Childe of my Heart ~ Chapter Thirty-five
by Shanyah
 

He’d planned to lay a deal on the table, but he was the one laying on it. Head up, trousers down, fingers tousling Xander’s hair, hips rising as a hot mouth slid onto his cock. Xander, Xander, he planned to say. Christ pet don’t stop he found himself saying when Xander pulled off, lashing his tongue from side to side. That hot mouth closed around his cock-head, sucked on it, chilly air licked at the wet trails on his shaft and the contrast was maddening in a ball tightening way. 

“Luv,” he groaned, reflexively fucking upward.

Xander grasped his hips, stayed their thrusting, looked up along his body and met his eye and he started breathing, thrill swamped him because he knew what Xander’s black-eyed look meant. Now retreating, now advancing, Xander adjusted to the length and girth of him, took him in deep, all the way in, chin pressed to his balls, humid air gushing from his nose to stir Spike’s pubes, throat encasing him, swallowing, emptying him.

Aftershocks of pleasure still bouncing around in his bloodstream, he pulled Xander up over him, kissed the friction reddened lips, swept his tongue between them greedy for the taste of himself in Xander’s mouth. But when he cupped Xander’s erection, rocked the heel of his palm on it, Xander broke the kiss, “Wait, wait Spike…ah fuck,” he gasped, his hips seizing up and his cock jerking under Spike’s hand.

“Did you just…?”

“Yes I did,” Xander hid his face in the crook of Spike’s shoulder. “I just came in my pants.”

Amusement plucking at the corners of his mouth, Spike hooked a leg across Xander’s, warding off their inevitable separation a little longer. “It happens,” he said, “not to me, but yeah, premature shooting happens.”

Xander exhaled a murmur of laughter. “No, Spike, you never come within sixty seconds of me putting my mouth on you.”

*    *    *    *

They tidied up and used the table for its intended purpose, sat across from one another sobering up on Dawn’s extra-strong coffee and catching up on gossip. Spike bragged about his custom made dagger and quarterstaff, Xander said Spike’s staff was brag-worthy indeed. The indigo sky of night brightened into the pink and ruby of early dawn, the fire burned to a bed of embers and the pot of coffee was down to its dregs. Ten minutes ago, the gossip had dried up and Spike’s bedroom door, invitingly open, became the subject of side-long glances from both men.

“Guess I should head out?” Xander said, the query appearing to prompt Spike into closing the door with a firm thud.

“I’ll walk you home,” he said.

Xander took up the sword and waited until Spike was three steps ahead before following him out.

Spike dropped to snail’s pace. “Come up here, beside me.”

Xander matched his steps to Spike’s and the Fifth Rankers out on the ledge stared and whispered as Earner and Earned loitered past shoulder to shoulder. “Six days to go before the twenty first day,” Xander said.

Spike gave a non-committal nod.

Throw me a scrap Spike, Xander thought, feeling his nerves agitate like a bowlful of fishing maggots as the silence between them echoed. “Anya grew on me,” he blurted. “We didn’t start out with closet smoochies like me and Cordelia…and I didn’t sneak around with her like I did with Willow after Cordelia and I came out in the open.”

“Lure of the forbidden?” Spike asked.

“Anya wasn’t like that…”

“She was boring?” Palm on his back, gentle pressure as Spike guided him through a gang of Gangr’al demons.

“She was upfront, stable, and that grew on me. We were a regular couple.”

“Except ex-demons aren’t regular birds,” said Spike.

“I glossed over that. And if I sometimes thought her Levis would look sexier with man buns in them…”

“You glossed over that also,” Spike’s palm loitered up his back to curl on his shoulder.

“As you do when you spend your free time trying to convince demons that really, your scalp would make a detectable and slidey toupee,” Xander said, glad of the light guide on his shoulder even though they had cleared the crowds and were on the deserted mile to The Baths.

Spike leaned in, tickling Xander’s ear with a coffee flavoured whisper as he frisked his hair. “I like your scalp on you.”

“That’s reassuring,” Xander ran his hand up Spike’s arm, circled his wrist and brought it down, planting a kiss on Spike’s pulse point. “We were happy in love and we were going to stay happy. Then Glory came by to poop the party that is Hellmouth living.”

He let go of Spike’s squirming hand, felt the pressure mount as they turned the corner and quick walked to the closed Bath gates in the visible distance. “Glory moved mortality into the next block, we were all gonna die soonish. I rushed out to carpe diem because there was no time to stop and wonder about man buns in Levi’s.”

Spike’s jeans swished with his scissoring legs. “Carp diem being?” Clipped words, faster scissoring.

“Jonas and Sons Jewelers Store,” Xander lengthened his stride and caught up with Spike. “It’s what you do in an apocalypse. You shake off your confusion and say things out loud to make them real. I asked Anya to marry me out loud and made the future real.”

Spike snorted sarcasm. “It worked a treat.”

“For most of that night there wasn’t a happier man in Sunnydale. But Buffy died and I was stuck with a fiancée, I mean it’s no excuse, I know it isn’t. But I was just so trapped when I realized stability was Buffy, not Anya. And there was the grieving. The fights because I’d turned into a Viking on recess in the sack.”

“I had no idea,” Spike dictated a jog that brought them closer to the gates. “You and Anya came across as sickly ecstatic.”

“She was, ecstatically organizing our lives. She wanted joint accounts right away, wanted me to get a raise and lose the flab. She wanted to come off the pill on our honeymoon. I got into my car, drove around, saw the neon signs of The Tango.”

“The Tango – that pick-up joint on edge of town?”

“The very same. I parked up and went in there for a round of hassle-free dancing with carefree girls. Then this guy danced up to me and suggested a different kind of tango. The guy had an incredible pair of Levi’s on him.”

Spike cut across his path, got to the gates and flitted to the alcove on one side of the Bath gates, resting his foot on the stone seat in the alcove. “What was his name, this Tango guy?”

“Told you Spike, I don’t remember his name,” breath coming in spurts, Xander dropped onto the seat. “I left with him, motel room. Too edgy to ask him his name again. We stayed all night and the guy, he did things that… he was…he didn’t freak out when I…I got emotional. I was breathing, for the first time in my life I could brea-” Xander shook his head, feeling emotional about this first time – having verbal dialogue about his gayness. “Stress relief. You’re not telling me you never fucked someone for relief?”

Spike searched his eyes and said nothing by word or expression. Aware of reaching desperation, Xander forced his vocal cords to deliver in even pitch. “Here lives asymmetry,” he looked over Spike’s knee at the other side of the gates. “Everywhere else Tresten has symmetry, but there’s no mirror alcove on the other side of the gates. Why’s that?”

Spike raised his foot over Xander’s thigh, brought it down on the floor between his feet, did the same with his other foot and slid down to kneel at Xander’s feet.

“That’s all he was Spike, stress relief,” Xander smiled, pleaded. “Next time, I’ll down a beer.”

Spike’s face broke into a twisted smirk. “Can’t decide whether to daub myself Stray Fuck or Pint of Larger.”

“I meant Rhiana’s boy, he’s the stray fuck,” Xander quickly corrected.

Spike closed his fingers around Xander’s throat, barely gripping and hardly smiling. The hand was a lasso on Xander, wiring into a fuzzy memory and causing convulsive swallows. But Spike was talking and the intensity in his voice slapped down fuzzy memories like Dawn slapped down fuzzy moths.

“If we’re gonna have another go at this, I don’t want the Bertrands of the Trail de-stressing you. There will be nowhere safe for the next man – semi, sub or full human – who comes round figuring to iron out your kinks,” Spike scored the fishbone rings on Xander’s artery.

“I will smoke him out and slit his fucking throat for stress relief, burn down his Master’s house, gut everyone in it for recompense.” Spike tightened his grip on Xander’s throat, tugging him forward so their noses touched and their lips lined up, so his words, dark and thick as molasses, trickled onto Xander’s lips. “And you, fuck around again and I’ll....” Spike let his thumb say the rest, head tilted and guiltless eyes lighting on Xander’s eyes, he slowly pressed down on the artery.

Xander’s blood buzzed down to his cock, hitting him with a ruthless hard on. He went light-headed, was breathing, but felt like he wasn’t and the firmer the cool thumb pressed, the more his blood buzzed and the harder he became. Dizzy with a pleasure he didn’t think he should be feeling, he said, “Yes Spike, okay.” 

Spike lifted his thumb off.

The blood soared back to Xander’s head and he was flying, experiencing everything in high-resolution. The satin grain of Spike’s nape when he put his hand there to steady himself, the harsh sound of his own raked in breaths, the concentrated doses of Spike’s scent that came in on those inhalations, all experienced in high resolution and all rocketing him towards another premature climax.

“Usually, Xander, when someone touches you here,” Spike kissed the point he’d depressed moments ago, “you punch their lights out.”

Xander couldn’t marshal his words or thoughts right away. He closed his eyes, waited for his throat to stop quivering and the heat in his blood to cool. By that time, Spike had moved to sit next to him on the bench and was looking at him with the guiltless gaze. He’d seen babies do that, stare in blue-eyed innocence.

“I was being willing, Spike. Isn’t that what you want, me willing to submit to your thumb?”

“What vampire doesn’t want that? But see I know you. Too hard up here,” Spike knuckled the side of his blond head, “and all I’m doing by asking that of you is forcing you against you. Don’t want you chipped, Xander. Don’t want you crawling.”

Xander glanced away. He shouldn’t be the one feeling guilty here, but he was and the guilt came in the form of inner conflict. The chip was good, it made humans safe. The chip was bad, it made Spike crawl. Spike had just cut off his oxygen, could’ve turned him into a cabbage; he needed chipping. Spike would never really hurt him.

More confused than ever, Xander focused on the two thousand things he was not confused about. “I don’t need two thousand men, Spike.”

Spike took a cigarette out, twirled it between two fingers like it were a miniature quarterstaff. “We’ve done this before. We stood in a nook and hashed out this same topic. Remember that?”

Xander looked into the dark space behind the bench, remembered a similar ink-black alcove on the Third Ranking staircase. He’d agreed to save his glances for Spike only, but with no stake and nowhere to go, he’d have said anything in that alcove. Now was different. Now fear wasn’t forcing him to return to Spike’s custody. He could walk away with an indigo band, a house, a militia of Xanderettes and no Spike. The thought was like a drill digging into an exposed tooth-nerve.

“You want to know what else I remember, Spike? Every word of your letter. Well here I am, talented, willing and starting to think you don’t believe you’re Master Vampire enough to teach me submission,” he said with a bravado that started and ended at his mouth.

Spike cocked his eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“It feels so.”

“I’m still going to want you to live in the Pool House.”

Xander had hoped it wouldn’t be so, but said, “I know.”

“I’ll put more guards at the gates if you’re worried,” Spike said.

“Worried about what?” Xander asked. Spike gave him a strange look. He couldn’t describe it, but it made him check the dark alcove again, see if the bogey-man was lurking in there. “Should I be screaming in fear and running for the locker-room, Spike?” He asked, his pulse speeding up.

Spike dismissed this with a roll of his eyes. “I’m going to bed,” he said, standing up.

Rickety sigh from Xander and they left the asymmetrical alcove. “Spike?” Xander said as they parted ways at the Bath gates. “Stumpy and I? It’s love at first sight, thanks.”

Spike slowed down, but didn’t stop. “Take care of him, won’t you? He’s not as tough as he looks.”

I will Xander was about to say, but Spike had increased his pace again, head down, legs scissoring, fast, faster, sprinting, gone.

CHILDE OF MY HEART ~ CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

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