Xander groaned, stretching with a pleasant ache and twinge in abused muscles, then flopped bonelessly on his back with a satisfied smile. "This time last year, I was saving up for a ring to ask Anya to marry me, and look at me now."

Spike lifted his eyebrow, then the rug, peering into the darkness at Xander's naked body. "Look tasty to me, pet. 'Sides, what would you want to get married for? 'S all, papers and rings, and bad taffeta dresses and people boo hooing."

"I thought that was what you wanted."

"Me?" Spike injected more offended pride into that single syllable than two little letters should be able to bear. "Didn't need marriage to stick with Dru a hundred years. 'Sides, we'd have to move to Massachusetts, I hear. Or Canada. Which is freeze your bollocks off cold, mate." Spike's eyebrows drew together as he realized that Xander had frozen absolutely and was staring at him. "What?"

"You - you thought I meant marry me?"

"Yeah, don't see anyone else around here in this little crypt for two. Who else would I be marryin'?"

"Uh, Buffy?"

Spike snorted. "Right." He lay back, tucking his hands behind his head, then scowled the scowl Xander had come to recognize as Spike's 'I want a fucking cigarette' scowl. But he didn't move. Instead, he turned his head and gave Xander a long, considering look then asked: "What would you say this is?"

"This?"

"You and me."

Xander shrugged, but smiled, rolling onto his stomach and hooking a leg over Spike's beneath the scratchy-softness of the Very Expensive rugs he wasn't going to ask where Spike got. "I dunno. Does it have to be a thing?" He pressed his palm over Spike's chest, where a heart would beat if Spike was alive.

But Spike didn't smile, he only looked at Xander with that curiously blank expression, a crease between his eyebrows, as if hovering between facial expressions he hadn't yet decided on. "Do you like me?"

"Spike, less than a minute ago, we were joking about marriage."

"Joking," Spike said, an odd intensity creeping into his voice.

"And ten minutes ago, you were buried seven inches deep up my ass."

Spike still wasn't smiling.

"I like you," Xander finally answered, wishing those eyes would warm up, or reveal something other than wariness. "If you're looking for more than like, I - I can't say more than that." He licked his lips. "Yet."

Something sparked deep in Spike's eyes at that, and he rolled them both, slithering up to Xander to slide a leg over his hip, reversing their position, close enough that Xander could feel Spike's breath if he had any. But he didn't say anything else. Just looked and kept looking.

He lifted his hand, bringing it close to Xander's face, and watched as Xander closed his eyes and nuzzled into Spike's palm like a trusting puppy, all warm breath and cold nose.

Then, Xander did feel Spike's breath, soft and - *nervous. He's nervous?* "What?"

Spike traced the top line of Xander's cheek, watching the skin turn white, then pink where his thumb had been. "Do you trust me, pet?"

Xander looked at him in confusion. "I'm sure there are people who'd say I'm absolutely fucking crazy, but yeah, I trust the guy who's both saved and fucked my ass, sometimes in the same night."

Spike shook his head, rolling over to rummage beneath another carpet, and turning back, eyes dark and absolutely unreadable now as he watched Xander. "Do you trust me?" He asked, a pair of chrome-bright handcuffs dangling from his hand.

Xander's heart leapt against his ribs, the silver bright in the dark, and raised his hands until they grasped the ladder to the upper floor of Spike's crypt, wanting enough to trust, and met Spike's eyes. "Yes."