Atrophy (Angel/Spike, PG-13)

[carlyinrome]

Angel sits in his office staring at the lack of reflection in the windows that should be facilitating his burning to nothing, and wonders if it’s just taking him a very long time to die. He closes his eyes, tries to think of the last time he felt an emotion that wasn’t negative or blasé, and can’t.

Someone enters his office without knocking; he knows who it is without turning around, without their reflection in the glass.

He opens his eyes. “Do you think our hearts atrophy?”

“A reason they shouldn’t?” Spike asks, coming around to sit on the edge of Angel’s desk, even though he’s been asked repeatedly not to sit on the desk, and lighting a cigarette, even though he’s been asked repeatedly not to smoke in the building.

Angel doesn’t say anything. He wishes, almost, for a purer pain to test his theory, and he thinks for a moment about asking Spike about fucking Buffy, but at the last moment he can’t profane her in that way. After all these years, she’s still an altar. He lowers his head without thinking about the gesture; he feels heavy. Everywhere.

After a moment, there’s a cool pressure on the back of his neck. Spike’s hand.

Angel tenses.

Spike sighs. It comes out acrid, cigarette-stained.

“Relax, mate. Just . . . relax.”

Angel’s immediate response at an order from Spike is fangs, but Spike’s made his voice so velvet that he forces himself to obey, and so he makes himself as relaxed as he can be . . . which is really just inches from tense, but with Spike’s hand on the back of his neck, with his thumb gently caressing the side of his throat, with neither of them saying anything, it’s kind of nice.