Chapter Five

"Scotch, straight up," someone said, causing Xander to blink, double take. Scotch? Who was this merciful God who didn't demand ten syllable drinks in a nasal voice? He turned with the drink held reverently in his hands only to see the same guy Spike had walked in with earlier in the evening.

"Brian," the guy said, an artful glance over Xander's body, pausing at his hipbones that peaked out of his trousers. Xander glanced up to see Spike staring at them now from across the room, one arm slung over Justin's shoulder, the other angled just so, so that a triangle of his taught stomach could be licked or …

"Alex," … ander. Alex, Alexander, Xander, Lex … so many characters, so many names that Xander wasn't always sure which he one he was.

"Yeah, I know," Brian said with a grim twist of his lips as he nodded towards Spike who was laughing as he was pulled to the dance floor by Justin. Something flared in Xander but was gone before he cared to identify it. "What time do you get off?" and the pun is lame, the innuendo heavy, but Brian is gorgeous enough to pull it off.

"5:00. With him," Xander said with a teasing smile of his own, nodding to where Spike was dancing. Dancing being a very loose term for the gyrating, hip thrusting, epitome of obscenity that Spike was engaging in with a dark haired beauty – having abandoned Justin, who was 'dancing' with a stunning young man himself.

Brian smiled, communicating everything Xander felt in that moment.

They were having a really shitty night.

Xander snarled absently at the keys in his hand that stubbornly refused to fit into the lock. Somewhere in one of Giles's musty old books, Xander thought there must have been a section dedicated to the dastardly, fiendish creature; Keydius. A tiny demon who lived in keys and used it's evil magic to make the key shift into different dimensions when you're looking for it, then convince you you're losing your mind when you find them in the freezer hours later. This demon also the keys shrink and grow so they wouldn't fit in the right locks just to irk the poor owner - to slowly drive them insane until they decide to eat the keys one by one, crunching on the metal and cackling with bleeding gums and …

Spike silently snatched the keys from Xander's grip and smoothly opened the door. Xander hated it when he did that.

"I hate it when you do that," he said, shuffling inside with his eyes narrowed.

"Do what? Open the door? Christ, you're a grumpy sod," Spike growled, slamming the door behind him and throwing his coat onto one of the many impersonal ikea chairs littered about the apartment.

"Have fun tonight, sweetie?" Xander spat, flopping onto a black suede couch - feeling his feet throb as though they had a pulse of their own. He had a vague notion of bending over to remove the restrictive boots, but thought better of it knowing his back would be shot and there was probably no way he could bend that far without popping his spleen – his trousers were unnervingly tight. Fuck. He was old. He was old, feeble and why was it that Spike always looked like he'd just recently been ravaged?

"What crawled up your arse and died, Harris?" Spike asked irritably, hand on his hip, head cocked, looking like a furious housewife. As much as it would usually delight Xander to inform him of it and scoff for a day or so thereafter but he was tired, pissed off at nothing in particular and his feet hurt.

"I don't know," he said finally, suppressing an apology. Wild, passionate, kisses and gropes were all well and good in public, but behind the scenes things were the same as they always had been.

"You should start wearing balm again. Your lips are chapped. Makes me think of lizard skin when I'm trying to snog you," Spike commented absently, switching on the television. Well. Maybe things weren't exactly as they'd always been.

"What time is it?" Xander asked as Spike settled on an old episode of I Love Lucy.

"Six," Spike said, shifting so that his legs had fallen open lewdly and a cigarette twitched in his fingers.

"I should call the Boss, give him an initial report," Xander muttered, wincing when he realised that would mean fishing his mobile phone from his pocket. His pocket that was plastered to his with sweat and a spilt martini.

"Probably," Spike agreed, legs sliding apart a little further as he kicked a boot up onto the coffee table and rested his palm on his crotch. Xander heaved a sigh.

"You have to write your initial report of the possible locations of the Hellmouth," he said, knowing that in the end, he would be the one to write it. He always was.

"I reckon its directly beneath the backroom," Spike replied, rolling his shoulders, taking a deep drag of the cigarette Xander was too tired to tell him to put out.

"When did you see the backroom?" Xander blurted out, horrified in instant later that he almost sounded jealous. Oh, hello doughnut boy, he who makes a total ass of himself! Wondering when you'd get here!

"I like it when you get possessive, pet," Spike said, eyes connecting for a second, just a second where Xander and Alex merged into one, horny and in love. Spike's eyes flicked downwards, his gaze moving over Xander's body, halting. "You should lay of the crisps. Getting a right gut on you," he said, eyes flicking back to Lucy who was making a face at the camera.

Xander took the moment to remind himself that the Boss wouldn't be pleased it there was nothing but a neat pile of ash on their new ikea armchair.

He dragged himself to his feet and wrestled his phone from his pocket, punching in the familiar number. An hour and twenty minutes later, he was lying in bed with a snoring vampire. Why did Spike snore, anyway? It wasn't like he needed to breathe.

As he was finally drifting off to sleep, Xander realised somewhere in the back of his mind that the snoring had stopped, which probably meant Spike snored on purpose when Xander was awake, just to piss him off. This in turn meant that the blue orbs floating in the darkness a few inches from his face probably meant Spike was awake and watching him – a pastime that fell well into the creepy category.

Xander was asleep before he was angry.