Childe of my Heart ~ Chapter Eight
by Shanyah
 

Non-Comfort Zone

Each night, there’d be a tug of war over the duster and exchanged warnings to each other to, “stay on your side of the blanket,” and for a while Xander would be too blocked up with seething to think. But a couple of hours before sunrise, the Trail would be settling down and he’d ping awake like the quietening had shaken him out of sleep. Covered by the leather-smoke scent of Spike’s coat, Xander wondered why.

Why did he behave like he was being paid to make Spike mad and why didn’t Spike swat him flat because they both knew he could if he wanted to. Having no answers, he stuck to the tried and tested: disrespect Spike.

Disrespect Spike morning, noon and night. Then two hours before sunrise, wake up and watch him sleep. Watch his chest not rise and fall with breathing and his face not scrunch up in the forever frown Spike had for him. It got to the point where he’d leave the room before dawn so he could watch the Main Floor instead of Spike.

That guy from the bathroom lived next door but one and would usually be out on the ledge in front of his door. “’mornin’,” they’d nod at each other and greetings developed into chat as the days passed. Rodney was so laid back he made Oz look ADHD. He was a breath of fresh air after confinement with Spike. One morning, he opened the door and Rodney was there, waiting for him by the railings outside their room.

“Brave move,” Xander went to stand beside him. “Spike will not be happy about you hanging out on his patch.”

“Ah well,” Rodney hopped onto the railings, sat with his legs dangling on ledge side and hands resting palm up on his thighs. “What are you doing with him anyhow? He’s a jerk.”

Xander kept his laughter low. “Why – you have someone else lined up for me, Rodney?”

“Call me Rod,” the man practically purred at him.

“I bet you say that to all the humans,” Xander ran his eyes over Rodney’s very human features. “Is that a disguise or are you mortal all the way through.”

Smiling, Rodney leaned in closer, “I’m human and I think you’re flirting.”

He placed his hand on Rodney’s chest to keep him at arm’s length. “You wouldn’t think, you’d know if I was flirting.”

Rodney looked down at his hand and covered it with his own, “Are you sure about that, Xander?”

He was sure and was pulling his hand away to show how totally sure he was, when Spike stormed out onto the landing.

“What are you playing at, pet?”

Xander shivered at the menace in Spike’s soft tone and yellow eyes. The eyes looked him up and down, and he took his hand off Rodney’s chest.

Now is the time to start showing my Amo some respect, he thought. “Just being neighborly Spike,” he smirked.

Rodney laughed, the next moment yelling as Spike punched him overboard.

“Jesus,” Xander gasped, watching Rodney hit the Second Ranking railings, bounce off them and crash onto the First Ranking ledge. “Jesus,” he gasped again when Rodney got up, dusted himself off and jumped down to Main Floor. “He said he was mortal,” a betrayed and relieved murmur.

Spike strode into the room, came out to the doorway with Xander’s rucksack. “Want you gone,” he kicked the backpack slithering to its owner.

Xander looked down at it, “gone?”

“Deaf as well as thick? Yeah gone. Off Third Ranking. You give them the come on and next thing they’ll be hitting on Nibblet. Couldn’t live with that. You I can live without,” and Spike closed the door on him.

*    *    *    *

He strapped the backpack on and headed for a shower. A free man and loving every free step he took.

Ramon turned him away from the bath doors. “You may only enter with your Amo,” he said.

The Too-Cute twink pretended not to see him.

Not bothered, Xander hung around the dinning hall doors until opening time.

“I presume you have a note from Master Spike,” the guard at the door said.

“What note?”

“A letter permitting you use of the facilities on your own. It protects the staff against liability should misadventure fall upon you whilst on the premises.”

Still not bothered, Xander strolled down the right wing, found an empty bench and watched his room’s door across on the left wing. Hours later, Fred, Spike and Dawn left the room and went into the baths. A couple of hours and they came out, chatting and went back into the room. They wouldn’t go for breakfast for another hour, after the dinning hall had cleared some. Spike would smoke at the railings until then, Dawn and Fred would bathe in the sunshine under the portholes. It was their morning schedule.

Thirty minutes passed and Spike hadn’t come to smoke at the railings, the girls weren’t sunbathing and the small break in schedule bothered Xander. It shook him more than the fact that he had nowhere to go.

He bit on his bottom lip and watched the closed door, startling when a shadow fell across him.

“You are on my seat, boy.”

There wasn’t a name on the bench, but Xander moved to the next bench, wasn’t about to argue with an indigo wearing Gang’ral. The shadow fell across him again.

“I find you behavior offensive,” the Gang’ral said.

Really bothered now, Xander moved three benches down, his heart banging in his throat when the Gang’ral followed.

“I wish to talk with your Earner. Where is he?”

Shit.

Xander glanced across at the left wing. Spike wasn’t there.

“Xander?”

He ran up to Rodney and could’ve kissed him, betrayal be damned. “Hey, I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Your Amo’s crazy, man,” Rodney said with a shake of head.

“A little,” Xander glanced back at the Gang’ral.

Rodney glanced that way too and steered him towards the dinning hall. “Gang’rals are an anti-social breed, they don’t take kindly to neighborliness.”

Xander hugged his backpack and let out a breathy laugh. “Tell me about it.”

Rodney looked at the backpack. “Did Spike throw you out?”

“No…yeah…kinda,” Xander slid the rucksack onto his back and glanced across to left wing once more.

“That blows. What are you gonna do now?”

He couldn’t believe this guy. He’d been thrown out because of him and the best he could come up with was a dumbass question like that?

“Wait for him to cool down, I guess.”

“Good luck with that and holler if you need anything,” Rodney bustled to the dinning hall.

“Uhm, actually,” Xander was on his heels, “a bowl of rice?”

Rodney darted through the doors and once inside the dinning hall, turned to say, “I’d love to bring it out to you, really I would. But I’ve got my eye on Fourth Ranking and Amo Tresten will never let me Bid when it gets round that I’ve been fraternizing with the Unbonded. Anything else, you let me know.”

Freaking out, he was freaking out at being labeled Unbonded, hadn’t seen it that way exactly. He stood wordless at the dinning hall doors, rucksack hot and heavy on his back.

“Is it true, you are Unbonded?” The guard frowned down at him.

“It’s not like that,” Xander scraped a hand through his hair. “It’s…he…I’m bonded, okay?”

The Gang’ral came a few steps closer, “Then where is your Master?”

Xander hotfooted it to the left wing.

*    *    *    *

The door was locked. He had no clue where they could be, hadn’t seen them leave the room. He couldn’t wait outside the door because the Third Rankers were looking at him, talking about him.

Keeping his head down, he rushed to the end of the ledge, went into the staircase tunnel and squeezed into an alcove.

It was dark in the alcove. Dark, closed and somehow wrong. He pressed against the wall, fear tickling his spine as the Trail’s monsters went up and down the staircase.

*    *    *    *

Usually he’d go down to the gaming pits after dinner, but he stayed in tonight. Sat on the bed with Nibblet and Fred and finally answered the question they’d been asking all day in the Baths. Told them he’d sent Harris packing.

Fred stared at him like he had two heads. “Where did he go?”

“Can rot on Main Floor far’s I’m concerned.”

“You can’t leave him out there all night, Spike,” Dawn’s face became redder by the second, her voice piercing. “The Tomb Robbers will get him and if they don’t, the Gangr’al Master will.”

“I tried,” he shrugged. “Harris wouldn’t listen.”

“That’s your excuse for Unbonding him – you tried? You’re letting him come home and trying harder Spike because all you’ve done since we got here is snarl him,” Dawn said, still piercing.

“Me and him are through. May as well get used to it.”

“Is that final?” Fred asked softly.

“Too right it is.”

“Then I’m finding him in the morning and moving in with him. Snarl at that,” Dawn flung herself face down on the bed and started with the bawling.

He hated that, felt like he was the cause of it when the villain was Harris. “Xander’s not worth the fuss-”

“That’s what Buffy says about you, because you’re bad. But you’re worth it to me and so is Xander. Please give him another chance Spike, please.”

He went out onto the landing, chain smoked at the railings, scanning the right wing benches where he’d last seen Xander. Harris wasn’t there. Was creating drama in absentia though, and who’d said anything about Unbonded anyway. Such a strong word, Unbonded. Boy was his, wherever he was. Still belonged to him.

*    *    *    *

Light footsteps came down the stairs. Unlike the heavy ones that had been going up and down the staircase all day, these ones stopped just before the alcove. He tried to still his heart, wished his axe and stake weren’t on the middle shelf back in the room.

A light step and another, coming into the alcove. Sweating, breathing like he’d run ten miles, he patted the ground for a rock to throw at the Footstep Demon. His fingers scuttled onto a stone and he clenched it, stifling a scream as a cool hand clamped his wrist. He threw a blind punch and that wrist got clamped too.

Yanked to his feet, slammed against the wall, wrists pinned above his head, hard thighs pressing on him so he couldn’t kick. He was suffocating, grabbed quick shallow breaths so he could swear at his attacker.

Leather and smoke, came in on those breaths. Pinewood scent from an open fire. Creamy bar of Imperial Leather soap.

“Spike,” he said, shaking from cold and relief.

“You are sending me round the fucking bend, Harris. ‘m halfway there at the best of times and you just keep pushing and pushing,” Spike pushed and pushed up against him, fingers too-tight iron cuffs on his wrists.

“Sorry and for before, I’m sorry,” he said, badly wanting some space between him and Spike.

“Sorry for being a slut or sorry I caught you at being a slut?”

“Living with you is enough to…” Xander bit off the rest of his heated retort. “You’ve got me pinned to the wall and begging you to take me back. What more do you want?”

“World peace. Failing that, I want an end to your morning trysts with Wanker. Want all of Third Ranking to know whom you belong to. You’ll look at me like you don’t see anyone else, listen to me like I’m enchanting you with melodies. You are going to shape up Harris and I mean starting now. Understood?”

Spike’s intensity came at him in the dark, thick as treacle and sinister as a coiled rattler. In way over his head, Xander could only nod, knocking his brow on Spike’s in the process.

Spike let go of his wrists to grab his head, holding him in place so he could feel the inflexible ridges on Spike’s forehead. “Understood?” He repeated and Xander wondered why.

Why was he getting a hard on for Spike’s gritty tone and vamped out brow?

“Yes, understood…it’s cramped in here can we go somewhere light and roomy?”

*    *    *    *

Know your type and the fun will follow, Xander believed.

Spike was too bleached, too top-dog and he had all those unsmooth sides – not in his walk or body – but in him. Describe Spike in a word and he’d have to say ‘rough-cut,’ not his type.

But after weeks of dedicating his vision to Spike, he was forced to like Spike’s visible smoothness and the opportunities to look and like were bountiful. His eyes runnethed over.

Spike was having an affair with a shower-head. He used the same one everyday. Preened under it, lathered hands working smoothness into his skin and water kissing the sleek curve of his spine.

Xander looked and liked, turned his own shower tap to maximum cold.

The sparring sessions in the exercise yard every evening were just another chance for Spike to show off the smooth. Oiled reflexes and fluid moves; easy strength as he banded his arms around Xander in a surprise attack from behind, lifting and turning him around with a casual, “keep your guard up.”

Xander was trying to keep his rod down.

Come two hours before sunrise, hair color didn’t seem as important as needing to find out whether the prominent bone at the base of Spike’s neck, all smooth under the taut skin, would feel like powder or marble.

Butter smooth like the duster rubbing on me, he’d decide one night; smooth like a marble rolling in my mouth, he’d decide the next.

Yes, Spike’s bone was begging to be tongued.

“This’s so unfair,” Xander whispered as sleep vanished from his eyes on yet another pre-dawn, morning wood encouraged by the pert ass squirming against his abdomen.

Honestly, he thought, Spike could not wiggle his butt like that and not know what he was doing. After a late night training session of lifting and handling followed by a long shower of much lathering, he just knew Spike was using sign language for ‘let’s get it on.’

He eased a finger down Spike’s nape, caressed the powder smooth skin over the coveted bone, gleaming white in the fragile light coming in through the window.

Spike tensed and flipped over, trapping Xander under him. “What was that Xander?”

It came from nowhere, the lame comment just popped out of his mouth as his brain let his other head do the thinking. “Jouez le jeu?”

Spike glanced down like he was trying to see between their jammed bodies then fairly flew off him, rolling into the base of the bed.

“Oh you’re joking me.” He whipped the disarrayed duster right off Xander and took a good look. “No you’re not joking.”

Xander turned onto his stomach and snorted almost derisive, but with too much breathlessness to quite pull it off. Still, he prepared to deny all accusations.

“Don’t hit the panic button -”

“What’s up?” Dawn mumbled from the bed.

“Jouez le jeu apparently,” Spike nailed him with cold smirk.

Big hoopla over one little above the waist feel, Xander thought. It wasn’t as if anything X-rated could have happened with the girls in the room and Spike defending his hetero-machoality.

“What game are we playing, Spike?” Fred’s head came into view over the side of the bed. “Can it wait until morning?”

Xander needed the conversation to die a swift death and seeing it wouldn’t be doing that without the help of his capable tongue, he put two and two together and voiced a plan.

“Bidding’s how you get stuff in The Trail, yes? So we play the Bidding game to get our book back from Tresten.”

“Just like that? We walk up to Tresten and tell him we’re Bidding for the book?” Spike asked, his bored tone grating on Xander.

“Let’s face it guys, even if we find an exit out the Trail, we’ll need the book to open a portal home.”

“Xander’s…he’s right we’ll get lost outside the Trail without the book,” Fred lowered her chin onto the rim of the mattress. “Dimensions are massive Spike, people go missing in them a-and The Trail isn’t pea sized. I just don’t see how we’ll get the book back if we don’t ask Tresten for it.”

Spike rifled his duster pockets, brought a cigarette pack and the Zippo out and went to the door, cold air flowing in as he swung the door open and stood in the doorway. Lighting up, he crumpled the packet, tossed it onto the landing.

“When’s it bidding night next, Fred?” He asked, unreadable stare on Xander.

*    *    *    *

Twelve weeks after Dawn’s slide, Glory showed in Sunnydale and accompanied by her minions, tracked Buffy to the Magic Box.

Giles, Willow and Tara sprung away from the table as Glory walked in, Buffy jumped off the counter and lifted the Troll hammer off a shelf, striding over to meet Glory’s confident descent of the steps.

“You look good for a spook,” Glory greeted.

“Thanks. I’d like to say the same, but frankly? You could stand to get some work done.” Buffy hefted the hammer onto her shoulder. “Old times’ sake says I make the first cut.”

She feinted left with the hammer and changed to a double handed grip, heaving the hammer upward in an uppercut that swept Glory off her feet. The festering Goddess crashed into a bookshelf, books tumbling onto her head and Buffy’s hammer caving her skull in.

Silence save for the frightened mewling of the minions.

“That was epic battling,” Buffy slowly approached Glory’s attendants, “nothing like goddess slaying to get a Slayer…well, slaying.”

The minions used the door and Giles brought the orb down from a shelf, “catch,” he pitched it to Buffy.

Twisting hip and shoulder into the swing, Buffy batted the orb and it exploded into a blue shower of fine snow. Giles finally spoke after an hour of nothing happening.

“Perhaps they’re asleep. Let’s wait and see what the morning brings.”

“D’you think the portal opened at the house – I have to get home, she could be there right now.” Buffy looked away from Willow’s drawn face, “I mean, they could all be at the house.”

The windows on approach were dark and not bothering to go into the house, Buffy sat on the porch steps, watching Giles reverse out of the driveway, off to bury Glory.

“What did we do Willow?” She asked, “They could be, could be…”

“They’re not,” Willow sank on the step below her and held her hand out for Tara, “They’re not. I’d know if Xander was.”

CHILDE OF MY HEART ~ CHAPTER NINE

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