Spike nursed his beer, watching Xander as he and Clem sat on
the couch playing Grand Theft Auto. He seemed to be doing good
today, the shaking in his hands was minimal, and his spirits were
high. But then when he was Butch his spirits were almost always
high – The Boy seemed capable of springing back from
anything. No matter how low he’d get, sooner or later he
and Clem would start babbling on about some superhero or other
and he’d be his old self again in no time. The problem was,
he seemed to be The Boy a little bit less every day.
The Bastard made Clem nervous so he didn’t stick around
long on the days when he made an appearance. Not that The
Bastard minded Clem hanging about, he thought of Clem as a
valuable ally. He had done well when he’d found them this
lair, no doubt about that. The flat belonged to some mate of
Clem’s that was visiting family in Nevada or some such
thing. It wasn’t anything extravagant, but it had
electricity and cable and even a Play Station for Xander, and
when he was Boy Xander, he and Clem would play games or
talk about science fiction and comic books and it was as if they
were long lost twins or something.
The Bastard, on the other hand, had no use for kid’s stuff,
and Clem always found some excuse or other to hightail it out of
there on those days. He’d drop their supplies by and
remember sudden, urgent business on the other side of town. That
suited them all fine. As long as The Bastard was around, Spike
preferred Clem leave them alone, as the fun they got up to by
themselves was more of the raw and naked kind.
The day The Bastard asked Clem to procure them a set of vamp
proof chains, heavy duty lube and a box of latex gloves, Clem
turned so pale Spike thought he was gonna have to give him mouth
to mouth to start him breathing again. While he and Clem got on
just fine, Spike had no bloody interest in kissing him, so it was
just as well that Clem knew when to leave. Spike tried to get him
to stop bringing over so much junk food, but that had nearly
caused a riot, so he’d backed down on that right quick. He
barely got Xander to take a vitamin once a day; he had to take
his victories where he could get them.
He took another drink of his beer, running his fingers up and
down the neck absent-mindedly. They’d been here close to
two weeks, now, and Spike wasn’t sure why they were still
in town. He’d brought up the idea of heading out of state
often enough that The Bastard had finally cracked down, and told
him if he mentioned the subject again he’d keep Spike in a
ball gag full time. He told Spike he trusted him, but he refused
to admit that they couldn’t leave, and Spike was beginning
to wonder if he knew why.
Maybe he was afraid that if he left the Hellmouth, he’d
start to lose his hold on Xander’s body? Maybe it was the
power of the Hellmouth that kept him as strong as he was. And he
was strong when he was The Bastard; stronger than when he
was Butch, anyway. Still not as powerful as a vampire, but he was
getting his strength from somewhere supernatural, and there was
no place more supernatural than the Hellmouth.
What kept Spike worried was the nightmares, and the sudden fits
Xander would take when he’d collapse to the floor, pale and
shaky, and have to be carried to bed. He’d sleep it off,
and when he woke he’d be fine. Then he’d go on like
it had never happened, refusing to talk about it, like the child
that closed his eyes to make the monsters go away. But Spike kept
watch, and he knew it wasn’t getting any better. Not by a
long shot.
At least they didn’t seem to be in any danger of being
discovered by the slayer. Clem had been at Willy’s Bar the
other day, and the word was going round that the slayer
hadn’t been asking as many questions this week. Week
before, she’d been over most every day beating the hell out
of Willy and half the demons in his bar trying to get some word
on where they were. Hopefully they’d decided Spike and
Xander had left town by now, and would ease up their search. Clem
wasn’t buying Spike’s blood locally, which should
throw them off the trail some. He was also wearing a set of the
same charms as Spike and Xander, so that should confuse the issue
even more.
Clem jumped up out of his seat, cheering at something on the
screen that had them both laughing like loons. He and Xander
might as well be the same person, they had so many things in
common: superhero comics, science fiction TV shows, bad slasher
films and Godzilla movies, Saturday morning cartoons, video
games. It was like having two kids in the flat, and sometimes
Spike wanted to go out and kill something so badly he ached with
the need to get away from the whole crazy mess. But then
he’d find himself sitting on the floor, leaning back
between Xander’s legs, his strong, callused fingers
kneading the muscles of Spike’s shoulders. They’d
drink beer and laugh as they made fun of some old kung fu movie
and he’d realize he hadn’t felt this calm and easy in
ages.
When The Bastard was in the room, well, there was a pit in his
stomach filled with fire and need, and he knew he’d do
whatever it took to keep Xander safe. Xander’s sure hands
on his body made him feel real, made his skin tingle and his cock
ache and he never wanted it to end. He knew he was cherished for
who he was, not what he could do for Xander. With Angelus, Spike
had never been an equal partner, he’d always been an
afterthought, the childe of his childe. Only worth the effort to
raise up the right way so there would be someone to take care of
Drusilla.
And Dru – he’d followed wherever she wanted to go,
let her take the lead in their games whenever she wanted, but for
the most part, he had been the strong one, the one to keep her
safe and make sure she had the luxuries she craved: the softest
beds and the loveliest gowns and toys and tea parties and dozens
of dolls to keep her company. He was the one who kept her safe
when she wanted to dance out into the sun and play with the beams
of light; the one who held her when her visions sent her
screaming until exhaustion took her and her nightmares had her
tearing out her hair and sobbing in his arms.
He ran his finger around the lip of his beer bottle as he
contemplated a hundred years worth of dedication to his dark
princess. Sometimes it felt more like a thousand years, he was
worn so thin from running along behind her – always a step
behind, trying to do whatever it was she needed and struggling to
be someone he wasn’t in order to keep her happy and safe.
He was never what she wanted in the end. How could he be, when
all she wanted was her Daddy, her Angelus?
Spike had loved her forever, but he was tired of being the strong
one. He wanted someone to hold him when he had bad dreams and
keep him safe for once. Xander was willing to do that; he
craved the chance to be there for Spike. Butch hadn’t
understood it at first – to him it meant that Spike thought
of himself as weak. But if Spike were weak, then The Bastard
would never consider him worthy of watching his back. The Bastard
trusted him, and that showed he was worthy; showed he was worth
the effort.
“Oh, wow! Look at the time! I gotta go.” Clem was out
of his seat and across the room in seconds, grabbing his backpack
and the empty cooler Spike’s blood had come in.
Spike glanced at Xander in surprise. It looked like The Bastard
had made an appearance while Spike was lost somewhere in his own
head. He seemed to show up out of the blue these days, at less
than a moment’s notice.
Spike followed Clem to the door. “Thanks,
mate.”
Clem’s smile reminded Spike of Boy Xander’s
– cheery and good humored, despite his nervousness as he
glanced back at Xander, who’d turned off the TV and sat
there watching them, dark eyes hooded and remote. “No
problem, Spike. I’ve had more fun in the last couple of
weeks than I’ve had in years.” He waved awkwardly at
Xander. “See ya tomorrow!”
Spike locked the door behind him, knowing there was a good chance
of sex in his immediate future. He grabbed his beer, taking a
couple of swigs, thinking he’d finish it off before he
joined Xander on the couch.
“Slow down,” Xander ordered hoarsely.
Spike looked over at him in surprise. “What?”
“I couldn’t concentrate on the game. All I could see
was you running your fingers around the mouth of that bottle,
your lips wrapping around it as you drank. You’ve been
touching that bottle like it was my body. Show me what
you’re going to do once I give you permission to touch
me.”
Spike smiled sexily and licked his lips. “What? You mean
when I stick the tip of my tongue in like I’m fucking your
arsehole?” He flicked his tongue in and out of the mouth of
the bottle. “Or maybe when I lick all around the rim like
this?” He used that bottle every way he could think of,
licking and sucking and practically deep throating it before
Xander called a halt to the demonstration so he could put all his
practice into use. After all, practice makes perfect. And Spike
was perfect, Xander told him so, more than once.
The part Spike liked best was when Xander pulled him up so he was
kneeling on the couch, one leg on either side of Xander’s
body, and shoved two slick fingers in Spike’s arse while he
bit the soft skin of Spike’s stomach and tongue fucked his
navel. By the time Spike was ready to ease down onto
Xander’s slick shaft, he was so hard that he had to close
his eyes on the sight of Xander’s hungry smile so he
wouldn’t come before they even got to the main event.
With Xander’s fat cock buried deep inside him, he was as
close to heaven as a vampire could get; grinding and undulating,
his hips moving sinuously as he rose and fell, leaving Xander
flushed and breathless. Spike clutched at the back of the couch,
holding on white-knuckled as he writhed and trembled, his cock
painting slick stripes on Xander’s belly when he leaned
forward to bring their faces close enough to kiss.
With Spike’s nipples so close to hand, Xander took his time
playing with them, pulling and twisting until they ached
pleasurably, then sucking the swollen nubs into his mouth to
soothe them with his tongue. When he bit down on one nip
suddenly, Spike came without touching his cock, the sudden rush
of pain/pleasure shocking him, his back arching as his hips
stuttered uncontrollably.
It took him a minute to recover and realize that Xander was still
hard inside him, so he put his vampire stamina to good use,
tightening his muscles and griping Xander’s cock as he
writhed and bucked, rolling his hips and using every trick in his
arsenal to practically pull Xander’s orgasm out of him. It
was some time before either of them was willing to move after
that, but finally Spike prodded Xander to his feet and they
shared a shower, where Spike showed Xander that even humans were
capable of coming twice in a fairly short amount of time when
they’re assisted by a vampire with a talent for rimming and
an extremely agile tongue.
“What would you do, if I wasn’t around?”
Xander’s head lay in Spike’s lap, so the angle was
awkward, but he watched Spike’s face as closely as he
could, resisting the urge to close his eyes and do his best to
purr when Spike stroked his fingers through his hair.
“What the hell are you on about?”
They’d been watching some really bad made for TV movie on
the SciFi Channel, or had been until they’d both drifted
off in the early am hours. It had been a rough day. Xander
hadn’t slept well the night before, the nightmares that
haunted his sleep forcing him back to consciousness time and time
again. He’d had the shakes for most of the day, and Spike
had insisted he take a nap in the afternoon, after he’d
fallen in the bathroom, his knees giving out from under him, and
hadn’t been able to get back up.
Usually a couple hours sleep helped, but he’d woken just as
shaky as he’d gone to bed, and Spike had to force him to
eat some soup and crackers, just to get something in his stomach.
He felt a little better after he ate, and they’d lazed
around doing nothing much, just hanging out while Spike talked to
him about Budapest and Greece and Peru. Xander wanted to see the
Brazilian rain forests, and although Spike said he preferred Rio
and sleeping under a roof where he could stay dry and
comfortable, he admitted that he was curious, and could be talked
into going with Xander, if he wanted the company.
Now, tired and sore from a day of stress and worry,
Xander’s thoughts drifted over the places Spike had
promised to take him once he was feeling better. If he got
better, which he wasn’t very positive about at the moment.
He reached over blindly, fumbling the remote from the coffee
table and clicking off a fascinating infomercial hosted by a guy
with a really bad bald spot and a pitiful looking
comb-over.
“I mean it, Spike.” Xander reached up and nudged him
in the ribs with one finger. “What would you do if I left
you?”
Spike didn’t look very happy about the direction this
conversation was headed. “Going somewhere?”
“Not now, no. But eventually…” He let his
words trail off, unsure of what to say. He really didn’t
want to think about this any more than Spike did, but the
thoughts in his head wouldn’t go away.
“Not without me, you’re not.” Spike’s
fingers tightened in his hair almost to the point of pain,
holding onto the curls Xander could never manage to keep in
place. He nudged Spike’s hand with his head, and Spike
loosened his grip, fingers running restlessly through
Xander’s hair.
Xander rocked his head on Spike’s lap. “You
can’t go everywhere with me.”
“Why not?” Spike wanted to know.
“Even to the bathroom?”
“Depends.” He shrugged. “If you’re taking
a shower, then I’ll be glued to your side.”
“That would make it difficult to get clean.”
Spike sighed exasperatedly. “Who said anything about
getting clean?”
“That’s what you usually do in the
shower.”
“Only after I’d got us both dirtier first.” He
leered down at Xander, which was a funny thing to see from
Xander’s sideways angle.
“I don’t think you could get any
dirtier.”
“Oi!” Spike grabbed a lock of Xander’s hair and
tugged lightly.
Xander grinned. “Loon.”
“That’s my word,” Spike complained.
“It’s mine, now. And you never answered the
question.”
“Which question?” Spike was definitely trying to
avoid the subject.
“What would you do if I were gone?” Spike frowned at
him, but Xander ignored that. “Would you travel? Back to
New York? Have you ever been to Australia? Or what about London
– that’s home, right? Maybe to Brazil to find
Drusilla.”
“No. I wouldn’t be welcome there.” Spike
answered shortly. That surprised Xander.
“Why not?”
“I don’t belong to her anymore, do I?”
He sounded so matter of fact about it. Xander couldn’t
understand why Spike wasn’t upset by that admission.
He’d been with Drusilla for so long. He had to miss her so
much.
“But you love her.”
“I always will. She’ll always be my dark princess.
But she’s not mine anymore. And I’m fine with
that. I’m not hers anymore, either.” Xander’s
heart ached for Spike. How could that not hurt him?
“You’re not?”
“Of course not.” Spike ran the backs of his fingers
lightly down Xander’s cheek. “I’m
yours.”
“His, you mean,” he said bitterly. He
wasn’t sure why that hurt so much, but it did.
Spike shook his head. “I belong to Xander.” He
grinned mischievously. “Both of them.”
Xander sat up, crossing his legs so he could sit sideways on the
couch. “But if I wasn’t around…” He
couldn’t let it go, but Spike didn’t even give him a
chance to finish.
“You never answered my question, either, you know.
Where are you going, that I can’t follow?”
“I don’t know. Who knows what will happen in the
future. Things change. Sometimes they change really
fast.”
“I’ll follow you wherever you go.”
Xander liked the sound of that, the way Spike said it like there
was no doubt in his mind. He wanted it to be true, but there was
one undisputable fact that Spike was ignoring. “Spike.
Someday, I’ll die.”
“What?”
Xander spoke slowly, as if to a child who simply couldn’t
grasp the concept. “I’m mortal! We mortals tend to do
that. Eventually, I’ll die.”
“You don’t have to.” Spike’s face turned
stubborn, and he refused to look Xander in the eye.
“You planning on turning me?”
He rolled his eyes. “Not anytime soon, you nob.”
Sometimes the obvious simply needed to be stated.
“There’s a little matter of the chip that might get
in the way.”
A new thought began to take hold in Xander’s brain.
“Do you think that’s his idea?”
“Whose?”
“The Sadistic Bastard.” He used air quotes to make it
stand out. “My alter ego. Does he want to get
vamped?”
“Who the bloody hell knows? Not like he tells me
anything.” Seems Xander had hit upon a sore point.
“He keeps me totally in the dark. You’d know better
than me.”
Xander laughed. “He keeps me in the dark, too. Do you want
me to be a vampire?”
“I wouldn’t mind, I guess. Except that you might not
be you anymore.”
“I wouldn’t? Why not?”
“Turning’s not an exact science, you know. I
don’t really know how it works, it just does, and you never
know what will happen. You could lose most of your personality,
and if that happened, you wouldn’t be you anymore. That
would be a shame, because I’ve grown exceedingly fond of
you.”
Xander couldn’t help the grin that statement caused.
“So I might be like The Bastard all the time. Not me at
all.”
“Yeah, maybe. The Bastard would make a marvelous vampire,
but I don’t want to lose you – Butch, I mean. I want
you both.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? There’s more to you than The
Bastard, the same way there’s more to you than The Boy.
It’s what you are together that I want. Why would I settle
for just half of you when I could have it all?”
“I’m not sure you can have both.” He
chewed on his lip as he thought that one out. “What if
it’s me or him?”
Spike’s stare seemed to go right through him.
“We’re not talking about turning here, are
we?”
He had to think about that question. “I don’t
honestly know.”
Spike ran his hand down the side of Xander’s face.
“I’ll take whatever part of you I can
get.”
Xander’s jaw fell open in shock. “You’re a
romantic.”
“Am not!” Xander laughed at the panicked look on
Spike’s face. “You take that back.”
“It’s true!” He felt a wide grin split his
face. “A soppy, starry-eyed, sentimental fool!”
Spike reached over and shoved Xander’s shoulder. “Why
you manky little plonker!”
“That’s not even English.” Xander returned the
shove. “Speak English!”
“I’ll show you English!”
Xander should have expected some sort of retaliation, but he was
totally taken by surprised when Spike leaned over, poked his
fingers into Xander’s ribs and start tickling. He squirmed
away, or tried to, but with Spike’s superior strength, it
wasn’t as easy as he expected. They wrestled about,
Xander’s screams getting in the way of his launching a
counter attack – it was hard to fight back when you were
short-breathed with laughter.
It didn’t take long before they landed on the floor,
rolling over and over, knocking the coffee table on its side and
sending their thankfully mostly-empty beer bottles rolling across
the room. When they finally began to settle down, Xander found
himself trapped under Spike’s body, his hands held above
his head. Xander stared up at him, smiling, perfectly content to
stay in this moment forever, if he could.
Spike leaned down, his lips barely touching Xander’s,
brushing a feather-light kiss across them. They didn’t
usually kiss like this, Xander was used to The Bastard being in
charge when they got all groiny, but this was different, and
Xander raised his head, trying to hold onto the kiss as long as
he could. So Spike kissed him again, and again, until one blended
into a dozen, sweet and romantic, and totally perfect.
A long time later, Spike pulled them both back onto the couch,
and they lay wrapped around each other, Xander’s head on
Spike’s chest, Spike’s fingers running gently through
Xander’s hair. As he drifted off to sleep he thought he
heard Spike whisper.
“I don’t want to lose either one of you.”
Xander woke with a start, disoriented and gasping for breath. He
coughed harshly, a nasty taste in his mouth. Raising his head, he
realized Spike’s chest was wet - covered with blood. It
looked like old blood, dark and thick and foul. It took Xander a
moment to realize it was coming out of his mouth and nose. He
pushed himself backwards, struggling to his feet, as Spike opened
his eyes, blinking up at him, confusedly.
“Xander!”
Spike moved quickly, just in time to catch Xander as his knees
gave out from under him. He tried to speak, but the room was
spinning around him, and then the world went black.