Author's Note: I wrote this story a long time ago, and it is much darker than my current work. Warnings for implied rape and major character death.

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The phone rang in the Hyperion for the first time in two years, scaring them both. Spike dove under a desk; he must have thought it was a bomb scare. In the thirty years they had lived together in that old hotel, he hadn't mellowed at all. Angel, still the patient one, assessed the situation as the phone jangled. "I think someone is calling us," he said eventually.

Spike poked his head up from under the desk. "You can't be serious, mate. Nobody calls us anymore." Angel shrugged, and the phone rang again. Spike's eyes widened, and he looked from the phone, to Angel, and back again. "Who the bloody hell is left, anyway?"

The phone continued to ring, piercing the Hyperion's empty silence every fourth second. "I don't know, a few people. Anne, maybe," Angel said, shrugging. "Should we pick it up?"

Spike blinked, then rolled his eyes as if that had been his idea all along. "Of course we should, you poncey poof!" Spike said, swinging out from under the desk and striding across the room. He picked up the phone and held it to his ear. "Angel Investigations... uh... we help the homeless."

"Helpless," Angel corrected.

Spike sneered at Angel, then huffed and said, "Right... the helpless."

"Helpless? Oh, come on," the voice on the other end said. She laughed then, like someone dancing on a grave, and said, "How long has it been since there's been anyone like that?"

Spike coughed, and for a moment he felt sick, as though he were sliding through time into the dark, and everything warm and good was being left behind. Angel felt it too, and he stood up, his face turned to stone. "Who is this?" Spike asked weakly.

"Give me a break, Spike, you know who this is. Or is old age finally catching up to you two like it has the rest of us?" She laughed again, her voice dead and crackling, and said, "It's Buffy, dear."

Angel said, "Please tell me it's Anne."

Spike put his hand over the receiver, said, "Sorry."

Angel nodded. "Right. Buffy. Of course it's Buffy." He scowled. "I just… I thought she had the sense to leave us alone, after last time." He made a great show of not caring, for all of three seconds, before he began to fidget nervously, then asked, "So, then... how is she? Why is she calling? What's going on?"

Spike gestured to a second phone, lying under a pile of papers on the other side of the desk. Angel picked it up.

"You boys still bored?" she asked as Angel picked up. "You must feel very unnecessary, now that my girls can take care of everything by themselves."

By her 'girls,' she meant the army of slayers she had trained at her compound in Scotland. They kept the order in the underworld now. "We are a little bored, yeah," Spike said. "It might help if you called more often. How long has it been?"

"Ten years," Angel said, closing his eyes.

"Oh, hi, Angel," she chirped, blithely ignoring the tension on the other end. "Has it really been that long?"

"You know it has."

"I know. Sorry." She grew quiet, and Spike remembered that habit she had, that aloofness. She could be standing right next to him and he still felt alone. Drove him crazy. "You know how it is."

Spike was about to say, "Not really," but he knew it wasn't worth it. He looked up at Angel, who was looking at him with that I-know-what-you-mean glower. At least he understood.

"I'm in Los Angeles," she said. "I'm not here long. Can I see you?"

Angel and Spike both tried not to freeze, not to feel their skin crawl, not to scream. "Which one?" Angel asked.

"Um... both of you, I guess."

A great, breathless sigh from both of them. The last time she'd blown through this city, they had all three come to blows. It had taken years for those wounds to heal. But it was Buffy. It would always be Buffy. "Sure," Angel said. "Stop by any time."

"How about tomorrow?"

They agreed. Spike put down the phone. "Why do I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach?"

"For me, its like a knife, right here," Angel said, wryly gesturing to his heart. "Remember the last time she was here?"

"When she breezed in here and dared us to fight over her?" Spike asked. "The time we nearly killed each other before she wolloped us each herself? Sure, somehow, I've managed to forget. " Spike shook his head. "Honestly, why does she do this to us?"

"It was a bad time for her. She'd just gotten divorced from what's-his-name. She was turning forty."

"Ah, yes, the mid-life crisis." Spike plunked down in the desk chair and twirled once. "It's a good thing we vamps don't suffer from such things."

Angel laughed. He crossed his arms and said, "Really? Then how do you explain your Billy Idol phase? Don't think I've forgotten."

Spike chuckled, running a hand through his soft brown curls. It had been decades since he had bleached his hair or painted his nails. "Yeah, I guess I was feeling my age. Remember your whole businessman-slash-lawyer-slash-souled-vampire thing?"

Angel shrugged. "Other guys buy sports cars. I acquired Wolfram and Hart."

"Which came with sports cars," Spike reminded. "So you think we should cut her some slack?"

"Don't you want to?"

Spike bit his lip, and stared hard at Angel. "Desperately," he said, then, "You still love her?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Always, peaches."

There was the inevitable silence that always followed that admission. They stared at each other blankly, each aware of the other's thoughts, before the moment passed.

"I wish Cordelia hadn't died," Angel said, breaking the silence.

"There you go again, always bringing up the brunette," Spike said, cocking an eyebrow. "It never would have been any different with her, Angel, you know that. We're not meant to be happy, with or without a curse."

"She still shouldn't have died that way."

Spike had to agree. He hadn't really known her, but from what he'd heard, the Powers had been cruel to her. Used, corrupted, and comatose by twenty-two. But they were cruel to everyone, he thought. "She's gone, Angel."

"They're all gone," Angel said, looking around the empty lobby.

It was true. Fred had died next, immolated in the birth pains of Illyria. And then Illyria had died, too, and Gunn, in the final battle. That was a grief he could not reconcile. Why had they died, and he and Spike survived? Angel had been ready; it was his plan. Buffy and her army had arrived in time to save them, but not the rest. It haunted him. Lorne had survived, too, of course, and still lived in Los Angeles, but they hadn't heard from him in two years. He had been their last phone call.

Angel never expected to be the last one to leave, and he had expected Spike less. Spike had hardly expected it, either. For hundreds of years they had hated each other and loved each other enough to tolerate each other, now and for eternity. So there they were, back where they had started, minus Darla and Drusilla, with two souls to boot and not a day older.

"Remember when you staked Drusilla?" Spike asked wistfully, remembering the way his old paramour had loved the stars.

"She was evil," Angel said, nodding. "You were upset, as I recall."

"She was my lover for a hundred years, Angel. And my sire." Spike sniffed. "Bugger her morals."

"I thought you'd understand."

"It sometimes seems like you exist torment me," Spike said.

"You know, I think the same thing about you," Angel said, sitting on the desk. "That you exist to take things from me. Drusilla, the Ring of Amara, that amulet thingy that destroyed Sunnydale. Buffy."

"That last one you gave away," Spike said.

"Fair enough," Angel said. He picked up a pencil and absently broke it in half. "Doesn't matter, anyway. The only thing that lasts is us."

"Let's not do this," Spike suggested. "Let's just keep on as we were. Two dead blokes, throwing back pints of blood and Guinness, watching reruns of Bonanza, pretending to like each other. Alright then?"

Angel scratched his chin and looked at the door. It was still the same door as it had been in the fifties, a priceless antique now. Angel kept the whole place in perfect repair. He looked back at Spike, his face fallen. "I can't believe she's coming here again," he said.

Spike clapped him on the back and said, "We'll survive."

Angel nodded quickly, and stared down at his feet. "Forever," he agreed. He smiled and scratched his chin. "And I don't just pretend, Spike. I really do like you. Well, sort of."

Spike smirked. "I think we're past the simple distinctions of like and dislike, Angel. After all this time." He paused, noticing a spot of lint on his duster, flicking it off. It had been replaced three times since Nicki's death, rendered meaningless, but he still wore it. "We just are. And always will be."

~0~

Spike remembered the first time he met Angel, or Angelus, soon after Drusilla turned him. Drusilla brought him back to her lair, introducing Darla and Angel like parents. He had been William then, and his first thought had been that this Irish vampire was a prat with bad hair. He liked Darla from the start, although she never took to him or Dru, but he didn't care for Angelus at all.

He liked him less the first time he saw him have his way with Drusilla. She loved Spike, as much as a vampire could, but she adored Angel. She would call him Daddy, and he would call her princess. It didn't matter if Spike was there or not; it was Angel's gang, and they all belonged to him. He use Drusilla as he pleased, but Spike was not allowed to touch Darla, or hardly even speak to her.

He had his way with Spike, too, at first. It wasn't about sex-it was about dominance. Shocked, William had borne it because he had no choice. When he had gotten older and stronger, and changed his name, he fought back, to Dru's sincere amusement. After a tussle which Angel won, Angel laughed and agreed to leave Spike alone. Drusilla he kept.

He remembered the day with the gypsies very clearly. He had been devouring them like candy while Darla tried to bargain with their spellcasters. She wanted them to take back Angel's soul, but they refused. Spike had ruined it, Darla told him, but he didn't care. He would be the leader then, he assumed. Angel was useless, a vampire with a soul, what a nancy! Ironic, now, that bit.

Spike hadn't been the leader, of course. Darla had directed them after Angel lost his nerve. She was the progenitor, after all, but she had no interest in the group if Angel wasn't in it. The day after he ran off with the baby in China, she left to rejoin the Master, and Spike was alone with Drusilla, which was fine by him.

As much as he had hated Angel as a cub, Spike hated him more in Sunnydale. First off he had hated him for changing sides, and then hated him for changing back. Hated him in the end most of all, because he broke Buffy's heart. Buffy had closed down after that, for everyone. At least that's what Spike told himself.

When she had rescued them from the Circle of the Black Thorn, in that dark alley, Angel had been furious. "You stupid girl!" he'd screamed. "If you couldn't get here earlier, you shouldn't have come at all!" He was grieving, of course, for Fred and Gunn and Wesley and Cordelia and all of humanity, but Spike had been so angry with him; it wasn't Buffy's fault, it was his fault, and he was most angry with Buffy for letting him get away with it.

Before she left, Buffy came to him and said, "Take care of him." Of Angel. Spike had sputtered and protested, but she looked at him in that way, and he had stayed beside him ever since.

The next time she came to Los Angeles, years later, Buffy came to be with Angel. Some shamans he knew from Wolfram and Hart had finally taken the castration clause out of his curse, and she came back from Scotland to see him. To be with him. That had hurt more than Spike expected. It was no secret that Buffy had always loved Angel, that he was the one she'd always really wanted, but he never thought he'd be there, watching it.

It hadn't lasted. As Spike said, they weren't meant to be happy. He had remained aloof, and she had been unable to reach him. The only time he showed real emotion with her was at the end, when he had seen her with Spike. She was sitting next to him, her head just slightly on his shoulder, but Angel had known it was over.

He had taken a swing at Spike right then, and Spike let it hit him. Knocked him right off his chair, and Angel was about to pummel him purple before Buffy jumped in and stopped him. They started screaming at each other, and they wrecked almost every piece of furniture in the room before it was over.

She had stayed a little while with Spike, testing him out again. It was probably the best time of his life, but that was relative. She still treated him like crap, punishing him for not being Angel, and the closer she got to him the further away she felt.

He would have taken it, though. He would have taken it forever if it wasn't for Angel. He would have gone back to Scotland with her and let her keep him as a toy, but it was too much for Angel. His grandsire had looked like death when he lost her, and he never got better. He tried to be happy for them, but it was hard when it was so obvious they were wrong for each other. Eventually, Spike told her to leave. She had beaten them for it, and cried, and he had wanted to hold her for eternity until she withered up and died, but he had to let her go.

That was when he realized he loved Angel. Not like he loved Buffy... God, he loved her... but Angel was his blood brother. Angel was the only one who understood, the only one who would still be around. He let her go.

She had married what's-his-name, that Finn boy. Turns out his marriage to that golly-gee-shucks wife of his hadn't worked out, and Buffy grabbed him on the rebound. That hadn't worked out; he was damaged goods, too. She had come back to them when it ended, all rage and violence. She blamed them both for her emotional mayhem, which was fair. After she had gone, Spike and Angel's friendship was almost ruined, but they had made amends eventually. They had time.

Now she was coming back. He could hardly stand to see her again; he could hardly wait. After laying in bed for hours, he admitted he couldn't sleep and went over to Angel's room.

"You still awake?" he asked quietly at the door.

"Of course," Angel said.

"I miss her every day," Spike said. "But I never wanted her to come back. Not really."

Angel said, "Yes, you did."

"I know."

Angel patted the bed next to him. "Come here, son, tell me your troubles."

Spike walked towards the bed and sat down. "I don't need to tell you anything," he said. "You know what I feel."

"Of course I do. Two sides of the same coin," Angel said. "You can still say it."

Spike shook his head. "No point."

"Well, we can just lie here, then, secure in the knowledge that each of us is as miserable as the other."

"Spot on, poofster."

Spike lay down, staring at the ceiling. "Do you think there's any chance that things will be different?" he asked Angel. "Better even?"

Angel didn't answer. There was no point. They passed the night in silence, no breath, no movement, neither sleeping. The storm that was Buffy was coming.

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