Spike fumbled with the handle, skeletal fingers trembling as he forced the door open. He glided across the street, moving in a dreamy waltz driven by almost-collapse that locked his joints into place. The wind caressed him, duster fluttering like ten thousand ravens on the wing. The leather swallowed him; fell in loose folds like the skin of an ancient and slid like dry leaves against his papery skin. It was just one street, but crossing it took a hundred hours in two minutes; the moon danced through her phases before he gained the sidewalk.

The door, the last thing denying him his God Sire Lover granted salvation, stood as high and forbidding as the very gates of Heaven, thicker and darker than any Renaissance panel door with its bronze carvings of the Isaac at Abraham’s mercy.

<I kneel before you now, arms raised in supplication. Hear me, oh Lord my Father my Sire my Lover. He said, I locked you in this body, I meant it as a kind of trial. I bring you the childe, flesh the flesh, the flesh made word. Accept this offering, oh my everything. Take this devotion, for it is yours. You can use it as a weapon or to make some woman smile.>

The door was heavy, its hinges stiff with disuse and angry at the oil stolen from them by time and care(less)takers. Spike pulled on it, bones and weary cartilage meeting in a groan of distaste. He leaned back, using all his weight to leverage the door open. But the door refused, seeing no reason to allow in such a wraith, so unworthy of its efforts. Spike’s arm protested the weight and his hand failed, muscles surrendering. Bone slid, tendons warped with the slowing of time. A tendril of pain joined Spike’s dislocated shoulder as he met man-made stone with a soundless tear of flesh.

<Better, this. To be on the knee, forehead to the altar. I bring you this, the offering of what I could not give when I had the means to do so. Then let me start again, I cried, Oh please let me start again. Take this bone wrapped in fat, allow me to cast it upon your hearth, let the sweet odors please you, ease your anger and your rage. Rage I would take if that is what you wish to give. Oh my sweetest existence! Does this offering please you? I want a face that is fair, I want a spirit that is calm.>

Angel heard the door protest as someone tried to open it. He waited, muscles tensed and eyes two opal teardrops waiting to fall. Time, where did time go? Why was nothing happening? Doors groaned and opened, regardless of their own desires they allowed passage because it was their destiny. Why did his very own door, the only one that served him unconditionally, not bring forth this newest visitor? The door screamed in denial, high and cruel.

Then nothing.

Unacceptable, completely inappropriate and Angel couldn’t simply let such insubordination pass so he went to his recaltricant door, all steel and aluminum and mostly glass. One sharp push and the door was grumbling but obeying. And there.

There.

On the ground.

“Spike.”

The angelic whore raised his wretched head. “Sire,” He said, the breath a prayer of meditation and joy. <His Sire his God had taken his Lover had accepted his Everything had been sated by his offering.>

Angel stared in horror. His mind struck him with a chain flail because he’d been a bad Sire, thinking that his childe would simply be pale and wan after so many weeks of wanting death so badly. Did you think, you neglecting bastard, that he would simply need a pint of life and then nothing? Angel let his tears fall in the span that separates a hummingbird’s heartbeat from its neighbor and then he let time begin again. Reach for him, your most glorious creation and take him into your arms. He cannot take himself there.

Spike felt arms pulling on him, lifting him with divine ease. <What had he done to earn this boon? His best was not worthy of this, no. All that he had would barely if he was favored by Fortuna purchase for his heart a brief tryst with Daphne. Certainly not this.>

“Hold on, Spike. I’ve got what you need,” Angel murmured desperately as he carried Spike through the now-unctuous door. The lobby’s queries were ignored as the Lord and Master of the realm carried his wayward other half to life’s very storage room and laid him out on a steel and stone altar.

Angel paced, glancing occasionally at Spike, while blood heated on the stove(hearth). When it was steaming and perfect he decanted liquid rubies into a surrogate victim and draped his childe’s shadow over his own body, readying Spike for to be nourished.

The first touch of his Sire’s chalice to his lips brought Spike back from his reverie with Nox and her children. Fresh and so close to real, Spike suckled at this ambrosia, knowing that he could bear it only because it was gifted upon him by his Sire, the blessing of a higher being the secret and sacred what he was missing before. His body reviled the foul and only the purification that was his Sire his Master could render such offal to the absolute of water.

“Better?” Angel asked softly, voice no more than white lawn against Spike’s hearing senses.

Spike tried to turn to most properly bow and show reverence. “Sire.” Again he breathed the word that was all he knew. His Sire would understand by the knowledge that a Sire had of his childe.

“Shh,” Angel whispered, pressing Spike’s face into his chest. “I’m here.”

“I am not,” Spike murmured.

“You are,” Angel countered firmly.

“Will you send me away?” Spike begged. “I ask not that you let me stay; just that you let me fall away.”

Angel closed his eyes against the pain, both his and Spike’s. Anything his childe asked of him, he would find. Not this, however. He had given life to his childe in a moment of death, but that life he could not take back, no matter how sweetly it was offered. “Stay.”

Spike frowned, but quickly ordered his face not to do so. He didn’t understand. Did Angel wish him to remain? Why? He was unworthy of love, of hate, of any sort of attention. Angel would not waste his time even torturing his childe. Why would he ask Spike to stay? <Sire, I do not know this, this request.>

“I.”

Angel waited, balanced on the head of a pin with tens of thousands of his kindred. Spike left that word on its ledge, alone, balanced in stagnation. “Spike?”

<Please Sire grant me this boon. Let my via dolorosa be fruitful; I have pondered on the glory of my Lover my Existence. I have searched this soul I was given. Please, Sire.>

“Please stay?” Angel asked again. “Or tell me you do not want to be with me. You wrote that you loved me.” Tell me you were not lying, my childe. Show me how you have learned the truth of truth.

“Always, love you my Sire my Lover my…” Spike chanted, as a penitent before his God.

“Then stay with me,” Angel reasoned. “I need you here, at my side(in my bed).”

Seeds of hope that Spike thought he’d dutifully discarded because they were from last season and wouldn’t be good anymore began to germinate, each sending a single, strong root deep into his soul. He cried out for the pain, that it might continue forever. His Sire needed him. The reason was irrelevant, his Sire needed him! By his side! There, where their feet met in time, together to keep the time. “Ah…” He gasped, words fleeing him as books from a fire.

Angel heard too many things in that single soundless syllable, too many sneering insults and debased laughs. “I know we can’t have what we had; you don’t want that. But I love you, Spike. I always have, even when…” His voice died in his throat as Spike began to pull away from him. No, Spike wasn’t rejecting him because Spike loved him.

Spike let the rotation of the earth move him to face Angel.

His Sire loved him.

His God loved him.

His Lover loved him.

His Everything loved him.

His Existence loved him.

Spike rested his forehead on Angel’s, indulging in such grossly familiar contact with his Sire. He could deny his Sire nothing. His Everything needed him by his side. His Lover loved him. “I need…” Spike murmured. <His Sire his Lover his Father.>

“What?” Angel asked frantically, intoxicated by his childe’s proximity, even as gaunt and not quite there as he was. “What do you need, Spike?”

<I need what I have needed ever since I partook of you.>

“I need…” Spike began again. “This.”

Angel turned his head, letting Spike’s nose slide against his. “This?” He was answered by everything(blue) eyes, sharpened by so many kinds of hunger they were a perfection of aching lack.

Spike saw the universe spinning out of control in his Sire’s eyes. They filled his vision, swept away his pain and his wanting for death and solitude. Solitude meant leaving his Sire and he could not leave. Ever.

Then Angel saw. He saw, hidden there between flecks of crying(blue) and sorrow(blue) and desire(blue) the answer he had so very much wanted. Spike wanted this. He wanted their love. The love they had together, that they could not divide equally and take away to give to someone else because like a living heart their love could only keep them alive by being whole. “You have this,” Angel said, his voice not even a whisper. “For as long as you want it.”

“Need,” Spike insisted. “Need forever.” Thick vines of hope twined about his soul, tangling in his heat. Broad, thick leaves lifted their glossy faces to the moon.

Angel risked a smile. “It’s yours.”

“Angel,” Spike moaned. <I love you. I am yours. I never turned aside, he said, I never walked away. This is all I have ever needed to have you need me. I have wronged you. Doubted you, lost faith in you. He was not you, never you, just filth wearing a crude rubber mask. It was you who built the temple, you who covered up my face. My Sire this is you. Real. And I am. Flesh made word made flesh again, your love a benediction.>

“Mmm?” Angel murmured. His childe was staying. Their love was accepted. Alive. Eternal but new for the souls that let them wash away the façade of violence and death.

“Keep me?” <Please, Sire. Keep me. You may come to me in happiness, or you may come to me in grief. You can create me destroy me with your love or your hate. I would worship our sister the moon’s brother the sun I would make love to Daphne I would drink the tears of The Child. You may come to me in deepest faith, or you may come in disbelief. If it be your will. Come back to me.>

“You are mine. Forever,” Angel said quietly but with the vehemence born of desperation. Spike melted like silk against him, a beatific smile gracing that precious face. “And that is my will.”

“If it be your will,” Spike prayed.