Chocolatey Goodness

Part 8: Pillow-Talking

rated NC-17

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Xander woke in his own bed, in what was definitely the middle of the night...or maybe the early hours of the morning. Alone, a bit cold, trapped, and extremely annoyed. Well, when you fall asleep under the covers with a purring vampire snuggled up to your back--- and wake up naked, un-blanketed, and staring at where the ceiling would be if you could see in the dark, hands stretched over your head and cuffed to something solid that you can't even identify...

"Spike!" he hissed. No answer from the pitch-black room. He wriggled his wrists against the cold metal handcuffs. So not funny. At least his hands were warm, stuffed under the upholstery at the back of the sofa-bed, so that the cuffs could be fastened, he guessed, to some bit of metal in the sofa frame itself.

Oh Spi-ike.... c'mere you psychotic little bastard, and we can have a talk about why Xander doesn't like to wake up naked and chained to things, when he didn't go to sleep that way. And how his life has progressed to the point where he actually needs to add that last clause...

"Spike, not funny. Not even remotely funny. Not even high school talent show funny. Which was actually pretty terrifying. Where are you?" No answer. Great. Well, you're the one who gave him the idea, Harris. At least it wasn't the water heater. If I have to be naked and handcuffed to something so my mom can walk in at an inopportune moment... or...ulp, Willow---no, don't go there. Nope. Buffy. Nope. Bad, evil thoughts. Go away now. Anyway, at least I get to be in my own bed. But...

"Spike, dammit. I'm cold !"

A long-suffering sigh rose from directly beneath him, echoing through the mattress and chasing its way along his bones until it bounced around for a few blissful seconds in his skull.

"You're no fun anymore, you know that"? Spike sounded half-amused and half-disgusted. "I mean... play on my sympathies, why don't you?" His low voice was muffled by the fact that there was a rather broken down sofa-bed between him and his still-pissed-off lover.

"Why are you under the bed, Spike?" Xander asked a bit more patiently than he thought he was capable of.

"Wanted to see if I could bend that damn support beam back into place, so I don't keep wakin' up with a crick in my back every bleedin' day."

Okay, that was a fair and reasonable answer, except...

"And you chose to do this in the middle of the night because?"

"Couldn't sleep, could I. Supposed to be out killin' things, but nooooo, somebody 'as to work all day, and then whine at me about takin' off without 'im.... And that thing kept pokin' me in the back. Not in a good way." Spike's voice was laced with irritation.

"Okay, fine. Makes sense. And the fact that I'm freezing my ass off, chained naked to the bed, and you took all the covers with you?

Spike chuckled. "Well, I was about to wake you up and have a little fun, but then the soddin' bedframe attacked me again. Decided six months in a wheelchair once in my unlifetime was enough, thanks. Figured you'd keep nicely up there. And…well, it's chilly down here." He pushed upwards on the metal bar that ran across the top third of the bed, and Xander curled unconsciously into the contact.

"Well, with the AC cranked up to middle-aged hot-flash heaven level, it ain't exactly Club Med up here, either. I'm cold."

"And you're a brat, 'cos you know that's my weak point, and you're playin' it for all it's worth. Sucker for a sob story, I am. Dru once melted my only copy of 'Sid Sings' on CD, because it was 'pretty' an' she thought it'd make rainbow colors if she burned it. 'Bout to wring her sweet little neck, and all she had to do was bat 'er eyelashes at me an' look all frail, and whimper "But I'm cooooold, Spike," an' there I was jumpin' like Walter bloody Raleigh to put m'coat around 'er."

"That was truly touching, Spike. Or maybe you're just truly touched." Xander stretched his arms, trying to shake a little life back into his prickling wrists. "For the record, I don't like waking up alone."

Silence from beneath the bed. Finally, "No, me neither. Didn't actually expect you to wake up; out like a light, you were. Well, I know why I don't. Why you?"

Xander sighed. The things he ended up telling Spike, just because the vampire asked... "When I was little, I used to get scared."

Another chuckle from beneath him. "Used to?"

"Yeah, okay, point, but that was before I found out there were real creepy-crawlies out there to be scared of. Back then, it was monsters under the bed."

"Grrrrrr...." Spike growled obligingly from under the bed.

"Even pointier point. Anyway... My mom... she used to try a little harder, back then. If Dad wasn't home, and I was scared, she'd come into my room and lay down with me, and I didn't think they could get me, with her there. I was always begging her to stay, so when I woke up, I'd know she'd been there all night, and none of 'em did anything nasty to me while I was sleepin'. She'd stay 'til I fell asleep, but she was always gone in the morning. I mean, who wants to spend the night in a twin bed with a six year old, right?"

*****

Spike was quiet, for a moment, then laughed. Just a bit. What a bloody world. Oedipal schmoedipal, right? Anybody else, I'd laugh my arse off.

"Fine. See if I share my innermost childhood remembrances with the dead guy again," Xander muttered peevishly.

"No, I was just thinkin' we could have a lovely competition to see which of us'd give Freud the biggest hard-on. Hang about up there-- I'll be finished in a minute, and I'll bring the blankets back, promise." Spike pushed up on one of the bent sections of the support bar, and the metal gave a little groan.

"Like I'm going anywhere." Xander said slowly. "Hey Spike..."

"Yeh?"

"You really want me?" A really small voice, like the boy was still about six years old.

"Like, right now? You mean, am I down here thinkin' about you all trapped up there, layin' ready and open for me to come and lick you from head to toe, and put my mouth around your cock and suck every bit o' life out of you, and you can't do a damn thing about it 'cept lie there and take it like a good boy?" Spike asked, his throat suddenly feeling rougher, like he'd just smoked a pack and a half of menthols in five minutes.

"Okay, not so cold anymore… but no, I actually meant that in a....relationship way, like 'Spike, why am I having these strange feelings, Spike, do you think we should get a cat? ' What's really going on?"

The cold air was a little heavier than it should've been, maybe. That was why the quiet echoed so loudly. Why the hell does he have to think of these things? Why does he have to ruin a perfectly good little pre-shag conversation that was about to turn kinky in a minute if I had my way, by askin' me stuff that comes way too close to me tellin' him I love him?

"So, more like, am I down here thinkin' that the minute this chip comes out of my head, you're first on the dinner menu, followed by all your little friends? Or maybe save you so's you can watch when I drain the witches, and stake Rupert through the eyes with the earpieces from his bloody glasses, an' decorate the trees on Summerherst with the Slayer's intestines?'

"And suddenly I could use a sweater. Yeah, something like that."

"No. I'm not down here thinkin' that. You really can't leave things go, can you." Spike had the feeling he was colder under the stolen blankets than Xander was up there without them.

"Oh yeah. Been the master of that for nineteen years, give or take. Letting things sit without touching 'em. Well, without touching 'em in public, anyway."

Spike pushed up suddenly on the mattress itself, not the beam, so that his hands were pressing against Xander's shoulders, with only a mattress and death and a demon between them.

"I told you I wouldn't hurt you. I didn't just mean 'at the moment'." Ever, alright? Don't make me say it. Don't make me say it includes your sniveling, world-saving little friends because rippin' 'em to pieces sorta qualifies as hurting you, in the most academic sense of the word...

"I don't know what that means," Xander replied, sounding... vaguely comforted, all the same.

"Well, that makes two of us. But for what it's worth, it's true."

Xander laughed, just a little. "Yeah, well you told me my friends wanted me to join the Army, too."

Spike punched the mattress, but not hard. "So I lie a bit. S'pose if you're really worried you could have Red do her kicky little truth spell on me, if you wanna risk me bein' turned into a stink beetle. But then there'd be the little matter of tellin' her we've been shagging..."

"Is that what we've been doing." It wasn't really a question, merely a verification.

Yes. I've been cuddling with you and pulling you onto my lap and kissing you at every available opportunity and watching you while you sleep like you'll fade away if I close my eyes, and it's all for the sake of a good hard fuck. God, I'm in love with an idiot. Which, for once, is actually safer for me than otherwise, so I suppose I'd best not look a gift horse in the arse.

"Among other things," he answered simply. "Things we could be doin' in about three minutes if you'd shut up and let me fix this castoff from the Brady Bunch set." He gave the second bend, the one that had been poking upward, instead of dipping down, a hearty pull. It creaked alarmingly, and then slowly settled into a position vaguely resembling straight.

"There. Got it." He slid out from under the bed, pulling the wooly blankets with him. "Still cold? " he asked, tossing a blanket over Xander's feet as the boy blinked at him.

"Hungry."

"You're always hungry! Where the hell do you put it all?" Spike stared at him in amazement. He'd eaten two bloody plates of garlic-free spaghetti, a huge pile of chocolate chip cookies, and half a bag of cheese puffs during the hour before he collapsed exhausted into the bed and started giving Spike cocker-spaniel-eyes about not going hunting tonight. Now it was three in the morning, and Xander wanted food?

"You're always dead. What's your point? Gonna let me go so I can get some munchies, or what?"

Spike grinned. Not quite wickedly. Just...slightly naughtily. "Think not, somehow. Not when you're lookin' so lovely an' defenseless there."

He strolled over to the fridge, having no trouble navigating the piles of laundry and other basement fun that lay on the floor like a minefield for those with non-vampiric sight. Now... what had they actually brought home on Wednesday night from that bizarre shopping trip to the suburban mecca known as Super-Wal-Mart? Oh, yeah.... that would do it. Grabbing his prize and retrieving a spoon from the silverware cup Ah, Martha Stewart's White-Trash Living..., he returned to the bed, sitting beside Xander.

"Open up, then."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Well, if you won't open your mouth, I'll obviously have to spread chocolate pudding all over your body and lick it all off, instead. Which would be fun for me, but wouldn't solve your little hunger problem."

"Open mouth, get pudding. Close mouth, get licked. Open mouth, get pudding. Close mouth, get licked. Open mouth..." Xander chanted sadly, as if supremely torn.

Spike smiled far more gently than he ever knew he was capable of, and gave in. "Open your mouth, idiot. I brought two containers."

"Hmm... lick first, eat later?"

"I can do that." And Spike dipped a finger into the first container of pudding, and began slowly painting a completely accurate regulation dart board on Xander's chest.

"That tickles," his lover laughed semi-grumpily as he finished the high-scoring ring.

"Best wash it off, then, hadn't I." And he began to lick, slowly. Tasting. Tasting everything.

"So," Xander said a little waveringly. Spike was unsure whether it was all emotional or had anything to do with the fact that Spike was dragging his tongue awfully close to the patch of coarse curls between Xander's legs… "Does that mean that you don't actually want to eat me?"

Spike pressed his laughter against warm skin, tasting creamy chocolate and salt sweat, and smelling the rushing blood, so close beneath that skin.

"Didn't say that… just that I wouldn't hurt you. Well, not in a bad way...." He dipped his finger in the almost-empty pudding-cup, and crawled up Xander's body to offer it to the motionless boy, who licked that finger as if it were the last pudding-covered vampire finger in the western hemisphere.

"There is more, y'know…" And Spike opened the second container, dipped the spoon in, and began to slowly feed Xander, teasing him…holding the spoon just above where he could reach with his mouth, then darting in and letting Xander suck the cool, creamy pudding with disturbingly single-minded precision.

"I like you better in the bed than under it," Xander offered with a smile, after he'd once again released the spoon from between his lips.

"Grrr…" Spike answered, and held another spoonful above the boy's head. And held it there.... "Oh, c'mon. Say please and get it over with!"

Xander shook his head, and reached for the spoon with a lightning-quick movement of his right hand. Vampiric reflexes were faster, and Spike caught the hand in mid-grab.

"No, we don't, now. And how long ago did we figure out how to get out of the handcuffs?" Spike questioned sternly.

"Oh, somewhere around 'open mouth, get pudding...' " Xander replied innocently.

"Well, put those hands away again, or I won't feed you any more."

"Sir, yes sir. Putting hands away, sir."