Hustler!verse

The hair is like a beacon. It doesn’t matter how many years, how many things have changed, a flash of platinum blond locks always catches his eye and makes him turn, even in the middle of a conversation. The short, pudgy executive doesn’t stop chattering even though Xander’s attention is obviously no longer on him. Words like budget and bottom line, red tape and supplies, all the buzz words that Xander’s spent too many years assimilating, wash over him. He knows the answers, says them in the expected pauses; the business man is as used to this as he is.

The platinum hair belongs to a girl of maybe seventeen, trying to pass herself off as a twenty something. She’s not the only hustler in the room, or even the youngest, but she is the newest. The others have a practiced, bored grace, their eyes hard underneath the makeup. It’s the look Buffy has, sometimes, when things have gone on a little too long or she’s been alone a little too often. The look used to break his heart. Then his heart got tired of shattering and waits for the more important things, now.

The crowd moves and swirls around him with its own choreography. He knows the steps, can move amongst the partners easily, which gives him a sense of pride. Not a lot, really—this isn’t fighting off a pack of demons or casting an important spell—but it’s one he knows almost instinctively. After years of watching people discover something innate and powerful, it’s nice to experience it himself.

The business man makes his excuses and says his goodbyes, Xander responding automatically. His attention’s still caught by the girl with the dyed hair, as she goes from old, fat balding man to old, fat balding man. Xander’s unusual in the crowd, since his height of six straight isn’t matched by a comparable width. Living in Africa for a year helped him regain a little focus, learn how to calm his stress which stopped him from eating so much. Plus, twinkies cost an arm and a leg down there. Sometimes literally.

The girl is laughing just a little too loudly, her smile just a little too fake. Her breasts aren’t fake, but they're shoved up so high it makes them look like balloons. She’s twittery and nervous and Xander wonders if he should go over there, just to help calm her down. Maybe invite her back to his place, just so he knows that her first time in an upscale business dinner won’t end up too badly. He’s done it before, and he knows all the things to do and say.

Someone jostles her arm before Xander can move. There’s a group of them, mostly young but not always, who usually take pity on the new ones. Well, Thomson gets off on breaking them in, playing the mentor, but he doesn’t hurt them which makes him a member by default. The girl is being talked to, low and serious, so Xander assumes it’s one of the group and starts to turn away, only barely paying attention to the girl as she moves to follow.

Exposing the one who’d caught her arm.

The hair is still blonde, so brilliant that Xander’s not really sure it’s been dyed. It doesn’t have the same straw-look to it that the girl’s has, although that may be due to experience. Lithe body, compact enough to fit within the boundaries of a girl just barely five-ten in heels and not well padded around the edges. Tailored black pants and a soft blue shirt, button down and dark, almost the same shade as the eyes that shift across the room to lock on Xander’s.

He’s not surprised. He doesn’t have it in him to be surprised anymore, not about this. Just stares and toys with the pink plastic saber in his drink that used to spear fruit. The girl doesn’t understand, looking between Xander and her savior. If she even knows he’s her savior. Part of the reason for the ‘group’ was due to a number of assholes that Xander would’ve loved to sic Buffy on. She takes a half step towards Xander, looking backwards to see if she’s being pointed in his direction, and everything clicks.

Xander’s across the room in an instant, kindly but firmly directing the girl to Thomson. His third wife had just finished divorcing him, and Xander figured he could do his part to ease the mediocrity of it all. The girl moves, still glancing backwards, gaining speed as both men nod encouragingly.

“Don’t suppose you’re gonna ask, are you?”

“Do I need to?”

“Nah, suppose not. Figured I’d run into you eventually.” They’re heading towards the bar, Xander silent while his favorite drink is ordered along with a maker’s Manhattan. “Was waiting to see if you’d want.”

Want what? Want to renew a hatred? Want to laugh and mock and generally act like a twenty something immature brat? Or maybe want to catch up on old times, ask the obligatory questions about how and when and why the radio silence?

“I want. Anything to take care of?”

The drink is tossed back, throat lengthened and exposed to show muscles tense and release as the liquid goes down. Xander watches, transfixed because he knows this isn’t a designed move. Just a man so incredibly, innately sexual, that he’d sent a young man into a sexual tizzy of denial, fear, and lust, just by being himself.

Xander drives. He’s got an expensive car, real leather seats with all the trimmings, and roomy enough to fit two people beside himself in the driver’s seat. Mirrors to help his visibility are tacked on here and there, but subtly enough that they aren’t noticeable to clients he drives. His favorite thing, though is the built-in seat-support for his back, which has gotten very bitter over the years and reminds him of his past exploits frequently.

They drive in silence for a while, Xander trying to maintain the blase mask of Spike. In his car.

And then Spike leans over and starts mouthing his crotch.

The roomy seats allow him to spread his left leg wide, butt inching backward while his right hand drops from the steering wheel completely. Yes, the hair is as soft as a normal, unbleached person’s would be, curling around his fingers without a hint of product. Spike hums when Xander tugs on the fringes, obligingly biting down with just the right amount of pressure.

“It’s another twenty minutes,” Xander says calmly.

The button slips open easily, the zipper less so. It’s the curse of dress-pants, but Xander doesn’t make a move to help. He likes the sharp chin digging into him occasionally, and the growl of frustration. He doesn’t think Spike is usually this vocal about his emotions, and whether or not it’s true, it makes him harder. When the zipper’s finally down, Spike uses nose and lips and tongue to draw him out. He’s not a randy sixteen year old anymore, and he’s just barely hardening even under the expert attention lavished on a cock that knew from expert. Spike worked slow and steady, seeming to enjoy the challenge, moaning happily when a burst of precome nearly made him choke. His hands were kept behind his back, linked and glowing eerily from passing street lights.

Ten minutes til home, Xander is fully hard and Spike is bobbing fast enough that a normal human would have whiplash. The car isn’t swerving erratically yet, but Xander knows that’s not far off, especially when Spike deep throats him and swallows, eyes closed when he’s rewarded with the first moan Xander’s made all night. Each hair-pull creates a whimper and something in the back of Xander’s brain wonders if Spike knows that’s what he likes, or if Spike likes it too. But it’s a small voice, and an irrelevant one. He can’t believe Spike isn’t phenomenal at his job. He saw the jealous looks as they exited.

If he slouches a little, he can slide his hands out of Spike’s hair, down a bony, knobby spine to find hip bones sharp as papercuts underneath expensive cloth. If he slouches anymore, the mirrors won’t be angled right, and he could get his license revoked if they’re caught, but then his hand closes around Spike’s cock—hard and ready and obviously wanting—and Xander tells the world that it owes him, dammit, and it better fucking behave. The world doesn’t say anything back, but there are no cops as Xander palms and rubs over Spike’s cock, breathy whimpers matching each twitch in the hips under his arm.

Turning up the driveway, Spike starts sucking with the intensity of a well bred Eureka, but Xander stops him. “Inside.”

The drive is shaded with sycamore trees, letting in light and a hint of noise but keeping out prying eyes. They stiff-walk their way inside, Xander muttering the invitation under his breath as if it were nothing at all. And it isn’t anything at all, especially when Spike pushes him into the wall and sinks to his knees, whimpering with every down-swallow, blue eyes grey in the darkness and glassy from reflected light.

Xander comes with a groan of relief, petting Spike’s hair and trying not to read anything into the shininess that has nothing to do with outside light. He tugs out his wallet and finds his stash of fifties, pulling out two.

“Bedrooms upstairs. I’ll make us drinks.”

Spike nods and finds his own way.

Spike’s staring at the pictures in his hallway, shirt untucked and partway unbuttoned, shoes and socks tossed somewhere downstairs. He looks small and compact, the way Xander still remembers calling him, and casual as he wanders from image to image. He looks so unbelievably sexy that Xander wants to fuck him just like that, arms braced against the wall so they can still look up to see paintings someone else picked out to supposedly show taste and wealth.

Xander hands over a drink, made downstairs without thought, gesturing towards the bedroom. He follows behind Spike, just so he can see a flash of heel lifting, creasing the tailored pants into black sand dunes, the way narrow hips and a firm ass move against the fabric. There’s a swish almost like a girl’s, but without the coquettishness Xander expects. There’s nothing coy about Spike, just raw and powerful and intoxicating.

“Nice place. Councilling must pay.”

That Spike keeps up on their doings doesn’t surprise him. “Should’ve come sooner,” he says, pressing Spike against the wall next to his dresser and kissing him. Warm whiskey and something sweet and tangy like the chicken his next door neighbor makes and swears isn’t sweet and sour chicken like you can get down the block, and just as talented as Xander’s cock has been attesting to. Wet sounds of touch and release, of breathing and gasping when the lack thereof goes on too long, fill the room and Xander’s not hard yet, but he’s starting to fill and rise, Spike’s hand on his groin encouraging each rush of blood.

Spike’s muscles are long and lean, flat under his skin and only bunching in the right places. Arms and abs and a few almost popping out on his back. Xander hunts them all down through a shirt that’s never seen the inside of shrink-wrap packaging, the softness marked against the solidity underneath. Spike twists and turns obligingly, model perfect and bored with worship of fingers and eyes the same.

“Why haven’t I seen you before?”

Spike’s worth every fifty in his wallet and more beside. He doesn’t need the memory of the blowjob to tell him that, he’s known it since he was a pimply-faced brat and didn’t understand the difference between a lover and a fuck. It’s the casualness that gets to him, the mask-like distance and a hint of sadness, resignation, and Xander bites down on Spike’s neck, hard.

“Fuck!” Spike arches and groans, something wet pressing from him to Xander.

“I like that.”

Dark blue glitters beneath lowered lashes, half-mast and considering and Xander remembers this look too. The one that says too close, too close, push it away now. But Spike doesn’t push, just melts into the wall so his body can spread out more, inviting Xander to touch and look and explore. So Xander does, removing the shirt but not the pants, touching and licking and biting. Lots of biting all over until Spike is covered in marks that aren’t red but are still visible to the naked eye and Xander thinks he could get used to that. Something rough around Spike’s neck draws his attention and he spends almost a solid minute sucking up a bruise that’d be purple and huge on a human, right over the patch.

“Do you have it?”

Spike blinks, surprised, and Xander has to grin—he doesn’t think he’s ever surprised Spike before. But then Spike relaxes like the good whore Xander knows he is, pulling out a bit of coiled leather from his pocket. “Usually charge extra for this.”

Except nothing about this is ‘usually’, for either of them, and Spike buckles the leather on without another word. Xander studies the picture, elegant, expensive male with coarse, frayed material around his neck. He decides the contrast works for now. “I’ll buy you a better one,” he promises though, because the chaffing bothers him, and because he wants jewels there instead. Tiger’s eyes and onyx, or maybe obsidian, set in silver.

Spike groans.

“Should’ve come earlier.” By now Xander’s naked, clothes removed by deftly competent hands to be neatly folded and placed to the side. Spike still wears the slacks, but the legs are all rucked up, exposing springy curls that are dark as the sky leaking under the blinds. Xander slides hands underneath, Spike laying back on the bed, hips canted up to let him.

“Not the only piece you’ve brought to your bed. Can smell ’em.”

That’s not what Xander hears, though, not when he finds the backs of lowered knees and tickles them. He knows it’s a spot, remembers silly games when silliness was hard to find, a young girl desperate for any kind of affection and a vampire that couldn’t seem to help but give it. Spike tenses at the attack but doesn’t resist, his eyes still hidden by lashes Xander doesn’t remember being this long.

Xander hears what he hears again when he removes his hands and slides them up to rub on Spike’s erection, grinding the cloth down hard. Its in the way Spike groans and moves into the touch, the way his legs fall open just a little bit wider, and how he looks like a little boy stretched out on Xander’s big bed.

“How long have you been watching me?”

Spike doesn’t start or deny it, which tells Xander just how important this is to a vampire that never shut up, not even at the very end when his words weren’t shouted to the wind anymore, but at himself where he thought no one else could hear them. Xander lips over wrinkled nipples, trying not to smile when Spike tenses in response, hands still busy on an erection that’s throbbing lightly in time with his touch.

“Doesn’t matter, I suppose,” Xander continues. He pushes the material of Spike’s pants aside, Spike’s cock springing out. Xander caresses it, a shiver running through him when he finds Spike baby smooth and slightly sticky. “Interesting. One, but not the other.”

He can see it there on Spike’s lips, a promise to do whichever Xander prefers, but Xander doesn’t want to hear that, so he ducks down to lick the head of Spike’s cock like a lollipop. The stuttered gasp sounds much better.

“Should’ve come sooner,” he repeats and then there’s no more talking. Spike lays back and takes it, a moaning ragdoll as Xander explores every inch available with mouth and tongue and clever, callused fingers. Spike’s in some sort of weird headspace, not the normal one whores go to even when they enjoy their john, but something different that Xander almost recognizes. He doesn’t disturb it, though, concentrating on mapping alabaster skin that’s smooth in all the right places, rough in the better ones, and perfectly attuned to what Xander wants.

Spike comes back when Xander slides inside, eyes suddenly wide at the slight pain—Xander’s lubed but Spike hasn’t been opened, because Xander has a hunch, one that’s proven right when Spike gasps and bucks and is suddenly a wildcat. His hands lock together above his head, his legs wrap around Xander’s waist, and his ass is tight enough to make Xander think thoughts he hasn’t thought in a long time.

They fuck until the old man that lives in Xander’s skin cries exhaustion. He’s come twice, not counting the blowjob, and he’s made Spike come a few more times than that. The vampire is warm vanilla pudding in his bed, creamy and clingy and making snuffling sounds as Xander curls around him. “Money’s on the dresser,” he whispers.

Spike makes a noncommittal sound and burrows closer. He’s still there the next morning, serving breakfast in bed, something deeply disturbing to a slightly hung over Xander. “I have pancakes?” he asks, working his way through the first stake. “I didn’t know I have pancakes.”

Spike licks him clean of syrup inside and out, straddling Xander’s surprisingly interested cock and nudging it occasionally. Perhaps not so surprisingly, though, particularly when Spike lifts up and slides back down, still tight and perfect and warm from sleeping with Xander inside him, and rocks. It’s slow, not anything like the frenzied pounding from the night before, and Xander barely even tenses when he finally comes, his own mental headspace one of waves and warm sun and the tightest ass he’s ever felt.

Spike’s still there for the showering, and the preparing of the briefcase, and Xander’s wallet is still sitting untouched on his dresser. And he’s still there when Xander comes home, mood soured from a bad day at the office, caught completely off guard when there’s a bleached-blonde head bobbing in his living room.

For an instant, there’s something in Spike’s face that Xander never, ever wants to see again.

But then he’s slamming Spike up against the wall, their pants yanked down miraculously without tearing anything and Xander’s inside, roughly taking without consideration or preparation and Spike’s a yowling, writhing, mass of nerve endings, babbling for more, thrusting back to take Xander as deeply as he’ll go, begging in a roughened voice that Xander could definitely get used to. They come when Xander bites hard enough to draw blood.

He makes Spike lick the wall clean. Then he makes Spike clean Xander, with an extra helping on top.

“I’m not sixteen, anymore.”

Spike just smiles, the first one Xander’s ever seen that isn’t a smirk, and tilts his neck to expose his bleeding neck and the collar he hasn't taken off yet.

Spike makes them dinner. He’s a good cook.

They still go to dinner parties. Xander isn’t sure why, since he’d much rather be home and screwing Spike into a moaning, panting, sticky mess on his sheets. But it’s written there on the little black book Spike bought him for a joke and then proceeded to fill with all kinds of dates and numbers that Xander used to keep on sticky notes around his office and home. So when he goes home, it’s automatic: kiss Spike, shower, kiss Spike, change, then stare.

Spike dressed up is a thing of magnificent beauty.

Doesn’t matter that it’s just a pair of black dress slacks and a button down that’s more silver than white, making his hair blinding under the yellowy lights. He’s got a little bit of make up around his eyes, a touch of rogue on his lips, and Xander’s hard, so fucking hard, because he knows why Spike looks like that. Knows it because he sidles up to Xander like a cat, tucking his arm through Xander’s and strutting as they walk, heat and sex and disdain all telling the world that Spike belongs to Xander and Spike likes it that way just fine.

Spike offers to blow him on the way there—car-sex is something they both enjoy—but Xander turns him down. He has plans. The dinners follow a standard formula, and Xander already knows he can manage to make it through the dinner because it’s after, when the speaker gets up and starts droning on about something involving cash flows and expense accounts and pretzel-knotted tax codes, that Xander can strike.

Everyone always falls asleep during these speeches. It’s the ‘get together’ afterwards that attracts such high attendance and even the speaker knows it. Tonight it’s a guy Xander has met a few times, toupee half off his shiny-bright head and eyes drooping as he speaks. Perfect. Xander edges his chair closer to Spike’s, casually, oh-so-casually, dropping his hand between Spike’s wide-flung legs.

He’s hard. Xander rubs over the bulge appreciatively, grinning when Spike flashes him a look of surprise before slumping back into kitty-cat enjoyment as he’s stroked and petted. “You like this?” They’re in a table by the back, thank god, because Xander’s not sure he could do this where more people could see. He’s already got a significant audience, male and female both slowly losing the daze of boredom and focusing in the hand that moves underneath the table cloth. “Me touching you like this where everyone can see?”

Spike makes a noise that’s practically a purr, hips thrusting up without his torso moving a hair. Xander envies his talent and starts rolling Spike’s balls, pinching lightly the way Spike loves. “Yeah,” Spike says. His voice is husky and creaky like it needs to be oiled. Xander briefly entertains fantasies of ‘oiling’ it, then dismisses them as too lame and better saved for later. “Fuck, Xan,” Spike adds when Xander pinches down even harder.

He’s almost content to just keep touching Spike like this, working him while Spike’s legs get wider and wider, his shoulders slumping down and his eyes half-closed in obvious pleasure. It’s a sight and it’s attracting even more attention, though no one says anything. Why should they interrupt the show?

Xander leans closer, so his mouth is brushing against Spike’s ear. “If I told you I wanted to watch you fuck someone else,” he whispered, “would you?”

Spike goes rigid—all ways—against him and whimpers deep inside his throat.

“What about her? The redhead that’s watching us. Would you let her come up to you, buy you drinks and offer to take you back to her place? And you’d say yes, just because I want you to. And that you’ve got a few provisos.”

Spike was starting to pant, short, controlled puffs of air that made his lips wet and his Adam apple bob. Xander wants to bite it, but doesn’t. Just strokes a little harder, waiting for a response. “Provisos?”

“Piece of ass like yours isn’t cheap,” he answers, licking at the delicate shell of Spike’s ear. “You charge a lot for a chance at this cock, don’t you? Money up front before you give her a ride.” Spike groans and Xander gets harder. “I know how good it is, too. Fuckin’ me blind and boneless with that cock. Let me suck on it till you come in my mouth. . . .”

Spike’s throbbing now, like he’s got a pulse to set the beat, mouth open and pink and wet and Xander wants to bite it. Doesn’t though. “Wanna be my pimp, Harris?”

“Yeah. That’s right. Gonna pimp you out. Make a killing on that pretty ass of yours, get off while you’re getting someone else off. Think about it. Look her Spike, you know she’s wet for you.” The woman—Carol, maybe—flushes pink when Spike locks eyes with her, her breathing quick, crossing and uncrossing her legs. “You wanna eat her, Spike? Let her drip all over your tongue while I fuck your face into her cunt. Would you like that?”

Spike’s pants are wet by now, not a single scrap of fabric separating them from Spike’s cock. His body shifts slightly, leaning up against Xander and at a better angle to watch Carol or whatever her name is. Xander can’t see his face, but he can see Carol’s and knows exactly what Spike’s doing to her. She’s hot already, twenty feet away watching another man get jerked off in public, and Spike’s making eyes are her like it’s her he’s fucking instead of Xander’s hand, like she’s all that he sees, all that he wants, and Xander knows that Spike can make her come just from being watched this way. He hadn’t believed Spike when he’d explained this hidden talent. So Spike had taken him to a restaurant and made those hot, damnably blue eyes at him until Xander came in his pants, cock totally untouched.

His vampire’s hotter than anything living or dead and Xander loves it all.

“Or maybe I’ll let you fuck her for real. Watch you slide between her hips, slide your cock in where it’s warm and wet and tight. Let you bang into her till she’s unconscious, still so hard while she spasms around you again and again. And when she tells you no more, it hurts, you’ll go to me. Take my cock out and suck it down your throat, desperate to feel me come. Can’t come till you feel me and you want it bad, now, want to hear me groan, grab your head and fuck your mouth till your lips are swollen and the back of your throat’s bruised. And when it’s all over, you’ll take the money she gives you and you’ll hand it directly to me. Thank her for a fuck and me for letting you. Will you do that Spike? Will you do that for me?”

Spike’s still fucking Carol with his eyes, but Xander can feel agreement pouring out of him. And Xander is serious, one day he’s going to do exactly what he threatens. But not today, not while he’s whispering, “Make her come,” to Spike, so hard he’s got to be obscene in his pants. And Spike, good little whore that he is, does something with his eyes and Carol’s closing hers, face turning bright red, head tilted back while her body trembles.

When the speaker’s done, Xander hauls Spike to his feet and hurries him over to the bathroom. He’s rough, hurting Spike as he shoves him into the stall and onto the clean toilet, but he doesn’t care. Takes himself out and shoves into Spike’s mouth, hard and deep. Spike groans loudly, hands holding on to Xander’s ass, throat open and wet while Xander fucks him wildly. “Don’t come,” Xander orders, emptying himself so soon it’d be humiliating if he wasn’t certain he could get it up again for later. And he can.

Outside, they see Carol waiting for them. She’s a small woman up close, red hair and green eyes, full of that Irish earthiness—whiskey and cold, wet rainstorms. She smiles, holding out a wad of green bills. “I’ll give you twice more, if I can watch this time.”

Xander pockets the money for services well rendered, knowing that he’s going to be a sap later and give it to Spike. Or maybe he won’t, since Spike's a whore, but he’s Xander’s whore and Xander doesn’t like sharing that much. In fact, as he’s faced with the actual possibility of watching another person use Spike to get off, he decides that it’s lost a lot of the luster. “Sorry,” he says with an easy smile. “One time only deal. Gotta go find your own.”

Spike’s on him as soon as they reach the car, tugging Xander’s pants open and shimmying out of his own at the same time. It’s complicated, even in a car as roomy as Xander’s, and they both get whacked a few times, but they don’t stop. Not when Spike’s sucking him back into his mouth, getting him wet and then shifting so he can sit down, ass tucked into the groove of Xander’s thighs as if he was made to be right there all the fucking time. His balls and cock are leaking all over Xander’s shirt, but neither of them care. Not when Spike’s got his arms wrapped around Xander’s neck, forehead pressed hard against Xander’s collar bone, mumbling, “Drive home. With me like this, please.”

It’s awkward starting the car with a vampire sex-fiend in your lap, but Xander does it. Even manages to find the right pedals to pull out of the spot they’re in. He concentrates on driving, at least for a little, getting them out of the lot and heading towards home. He has to trust his instincts, hoping like hell they don’t screw him over—because Spike’s squeezing him, rocking slowly and steadily, working him over in way that’s more erotic than any violent coupling can ever be. Xander bites his ear, his forehead, hands death-gripped around the steering wheel.

“Want you to come in me,” Spike says dreamily. He’s nuzzled down below Xander’s chin, tucked up like a child. He’s not really small enough to make it work, but Spike’s amazing flexibility is tied directly to his determination. “Let me come on you. Love when I can do that.”

“You’d let me pimp you out, if I wanted,” he says instead. “Wouldn’t you.”

“Yeah.” Spike’s voice is as ragged as the pot hole Xander avoids, black depth and rough, broken edges. “Fuck anyone you tell me to, whenever you want.”

“And you’d fuck that woman, just because I said so?”

“Falls under the ‘anyone’ category, yeah.” Then he stiffens. “Christ, there, do that again.”

Xander thrusts again, hoping he matches the angle as his involuntary jab before. “And you’d let me have the money?” They’re two blocks from the house and Xander’s seconds from coming. He just needs to get to the driveway, mantras through his mind. Driveway driveway driveway.

“Hell I need money for?” Spike’s rubbing his neck and shoulders, mouthing his shirt till it’s wet and probably ruined. His cock is so hard, wet and desperate, rubbing off on Xander’s belly, but it’s his ass that Spike gives his attention to. Xander can feel how hard he’s concentrating: flex and release, roll, grind, winch down tight, and more, all set on shuffle/repeat like the mp3 player Spike’s never without anymore. “Yeah, that’s it,” he purrs. “Fuck your Spike. Fuck me hard.”

Xander just barely manages to slam on the brake as he comes, car rolling to a stop in his own driveway. It takes too damned long for Xander to calm down. Spike’s petting him, shushing him, just the way Xander likes, ass still surrounding Xander’s cock and tensing with each shift, hard cock still riding against Xander’s belly, shaped to sculpted abs just for this reason. When his breathing is even enough, Xander leans forward to kiss Spike.

Spike blinks, owlish, when he’s released. “Pimpin’ me out gets you that hard?” he asks.

Shaking his head, Xander snakes a hand down between them and grabs Spike’s cock. “Say it again.”

“What, pimping?”

A rough squeeze, tormenting instead of taunting. Spike bucks up, breathing harshly, getting it. “Your Spike. Fuck your Spike.” He starts repeating it to the rhythm of Xander’s hand, over and over until it’s one long stream of syllables. Xander doesn’t care, separating each word in his head and loving it more each time. “Your Spike.”

He makes the horn go off, when he comes.

Xander works with a level of distance that only Spike sees. Well, the others probably do too, if they're smart enough to look past the wide grin and the laughing eye he turns on the world, but Xander's pretty sure that no one looks too close at the man with one eye and his grins are taken as a manager's expected costume, like the suit and tie he loathes but wears every day.

But Spike sees. Spike sees a truly frightening amount, reminding Xander of times when Spike always had the sharp comment no one wanted to hear or the insidious insinuation that crept in the foundations of their well-plastered walls of denial like dry-rot or termites and left destruction in its wake. Xander isn't afraid of the observation anymore, but it still weirds him out completely when it isn't making him crazy.

Like now.

"Keep the door open," Spike instruction. His voice is warm and low and smooth like the best espresso, the bite hidden until after you swallow your mouthful, coming over the telephone with a snake-charmer's skill. Xander is in his chair, door open to the whole wide world—well, busy office, anyway. People scurry on past him, trapped on the telephone with a gigolo he's going to be finding something to give as a bonus. Big, big bonus. "Open your pants, love."

"Spike! I am not opening my pants in the middle of my office with the door open and you know have those huge windows behind me, because I complain to you how much I hate them since I can't keep blinds over them because they always break and the plants never get enough light and—"

"Sh. Sh, sh, sh." It's the kind of quieting croon fathers make to fussy sons and daughters, masculine and paternal and encouraging, and it silences Xander faster than any curt order could. "Sh, love. Not gonna get you in trouble. Don't want you in trouble, do I? Love your wallet as much as I love your cock. Both thick and hard for me, aren't they? Are you hard, pet? Hard already for me? Love your cock, Xander. Love it in my mouth and in my ass, fill me up so good. Can you take it out, pet? Want you to touch it. Pretend it's me, pet, run your fingers all over your cock for me."

Xander wants to object, wants to curse Spike out for taking advantage of him like this because Spike knows that this voice can make Xander do just about damn anything. It's like aural crack cocaine, heroine injected through eardrum and it leaves Xander limp and helpless and dazedly obedient because each coaxing request is like another hit on the pipe. "Bastard," he whispers, voice rough with lust. "You're such a manipulative bastard."

"Shh," Spike admonishes, and he's still so gentle, persuasive, without the ironic twist that's so uniquely Spike. There's just warmth and honey-sweet need, tempered with a pinch of disapproval and correction, baked up into an irresistible cake. "Quietly, now, pet. Don't want others to see what you're doing. So naughty, you are, cock out and hard in your hands. Push away from the desk a bit. Don't want you to knock the pretty head against your keyboard drawer."

Spike doesn't ask him if he's done what he asked, because the mother fucker knows Xander's wrapped around his cock the way girls used to wrap him around their breasts. Xander's out, obscene against the dark of his slacks, and if he doesn't push away, he really would smack against the damned keyboard drawer.

"You've such a beautiful cock," Spike croons to him. "D'you like it when I nibble on the vein? Touch it for me, love. Trace it with your finger. So blue, it is, dark and pulsing. I love to feel it against me, giving me a pulse just for a little bit. That's right, pet, slow, steady touches. Just feel how strong your are through it. Could suck right there for hours, and have, haven't I? Knelt between your legs while you were flat out on the bed, worshiping you right there. But that's not all there is, oh no. You're so sensitive 'round your scar. Desecration, circumcising that cock, but I love the little hook it makes. Touch there, now, love. Feel the bump of it? Imagine me licking right there, pet. Point of my tongue finding each knot of skin, laving it. Does it feel good, pet? When I touch you there?"

Xander's eyes are starting to ache from staring so hard at the open doorway but he can't look away, can't shift to ease the growing cramp in his shoulder, because one hand's clutching the desk and the other is completely obedient to whatever Spike tells him to do. "Yeah."

"Tell me, pet. Tell me."

He whimpers, body shuddering hard as the gentle command speeds to vocal cords, faster than impulses from his brain can get there. "Yes, Spike. Feels good."

"That's a good pet," Spike answers, the soothing praise reward enough to make Xander arch and groan. "Stroke yourself now. Soft and slow. Love to tease you. Make you glare up at me like I've done something terrible. I'm there now, aren't I? At work with you. Snug under your desk, dressed up in nothing more than a ribbon. Can you see me, pet? Hands coming up while your working, talking on the phone like a good worker bee. Want me to suck you, Xan? There where anybody can walk in and see you so hard and beautiful. Hard for me, aren't you, pet? Want me to suck that cock into my mouth, nurse it while you calm ruffled feathers and then go ruffle a few more for fun. Mouth so wet and soft round your cock, more holding than sucking. Touching you here and there with my tongue, random patterns that make you twitch. Do that for me, pet, won't you? Stroke like it's my mouth around you, fingers finding all the good spots I find with my tongue. Do that for me, love, yeah, just like that."

He isn't sure if it's the steady repetitions or just the word-picture Spike's creating or maybe it really is the thrill of possibly being caught. All he does know is that his cock is flushed with blood in his fist and he's about to make an unseemly mess in his pants very very soon. "Please," he begs, not sure what he's begging for. More, less, the chance to give in to the pressure rising in his balls, he'll take all of the above, Alex. Daily double? Sure, risk it all, because so long as Spike was talking, Xander would risk everything, do anything to hear more.

"Such a good boy for me," Spike praises and it's balm to his ragged, sparking nerves. "Want you to tug on it now, love. Can you do that for me? Palm around the head, squeezing with each pull. That's me again, love. Taking you into my throat and swallowing down around you the way only I can. Taking you deepest ever, mouth and throat working around you to make sure you're taking care of. Do you feel it? Tell me you feel it, pet."

"Yessssss."

"Such a good boy for me. Gonna give me a treat now, aren't you, pet? Let me taste it. So much till it runs out my mouth and down over my chin, wet and thick and that's all I need, Xan. Give me that, give me you, and I don't want anything else. Just let me have it, pet, let me taste it, fill me full of it till I can't hold anymore—"

He comes with a strangled cry, under the startled eyes of his administrative assistant, there to deliver the document Xander has to sign before he can go home for the day. She's blinking, searching for some rational explanation for why her boss is panting and flushed, left hand gripping the desk so hard there are going to be smudge marks the janitor will yell at them both for leaving—him for doing it, her for not chastising him for it. Xander pants and blinks, trying to focus and failing miserably. "Sneeze," he lies, left hand trembling as he transfers the phone from one ear or the other. "Just leave that, Jenean, I'll give it to you on my way out, okay? And close the door, please."

It's got to be screaming obvious, he may as well wave his wet right hand around and splatter everything just for proof, but Jenean just says, "Bless you," and leaves the stack of folders far enough away that she may actually have not seen Xander still clutching his exposed-but-for-the-edge-of-his-desk-cock.

The door closing is like a starter's pistol, leaving Xander slumped and trembling in his expensive leather executive's chair. "You bastard," he hisses. He's grinning and he knows Spike's going to hear it, but there are forms to observe in this and everything else. And Spike is a bastard. He admits that as often as he admits how damned good he is at his job—being whatever Xander wants him to be. Sometimes whatever Xander needs to him to be.

"Can fuck me for it to punish me," Spike says cheerfully.

"Fuck you?" He remembers at the last second to keep his shriek in whispered decibels. It's not possible to keep Spike a secret, but confirming that yes, Xander does have a private sex-bunny isn't something he's interested in doing. "I'll be lucky if I get up by next week, he who forgets that I'm not a randy bloody teenager anymore!"

Spike snickers but doesn't deny that this little humiliation of advancing age is a real possibility. Spike never insults him for it, though, and always manages to turn even reading in bed into an exercise of debauchery, one that thankfully lets his cock rest for a few precious hours. "Pants are in your bag, love. Sign your papers and come home. Your pressie from Leather Lust arrived today."

Xander's home in fifteen minutes flat.

That water’s running when Xander gets home. It’s a siren call of pitter-patter-splash and Xander follows it with his nose in the air and his eyes closed the way cartooned elves used to follow the scent of cookies. Or some twisted commercial from his childhood, and that’s the last thing Xander wants to be thinking about because the shower’s on.

And Spike’s inside it.

Xander used to have a shower curtain, folded plastic that used to mildew and get replaced biannually. Three days after Spike wandered back into his life, construction started on the new bathroom, because no way was Xander going to tolerate that moldy, translucent bit of streaked curtain between him and the vision inside the shower stall.

Sometimes when Xander comes home like this, he has to stop and stare and drool. It doesn’t matter that this is his, to be taken whenever he wants and eagerly provoked into the wanting. There’s an elegant beauty to Spike, an ethereal hint of something that floors Xander whenever he sees it.

Pale skin, smooth and kept mostly hairless when Xander discovered that yeah, he kinda liked that kink. Spike never objects to anything, just arranges for visits to salons and comes home baby smooth from the eyebrows down. Xander can spend hours running his hands over that fine skin, not a single prickle disturbing the sweep and rise and dip of Spike’s body. The bones are light, muscles dense, and nothing is too big except maybe his head, but that’s okay. Because it means his mouth is big and his tongue is long, and who care that he looks like a bobble-head doll sometimes.

Spike’s not tall, except when he’s being a blustery bastard, attitude a ten-foot tall carnival mask that makes him bigger then life. Also, when he’s naked. When that smooth, soft skin is exposed to every inch of Xander’s grasping gaze, he’s no longer a few inches shorter and a little skinnier then Xander. Now he’s a towering vision of the perfect combination of male and female, blended together into an irresistible package.

The water always makes him glisten, highlighting each ridge of muscle and bone. Surprisingly long legs, powerful muscles laying close and solid. Flat belly that’s as bumpy as an old-fashioned wash-board and Xander loves to tease Spike about that. No classic six-pack, no, but still muscular and solid and Xander worships each one regularly. Broad pecs that are tipped with dusky nipples that are extremely sensitive, leading up to a neck Xander loves, loves, loves to bite. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, and the constant wash of water only heightens each feature.

Xander wants to order him to go around naked all the time, but he knows he’ll get unreasonably jealous if he does, so the order stays on his tongue, etching like acid in between the taste buds. So this time he doesn’t stand and just watch. Because it’s his, all his, and daddy wants to play this time. Spike’s soaping his hair when Xander opens the clear glass door, smiling a welcome. Xander grins back, then shoves Spike against the wall, nipping and licking all over his neck—the fastest route to a hardened cock and a very pliable Spike. “Busy day?” Spike rumbles, fondly stroking Xander’s neck and back.

“Unbelievably.” The last few weeks have been hellish and Xander’s been fucking Spike harder and harder in response. “Where’s the slick?”

Spike groans as he’s bitten particularly hard. “All ready,” he pants. “Fuck me, love.”

Xander shakes his head and grins. “Nuh uh,” he says. The water’s soaking into Xander’s eyes, blinding him as he grabs the tube from it’s customary spot and pops it open. “Want you to fuck me, this time.”

He doesn’t notice that Spike’s gone rigid until he’s worked two fingers up inside himself and he thinks he’s ready. “Oh, for—” Grabbing Spike’s head down for a rough kiss that breaks the skin on both their lips, Xander shakes the too-big head in his hand until he’s sure he can hear something rattle. “It’s not the first time I’ve been fucked,” he says firmly.

But it’s the first time Spike has. He’ll top, sure, and loves it when Xander sucks on his cock so long his jaw pops loose and he’s on a liquid diet for a few days. But Xander’s butt is reserved for maybe a few fingers and never anything more. Xander doesn’t like the look in Spike’s eyes, so he persuades his lover to hold onto the hand-rails he had specially installed, never mind the looks from the construction workers who knew he was gay, since they were inhouse, and says, “Hold on.”

Spike grips, automatically obedient, and Xander’s climbing onto Spike’s body, executing a maneuver he knows he can’t duplicate as he somehow manages not to slip on Spike’s slick body while he perches with only one hand, the other busily trying to line Spike’s cock up correctly.

When he finally manages and lowers himself down, Spike gives an almighty groan. “Fuck,” he whispers, blue eyes wide and dazed.

Xander kisses him. “Shut up, baby, and fuck me.”

* * * * *

That’s the first time Spike tops, but it’s not the last. He’ll drop by the office now, Xander counting the seconds since the sun sets on those nights he knows he’ll be working late. Spike saunters in, supremely comfortable in any settling, lazy-eyed and bored. Xander doesn’t even look up, focused on getting his work done so he’ll see his house before midnight, his bed before two, and he can’t afford the distractions.

Once, Spike played the lonely housewife, wanting a coring from her distant hubby. Complaining Xander left him for over ten hours already and he was desperate for a shag. But not since the shower when Spike fucked him until Xander turned into long lines of sizzling nerves and brainless mush in the best possible way. Since then, he’s come up with all kinds of things.

“Working late again?” Spike asks. “Stand up, then. Can keep reading that way.”

Okay, this is different from what Xander’s expecting—there’s no bad boy, no lead in. Just Spike pushing him forward so he can undo and drop Xander’s pants, coaxing him to lean his weight down onto his elbows.

“Keep reading,” Spike instructs when Xander twists to look at him questioningly. When Xander still doesn’t obey, Spike smiles sweetly. “Trust me, love. You’ll like it.”

There isn’t much Spike does to him that he doesn’t like, so Xander goes back to reading the paper printouts since he can’t read the computer screen easily for long, while his ass is fondled and his balls are cupped. It makes reading difficult, but Spike said read, and Xander’s willing to give it at least a try.

That is until the finger that’s working inside him disappears and Spike shoves in with one smooth thrust. He yells. Or moans. Something loudy and vaguely ow-y, because yes, that kinda hurt. But Spike’s there, turning his head back to the papers, hand sliding down to spread over the middle of his back, holding him hunched over in the perfect position. “Said read,” Spike says breathlessly. “Means read the damned papers and pretend I’m not here.”

Xander has no idea what’s going on, but the burn’s faded to something much, much nicer, and Spike starts to fuck him. Hard. There’s nothing sharing and sweet about this, not even the rough play they love to indulge in. It’s as if Xander isn’t even there and Spike’s just fucking to get his rocks off.

It’s unbelievably hot.

They manage to both keep up the pretense for another ten, fifteen minutes tops. Then Xander groans and shoves the papers away, resting his head and arms on the desk so he can thrust back into Spike’s pelvis. Spike chuckles, hands caressing down Xander’s skin to find the hot, heavy cock swinging against the blotter. “Like that, huh? Thought you might. Such a twisted thing you are.”

“Already knew I was a kinky bastard, Spike.”

Spike fucks him harder in response. He normally has to be coaxed into this, not comfortable bruising Xander in any situation, but this time he just pounds his way hard enough that Xander thinks his own hips are going to get displaced and he loves every. Single. Second of it.

When Spike grabs onto his body with both hands, he knows the vampire is close and that sends him over the edge. He screams hoarsely, single eye squeezed shut tight as he paints himself onto the desk and papers that can’t afford to be come stained and that’s probably a bad thing, but then Spike is yelling and filling him and Xander doesn’t give a damn about papers.

Which is good, since Spike collapses down onto him and the ones that aren’t stained are now smooshed.

“Better, love?” Spike asks after a while. “Looked like you needed that.”

Xander twists and turns enough that he can push his face up towards Spike’s, collecting the kiss that was waiting for him. “You’re brilliant. But I’m cramping.”

Spike laughs and they slither into Xander’s delux leather chair and Spike kisses him and massages his legs until they lie still. “Love?”

“Love.”

Work. Work consumes him, overwhelms him, and Xander’s starting to drift back into that horrible place he was after Sunnydale and before Spike. The one where he was an asshole, knew he was, because that’s the only way he could survive. Layoffs and firings, his job now that he’s been given someone else’s responsibilities, and Xander hates that more than anything else. Telling someone who’s worked hard, done a good job, that the company has to let him go, here’s his check and yeah, look, there’s a guard to make sure you don’t do anything destructive on your way out the door that’s hitting you in the ass. Those are worse than the firings, because then—usually—they deserve being told to shove off.

He starts sleeping at work. Spike visits him sometimes, snarling at anyone who dares look side-long at the overworked man and his domesticated lover, who comes bearing food and drink and clean clothes whenever he thinks Xander needs it. The secretaries all love him, of course. Spike charms them as easily as the breathing he doesn’t do, leaving Xander gasping in his wake as his life is rearranged before his eyes.

He’s sitting at his desk, trying to make the figures in front of him stop blurring into one long string of numbers that says ‘loser’ and ‘asshole’ and other words Xander knows he wears on a sign around his neck. The atmosphere at work is tense and the pink-slip bearer is distrusted. Xander’s pretty sure he hates that the most, although this stupid sheet of stupid paper with stupid numbers for his stupid job is running a close second.

“Late.” The word is grumpy, tossed off of lips that don’t care while eyes wander the office around him.

Xander doesn’t bother looking up or asking how he got in, since it’s past ten thirty and the security guard should be on site. He probably is, wondering what that shadow is and if he’s seeing things. “Yeah. You knew that.”

“It’s the weekend now, love. Time for good little worker-bees to smell the flowers rather then just fuck ’em.”

“Is that a hint?” Xander’s pretty sure that even if he had time to be interested, he wouldn’t be able. Too many hours cramped at a desk, yelling, being yelled at, and way too many things on his brain to ever allow blood to flow south. “Because I already told you—”

“Shut up.” When Xander falls silent, mostly out of exhaustion, Spike nods. “Good. Now c’mere.”

Xander blinks at Spike, then back to his trusty computer. “In a minute, okay?”

“Save it,” Spike tells him. Xander clicks the little disk-icon because it’s habit and he knows better than not to when Spike tells him to do something important. Like grow the little goatee that makes him look so dashing, and okay, what the hell?

Spike smirks at him, holding the power-cord. “Saved it, didn’t you, love? Gonna take a while to boot back up, now. So come on. Take a break.”

He feels the anger, red and throbbing and so fierce it terrifies him behind his eye, waiting to be let free. He wants to let it go, wants to spew out all the things he kept in side the last week, month, quarter, because Spike is his and he’ll take all the crap Xander can’t shove down the throats of people who actually deserve it. But Spike doesn’t look like the one time he suggested Xander just do that. He looks annoyed. Like he’s waiting and Xander better get his arse moving.

It makes the anger vanish with a pop of exhaustion and an emotion Xander can’t—hasn’t ever been able to—name. He slumps down in his chair, for one precious instant as if he was going to cry. But then he straightens and hobbles over on numb feet to where Spike’s waiting.

There’s a small courtyard in the middle of the building. It’s totally incongruous, full of flowers and greenery that’s inappropriate for a building that houses a construction company, two different lawyer offices, and part of a health insurance company. But there it is, bathed in silver and velvet shadow, stems of grass waving in the soft breeze. Spike takes him there and sits him down on a blanket produced from no where at all.

“Um?”

“Quiet. Don’t talk.”

It’s a weird request, since Spike usually is okay with Xander’s talking, and Xander subsides with a click of teeth closing together. Spike’s fiddling with the plastic bag, murmuring to himself as he sets whatever it is up. Xander watches him for a moment, then tips his eye up to the sky. The stars are barely visible through haze and bright city lights, but he can make out a couple constellations still. He tries to remember what special significance Cassiopeia has on whether mer-demons will rise, not that it matters in a land-locked town. It keeps his mind busy without treading on things he knows he shouldn’t be thinking about and it lets him think about maybe, just maybe, untensing the muscle in his shoulders.

“C’mere.” Spike settles behind him, chest suddenly the most perfect back-rest. Xander’s ass presses against Spike’s groin, but it’s not sexual. It’s too comforting to be sexual, arms wrapping around his middle and petting him there. “Comfortable?”

Something twinges in his neck when he nods and a little bit of the pressure decreases. Yeah, he’s comfy. Spike’s here, and holding him, and he’s not gone from work, just taking a break. For a little, he can pretend that this is something they’d planned and wanted, just a time for the two of them. That the mountain of work in his office is gone, and this is his reward.

“Open up, Xan.” Something cold touches his lips and Xander automatically opens. Plastic glides across lips and tongue, then something wet and cold and sweet slides onto his tongue, spoon departing with the same smooth motion.

Whipped cream. Chocolate ice cream. Kaluha and fudge syrup.

He moans. Can’t help it as his favorite ice cream melts on his tongue before he swallows it down. “What did you—”

“Hush. Told you not to talk.” Spike prevents his arguing by placing another spoonful in his mouth and Xander pretty much gives up. There’s a hand roving over his body, petting and massaging as he’s feed the sweetest, bestest. most gooey treat that he won’t often allow himself. There’s marshmallows mixed in with the whipped cream, and bits of toffee, too. Xander’s purring by the fourth bite, sent to a place he can usually only get to after marathon sex or Spike’s determined interest.

When the cup’s scraped clean and Xander’s too tired and content to argue, his pants are opened. “Don’t talk,” Spike reminds him as his hands slip underneath two-day old boxers to caress Xander’s cock. “Don’t want to hear a word out of you, now. Just lie back. Know you’re comfortable. Stay comfy, love.”

Spike’s words are as gooey as fudge and keep his body just as delightfully leaden. He sweeps his hands back up to Xander’s chest, unbuttoning the starched white shirt and pushing it down Xander’s arm. “Stay still, love. Nice and still for me.” The words act as touchstones, grounding Xander as his body is touched and teased and. . .

And there’s that word again, the one Xander can’t acknowledge, not even a little.

“Missed this,” Spike whispers in his ear. “Warm and hard against me. Can’t sleep right without you anymore, love. Too cold. Bed’s too soft.” He starts massaging under Xander’s pecs, right where he’s just starting to swell with a gut. Not a bad one, really, but the muscles just aren’t as taut and hard as the abs he leans against. Spike doesn’t seem to mind, though, rubbing and soothing—somethingly.

“Gonna take you home, do you proper then. But that’s for later, love. This is just a reminder. A promise.” Lips brush under his ear as his hips and thighs are stroked underneath the fabric of his pants. Spike’s hands are strong, the fingers so sensitive to the slightest twitch or flinch. “Can promise you, can’t I?”

Xander nods, unable to give in to the moan in his chest. Please. He wants the promises so much. . .

“Want that, Xan. Want it so much.”

Xander nods again, gasping a little as his cock is fondled. “Want it, too,” he murmurs, breaking the no-talking rule, but this is too important. Spike’s starting to tense against his back and Xander doesn’t want that, not ever. Spike shouldn’t ever be tense except when he’s stretched out between his restraints, body bucking as he waits for permission to come. That’s good tension, the sweetest, and not anything at all to do with the tension right now. “Want. . .”

Spike hums against his ear, kissing him there again. “Good.” It’s like they’ve spoken for five hours, five days, hashed out the tiniest little details and now Spike’s content again, petting kitty that knows it’s owner is well trained in the care and keeping of said kitty. Xander feels breathless, wondering just what he’s said and what Spike’s agreeing to, and deciding—

That he doesn’t care. Because Spike’s kissing his mouth now, hands sure and certain over his cock and Xander lets go of every last bit of uncertainty in his mind and trusts Spike. Completely. And when he comes, messing his pants and Spike’s hand, and whatever security cameras are trained on them, he murmurs a soft, simple phrase.

And then Spike comes.

Xander still keeps in contact with everybody. ‘Everybody’ meaning Willow and the new Watchers Council over in London. He’ll help them out occasionally, if they need it, but lately it’s primarily his contacts and influence that he wants, and he’s happy enough to let them have it. Except when Willow calls demanding that he and his new beau come to London for Winter Holidays.

He thinks about it. He doesn’t tell Spike, because he knows what Spike will say. “Whatever you want, love. Go, or don’t go, it’s you I want.” Usually that leads to wrestling of the naked variety, but sometimes it leads to snits, too, so Xander just thinks. Later, he calls back Willow and tells her that he’ll come, but he needs a favor, first.

Spike doesn’t comment when Xander blocks out two weeks for their London vacation three days before they have to leave. He doesn’t comment when Xander apologizes for not telling him before or taking him to Maui or the Bahamas, where it’s warm and tropical and sunny—except sunny isn’t such a good thing for a vampiric lover and Xander’s apology stumbles to an ungainly finish on the mat, legs cocked, arms pointing in all directions, and he’s so not going to get the gold for this one.

What Spike does do is kiss Xander under he can’t remember what he’s supposed to be apologizing for, anyway. And later, when Xander’s sleepy and sated on the bed, Spike packs their clothes so that when the Friday they’re to leave dawns crisp and clear and cold, all Xander has to do is figure out what he’s wearing on the plane and dump his everyday toiletries into a bag, which Spike then takes and packs in the suitcases.

“You’re too good to me,” Xander murmurs, pressing his boyfriend against the wall so they can share toothpaste-and-tap-water flavored kisses. Spike melts against him, still standing only because Xander’s weight keeps him there, making low, wanting noises in the back of his throat. His arms wind around Xander’s neck and he rests heavily there. “Hey. You okay?”

It’s disturbing to see Spike do things that, in a normal person, would mean insecurity and uncertainty. But this is Spike, so that can’t be what he means, right? His body doesn’t believe that, though, pulling Spike close and nudging so his head falls into the crook of Xander’s neck.

“Fine, love,” Spike says, lips buzzing against Xander’s throat. “We should go. We’ll be late.”

Okay, no, his body is right and his head is really, really wrong. Spike’s never acted this way with Xander before, not even when he brought that girl home and assumed that Spike knew she was for them, to do play with the things two guys didn’t get to play with when they were monogamous, and not a slow introduction of Spike’s replacement. He strokes the skin of Spike’s back under the cashmire sweater he’s wearing and wonders what he’s done wrong and how he’s going to fix it.

“Do you not want to go?” His voice is small and he can practically mouth along with Spike as he goes through the expected ‘whatever you want is fine’ line that he’s been feeding Xander increasingly. “Okay, I know that. But do you, Spike, man who I’m living with and loving with and potentially vacationing with, not want to go to London? I mean, I know you’re okay with Willow and the rest. Well, I know you talk to them.”

The phone bill tells him that, though he’s never once asked either of them what they talk about and if Spike is really talking to Buffy when he calls the number with the Italian country code. It could be Andrew, after all. But Spike doesn’t think so, and the lack of screaming and hatred coming from that half of the globe has always meant acceptance to him.

“We’ll be late,” is all Spike says. He pulls away, hefting all four of their bags—one just to take presents—and starts walking towards the car.

Xander doesn’t try to stop him. Just trails along in Spike’s wake as he loads the car and then climbs into the protected back seat. Usually, Spike’s the one who takes care of Xander. Spike doesn’t have emotional problems, that Xander has ever been able to tell, because all of Spike’s problems center around two things, once normal things like where he’s sleeping are taken care of. They are: a)does he care for someone and b) does that person care for him back. And that’s never been an issue, not since the first time Xander saw him across a crowded room—that’s a song, isn’t it?—because Xander has always cared for him. Always wanted him, the way Spike needs to be wanted, and now that Spike’s quiet and controlled and uncommunicative, Xander hasn’t the first clue how to fix whatever’s wrong.

He hates whenever he has to drive with Spike during the day. Spike has a ‘bed’ they’ve made in the backseat, where he can curl up in comfortably while Xander chauffeurs them to their daylight destination. Xander hates it, because it’s too thick for talking and it makes him feel at best like he’s a hired hand and worst like he’s on some dirty kidnapping or human slavery run.

Once, he told Spike that. A flash of blue eyes was the only warning he’d had before they were playing Master and Slave—frighteningly not that different from normal—for almost a full week.

Regardless, Xander hates it and that, combined with not knowing what’s making Spike upset, puts him in a really grumpy mood when he drives up to his personal hanger. Yes, he has a personal hanger. He travels a lot of business, when things aren’t crunched like they have been lately, and having a personal plane and a group of pilots on retainer—so there’s always someone who can fly it for him—has made a huge difference in the past. It’s nice now, too, because he can use Willow’s favor.

Spike plays dodge-the-windows while Xander chats with the pilot and first officer. They aren’t late, if anything they’re early, but as Spike gazes around the hanger with badly concealed wonder, Xander wonders if he’d ever told Spike he owns his own plane. Or that when he says he has to ‘get to the airport early’, it’s not because he’s waiting in line with the rest of the planet, fighting to get through stupider and stupider security. It’s usually because he can work there without wanting to spend more time cuddling in bed with Spike or working out on his home gym so he can still be buff for Spike.

There’s a lot of things that end with ‘Spike’ in Xander’s head.

He shows the security guy where their suitcases are and both he and Spike submit less than cheerfully as they and their stuff are wanded. They pass, though there’s an interesting moment when the wand goes over Spike’s head, and are allowed to board the plane.

At least, that’s what Xander assumes comes next.

He’s standing in the middle of the hanger, arm extended towards the plane the way a gentleman might because every once in a while, Xander remembers his manners. He knows how much Spike likes that, too, so he covertly reads Miss Manners’ old articles and watches period shows with more interest than he should. Spike’s staring at his arm and the three stairs that lead up to the cabin where they’ll be served drinks and food and blood for Spike as they listen to classical music—the only way Xander can make it through a flight without giving in to his inner phobia.

“Spike?”

The pilot is watching them, but he’s more interested in seeing them disappear up those stairs than whatever is keeping them on the ground. Everyone else is busy and despite the hanger being fairly crowded, and Xander feels like he’s alone.

“Spike, if you don’t want to go, we won’t. Okay? Just tell me, please.” You’re starting to scare me. He hasn’t openly begged in a long time. Not since Anya was dragging him by the short-hairs or something was so incredibly vital that he couldn’t wait to put it in a more private setting and had to get the words out as soon as he possibly could shape them. A situation this was rapidly becoming. “Spike? Talk to me, please.”

“I’ll just go to the back, won’t I?” he says so quietly Xander almost doesn’t hear the words inside the buzzing of Spike’s voice. “Maybe you could, uh, distract them?”

And suddenly Xander knows exactly what Spike’s problem is. And how much of an asshole he is for not seeing it before.

Stuck in their own bubble of space and time, Xander takes Spike’s hands and pulls him close enough for a long, slow kiss. The kind that says hi, I haven’t seen you in a long time, and I’ve really hated that, please don’t go away again, ever, because I need you. Spike resists for a fraction of a second, and that’s way too long as far as Xander’s concerned. Spike isn’t supposed to resist Xander’s kisses, or be confused or worried by them.

Cupping Spike’s face in his hands, Xander nibbles on the fuller lower lip for a moment. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”

“Told me what?” Spike’s just the tiniest bit breathless, fathomless blue eyes dazed as they look everywhere but up at Xander. “Got me the delux coffin to travel in back there?”

“No. Willow sent you a happy-early-solstice present. Okay, so I asked for it, but she was really excited when I did because apparently she’d already been planning on doing something like this and was both pleased and proud and said I’d been very well trained, to ask for it already.”

Spike finally lets his eyes meet Xander’s, a glimmer of amusement shining through the confusion and uncertainly. “She said all that?”

“I paraphrased.” Xander has to kiss him again, has to taste copper and clean salt on his tongue. “Have you ever heard of necrotempered glass?” he murmurs, lips so close that he can barely hear what he’s saying and knows no one else will.

Spike stills in his arms, lips moving as he silently repeats ‘necrotempered’.

Xander knows that there are whispered comments about them now, but doesn’t stop his hands from cupping Spike’s buttocks and pulling him even closer. “Gonna come on the plane now?”

There’s a ghost of a smile and then Spike is backing away—and taking Xander’s hand. That simple gesture is more erotic and meaningful than any of the kisses they’d shared. “Dunno. Am I going to come on the plane?”

The slight droop to his shoulders is gone as if it’s never been. His eyes are back to their cool fire, distant yes, but glowing whenever they look at Xander, lips curved into that faint smile Xander hasn’t realized he’s missed until it’s back again. Relief feels like tums do when he has heartburn—chilly and perfect.

He lets himself grin, giving in to the tug on his hand and climbing up onto the plane. Spike lets his hand go only long enough for them to buckle up before long fingers are winding through his again, palm softer than he’s ever felt before as it rests against his own work-roughened one. They’re quiet as the plane goes through it’s takeoff rituals, including the waiting while other planes go first.

There’s a moment when they taxi out of the hanger and into the weak December sunshine. Spike tenses, fingers tightening around Xander’s as he waits for—for a lot of things Xander doesn’t want to think about. He knows Willow’s spell is good. He knows, because he did his own research before letting Willow cast the spell. Nothing is going to happen to Spike.

And if it does, Xander has a stash of light-proof mylar blankets waiting underneath the seats.

The light creeps over them like syrup, slow and steady and Xander realizes he’s not breathing as Spike’s legs are fully bathed in sunlight. Nothing happens. The spell works.

They both exchange guiltily relieved smiles, silently grateful the other isn’t saying anything. Brahms comes on as the plane takes off and drinks are served by a cheerful Molly, who’s pleased as punch to finally meet the boss’s other half. It’s not until she mentions it that they look down and see—their hands are still clasped together.

Xander resolves not to let go, ever. Not even when Willow greets them with a squeal that makes them both wince and a tackle that would do a linebacker proud.

His eyes ache. Sandpaper rubs them inside his skull, making his entire head ache like when he’s on site and they’re jack-hammering. He wants to tell them to stop, to please just be quiet for five seconds—and then he remembers that the jack-hammers are inside his skull and all he’s trying to do is read.

Xander knows he’s not stupid, and that when it comes to a lot of things, he’s a lot better than merely competent. But when the topics turn outside of business, or sports, or the politics he’s only partially aware of, Xander gets out of depth, fast. It’s that metaphorical diving board, the one that used to taunt him when he was younger and still trying to prove himself to his company. The one that bounces and jiggles and trembles under his naked feet, taunting him with the fifteen foot drop into something he knows is too deep and thinks is filled with something other than chlorinated water. What, he’s not really sure.

So when he gets stuck with Dave, who’s a great guy but can’t stop talking about his kids, Xander gets quiet very rapidly. Normally, that’s okay. He’s kidless, and not expected to understand the daily bitching the rest of the ‘lucky’ go through. But this wasn’t about kids, just the books they read that adults were supposed to have read when they were kids. So when Dave goes on and on about how proud he is of his seven year old genius, busily reading Alice in Wonderland, Xander feels. . .

Ashamed.

He knows why he never read those books. The call of the outdoors was always greater, and there was always Willow to help him with the things he should’ve learned and never quite did. But Willow’s raising kids of her own, now, busy being the perfect Wicca Mommy to two red-headed twins Xander thinks maybe look just a little bit like him, despite his total non-involvement in their procreation. He’s still not sure who the daddy is and isn’t interested in asking.

Kidless or not, he still should’ve read these books during his childhood, or so everyone says when the topic comes up. So Xander’s trying. He’s stared at the first page for almost ten minutes, sprawled in his big office chair in his office, treating himself to cigar while he tries to puzzle out something a seven year old girl could, and he remembers a six year old very definitely did. It’s still not making sense, though. The little black letters are too interested in crawling on the crisp grey pages, taunting him. He knows they’re enjoying their torment of him. He knows it.

He doesn’t move when Spike hands appear in his field of vision, staring fixedly at the letter ‘the’ which is being particularly nasty and doing loop-de-loops. “It’s not going to eat you, love.”

“I’m fine,” he says mechanically. “I just want to read this.”

“Uh huh.” The book is tugged out of his hands before he can blink, right hand clasped tightly into Spike’s. “Come on. Bring your ciggie and the tray.”

Obeying Spike is habit ingrained, so Xander raises, grabbing cigar and ashtray with one hand while he’s tugged into the bedroom with the other. A quiet word has him undressing and then sliding under the cool covers, automatically curling up against Spike’s seated body.

“Don’t get any ashes on me,” Spike instructs, propping the book on his other hip. “Now, then. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do—”

Xander sits up abruptly, the half-familiar words soaking into him, sweeter and richer than the paltry attempts inside his own head. “Spike?”

Spike turns and looks at him, something soft in his eyes that Xander’s seen only three or four times. Wait, this makes four, officially. Xander can’t look away when Spike looks at him like this, and he doesn’t want to. It’s like sinking into a hot tub, knowing there are arms waiting to catch you. “Yeah?”

“I—it’s just Alice in Wonderland..”

“Means I’ll be able to do the voices right, since it’s a good British book.”

“But it’s a kid’s book!”

Spike’s eyebrow flits up, a sign that he’s less than amused, something Xander’s says only when he wants to be spanked. “Wasn’t written for kids, Xan.”

“Yes it was! It was written for the Willow’s of the world so that Xander’s—”

His vehemence startles him and he breaks off before he can complete the sentence. Spike completes it for him, though, and then smiles at him. “Idiot. Cuddle up.”

“Huh?”

Sighing heavily, Spike pushes him down so he’s curled into Spike’s lap. Playing with Xander’s hair keeps him from popping up, and Spike again starts reading: “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do,” he starts. The smoothness of his voice sends the words directly into Xander’s brainstem, the husky depths making Xander’s eyes fall shut as he stops worrying and fretting and trying and just listens. “Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"”

The ending finally penetrates along the wave of Spike’s voice, and Xander’s glad he’s laying on Spike’s thigh, where Spike can’t see him blush. Spike continues carding through his hair until Xander reaches for his cigar and puffs it slowly. He’s still as a maniquin, and Xander knows without looking he’s as beautiful. But he forgets, sometimes, how sensitive Spike is, too.

“Never too late to be a child,” he murmurs, taking the cigar and tapping it out for Xander. “Gonna fuss more?”

“No.”

“Good. So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid,) whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. . .

There's a hole in the sky. Oh, it's more complicated than that, as Willow explains over hot cocoa while the others do something arcane and mysterious in the living room. All he knows is that it's magic and involves something that eventually drives him outside, escaping the fumes of sulphur and holly, mixing in unholy union. Good natured laughter chases after him, momentarily warming him the way the winter coat he wraps around himself doesn't.

Christmas in England is cold. Witch-tit cold, as Spike would say if Willow hadn't threatened black-eyed murder the first time it crossed his lips.

It's an appropriate euphemism as the chill arrows through wool coat, wool sweater, and cotton undershirt with the precision of a Robin Hood, everything that can raise up in supplication doing so. He probably looks like a frightened dog, hackling at the sky, or he would if the coat wasn't matched by matching hat and gloves. Spike calls him a mummy every time he sees him bundled up this way, but he hasn't once moved from the cozy fire Willow lit for him, buried in blankets up to his nose so that only his eyes are visible. He looks like a child, innocent and sweet in ways Xander knows damned well he's not—

Except when he is. Like now. The murdering, mayhem-loving, evil vampire Willow drinks hot toddies with and gushes over british foods Xander doesn't understand is more innocent than Xander, right now. Because it's Christmas.

Xander heads to the field Willow took him to that morning, to point out where it is. She knows, of course. In his less charitable moments, Xander thinks the whole purpose of bringing them out here is just to make Xander lose fingers and toes doing what he always does at Christmas time. Except then he looks up and the less charitable parts of him melt in the cold fire of starlight.

It's partially magical and partially just a physical anomaly, but for whatever reason, if you stand just so in a field of something entirely blanketed in snow, you can see the sky. Not like Xander sees it at home, weak pinpricks of light fighting through lightyears of time and distance just to be brought short by man-made greed for newer, faster, more more more. To the left and the right of him, Xander can see the pollution. It's not as thick as at home, turning the sky a murky yellowy brown almost all year round, but it's still there, a film that lays over the night sky, like chocolate only gross.

Just not above him.

Above him, stars shine down with a brilliance Xander hasn't believed possible until this moment. It's not a few occasional moments of clarity, either, a recognized constellation blurring into one he knows, but can't remember the name for. There are thousands of stars above him, blinking and winking their way across galaxies to dance around Xander like fireflies. His arms creak when he extends them, but the cold is forgotten as Xander twirls himself around the way he used to, as a child, the air giving like a lover, before rushing back up to cradle him.

Like this, he can almost forget.

It's been decades, of course. He's not a young man, for all Spike twits him that his presence keeps Xander young. It's been many Christmases since the ones in he thinks of now, Christmases spent happy and sad, with loved ones and without—but these memories persist. Each time he mentally reboots and reformats, these bits of data never let themselves get written over, always around to remind him of a time when Christmas was the worst day of the year, second only to New Years—because on New Years the ‘kids' were sent away. Xander had called himself a child long after he should've, to keep that reprieve.

He's not a kid, hasn't been since before he breached the chronological thresholds, but he still doesn't know how to shake it. The pain is as fresh and real as when he was seven and learned the hard way that the best Christmases were spent away from the annual family gatherings, tucked up in blankets with cool-but-not-cold California air playing games with his hair while the stars watched over him.

The need to be over this is so bad it's an ache. He wants to be back inside, laughing with the friends he hasn't seen in so long, a casual, competent, confident adult who knows his worth and the worth of his friends. And when it's not Christmas, he knows all that.

During Christmas, he's still waiting for one of the stars to detach from the sky and come stay with him, keeping him safe and warm from the kinds of things kids can't fight. An angel, but he doesn't believe in those, not since he learned that since Willow was Jewish, she didn't believe in angels. Willow is his loadstone, his pointer, the ruler against which he measures his life, even to this day.

So Xander sways to a rhythm he can almost hear, playing catch-me-if-you-can with moonbeams, and tries to remember that he's out here by choice, and there's people waiting for him back in Willow's house, if he wants. No sleeping bag, no drunken shouts, since Willow doesn't allow anything more than a slightly alcoholic egg nog, nothing but warmth and safety and love.

He doesn't know how to go back.

The snow is trampled into icy puddles, a misshapen circle surrounding him, marking him as the lunatic dancing with nothing on Christmas eve, but he can't stop. Not until he knows how to leave these memories go, to forget the hurts and remember the joys. He knows that Willow is worried about him, knows she wants more than anything to give him the peace he craves—

"Not like that, love," comes a whispery voice, startling him so badly he nearly falls. "Like this."

Hands wrapped up in leather take his, pulling them into the proper position, his feet automatically following. He's whirled around in a proper waltz step, and for a moment he thinks the angels he can't believe in really do exist, because who else is going to come out on a blistery cold night when presents beckon from underneath the tree in a warm, cozy little room?

Strong hands push his head down to rest against a shoulder, too short to be comfortable but so familiar he nearly sobs. "Spike."

"Red told me."

He's not sure if he's upset or not. "It's not a secret."

"No. It's worse than." They're still dancing. Xander's feet are wet, water seeping past insulated plastic and rubber to make his socks heavy and his feet numb. "It's a memory."

"How is that worse than a secret?"

"Because a secret can be shared, love, and shared again until there are enough shoulders to heft the load so that yours can stop hurting. But a memory ... no one knows that but you. You can tell other people about it, try and explain all the twists and turns it's taken in your head, but you can't truly ever get it out."

That prompts Xander to lift his head, watching eyes gone shadowed black in the night. "What's your memory?"

"Dancing. Drusilla. The way the starlight would shatter like glass when it struck her hair. Her eyes would light up and she'd beg me to whirl her around until she couldn't tell where the earth and the sky were supposed to be anymore."

Xander stops dancing. Pulling Spike into his arms, bulky coat mating to bulky coat, he leans forward for the kind of kiss he's only just now realized he badly wants. "Spike?"

"Yeah, love?"

"Whirl me around, please? I want to dance in the sky."

Happy Birthday moosesal!!!!!!
It's happy birthday

moosesal!!!!! *tosses confetti and streamers and panties*

In honor of your birthday, I have for you the piece of hustler!verse you've been asking for, oh, long long ago. I doubt you even remember it -- but I do. Hope you enjoy and I hope today is utterly fabulous. Love you sweetie *smooch*

beta'd by the amazing

monanotlisa who pulled this out in a bare hour. Thank you, hon!!

Xander’s been to London before. He’s familiar with the bone-chilling wetness that seeps into everything, no matter that it’s snow that dots along the ground. The skidmarked sky is familiar to him, lines of different greys competing to form a Monet like picture without the unifying theme. The smell of acid rain mixing with that sickly attractiveness of petrol clings to everything, forgotten after mere moments in its presence. London is a city like any other city, a realization that’s taken Xander all his adult life to deduce, but he knows cities now. He’s familiar with their heart beat, their breath, the surreptitious cough that throws everything out of whack for that one precious moment.

Spike makes it different.

Spike makes everything different, glowing with his own special light that creates shadows and haloed glare that wasn’t there two seconds before. He’s studied disinterest when they visit the palace, suavely sophisticated and so British that he makes the eye-rolling locals look like country hayseeds. Xander figures this will set the tone, influence the way Spike will look at all their London adventures—until he mentions that Willow thinks they should go to the museum. The switch is thrown, Spike turning into a beaming twelve year old, grabbing Xander’s hand and half-dragging him to the building. The sooner to see exhibits the Spike of years before would’ve dusted himself over rather than admit to being interested in.

He’s like the sun, Xander thinks as he laughs and mocks and watches with the obsessive need Spike is fully aware of. Only there’s no danger of cancer or sunspots or blindness from staring at it directly for too long.

It takes Xander a couple days, but after they do all the purely touristy things—a vampire docent in the Tower of London takes it to newer and scarier places—Xander finally begs and pleads and promises enough, and Spike relents.

“Really want to, do you?” He’s leaning against the wall in the men’s section of Harrod’s, unconsciously—or maybe even consciously—mimicking the pose of the well-dressed mannequin beside him. The sculpted lines of Spike’s body, subtly enhanced by clothes more expensive than anything sold in this store, attract attention. Xander’s had training in this, though, and has learned to ignore it. Mostly. “Think it’ll be fun?”

“Am I thinking fun like the clubbing we’re still doing tomorrow night? Maybe not. Am I thinking general fun, since it’s something I want and you’re giving it to me? Yes.” Xander’s learned not to be shy, either, and steps right up into Spike’s personal space as if he has every right to be there. Which he does. Tilting his chin up and to the side, he makes his eyes big and his lips crumpled and soft. “Please?”

Spike’s totally into his studied indifference, not so much submitting to Xander’s touch as deigning to grant him unfortunate access. At least, that’s how he looks. Xander knows better and curls his fingers around Spike’s wrist, thumb rubbing against a vein that shouldn’t be so blue, knowing exactly what that does to his lover. Two seconds of petting and Spike nods, once, and Xander pretends he didn’t see the width of Spike’s eyes or the way that always makes him look vulnerable. “Fine. Gonna buy me something pretty here first, aren’t you?”

It takes them an hour to extricate themselves from the store. There’s the picking of gifts, choosing if they belong to the two of them or to other people, and the inevitable crowd of attendees, all desperate to help and perhaps even touch this blond god in their store. Xander keeps his arm through Spike’s the entire time. It doesn’t deter anyone.

Outside, Spike’s back in bouncy mode, which suits Xander fine. He knows it’s a shield, but that’s okay because he needs one too. He wants to do this, wants to see and touch and taste the grit that’s buried deep in Spike’s skin, but the anticipation of finally doing it is intense. They don’t talk much as they go from tube to train to their own two feet, skirting patches of snow and ice with the ease of men who’ve lived in a northern climate for at least a few years.

The building they end up is nondescript. It’s a building. It has building-like properties, which Xander could probably go on at length about if asked. But no one does, and Xander tries to figure out what is important besides the bricks and mortar and support beams and hundreds of years of wear and tear.

“This is where it started,” Spike says, so low that the thud of feet and steady honk of traffic on the major drag not far from here almost overwhelms it. Almost. Xander’s sure he could hear Spike’s words with his skin, if his ears somehow missed it. “All of it.”

Xander looks back at the building a few steps up from the sidewalk, trying to see it the way it was a century and more before. “Was this. . .” He wants to ask if this was Spike’s home. Did William grow up here, become a man here, play games here? But the word ‘home’ keeps getting stuck in Xander’s throat. He can’t say it, can’t even think of anywhere being Spike’s home except with him.

“It was a party. Not the kind you lot have, now a days. This was different.”

There’s a light in Spike’s eye that he doesn’t like. It makes Xander’s stomach clench and buyer’s remorse suffuses him. “That party.”

Spike nods, the set of his jaw communicating gratitude. He’s told Xander everything—no secrets, not anymore—but seeing it like this is different. And suddenly Xander gets it. Really gets it. The strange set of Spike’s shoulders, expensive material hanging at funny, uncomfortable angles, the taste of the air that’s probably so different from when Spike stood here, waiting to get a glimpse of the thing he wanted most when he was William and foolish and a bit of a wet blanket, Spike’s words.

“You know what?” Xander says loudly. “I haven’t been to an authentic English pub yet. The kind that isn’t in Zaguts or Lonely Planet or whatever guides you wacky British have. I want something that a bloke from London’s gonna go to when he wants a pint and some crisps.”

There’s a moment when the world holds still. Metaphorical clouds shift and shudder, chess pieces tremble as their commander decides the next plan of attack. And then everything stills, goes quiet, and Xander’s lungful of London smog is fresh as a mountain stream.

“Love, don’t say ‘crisps’,” Spike tells him, threading his arm through Xander’s and tugging him down the street. “And don’t say ‘bloke’. It’s disturbing, listening to you mangle perfectly sensible words.”

“I’m not mangling them.”

“You’ve got sodding marbles in your mouth, Xander. It’s depressing. And the way you flatten your vowels.”

“Yeah, yeah, says the man who’s perfected Mockney.”

“Oi! I’ll have you know—”

“Tell it to someone who hasn’t listened to a drunken Giles bitch about it, Spike.”

They grin at each other, loon matched to perfect loon, and almost skip as they head for the first authentic pub Spike can remember.

The next few days pass better, though Xander can’t quite let go of the unease he felt standing before Spike’s past, bigger than life and reeking faintly of sewage blocked up somewhere nearby. He knows what Spike is, knows it in a way that not even Buffy can attest to, because he’s seen it. Good days and bad, each mask is used and dropped in his presence until the softer, gooey underbelly is exposed and all the words Spike’s bottled up through the decades come tumbling out. He thinks of himself as a therapist, sometimes. Spike’s therapist, even though that word is wrong, making too-tight skin shiver on his bones. The word he really wants to use—words, two words, and he can almost hear the bells crying in the distance—makes his heart ache.

All he knows is that Spike has given him a gift, through their relationship. He’s given Xander a key, shown Xander where the lock is—and stays silent as Xander twists the metal in his grasp, snapping off teeth until it’s nothing but a mangled piece of scrap.

Well. Maybe not that dire. But when it’s dark and quiet and the wrongness of the past few days rattles in his throat, acidic and frothy, that’s what he feels.

They go clubbing. They’re still doing the tourist thing, grateful to those slate-grey clouds above head that allow Spike mobility during the day, but at night, they go clubbing. It starts out as a one time thing—Spike may adore the loud and the beat and the sweat and the move, but Xander doesn’t. Not anymore. Middle-aged man cuts a very frayed rug and Xander doesn’t need youth and the kind of innocence he’s pretty sure he’s never had thrown into his face. But Spike loves it, and they go, and Xander discovers something he’s pretty sure Spike’s known all this time. Something his younger self knew and forgot to impart to the older, wiser version.

Clubbing is anonymous. It’s safe.

Sure, there’s sweat and music deadening already dying nerves, bodies bouncing into his with the force of sledge hammers, and stupid, skinny little tweenies that manages to cover all shapes and sizes and races and ages, united within their hostility to Older, Suited Guy, who happens to be dressed in Spike’s finest and looks almost as punked out as they do. There’s flirting and grinding and a million and one chances to dance with someone, all there for the taking.

But you don’t have to take it. And they don’t.

They start out dancing together that first night, attracting all kinds of attention that only shines a spotlight on the wrong. Their moves look fluid and slick, two bodies knowing the other intimately, but it’s off. There’s a stutter step, a hesitation they both feel like knives under their skin, and after two or three songs, they separate. Don’t find each other until one of them wants to go.

It sets the stage and by the third night, they aren’t going clubbing together the way Xander’s always wanted to do and never did. They’re going alone, for their own needs, and just happen to share cabs there and back again. Seconds into that throbbing, mind-numbing beat Xander vanishes, takes himself out of the main paths to find a space he can dance and groove and generally make a fool out of himself in the peace and quiet of his own head. He tells himself not to look for Spike, not to care where Spike is. He drinks until he’s verging on shit-faced, because that’s anonymous and alone and safe, too, and sometimes when he’s drunk enough, he manages to keep his eyes from Spike for more than thirty seconds.

Most nights he doesn’t.

He knows Spike knows he’s watching. Spike struts for him the first night, intentionally toying with girl after boy after girl, obviously playing to anyone that wasn’t hormone-blitzed and twenty-two. It stops being playing by the second night, and Xander watches while Spike twines himself cat-close to a pretty boy with a shock of bright blue hair done up in points. They aren’t kissing, yet. Spike doesn’t go that far, but Xander knows that it’s only a matter of time. It’s not that he thinks Spike will leave him—he knows Spike won’t. Spike doesn’t, not unless he’s thrown out. But he also knows that he won’t keep Spike, not if Spike wants to go.

The writhing mass of radioactive lead in his belly tells him maybe, just maybe, Spike does.

He’s not the oldest at the club by far, but it still comes as a shock when Spike drops the blue-hair boy for a much older man. Much older. Older than Xander, even, with hair going from grey to white, with only an occasional nod at light brown. He’s tall and thickly built, obviously a former athlete of some kind, and his attitude fairly screams corporate exec. He’s dressed as one of the kids, but it’s the aura of him that does it. Power and arrogance and the total certainty that all he has to do is snap his fingers and it’s his. He knows this, because he’s made certain of it.

Xander hates people like that. He’s worked all his life for them, worked until he doesn’t have to work for them anymore. He hates the easy appearances they keep up because he knows it hides backstabbing effort and shady deals in shady alleys, broken careers littered in their wake, and Xander prefers those who sweat hours of life instead of the kind of slithering control-freaks that are in the upper echelon of every company he’s ever worked in.

The music is thunder-loud, throbbing through his body and bringing none of the numbness Xander needs. This is different. This isn’t a little kid, toyed with for the sake of making Spike feel young and powerful again.

This is a trick.

He’s on his feet before he knows it, energy surging through him until his vision goes splotchy. Kids cry out as he shoves past them, a few sounding appreciative, but Xander ignores all of them. He can’t hear, he can’t think, because his eyes are glued to two pairs of lips that grow huge and defined and he can read every last word they shout to each other.

“Spike! Never thought I’d see you here in London. I thought you said you never wanted to come back here!”

Spike’s smile is mysterious, persona firmly in place, and Xander has to throttle back the urge to scream and kill and mutilate. He’s forgotten how fake Spike looks this way, sneer and bluster and dusty dry clay that’ll shatter at the slightest touch. This is wrong, all wrong, and Xander can’t get there fucking fast enough.

“Things change, mate. How’s the record business coming, then? Sign any interesting bands?

It hits him, a chasm of ten feet away from the dancing couple, that Spike knows this man. That they’ve met before, probably had sex before, dirty money staining both their palms, and Xander wonders why the hell people aren’t diving out of the way because he’s pretty sure he’s growling and a half second away from killing the next person who comes up to him and asks if he’s a daddy looking for a boy.

“Doin’ fine, like always,” the exec says, shark-grin scarily like a vampire seconds from a kill. “So, I wondered since you were in town. . .” Fingers, wandering; bad, evil fingers hook their way into Spike’s belt loops and pull his hips closer, head dropping so that it’s hard to read the words. Xander knows them anyway. “You know, you don’t look a day older than the last time. Still so damned hot. Are you still as good in bed? But you’re here with someone, of course. I understand.” His mouth moves in closer, but by now, Xander can hear the words. “Whatever your going rate is, I’ll triple it.”

Xander’s world combusts.

The exec is five feet away by the time his vision clears, holding a bleeding nose while a crowd gathers around. Even the music is helpfully lowered, the human need to shout fight, fight, fight kicking in faster than the bouncers. “Get away from him,” Xander snarls, hand clamped around Spike’s wrist so tightly bones creak. “You don’t touch him.”

Blood makes him look even more like a vampire, the arrogant sneer familiar as breath to one who’s seen the master, slept with him, seen him stand in all his bleached glory, so certain that the world is his for the taking because he’s done it time and again. “Is this who you’re with?” the exec asks, blood in his throat making his voice raw, intensifying the disdain. “What’s he pay you, huh? I’ll square it.”

“Oo, wow. Squaring it, that’s so much bigger than doubling or tripling or even quadrupling,” Xander mocks. He hasn’t turned around, can’t, because he knows he’ll see everything in Spike’s eyes. “You go to special lessons on how to buy a hooker? Or is buying it the only way you can get some?” The exec’s face contorts, but Xander doesn’t care. He knows he can take this asshole, knows he won’t have to because the bouncers are closing, and because pretty soon Spike will make his choice. It’s the last that sends the words tumbling from his mouth. “Go pick up some of the skanks outside, they look like they could use a couple grand, and you don’t come near my boyfriend again. Get me?”

Scattered applause bursts out, and then the bouncers are there. They don’t care who started what, or that the exec start screaming that he’ll never come back here or bring his custom with him. The club isn’t hurting for funds, and with the rumor of the fight, the owner’s secure. Everyone is hustled outside, though one of the bouncers is smart enough to shove the exec out a different exit than the one Xander and Spike are pushed through.

Night air wraps around them like a blanket, muffled after the noise of the club. Lights blind their eyes, but Xander can’t see anyway. All he knows is that his hand has dropped from Spike’s wrist, they have maybe five minutes before the exec comes back for payback, and Spike hasn’t chosen yet. He’s just standing there, thoughtful and closed off, and that’s almost as bad as whatever the answer will be. Because Xander’s forgotten just how many walls used to separate Spike from the rest of the world and he’s fucking shattered the only key he’s ever had.

The silence stretches, taffy-long, thin and impenetrable and Xander abruptly sighs. He’s not a sixteen year old anymore and he’s always known that his life with Spike is temporary. “I’m going back to the hotel,” he says, tracing patterns of things he doesn’t want the name of next to his shoes. “Come with?”

The hands on his shoulders are a shock, lights flaring behind his eyes as his shoulders hit rough brick seconds before lips slam onto his. Alcohol is sweet and bitter on Spike’s tongue, but it’s desperation that he tastes most prominently, desperation and need and a sense of relief that’s so powerful that Xander knows he could come just from the taste of it. But that’s not what he wants, so he reigns his body in and kisses back, sucking and biting and shoving his heat into Spike as far as it will go.

He has no memory of when they change positions. All he knows is there is cool air teasing his balls, and Spike is whimpering as his back is scraped raw, fingers clawing at his shoulders, his shirt, his neck. There’s blood in the air, but Xander can’t smell anything but their own rut. He fucks Spike with abandon, shoving his cock deeper and deeper, wanting more, always fucking more—and then he stops.

Spike wails, sightless eyes opened wide, shining in reflected light. “Nuh!” he cries, unable to make it the full ‘no’ Xander knows he means. “Xan!”

Xander waits until Spike stops panting, until his head drops, and the now-familiar uncertainty reappears. Spike is watching Xander warily. The words are tumbling in his brain, possession and confusion and cliches so overdone he cringes at the thought of them, but needs to finally say them. He can’t. All he can do is stare, and want, and pray with a desperation he’s never had before that Spike will just know, the way he always does. The way he always did until three days ago, standing in front of a house that held everything of William and not one iota of the man he is now.

When Spike leans forward to kiss him again, it’s a benediction. Hands full of rough brick and silk-smooth skin suddenly grasp a key, that elusive key, again, glowing with a light Xander doesn’t need to look at to see. There’s no sex in their kiss, despite Xander still balls-deep in Spike’s body. There’s no resignation, no masks, no hiding.

“Boyfriend?” Spike asks, lips pulled bare millimeters away. “Husband’s more appropriate, I guess.” He licks his lips and Xander’s, settling back in for a kiss that heats them both in a way sex never has, and never will. “But lover, now. Lover’s got a better ring. Think you can use that from now on?”

Xander dimly remembers passing the exec as they find a cab. He remembers grinning at the man and dumping a few hundreds on his bleeding, sweaty face, and saying thank you. He knows he heard Spike’s laugh, reveling in both the mockery and the joy. What he really remembers, though, is tumbling into a cab with Spike in his arms, certain now that he’d never leave. The final piece clicks into place, the last clue revealed, and Xander knows that he isn’t holding a key anymore. He’s holding Spike.

“Lover,” Xander tells him, over and over. “My lover, my love, mine, my lover.” The words are jumbled, almost frantic, but Xander knows that each one is savored, fine wine on a sophisticated palate. He won’t—can’t—stop saying them. Doesn’t want to.

The cabby grins as they clamber out of the cab, wrapped around each other so tightly that their feet have no where to go. “Ah, young love,” he says, party mocking, but his grin is thoroughly appreciative.

“Nah,” Spike says, leaning in for a kiss that makes Xander whimper and pant with need. “Old love. Best kind, that.”

Part Eleven

Xander’s shoulders are aching by the time he makes it to the door. A suitcase is supposed to hold papers, legacy to a generation of top hats and three-button suits and early machine guns stuck out of the window of ancient, beetle looking cars. Okay, so briefcases aren’t actually that connected with gangster movies, but that’s what’s stuck in Xander’s head as he lugs his briefcase. The one that’s filled with his laptop, his gym clothes, enough papers to stuff a horse, and that’s not including all the other junk that manages to accumulate itself with in thin leather borders.

He’s spent the weekend working in the shed in the back, carefully crafting a cradle for the newest addition to the Scooby family. He enjoys the work, pouring himself into the fine grain of the wood so this little one will know who he is, no matter how often he does or does not visit. It’s tangible proof of his love, and Buffy adores it even though the pictures she’s seen are of half-built, unstained monstrosities, and she’s sure her daughter—no sonogram needed to tell the Slayer her child will be a girl—will love it too. Xander just smiles when she gushes about calling the baby Joyce, and ignores that he’s not twenty three, able to work all day and all night doing whatever he feels like it.

His shoulders really hurt. He’s pretty sure other things hurt, as well, but lugging his work-things into the house only reminds him how much his shoulders hurt. He’s tired and feels old and all he really wants is to come home to his bed. Whether it’s filled or not is irrelevant at this point. He wants to rest.

He never makes it upstairs.

The music is something Xander can’t identify. Eighties for certain, suffused with the irreverent bounciness that even the raunchiest of songs couldn’t shake free from. Pop, and silly, and loud, the music winds its way through the house until the creaks are muffled, the sunshine peeking through here and there a little brighter. Hell, even the walls look glowy to Xander’s distracted eyes.

Distracted by Spike. Because Spike is dancing. Spike dancing is always something to watch, the way those arms and legs and sleek, smooth angles move and twist to the beat. The way his eyes sparkle the brightest blue of the summer sky, and a smile that sings of boyish adventure curls his lips. Spike dancing usually leads to Xander dancing, or at least wanting to, adrenaline already pumping through his body as he watches Spike shake and shimmy and bounce his way through the living room.

There’s a rag in one of his hands and a can of pledge in the other.

He’s also stark naked.

“Marconi plays the maba, listen to the radio... ”

Xander’s laughter starts out as giggles, unable to tear his eyes from the prancing spectacle of naked vampire cleaning. It climbs up from his belly, pulling all the pain and frustration of the day out as he chuckles and guffaws, leaning against the wall as Spike doesn’t stop. Spike can hear him laughing, of course. There aren’t any headphones to give him the excuse. But he continues to dance and clean and eventually even sing along with the music.

The living room is spotless and Xander is a tittering heap on the floor by the time Spike comes over and slides between Xander’s chest and Xander’s raised knees. “Hello, love,” Spike purrs. “Ready for a pre-dinner snack?”

His body feels lighter, strangely, occasionally tremors from left over laughter shaking his body. His face is hot, the skin tight from drying tears, but his arms go around Spike’s waist easily, the pain in his shoulders forgotten. “A pre-dinner snack? What are you gonna feed me, hm?”

Spike’s smile is sharp enough to cut steel, though his eyes remain lost in the sugar-pop that continues blaring around them. “Not feeding you nothing, you fat bastard. Feeding me.”

Xander groans appreciatively as clever fingers open his pants, a cool body settling between his pushed-apart legs. The blow job is hard and fast, all about Spike’s driving need to taste Xander’s release.

Or at least, that’s what Spike would say, if Xander asked. Good thing Spike’s sucking words as well as come out of Xander’s body, so he can’t.

Part Twelve

There’s a soft hush in the background, the shushing blankness of a white-noise machine, fuzzing the edges of the room into a soft, hazy glow. Xander leans into the sound, back cushioned by a sofa worth less than he paid for it, the plush material too soft against his back but so familiar that he doesn’t bother even mentally complaining. They’ve had this sofa for years and there’s no getting rid of it, not now.

Across from him, Dave is busily raising an eyebrow. “He does dishes?”

Xander doesn’t bother rolling his eyes, or forcing that ‘ha-ha, you’re so funny’ smile, the one that seems to get him everything he wants if people think it’s coming. He just smiles, letting soft material catch his head, muss the hair that’s a little too long, a little too grey at the temples and starting to gnarl into impossibly tight curls. He’s never had curly hair before and he doesn’t like it now, too coarse to be worth the effort.

“He likes it. I'm not really the guy to say no, you know?”

Spike does like it, although what Xander doesn’t mention is that initially, it was a form of punishment. Dave may be a long-standing friend, a golfing buddy back when Xander thought he’d get more business done if he just sucked it up and played a few rounds, growing into something as deep and meaningful as his friendship with Willow, white as a winter’s snow-storm and glowingly happy with her latest grandchild shows promise of following in her granddam’s footsteps—but he doesn’t need to know about that. He guesses, Xander’s sure, with bright eyes that catch nuances Xander’s long-ago assimilated, but he never says anything and Xander never needs to.

“Now if only my wife would like washing dishes,” Dave jokes. There’s a question lurking around the edges of the banter, wary and at odds with the gentle tone. Dave doesn’t ask it, though; there’s a reason he’s probably Xander’s closest friend outside of the Scoobies. He’s learned how to make silence work for him.

Smiling, Xander stretches an arm across the back. “He likes giving me my space,” he says, then lets his gaze turn wicked, “and he doesn’t like being next to me right after mexican.”

Dave laughs, but it’s eclipsed by a blister of words Xander knows by heart, too distant to let Dave share in their meaning, although the tone’s damned clear enough. The constant hush ends, resolving itself into the steady stream of water from a faucet just seconds before it ends, Spike himself appearing moments after. He’s dressed casually, far more so than anyone outside their closest is used to seeing: ratty jeans with no socks, the frayed ends trailing behind him like a lady’s train, a soft black sweater that ends just beneath a pointed chin, bringing out the startling, incandescent blue of his eyes.

Spike kneels down at Xander’s feet first, fussing with something Dave can’t see. It’s an effort not to reach out, not to touch hair that curls in ways Xander’s never will again, soft and silken against greedy fingers, which is why Spike does it. There’s nothing down there to distract him, no job he has to see to, just the quiet tease of a man who knows his lover well.

Dave shakes his head as Spike rises up, twining himself around Xander the same way Joyce—their Russian—twines himself around Dave whenever he happens by. Joyce is upstairs now, scared away by the scent of cigars and chatter she knows better than to interrupt. She’ll come back later, carefully nosing against Xander’s leg, then Spike’s, verifying each is smoke-free and untouched before welcoming them back into her domain. “You two aren’t like anyone else I know.”

“Be boring, if we were. Spice of life, and all.” Spike’s good at this, much better than Xander, and takes over as seamlessly as he takes over everything else. Xander transfers the weight of his head from the sofa to Spike’s strong, rounded shoulder and doesn’t pay much attention. Wine affects him more strongly, lately, and he just wants to float against the sound of two friends conversing, only occasionally requiring his input.

Later, when Dave has departed back to his wife, Xander doesn’t move and Spike does nothing but tighten his arms, letting Xander stay. “He noticed, I think. People are starting to.”

“Tell ’em you bought me surgery. It’s what all rich old men do for their wives, inn't?”

The answer’s pert, but Spike’s hand is busily stroking Xander’s sweater, sweeping across the lines of his collarbone to find Xander’s heart and staying there, rubbing against cashmere like it’s the fabric that has his attention. Xander settles. Some conversations need the right time and place, and they fight enough that he can wait for one of those.

Fighting always makes him hot, makes him young enough to push Spike down by the silver choker he never takes off, makes him want to hurt the way he knows Spike wants, the way he wants. Makes him brave.

He’s not now, surrounded by the trappings of a wealthy, comfortable life and a lover who still asserts no wants unless forced to. One who is still as young as he has been for a century or more, while Xander creaks into middle age, regrets like poppies blooming behind him, waving in bright colors from the corner of his eye and never as bad as he thinks upon confrontation; Spike is a talented gardener.

Spike kisses his cheek, soft lips against stubble he’s never complained about. “C’mon. There’s laundry to be put away.”

Xander is drawn to his feet, drawn up stairs to where two baskets wait, messily heaped with clothes. There are a riot of colors and fabrics, melding under their hands as they methodically remove and shake each item, folding them neatly into piles without asking which belongs to whom or what place they should be put. They know. Xander knows, no matter that it’s Spike who arranged the system, Spike who maintains the home that Xander’s bought and paid for and doesn’t care a damn about.

“You never used to be this good at organizing,” Xander says as they settle into bed, cross that it’s so quiet. Sycamores have been replaced with willows, their heavy-hanging branches throwing shadows that dance and sway through the open window. “I mean, back when you were trying to kill us.”

Spike smiles and says nothing. There’s no way to answer that, and Xander knows he’s being humored, knows he’s being crotchety for no reason at all, and doesn’t mind. Because when Spike leans in to kiss him there’s no hint of subservience, no butler-like care, just wine sweet and sticky against lips and tongue that are his and his alone, because they choose to be.

He can be grumpy more in the morning.

The End

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