Childe of my Heart ~ Chapter Twenty-one
by Shanyah
 

Xander had no encounters of the weird kind over the next humdrum days. The laundry basket didn’t morph into Satan’s minion, recompense didn’t crap on him for withholding the information in Rhiana’s note from Spike and the flashbacks didn’t drop by. He came across the tie-dye bag from Rhiana as he was putting the shopping away and in the bag was a gift of leather whip. No doubt Spike would want to know every last detail about the gift: where did you get it, how come she gave it you, were you ogling her fine-looking naked boy…Xander packed the tie-dye bag at the back of the messy top shelf in the bathroom closet. Encounters continued to not take place, including sexual encounters between him and Spike.

On the fourth day, Thursday, Xander watched his dad spin into a whiskey rage that left the livingroom trashed and his mom bruised. He’d been napping in the hammock at the time and startled awake, his heart hammering and his elbow jabbing into Dawn’s side.

“Ouch, Xander!” She rolled to the edge of the hammock, glared at him.

“Sorry, didn’t know you were…” he cleared his dusty throat and scoured his palm across his brow. “When did you creep up here?”

“Earlier, when Fred started sketching an alternative version of her invention amid much babbling.” Dawn settled onto her back and propped the black book on her chest, idly thumbing through the pages. “I’m bored, are you bored?”

“That’s a hint right? A please-go-with-to-the-Baths hint? Here’s another one, see if Spike will go with you.”

Friday dawned on a keyed up Xander. He reached across Spike for the lube on the nightstand and laid the tube in the dip between Spike’s pecs. “Please,” he said, lips on Spike’s cheek, brushing, pleading. Spike was quiet for about ten beats, looking at him but not, more as if trying to X-Ray into him. Quick body flip and Spike was sprawling in his preferred position, ear over Xander’s heart and arm flung across his chest. Tube of Eros on the floor.

“I’m all for a bit of rough, but least give yourself a chance to mend,” he said. “What say we duel in a location other than the bed? It’ll use up your stamina, I guarantee.”

He smiled at Spike with a mishmash of feelings; frustrated that there would be no horizontal duelling, pleased in a foolish kind of way that Spike was starting an actual conversation and that he cared about the comfort of his ass – which hadn’t been that uncomfortable to start with.

“I’m mended,” he said.

Spike blew out a sound, too harsh to be a sigh, too soft to be a snort. “I’m not praising it right? But chip’s being doing the hard labour past three years, made me forget how taxing it can be sometimes, bringing the fangs to heel. Smell of cum and pain, pet, it’s a red rag,” Spike stroked his finger along Xander’s third rib. “D’rather not test my heeling powers just yet.”

He eased his fingers through Spike’s hair, gently carding. “Tell me more about out of bed duelling,” he said, apologetic for red ragging Spike.

Out of bed duelling was him, Dawn and Fred pointing wooden swords at each other in the courtyard on Saturday. Spike watched them, his cheeks sucked in and his cheekbones sharp enough to give a real sword an inferiority complex. He probably wasn’t trying to look hot, but with his fingers stroking the shaft of his decoy sword and the tunic unbuttoned all the way down to his…

“Look where you’re fighting, Harris, not at me,” Spike hurdled off the butcher’s block and broke into their circle of pointing. “Nibblet, hack at Fred,” he said.

“Huh?” Dawn’s brow creased.

“No good hacking the air. Go for Fred like you mean it.”

They went back to sparring and Spike broke into their circle again, brought his sword this time and swiped at them like he meant it. Ducking Spike’s sword was gruelling, and when it caught him, flat of the blade slapping his chest, it hurt. He whimpered for Willow it hurt that much. But the exhaustion didn’t bring on sleep and now he wished he hadn’t avoided Spike’s sword as much because the smarting blade-slaps had to be better than this. In bed with only the nightmares for company, no feeling anywhere in his body to take his mind off his mind. To ice the cake, his cock refused to be jacked into cooperation, he wouldn’t be getting any diversionary pleasure from it tonight.

“Back so soon?” He said when Spike came to bed fresh from the shower after a night at the gaming pit.

Spike squirmed about, gave him a small push, “shove across,” tugged the blanket, lowered his head onto a pillow, “hmm,” closed his eyes. Total stillness.

Disgusted by Spike’s effortless sleep, he swore and went for his own shower, jerked back into the now as pain throbbed in his gums. Creeped when he realised he’d lost a segment of time to the memories, had showered, thrown a towel around his shoulders and now stood at the bathroom sink, his fist moving in a blur in the mirror, brushing the enamel off his teeth, creeped… or maybe creepily satisfied by the soreness in his mouth. Shuddering, he carefully extracted the toothbrush, ran the tap, held the blood bright brush under the running water and spat red froth into the sink, the throbbing already numbing out.

He needed sex. No matter how pathetic that sounded, that’s what he needed, cock. Since Spike had put a hold on things, he looked for throbbing elsewhere, cleaned his teeth eight times that day. It didn’t help. His pain threshold, high and freaky-efficient thanks to years of Scoobage, fine-tuned itself and soon the throbbing barely made the grade for slight discomfort; all day he walked around dazed by daymares.

Riley and Buffy used to bring their Psych101 discussions to the Magic Box; you’ve got to own your demons, face them or some day they’ll come back to haunt you, Riley had once said. He was of the Repress Your Demons school of thought – or repress your Kool Aid Kid in his case. It never happened if you can’t remember it. The strategy had worked one hundred percent, but for an unknown reason, the Kid was back, here to bear out Riley’s ghost theory.

It – the Kid, would not stay tamped down, meant to haunt him until he remembered everything, including things he couldn’t even remember conveniently forgetting. It meant for him to own those things and tough shit because he meant to deny the fucking Kid and its trauma till the day he died. In the meantime, he’d live with the headache that had been dogging him all morning. It was Monday morning, you were supposed to have a headache on Monday morning. Tuesday morning and he was sweating under a cold shower, shivering in his warm towel as he put the whip back into the bathroom closet, only stopped from trying it out by the knowledge that he couldn’t sneak something as tell-tale as welts on his back past Spike.

“You’re kind of puffy there luv, on the inside of your lip,” Spike had pulled out of a kiss to say last night. “What happened?”

“Burnt, coffee too hot,” he’d said.

Spike’s kisses had turned considerate sort of and that’s when all this had started, the choked up with anger and the tears swarming close to the surface, emotions panicking in his chest, too many to breathe through and too rowdy to hold in. Why he wasn’t rocking in a corner, blubbing and pulling his hair out, he didn’t know. And it was Tuesday now or Wednesday, or who the hell gives a fuck what day. The light was leaving the sky and Spike was leaving the courtyard, “nipping down to the casino,” he said. Dawn and Fred had gone, “to the library,” code for swimming. He couldn’t be by himself, it was weak of him, but he’d never claimed to be strong and anyway, they were low on flour.

He took the Dutch oven off the fire, left it on the butcher’s block and strayed out of the courtyard gates, vaguely aiming for the Fifth Ranking market. Skinny Al materialised round the corner from the unit and trotted ahead, uplifted tail waving him on like a fuzzy, white flag.

*    *    *    *

He’d been smelling rubber and bleach under the every day camp smells for days now. Couple more days, the whiff wasn’t any fainter, stronger rubber smell in the room if anything and he complained about it to Xander. “It’s all up in my nose, bloody maddening. Where’s it coming from, d’you reckon?”

Xander reached into the closet for a bathrobe and pointed at the box of latex gloves on Fred’s ex-worktable. “I’m gonna catch a shower,” he said, striding out of the door he’d walked through but five minutes ago.

Spike climbed off the bed and stood in the doorway, watching Xander amble across the courtyard, dark hair mussed and falling to his shoulders. Harris needed a haircut. Strange, that he hadn’t noticed how long the hair had grown, stranger that he’d missed the contradiction in Xander’s walk. Tense in the shoulders, relaxed in the hips…no. No. He hadn’t missed the contradiction, it hadn’t been there to miss. Harris had been edgy, feeling the strain of monk-like living past week or so, tense in hips, shoulders and all the way through. This half-and-half was new, and the boy was forever showering, probably wanking off in there right now. Shooting the tension from his hips onto the shower tiles.

He empathized, wasn’t suited to a monk’s life either, hence the extended hours at the gaming pits. Xander should be healed by now, not as if he’d been badly torn. More bruised than torn, red-raw rosebud quivering and pouting for more and…and this kind of thinking was exactly why he’d waited. He cooked the box of latex gloves in the fire-pit, moved Fred’s ex-worktable out into the courtyard, fetched the lube and went into the bathroom, grabbing a rusty metal stool from under the sink before opening the door to the shower room.

Xander spun into the spray to rinse the suds off his lower back and buttocks. “Knock once in a while,” he said, thudding the bottle of shower gel onto a glass shelf in the shower stall.

Spike shrugged off his bathrobe and took the stool into the marble-tiled enclosure, placing it close to a wall and out of reach of the gushing water. Same round stool Xander used to put in the stall for him to shower on ages ago when he’d come round from the mace thing and his legs hadn’t been up to supporting him. He’d sit on the stool and let the hot water melt him, it was great.

“Used to watch you on Third Ranking, did I tell you?” He sat down, hands on knees, smirk on face. “You’d slink to the corner showerhead with your blue sponge soaped up, all stealthy about the bum washing.”

Xander stepped out of the spray, a hand on the faucet, fingers tapping. “What do you want?”

He opened his fist out, showing Xander the tube of Eros. “Same as you,” he said.

Xander took a quick step and was straddled on his lap, streaming water onto him and clutching his shoulders. Slicked him up this time though, made sure of it. Water pounded the tiles and Xander pounded him, ass slapping his thighs, stinging. He grabbed Xander’s hair, pressed their faces together on the down-thrusts, lips crushing, teeth nipping. His other hand, he braced on Xander’s waist and held on, sucked into the manic pace.

*    *    *    *

Later, they sat on stools at the table, eating dinner under a pale half-moon. Dawn said the roasted root vegetables tasted like burnt rubber. Fred said she tasted a bit of burnt but no rubber. Spike snagged Xander’s wrist, re-directing the fork in Xander’s hand to his own mouth, had a taste of the sweet potato cube skewered on the fork and concurred with Dawn, watched by grinning Xander the whole time.

“Rubbery parsnips is a reason to smile?” Dawn asked.

“Please ignore me,” Xander took back his hand and polished off his forkful.

No mean feat, Spike thought, badly tempted to displace the fork and slip his tongue between Xander’s lips in its place. Blood blazing to his cock, he leaned away, drained the blood in his mug in one go. “Lined up volunteers from the townsfolk to spar with you. Still gonna use decoy swords and they too…them too…them also will too…” Bugger.

“They too will use decoys?” Fred helped out.

“Yeah, what Fred said. Gaming pit, tomorrow, four pm.”

The next day at four-fifteen, Spike nodded approval as Dawn side-stepped her Third Ranking volunteer. He blundered past her, she spun and planted her boot heel on his behind, helping his rush into the side of the pit. She was at his back, slashing her sword down in a two-handed hold and depressing its blade on her sparring partner’s jugular.

“Say uncle,” she quipped in the tone of big sis.

The spectators around the gaming pit guffawed as the Third Ranker went into a tirade of Spanish. Dawn stuck her tongue out at them, hopped onto the pit’s edge and opened her book. “How’d I do?” She wiped sawdust off a glossy page.

“Very well,” Spike said. Too well even, he thought, looks like there’s perks to having Slayer blood after all. “Just mind how you go with the cocky. These demons have snacked on more children than you’ve dunked cookies in milk.”

Dawn held the book up in front of her face. “I beat him, that’s what counts,” she said, stroppy.

He jumped into the pit, strode across to Dawn, plucked the book from her and tossed it over her shoulder, tang of bleach trickling through the Dawn’s normal scent of sawdust and talcum powder, aggravating his sinuses. “You and me, we talk straight. So talk straight,” he said.

“I’m sick of being the human butt of demon humour,” Dawn grumbled, scratching her elbow. “What makes them better than us?”

This was why she was his L’il Bit, always she counted him in the us. “Beating Tresten’s what counts Nibblet. These others are steps in a staircase. You don’t care what a stair feels when you stomp on it. All you care is it’s there to take you to the top. Treat them like that. They boo, cheer or snivel, makes no difference to you.” He chucked her under the chin and took in the audience. “We’ve time for one more before Jude’s match starts. Gonna repeat the rules. No limb-breaking or causing of permanent damage…”

“He would have us pet his humans,” Dawn’s bested opponent said.

“Pet in the fondling sense? Welcome to try,” he strolled through the watchers and snorted at an eagerly ticking Grang’al. “Friendly sparring, I said. You, Lei-ach, you’ll do.”

The Lei-ach demon hustled into the pit, flicked a tubed tongue through a pair of short, curving tusks at Xander.

Spike squeezed Xander’s shoulder. “He wants to fight clean, good on him. You fight dirty. Try to keep out of the tongue’s way, it’s a sucker. Sucks the bone marrow out of you. Alright?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to hear a growl Harris.”

“Grr.”

“That’s a growl?”

“Grr…rr…r.”

Despairing, he dropped his hand off Xander’s shoulder, “Help a mate out, Fred.”

Fred picked up her sword, but stayed sat on the pit’s edge, seemingly unable to shift her gaze from the demon’s tusks and flickering tongue.

“Sharpish like, Burkle,” he clapped.

Fred shilly-shallied, Xander unfocused and together they were rubbish. He called out tactics, Xander and Fred carried on being rubbish, were stumbling feet and fumbling hands, slow to retreat and slower to strike. Fred took a shoulder punch, fell flat on her back, Lei-ach hissing over her. The spectators crowded in closer, Lei-ach’s hackles rose, his hissing softened, Fred borrowed the look of perfect prey – eyes and body stunned – and Xander leaped in from behind. Clouted Lei-ach’s skull, breaking the blade of his wooden sword, switched grip in a twinkling and handled the sword like a dagger, pointed the jagged tip downwards, tore through tunic and skin, gouging a track down Lei-ach’s back. The demon rounded on Xander, he swerved, gained some distance and stopped, shoulders loose and head dipped a tiny notch, temper sparkling behind his expressionless stare.

Me, come get me you bastard, Xander’s stance said, passive-aggression the kind of which to jolt the complacency out of any demon. His own demon reared its head and paid eager attention, ‘Mine, My childe’ it whispered along the threads knitting him together. Lei-ach tensed for attack and Spike issued a warning, growl so deep it rattled up from the bedrock of his being.

Lei-ach clambered out of the pit. Spike grinned at Dawn, Xander and Fred. “Same place, same time day after tomorrow,” he said, his voice airless with excitement.

Fred groaned, slumping against a pit wall.

“Need a minute, luv?” He reached down and lugged her over the side.

“An hour, maybe two,” she panted, sitting on the pit edge.

“Can Xander and me go ahead?” Dawn asked.

Spike nodded, “No dawdling in the corridors.”

Xander draped an arm over Dawn’s shoulder and swaggered out of the Town Square with her. Spike sat next to Fred, she contemplating the settling sawdust and him the swaggering ass.

Alright, fine, okay, he took it all back, Harris’ ass wasn’t lukewarm. Was nicer than nice, but not as nice as his smile. Xander smiled better than he strutted it. He had a morning smile, sleepy as if to ask, ‘can we stay lazed up like this a little longer?’ He’d go to the window and check there wasn’t anyone floating outside it. Come back to bed, lay facing Xander and drone about everything and nothing.

He met Xander’s second smile yesterday as they were dressing in the room after the shower shag. Was sinful that smile, hint of teeth, upward tweak to the corner of lush lips. He replied in kind, slow reveal of fangs to remind Harris that he had bigger and sharper teeth and they could do depraved things to him. A silky laugh, telling the boy, warning him, ‘I will fuck you so hard you’ll be snorkelling those pearly whites out of the mattress.’

Xander’s artless smile was his best-liked. Full and frank, it made him care. He’d see that smile and he’d be thinking how he’d like to slow Xander down. Wean him off the pain some, that and the control-freak behaviour. Coax him onto the easy road to shutdown. Didn’t take genius, Harris was using him to shut out something, The Trail he’d bet. It was the Scooby way, stay in control by uncontrollably fucking the evil undead. And because Xander’s smiles wowed and held no regrets, he let himself get taken for a prick with a pair of hands and not much else.

Digging his fists into his duster pockets, Spike bunched the flaps of the coat over his crotch and hoped the bulge there would deflate soon. “We should tidy your hair,” he said looking at Fred’s sad mop.

“I used to be like you once upon a time in Pylea,” she said.

“A vampire what’s too sexy for his own good?” Spike asked in confusion.

Fred’s smile didn’t quite lift off. “I had an explosive collar around my neck to discourage bad things like free will.”

He unearthed the Zippo from his pocket and snapped its flame on and off, not about to discuss his muzzled shame with her. “Angel and his big gob.”

“Wesley actually.” She looked at the milling crowd, “Statistically speaking, the chances of being rescued diminish the longer you’re lost.”

Again the beach, faint like it had been on Nibblet, different in that it didn’t set off his sinuses. “Been bleaching your whites?” He twitched the collar of her white tunic, she continued to look blank and he waved a hand, crediting her unusually slow wits to fatigue.

“Statistics didn’t reckon on my rescue plan. It’s stalled in its sorta shite stage, but I’m hoping a brainy Miss will help knock it into shape at tonight’s research meeting,” he said.

“Does it involve toads? I’m good at toads, fighting not so much.”

“Hey now,” he clothed his snigger in a cough, “mustn’t put yourself down. Did I thank you for the toad and mushroom cure by the way?”

“Only about a hundred times,” Fred’s smile finally lifted off. “Luck deserves most of the applause.”

“Fred faced down Brat Boy Harris and kicked out Doctor Did-Little,” he said in high-pitch, mimicking Dawn and warming at Fred’s laughter. “Luck had bugger-all to do with it. You went with your gut when everyone around you said you were off beam. Takes knackers pet, not luck. So cheers, you’re alright by me.”

A nod from Fred whose cotton pants swished against Spike’s with the swing of her legs. “And you by me,” she said.

“How’d you get the collar off?” He asked, watching the hordes gather around the gaming pit for Jude’s fight,

“With a hairpin, an electrical wire and a sow’s ear.”

“Get out,” he bumped his shoulder into hers.

“It’s the gospel truth. I shared a stable with a pig - cows do that sometimes – and when my Mistress wasn’t looking, I…”

*    *    *    *

“Put me down, Xander!” Dawn laughed, token struggling in his fire-man’s lift.

“So you can stop under every torch and read me Trailian Trivia? I don’t think so,” he said, his nostrils flaring at the talcum power and sawdusty scent of her uniform.

“But it’s coming up to Tresten’s party season and if you wanna look swish you have to let me read up on the costumes.”

“Very important to be up on the swish for those cursed individuals invited to Tresten’s shindig. I’m not.” He took the stairs faster, amused by Dawn’s attempts to read up-side-down and reaching for the handrail at melancholy’s unannounced arrival.

*    *    *    *

“Say cheese.”

“Can I say something different this time?” He jumps up and down on the couch. “Cheese doesn’t bring out my smile.”

She makes a funny face, he laughs and she takes a picture of him, “that’s better,” she says. “One more and then it’s bed time.”

He curls his bottom lip over his top lip, flexes his arm muscles and looks at her cross-eyed. “Spinach,” he yells when the flash goes off in his face.

She laughs, puts the Polaroid camera on the couch and starts putting the stuff they’ve been looking at back into the chest on the floor. It’s stuff she says he’ll be glad they kept when he grows up.

“I think you lost your pipe, Popeye,” she says and smiles a huge smile at him.

He grabs the camera and takes a picture of her smile to go in his trunk.

“You’re a good kid,” she smacks a squelchy kiss on his forehead. “You’re a great kid and I don’t deserve you.”

She looks sad when she says that and he wishes his dad would stay at the bar and never come home. Tony brings booze for her every night. She yells that Tony is sabotaging and he won’t be happy until she crashes with him. Her hand shakes when she’s pouring the gin he brings into the sink and Tony just laughs, says bitch can’t take a joke now she’s good and sober. It’s like that every night and last night Tony said he’d smash in her butt-ugly face if she poured out the gin and he wasn’t laughing when he said it.

“You’re not ugly mom,” he puts the camera into the trunk and bangs the lid down. “Let’s take the trunk and go. We could go now, to Grandma’s.”

She locks the trunk and puts the key in his pyjama pocket. “Come on, I’ll read you a story,” she says and carries him over her shoulder like she’s a fireman.

“Jessica…mom, we could just run away.”

“How does a chapter of Huckleberry Finn grab you? Or Gulliver’s Travels,” she’s walking fast up the stairs. “You like Gulliver, don’t you?”

“He’s a mean drunk mom and you know he’s drinking more and getting meaner.”

“It’s a school night so you can’t stay up long, lights out by eight-thirty – and don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

His head’s bouncing and he feels like laughing because he’s upside-down, but he doesn’t really feel like laughing for real and he talks louder so she can’t pretend to not hear him. “Just cause he says he’s sorry after, don’t believe him and just cause he reads that AA stuff don’t think he’ll sober up too. He’s stupid. He’s a jackass and I hate him and I hate that you want to stay. Why can’t we just leave?”

“Honey, it’s not that simple,” she’s on the landing and moves him off her shoulder so he’s piggy-backing on her front and her arms are tight around him, her hair tickles his nose and smells like talcum. “You are the best and the bravest little boy in the whole wide world, my life’s one achievement. Your dad made you possible and I love him for it. I know he gets a little stressed out, but he’s trying hard to get better and he needs my support. When you’re older you’ll understand that we don’t up and leave people we love. We never do that, Xander.”

CHILDE OF MY HEART ~ CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

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