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Xander Harris stood, arms out, hands pressed against the shower wall like he was being patted down. The water, hot as he could stand, pounded his bent head. Steaming, scalding, hot enough to disintegrate the thoughts in his head and wash them down the drain.

It was all Buffy's fault, really. If she hadn't gone out to enjoy life as Invisible Girl, he would never have gone hunting for her, ended up in Spike's crypt-and seen what he had seen.

Spike. Naked. Gloriously, totally nude, doing some kind of exercise that looked for all the world like he was practicing fucking. Of course he was envisioning Buffy, the unattainable, but Xander had realized... what, exactly? That he's beautiful, the part of his mind that was apparently controlling his cock put in. Gorgeous, sexy, even more amazing naked than clothed. Xander told that perverted part of his brain to shut the hell up, please, because he, Xander Harris, All-American Straight Guy, did not, could not possibly find Spike attractive. Why not? the voice demanded.

"Because he's Spike," he informed his Inner Pervert. "One, a guy. Like I'm a guy. A guy who likes women, a guy who loves Anya, a guy who's getting married. To a woman. Very soon. Two, a vampire. Evil, blood-sucking fiend, remember? If he wasn't chipped, he'd kill us all in our sleep? Vicious, violent, altogether bad for you. Three, and maybe this is the most important - he hates me. I don't think he's ever actually called me by name. I'm sure when he gets the chip out, I'll be the first to go."

Unsurprisingly, his cock didn't seem inclined to listen to reason. It never really had before-which is how he'd gotten involved with Cordy, and Anya, and Mantis-Lady, and Mummy-Girl, and for Christ's sake Faith, and if he hadn't learned his lesson from her ideas of foreplay, he never would - and every single one of his other fucked-up, damaging, emotionally scarring relationships. Not that I'm calling the thing with Faith a relationship, because, well, 'relationship' implies more than an urge to fuck and/or strangle.

Xander resolutely turned the water to cold. His hard-on flagged a little, and he took a few slow, deep breaths. I wonder if he's cool. What is body temperature on a dead guy, anyway? Xander imagined a smooth, cool hand against his hot skin, running slim fingers across the back of his neck, down his chest, combing the dark curls of his pubic hair... Does he smirk all the time? When he's coming? Does he... vamp out? The hand grew an arm, attached itself to a body, a head with gleaming gold eyes, whispering his name around a mouthful of fangs.

His erection was back.

"Fine," he snapped. "But just this once, understand? Then you're not allowed to show me disturbing images of naked Spike any more." He turned the water temperature back up, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back.

Spike was back, slim cool hands teasing his nipples, one dipping down to stroke lightly at his cock. No fangs this time, only the steep planes and angles of the vampire's human guise, cheekbones sharp enough that Xander thought he might cut himself, tracing them. Those haunting blue eyes were dark with lust, and his mouth curved up, but with something gentler than a smirk. "Xander," he hissed, and wrapped his hand tightly around the other man's erection.

Xander groaned, and hissed, and rolled his hips, thrusting against the encompassing hand, made warm by the water. "So good," he moaned. "Please... God..." and suddenly it was all too much, and he was coming in hard spurts. "Spike!" he yelled, and was brought back to himself by the echo of the shower stall.

He realized with a start that Anya was leaning against the closed bathroom door, watching him. "That looked extraordinary," she said, coming forward and giving him a kiss. "Was it?"

"Um... yeah," he said, trying to regain both his breath and his equilibrium. Feeling incredibly uncertain of how his fiancee would react to catching him jerking off while fantasizing someone else - a man, at that, Xander shut off the shower and reached for his towel. Anya handed it to him. She was smiling, which was probably a good sign.

"So you're attracted to Spike? Xander, honey, I had no idea."

"Um... no! I mean... no! Bad, evil vampire. Also male. Not an attractive combo for the Xan-Man. No way."

Anya... laughed, patting him on the cheek. "You're adorable when you're in denial, Xander."

"Denial? Not in denial, Ahn."

"So you were screaming his name a minute ago why, then?"

"Um... I was imagining... staking him."

She smiled, and gave him another kiss. "It's okay, you know. I don't mind that you find Spike attractive. I find him very attractive myself - not as attractive as you, but still very desirable. It's good if you feel the same way."

"It - it is?" Xander was beginning to wrap his brain around the idea that not only was Anya not angry, not planning on spending the next hour revisiting the most hideous tortures she'd visited on cheating men, but she seemed... at least pleased by the revelation. And with Anya, pleased usually meant aroused, which meant that Xander got sex. Good, straight-guy sex, with his woman and no disturbing images.

"Yes!" she crowed, clapping her hands together in that way that only sex and money seemed to set off. "We could have a threesome."

Xander's jaw dropped. "Um... Anya?" he managed once he regained control of his jaw muscles. "Spike? Evil vampire guy? Plus he hates me, remember?"

Anya shook her head. "Don't be silly. He doesn't hate you."

"I beg to differ. Or hadn't you notice his tendency to insult me whenever I come within range?" Increasingly disturbed by the tenor of this conversation, Xander headed into the bedroom. He thought it would perhaps be less frightening if he was wearing pants.

"Males exchange insults to express affection, Xander, you should know that. Perhaps you need more male friends." She followed him.

"I have plenty of male friends!" he protested.

"Name one."

"Um... well...."

:"And the guys at work don't count, since you don't spend time with them except at work."

"Well... there's..."

"Spike," Anya suggested.

"Spike and I are not friends! Friends...go out, and have beers, and play pool. They don't... well, they don't do what Spike and I do."

"Flirt with each other?"

"Anya, we are not flirting. I refuse to believe that I'm even having this conversation. Let's start over, shall we?"

"If you insist. So you find Spike attractive?"

Xander groaned.

***

They came off the dance floor together, panting a little. She was flushed and glowing with exertion, and her closeness during the dance had his brain swimming in warm tingly circles and wondering how much longer she was going to be interested in staying. The whole learning-to-dance thing for the wedding was definitely of the good, as far as he was concerned, because it usually led to a different kind of dancing not much later on. He was about to ask her if she wanted water when she chirped, "There he is. Here's your chance."

"My chance for what?" he asked, blinking stupidly, wondering when Anya'd mastered Willow's habit of making him feel like he'd come in halfway through the conversation.

"To play pool with Spike. And have beers. He's over there." She pointed across the room. The bleached vampire was indeed wielding a pool cue against some poor defenseless college guy.

"What?"

"You said that friends have beers and play pool. Spike is there playing pool. You should go play with him."

"Anya-"

"How else are we going to have a threesome, Xander? You want to have sex with Spike. Unless you want me to go over there and ask him now-"

"No!" He pinched the bridge of his nose, and then sighed. "All right. I'll go play pool with Spike. But this does not mean we're going to have sex, understand?"

She just smiled.

I'm just doing this to get away from Anya and her disturbing ideas, understand? he firmly informed the twisty part of his mind as he ordered a couple of beers and found an unattended pool cue. Sex with Spike does not begin to enter the equation.

The man - er, vampire - in question was accepting his blood money very funny, brain from the frustrated frat boy. He made a comment Xander didn't catch over the crowd noise and the band. Since it came out of Spike's mouth, he assumed that it was snarky, sarcastic, or both, because Frat Boy launched himself at the demon. Spike dodged back, grinning, and was clobbered from behind.

Frat Boy had a friend.

Xander had a pool cue, two bottles of beer, and nearly six years experience battling denizens of the Hellmouth.

An hour later, after the fight, the firm ejection from the Bronze, the shrill lecture from Anya, and, thankfully, a handful of Tylenol, Xander and Spike slumped on the couch, alternating between drinking the beer and holding it to various sore spots. Xander'd found a soccer game, amazingly in English, on one of the sports networks, and it blared in the background. He felt very manly - or at least very male. All my chromosomes in order, thank you very much. Double dose of testosterone for the Xan-man.

Anya came out of the kitchen holding two ice packs wrapped in towels. She handed one to each of them. "I'm going to bed," she said. "Don't stay up too late, Xander. Spike, you can sleep on the couch if you don't want to go back to your crypt tonight." And she disappeared.

Spike replaced the beer bottle over his eye with the ice pack, took a swig, and made an appreciative noise. "This isn't bad. For American swill, anyway."

"It's Fat Tire, I think," he said, squinting at the bottle. "Anya buys whatever's on sale; sometimes I luck out."

"Hm."

Silence again, and Xander tried not to fidget, hyperaware of Spike's closeness.

"So what was that about, Harris?" Spike asked after fifteen minutes or more of silence.

"What was what about?" he squeaked, jumping. Did he catch me staring? Was I staring? I wasn't staring. Not at his cheekbones, no way in hell.

"The fight. At the Bronze."

"What do you mean? They jumped you. I didn't even hear what you said to him."

"Told him he should put his money somewhere safer, like on the horses," the vampire said with a yawn. "Why'd you get involved?"

"Well, they were attacking you." Xander was confused. The frat boys attacked Spike; Spike couldn't fight back because of the chip; he'd helped him. Where was the problem?

"Yeah, you said that. Why'd you help, though? 'S no secret you don't like me. I woulda thought you'd appreciate a chance to watch me get stomped on."

The thought floored him. "Well... because...." He trailed off, completely at a loss. Spike waited, scarred eyebrow arched in inquiry. Did he practice that in front of the mirror? No, wait, that doesn't work at all. How long's he had that scar, I wonder?

"Because?"

"I don't really know," he said. "It seemed like the thing to do, I guess."

"Got a soft spot for me, then, boy?" Still the arched eyebrow.

A very hard spot, actually, said that little voice that had gotten him into this situation in the first place. He told the voice to shut UP already. "NO! Um, no. I - Buffy'd probably get mad if I let you get the crap beaten out of you at the Bronze. They might've accidentally staked you, and, well, that would be... bad." He tried to figure out why it would be bad, beyond the whole disappointing Anya about the threesome thing, which wasn't going to happen ANYWAY, thank you very much.

"It's a wonder they let you out of high school," Spike snorted. "Is there more beer?"

Xander retreated into the kitchen. Beer he understood. This thing with Spike - this nonexistent thing with Spike - was way beyond him. Go away, he told his hard-on. You don't make any sense.

Spike had a cigarette in one hand and was searching his duster pockets when he came back with the beer. "If you light up in here, I will turn Anya loose on you."

"This is a threat?" was the incredulous reply.

"Obviously you've never seen her really pissed off."

He shrugged. "Demon girl doesn't worry me." He stopped looking for the lighter, though, and settled for picking the label off the beer.

"I'm going to bed," Xander announced after the soccer game finished. It'd been over five minutes, and he couldn't have said who'd won; hell, he couldn't have said who was playing. He'd spent the game staring intently at the label of his beer, at the carpet fiber, at the closed bedroom door Anya slept behind, at anything besides Spike. He could recite the ingredients, the warning labels, knew how many fibers there were in a square inch of carpet.

Could draw Spike's face in his sleep.

"You can stay, if you want. Shut the curtains and you should be okay. Do you want a blanket?"

Spike stood up, and Xander found himself captured by those stormy blue eyes. "What do you want?" he asked, simple and stark, and all the blood in Xander's body pooled in his cock.

You, want you. No, you don't. "Why would I want anything?"

The intense blue gaze traveled across his body. "Got me."

No, I don't; that's the problem. Shut UP. "Are you staying?"

"Are you going to tie me up?"

"Why would I do that?" came out of his mouth before he could stop it.

"Afraid I'll eat you or the missus during the night? Bloody hell, Xander, have you been possessed?"

"Possessed?" Okay, THAT came out of right field.

"Yeah. Possessed. Or something. Got turned into a pod person, had zombies eat your brains, the lover Wiccas practicing mojo on you?"

"Uh - no?"

"Then what do you want? You don't like vampires, particularly me. Tonight, you got in a bar fight to protect me, brought me home, gave me decent American beer, turned on the footy and failed to watch it, stared at me half the night, and now you're offering me your couch without threats or bondage. Yet you keep insisting you don't want anything. Why the bloody hell are you doing this, then? Demon want a threesome?"

That last was so close to the truth that his jaw dropped open.

"She does!" Spike crowed. "That's it, then? Well, why didn't you just ask?"

Anya came out of the bedroom, clapping her hands in delight. "You mean it?"

Spike turned and grinned at her. "Pet, I would've figured you'd know about vamps, even if your boy didn't."

"Of course I knew. But Xander's so bent on being, well, straight, that I didn't think he'd have the nerve to actually do it."

Xander managed to get his mouth most of the way closed. "Um - still in the room, here? Anya, know what about vamps?"

"That they're the whores of the demon world, of course. Vampires will sleep with anything."

He looked at Spike. Spike, who could easily be described as sex on the hoof, and nodded. Suddenly it all made sense. This was some kind of vampire mojo, perpetuated on him, Xander, so that Spike could get some sweet Xander loving, and the idea was so ludicrous it was amazing he wasn't laughing out loud. Spike was mad for Buffy. If he could work vampire mojo, he'd be in bed with the Slayer, not seducing Xander and his fiancee in their living room.

In that case - what the hell was this?

"Oh."

"You see, Xander finds you very attractive," Anya was saying to Spike, and Xander prayed for an aneurysm (an Anya-rysm?) or a portal to hell so he wouldn't have to deal with the mockery that was coming, there's never a disaster when you need one, "but he wouldn't admit it. So I thought if you became friends, then he would have sex with you. With me there, of course, because Xander is monogamous."

He was braced for the snarky comment that never came. "This true?" Spike asked him.

"Yeah," he admitted. Hellgod invasion would be good right about now, if anybody's listening.

"You know he doesn't have any male friends besides you?"

"We're not friends, Ahn," Xander muttered.

"No, we're not," Spike concurred. Damn vampire hearing. "But that's never bothered me before."

"Be - before?"

"You could say a lot of things about me an' Angelus. 'Friends' in't one of 'em."

"You and - Angelus?" he squeaked. The image of Angel kissing Spike, dark hair against blonde, slipped through his mind, giving his cock new life.

"Vampire blood bonds are always sexual, Xander," Anya said. "I'm surprised you didn't know that."

He was panting a little. "Didn't really want to, Ahn."

"Like the idea more than a little, don't you, ducks?" Spike asked him in a soft voice that sent shivers down his back. "Angelus an' me, together?"

Xander realized he was trembling. Spike was very, very close. The idea made him uncomfortable, but the reality... the reality, apparently, made him tremble. He wondered why he thought Spike's eyes were ice blue, when they were clearly very dark. Sea-storm blue over cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Long dark lashes fluttered across them as he blinked. He isn't breathing, Xander realized, and it gave the whole scene a feeling of unreality. This close to someone else always meant hot breath on his cheek. "Vampires don't breathe," he said aloud, as the information moved from forebrain to hindbrain.

"No," and the mouth can curve in something gentler than a smirk. A true smile, amusement echoed in those storm eyes. It wasn't supposed to be like this, if it happened at all. It was supposed to be about Anya, wanting the threesome, not him, wanting Spike.

Then Spike kissed him. He was drowning in the coolness, the tongue, the firm mouth against his own. Those long elegant hands were buried in his hair, the long lean body pressed against his own. Spike was shorter than him, and it made it less objectionable somehow. His partners were supposed to be shorter; it was the way of things.

He whimpered a little as Spike stepped away. "So?" Spike asked.

"Please," and his voice cracked.

"So it's that way, is it?"

Apparently it was, because Spike started kissing him again, and nothing else really mattered at that point.

*

It was cave-dark when Spike woke up, bleary and slightly confused. That was a hell of dream, he thought, stretching. I really need to cut back on that tequila before bedtime thing.. He rolled over, and discovered two things.

The first was that the bedroom door was cracked, letting in a small amount of light. The light allowed him to see the second thing.

It wasn't a dream.

Xander was asleep, long dark lashes curled up on pale cheeks, curled up on his side. Anya was spooned behind him, also asleep, an arm flung around his waist. So Anya got her threesome. Well, I'd best get gone. Don't want Droopy-Boy waking up and getting jealous on me. Had enough of that with Angelus, thank you very much. He started to slip out of bed.

"Spike?" Anya opened one eye. "Where are you going?"

"I was just going, ducks. Don't want your man-child having second thoughts and deciding to stake the evidence of his bisexual leanings."

"But - it's the middle of the day."

"S'not too far from the door to the sewers. Don't worry 'bout me, pet."

Xander made an incoherent noise and shifted. "You'll wake Xander. Come back to bed."

For a minute, he actually thought about it. "Ta very much, but no." He found his clothes, grabbed a ratty blanket from the linen closet, and slipped out the door.

It was better that way, he told himself.