He hasn't forgotten the vampires. It's just harder to see them through the tears. Angel hasn't moved, his expression hasn't shifted or even altered. Spike is sprawled in a dusty loveseat and is clutching a beer bottle.

They are staring at him.

There is... hunger.

Curiosity. He's as much a new specimen as a blast from the past to them.

Angel stands languidly, which Xander knows from experience is just a skilled mask - there's nothing relaxed about the impossibly huge vampire. Was he always that tall, always that hulking? Maybe it's the alcohol.

Maybe Jupiter's aligned with the moon. Maybe it's that time of the month. Maybe he's losing the last bare threads, which hold his mind together.

Maybe he's jealous.

Of Angel. And that makes him mad. Because he doesn't think Angel should have any power left over him, after all these years. But the letter brought it all back. Angel's paper, Angel's pen, Angel standing by without prying, ready to help, to show her how to use the ancient instrument.

Angel who had been with her forever until she died.

Angel she had called for in the end.

He clings to the letter. Wipes off the tears with the back of his hand and a tired sigh. Each year, it takes a little more energy to be angry. To feel anything at all. Sometimes... not often... but sometimes, he chooses a scar, always at random, always a different one, and takes knife to flesh, never too deep, but he needs the wound... needs to watch himself bleed.

He needs it now, when he is open and raw from the letter and the memory of Cordelia, that very last imprint burned into his mind's eye ((a blast of Glory-fire-ball-thingie, Wesley jumping in the way with a stupidly heroic cry, Angel's name on a wail, but too late, much too late, and then a flash of something unrecognizable, and it is them, what is left of them, and he knows madness.))

Drops of blood to mix with the drops of ink. An easy pattern of pain, past, future and other things which make no sense.

He can't remain frozen here much longer. He might never move again, and he doesn't figure Angel would take kindly to a permanent Xander-shaped fixture in his lobby.

He doesn't realize how much it hurts to breathe, until there's a hand on his shoulder and starved lungs beg for oxygen.

Angel still stands in front of him, shoulders slightly hunched, unfathomable and so cold.

They've never had more in common than they do now. Xander wonders if Angel bleeds himself too. Then feels the lithe vampire standing at his back.

Yes, Angel bleeds. Except he's not so prosaic as to use a knife.

That's what Spike's fangs are for.

And it will do. It will do just fine. For now.

He feels ready. To collect new scars. And he can't deny himself the pathetic comfort of all things known and familiar. You never miss home so much until you get a glimpse of the front gates, and it's all wrapped up in there - in Angel and Spike, but mostly in Angel. The vampire touched them all. He carries a small silver cross for luck, a love of old, dusty volumes full of knowledge, the smell of herbs and rituals, the musk of the wolf, British stuffiness and an unhealthy devotion to high-heeled shoes.

Residue of alcohol or the lucid unreality of a twenty-year trip into the past, but he doesn't remember Spike guiding him up the flight of stairs. He just knows that Angel is still there, he feels that hulking shadow following him - to the second floor, and then, there's a bedroom.

It's mostly dark. Tiny shards of neon light sneaking in through a back window.

There's a bed.

"Bathroom?" Xander asks, and Angel points in the general direction of more darkness. Xander stumbles into the tidy, tiled room. Flips on a light. He starts to laugh at the absurdity of the huge mirror over the sink, until he sees himself reflected in it. What a blessed relief it must be for them not to have to do that every goddamn day. Another good reason to hate them, if he needed one more.

He finds a toothbrush, toothpaste, and clean, white towels. And he's just sober enough to wonder about vampires who actually have these things in their bathrooms, but apparently, not quite sober enough to make the leap in judgment and just *leave*.

When he exits the bathroom, minty fresh and tear-track free, Angel is nowhere to be seen.

The blankets to the bed are turned down. Spike is sprawled on top of them, two beer bottles in one hand, and boots off. Xander eyes the large, soft mattress, feathered quilt and pile of dark pillows. The bleached vampire in startling contrast to the offer of rest and //home// which he hasn't been able to conjure in nearly two decades. Leave it to Angel to fuse his own love of creature comforts with self-flagellation.

Xander is just so. fucking. tired. If there are crosses to bear wrapped up inside this overture of cold beer and clean sheets and a night's rest from dreaming, then he will abide the nails in the morning. Maybe he will even enjoy them.

He sinks into down and cotton, closes his eyes, and finishes the Guinness in three sips. Watches the obvious amusement play across pale features when he is through. Startling blue eyes hold his, as Spike drinks down the last of his own beer, and leans over Xander to the nightstand.

One cool, bare arm and one still heartbeat draped across Xander's chest, and the soft clink of glass meeting wood. "What are ya doin' here, pet?" Sweet breath and the tip of Spike's nose on his left cheek. Xander wonders if Spike feels this cool and sharp to Angel, like some divine instrument of pain.

He grabs the back of the vampire's head, and tugs, until those eyes find his again. Wide. Amused. "Here is as good a place as any," he says slowly.

The small lines in the corners of Spike's eyes vanish as he nods his wordless understanding.

When the kiss comes Xander's mouth is chilled from the beer, and he doesn't even notice how cold the lips are on his own.

That same mouth over chin and cheek, and it only finally feels cold when it brushes against the smooth hairs of his chest. But Spike's tongue has found the path of silver scars, and that is reason enough for the shudder which wracks Xander's form. There is an expression strangely akin to rapture on the vampire's face, as he traces line upon line of misshapen flesh with the tip of one finger. The scar on Xander's shoulder, looping around almost to his back, and running alongside his carotid. From where the support beam fell on his head and gave him a nine month trip to the land of never-never. The scar on his belly, from Glory's own fingertips //touched by a god, should have felt a damn sight better than this//. The scar on his eyebrow from falling down and down and down and landing on a pile of stones and shards of glass, face first. They patched him back together pretty well, actually. Considering. And the scar just above his heart, from where Willow accidentally stabbed him with scissors when they were ten, and playing pirates. Spike brushes them all with an open, reverent palm and an expression of curious wonderment in the gold eyes.

How fitting, isn't it... Not just the Willow scar over his heart; no, he has debated that pathetic metaphor ad nauseum ever since puberty. But that Spike can't tell the marks apart. That no one can.

The wounds he received in life and the ones he bore near death are interchangeable. A testament to continuity. Maybe a sign that this foolish, stolen moment will amount to something greater than temporary respite.

Maybe, knives and fingers and razors and tongues are really all the same.

And maybe... with Spike's fangs buried in his neck, Xander can finally bury the dead.

The vampire is kissing him again, open mouth over his chest, small, gold metal ball brushing against his nipples. Xander arches, inches between the mattress and his back, which Spike spans easily with long, determined fingers. Spike is lean, and hard, impassioned. Every moan and gasp from Xander brings a fiercer caress, a longer lick of flat, wet tongue. Nothing at all like making love with a woman //Anya Cordelia Willow// and for that Xander is almost grateful. Spike takes what he wants of Xander, and Xander lets him. In return, he gets to lay back and be stripped by steady, determined hands.

Lay still and be covered by lingering, half-worshipful kisses. Lay his head on the softest of pillows, feel his face turned to the side just... so... and be drained.

Of thought, and fear, and memory.

Drowsy pleasures and lazy fires in his gut, a taut form above him, naked hips grinding against his groin. Smell of his own blood in the air, thin rivulets on the once-pristine sheets. Opens heavy eyes to the vampire hovering over him; wet, red lips, arms corded and stretched tight to accommodate his weight as he presses down... Xander reaches up, grabs that weight against him, crushes it into his skin, and his bones and his scars. Rubs and rocks and moans. Closes his eyes, and surrenders to rhythm and impermanence. Hears Spike breathing, harsh, jagged, by his ear. Just the smallest amount of sweat at the base of the vampire's spine. Xander gathers the drops on his fingertips, drags them up, over the bumps and valleys of the long, white back. Digs his fingers into the vampire's scalp, and raises his hips.

Drags a moan from his chest, offers it up to the altar of continuance.

Somewhere he remembers it. He can put pictures to it, if not words. //Soft hair in sunshine and feet pajamas//

The vampire's muffled cry against the hollow of his shoulder, punishing hands pin Xander's wrists to the bed. He opens his eyes....

//Prom dresses and Leggos//

Sees Angel draped across a large leather chair beneath the window. Shirt off, long legs covered only in gray shadow. Two half-finished cigarettes beside him on the small table, wispy halos of white and blue smoke around ruffled hair. Sculpture of a lifeless god, baptized by moonlight. Watching with unfathomable eyes and no upturn of his red, red mouth.

//Iloveyouforevers and pancake syrup in the big plastic jar that looks like a fat old lady//

Xander struggles, digs his heels into the vampire's calves, presses cock to cock once, twice more. He groans, and shifts his gaze away from Angel. His tears are a foreign and unbidden aside to his orgasm, his shout is roughened by the riot of salt in his throat.

// .. safety and hearth and home and .. //

And so he turns his head again to the side, and he offers his neck to the vampire. Because this, this was none of those things. But in bloodless sleep, there is at least the comfort of Nothing-at-all.

He awakens much later to a heaviness in his chest, something *sitting* on his heart, and the choking throb of fear mingled with grief. No way to judge the passage of time in this room; heavy velvet drapes and no modern conveniences such as alarms or radios. It is so dark, in fact, that Xander is not even wholly aware that the familiar ache he rises to every morning has now materialized into flesh.

Until there is a flash of car headlights between the slats in the blinds, and he sees it...him. Angel, kneeling over him, eyes the color of noontime sun and mouth half open. Rocking on his haunches, hands resting not-so-gently on Xander's breastbone. Angel. And only Angel could have that *look* while wearing the face of a demon, only Angel could be the fucking physical embodiment of sorrow and loss and pain while deadly fangs tear into his own bottom lip and he sniffs at the air around Xander's head like a wild dog.

Breathing and panting and breathing him... in. Xander lays still while the tiger paws at his chest, because it is the smart thing to do, and because suddenly, he understands. He closes his eyes while Angel's nose presses into his hair, his face, nuzzles the softest places on his neck and chest. And Xander wonders what he smells like. Does he still carry them? Incense and white sage, hemp and cannibus, grave soil and sweet, sweet sunlight. Will Angel find them on his skin? In his pores, in his cells?

The vampire *burrows* into him, snuffling across the long blue vein where Spike has fed, but making no move to rend the flesh. He drinks without teeth, and Xander hopes it is enough. Hopes that what remains on him, of him, is still something of those that he loved.

Angel purrs, a rough aria to plunder the silence. Muscles flex and strain, lips part and glisten in borrowed light. Ridges smooth out before Xander's mortal eyes, and he cannot help the little sigh, the release of tension. Relief as old as humanity itself.

Mortals would rather behold the mask than the beast.

There is a question and the luxury of choice in Angel's hunched shoulders, downturned mouth and tragic eyes. The vampire lifts a gentle hand to Xander's cheekbone, slow and obvious, but Xander doesn't flinch, or scream or squirm away.

He twists his head to the side, unconsciously offering his throat, looking for Spike. He finds nothing but more shadows. Angel can watch, but the reverse isn't true. Maybe... maybe this is too much intimacy - not Spike doing what vampires do, fucking and drinking, but Angel roaming human skin, chasing disheartened dreams of suburban life and golden ages.

Angel takes the bared throat as preemptive absolution, a quiescent invitation. His fingers course Xander's damaged features like Braille, a parchment telling of friends not forgotten and enemies long gone. Tongue sneaks out to bathe the bumps of a badly-mended collarbone and Angel sheds his remaining clothing the way Xander wishes he could shed years.

Scar-ravaged skin longs for the sweet whispers of flawless alabaster flesh. Lips which loved Buffy, arms which carried Willow away from harm and deadly fumes, hands which broke Giles' fingers... right and wrong, good and bad, black and white fade under the threat of nothingness. So bitterly sweet, that an union which the past should condemn to failure and impossibility holds the key to remembrance, for both of them. Small worships, pagan offerings of sweat and seed.

The chill - Angel's cold passion - descends over Xander like a distant fog, and if there isn't tenderness, there is mindfulness. Not an inch is neglected or cursorily attended, and Xander hasn't known such devotion since the sweetness of Willow, the worldliness of Cordelia and Anya's eagerness. A symphony of color, copper, black and chestnut curls; and of course golden blond, always there. Ghost of Buffy in the background. Does she mind sharing? And what would Cordelia do, if she found them here, in the dark, commiserating loss over naked flesh - besides grunt in tactless, exaggerated disgust?

Xander squirms under Angel's sharp licks - hinges of memory and shards of intimate knowledge.

A guild.

A secret society of two.

They fit easily, curves to curves, none of Spike's harsh angles. Angel straddles Xander's hips and the weight is comfortable. Real. Almost feverish, skin impossibly soft.

Xander has never equated softness with Angel - or another male body. Older recollections of paternal hands too often curled into fists. Now Angel's chest is like velvet against his own, and Angel's purr is like a lullaby close to his ear. Lids fluttering, darkness and shadows, broad, round, white shoulders, known by touch rather than sight. Solidness. Wide back, which doesn't give under Xander's clawing fingers, strong thighs that won't let go.

Less for the ghosts, more for him. No need to explain the scars, no need to worry about his partner's pleasure. Angel asks for nothing, expects nothing, no demands, just weight and meat, and growls for a lover who won't scream or break down when the demon howls. Warmth.

Xander clamps blunt teeth deep in Angel's biceps, pushes his tongue flat against the unbroken flesh. The vampire grunts and grabs Xander's hair, wrenching Xander's face away from his arm. Pale lips hover next to his own.

Xander doesn't strain upward to close the distance.

Angel holds still.

Inches between their thin mouths, more room for the specters mourning over their shoulders.

Angel coaxes Xander on his stomach in a rasp of sheets and the moans of the old mattress. Face pressed against the pillows, extinguishing what little light filters through the blinds, muffling all sounds - it feels like a cocoon, caught between the hardness of the bed and the hardness of Angel.

((Buffy's slight frame pressed to Angel's hulking body, her tiny hands in his strong ones //and how did he not crush her to nothing that first night?//))

Not a hair-breath of empty space left for the phantoms, and there's relief in absence, nothingness less threatening now. It feels like clean ground, new foundations //tabula rasa// and however fleeting the remission, it's good while it lasts.

Angel knows how to make it last.

He wraps an arm around Xander's stomach, lifting him off the mattress just enough to arouse neglected nipples. Xander's hardness swells, crushed by the weight of his own body, but the ache is comfortable, and he doesn't try to ease it. Muscles knot and tighten pleasantly in his groin. He breathes out little puffs of air into the pillow.

Angel's free arm winds around his throat, but there is no dread, just eyes closed, because he refuses to open them. Stare into the faces of his ghosts, again. This time is for him... just a few //blessed minutes//... of indulgence and release long forgotten //please, I beg you//.

Wild growls and moans, Xander forced on his knees, but no fear, yet no fear... He likes that he cannot look into Angel's eyes, he likes that about fucking a man, likes it and despises it too.

The vampire takes the time to prepare him, but Xander does not care one way or another. Then good pain, and blood again, dripping not from his jugular; intrusion, unrelenting girth stretching him. He whimpers, cheeks wet, drives himself backward with a small shout.

A sob.

His chest hurts. He's the one crying.

The tears are few and shameless. His body did not remember pleasure. Did not remember fullness. Until now.

Thrusts taking him off the bed, lithe fingers flattened against his stomach, jerking him off, playing with his nipples, invading his mouth, restless, bruising, hungry, manic. Pressure builds in his loins and between his eyes. He clings to one thick arm as he loses control, and Angel lets him. Holds him tighter. Until ribs groan and cave in pain.

The vampire forgot how to hold a mortal's body a long time ago, and does not care to remember now. Xander finds himself smashed face-first against the wall at the head of the bed, palms flat above his head, crucified by the sheer mass of Angel's body. Weak, painful knees protest the workout.

And the vampire, relentless, pounds into him until the foundations shake and Xander's wail is heard all the way down to Santa Monica.

//Angel//

Twin, needle-like fangs reshape the territory claimed by Spike.

More blood lost, more crimson memories draining out.

When he falls, there's no one to catch him.

Light dims. Angel is gone again.

"So, you're asking what? For my *permission*?" Angel's voice from another room, soft echoes of amber honey and bloodletting in the sex-roughened tones.

Rising, unsteady on half-empty veins. Following the exchange like a tether to reality, to the light spilling from the bathroom.

"I'm telling you what I want. On the rare chance that you give a flying fuck." Xander can hear the peculiar pattern of intake and release of breath, recognizes the sounds of a vampire smoking. The mind clings to such peculiar recollections.

"You're telling me." Carving knives and cold, cold fingers along the base of Xander's spine. More uninvited memories; the cadence of anger and hate, his parents raging in the bedroom next to his. The sounds of fists in the drywall. His legs ache.

"Yeah, I'm telling you. I'm telling you that I want some goddamn company. I'm telling you that I want something that moves around for more than a kill. Something that whimpers and groans and bloody well *notices* when I'm fucking them. Someone that actually remembers what a conversation is."

//what are they...?//

"Because you're a frigging poet, right, I forgot."

"Suck my dick, Angelus." (Invoke the name, and shouldn't his heart skip a beat now?) "You think I didn't notice? You think I didn't *hear* you? You haven't made sounds like that in twenty years. Shit, you haven't made a *sound* in twenty years. And the way you looked at him in the bar ---"

"What the hell are you --oh... I get it. This is some half-assed jealousy. That it, Will? Afraid of not being Daddy's favorite anymore? Newsflash... I didn't like the kid twenty years ago, and I don't like him any more now. You should know better than anyone... neither of us have a problem fucking someone we don't even claim to like."

The words sting for the briefest of spells. (("that worthless little bastard... he is *your* son... not mine..." Paternal disdain always hurts much worse than fists...))

He clamps down on the small hysterical laugh that wants to bubble up. It's too fucking ironic, that Angel would remind him of his father now. His own fault anyway, for allowing the vampire's dead touch to feel like home.

"Then what's the problem then? You did it once. You've been doin' it for a hundred and forty-some years."

"The problem is that I have no intention of making the same mistake twice."

Wouldn't be the first time Xander was called a mistake.

"You know what, Angel. It's really no goddamn wonder you're always alone."

But it will be the last.

Home is not here.

Xander dresses in silence, or what passes for it among mortals. He knows full well they can hear him anyway, but figures that if they have not sought him out again by now, they likely won't. He is in no condition to wrap his mind around some fucked up archetypal bitterness which has transcended centuries, but he is all too familiar with the warped ties of kindred. He has no doubt such will take precedence over one scarred and exhausted remnant from their past.

And that if they truly wanted him dead //or worse// it would already be so.

He folds the letter from Cordelia carefully, and stuffs it into his jacket. Spike's sarcasm is raw, a bleeding wound Xander can almost see. God knows he can relate to its bright and stunning violence.

"The only thing keeping you going was that bullshit back in Sunnydale, and now you're just gonna let the last of it walk out this fucking door...because you're too stubborn, stupid or what... *afraid* to let me make it forever?"

//Forever.// When was the last time Xander contemplated forever? The last time he gave thought to anything past one hour from now, one moment from now, what it would take to get him through in one piece, and where he will spend the next cold or wet night. And if Spike or Angel bit him, took him, turned him, he could shed that grief and that fear like a paper skin.

But he would shed Them too. He would forget the way Willow bit her bottom lip when she worked on math equations, the way Buffy pushed her wheat colored hair out of her eyes with a whole fist, and the very first time Giles looked at him with absolute pride, and suddenly, he knew what Father was.

He lives every day with crippling physical pain, but it has been twenty years since he has felt so acutely aware of his own frailties. His own mortality. It has been twenty years since he has been...grateful for it.

For the ache in his bones that reminds him he is here. For the graying at his temples that reminds him that he will not always be.

He will die. And whether he will see them all again, those he loves, or whether he will simply rot and be forgotten, doesn't really matter. One way or the other, his grief is finite. Because he is finite.

He will not live forever. But he will not suffer forever either.

He briefly wonders if they would follow, tonight, tomorrow. If some night in some strange city he will turn around and stare into yellow eyes, signifying that Angel has had an epiphany of sorts, and he wants Xander to come Home. He takes comfort in the fact that he is old, and getting older, and soon, not even the fires of immortality will be able to create something pleasing to the eye out of his wearied flesh. They would not suffer to spend eternity with ugliness.

Xander thinks of heading back to Montana.

He can hear the vampires' sharp voices carry through the marble and mortar as he exits the hotel. He closes the heavy doors and trades the sounds of rage for the gentle spray of rain on the sidewalk.

He takes his ghosts with him.

THE END