a/n: As always, reviews are much appreciated. =). Uh...this is sort of trippy but I was trying to get across the fact that Spike was feverish. Don't know how well I accomplished it and I don't know how well the point of this chapter will get across, but I say just take what you can from it.

Stay

Chapter Thirteen

Spike POV

My. Name. Is. Spike.

My blood is cold and stagnant and borrowed and stolen and Sire used to tell me that it wasn't my blood. It was his. I was his. Whose blood is this? Yours, Sire. Always yours. Always. Forever. Til the day I'm bloody dust in the dark, everything about me is yours. And he'd say, "Mine" and pound me into the mattress and sink his fangs into my neck and drink and drink and take, and I'd give and he never gave back.

But now it's different. He doesn't want to drink and drink and take and I don't want to give and give and never receive. He cares - I can feel it in his gentle mouth trailing kisses down my abdomen. I can see it in the brown eyes that peer up at me, searching for the pleasure I wanted so much not to express. But I'd give him anything. Anything.

"Will," he murmurs, his lips brushing over my navel.

"Spike," I correct. "Spike."

I'd screamed my own name during. Screamed it. Not his name. Mine.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

Gathered me into his large, cold arms afterwards and stroked my hair just like he always had and always would, because I was his. Planted little kisses on my forehead, on my lips, on my cheeks, on my eyes because they were his, too.

Whose? He would ask.

Yours, Sire. Yours. Your precious, sweet-hearted William. Yours. Always and forever and day by day and year by year until the Slayer finally does me in with a wooden stick and an insipid quip.

Whose?

Yours. Yours on earth and yours in Hell. And when I'm burning for my sins, I'll still be yours because I burn for you. Because you damned me. "Spike," he hesitated before he said it. He doesn't like it. "You're burning up."

"Mine," I replied, rolling onto his toned body. "Mine." And God, his body is so cold so cool against my own and I feel human again because being against him is like falling naked knee deep in snow. And I smell him - inhale that beautiful, masculine scent that's buried within his skin - and I perch myself on his stomach and I cry. Big soddin' tears all down my face.

He murmurs little Gaelic phrases that I don't understand, wraps his arms around me and brings me down once again. Because he can. Because I'm his.

His breathy whispers are dreaming against my ear - a coddling tone, a soothing hand stroking down my back, hesitantly stopping on my bum because he doesn't know if it's right to touch me while I'm crying and whimpering and pathetic, but he'll do it anyway. He'll take that risk.

Because I'm his boy. I'll always be his boy.

"You're sick, precious," he says in hushed tones, but I'm trying to ignore him because he doesn't understand and he'll never understand. He's my blood and my hands and my eyes and my skin and my heart and my fingers and my feet and my arms and my legs and my thighs and my knackers and my arse. He's my blood, my blood - rushing through my veins and it all belongs to him and only to him and nothing belongs to me.

But I'll do anything to be his.

"Mine," I growled, shoving him away.

He looks surprised now and his forehead is creased in that way it does when he's showing any kind of facial expression and he's so beautiful, my sire is. Everything he does is beautiful to me.

"What's yours?"

I bite my tongue so hard it bleeds and I'm so hot and sticky and the room is spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and why isn't anything tipping over?

"Mine," I repeated more softly, and I crawled less than gracefully and sprawled over him.

"Yours." I kissed his neck three times - short, hard, quick kisses and I dragged myself over him, relishing in the way that if he were an ice cube and I were water, he'd be cracking right now. Kiss kiss kiss up his neck, and a kiss on his chin and on his cheek and his nose and his forehead and his eyelids and back down again and there's his mouth. That mouth that can bruise me better than his belt, pale and parted and pretty and panting. That mouth hurts.

I plunge my tongue into that mouth. That mouth.

He purrs, great big rumbling and for a minute, I mistake the vibration for my heart beating and I pull away and suck in a breath and fall into his arms again because the room's spinning and Da will rip their throats out because we don't play that way.

"Will?"

Mine. Mine. Mine.

His lips press against my forehead and I squirm against him, clutching at his side, and I'm hungry and why isn't there blood?

I sink my fangs right underneath his nipple and he doesn't whimper because Sire never whimpers and Sire never cries. He's strong and in control and he knows what's best for me. His blood is sweet and tangy and rich and it flows through me so well and cools me down because it's cold blood because he's cold and I'm cold and we're always so cold, me and my sire are. We're the icicles dripping from the roof of the barn.

"Starvin'," I murmur, climbing back up his body so he can lick the remnants from my face because I'm his messy lil' cub and he didn't kill me with his big teeth and claws even though I was the runt and held the rest of the pride behind. "I starve for you."

He said more soothing things and cuddled me and kissed me and loved me. Loved me.

Spinning.

I threw a leg over his waist and an arm over his chest and rubbed against his side and scraped at his neck with my fangs and growled and snarled and I was there and the room was spinning and the lights were dimming and the sun was going down.

"Will?" He sounded so concerned and I gripped him more tightly to me and he gripped me more tightly to him and we were still, so still and everywhere else in the world was spinning while we were stagnant and beautiful and dreaming of home.

"Spike," I said softly. "'S Spike now."

"You're burning up," he said again, pressing his cold hands against my skin. "You're so warm."

"Sickly. Ill," I reminded him. "'M less than I was somehow." In your arms. Less than me in your arms.

Another kiss, deep and bruising in its exploration and I thought I heard the ceiling fan crash to the ground but it was my imagination.

And I asked, "Whose?"

And he said, "Mine."

TBC...