Childe of my Heart ~ Chapter Forty-eight
by Shanyah
 

Spike knelt on the foot of the bed, sunk back on his heels and plonked the hamper in the space between him and Xander. “You’re awake,” he said, conversational testing of the waters.

Xander drew his legs in to sit cross-legged. “Seems that way,” his voice hoarse from crying and flat with disinterest.

Spike’s hopes dropped ground-scraping low. He weighed his options. He could spend the next week wheedling, trying to make Xander interested, or he could take a deep breath, jump in at the deep-end and make a prat of himself. He took a breath and… “let’s get claimed, Xander,” he said.

A glimmer of interest in Xander’s eyes, quickly draped by lowered lashes. “Claimed as in murky vampire rituals in Giles’ books?”

“You’ve read about claiming?” Spike asked, warmed by the glimmer.

“A little, and a lot about the art of dry walling. Nothing about why the fuck you didn’t tell me I’d been subpoenaed or that Groza has a boner for me.”

Spike experienced a wallop of guilt and it had fangs, sucking the sense out of his reasons. He didn’t dare offend Xander with the chaff that remained: I thought you’d defend yourself better without seeing what was coming at you. I knew we’d be out of The Trail before Tresten’s party came round. You’re too weak to handle the truth.

He lifted the flask and a mug from the hamper, filled the mug with coffee and offered that and sincerity to Xander, recounting Groza’s visits in detail. Xander’s reaction was no reaction to the tale or to the mug in Spike’s hand. “He could’ve done anything to you, and yours truly terrified, would’ve had to watch,” Spike summed up.

“And you figured if you were terrified, I’d be a gibbering wreck? Even so Spike, I had a right to know.”

“I got it wrong,” Spike said.

Xander took the mug and drunk a mouthful of coffee, and throughout that mouthful and the ones that followed, he bored his gaze into Spike, cold eyes stripping back skin to expose dishonesty. Phantom sweat needled Spike’s brow. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Xander re-filled the mug, “Okay,” he sighed into the rising steam, “okay.”

Spike’s hopes climbed a smidge and his tension started to melt away.

“Show me the bracelet,” said Xander.

The tightness returned to Spike’s arms and shoulders. “I haven’t got it.”

Xander put the coffee mug on the nightstand and leaned back, pushing his back against the headboard. “Can you go and get it?”

It was an order, Spike heard it clearly but regretted that he could not comply. That he wanted to comply was as indicative of his anxiety as the pleading tone in his explanation. “I paid the bracelet to Jude, a fee to fight for that pair of rings.”

“Oh, so the going price for me is that pair of rings? Nice.”

“Xander,” Spike groaned, scrubbing his face. “I’ve got better things to do than row over trinkets.”

Xander clambered off the bed, tipping the hamper onto its side as he went. Spike righted the basket, anxiety deepening as Xander got dressed in a pair of pants, bathrobe and slippers. “Where are you going?”

“Where I won’t start a row over the fact that you’re minimising,” Xander flung as he strode out.

Spike was up and following Xander, getting to the door before prudence – and the slamming door - stopped him. Crowd Xander, and they’d have the quarrel he was trying to avoid; wiser to sit and do the waiting for a change. Xander would be back. Five minutes later, Xander wasn’t back and Spike couldn’t sit anymore. He paced around the room, chewing on his thumbnail. Opened the door and glanced along the empty balcony, chewing on his thumbnail. Came back inside and glared at his duffel bag, cursing the rings that were in his jeans that was inside the bag. He’d not have gone near that bracelet if he’d known how much aggro it’d bring and since it wasn’t around for him to swear at, he tore into his duffel and took the rings out of his jeans pocket, all set to spew curses on the ruby and amethyst fishbone rings.

But that was the trouble with him, wasn’t it? Always tearing into things, making a mess of them and almost always blaming it on someone or something else. He placed the rings on the nightstand and lay on the bed. Shoulders propped on a mound of pillows and legs stretched out, he watched the door and waited for Xander. It seemed a lifetime before Xander returned, by which time Spike had re-phrased his minimisation.

“Buffy’s not here, I don’t wish she were and I don’t want us bigging her up by rowing about her. She doesn’t come into why I want to claim you and she’s not the reason I’m sat here bricking it, afraid you’ll turn me down.”

Standing uncertainly at the side of the bed, Xander tweaked him a frown. “Suddenly the understudy’s in your limelight Spike?”

“That was stupid. I was talking outta my arse.”

“You’re not now?”

“Sometimes think I was born stupid, but no, not talking outta my arse now,” Spike said.

Xander sat next to him, his torso twisted sideways and his gaze on the nightstand. He played with the rings, pushed them along the cabinet top, rattled them in his fist like a pair of dice. “The claim, when does it end?” He asked, tumbling the rings into the circle of his wristband on the cabinet.

“It doesn’t.”

“And when we’re back in Sunnydale? The Trail will be history and the claim won’t be. You’ll be stuck with a mistake you made, a fucking spur in your side and I’ll be…” Xander prodded the maroon wristband, “I’ll be Earned for the rest of my life?”

“When have I said you’re a mistake?” Spike snapped upright, heat in his growl. “That’s other people’s crap Xander and it doesn’t belong here.”

Mutiny defined the curve of Xander’s lower lip at Spike’s peppery antics. A leap in forward moving, to Spike’s way of thinking. Xander like this – up and mutinous was an improvement on Xander down and indifferent. The trick was finding the balance between rousing him and pissing him off. Lying back on the pillows, he picked at a loose thread on Xander’s sleeve, looped it around his finger and tugged it free.

“Claiming’s not the same as Earning. You’ll go back to Sunnydale and to living how you like, where and with whom.” Needing a moment to smother his resentment at the thought of Xander setting up house with someone else, Spike found a loose string on Xander’s pocket, freed that too and brushed the pocket down.

“You won’t wear a wristband and my mark won’t stay. After a couple of days you won’t feel it,” Spike took his hand off Xander and wedged it under his head, bringing his other arm around his middle. “In a year, you’ll forget it’s there if we don’t revamp it.” He gulped down the intensity, tried to speak lightly in case his great passion on the matter scared Xander off, “But I won’t and them out there, they won’t forget it’s there.”

Spike sounded like a greatly passionate vampire. The air around him fairly hummed with the intensity of his feelings and déjà vu’d Xander to a hotel kitchen. He was standing under humming florescent tubes with his best man, Willow. Checking out the exit as she hugged him, knowing he’d run the moment she let go.

A claim was commitment by another name and he wanted to bolt.

Aiming to bolt for the empty side of his bed, he started to climb over Spike and got as far as framing him with hands and knees. Then he needed to rest from all the running so he rested on Spike. Deep, mutual groans as Spike took his weight, shifting his legs apart and settling him between. He lowered his brow onto Spike’s, sinking into the embrace when Spike’s arms came around him.

“Yes or no, Xander?”

Xander’s heart thumped. “Yes is risky,” he said.

Spike stroked his back, “Risky why?” he asked.

Because he’d be going into the claim knowing that he needed Spike way more than Spike needed him and wanted more from the claim than Spike could begin to imagine. A smart man would say no and keep running. But he’d tried that already; his rebellion against being Earned, those tantrums he’d had, a big part of that had been about running away from Spike, and each step that took him farther away from Spike, brought him back nearer to Spike. Right now, he couldn’t see the bad in being near Spike.

“What do you get out of it?” Xander’s last try at evasion. Poor attempt.

“Angel’s approval, finally. He’s going to love being related to you.”

“You’re using me to score points against Deadboy?” Xander asked, small smile.

“Gonna use you for other things also,” Spike rotated his hips, grin in his eyes. Then his expression became serious and he drew his finger along Xander’s jugular. “So, Xander?”

*    *    *    *

So, they were kneeling face-to-face on the bed, naked from the waist up, kissing, and it seemed to Xander, great as the kissing felt, that Spike was giving him a chance to back out. An hour, even a half hour ago, he maybe would’ve asked for more thinking time, but now, want was clawing at him and he needed to be closer. Under Spike’s skin was how close he needed to be.  

He eased away, touching his finger to Spike’s chin to prevent him from diving in again. “Are we doing this?”

Spike’s throat worked with hard swallows. “Yes, doing it. Gonna have to improvise though.”  

“By improvise you mean?”

“Wing it. Ad-lib the stuff that goes into the claim.”

Xander glanced at the only stuff on the bed besides pillows, sheets, him and Spike. Something about the Aurelius seal on the dagger handle commanded hush. “That stuff?” He whispered.

“Yeah…no…well sort of. But other stuff too, words and such,” Spike counter-whispered.

A crack tore the quiet. Spike and Xander startled, grabbed hands, looked at the fire-place as sap fizzed up from a split log. “What are we like,” Spike tittered.

Xander giggled just as nervously, sobering when Spike continued to look skittish. “Baby Moses in a floatable carry-cot,” Xander said a little wheezy, “You have no clue how to do this.”  

“Do. I have clues. Two-way loyalty and protection come as standard in a claim. And then we fill it out with other things – affirmations.”

The lofty tone alone told Xander he was right; Spike was a virgin at claiming. He was going to be Spike’s first time, and fuck if that didn’t turn him into some kind of cave man. Me Xander, you Spike, we claim now. He kissed his thumb along Spike’s knuckles and said, “I’m ready. Affirm me.”

Spike gathered himself, shedding the jitters, radiating self-assurance and an indefinable serenity. “I, Spike, claim you Xander Harris,” he said and serenity was in his voice too and in his eyes that had gone startling blue. Serenity was in Spike’s smile, a quiet thing that coiled around Xander’s breathing apparatus. “I claim you. By my blood these things I swear to you: honesty, trust, loyalty, respect and protection. You are with me and I am with you; we are in the House of Aurelius, and time or distance, man, woman or beast will not lead me to forsake my oath to you, the childe of my heart.”

Xander nodded his acceptance, kept on nodding and blurted into speech when Spike squeezed his hands. “I’ll never raise my hand to you in anger and…” and shit, he was going to cry – again. Tears swelled his throat and blurred his vision. He cleared his throat, blinked and composed now, carried on. “I got lost inside myself and if I’d just stopped to think for a second, but I wasn’t thinking and I’m so sorry, I’ll never hurt you like that again…” babble-mania, composure gone.

Spike dipped his head in a tiny, encouraging nod, “Go on.”

Xander blew a soft breath through pursed lips, changing grip so his fingers laced with Spike’s. “I’ll watch your back, Spike. I promise to trust and respect you and be faithful to you. When critics try to make me doubt you, I’ll believe you. When the past tries to drown me, I’ll hold onto you and when fear finds me, when it makes me breathless, I’ll find my breath in you, my cedar tree.”

“Promise accepted,” Spike said. Then he grinned widely, slipping his hands from Xander’s. “Cedar tree, huh?”

“They’re special,” he said, watching Spike pick up the dagger and make two clean cuts on his forefinger. Flesh parted, blood gushed and Xander’s stomach rioted. He found himself clenching his teeth as Spike brought the dripping finger to his lips.

“Drink up luv - Xander. Congealed blood sticks to your teeth, does this slippy jig in your mouth.”

Not able to curb a squicked shiver, Xander opened his mouth and took Spike’s finger in. But his gullet clamped up, refusing to swallow the coppery-salty liquid, and adrenalin twitched his muscles, priming him for flight. He felt Spike’s lips caress his neck, comforting – before the fangs dropped and penetrated him. They went in deep and the hurt went deeper. He struggled not to rear back, swallowing the blood in his mouth on reflex, panicking all over again.

Clutching at Spike’s shoulders, screwed to his fangs and blubbering around his finger, “I think I’m…I’m dying, Spike!”

He heard and felt Spike’s muffled chuckle and maybe he’d be laughing too, if he didn’t have a neck full of teeth scaring hell out of him. Not a recommended way to croak. Then it all changed; Spike’s fangs slid out of him and his lips pulled on the pounding in his neck. They sucked on his pain and twanged his veins, jolting him with white-hot pleasure and giving him a fearsome hard-on. He went from blubbering to panting, from reflex swallowing to the active pursuit of Spike’s blood. He lapped the slits on Spike’s finger, sealed his lips around it as it fucked his mouth, and Spike’s tongue was doing a totally alien but very good thing, tapping on the claim marks, making them tingle and his nerve-endings spark like live wires. Xander earthed his hands in Spike’s hair and thrust his hips in synch with Spike’s thrusts, not dying but tranced out in rapture.

CHILDE OF MY HEART ~ CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

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