Buffet

The room was dark. Totally, utterly, eyes closed and pressed against the pillow so he couldn't possibly see, dark. Spike was glad he didn't need to breathe. Didn't need to take that large lungful of air he couldn't have got through the pillow he'd buried his face in. All he could do was inhale, just enough that he could catch the scent that was pressed into the fabric.

There was the faint memory of conditioner from clean, wet hair soaking into it just after a shower, before back to bed to waste all that wonderful hot water, except it wasn't any kind of a waste. Skin and sweat, the only after-shave he could stand to smell on anyone who came as close to him as this pillow. Saliva, and it wasn't Spike who drooled in his sleep, no matter what anybody might say otherwise. All mixed in there so dim and so strong and so well that he couldn't tell which scents had come from his own body, and which were left there by the other.

If his eyes hadn't been pressed shut by the pillow, he would have had to close them just to let the smell invade every particle of his being. As it was, the darkness behind his eyelids and the smell shoved against his nose and into his lungs made the room seem to spin around him. As if he'd had balance, once, and had now lost it and was slipping off the bed. Only he wasn't, he knew he wasn't because he was naked and the cool air of the air conditioner was swirling around him and making his skin prickle. Cold air and waiting.

He wasn't good at waiting, and everybody knew it. Ask friends or enemies alike, and they'd tell you, tell tales about Spike who couldn't wait for anything. Not for night to fall, those days in early spring when the air conditioning was off and the real breeze was cool and wet blowing in the window and he was just itching to be out there in the moonlight. Not for day to come when he was dragging himself back home and all he wanted was this bed and sleep and dark and somebody here beside him. Hell, not even for the pizza guy to show up on the doorstep, and they all knew it, so it wasn't fair that he was here, naked, waiting.

But he was going to manage, this time. He was going to stay here like this, and wait. Not because he could. Because he had to. He had to, or he wouldn't get what he wanted. Needed. What he wasn't sure, even yet, would really happen. There had been no answer when he'd asked; he was just told that if the answer were yes, he would have to wait. Come here and strip down and not look and not try to listen, and wait.

He'd asked if that meant yes. He'd received a look that usually meant he was insane for asking. Which didn't tell him if he was waiting for...anything. If he was waiting until he felt stupid enough to go back out and pretend he hadn't--

There was a noise.

He found himself relaxing, tensing, waiting. He didn't try to identify the noise, because he already knew what it was. He pressed his face deeper into the pillow, and waited.

When this was over, whichever this turned out to be, if it ever started, he was going to have the imprint of cotton fibres permanently etched into the skin of his nose. Faint pink pillow creases that you'd think a guy with no circulation wouldn't have to worry about or ever get teased about, but no such luck. If he opened his eyes now, he'd have pillow creases on his retinas, he was sure. As it was, he had little pressure-colors swimming in the dark, there. Random blurbs of green and gold and red, melting into each other, but nothing he could concentrate on, nothing that stayed still enough to take his mind off the fact that he was staying still.

Not twitching even one muscle, except maybe the ones he had no control over anyway, and those were safely hidden, trapped between him and the sheets and the darkness, so no one could tell he wasn't quite motionless. And if they could, maybe they could tell it wasn't his fault. Wasn't him not waiting, was just his body being not quite still as death, like the mythos said all good vampires could be. Those myth-writers never considered that the vampire might be waiting for something he really, really wanted and still, despite the slight shuffle of a footstep and the barely felt motion of the bed as something not him touched it, still didn't really know if he was getting. Didn't he deserve something for trying?

He heard the slick hiss of leather, and he breathed.

Sweatshampoocottonspit body-scents and hair and down, down deep within the pillow, down that still, washed and worn for years, smelled like goosedown, but over all that was the sharp, old, dark tang of tannin and cowskin. He couldn't really smell it through the fabric; had to be memory, invading his nose, sneaking its way through the pillow, teasing him. Louder even than that scent, though, mixing his senses around like a borrowed acid trip in someone else's blood, was the sound of his own breath in his ears. Too loud, drowning out everything else that might have been going on, and he cut it off, raggedly. Not quite daring to breathe out again, let the stolen, useless oxygen out, so Spike just waited, holding it in his lungs.

The waiting was suddenly easier. Suddenly something he wanted more of, wanted to know it wasn't about to happen; he wanted to be lying there ready and seen to be motionless, as instructed, not moving an inch. Millimetres, yes. He wished he could actually speak, and say "let me wait" and know that delicious feel of knowing it was coming, and had not yet arrived. Almost more delicious than the touch he craved.

When it came, he was so unprepared for it that for that first moment all he knew was that he'd lost the sensations -- lost the smell and the memory and the sound, shattered in the slap and the fire.

Fractions of seconds could stretch into millennia, lying there, and that first fraction was loss, and the ridiculous feeling of "give me that back, I wanted that waiting, you've taken it away..." and the second was laughter so far down inside him that it would never make its way out, at himself, and the third was blank, utter fear. Because it was all gone. Everything, in that blaze of sensation, nothing left of him at all, he was nothing but spontaneously combusting atoms, burning themselves from nova to cinder and back again. Nameless, faceless, had no past, had no future, had nothing but this feeling.

As everything began to swarm in on him, it came again -- the burst of fire and the whisper of a breath not his own, and everything inside him docilely re-shattered, knowing that this was what it was for. There was the hint of waiting, again, fighting with the struggle to have more, have all of it now. Trying to smell the scent within the pillow and on the one behind him, rather than forgetting to inhale as the force hit him again. One hand almost twitched as he thought briefly of pushing away, clearing his face enough that he could breathe if he wanted to.

Twitch, and a slap, and he went still once more and bowed his head in apology. Not that it could be seen, head pressed down as far as it could go; he bowed it regardless. A moment of waiting to see if it was accepted. To find out, rather, because seeing was darkness, still just darkness, and the faint pricks of imaginary stars that moved and fluttered and swarmed so fast, like black bats in the lightless cave of his skull, and they, or the waiting, was going to eat him unalive. Until the moment was past, so quickly that he wasn't sure if he'd imagined the whole thing, that there had been no apology, no forgiveness, just the natural pause before the explosion blossomed again, and he gratefully gave himself over.

Perceptions crept in again, too soon, scents reasserting themselves in his nose, and it made him wish he dared turn his head and just drink in that other flavor. The one that he knew better than his own, the one deep in the bedclothes and spread on his skin and poised on his tongue before he swallowed. But that way lay other things; later, perhaps, when the fire was gone, when he had the sense to be sure of which sense he was even using. Now, though, there was only awareness. Awareness of that scent. Awareness of the hushed sound of motion through air, awareness of the heat and the weight and the breath behind him.

Perversely, now, that awareness was everything he wanted. No longer needing the absence of everything, his body began straining towards, yearning and begging him to move, get closer, beg for more. Not something he could bury himself in. And so he lifted towards the next one, not quite voluntarily and nothing he had to apologize for, especially not when the next one came harder and faster and there was a hint of a whisper of something, in the voice he knew better than his own.

Something that told him he was allowed to feel this, to want this, to let this take him over so completely that it took the breathing of his own name to even remind him who he was. That he was allowed to let himself be reminded, as well. To remember and to experience, and to meet what was coming with his own need, somewhere in the middle, and know it was Spike who needed. To know by scent and sound and feel, who was giving. To know by the very act, by how it made him feel better and better with each incendiary touch, why it was being given.

It was enough that for the next several moments, minutes or however long it was, as that hardly mattered except for being long enough to encompass what occurred, he could lie there and enjoy it. Let awareness fill him until he could expand beyond the corners of his universe, filled until he knew that he would explode at a single touch.

That he did not, spoke nothing of his control. Rather it spoke of the pause, the silence that gathered and the waiting, only this time it was not he who waited. Face pressed into darkness, he did not notice it at first, then it swooped down upon him and curled into every corner of his mind. His body trembled, and something else whisked across his back, something light and cool in the scent he knew.

Something grew in the back of his throat. A growl or a cry or a name, he didn't know and didn't care, didn't try to stop it or push it out, just felt it as the waiting ended and it flew from him and into the muffling fabric and feathers of the pillow.

It was heard, he knew, and it didn't matter, or maybe it mattered more than anything, the blazing response to his own broken silence not punishment, but reward. Not reward, no, neither -- the feeling in every screaming nerve ending, those that had been touched, those that were simply singing along with the sensation. Gift? The gift of his own skin, saved times past counting by the one who was now setting it on fire? The giving of himself back to himself. The giving of everything. The touch that told him now, told him nights and mornings that he was not alone, would never be alone again. The sound and the scent that belonged to him, as much as he belonged. The taste on his tongue that he didn't have now, but would again, the sight before his eyes even in the darkness, even with his face turned away, always there.

It wasn't what he was waiting for, now. There wasn't anything he was waiting for, any longer. Nothing except the burning of knowledge throughout his body, his mind, his being that burned and raged with every touch, every whisper of sound and echo. He wanted to howl and fly apart at the seams. Wanted to know that he was flying, wanted to know that hand was the one beneath him, spinning him forward into the fire. The sky would swallow him, and he didn't care. Didn't want for anything, not at this moment.

And that was what this was for. The absolute absence of want. Wanting and needing and waiting, all leading up to desiring nothing. Just taking. Giving. With the shifting of weight on the bed and the barely-there whiff of motion through air and the swallowed noises and yearning, yearning for more, it was all for the taking, and the giving.

Writhing and begging and panting, all those ing-words he used to use for easy rhymes in another life, and they had no purchase here, couldn't begin to be what was taking place. As everything that existed came together, fell apart, destroyed itself, and rose phoenixlike from the ashes, he was there for all of it. And he wasn't alone.

The concrete thought of his lover brought him down to earth, down into his skin. Not crashing, just back where feeling and hearing and smelling and touching was everything again. He wriggled, once, happily. Felt a hand where before only the leather had been, caressing gently the still burning flesh. Still burning, he snorted at himself somewhere inside his brain where he could think. As if it would stop anytime soon.

Another series of quick stings, then, and a softly spoken word, and his world exploded into fragments of release. Wrung from him as the words had once been. Drawn out like everything else, like it would last forever, until even this finality was too much, and he could almost wish it over in the same shattered breath that he used to hiss his fulfillment, his utter, torturous joy. And at last, it was.

Finally, over, and he was still and complete and quiet. And smiling.

His head lolled and the bed dipped, and he didn't move as a familiar body fit itself beside his. Pulled into a set of welcoming arms, he let his own body remain the formless, boneless mass of uncoordinated goo it had become. If anyone wanted anything from him now, they would have to do it, themselves. As his lover was doing, now, fitting Spike against his body, brushing his hair with one steady hand, and leaning down to kiss his neck.

"Love you," came softly to his ears, and he was pleased to find they were still working. Another quick kiss, then, "Tomorrow, it's my turn."

If there was anything left in his brain capable of forming a reply, it had more energy than Spike did, and it was welcome to answer that any way it liked. Tomorrow. He lay in silence, while his lover's laughter tickled the skin of his cheek. He managed something that sounded like "Mur."

"Yeah. You say that now. Wait 'til tomorrow."

the end