The Bet 3/3
Title: The Bet
Author: emelye_miller
Chapter:3/3
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine, don’t sue.
Warnings: None
A/N: Written for spring_with_xan. Continued from Chapter Two .
“Double or nothing.”
“You have a problem.”
“M’serious.”
“So am I. Seek professional help. Ow!” Xander flinched as the nurse bumped into his ankle in her efforts to set and immobilize his wrist.
“Careful!” Spike barked at her. She jumped and Xander winced as his arm was jostled.
Xander pursed his lips and glared at Spike. “Fine. Double or nothing? Manage things for a week while my ankle heals and you win. I’ll spit polish anything you put in front of me.”
There was a loud clatter as the nurse knocked over the plastic container housing the bandages.
“An’ if you win?” Spike prompted, “Not that I expect you to.”
Xander grinned lecherously. “Oh, you know what I want.”
Spike grimaced, ignoring the blushing nurse excusing herself from the exam room. “Already giving you up on your day off to those friends of yours…” he grumbled.
Xander rolled his eyes. “It’s three hours at the waterslide park. You’ll cope. They wanted to cheer me up.”
“I want to cheer you up.”
“You are the reason I’m sitting here listening to Rod Stewart’s greatest Muzak hits in a fiberglass cast,” he pointed out, though seeing Spike’s stricken expression, amended, “Not that you’d be any different from anyone else in that regard since I know Buffy to be responsible for nine out of my last ten hospital visits-” Spike growled slightly at the reminder and Xander smiled bemusedly. “I’ll let you make it up to me tonight,” he promised.
“Could make it up to you now,” Spike pouted in the way Xander typically found irresistible. Xander wound a finger in the belt loop of Spike’s jeans and pulled him closer.
“I know you could. But we don’t have a waterslide in our apartment.”
“You can’t go on any bleedin’ waterslides in a cast, anyway.”
“Fine. We don’t have Amy Yip in our apartment.”
“I could wear a red Speedo and give you the kiss of life.”
Xander had to pause to appreciate that image. “Do you have one?”
“Could get one.”
Xander nodded thoughtfully. “Would you wear a whistle?”
“Even cover my nose in zinc oxide.”
Xander shivered as a wave of arousal trickled down his spine and pooled in his groin. “I have a lifeguard fetish,” he realized. “And we will be exploring this further. Tonight. When I get back from the waterslide park.”
Spike sighed the sigh of a long-suffering vampire. “Suppose you’ll be wanting me to do the cooking and washing up when you get home.”
Xander beamed. “Well, I do need to eat. And if you want me to take care of the Fyarl mucous you let petrify your weapons chest-”
“Just ‘cause I’ve got better things to do-”
“-since you can’t seem to figure out you don’t have minions anymore to do your scutwork-”
“-than nance around with a feather duster-”
“I mean, would it kill you to hang up your wet towels? We’re going to get silverfish!”
Spike snorted. “Ponce.”
“Slob.”
“Wanker.”
“I’m not the one who watches the history channel with a jar of Vaseline.” Xander threw out with smug satisfaction.
“One time, you git! Just got a little worked up ‘cause one of the reenactments reminded me of Dru,” Spike blustered in defense.
Their scandalized nurse interrupted Xander’s perfectly good gloat to release them from their sterile beige cell. Spike, humbled by the reminder of Xander’s predicament stoically took the ream of papers she handed them on the care and feeding of a fiberglass cast and, with slightly malicious glee, the prescription for painkillers only slightly less potent then the average elephant tranquilizer, noting with undisguised joy the scrawled allowance for four refills. Xander just sighed and watched Spike’s wheels turn as he helped him hobble to the car, hoping the hamster didn’t give out before he discovered that it was Xander’s goolies on the line if Spike sold off the remaining pills.
Amy Yip, with her olive skin and bright red suit sat high and statuesque above the Lazy River like some kind of goddess idol that invited worship. Xander, however, passed beneath her station for the third time in his innertube, unaware and deep in contemplation. Somewhere in the maze of tube slides overhead, he heard Willow scream in delight. He would have smiled, but he was worried he was taking advantage of Spike’s idiocy for his own selfish gain. He felt too guilty to even muster a lewd thought for the subject of nearly every pervy thought from age twelve to fifteen.
Buffy floated up along side him. “The non-verbal I expect. But usually there’s more drool,” she observed.
Xander frowned. “I think I’m being a douche.”
“I think Spike can handle losing you to an afternoon of sunny fun every once in a while. Besides, he likes you tan.”
“It’s not that. It’s this bet. He’s not going to win. He was never going to win. I mean, I want Vegas but-”
“But you want him to take you because he wants to and not because he was too stupid to turn down a bet.”
“Exactly! -Wait, when did Spike tell you he likes me tan? And more to the point, when did you and Spike become talking buddies?”
Buffy trailed a thoughtful hand in the water. “We’re not talking buddies,” she reassured him. “But we talk. Or, he insults me and I kick him and then we sort of have an insulting/kicking understanding.”
“No coffee klatch, then?”
“No. But I did paint his nails for him last week.”
Xander nodded, impressed. “You do good work.”
“Thank you. Anyway, he didn’t really tell me he likes you tan. He said something like, ‘I won’t turn your precious donut boy. If all I wanted was a pasty bit of fluff to get a leg over, I’d have stuck with Harmony.’”
Xander grinned warmly. “See? And that’s why I stick with the bleached menace. If you read between the lines-”
Buffy smiled reluctantly, “-it’s kind of sweet. I know. Anyway, don’t worry. He’s completely head over heals for you. Any time spent with you will be of the good.”
“You think so?”
“Totally.”
Xander nodded, feeling much more relaxed.
“You’re going to clean the snot off his swords anyway, aren’t you.”
“Probably.”
Xander was nearly bonelessly relaxed by the time Buffy and Willow dropped him off at home. He felt serene, at one with the universe, satisfied with his lot in life and on the sixth lap past the lifeguard tower, Amy decided to apply sunscreen.
He arrived home with a half-on, curious to see what Spike had cobbled together for dinner. Even cold cereal sounded appealing as long as he could share it with his vampire.
Man, he had it bad.
The low tide smell started in the stairwell and became stronger and more rank, overlaid with the suggestion of a refinery, the closer he got to his apartment. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating the whisps of smoke curling out the bottom of his door-until he heard Spike cursing and stomping around the apartment and the smoke alarm meeting a violent and untimely death as it’s screams were abruptly silenced.
He pushed open the door and was assaulted by the stench and smoke, coughing, he pushed through the haze to find the kitchen. Smoke was pouring out of the oven. Xander noted it was heated to 400°. Impressed, he turned it off.
Taking the mitts, he took a fortifying breath of soot before opening the oven door and pulling out the charred remains of a box of fishsticks. Box included.
He dumped the smoking cardboard carcass in the sink and turned on the cold water.
“Honey. I’m home.”
Spike stood just behind him, leaning against the counter, eyes dejectedly trained on the linoleum.
“Hey,” He began lightly, reaching for Spike. Spike pulled his arm out of Xander’s grasp roughly. Xander frowned, concerned and tried again more gently. “Hey.”
Spike didn’t say anything but he allowed Xander to pull him close. After a few minutes of comfort and reassurance non-verbally given and received, Xander pulled out his phone and dialed his boss.
“Hey Jake, can I speak to Ryan? Ryan? This is Xander. Yeah, you heard about that huh? Yeah, well I was thinking about taking my vacation time. Yeah? Great. See you then.” Xander flipped his phone shut. “So here’s what’s going to happen,” he told Spike. “We’re going to open every window, we’re going to get in the car, drop the apartment keys off with Buffy and we’re going to drive to Vegas. We’re going to order room service and have a lot of sex.”
“You sure you trust me in Vegas?” Spike muttered, and the amount of self-hatred in his voice brought Xander up short.
“I trust you with my money. I trust you with my friends, my home, my life.”
“Idiot,” Spike said, pressing his forehead to Xander’s tenderly.
Xander shook his head and ran a hand up and down Spike’s back, “You take risks. It’s one of the best things about you. Helping Buffy is risky. Shacking up with me is risky. If you played it safe, we wouldn’t even be here, so if you want to blow my savings take it. If you want to bet the apartment, the car, whatever-I’m okay with that. I’ll be pissed if you lose, but not as pissed as I’d be if you woke up tomorrow morning and stopped taking risks, came to your senses and left me for a normal vampire girlfriend and a normal vamp lair and a normal vamp life. Get it?”
“Got it,” Spike said, voice a little hoarse with smoke or emotion.
Xander smiled. “Good. And just to show I’m not a sore winner, I’ll get started on the crusty arsenal when we get back.”
Spike snickered. “You said crusty arse.”
Xander wagged his eyebrows and grinned, slapping his keys into Spike’s hand “You drive.”
Xander lay naked and stretched out on the bed in their graciously appointed suite surrounded by the trappings of the 24th century. A gorgeous lover and a week at the Star Trek Hilton. It was his every geeky dream come true. Spike’s lilting voice hollered out from behind the bathroom door.
“I’m not coming out, I look stupid.”
“You wanted to go double or nothing.”
“Do I have to say this twaddle?”
“Yes! Now get your ass out here!”
The bathroom door swung open and Spike appeared in all his naked glory, though with the addition of a pair of distinctly pointed ears. Xander and his now rampant erection sat up with interest.
With a dramatic sigh of defeat, Spike drew breath to speak.
“It is the time of Pon Farr and I must mate or I will die,” he delivered in a disinterested monotone.
It was the most beautiful thing Xander had ever heard.
“Think that’s your cue, love,” Spike prompted.
Xander leaped off the bed and in one swift move dropped his shoulder and hoisted Spike into a fireman’s carry. Spike made a startled noise.
“Fuck the script,” Xander pronounced.
“What about the wager?” Spike protested.
Xander dropped Spike on the bed. “Fuck the wager.”
Spike grinned lecherously up at him. “Really got you hot, didn’t I? Gonna give it to me hard, eh?”
Xander trailed a worshipful finger from the tip of a pointed ear to the base of Spike’s cock, heart and soul burning with desire for the man laid out like a feast before him. With a wicked grin he leaned over and flicked his tongue against the shell of Spike’s ear, feeling Spike’s sharp intake of useless breath where their chests met and huskily whispered his response.
“Bet on it.”
Author: emelye_miller
Chapter:3/3
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine, don’t sue.
Warnings: None
A/N: Written for spring_with_xan. Continued from Chapter Two .
“Double or nothing.”
“You have a problem.”
“M’serious.”
“So am I. Seek professional help. Ow!” Xander flinched as the nurse bumped into his ankle in her efforts to set and immobilize his wrist.
“Careful!” Spike barked at her. She jumped and Xander winced as his arm was jostled.
Xander pursed his lips and glared at Spike. “Fine. Double or nothing? Manage things for a week while my ankle heals and you win. I’ll spit polish anything you put in front of me.”
There was a loud clatter as the nurse knocked over the plastic container housing the bandages.
“An’ if you win?” Spike prompted, “Not that I expect you to.”
Xander grinned lecherously. “Oh, you know what I want.”
Spike grimaced, ignoring the blushing nurse excusing herself from the exam room. “Already giving you up on your day off to those friends of yours…” he grumbled.
Xander rolled his eyes. “It’s three hours at the waterslide park. You’ll cope. They wanted to cheer me up.”
“I want to cheer you up.”
“You are the reason I’m sitting here listening to Rod Stewart’s greatest Muzak hits in a fiberglass cast,” he pointed out, though seeing Spike’s stricken expression, amended, “Not that you’d be any different from anyone else in that regard since I know Buffy to be responsible for nine out of my last ten hospital visits-” Spike growled slightly at the reminder and Xander smiled bemusedly. “I’ll let you make it up to me tonight,” he promised.
“Could make it up to you now,” Spike pouted in the way Xander typically found irresistible. Xander wound a finger in the belt loop of Spike’s jeans and pulled him closer.
“I know you could. But we don’t have a waterslide in our apartment.”
“You can’t go on any bleedin’ waterslides in a cast, anyway.”
“Fine. We don’t have Amy Yip in our apartment.”
“I could wear a red Speedo and give you the kiss of life.”
Xander had to pause to appreciate that image. “Do you have one?”
“Could get one.”
Xander nodded thoughtfully. “Would you wear a whistle?”
“Even cover my nose in zinc oxide.”
Xander shivered as a wave of arousal trickled down his spine and pooled in his groin. “I have a lifeguard fetish,” he realized. “And we will be exploring this further. Tonight. When I get back from the waterslide park.”
Spike sighed the sigh of a long-suffering vampire. “Suppose you’ll be wanting me to do the cooking and washing up when you get home.”
Xander beamed. “Well, I do need to eat. And if you want me to take care of the Fyarl mucous you let petrify your weapons chest-”
“Just ‘cause I’ve got better things to do-”
“-since you can’t seem to figure out you don’t have minions anymore to do your scutwork-”
“-than nance around with a feather duster-”
“I mean, would it kill you to hang up your wet towels? We’re going to get silverfish!”
Spike snorted. “Ponce.”
“Slob.”
“Wanker.”
“I’m not the one who watches the history channel with a jar of Vaseline.” Xander threw out with smug satisfaction.
“One time, you git! Just got a little worked up ‘cause one of the reenactments reminded me of Dru,” Spike blustered in defense.
Their scandalized nurse interrupted Xander’s perfectly good gloat to release them from their sterile beige cell. Spike, humbled by the reminder of Xander’s predicament stoically took the ream of papers she handed them on the care and feeding of a fiberglass cast and, with slightly malicious glee, the prescription for painkillers only slightly less potent then the average elephant tranquilizer, noting with undisguised joy the scrawled allowance for four refills. Xander just sighed and watched Spike’s wheels turn as he helped him hobble to the car, hoping the hamster didn’t give out before he discovered that it was Xander’s goolies on the line if Spike sold off the remaining pills.
Amy Yip, with her olive skin and bright red suit sat high and statuesque above the Lazy River like some kind of goddess idol that invited worship. Xander, however, passed beneath her station for the third time in his innertube, unaware and deep in contemplation. Somewhere in the maze of tube slides overhead, he heard Willow scream in delight. He would have smiled, but he was worried he was taking advantage of Spike’s idiocy for his own selfish gain. He felt too guilty to even muster a lewd thought for the subject of nearly every pervy thought from age twelve to fifteen.
Buffy floated up along side him. “The non-verbal I expect. But usually there’s more drool,” she observed.
Xander frowned. “I think I’m being a douche.”
“I think Spike can handle losing you to an afternoon of sunny fun every once in a while. Besides, he likes you tan.”
“It’s not that. It’s this bet. He’s not going to win. He was never going to win. I mean, I want Vegas but-”
“But you want him to take you because he wants to and not because he was too stupid to turn down a bet.”
“Exactly! -Wait, when did Spike tell you he likes me tan? And more to the point, when did you and Spike become talking buddies?”
Buffy trailed a thoughtful hand in the water. “We’re not talking buddies,” she reassured him. “But we talk. Or, he insults me and I kick him and then we sort of have an insulting/kicking understanding.”
“No coffee klatch, then?”
“No. But I did paint his nails for him last week.”
Xander nodded, impressed. “You do good work.”
“Thank you. Anyway, he didn’t really tell me he likes you tan. He said something like, ‘I won’t turn your precious donut boy. If all I wanted was a pasty bit of fluff to get a leg over, I’d have stuck with Harmony.’”
Xander grinned warmly. “See? And that’s why I stick with the bleached menace. If you read between the lines-”
Buffy smiled reluctantly, “-it’s kind of sweet. I know. Anyway, don’t worry. He’s completely head over heals for you. Any time spent with you will be of the good.”
“You think so?”
“Totally.”
Xander nodded, feeling much more relaxed.
“You’re going to clean the snot off his swords anyway, aren’t you.”
“Probably.”
Xander was nearly bonelessly relaxed by the time Buffy and Willow dropped him off at home. He felt serene, at one with the universe, satisfied with his lot in life and on the sixth lap past the lifeguard tower, Amy decided to apply sunscreen.
He arrived home with a half-on, curious to see what Spike had cobbled together for dinner. Even cold cereal sounded appealing as long as he could share it with his vampire.
Man, he had it bad.
The low tide smell started in the stairwell and became stronger and more rank, overlaid with the suggestion of a refinery, the closer he got to his apartment. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating the whisps of smoke curling out the bottom of his door-until he heard Spike cursing and stomping around the apartment and the smoke alarm meeting a violent and untimely death as it’s screams were abruptly silenced.
He pushed open the door and was assaulted by the stench and smoke, coughing, he pushed through the haze to find the kitchen. Smoke was pouring out of the oven. Xander noted it was heated to 400°. Impressed, he turned it off.
Taking the mitts, he took a fortifying breath of soot before opening the oven door and pulling out the charred remains of a box of fishsticks. Box included.
He dumped the smoking cardboard carcass in the sink and turned on the cold water.
“Honey. I’m home.”
Spike stood just behind him, leaning against the counter, eyes dejectedly trained on the linoleum.
“Hey,” He began lightly, reaching for Spike. Spike pulled his arm out of Xander’s grasp roughly. Xander frowned, concerned and tried again more gently. “Hey.”
Spike didn’t say anything but he allowed Xander to pull him close. After a few minutes of comfort and reassurance non-verbally given and received, Xander pulled out his phone and dialed his boss.
“Hey Jake, can I speak to Ryan? Ryan? This is Xander. Yeah, you heard about that huh? Yeah, well I was thinking about taking my vacation time. Yeah? Great. See you then.” Xander flipped his phone shut. “So here’s what’s going to happen,” he told Spike. “We’re going to open every window, we’re going to get in the car, drop the apartment keys off with Buffy and we’re going to drive to Vegas. We’re going to order room service and have a lot of sex.”
“You sure you trust me in Vegas?” Spike muttered, and the amount of self-hatred in his voice brought Xander up short.
“I trust you with my money. I trust you with my friends, my home, my life.”
“Idiot,” Spike said, pressing his forehead to Xander’s tenderly.
Xander shook his head and ran a hand up and down Spike’s back, “You take risks. It’s one of the best things about you. Helping Buffy is risky. Shacking up with me is risky. If you played it safe, we wouldn’t even be here, so if you want to blow my savings take it. If you want to bet the apartment, the car, whatever-I’m okay with that. I’ll be pissed if you lose, but not as pissed as I’d be if you woke up tomorrow morning and stopped taking risks, came to your senses and left me for a normal vampire girlfriend and a normal vamp lair and a normal vamp life. Get it?”
“Got it,” Spike said, voice a little hoarse with smoke or emotion.
Xander smiled. “Good. And just to show I’m not a sore winner, I’ll get started on the crusty arsenal when we get back.”
Spike snickered. “You said crusty arse.”
Xander wagged his eyebrows and grinned, slapping his keys into Spike’s hand “You drive.”
Xander lay naked and stretched out on the bed in their graciously appointed suite surrounded by the trappings of the 24th century. A gorgeous lover and a week at the Star Trek Hilton. It was his every geeky dream come true. Spike’s lilting voice hollered out from behind the bathroom door.
“I’m not coming out, I look stupid.”
“You wanted to go double or nothing.”
“Do I have to say this twaddle?”
“Yes! Now get your ass out here!”
The bathroom door swung open and Spike appeared in all his naked glory, though with the addition of a pair of distinctly pointed ears. Xander and his now rampant erection sat up with interest.
With a dramatic sigh of defeat, Spike drew breath to speak.
“It is the time of Pon Farr and I must mate or I will die,” he delivered in a disinterested monotone.
It was the most beautiful thing Xander had ever heard.
“Think that’s your cue, love,” Spike prompted.
Xander leaped off the bed and in one swift move dropped his shoulder and hoisted Spike into a fireman’s carry. Spike made a startled noise.
“Fuck the script,” Xander pronounced.
“What about the wager?” Spike protested.
Xander dropped Spike on the bed. “Fuck the wager.”
Spike grinned lecherously up at him. “Really got you hot, didn’t I? Gonna give it to me hard, eh?”
Xander trailed a worshipful finger from the tip of a pointed ear to the base of Spike’s cock, heart and soul burning with desire for the man laid out like a feast before him. With a wicked grin he leaned over and flicked his tongue against the shell of Spike’s ear, feeling Spike’s sharp intake of useless breath where their chests met and huskily whispered his response.
“Bet on it.”