Chocolatey Goodness

Part 15: Chocolate Oranges

rated NC-17

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"Spike?" Xander called out loudly over 'Video Killed The Radio Star,' which was blasting down from Willow's CD-drive through the hole in the ceiling.

They had what was left of Angel's flat to themselves, since Angel and Wesley had climbed up the makeshift ladder in the lift shaft a few minutes ago. Allegedly to watch Willow perform last-rites on Cordelia's computer, but actually to give them some time alone, which was suspiciously nice of Angel. Spike's Sire had muttered something about not getting peanut butter in his bed, which made Spike blink for a few seconds before deciding that Angel was either doing some freaky Drusilla thing and reading his memories, or he was just a raving nutter. And did that mean he was actually offering his collapsed but still usable bed, provided there was no peanut butter involved? Could Xander be persuaded to use it, even if he was? These and other questions will be answered on today's episode of Passions...

"Hello, larcenous vampire I happen to be sleeping with." That was said a bit more softly, and from closer in. Followed by Xander singing a little "Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh" along with the bubblegum chorus. More or less in tune. In that the tune was closer to the original than it was to, say, the Hallelujah Chorus.

Spike looked up from where he was crouched sorting Angel's un-charred clothes into 'Steal for Xander' and 'Let the Poof Keep 'Em' piles. The first one had a nice set of chains at the bottom of it, but was reluctantly leather-free, since he knew damn well when Angel had last worn those black leather trousers, and didn't think his lover would appreciate the reminder. Said lover was standing in the doorway to Angel's mostly intact bedroom, dressed like a cross between Indiana Jones and Magnum P.I.

"Yeah. C'mere, I wanna see if this shirt looks as good on you as I think it will. Vague possibility of hotness, and couldn't be worse than what you're wearing now, anyway. " The where-the-hell-did-Angel-get-that-thing fedora looked just fine on Xander, but not when combined with a shirt that Tom Selleck's wardobe-mistress would've probably turned down as being too loud, and yes, Spike watched too much telly. What else did he have to do besides shag and not kill people?

Xander shook his head as if he should've known better than to expect Spike to be doing anything useful, but he walked into the room. "Angel tossed me down the key to that trunk you couldn't get open. He said you might want this." Xander held out a large oblong shape wrapped in some sort of black cloth, and Spike took it from him, handing over a black silk shirt in fair exchange. Xander examined the shirt critically, while Spike did the same with the package he'd been handed. The cloth was old, velvet and lace, and fringed.

"This was Dru's," he said suddenly. "We bought it for her in Yorkshire." Spike fingered the shawl for a moment. "Well, I picked his pocket an' bought it for her." He slowly unwrapped it, not really daring to give in to his guess at what might be inside. It was correct, though. "Bugger. Bugger it all, he kept it."

Xander paused in taking off the bilious blue and red shirt with parrots-probably-shagging on it, and stepped close to look over Spike's shoulder. "That's..."

It was Spike. And Angelus, and Drusilla, neatly done up in watercolors, framed in dark walnut. Not brilliant by any means, but it was them. Dru wearing the black shawl over a crushed velvet dress, Angelus in dark gray and emerald green, like an overgrown leprechaun, and Spike in black and red. But not a good red-- that awful reddish-pinkish silk waistcoat with the raspberries embroidered on it that Dru had picked out in a booth in the Shambles.

"Raspberries," she'd crooned, and the dark gray eyes had lit up, and he could see the stars beyond the cobwebs in them. "All red and sticky, like blood, and sweet, like my little Spike. It's delicious!" Hideous, is what it was, and Angelus had only bought it to torment him because he knew Spike thought so, and Spike had only worn it because...

Spike looked down at his current attire, and choked back a laugh. And what was shagging on this shirt of Xander's that he was wearing-- against his will and every ounce of fashion sense he possessed-- now? Oversexed ferns? He'd only worn the waistcoat because Drusilla asked him to, and he sure as hell hadn't changed all that much over the years, no matter how smarmily Angel wanted to tweak him about having fallen in love with a human.

"That's your real hair color?" Xander asked, dragging him firmly into the present. He reached out a finger to outline the shape of a dark blond wave that had fallen on Spike's forehead an unlifetime ago, and then tugged not all that gently at its peroxided counterpart. "You said you weren't a natural blond. Undead liar guy."

Spike grinned. "Actually, you said I wasn't. I wasn't really in any condition to argue with you at the time, considering you had your hands on my cock and it'd been a few months since anybody but me'd had the privilege." If there was one thing he'd learned in a hundred and twenty-whatever-he-decided-to-say-today years, it was that the truth worked as good as a lie, sometimes.

Xander hmm-hmmmed, which meant he was blushing and trying not to attract Spike's attention to it. Good luck, when your lover can sense the blood rushing to your face. He didn't blush this much when they were really alone; it was as if being around his friends had turned Xander back into the vulnerable, head-trippable kid he'd been this spring. Or maybe it wasn't his friends, maybe it was last night, or maybe it was any of a hundred things stuffed into that random-access head of his. Spike took a little pity. Just a little; he was evil, after all.

"Alright, so I'm the original cuffs-and-collars boy. I'd really thought it was darker, frankly." Hadn't he dreamed not that long ago that they'd been a matched set, him and Dru and the Irish Bastard, with Darla the odd one out? That he'd bleached his hair to wipe out his likeness to Angelus. And that was laughable, because he was nothing like Angel, souled or unsouled. Why had he done it? Because he wasn't blond enough? Thinking Angelus would come back for Spike like he came back for the Bitch in China, like he could smell the bleach from halfway round the world? His mental chorus laughed in his ear. Christ, but you're a broody git, these days, Spike. You bleached it 'cos you're a fuckin' vain little prick and you thought it made you look like a serious badass.

He shrugged. "You wait 'til you haven't seen yourself in a mirror for a hundred and twenty years, then try and remember your natural color."

Xander was oddly silent for a bit, and then said, "A hundred and twenty? What, you were six when you were turned? You've gotta pick an age, Spike. You're worse than my mom."

"I was twenty-four." Twenty-four and a complete virgin, for all the good his mooning about after Cecily Cardew and at least six other muffin-headed London society girls before her had ever done. Dru and Angelus had made short work of that problem, though. "It was eighteen eighty, don't bother tryin' to do the maths, it won't come out right. All the things I lie about, and you're worried about my age ?"

"Thought I'd start out with that, and work my way up slowly to the big things like 'Did you break my disco ball' and of course the most important, 'Do you really think I'm hot, or are you just saying that so I'll keep feeding you and letting you have your wicked demonic way with me?' " Now there was a grin, something half shy, half lascivious.

"No, I didn't break your sodding disco ball, but I'll buy you a new one if it means that much to you. Er...if you'll lend me the cash." Xander laughed at him. "And I didn't so much imply that you're hot, as that you make me hot." Another flush, and Spike smirked, wondering if he might be able to give up lying completely. Just tell Xander some embarrassing but less important truth every time he stepped too close to a ticklish subject, instead. "So can I have my wicked demonic way with you again?" He gave Xander his own lascivious glance, and random-blush-boy looked down at the portrait to escape it.

"A room and a half away from Willow? I think not, somehow." Xander stared at the picture, and Spike wondered what was going through his head. Was there some unwritten law that said he could read any git in the world except the man he was in love with? "Hey, I know that face," Xander said after a moment, pointing at the painted Spike, with a bit of a smarmy Xandergrin replacing the blush. Spike raised an eyebrow at him.

"I should hope so; you've been lookin' at it on and off for two and a half years now."

Xander thumped him on the skull with his knuckles, and then pointed again, tracing the edge of the smile on the other Spike's face. "That face. That's your 'I've just been fucked until I made little squeaky noises, and ain't I happy about it' face."

Spike gave Xander an arch glance, one that Angelus had taught him a hundred and twenty years ago, give or take. "Oh, you know that look, do you?" It was shot right back at him with a nod-and-a-half, and Spike had to laugh. He learned far too fast, Alexander Harris did. "Well, you're right. I had. Gotta give him that, he got us all down."

Xander snorted. "And then you ate him, right?"

"Well, not right afterwards. We gave him time to clean his brushes first." Xander gave him an "Oh" and Spike rolled his eyes. He smacked his lover lightly on the seat of his trousers. "Angelus painted it, you git. From a photograph." And they had given him time to clean his brushes first. Just. Mostly because they'd been promised unspecified treats if they would stay the hell out of the room until he'd finished painting.

"They had cameras back then?" Which went to show that Xander Harris learned fast when he was paying attention, but not when he was staring at his History teacher's knockers. Or possibly when he was trying to pretend he wasn't staring at his History teacher's cock, Spike mentally appended.

"Yes, Mister Radio Killed The Music Hall Star. They had indoor plumbing, too, even the sort that flushed, if you had the dosh for it, and those little round things we used to call wheels were catching on in the smarter circles. It was eighteen eighty-six, not the bleedin' stone age, Xander. Maybe you should watch a bit more History Channel and a bit less Cartoon Network."

"Or we could watch a bit more Blackadder. That's vaguely historical, right?" Xander was still staring at the picture, and Spike held it up so he could get a closer look. So Spike could get a closer look as well, though it was behind his eyes if he closed them. Dru staring off somewhere, seeing the stars only knew what, Angelus looking straight at where the camera would have been, all serious except for the twitch of a smile at one corner of his mouth-- and Spike himself. With, as Xander had said, the look of a man who's just been fucked into smug insensibility. Spike closed his eyes, and he could almost smell the chocolate oranges.

"Okay, tell me about it," said Xander, sitting down next to Spike on an overturned bookcase, and slipping off his shirt. Putting his warm, bare chest up against Spike's t-shirted back, and it felt almost as hot as the fire had been in that little room in York.

"Really?" He hadn't thought Xander would want to hear about anything Angelus-related, given his jealousy of Angel. Which was suddenly not too hard to pick up, now that somebody didn't have his bleached head stuck completely up his fiendishly attractive arse. He opened his eyes, and Xander was nodding, a small smile on his face. It made no sense, but it seemed to be a good sort of senselessness, so Spike didn't question it too hard. "You want me to tell you about me getting shagged?"

"Yeah, you're obviously dying to. Fell asleep during the last Spike-gets-fucked bedtime story you tried to tell me. Here's your chance to come up with one that's interesting enough to keep me awake. You've got a better chance now-- it's noon, and I'm not in bed."

"Which is pretty bloody rare." Xander thwapped him again, and Spike grinned. "Alright-- though we could correct that, y'know. There's a perfectly good bed right over there, and the door still shuts on this room and everything..." Xander flipped him the finger, and he sighed tragically. "Fine. We were in Yorkshire. York proper, actually. Dru liked it, 'cos of the Shambles. Little alley market, and she just loved to look at the pretties on the market stalls. Clothes, girls, ribbons, fresh raspberries. Oranges. She'd eat fruit, for some reason. Blood and fresh fruit. Chocolate if you fed it to her, though she didn't care much one way or the other about it."

"That's 'cause she's insane."

"True enough, though that doesn't exactly explain you and me." If anything did. "Anyhow, we'd walked all the way round the city on the wall the day before, to show her you could do it, and probably because the great Irish poofter thought it would wear me out and I wouldn't be so likely to drive him buggy--fat chance of that. Himself noticed this little shop where a professor-type was doing photographs and got some daft idea of us doing a family portrait, even though her high-and-mightyness was off in London."

"Who?"

"Oh, the Bitch. Angel's Sire. Bane of my bloody existence, she was, and you think he's got no sense of humor? Eh. She wasn't there, though, wandered off to London to see her Sire, and me and Dru got the dubious joy of havin' the Poof to ourselves for a year or three. So. York. That next day he dolled us all up in those fancified threads, and said we had to be good for an hour while the professor-git wanked about with his equipment. Aside from in bed, have you ever seen me be good for an hour?"

*****

"I can't believe you made me wear this fairycake getup." Spike tugged at his collar as Drusilla leaned against him, and Angelus cuffed him across the head.

"As if you've never worn a gentleman's clothes before, brat. Hush and behave, or I'll give you somethin' to complain about."

Sodding waistcoat with the sodding raspberries that looked like somebody'd squished a sodding jelly-roll on him... "Promises, promises."

"You promised me a lolly if I'd be good," Dru said sincerely, turning her head to look back at their Sire.

"That I did, precious." Leaning his head close to Spike's ear, Angelus whispered, "Which one was Lolly again?"

"The little dark-haired chit in the chocolate shop. Promised me a lolly too, you did."

Angelus smacked him on the skull again. "That I did not. Might find you something else to lick, though."

Spike pouted. He'd got quite good at that, since the Bitch took off and he didn't have to play the bully-boy anymore unless he felt like it. With a sigh, his Sire smoothed his hair. "I've a chocolate orange for you in my pocket."

*****

"Geez, and I thought you acted like a kid around him now." Xander had slipped Angel's shirt on, and yeah, the boy definitely needed to wear more black. Spike tore his eyes away reluctantly, and found them caught by his own painted reflection.

"Well, he let me, then. I'd not had the chance to be one, really, the first time, and he knew it, so he let me get away with acting as young as Dru did. Up to a point. Even though she couldn't help it, and I could. Mostly."

*****

"Daddy, I'm feeling wick-ed," Drusilla sang after about ten minutes, her eyes sparkling, and Angelus groaned. Spike grinned. Family portrait or not, Dru wasn't supposed to be calling him Daddy and confusing the poor little professor fellow. Not when Daddy only looked two or three years older than the both of them, at most. "Can I play with the little man?"

"No, Princess. Not now. He has to be around to develop the photograph. Next week, then you can play. Just sit still and wait while he fixes his equipment." Angelus fussed a bit with her hair, and she hummed happily, momentarily distracted. Spike, meanwhile... "And Will, stay out of my pocket. Y' can have the chocolate when we get home." Bugger. Caught red-handed.

"But I'm bored now." Spike looked around the shop for something to occupy his twitchy mind. Shelves full of books, which might've been interesting enough, if his body wasn't feeling just as twitchy. They should've gone walking today; that would've worn him out a bit, but it hadn't been cloudy like yesterday, and they'd had to wait until true twilight to venture out.

"And chocolate's going to make you more likely to sit still? You must take me for a bigger idgit than you."

Spike looked him up and down. "You are a bigger idgit than me. 'Bout three stone bigger, at least. You should've shared that vicar on the way here-- you're getting fat." Another cuff, this time on the ear, and he grinned again. Sire-baiting. A much more entertaining game than sitting still and staring at the skinny little wanker with the glasses as he messed about over his camera and plates.

"Miss Millicent says you boys aren't to fight, or she'll be cross." Dru held up her doll, a new one that she'd taken off her latest snack.

*****

"I so didn't need to hear that part."

"Sorry, shall I pretend she popped over to the magical faerie toy shoppe and picked it out? If it helps any, I never fancied kids m'self. Takes too many to make a mouthful, and they don't fight back enough."

"That's...oddly comforting. Alright, go on, but try to gloss over the gourmet dining reviews, okay?"

*****

Twenty more minutes, and Spike had been up and down three times. Over to the bookshelves, thumbing through a treatise on blacksmithing, a collection of Irish fairytales, and a copy of 'Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.' He'd brought that last one back to read to Dru, but lost interest himself after a few minutes, and handed it over to Angelus, who was doing his best to explain to Drusilla that no, you couldn't just walk into mirrors, and her looking glass girl hadn't run away somewhere because she was ugly.

Across the room to stare over Professor Certified Plum-Duff's shoulder at the camera, and make grr faces behind his back, which had Angelus snarling terrible things at him in Gaelic. Back to sit and fidget for a bit, before he couldn't take it anymore and bounded up again, this time pacing the room and studying the ugly little linotypes of political figures on the walls.

"William, sit down before I have to come over there and knock you down."

It was a bad day, and he really couldn't help it. The devil was in him-- not the demon that he actually was, but the May-mad one that he really had no leash on. Spike threw himself into his seat with a petulant growl and started picking at the threads in his tie. He wasn't usually so restless; it was just that every so often, when the wind was wrong or the moon was too bright, he needed to...

*****

"To what?"

"I dunno. Throw m'self against the walls and see how hard I could bounce off, I s'pose. See where the edges of the playground were."

*****

"And the spiders said you shan't, you shan't, but Mummy knew better, didn't she, darling?" Dru was crooning to her doll. Angelus had given up any attempt at interesting her in the book again, but at least she'd been relatively good, which was more than Spike could say for himself.

He'd tried once more to filch the chocolate from his Sire's pocket, and been smacked on the hand for his pains. So he'd proceeded to unbutton the back of Drusilla's dress, slipping his hand inside and tickling her back, with an eye to reaching all the way round the front, given time. That might've been alright if she hadn't started going on about the tarantulas wanting to dance with her, and stood up, whirling around and letting the front of her dress fall to her waist.

Luckily for his fragile human sanity, Professor Whatzit had his back turned. Angelus had grabbed Dru, buttoned up her dress, set her down with her doll, and told her if she'd be Daddy's best Princess, he'd punish her when they got home, which had her beaming. Then he grabbed Spike by the ear. "Pardon me, sir, I'll just be a minute," to the photographer, who waved him off with a distracted 'Of course, quite all right,' and obviously wouldn't have noticed if Dru were dancing naked with a thousand hairy spiders, just so long as he had the right lens in his big black box.

Then it was into the room next door, which was much warmer, what with the roaring fire and all, and slam went the door to the kick of Angelus' foot, and a rough push sent Spike stumbling in the direction of the big oak trestle in front of the fireplace.

"Over the table, Spike," Angelus growled in that Sire-says, don't arse about, do it now or else voice, and Spike was forgetting any hope of a fight, just stripping his jacket off, stupid raspberry waistcoat off, dropping the braces from his shoulders. Trousers round his ankles and bare-arsed over the warm wood before Angelus had even shrugged off his coat. Spike lay there, listening. Listening to the rustle of wool as it fell against the tabletop, the little snarls of annoyance. Impatience with him, and hadn't he been asking for it. Begging for it. Listening to the sound of hands fiddling with that shiny Celtic knot on the buckle of the wide belt. Eyes closed, waiting. Waiting for the first blow. The first crack.

*****

"Pet?" Xander was warm behind him again, a layer of silk between them now but that didn't mean Spike couldn't still feel the heartbeat speed up, the body tense. Then black-silk-covered arms wrapped around his own, and Xander's chin was on his shoulder, hat knocked off somewhere. Beating of the heart against his back, throbbing of the throat-pulse, echo skittering across his shoulderblade. Shallow breath in his ear, but no words, so Spike gave them. "You do remember I like that sort of thing? Did back then, too."

Liked was really too ridiculous a word. Loved. Loved and hated. Loved the touch, loved the hit and the hot and the hurt spreading across his skin like fire, but a safe one. Loved the loss of control, giving it up, letting somebody else tell him how far it was alright to go, because that somebody knew. Hated the feeling of being a child again, and loved it with an uneasy mix of worship and not-quite-shame. Hated the knowledge that he was being punished, like any child hates it, and the knowledge that he was asking for it, and loved the touch and the hands behind it with a passion that had terrified him even then.

"With a belt?" And it wasn't just the heartbeat that twitched against him.

"Could've stood up and walked out any time." Which was both truth and lie. There was more to that Sire-says voice than just Pavlovian conditioning-- there was blood in it. There was always blood in it. "But he was good at it. Why would I want to? Good with his hands, too." He closed his eyes, and listened to Xander breathe. "Dru wasn't half bad, really, but her heart wasn't in it. She liked rougher stuff, and she'd rather take it than dish it out."

"You're a complete sicko, you know that, right? I mean, I'm not informing you of anything that slipped your mind?" There was a touch of sarcasm in that voice, as if mocking Spike for thinking he needed to remind Xander that he was a sicko, but it was shallow. Beneath it was something else. The warm hands slipped down his torso towards Spike's own belt buckle, not quite touching it.

"Anytime you want to use it on me, you can have it, luv." He waited. Tasted the air like a snake, mouth open and silent. Tested a theory. "And if you want to try it the other way, all you have to do is ask." Beat-BEAT. "Anyhow, I was waiting for Angel to whale the tar out of me..." And there was the twitch again, though the timing was odd, and he smiled.

*****

Heavy sound of leather being drawn through beltloops, and Spike was hard against the table, and screwing his eyes shut. Waiting. Still. Now he could hold still, now that he was waiting, in this completely undignified position for a grown man of thirty, or even a vampire of six years. Waiting to be beaten until he blubbered, and he always did, when it was this kind of day.

There'd be no being held over his Sire's knees, smacked with his hand, something simple and safe no matter how hard it got, the sort of thing they did for fun as much as anything else. Not now. He'd passed that about ten minutes and four hundred fidgets ago. But after it was over, that way or this way, Himself would pull Spike up onto his lap and hold him while he cried it out. Whatever was in him today. Whatever he needed this for. And sometimes that was the best part. He could almost hear the whistle through the air that would start the whole thing going.

Which was why he jumped when a heavy body bent itself over him. Pushed him flat and whispered in his ear.

"Why always so hard, so much trouble, Will? Can't you just ask?" He shook his head, felt his hair brush against Angelus' chin, and scrape in the bristle there. Why he wouldn't just grow a beard and get it over with... No, Spike couldn't just ask, and his Sire knew damn well, and Spike knew damn well it was a rhetorical question. "No, y' never can. Can't help it, can you." Spike silently shook his head again. "I don't think you even know, do you." And what the hell did that mean?

Then the touch was gone, and he was cold again, though the fire wasn't really all that far from his bared backside, and he should've been worried about it, probably. But all he wanted was that touch back, any touch. Anything against his body, against his skin, as long as it came from his Sire. What was he doing-- oiling the damn thing up so it would swing better?

But he was fiddling around in that great heavy wool coat that smelled of old blood and night air and mostly of him, so much that Spike would sometimes lay with his head pillowed against it, when Angelus was off somewhere with Darla, and Dru was in one of her untouchable moods. Just lie there and smell him, and be easy.

Now there was a crinkling of paper, and then the smell, faint before in the other room, hit him. Chocolate. Not English chocolate, wonderful and sweet and cheap enough for him to fall in love with even on the little money he'd had free to spend when he was alive. No, this was something dark and rich that had made its way here from the Continent. Something that Angelus had spent real money on, for him.

Could've just taken it and killed the shopgirl, but not when Dru wanted her for a pressie on their going-away night, so he'd forked over some ungodly amount of the cash that he carried in those hundreds of pockets. Hadn't let Spike in to see what he was buying, just said it was a surprise, and would he watch Dru before she snatched another pram away, because they always made such a fuss about the infants. He could smell it, though, even wrapped in paper and hidden away for later, and now Angelus was going to what-- really punish him by throwing it in the fire? He'd moved over there, and Spike could smell melting chocolate, and the over-sugared tang of glacé oranges. Couldn't say he didn't deserve it, but...

"Get it over with, will you?" he begged finally, in as low a voice as he could manage, and he didn't know whether he meant the torment of smelling his treat go up in flames, or the waiting, or the beating, or what. Maybe that was what Angelus thought he didn't know, and if so, he was bloody annoyingly right as usual. He waited, again. Waited and waited, and at last his Sire was behind him, picking up the belt from the table--

And tossing it to the floor.

He twitched. Fidgeted. Didn't know what was going on. "Dammit, Angelus, you fucking nancyboy of an artiste, don't torture me, just get on with it!" Whatever it was, and Spike twitched again, until large fingers, warm from the heat of the fire, touched him in that spot. The one on the small of his back, just there, and it was automatic: he lifted up into that touch and purred, and rested his head against the tabletop. He smelled chocolate again, so strong that he couldn't believe he wasn't in the doorway of the sweet shop, eyeing that pretty girl Dru was so peckish for. But he was seeing his Sire's hand, instead, holding a warm candied orange in front of his face. Streaked with just the barest trace of dark brown.

"Chew on that, Will, and shut up." Spike accepted it between his lips in utter confusion, and bound himself to waiting again-- but there was no more of that. Fire-warmed, dry hand returning to his back in half a second, and the other, slick and warmer still, touching his arse with practiced ease, and pushing inside him. He was so shocked, he bit clean through the candy. Never. Angelus never did this, not on a bounce-off-the-walls day. Might throw him over a table and bugger him senseless and dry, just for a change, and that was good too, but never this. Never slow and warm and sweet and easy on a bad day.

Never, but as he twitched again, squirming against his will, he felt the warmth inside him move, and he relaxed. Gave himself over just as he would have to the leather, but this was slick and sweet inside him, and the scent of the melted chocolate on his Sire's fingers made him melt as well, onto the table. Just let go and fall into that place where he was being held and done to, and it was better than anything, because it was Him.

Candy orange in his mouth, and the whole room was full of the smell of chocolate, heated by the fire, being heated again by the movement in and out of him. The long, slow touch inside him at the place that made him try to either push back against the fingers or fall forward against the table while his head filled with chocolate and stars, and his body couldn't decide. He couldn't decide. The touch disappeared, for the tiniest of seconds, and then that heavy body was against him again, and the cock sliding into him, so damn slowly, so perfect. Taking forever, but it wasn't waiting, now, it was being. Being there, with Angelus in him. Bent over him and whispering in his ear.

"I know you can't help it, mo chroi. I know." And strong arms, stronger than his own, were around his shoulders. Tight enough to make him feel held. Loose enough that if he wanted to, he could've pulled away easily. The illusion of being trapped, the knowledge of freedom, and the feel of Angelus against him, pushing in and pulling out, rubbing him against the table at the same time. Slow, each time. Letting him choose whether to be still or not. Let go and be a child or accept this as something given freely from one man to another --and give it back. "Sire," he whispered once, and then "Angelus."

He wrapped his hands around those arms. Fell into the rhythm, lifting up for him, but controlling it at the same time, with his own movements, his own sounds and sighs. Being together with Angelus. Not just his boy. Always his boy, but not only. Being thirty years old instead of six, with a man behind him, moving with him, who was not his father, no matter how much they liked to play at it. Faster, warmer, and he knew he was making little noises, the kind that made Angelus smile wickedly, and thrust in harder. He'd seen that smile, other times, when they were facing each other. Just the two of them, moving together.

He finally did collapse forward on the table, as Angelus filled him. Spike grinned his own wickedness, because even if Himself couldn't be teased or pleasured into mew-squeaking like a bloody kitten, there was always that long, low groan at the end, that tickled the hairs on his neck, that made his ears vibrate for what seemed like hours in the silence afterward. Then he was pulled up, just a little.

One hand left Spike's arm for a moment to reach beneath. To touch Spike's own aching need, and Spike let his hand join his Sire's again there, stroking that need together until it left him in a flood of insanity and helplessness and power and love that ached just as much when he was spent. For only a second or two, he lay still, not actually breathing, but tasting. The room, the air... Dark and sweet and full of chocolate and sex and the smell of him. Of them. Then Angelus helped him up, and stood him straight. Pulled up his trousers and brushed the long strands of hair out of his dry eyes. Looked him in the face. "Better?"

"Yeah." Spike reached up to kiss him, and he reached down. They met somewhere in the middle, man and boy and man, and if they were both monsters and shouldn't be thinking themselves either one, there was nobody in here to tell them so. "Love you."

*****

"Bastard always knew," Spike said slowly, leaning back against Xander. Looking not at himself in the portrait, but at the man standing behind him, the man who painted it. "Even when I didn't know. When I couldn't even ask." He kept giving these little pieces of himself away to Xander, and he still didn't know where they went or what his lover did with them. If he knew what they were, even.

"Knew what?" It was a still, small voice, at odds with the hardness against Spike's back.

"When I needed to be a kid. When I needed to be a man."

The voice had been a boy's, that had asked him, but the body against him was something else. Over and over, the both of them. A lost child in his arms one minute. A confident adult protecting Spike from grumpy Sires or teasing cheerleaders, the next. And Spike was no better, still, though he might pretend to hold tight to that warm body at night just for Xander's sake. Or just to leech some heat.

Well, it worked, as long as somebody was playing the grown-up when they got arrested for public indecency, as he was sure would happen one of these days, or needed to look old enough to buy a few bottles of Diamond White. Just God help poor prats like Angel when the timing was off and they both had to be kids, because... Oh, the fun they could get up to with a certain party's credit card number that a certain other party had memorized purely by Braille while he had his hands on the party of the first part's wallet for a few brief seconds.

*****

When Spike was presentable again, Angelus gave him a nod, and he grinned. Shook his hair out slightly, undoing all the lovely work his Sire had put into combing it. Gave him a smarmy two-fingered salute, then thumbed his nose. "Just couldn't resist me, could ya."

"Don't flatter yourself." But Himself was grinning too. "I could hardly beat ye senseless if I wanted that ugly face of yours to look nice in the photo, could I. And I didn't see you as very likely to be still if I tanned y'r backside and then made you sit on it." Not that he hadn't done that before, and watched Spike squirm his way through an entire bloody dinner party, with a smile that made his 'wicked' one look positively angelic.

"Makes you think I'm goin' to be still now?" Spike answered back, with the devil in him again. This time it was his own devil, though, and they both knew it.

"I bought two chocolate oranges."

*****

"Course, when we got out there, Dru was sittin' in the chair and lickin' her fingers, and the poor little professor was just puttin' his jacket back on and trying to pretend we couldn't all see the steam on his specs. Angelus did tell her not to eat anybody while we were gone, but --heh-- that wasn't really what he meant. Can't say I blame her. She got bored, and Miss Millicent wasn't really entertaining company for somebody with an attention-span shorter than mine. Y'could tell Professor Whozit thought she'd been good while we were gone, anyway." He came to a stopping place, and waited. Could still feel Xander, close against him, and not remotely asleep.

"I'll...um... be right back."

And then bang, zoom, no more Xander. Out the door and up the ladder and Spike just sat there, shaking his head. Lightly cursing himself out. "Bloody well knew you shouldn't be describin' in detail how somebody else fucked you mindless, but oooooh no, you have to be Spike, Vampire Porn Star. Christ, he was insecure enough to give you a blowjob in a sewer tunnel a few hours ago, " ---and only Xander could possibly make a blowjob in a sewer tunnel romantic, somehow. When he'd laid his head against Spike's thigh--- "and you're tellin' him afternoon bedtime stories about you and the bloke upstairs with the fussy hair."

Spike sorted clothes. He could do that. He could concentrate on that, and sooner or later, Xander would come back down. This one for Xander, this one for Angel. This one for-- actually, this one wouldn't look bad on Spike himself. It must have been somebody's daft idea of a pressie, because there was no way Angel could've ever squeezed into it. He put it into a third pile, and tried not to think.

*****

"Hey doofus, are you done stealing clothes for me, or do you feel the need to dis my fashion-sense in private for a few more hours?"

Of course he was done-- it was an hour and a half later, and even the Poof didn't have that big of a wardrobe. Spike had absently stuck Xander's hat on his own head, and he was staring mindlessly at that portrait again. Could still almost smell the chocolate oranges. He looked up to watch Xander in the doorway. Still wearing Angel's shirt, and still looking a damn sight better in it than he had in the Hawaiian thing. This one clung to his muscular chest, tight stomach, as if it had been tailored for him. Now if only Spike could get him out of those baggy cargo pants and into... Was there an into? Out of sounded pretty good, all by itself.

"Done. You wanna try some on?" If he could get Xander out of, they could worry about into after an appropriate interval, after all. Say, four days or so.

Xander smiled at him. "No. But you can change out of that shirt, if you want. Even though you kinda look like Sting, P.I. You know..." He made mushy noises. "Cuuuuuuuute." Alright, now the bastard was just torturing Spike for the hell of it, and... wait, he was free?

Spike looked down at himself. Followed the pattern of green and blood-red leaves on the shirt and shuddered. Cute? Xander thought he looked cute in this thing? He ripped it off with a little squeaky happy noise, oddly reminiscent of certain sounds that might've been heard not long before his expression in that portrait was captured forever on film. He was reaching for the shirt he'd found for himself, something slinky and silver, when he felt a hand on his bare back. Tracing up and down his spine, and then settling in that spot. He hissed softly, then purred, as Xander's fingers splayed across his skin.

"Sorry it took so long-- there was a line, and I-no-longer-have-scones-up-my-ass wanted Aero bars, and Willow and Tara wanted Dairy Milk, and Cordy wanted anything chocolate that didn't list how many calories there are on the package, and Angel-- get this, Angel's up there eating jelly babies..." Xander babbled into his ear and rubbed his back at the same time, and Spike was hard put to decide whether to ask him what the hell he was talking about, or just stand there and moan slightly. "And I have to say, Smarties suck. I'll go with the English chocolate is better theory on everything else, but give me M&M's any day."

Then Spike felt something round and metallic pressed into his hand. "Bought you something," and he was flashing back and forth against his will, with a man against his back whom he loved to a level that petrified him, and the scent of chocolate oranges in his head. Spike was pretty sure he was going crazier than usual, until he opened his eyes and looked down at the brightly-colored ball in his hand. A Terry's chocolate orange, and he could smell the dark chocolate and the orange oils that flavored it even through the foil wrapper.

"I know it's not quite the same thing," Xander apologized, pulling Spike back against him as he studied it, and wrapping his arms loosely around Spike's waist. Hands on his stomach, drumming to the rhythm of whatever Bronze-music CD Willow was playing upstairs now.

"No, they didn't invent these things 'til the thirties," Spike answered, and Xander's arms tightened around him. He turned to face his lover. There was uncertainty in the dark eyes, and it wasn't about candy. He touched Xander's lips with his own, and then tasted-- and Xander had been tasting on the way back from whatever import shop he'd found nearby, because he had chocolate orange on his breath. Dark chocolate and fake orange flavor and a fading hint of essence-of-Spike, from hours ago.

"Like 'em, though. Not worse, just different," Spike said finally. If I said 'better,' would you believe me? Do I have to explain it in words even somebody who can't pay attention in History class would understand? Xander smiled at him, and maybe he didn't.

Spike pulled the hat off his head and tossed it on the bed. With a last look at the portrait, he dropped it gently onto the 'Let the Poof Keep It' pile. "There. Was that maudlin and romance-novelish enough for you?"

"I just thought you might like some chocolate. You're the one who decided to go all Harlequin on me." A shrug, but there was a smile on the quirky lips that hadn't been there a few seconds ago. "Or no, Mills and Boone, right? That you--yeah, right--just read to Dru 'cause she made you."

"You want Mills and Boone?" Spike challenged, and grabbed Xander. Pulled him close and pressed lips together and bent him backwards in a pose that was so completely unmanly it was ludicrous, all the while engaging in one of those stick-my-tongue-so-far-down-your-throat-I-can-taste-your-toenails kisses. Xander went with it, fake-swooning, one hand to his forehead, and Spike dragged him melodramatically over to the bed, before letting him drop with a thump onto the mattress. Fell down on top of him and started reaching for the waist fastening on those baggy trousers, but Xander stopped him.

"What did I say about having sex a room and a half away from my friends who don't know we're having sex?"

"We should do it more often?"

Xander whacked the chocolate orange against Spike's skull.

"We should tell them we're having sex, which would clear up the whole problem?"

"Yes, that would solve all our problems." Whack.

"We should have sex really loudly, so there's no doubt about it?"

"Thank you, Anya the Bloody." Whack!

"Ow. I think it's ready to eat now."

"Oh, let's give it one more, just to make sure." Whack. They unwrapped it, and the slices of chocolate fell in sections. "Would it be too sappy if I fed you some?"

Yes, Harris, I have moral and religious objections to you putting chocolate in my mouth. Twit. Spike shook his head, and they lay there on the bed for a long time, just eating chocolate. With occasional interludes of shin-tickling. When the last section was gone, Spike made a mournful noise, and Xander smiled mysteriously.

"What?"

"Oh no, I'm not telling you. You lie about your age, you lie about your natural hair color, you don't like my clothes, you steal Angel's, you're a sick, twisted masochist..."

"Er... yeah, and?"

"And you don't deserve to know that I have another chocolate orange in the glove compartment. For later."

"It's ninety-five degrees out there-- it'll melt!"

"That's kind of the idea."

*****

Spike fell asleep, afterwards. A few hours afterwards.

After stealing all kinds of things Xander didn't even want to think about and mostly sitting around laughing at other people doing the actual work, but that was Spike for you. After bitching loudly that he wasn't getting back in that damned bodybag again, it smelled like dead people--which got him the obvious comment from Cordy-- and they'd just wait here 'til nightfall. Meet the witches at the Rosa Grande Hotel after the sun went down, with 'Yippee' bubbling somewhere between Xander's ears, and no, wait, Spike's looking, a science fiction convention, how boring, don't make us go.

After Xander had gone back out to the car, and returned. After he had let Cordy drive it, the girls, and a load of salvageable stuff back to her place, with yet more bitching from Spike about how come she got to drive the car without an hour and a half of argument first, until Xander had elbowed him sharply in the ribs, and the moron had finally taken the hint.

After Xander had given Angel a Look. A new Look, one he didn't quite have the hang of, yet. He really needed to memorize the muscle-positions for that look, or make sure there was a mirror around the next time it actually worked, because, unbelievably, Angel had nodded and taken Wesley off down the tunnels to show him where they'd been attacked by the Fyarl demon. Or that was what he said they were going to do. Xander really didn't want to think of Angel and Wesley doing what he and Spike had been doing in the tunnels, so he had whispered 'Soul. Curse. Good guy. Just going to look at demon tracks,' to his imagination, and for once it had left him alone.

After all that. And just...afterwards. Spike fell asleep, afterwards.

Might have had something to do with the beforewards. Might have had something to do with lack of sleep last night. Might have had something to do with the fact that Xander was stroking that weird kitty-cat spot of his, over and over and over.

When he was pretty certain that Spike wasn't going to wake up and get all macho with him about it, Xander stood up and walked over to the two piles of clothes on the floor. Grinning, he dropped Spike's cabana shirt into the Angel pile. The other vampire would never wear it, but just the thought of Angel in it was enough to set him giggling quietly.

Then he crouched down to pick up the portrait. Stared at it, lost in it for a while, as lost as Spike had been. Weirdly beautiful, all three of them, and nothing of Xander there at all. No living twentieth-century people who were addicted to Doritos and Ding-Dongs and weren't quite sure when the camera was invented. Just Dru, who wasn't here, and Angel, who wasn't the same, and---

He glanced back to the bed. Is he watching me? Is he sleeping? He's dead, and he doesn't snore-- how the hell do I know for sure? Xander rolled his eyes at himself. Real Spike's back was turned, and it wasn't like Spike from a hundred and whatever years ago was going to tell anybody he was acting like a complete idiot.

He touched Spike's smile again. It was enough, for now. Enough that he knew that smile, because at least once --no, twice-- he'd put it there himself. He buried the portrait, Angelus, Dru, natural-blond liar-guy Spike and all, in the middle of the Xander pile, trying to pretend he couldn't hear the chains rattle at the bottom when he nudged them with his foot.