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Gloryhole part 9
The news feeds from Europe cut out three days later, in the middle of some footage of London lit up like a Tahitian beach front. Spike reached for the remote and flipped to another channel. There were only four left now. President for Life Marsha wasn't on any of them. The whole eastern seaboard was under heavy fire, lights all the way from Vermont to Philadelphia. There were rumors that Marsha had the Orb in an underground bunker in D.C., an airtight lightproof cave left over from the Cold War. There were also rumors that the humans were starting to blow things up.
So far things in L.A. were still relatively quiet. Seattle'd found its feet again, thanks in part to some well-timed crappy weather. Under heavy fog, the insurgent cell up there had been found, caught, and squished into tiny bits. They kept showing it again and again, relentlessly optimistic about the fate of the west coast, while Europe fell off the map.
Spike watched silently, the cat in his lap, the phone beside him. A week, Forsythe had said. At the time, Spike hadn't bothered to ask whether that meant a working week. Now he turned it over and over in his head--five days or seven, stupid absurd totally crucial difference--barely noticing the pretty lights engulf another hapless news crew. Outside, there was gunfire and shouting. The door to the apartment was barricaded. He was waiting for the electricity to shut off.
He paced the apartment, studied the street without showing himself in the window, glanced at the television, smoked cigarette after cigarette. He crumpled dollar bills and tossed them for the cat to chase. He lost his appetite halfway through every mug of blood he heated.
He'll just break, Forsythe had said, staring down at Xander's sleeping body.
Watching umbrellas swarm by in the street below, Spike wondered if Red had any of this in mind when she cast that protection spell. Probably not. But then, Xander was the only human who'd made it out of Forsythe's alive. So maybe the spell was still working, maybe it really would keep him safe at least a little while longer. Just long enough for things to tip over into total insanity. Just long enough for Spike to get a hand in. A week. Or forever. Whichever came first.
On the fifth day, he decided to start using his own definitions. Seattle had erupted again, a small light bomb had gone off in an L.A. bus, things were starting to seem close to total breakdown. The telly was down to a single channel, the one the government had taken over. It did nothing but broadcast rote reassurances and safety precautions. Carry an umbrella, avoid crowded places. Obey instructions from authorities. Although where the authorities were at this point was anyone's guess.
He opened three cans of tuna for the cat, put them down in a row in front of the refrigerator, and moved the bookcases away from the door. Scarfing tuna, Bug watched him slip a couple of stakes into his coat and step out.
"Back soon." He wasn't really sure that was true, but it was good to use his voice again. He hadn't said a word since he'd come home from Forsythe's. He didn't have anyone to talk to.
Bug went back to the tuna. He closed the door, locked it, and went down the darkened hallway.
The streets smelled like burnt tires and rot. The sidewalks were strewn with strange rubbish. He passed an overturned Red Flyer wagon covered in blood, a glittering shoal of CDs, a box of cheap porn paperbacks. In an alley, two bodies were struggling. He glanced in and kept going, one hand on the stake inside his breast pocket.
There weren't many people in the streets now, at least not alone or in small groups. He caught sight of a couple of large gangs, clustered at the far end of streets he didn't walk down. There were fires in storefronts, the tang of gasoline, alarms in the distance. Most of the street lights were out, either because they'd been broken or because the power grid was collapsing. Once he heard automatic gunfire. It was behind him, probably five or six blocks up. He didn't turn around, but he walked a little faster.
It took him twenty minutes to cover the distance to Forsythe's, and when he got there he wasn't surprised to see the place boarded up and closed down. He didn't pause, just went straight down to the side door and punched the numbers into the combination lock. Forsythe had given him the code in a matter-of-fact way, not bothering to mention what they both knew: there wasn't any property left to worry about anymore. Someone had tried to bash the door in at least once--there were white scrapes and dents in the metal, and the buttons on the lock were scratched. It still worked, though. Thank God.
He closed the door behind him, stepped into the dark hallway, and listened. The place was silent. It put a chill down his spine--things had got bad fast in the last day or two, he'd waited too long, Forsythe had scuppered the whole thing and now it was too late. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe it was better if Xander got out of it all that way--at least it would mean he was done fighting. Done fighting and done being fucked. On the other hand, it would be incredibly irritating if all this effort came to nothing.
Somewhere down the hall, he heard a door open.
"Forsythe?" He kept one hand on the stake, and wished he'd thought to bring a gun. It would be satisfying to shoot Lou, if nothing else.
"Spike!" The lights came on suddenly, and Forsythe stepped out of a doorway down the hall. He wore a dark grey suit with a white shirt, no jacket. He'd loosened the tie, so it hung like a noose around his throat. In his right hand, he held a shotgun. "What are you doing here?"
"Came to check in." Warily, his eyes on Forsythe's shotgun hand, Spike started down the hall. "Still got an investment in this place, don't I?"
Forsythe smiled faintly. Closer up, Spike could see the circles under his eyes, and the ragged ends of his fingernails. Forsythe always had manicures. "How is it out there?"
"Not bad." The room Forsythe had been in was a small office, he could see now. There was a desk covered with files, a bottle of tequila, a mountain of shredded paper. "Not good, either. How is it in here?"
"Okay." Forsythe raised the shotgun and let it rest across his shoulder in a negligent way. He seemed different, somehow. The timbre of his voice seemed lower, less fussy. His movements seemed more competent. "We had a little trouble a day or two ago, but they took the discouragement okay."
"Where's Lou?"
"Lou..." Forsythe pursed his lips. "Lou kind of quit."
"Kind of?"
Forsythe swung the shotgun off his shoulder and turned toward the office. "Drink?"
"Christ, yes." Peering around the doorframe, he toed a pile of shredded paper. "Didn't take you for a tequila man, Forsythe."
"Pete."
"Sorry?"
Forsythe raised the bottle to his mouth and drank. His Adam's apple jumped in the open throat of his shirt, and the level in the bottle dropped an inch. He lowered it, wiped his mouth, and held it out. "Pete Farmer. I made that Staunton Forsythe shit up when I got turned."
Spike put his hand out carefully and took the bottle. "Right. Well...thanks for the drink."
"No problem." Forsythe seated himself on the edge of the desk and watched while Spike drank. "So, I guess you probably didn't come back here for me." His tone was regretful, but not surprised.
Spike wiped his mouth and handed the bottle back. The booze cut a warm line down his middle, and held a palm against his belly. "Thought I'd check in on Troy. See how that training worked out." He had no idea whether he sounded sincere or not. At this point it hardly seemed to matter.
Forsythe put the bottle on the desk and nodded. "Sure. You want to see him?" Before Spike could answer, he pushed off the desk and started for the door, the shotgun still swinging loosely in his grip. Spike gave the tequila a longing look, then followed.
They walked in silence down the hall. The window in the door to the whores' quarters was dark. Forsythe punched in the code, pushed the door open, and stood aside. "He's in his room."
Spike went through warily, half expecting a pair of shotgun shells in his lower back. Xander's door was ajar, and his room was dark. With the tip of his finger, Spike pushed the door all the way open. Xander was sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, his knees pulled up to his chest. He was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of loose khakis. He'd lost a few pounds, he hadn't shaved. Apart from that, he looked the same as always. The same as he used to look a million years ago, in Sunnydale. He needed a haircut and his clothes were too big. It was like looking into a time warp.
"Hey," Spike said. He was holding himself taut, ready to step back if Xander made a sudden movement. They hadn't exactly parted on good terms.
But Xander did nothing. He didn't seem to have heard anything. His eyes, Spike noticed, were sort of weird-looking. Fixed. He was staring at the opposite wall as if there were something absorbing there, as if he were lost in some invisible picture show playing out on the cement.
"He's been like that for three days," Forsythe said, from the darkness behind Spike. "We had to pull him out of the program."
"What--" Spike crouched down and squinted, trying to get a better look without getting any closer. "What's wrong with him?"
"He's busted," Forsythe said simply. "Loco. Crazy in the coconut." Spike looked up with a frown; Forsythe shrugged. "He spent the first two days trying to punch Lou in the face, then he just shut down." He studied Xander wearily. "He said some stuff about you."
"Did he."
"He did." No way to read that mild, quiet tone.
Spike stood up and put his hands in his pockets, past the comforting cool touch of the stake, to find his cigarettes. He pulled them out and lit one, then offered the packet to Forsythe. Forsythe took one without comment. They stood in the doorway, smoking. Xander didn't move.
"Well," Forsythe said at last, tapping ash to the floor. "He's no good to me anymore, so you might as well take him."
It occurred to Spike to keep up the bizarre pantomime, to say What do I want with him?, to make Forsythe convince him. But one look at Forsythe's face told him that was a bad idea. They were past playing that little game. "Okay."
Forsythe shouldered the shotgun, stepped into the room, and hooked a hand under Xander's right arm. He pulled, and Xander stood up. When he turned toward the door, Spike saw the dull steel tag they'd already punched through the cartilage of his left ear, to mark him as owned. A streak of dried blood ran from the piercing down the side of his neck to the collar of his shirt.
"You'll want to be careful getting him home," Forsythe said, pushing Xander gently forward so he started to walk toward Spike. His expression was still blank, dislocated, eerie. Spike took a superstitious step back into the hall. "He's tagged, but I doubt that'll matter out there right now."
"Right."
"Lay low until this all blows over. Don't worry about the official registration until later." As if he understood that Spike wasn't going to take over, Forsythe steered Xander toward the door and punched in the combination.
"Right. Look, about my money--"
"Seven and a half percent, yeah. I've got it in the safe, I think."
Spike took a sharp drag on his cigarette, and they looked at each other in the brief orange light. "Nah, forget it. I'll reinvest. When all this blows over."
Forsythe's gaze dropped to Spike's lips, and stayed there for a moment. Regret shadowed his face. "Okay, Spike. We'll talk later. When we're back up and running again."
They went back through to the lighted hallway, and the door closed behind them with a heavy, final clang.
"Put this on." Xander didn't respond, so Spike wrestled the sweatshirt over his head, and hauled his arms through the sleeves. With the hood up, it hid his face and neck, which was good. The less anyone saw of him, the better. The less chance anyone noticed the tag that meant he was human, the better. "Stay close, and do what I tell you. Right?"
Xander stared into space. Spike waved a hand in front of his face, and he didn't track. He wasn't drugged, just...gone. Whatever the hell they'd done to him, it'd opened a trapdoor somewhere and he'd used it to exit the building. Or maybe it wasn't just the training that'd done it.
"Sorry," Spike said, pushing Xander's arms through the sleeves of the bulky down coat Forsythe had lent them. "It was for your own good, I promise."
Bundled awkwardly into his layers of cast-offs, Xander had no opinion. Spike gave him a final once-over, slipped a stake into his coat where he could reach it if he remembered how, and opened the door. "Right, we're off."
The streets were silent and dark. Spike led the way, walking fast with his hand clamped around Xander's bicep, hauling him along. Rats swarmed in the gutters. In the distance, whooping and gunshots. Spike walked faster.
Halfway home, they were rushed by something from the mouth of an alley. The suddenness of it almost knocked Spike off his feet. He lost hold of Xander's arm, heard scuffling and the sound of bodies colliding. Then he had the stake in one hand and the tail of a ratty tweed coat in the other. He yanked hard, and the vamp came squealing back onto the point. Dust exploded. Through it, he saw Xander stagger backward, catch his balance, and turn to run. Not completely lost in la-la land, then. Spike grabbed the hood of Xander's sweatshirt and held on, and Xander stopped with a startled Urk.
"Christ." Spike gave the hood an irritable yank, and Xander turned around, his eyes on Spike's feet. "Do that again and I'll thump you myself." The hood was all twisted now, and the tag was showing again. He pulled it back up over Xander's head, took hold of his arm, and pointed them for home.
Thanks to a bizarrely merciful God or Red's lingering spell, they made it without any more meetings. Spike undid the locks and shoved Xander through the door first. Bug took one look and sloped off to the bedroom.
"Stay there." Spike parked Xander by the couch, and went back to barricade the door. Only as he was doing it did he realize that he hadn't really planned this part very well. For one thing, the only food he had in the house was Bug's tuna. "Well, home sweet home, I guess. Hope you like fish."
Either Xander didn't like fish or he wasn't hungry, because the tuna stayed untouched in front of him until Bug lost patience and leapt up to snarfle it. Xander didn't react. Stripped of his layers, he sat quietly where Spike had put him, in the one chair beside the little kitchen table. It was strange to see the borrowed trainers on his feet. It had been a long time since Spike had seen Xander wear shoes.
"So." He lit another cigarette, blew smoke to the side, and fidgeted with the lighter. "You really batty now? Or just pissed off?"
Xander blinked. When Spike raised the cigarette his eyes followed the glowing tip. It was dim in the apartment, almost dark, because it didn't pay to keep the place lighted up too much. It drew attention. Spike held the cigarette out across the table, butt-end first. "Want a drag?"
Xander studied the cigarette. Then he lifted his hands--the wrists together, as if they were bound that way--and instead of reaching out, touched the tag in his ear. His face registered some faint negative emotion. Displeasure, or discomfort.
"That's so nobody gets any bright ideas." Spike took the cigarette back and dragged on it hard. "Means you're someone's property. In this case, mine."
Xander's eyes raised to meet his. They were dark and empty, like dead men's closets. Looking at them made Spike uneasy, so he looked away.
"Sorry about before." He had a sense of wanting to explain things, to absolve himself. Which was a laugh. "What I said, I mean. Before--" He wasn't quite sure what to say. "Back at Forsythe's."
"Forsythe's." Xander's voice was low and soft, as if he hadn't used it in a while. It startled Spike to hear him speak, in fact. A fact he covered by dragging again on the cigarette, pretending to relish the smoke.
"Yeah. You know, about the rebellion."
Xander was still staring at him, he realized. It was a frank, passive, excruciating stare. Not something you could tell him not to do, but not something you wanted to sit there and take. It was hard to know exactly what was going on behind that flat look, and at the same time easy to guess.
"What about the rebellion?" Something seemed to pain Xander as he said it; a kind of flinch traveled over his face.
For a couple of seconds Spike considered lying. He'd lied so much already, what did it matter if he did it once more, harmlessly, to make himself look better? He could say that he'd been mistaken, that the rebellion had almost been crushed but flared back up again in the last few days. He could say he'd only bought Xander to make his last few days of slavery a living hell. For that matter, he could actually do that. He could tell Xander to get on his knees and earn his keep. It was his right--he owned Xander now. But for some reason the idea didn't appeal.
"I lied." His own voice sounded bizarre in his ears. What the hell was he doing? "The Council's fucked, the whole east coast's going up like a birthday cake. Give it two days and they'll be setting off bombs in Beverly Hills." He paused and assessed Xander's expression. No change. "You win."
Xander lowered his eyes and studied Bug, who was getting through the tuna at a good clip. "Who?"
"Who what?"
"Who wins?"
In frustration, Spike reached out and swept the cat off the table. "You do, you stupid wanker. All of you. Humans, the good guys. You know."
For almost a minute, Xander didn't move. Then he slowly raised his arms and placed his elbows on the table. He lowered his forehead to his palms and pressed it there. Spike watched the top of his head and waited. Nothing happened.
"I had to say all that," Spike said finally, when his cigarette was almost out. "He wasn't going to sell you unless you weren't worth anything." Momentarily, self-righteousness bolstered his tone. "You wanted me to get you out of there, so I did. Wasn't exactly easy on my end either, all right?"
Xander took a deep breath. Spike waited for him to say something, but he didn't.
"You pissed off?"
Nothing. Bug lashed her tail against the lino.
"Not like I planned this," Spike muttered, standing up and collecting his cigarettes. "Not my fault the bloody insurgents finally pulled their thumbs out."
"No," Xander said to the table. "It's not your fault."
"Right, so my advice to you is whatever went on back there, make your peace with it and--"
He stopped there, interrupted by the plate flying at his head. He batted it away, showering tuna in all directions and banging the sensitive tip of his wristbone. "Ow!" The pain blinded him for a second, just long enough for Xander to pick up the chair and swing it. It caught Spike mid-ribs, knocking him into the table. "Fucking hell!"
Xander, thank God, would always be a stupid fighter. Instead of keeping his distance he closed in and tried to punch. The two hits he landed didn't hurt, and Spike had the satisfaction of grabbing his wrist and jerking it around to the breaking point, which dropped him to his knees as if he'd been poleaxed. They stayed frozen, surrounded by broken china and bits of fish. Xander was breathing hard, his face white except for two high points of color in his cheekbones. His eyes were shining with furious tears. His mouth, Spike noticed absently, was pretty much at dick level.
"Make my peace with it?" Xander gasped, curling right to lessen the pain in his wrist. "Make my peace? You stupid motherfucker."
"Language." Spike gave the wrist an extra tweak. "It's over, Harris. Forget about it."
Xander opened his mouth and started a wheezing, breathless laughter. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He was crumpling to the floor, the fight apparently out of him, so Spike let his wrist go and stepped clear. Xander went fetal, still laughing. After a minute or two the laughter seemed more like tears.
"Look." He didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do about a grown man crying like a baby on his kitchen floor. Especially one covered in tuna. This had not been in the plan. "Look, just forget about it. Not like you're the only one in the world who's ever had to crawl through a sewer."
Xander took a hitching breath and wiped his hands over his face. "A sewer," he said, his tone quiet and dreamy. "That would be so nice right now."
Flummoxed, stymied, out of his depth, Spike lit another cigarette and pressed his back against the wall. Xander stayed where he was. After a few minutes, Bug reappeared from the bedroom and started to clean the tuna off the floor.
