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Hellfire Tales: Away With The Boys In The Band pt 3/15(?)
apologies for not getting this up last night as planned. by the time I got to it I was more asleep than awake and gave up for the night.

full header & part one || part two






So much for staying asleep once he was asleep. The second the sand wore off, Matt was awake. The roll of the wheels and movement of the bus familiar but disorienting all the same. This wasn't his bunk...Xander.

He managed to squirm and turn onto his other side. He'd nearly had his nose in the back of the bus when he'd woken up—but that's about where he'd gone to sleep too. Xander was sprawled on his stomach taking up over half of their bed.

A—was that a rock or a crystal? Whatever it was, it gave off a pale blue glow and was more or less functioning as a night light. Matt wondered idly if that's all it did, was glow like a night light or if it had some other kind of magic spells worked into it. He dared anyone to blame him for being suspicious of obviously magic rocks.

Actually he wished someone would try to tell him that was stupid. Preferably someone who he could beat to a pulp without being guilty over it when he was through. Even with Xander making it easy on him, just—mostly just by being himself. He was so close to just snapping with the possessiveness, lust, jealousy and rage that came with the damned tattoos and...then things didn't make more sense, they just got fucking weirder and weirder. Werewolves, and hungry Incubi, Slayers, fucking Dracula. Even the fucking bus was “warded” and a goddamned glowing rock for a night light.

Matt bit his lip wondering if he dared let that go. He had it kind of tied up in—mental duct tape or something. At least for now, he could feel it straining and not wanting to be bound up. That had really been about the stupidest thing he'd ever done. Breaking down the years of barriers and walls to look at Coyote had been fucking STUPID. There weren't words for how stupid it was. He wasn't ever going to be able to get it all walled away again. He could feel the colors and lights and shit, but whatever exactly he'd managed to tie it up enough that it wasn't superimposed over his vision was still holding.

He really had the suspicion that Coyote had been trying to provoke him into using that shit, just hadn't banked on how deep and thoroughly Matt had locked it away and how fucking nasty the backlash was. Not really that Coyote knew he had that even...not exactly...just expected him to have something. He was weirdly sure he would have felt it if Coyote had tried more than “a glance at the surface”.

And that Serpents Children shit. What was that shit? It meant something. Rose said that the demon hunter she'd known over a century and a half before had a winged serpent tattoo. That demon hunter being Matteo Cortez, his however many greats grandfather.

Oh and the usually only sons. With prophecy maybe attached to a daughter—a daughter who wasn't theoretical and part succubus with a mother who'd been dead well over a century. Yeah. Great. Whatever they were maybe freaking out with the baby, likely was going to be that much worse or more.

Hell, Gerard couldn't make this shit up for one of his comics, and Gerard had a fucking insane imagination.

Xander stirred just a little and made a soft sound muffled into his pillow. The pain and shattered suddenly rolling off Xander hit Matt with the force of a baseball bat to the head. Sad, hurt, just fucking destroyed. Another muffled sound, close to but not quite a sob, just broken, destroyed.

Matt reached for Xander, his hand resting on the bare back he'd been trying not to look at. Xander was easy to like, easy to want—gorgeous, scars and all, sensual, gentle as hell even if he looked like he could tear someone apart barehanded. If he were free to, Matt had no illusions Xan probably could kill him barehanded. The man wasn't small and had been fighting demons since he was a kid. Xan dismissed himself as 'not that good' of a fighter and the weak link, but he was the one without 'super powers' still holding his own against monsters. Put him up against your average human and Xan would wipe the freaking floor. Hell, Xan was easy to just freaking fall for.

That didn't make this shit with the ruby better. It made it all that much worse.

Way fucking worse because Xan was... Xan was someone who deserved a fuck of a lot more than this shit. Someone Matt could have really went for if things were different, would have wanted to see what maybe could have worked out—instead Xan was spending his time pandering to the side effects of the curse and trying to keep Matt from losing his mind from all the fucking weird and at best being just fucking used if not almost brutalized on a regular basis when Matt couldn't hold back the shit from the ruby any longer. And then ended up trying to comfort Matt. Talk about fucked up.

Xander shifted again with a muffled agonized sound that was almost “No.”

“Xan, c'mon wake up, just a dream,” Matt whispered, gently rubbing Xander's shoulder.

Xander made another sound, that was definitely a sob and definitely no.

The whatever the fuck it was snapped completely loose.

Matt screamed. Everything fucking radiated. His palms pressed to his eyes. OH fuck, fuck fuck. Goddamned blinding, his head felt like it had been smashed open and his skin ripped off his body nothing but raw exposed nerves.

~*~

It took a second for the screams to register as not part of his nightmare, which had started as Willow on the bluff radiating black magic and wanting to end the world in a haze of rage and grief the night Tara was killed, then twisted and warped to Willow now, not black eyed and vieny but somehow worse. Anya and Jesse and Joyce. Dawn –destroyed. A spell yanking the key out of Willow's reach and without the Key the girl was a husk, dying on the floor. Andrew, Tyson. Oksana and Mike dead. Buffy little more than a zombie. Tara, hurt sobbing and broken beyond her mind ever recovering at Willow's feet. A burst of pure black magic from Willow aimed straight at Matt and he was pinned helpless unable to move, to do anything but watch.

It wasn't a dream. Matt was screaming.

“What? Safe, c'mon safe. Nothing's getting on this bus,” Xander rasped shifting and managing to pull Matt into his arms. Matt burrowed his face into Xander's chest, shaking and gasping for air. “Gotcha, gotcha, hon, what—what's—”

Gods Willow couldn't have gotten through the bus wards to get to Matt. Couldn't know Matt even existed yet. She—fuck would she have a clue of what she was messing with with the binding spells?

The door to the bedroom slammed open. Mike, Oksana, Vlad, who seemed to have managed to return to a moving bus and Jake whatever the hell he was. Oksana's squeak and the flying of the sheet upwards...Slayer or not, Vlad really needed his medieval head examined for insisting a freaking nine-year-old get dragged along on this.

“Have you truly so little control?”

Xander was going to figure out what that so very not human asshole was and find a way to slay him for that shit—

“FUCK YOU,” Matt managed to half-wail half-gasp out a few moments later.

Xander only barely registered Vlad and Jake's minor go round. Jake being snotty about why was one of the Keepers surprised at one of the Serpent's Blood being a powerful Shaman?

“Just fucking great, ancient assholes not only being cryptic but bickering in cryptic crap.” Xander growled under his breath holding Matt a little tighter to him. “Gotcha, gotcha, hon. They're not likely to be helpful for a while—” Bickering dickheads. Jake and Vlad were getting frigging loud. Vlad slipping into—Walla-whatever-the-hell medieval Transylvanian and Jake into, Xander had no freaking clue if the language was human or demon. Somewhere between second grade playground insults and a pissing contest by tone. Yeah, well, something was normal, the ones who knew what might be going on and had some actual power to do something? Totally freaking worthless having tantrums. Typical.

“KISS AND MAKE UP AND SOME FUCKING HELP ALREADY!” Xander snarled over his shoulder at the two. Oksana had apparently slipped out and squeezed back in between the two idiots now gaping at Xander.

“Puppy?” Oksana offered holding out her stuffed dog, already clung and loved into looking years older than the couple weeks it had been since Matt and Xander had bought it for her in Jersey. Tara had claimed to put a spell on it to chase away regular nightmares and made it so the Slayer dreams weren't scary even if they were awful. Xander thought it was more the kind of “spell” that only worked because Oksana believed in it so desperately. Slayer dreams were thankfully rare and so far, not a single nightmare though the poor stuffed dog had been squeezed nearly to rags Oksana clung to it so tightly in her sleep already.

Matt lifted his head away from Xander's chest. Xander reluctantly loosened his hold so Matt could move even that much. Matt's breath caught, almost sounding as if the wind was knocked out of him. “Thanks, baby, but you keep Puppy huh? I got Xan. You keep your puppy. She'd be sad with me and miss you.”

Oksana gave him a look like she was about to call him on the fact she was nine not three and knew better than her stuffed dog would be sad, but a second later the toy was held to her chest and arms wrapped around it, all but squeezing the stuffing out of the toy. “Sure?”

“Yeah. You keep Puppy.” Matt managed.

“Dream much good with Puppy,” Oksana said with a tremble in her voice.

“Better, they're better with Puppy. Yeah, 'spect so. You keep puppy with you. I'm okay.”

“Matt?”

“Okay. I'm okay now.”

“Uh huh,” Xander said doubtfully.

“You must have a bit more care with your shields and how you control your gift, little cousin. This bus is far too heavily warded and the ones who travel on it too magical of nature.” Jake Coyote said quietly.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Xander snapped, hell, even he kinda figured that much. Real helpful—not.

“I'm okay,” Matt managed.

Xander was pretty damned sure he lying through his teeth. The look on Oksana's face said she thought Matt was full of it too.

“Promise, sweetie, you and puppy go on back to bed. All of you...”

“You damn well better be okay,” Mike threatened.

“I am, kiddo,” Matt agreed. “Go back to bed.”

“Strengthen your shields, little cousin.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Matt shot back at Jake.

If Matt hadn't been gouging a hole in his side with the hand out of sight of the others, Xander might have almost bought that. Almost. And he'd known Matt longer than the kids or Vlad. Definitely longer than Jake.

Vlad scowled a minute and started back in at Jake.

“Get back to bed, and you two don't keep the kids up,” Xander said. He doubted either of them were going to be all that helpful, they seemed stuck on whatever the hell their bitching pissing contest was.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, squirt, I'm okay,” Matt assured Oksana who pounced for a second and hugged them both.

Xander kissed her cheek. “You and Puppy get some sleep. You've got to walk Pepper tomorrow. I'll take care of Matt.”

Mike eyeballed Matt hard but followed Oksana back to the bunks. Jake and Vlad headed toward the front lounge of the bus with “shout if you need us” from both in not so many words.

“Okay now, I'm calling bullshit,” Xander said softly as Matt's face was buried back in his chest and the other man was shaking.

“Fucking stupid.”

“What? What's stupid?” Xander frowned ruthlessly stomping down the reflexive hurt and anger, he didn't think Matt was calling him stupid but...

“Me.”

“Huh? How are you stupid?”

“I can't wall it back up.”

“Wall what?”

“I don't know. That aura book you let me read—like that only more...sorta...”

“You see auras?”

“Fuck I don't know.”

“Calm down. Calm down.” Xander murmured. “What happened that you were screaming?”

“Woke up, it slipped bout fuckin' blinded me, felt like my skin had been ripped off.”

“Not so much with the past tense by how you're shaking and your voice.” Xander snorted. Matt's voice was a bit steadier. Still winded to the point of a little gaspy and wheezy and obviously in pain, but whatever stubborn he managed to calm himself with Oksana and her stuffed puppy seemed to have done something.

“Ass”

“Yup.” Xander agreed. “Okay what was it that is blinding?”

“The bus—”

“The bus?”

“It's—not a color just bright.”

“Huh?”

“Heat off pavement, ya know, only bright, bright enough to fucking hurt to look at. Weird marks in it in colors but mostly just...like heat off pavement, only bright.”

Xander frowned. “The wards? You can see the wards on the bus?”

“I—is that what it is?”

“That or you're hallucinating and all the weird broke your brain or you took something interesting today but haven't noticed you doing any drugs yet so...”

“Not fucking stoned.”

“Didn't think you were.”

“You think I'm crazy?”

“I was possessed by a hyena on a field trip to the zoo when I was in school. My crazy meter is a bit skewed. I can buy seeing the wards even if I don't think I've heard of that before—feeling em yeah, but seeing them? New one on me but I could believe it.”

“Oksana's dog—don't ever piss Tara off to the point she does something about it.”

“Tara actually put a spell on the dog?” Xander asked curiously. “And no, pissing Tara off to the point she'd do something in anger—she really doesn't have it in her to strike out like that but if she did, yeah that'd be a big fucking stupid thing to do.”

Matt snorted a little and pressed in closer. Xander tightened his arms around him and rubbed Matt's shoulder a little with his hand.

“Spell on the dog?” Xander prompted when Matt's breathing got sharper and more pained and he began to tremble again. Distraction seemed to help...Xander could do that. He was king of distraction.

“Not—more—don't think it's a spell...not, not...”

“Tell me. Not going to think you're crazy. We've got Dracula being all pissy with the not human guy who followed you home up front and a freaking golem driving the bus.”

“A what?”

“Golem. Supposed to be mindless semi-disposable drones—don't really want to lose one cause they're a bitch to make and take a hella lot of magic, and some really freaking dark magic at that. Or in this case—a night of bad movies on sci-fi, a case of beer, and two drunk geeks with mojo babbling their way through comic books and Andrew's past as a wanna be evil overlord back when he was hooked up with Jonathan and Warren and made a freeze ray gun like Mr. Freeze's and a sex-bot for Warren and then later a Buffy-bot to impersonate Buff the time she died doing her swan dive off the tower Glory's minions had made to close the hell dimension portal.”

“What?” Matt squeaked.

“Yeah. Andrew and Tyson are under geis to never cast when they've been drinking. And Tara took away all of Andrew's Piers Anthony books for a few months. She really should've taken away his Crusade DVD's too. Andrew likes mixing tech and mojo a lot. But he's been put under geis not to experiment without approval and supervision.”

“Golem?” Matt didn't seem to be able to get more than one word out at a time with a shaky squeak to his voice.

“Yeah. Golem. Take one drunk geek with some seriously strong mojo and a hella strong affinity for blackest magics add one drunk geek with even more mojo and a hella strong afinity for earth elemental magics. Stick them on a power node on a Gateway Convergence of stacked up power nodes and an intersection of ley lines, using dirt that's soaked up power forever and a day because of where the dirts from. Too gods damned plastered to know their own names let alone exactly what spells they actually used. The result is now named Clay Grundy. That was Tyson's idea, the name. Andrew loved it. Tara took away the Piers Anthony. Whatever they did—and I really don't think they know exactly what they did, not exactly because the spells went wonky a bit—they ended up with a Golem that is...autonomous or can be, eventually when he's been alive for a while. And unmaking Clay is...more murdering an innocent than unmaking a walking dirt-drone. He doesn't even look like dirt—he looks like normal people. And...I need to see what the hells he actually did all day yesterday, I didn't see him once now that I think of it.”

“Golem.”

“Golem. If Andrew ever went all dark side for real, rather than just playing with comic book-induced delusions, he'd be fucking terrifying. He's scary enough just trying to be helpful. Reality and that boy kind of ignore each other a lot. Tyson's the same level of clueless geek who'd rather play in fantasy land with more power and less control.”

“Golem.”

“Yeah. Golem. What'd Tara do to Puppy?”

“Just...” Matt shook his head.

“What?”

“Nuts.”

“Babe, Dracula is up front and a golem driving the bus. We got married by way of a demonically cursed ruby plotted by a going on three hundred year old vampire. I'm not gonna think you're nuts.”

Matt made a sound a lot closer to hysteria than laughter. Xander rolled them enough to pin Matt Mostly underneath him.

“What'd Tara do to the dog?”

“Just—power. Willed it in not I dunno spelled it in...not specific, just.. power comfort, safety, reassurance, peacefulness. What she'd wrap Oksana up in anyway if she was there when Oksana woke up from a nightmare.”

“She basically willed a Tara-hug straight into Puppy?” Xander smiled. That was reassuring. The three seconds Tara had held Puppy before she told Oksana Puppy would stop her nightmares wasn't enough for any type of complex dream-warding. That kind of mojo that quick on a whim, even if the whim was to make a little girl feel better and ease her nightmares—was headed for Willow levels of badness and abuse of mojo. “Puppy can't be lost though. Tara put a little bit of herself in it to do that. Likely isn't enough to be too worrisome as strong as Tara is and with Hellfire's wards but...yeah. Not wanting to find out.”

“You tell me she made some fuckin' Harry Potter Voldemort shit thing—”

“Nope. Not Tara. Touch of her power went into Puppy, just a grain or two of sands worth, even as subtle as Tara is—we'd've noticed or Puppy would have set off the wards on the bus. Enough to hold that feeling for Oksana. Her magic, not her soul like the whatchamacallits Voldemort made.”

Matt burrowed more, if that was possible. Xander wrapped himself around Matt as much as he could, shielding Matt from whatever he was sensing and seeing so strongly it set him off screaming like he had was probably impossible but Xander was going to give it his best shot.

~*~

Knowing what the hell the shimmer that was just—fucking blinding was helped. Xander helped.

Oksana had helped. If only for the fact that terrifying her unnecessarily was not going to fucking happen if he could help it. If any of them could. The poor kid and her nightmares and hell, none of them really had a clue what the regular nightmares were. Oksana wasn't saying, not even with Vlad to translate and get around her very shaky English.

Desperation not to spook her was responsible for the worst of it being—shut off, blocked off? He didn't know. It just wasn't as much, still too much but not killing him. Backed off or turned off enough he could breathe and almost think even if it was still crushing and slicing at him.

It hadn't been this bad when he'd been stupid enough to break the crap loose earlier, the day before, whichever. Didn't make sense—the quiet spots...unless that had been a quiet spot. He remembered one quiet spot he'd found he got in so much trouble for when he'd been small. The alley behind his grandma Alvarez' apartment building, by the big green dumpster that had been there. A little spot really, probably only as big as the dumpster itself but it was there. Like everything had been wiped away and that place was still new, clean, unmarked.

Anything that unmarked and blank had to be deliberate. It had to be.

“Why would something be quiet?”

“Huh?” Xander's response was immediate and confused but...he didn't feel like he thought Matt was losing it.

“Today when I...Coyote bugged me and I actually tried to look at him...like the shit I used to see and...he kinda hid most of himself but...it was quiet,” Matt frowned. Quiet wasn't right. It was the best description he'd had at maybe all of four for that spot in the alley behind his grandma's building but it wasn't right. “Clean—like fucking bleached of anything that would make the shit—”

“Make what shit?”

“Colors, glows and lights and images...shit.. all sorts of shit that shouldn't be there,” Matt whispered. “It was..where it was quiet when I was little. Where I could just look at my shoes and stuff wasn't so loud and so close but—more like...spot that's just fucking bleached everything wiped away.”

“Somewhere ritually cleansed?” Xander suggested. “Something was there that was so bad or happened was so bad that someone performed a ritual to wipe everything clean to get rid of the nasty.”

“Why the fuck would an alley be ritually cleansed?” Matt muttered. “Don't answer that. Grandma's neighborhood was...starting to get odd when I was a kid and by the time I was in high school one of the worst around. I don't wanna know.”

No he didn't want to think why the spot in the alley behind his grandmother's house would have been ritually cleansed. He didn't even want to know what the hell that was exactly. He didn't.

Patience and concern radiated off Xander.

“You think I'm losing it?”

“Nope.” Truth pure and simple. “You see auras like Tara.”

So fucking simple. Easy as that. Xander believed him.

“This fucking weird shit is driving me crazy.”

“Maybe a little but you haven't lost it. Crazy is almost required when you're dealing with weird shit.”

Matt shook his head a little. He didn't think quite like Tara. Not quite what was in the aura book either. Close but not exactly the same. Xander believed him. Even with the echoes of whispers from when he was little taunting in the back of his head, how his parents thought he was crazy then and he probably was now...Xander didn't fucking blink. What little control he managed slipped and everything crashed burning sharp against him again.

“C'mon focus,” Xander whispered in his ear.

Something...something slid over and past the wards. Even through the wards he could feel it, the wrongness of it. The whatever was looking and not happy it wasn't finding what it was looking for.

“MINE!” Matt snarled.

“Okay—yeah, yours I'm yours you know it...I know it...” Xander soothed sounding confused more than anything.

“Something—” Matt broke off and fought down the feel of everything, eyes squeezed tight and face pressed into Xander's shoulder. He wasn't going to lose it on Xan again. He wasn't. Damn it he wasn't.

“What?”

Matt shook his head a little and fought to press it all back down. Xander simply believed him. No one had ever believed him. Even the guys with his instinct and no matter how many times he was proven right they doubted. The meds and shrinks and whispered conversations he wasn't meant to hear when he was four, five, six years old—no one had believed him then. He had no idea how he'd managed to bury it, lock it all away all those years ago to attempt to do it now. It felt kind of squished and coiled and ready to snap loose at any second but he eventually got it pressed back. Xander wrapped around him as much as physically possible and somehow cocooned around him with his presence.

Xander's murmuring finally registered, sounding a little tired and hoarse as if he'd been at it for a long time.

“M'kay,” Matt swallowed. The feel of Xander's presence was...if the curse didn't drive him nuts this was going to and faster than the ruby's curse, binding, whatever the fuck. “Got it under control for now.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah...”

“Yeah, you sound real sure,” Xander said drolly.

Matt bit his lip.

“What?”

“Nothin'—I...just—used to see shit when I was little. Kinda broke it loose with Coyote earlier I'm okay. Just...”

“Uh huh. The kids are going with you tomorrow. At least Mike is. Can you sleep now?”

“Yeah,” Matt lied Xander sounded as exhausted as he felt. Xander didn't let go, and that cocoon of his presence didn't either. Xander finally drifted off a little while after he obviously, finally decided Matt's faking sleep just might be real.


~*~

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