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So Spike's walking home in the rain. He's just spent a long fucking pointless three hours sitting in Willy's waiting for a shipment of guaranteed-clean guaranteed-donated, guaranteed to keep Xander happy and still taste good blood to come in-- and the wankers never showed. And it's just pissing down on him, isn't it. He's stomping in the puddles and kicking at the lightpoles and thinking all he really wants to do is go home and crawl into bed and into Xander's arms and have it all loved out of his head for a while.
So he doesn't have to think about the folks at Willy's laughing behind his back, and how even the little rat himself, afraid of everybody and his shadow, isn't afraid of Spike anymore. He doesn't have to think about how much he's changed and changing, what he's half afraid he'll become, and whether it's a good thing or a bad. Just has to think about dark eyes and shaggy hair and arms and legs tangled around him, and the taste of Xander on his lips.
Gets up to the front porch, and the porch swing's creaking back and forth in the wind, and he's thinking about what a sorry ponce he really is, that he bought Xander not just a house (no matter how old, cheap, and patched with a thousand generations of termite corpses it might be) but a house with a bleeding porch swing, and he's thinking that maybe when it stops raining they can come out and sit in it, and stare at the moon. Then he looks up, and he realizes the lights aren't on. Xander's not home.
Probably off somewhere with the Scoobies, saving the world or getting a Corgi out of a tree, and Spike could hunt them down and join them, sure. Buffy still glares like she thinks (knows damn well) he's up to no good, but she won't turn down Spike watching her back, and the rest, well, they're something like friends. Maybe. But maybe he doesn't want to be there, with them, because they'll make him think too hard. Make him wonder if he cares what they're saving as long as he gets to kick some scaly arse-- and fear that he might. Because Xander does.
And Spike just wants Xander, tonight, just him, and Xander's not here, and Spike's soaking wet, freezing wet, and he hates to be that wet when he doesn't have somebody to be wet with. Clothes plastered to his skin, and the duster feels like it weighs eight stone, just dragging him down. Opens the door thinking all he has left to do is stomp around the house, feed the cat, find every piece of chocolate in the place --sorry, Harris-- and sprawl out under the covers. Eat and wait for Xander to get home, and try not to think about how long that'll be.
So the first thing he sees when he gets in is Tigger, trying to knock him bloody over, twining around his feet, making that happy-to-see-you-and-I-haven't-been- fed-in-months noise, which means he's lying, the furry orange bastard, and the second thing he sees is the light from the living room. Flickering. Couldn't spot it through the blackout curtains, it was so faint, though there must be eight or nine of those candles lit around the couch. Where Xander's sitting. Sort of leaning back easy, legs spread, but not too wide, shadows from the candle flames making tattoos on his skin that change every time he breathes out and the fire flickers.
There on the couch, where Xander's been waiting, naked, in the mostly dark, because the power's out, has been for a while from how far down those candles are melted, and if Spike wants every piece of chocolate in the place, he doesn't have far to walk, because it's all right there. Only it's not as easy as scarfing it all down, because while he's been waiting, Xander's gotten very bored. Or very creative. He's been melting the chocolate over the candle flames, melting it in his fingers and drawing, painting, with it. On himself.
Tiger stripes down one leg, all the way from the top of his thigh to his ankle, and loop-de-loops down his foot and around his toes. The other leg bare except for the stake on his shin, with a snaky S curved around it. Or maybe it's not a stake, maybe it's a railroad spike, like the tiny one, the tattoo Xander told everyone he wasn't going to get in L.A., then did anyway, just last week. The dark smudge that Spike can just see in the shadows of his left inner arm, where it rests on the sofa-back.
It's hard to make out all the drawings from the entry foyer, even with Spike's enhanced sight, since Xander isn't the world's best sketch artist-- but Spike can smell, even from there. Can smell melted wax and and chocolate, of course, chocolate, and Xander. Sweat and expectation, maybe impatience waiting for him, though there's none of that on Xander's face, just a lazy smile, and Spike could cross the room and shuck off his duster with his eyes closed, the smell of Xander is so strong. But he doesn't close his eyes, because as he walks and shucks he's watching Xander paint with his right hand.
He's made an X on one nipple, like a target, and Spike's lips purse unconsciously, ready to suck it off even from half a room away and getting closer, and the rest of Xander's name trails away below it, down the muscles of his left side. The S curves around the other nipple, and down and down and the E is still wet, he must have just soaked his fingers because the end of that E is still dripping, just like the rain dripping off Spike's hair and running down to the tip of his nose. But this is one dark line of brown, run down and even further down, just missing Xander's belly button and down and down and disappearing into the dark curls in the shadows of his thighs.
All the way down, and Spike is unsure as he stands before his lover, who is smiling up at him, what to do. He thinks he should kneel and use his hands to gently spread Xander's legs apart, and put his mouth on that one drop of chocolate that has trailed down to the tip of Xander's cock, where it lies like a dark pearl next to a single, glistening drop of pre-cum, and if he licks them together... He thinks he should do that, but he gets as far as his knees, and he's caught by Xander's eyes, the reflection of all the candle-flames in the world, and Xander smiles at him and it hurts-- it physically hurts him.
Then Xander looks down, and Spike has to follow, locked in on the aim of that dark gaze, where it falls on a sticky brown hand finishing off the last design.
That's where he's stuck, that's where he finally puts his mouth, as Xander leans forward to help him reach it. His lips against the curves that Xander has painted on his chest, twin reflecting curves that come to a point at the bottom, right over his real heart. Taste of chocolate and Xander skin on his lips and tongue and in his mouth, and the beating beneath the breastbone like it's pounding into Spike, like the pulse of Xander's heart is coming through his mouth and down and filling his own quiet ribcage with a rhythm he hasn't beat to in over a century.
It's where he's stuck, it's where he stays for a long, long time, with Xander's arms pulling him close and Xander's fingers smearing chocolate all over his back, and Xander's lips in his soaking wet hair, and his own against Xander's chest, and the beating of one heart echoing through them both.