Spike's sitting in his wheelchair in a back corner of the dark, cluttered factory, wishing he hadn't smoked his last cigarette already and trying futilely to wiggle his toes, when suddenly he thinks of church. He thinks of fractured bible scenes in glowing stained glass, darkly polished hard wooden pews, and the giant pipe organ that crushed his spine, and what made him think of all that just now?—the smell. The scent of church, faint but unmistakable.

Drusilla comes into view, sashaying with each step to the music in her head. Her pale skin glows like moonlight, and he smiles to see her, especially with that bloody git Angelus nowhere in sight. She's found a wine-red crushed velvet dress to wear, and she plucks at the long skirt with one hand as she settles herself on his lap and dips her head down to kiss him.

"Where've you been, Princess?" Spike asks against her lips. The smell of church is caught in the folds of her dress; frankincense and beeswax.

"With Daddy," she says, and he scowls. "Don't be cross, Sweet William," she singsongs, slipping off his lap and around back of his chair, "Daddy says I must bring you to church now."

The feeling that she's taking him for a walk like a doll in a pram is only intensified with Miss Edith perched on his lap. He'd toss the bloody doll out into the street to salvage a bit of his dignity, but then Drusilla would be upset and he couldn't stand that. So he sits in the chair and holds the doll on his knee and listens to Drusilla sing her little rhymes as she pushes him along Sunnydale's deserted 3 a.m. streets, and he hopes to hell that no other demons are out tonight.

He's heard that Sunnydale has forty-three churches, though he's not sure if that counts the one he and the Slayers recently destroyed. This one is dedicated to St. Pelagius and it doesn't have a wheelchair ramp.

"Bloody inconsiderate," Spike grumbles at the bottom of the flight of twenty stone steps, just for something to say. "How're the differently abled supposed to get into heaven, then?"

Drusilla scoops him out of the chair and cradles him in her arms as easily as if he were a blood-drained toddler. He wraps one arm around her shoulders for balance, and kisses her temple. His princess is strong again, that's one thing he did right.

"One, two, buckle my shoe," Drusilla chants as she carries him up the steps. She jostles him in her arms as she works to grasp her long skirt and bunch it up clear of her feet, and he feels a bright jolt of pain somewhere near the bottom of his spine. "Three, four, shut the door. Five, six, pick up sticks. Seven, eight, lay them straight. Nine, ten, a big fat hen." She stops on the tenth step, tilts her head as if listening for something.

"Eleven, twelve, I hope you're well," he prompts gently to try to get her climbing again. Not that he's eager to meet Angelus in the church, but he feels silly and exposed, hanging out halfway up the pale granite steps.

"Ssssh, sweetling. I know the rest," she says, and repeats his line a bit petulantly as she starts up the stairs again. "Eleven, twelve, I hope you're well. Thirteen, fourteen, draw the curtain. Fifteen, sixteen, Daddy's in the kitchen," which is a bit of a variation from the original Mother Goose, but he supposes she's improvising to fit the situation. Clever girl. Barking mad, of course, he'd be the first to admit it, but that doesn't stop him from loving her. "Seventeen, eighteen, he's in waiting. Nineteen, twenty, my stomach's empty."

The church's heavy oaken door swings outward, and Angelus is framed in the doorway. "Hungry, Drusilla? Don't worry, I saved you a priest."

Drusilla props Spike up at the aisle end of a first-row pew, and sets Miss Edith on the pew across the aisle. The only light in the church comes from a table off to the side, covered with four tiers of flickering offertory candles, and another two candles on the altar up front.

The young priest is kneeling halfway between the altar rail and the pulpit, praying in Spanish in a hitching, frightened whisper. He's wearing his vestments, white robe and collar, and since it's the middle of the night and the man probably doesn't sleep in the things, Spike guesses that Angelus made the priest get dressed for this party. Angelus has always had a thing for religious symbols.

The priest's hands are tied behind his back, and Spike guesses his feet are tied too. There's a fresh bruise on his forehead, and Spike doesn't see any open wounds but he can smell, faintly, spilt blood.

"Is it all for me, Daddy?" Drusilla asks, standing on tiptoes over the priest with an expression of rapture. Spike slouches in the pew, seething with jealousy. Typical of Angelus to put on a show like this and make sure Spike has a first-row seat.

"Take as much as you want, Dru, then share with Spike," Angelus says offhandedly, leaning against the pulpit with his arms crossed. "I already ate."

Drusilla arches up towards the ceiling with an expression of ecstasy, and then lunges down in game face. The priest's prayers are cut off with a last desperate gasp, and Drusilla kneels with her teeth in his neck, sucking and murmuring in childish delight. The sight of her feeding makes Spike both hard and hungry, and he grits his teeth against the ache. Angelus glances over at him and smirks.

Eventually Drusilla lifts her head, licks the blood from her lips, and carries the priest over to Spike. The man is already dead.

"I saved you some, love. Do you think he will take my confession, when you're finished? I've been a naughty girl indeed."

"There's no point in confessing, luv, there's no saving you now." Spike knows he won't upset her with that; Dru might still play the Catholic girl, but she knows she's evil well enough. "Give him here." With the priest propped limply on the bench beside Spike, Spike is able to get an arm around and balance himself and the body so he can latch onto the holes Dru has already made in the neck. Spike laps at the dripping blood and lets his demon surface. He sinks his fangs in and drains the priest, who tastes of spicy food and communion wine. Dru hasn't left him much; not more than a pint. Spike's still hungry when he finishes, but at least the edge is off it.

He pushes the body away and it falls awkwardly to the floor. "Poor sod, bloody shame to die a virgin," he comments offhand, since this is a Roman Catholic church.

"Oh, he didn't," Angelus says with a particularly smug, slow grin, and Drusilla giggles. Spike remembers how she came to him in the factory already reeking of church, and he feels another pang of helpless jealousy.

To distract himself from the depressing mental image of Drusilla, Angelus and the priest in unholy congress, Spike reaches into his duster pocket for his packet of fags. Then remembers he already smoked them all and nobody's brought him any more yet. This pisses him off even more, especially since there's nothing he can do about it. "So what the hell did you have Dru drag me all the way out here for, anyway?" he demands of Angelus. "Haven't you ever heard of bloody takeout?"

"I had Drusilla bring you here," Angelus says, uncoiling and stalking towards Spike with a predatory air, "because I want to fuck you in a church."

Oh. Hell.

On some level Spike has known this was coming. In the week since Angelus showed up, soul-free for the first time in a century, Spike's been figuratively holding his breath and waiting for the revenge to hit the fan. Spike recently captured Angel and let Drusilla torture him at length, and somehow he knows Angelus is holding that against him rather than Drusilla. And then Spike had brought Angel to a church to perform a ritual that was supposed to kill Angel and heal Drusilla, and, well, it'd half worked.

"Drusilla," Angelus says, "Take Spike's clothes off."

She's gentle with him, clucking and murmuring like she does with her dolls. Spike cooperates. If it were Angelus undressing him he'd fight it, but it's nice to be touched by Dru, even under the circumstances. He carefully avoids looking in Angelus's direction.

Naked, he feels vulnerable, which he supposes is the desired effect. There's patches of pink scar tissue on his torso and legs, left over from the burns he got in that other church. Two weeks ago he was delirious with pain, unable to move, barely able to keep down the blood from the small animals Dru kept bringing him. Two weeks from now his skin will be smooth and perfect again. Vampire healing—bloody brilliant. Now if only his fucking spine would fix itself and his legs would start working.

"I want him in front of the altar," Angelus says.

"Yes, Daddy," Dru says meekly, and picks Spike up.

"Wouldn't you like to run off to Brazil, pet?" Spike suggests hopefully as she carries him up the two steps to the raised stage at the front of the church. "Right now. Just the two of us, like before."

She sets him down on the dark purple carpet with his legs in front of him so he can hold himself up with his hands. "Silly Willy! Daddy's back, we don't have to be alone anymore."

"Yes, Spike," Angelus says as Dru backs away and drifts out of sight. "Daddy's back."

Spike rolls his eyes. "No matter what you do, I am not calling you Daddy."

"That's okay," Angelus agrees easily. "There are other things you can call me."

"Great big poof?" Spike suggests. "Pathetic wank—" He's cut off when Angelus kicks him in the chest.

Spike skids a few feet backwards, carpet burns on his bare arse, and lands flat on his back. Angelus follows and plants one foot over Spike's breastbone, applying not quite enough pressure to crack it. "That's enough, boy," he says, hints of the old mick accent bleeding through.

Okay, so maybe antagonizing Angelus isn't the greatest idea right now, but old habits are hard to break. Spike grabs his grandsire's ankle and tries to pry it off his chest, but it's fucking impossible without leverage, and he has none. Miles above him, Angelus chuckles.

"Go ahead and fight it." Angelus finally lifts his foot off Spike and crouches down, while Spike struggles up onto his elbows. "All the more fun for me." He pulls a silver flask out of the breast pocket of his jacket. "Guess what I have here?"

"Whiskey?" Spike suggests, entertaining a little optimism. He can smell liquor on Angelus's breath when he talks.

Angelus chuckles. "You want a drink, then?" He holds out the flask towards Spike, but snatches it away when Spike reaches for it. "Not a good idea. I filled it up from the baptismal font."

Holy water. On the plus side, Angelus didn't let him drink it.

Candlelight glints off the silver flask as Angelus slowly lets it tip. Spike watches mesmerized as a drip of liquid bulges at the mouth, then tumbles down, down, to splash just over Spike's navel. "Fuck!" he yelps, batting at the burning liquid with one hand. This has the effect of spreading out the pain, and transferring some of it to Spike's hand. "Fuck!"

"Payback's a bitch," Angelus notes smugly. And drizzles some more holy water over Spike's left shoulder.

"Bastard!" Spike snatches the flask and hurls it away, and falls flat on his back again, panting at the pain.

And Angelus is gone and then he's back, patting at the burning places with something soft, and oh, it's Spike's own t-shirt. So Angelus sops up the holy water that's left, and the pain gets a little less, and Spike won't be able to wear the t-shirt again until it's completely dry.

Angelus tosses the t-shirt aside and, surprise, kisses Spike.

It's a rough kiss, the kind that draws blood. Neither one of them is in game face, so it's blunt human teeth that close on Spike's lip hard enough to break the skin, and fuck, it's been nearly a century since the last time they did this and Spike wants it.

"Whose are you, boy?" Angelus demands, his voice sandpaper-rough.

The expected answer grates, and it's tempting to fight it, but that would just mean Angelus beating him up a little more before he fucks him. Spike's impatient to get to the sex and besides, unlike Drusilla he doesn't actually like pain. "Yours," he gasps. "I'm yours."

The organist's bench has a throw pillow on it. Angelus gets it while Spike lies on the carpet, feeling the sting of the holy water burns subside. The pillow goes under Spike's hips to get him into a better position for Angelus. Angelus kneels between Spike's splayed legs, slowly unbuttoning his fly and smirking, and Spike can't feel much below his waist but he can feel his dick growing hard in aching anticipation, and there's a burning feeling at the base of his spine, and—fuck! He can smell his own flesh burning! He yelps and throws his arms out to roll himself over, off the pillow. He looks back over his shoulder and sees it—the golden cross embroidered onto the purple velvet of the cushion.

"Ooops," says Angelus mildly.

"Bugger!" Spike swears, glaring impotently at his tormentor. "You did that on purpose! You think it's funny to brand a cross into a fellow's arse?"

"Pretty funny, yeah." The dark look in Angelus's eyes is not exactly amusement, but he's definitely enjoying this. Spike can smell the other vampire's musky arousal. Angelus reaches down and flips the pillow over, showing the other side to be unadorned. Then he grasps Spike's hips with his big hands and lifts him back into position on the pillow, and funny that Spike resents Angel flinging him about like a ragdoll when he doesn't really mind Dru doing it.

As though summoned by Spike's thought of her, Dru comes back into the sanctuary through a side door. Spike can't see her, but he can hear her humming to herself.

"Look what I found, Daddy," Dru says. "It smells just like I remember."

Spike manages to twist his head around enough to see her. Dru's found a censer somewhere, a lacey brass teardrop on four long chains, and there's white smoke drifting out of it.

"That's nice, Dru," Angelus says in a placating tone. "You go ahead and play with that while I fuck Spike." Nice of him to make it sound so bloody romantic.

Finally, finally, Angelus gets down between Spike's legs and thrusts into him. Spike yelps once at the sudden tearing. It hurts, but he's glad he can feel it at all. "That's right, fuck me, you great big poof."

In the background, Dru is chanting. "Pater noster qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum." She was a nun for less than a day before Angelus killed her, but apparently she still remembers the Latin. She's pacing a wide circle around Angelus and Spike, swinging the smoking censer in arcs more playful than authentic.

Angelus is fucking Spike with slow, smooth thrusts. He's in no hurry; he probably came earlier with the priest.

"Adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra," Dru chants in her nursery-rhyme voice. The cloying scent of the incense tickles Spike's nose and makes him want to sneeze. Which is ridiculous, because vampires don't sneeze.

Vampires don't sneeze, but Spike's eyes are watering a little now and the deep burning sensation in his nose is rivaling the other, lower, nicer one for his attention. He gasps a breath in suddenly without meaning to, and then he sneezes, "heh-chsh!" His head snaps forward with the sneeze, then back to the floor with a jarring thud.

Angelus has stopped moving inside him, and when Spike opens his eyes he sees his grandsire looking down at him with an expression of surprise. "What was that, Spike?"

"Nothing," Spike mutters, rubbing the back of his hand roughly over his nose, and Angelus starts moving again.

Drusilla executes a little spin on her circular path. "Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie."

The fucking incense is still tickling Spike's nose, and this is inconvenient, annoying, and bloody embarrassing. He sniffles, trying to hold back a second sneeze, and Angelus has the gall to snicker.

"Heh-chsh!" Spike sneezes again.

Dru pauses her recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and says "Poor William, has he caught a cold?"

Spike grits his teeth against the burning in his sinuses and reminds Dru, "We're vampires, pet. We don't get sick."

"That's very interesting Spike," Angelus says, his voice level and calm even as he drives into Spike harder than before. "What was that funny noise you made just a moment ago?"

Perfect, now Angelus is mocking him while shagging him. All he needs is Darla in the background commenting on their technique, and it'd be just like old times.

"Et dimitte nobis debita nostra," Drusilla takes up her chanting again, twirling the censer in wide, smokey arcs.

"Heh-choo!" The sneeze rocks his whole body this time, and it doesn't help; his nose is still burning and twitching. "It's the fucking incense. Must be mystical, like the crosses and the h-htchoo!" Fuck. He sniffles and finishes his sentence, feeling like a complete prat, "holy water."

"Of course," Angelus agrees dryly. "Which is why it's affecting Drusilla and me the same as you."

Spike groans and mashes his nose with his fist, trying to force the next impending sneeze away.

It's not mystical. It's just that Spike is a sorry excuse for a vampire, a fact which Angelus let him in on the day Dru first brought him home, and reminded him of every day for twenty years until that gypsy curse came between them. Christ, whoever heard of a vampire with fucking allergies?

"Heh-chsh!"

"Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris."

The Church of England had only used incense on high holy days. He remembers sitting on the bench beside his mother in the crowded, stuffy church on All Hallows Eve not a month before he was turned, listening to the priest's droning prayers and desperately trying to hold his breath to avoid inhaling the incense's sharp, irritating smoke. That was a futile struggle, of course; he was soon overpowered, and the escaped sneeze echoed in the high recesses of the hushed church. Spike remembers, but doesn't want to remember, blushing furiously at the certainty that everyone in the church was glaring at him. He remembers digging in his pocket for the linen handkerchief he carried around like a nancy boy, and he remembers burying his nose in it, trying to muffle his shuddering breaths until the sneezing fit overtook him. He remembers fleeing the church with the hanky still pressed over his nose and mouth, and running into the doorjamb on the way out, stunning himself and knocking his glasses off. He remembers walking home alone and early in the chill drizzle, gasping in what passed for clean air in Victorian London, still wracked with occasional sneezes all the way to his own doorstep.

Sod it all, that wasn't Spike. It was William, a pathetic human killed by Drusilla in 1880, with whom Spike just happened to share a body, memories, certain innate personality traits, a grasp of English grammar to which he'd never admit out loud, and a sensitivity to religious incense.

"Heh-choo!"

"Et ne nos inducas in tentationem..."

"Bloody hell, Dru, get that thing away from me!" Spike manages to shout before he sneezes again.

"But I like it," she pouts.

"So. Do. I," Angelus pants, pounding into Spike with each word.

And that's no big surprise, since Angelus is a sadistic bastard, but the next time Spike sneezes he hears Angelus groan along with him, and isn't that interesting? The big poof does like it. Spike suddenly realizes that every time he sneezes, he must be clenching hard around Angelus's dick.

"Dru, come here!" Spike gasps.

She pads over to him on her slipper feet, and the censer dangles near Spike's head as she tilts her head one way and the other, waiting for someone to explain to her what she should do.

Angelus pauses and a wicked smile plays on his lips. "Leave the censer there, Dru. Spike needs your attention."

She sets the censer down on the carpet scant inches from his head, and lets the brass chains tumble slinkily to the floor. Spike holds his breath—remembering finally that he can do that, that he in no way needs to breathe—because he'd had a plan something like this when he called Dru to him, but now that Angelus has taken it over it doesn't seem like such a great idea.

Drusilla kneels beside Spike, arranging her dress fussily for a moment before leaning over and sliding her blood-warm lips down over Spike's dick. Spike gasps in surprise, and the incense fills his mouth and nose.

The smoke is a swarm of stinging wasps in Spike's sinuses. Tears well in his eyes and slide down the sides of his face. He tries to hold back out of sheer obstinate stubborness, but it's impossible. "Hehchoo!" he sneezes, and his whole body convulses with it, and Angelus's rhythm falters momentarily and the big vampire makes a low growling noise that makes Spike's belly feel warm with anticipation. Dru, meanwhile, lifts her head to scold him, "Hold still silly boy," and she plants her hands firmly on his hips before she goes down on him again.

Spike is helpless, caught between Dru and Angelus and the incense. His head arches back exposing his throat, but there's no one free to bite him. He sneezes again and hardly notices, because by now the things Dru is doing with her tongue and the rough, insistent fucking of Angelus are bringing Spike to the bright and fragile edge of orgasm. Then he's coming with a scream, and his fingernails dig into his palms and he almost thinks he can feel his toes curl.

When he opens his eyes, Drusilla is sitting back and wiping her mouth with a smile, and Angelus is pounding him faster than ever, his own expression tight and dark. Spike knows that scowl; Angelus is close.

Deliberately, Spike turns his head toward the censer and inhales. He has enough time to notice his lack of reflection in its shiny brass surface before the sneezes overtake him in violent staccato.

Angelus's hands tighten around Spike's wrists until the bones grind together, and between sneezes Spike whimpers at the pain. Then he hears Angelus gasping, and the relentless thrusting stops, and the big vampire cries out in a soft voice, "Oh God."

Then Angelus is standing up and turning his back to Spike and walking away to lean heavily against the pulpit, and Spike doesn't think he's meant to notice that the other man's hands are trembling.

Drusilla wipes a tear from Spike's cheek, then brings her finger to her mouth to taste it. Spike holds his breath, and manages to be still. Drusilla leans down and kisses his forehead, and whispers with an air of finality, "... sed libera nos a malo."

Gruffly in the distance, Angelus says "Amen."

Pelagius is a medieval Spanish saint; he's the patron saint of abandoned people and torture victims.

Dru recites the Lord's Prayer in Latin in its entirety.