pay attention to him," he admitted. Angel helped Xander off the table, his hand under Xander's elbow until he made sure both Xander's legs actually worked.

"Oz," Willow breathed in horror. "Oz was down where the zombies were." She looked ready to go running out after him.

"Wolf went running out a while back," Spike shrugged. "He'll be back after he runs off some of his energy."

Giles waited until Jenny reached him, slipping his arm around her waist even as Jenny kept a hold on Willow. "We'll find him tomorrow," he promised. "Right now, it's time for all good little heroes to go home and get some sleep." Giles smiled at Willow before looking over at the rest of them, but his gaze lingered longest on Buffy.

Xander stood and watched as Buffy headed over to them, the four of them slowly limping their way out of the ruined library leaning on each other. Okay, so Giles wasn't the giant jerk that Xander had been calling him. He was a minor jerk... who really did care about Willow and Buffy.

"Right then, time ta get you fixed up before you bleed out, Peaches," Spike told Angel as he held out his hand for Faith, for just a second looking like the gentleman he used to be.

"I'm not going to bleed out," Angel sighed in his best put-upon voice.

"No pig for you tonight," Xander said firmly.

"No bottled for him tonight. Gut wound like that needs fresh," Spike said as he looked right at Xander. Yep, Xander had become the official keeper of Angel's diet.

"Sounds like a visit to the suckhouse," Xander said firmly.

"I don't need—"

"Hey!" Xander interrupted him. "If Angelus comes out again, I am going to be able to honestly say I held up my end of the bargain and no eating or raping is needed. Go feed, have some sex that I am going to try really, really hard to not think about, come back tomorrow night in one piece, please."

"I don't need to—"

"You always were a randy sod," Spike jumped in. "I'm surprised you didn't bugger the boy when ya had the chance, but if ya want to get all that frustration built up again, you always have that warm body right next door if ya lose control." Spike looked over at Xander with an expression that made it perfectly clear that Spike considered him downright shaggable.

Angel vamped out and might have slammed Spike into the wall if Xander hadn't caught him by the arm. Oh yeah, there would be Spike slamming and human blood and sex that he was not thinking about later, but right now he just wanted to get home. "Home? Please?" he asked with his best hopeful smile. Angel looked down at him for a second before he sighed and slipped an arm around Xander, settling for glaring at Spike.

"Manipulative little shit, isn't he?" Spike asked with a smirk.

"Yes," Angel immediately agreed. He gave Xander a pointed look, but Xander didn't care because the world was still in one piece and they were all going home.

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