Treasure Houses

You will return to the land
Where poems of love grow
from ribbons of human touch
and there you'll drink from pools
of human laughter and gather
dreams of amazing grace.

Sometimes, they sleep until evening. The window from their room looks out over the Nile, and if Spike will never feel the sun again, never be able to touch the light in any other way save when Wesley carries it back in his clothes and skin at the end of his walk home, he can still watch the day change and soften in varying degrees of heavy gold from the comfort of their room. Sometimes he coaxes Wesley into staying there, seeing Egypt through his eyes, reflections and shadows on the walls, and the shifting sky outside, colours deepening and lightenng, the heat bleaching it to an almost painful white, and times, blazoning mirages onto the retina, more illusion in a land of legerdemain.

The bedroom is a paean of colour and shading, texture and fabric and light. With no garden to create here, Wesley has turned silk and glass and water into their own personal oasis, capturing the river in reflection so that it fills the room, wavering through the drapes to turn the sheets into liquid illumination.

There is a reason they don't let anyone in here. Wesley creates privacy and shade, as well as the glow of fire embers and candles and ripples of sun-splashed water to move across draped walls. He will bring home tiles from a fleamarket and gladly help Xander make a mosaic-inset table that looks like something Cordelia's friends would pay a fortune for, and shrug off any attention the finished work gets, taking it as much for granted as Xander does, but the strips of peacock-green raw silk that run from the corners of the room to the centre of the ceiling, held up with concealed thumbtacks and taking, in Spike's mind, about a thousandth of the effort, are his secret. It makes no sense, but Wesley's idea of what should remain private is as hidden and guarded as his inner life can be, and it is that closely watched haven that he reproduces behind the closed door.

The rest of the house is like a rich, ornate casing for Illyria's blue-jewelled beauty, a warm glow of setting sun and gold tracery, but the bedroom is a Nile-fed pool of cool air, brought to life by the moon and the whispers of night, an illusion of shrouding mists and vapours during daylight.

It is completely theirs.

Wesley is asleep, the distant sounds of the city leaving him untroubled, his long limbs relaxed and warm with the last vestiges of the afternoon's sun. It is almost tangible here, the different warmths corresponding to the different kinds of sunlight, the shading between early evening and afternoon and morning not some gradual, gentle blur, but a succession of separate moments. The afternoon has seeped into Wesley's bones, softening the hard lines of his face into something kind, and slightly blurred in the dim light, and too distant altogether for Spike's liking.

Spike rolls over to curl into Wesley's body, fingers just beneath his jaw, and Wesley sighs, softly, content. "It's nearly dark," Spike whispers, wanting him awake, now, and Wesley murmurs agreement and leans back in for a kiss, slow and long. Wesley tucks his face against Spike's neck and his breathing evens back out as he dozes into half-awareness, the in-out-in-out rhythm of security, fingers curling against Spike's chest, one-two-three-inhale-one-two-three-exhale.

His breath is warm against Spike's face.

Spike kisses him again, almost, nuzzling along his jaw, mouth to the corner of Wesley's sleepy smile, and Wesley shifts to tangle a hand in Spike's hair, shifting to curl his fingers around the back of his neck.

Wesley rolls, easily, pressing close on top of Spike, with another lazy smile and Spike arches against him, half hard already, pressing close into the warm, solid weight of Wesley's stomach as Wesley bends his head to kiss along Spike's shoulder, fingers tangling in the heavy material of the sheets and pulling them back, touch warm against Spike's side.

This is familiar, the slam-stutter rhythm of Wes's heartbeat under Spike's fingers, the way Wesley's mouth feels against his skin, the constant need to remind himself he doesn't really have to breathe.

"Evening," Wesley murmurs, with a soft laugh against his ribs.

"Evening," Spike repeats, head tilting back with a smile, and lets the world slip away.

*