Title: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear

Series: To Each Holiday There is a Reason

Author: Shara Nesu (And hasn't it been a long time since I posted! - Hi again to All!)

Feedback: Shara-Nesu@supanet.com. or Livejournal -
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sharanesu/ Please - comments welcome about
ideas for future episodes or anything!

Archived: Shara's place: http://www.shara-nesu.supanet.com/index.html

Disclaimer: I don't own anyone it all belongs to Joss etc. Who obviously has no idea who Angel really belongs to... Spike!

Spoilers: Angel The Series - Absolutely none.

Category/Pairings: Spike/Angel

Rating: G Warning: Swearing, Adult situations.

Distribution: Want, Have, Take.

Summary: It's Christmas again for Angel & Spike. But this year Angel has lost his Christmas joy...Spike.

Notes: So many thanks to KLD for her beta! Ta luv. And Big hugs to Rhonda for finding Christmas Song to write this short story.


It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
by Shara Nesu


Angel’s POV:

When I was a little boy, no older than seven or eight, my mother used to take me carol singing. We were from good Irish Roman Catholic stock and I was even an altar boy until the age of 13. But it’s the carol singing that I remember more than anything from my human past. It was before my sister was born, when my mother had her full strength. After Kathy, she never really recovered, looking older than her years - frail and weak.

Anyway, back to the carol singing. It was a time my mother and I would spend together, talking as we walked from one house to another. There were others in the choir, but we kept to ourselves laughing and talking about the next house we would come upon. Would they offer us sweet sugar, or mulled wine, or even a penny for our trouble?

The carol singing stopped the year Kathy was born. I didn’t really mind; she was such a lovely baby that I loved to spend Christmas with her. She grew up and each year Christmas was our special time. We would bake, laugh and play in the snow, and I’d take her carol singing as she grew older. Girlfriends, whores and drink were forgotten for a few days of the year, and I laughed and played as innocent as any child.

Then Darla came along and the carol singing ended.

Christmas changed with the arrival of Angelus. It was still a special time, time spent with family and sire. After a time, carol singing returned but now with added flavour. The rush of blood while singing Silent Night - while I gave the listeners a ‘silent night’. It became tradition, singing in the street - a sick drunken noise - then the sounds of screams as we killed our stupid, Christmas Cheer filled victims.

With the arrival of a soul, the carol singing once again ended.

The gap this time was longer than ever before. Years and years were spent avoiding the Christmas cheer. Occasionally, fits of depression would find me in a Catholic Church trying to pour out my sins to a confused and then frightened priest. Usually it ended in being chased away as a messenger from the devil. I made sure I never heard a carol at Christmas for years.

Then came Buffy.

Everything changed for me once again. There was a Christmas that first year after I’d met her. It was tentative and sad, but I heard the music and once again saw Christmas joy again. I heard the new songs, and I felt almost happy for the first time since the loss of Kathy. I caught myself humming carols even older than I was. Light filled my life for a couple of days and then it went away again.

Angelus returned and the carols were gone.

Never again did I let myself hear the singing after that. I never let myself feel any joy. I closed myself off the world and never heard the joy of Christmas songs. For years and years I denied myself that small part of Christmastide that I’d always loved.

Then Spike arrived on my doorstep.

It didn’t escape my notice that my Childe-turned lover seduced me with a Christmas song. The song was the Twelve Days of Christmas and he gave me twelve gifts. I fell him love with him that very first day but I sure as hell didn’t tell him that! It was like discovering once again the meaning of Christmas. Of finding family, love, and a reason for living. All those things were found in Spike. Sappy, I know, but heartbreakingly true. Heartbreaking because this Christmas, one-year after he seduced me, I know he doesn’t love me anymore. The songs have gone. The Carols no longer heard.

Spike left me and all that is left is silence.

~*~*~*~

Spike left my home on the 13th of December. We had some stupid fight over our latest case. He’d almost gotten himself killed, again and I had come to his rescue. Of course he never saw it that way. I was always overbearing and rushing in at the wrong time. This time he might have been right. He’d been fighting this huge demon; I had seen him fall back thinking he was in real danger when he was only feinting. I had rushed in shoved him out the way and almost got myself decapitated. In the end we had managed to kill the beast, but Spike was furious. Words came out of him like - trust, believe and respect. I didn’t trust him. I didn’t believe in him. I didn’t respect him. Our argument changes like all couple’s fights do. Didn’t I know it was one year ago this day he’d given me my first Christmas gift? Didn’t I remember we were a team? Didn’t I notice how hurt he felt because I didn’t remember our anniversary? Didn’t I love him?

I didn’t trust him. I didn’t believe in him. I didn’t respect him. In other words I’d forgotten we were a team. A couple. Lovers. I had stopped thinking of Spike and his love for the human world. For Christmas. He left that very night. I went up to our rooms later, after trying to get myself drunk at the local pub, to find Spike packed and gone. The rooms were empty; his side of the bed was cold. Spike had gone. For days those were the only three words that filled my mind. Repeated over and over. Spike is gone.

Days past. Cordelia decorated the Hyperion with ugly decorations, but there was still no Spike. The lights of the huge tree were cold and dead to me. There was no joy, no glitter. Spike was gone and nothing else mattered.

Cordelia called me a morose old fart. Said I should get out and find him again. I couldn’t though; I didn’t know where to look. He’d been my lover for over a year and I didn’t know where to find him when he ran away.

Soon my mortal family gave up. They invited me to Cordelia’s house for Christmas, I said I might come. Then again, most likely not. Days came and went and still no Spike.

On the 24th of December, I could take no more. I left my home and found myself once again wondering the streets. People rushed around doing late shopping. Gathering gifts and toys, spending horrific amounts of money. Still I walked through streets of excited shoppers, but as night drew on the streets cleared as they rushed home to wrap their gifts and ready themselves for the onslaught of distant family members arriving the next day. The streets grew quite. But in the distance, I could hear it. A Carol.

On some impulse I had walked up to an old Catholic Church, lighted only with candles and inside the ghostly sound of a single choirboy. A sound alone just as I was. Then another voice joined in and then more, until a choir of voices sang out that song and I then I knew.

I loved Spike. I loved him and never really treated him as if I did. A whole year spent with holidays and fun, but I’d never really thought about Spike
himself. Never told him I truly loved him. Never trusted him. Never believed in him. Never respected him. I had shut myself away. Closed myself to life. To him.

I touched happiness once again. Found a spirit of Christmas maybe, yes, even for an old vampire like me can finally see. I rushed home, and prayed I wasn’t too late. Our rooms were soon filled with a glowing Christmas tree, presents, the smell of mulled wine and sweets. The human foods that Spike loved. Spike was more human than I ever really thought about. Something else that I hadn’t taken note of. I claimed to love him but didn’t notice those small things. The fact that Spike loved Christmas. The gifts, the songs, the lights, the horrific decorations that people adore their houses with. I should have remembered too, what I loved about it and shared it with him. Last year, he showed me, this year I had forgotten; now I just hoped it isn’t too late for me. That he’ll give me a second chance.

It was the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, and I went to bed just like thousands of other people and children, hoping, praying for a special gift the
next day.

~*~*~*~

25th December:

I opened my eyes to the morning dimness of my bedroom. It was light outside, just a few hours after dawn, certainly not time for vampires to awaken, but time for mortals to jump out of bed and send wrapping paper flying. So I too crawled out of my warm bed.

For a moment it didn’t register. For a second I didn’t see what was before me when I opened the bedroom door. The sight and smell of Christmas morning. The room filled with the scent of roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, turkey cooking in the oven, and to my astonishment, Spike dressed in jeans and apron standing over the small oven in the kitchenette. Music was playing in the background, a Christmas song I hadn’t heard before.

//It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King."
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.//


Joy and warmth filled my body as I watched Spike do such achingly normal things. It was if he’d never left, but the present of him didn’t escape my notice. My gift on this special day. I smiled as he crossed the room, setting down glasses of blood on a table before the tree I’d decorated only the night before. It was a strange sight, but after all we aren’t really human, just vampires with souls pretending to be.


//Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel-sounds
The blessed angels sing.//

I hum softly with the music, watching Spike move around our home. It’s then for the first time he notices me standing there, dressed only in boxer shorts pulled on as I rolled out of bed.

"Don’t you dare start singing, Angel." He grins at me.

//Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the heavenly strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The tidings which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!//


I’ve never noticed before how really human Spike is. Even without his soul he clung to humanity. To that spark that made them capable of good or evil. Where Demons don’t have that choice, Spike always did. Now with his soul he is heartbreakingly human. A light shining for me in the dark of my long existence. Like those angels of old, he’s here to guide my way. A light in my dark nights, making me forgot two centuries of wrongs, and bring to me the light of Christmas anew. A simple human joy of peace and happiness.

"Good grief Angel!" he snarls, shocking me out of my deep thinking. "Would you stop with the brooding! It’s Christmas, and I want pressies!"

//O ye, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing!//


"Spike," I say, catching his arm as he pulls me towards the tree.

"Pressies, Angel," he groans out.

"You are my present, Spike," I reply and pull him to me. "You are my light. I love you and I should have told you. I won’t forget again, Spike...Will."

Blue eyes stare into mine for a long time. There are no witty comebacks. No sarcastic comments. No `don’t be overly dramatic Angel` lines.

"Happy Christmas, Angel," he whispers touching my cheek with the soft palm of his hand.

Those three words reveal that I have been forgiven.


//For lo! The days are hastening on,
By prophets seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years
Shall come the time foretold,
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendours fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.//



THE END