Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: R

Beneath the Shell

by
Mad Poetess

"It's just bondage," Xander told him, tracing his hand over Spike's lower lip, and enjoying the disappointed look in sullen blue eyes, when he retracted it too fast for Spike to do more than snap blunt teeth at him. "You like bondage, remember?"

Spike growled. "This is not bondage. This is not remotely sexy. This is... This is... without a doubt the stupidest thing I have ever let you convince me to do," he announced. "Ever."

"Really?" Xander asked, interested, if skeptical. "Stupider than the time with the Clydesdales?"

Spike glared at him. "Yes. And that would've been just bloody peachyfine if you hadn't picked a retired Budweiser Clydesdale for your initiation into the joys of getting buggered on horseback. Any other horse, a Salvation Army Santa passes by the barn door, no problem. You had to choose the one bloody animal in the place trained to take off out onto the road at parade clip at the sound of somebody ringing a bell."

Xander shrugged, even as he grinned at the memory of Spike trying to hang onto him and the horse at the same time. "You're the one who left the barn door open."

He withheld a snicker as Spike instinctively tried to flip him the bird -- Xander recognized the narrowing of the eyes that preceded the familiar two-fingered salute. Since Spike barely had the freedom of movement below his neck to shiver, much less extend his fingers, his only recourse was a much less dignified extension of his tongue.

"You'd turned the thermostat up to ninety degrees so you wouldn't freeze your poor little human arse off. I was hot. Unlike now."

Xander walked slowly around him, sizing up the view from every angle. "Oh, I wouldn't say that..."

His lover stood in the middle of the room, one hand braced at his hip, one resting on his bent knee, foot propped on a square-cut block of ice that must have been a good two feet tall. Though every inch of him was covered, from stem to stern, collarbone to calf, tip to toes, Xander could see it all. The lines of Spike's calves, the tight curve of his flexed buttocks, the natural strength of his narrow back...the prominent erection that belied all his claims about the not remotely sexiness of it all, because if Spike could keep it up on the back of a runaway Clydesdale, he could handle a few minutes in a walk-in freezer, no problem -- all were outlined in stark relief against the frost-coated whiteness of the room.

Because all of Spike was coated with a thick, smooth, sweet-smelling layer of rich dark chocolate.

The view was certainly clear enough that Xander didn't really need his winter coat and fuzzy-Spiderman-head mittens to stay warm. Not that he was taking them off.

Spike preened for a moment at both the compliment and the ogling, but then shook his head and scowled. "I mean it! I'm bloody freezing, Harris."

"And that's a problem for you why? Not like you have any body temperature anyway."

"Which is why I'm bloody freezing, idiot! That thumpy, pumpy, obviously well-circulated -- " Spike shot a glance down to Xander's jeans -- "blood of yours? In addition to being quite tasty, it's what keeps you from freezing your poor little nicely-rounded human arse off. No body temperature, you feel the cold more, not less."

Xander refused to feel guilty. Much. After all, it wasn't like he'd conked Spike over the head, thrown him in the trunk, driven him to the dockyards and dragged him into the walk-in fish freezer on Pier 8. Spike had not only ridden shotgun on the trip over, he'd made the calls himself, to rent out the warehouse in the first place. The only thing Xander had done was...well, give him the look he was giving Spike now. The one where his pupils got really big, and kind of glassy, like he was just a blink away from crying. The sting of the cold air on his face was really good for evoking the effect.

"I let you taste my pumpy tasty blood -- which, on the scale of stupid, believe me, ranks far above fucking on the backs of the entire Anheuser-Busch sleigh team and possibly the Jamaican bobsled team -- all the time, but you don't want to do this one thing for me?" Xander ran his tongue lightly over the outside of his mouth. "You don't want to let me taste you?"

Xander wondered if Spike realized he was mimicking the movement exactly, licking his lips as he stared at Xander. "I...fully understand -- heartily encourage -- the urge to lick various -- well, any -- substances off my body, but.... I'm freezing!" Indeed, Xander could see Spike's teeth had reached the chattering stage. "What's wrong with a roaring fire and some nice caramel dip?"

Xander noted that suggestion for later use, but shook his head. "I don't want to lick." He leaned close enough to Spike that if the vampire could've moved -- well, moved without spoiling the game, because it wasn't like he didn't have the strength to move if he wanted to -- Spike would've been rubbing up against his warmth in a heartbeat, no doubt. "I want to bite," he whispered in Spike's ear, blowing hot air across the chilled white flesh.

Was it his imagination, or did he hear a tiny cracking in Spike's hardened exterior? The shudder and little moan seemed to work with that theory, though it could just have been the teeth chattering again.

Spike quickly turned his head and made a most unattractive face at his lover. "Son of a bitch."

Xander pretended ignorance, and hurt. "You don't like it when I bite you?"

This time Spike's growl raised the hairs on the back of Xander's neck, and echoed in the cavernous room like thunder. "I don't like it when you don't bite me NOW!"

Xander couldn't help snickering. "Oh. I see. The big bad vampire can't handle a little delayed gratification? Me, he can lash to the bed with bungee cords and tickle with a feather until my eyeballs explode, but he can't wait five minutes for my sex toy to take effect?"

Spike said nothing, merely glowered at him, and tossed his head in a pseudo-dismissive 'whatever' motion. Xander continued his tour around his lover's truly statuesque body, stopping to pull off a mitten and run his finger over a chocolate curve, still slightly moist, then lick that finger before the blazing eyes of a hardly disinterested demon. He tilted his head Spike-style at the muscle outlined by the stretching of that strong inner thigh...

Then, with a grin whose evilness he'd been plagiarizing from Spike for years now, Xander put his mouth close to the back of Spike's neck -- but true to his word, he didn't lick. He sniffed -- breathing in the rich, sweet, dark scent, moving down the spine from neck to back to the shadowed crease of Spike's ass, breathing out warm air across those motionless muscles all along the way.

Spike hissed. "Bastard. Enough already. Stuff's got to have set by now."

Xander sat back on his heels. "You're such a whiner. Maybe I should've covered your head after all. Not like you need to breathe or anything."

"I am not a fucking whiner! I've been standing bollocks-naked in the middle of a room that's twenty bleeding degrees below freezing, for the last ten minutes, thank you, because somebody thought pouring bottles of brown goop all over me and standing round watching it set was going to win him the most-inventive-sex-game-of-the-week prize on the Sunday Night Sex Show. And I'm a sucker for a sob story and a pair of big brown eyes."

Xander regarded him cynically. "Uh huh. And the chance at a Pleasure Chest full of free sex toys..."

"Was nothing compared to the look on your face when you saw that chocolate dripping off the tip of my cock." The flash of plain honesty on Spike's face was something rare and good, and tended to show up only in discussions of sex, violence, or bad kung fu movies. "Nothing prettier in the world than that look. S'why I keep you around." Spike got quieter. "Mostly."

"And I thought you loved me for my mind." Xander covered the surge in his groin and the skip in his heart with a sarcasm he'd never had to learn from Spike, a defense against dangers older than any smartass whiny, beautiful chocolate-covered vampire could ever imagine.

"I love you for your mouth," Spike answered, his voice low and dirty and true. "Now BITE me already!"

Xander grinned, and played at nipping the lower curve of Spike's ass -- except he pulled away before his teeth touched, a wary frown on his face.

"What?" Frustrated, indignant, and Xander could hear the chocolate cracking for sure this time, as the cold-proof boner proved itself against gravity as well as temperature.

"Well, it just occurred to me. What if you're all cold and corpsey under there? I mean, I'm used to shoving the dead weight out of the way when I have to pee in the morning, but at least you're room temperature. It's not like we were doing it in a morgue drawer the night before or something. But here..." Xander waved a mittened hand around at the frosty room.

Spike's face contorted into a mixture of anger, annoyance, and arousal that made Xander think maybe he might want to take the coat off after all. And the jeans. And the thermal underwear. "You think of this NOW?"

"Well.... yeah?" The best innocent look he could come up with, considering what his body was busy coming up with. "What if you're all.... dead, beneath your chocolate? Kinda takes away the tasty goodness, maybe."

"Xander," Spike said with icy sweetness. "I am dead. I was dead when you met me, I was dead when I walked in the room, and I'm dead beneath my chocolate. But what's more to the point than the fact that I'm still deceased, which I should bloody well hope you KNOW--" He cheated slightly, shifting his hips the tiniest bit. Enough for a sliver of a faultline to appear, that Xander followed with his eyes, across one thigh and up to the thick, dark erection hanging over his head. "I'm naked beneath my chocolate."

"Uh...gahhh?" Xander replied. More to the visual than to any of the listed facts that he'd certainly known all along, including the naked one.

And the arctic ice was suddenly replaced by slow-burning smug. "So? We're getting our appetite back now, are we?"

"Guh?" Xander nodded, and knelt up, raising his head, warm mouth just a breath away from the tip of Spike's chocolate covered cock.

Then he grinned, plopped himself down on his butt in the middle of the floor, and took a huge bite of iceblock-propped ankle. "Mmmmmmmm. This was the mint one."

"Xander?" The words as gritted as Spike's teeth.

"Mmmm. Yush?"

"Do you know what I'm going to do to you when I'm finally allowed to move again?"

Slurp. Lick. CRUNCH. "Mmmm. No. Wha?"

"Guess."

"Mmm." Swallow. "Fuck me hard?"

Sound of crackling and a sigh. "Well, that too. But first..." Spike paused, and Xander took the opportunity to take another mintchoc flavored bite, this time just over Spike's Achilles tendon. "Ahhh. Hmmm. What was I saying?"

"Mmmfh. Something about what you're gonna do to me?"

"Oh yeah." Spike craned his neck to look down at him. "Is your arse by any chance getting cold down there?"

"Uh..." Xander blinked at the nonsequitor -- though now that he thought of it, these jeans were awfully thin, and the thermal undies... he kind of wished he'd bought the thicker ones, even if they didn't match his mittens. He wriggled uncomfortably. "Yeah. A little? Why?"

Spike smiled at him, with a sharpness that made Xander bite his own lip in sudden nervousness, before diving back to Spike's leg for a surge of comfort-food. "Just checking."

The End

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Beneath the Shell

by Mad Poetess

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by
Mad Poetess