Kin of the Clan

[lit_gal]

Kin of the Clan
Jim/Blair (eventually... they're having issues)
Angel/Xander
Spike/Cordelia
Spike/Blair (once or twice)
Angel/Spike (when they need rough vampire sex)
Faith/Graham
Aw hell, basically the rule is to just keep it in the family.



Does anyone remember this? Blair is a member of Angel's clan, Jim is kidnapped and he discovers that Angel and Spike's rescues look a lot like kidnapping.

Jim was clueless, so this chapter tries to fill you in on any big pieces you might have missed.

Read old chapters over at AO3



Jim half-heartedly watched television. As kidnappings went, this was one of the better ones. He’d give Angel’s crew four stars for accommodations, but he could feel the itch to move, to do something. He had to escape, and he couldn’t start formulating a plan until he got out of this suite. Right now, all he knew was that there was some sort of force field outside the bedroom and bathroom windows. And Jim was not going to use the word magic, although the force field was pretty hard to explain in any other terms.

“Hungry?” Blair asked with a hopeful smile.

Jim looked up, but honestly, he wasn’t. “I think I have too much on my mind,” he said. He shifted, and the chains on his wrists rattled. Blair’s gaze went right to them.

“I am so sorry.”

“Hey, I get it. You had a vision, and given a choice between being buried alive by Harrison and his idiot friends, and being here, at least I have cable here.” Jim gestured toward the television.

“Man,” Blair whispered. And that was guilt.

“You can lose the guilt, Sandburg.” Jim said.

“Hey great, just as soon as you stop being angry and passive aggressive.” Blair threw himself down into a chair.

If they were home in the loft, Jim would have a few choice words, but they were stuck in the Hyperion under guard by Angel’s crew. Jim studied Blair. At least he was. Blair seemed free to come and go. Jim wasn’t sure how to use that information, though. Blair didn’t seem likely to help them escape.

And that made Jim’s chest ache. He’d really thought that Blair was loyal, but maybe there was something wrong with him because it did seem like everyone in his life took turns stabbing him in the back. Thank God he hadn’t ever acted on his attraction to Blair. He didn’t need to see Blair betray him sexually as well as betray their friendship.

“Oh, and if you’re going to sleep with any of these people, be respectful enough to take it somewhere else,” Jim said firmly. “If I can’t leave these rooms, I really don’t want to be stuck in here with you and some clan member.”

“What? Hey, I would never…” Blair stopped, but that might have had something to do with the glare Jim sent his way. “Okay, I would totally sleep with several of the people around here, but I would never do it where it would make you uncomfortable.”

“That rules out whatever state I’m in, then,” Jim said.

“Nice. Really nice. Look, you just need to get to know them.” Jim was reserving judgment on that. Right now he needed to remain quiet and gather intel. He focused on the basketball game, which allowed him to ignore the chains on his wrists and the general unease he felt about Sandburg having sex with any of these people. Jim had never been good at cutting himself off from his feelings, which is probably why he had perfected the art of hiding them. So he needed to keep hiding his feelings for Blair and hide the fact that it was killing him that Blair had chosen this insane asylum over him.

An uneasy quiet fell over the room until a loud knocking interrupted the awkward silence.

“I’ll get it,” Blair said as he jumped out of his chair. Jim grunted. Despite his outward disinterest, he did keep his senses focused on Blair, so when Blair stumbled backward, Jim was up off the couch in a heartbeat.

“This room is entirely too small, but if Angel is unwilling to be reasonable, I will just have to make due.” Cordelia from downstairs swept into the room with a large portfolio like artists used tucked under her arm.

“Hey, it’s not like Spike is being reasonable man. Your vampire is just as weird as mine.” A well built man with dark, wavy hair followed her into the room.

“No one is as weird as your vampire,” Cordelia shot back. “Blair, we’re having the meeting in here. Could you clear the coffee table, please?” Her words were a request, but they had that same tone that commanding officers used to request them, and Blair reacted like he’d been ordered. He hurried to grab the remote and a dish with nuts off the table.

“Jim, this is Xander Harris. Xander, Detective Jim Ellison,” Blair offered in a hurried introduction.

Xander smiled. “Hey, nice to meet you. Any friend of Blair’s is a friend of ours, and chaining friends is unfriendlike, but it’s actually not totally without precedent. But still… sorry.” He held his hand out, and Jim shook hands warily. He’d thought that Xander might fill some familial role in this vampire mafia, but there was a sense of power in Xander, even if his words made him sound like a bumbling fool. He wouldn’t be the first to wear that disguise. Henri Brown did the same thing. He’d wear his bright shirts and grin at everyone, and very few people knew that he’d been special ops trained. It was a camouflage.

Jim gave Xander a quick nod. He sure as hell wasn’t going to say he was pleased to meet any of these people.

“Oh man, you didn’t just walk out of a meeting with the others, did you?” Blair asked as he watched, his scent slowly growing more and more sour with a sort of mild horror. He sometimes got that scent going when Jim ate fast food two meals in a day.

“Of course they did.” A beautiful blonde with short hair flounced into the room and threw herself down on the end of the sofa. Jim rarely saw women who genuinely flounced, but she did. “Can we hurry up and finish this? I have more important things to do.”

“Keep up running your mouth, and you won’t be able to do much of anything,” Spike said as he followed.

She rolled her eyes.

Blair moved to Jim’s side, which was good because Jim was feeling an overpowering urge to grab Sandburg, shove him in a corner. “Jim, that’s Anya or Anyanka. She doesn’t really have a last name since she used to be a demon.”

“I still would be if men weren’t bastards,” she said with a huff. “If I didn’t like men’s penises so much, I’d be tempted to wipe them off the face of the earth.”

“Which would be hugely of the bad,” Xander protested.

Anya rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t wipe them off this earth, idiot. I’d just make a world of all women.”

“Which wouldn’t last long what with the lack of children,” Blair pointed out.

Anya shrugged. “Details.”

They were insane. They were all insane.

Spike leaned against the wall, and Cordelia hit Anya on the knee before looking at the seat. The seat Anya had chosen was the one closest to the map Cordelia had just laid out on the coffee table. Anya huffed, but she slid over to the middle.

“Right then, I’m with her. Let’s get this over with,” Spike said.

“We’ll wait for the others,” Cordelia said firmly.

Spike snorted. “Bloody hell. It’ll take a calf puller ta get Peaches’ head out of his arse. He can’t even look at soldier boy without getting cranky that Blair might have other loyalties.”

“I would never betray the clan. You guys are my family,” Blair protested, and Jim felt a wave of cold fury wash through him as he gathered one more piece of evidence that Blair wasn’t the friend Jim had thought. He needed to start thinking about his own escape and leave Blair behind, but the very thought of that made Jim’s bones ache. He wanted his friend. Problem was, Blair was turning out to be less of a friend than he’d assumed.

“You already did, mate. You hid this one from us, and that’s why Angel’s so bloody put out.”

“I didn’t hide him,” Blair said, but he smelled of sour guilt.

“Oh please,” Anya said. “If you’re going to lie, do it better than that. Are the others coming?”

“They’ll come,” Cordelia said with confidence, and she smelled as confident as she appeared. Spike took out a cigarette and put it between his lips without lighting it. That surprised Jim because he couldn’t smell cigarette smoke on the vampire, and he’d never seen him smoke.

“I don’t have all day,” Anya said.

“Then you don’t have to be here at all,” Spike snapped.

“But I don’t like being left out. I am a member of this clan.”

Xander cleared his throat. “Maybe I should go… encourage him to come up here,” Xander said.

“Don’t bother, luv. Graham explains the military mind better than you could.”

Jim narrowed his eyes at the suggestion that someone was trying to explain his psychology to this mysterious Angel. “If he has a question, he can ask me,” Jim said firmly.

“Oh no,” Blair rushed to say. “That would be a monumentally bad idea. Angel has control over himself, but I don’t think anyone wants to actually see how far that control goes, not right now.”

“Meaning?” Jim demanded. In a blink, Spike was there, his hand wrapped around Jim’s throat as he casually slammed Jim back into the wall.

“Meaning this is his clan, and he’s a right prick about wanting to protect everyone in it. But then you come and Blair smells of misery and guilt. If it weren’t for the fact that Sandburg likes you, I’d recommend dropping you off at some suckhouse and letting them dispose of the body.”

“Hey!” Blair grabbed Spike’s arm. “Let’s play nice. Jim might even be able to help us find Jenny.”

“And even if he won’t,” Xander said as he came to stand on the other side of Spike, “we won’t kill a detective just because he was unlucky enough to nearly get buried alive by some bad guys. We don’t kill good guys, remember?” Xander asked, and again, Jim had that sense of power. Xander sounded like he was making a request, but it was like when a commanding officer made a suggestion. The fleeting sense of power running across Jim’s skin made him want to strike out, but he had more control than that. If he attacked now, he was not in a position to win. So he waited and let Blair and Xander make his argument for him, no matter how much that galled.

Spike gave Jim’s head one more smack against the wall, and then he retreated to stand at Cordelia’s side. She reached for his hand, and he took it.

“That’s Spike for you,” Xander said apologetically. Spike flipped them off with two fingers.

“That’s it. I have more interesting things to do than watch men fight, especially when the fight doesn’t end in sweaty sex,” Anya announced as she stood. Jim stared at her, not sure how to even process that comment. Before he could come up with any appropriate response for such an inappropriate statement, she had turned and walked out.

“Good riddance,” Spike muttered.

“Hey, she is very on the helpful side with magical research.” Xander went back to the dresser and hopped up to sit on the edge. “A thousand years of meeting people and seeing spells is huge with the useful.”

“She helped us find Fred,” Cordelia said. Jim got a strange feeling that as long as Xander and Cordelia were voting Anya into the clan, she was safe. Since they were both human, that might be Jim’s best chance of escape—to put pressure on them.

Blair explained quietly, “Fred is a technomage. She was a scientist, only another scientist stole her work and threw her into a hell dimension. It was one of the nicer hell dimensions, really, but still… not a place to vacation in. She was enslaved and suffered a lot of emotional trauma before the clan got her back.”

“They rescued her?” Jim asked, just to clarify. These guys weren’t coming off as the big damn hero types.

Xander jumped in. “Anya came to us after she lost her demony powers. She was trying to avenge the women this guy had enslaved and killed, and when she lost her powers and couldn’t stop him, she asked us for help.”

“I just want to say that I was only in it for the fighting,” Spike announced. “It was a bloody grand fight, too. Those wankers didn’t go down easy.”

“The scientists?” Jim asked.

Blair looked at him like he’d lost his mind, but then everyone else was too.

“The demons who lived in that hell dimension,” Xander said. “They were pretty low on the scary powers side, but they had brute strength and a love of swords going for them. But man, Angel loved running around in the sun and being able to let his Angelus out in a good sword fight. There for a while, I think he was considering moving there.”

Spike snorted, which seemed like a general denial of the truth of Xander’s statement. Jim ignored him.

“Angel and Angelus?” Jim was starting to get some real intel now.

Xander nodded. “Angel and Angelus are two creatures—one a soul that broods too much and loves with his whole heart, and the other demon who wants to own and care for those in his possession and who is really kind of terrifyingly possessive.”

Jim was fairly sure Xander was describing a stalker.

“Under the right circumstance and with the right spell, one side or the other can temporarily gain a little ground on the other, even if they’re supposed to be equals.” Xander held up his hand and showed it rocking back and forth.

“Bloody stupid, that,” Spike said.

“Anya’s right,” Blair interrupted. “If the curse was too rigid, it would be in danger of failing. All living things need to grow and flex, and magic is living. Totally living.”

It occurred to Jim that Blair was very comfortable openly disagreeing with Spike. Over the phone, Blair had said that he was low on the totem pole, but Graham said that Blair was high in the hierarchy. Based on this piece of intelligence, Jim suspected that Graham was right and Blair was undervaluing his own worth. Nothing new there. And now that Jim understood Blair’s past, he had a pretty good idea he knew where that insecurity came from. Jim definitely wanted to pay a visit to Blair’s biological grandparents on his human side.

“So if the demon has too much control, everyone is in danger,” Jim guessed. Possessive and demonic sounded very dangerous, and Blair was right at ground zero. The thought made Jim clench his fists.

“Completely, but that’s not going to happen,” Xander rushed to say. “I mean, the curse that linked the two—that is a Teflon covered armor plated sort of curse, and trust me, people have thrown some pretty big uncursing spells at it. A god tried to undo the curse, and when Ra has to throw up his hands and admit that a curse can’t be uncursed, that’s on tough curse, so we don’t have to worry about the soulless one coming to visit. But sometimes a really good spell maker can tip the seesaw a little. First one comes out and then the other, and the balance is still there so the curse lets it happen.”

“Great.” Jim was getting a headache.

“Which is why we need to find and kill this bint,” Spike said, and his eyes flashed yellow. Bint? Jim looked around the room, but Blair seemed to be the only one who showed any unease at the idea of killing some woman.

“I won’t participate in a murder,” Jim said firmly.

Xander nodded . “We need more people around here who are on the anti-murder side. Anya might be human, but she’s weirdly pro-killing anyone who bothers us.”

“Her body might be changed, but her morals and her mind are still very…” Blair let his voice trail off.

“Vengeance demony? Yeah. I get that,” Xander agreed. “So, it’s nice to know that Sentinels or Guardians or whatever name you settled on have more of a humanish moral compass. I get tired of being the compassy one around here.”

“You are not the only one who knows right from wrong,” Cordelia said archly.

“Yeah, but you send Spike to break legs and don’t let him kill and call that a win in the moral right column.”

“When they don’t pay their bills, it is,” she said, and she narrowed her eyes in a way that suggested that if Xander didn’t agree, she would make him pay. Jim was quickly beginning to think that she was not the weak link he was searching for. Jim shifted so he was between Blair and Cordelia. When he did, Spike grinned.

“Maybe we should explain all this so he knows what he walked into,” Blair suggested. Jim almost said something sarcastic about being dragged into this in chains rather than walking into it, but with Spike in the same room, Jim decided that poking Blair wasn’t worth the price he’d pay. After a second, Blair started. “Okay, I won’t bore you with the various demon religions and theories about how the world started, but basically you have the type of demons that like quiet and the type of demons that like mayhem. And D’fatum are definitely the quiet types, which is why we’re associated with the Powers that Be a lot of the time. And yeah, I totally see the irony in my family being the quiet sort of demon. And then there are other demons who are more neutral. Ra is a total neutral with five avatars, two into the murder and mayhem, two into peace and quiet, and one standing in the middle.”

Jim recognized Blair’s expression. His hands were starting to fly and he was about to get completely off topic with some tangentially related subject that he found interesting. Jim cut him off with a sharp whistle. Blair stopped, his hands still raised.

“Wow. You found the Sandman’s off switch. I’m impressed.”

Jim turned and saw Faith walking in. Graham was right behind her, and coming up the rear was Angel. The Capo. That was probably a mischaracterization, and Jim knew the danger inherent in mislabeling a suspect, but it was the closest he could come to understanding these dynamics.

Jim’s first observation was that Angel looked furious. That was strange because Spike looked amused, and Faith just chose the side of the couch opposite Cordelia and dropped down onto it without seeming interested in much at all. Blair pressed close, and Jim rested his hand on the small of Blair’s back, and Angel’s eyes actually turned yellow. At this rate, Jim was going to start working on a bumper crop of ulcers.

“Don’t be disrespectful, boy,” Angel said with a slight Irish lilt in his voice.

The danger swirled around him, and Jim resisted the urge to either strike out first or to put up his hands in surrender. “Blair was getting a little off track, and I wanted to know about the woman that Spike plans to kill.” Jim even managed to sound halfway polite.

Angel narrowed his eyes and took a step closer. Spike pushed off from the wall, and now Jim definitely felt the threat fill every inch of unused space.

Faith laughed. “Trust me, after living with Blair, I know how very off track that boy gets. Graham, why don’t you do your military thing?”

The tensions in the room didn’t exactly ease as much as they shifted. Graham nodded. “I assume we’re talking about Jenny Giles?”

“That’d be her,” Spike agreed. Jim forced himself to take a step backward because Angel’s expression was not making him feel any safer. Distance was his friend at this point.

Graham sat on the arm of the couch closest Faith. These people were not subtle with their alliances. “Okay, this is the short version. We are the tactical support for a Ranger team that holds the pass, so to speak. The Hellmouth is currently closed, but it’s a weak spot between dimensions, and the Army has the best unit in the country sitting on top of it. They have a number of locals and a couple of demons helping them.

“We normally go down and help them when situations get difficult.”

Jim interrupted. “Wait, this group works with Ranger units?”

Graham smiled. “This group kicks ass with Ranger units, but it is a little like trying to get Marines and Rangers to cooperate.”

Jim almost laughed. Yeah, he bet. If Rangers and Marines were sent on a mission together, that was one serious mission. The two groups would work together seamlessly to take out the enemy. And then as soon as the area was secure, they would focus all their attention on kicking each other’s asses in everything from poker to sparring to who could spit the farthest. As an officer, Jim had tried to rise above that sort of over-active competition, but he usually failed.

Graham shrugged and gave Jim a look that suggested the two of them understood each other. Jim blinked as Blair bumped against him hard enough to make Jim look down.

“Right,” Graham said loudly, and suddenly the tensions shifted again. Jim felt like he was trying to look at the world through a funhouse mirror that kept shifting all the reflections into distorted shapes of themselves. “We asked for tactical support when we encountered an organized army that seemed to be taking up a demonic form of Nazism where they wanted to destroy all humans and halfbreeds. They had a doomsday weapon, so we coordinated an attack.

“Jenny Giles was one of the magic users embedded with the Ranger unit. Against orders, she prepared a doomsday weapon of her own—a magical bomb that targeted all demonic energies.”

Jim reached out and caught Blair’s arm by instinct. Fuck. Blair was part demon.

Blair curled his fingers around Jim’s arm. “Totally ruined her karmic load,” Blair muttered.

“Friendly losses?” Jim asked, his stomach sour. He’d seen that sort of stupidity on the battlefield entirely too much.

Graham nodded. “We lost two locals—fathers who just wanted to protect their families. Faith was incapacitated, and both Angel and Spike would have turned to dust, only they’re both old and suspicious bastards who poked around after they got suspicious. They’d prepared countercharms believing that Jenny Giles might target them. However, they didn’t anticipate that she would actually try to create a genocide device, so their counterspell didn’t protect Faith or our two locals. The Ranger unit had one of their own injured—a man whose great grandfather was a changeling, and their best frontline fighter also went down, although she’s recovered.”

Jim pressed his lips together. He understood the need for vengeance, he did. But he was a cop. “She should be arrested and brought to trial. If the Army has units assigned to demonic activities, then they’ll have some sort of court martial or war crimes tribunal set up.”

“They do,” Graham agreed. “We have a FISA court set up for demonic situations. Blair is considered an expert on local cultures, and he’s testified in front of the court multiple times.”

Jim closed his eyes as he took one more hit to the illusion that he knew Blair. Blair’s fingers tightened on his arm, but Jim really wanted some space. Unfortunately, the room was too damn small for him to get any. “So, why are people talking about killing her instead of arresting her?”

“She’s too fucking dangerous,” Spike said firmly. “She’s throwing all her magic at trying to undo the spell on Peaches here, and the quicker we break her neck, the quicker that shite stops.”

“I would rather arrest her,” Graham said, and he ignored the blistering glare Spike sent his way. “However, to be realistic, I don’t believe she will ever allow herself to be captured. If we get close enough, she will either kill herself or use her magic as some sort of super weapon. I don’t see her as someone who will let herself get captured.”

“Suicide by cop?” Jim asked.

Blair snorted. “Man, I wish. She’s going to be more like a family annihilator. I’ll save you all by killing you and sending you to your happy place. She is a zealot. Total zealot. Off her rocker and making the Kool Aid for all the kids to drink sort of zealot.”

“She believes she’s right and the rest of the world is wrong,” Graham agreed. “But the worst part is that her religious beliefs are tied up with most of us being dead. She might want to find a way to save Angel and Faith and maybe Spike depending on whether she thinks she can control him…”

Spike growled so ferociously that the hairs on Jim’s arms stood up.

“However,” Graham continued, “in her head, the world is better if the rest of us are dead. She’s trying to get the world back on schedule for an Armageddon, and she’s decided that the human members of this clan are keeping the demonic ones from picking a side and ushering in the final battle.”

Jim’s legs turned to water. Fuck. The truth of it was in every word Graham spoke, so Jim didn’t doubt him; however, there was one thing he sure as hell didn’t understand.

“Sandburg, you walked into this without telling me? Unless you want me to leash you, you’d better tell me that you didn’t know any of this was going on when you make your travel plans.” Fear fed the growing fury in Jim’s chest. He was actually in pain as he thought about Blair handling this alone. Jim waited, but Blair didn’t answer. His gaze skittered around the room without settling anywhere, and the cold realization sunk in through Jim’s skin.

Blair had planned to handle this alone. Or Blair had planned to handle this with his precious clan and leave Jim out.

Jim took one look at Blair, and he couldn’t stand to be in the same room anymore. Jerking his arm away, Jim stormed through the middle of the room with as much dignity as he could. Everyone stared, but that was fine. They could fucking stare all they fucking wanted. Jim got into the bedroom and turned around and slammed the connecting door so hard that he could hear something crack.

And the worst part was that he could still hear them planning their strategy. Dropping onto the bed, Jim tried to wish the whole mess away, but reality had never worked that way.

Comments

[lady-ceylonna.livejournal.com]

Squee! I was hoping for more of this verse.

[strangefen.livejournal.com]

*\0/* I'm so excited to see more of this universe!

[ejmam.livejournal.com]

Yay, I really like this verse. And I like the introduction of Jim and I'm a big fan of balanced Angel/Angelus. Squee!

[sparrow2000.livejournal.com]

Nice to see more of this 'verse.

[junnights.livejournal.com]

YATTA! I'm SOOOOO glad you've written and posted more of this verse:D:D:D:D:D Its AMAZING!:D:D:D:D THANK YOU!!!:D:D:D:D
And this is brill :D I love how Jim is being sceptical and yet... gets their point and all:D Hoping for more soon:D:D:D

[cybersuzy.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you so much for updating! And I see a plot happening! (btw, I missed your writing so much that I've begun reading the Igigi fics, even though I haven't watched either show. I'm gonna spoil myself so much! But I love the story so far.)

[jak-quill.livejournal.com]

-sigh- what a wonderful web you are spinning! Blair loves the Clan because they 'want' and 'need' him. Blair doesn't realize that Jim "wants" and "needs" him! He just thinks Jim needs his help... Jim "needs" to open up to Blair or else things are going to be BAD! This is going to be GRAND!!

[ruefull.livejournal.com]

OMG, I was so excited to see a new chapter of this!!!!

I admit freely, it's one of my all-time favorites of your universes, both the original series and all the little side series that have come after, and seeing more of it must makes me very happy!

Bless your heart for continuing!

[shakatany.livejournal.com]

Hooray!! More KotC!! I love this fic as well as all the previous Kins. Will Jim accept Angel's leadership in order to help Blair? I'm sure he will but not without a lot of trauma that I can't wait to read about.

I haven't been LJing that much and still have your SG stories to finish but with this I drop everything and read. As always looking forward to more.

Shakatany

[chaoskir.livejournal.com]

Oh yessss! I do remember. And sonehow I understand how Jum feels.
Great chapter! Thank you.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

How awesome to see more of this.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

Very happy to see more of this. Poor Jim has been sent for such a loop and Blair is so busy covering his own insecurities that he isn't giving Jim the reassurance he needs. And Angel just needs to chill. I do enjoy Jim's outsider perspective on the clan, it's spot on and totally off all at the same time.

[mulder200.livejournal.com]

Poor Jim! Talk about complicated! And Poor Blair! Talk about guilt issues.

[catservant66.livejournal.com]

Happy person, here. Thought maybe you forgot about this 'verse.

This, AND original fic AND you finished another arc of Igigi.

[big hug]

[delibby.livejournal.com]

yay!!!!!!!

ty!

Yayyyy!

[desert-rose11.livejournal.com]

This and Toys are a couple of my favourite stories. Anything you write with Jim/Blair in it is also awesome.
Look forward to seeing more.
BTW: anymore on Jim/Blair with Methos???

[mendenbar01.livejournal.com]

Don't know why but I had to go back to Kin of the Heart and start my annual re-read early this year (or is it late?). I cannot get over the changes from then until now, the major changes in the players and their situations. And yet you keep them going, I would like to say organically, but you never know where Blair might go with that so I won't. I don't know what happens to fics when their authors give up writing, but could you leave this series to me in your Will?