Sunday Funnies
by The Mad Poetess
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven

Part One

Spike was dreaming: he was lying in the satin-sheeted bed of some 
hunt-set country squire whose estate they had "liberated" the night 
before, sandwiched snugly between Angelus and Drusilla. Warm, 
practically roasting under two goosedown duvets, as a fire hissed and 
popped on the grey marble hearth at the end of the room. Broad back 
in front of him, and dark brown hair spread over it, escaping from 
its velvet tie. Soft body pressed up against his own back, and 
Drusilla's wicked little teeth nipping sharply at his earlobe.

"William," she hissed into his ear, sweet as dark Tuscany wine, but 
she never called him William, not if she could help it. Nor Will, nor 
anything else that acknowledged his life before it became her 
property and that of the great, softly snoring Irish lump whose back 
his head was pillowed against. {Doesn't need to breathe, why does he 
bloody need to snore?} No, from Dru it was all "sweet boy," "precious 
poison," "little dark one." It wasn't until he became Spike that she 
was willing to call him by a real name, and then only because it held 
nothing of what he had been, only what he had become. He wasn't Spike 
yet, now, but still he was, knew it to be his name as the other one 
was whispered in his ear.

"William, he's leaving us," she breathed, somewhere between a whine 
and a caress, her chilly hand running down his bare shoulder. No, 
what? No. He placed his own hand on that wide, cool back before him, 
solid as marble. There. Under his touch. Not gone. But their sweet 
mad princess saw things in her head, things that somehow came about, 
and as he stared, willing everything to remain as it was, it all fell 
apart. Angelus crumbled to nothing under his hand. The grave-dust 
blew across the covers, though there was no air moving, not a 
breath, and it disappeared into the darkness that encroached from 
every shadowed corner of the room. In the distance, familiar 
bootheels rang on the stone floors, moving away, fading, dying.

Nothing under his hands, and the bed was cold on the empty side. 
Hungry lips brushed the back of his neck. Thin arms, frail and steely 
at once, drew him round to look at her. "Just us, now, blue-eyed boy. 
Orphans. You'll have to be my Daddy now." Soft, deceptively 
helpless. "Will you take care of me?" Her hair was all mussed, curls 
tangled like cobwebs in her face. Little girl. His own little girl, 
for all she was older, darker, more lost. Angelus' little girl, with 
his same dark hair and eyes, both of them always pulling at you, 
sucking more out of you than you had left to give.

"Always, precious, always..." he answered, his hands in the sweet 
snarls of her hair, one cold leg wrapped around hers, trying to keep 
warm. The fire in the grate was dying. She shook her head, tossed it 
wildly, catching her hair on his fingers.

"No. Don't say always, no!" and she was sobbing, though no tear, 
either of salt or blood, marred her white face in the flickering half-
light. She scratched at his chest with her sharp little nails, 
scoring him with lines of fire that faded all too quickly. "Nothing's 
ever for always, not for me, not for you. All the stars burn out when 
the sun comes up." She was calm again, quiet and cold and 
small. "There's only darkness for us, and dirt, and what lives in it. 
It's cold in here, Spike." But he wasn't Spike, not yet, was he?

He ran his hands down her slender body, tried to wrap himself around 
her. So thin always, and always cold. She was unmoving in his arms, 
and shrinking, somehow. Smaller, thinner, until he could have broken 
her bird-bones with a whisper, and she wouldn't look at him. At the 
last, as she faded to a sliver of frozen air, she turned 
away. "Everyone leaves, Will." But she never called him Will, and his 
arms were empty. 

His lovers were gone, but somehow there was warmth. He almost rose to 
prod the dying fire, but the unexpected heat was close at hand. Dark 
hair on the pillow beside him, dark eyes wide with questions. Always 
dark hair, dark eyes, for him. For Angelus, it had been golden hair, 
the lost glow of the sun. Darla, Penn, the unnamed, unborn Slayer. 
An exception or two had been made... dark Dru in a strange passion 
for a mirror of himself, charmed by the twisted sweetness that lived 
in her muddled head, by how easy she had been to shatter, and how 
beautifully the fragments had combined. And William... who'd ever 
know what they had chosen him for? Perhaps for the way Spike's hair 
would shine when he ripped the darkness from it, burning away every 
trace of anything that had ever resembled the absent presence of 
Angelus. Maybe Dru had seen it all, and whispered it to their sire.

The boy who lay next to him was blood-warm. Warmer than Spike had 
ever managed to make the two lost, cold bodies that had slipped away 
from him, no matter the helpless desperation of his love for them, 
the gritty heat of his 
resentment. These brown eyes held nothing in them of madness and 
death, only the guilts and sorrows of a human life. The face that 
framed them had seen the sun, recently enough that the blood that 
moved beneath its planes, around the cords of the bared throat, 
pulsed as if it still carried that brightness through the veins. Not 
for us, never for us, Dru's voice echoed as he reached to touch the 
hollow of one temple, where shadows pooled. It burned his fingers 
when he touched that skin, and when the boy smiled, it hurt Spike's 
eyes.

Not for you, whispered the Angelus who had abandoned them, the Angel 
who had reappeared in that familiar body. Never for you, laughed 
Darla, who had never been kind, and Drusilla crooned a wordless 
counterpoint. The voices of the lost and gone filled the room. Not 
for me, the phantom of his dark-haired life repeated quietly, and 
Spike had got a bellyful of it. 

"Fuck off, you," he snarled to the empty room, but it wasn't loud 
enough to drown them out, and as he took the sun-browned hand that 
reached for him, the fire in the grate went out, and he was alone.

*****

And he woke, alone in a cool bed that smelled of artificial spring, 
and peanut butter.

{What could we possibly add to that little vignette to decrease the 
subtlety?) he grumbled to himself as he blinked his way back to 
consciousness. {Perhaps if we actually invited old Sigmund in for a 
guest appearance, doing a play-by-play and sucking on a bloody great 
cigar?}

Dim light filtered into Spike's opening eyes. Ah, the Harris 
basement, scene of torture, torment, teenage angst, galloping mildew, 
too much chocolate, and the best shag he'd had in recent memory. 
("Recent" being a relative term for somebody with access to over a 
century's worth of comparison...) From a wise-arsed, immature, 
completely inexperienced human male who was now conspicuously absent 
from the scene of the crime. Who had a habit of making Spike want to 
laugh even when he was annoying the unliving shit out of the vampire, 
even when he.wasn't here.

{And we have a winner, ladies and gentlemen, in the `who leaves
the 
bed while the other bloke's sleeping, and buggers off into the 
sunset' race. Or rather, into the sunrise. Hell, what time is it 
anyway?} He glanced down at his stolen black digital watch, which had 
far too many buttons for his liking. It happened to be the only thing 
he was wearing, and he didn't want to dwell on what sort of
fashion 
statement that made. Suburban vampire chic. Seven thirty in the 
morning. He should be just getting to sleep after a night of fun and 
pillage on the Hellmouth, not yawning his way into half-awakeness in 
somebody else's bed. Or even his own bed, assuming he had one. 

He sat up against the sofa-back slowly, the joints in his spine 
popping as he straightened. {Old vampires never die, they just take 
to shagging humans and get rheumatoid arthritis from broken-down sofa 
beds.} Never mind that at less than two centuries, he was hardly an 
old vampire. Moments like this, when the full weight of his own 
idiocy pressed down on his bones, he felt every one of those years as 
if it were an eternity of listening to Angel gas on about goodness 
and redemption. {Human, Spike. You fucked a human, and not a pretty 
little necromancer or a well-hung sociopath, but an innocent. Without 
even killing him afterwards, or possibly before, like any self-
respecting vampire would.} He didn't count Angel in that
category, of 
course. {And you've no effin' intention of killing him either,
have 
you? 'Cos the world's a better place with him in it. Wanker. Idiot. 
Moron. Pillock.} 

He banged his fist up and back into the upholstery. Not bad. 
Something to hit, even if it didn't make the requisite 
oof-ing sounds to really get his pistons going. Still punching the 
sofa absently, he thought back and corrected himself. {Well, 
technically you didn't fuck a human, you allowed yourself to be 
fucked *by* a human, which is such an improvement. Allowed the hell 
out of it.invited it, practically begged for it, got what you
asked 
for, and had the time of your death.}

Right, so... wanted him, had him, or rather, was had by him, which 
had always been a matter of mood with Spike anyway. Itch scratched? 
Pondering... {What the hell sort of pondering does it take, ninny? 
You had a good shag, blew off some steam, and....would jump him this 
minute if he set foot in the room. Except that might scare the boy, 
and for some reason you give a damn. Bugger. In the philosophical 
sense.} 

Spike groaned. Shit like this only happened to him. Did your average 
vamp-on-the-street develop a lech for one of the Slayer's best 
friends? Hell, no. Unless it involved draining and/or turning 
him/her/it. Did Dru take a lover besides him and then care what the 
bloke thought in the morning? Not if the past was anything to go by. 
You shagged another vampire, or various and sundry physically 
compatible creatures of the night, and come sundown, you rolled out 
of bed, had a smoke, tipped your metaphorical hat and sodded off. If 
the sex hadn't been all that good, or you'd been planning on doing it 
anyway, maybe you offed the bugger for afters.

The only reason that pea-brained party-girl Harmony didn't understand 
the concept was, aside from her inherent stupidity, that she was 
essentially about four months old when he'd taken up with her. {Hmph. 
Who's robbing the cradle now, eh? I'm gaining on you, Angel. An 
infant vamp and a nineteen-year-old human. Not quite statutory, 
*cough* Slayer *cough*, but getting there.} Harmony might just learn, 
if she didn't trip on her own vanity and land on a well-placed 
stake. Self-help books: The Top Ten Stupid Things Vampires Do To 
Really Bugger Themselves Up.

Maybe if you were lucky, or unlucky, as the case might be, you'd run 
into somebody you wanted to spend more than a night with...start 
running together, hunting together... it was all so much more casual 
than these agonizingly awkward human relationship...thingies. Unless 
of course you were lucky enough to be turned by a psychotically 
attractive git from the Order of Aurelius who got off on that Anne 
Rice family togetherness thing, which was rare enough in the eighteen 
hundreds, let alone today. Little families like theirs, mated pairs 
like him and Dru (or like he'd pretended they were) didn't come along 
very often. 

{I'm.brooding! I don't brood--I kill. I beat things up. I make 
brilliantly sarcastic observations, and I shag whatever I damn well 
feel like shagging. I occasionally get completely shitfaced and sing 
show tunes at the top of my lungs, but I Don't. Bleedin'. Brood! 
Grrrr...} The only two people he'd ever brooded over in his whole 
relatively short unlife were... Fuck. And fuck, and also for good 
measure, fuck. {Not going there, not thinking that, not not not... 
not even entering the same postal code as that thought.} 

Because shit like this didn't only happen to Spike. It had happened 
to Angel...when the bloody great poofter had fallen in love with the 
Slayer. {What part of 'don't think that thought' didn't you 
understand, brain?}

Because Spike, William the bleedin' Bloody, was *not* falling in love 
with a human. A human who wasn't even here, whose basement Spike was 
trapped in until sunset, unless he wanted to make a run for it under 
his leather duster, which was feeling more and more like Russian 
roulette every time he tried it. A dark-haired, dark-eyed male human 
with a truly delicious arse, visually and literally, a self-
sacrificing wit, a blinding smile, no personal pride to speak of, and 
even less taste in clothing. 

And bed partners, apparently. Spike's itchy mind had quickly put last 
night's little comment about car-inspired Faithisms together with his 
memory of Xander and the Watcher canvassing Sunnydale's danker 
hellholes looking for "Dark hair. Yea tall, name of Faith, criminally 
insane." Bit of nasty history there, behind that self-deprecating "I 
don't know what I'm doing" -- something the second Slayer had done to 
his Xander. They might just have to have words, if they met up. Wait--
"his" Xander? {Shit...shit...shit...} Then there was Demon-Girl, 
who'd shagged Xander silly for months and then broken up with him 
because he didn't love her, or some such bollocks? And now ... Spike, 
at least for last night, which showed the lad had some discernment, 
after all, if not much instinct for self-preservation. And who knew 
how many in between? Oh, he'd been going with the Prom Queen, lovely 
Cordelia, hadn't he, back in the day? Now *there* was a match made in 
Bedlam.

{Yup. This is the life. Trapped in a basement trying to convince 
myself I haven't gone and fallen for the enemy. Pounding a hole in 
the back of a ratty old sofa while I sit here trying to figure out 
what sexual idiocies in his past prompted him to be suicidal enough 
to give *me* a go, and.pretending I don't miss him already.}
Sounds 
from the top of the indoor stairs froze his hand in mid-smack, as the 
door between the basement and the main floor of the Harris house 
began creaking open. {And of course, lying about absolutely starkers 
except for a digital watch and my infallible charm, while his parents 
pop down from the living room to offer me a cuppa and a nice 
chocolate biscuit. Cookie. Whatever. Shit.}

He scuttled for, and under, the covers as quickly and silently as 
possible as the door shut again and the stairs began to squeak. He 
curled up, head under the pillow, trying to look as much like a 
sleeping Xander Harris as possible. {I.am a nineteen year old boy-
child with no fashion sense. I've just buggered the brains out of an 
annoying but irresistible vampire named Spike, and I'd like some 
bloody sleep, so for God's sake, don't try to *talk* to me!} 

He still wasn't in any hurry to have *that* conversation with the 
boy's mum. He could picture it:
"Er, hello, Mrs. Harris. Xander's just.stepped out to see a
man about 
a dog. Who'm I? Well, I used to go by William, but most folks call me 
Spike, these days. I just stopped in to borrow the washing 
machine, 'cos I love the way it makes m'clothes smell all springtime 
fresh, and keeps the colors bright.er, yeah, they're in the
machine 
right now. I really only brought the one set with me, and." The
slow 
steps down the stairs were a little too heavy for a woman, though.

Or Xander's dad could just beat the crap out of Spike. That was 
always an option. Not as if the shit-for-brains arsewipe could come 
to any other conclusion except the coincidentally accurate one if he 
found a naked man in his son's bed, smelling of peanut butter and 
sex. {Not as if there's anywhere I could run to. Wonder if
anybody's 
picked up on the fact that I don't like Harris the elder very
much. 
too damned familiar. Treats his family like shit, at the very least 
rips 'em to bits with his mouth, and when he's in a serious
drunk. 
If I *ever* even suspect he's laid a hand on Xander. I'll do
what? 
First of all, insert the obligatory 'why the fuck do I care?' here, 
and second, what'll I do? Throw m'self at his fist repeatedly
until 
he repents the error of his ways or I go unconscious?} He could 
picture that, too. It was less amusing than the first sequence, but 
just as unpleasant.

The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, and scuffed across 
towards the bed. {I'm asleep, I'm asleep, I'm asleep,
I'm a bloody 
invisible vampire.} A quiet *ahem* in a familiar voice led him to 
tentatively peek out through a fold in the blanket. at Xander
Harris, 
wearing what had to be the oldest gray bathrobe in fashion history, 
holding a folded-up newspaper under one arm and a plate of pastry-
type things in both hands.

********************************

Part Two

Spike shook his head at his own schoolboy panic, sitting up and 
shrugging the covers down to his waist while trying to look as un-
sheepish as possible. He had an image to protect, after all.
Wouldn't 
do him any good to be seen cowering under the blankets apparently in 
order to avoid {Capitalize as appropriate.} the Morning After 
Conversation. Xander was just standing there, staring at him, 
indecipherable expression on his infuriatingly welcome sight of a 
face. {What--I still have peanut butter on my face? I thought between 
us we'd pretty much managed to lick the platter clean on that
score.}

"Let me guess." Spike ventured. "You're torn between
pretending I'm 
not here, kicking my arse out of bed and into the sunlight, or 
initiating the inevitable *painfully* awkward conversation about what 
you did or didn't do last night." {See, Harris. You're
not the only 
one who's mastered the trick of kickin' himself to save the
other 
fellow the bother.}

His host blinked those exasperating dark eyes, slowly. "Okay, I
was 
gonna go for `Blueberry danish, bearclaw, or chocolate donut with 
sprinkles?' but if you want to dive straight into the mocking
and 
humiliation, I guess that's an option too."

Spike snorted. "Let's see--the love of my undeath left me, 
repeatedly, `cos I'm apparently too *nice a guy* for her.
I've got a 
chip in my head that's effectively turned me into a cottontailed 
bunny, *which* I bloody asked for, since the bastards nabbed me while 
I stood in the middle of a clearing and tossed off about how the Big 
Fuckin' Bad was back and everybody'd better watch out. 
Somewhere in 
there I shacked up with the only vampire in the world whose skull you 
can use as a wind instrument, and even *she* wouldn't have me now 
because I'm too soddin' pathetic. Not that I ever want to see
`er 
again, mind you. So I'd say I've pretty much reached a humiliation 
plateau. Not much more you could heap on me at this point, unless it 
involves wearin' a ballerina costume. Sprinkles."

"Umm, what?" Xander asked, confusion radiating from his scrunched-up 
face.

"Chocolate with sprinkles, please." Politeness will get you 
everywhere. Well, that and positively edible lips, which Spike was 
well aware he possessed.

The youth looked down at the pile of pastries. "Oh. Right. By the 
way, you left off 'Give the Buffmeister a call and tell her you took 
advantage of me in my weakened condition, and you need to be staked 
immediately' from *your* menu." He slowly approached the bed and held 
out what was possibly the gooiest chocolate donut Spike had ever 
encountered, topped off with a fiesta of chocolate sprinkles. 

{Nothing like the hair of the dog that bit you.} Spike mused, 
accepting it gingerly. Trying to figure out the safest place to bite 
into it without dripping chocolate all over the clean bedclothes.

"No, you told me you wouldn't, and I believe you. Shouldn't I? 
Anyway, what weakened condition? You weren't drunk, though if you 
want to pretend you were, s'alright by me."

Xander sat down on the edge of the red reclining chair that had been 
Spike's oh-so-comfortable bed up until last night, plate of donutty 
goodness on his knees. "How do you know I wasn't? I could've been 
drunk. Most people have problems figuring out that I'm *not* drunk." 
he asked, a bit defensively.

"I'd have smelled it on you. You just smelled like chocolate, er... 
coconut, and.well, you, and maybe the tiniest dash of garlic."
Spike 
was still eyeing the donut carefully.

"To which you're allergic," Xander pointed out helpfully.

Spike smiled. "Yeah, well," gesturing vaguely with his donut-filled 
hand, "I like to live dangerously. What can I say." Chocolate 
sprinkles flew everywhere. So much for protecting the bedsheets. 
Xander apparently noticed his reluctance engage the donut in battle, 
as it were.

"Oh, go ahead. If I actually gave a damn, you think I'd be sleeping 
in the Bed of Doom in the first place?" The teen picked up another 
chocolate donut and bit in, sure enough dripping icing and sprinkles 
all over the plate beneath. "Most recent carbon datings on that couch 
suggest that I was probably conceived in it. And that did *not* just 
come out of my mouth." Or at least that was what it sounded like he'd 
said, though a mouthful of pastry.

Wincing inwardly at the thought of Harris Senior and the pixilated 
hausfrau having ever touched the bed he was lying in {and the 
demonette, and whoever else he's had over for slumber parties of the 
more-or-less innocent variety.}, Spike shrugged and attacked the 
sticky donut. Frosting on his fingers, and yes, dripping onto the 
pillow. Bloody good chocolate, though.

"Well," he finally said when he could get his jaws to work properly 
again, "*someone* was pretty insistent about changing the sheets last 
night, and it wasn't me."

Xander licked chocolate icing off his upper lip. Which didn't do much 
for Spike's powers of concentration on the alleged awkwardness at 
hand. "And the comfort rating plunges sharply. Stay tuned for further 
developments. Right. Sheets. That was for *your* benefit," the boy 
added, and then paused. "Jammy little oik."

"I'm so proud. Next we'll teach you why real football isn't played 
with a ball that has pointy ends. Y'know, if you're going to try 
claiming amnesia, you probably shouldn't be quoting me on anything I 
may or may not've said last night." Spike studied his chocolate-
coated fingers intently. Began to lick them clean, one by one. In 
between fingers: "So.somewhere around the ungodly hour of seven
or 
so, you got peckish and decided to go out for donuts and the morning 
paper?"

Xander stood up, looking at Spike oddly, after having polished off 
the last of his own donut. "Yes. Yes I did. It's a bright sunny 
Sunnydale Sunday morning, and while I was ambling my way down the 
road to Mister Donut, I passed Officer Bob on his bicycle. He 
said, 'Good Morning, Xander!' and I said 'Good Morning, Officer Bob,' 
and he said 'That's a lovely bathrobe you're wearing, Xander,' and I 
said, 'Thank you, Officer Bob. My grandma gave it to me for Christmas 
when I was sixteen.' "

Spike launched a chocolate-sprinkled pillow at his head, which he 
ducked easily. "Yeh, right, I take your point. So you got peckish 
and decided to sneak upstairs and pinch some calorie-laden goodness 
from your folks, who apparently get up far earlier in the morning 
than I gave 'em credit for. Come to it, so do you. Bunch of giant 
larks, the lot of you." He should be sleeping. In a crypt somewhere, 
probably, but he should definitely be sleeping.

The Scooby-child walked over to the "kitchen" and put down the plate 
with its remaining bounty on the little card table. "Are you kidding? 
Nobody in this house is awake before noon on a Sunday. My dad, in his 
own warped little world, thinks he can make up for being out all 
night terrorizing the countryside and worrying the sheep, by bringing 
home tasty baked goods. I'd say these entered the premises at about 
three a.m." He unfolded the newspaper that had somehow managed to 
stay put under his arm all this time, and pulled off the first 
section. Leaning back against the fridge, he seemed to be perusing 
the morning headlines. His voice emerged from behind a wall of 
newsprint: "Like you need to worry about calories, anyway. What is it 
with you and people food? It's not like you need it to survive."

Spike was insulted, just a bit, and felt no need to hide it in his 
reply. "Oi! I'm people, too. I'm just. dead people. No, I don't
need 
human food to survive. Don't need to shag, either. Doesn't mean I 
don't like it."

Silence from the fortress of newspaper. Finally: "Was that a 
compliment?"

"No," Spike answered sulkily. {Well, yeah, but.}

"Oh." A rather small 'oh' that was trying *so* hard to be 
nonchalant. Spike sighed. The things he had to do around here.

"A compliment would've been 'That was nice, thank you, I enjoyed 
it,' " he explained in as bored a tone as he could manage.

"Oh." Pause. "Was *that* a compliment?" Maybe a little amusedly.

{No, that was what we in the business like to call 
an 'understatement.' Not that I'm going to tell you that, git.} 

"Maybe." He glanced around. Where was his duster? Surely he had a 
pack of fags hidden in one of the pockets. That was the one place he 
hadn't checked last night.mainly because he couldn't figure out
where 
it had gotten to. Then again, there was something a bit too cliched 
about smoking during this conversation, anyway. 

The newspaper Berlin Wall lowered enough to reveal Xander's eyes and 
nose. Yeah, definite amusement, coupled with uncertainty and a tiny 
bit of duh-face working its way in there.

"Was that the painfully awkward conversation?" the boy asked. 

{Ha! You wish!} "No, that was us doing the Lambada *around* the 
painfully awkward conversation," Spike supplied, giving up on the 
visual search for his coat. He had a brief mental flash of he and 
Xander doing the back-breakingly ridiculous grope-and-slither dance, 
and had to grin.

"Oh sure, pick a dance that was popular for about five minutes the 
year I turned nine." Xander sneered.

"You'd prefer the mental image supplied by the Macarena? Maybe the 
Boot-Scoot Boogie?" Spike shot back. He studied the visible parts of 
Xander's face, and came to an amazing conclusion. {No, not that he's 
breathtaking. I came to that conclusion a while ago. Reinforced a bit 
in recent moments, that's all.} "Hang about--you tried to learn it, 
didn't you? The Lambada, I mean." He couldn't keep the snicker out of 
his voice. Oh, this was *too* good.

Those dark eyes crinkled up. Somebody was smiling, behind the Sunday 
paper. "Oh, yeah. Me and Willow were quite the little dirty dancers. 
Impressed the heck out of Ira and Sheila. Well, confused the heck out 
of 'em, anyway."

A nine-year-old Xander and Willow.... He couldn't even conjure up an 
image for that one. "Don't suppose there's a snapshot of that lying 
around anywhere?" he chuckled.

"What, for blackmail purposes? All the blood and Count Chocula you 
can eat and a no-stake-age guarantee? Nuh-uh. All incriminating 
evidence was eaten or flushed. Or both. Peter Graves has nothing on 
me." Xander riposted, finally lowering the newspaper.

Spike shook his head. "Just wondered what you looked like as a kid. 
If I wanted to blackmail you, I s'pose I've got more recent dirt on 
you than a ten-year-old shot of you and Red doing the vertical rug-
shag."

The smile was gone, just like that. "Yeah, I guess you do. That'd be 
the painfully awkward conversation part, right?" 

Kick-me face. What, the kid thought Spike actually *was* going to 
blackmail him? Hadn't he been paying attention to the whole 'I don't 
want to be Slayer-munchies' byplay? Aside from which.well, why
did 
Spike care whether the boy thought he'd do something like that? But 
he did care, and it made him feel twitchy. This was getting stupid. 
Or maybe Spike was.

"Here, throw me a section, will you? No fair hoardin' the defensive 
shields." Spike motioned towards the newspaper. Xander was boggling 
at him. Long past duh-face, and well into what-the-hell-are-you-
talking-about.

"Comics, entertainment, local news, don't care. Anything but the 
sports page or home décor." Blink. Blink. {Oh, for cryin' out 
loud...} He started to make 'Fine, I'll get it myself' movements, and 
as the blanket began to slip off his hips, Xander quickly threw him 
the multi-colored Sunday comics.

"Ta." He unfolded the pages and spread them across his lap. Silence. 
He looked up. The younger man was studying him in turbo-confusion 
mode. He sighed. Spike to the rescue. {Spend half your time winding 
him up, and the minute he gets really twisted in knots, just like you 
love to watch, you have to go and kiss it better, don't you, 
moron? 'Cos it's *different*, this time, innit. Well, then, let's 
even the footing a bit, then.} "Look, I'm not very good at all this 
Morning After bollocks. Not usually necessary."

Well, that got rid of the confused-face, anyhow. Replaced 
by...another new one. Something between curiosity and self-disgust. 
{Bugger it all. What are we going to do with this boy? 'Ello? Snarky 
voices? Any help here?}

"What, you're pretty much a 'shag-'em-and-leave-'em' kinda guy?" 

The bitterness in that voice, with its mimicry of his accent actually 
coming closer than last night's much more pleasurable mockery, was 
cutting through loud and clear. Unless Spike had lost his usual touch 
for sussing out people's dirty little inner devils, it didn't have a 
hell of a lot to do with Spike-and-Xander's-Wild-n'-Wacky-Peanut-
Butter-Adventure. {Somebody hurt him, hard. Maybe broke 'im. Maybe 
more than once.} And when Spike figured out who it was, they were 
gonna pay. {Fuck. Fuck. Soddin' hell, buggering fuck a blind mongoose 
in a dark alley in Dorchester. This is *not* happening.} Casual. Calm.

"S'mutual, ducks. Unless you're in what you'd call your long-term 
relationship, which takes on a whole new meaning when you're both 
dead, your basic demon's pretty much into one-night stands. Saves on 
flowers n' candy. No bumbling on about how you'll call 'em when you 
know bloody well you'll never lay eyes on 'em again." Spike 
pretended to be terribly interested in the reprinted Peanuts strip at 
the top of the page. One he'd read when it was new. More silence. 
{What, I have to do all the work? Well, I'm not payin' rent, might as 
well do something to earn my keep.} "Or you find yourself somebody to 
play about with for a while, but everybody knows the score. Nice and 
clean. Well, nice and clean and dirty, if it's any good," he finished 
off suggestively.

"Like Harmony?" Xander asked, with a rusty little penknife in his 
voice. Oh, this one could dig it in, when he put in the effort. Spike 
looked up at him, halfway across the room, still looking as if he'd 
just woken up, dark hair standing up in fluffed-up tangles. Why did 
he always underestimate this child's potential to act exactly like a 
wounded animal in a trap? Exactly like...well, like Spike, without 
the malice aforethought. What a sorry pair.

"Yeah, well. I had to pick up an eighteen year old Vampire American 
Princess raised on Beverly Hills 90210. Dozy bitch. " Said without 
rancor. Well, without much. She'd learn, or she'd be dust. She'd stop 
being a high-school bimbo and learn to be a vampire, or somebody 
would stop it for her. Idiot fledges were tuppence a bag everywhere, 
but especially on the Hellmouth, and they made great cannon fodder. 
Harmony made an *exceptionally* idiotic vamp, though the view wasn't 
bad. Not nearly as good as the one he had at the moment, however.

"I think you actually hurt her, if that' s possible. I ran across 
her burning a pile of your stuff. Books, CD's..." The human looked 
lost in thought, and maybe a little embarrassed, and still disgusted.

"Wondered what happened to 'em. If it makes y'feel all warm and gooey 
inside, she got 'er own back. Tried to stake me last Thanksgiving. 
Wouldn't feed me, wouldn't give me my gear back, and now I know why, 
just kept rabbiting on about girl-power an' self-actualization." He 
pronounced the last phrase in true radio-shrink mode, complete with 
supportive undertones. "Is it just me, or do you think somebody ought 
to bitch-slap Crankshaft into a well-earned grave, too?" he added, 
scanning the bottom of the first page of the funnies.

"What, you don't find other cranky old people endearing? " Xander 
sniped.

"Hiss and spit, pet. Me-ow. I don't feature me joining the Geritol 
set anytime soon. " He tossed the paper to the foot of the bed with 
an 'I-give-up' shrug. This was taking too bloody long, and making him 
think too bloody much, and taking its toll on his extremely creative 
internal vocabulary to the point where the only words that kept 
repeating in his head were 'bloody,' 'bugger' and 'fuck.' Not good, 
Spike. Not good at all.

********************************

Part Three

He gave the boy a hard stare. "You gonna let me make this easy for 
you, or what? You want to forget anything ever happened, fine. Great. 
It's forgotten. Not about to out you to your little friends, for 
obvious reasons. We'll just say the only reason I'm still here is I 
don't fancy damagin' my youthful good looks with harmful UV rays." 

{And I'm *not* a cranky old person. So there.} Snarky Voice swam up 
from whatever sewer it'd been sleeping in, and bashed him in the 
brain with a two-by-four. {No, *you're* a soddin' cottontailed bunny -
-who's shagged everything on two legs, and at least one with fins. 
Male, female, and questionable but tasty. Who can drape himself round 
a woman like a second skin and whisper pretty garbage in her ear all 
night, but hold a *man* like you still want him there in the morning? 
*Cuddle* afterwards?!! Only done that with one, never since then. You 
did it last night, though, didn't you? In the dark, where nobody 
could see. *I* could see, you sorry little bastard.} Spike shook off 
his internal torture artist with a mental glare, and concentrated on 
Xander. Something was going on there. The wheels were turning.

No answer to his spoken question. But the look on that face said 
he'd not only just knocked Xander down and kicked him, but spat on 
him as well. {Oh, nice. Wonderful. Puppies and kittens and fluffy 
bunnies, none of 'em with enough blood in 'em to make a decent meal, 
and now Xander Harris. Just stake me now.} 

"Xander..." Spike didn't know how to be apologetic. Not sincerely. 
Not to somebody who was mentally older than ten, which seemed to be 
about where Dru was stuck. Then again, he began to wonder if the boy 
was much older than that, emotionally, no matter how bright he might 
actually be.

Big-time anger now, red and black, and this time it really was aimed 
at Spike. "No, stay as long as you want. Please make use of the 
facilities. They're available to every stray vampire who decides to 
plant his ass in my chair and hang his outdated punk rock posters on 
my walls and eat my food and play with my head, and just generally 
treat me like shit. Be sure to turn the vacancy sign on when you 
leave." That said, Xander tossed the paper on the table and stalked 
off to the bathroom, leaving Spike to stare at the rumpled sheets and 
the Sunday funnies and wonder just what on the Hellmouth he was 
doing, for about the four-thousandth time in the last forty-eight 
hours. 

{And what did he mean, 'outdated' punk rock posters?}

Then, as the sound of the shower started up, he pushed the covers 
back, lost his mind (again), wrapped a sheet around his waist, and 
made his way to the bathroom door.

***

Knock, knock. Who's there? An idiot vampire who's gone and fallen in 
. {No! No chance in hell at *that* word.} .fallen for.
sod it. Nah, 
didn't exactly have a very manly ring to it. {I'm not. I'm not. It's 
fucking stupid, and completely insane, and I'm not, and... and even 
if I am, I'm not telling *him.* He's not having *that* to hold over 
my head. God, I've got to be the wettest demon this side of the 
Pacific Ocean. One good shag, or, right, fine, one *exceptionally* 
good shag, and a few months of quietly lusting after the boy and 
yeah, treating him like shit because I treat *everybody* like shit, 
so it made good cover, and if I treated him a titch *more* shittily 
than everybody else, well.and... and here I am being the male
version 
of Harmony Kendall and babbling like Willow on speed. Just put me 
in a dress and call me Susan.}

And he knew, didn't he, that it *hadn't* been anything he would've 
considered an exceptionally good shag, if it had happened with anyone 
else. Not bad, had worse. A fumbling virgin. Still, he supposed, 
technically a virgin. Except.rolling across the floor,
fighting over 
that all-important jar of peanut butter, the look on Xander's face 
when Spike kissed him that first time, the second time. Xander 
licking peanut butter off Spike's nose, and him thinking, yeah, 
alright, the lad's got a pair! And a very nice pair, very nice 
everything. Being so ready to explode almost at the sight of that 
rapidly changing face, let alone when those shyly exploring fingers 
had almost teased him into oblivion. 

Pulling the boy to his chest. Just holding him there, trying to let 
him know just by touching him that no, he hadn't done anything 
wrong. Listening to Xander's heart beat and realizing he wasn't 
hungry for it, not in the conventional vampire sense. Talking to him, 
listening to him talk, even when the words were putting off Spike's 
release from the hot ache that had been building inside him for 
months. Just because the sound of Xander's voice and the nonsense 
coming out of his mouth both actually meant something, words, 
thoughts, that amused the hell out of the vampire, or would have, if 
he hadn't been just this close to disintegrating. And the slow 
torture of wanting the body, and despite himself, wanting the man, 
and finally the unbelievable feeling that with Xander Harris wrapped 
around his body, inside and out, he'd found the most perfect place in 
the world to be. It had been like being the moron in the middle of a 
fireworks factory who lights up a fag and tosses the match over his 
shoulder. and it had been like.coming home. 

And of course, in trying to do the decent {cowardly} thing and let 
the fool boy pretend it never happened, he'd gone and buggered 
something up again. Maybe everything. {Saw it in his eyes, that 
Parker Abrams *vulnerability*, and knew it was for real, in this one, 
and said.something.to kick him back to the gravel where
whoever the 
last one was left him. Right. Well. Carve another cock-up notch on 
the great stone tablets in the Spike Hall of Fame. Right next to 'Oh, 
just play about with the Slayerettes' heads a bit, let the Slayer get 
her tight little arse kicked, and Tony Frankenrobbins will get this 
chip out of your head.' Well, let's just see how much more of an 
imbecile I can make of myself, shall we?}

Knock, knock. No answer. Knock, knock. Just the sound of running 
water.

"Xander?" No reply. He slowly pushed the door open. White shower 
curtain drawn shut, and the water running behind it. He almost 
tripped on the blasted sheet walking in, and would have dropped it 
where he stood, but the point of the exercise was *not* to make the 
boy more screwed up than he already was, and somehow he suspected 
that a stark naked vampire wouldn't help the atmosphere. {Shame, 
really, 'cos I make a pretty damn fine lookin' stark naked vampire.}

"Xander?" he asked again.

"Get out." The voice was low, both in timbre and origin-- it came 
from the floor of the shower. What, he was *sitting* under the shower?

"Look, Xander." he started. God knows what he was actually about
to 
say. He hadn't gotten that far yet.

"I said, get out. You can change the channels on the TV by hand--
it's a spiffy new technology called getting up off your ass. The 
blood's in the fridge, the garlic bread's on the microwave, if you 
feel like *living dangerously*, and your Count Chocula's in the 
cabinet behind the plunger. You can't be that bored, you sure as 
hell don't need to take a piss, so get the fuck out." Xander's voice 
was rough, darker than his usual half-cracking tenor.

{Yeah, *he's* in a good mood. Yay, me, as his lot would say. Whatever 
it was you said, Spike, you did a right good job.} Enough of this. 
There was tact, and patience, and there was finding out what was 
going on, and he'd never been all that good with happy mediums. {I'm 
trying. Don't I get points for trying?}

Spike drew the curtain aside. Xander sat in the far corner of the 
shower, knees drawn up to his chest, chin resting on arms resting on 
knees. The water poured down on him, plastering his dark hair to his 
skull, to his face, which was set in the most amazing combination of 
anger and hurt and some sort of loathing.making him look, despite
the 
well-developed muscles, very much like a twelve year old kid.

"Do you not comprehend 'Get out,' Dead-Boy the Second? Do I need 
to go ask Giles what the Fyarl is for it? " the youth asked 
incredulously. "Also, in America, the reason we close the bathroom 
door is to hide the naked people on the inside from the non-naked 
people on the outside." Spike shook his head, and sank down on his 
haunches next to the open curtain, to look Xander in the eye.

"Whatever I said to piss you off, I'm sorry," he said simply. "And 
whoever it was that chewed you up and spit you out, and chewed you up 
all over again, it wasn't me, Xander. Not even with my big vampire 
teeth." He waited, and when the silence got a bit too loud, he 
finally added, "Was it?"

Xander laughed, a short explosive sound that it must've hurt to make, 
if hearing it was any indication. "Don't flatter yourself." Lower, 
even: "Get out, Spike. You wanna protect your youthful good looks, 
feel free. There's lotion in the medicine chest. Take it and go 
moisturize yourself to death."

"Could be fun. Not 'til you tell me what the hell I said, though. I 
might want to use it on purpose, sometime, if it was *that* good." 
Spike tried for an evil grin, really, but it ended up a sort of 
pained half-smile.

"Fuck you." Said without any emotion at all, and *that* was scary, 
even for a hundred and twenty-something year old vampire. (When had 
he last really counted, instead of tossing off a number that sounded 
right?)

"Already did that, pet. Did you want another go?" Just a laugh. Just 
Spike being Spike. Safe and familiar, in its own whacked-out way, he 
hoped.

"Yes," the boy hissed, his voice suddenly as full of loathing as it 
had been empty of anything a second before--not for Spike, the 
vampire realized in a flash-- but for himself. 

Oh. Spike couldn't decide which bit of himself he disliked more-- 
the part that, despite the sickening sound of Xander's voice stewing 
in its own self-hatred, was doing a little dance of joy that Xander 
did, indeed, still want him-- or the bit that was getting smoky and 
cold and cracking to little pieces because it only heard the pain, 
and, unlike any self-respecting demon, wanted it to stop. {Girly-
vamp...}

Xander scowled at him. Despite the hot water falling on his body, 
the youngster was shivering, or shaking, or *something*. "Yes, I want 
another go. No, I don't want to forget it. I don't think I *can* 
forget it. Are you fucking happy? Have you accomplished your list 
of evil things to do for the week? Stomp on some plants, since they 
won't set your chip off, watch PBS without pledging, twist Xander's 
head around 'til it pops off, and move on to bigger and better 
happies?"

"Yeah, that about sums it up," Spike said agreeably, sliding all the 
way down to sit with his back against the bathroom wall, legs 
stretched out in front of him across the doorway to the shower, still 
wrapped in a sheet that was by this time soaking wet from the water 
splashing out onto the floor. "You left off 'Try and take over the 
world,' but I figure we can do that tomorrow night, Pinky." No joy. 
Not a smile cracked. "Look, didn't say you *had* to forget about it, 
you know. I said you *could*," he added a bit gruffly.

Xander didn't seem to hear him, because what he said next sure as 
hell wasn't in answer to anything Spike had just uttered. "Y'know, 
when we figured out you'd played us all, to get us separated from 
Buffy, I tried to be surprised. I really did. Ran into you in that 
alley, looking for Faith, I realized you were right. We *can't* get 
it through our heads that you hate us all. We're stupid. Well, *I'm* 
stupid. No matter how many times I bang up flat against a brick wall, 
break my nose, I still keep running back into it like it's gonna 
slide out of the way when I get there. Wanting to *trust* you. And 
what kind of an idiot does that make me?"

Spike didn't even know how to begin to answer that. {Dunno if I 
could count the ways, mate. Don't know what's worse-- the fact that 
you want to, or the fact that I think maybe you can.} 

"For once in my life, that wasn't a rhetorical question, you know. 
And now I'm strangely proud that I could use the word 'rhetorical' 
correctly in a sentence."

"Xander."

"Yeah, that's a pretty good answer. I like it. I'm a unique species 
of idiot. Got my own Latin name and everything. Thank God there's no 
more of me, or we might procreate. I mean, c'mon, look me in the face 
and tell me I *should* trust you. And I'll probably do it, 'cause, 
can we say it together, class, I'm an idiot."

Spike looked him in the face. {Good face. Like it. Shouldn't have 
that look on it, though.} "You shouldn't trust me. I'm a bastard. I 
keep trying to tell you people that. You'd think *I'd* get it through 
my head that you never listen. You shouldn't trust me, but no matter 
how much you bitch an' moan about me, no matter how many times I've 
screwed you over, *you* do. Hell, Xander, you trusted me with your 
*life* last night."

Xander apparently heard *that* one, because his eyes widened. "Umm, 
no, giving it up for American chipmanship here."

"S'not what I mean, and you know it. You believed me when I told you 
there was nothing you could get from me, nor the other way round." No 
answer, and Xander was staring off into space, now. {Oh, brilliant, 
Spike. Forget wearing a sheet into the room to spare him the mind-
altering sight of your tackle--just throw the words 'unprotected sex' 
in his face, the morning after his first and probably only time, at 
this rate, and see if he calms down.} "Which is *true*, got that? 
Don't get your delicates in a twist. Well, if you were wearin' any."

"Would I seem any less stupid if I pointed out that I actually knew 
that?" Xander finally asked, sounding tired. "Not, oddly enough, the 
only person in my graduating class to have had sex with a vampire. 
Welcome to the Hellmouth. True, I didn't need to worry about you 
turning into Soul-Free Psycho Boy, since you came pre-packaged that 
way, so, yeah, big advantage there. Score one over the Buffster."

"Definitely two, at least. You're a better kisser," Spike offered. 
Well, it was true. Slayer'd been.close, but.no cigar, eh,
Sigmund? If 
he could just get the kid to smile. but no. "Right, fine, I'm 
actually glad you didn't just trust me on that one," ...running 
fingers through ice-blonde hair still sticky with peanut butter from 
last night, " 'cos I'd hate to be the one twit who told you the truth 
and got you killed because you believed the next bloke. Assuming 
there is a next bloke. Bird. Whatever."

"Oh, give me some credit, Spike! It's the year two thousand. They 
were practically teaching us safe sex in kindergarten. I may be 
stupid, but I'm not *that* stupid. And why..." The young man's voice 
trailed off, and he closed his eyes. Spike waited, but nothing more 
seemed to be forthcoming.

{Look, it's Spike, Unconventional Vampire Dentist! I sleep all night 
and pull teeth all day.} "Why what, pet?"

Xander kept his eyes closed. "Don't call me that. Why did. Look,
when 
I made that crack about the mocking and the humiliation, I meant me, 
you know."

Spike shrugged, then realized how useful that was when the boy 
couldn't *see* him. "Yeah, knew that. So?"

"So... why don't you want to see me get killed? Saving it for 
entertainment value when "Passions" gets canceled? I thought watching 
me twist in the wind was your purpose in life. Why aren't you at 
least makin' with the patented Spike 'cut you off at the knees and 
piss on your head' sarcasm? Why aren't you being an asshole, dammit? 
I know how to *deal* with that."

Oh, perfect. Here was this naked boy in a shower, looking like a 
cross between a scared child and well, dinner, and/or the most 
delicious fuck in the world. He was shivering and very possibly about 
to cry, just literally *begging* Spike to rip his sensitive little 
soul to shreds... nummy. Except it wasn't, because Spike was Soul-
Free Psycho Boy, apparently, and he didn't want to. The thought of it 
actually made him sick. And the thought of it making him sick 
actually made him sick, but not as much as it should. He pulled his 
knees up to sit cross-legged, tangling himself up in the sodden sheet 
even more. Sighed. Wished he had a smoke.

Xander finally opened his eyes. Blinked. "Hello, annoying vampire in 
my bathroom, I asked you a question."

********************************

Part Four

Spike's Philosophy Course, 101: In the history of history, there are 
two things that always fuck up a perfectly good plan for world 
domination. Or cornering the global kumquat market, or getting the 
attention of the bint next door with the walloping knockers, or 
winning at Monopoly. Insert your own worthwhile endeavor here.

Item One: Not, as you'd expect, poor planning, but lack of patience. 
Short attention-span theatre, boys and girls. Case in point, one 
vampire being slammed into a car bonnet by his brassed-off sire, to 
the tune of " Hey, I had a plan!" --"You? A plan?" --
"A good plan. 
Smart. Carefully laid out. - But I got bored. All that watching, 
waiting, - my legs started to cramp." Even the poor planning, when 
it happened-- and he was the first to admit, though not out loud, 
that it did-- had more to do with not being able to put up with 
taking the time to think everything through. Two steps ahead of the 
game at most, that was all he could get, which was why he never could 
play chess, aside from the sitting doing nothing while your bum fell 
asleep aspect.

Spike had a history of falling afoul of Item One. Can't actually 
wait 'til the Feast of St. Vigeous, no, we have to attack early, and 
get our collective backsides kicked by the Slayer and, heaven or hell 
help us, her ever-lovin' *mother*. Welcome to Sunnydale, Spike, hope 
you survive the experience. Make a pact with the Slayer to get him 
and Dru out of town and the seriously *twisted* version of brassed-
off sire packed off to hell, and he wins the battle, but loses Dru. 
The operation was a success, but the patient's dust. He *knew* about 
Item One, and how susceptible he was to it. Didn't mean he ever 
learned. Witness last month's fun with the demonic Terminator.

Item Two: Samson, Merlin, any number of your basic Greek gods and 
heroes, mythical or otherwise. They could tell you. So could Angelus, 
the demon with the face of an Angel, if he weren't stuck in a box 
with a nancy-boy human soul slapped over him. Yeah, the "L" word. 
Love. Luuuurve, with all the snotty adolescent whine you can put into 
it. Helps if you roll your eyes a bit and make violin-sawing 
motions. 

Once upon a time, the Irish Bastard (TM) wasn't all that twisted. Oh, 
he was a fine figure of a vampire, yeah, loved to torture, maim, 
drain, turn people's heads on their necks 'til the crackling sounds 
bounced off the walls, but to Spike, or the man he'd been back then, 
and Drusilla, he was just Angelus. The only torments he inflicted on 
them once they were vampires were ones they'd...enjoyed. One way or 
another. Then somewhere along the way he got himself a soul, second-
hand, for a decent price in a car boot sale. Buy from the gypsies, 
you always get wonky goods. Enter the ponce. Still shaggable, maybe, 
if you gagged him and didn't look into the puppy eyes. 
Theoretically. 

And enter Item Two: bottle-blonde Slayer with about four brain cells 
to rub together, an admittedly tasty little package, and the delusion 
that the world revolved around her. Ponce, meet Slayer, meet gypsy 
curse, add mood music and scented candles, Calgon, take me away, and 
welcome back Angelus. 'Cept it wasn't the old, familiar Irish 
Bastard. This one lived and breathed, or actually didn't, for 
breaking the Slayer into little tiny pieces and playing out 
Riverdance on top of 'em. {An' ain't that a lovely mental 
image...} 'Cos even without the soul, he *still* loved her. And he 
*hated* that, so he hated *everything*. When he got bored with 
tormenting her, there was always Spike in a wheelchair to cut into 
shreds, Dru to use and toss aside. The world to suck into hell.
Luuuurve. Item Two.

Spike, now, Spike didn't tend to get caught up by Item Two all that 
often, historically speaking. {Can count that high on my fingers, I 
can. One, two...} But when he did... Take one vampire, by definition 
not in his right mind, and wasn't all that stable beforehand, thanks, 
add two scoops of 'Utter Git' powder, stir in chocolate as desired, 
and set on puree.

***

So, and he was freezing his knackers off on the cold concrete floor, 
with a clammy bedsheet sticking to him, and Xander Harris was staring 
at him, waiting for the answer to the question he'd been asking 
himself for a while now: why did he care if the boy lived or died, 
why wasn't he being his usual charming, devilish, 'cut you off at the 
knees and piss on your head' self? {How the hell should I know? See 
Item Two above. Bang, slam, smack me in the face with a brick wall. 
I... No, won't say it, won't even think it, but yeah, Item Two.}

"You know, you can leave any time. It was pretty much implied in the 
phrase 'Get out.' I assume you're not gonna answer the question, so, 
to steal another Spikeism, sod off," Xander finally said, far too 
softly.

{Oh, hell, here goes nothing.}

"No, I'll answer the question, but it's a bitch of an exchange rate. 
I do yours, you have to answer three of mine." He wanted to be up 
and pacing. That was him, usually. Too much energy for one dead body 
to keep in. But he should've been sleeping, and he was cold and wet, 
and mentally deranged, and trying to be selectively truthful with 
this dangerous little fool in front of him.

Water cascading down his face, into his eyes, over his crumpled-up 
body, which had at last stopped shivering, Xander scowled. "Or you 
could just leave."

"Yeah, or I could just leave. Don't count on it, though, when you're 
so much fun to annoy. You in?"

"Whatever."

"Right, here's your answer: I'm a loony." He grinned. Come on, smile, 
already. No, but at least there was something approaching duh-face, 
which got rid of the one that was making Spike want to bash his own 
head against the tiles.

"That's it?"

"In a nutshell. Which is, as they say, an appropriate receptacle."

"Fuck off, thank you for playing, take your home version of the game 
and go to hell," his...well, yeah, *his* Xander replied.

"What was that? 'Please extrapolate, Spike' did you say?" he asked 
musingly. "Thanks for askin'--don't mind if I do. Now, and don't 
quote me on this, but I don't think you're an idiot. Well, no more 
than usual. I think you're bloody *demented*, for doing something as 
damn fool stupid as shaggin' *me*, but hey, 'demented,' y'know, it 
has potential. I can work with 'demented.' And I care about whether 
you live or die because, hey, what do you know-- *I'm* demented, 
too! "

***

And it was clear as a bell. In an instant. He'd been having bitch-out 
sessions with himself, brooding over the boy, brooding over the fact 
that he was brooding.Calling himself by every sneeringly familiar 
epithet he'd ever used on anybody else. Second-guessing his own 
wonderful, devious, endlessly entertaining dead brain because he 
didn't want to acknowledge what was going on a little lower--no, not 
that low--in his unbeating heart. Because it made him girly-vamp, or 
a bit too much like the ponce, or any number of things he didn't want 
to be, because they were, well, demented. 

{But that's what I *am* ! Out and proud as a psychotic vampire for 
over a century. Wave the Rorshach-blotted flag and let me lead the 
march. When did I get so afraid of being crazy? Too much watching 
over Dru and knowing I couldn't follow it in *that* direction? No 
fear. Not my kind of crazy. When did I start being ashamed of being 
stupid? I'm a complete idiot with demonic squirrels nesting in my 
attic, and it's been my claim to fame for the better part of my 
unlife. 'Cos I may be an idiot, but I'm an idiot with *style* !}

Granted, his idea of style usually involved general carnage, 
bloodshed, death, and much kicking of human and demonic tail, and 
thanks to good old American chipmanship, he was seriously limited in 
that department at the moment. To demons and threadbare furniture, 
to be exact. That didn't mean he couldn't invent new ways of being 
completely out of his mind, though!

{If I want to shag a good guy, and keep shagging him for the 
foreseeable future, I'm obviously insane. Where exactly is it written 
that one brand of insanity's got more street cred than another? I'm a 
complete boneheaded, gobsmacked loon, and if I want to call this 
boy 'pet' or 'love' or kiss him, or stroke his hair, or hold him 
until and while and after he finally opens that bruised little heart 
of his, and let him cry into my great manly chest, I say damn 
straight! Tally fucking ho! It's completely twisted, and what the 
hell's more me than that? And if I've gone and fallen in love with 
him, y'know, luuuurve, with a sicky sweet sucking sound at the end, 
well, dunno what could be more stupid, so, again, true to the Spike 
legend come what may.}

He looked at the boy in the shower, really looked, past the barbed 
wire in the eyes, at the goofy lovable geek who was always trying to 
make everyone laugh, because then it would be happening because he 
*wanted* it, not because they thought he was laughable. Yeah, Spike 
could see where you might think that. It had its own brand of 
pathetic stereotype to it, and God knew, he'd picked at it enough in 
the past himself, targeting *exactly* what would make Xander bleed, 
and poking at it with a big pointy stick, just to see him jump and 
squirm. The temptation was still there--but now there was the sick 
feeling at the mere idea, as well. 

Beyond the post-high-school geek, which would never completely die 
away, there was a dark, screwed-up soul that just begged to be 
twisted even more, or maybe smoothed until it came out straight. A 
bloody white knight, too, ready to sacrifice himself for his friends, 
but smart enough to be scared shitless of whatever it was he was 
doing. There was also a bright, inquisitive spark, a fiendish sense 
of humor, and a shaking cold heat that had just about knocked Spike 
to the ground when they touched. Oh, and touches. Little tentative 
touches, like Xander was shocked by his own curiosity--and Spike had 
finally stopped him only because it was too much. Way out of control. 
About like William the Bloody right now. Which was, Spike had finally 
got through his own thick head, a *good* thing. 

{Totally mentally and emotionally fucked, that's me! A couple 
thousand fries short of a Happy Meal, and proud of it, mate. I love 
Xander Harris. Oi! Little voices! Take that, roll it, smoke it, and 
shove it up your collective arse. Which, I suppose, would be mine, 
so. right, interesting image. Work with it another time. Now, 
*telling* him about it, that's well over the line into suicidal, 
which, let's check-- anybody in there want to dust himself anymore? 
Eh? No, didn't think so.}

But to say it to himself, well, it was that easy. Easy as letting go 
his hold on a sanity that never was all it was talked up to be. He 
could think it, roll it over silently on his tongue and decide it 
sounded right, try to figure out what he was going to do about it-- 
all without giving a tinker's damn whether the undead Sybil-ettes in 
his brain decided to nag him into next week or not. {See, there's 
nothing you lot can throw at me anymore, that I can't laugh off. I'm 
Spike, and I'm a raving nutter, and yee-bloody-haw! ...Note to self-- 
do *not* watch "Dukes of Hazzard" repeats on TNN again, no matter how 
short the cut-offs are.}

Now, to try to fix whatever it was he'd buggered up, if he could.

***

"It shocked the hell out of me, I'll tell you. Er, not the being 
demented part, already knew that--the caring whether you buy it or 
not. But I do. It's a laugh, innit? You shouldn't trust me, but, and 
God knows why, you can. So, as I said, I'm a loony, do I get my 
questions now?"

"No." Was he losing his touch? Spike couldn't even begin to gauge 
the expression on that water-rivuleted face, with its dark brows 
scrunched inward over narrowed eyes. Reassured? Disgusted? 
Disbelieving? Getting in radio signals from the Outer Hebrides on his 
dental work?

"Oh...Fine, take all the fun out of it. " He *really* needed a cig. 
Or some more chocolate. Or a good shag. Or all three. "I'm not taking 
the piss because you didn't do anything for me to make fun of. In 
other words, yessss, " and he tried to give the word the same 
hissing sibilance that Xander had earlier, just for dramatic effect, 
but his heart was hardly in it, "...it was a bloody compliment. 
Happy?"

"Um...confused?" The boy finally raised his chin from his hands, 
wiped his face, which was an utterly useless gesture as the water 
poured over it once more, and leaned his head back against the shower 
wall. "What was a compliment?"

Spike rolled his eyes. "Fishing for it, now?" The look he got for 
that was pure Xander: 'I don't know what the hell you're talking 
about, but I'm sure it makes me look pathetic somehow...' He shook 
his head. "No, you really don't get it, do you."

"Xander Harris, boy genius, comprehends all. But please enlighten 
Idiot Jed, who lives in my head, 'cause *he's* a little clueless."

"That was a compliment, as in 'Thank you, that was nice, I enjoyed 
it.' Quite a bit, actually. Are you insecure enough to need me to 
tell you in detail exactly how much, or do I get to keep a tiny shred 
of my own dignity, assuming I have any left? " Willow-babble was 
apparently catching, and if Spike wasn't careful, he'd be spilling 
things he didn't want to spill...like...suicidal sicky sucking sound 
things.

Silence. Oh, but the face. The face wasn't I-detest-myself-face, or 
duh-face, or kick-me-now face. No smile, but there was something 
about the eyes. Something in the black-lashed, dark brown, blinking 
away the water...eyes. Something akin to wonder. Which was, as Spike 
had previously pointed out to himself, dangerous as all hell. Because 
it looked *so* good. {And I love to live dangerously, don't I?}

"Do I get my questions now, brat?" A nod. A narrowing of the eyes 
again. Preparing for the worst. {How long is it gonna take to fix 
you, boy? How long before you stop giving me that look?} 

"Right, One, and you actually owe me this one anyway, but what the 
heck--I'll throw you a freebie. What did I say that set you off in 
the first place? Inquiring minds wanna know. And don't give me any 
more crap, please, or I'll be an astoundingly shaggable corpsicle 
before this conversation's over.

"This is a conversation?" Xander asked, and there it was. An actual 
honest-to-whoever smile. Pretty weak, but there, all the same. "I 
thought it was a home invasion. Somebody needs to tell me these 
things. I never get the memos."

Two can play at the stern silence game, although not very well when 
one of them wants to stand up and do the naked vampire happy dance 
(which is much more manly and dignified than the name implies, and 
involves a reasonable amount of chest-beating and growling...), 
probably slipping on the wet floor, falling and breaking his neck... 
Spike settled for a Rupert Giles mock-glare, patent pending. He was 
rewarded.

"Well, 'It's forgotten...' probably had a little to do with it." 
Hesitantly, as if he still thought Spike was going to tear strips off 
him.

"I was giving you a choice, luv."

"Funny, 'cause from shower-boy's perspective, you were telling me 
that *you* wouldn't mind forgetting it." 

{Oh. *that* was it. Happy twisted vampire dance. Boy's hurt
'cos he 
thought *I* didn't want *him*. Which means he really does want *me.* 
What do we say to that, then? Not ever the truth, right? Hey, it's 
just crazy enough.}

"Did I *say* that? 'Cos I don't remember hearing m'self say that. 
Did you hit me on the head when I wasn't looking? I doubt I'd have 
noticed it at the time, because I think I might've been just a little 
distracted watchin' you lick chocolate goo stuff off your lips. To 
my knowledge, though, I said *you* could forget about it. Didn't say 
I would... or could."

He held up one finger, half to hold off any extrapolation Xander 
might ask for on *that* one, and half because he was ticking off the 
list. "That's one. Number Two-- you trust me. Sort of. Right, 
demented, like everything else about you. So what was all that shit 
last night about me trying to kill you? Shoving the vampire version 
of bug repellant in my face and knocking me arse over tip down the 
stairs? The other thing I smelled on you was fear. Stronger than the 
damned garlic."

********************************

Part Five

Okay, now *there* was an identifiable Xander-face. Sheepish, can't-
believe-I-did-that-face. God, the list was getting long.

"Hormones?"

"Eh? Come again?" {Hopefully? Today?}

"Those things that teenage guys have instead of brain cells? I mean, 
how was I supposed to be able to tell the difference between enraged 
vampire and horny vampire? Do you guys have a user's manual or 
something?" Beat.... "I mean, that *was* horny vampire, right?" And 
there was the laugh in his voice. Back from the great beyond.

Spike laughed out loud. "Oh, *hell* yeah. Remember what I told you 
about blood and chocolate?"

"I seem to vaguely recall sounds coming out of your mouth on Friday 
night, yeah."

"Complete and utter shite. Vampire Viagra, my arse. You ever met a 
vampire looked like he needed any encouragement? Blood's blood. 
Tastes great, less filling. Not saying it can't be...erotic...but 
that's just your general vampy good times."

"Um, your point, if indeed you have one?" Concentration. Maybe even a 
little interest in vampy good times?

"Chocolate. Brown stuff, tastes like silk feels. Sort of explodes on 
your tongue and slides all the way down your throat, straight into 
your blood... feels like you're swimming in it if you run your tongue 
round the inside of your mouth, and you just sort of melt into this 
place that's dark, and warm, and sweet, and you stay there, just 
drowning in it. 'Til the sugar high kicks in, of course. And then 
you want to kick something, kill something, or shag something. 
Depending on how much you ate. Two pound bags full of it, in my case. 
Spike's personal downfall. Not, as I said, as if I need a lot of 
encouragement."

Xander stared at him, eyes popping, then burst into laughter. Rolling 
on the floor type laughter, which, since he was already pretty much 
*on* the floor, provided an excellent and most entertaining view for 
Spike. And revealed that Spike had picked just the right location 
when he'd covertly made use of the temporary tattoo he found in 
Xander's grocery bag last night. Winnie the Pooh, allegedly 
purchased while trying to get a different one for the little red 
witch. Priceless. Time was, like about an hour ago, he would've been 
vaguely offended by being the object of your basic laughing-my-arse-
off-at-you moment, but that was the old Spike, and this was the new, 
improved, completely deranged Spike, who was just glad to see the boy-
man in front of him laughing. At anything.

Great shuddering gasps of air, slowing down, and finally Xander sat 
back up, obviously realized he was completely naked {And how 
distracted was he that he didn't before, eh?} and had just been 
putting on a free floor show for a vampire audience of one. Smiled 
wryly. Gulped a few more times, and shrugged.

"Sorry... first, if you want to chip in on the rent and the Fluff n' 
Fold isn't your kinda gig, I know for a fact there's an opening at 
the 1-900-HOT-NITE phone sex line. Don't drop my name as a reference, 
though."

Spike smirked. Couldn't help it. {Damn right, I have a sexy voice. 
Too sexy for this sheet, anyway.}

"Second, it's just my luck that my first meeting of Chocoholics 
Anonymous would be held in my bathroom, and consist of a naked me and 
a mostly naked vampire. Hi, I'm Xander."

Spike shook his head. Smiled. And the correct reply was? Oh 
yeah. "Hi, Xander."

"I'm a chocoholic. I think of chocolate while I'm at work, when I'm 
in a bad place, and it makes everything a little easier. I think 
about how it smells when you first get it out of the package, about 
how if you melt it, it gets all gooey and feels like it's actually 
sinking into your tongue, like you'll have a chocolate flavored 
tongue from now on, everything'll taste like chocolate. Chocolate 
air, chocolate.lips.If I don't wanna think about anything at
all, a 
candy bar, a Hershey's kiss, a cup of hot cocoa, and I'm gone, lost, 
anywhere but here. And.last night, I had sex with a guy, not to 
mention a dead guy, not to mention a dead evil guy who hates me, and 
I liked it, and it didn't have a damn thing to do with the 
chocolate." His voice got softer at the end, with a hint of 
resignation.

"And they fired you because?" Spike asked with a lifted eyebrow. 
Because that little speech had certainly done something for *him*. 
The idiots didn't know what they were missing.

Embarrassed look again. "They took one look at me and got the wrong 
idea. Or maybe the right one, come to think of it. Sink or swim 
tryouts, they stick me in a room full of other guys with phones. Here 
I am waiting for Helen the lovelorn librarian to ring my line and I 
get Hank, the Texas trucker, on a long haul, drivin' east and lookin' 
for love in all the wrong places. The stuttering, and the babbling, 
and the running from the room probably weren't good career moves, on 
reflection. And the truth of *that* story has never before been 
uttered." he intoned.

Spike twisted his mouth around, trying to keep it closed. Bit like 
sucking on a lemon. {I will *not* laugh. I won't.}

"It's okay. You can laugh. Really." Xander smiled at him, and there 
it really was. The one that hurt his eyes. The one that made him 
admit without a qualm, in his new, proud-to-be-insane-brain, that it 
hadn't had a damn thing to do with the chocolate for him, either.

He laughed, and it was pure, and easy, and it tasted like chocolate 
silk. Finally he put up two fingers.

"Same to you, Spike," Xander replied, mock-huffily, flipping him the 
American one-finger-salute.

Spike looked at his hand. Grimaced. "No, then they'd be facing the 
other way, luv, but at least you're getting the pattern-recognition 
thing down. This means two questions answered, and time for the 
third."

"Which is?"

How pathetic and small could he make himself look, now? He plucked at 
the utterly sodden sheet that was tangled around his lower body and 
frankly turning him into one very cold dead guy, and answered, in his 
best Spike wheedle, "Can I come in there? I'm freezing!"

Now he was being given the once-over. {What, you don't want a 
gorgeous naked blonde in your shower? What kind of man are you?} 

"You'd better hurry up. I don't think there's much hot water left."

You've never seen a vampire move faster. Crawling over the sill of 
the shower and kicking the soaking sheets across the floor as he did 
it. Pulling the warm body before him up, to lean against the shower 
wall. Running his hands though the dripping dark curls that fell in 
Xander's face. Standing under the needling spray, putting his mouth 
everywhere he could reach. The hollow of the throat, kissing across 
the veins, feeling the blood that pumped beneath the skin. Lips, 
nibbling here and there. Cheeks, nose, earlobe, and, if he stood on 
tiptoe, which he was perfectly willing to do, forehead. Strong arms, 
for a human, wrapping around him, running over his back, down to cup 
his arse-cheeks, and then annoyingly, letting go, but sliding sweetly 
back up. Fingers up and down his neck, grabbing him by his own now-
drenched hair and pulling him close for a long, hard, and very wet 
kiss. 

Breaking, to raise two fingers again. "See, palm out, two fingers, 
means two things. One, I don't hate you, and two, if it was just the 
chocolate, I'd have been gone the minute the sun went down."

Xander pulled him closer again, bending down a bit. Forehead to 
forehead. Nose to nose. Brown eyes to blue. "Actually, it's a peace 
sign. If you want to get technical about it. But I don't." 

"Good. And for future reference." Spike trailed off, feeding him
the 
line.

"Yeah?"

"*That* was the painfully awkward conversation."

And of course, that was also the moment the hot water chose to run 
out. See what you get for sitting on the floor and psychoanalyzing?

***

Freezing cold water couldn't do a hell of a lot to dampen Spike's 
mood, but physiology is physiology, even warped vampire physiology, 
and besides, he *hated* being cold.

So, cursing fluently in Ghabresh, a language in which he only knew 
*how* to curse, he dragged Xander out of the slippery bathroom, not 
even allowing the boy to pick up his robe, which wouldn't have helped 
a bit, since it, too, was sopping wet where it lay on the floor. No 
time for towels. By the time he'd have found a clean towel that 
hadn't been hit by the water spraying out the open shower door, he 
could've been marketed as frozen-vamp-on-a-stick. If he'd had a 
stick. Other than the obvious.

Murphy's Law said that either a Harris or a Scooby would have slipped 
into the basement while they were sequestered in the bathroom. There 
they'd be, two naked, freezing, waterlogged men, alternately cursing 
and laughing, tumbling out of the shower and into the harsh light of 
day, to coin a phrase. But Murphy must have been still asleep, like 
any sane bastard, because they were alone when Spike zoomed under the 
covers and heard the bedsprings give an ominous creak. like the
thing 
was about to finally give up the ghost.

"You *really* don't like to be cold, do you?" Xander laughed. Spike 
scowled at him from where he half-reclined, cocooned in not one, but 
two blankets, one of which he'd yanked from the top of the dryer on 
the way to the bed. Xander, meanwhile, sat Indian-style on the red 
recliner, wrapped in yet another blanket.

"Yes, I *really* don't like to be cold. Least not naked and cold. 
Warm-blooded bugger, " Spike muttered sarcastically. Gave it his best 
seductive grin. "You could come over here and do something about 
that, selfish git."

"Nope." Xander grinned back. Which was heartening, but confusing.

"Nope?" Spike repeated, mocking the Yank accent badly, as usual. 

"Nope. We're gonna wait for the water heater to fill up again, and 
then we're gonna finish what we started." 

{Score! Demented vampire: six million points, opposing team, whoever 
they might be: squat.} "And that'll be how long?"

" 'Bout an hour. Give or take."

{An hour? Sixty bloody minutes???? Thirty-six hundred seconds? } "And 
we do what 'til then?"

Xander got up from the chair, pulling the blanket tightly around 
himself. "I'm *so* glad you asked." He walked over to the table where 
the plate of baked goods still lay, and picked up the last chocolate 
donut, returning with it to the side of the bed.

"*You* are going to eat this donut. *I* am going to sit in that 
chair, and *watch* you eat this donut. If you're very talented, you 
should be able to make it last at least, oh, fifteen or twenty 
minutes. If you behave, I'll entertain you while you do it." He 
waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Well, he was probably trying to be 
suggestive, though it mostly came over as Groucho Marx. "If you 
don't, I get out the Sock Puppet of Love, and reenact my first date 
with Cordelia for you. Complete with fashion tips. And a step by step 
description of how to locate various parts of a woman's anatomy while 
locked in a dark broom closet. And the choice quotes you get to hear 
when you choose incorrectly." He held out the donut, and Spike 
carefully took it from him, their fingers touching for a moment.

"Was that the threat, or the entertainment?" Spike laughed, gazing at 
the gooey item in his hand, then back at the grinning face above 
him. "If that was the threat, what do you do for entertainment? And 
don't say the Lambada."

"Eat the donut, English Boy. The entertainment is. I read you the 
comics."

"So let me get this straight: we wait for the water to get hot again 
so we can go shag in the shower, I eat a donut, you read the Sunday 
comics out loud?"

"Well, if you want to boil a complex thought down to its simplest 
possible form. But I do funny voices, too."

***

And so he did. Spike sat up in the bed, wrapped up in as many layers 
of covering as he could find, eating a chocolate donut that was 
actually stickier than the last one, and doing it as slowly as 
inhumanly possible. Tiny, tiny bites. Dropping chocolate sprinkles 
all over himself, and smearing icing the devil only knew where. 
Xander sat on the chair, watched him intently, and in between 
glances, read the comics out loud, all six pages of them. Peanuts. 
Doonesbury. Mallard bloody Fillmore. Even "Mary Worth," in a truly 
creditable nosy old lady voice. When he got around to "Fred Bassett" 
and did the dog's voice in a fractured parody of Giles' accent, Spike 
almost choked on what was left of the donut. Which was pretty much a 
tiny piece of mushy icing-and-crumbs.

He began to lick a chocolate-smeared finger, and Xander looked up 
sharply from the last page. "Oh no you don't. Nobody said you got to 
bogart the frosting, blondie. " Tossing down the paper and rising 
from the chair, shedding his blanket like an unwanted second skin, he 
did a sort of predatory crawl up the bed that Spike hadn't seen done 
so neatly since, well, himself. Not that Spike was vain, or 
anything. Just wondering where this boy had learned all his new 
tricks. Especially since the journey ended with him lying 
comfortably on top of Spike, looking into his eyes.

"This was sort of the point of the whole exercise." And he picked up 
Spike's left hand {Warm fingers, nice.} and brought it to his mouth, 
slooooowly sucking the chocolate from each finger. Warm mouth, tongue 
encircling Spike's index finger, wet, soft, faster, harder. Prompting 
extremely entertaining thoughts about what that mouth and tongue 
might be able to get up to elsewhere. Licking streaks from the back 
of Spike's hand, tickling the pale skin with the tip of that talented 
tongue. He placed little wet, warm kisses in Spike's palm, and closed 
it up on them with his own hand, as if to trap them there. Somewhere 
under the blankets, Spike wasn't feeling very cold anymore. Not cold 
at all. Xander started on the other hand, pinning the clean one down 
to the pillow with surprising fierceness.

By the time both of his hands were bolted to the pillow, and Xander 
had moved on to licking frosting from the corners of Spike's mouth, 
the vampire was reasonably sure the youngster was possessed. Because 
where had this warmly controlling personality been hiding? Where had 
this flaring heat been generated? Surely not inside the achingly 
defensive child he'd just spent the better part of an hour with, who 
had to be cajoled into accepting the fact that not only had he made 
love to a man last night, he'd enjoyed it. Enjoyed Spike. This was 
someone else. This man knew what he wanted, and was taking it. Maybe 
a little hesitantly, compared to other lovers Spike could name, who 
had always taken everything he was willing to give, and then some, 
but. still, Xander was in control. Of himself, and very possibly
of 
Spike.

It was odd. It was undeniably pleasurable, and the moves. as
Xander 
raised his head up to give the older man an unbelievably seductive 
stare, Spike got it. The moves were familiar. Because this was the 
first time he'd looked into a mirror and seen himself in over a 
hundred years. {Me! He's doing *me*! The little.} And he smiled. 
Laughed. What else could he do?

********************************

Part Six

"You ballsy little shit. Using my own moves on me and thinking I 
wouldn't recognize 'em." Mouth covered by a rough kiss, he could
only 
laugh again, before his tongue got busy with other activities, like 
scraping and stabbing, and sliding, and stroking, and other fun "S" 
words. There was a war on, was there? But then it slowed down, to a 
concentrated sucking at his bottom lip, as if Xander's whole being 
were focussed on just enjoying that one tiny part of him, until he'd 
got it completely memorized. Finally, with a nip that almost, almost 
drew blood, and sent sparks racing around Spike's nerves {Gonna have 
to teach this one that pain can be a *good* thing...oh, how long 
*has* it been?}, Xander pulled his mouth away. Smiled, half-shy, half-
cocky.

"You like? Because I do other impressions, too, but I don't think 
Milton Berle would be appropriate here."

"You're demented." whispered Spike, proudly, happily. {And the little 
psycho's all mine!}

"Yup. Depraved. Deprived. Delirious. Stop me any time, now." He 
wriggled a bit, invoking sensations that Spike had no intention of 
stopping.

"Delicious."

"Oh, I like that. How about. oh, help me out, here. I wasn't
exactly 
the S.A.T. king."

"Nummy. That was a synonym. You reckon that water's hot yet?"

Xander shook his head. "Bout five more minutes, I'd say. What'll we 
do for five minutes?"

"Not what you were just doing, if you want there to be anything left 
to do in the shower!"

"Right. Umm.how 'bout them Broncos?"

The vampire snorted. "There's a reason I told you I didn't want the 
sports pages. American football."

"Okay.how 'bout them outdated musical groups?" Xander tried,
pointing 
at the poster on the wall above the bed, the one thing that Spike had 
contributed to the otherwise depressing décor. "And I use 'music'
in 
the loosest possible sense of the term."

Spike glared at him. "Right, first, don't go there. Second, not 
outdated."

"Excuse me if this word has gotten familiar over the past few months, 
but -- huh?"

"Sex Pistols in '66. That's not a tour poster, twit. It's an L.A. 
club band. Sort of a tribute thing, but their gig is they do covers 
of soppy sixties songs, and punk 'em up Pistols-style. Totally 
twisted, and not bad. 'Course, it's a bit of a head trip to see 'em--
their lead singer looks like Johnny Rotten and sounds like Sid--but 
it makes for some good fun after a long afternoon of watching someone 
shove hot pokers in your Sire. The Pistols, you uncultured gimboid, 
didn't hit the scene 'til *seventy*-six. When you were.right,
still 
a twinkle in your sod of a father's eye. And you have absolutely no 
idea what I'm talking about."

"No, but keep it up. I like hearing you talk."

{Right, entering smug-mode. No. Bad! Down, smug-mode. Sit. Heel.}

"Which is why you tell me to shut up at every available opportunity."

The smirking face above him lowered itself to his. {*My* smirk--who 
said you could pinch it?}

"Mmmm. Yeah. Shut up."

A long kiss later, and: "So. Angel. Hot pokers. Tell me more." 

Spike chortled. "I knew I liked you. Think the water's hot yet?"

"One way to find out."

*** 

In the bathroom again, and catching sight of Xander in the full-
length mirror on the back of the door, Spike just had to play. 
Pulling a naked Xander back against him, he looked into the mirror. 
*Nice* view. Of Xander, of course.

"And that's. 'wiggins' suddenly seems too high-school for 
words. 'Disconcerting" ? No, too Giles." Xander commented, looking at 
himself alone in the mirror. " And so not a name I ever meant hear 
while standing naked in front of a mirror. Also, not usually 
your 'naked in front of the mirror' kind of guy. More of a 'naked 
under your clothes where nobody can see you, least of all yourself' 
type. "

"That explains your taste in clothes." Spike snarled softly in
his 
ear, lazily stroking Xander's left nipple. "Well, no, it doesn't 
really. Maybe complete blindness. anyway, the view's pretty good
from 
here."

"Yeah, but you're not in it." A bit disappointedly.

"Sure I am." Spike whispered, grinning diabolically. He ran his
hands 
slowly over Xander's chest, enjoying the slide across the firm muscle 
beneath the skin. Gently tweaked both nipples at once, which got him 
a pleasant reward as his lover bucked back against him, pressing his 
buttocks against the vamp's twitching erection. Little look of 
surprise on the face in the mirror at that, but not necessarily 
unhappy surprise. Spike put his mouth against Xander's shoulder, and 
licked. Clean. A faint salty skin taste, but not strong, after having 
sat under the shower for so long. Sucked. Nibbled, just a little.

"Oral fixation much?" Xander hissed, obviously unable to tear his 
eyes away from the sight of himself in the mirror, being aroused by a 
phantom lover who felt all too real.

" I'm a vampire, pe. luv. It sorta goes with the territory. "

Brown eyes looked back straight at him, in the mirror. Wide mouth 
smiled, too damn shyly. "You can call me 'pet.' I.like it. I was
just 
being a shit; happens, sometimes. Not that I mind the other, either."

And there was something uncomfortably wonderful about that. Demented, 
even. Spike all but purred. "Well, pet, I do know a few tricks that 
don't involve the mouth. Here's a nice party piece. haven't done
this 
bit in a while."

He ran his hands down the muscular torso, across the narrow hips, and 
down to the warm shaft that was already showing the effects of his 
ministrations. Clasped it in both hands. Massaged the skin, felt it 
harden even more under his fingers. Smirking, he played the game he'd 
had in mind. Made it his. Made it dance.

Xander, of course, was staring goggle-eyed into the mirror at his own 
member doing things by itself that it'd never got up to before. 
Visibly torn between sinking into complete psychotic bliss, and 
giggling hysterically at the sight of Xander Harris and his Amazing 
Dancing Penis...

Evil things. The little evil things that Spike could still get away 
with doing, that inspired no guilt whatsoever in his suddenly brood-
prone brain... Like this: in his best Annoying-Little-Drunk-Man 
impersonation (think Ronnie Corbett on helium), he spoke for Xander's 
voiceless cock, moving it in time with the words.

"'Ello up there! Get me off this wanker, somebody! 'E's a bleedin' 
psycho. Spends most his young life doin' absolutely nothin' with me, 
and then this year starts stickin' me into every demon 'at walks by 
with a wiggle an' a wink. Bloody dangerous, I tell you!"

Giggling hysterically won, although Xander's body was still jerking 
softly in Spike's arms, with each movement of his trapped 
penis. "Well, not absolutely nothing. Just...not sharing with 
others. And that...is *not* what it would sound like..." he gasped 
in between snickers. "I'm a man. I have a *manly* dick!"

Well, it was doing its best to prove that assertion to Spike, as it 
grew hotter and harder in his hands. {Ahh, nineteen year olds...This 
is too easy...} Right then. Manly. Dropping his voice to femme-trying-
to-sound-butch range. (Think John Inman answering the phone at Grace 
Brothers Department Store: 'Menswear...') Gruff. Masculine. Full of 
it.

"Er.. right. That's me. *Manly*. Anybody see a little blonde girl 
anywhere? 'Ow 'bout a redhead with enormous melons? On the prowl for 
female flesh, I am. Wait.. what's that? Naked vampire arse? Don't 
mind if I do!" Having finished his little morality play, Spike 
punctuated the last sentence by letting go of Xander's cock (which 
was doing a good job of standing upright on its own now) and grabbing 
the boy's hands, yanking them back to cup the aforementioned arse. 
Pressing the two of them even closer together.

The face in the mirror shook from side to side, unable to control the 
laughter, or much of anything else, judging from the shuddering of 
his body against Spike's. But he played along, squeezing Spike's 
lower cheeks firmly, then breaking free and stumbling forward.

"*I'm* deranged?" he wheezed. "Me? Get the hell in the shower, you 
Froot Loop, before you get *cold* again."

Spike chuckled dangerously. "No fear, pet. No fear." 

Nonetheless, he turned, about to make for the shower, when Xander 
stopped him short with "And what the hell is *that* ?" in an 
aggrieved shout.

Spinning around, the first thing Spike noticed was probably *not* 
what Xander was asking about, but he had to play the game 
anyway. "Well, if *you* don't know..."

"*That*." Xander sighed exasperatedly, twisting himself round so that 
he could point in the mirror, back to the red and yellow tattoo 
emblazoned high on his left cheek.

The sight of that delicious arse, with the bear of very little brain 
playing on it.funny as hell. Erotic as hell. {God, I wish I could
see 
myself. Wonder how I look when I'm this turned on? Like the devil in 
blue jeans, somebody once said.} Spike's inner demons warred over who 
got to come up with the best answer, and Snarky Voice Number 
Seventeen won the pool. In best BBC announcer English: "I believe 
his formal title is 'Mr. Sanders,' but I've been told he lets his 
intimates call him 'silly old bear.' "

"You are *so* dead!" --Well, obviously.

Xander pushed him unprotesting into the shower, turned the hot water 
on with a jerk, and shoved him under it. Yanked the curtain shut. 
Shoved him up against the tiled wall like a man possessed. More 
kissing. Which was always fine. Xander's hands in his hair, under the 
hot fall of water, pulling him tightly to the other man's face, 
hurting, just enough to feel good. Xander broke away with a gasp and 
reached for the shampoo hanging from the shower caddy. Eh? Something 
reddish and fruity-scented, and those hands were coming at his head 
again, this time to rub shampoo into his hair like the Demon 
Hairdresser of Fleet Street. Closing his eyes, Spike let the 
invisible fingers massage his scalp, and melted back against the 
wall. Goodbye, peanut butter! Hello, ecstasy. Touching. Things that 
walk the night, how he loved to be touched, to touch. To feel the 
spark and smooth of skin on skin. Warm on cool, under the hot water, 
in the steam. Sensation.

***

Somewhere around the time Xander started rubbing the foam from the 
shampoo all over his body, Spike realized he really hadn't a clue 
what it was they were going to do in the shower. He wasn't about to 
try taking Xander, standing up on slick concrete, first time, with a 
chip in his skull that might decide to fry his brain at the least bit 
of an ache, no matter how pleasant. Wouldn't mind the other way 
round, again. Could be fun. He reached down to find wet curls even 
with his waistline, as Xander crouched down to lick across his 
stomach. Opened his eyes. {Oh, nice view. I could get quite used to 
dark haired boys seen from that angle. Well, one dark haired boy.} He 
reached down and tweaked a curl out of Xander's face, which got his 
lover looking up at him. A bit uncertain again.

"I know you said...next time..." and there was fear in that voice, 
and a bit of that white knight bravery, and Spike realized he was, in 
his own way, just as scared. He didn't want to hurt the boy, and he 
certainly didn't want to hurt *himself*, and it really just wasn't 
the time. The thought of *him*, of all people, playing nervous virgin 
in unison with his mercurial human lover was enough to raise a 
chuckle.

"Not in the shower, luv. Not the first time. Too athletic for this 
early on a Sunday morning, anyway. Maybe.another time, yeah?
Soon." 
Then he leered, just a bit. "But if you want to do something else 
nice for me, well, I wouldn't say no. I mean, while you're down 
there, an' all."

Bit of your traditional Xander Harris embarrassment, and some more of 
that stuff from last night--uncertain of himself again. {Doesn't know 
how to do it. Doesn't know if he'll get it right. Doesn't know if 
I'll be upset with him.} Spike sighed. When was the last time he'd 
been with a virgin? Nineteen-oh-two? Twenty-six? When was the last 
time he'd cared about what his lover was *feeling* beyond the purely 
physical, aside from Dru? He pulled Xander up. Pushed *him* back 
against the other wall.

"Right. You've never done this before. Eventually I'll exhaust your 
list of those. Well, I'm *sure* you've had it done *to* you, but I'm 
guessing you weren't taking pointers at the time." Xander smiled 
slightly, and nodded. {Yeah, I'll bet. Anya's got quite the little 
mouth on her. If she gives head as well as she bitches, I've got a 
lot to live up to. Figuratively speaking.} He slid to his knees, 
using Xander's slick body as a precarious handhold. Took hold of the 
reddened cock before him, and brought it to his mouth. Gently licked 
the bulbous tip, tasting salt as it leaked from the slit, and was 
rewarded by a gasp of pleasure from Xander. "There really *isn't* a 
user's manual, y'know. No right or wrong answer."

"That's...what they said about essay questions, but I never did test 
well..." Xander babbled.

Spike chuckled. Thought about it, put his mouth completely over the 
tip of Xander's erection, and chuckled again. Oh, *that* got him a 
reaction. Licked around in a circle. Pulled off. "No grade, promise. 
Who would you take the reports home to, anyway? No, enthusiasm and 
creativity are pretty much welcome, and teeth..." he added, very, 
very gently grazing the top with his upper set, causing Xander to 
flatten against the wall with a little yip thrown in for good 
measure..."are allowed, but should be used sparingly."

In a voice about half a note higher than his normal speaking tone, 
Xander stammered..."Um, yeah...could you maybe not vamp out while 
you're doing that? No offense, but I don't think I want *those* teeth 
doing their thing on my...thing..."

Spike had to laugh. "I don't need the headache, thanks." He returned 
wholeheartedly to what he'd been doing, and soon the witty banter 
wasn't really an option, as he slowly engulfed the length of Xander's 
shaft with his mouth, moving up and down, taking in a little more 
each time. {And they say there's no advantage in being a big-mouthed 
vampire...} He could feel the boy's fingers twining loosely in his 
hair, as he made his way to the base, and slowly, trying his best not 
to smile, but not doing that good a job of it, took in the taut sac 
as well. 

There was a *definite* advantage in not having to breathe. Xander was 
doing enough of it for the both of them, anyway. Spike moved his 
tongue, just a bit, tickling the underside of Xander's balls. Let 
them slip back out. Easily reacting to the expected thrust, twitch, 
thrust. Sucking for all he was worth, and *not* using the teeth. He'd 
made his point. What could be better than a mouthful of Xander 
Harris? Maybe a mouthful of Xander Harris coated in chocolate sauce, 
but this would do nicely. He could feel it coming, feel the boy's 
thrusts begin to strain into him, and he reached up blindly, grabbing 
Xander's hands on pure instinct. Wanting to be connected, touching, 
as Xander groaned loudly, and the semen came flooding into Spike's 
mouth, drowning him in hot, wet salt which he drank down like he'd 
been dying of thirst, until at last it stopped. And the hot rain of 
water continued to patter on his head.

He just knelt there for a moment, not letting go. Not with his hands, 
not with his mouth. Finally he allowed Xander's cock to slip slowly 
from his lips, licking off every bit of residue on the way out. Not 
blood, but close. Not chocolate, but almost better.

Not letting go of Xander's hands, he looked up. Smiled. The boy was 
blinking back down at him. Gobsmacked. Such a wonderfully descriptive 
term. Xander smiled back at Spike, after a few seconds. "Follow that, 
I'm supposed to?" Listened to himself. Shook his head, dousing 
Spike's face with water. "Yoda, I am?"

He pulled up on Spike's hands, and drew the vampire level with him, 
bringing his lips close. "You want to taste yourself, do you?" Spike 
whispered at him. "I don't blame you. You taste *good*, pet." The 
vampire smashed their mouths together, darting his flavor-filled 
tongue into Xander's mouth. Basting the boy in his own juices. 
Delicious. Beat hell out of the Slayer's Thanksgiving turkey...

********************************

Part Seven

"What do you think?" Spike said at last. "You game?" He snarled to 
punctuate the word, letting bumpy brow, amber eyes, sharp teeth 
flicker over his face and disappear. Testing, a bit, to see what 
would or wouldn't scare Xander, but also warning, reminding the human 
that this was what he held in his arms. And there was nothing bad. No 
fear. No shrinking back. Just a smile. The one that hurt his eyes.

"Oh, I'm game." Xander spun him around in a surprisingly quick move, 
so that *Spike* had his back to the wall, and *Xander* was doing a 
slow slide down Spike's body, rubbing at all sorts of interesting 
places on the way down. Spike leaned back against the wall, willing 
himself to relax. He wasn't a trembling virgin, by any stretch of the 
imagination, and the mere feeling of a lover taking his cock into 
willing fingers, rolling it... shouldn't be about to send him over 
the edge into no-vamp's-land. 

The touch of soft lips, a moist tongue, on the tip of his shaft, 
gliding over the top, tracing patterns in slow spirals... shouldn't 
be driving all coherent thought from his mind. Time was, he could get 
a blow job and do the Times crossword puzzle in his head at the same 
time. Time was. time was moving at an entirely different
rate, now. 
He could have written a letter home to his long-dead mum, if he ever 
cared to remember her name, all about the beautiful boy with whom he 
was undeniably sure he was in love, who was sucking his cock as if it 
was the only other object in the world besides the boy's own 
extremely kissable mouth. He could have signed it, love Will, bloody 
well don't wish you were here, and posted it, all in the time it took 
Xander Harris to breathe in though his nose and push his mouth an 
inch further down the length of Spike's penis.

That mouth.was sliding up again, and the tongue.was docking
itself 
beneath the extra skin of Spike's uncircumcised cock, shifting it 
about in agonizingly slow circles. {Bloody Hell! I didn't teach
him 
*that* ! Full marks for creativity.} "Xander." The movement
slowed 
down. "Nooo. don't stop. Just.yeah. Good. Do that." Nonsense. 
Gibberish. Very dignified, very British. very badass.Xander's
mouth 
slid down again, *quite* far, enough to graze Spike's balls with the 
tip of his tongue. Spike wasn't expecting him to try the 'swallow you 
whole' trick, and he didn't. What he *did* do was very gently touch 
them with his teeth, just a pinprick of sharpness that had Spike 
reaching for a handhold on the wall and making little high-pitched 
sounds of complete madness. Anything so that he didn't either fall to 
the ground or grab Xander's head and smother his lover between his 
legs. Hell of a way to go. Disappointed and at the same time relieved 
when *that* sensation faded and Xander went back to pumping up and 
down, like any normal, non-demented human who happened to be sucking 
off a vampire.

Reaching the edge, and so close, so bloody close, and his eyes were 
shut, but he wanted them open, wanted to *see* the dark lashes on the 
light skin as Xander looked down at what he was doing. He saw 
spraying water, and wet, dark hair, and felt himself starting to 
completely let go, lose himself entirely to this human mystery at his 
feet. Body, heart. soul? Did he have a soul? He went on and on
about 
Soul-Boy and what a ponce he was, but just because Spike's soul 
wasn't human, did that mean he didn't have one? If he did, he was 
transcendently positive at this moment that it belonged completely to 
Alexander Harris. Who had, while he was pondering the mysteries of 
the universe, begun softly to *hum*, a tune that might have been 
familiar if Spike weren't too busy thrusting forward, muttering 
intelligent things like "Yes.Dear God, yes, don't ever stop
that.love.
it." At least he'd managed not to say the other. To say 'Love
*you*.' 
And on E above middle C, he was exploding into Xander's mouth, 
wrapping his fingers in that dark hair, not pulling, just holding on 
for dear unlife until he'd given everything he had. Everything. Which 
his lover took, without ever once drawing back.

When he could think in English again, he stroked Xander's 
forehead. "Come here, you." Drew Xander up to taste himself in that 
unbelievable mouth. Salty and faintly coppery, and creamy, and warm 
as the hot water that was still hitting them could make the product 
of a room-temperature body. Looked into his eyes, which were 
searching for some sort of approval, or rejection. Spike smiled. A 
real, honest, genuine smile, the sort that tended to make him want to 
yak when he saw it on human faces, with a few exceptions. "What on 
the Hellmouth was *that* ?" he asked.

"Umm."God Save the Queen' ? Well, actually, 'My Country 'Tis of 
Thee,' but I figured you couldn't hear the words anyway, so I'd be 
covered either way."

And Spike laughed as he soaped Xander's curls with the Watermelon-and-
pineapple shampoo, and he laughed as he kissed the back of Xander's 
neck and he laughed as he slid down to run his hands over Xander's 
slim, suds-covered buttocks.and he said, finally, when he thought
he 
could speak in his native tongue again, "Very patriotic. Very 
creative. You pass with flying colors. "

***

In bed, at, oh, ten a.m., because he was tired. He wasn't supposed to 
even be awake. Xander bumbling around trying to pick up the various 
pieces of flotsam and jetsam that had accumulated over the weekend: 
empty candy wrappers, a pint bottle of long-gone cider, clothes and 
sheets and bathrobes that belonged either in the laundry or the 
trash, depending on how much they'd gotten in the way. Spike yawned. 
Bitched.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Xander looked up from where he was crouched on the floor, dabbing at 
a spot of chocolate peanut butter with an already sopping 
bedsheet. "Cleaning?"

"Who are you and what have you done with Xander Harris?" Spike asked 
sardonically. "You're demented. Come back to bed." He looked over at 
the red recliner next to the bed. If he read things right, it was 
just for sitting in, now. Unless they were invaded by the outside 
world.

Xander dropped the sheet and left it where it fell, returning to the 
bed, and Spike. "Yeah, don't know what came over me, there. Kinda 
like getting up at seven in the morning. You've seen me--I don't 
move 'til nature calls, if I can help it."

Spike lifted the blankets and pulled Xander down to the bed with a 
thump, yanking him close. "C'mere. I'm cold. Yeah, what the hell were 
you doing up?"

Xander shook his head. "I dunno. I think.I don't usually sleep
that 
well." There was silence, as they both tried to decipher what that 
meant.

"What about you? I know damn well you weren't asleep when I came down 
the stairs. I could hear you muttering something about being 
invisible. Which, may I say, ain't all it's cracked up to be. Been 
there, done that."

Spike snickered. "I said that out loud? Yeah, that would've convinced 
your parents I was you, hiding under the covers."

"Yeah, point, but you should've been asleep. I didn't figure you'd 
wake up, that's why I thought I was covered to sneak off for some 
chow. Y'know, if this keeps up, your sleep-cycle's gonna be massively 
fucked."

"As long as I am too. Will it?" He stared hard at the dark, light, 
strange, familiar man in his arms. Boy. Human. Lover. Xander. Because 
it seemed like everything was riding on that question. More than the 
person who had to answer it would ever know. "And before we repeat a 
conversation that's as over as your fashion statement, *I* want it 
to. Do you?"

Xander leaned back against his chest. Lay his head down, pillowed on 
Spike's shoulder. Was silent. Reached for Spike's hand. Played with 
the fingers. Twined them in his own, and held them there, against his 
own chest. "Yeah. I'm demented. What can I say."

Spike kissed the top of that still-damp head, leaving his mouth 
there, tasting watermelon and pineapple. "Demented, alright. 
Delirious.deranged.possibly delightful.we'll see."

"Hey, no fair. You never answered why you were up at seven-thirty in 
the morning. Giant Vampire Lark."

"Bad dream," Spike answered, before he knew what he was saying. 
{*That* wasn't for public consumption. What the hell?}

Xander turned his head to look at his bedmate. "You? You dream?"

"Yeah--of vampire sheep." Huh-duh-huh face. "It's a Blade Runner 
joke. You're too young. Go to sleep."

Xander yawned. "Yeah, prob'ly should. Saw that movie, though. No 
sheep." He rolled over suddenly to face Spike, who was laying flat on 
his back. Unhesitatingly put an arm across Spike's chest, and 
slithered the other behind the vampire's neck, becoming a human 
pillow. A warm human pillow. Yawn. Head back on shoulder. Yawn. "Make 
you a deal."

"Hmm? What? All the Count Chocula I can eat and a no stake-age 
guarantee if I give you head in the shower every morning?"

"Okay, not.what I had in mind, but you just go right on making 
bluntness work for you there. No, I was gonna say." Yawn.
Snuggle. 
Yawn.

"What?' Softly. So as not to wake him if he really had fallen asleep. 
Not that Spike was all that far from it himself.

"No bad dreams. I'll stake yours if you'll bite mine." Whispered 
into Spike's ear. 

{Oh, dear God. Or whoever. What'll I do with you, eh?} Spike let his 
head fall down to rest against Xander's. Blonde against dark brown. 
Sun and shadow, sure, an old cliché, but which was which? 

"Okay, pet. You're delirious, and you don't know what you're saying, 
but what the hell. Bite 'em up with my big vampire teeth, I will. Go 
to sleep."

" 'Kay." 

And so they did, drifting off and sleeping deep into the afternoon. 
It was warm, and they were demented, and all in all, it had been a 
hell of a weekend. Spike, if he dreamed at all, didn't remember them, 
but he didn't wake alone.


End.