::.. Witlingville ..::

Gloryhole part 6

The idea came suddenly and easily, while he was lying in bed in a state of dreamy post-wank. A million years ago, Angelus and Darla had wanted to buy a house in Manchester. Stupid thing to want, and he'd pointed out that they couldn't afford it anyway. Angelus punched him in the head, and Darla smiled in that smug, scheming way of hers. The next week, the grounds of the house were the site of a couple of gruesome murders. The price dropped. It was bought by a worthy curate. He died too, strung up on his own garden gate. The place was clearly cursed; the price bottomed out. Angelus bought it for a quarter of the original value.

They only lived in it for two weeks before Drusilla lit the attic on fire, but by that time they were tired of it anyway.

The next night he sat on the couch beside Forsythe, glass in hand, knees spread wide. Talking business.

"Been managing the help a couple weeks now," he said, settling his shoulders into the couch with an air of decision. "And I have to say. I have some concerns."

"Concerns?" Forsythe turned to face him, the ice tongs in midair. "What do you mean?"

"Concerns," Spike said, "about the help."

Forsythe waited, one eyebrow raised.

"They're not supervised," Spike said. "Not all the time, anyway. They see each other in the gym, at meals, in the hallways. Nobody there to keep an eye on them."

Forsythe frowned. "I don't have the personnel to supervise every moment of their lives. And we've never had a problem with insurrection--"

"Not one you know about." Spike paused and sipped his whiskey. This was where it got tricky, from here on out. It had to be done just right. "I see things you don't, Forsythe. I hear things."

Forsythe put the tongs back in the bucket and set his glass down. "What have you heard?"

"The insurgents are almost wiped out. It's on the bloody news every night, isn't it?"

"Of course. But none of my humans are insurgents, they're all carefully screened for any prior acts of aggression, or even the potential for aggressive conduct--"

"It's on the bloody news every night, and they see it every night, and you think that doesn't do anything to them?" Spike took a long, meaningful sip of his drink. "Put yourself in their shoes. You're whoring to the new master classes, and maybe you like it and maybe you don't, but at least you know there's still a last gasp out there somewhere. Then you find out it's about to get snuffed."

Forsythe sat in silence, his fingers fiddling with the end of his tie.

"I'll tell you one thing," Spike said. "Back in the bad old days, if I'd seen an all-out war on vamps every night on the telly, I'd have taken some interest in it. And if I'd seen the other side taking the match like we're doing to them, I might have started feeling a little...political."

Forsythe's eyes flicked up at that word, and his lips tightened. "What have you heard, exactly?"

Spike shrugged. "Nothing in particular. More like what I haven't heard, really."

"Which ones?" Forsythe looked braced for the worst, like a man already trying to reckon in his head the brutal costs of the cuts he was about to make. Spike paused, felt a tingle in his fingertips and at the base of his spine, then took the plunge.

"Troy."

Forsythe's eyes widened slightly. Then they narrowed, and Spike made his face as guileless as he could, submitting to the inspection. "Troy's our highest earner, Spike."

"I know that."

"I've had him checked from here to Tuscaloosa, and there's nothing on him. No association with the insurgents, no violence. Nothing."

So either Forsythe's fact-checkers were sloppy, or Red's spell was, what, still protecting him? Maybe. Spike shrugged. "I'm not saying he's an insurgent, Forsythe. I'm just saying I hear things."

"I thought it was what you didn't hear."

"Right. I don't hear a lot of what goes on, because you don't have them under watch."

Forsythe turned back to the ice bucket and picked the tongs up again. Closing them gently around an ice cube, he said, "Troy was sold to me by a gamer who worked his humans hard. A lot harder than I do." Spike said nothing, and Forsythe dropped the ice into his glass, poured himself a generous couple of fingers, and eased back into the couch. "You can't tell anymore, but when I bought him he had three broken fingers and a dislocated jaw. He'd been kept on a short leash in a little box and only let out to serve clients." Forsythe sipped his drink and smiled without amusement. "He was what we call a fixer-upper."

"You fixed him up all right," Spike said, letting some admiration into his tone.

"I didn't have the capital to buy big at the front end, so I bought good-quality salvage instead. It took nine weeks to make him presentable. Nine weeks of good food and a soft bed and nobody stepping on his hands. Plus a full course of antibiotics and an orthodontist for the jaw." Forsythe's expression was abstracted, and his lip was curled slightly in disdain or disgust. "Low-end gaming houses are filthy places, Spike. They treat their humans like monkeys at the zoo."

"So I hear." The mood had shifted noticeably, and a little surprisingly, Spike thought. Forsythe was swirling his drink in his hand as if he'd forgotten what it was for, his gaze still lost in the middle distance. "Glad you're not running a place like that, then."

"I'm not." Forsythe looked up, his lips still pressed tight. "But that's not the point. The point is, Troy was in that place eight months, according to his papers, and who knows where he was before that. He had three documented assaults on his record, which probably means a dozen or twenty, and he never once fought back."

"They wouldn't tell you if he did," Spike pointed out. "It'd just lower his resale."

"If the house doesn't document it, the client can go to the authorities. I check all of my humans before I buy. Not a single complaint on record for Troy."

Spike spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Fair enough. I'm just telling you what I hear."

"Or what you don't hear." Forsythe set his drink down, and for a moment Spike thought he'd blown it, and Forsythe was going to just stand up and walk out, conversation over. Instead, he dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes. Must be the booze making him tired, but his shoulders looked dispirited and his thin hair was fluffed up unflatteringly on the top of his head, and for the first time ever, Spike felt some liking for him. "Tell me what's going on with him, and I'll see what we can do."

"Thought I might make some suggestions of my own," Spike said, with the sense that he was feeling his way carefully forward over thin ice. Forsythe raised his head and looked at him. "He's a good kid, I like him. You know that."

"Sure Spike, I know that." Forsythe's laugh was just a touch bitter. Again, Spike felt a touch of sympathy, and stamped on it.

"Well, like I said, it's nothing definite. Mostly just a feeling I've got, and a couple of looks he's given me. And the fact there's all these bloody raids on the telly all the time--"

"What are you suggesting?" Forsythe sounded weary and a little impatient.

"Cut off the television." Spike sucked the shreds of a bar peanut from between his molars. "Give 'em movies, give 'em video games, whatever, but cut off the bloody newsfeed. Doesn't help to keep reminding them that they're losing, every time they're on the treadmill."

Forsythe studied his drink, then nodded. "All right. That's fine, we can do that. Anything else?"

Here went nothing. "Isolate him."

Forsythe blinked, then frowned. "Who--Troy?"

"Keep him away from the others for a while."

Forsythe considered that, then shook his head in confusion. "What for?"

"He's working on something. Got something up his sleeve, I don't know what yet, but if he's thinking about rebellion, you don't want him near the others. I'm not saying punish him, I'm just saying keep an eye on him."

"I thought that's what you do."

"I don't live here, Forsythe, and I'm not going to start. You keep letting them mix and mingle like they do, I've got no chance. Couple of weeks with no regular news, no revolutionary chitchat with his friends..." Spike finished his whiskey, dropped the glass on the table, and stood up. "Maybe that'll take care of it."

Forsythe stayed seated, staring at the coffee table with a frown. "What if it doesn't?"

"Couple of weeks, the insurgents'll all be dead anyway." Spike hauled his coat on and patted his pockets for his cigarettes. "Won't matter what he's thinking about then, will it?"

He passed Lou in the hallway on the way out, and felt eyes on the back of his neck until the door closed behind him.

He kept a low profile for a few days, to let things take their course. Turned up for what passed for work on a Thursday, late evening. Becky at reception said Xander was with a client. Fair enough, he was just there to walk the wards. He did it with a bottle of German beer in his hand, doing nothing more than glancing into the windows of the rooms he passed. Tiffany was reading a book, Dirk was doing push-ups beside his bed. Chablis was sitting in her chair, facing the door, staring back at him. He paused, then knocked. She nodded. He opened the door.

"Everything all right?"

"No more television," she said flatly. Her expression was unsurprised, unmoved. Her eyes were sharp and smart. With a sense of bemusement at his own stupidity, Spike realized that she was probably the insurgent in the group.

"No more television," he repeated. "Boring shite anyway, right?"

"No more Troy, either," she said. Her expression had tightened into dislike now. "What's up with that, exactly?"

"Troy's in a time-out right now."

"Why is he in a time-out?"

"Troy is..." He paused, assessing her face, wondering how far he could take it with her. "Troy's considering a new career."

She looked wary. "What kind of new career?"

"One that isn't this one." He smiled and raised the beer to her. "You're going to have to trust me on this one, Chablis."

"I don't trust you any farther than I could throw your maimed and blackened body. Spike."

He paused, then smiled despite himself. "I used to know a Slayer you'd have liked."

"I hope you die," she said simply, and turned to face the wall.

Dismissed, he closed the door and left.

Xander's room was empty, the door ajar. Spike went in, examined the three paperback mystery novels on the shelf over the bed, studied the toothbrush and the neat bar of soap, ran his palm under the pillow, then sank down against the wall behind the door and killed the rest of his beer. He sat there for a while, elbows on knees, listening to the faint sounds of industry in the rest of the building. By the time the door at the end of the hall opened with its businesslike buzz and click, he'd built up a thin, vibrating tension over his whole body.

He saw Lou's big shape through the crack in the door hinge, and Xander's smaller one in front of him.

"There you go," Lou said simply.

"Thanks." Xander sounded tired and faint. He walked into the room and shut the door behind him, then just stood there in the darkness for a minute.

He looked...well, like a pornographer's wet dream. He was naked to the waist, covered in some kind of body glitter that picked out his muscles, all the lean lines of his body. His hair was black, heavy with oil, slicked back off his face. His eyes were kohled. Thick dark smudges, dragged half down his cheeks now, and rough black eyelashes. Had he always had eyelashes like that? And where the hell had the leather pants come from?

"You never wear leather pants for me," Spike said a little petulantly, and Xander jumped six inches.

"Holy fuck--" His heart was hammering, he'd stumbled back toward the door as if he thought he could get out that way. With one hand, he slapped at the light switch. It came on, and they both blinked. With the light on, he looked even more debauched. There was color on his lips, mostly chewed off now, but you could see the wineish stain. His nipples had been licked clean of glitter.

"Have a nice time?" Spike asked, rolling his beer bottle between his hands. The smell of booze and hash and come was pungent, nose-tickling.

"I--" Xander stopped, took a deep breath, and let go of the door knob. He'd been holding onto it for the last few seconds, Spike realized. He was very stoned. "What are you doing in here?"

"Cross-stitch." Spike smiled, watching Xander wobble and find his balance. "Mr. Carruthers branching out?"

"No." Xander paused, swallowed as if overcoming a wave of nausea, and headed for the sink. "What do you want, Spike?"

"Nothing. Just doing my job. Checking in." He tipped his head back against the wall and watched Xander run hot water over the hand towel. "Haven't been by in a while. How's life treating you?"

Xander said nothing. He bent over the sink and prodded at the towel with the tips of his fingers. Steam rose up out of the basin.

"Nice outfit," Spike said. Distractingly, he was getting hard. He hadn't kept his appointment the week before; backing off had seemed like good strategy. "Very Liz Taylor."

"Whatever the client wants," Xander said quietly, in a singsong way that made it sound like the company motto, which it probably was. He wrung the hand towel out and started scrubbing it over his chest and under his arms.

"That's right," Spike said. "Got a satisfaction guarantee here, don't you? Your friend Lou told me about it."

"They're satisfied," Xander said. Water was trickling down his ribs, headed for the leather. Going to mess it all up. His hands were shaking, Spike noticed. They. Two against one, then. Or more.

"Sure you did a good job," he said, returning his gaze to the bottle in his hands. "I told you, you're good at this."

Xander laughed, like a man who'd just been told he'd been promoted to head nightsoil collector. "Thanks. Thanks a lot." He wiped the towel over his face, then dunked it back into the basin. The black smears down his cheeks were like tiger stripes, all the way down to his chin now .

Spike started peeling the label off his bottle, trying to ignore the smell of sex and the way Xander's arms were shaking. "Listen, there's a couple of things you should probably know--"

"Spike." Xander stood up, dropping the towel into the water and letting his hands hang loose at his sides. With a shock, Spike realized he was crying. Not really crying, not sobbing, but his eyes were tearing and the shaking was up to his shoulders now. "Could you leave, please?"

Spike sat frozen, a damp curl of paper between his finger and thumb.

"I could just--" Xander broke off, scrubbed his forearm across his eyes, and turned back to the sink abruptly. "I could just use some fucking privacy right now."

Spike said nothing. After a few seconds, Xander went back to wiping glitter off his chest and arms with the wet cloth. He didn't seem surprised that Spike hadn't left. Well, he was used to not getting what he wanted.

Spike sat against the wall for another minute or two, then levered himself to his feet and set the empty bottle carefully down on top of Xander's dresser. Xander ignored him.

"Get those trousers off," Spike said, pulling the other hand towel off the bar.

Xander didn't respond for a second. Then the words filtered through, and he stopped with his hands halfway to his face, dripping, raccoon-eyed. His expression was one of numbed and hopeless shock.

"Oh, come on," he said softly, as much to the world in general as to Spike.

"You're fucking them up," Spike said. "You ruin a pair of trousers like that, you don't have to pay for them?"

"I don't--" Xander paused. "You're worried about my pants?"

"Leather's not cheap," Spike said, walking over and taking the wet towel out of Xander's hands. "Go on, get 'em off."

Xander stood for a minute with his hands braced on the edge of the sink, as if he couldn't stand up any other way. In the mirror, his expression was bitter and internal. Spike folded the hand towel into a neat rectangle and waited.

Finally Xander undid the trousers and got them down. It took some doing. Leather clung, especially after you'd fucked in it. His legs were golden too, beautiful paint-smeared Adonis legs, two hundred dollars an hour. Naked, he was damp and shiny and trembling, and he smelled like hard fucking. The trousers were going to need dry cleaning, Spike reflected, kicking them out of the way.

"Lie down." He ignored how Xander's shoulders rose at that, and the way his mouth compressed. "Go on." At the sink, he ran the water as hot as he could stand, and floated both the towels in it. Behind him, the bedsprings squeaked.

"There's a couple of things you should know," he said, turning around with one of the towels in his hand. Xander was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, his hands loose at his sides. Naked, golden-skinned, charcoal stripes down his cheeks and neck. His belly was a taut gleaming curve, the hair between his legs was spangled with gold dust. His cock was golden and small, defenseless. Spike sat down on the bed beside him, and he flinched.

"They've isolated the lot of you," Spike said, wiping the cloth up the side of Xander's throat, erasing the black line. "You know that, right?"

Xander blinked, and his eyes left the ceiling and refocused on Spike's face. "What?"

"Because of the insurgents." Spike ran the cloth behind Xander's ear, refolded it, and wiped beneath his jaw. "Things are getting...iffy."

For a minute Xander just stared at him. His eyes were huge and black and wet, veined with red. His blood smelled like bong water. He reached up and caught hold of Spike's wrist with hot fingers. "What--what's going on?"

Spike pulled his wrist free with a slight frown, then went back to wiping Xander's collarbone. "Insurgents're making a comeback. Not exactly on the run anymore. There's rumors they're going to make a go for the Orb."

"The Orb..." Xander's gaze was suddenly desperate and keen. He started to sit up, and Spike pressed him back down. "Spike, if they get the Orb they could win. They could make everything the way it used to be--"

"No bloody kidding." Spike wiped Xander's forehead with the cloth, examined the golden residue, and folded it over again. "That's why no telly, and no talking to each other."

"They're worried about rebellion." Xander let Spike pick up his hand and start wiping his fingers, hardly seeming to notice. That was one of the breaks right there, at the base of the index finger. Funny how he'd never noticed it before. "Do you think...?" His eyes were back on Spike, pleading, ravenous. "You think it could actually happen?"

"Doesn't matter what I think," Spike said. He finished with the first hand and started on the other. "What matters is what they think. And what the insurgents do, I guess."

Xander fell silent, his breath rapid now, his gaze fixed somewhere in midair between him and the ceiling. Spike kept wiping in silence, glancing up occasionally to watch the wheels spin. The room was quiet, and he was starting to feel a contact high.

"Probably won't pan out," he said finally, when the cloth in his hands was clammy and used up. "Nothing to get your hopes up about, anyway. Just thought you'd like to know what was going on." He stood up, walked back to the sink, and dropped the towel in. The other one was still floating in there, hot and clean, and he plucked it out and started squeezing the water from it.

There was movement on the bed behind him; when he glanced up, he saw that Xander was propped on one elbow, studying his back. Even bright-eyed from the drugs, he looked exhausted. He was frowning.

"Why are you doing this, Spike?"

A little slow, but you had to cut him some slack for being stoned. Spike counted to three, then turned and shrugged, his eyes on the towel in his hands. "You're not so bad, Harris. And I figure maybe I owe you one."

Xander rubbed a finger slowly down the bridge of his nose. "What for?"

Spike gave a short laugh, and glanced around the room. "Right, sorry, I forgot you like this. You like everything you do. You're a lucky sod, aren't you?"

Xander studied him for a moment, then looked away. At the door, Spike realized. Xander's throat was still golden, and it shone when he swallowed hard. "You think it could actually happen?"

Timing wasn't everything, but it was a lot. Spike let a few seconds go without saying anything. The cloth dripped onto the floor, and he gave it another quick wring into the sink.

"Yeah," he said finally, almost in an undertone. "Yeah, I think it might."

Xander's heart kicked up painfully, and the springs squeaked. When Spike turned back, Xander was staring at the ceiling again, but his expression wasn't empty anymore. It was preoccupied, verging on overwhelmed.

"Right, then." Spike folded the towel into a rectangle and tossed it onto Xander's stomach. "Just thought I'd check in." He started for the door, and the springs squeaked again.

"Spike." He turned back. Xander was up on one elbow, staring at him with all the hope in the world. Which wasn't much, these days. "Can you get me out of here?"

Timing. Spike stood there in silence, letting the seconds tick by.

"Please," Xander said. Automatically, or maybe not, he arched his body a few degrees to show his belly and throat. Spike's cock twitched.

He took a few steps back to the bed, slow and considering. When he got there, Xander lay back and watched him with wet black eyes. His legs were parted now, as if by coincidence.

"That would be stealing," Spike said, his eyes locked on Xander's. "That would be illegal."

"You like illegal," Xander said. "Illegal is your thing."

"You know what they do to human smugglers these days?"

Xander said nothing, which meant he knew.

"I like all my bits where they are," Spike said. "And I don't like anything rammed up where it doesn't belong."

Without looking away from Spike's face, Xander reached down and caught hold of Spike's hand. He pulled it to his throat, to the pulse there.

"If you get me out of here, you can do anything you want." The beat of blood under Spike's fingers made that a more elaborate promise.

Spike paused, then crouched beside the bed so their faces were inches apart. Softly, and without moving his hand, he said, "If I get you out of here, you're going to make it worth my while before you walk away." He pressed the artery with the pads of his fingers.

Xander nodded, swallowed, and nodded again. Carefully, he lifted Spike's hand away from his throat. "Get me out of here."

All the tension in the room narrowed to a single point over Spike's right temple, then suddenly evaporated. He felt a rush of ridiculous, self-congratulatory giddiness, the urge to vamp. That would be bad. He grinned instead, then thought what the hell, and leaned in for a fast, wet kiss that made Xander's heartbeat trip.

"See what I can do," Spike said, standing up. His mouth tasted like glitter and THC. "Try to stay out of trouble for a bit, all right?"

He was just stoned enough to tousle Xander's hair on the way out, and to feel the silky-smooth texture against his fingers for the next ten minutes at least.