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Gloryhole part 7
Step three was the part Spike knew he was worst at: biding time. He’d figured on a week or so of subtle hints, covert signals, significant glances that said The eagle has landed and The red flag flies at midnight. He got three days. He dropped into the gym while Xander was in there, lifting weights alone with Judge Dredd on the television. Made a couple of allusive comments about the weather. Waited until he heard the skip-tap of a hopeful heart, then buggered off again. Did the same thing during his rounds on the ward. Three days of that, and then the universe handed him a gift horse. He stopped by Xander’s room in the early morning, and found him sitting on his bed with his back against the wall and his arms cinching his knees to his chest. As if he’d fly apart if he let go. His eyes were wide, his blood up.
“Everything all right?” Spike paused warily in the doorway, but Xander was nodding.
“I just saw Secretary Jhabvala.”
Secretary Jhabvala? Spike almost asked. He was distracted by the red mottling on Xander’s throat, and by the smell of blood in the air. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Xander hesitated, seemed about to say more, then kept his mouth shut. His face was urgent, though, so Spike stepped in and swung the door closed behind him. “Jhabvala’s one of the guys in charge of the insurgent problem.”
“Oh, right.” Still no bells, but whatever, he hadn’t started to read the newspaper just because the world ended. “What happened to your neck?”
Xander shook his head impatiently. “He said the insurgents took Chicago last night.”
“They—“ Spike broke off and lowered his tone. “They did. Yeah. Came in here to tell you that, actually.”
“Holy shit.” For a few seconds Xander just sat there, staring into space, his face glowing with the confirmation. Chicago? Spike thought worriedly.
“This Jhabvala guy, he did that to your neck?” Spike stepped closer for a better look at the bruises. It was like looking at his record collection after Harmony trashed it. It made his stomach ache with a kind of suppressed, unhappy heat.
“He was tense.” Xander blew it off, already forgotten, his hands clamping tighter on his knees until the tendons turned white. “This is happening fast, I feel like—I don’t really feel ready for it, somehow.” He gave a nervous laugh, and looked at Spike with a sort of manic optimism. The way puppies looked at you through the shop glass. “What’s the plan?”
“Don’t worry about the plan,” Spike said shortly, walking over to the sink and pulling the towel off the bar. “You should get something on that throat.”
“It’s fine.” Xander frowned in irritation at the encroaching towel, and tried to take it out of Spike’s hands. Spike held it away. “Listen, what do we do now?”
“Nothing.” Spike made his tone flat, to rein in Xander’s attention. “Tip your head.”
Xander stared at him wide-eyed, as if Spike had asked him to throw javelin. “Nothing? Spike, come on.”
“Chicago’s a long way away.” Spike pushed the towel to Xander’s neck and held it there, ignoring how he tried to twist free. “This is L.A., we’re going to let things happen. If you fuck it up now—“ He let that float into silence, knowing Xander could fill in the blank for himself.
Xander sat staring at his toes, his head tipped to the side, his arms so tight around his knees that his triceps stood out an inch. Spike held the towel uselessly to his neck, trying to think. Chicago. Fuck. Maybe it was misinformation, or a mistake.
“Did Lou see this?” he asked, touching a nickel-sized bruise with one fingertip. Looked like Jhabvala enjoyed a little throttling with his sex. When he was tense, at least. Nice.
Xander shrugged. “Jhabvala’s a high roller.”
“What, so nobody cares if he half-kills the help?” That came out shriller than he meant it to, and he pinched his mouth shut with a scowl. Xander gave him a distracted, faintly amused look.
“They’ll take it out of his account.”
“Taking it out of his account doesn’t help you though, does it?” Spike knew he sounded ridiculous—he’d put bruises like that on Xander’s neck himself, after all—but he couldn’t help himself. That was actually the point, when he gave himself a minute to think about it. He’d put bruises on Xander’s neck once before, and maybe he would again, but the point was, he had the right to, and nobody else did. Not Senator Jhabfuck, not Lou, not even Forsythe. Somewhere along the line Spike’s views had walked all the way around the circle and now everything sat a whole lot differently. “Someone needs to have a conversation with this wanker.”
Xander was looking at him strangely, he realized. Not just faintly amused anymore. More like bewildered, or even astonished.
“Things are happening,” Spike muttered, to jerk Xander’s attention away from him and back to…whatever the hell was going on. “Now is not a good time to be laid up, all right?”
“I’m fine.” Xander’s hand came up and tried gently to take the towel off his neck again. Spike took his own hand away abruptly, and stepped back from the bed. “Spike…” He sat there holding the towel obediently to his throat, his eyes big and black. Eyes like that could make you do the stupidest things. “You’re going to help me, right?”
“Said I would, didn’t I?”
“You’re going to get me out.” It’s not a question—it was like he couldn't quite stand to make it a question, in case the answer was no.
“Get some sleep.” That was cruel, but Spike was suddenly both irritated and exhausted. He needed some time to figure this out, see how developments were playing into the strategy. And he couldn't do that with the smell of Xander’s abused body up his nose. “I’ll be in touch.”
It was ridiculous—he might as well have laid a finger alongside his nose and winked—but Xander clearly wasn't seeing the humor. He licked his dry lips and nodded, and his big black eyes followed Spike all the way out of the room and down the hall, through the door, and out.
Senator Jhabvala may have been a whore-throttling fuck, but his information was good. Chicago was alight with the biggest concentration of UV hits ever seen--the news feeds made it look like daytime at three a.m. The whole city was ash, as far as anyone could tell. Humans were pouring into it from all directions, even across the lake in makeshift rafts. President For Life Marsha was on three channels at once, looking calm and saying the same things over and over: the situation is isolated, the insurgents will be crushed, the Orb is safe. Meanwhile, L.A. was freaking out.
Spike walked home through dead streets, nobody around because everyone was inside watching the news with big fat saucer eyes. Passing the open doors of pubs and restaurants, he heard the same news stories on repeat. Marsha's faint Jersey accent got stronger when was rattled, he noticed. He wondered how she'd made it this far with a tell like that.
At home he sat in front of the telly with The Bug on his lap, scratching her ears absently while the flares continued to go up over Chicago. It was pretty, in a way. Then reports started of lights in Boston, and the aesthetics didn't seem as interesting. He dumped Bug and got the whiskey. Apparently it was really happening. God knew how, but it was. He couldn't decide how he felt about it. Numb, mostly. And cheated.
The cat watched narrowly from the door to the bedroom while he drank himself through the day.
He fell asleep at some point, and woke up to the shrill jangle of the telephone. It was night again. His mouth tasted like fungus. Not the expensive kind, the kind that grows behind toilets. He was lying on the floor beside the couch, the empty bottle at his head, the television muted but still on. Either they were re-running footage he'd already seen, or Boston was still under fire. He flung a hand out and knocked the receiver out of the cradle, then dragged it to his lips.
"What."
"Spike--it's Forsythe."
Spike licked the inside of his mouth, and considered throwing up.
"Are you there, Spike?"
"Yeah."
"I called to check in. And to say thank you. The situation--this is...it's just staggering."
Spike opened one eye and looked at the television screen. The text at the bottom of the image read Seattle. He opened the other eye.
"Nobody saw this coming," Forsythe said. "But I think you did. You were right. I really can't believe any of this is happening. The Council will take care of it, of course, but my God, how did it get this far?"
"Seattle," Spike said dumbly, sitting up.
"Are you all right, Spike?"
"I'm fine."
"Well, I wanted to let you know I'm having the whole group put down. God, it's a waste, but the risk right now is just too--"
"You're what?"
"Putting them down. Spike, are you sure you're okay?"
"Ten minutes," Spike said, standing up so fast he almost fell down again. "I'll be there in ten minutes."
