Black Birch

Words: 839
Summary: When you needed to lean a little extra, when you wanted more than that fleeting good morning kiss before hurrying to work, more than those ‘I love you’s’. Words couldn’t fill those days. Touch and caresses wasn’t enough, you needed to be showed, to feel that you were needed, wanted, owned beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Story Notes:
ladycat777 wanted something distracting in her comments - I wrote her this. Unbeta’ed.
Originally posted 2005-10-07

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Sometimes Spike couldn’t help it, it was like a need that couldn’t be fulfilled. A deep hole inside that seemed empty no matter what. When those days happened he knew he was needy, clingy and demanded attention - but Xander never saw it that way. He always told Spike off for putting himself down. Spike did the same for Xander when it was his turn to feel out of place - they both had days when it seemed nothing was right. When you needed to lean a little extra, when you wanted more than that fleeting good morning kiss before hurrying to work, more than those ‘I love you’s’. Words couldn’t fill those days. Touch and caresses wasn’t enough, you needed to be showed, to feel that you were needed, wanted, owned beyond a shadow of a doubt.

It came with the years, this intimate knowledge of each other that nothing was ever too much to ask for. Xander learned that giving Spike pain wasn’t hurting him, not in the way Xander thought. No, it hurt in the good way. That burning sensation when you don’t know where to go, when you crawl on your hands and knees away but really only moving closer, climbing past the pain to that pleasure that whitens everything out. To get to that good melted bones feeling afterwards, caressing the marks, digging deep into the bruises just to feel them. To know they’re there, if only for a fleeting moment. Those times, when Spike can see Xander’s hands still on him in shades of color, that’s when he really dislikes this whole vampire constitution and rapid healing. Once, he’d gotten Xander to burn his print into him with holy water. Only once. Xander didn’t like the smell, that sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh, that shuddering feeling he got seeing smoke curl up from his lover’s skin and not in a pleasant way. No, sometimes they reached too far to find each others boundaries, where one of them thought it was enough. Which made it enough for both of them, ideas lost some of its’ shine when you realised the other part of you really didn’t approve of it. When you realised that it hurt the us and we.

But Spike had treasured that handprint as long as it lasted, low on his stomach it stood out starkly red against the his pale soft skin. It said mine, it said owned in so much more than he could say with words. He’d wanted to go to LA and show it to Angel. But Xander after his first wicked grin, didn’t think it was such a good idea. He doubted Angel would approve of Xander marking Spike like that. Spike had told him about those months at Wolfram and Hart before the big battle, when occasionally him and ‘the big poof’ had landed in bed together. When Angel couldn’t help touch him to know he was real. Xander still felt such jelaousy that it boiled inside him when he thought about Angel’s hands being the first to touch Spike afterwards. That after being burned alive and then a ghost, just a whisper of breath that everyone could ignore, it was Angel who was there. Spike may not have said much, but Xander knew so well .. they were both tactile persons, human touch meant so much just by so little and imagining being a shadow of nothing that people could walk through… it hurt to know Deadboy’s large hams of hands had been there. And not him. Not Xander.

But Spike always was good at pointing out who it was that had him now, who it was that had that cool body wrapped around him like a silk sheet, skin to skin and nothing in between. Who it was that got those whispers against that soft spot on the neck, words of ‘love’, ‘pet’ and wicked things like only Spike could say first thing in the morning and make it feel like there was no such thing as ever getting out of bed. That cool fist wrapped around his cock, lips wet and soft against his shoulder, soon making him forget all about being tired and cranky in the too early dawn. Making Xander appriciate every little second before he has to go off to work. It was Spike who pointed out whose hands he wanted to tie him up, but it was Xander who teased, licked, bit and left him wanting for those hours while Xander was at work. It was Xander who enjoyed the power of having Spike, who made himself hard while at work and called in naughty messages on the homephone. It was Xander who knew Spike lay home waiting for him, to come home and fulfill all those promises spoken on the answering machine. And it is both of them who goes to sleep exhausted, wrapped in each other, as close as can be and know that it’s what they both want. Skin to skin and nothing in between.