Pairing: Spike/Xander
Warnings: slash
Spoilers: none

One

Xander would never tell Spike this, but secretly he's glad that Spike is a restless sleeper. If it weren't for occasional movement or intermittent spells of breathing, it would feel like lying next to a dead body, and on a gut level that's still kinda creepy.

He doesn't care for the nightmares though.

They're relentless, never jolting Spike awake, but trapping him in memories of pain and conflagration. Xander has to shake him, like a terrier shakes a struggling rat. Afterwards, Spike is always sore, shies away either from Xander's sheer body heat or from a forgiveness he sometimes feels he doesn't deserve – Xander can't tell which.

There are parts of Spike that Xander will never be able to reach, no matter how deeply he buries himself in that lithe, needy body, no matter how greedily he drinks sweet obscenities from Spike's lips.

And there are things Spike will never fully understand. How workout at the gym gets harder every year. Or why Xander shaved off the roguish goatee Spike liked so much. Spike doesn't need to know that it was turning silver and couldn't be dyed as inconspicuously as the hair.

But whenever they have Chinese, Xander orders King Prawns even though he thinks they're icky, because Spike – who never orders them but likes the chewy, rubbery texture – likes to steal them from his container, and they've reached a point where one completes the other's sentences.

And that's probably as one as two people can get.

fin