“You ready for off, Harris?” Spike asked, tearing the cellophane off a red and white packet of cigarettes.

 

Xander had his coat on, his stake in his pocket and his maroon band on his wrist, dressed for the Trail but was suddenly not ready to go out into it after seeing the cellophane float to the floor. Seven weeks ago, Spike had asked him the same thing, are you coming, Harris? He’d gone, bouncing behind Spike, running down the tunnel to his surprise Rite of Passage. If Spike could do that to him for cigarettes, how far would he go for information on the doors?

 

Xander doused the candles and sprinkled ashes onto the fire to quench the high flames, did everything he could come up with to delay the trek to Main Floor.

 

*    *    *    *

 

The boy double checked the latch on the shutters, carefully turned the lamps down so the wicks were all the same length. Faffing around like a nervous old biddy.

 

“You’re not sweeping up now.”

 

“Just a once over, Spike. There’s dust and ash and…dust-ash.”

 

He grabbed the broom from Xander and leant it the corner. “Dust and Ash will be here when we get back.”

 

Xander unbuckled his wristband, buckled it on tighter, gave him a crooked smirk. “You doing okay for smokes?”

 

“Never done better. Let’s go,” he stuck a cig between his lips and headed out.

 

Xander had his sulk on, plodded more than the required three steps behind him. The sulking and plodding put him right off, dropped Harris down the ranks from being a potential shag to being a cross to bear. Just as well, Xander wasn’t the sort he went in for. Didn’t consume him like Buffy, match his lunacy like Dru or get him roaring like Angelus had done. Was lukewarm at best and forgettable at honest.

 

*    *    *    *

 

He found Jude rounding up bets at the gaming pit. “Wait here,” he turned to tell Xander. The boy was doubled over, hands on his knees, head hanging low, breathed as though choking.

 

“Jude, meet me in the Square. Thirty minutes,” Spike said, taking the three steps to Xander. “What now?”

 

“Cramps…think I ate something off or something.”

 

“Good place to cramp, middle of the crowd.”

 

“Sorry,” Xander squeezed out.

 

He glared at the bent head. Harris couldn’t have waited, had to display his weakness to a bunch of hungry demons. “Let’s find somewhere less central for this,” he said, clasping Xander’s elbow.

 

Xander flinched and shuffled back from him, gray under his tanned face and sweat over it. Fear in the splintered smile. Afraid of him. He liked that in most people, but not in his boy. He stalked forward, Xander edged back, and again when he took another step. He stopped, felt like he had a turn-key in him, twisting him tight.

 

“Out with it, Xander.”

 

“I’m not going through it again,” Xander said, knuckles white around the stake, voice on the rise. “Not again and don’t try to make me.”

 

He hadn’t the foggiest what Harris was blathering on about, but the spectators were taking notice and their attention was the last thing he wanted.

 

“You think I’m a brute? I’m not Angelus luv, wouldn’t force you into anything,” he said, glancing round for somewhere to sit. Big boulder some feet away, thin, white cat licking its arse on it. He morphed at the cat, it scuttled off and he drew Xander to the boulder, told him to sit.

 

Xander stayed standing, shoulders hunched in stubbornness. “Don’ wanna sit.”

 

So bleeding immature, Spike thought, sitting down and tugging Xander to sit between his thighs. He lit a cigarette. The crowd cheered behind him. Xander hunched his hunched shoulders forward. Blowing his lungful of smoke at the sky, he kneaded Xander’s shoulder, had his arm hugged around the tense chest by the time the cigarette was down to its butt.

 

Had the corduroy coat unbuttoned and his hand under Xander’s cotton tunic, strumming his nipple, not long after. And not long after that, his dick was throbbing on Xander’s back, fingers pulling at the too tightly knotted drawstrings on Xander’s too big pants. Mouth moving on a warm ear, sucked on the earlobe when a tiny croak shot from Xander. 

 

Spike eased his hand under the elastic waistband of boxer shorts, “Do that again,” he said.

 

“Do what?” Xander croaked.

 

“Yeah that,” he said, curling his fingers around the eye-watering erection he found. “My, not for the faint hearted, this.”

 

Xander turned his head towards him, eyes groaning shut.

 

Spike lost the will to tease. He cradled Xander’s crown, filling his palm with silky waves, angled his mouth over Xander’s just as another scratchy sigh escaped his boy. It gusted warmth into his mouth, made his cock twitch in excitement and he swept his tongue past the lips molded to his. Was met by bold stroking, tasted like cinnamon and earth, need and thrill.

 

Unmindful of time and place, Spike fisted Xander to the rhythm of their kissing, slow and wholly engaged…their husky sound-bites clashing with a loud, nearby cough. They broke apart. Xander pulled his tunic down over his midriff, Spike re-tied the drawstrings, glanced behind at Jude.

 

“You wished to speak with me, Master Spike,” Jude said.

 

“Give us a minute.”

 

“Certainly,” Jude clasped his hands in front of him and looked at the ground, waited.

 

He flashed Jude a touch of gold and pointed at the far end of The Square, “over there.”

 

“Of course, Mi Amo.”

 

Jude retreated and Spike buried his nose in Xander’s hair. “His timing stinks.”

 

“Whereas yours is impeccable,” Xander laughed, a low and breathless sound. 

 

Laughter and Xander-scents, excellent reasons for him to stay put. He wrapped his arms around the pliant body, giving them both time to calm the hell down. Holding Xander and him at rest from squabbling just a while longer.

 

*    *    *    *

 

“It’s like this. I’ve had a gut full of this place, want out. You’re gonna show me where the trucks come in so I can get out. Did you understand that Jude, or do you want me to go over it in French?” 

 

“Your meaning is clear, Mi Amo. Please come with me.”

 

Jude led Spike and Xander through one of the seven Town Square gates, into a tunnel, down a ramp, past nooks and hovels and a pond of gray-green water. They took a sharp right into a bright tunnel that widened into a massive forecourt backed by two hangar type doors. Open doors showing a dark night lit by fogged headlamps.

 

Marble slabs - larger versions of the butcher’s block back at the unit – took up a quarter of the forecourt. An industrial sized fireplace blazed in one corner and vehicles with number plates from Atlanta to Zurich were parked in the center of the hangar. Transit vans and pickup trucks, ambulances and five-door saloons all being unloaded and stripped down to spare parts by Runners.

 

Echoey, busy-bee footsteps as the Runners ferried car batteries and boxed goods to the marble slabs where Jude directed what went where, which boxes were opened first, which could wait and which were, “damaged. These goods are unsuitable to present to Earners. Dispose of them in the incinerator and have Amran replace the order.” Jude picked up a metal box and rattled it like a charity worker appealing for loose change on a street corner, “please store all motor stamps in the stamp box. Place them not in your pockets but in the box that which I have set aside for stamps.”

 

“He’s a bossy little so-and-so,” Spike said, glancing away from Jude to watch the activity at the open hangar doors.

 

A Pirate drove a van right up to the entrance, hopped out and called to a group of his colleagues milling outside the doors. They gathered behind the van and pushed it into the Trail, heaving until its head was clear of the entrance.

 

“Son of a bitch,” Spike softly laughed as a Runner climbed into the driver’s seat and drove the van all the way into the Trail. “Those blokes, the ones on the outside, they’re not about to step a foot in here.”

 

“Nor should you attempt to step a foot beyond the doors,” Jude said and he lobbed a rear-view mirror at the entrance.

 

It banged against the air, caught flame and whizzed back into the hangar, ricocheting on the walls before being sucked into the incinerator.

 

“Not the way out then,” Spike said.

 

“No Mi Amo. Nothing leaves by those doors. A strand of hair could not float through them.”

 

“We’re stuck,” Xander said.

 

“We were stuck before.”

 

“This is different, Spike. Now we’re double stuck, can’t leave Dyulin or The Trail.”

 

“Have a care, pet. It’s not Spike out here and your vibe can stand to sound more Earned-like.”

 

“Get over yourself, Spike. You’re jailbait, you don’t own shit.”

 

Couldn’t rightly say Harris was sloppy at making an exit. He stripped his wristband, flung it at the entrance and stormed off, head held haughty and hand coming up, finger raised to flip off the world. Didn’t even have the good manners to watch his band’s cremation. Wanted a sound whipping, did Xander.

 

“Ahem,” Jude coughed, and the Runners started up their chores again, hammering louder, talking louder.

 

Spike smirked harder. “Don’t you worry. I’m going to tan his hide when I get home. Haven’t got a whip in those drawers, have you Jude?”

 

Jude unlocked a drawer, took out a maroon wristband and an indigo envelope and brought them over. Spike fastened the band above his own indigo one and wafted the envelope in Jude’s face.

 

“What’s this?”

 

“It is an invitation to Amo Tresten’s Court. You are honored, for Master Spike is the only Fifth Ranker to receive an invitation.”

 

“Oh?” Spike quirked his eyebrow. “Do tell.”

 

“The first Court of Amo Tresten’s Festive Season is an illustrious event and though the date is far off, Master Spike may wish to prepare his boy, perhaps ensure he is appropriately perfumed.”

 

“Tresten ordered me warned, did he? Well I don’t scent at gunpoint.” Spike pocketed the envelope – and a Swiss Army knife from a worktop – and went in search of a flogger.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Crammed to over-capacity and crouching in the corner of the room like some evil Friar Tuck munching on dirty laundry, the straw basket troubled Xander. Troubled him enough to look around the room and notice he was fuming in near-darkness.

 

He rolled off the bed, grabbed a box of matches and tried to light a candle, but his hands were shaking and the matches jumped out of the box like water drops jumping off the skin of a beating drum. His heart was a beating drum, his lungs empty and he went to fill them at the window. Drank down chilled draughts of Dyulin air and coughed it up when the darkness outside stared at him.

 

That darkness flew in through the window and carried Xander away from the present.

 

*    *    *    *

 

He counts to ten four times, but she doesn’t come to find him.

 

“Mom?”

 

He can see her legs in the crack ‘cause it’s light outside. Her legs are under the table and they’re not moving. It’s dark inside and it smells like soap powder and shoe polish. He doesn’t like it.

 

“Please come and find me mommy!”

 

Her toes wiggle, but her legs don’t move. She’s sleeping again. He bangs on the door. He wants to kick, but his knees are up to his chin and he can’t move his legs to kick. He told her he was too big for in here anymore and he said he didn’t want to hide in here ‘cause the doors stuck last time. She said it was fixed up and she’d come find him anyways. But she’s not coming and it’s dark and he can’t get out.

 

He bangs his head and hands on the door, it hurts but he bangs because it’s black outside and now he can’t see her legs. His shirt is wet and it’s yucky on his back. He wants a drink of Kool-Aid and he needs the bathroom. He can’t, “breathe, I can’t…let me out mommy, find me…!”

 

It’s still dark inside. Outside it’s light and he can smell toast and lemons from outside. Her legs and his legs are under the table.

 

“Did you get him to school on time Tony?”

 

“I thought you got Rosenberg to drop him off.”

 

“I haven’t seen him since…” her legs walk round and round the table, “we were…hide and seek I think…Sweetie! Mommy can’t find you baby, you need to stop playing.”

 

He scratches on the door and her legs run to him.

 

“Shit, Tony! I asked you to fix the sink doors…”