The dead don't dream.

At least, that's what Angel had always believed. The dead don't dream--just like they didn't walk the earth, didn't walk and talk and look like the living, didn't carry souls and the guilt of hundreds of years of evil. And when they slept, they didn't dream--dreaming was for the living, with their lives full of light, and their souls full of hope.

Vampires didn't dream. When they slept, they slept with the empty minds of the dead bodies they were.

Therefore, it was no dream. Doyle really was crawling into bed with him.

"What--" he began, jerking away from the scorching presence of the half-demon. *Warm,* he thought in confusion, *why is he always so warm?* There was no answer, and he flipped over, every muscle tense with bafflement. He felt his brows try to draw together, and stifled the impulse with the almost-ease of long practice. He was no newly-made child, to vamp out at the least provocation.

When he saw Doyle's face, half-concealed in shadow, he drew back.

"Doyle?" he said, softly, but the form beside him didn't move, didn't acknowledge that he'd spoken. He shook his head, the whole scene feeling more than a little unreal. Doyle's features, skewed green and eerily familiar, were calm and still. The lean, wiry body was still fully clothed. And one green hand held with white-knuckled strength to Angel's last surviving supply of alcohol--a brandy bottled in 1897.

Doyle was a great guy, but he was hell on his liquor cabinet.

"Doyle," he said again, louder. Why the hell was Doyle in his bed? Why had Doyle--*vamped out* his mind automatically inserted, but he banished that thought--transformed?

"What the hell is going on?"

Now Doyle reacted, turning to face him. Angel just barely managed to prevent himself from reacting, though his throat closed for an instant. Just as narrowly he stopped the hand that reached out, drawn to pain as he always had been.

As a vampire, to feed.

As an angel, to ease.

But his hand stayed where he told it to, and his face didn't twitch, didn't flinch, his eyes didn't falter. He stayed right where he was, looking into Doyle's eyes--softy brown, sensitive, resolute eyes, very human eyes--a sharp contrast to the demonic face he wore.

Eyes that were crying.

"Doyle," he said quietly. "What happened?"

At last, a reaction--Doyle flinched sharply, and the demonic face melted away as he closed his eyes. Angel pulled himself up more fully, settling against the headboard, and staring at the fully-dressed, half-human, completely sloshed person in his bed. Making himself comfortable, watching as the familiar "Doyle" slid back into view, more than simply skin and bones and flesh but an expression, an attitude, a persona. A mask. Hiding something beneath it, something intensely vulnerable.

But he didn't need to repeat himself, because Doyle was speaking now.

"This Buffy chick--you know her well?"

"Buffy?" Startled, Angel shot another look at Doyle's face, but nothing could be seen--not the demon who'd come to his bed for unknown reasons, not the vulnerable being beneath it--this was pure Doyle, tanked on hundred-year brandy and asking about his social life.

"Yeah, I knew her."

"No, man, I knew that--did you know her *well?*"

Okay, scratch that--he had a tanked Doyle in his bed, asking about his *sex* life.

"I don't kiss and tell," he managed, trying to look forbidding. It apparently didn't work,  since Doyle was now laughing.

"You know, you'd think that a vampire a couple hundred years old could do that look better. Oh well." Angel glared at him, and it only set Doyle off even more. With a resigned growl, he settled back against the headboard. While on one hand, it was nice to see Doyle looking a little less like a suicidal cross between Hellraiser and a tree frog, and a little more like the snarky, irreverent Doyle he knew and loved--he still wanted to know what the hell Doyle was doing in his bed.

"Doyle," he rumbled, again fighting the urge to vamp out but this time allowing his eyes to take on just a hint of their vampire cast, "what the hell are you doing here?"

Doyle sobered, laughter lingering in his eyes, but fading away even as Angel watched. "I'm not sure," he said finally. "But I think--it was this." He twisted, stretched, and surged forward, almost too fast for Angel to react to, and his mouth landed hard and hot on Angel's lips, sharp with brandy and something intoxicating all his own. The kiss dragged on for what felt like lifetimes, as a firm, curling tongue stroked over his open mouth--never entering, but testing, exploring.

And then, abruptly as a blow, it was gone. Angel blinked, gasped slightly--though he hadn't drawn breath for centuries--and stared up at Doyle, who was standing by his bed, eyes shuttered. His movements were precise as he placed the bottle of brandy on the bed. "That's good stuff," he commented, sounding slighly breathless and slightly remote, artificially casual. Someone who didn't know him might even call him normal, thought Angel, feeling shell-shocked.

Doyle stood there for a moment, while Angel tried to think of something to say--something that wasn't either trite or moronic. "Why?" he finally asked, not moving, letting his confusion show in his eyes.

For a moment, Doyle didn't react; then he took a deep breath, and smiled carefully. He turned to go, Angel feeling like an idiot staring stupidly, but helpless to stop him. He felt like he was water that had been shocked into immobility, frozen on the outside while the inside seethed with questions and hunger and confusion.

At the door, Doyle turned for a moment. "Remember, you don't kiss and tell," he said quietly, for a moment the vulnerable look back in his eyes, and then he was gone. From a long way away, Angel heard the front door open, and close.

Vampires are dead, and the dead don't dream.

But it was a long time before Angel slept.

The End