TITLE: ARE WE THERE YET?
AUTHOR: Katriena Knights
RATING: NC-17 for explicit sexual content.
SPOILERS/TIMELINE: Filler for Long Day's Journey
SUMMARY: It's a four-hour ride to Death Valley, and Gwen owes Angel two
orgasms. FOLLOW-UP TO SPARKS: 
http://www.bewellweb.com/dknights/sparks.html
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, just playing.

Angel set his hand against the small of Gwen's back as he ushered
her out the door of the hotel--made a point of it, as if to flaunt the
fact he was touching her. His fingers sizzled against her skin. She
liked his touch, the way his long fingers curled against her back, but
she didn't like the reason he was touching her.

Still, she let him make his ridiculous Alpha male gesture until he
had guided her out of the hotel. Then she said, tightly, "Get your hands
off me."

He did, looking a little startled, but quelling it as he opened the
passenger door of his ridiculously large car. "Gee, Gwen, you've never
complained about my hands on you before."

The accusatory tone stung. She got in, dared a look at him as he
closed the door and walked around the front of the car.

When he got in on the driver's side she said sharply, "You don't get
to use me to piss off Cordelia."

His flinty eyes softened a little, but his gaze slid away from her
and his jaw worked, teeth grating. He was angry, she could tell. Not
just pissed-angry. Wounded-angry. The kind of angry that burrowed in
deep and stuck there, and made you want to lash out at everyone and
everything around you.

He settled down behind the wheel, started the car. She watched his
hands, haunted suddenly by the memory of those long, slim fingers inside
her. She pushed it away.

"Things not working out so well with the girlfriend, huh?" she said,
her tone perhaps a little too flip, but it was hard for her to think
about him loving that brittle girl, at the same time remembering the
night they'd spent together before Cordelia had come back.

He slammed the car into gear and peeled out, tires screeching.
"She's not my girlfriend," he snapped, "and neither are you."

She gaped at him. He wasn't like this--she knew he wasn't. He was
soft words and careful hands, cool mouth full of the taste of Merlot--

"Oh, my God," she said. "Could you *be* a bigger bitch?"

He looked at her, and the startlement in his face was almost
comical. Then his expression changed, remorse creeping into his dark
eyes. He let her see it for a split second, then fixed his eyes on the
road. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you're sorry all right. Sorry excuse for a human being." Now
she was angry. Pissed-angry.

"Guess it's good I'm not one, then." His voice had tightened up again.

She studied him. His hands clenched the steering wheel so tightly
his knuckles showed white. "What did she do to you?" Whatever it was, it
must have been bad. Angel looked like he was fighting with the aftermath
of an emotional evisceration.

His eyes slid sideways, toward her, but he didn't turn his head to
look at her directly. His hands worked on the steering wheel. Gwen
noticed the car had sped up, and wondered if Angel realized it, distant
as he seemed to be. He was silent for what seemed a long time, while the
speedometer hit sixty, sixty-five, seventy.

"You don't have to tell me," she blurted finally, as the red needle
touched eighty, but at the same time he said, "She fucked my kid."

Gwen's eyes widened. Angel flicked a glance toward her again,
apologetic this time, as if perhaps he felt it inappropriate to use
obscenities in front of a lady.

"You have a kid?" she said. "You literally have a kid, and your
girlfriend literally fucked him?"

He made a face. "It's a long story."

"It's a long drive to Death Valley."

Smiling at her, he laughed a little, and started talking.
#
It really wasn't that long a story, relatively speaking. Not as long
at the one he'd murmured to her in his bed a few weeks ago. Weirder,
though, she had to admit, and the curse story had been weird enough.

"A lot of people did crazy things that night," she said after a
moment. She still hadn't quite had time to absorb the rest of it, the
part where vampires can't have children but somehow he did, and the part
where the kid was eighteen years old even though he'd been born last
year. "I mean, there was fire falling from the sky. When you think it's
the end of the world, you do weird stuff."

She remembered what she'd done. She'd sat in her huge bed--just huge
enough to constantly remind her she could never share it with
anyone--watching TV, watching the news reporters babble about what was
going on in LA. It was hard to stay calm when the news anchors were so
rattled.

And she'd picked up the phone six times at least and called Angel
Investigations, but every time she'd gotten either a busy signal or the
answering machine.

She'd lain awake half the night wondering where he was, if he was
okay. While he probably hadn't thought about her at all, what with
confronting the lava beast, having stakes shoved into his throat, and
finding his little doxy schtupping his teenaged son.

She'd said it before and she would probably say it again--his life
sucked even more than hers did.

They were on a long stretch of dark highway by now, approaching the
desert. Angel had slowed down a little, but was still cruising well over
the posted speed limit. The car ran smoothly, she noticed. He must keep
it in good shape. She didn't have an extensive knowledge of classic
cars, but she knew enough to know this car was older than she was. Of
course, her motor purred pretty smoothly when Angel touched her, too.

"You ever put the top back?" she said suddenly.

He looked at her. "Only at night. I've found it's a little hard to
drive with my body bursting into flames."

He was mocking her a little, and unnecessarily, but she decided to
ignore it. "So what do you do in the daytime? Ride around in the trunk?"

His mouth twitched a little. "Mostly I sit on the floor with a
blanket over my head."

"Huh." She decided not to say anything else, mostly because she
found this image amusing, and she had the feeling his ego had taken
about as much pummeling as it could handle at the moment.

He looked out the front window, at the road. The highway was pretty
straight here, making for easy driving. She looked out her own window,
watching the stars.

"I'm sorry," he said after a time. He sounded sincere this time.
"About before. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that."

Gwen turned toward him, studying his face. His eyes were so dark
they looked black in the vague light. "You know what I like about you?"

"Um...no?" She had a feeling he'd been searching for a quip and had
failed to find one.

"When you say you're sorry, you really mean it."

This seemed to baffle him, and Gwen realized she'd been right in her
assessment of him. He was so utterly sincere it would have been comical
if he wasn't...well, so sincere. And that made it hard for her to take
anything he'd said to her personally. At least, not the bad things,
because she knew they'd been in response to pain.

He recovered his stoicism after a moment and shrugged. "Well, you're
the third person today who's called me on the carpet for being a bitch,
so I guess I must deserve it."

"Really? Who else in your life has the nerve to tell you the truth?"

"Lorne," he said, then frowned again. "And Cordy."
She'd meant her comment lightly, but now she gaped at him, not sure
if she was amazed or appalled.

"Cordy?"

"Yeah. She told me to get over it."

Now Gwen was definitely appalled. How could he love a woman who
would treat him like that? *I would never--* For a split second,
frantic, she thought she'd said it aloud, but he didn't respond, so
apparently she hadn't. "Man, she's got some balls," she said instead.

Angel deflated a little, slumping at the shoulders, his hands
shifting again on the steering wheel. "I wouldn't know. I've never
actually been in a position to find out."

Gwen blinked. His humor came so rarely, and was usually so wry, that
it caught her off guard. She rallied quickly. "That'd put you off, huh?
If you got in her pants and *boom* there's a big dick looking you in the
face?"

He laughed, and she couldn't hold back a smile, gratified that she'd
made that sound come out of him.

"Might not put me off as much as you'd think."

This surprised her. "Oh, really? My goodness. You have layers."

His smile had genuine warmth in it. The faint light glinted off his
teeth, his eyes, then the smile faded.

"I never really asked you if you wanted to come along," he said.
"I'm sorry about that. So would you like me to drop you off somewhere?"

She considered. They were heading for some mysterious cave in Death
Valley, to retrieve a mystical creature that very well might eat them
even though they were planning to protect it. And Angel was offering to
drop her off, so she could get on her way to Tahiti, where it was warm
and presumably there were no giant lava beasts running around
slaughtering people.

She smiled. "It's okay. I got your back."

"Thanks." He seemed a little less tense, finally. "I knew there was
a reason I wanted to bring you along."

END PART ONE