Xander woke just before the alarm, an old habit he was falling back into after only a few days at work.  He carefully unwrapped himself from the sleeping vampire and turned to switch off the alarm with minutes to spare.  Still incredibly horny from the previous evening, Xander wondered about waking Spike up with a blowjob that would hopefully progress to something more, but he remembered the growl that had met his innocent kisses a couple of mornings ago and didn’t want to risk antagonising Spike.  With a self-pitying sigh Xander dragged himself from the bed.

As he shaved he thought about this time last week, about how happy they’d been.  He’d gone through the phase of needing to be up and doing something after the long period of incapacity, and the last two weeks of freedom had been spent almost exclusively in bed.  It had been a different kind of recuperation, devoted entirely to their thoughts, their needs, their identity as a unit.  Plenty of sex but also plenty of talking, connecting, finding one another and finding a degree of peace after all they’d been through.  A few days on and that wonderful peace seemed to be a lost ideal.

…

Spike wasn’t sure he’d slept at all.  The demon had temporarily stopped pounding at him for control, sex, violence, blood, liberation, revenge – the list went on and on – and he’d felt reasonably settled, able to relax but loath to miss out on a conscious moment with Xander so close and so loving despite the distress the vampire had inflicted.  Spike had lain awake and listened to every breath, every heartbeat, with intense adoration.  Maybe Xander had been joking about worshipping Spike, but Spike’s feelings toward Xander were truly that fervent.

He felt Xander wake and leave his side, and the familiar feeling of being willing to go to any length to retain that beloved presence rushed through him, but he didn’t move, refused to let Xander know he was conscious, gave his battered human the opportunity to escape.  He smelt Xander’s arousal, it fed his own, but last night’s rejection had been warranted and what had changed since?  Xander wasn’t going to trust him, wasn’t going to…  Spike flinched painfully at the thought of Xander not wanting him, cursing the rampaging demon and its mindless need for revenge.  Cursing…himself.

…

As Xander re-entered the bedroom Spike couldn’t help taking a glance; he’d promised himself to leave Xander alone, to pretend to be asleep until after he’d gone to work, but he couldn’t help himself: it was a major element of his sense of security.  Seeing Xander falter as their eyes met he quickly looked away.

Xander had spent the last five minutes willing Spike to be awake by the time he returned to the bedroom, but it was still a surprise when he found himself gazing into troubled blue eyes.  The impression Xander gleaned from that momentary contact was quite poignant: Spike’s sorrow at recent events was palpable, and his sense of loss all pervasive.  No way Xander was going to leave him feeling like that.  He crossed to the foot of the bed and threw aside the covers, meeting Spike’s look of shock with one that spoke of lust and adoration and lust and undoubtedly more lust.  Xander began a slow crawl up the body that twitched expectantly, holding Spike’s hopeful, desirous gaze every inch of the way.

Face-to-face and Xander paused as he studied the vampire’s mouth, thinking about that first kiss, the way it was going to taste, to feel, how it would send bolts of electricity straight to his already rigid cock.  No fondling or kneading or grabbing and that amazed Xander, widening his focus and allowing him to notice how hard Spike was working to be non-threatening, to leave absolute control to Xander.  Absolute control.  The complete power scenario was a wicked thought in an already hyped mind.  Xander crushed his mouth to Spike’s, hearing the libidinous creak emerging from the vampire’s throat instantly subdued unless it was mistaken for anything hostile.

“It’s okay,” he broke the kiss to say.  “We’re okay.”  He finally lowered his body, playing his cock over Spike’s and listening for another of those creaks as he resumed the kiss.  Within seconds Spike was groping under the pillows and rescuing the lubricant, pressing the tube urgently at Xander.  “Sure that’s what you want?” Xander asked.  Spike responded with a enthusiastic nod, already breathing hard at the promise of being fucked.  “Strong, silent type today?”

“I say the wrong thing and this is over,” Spike confided in a whisper.  “I keep saying the wrong thing.”

“Tell me you want me.”

“I want you, Xander, I want you inside me, I want you to—”  Spike broke off, biting his lip, knowing he’d done exactly what he’d been afraid of.

“Claim you?” Xander finished for him.

Spike turned his face away, eyes, lips tightly shut as he closed himself off, afraid to ruin this with another inappropriate word, just knowing that Xander was about to pull away, to leave him frustrated and without this memory to see him through a long day alone.  He choked back a plea as he felt Xander move away, but the separation was momentary before Xander was back and straddling his waist.

“Hold onto the headboard.”

Spike’s hands flew to obey, and his eyes flickered open in wonder as he felt the silk tie that Xander had discarded the previous morning being wound around his wrists.  Satisfied that his vampire was securely tied…  Securely if he plays along, I’m not kidding myself about silk versus vampire strength.  …Xander sat back with a contented sigh to survey his partner.  His cock dripped its approval, and Xander scooped up the blob of pre-come from where it had landed and teasingly massaged it into Spike’s left nipple.  Spike flexed against his restraints and Xander waited to see if he’d break free.  No.  He smiled his approval, laying his hands over Spike’s biceps to feel them swell and harden; the power of this creature was an awesome thing.  Awesome and erotic.  More pre-come, right nipple, and Xander teased and pinched until Spike was writhing, either to get more or less contact, Xander couldn’t tell.

“You can talk,” he told Spike, his voice husky with arousal.

“I want you.”

“I know you do.”  Xander shifted back until Spike’s cock was pressed against his buttocks.  “I feel you do.  You’re going to have me, I promise.”  Xander saw the sudden panic as Spike misunderstood his intentions.  “Deep inside you,” Xander said pointedly, “I’ll be inside you.”   He acknowledged the highly visible gratitude with a soft smile.

“I love you, Xander,” emerged unbidden.

Xander went back to playing with the hardened nipples, rolling them in perfect symmetry.

“I know you love me.  You know I love you.”  Spike nodded.  A sharp squeeze and Xander felt the undulation beneath him, the stab of a needy erection against him.  “Shall I leave you like this all day?”  A shuddering gasp came from the vampire.  “I could work you into my schedule.  Come home, fuck your mouth, fuck your ass.  Wouldn’t bring you off, just leave you hard and desperate and waiting for the next fuck.”  Xander could feel the steady trickle of Spike’s fluids on his skin and considered moving forward, meanly enjoying the thought of removing Spike’s one source of relief for his aching cock.  “Every couple of hours I’d be back for more and you’d have no choice but to take it.  Course, I’d have to tie your ankles to the bed too, keep you wide open, make sure you couldn’t play hard to get.”

“Wouldn’t,” Spike assured, and Xander heard the brush of his legs across the sheets as he assumed the position Xander allegedly wanted.

Xander leant forward, sucking one nipple then the other, infuriatingly gently, before moving to rake his teeth over his mark until Spike was panting and thrusting his hips, trying to find the friction that would allow him to reach orgasm, the change in Xander’s position bringing Spike unknowingly close to penetrating his lover.  Xander fell still to concentrate on the sensation of Spike’s cock brushing at his opening, feeling the swollen head sliding sensuously in the wash of pre-come, aware of his muscles relaxing in anticipation of the longed-for breach.  Spike’s body was reacting equally as instinctively: a stronger push, and now Xander was the one biting his lip to stay silent; maybe Spike was sufficiently aroused to let it happen if it was going to happen, and after it had happened once…  Damn, damn, fucking damn…  At this precise moment in time Xander would have paid to have his conscience surgically removed.

“Spike.  Sweetheart.  You know you’re almost in me?”

Spike let out a strangled sob, abruptly changed the angle of his thrusts, shot stream after stream of semen over Xander’s back.  He was barely finished before he was hoarsely demanding…

“Fuck me.”

…and Xander was hurrying to oblige, between Spike’s thighs, haphazard in his preparations, pressing himself into Spike’s body with a recklessness the vampire craved.  Corresponding groans as Xander slid in to the hilt, pausing for only a second before tumbling into a ragged pattern of thrusts that announced how quickly this would be over.

“Gonna come.  Sorry.  Gotta come.”

“Say it,” Spike urged.

“I claim you, you’re mine, I claim you.”

Spike twisted his head, exposing the scar of Xander’s mark; Xander fell on it, burying his teeth and yelling against Spike’s bleeding flesh as his orgasm wracked his body, vaguely aware of Spike’s own cries and the splash of coldness that made his stomach muscles twitch.

Xander collapsed onto Spike and stayed there, kissing his neck, licking up the last of the blood that trickled from the rapidly healing bite and feeling its effect vibrating through his body.

“It means a lot,” he whispered.

“Hmm?”

“You letting me come in you.”  Spike shifted a little and managed to see Xander’s peaceful face.  Xander ran a finger over the vampire’s full bottom lip and Spike playfully snapped at it, catching the tip and biting harmlessly.  “We do this of a morning, and I go off to work, and I can guarantee that in a couple of hours I’ll stop and I’ll think… ‘I’m in him.  There’s a part of me inside him.’”  Xander leant up, kissed Spike softly and gazed into his eyes.  “I’m in you.  And one day soon it will be the other way around.  I’ll be thinking, ‘He’s in me’.  You’ll be in me.”

Momentarily lost for words, Spike merely nodded.  Xander reached up and undid Spike’s wrists, having a grunt of satisfaction squeezed from him by the embrace that immediately followed.

“You have extraordinary timing,” Spike whispered.

“I do?”

“You wait until we’re in the middle of me giving you hell to tell me something like that.”

“No-one else has ever let me,” Xander confessed, almost inaudibly.

“No-one…?”

“That’s the trouble with us humans.  It’s all breeding and disease.”

“There’s a novelty.”

“What is?”

“Usually I want to kill everyone who’s touched you.  Now I want to kill everyone who’s denied you.”

Xander gave a soft laugh.

“At least you’re consistent with the killing.”

Spike pressed his face into Xander’s hair and kissed.

“You’ll always be inside me.  Part of you.”

“I want to be.”  Xander gave himself a little room with a persistent wriggle, leant up on an elbow.  “We’re good.  Together.”

“We are that, love.”

“D’you think…  Will you ever be happy here again?”

“Right now, I’m happy.”

“Yeah?”

Spike smiled at Xander’s smile, love thumping maniacally at him.

“Yeah.”

He rolled Xander onto his back, kissed his face, his mouth, his jaw, his neck; rubbed his face in Xander’s chest and inhaled deeply.  Xander tensed.

“Am I all right?”

“More than all right,” Spike purred.

“I mean, do I smell bad?  I forget how sensitive your senses are and…”

“Only good, Xander.  You smell good.”

“It’s just, last night, I remember that last night…”

“That was to get rid of you.  I’m sorry, it was cruel.”

“I don’t always think.  And let’s be honest, there’s a reason no-one’s produced aftershaves called long day at the office or saloon bar.”  Spike chuckled.  “You can tell me, I’d rather that than turn you off me.”

“Oh, believe me, nothing’s going to turn me off you.”

The troubled expression that had become untroubled became troubled again as memories surfaced and a particular question demanded an answer.  A question that Xander knew he had to ask while he felt marginally brave and safe.

“Spike…  When did the chip stop working?”

Spike froze for a moment, leant his forehead against Xander’s ribcage, and sighed.

“It’s working, love.  I promise you that.”

“But you—”

Xander was stopped abruptly by a glimpse of damning lucidity.  The questions he needed to ask were about himself, not Spike, but could he go there?  Spike recognised the moment had arrived: the moment when Xander saw how imperilled he was around his vampire, that his willingness to place Spike’s welfare so far above his own meant he was no longer able to instigate the simplest life-saving measure of refusing to let Spike drain him.  If Xander felt it was what Spike needed he would willingly let himself be mutilated with glass and exsanguinated.  During his periods of instability Spike was evidently unable to recognise that what he was doing was wrong.  The chip was functioning perfectly; Spike’s judgement and Xander’s survival instincts were extremely faulty.

Spike already knew it, Xander finally figured it out.  They looked at one another, Xander craving another few days of denial, beseeching Spike to make it go away.  The vampire did his best.  Falling back into his previous position, Spike grasped the headboard again.  “Going to do it?”

“Do it?”

“What you said.”  Spike gestured with his head and Xander’s gaze travelled from his face up to his hands.  “Leave me like this, come home, fuck me every couple of hours…?”

It was an extraordinary realisation: that Spike would stay there, trussed and waiting all day if Xander wanted him to.  Extraordinary, disturbing and, post-orgasmic, Xander didn’t like it one little bit.

“No.  Bad idea.  Bad, bad idea.”

“Why?”  The disappointment was evident in Spike’s voice.

“Because it turns you into…into…”  Xander stopped to think, tried to put what he felt into the correct words.  “It makes you into an object, just something to use.  It’s abuse.”

“If I want to do this for you?”

“No, Spike.  Maybe…if you were tied in here and I was just downstairs and the coming back was planned…  If it was something we…”  Xander paused again, took a breath.  “I would feel guilty leaving you like this.”

“Just guilty?”  Xander looked the question.  “Wouldn’t do anything for you?  Knowing I was here, ready and available, desperate for you and only able to think about the next time you’d walk in and fuck me…”

“Stop it!”

“Look at me.”

“I never stop looking at you.”

That didn’t, however, prevent Xander from taking another look now.  The white-knuckled hands gripping the headboard, the arms with their full, taut muscles, beautiful face that turned away with brilliantly played faux coyness, perfectly sculpted, caramel-peaked chest that rose and fell with excited breaths, twitching abs, still glistening with spent semen, that invited a tracing finger, fully-hard erection that gave excited little shudders under the scrutiny…  And that was as far as Xander was going to get as his mouth was unresistingly drawn to the vampire’s cock, lips sliding over the head, tongue probing the leaking slit.  Just as the sound of a car horn outside disrupted the peace.  Xander’s head abruptly rose.

“Oh…fucking…fuck.”

“That’ll be your lift then,” Spike sighed resignedly.

“Shit.  Fuck.  Shit.  Fuck…” and so the chant continued as Xander rushed to clean himself up and get ready for work.

Knowing he had bridges to build, Spike rose and, after taking in the mess still on his body, rejected his own robe and pulled on Xander’s instead.  As Xander cursed his way around the bath and bed rooms Spike went downstairs, opened the front door and caught Jake’s eye, gesturing him in.  He braced himself, really not wanting to do this but knowing he had to start on the damage limitation before Jake had a chance to say a word to Xander.  The young man approached with his usual friendly air, joining Spike in the hall with his customary smile.

“I want to…”

“We’ll forget it,” Jake interrupted, sounding unarguably determined.

“I’m sorry,” Spike persisted.  “I don’t mean to fuck things up but it happens.”

“Okay, it happens.  Or it tried to happen.  But…” Jake shrugged, “no real fucking things up, Spike.  Let’s forget it.”

“If Xander asks?”

“I’ll tell him it’s none of his business.”

“That’ll go down well.”

“Like he’s going to remember much anyway.”  Jake’s face showed his perturbed thoughts, and Spike knew what was on the way.  “You never honestly thought…?”

“Honestly?”  Spike wondered if he could deliver honestly.  “You would be…”  Spike took a breath: honestly was hard.  “…so much better for him.”

“No.  I knew him before you were here, I know him now.  He’ll never love anyone like he loves you and all the shit has to be worth that.  Me…  I want him as a friend and that’s what I have.  I’m lucky and I know it.  I’ve never had someone like him, he’s…”

“Your brother,” Spike finished for him, remembering Jake’s forlorn statement when Xander was in a coma.

“Yeah,” Jake smiled.  “So, don’t ever think…”

“No.  No, I won’t.”

“Good.”  Jake started toward the door, turned and came back.  “Anyway, you were right.  If I were that way inclined I’d definitely go for the exotic.”  Spike raised a quizzical eyebrow and Jake broke into an easy laugh.  “Don’t flatter yourself, it’s not like you’ve cornered the market.  There’s this French guy we work with sometimes, a designer, and he is so hot.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Xander’s voice preceded his appearance.

“You’re fine, we can be late,” Jake called back.  “What’s the point of the promotion if we can’t be late?”

“Does Xander like him?” Spike demanded.

“Oh, yeah, he really likes him.  In fact, if you hadn’t come along…”

“Who does Xander like?” Xander asked as he dithered on the landing, fiddling with cuff buttons.

“Jean-Claude.”

“Oh, shit, we don’t have to work with that asshole, do we?  If I never set eyes on him again it’ll be too soon.”

Spike’s stricken expression slid into a glower and Jake grinned.

“Sorry about that, old chap,” Jake said in a perfectly elocuted English accent, “might have led you astray there.”

“You haven’t seen it yet,” Xander explained to Spike as he trotted down the stairs.  “After the promotion.  Big plaque over the picture in the reception.  ‘The MacDonald Partnership’ and our names beneath it, makes it…makes it…”

“Real,” Jake supplied.

“Real,” Xander agreed.  “Okay, ready, almost ready, what have I forgotten?  Keys.  Where the…?  Shit.”

“I see ‘em.  I’ll…”  Jake was already crawling under the hall table.  “You do the nauseatingly sappy farewell moment while my back is turned.”

Expecting the customary all-purpose peck he received when they were in the presence of other people, Spike was pleasantly stunned when Xander pulled him into a hard, passionate kiss.  When it broke Xander kept him close, resting their brows together as he stroked the back of Spike’s head.

“You feel bad today, you give me a call, I’ll come back.  You want to go insane, promise me you won’t wreck the piano, wreck everything but the piano.”  Spike nodded against Xander.  “I love you.  Whatever.  Remember that.”  Another nod, another kiss, and Spike speechlessly watched Xander collect his coat and briefcase, receiving another kiss before Xander followed a key-jangling Jake out to the car.

This was the moment Spike hated the most.  Being awake when Xander left, being confronted by the sense of emptiness in the house and in himself.  He felt the demon stir, discontent with this abandonment, but he was in no mood to indulge that aspect of his complex make-up.  He needed to atone.  He had repeatedly hurt Xander over the last few days and he needed to atone.

Into the living room, and Spike dropped the robe.  Last night he had found the glass used to cut Xander, and now he took it up again; the scent of Xander’s blood drew him to a certain area and he gracefully sank to the carpet, sitting cross-legged on the reddish-brown stains.  It seemed only fitting that he should imitate and, in some obscure way, honour Xander.  With a steady hand he wrote his lover’s name along his inner arm, whole body tingling with the thrill of the abuse.  Not wanting to stop there, Spike carved a large X into his chest, recalling with libidinous pleasure the occasion when Xander had bitten that symbol into his body.  He looked down at his revived erection.  Some atonement.  Sorry, love.  Holding his penis steady, Spike scrawled an X into the skin of the shaft, flinching with the delicious pain.  Won’t get a fuck tonight if he sees that.  Atonement indeed.  The thought of being denied by his lover was all the further stimulation Spike needed, and his hand closed around the bloody member, yanking agonizingly for the few seconds it took to come.

Spike let himself fall backwards, spreading out on the ruined carpet and purring his pleasure as he caught the scent of Xander’s blood once again, now enhanced by the smell of his semen as it trickled from Spike’s body.  Turning his head, Spike’s eyes came to rest upon the remains of the palm, and all the good feelings left him in a jolt.  He knew, he had known, how much Xander loved that plant, the significance of it.

“It’s only a soddin’ plant,” Spike said aloud, irritably because he knew he was lying, and damn Xander for making that matter.  The irritability grew when he accepted that there would be no denial later, that the cuts on his body would be healed and Xander would be none the wiser about any fanciful gesture of atonement.  As if he could ever let Xander know about this anyway, not when Xander’s own cutting was about a desperate need for focus and control when his life seemed to be spiralling away from him.  What did it say about Spike when his Consort was left feeling…

“He is not my fucking Consort, I am too fucking pathetic to claim him!” Spike screamed in an effort to drown out his own thoughts, but the source of his erratic behaviour was stuck in the forefront of his mind again: his inability to take revenge for the man who was his Consort in every way but through ritual.  That ritual was inconsequential to him was another lie; a fundamental part of him insisted that Xander should be claimed by word and deed, that the men who harmed him…  The demon roared at the thought of these men still enjoying their lives, when they should be terrorised and tortured and possibly even turned so their horror could continue for a very long time.

On his feet now and prowling, full game face and almost insensible with rage, letting the frustration build and build until it exploded from him.  Unable to escape this setting, Spike turned on what was left of the living room, systematically destroying everything within his reach.

…

It took a while to persuade Jake not to come into the house that evening, and when Xander stepped into his home he knew that every minute it had taken was worthwhile.  He wouldn’t have wanted to explain what he found.

This was how he imagined the place would look if a tornado passed through.  Followed by an earthquake.  Throw in a tsunami and that was about it.

Xander draped his coat over the newel post that now stood at a forty-five degree angle and was completely detached from the banister.  He didn’t throw his keys on the hall table because he had no idea of where to start looking for, presumably, its remains.  A slow wander through the ground floor rooms and Xander could only chew his bottom lip and try to accept what he was seeing.  Kitchen, wrecked.  Even the steel refrigerator door had fist-shaped punch marks in it.  Living room, wrecked.  Spike had finished what he’d started and not one piece of furniture remained intact.  Dining room, wrecked.  The warped frame of the table was wedged halfway through the smashed window.  Games room, wrecked.  If Xander would have counted on one piece surviving it was the pool table, but that was nothing more than a heap of slivers, shreds and splinters of its components.  Study, wrecked.  The remains of the computer were still plaintively beeping and flickering, throwing a disconcerting strobe effect over the darkened room.

He looked toward the music room, knowing that Spike would have been too irrational to stop before he destroyed the piano.  Despite standing there, telling himself it was only a piano and a piano could be replaced, he began to tear up at the thought of Spike’s wonderful gift in pieces.  But he had to see and, after a long pause for several deep breaths, he cautiously pushed the door open.

The piano was whole.  The room was untouched.  Spike sat on the floor near the far wall, still naked.  He was bruised, cut and bloody in the aftermath of his destructive frenzy, head down, exhausted and barely conscious.  Xander went back to where he’d noticed his robe, picking it up from the floor and shaking the debris from it, then returned to Spike, approaching carefully and kneeling by the vampire’s side to wrap the robe around his shoulders.  The tousled head rose and sleepy eyes focused on Xander with some difficulty.

“Hey,” Xander greeted him.

A few blinks and Spike was mutely offering a hand.  Xander took it curiously, stroking gently until…  He brought the heel of Spike’s hand to his mouth, sucking and chewing until he was able to draw out a long splinter and spit it away.  The past swept up to join them: splinters were always followed by comfort.  Xander cradled Spike to him, the vampire reaching to link an arm around Xander’s neck, and they rocked.

“Do we still have somewhere to sleep?”

“I didn’t – couldn’t – go upstairs.”

Xander felt mean being grateful that the PTSD had saved the upper floor from this vampiric wrecking ball, but grateful he was.

“How about we get you into the shower and then you rest?”  Spike nodded and let Xander coax him to his feet, put the robe on him properly and tied the belt.  “You feel so cold.  Nice, hot shower, huh?”

“With you?”

“Oh, yeah, with me, definitely with me.”

“I need to be with you.”

Arm around Spike’s waist, Xander led him to the staircase before he pulled away and went into the living room, evidently looking for something.  The state of the room was still a shock the second time around for Xander.  He gazed at one pile of remains after the other.

“Don’t remember losing the coffee table down the back of the sofa.  You’d think we’d have noticed.”

The attempt at lightening the mood fell justifiably flat.  Clutching a piece of glass, Spike turned back and reached for his partner.  Wondering where Spike was going to make his mark this time, Xander took an unconscious step back before going to him, trying to be calm, trying to be what Spike needed.

What Spike needed was nothing more than the comfort of Xander’s arm around him again.  Moving close, this time they made the stairs, got to the bathroom and into the shower.  Holding and rocking the vampire again, Xander hummed and dropped chaste kisses onto neck and shoulders until Spike had warmed up a little.  Carefully washing away the dried blood, Xander found healing scars that made him too uncomfortable to look at closely.  He busied himself instead with the extraction of more splinters, both wood and glass, not thinking about X-shaped scars, not thinking about deliberately caused X-shaped scars, certainly not thinking about the whereabouts of deliberately caused X-shaped scars.

“Sing.”

“I can’t sing.  I’m prepared to risk your love by humming, isn’t that enough?”

“I like it when you sing.”

Xander looked up from where he was easing glass from the edge of Spike’s left foot.

“You like?”

“I like.”

“Did you hit your head?” Xander chuckled.

“You sing and…it lets me in.”

“You’re already in.”  Spike fell silent again, trailing his fingers over Xander’s dripping hair.  “I can’t believe I feel guilty for denying you something so horrible.”  The fingers trailed, as did the silence.  “What do you want me to sing?”

“What you were learning.”

Xander left the glass alone for a moment and affectionately ran his hand over Spike’s calf.

“Thanks for leaving the piano.”

“You told me to.”

“So…”

“Sing.”

Xander sang, uncomfortably, and not as awfully as he imagined.

“There were bells on a hill, but I never heard them ringing.  No, I never heard them at all, till there was you.”  He paused as he worked.  “I think I’ll have to get these last pieces out when you’re laying down.”

“Sing.”

Long, embarrassed sigh from the man on his knees.

“There were birds in the sky, but I never saw them winging.  No, I never saw them at all, till there was you.”

“Is that true?  Bells and birds and me?”

Xander kissed Spike’s hip, knelt up and nuzzled.

“Ringing, winging, whole deal.  All you.”

Spike pulled Xander to his feet and kissed him.

“Can you forgive me?”

“For?”

The humourless laugh said it all.

“Where do I start?”

“Hey, just…  Yes.  I forgive you.  It’s only stuff, we can replace it.”

“I’ve hurt you.”

“No replacing me though.”

“You’re irreplaceable.”

“You feel any better?  Calmer for doing that?”

“I don’t know.”

Xander nodded, understanding despite not understanding.  He put his arms firmly around Spike’s waist and swayed them to the music that trickled through his mind.  Spike went easily with him, elbows on Xander’s shoulders, hands draped on the crown of Xander’s head.

“There was love all around, but I never heard it singing.  No, I never heard it at all, till there was you.”

Repossession 69       Repossession Index       Repossession Notes

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