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Prawnverse part 5
It pisses him off. He picked Xander up thinking not-very-complex things. Thinking Hello, here's the Slayer's boy turned whore, isn't that interesting. Thinking any kid on that corner had to be jaded, blasé. Thinking how impossible it was to pass up the irony, and the poetic justice. Thinking with his dick, in other words.
Now it's getting complicated, and he doesn't like it. Obviously Xander isn't used to doing this, or at least not exactly this, though he hasn't kicked up the kind of fuss he once would have at the very thought. Maybe he hadn't been out there long enough. But something put him there in the first place, and it's a long way from a Sunnydale lower-middle class to lighting up the corners of the city at night. Apparently a long, nasty, scary way, if Xander's nighttime habits are any indication.
He really doesn't want to have to deal.
So he doesn't. He's not Xander's keeper - well, not like that. He's just the guy who feeds him and fucks him. That's different. Sooner or later Xander's going to get his act together and find some part-time job, bussing tables or selling drugs or something, and he'll be out of Spike's life again. There's no need to share childhood traumas in the interim.
He is curious about the sex, though. One morning, both of them supine and sweaty, the sheets still soaking through, he reaches for his cigarettes with one hand and rubs his face with the other.
"You never did this before." It's not a question - he's figured out by now that Xander wasn't playing games, that first night. There've been too many repeats, too many sudden hesitations and backpedallings. Along with all the orgasms, yeah.
"What - no. No." Xander's staring at the ceiling, shaking his head a little for the hearing impaired. Or just a leftover kick of the old personality, all hopped-up middle American defensiveness.
"What had you done?" Spike lights his cigarette. "Must have done something."
Xander says nothing, just stares at the ceiling, and Spike waves the cigarettes at him. He glances at them and shakes his head. Spike drops the packet on the bedside table. "Had to be something standing between you and the wolf at the door."
Xander gives a humorless little laugh at that, and Spike decides not to take offense. "Look, I've done my share. I'm just curious. Never gave head before?"
"No."
"Never got fucked."
"No." That's more emphatic. Xander's face is taut, fixed. His eyes are on the ceiling. Spike regards him for a minute, then glances up at the ceiling in case there's something really interesting up there. There isn't.
"So, what? Got sucked off a lot, I guess."
Xander is silent for a second, and then his jaw twitches and he says, "Is this part of it?"
"Is what part of what?"
"I have to say this stuff now, too?"
Spike frowns and considers his cigarette. Again, he decides to cut some slack and not get shirty. Xander's on the clock, he has to remember. It's a job, as far as Xander's concerned. One he's apparently still pretty touchy about. "No," he says, stubbing out his cigarette. "You don't. I was just curious."
Xander chooses silence in response to that, and Spike gets up with a shrug and goes to the bathroom, where he showers in the hottest water he can stand for almost half an hour. It's not a waste when he does it; he's cold-blooded.
