Title: Lost Part 3

Email: tirel@pcnuthut.com

Site: https://www.angelfire.com/tv2/firebird_ascending/

Author: Velvet Crypt

Disclaimer: Joss is God. I own nothing.

Distribution: Sure. Just lemme know where my baby’s going.

Spoilers:

Summary: The situation worsens.

By the time the boys came back downstairs the girls were planning dinner. Tara and Dawn tore up lettuce and cut veggies for salad and Willow stirred the no bake cheesecake. Buffy had just finished making hamburger patties and was heating up the pan. Xander and Spike came in, not holding hands, but walking close enough that their shoulders brushed.

“Hey guys.” Buffy called with a smile. “Xander, can you get the dishes down?” Xander nodded and steered his charge to a chair at the table before getting into the cupboard. Buffy dropped several patties in the pan and stood waiting to push them around.

Tara was explaining the intricacies of tearing lettuce instead of cutting it when the first whimper came. Tara’s voice ground to a stop and she looked around the table, curious. Another whimper. “Spike? Are you okay?” She asked. Spike covered his face with his hands, gasping through his mouth. Xander dropped the plates he was carrying onto the counter and made a beeline for his vampire.

“Spike? Wil, honey, what’s wrong?” Spike looked helplessly up at Xander, his hands fluttering frantically at his throat. “Spike, you have to tell us what’s wrong. We can’t do anything if we don’t know!” Xander began to panic when Spike started dry heaving. Spike tried to push away from the table but the chair leg got stuck on the table leg. His whimpers turned desperate.

Xander jerked the chair out from under the table and Spike was off like a shot. He pushed past Willow and Dawn and flung the kitchen door open. Xander raced after him, followed by the others. Spike had made it about five feet off of the steps before falling to his knees and throwing up the blood he’d consumed that day.

Xander dropped to his knees and put an arm around the gagging vampire. “Spike, sweetie, what is it?” He begged. Spike sat back and covered his nose with the back of his hand. He rocked on his heels.

“Burn.” He croaked.

Xander looked confused. “Burn? Something was burning?”

“Was Buffy burning the burgers?” Dawn asked, kneeling on the other side of the blonde.

Spike shook his head and looked between the two of them, tears filling his eyes. “Burn.” He whispered again.

“Spike, what was burning?” Xander asked again.

Tara made a little gasp and covered her own mouth. “Oh, Goddess. Nothing was burning, Xander. Not now. But it did. It did burn, right Spike?” Spike nodded from his seat in the grass.

“Spike.” He agreed. “Burn.”

Xander had to bite his tongue to keep from gagging himself. “The smell of the burgers, Spike. Did they remind you of when you were burned? When the power line hit the water?” Spike nodded vigorously. Xander looked back at the girls, anguish on his face. Buffy turned and ran back into the kitchen.

By the time he’d gotten Spike to his feet and back onto the back steps, Buffy had come back out. “I threw the meat out into the garbage in the front.” She said quietly. “I turned the fan on, too. But Spike may be more comfortable eating in the living room. We’re having salad, oven-baked fries and cheesecake for dinner.” She added with an uptilted chin.

Willow hugged Buffy and pulled her inside ahead of an appreciative Xander and a shaky Spike.

______________________________________________________

The rest of dinner went remarkably well considering the precursor. Unfortunately, that was the last thing to go right that day. Once Spike and Xander were ensconced in their room, Spike began the seduction scene again. Xander had just shucked his jeans and turned to lay them on the chair when he was knocked onto his ass on the bed.

Cool hands scrabbled at Xander’s boxers, tugging them from his hips, exposing him to the questing lips hovering over him. Xander gasped and his hips shot up off of the bed as Spike’s insistent mouth closed over his hardening cock. Pleasure shot straight to his brain and he found his hands were moving of their own volition to Spike’s head. He couldn’t guarantee they were headed there to pull the blonde away.

“Spike, please…stop,” he moaned. He was afraid Spike was going to suck his will to say no right out of his dick. “I mean it, stop.” Spike hummed against his erection and Xander saw stars. He felt his hands moving again. “Spike. Stop. Now. If you don’t quit, I’m sleeping on the couch downstairs for the rest of the week.”

He nearly whimpered aloud when the talented lips reluctantly turned loose of his hardened flesh. He reached down and pulled his boxers up with a swift jerk, pulling several hairs in the process. The pain brought him back to himself. He sat up to find Spike bowed at his feet, looking up at him with such sadness and desperation.

“Please?” Spike whispered. “Sire? Claim?” He held out a hand entreatingly.

“I’m sorry, Spike. I’m not your Sire.” Xander said gently. “I don’t know how to claim you. I can’t.”

Tears threatened to spill from azure eyes and a protruding lip quivered. “Sire? Please? Claim?” Xander shook his head sadly. One single tear rolled down Spike’s porcelain white skin. He ducked his head and slowly crawled to the corner by the closet, where he curled into a fetal position. Xander could see the silent sobs wracking his body from the bed.

He launched off of the bed and knelt at Spike’s side. “Spike, sweetie, please. Come back to bed.” Spike didn’t act like he’d even heard Xander. That in itself was strange as the vampire was usually so in tune with what Xander was feeling that it was scary. “Spike, it’s cold down here. The floor is really hard. Please come back to bed. Let me hold you.” He could see the slow but sure shake of Spike’s head.

He sighed. ~Way to fuck it up, Harris.~ He moved back to the bed and pulled a blanket off of it. He tried several times to tuck it around Spike’s shoulders but the vamp threw it back off each time before curling back into a ball. “Not worthy.” He whispered the last time. Xander bit his lip hard enough to draw blood at the anguished sound of those two words.

Spike suddenly uncurled and bolted for the door. Xander followed a second or two later and watched Spike crawl into the armchair in the living room, wrapping his arms around the throw pillow. Xander stood for long minutes watching the miserable vampire before making his way back upstairs. He climbed into the bed, which was suddenly very large and very lonely. And he lay awake staring at the ceiling until the sun lightened the room.

_______________________________________________________

When he heard the girls begin to move around downstairs, he threw on his clothes from yesterday and made his way downstairs. He saw Spike, still in the armchair, and Willow kneeling next to him.

“Spike, where’s Xander, honey?…Spike? Are you alright?…Honey, are you hungry?…Spike?”

“He slept down here last night, Wills.” Xander croaked, then winced at the sound of his own voice. Willow looked up at him and her jaw dropped in shock.

“Goddess, what happened to you? You look like shit!” Xander smiled slightly. Willow blushed and tried again. “I mean, you look like you haven’t slept.“

“I haven’t.”

“You look like you spent all night worrying and grinding your head into the pillow.”

“I did.”

“And aren’t those the same clothes you wore yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

Willow’s expression softened as she looked between the vampire and man. “Xan, what happened.”

Xander came down the rest of the stairs and dropped onto the couch, his gaze resting on the blonde vamp who looked as though he hadn’t moved all night. “He tried it again.”

Willow frowned. “The ‘seduce Xander’ thing?”

Xander laughed without humor. “Oh, hell yeah. Never let it be said that the Zeppo has no self-control, cause Lordy did I exercise it last night. He kept asking me to claim him and calling me Sire.” Xander shrugged helplessly. “I’m not his Sire. And I don’t know how to claim him, Wills. I don’t know that he would even want that if he were ever to get back to normal. I don’t know how claims work.”

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “He crawled…crawled, Will…into the corner and cried. When I tried to talk to him he called himself ‘not worthy’. Then he ran down here and I don’t think he’s moved.”

Willow tucked a finger under Spike’s chin and looked into the vacant blue eyes. “Spike, Xander’s here. Can you wake up a bit for Xander?” A spark came into his eyes and they focused on Willow.

“Sire?” He murmured.

Xander sighed. Willow frowned. “No, not your Sire. Just Xander.”

“Xander. Sire. Claim?” Spike pleaded. Willow shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Spike. He can’t.” Spike’s head dropped back to the pillow and Willow watched the light go out of them again. She stood and looked between the two men again. “This isn’t good.”

Xander snorted. “Way to understate there, Wills.”

Willow glared at him. “Stop being an ass, Xander. This is way beyond what I know. I’m calling Giles.” Xander just lay on the couch watching Willow punch buttons on the phone. A few minutes later and she dropped the phone back into the cradle. “Giles is on his way.”

“Oh, goody. Someone else who’ll know I have a vampire refusing to sleep, eat, or remain sane unless I let him suck my dick.”

Willow stepped up to his knees, snatched a hank of hair and jerked. Hard. He stared up at her in astonishment. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that filth come out of your mouth, Alexander Harris.” She glared. “I don’t know what a claim is either. But I’m guessing it means that he wants to belong to you somehow. Right now, I think you should stop whining about how crappy this is and start thinking about how to make Spike better. I’d also try to remember that I’m not the only one in this and that I have other people to lean on. Oh, and I’d ponder for a bit on how much I love him and then spend the rest of the day wondering how I could say such an awful thing about him.”

Her eyes narrowed in anger. “I’m going into the kitchen and start breakfast. I’ll have someone bring yours out to you. I hope you’re ready to start thinking up a plan when Giles gets here.”

_________________________________________________________

Xander spent the next few hours staring at Spike. Thinking how badly hurt Spike was when Xander told him no last night. Wondering why. Remembering how much he loved him. And beating himself up for saying such shit about him. Every passing second he hurt more for the wounded vampire. And every time he started asking ‘why is this happening to me’ he’d look at the statue-still vampire huddled in the chair and change his question to ‘why is this happening to Spike?’

He didn’t touch the plate Buffy brought in to him. Didn’t even take his eyes off of Spike. When the doorbell rang, he didn’t move. Finally, Dawn bounced out of the kitchen to answer it. Giles stepped in, removing his coat. He took one look at Xander watching Spike do nothing, and headed for the kitchen.

Xander was okay with that. Willow knew all the dirty details. Let her fill Giles in. He’d just sit here, watching his vampire. By the time Giles came back out, Xander had zoned out. He wasn’t asleep, but neither was he focusing on anything in the room but Spike. Giles sat across from him and tried to speak to him.

Nothing.

He changed tactics and tried to get Spike’s attention.

Nothing.

Giles looked up at the girls. “Call Angel.”