Respite

by Metaforgirl

metaforgirl@yahoo.com

Xander/Spike Of COURSE

NC-17

Spoilers: S7 ish, nothing really.

Thanks to : Rubywisp for giving me the extra time when RL mowed me flat. Edibbea for giving me an instantaneous turn-around beta. You ROCK Edi!

This is a submission to the Spander Inquisition.

I was fortunate to be assigned a fic for my good buddy, Dancetomato. The request was as follows: Two things you definitely want included in your fic: Spander true love and a happy/schmoopy ending. It can be angsty in the beginning and middle, but the end should be happy. If you are so inclined, I have a kink for the dirty!wrong!daddy!boy!pr0n. But only if the boys both like it, not as a demeaning thing. And h/c is always good with no preference for who is hurting or who is comforting.

One thing you definitely *don't* want to see in your fic: Pre-season 4 Spander or vamp!Xander

Preferred rating: NC-17

Never wrote this kink before, babe. Hope I got it right. Luvvums.



Respite
by Metaforgirl

Xander tossed the key card onto the Formica-topped table by the door, followed by his small overnight bag, and the brochure of hotel services. His own heavily laden ring of keys clattered loudly as they hit the faux surface.

He popped open the flip phone belted at his waist, pressed a speed dial button without looking and spoke wearily into the mouthpiece. “I’m here. Yep, same place.” He listened to the response, a look of irritation penetrating the mask of exhaustion. “Look,” he finally snapped, “not everybody has your resources, buddy.” Either Xander or the caller switched off, because he flipped the case closed, paced the few feet across the room and flung himself, fully clothed and still in his traveling coat, across the protesting floral quilt of the double bed. He lay there for a long while, staring up at the ceiling. He barely breathed. Somewhere across the room a battery powered wall clock labored and managed to move its minute hand to the next glow-in-the-dark dot.

******************

The minute hand had advanced another ten glowing dots, Xander still lying unmoving atop the rose and gardenia emblazoned polyester coverlet, when his cell phone buzzed impatiently against his hip.

He reached down to engage it, adjusting the ear jack still resting against his cheek, as his eye registered another layer of disappointment, like more dust on a filthy old jeep. “Yeah,” he said dispiritedly. His eye brightened somewhat. “Andrew?” The chirruping voice prattled on, and Xander’s glance slid to the still unbolted hotel room door. “Sure, I’m fine.”

“Gosh, I couldn’t believe it!” Andrew’s voice carried well past the tiny sponge ear receiver and into the hotel room. Xander winced. “Just following Giles’ orders, you know? He said….”

One of the automatic mechanisms in Xander’s brain kicked in and deleted the meanings of the words in his ear, as he studied the ceiling and Andrew prattled on about something new that his mentor had pronounced upon. “Just a routine delivery, you know? But Angel and I had never really spoken…”

Xander became quite suddenly alert. An expression of extreme caution, almost craftiness, stilled every muscle in his face. “Angel?” he said.

“Yeah yeah, the message Mr. Giles sent me to deliver.” The receiver hooted shrilly into Xander’s ear with Andrew’s derisive giggles. “Are you even listening, Xander?”

Barely, thought Xander. “Sure,” he said. “I’m just tired, Andrew. It was a long trip…”

“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” screamed Andrew into Xander’s ear. “I completely forgot to ask you about your mission! How did it go? Did you find the Slayer, have you brought her with you?”

Xander’s eye closed reflexively and the new permanent crease at its corner deepened as the skin bulged around it in a little spasm of pain. A host of unbidden and unwanted images flew across his mind’s eye. Mud, flies, skeletal children unable to stand. A teenage girl, tinier than an American five year old, looking up at him with such bitterness.

I’m sorry, chanted the mantra in Xander’s mind. So sorry… “There are worse things than demons, Andrew,” Xander whispered into the phone.

Andrew was miraculously silent for half a second. Then, “oh,” he said. “Well, never mind Xander. I’m sure you’ll find the next one.”

Xander found himself hoping he did not. “Yeah, ‘course I will.” His glance flickered once more to the door. “So, about Angel?”

“Oh, right, man, I couldn’t believe it! I was just standing there talking to them and guess who walks in? Are you sitting down, Xander?”

No, thought Xander, I’m standing at the edge of a high rooftop. “I’m good,” he said.

“SPIIIKE!” screamed Andrew.

Xander wearily closed his eye.

******************

Spike flicked open the Zippo lighter. Raised it. Did not light the cigarette that was not hanging from his lips. Closed it, slipped it back into his pocket. Just one of the many filthy habits he had had to break.

The soul, he had discovered, was less a beacon showing him the way and more a light glaring into the eyes of a demon that had lived a century in total darkness. Sometimes he could only blindly do as he was told. So lost in the confusion of conflicting messages. The tough, uncaring persona he had worked so long to develop as an evil vampire, now served him well. Its aged and hardened exterior shielding the rocketing chaos within.

He was a White Hat now. Had been before the soul, if he had to admit it. He was a soldier, always had been. Beyond those two clear facts, he was lost. Angel was a sorry excuse for an example, but his only one. And the other vampire’s dislike, competitiveness, and obvious disapproval made mimicry an exercise in self-hatred that he could ill afford.

Now he stood outside the hotel, leaning against the borrowed staff car, looking up at room 227, and wondered which side of his little yin/yang whirlwind he was listening to when he answered these calls.

******************

He wasn’t going to show up this time. Xander felt the conviction of this slowly settling over the many, many layers of sorrow and loss that coated him. As disappointments went, it was a small one. Not as crushing as losing your girlfriend/friend in an Apocalypse, not as deep as continuously failing the test and watching the innocent fall before your tiny mortal skills could save them. It didn’t sting with that razor tailed whipping sting as had watching the only adult he had ever admired enfolding Andrew, Andrew! in his fatherly embrace and drawing him into the Watcherly fold.

Not that Xander would have ever desired the role of Watcher, he admitted to himself. Reading and researching and dwelling on morbid details of the heroic exploits of others was obviously more Andrew’s trip than his own. But still, it was as if, with the arrival of a true child-after-his-own-heart, Giles had completely forgotten that he existed.

Xander received the mission information, sometimes not even from Giles himself. He ran his errands. He laboriously typed his simple reports.

It had been over an hour since the call. Xander was sure that this time he wasn’t going to show up. Xander had discovered, recently, that there were worse feelings than loss and rejection. That there was a deep pit of numb bitterness and resignation more miserable than any hurt. He struggled as he felt himself sliding into that pit now.

The cheap latch on the door rattled and gave as the door was pushed open.

Spike was a moving cloud of leather and bleached hair, disdainful smirk, confident swagger, and disapproving glare. He tisked, stepped in, slammed the door behind him. His eyes raked over Xander’s prone, limp body with obvious disgust.

“Christ, Harris, can’t ya even hang up yer own coat properly?”

A prickle of goosebumps traveled up one of Xander’s arms. It was the first sensation he had registered in days.

“I was too tired,” he began, his voice a quavering miniature of its normal self.

“Too tired, too tired.” Spike rolled his eyes, flung his own jacket across a chair. “Get up, whelp, move yer sorry lazy arse.”

“Okay,” said Xander in a small voice. He found himself capable of the effort it took to roll off the bad and stand. He slipped off his own jacket. Took up Spike’s coat without being told and carried them both over to the tiny closet. Spike stood watching, legs apart, arms folded, eyes narrowed. Xander carefully closed the closet door and turned to regard him again. “Okay?” he said.

Spike waited a short but meaningful second before he nodded. “Good job, Harris,” he said. He waved an arm back towards the bed. “Have a seat.”

Xander’s eye flickered towards the bed, back towards Spike. A spark of rebellion lit the dull darkness there. “No,” he said. He smiled. “I’ll stand.”

Spike growled, and frowned against the muscle that struggled to turn up his lips. “Brat,” he said fiercely, stomping the few feet across the room and lightly, very, very lightly, slapping Xander’s cheek.

Xander’s head snapped sideways. “Ow,” he said. Anger rippled across his face like a black asp. He barely quelled it.

“Do as yer told, boy,” said Spike fiercely.

And this was the moment that neither was ever sure of. Xander Harris, an average mortal man, who at the ripe old age of twenty one had led armies against the uprisings of the Devil, fought the legions of Hell and stood stalwart and true with barely a whimper as the world repeatedly tried to end itself, slowly, painfully, made his grip release around the iron bar of control he held within himself.

One of these days, thought Spike with a sudden twinge, the boy wouldn’t be able to let go. One day it would be too hard, too stiff, too long a drop. And on that day, Xander Harris would become just another mindless soldier fighting heartlessly. Spike felt a kind of sick, desperate panic at the thought of that day.

Xander struggled, his jaw clenched; then, an infinitesimal twitch, the slight dip of his chin. He looked up at Spike from beneath thick lashes and the tiny change was barely perceptible, but it was there.

“S..s..sorry,” Xander whispered.

Spike nodded perfunctorily, as if he had expected this response. He turned to the bed and sat down with a loud thump, grabbing up the bolted hotel phone and punching in the number for room service.

“I’m … I’m not really hungry,” protested Xander weakly as Spike barked his order into the receiver. Spike ignored him and hung up the phone.

“You’ll eat, pup,” he said. He nodded towards the bathroom. “But first, let’s clean you up.”

There was that flare of rebellion in Xander’s eye, but it dimmed quickly and he nodded and began tugging at the buttons of his shirt.

Spike sighed with manufactured exasperation. “Not here, you brainless nit,” he said mildly. He waved towards the bathroom. “Go on in and get ready. I’ll be there in a minute.”

************************

Spike pocketed the credit card and closed the door behind the hotel employee, then leaned against the door and gathered his wits again.

In the bathroom, the water ran loudly into a tub. He could hear it clearly because Xander had left the door open. His memory supplied the image of Xander undressed, sitting in the tub, waiting for him.

What the Bloody Hell was he doing here?

Spike reached down and adjusted himself in his uncomfortably tight jeans and batted away the memories that his mind was happily trotting before him. Xander Harris, dark, scarred and moaning as he stroked his own cock to hardness. Xander Harris, spitting epithets and struggling ineffectually as he was entered. The browned muscled skin speckled with the dripping remnants of bubble bath as the man stood in the tub, head lowered, hands crossed behind his back.

Spike’s demon chortled and cavorted and urged him towards the bathroom. Spike’s soul buried its metaphorical head in its hands and wailed. Spike, the being who housed these disparate entities, longed for a cave where he could escape the turmoil.

“Spiike?” Xander’s childish quaver rose over the sound of rushing water. It was an innocent voice. The voice of someone helpless and in need.

Spike strode across the room, pulling his t-shirt over his head, flinging it aside as he walked.

“Comin’ whelp,” he called.

*************************

He had found something to use as bubble bath again. Spike could see him through the steam that had quickly filled the tiny bathroom. Xander’s large frame filled the small white tub. His hair was wet and clinging to his head, dripping over his ears. His hands, knuckles rough and scarred, nails bitten to the nub and beyond, gripped the edges of the tub. Bubbles covered what Spike’s memory eagerly recalled. Xander watched him enter, his eye liquid and dark, with a life Spike saw rarely. He still wore the patch. In all their encounters, Spike had not been able to prevail upon Xander to remove it.

He felt, somehow, that the patch was significant. A last barrier. Its removal symbolic of Xander’s last reserve.

“Take off the patch, kid,” he said quickly.

Xander shook his head slowly. He blinked. Water clung to his lashes. “I can’t,” he said.

Spike’s jaw clenched at the rebellion, but then he nodded it off. He found his attention caught by the water trickling from Xander’s brows around the contour’s of his cheeks and into the corner of his mouth. Spike’s hand went to his belt buckle and his fingers worked the restraints loose quickly.

“You’ve had a new hit since I last saw you,” he said, nodding to indicate a scar less white, less fully healed than the others.

Xander shrugged. “I don’t remember anymore.”

An ache of loss pinged in Spike’s chest. “You should try not ta ferget, Harris.”

Xander’s eye widened. His lower lip thrust out a tiny bit. “Sorry?”

A surge of power, erotic and charged, rushed through Spike and thudded in his groin. He groaned with relief, as his jeans slid to the floor. “I’ll remind ya, whelp,” he growled, stalking forward fully erect and swaying.

Xander watched him approach; his eyes tracking the bobbing cock coming towards him, as if hypnotized by it. His hands on the edge of the tub tightened.

“I don’t want…” he began, ritually reciting the protest.

Spike ignored him, stepped into the scalding hot water, pushing a firm hip to the side to make room for his foot. He levered his other foot around the other side of Xander’s hip and slowly eased down into the foam until he felt himself settle onto a hot, hard pelvis and an equally hot, hard erection pushed up against his. Both men closed their eyes just slightly at the contact. Somebody moaned.

“Be a good boy,” said Spike through his gritted teeth. “And let me wash you up.”

Xander raised his head. His eye looked almost sleepy. His mouth wet and slightly open. “I’m so dirty,” he whispered. And as Spike reached towards him with a soapy loofah, “Don’t…”

“Hush,” tutted Spike. He drew the sponge, with a firm hand, down Xander’s neck, across the sunburnt collar bone, down over a chest peppered with tiny white scars. “I’m takin’ care of ya now, boy,” he said, almost chanting the words, like a song. “Be a good boy and let me take care of you.”

“Yes,” said Xander, acquiescing. His whole body now, not just his voice, was acquiescing. “Yes, Spike.” And his face scrunched up with some painful effort. The muscles fighting against themselves. As if he were in pain. Or trying not to cry.

Spike’s hands moved, with soap and without. Slippery in the hot water, over the firm, weary body. A man’s body, made hard with life, not weights in some posh gym. A soldier’s body with unattractive scars wriggling here and there across the surface. Scars that Spike was finding, more and more, a certain familiar affection for. His hands washed and cleansed more than road dirt. Kneaded and pulled and washed away something deep within the body. And gradually the stiffened torso began to relax. Spike’s hands slid up, through the damp hair, caught at the leather strap holding the patch.

The limp, passive body beneath his stiffened violently and a steely fist closed around his wrist, drawing his hand from the patch. “No,” said Xander. Back into the full Harris voice. The voice of a man who had told Nigerian soldiers to back off as he helped the small child from the dust where they had pushed her. The voice that had spat in Spike’s face untold times. A voice that had no place here, now, in this room.

Spike pulled his hands free from Harris’s hair and caught firmly at his stubborn jaw. Shook it once and made the man look him in the eye. “Don’t you say no to me, kid,” he said firmly.

There was fear there, the black eye jittered and cried out with it, and Xander’s eye sought something in Spike’s face. Seemed to find it. Xander’s body relaxed. “Yes,” he said.

“Yes what?” said Spike.

“Yes…s..sir,” whispered Xander.

Spike shifted slightly on Xander’s hips. He lifted the sponge again. “Now lean back, pup,” he said silkily. “And let me wash yer hair.”

****************

Clean and damp, with a white hotel towel of inadequate size tied around his hips, Xander sat on the tiny plastic chair and tried to eat his hamburger. He watched Spike, standing before a mirror and grooming his wet hair with the borrowed hotel gel.

“Why do you do that?” he asked.

“What’s that, kid?” asked Spike, wiping his hands on a towel.

“Why do you stand in front of a mirror when you’re doing your hair?”

“Why do you crack jokes and ask lame questions, Harris? It’s what’s expected, innit? It’s what you do.” Spike sauntered over and Xander eye was caught again, by the still hard cock. Spike hadn’t bothered to cover himself.

“You all finished there?” said Spike, gesturing towards the half-eaten meal.

Xander nodded at him, looking up with fear and anticipation.

“Right then.” Spike rarely breathed, but he inhaled deeply. “So, brush yer teeth like a good boy and let’s get you into bed.”

******************

The first time had been a surprise, to say the least. Drunk and hysterical, pushed over the edge by some recent demonically induced trauma. Alone in LA, Xander had been stumbling out of a bar when he had slammed right into a dead man.

In any other time or place, in any other circumstances, the traditional insults and exchange of unpleasantries would have ensued. Followed, more than likely, by a subsequent eternity of avoidance.

But Xander had burst into tears, hugging the embarrassed, nonplussed vampire convulsively and sobbing out all his grief and regrets onto a leather-clad shoulder. Spike, as shocked as Harris, had responded to the burst of emotion as a thirsty man to the sudden appearance of a mountain stream.

They had found themselves in a room. Because two men sobbing in the streets was just embarrassing, even in LA. And then, somewhere along the line…

“What are ya waitin’ for, whelp? Get yer flabby arse over here.”

Xander rose, clutching the scanty towel to his hips with some dignity. It was a futile modesty, as his hard on pushed the cloth up. Spike could see the dark, heavy sac hanging just below the edge of the cheap cotton and he twitched uncomfortably under the coverlet.

“Now, pup. I’m gettin’ impatient.”

“You’re always impatient, Spike,” said Xander, a touch pugnaciously.

Spike snarled. “Don’t give me lip, boy,” he said.

Xander smiled a little at this. He swayed, but still stood, his eye wondering and worried. “Spike,” he said slowly, “I don’t want…”

“We know what you want, kid. No sense trotting out yer protests now,” sneered Spike. He made his face bland and cynical. Whacked the mattress beside him once loudly, with the flat of his hand. “Here. Now. There’s a good boy,” he added.

Xander padded over. He sat on the bed. Spike reached out and, with a quick flick of his hand, tossed aside Xander’s towel. He threw back the sheet.

“Now lie down,” he said easily. “And suck on yer daddy’s cock.”

Xander moaned once. A soft, high sound in his throat. Then he lay down next to Spike. He wavered, he wriggled. His erection leaked a steady dribble down his pelvis. A firm hard hand gripped the back of his neck.

“Make daddy feel good, boy,” said Spike carefully. He gently urged Xander’s head downward. His demon, feeling the human’s passivity and his power over it, soared inside him with mighty leathern wings. Spike felt dizzy with the erotic fire of it.

“Make me feel good,” he moaned, thrusting his hips into space.

A warm, eager mouth closed over him and Spike cried out with the wonder and the agony.

Xander Harris could suck cock with an expertise that, Spike was convinced, if any vampire had known of it, the boy would have been turned ages ago. The suction built as he managed to keep his lips sealed over Spike’s skin, the foreskin pulled firmly back and forth, a very wet, very strong tongue traveling in dizzying curls and strokes and lashings across the head of his cock, beneath the foreskin, dragging up the vein.

Spike was arching up, grabbing at hair, shoulders, 25 count starched cotton sheets, the suddenly humid air, losing track of himself, his soul, his demon, every appendage and facet of his confused and tormented self flying spinning off as the maelstrom of Xander Harris’s mouth shook him around and around.

He screamed and came and came apart.

A warm, wet tongue was cleaning him in wide, careful strokes. Damp, hot breath sighed against his pubic hair. “Did I make you feel good?” Xander’s throaty whisper brought Spike out of his bubble of selflessness.

He patted feebly at the silky hair. “Yeah,” said Spike. “Yer daddy’s good boy.” He heard the kid sigh. “Now come up here,” said Spike. “And let me fix you.”

The heat and power of the body were completely at odds with the meek and hesitant manner in which Xander pressed himself against Spike. Somehow making himself smaller, curling his head down and tucking it into Spike’s armpit.

“Make it better,” begged Xander in a voice so childish it would have seemed weird to Spike had he not been growing accustomed to it. A hand plucked hopefully at his, closed softly around his fingers and urged them lower.

“Please, daddy,” whimpered Xander. Spike closed his hand around the hard, leaking erection. He squeezed once and felt Xander’s whole body tremble. Beneath his knuckles, Spike could feel Xander’s balls tighten and lift. He pulled the heavy shaft.

Xander cried and pawed at his chest. “Harder,” he panted. “Pull me harder, daddy.”

Spike gathered Xander against him with one arm wrapped around his shoulders, his other hand firmly gripping the boy’s cock, pulling in hard, fast strokes, precum flowing over his fingers, sliding under his palm. Harris was already so close, this wouldn’t take long. “Oh my boy, my good boy,” chanted Spike, ferociously jerking Xander off.

Xander mewed and shuddered and Spike felt the hot spurting cum as it splattered against him, coating his hands yet more, dribbling down his chest.

Xander’s voice was devolving now, from little cries of pleasure to whimpers, to small sobs. Spike stopped pulling the softening cock, gently let go and wrapped both arms around the now shaking shoulders. Pulled the sobbing, 180 pound slayer of demons against his cold chest and rocking him soothingly. Rubbing his mouth against Xander’s hair, whispering assurances, promises to make it better. The sort of thing one tells a frightened child. He rocked and caressed and ran his hands over the vibrating body. His fingers slid into Xander’s hair and in a second had pulled free the leather patch.

Xander’s whole body stiffened. He convulsively grabbed at Spike’s ribs and buried his face in his chest, as if to hide it.

“Here, now, none a’ that,” murmured Spike, pulling the blinking, ducking head up with firm, gentle hands. He leant forward impulsively and kissed the furrowed forehead. “None of that now, whelp.”

Xander whimpered in protest and tried to twist aside.

Spike held him firmly. His lips moved lower. Over the scar. A battle scar and so honorable. Over the nose, wet, with flared nostrils. To a soft trembling lip. Denials still issuing from it. His mouth pressed down firmly.

Their first kiss. Later, both would look back on it with a kind of bemused wonder. Two pairs of eyebrows, on opposite sides of the world, would raise.

For a hard, dead man, Xander would reflect, Spike kissed with a lot of sensitivity and sympathy.

For a stupid American child, Spike would recall with a smile, Harris had a lot of skill.

The kiss deepened and both felt the moment when it went dark. When the emotions simmering below their actions began to rise, burbling like the toxic chemicals they were, to the surface.

They drew back from each other, and exchanged a long look. Then Spike lay back against the pillow, pulling the boy back into the crook of his arm. Xander sighed and snuggled his head against Spike’s chest.

A breeze seemed to waft over them. Something soothing and cool. Something calm.

The battery-run clock on the wall struggled and snapped its minute hand to the next glow-in-the-dark dot.

“So how you been, Harris?” said Spike into the gloom.

“Shitty as usual,” said Xander lightly. “And you?”

Spike laughed. He didn’t do it often lately, and that was usually at the Poof, in his presence, so a very guarded action. Now he laughed with his chest shaking, under Xander. He laughed until the rickety bed beneath them squawked. Spike patted at Xander’s shoulder and sighed.

“Same with me, Harris,” he said.

Xander lay for another moment, thinking. It was cold, now in the room. And the body under his was cold as well. But somehow from somewhere, Xander felt warmth.

“I just talked to Andrew…” he said slowly, regretfully. But Spike had to know.

Spike stroked Xander’s shoulder and stared at the ceiling, where the denizens of all his nightmares whirled and began, once more, to descend. “Yeah,” he said.

“Probably has told half the world by now,” said Xander. Not saying that name-that-must-not-be spoken.

He felt Spike nod.

Across the room, his cell phone buzzed so hard it began a steady crawl across the Formica counter on which it rested. They lay unmoving and listened to it reach the edge and fall to the shag carpet.

“I have to go answer that,” said Xander needlessly.

He thought he felt Spike swallow. Then the vampire shook himself and moved quickly and definitely out from under Xander. Both men sat up quickly and swung their legs over the opposite sides of the bed. Back to back they sat silent for another minute.

“Guess I better head on out, too,” said Spike finally.

Xander nodded, knowing Spike would know he had. “’Kay.”

Spike stood. He leant over and grabbed his t-shirt up off the floor, stomped off in search of his trousers.

Xander went off to find and don his own clothes.

They didn’t speak again until they stood once more at the closet. Xander handed Spike his jacket. Tried to help him put it on and grinned when his hand was slapped away.

“Take care of yourself, blondie,” he said.

Spike glanced up at him, grinned also. “Yeah, you too, kid.” He turned to the door, but stopped with his hand on the knob. “Hey, Harris,” he said.

He turned and looked at Xander and Xander felt some wind blow up under all the layers of dusty regret. Like a hand snapping the sheets straight. The goosebumps thrilled up his neck.

“Yeah?”

“Next time…” and the words hung there in the air. A clay pigeon waiting to be shattered. Spike’s eyes dropped then came up, he looked straight at Xander and something resolved there between them. He smiled. Xander would have said he smiled shyly, but he was still staring at those words hanging in the air and he couldn’t be sure. “Next time,” said Spike, “let me pick up the tab.”



END