"Spike?" Xander called, hovering in the doorway to Spike's crypt in a flood of moonlight as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The crypt looked empty, but it didn't feel empty, an anticipation thrumming on the air that matched the hum of expectation that had been building in Xander's chest all afternoon.

He took a deep breath, scenting the air, and wondering if this was part of the wish package or if he'd just never noticed how many scents there were in Spike's crypt. "You're picking now for a game of hide and seek, Spike?" He turned dust, green moss, mold, Doritos... *Clem must have been visiting.*

There was a faint metallic tang to match a dark brown stain in one corner, but in only one direction did Xander catch whiffs of the scent he was searching for. Smoke and whiskey.

Two smells he'd never previously expected to make his mouth water, not because he wanted to taste them, but because he wanted to taste them on Spike. He heard a low chuckle and froze, then turned slowly to scan the room, feeling watched. "How badly do you want it, pet?" Spike's voice was just on the edge of hearing, curling around him like the fog outside and making his dick harden in his jeans.

He let his head drop back with a growl that surprised himself, his body knowing this game even when his mind wasn't entirely sure what Spike was up to. "Wanna find out?" Xander felt the slow smile stretch his mouth and let his head fall forward again, eyes open now on the rug beside the sarcophagus. He kicked it aside, looking down a ladder and into Spike's darkened eyes, the skin showing beneath his open shirt made warm by flickering candlelight. "How about right now?"

"Pull the rug back over the opening when you come down, pet. Don't fancy interruptions."

Xander swung his legs onto the ladder, pausing long enough to smooth the heavy rug over the hole in the floor then gasped when he was grabbed from behind, plucked easily off the ladder and thrown onto his back on a mattress. Then, Spike was on him in a flash, lips to his throat, hands over the hardening bulge in Xander's jeans, rubbing, rubbing just light enough to make Xander need more.

"What makes you think you'll be the one doing the taking?" Spike's words buzzed against the side of Xander's throat, his tongue flickering out to take little tastes along his vein.

Xander thrust upwards, hard into that hand, trapping Spike's leg with his own and burying a hand in Spike's hair, yanking his head to the side so that he could speak directly into his ear. "What makes you think I want to be the one doing the taking?" The words scalded his tongue, sliding like lead into his aching balls as the truth of them made itself known, and Xander drew a shuddering breath. "I want you in me. I want you pounding into me until I can't breathe." Xander swallowed the next words that wanted to come, shaking with the effort of resisting them before giving in, whispering against Spike's ear. "I want you to fuck me like a vampire."

Spike drew back with a hiss, eyes flickering golden in the candlelight. "This some kind of vampire fetish?"

Xander felt the feral expression come over his face, slid his arms up above him on the mattress, and deliberately tilted back his head, offering. "No. Just you." Xander stretched, feeling the ache and burn as his muscles reached their limit, the tingling, tantalizing brush of Spike's inseams against his hips and waist. "Fuck the chip." He felt Spike go utterly still above him and opened his eyes again, watching the play of emotion over Spike's face. "Have me. I only look human." Xander gripped the metal bedstead with both hands, grinding against Spike, slowly. "It knows. And I want you."

Time spun away from Xander, flowing hot and red like every sip of blood Spike took from him, shoulders now, then back, even his thigh once, breaking through his flesh like a crisp apple and making Xander come so hard he saw white without so much as touching his cock. With every shift of skin over muscle, he felt the long scratches and half moons that Spike's fingernails had left in his skin until it flared and burned then blissfully cooled under the sweeps of Spike's tongue.

He felt high, drugged, like he should be sated on the sex, and the heat, and the friction of Spike's body over him, in him, rubbing slow and fluid against him while he took Spike's mouth, sweeping in to taste and claim, going to the source of that rich wood smoke and whiskey flavor, drinking down Spike's moans that left him light-headed. *I did that.*

Each orgasm flowed into the next until at last, Xander found himself on trembling hands and knees, legs splayed wide and back canted like a bitch in heat beneath Spike, fingers fisting restlessly against the sheets as they rocked together deep and slow. Spike's lips and teeth, blunt and human now, drifted down his back, dotting a kiss, a bite, a lick to every standing knot of Xander's spike, then dipped, swirled, and traced the bold black lines between Xander's shoulder blades with the tip of his tongue making Xander glad, so so fucking glad that he'd gone into that tattoo shop in Oxnard as he shuddered beneath the slick and nimble tracery of Spike's tongue.

"God, pet, taste like mulled wine. Could get drunk on you."

"Thought - thought you said I tasted like Christmas." Xander swayed under the slow, stretching slide of Spike's cock, and the slick sting of mingled sweat along his scratches.

"You are Christmas, pet. Gonna unwrap you." Spike's lips buzzed against the nape of Xander's neck. "Gonna have you."

Xander moaned, feeling those strong fingers, no longer cool, but hot, warmed with blood and heat and friction, sliding over his cock and down, down to squeeze the base, leaving Xander shuddering beneath him.

"Say you want me, pet." Spike stroked him, once, hard, then stopped, giving him no more than that barely-there in and out slide, faint and obscenely slick on the edge of hearing.

"Fuck Spike..."

"Better yet," Spike said, tongue rasping over the one bitten wound on Xander's throat, and over, and over until Xander keened, dropping his head down between his arms. "Say you want me to keep you."

"Please..." Xander tried to buck, tried to impale himself harder on Spike's cock, *so close so close so close* but Spike only rocked with him, lips and words buzzing into his skin. "Anything!"

"I want to open my Christmas pressie." Cold, cold metal snapped around Xander's wrist, and the headboard clanked, jerked when he reared back against the handcuff, eyes wide.

"No!"

"Yesss," Spike hissed into Xander's ear, rocking in fast, and hard and right there until Xander saw stars, the click and tap of Halfrek's pendant against his chin counting them closer to midnight, closer to the fiery orgasm he could feel building, tightening in his balls until he came with a desperate groan, the handcuff biting sharply into his wrist as he bucked back against Spike and the world went white.

When he came to again, it was to Spike curled up against his chest, tracing a lazy vee beneath Xander's collarbone, back and forth, batting the pendant this way and that as his lips moved silently against Xander's shoulder. "Tick tock, Christmas boy. Santa's due any minute now."

Xander felt a rush of cold through his veins and pulled away, rattling the handcuff against the bed. "You've got to let me go, Spike. You don't understand!"

"Oh, I understand." Lazily, Spike unfolded himself from Xander's body, watching Xander twist until he landed on the floor, one foot braced against the iron of his bedstead. "Understand that midnight's a tricksy time. All sorts of things...change at the witching hour." He leaned over the end of the bed, picking up his cigarettes and lighting one, blowing a stream of smoke at the ceiling. "Including, I'm thinking, you."

Xander locked his fingers around the cuff and pulled, flying across the room as the metal of Spike's bed gave way with a wrenching clatter, dropping vampire and mattress onto the floor. "I'm sorry, Spike. Jesus... You have no idea how sorry I am." Xander scrambled across the floor, jerking his jeans on and gathering his clothes as quickly as he could as the stunned vampire watched him, cigarette dangling from limp fingers until Xander was at the ladder.

Spike leapt across the room, hard fingers catching Xander's arm, hurt blue eyes meeting panicked brown for a bare instant before Spike crushed his lips to Xander's in a desperate kiss. "Come back?"

"Tomorrow," Xander promised, stealing a desperate glance at his watch before scrambling up the ladder and out of the crypt with a bang of the outer door. "Tomorrow, I promise!"

Spike sank slowly to the floor in the chaos left behind with his broken bed, the musk of sex thick on the air as he laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. "Don't want to fuckin' wait, pet. Want you."

He smoked his cigarette to the filter, crushing it out and tossing it aside before he went to examine the bed, tripping over a shoe.

A sneaker.

Size 11.

Spike picked it up with a slow smile. Well, then.

He carried the sneaker to the bed, sitting down and setting it beside him, looking at it, and wondering why it seemed familiar.