*****

"In the state I was in, if someone had come
and told me I could go home quietly, that
they would leave me my life whole, it would
have left me cold: several hours or several
years of waiting is all the same when you
have lost the illusion of being eternal."

-- Jean-Paul Sartre, "The Wall"

THE MAN WAS a similar creature.

Krycek had been watching the man for three weeks, three and a half maybe, and that was the only thing he knew for sure. There was something -- he still wasn't sure what -- that they had in common.

That in itself was rare enough that he kept coming back for more. Not every night. There were still commitments to be honored, or at least to be paid lip service. But four out of five evenings he sat at the end of the bar, where the curve of the worn wood wrapped around like half a horseshoe, where he could see everyone in the room and still duck out the back door if needed.

He drank two beers, the cheap American kind that made him think of the bitter spit of another man's mouth and football and Mulder, not necessarily in that order. And he watched the man, whom he'd begun to call the Stranger, just to have a way to refer to him. Not that he ever spoke the name out loud. He didn't have many people to talk with these days.

The Stranger was tall, a good two inches or so more than he was, and his body was sinewy and surprisingly supple, bordering on downright beefy around the hips. His dark hair was short in the back and spiky on top, like some preening bird asserting its dominance in a new jungle. His clothes, too, were showy in a way that belied the Stranger's aloof demeanor. He could have been decked out for the new club around the corner if he didn't look so chronically solemn: tight, long-sleeved V-necks and sweaters, always black or gray, with trim black leather pants that were too snug to be missed by many, even in a low-key establishment like this.

It wasn't a bad place to waste away an eternity of regret, Krycek allowed, given all his past sins and the inevitable future payback. It wasn't the most opportune, either, or the most cruisy or the least expensive. It didn't have the greatest decor, but the service was quick and more often than not silent, and self-pity wasn't supposed to be pretty anyway, was it? Krycek had discovered it right after fleeing D.C. for warmer, saner climates, the location a meeting place suggested by a phone sex trick who was neither tall nor dark and nearly got himself killed for the trouble.

It had been maybe six months since Krycek had last sat with his two beers and a hard, unsmiling face when he returned to find the Stranger, half a year in which the slow, spreading warmth cultivated in the California sun had begun to defrost Krycek's blood. Siberian incubation died hard and the briefest of exposures still sent his temperature plunging.

Didn't seem like the Stranger got much sun, either. Not pale, but no surfer like the WeHo rent boys who strutted down the sandy path outside Krycek's motel, shaking their asses in his direction as he paused to unlock the door. But he never had been tempted by blondes, not for anything more than a good-old Bond girl fuck.

The thing he kept coming back for, the thing he thought they might have in common, even if he didn't have a name for it yet, was this: the Stranger had this *way*. This way of looking at each patron who came through the door, a quick once-over, up-and-down glance, that made Krycek think, at first, that he might be a cop. But it was more innate than that. It was less lieutenant than refugee or prisoner of war. It seemed instinctual, almost predatory. He would never meet the eyes of his marks -- never met Krycek's eyes, that was for sure. Krycek could never get a close enough look to see what color the Stranger's eyes were, or what emotions they held. He wondered, fleetingly, what the Stranger would see in his eyes. Mulder had been the only one to see something human in his eyes in a long time.

Two beers was never enough to forget that.

-----------------------------------------

THE FOURTH NIGHT he went to the bar to watch the Stranger, the man didn't show up. The next day he was back, and in the weeks since he'd missed a day, but never two in a row, in no discernable pattern. Krycek was more patient than most of his employers would give him credit for. He came back night after night and just watched the Stranger, intrigued beyond any reason he could articulate.

He waited for some change in behavior, some clue to understanding how the Stranger could insist on spending each night in a place like this without seeming to enjoy it one iota. Krycek shredded the label on the bottle into a careful pile of wet paper strips, flexed his fingers once and straightened them out again. No matter what the doctors said about state-of-the-art biotechnology, there was just no way to recreate muscle memory. This hand -- no matter how perfect the skin tone, how responsive the goosebumps -- did not know what it felt like to touch Mulder's face in a Russian prison, to feel the trembling fear and anticipation. It was all still new then, the touching.

He watched as the Stranger politely refused a half-dozen come-ons, twice as many offered drinks, scores of interested glances. He drank three or four glasses of Scotch neat -- Krycek watched the bartender pull the bottle from the back of the cabinet where it otherwise lay untouched as soon as the man walked in the door. He'd obviously been there for a while in Krycek's absence; he never ordered at the bar, just sat at one of two booths against the wall, whichever was empty, and waited for his drink.

There were five or six other regulars at the bar, and only a couple of them spoke to each other for more than a nod hello. Two bartenders, Amy and Sharon, alternated weeknights and worked the busier weekend together. They were, by Krycek's observation, lovers, and during the week seemed to spend most of the slow evenings on the phone with the other. They said they were glad to see him back, and he took them at their word, and then they left him alone.

A little over month of staring, and Sharon finally caught on.

"You too, huh?" she said, setting down his second.

No one had spoken directly to him since the grocery clerk the day before yesterday; even tonight Sharon had just put his beer in front of him without a word and gone about her business. Sometimes he wondered if he would forget how to answer one day, simply become mute by lack of practice. He stared at her without answering.

"You're more patient than the others." She dried glasses as she spoke; he was alone at the bar just then and the Stranger was the only other customer in the place. He needed a cigarette, patted his jacket pocket a couple times before he remembered that he'd quit, had gotten sick of leaving Mulder alone so he could grab a quick smoke outside in the alley, and that train of thought was going nowhere good fast. Krycek watched Sharon with no small envy -- she got to polish tumblers, a plausible distraction, and he was left without his cigarettes.

Directly, then: "Does he have a name?"

"Not that he's shared," she said, just barely audible under the jukebox, seeming pleased to have won that round. "But he showed up a couple months after you took off the last time and's been coming back since." She paused, waiting for a response. When she didn't get it, she said, "Never leaves with anyone, though."

He thought about that, about whether to ask her another question.

"You just look like a boy up for a challenge, that's all. Like you need a new project." He stayed quiet. Mute.

"Okay, okay," Sharon said, shaking out her dishcloth with a quick snap of the wrist. "I get it. No project necessary." She smiled then. Some people just couldn't fathom the harm others had in their hearts, Krycek thought, watching her move away. For people like Sharon, it was all a joking, friendly world with camaraderie around every corner. He left 10 bucks on the counter and walked out into the warm night air.

-----------------------------------------

THE STRANGER WITHOUT a name he'd like to share was perched at the bar when Krycek came in the next night, two stools down from where he'd planned to sit. Both booths were full -- it was Saturday, Krycek remembered, with the dull recognition of how unmoored a man had become when his days were more or less the same no matter the calendar. The Stranger looked like he'd rather be somewhere else, and Krycek wondered what kept him there.

But then, he wasn't about to turn around and leave himself, so he walked past the Stranger to his usual seat and busied himself with his jacket, empty matchbooks on the bar, a stray cocktail napkin and finally, thank god for Amy, his beer. He was nervous suddenly, though that took him a moment or two to identify. He had heard cops talk about losing their nerve, about not being able to shoot when the time came or even draw their gun. But in his line of work, they talked about losing their *nerves*, about forgetting how to be scared even when it might have been a good idea, might have saved their ass from some fucked-up situation. His nerves came and went, but the visits seemed few and far between and it was always a surprise, like he'd suddenly remembered the name of an old adversary once thought dead.

After all this silent observation, what would he say if given the chance? And if this wasn't a chance, what the hell would one look like? He looked up from the pieces of label he'd been corralling into a pile. Some guy a few seats down from the Stranger had gotten a nosebleed or been punched or something -- he *must* have been nervous if he'd missed a fight or the spillover from one. He glanced at the Stranger from the corner of his eye. He was watching the guy with the nosebleed, and the look on his face was... The word that popped into Krycek's head was *hungry*, like he was a man who hadn't eaten in days, but that didn't make a lot of sense. But that was it, and the Stranger was so preoccupied that Krycek kept staring at him, feeling out different words but none was so right, none fit so well as *hungry*. But what the fuck did that mean?

Then the Stranger shook his head, threw back the remainder of his Scotch in one fluid motion and signaled Amy for another. And the expression was gone without a trace, and he was looking back at Krycek, catching him in the stare, saying nothing but making it clear that some kind of explanation would be required from Krycek if he hoped to get out alive.

Shit. This wasn't how it should go. He was caught, confused and still processing what he'd seen. But one of the benefits of years of deception was that his mouth knew how to get his ass out of trouble without much help from his brain.

"I'm Alex," he said, missing only a beat. He offered his hand to the Stranger, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. The man paused, seemed to think it over, then reached out and shook his hand.

"Angel."

He must have heard wrong. "Angel?"

The man gave a wry grin. "Yeah," he said. "Angel."

Krycek steeled his nerves, whatever was left of them since he'd apparently launched into auto-pilot pick-up mode. "Can I buy you a drink?"

Angel paused again, nodded. And that was all it took -- he wasn't a stranger for long.

-----------------------------------------

ALEX WAS SO confident it was intimidating. Angel remembered, vaguely, what it felt like to pick up a guy, to flatter him and smile the right way and get him into bed or a back alley or wherever it was that he could eat what he wanted and walk away clean. He knew that was what was going on -- the picking up part, at least, though he suspected Alex had some other motive. There was just too little happening in his gray-green eyes; his face was too carefully controlled not to have some vulnerability other than just a come-on.

Amy brought them fresh drinks and he was glad to have something to do with his hands. He still didn't get this part -- this talking to people part that Americans, especially those in this part of the country, were so good at, the Valley dialect rolling off their tongues like it took no effort to say so much, so many words in just a minute, without ever really thinking about what the next one would be.

Even this guy, Alex, who didn't look like he should fit in any more than Angel did, got the talking thing. His black leather jacket was scuffed and worn, not full with any Versace pretensions like the ones worn by the pretty boys around the corner, or at least not in this lifetime. He wore black jeans, like always, tight enough around the ass that it couldn't *not* be some kind of invitation for trouble. In the month or so that Angel had been sitting in his booth, cooly checking him out, he'd somehow left the impression of rough intellect -- tight jeans aside -- though he never talked to anyone, certainly not to Angel. His dark hair was cut short and his face was handsome in a been-there, fought-that kind of way: broken nose; a scar beneath his lower lip that made a hint of permanent, false smile; a barely-healed gash on his forehead near the hairline that must have been from a more recent encounter. But he had eyelashes like a Victorian doll, long and dark and impossibly lush, and cheekbones that made his face, despite the obvious beatings, look aristocratic and classically beautiful.

Now, he was making seemingly effortless conversation about the group of men who'd crowded into the bar, six obviously straight, obviously lost guys who still didn't know what was going on. Angel nodded, tried to smile in the right places, didn't seem to be expected to contribute anything, so he didn't. Alex let him get away with short answers to open-ended questions:

"You new to L.A.?"

"Yes."

"Yeah, every time I come back here it's an adjustment again. All those fucking palm trees. Takes a while to grow on you, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"And the people here..." Alex looked over his shoulder at the booths, where the men were finally paying their tab and shuffling off to the door, still loudly wondering where all the ladies were on a Saturday night. "Wanna move over there?" Angel nodded, suddenly even more shy. Not a coincidence any more that they were sitting next to each other, not just politeness that made him let this boy buy him a drink so Angel could stare at his rugged beauty while he made conversation for two.

But he'd known that was coming. Or hoped it, anyway, in some place in the back of his head where, if he was honest, he'd been nurturing a lusty flash to a half-developed fantasy in the past few weeks. Of all the men who'd tried to engage him, bought him drinks, tossed less-than-subtle glances his way that were really invitations... None of them had been remotely interesting. Something about Alex was different, something about his fiercely guarded posture, his obvious moodiness that belied the self-control in which he clearly needed to encase himself. There was something beneath all of that that looked, well, familiar. So he followed him to the booth, not really sure why but unable to refuse the offer.

They'd barely sat down when Amy came over, a triumphant look on her face. "More to drink, boys?"

Angel looked at Alex, who raised his eyebrows and grinned. Angel gave a slight nod of assent.

Alex switched to vodka, which in Angel's view was a debatable improvement on the shitty beer he had been drinking. Alex threw his drink back in one shot, sighed like a man who'd tasted mother's milk for the first time in three decades and had forgotten anything could taste so right, so natural.

"So where are you from?" Alex tried, which was basically the same question he'd asked before in a different costume.

Angel tossed back his own drink, let the warmth settle into his throat and chest and stomach and take the edge off his nerves. "Not far from here," he said.

"You didn't learn to drink Scotch like that in Southern California. Where are you from before that?"

"Ireland."

Alex paused. "From Ireland? You don't have an accent." Angel shouldn't have said that, didn't mean to anyway, it just slipped out. The looking-for-fun gaze in Alex's eyes darkened, grew more serious, contemplative.

"It's been a while," he offered in response, not saying anything more, hoping Alex would let it slide the way he'd let him ease his way into the conversation before.

And, just for a second, he did, shook it off and went on: "Yeah, you can't tell I'm Russian at all any more..." He stopped, and his eyes lit up and then darkened almost immediately, becoming more gray and focused and somehow frightening.

Change the subject, Angel thought to himself. Talk about the weather. The damn palm trees. Anything. But since he'd been returned to Sunnydale, making small-talk had been more than a challenge for him. All those years in a world with suffering no poet could articulate, when senseless, endless servitude was his only reality until he was left feral and infantile and incapable of language -- all that left its own kind of scars. All that remained was that one word, that one name that not even the fires of hell could erase from his memory, and things were never again the same.

He'd relearned how to read philosophy and write sonnets, the vocabulary somehow imbedded in places he hadn't known he still possessed, but simple conversation was just beyond his ken. He'd never gotten past feeling raw and unsure of how to communicate with the people around him, whether they were teen-age girls or the tough men in a place like this. So even when he knew that things were going wrong, when Alex seemed to be on a track he'd prefer to stay away from, even then he couldn't say a damn thing.

"I know what you are," Alex said, in a measured, far-too-deliberately- even tone of voice that could have been from a stranger's mouth.

He *was* a stranger, Angel had to remind himself. He didn't say anything.

"I just..." Alex's loquacious ease evaporated. He looked unsure, then, maybe a little confused.

Angel started to sweat a little, a few drops running between his shoulder blades down the small of his back. He didn't even know why exactly, but he had to restrain himself from bolting right then.

"I've been watching you, trying to figure out what you are. I didn't even think that it could be..." He stopped, looked Angel right in the eyes. "I thought maybe you were a cop."

If only. He found his voice: "I'm not a cop."

"I know," Alex said. And then Angel knew, too, just the second before it came out of Alex's mouth, he knew why he was sweating. "You're a vampire," Alex said calmly.

Calm. That was what he had to be. How the fuck had this gone from a casual drink to this? There just wasn't a good come-back to that.

"That's it," Alex said. "*That's* the thing I couldn't figure out." It was like he was talking to himself now.

Then he remembered Angel. "Aren't you going to tell me there's no such thing as vampires? That I'm obviously talking out my ass and need another drink or a cab home or something, right?"

But when he didn't answer, Alex laughed, low and short like a cough. "Right," he said. "That's what I thought." Alex's voice was as rough as his skin and jacket and, oh fuck, how had this happened? How had this guy he'd just started talking to made him?

He looked up from the table and Alex met his eyes again. He didn't know what he'd expected to see there -- pity? fear? -- but he didn't find it. Alex was calm, running his finger around the rim of his glass, back and forth, distractedly, patient like a hibernating bear who could slumber for six months until he got an urge. Angel didn't know how to get out of this conversation without just walking, and he couldn't do that. Alex may have made him, but he still didn't understand how that could have happened, or what they could have in common for him to still feel connected to the man.

Angel was still nervous, still scared, but he felt aggression at the edge of his fear and grabbed at it, reached for its confidence. "What do you know about vampires?" he finally asked, trying not to sound defensive.

"Plenty." Alex sounded smug now, which genuinely pissed him off, loosened his tongue.

"Read the whole Anne Rice series, huh?"

Alex grinned at that, skating over Angel's anger. "Me?" he asked. "Nah. Saw the movie, though. Not really my type." He looked at Angel, an up-and-down nakedly sexy look. "Tom Cruise is too short. And he had *horrible* hair."

Alex's look burned through his clothes like rays of light. When it became clear Angel wouldn't take the bait Alex was offering -- abandon the conversation for another drink and innuendo -- he answered more fully. "It used to be my job," he said after a while.

Angel wasn't sure what to make of that. This man wasn't a Watcher, that much he knew.

"I used to study them." He looked up. "Your kind. When I was at the FBI."

"You work for the government?" Angel couldn't keep the skepticism out of his voice. Alex was no more a G-man than a member of the Council.

"No," he said. "Not any more. But for a while, I did." Alex seemed reluctant to talk about this, almost pained. "The..." He paused, seeming to choose a word and then discard it, what word Angel didn't know. "The unit I worked with, that was what we did. Study vampires and ghosts and anything that didn't fit the FBI's ideas of how a crime could be committed." Angel didn't know what look he had on his face but it made Alex smile. "Really," he said, answering Angel's unspoken disbelief.

So he knew something about vampires. It didn't make him understand, not really, didn't make him get the world Angel was consigned to. Didn't make this so it could go anywhere. He was angry, then, at wasting time with some groupie, angry at himself for thinking this conversation would lead to some inevitably satisfying conclusion. "So you know all about the underworld now," he said, slipping back into his jacket.

Alex looked at him sharply, stopping him in his tracks, then said quietly, "Shit, that's not the underworld." He leaned closer, and his voice was dead serious: "Vampires, demons -- none of that compares to the shit I've seen humans do."

Angel looked at him, looked the truth he'd been avoiding square in the eye, and said, "You're human."

Alex, for some reason, found that incredibly funny. He laughed, hard and deep from his belly, letting his head roll back. At Angel's quizzical glare, Alex wiped his eyes and leaned back in.

"Technically, yes," he said, still smiling. "Though it's not something I've been accused of in a while."

He didn't want to deal with this maniac, no matter what they might have in common. "I think I've had enough company for one night," Angel said, sliding out of the booth.

Alex grabbed his arm, his fingers digging insistently through the shirt and into the skin. "Wait," he said. "Angel, don't go. I didn't mean to... Look, I'm sorry if I crossed some line, okay?" He seemed sincere. And that was the strange thing: After all of this, after this whole fucked up conversation he hoped to hell was just a bad dream... Alex still seemed sincerely interested in him.

"I just... I don't care," Alex said, sounding resigned, not quite pleading with him to stay any more. "It doesn't make a difference to me."

Angel sat back down. "It should," he said, wearily. He got so sick, sometimes, of trying to make them get it, get that they should just stay away, that it would all be easier in the long run and no one would have to leave town just to keep everyone's world from turning inside out again.

"Why?" Alex asked, impertinently. "Because you're some creature of the night?" Alex took his hand, pressed his thumb gently into Angel's hand until he raised his gaze from the table. "You don't scare me," he said.

"I should."

Alex didn't let go. "Look, Angel," he said, putting more pressure on his palm until Angel really did look at him, meet his eye. "What I do, the world I travel in -- the worst of the vampires I ever saw was Snoopy compared to what men in my line of work do without losing a night's sleep." He paused. "What I can do," he said, looking away from Angel. "What I've done."

He considered that. "What *do* you do?"

Alex didn't answer.

"Fine," Angel snapped, pulling his hand back. "You know what? Not in the mood for show-and-tell right now anyway."

"Wait," Alex said, slowly this time, weighing different words before he spoke them. "I'm... I sell things."

He didn't know why he was still there. "What things?" he asked through clenched teeth, feeling manipulated.

"Not things," Alex reconsidered. "Information."

Angel loosened his jaw. He was telling the truth, or was a better liar than Angel had known in a century or two. "What kind of information?" This was like pulling teeth. No Mr. Talkative now.

"The kind men -- governments -- kill for."

Shit, Angel thought. "You're a spy."

Alex looked at him like he was a child who just couldn't get the math right, couldn't realize that people like him didn't have job titles. "It's just what I do, Angel," he said, and hearing his name spoken so gently almost undid him right then and there. "It's what my father did," Alex continued. "It's the only thing I was ever prepared for. It's the only thing I'm any good at."

Angel was quiet. He could accept that, or he could leave. There weren't really any other choices. If that counted as a choice. If he pretended he hadn't made the choice a long time ago, when he'd left Sunnydale and swore he'd never go back, never look back, try to make it through the numbingly lonely days and nights without even fond memories to keep him warm. He didn't deserve warm memories, so he'd wound up at this bar alone. And that was a choice of sorts. "So why are you here?" he finally asked.

Alex seemed to sense that he'd made a decision. "Where?" he asked, confused but with a lighter tone. "Here with you?"

"In L.A."

"I'm..." He grinned. "Would you believe I'm on vacation?"

Angel felt a smile on his face before he could catch it. "No."

"Between jobs?"

He shook his head, determined not to laugh, not to give in so quickly or at least not so obviously.

"It doesn't have anything to do with you, or demons, or any of that," Alex said.

He had to be sure: "You're not gunning for eternal life here?"

Alex shook his head in bemusement. "Are you kidding?" he asked. "I'm an old man already. My father... He died when he was 39. I was 12. None of the boys I knew then are still alive. I don't even want..." He stumbled with the words, and Angel could sense they were somehow more true than the others he had given up. "I've wreaked more than enough havoc for one lifetime in the past five years. I don't want any more."

That was it, Angel realized. That was what they had in common. "You have regrets," Angel said, not a question. "I could see that in you."

Alex didn't say anything for maybe a minute. He started to speak twice, then stopped, as if the words couldn't make it past the long-hostile border of his lips. Finally, he said simply, "You don't?"

"That's all I have," Angel said. "That's all that's left."

Alex's eyes lightened again, like a chameleon's. "Then why are you talking to me?" he asked, with a dare in his voice.

Angel didn't know what he was getting at, kept silent.

"Why are you getting me drunk?" Alex asked.

"I'm not..." Angel didn't think that was fair. "Look," he said, "if you can't handle that Icelandic shit, don't blame it on me."

"Russian," Alex corrected him, with a defiant, wild grin. "Sometimes, people like us -- we'll do anything to feel alive, you know," he said. Angel felt a hand on his knee, under the table, felt Alex's fingers move up his thigh, felt himself get hard so fast that he almost bucked up out of the booth. "We'll do it just to break through the numb realization that we've ruined everything good we ever had," Alex continued, his voice velvety and enchanting as the hand cupped Angel's cock through his leather pants.

He moaned under his breath, closed his eyes for a second, letting go of all the thoughts that couldn't take root in a mind so riddled with desire, all the unanswered questions that poured through the little holes left in his reason by Alex's deft touch. When he opened his eyes again, Alex had his head tilted toward the back door propped open at the other end of the bar, gesturing at the alley that lay beyond. Alex was whispering: "We'll do it just to feel... anything."

----------------------------------------

KRYCEK'S HEAD COLLIDED with the brick wall as Angel's mouth slammed into his, the taller man's tongue pushing into his mouth insistently, desperately. Even though he'd made the first move -- all the moves, basically -- Krycek kept trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, how they'd gotten from spilling secrets over one lousy drink to this, but the more Angel ran kisses down his cheek and circled his hands around Krycek's ass the less he cared, anyway, and oh god the frantic heat of Angel's dick was pressed up against his stomach and nothing else really mattered anymore.

Angel twisted Krycek's shoulders around and unbuttoned his fly with one smooth turn of the wrist, pulling Krycek's hands above his head to rest on the wall for leverage. Krycek heard a half-second of zipper descending followed by the briefest of rustling fabric -- a sound that echoed in his head on lonely nights, that would nearly make him come without touching himself -- and braced his knees, steadying his weight.

Angel's cock thrust inside him just as his mouth landed on the back of his neck, all of it together dry and rough and painful and so good. He moved slowly after that first entrance, balancing himself with one hand clenched around Krycek's outstretched arms, one around his rib cage, then quickening the motions once he'd found the right rhythm. Angel's lips drank from him like a dying man, like he would find manna and honey in the sweat trickling from the base of his head, like the world's salvation lay in the tender nook between his earlobe and jawbone and the expanse from chin to jugular. Krycek groaned, reached down and grabbed Angel by the hair with his fingers and let him suck the soft skin in between his teeth until he almost came just from the sharp-sweet pain. He nudged Angel's arm around his chest down toward his own aching dick, pushing his ass back onto each thrust of the man's hips.

The strong hand of the Stranger -- he was almost past the point of remembering names for people or body parts -- wrapped around him, matching his own lunges with even strokes until Krycek cried out and came, slumping against the wall, the other man climaxing just a moment later. They stayed like that for a few minutes, chests heaving and coherent thought or sentences a distant mirage.

Then Angel pulled out, pushed away and zipped up with a tense approximation of his earlier grace. He stepped back a few paces, not saying a word.

Krycek closed his eyes, opened them again, his back still to the man. "What?" he said, half under his breath. Angel didn't answer. Krycek slowly leaned down to grab his jeans, pulled them up as he turned around. Angel was standing in a circle of harsh fluorescent light, staring at him coldly. "What's going on?"

"You said you didn't want to," Angel said, his voice low like a growl.

Krycek didn't know what the fuck was going on now. "Didn't want to? I don't think anybody made you do that, Angel, and I certainly never said I didn't want to."

Angel grimaced, like he regretted it. "Not that," he said, with disgust in his voice. Krycek had no idea what he was talking about. Jesus, 15 minutes ago they'd been sitting inside talking about --

"What is this about?" he asked cautiously.

"You said you didn't want to get bit." Angel spit out the words.

That's what this was about? "I don't," he sputtered. He tried it again, more calmly, "I told you, I don't."

"But you..." Angel paused, seeming almost embarrassed to have to say it out loud, but too pissed off to stop his accusations now. "When I kissed your neck..." He didn't seem capable of finishing the sentence.

Krycek almost grinned in relief: *That* was all it was. "Angel," he started, but the man's face was hard and guarded. "Look, that doesn't mean that I want to..."

He couldn't figure out where this was coming from. Angel's face was so closed off, even the hint of light that had become visible in his eyes as they sat in the booth was long gone. He was a stranger again. Jesus. And if Krycek were honest with himself, that was all he'd ever been, fucking or talk about vampires notwithstanding.

"I'll tell you what it's supposed to mean," he finally said, sick of talking to himself. Fuck him. Fuck his secrets and his regret and his soulful eyes. "It means I like danger."

Angel said nothing.

"And you know what?" Krycek continued. "I'm not the only one. I don't want to get bit, you asshole. But that doesn't mean that the idea that I might -- that it might not all be within my control -- isn't a turn-on."

Angel was still silent, face blank. *This* shit Krycek did not need in his life. Sex with strangers, if that's all this had been, was supposed to be vacant of this baggage, and he already had the ghost of one crazy man to contend with. He didn't need another. "Fuck you, Angel," he said, warming to the anger in his stomach, to the adrenal rush of a good fight. "*Fuck you.* You just fucked some guy you've known less than an hour in an alley behind a fucking fag bar. A guy who figured out your biggest secret in less than that much time. You think I'm the only one here who likes dangerous sex? Don't tell me it would have felt the same at the fucking Holiday Inn."

Still nothing. No response. Just like stone. Fuck him. Krycek buttoned his fly, walked right up to Angel and looked at him one more time, dead in the eyes, a challenge to say something, yell, fight, punch, bite, what-fucking-ever. Nothing. Not a flicker of life or recognition or anything at all. Krycek turned around and walked down the alley, toward his flea-bag motel, toward the nothing he'd had when he walked into the bar that night. Fuck him.

END.