1 TITLE: “Secret 3: Thorn”

AUTHOR: Polly Burns

EMAIL: go_rimbaud@hotmail.com Throw your hands in the air/ Wave em like you just don’t care…

SUMMARY: Just before and just after Willow’s big parade of badness in “Two to Go” and “Grave”, Jonathan and Andrew have some alone-time.

SPOILER WARNINGS: Ooh, let’s see… “Seeing Red”, “Villains”, “Two to Go”, “Grave”, maybe “Dead Things”, and any episode where Warren tried to kill Buffy.

RATING: Maybe PG-15, for references to violent and gory acts, bad magick, naughty swearwords, alcohol-drinking and Andrew and Jonathan in a Mexican motel room. With one bed. Ahem.

DISCLAIMER: Roses are red/ Leather is black/ Not making no money/ So get off my back. Warren, Jonathan, Andrew, Buffy, etc. do not belong to me, they never have and they never will. And that’s cool, cos I don’t know that they’re paper-trained…

NOTES: This time you get little asterisks to point the way, they separate the two parts of this story, the first which takes place right after Willow immolates Warren’s blood-corpse, and the second which is post “Grave”. This is my version of how Andrew and Jonathan got out of jail- cos I believe in the laws of physics- they bend, they don’t break. I don’t approve of Willow being able to fly around (without so much as a broom, for shame!) and Anya teleporting all over the damn place (take the bus!)- and yeah, I know Willow could make it so that gravity pushed up on her instead of down, and time and space are elastic, but it’s TACKY. So, let’s pretend that Willow had to run all the way to County Jail and she was so busy running there that she forgot to trash Xander’s car. And, I don’t know where the hell Jonathan and Andrew (“The annoying virgin”, you bitch!) met Anya, but I just don’t think they did. So remember, first part is when they get out of jail, then asterisks, and after asterisks, they are magically in Mexico. Wooh! Oh, yeah, “maricon” (or “mary-con”, if you’re Andrew) is Spanish for fag.

 

1.1 Thorn

2

3 Burn the Witch/ The Witch is dead/ Burn the Witch/ Just bring me back her head-

“Hey, Revenge of the Nerds, wake up, you made bail.” The words were far away, made in a thick, loud voice. Then the sound of somebody banging on the bars of the cell that Jonathan was sharing with Andrew. “Hey, you, Yoda, wake up.” That was a new a one, Jonathan observed as he sat up, slightly horrified to find that he had actually slept in the jail cell bed. Warren had usually just stuck to “Frodo”, knowing that he had struck gold when Jonathan punched his arm.

“See, I told you,” Andrew said, breathlessly as he stood, “I told you he was gonna come and get us out of here.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jonathan mumbled as they were shown out of the cell, into the long concrete hallway that they had walked down to get there. It reminded him of a big, scary laundry room, with its snow-white florescent lights and stone-like floor. Once we get out of here, I’m gonna kick him in the nuts, Jonathan said to himself. He was considering doing it to Andrew, as well. After his apparent nervous breakdown earlier, he had shot right back into the cozy state of denial he usually dwelled in. It hurt Jonathan, in a weird way, for Andrew to have been so distraught and then so quickly to have forgotten all about that, acted as though he hadn’t a care in the world. For hours, the only thing that had caused him any grief at all was not having his Discman. Why the hell do I care so much?, Jonathan asked himself, and was prepared to really think about it, but Andrew derailed his train of thought, killing hundreds… Jonathan looked up from the floor.

“Wha- what is this? Is this some kind of a trap?” Andrew stuttered.

“Buffy!” Jonathan exclaimed, before he could stop himself, “A-and some other people. What are you doing here?”

“We came to bail you out. You have to get out of here now, you’re in danger.” Buffy always sounded breathless too, like Andrew, but different. With Buffy, it was like everything she had to say was an urgent message; Andrew just sounded like an asthmatic obscene caller.

“W-why?” Andrew asked, looking around himself nervously, looking toward the door, Jonathan noticed.

“I don’t have time to explain it now, you just have to believe me.” Jonathan had missed that, the way she sounded when there was something life threatening going on. He was sure that lots of guys had had crushes on her, but for him, she wasn’t just a mental pin-up, she was like Sunnydale’s own Joan of Arc. Suddenly, he felt something bitter in his stomach- how could he have ever tried to hurt her… “Andrew, don’t be a dipshit, come on.”

“But what if-” Andrew looked toward the door again.

“Come on,” Jonathan sighed and pulled him by his arm.

Outside, they got into a too-small car. The guy Buffy had brought with her, Xander Harris, got into the driver’s seat, Buffy next to him. Andrew and Jonathan were in the back with this other blonde girl Jonathan vaguely remembered.

“Were we in Government together?” he asked her, “Senior year?”

“Maybe,” she said, “But I’m not going to pretend to remember you.”

“Um, okay…” Buffy’s friends had always been weird.

“So, what happened?” Andrew asked. He kept jogging his leg so that it bumped into Jonathan’s, it was making him nervous.

“Um, it’s kind of a long story,” Buffy said, her voice squeaking at the beginning, like she didn’t really want to talk about it.

The blonde girl sitting in back with them spoke, “Our friend, Willow, who is a powerful but disturbed witch went on a murderous rampage after your insane friend shot her girlfriend. She was seeking vengeance, but rather than come to me, she absorbed all the dark magick she could find, thus becoming very powerful and disturbed. She found your friend in the woods and she killed him.”

“She killed Warren?” Andrew yelped.

“We got there at the very end, she had been torturing him for a while, and she flicked her wrist, and whoosh!, his skin came right off, like a bath towel-”

“Anya…” Buffy said.

“Oh, I’m sorry for your loss.” The blonde girl gave Andrew a little smile.

“So his body’s just out there, in the woods?” Andrew cried.

“Well, she sort of incinerated his remains,” the blonde girl, Anya said.

“Oh my god…”

Jonathan turned his head, looked at Andrew. His face was, well, he was always pale, but he looked, beyond pale. When he was sixteen, Jonathan had managed to get to the front of one of Sunnydale High School’s many crime scenes and had sneaked a peek at a corpse. The official cause of death had been goring by a wild animal, but in retrospect, he knew that it had been a vampire. The body’s face had been the color of melted white candle wax; Andrew’s face was that color now.

“Sh-shut up!” Andrew gasped, “You’re lying!”

“No, she’s not,” Buffy said softly, not turning around to look at them.

“Why didn’t you do something?” Andrew moaned.

“It was, we got there and it was too late to do anything,” Buffy replied.

Nobody said anything else the whole rest of the car ride. Before they went into Buffy’s house, Jonathan managed to get a quick look at the night sky. It looked so soft, all that blackness, like an endless pile of powdered carbon. It was going to rain; voluptuous cloud cover obscured all the stars. For a second, he wondered if Warren had gotten a last look at it, at all that coal dust and black velvet.

“Um, I guess you two can sleep down here,” Buffy said, looking around with a worried expression. She seems so unsure, so overwhelmed, Jonathan thought, sadly. He hadn’t really seen too much of her since, since he’d cast that spell that had made everybody love him. In less than two years, something seemed to have been sucked right out of her. Once, Buffy had been like a star, something luminous, something so bright all you could do was get as close to her as possible, and hope she’d keep the darkness away. With her light. Now, Buffy looked… tired, dimmed. It made a little pain in Jonathan’s heart.

“The couch folds out,” she added, awkwardly, then to her friends she said, “Anya, Xander, do you think you could go to Spike’s crypt and pick up Dawn. I don’t want to leave, in case-”

“Yeah, we will,” said Xander Harris. Jonathan couldn’t think of him in any way other than by his full name. It’s cos I don’t really know any of them at all.

He was lost inside his own thoughts, because when he looked up from the floor, everyone had gone. He called Andrew’s name, not knowing what else to do.

“What?” Andrew looked up from a book. Somehow, he had gotten himself over to the bookshelf; he was crouched down on the floor, bent over a small paperback he held in one hand.

“Andrew, don’t go through her stuff!” As he often did, Jonathan wondered if Andrew’s parents had taught him anything about how to act like a human being.

“I need a distraction,” Andrew croaked. Oh, he sounds bad, Jonathan thought. His voice was thick and wet, and when Jonathan looked at his face, he saw that his eyes were lined in dark pink.

“Have you been crying?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“Trying not to.”

“Um, you can, if, um, you have to.”

“Thanks.” Andrew sniffed and went back to staring at the pages.

That was a fucking stupid thing to say. Why am I so nervous? Oh yeah, cos I might end up like Warren. He shivered when he thought of what Willow had done to him. He began to pace about, not really walking back and forth, just around the room. Would she find them, do to him and Andrew what she had done to Warren? His skin came right off, he remembered what the blonde girl, that Anya had said, he couldn’t get away from the words. Had it hurt? That was a silly thing to ask.

It was too weird; he just couldn’t reconcile the thought of Willow being all black magick with the image of smiling Willow Rosenberg, Willow who always wore soft, brightly colored clothing and had looked years younger than most of the people in their grade. And her girlfriend- he hadn’t known about that, either. When they had been in high school, she’d been going out with Daniel Osbourne, Oz?- Jonathan never called him Oz, never really spoke to him at all. Grief is an ugly thing, his mother had once said to him, grief makes you do crazy things sometimes. It’s almost as powerful as love.

“What are you reading?” he asked Andrew, desperate to hear a voice, any voice, even his own. The silence was like condensed milk poured down his throat, the weight of it, the syrupy sweetness. It was like the night sky, the night sky that was like an endless ebony confection, sweet like a decaying thing.

“Just this book.” Andrew sounded lost, his voice reminded Jonathan, inexplicably, of a balloon he’d once seen floating out over the sea.

“Well, yeah, I know it’s a book. What book is it?”

“Poetry,” Andrew answered sheepishly, “It’s this guy called e.e. cummings, it’s weird. He, like, doesn’t believe in capital letters or punctuation.”

Jonathan looked over Andrew’s shoulder. There were letters all over the page, Jonathan wasn’t even sure that they all made words. Jonathan read: “n , o ; w :/ theraIncomIng/ o all the roofs roar/ drownInsound( & (we(are like)dead)/ )Whoshout(Ghost)atOne(voiceless).

“I think it’s talking about a storm,” he said.

“We are like dead,” Andrew whispered, then laughed dryly, “Hey, look, it’s about us.”

The darkness was stifling, as surely a hand over the mouth, arms pinning your arms back. Andrew was tucked into one corner of the sofa bed, pulled into the most compact shape his body could make, looking hapless and innocent with his mouth hanging open like that. Jonathan kept slipping in and out of consciousness; he thought of the word “slipping”, because when he slept, he dreamt of trying to walk across a floor made of ice. Every couple of steps, he felt the ground yanked out from under him, but just as he was about to fall, he somehow managed to right himself. It was like being in two places at once, how the scenes switched back and forth; he was sliding around a ballroom on the inside of a glacier, he was lying on a floppy mattress with his head resting in his arms, watching Andrew sleep. Suddenly, the ice floor was cracking, melting, he thought of the line in the poem: drown in sound. The house was coming down! Willow! Willow was melting the house!

He awoke with a gasp, frantically sucking in air and clutching the bed sheets. The first thing he did was look at Andrew, hoping that he still had his skin, that he wasn’t a pile of ash. Andrew still lay collected in a tangle, as he had earlier. Now, though, his body shook and was making little coughing noises. At first, Jonathan thought that he was sick, and was just about to get Buffy, when he realized that Andrew was crying. He said his name.

“What?” Andrew sighed.

“Are you all right?”

He turned his head so that Jonathan could see his face. “I don’t look all right, do I?” He turned away again.

Jonathan took a deep breath. “Come here,” he said in his steadiest voice. Andrew didn’t move, so Jonathan went to him and used all the strength he had left to pull him into his arms. When he was handled like that, shown any kind of force, however gently, he became pliant. He was like a rag doll, Jonathan thought, a tall, shaky rag doll.

“How could she…” Andrew began.

“Warren took away what she loved, he as good as killed her. He killed a part of her, that’s for sure, because I never thought she could be like this.” Andrew shuddered against him. “How you feel now, is how she felt when he shot her girlfriend. Can you understand that?”

“Can you understand it? You didn’t care about him at all.”

“No, because I don’t think he cared about us. I don’t know what went on between you, an I don’t want to know… but I’m not gonna start remembering Warren as a swell guy just because he’s dead now.”

Andrew wailed softly. “But, but, the things she did to him…”

“Yeah, it’s horrible, and I’m sure he felt a lot of pain, but I can’t say that I blame her for doing it.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“Think about it, Andrew, with how you’re feeling right now, if you could, wouldn’t you do something horrible to her?”

“I’d tear her heart out.”

“So, see, you two aren’t all that different. You both know how it feels to lose somebody you cared about.”

“I guess.”

Jonathan laid his hand on Andrew’s left shoulder, thinking to pat him supportively. When he touched him, though, he felt something like a static shock. He started a bit, but Andrew didn’t notice. What the hell was that? Again, he put his hand on his shoulder, this time more cautiously. The shock tightened up, and Jonathan knew he was looking at something. Magick. Who the hell would put a spell on Andrew?, he laughed to himself, tracing his finger over his shoulder, lightly so that he wouldn’t feel it. Slowly, as though its components were coming in from all directions, a picture began to form. It was a rune, a bindrune; Jonathan saw Gebo, Wunjo, Fehu. Around the configuration, was a circle drawn out of what looked like cursive script, a sigil, somebody’s name…

I cannot believe he did this, Jonathan sighed inwardly. He put his hand over the place where Andrew had been marked, and traced Dagaz, the rune for Day. Just loud enough so Andrew wouldn’t hear him, he whispered the name of the rune, and he pictured the sun, coming on at dawn, blinding, clean and sharp as alcohol on the skin. Andrew gave a little gasp. Then, just as gingerly, he traced the shape of a thorn and said the name of that rune, as well, barely allowing sound to take to his breath, for he was still a little afraid of it. Be careful with this rune, he had read more than once, but it was the strongest thing he knew, the best he could do for Andrew outside of a magick circle, with nothing but his hands and his breath. Alone I am/ when I face danger, he murmured, but never do I falter. Dreamily, almost, Andrew let out a plaintiff sigh. Jonathan pressed his hand against his shoulder, feeling there warmth like that of a chair somebody has just gotten up from.

“What was that?” Andrew asked.

“So, um, nothing will happen to you. I know it’s stupid, but maybe it’ll help.”

“Oh.”

“Do you feel better?”

“No. I want this all to end.”

“I know, I almost want her to kill us,” Jonathan laughed.

“What I can’t stand is the waiting. It’s always been easier, y’know, feeling pain than waiting to feel pain.

“If we ever get out of this, I’m going to be a better person.”

Jonathan laughed again. “Jesus, Andrew, we’re lying in Buffy Summers’ living room, waiting for a deranged witch to come and get us, we’re not at a damn New Years’ Eve party!”

“If I wasn’t so scared, I might think this was actually… funny.”

“It is kind of funny, in the sense that I never want anybody to know about it ever.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re lying in Buffy Summers’ living room, holding onto each other for dear life and you’re talking about being a better person. Meanwhile, there’s somebody out there that wants to disembowel us over something your stupid boyfriend did. I can think of a couple of things I won’t be bragging about in the old super-villains’ home.”

“Huh- that is kind of funny…” Andrew trailed off. Because he was so close, Jonathan could feel his pulse quicken, his heartbeats sounded like a kid running down a hallway. “Jonathan?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t let go of me, okay?”

“I doubt that’s gonna do any good. What’s Willow gonna do, say Aw, how sweet and decide not to slit our throats and bathe in our blood?”

“Ew, do you think she’ll do that?”

“Whatever. What I’m saying is, I’m not exactly the pillar of strength you’re looking for right now.”

“You’re embarrassed.” Andrew started to pull away.

Jonathan stopped him. “I’m too scared to be embarrassed. What I’m saying is, well, I don’t really know what I’m saying. I just think that whatever you’re looking for, I don’t know if you’re going to find it in me.” He’s looking for Warren, Jonathan said to himself. Though it made him feel like an asshole to think this, he was beginning to equate Andrew with those women who often appeared on talk shows, the ones who seemed utterly helpless and useless without a man. Does he not know what to do without somebody telling him?

“It’s all right, I’ll go sleep in the bathtub, or something.” Andrew started to pull away again. Again, Jonathan stopped him.

“You don’t have to go anywhere.”

“I won’t stay where I’m not wanted.” He sat up.

“Don’t be an ass.” Jonathan grabbed his arm.

“Whatever you think I’m trying to do, I’m not. I just, I don’t want to feel like I’m alone, in this.”

“You aren’t.”

“The way you act sometimes, I wonder if you actually like me at all.”

“You should talk! You act like you’re trying out for lead float in the bitch parade. Half the time I want to strangle you!- you can be such a shallow, vacuous, weak-”

“Don’t call me weak! And anyway, you, strangle me?- how are you going to reach that high?”

“I’ll strangle you right now. I can reach you just fine.”

“Fine, then, go ahead and do it, um,” he tried to think up a really scathing name to call Jonathan, but all he could come up with was, “stupid!”

“I would, but, um, your brain’s already been deprived of enough oxygen.”

“Huh? What the hell are you talking about? When?”

“I was trying to call you dumb without saying the word ‘dumb’.”

“Warren used to be really good at that.”

“What an asshole.”

“Stop it!” Andrew yelled, or rather, whispered very loudly.

“He was, he was one of the most despicable, immoral, cold, sadistic people I have ever met in my life. And I was in the same grade as Cordelia Chase!”

“Shut up!”

“And you, you’re no better than him! You’ll do anything you’re told, as long as you think somebody’s going to pat your head and tell you what you want to hear.”

“That’s not true!” Andrew crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head away.

“It is so. He only tolerated you cos he knew you’d side with him, once he found out which buttons to push, which switches to flip.”

“Well, he only tolerated you cos, um, you know stuff.”

“Yeah, I know stuff. I know that he was putting spells on us both.”

“What, what are you talking about?” Andrew turned his head so that he could look straight into Jonathan’s eyes.

“I figured it out, he was using magick on me, while I was asleep, in the basement. He was doing something to my dreams.”

“He was not!”

“You lying bitch, he was so. After a while, I could practically smell it, taste it in the air. He was doing the same to you, he put a spell on you, too.”

“Oh yeah, what kind of spell?”

“Just now, I saw it, when I was- when I had my hand on your back. It was some runes and a sigil. It was meant to bind you to him, to give him some kind of control over you.” This last part, Jonathan said softly, regretting every syllable. He always thought he wanted to wound Andrew, any way that he could, but once he began to really cut into him, he hated the way doing it felt.

“What? How?”

“Um, I’m not sure.”

“Yeah you are, you know about this crap. How?”

Jonathan sighed heavily, “Through sex, Andrew, through sex. I felt violated just touching it, the place where he put it on you- how does it make you feel?”

“It, it’s not true.”

“It is so.”

“Well, where is it?” Turning his head to look over his shoulder, Andrew pulled at his shirt.

“You won’t see it, I took it away. Anyway, it didn’t leave an actual mark, it was only visible in the astral.”

“I’m going to kick you in the astral! Why do you keep doing this, Jonathan?”

“Doing what?”

“Acting all morally superior and stuff?”

“Um, because I am, seeing as how I’m the only one who seems to have any morals left.”

“Hey, you were just as deep into this as me and Warren were.”

“Yeah, and I feel like shit over it. Every time I think of the things that we did, what we were going to do- all those times that something could have gone seriously wrong, all the times that Warren tried to kill Buffy- And Katrina. I can’t close my eyes some nights without seeing her face, without thinking that I helped him murder her, helped him cover it up.

“Andrew, don’t you ever feel? Anything? At all? Don’t you ever just sit down and think, God, what am I doing?”

“I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think that it was wrong, any of it. Cos, y’know, what would that make Warren and what would that make me?” Andrew looked down. “I know what I am, I know what I’ve done. It’s just, if I really let myself think about it too much, do you think I’d ever be able to speak again, walk, get up in the morning? Do you think I’d be able to live with myself? Warren was a good excuse, cos, well, you must know that it’s easier to just let somebody else do everything, to just let yourself be in their hands completely.” Andrew looked and sounded much older than Jonathan knew he was. There were probably caches of new lines around his mouth, his eyes, latitude and longitude, the Equator across his forehead. “Maybe I never did actually love him, maybe it was his spell, I don’t know- but if I didn’t, you know what that makes me? Stupid, stupider, and evil.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You just spent ten minutes establishing that it was my fault. Don’t confuse me.”

“Come here,” Jonathan said softly.

“No, you’ll just yell at me again.”

“No, I promise I won’t.”

Andrew sighed and moved closer to Jonathan. “We should sleep,” Jonathan said. He put his arms around Andrew.

“I can’t sleep,” Andrew whispered into his shoulder.

“Yes you can,” Jonathan said softly, and touched the back of his head. Andrew’s breathing slowed. Hey, great, when Willow gets here, maybe I can just make her fall asleep. I’m not really good for all that much. He kissed the top of Andrew’s head and fell into dreams of glacial palaces and crumbling ice floors.

***

“Oh, shit, I just remembered, neither of us speaks Spanish.” Andrew blanched.

“No shit, Sherlock. How the hell did you forget that we don’t speak Spanish?”

“I dunno… I just, um, didn’t think about it. We should have said Canada. Do you want to go to Canada, Jonathan?”

After a day and a half in that horrible truck, with that truck driver out of his mind on speed or something, Jonathan wanted to fall into the middle of the dusty street and sleep. He hadn’t turned out to be such a bad guy, the truck driver, just it was a little unsettling how his eyes kinda popped out of his head like that. They’d gotten as far as the border with him, the truck driver, whose name Jonathan had scrubbed from his memory as soon as they were dropped off. He had expected the customs officers to acknowledge their presence somehow, give a nod to the strangeness of two white boys walking into Mexico. Nobody cared, though, nobody even asked them for their passports, which was good, cos they didn’t have any. This possibility had given Jonathan a panic attack earlier, it was almost too perfect that now, nobody really gave a shit.

Still, he wasn’t complaining, not about that, anyway.

“I need lunch,” Andrew whined.

“I need a drink,” Jonathan countered.

“You don’t drink.”

“I think I’m going to start.”

“Do you have any money?”

“I have like ten bucks.”

“What’s that in, um, Mexico money?”

“I don’t know. A lot, I guess. I think they really like American money here.”

“What about Americans?”

“That I don’t know about.” Paranoid, Jonathan looked around. Okay, good, nobody was looking at them. Again, it almost seemed like nobody noticed them at all. He wondered if it was some residual effect of Anya’s protection spell, or maybe people just had better things to worry about. “Hey, look, that’s a bank, I think,” he pointed, “Yeah, bank-o. We should get our money changed.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.

“So, do you think we’re gonna start up the gang again?” Jonathan shoved him. “Hey, what the hell was that for?”

“Don’t talk about the gang, or crime, or magick, or anything, okay?”

“God, what’s your problem.”

“Are you like the dumbest dumbass ever born?- We just got done being almost killed, and you’re already thinking up ways to get us almost killed again?”

Andrew kicked a can in the street, “It’s just, well, y’know, what are we good at? What are we going to do, here, anywhere? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a job, and I barely graduated high school. We’re in a foreign country where we don’t speak the language and we’re like a hundred miles away from anybody we know. We can’t exactly get by in the normal ways. What are you going to do, make people feel taller for money?”

“Ooh, what are you gonna do, make people feel smarter for money? I don’t know what we’re going to do, Andrew. I have about as much of a fucking clue as you do. Anyway, this was your idea. What did you think would happen when we got here, that everybody would speak English? That little old ladies would come running out of their houses with cookies and chicken soup?”

“I don’t know… Anyway, if you’re so smart, why did you listen to me? Everybody always says I’m so dumb, but then they’re dumb enough to take me seriously.”

Jonathan sighed. He held open the bank’s door. “C’mon, Andrew, here’s the bank-o.”

“So we have like, what, enough for a hotel room?” Andrew asked once they came out of the bank. Mercifully, the bank teller had spoken English, so Jonathan had been able to get by without making hand gestures or acting things out.

“If we were in America, do you think we could get a hotel room for fifteen dollars and seventy-nine cents?”

“Um, no.”

“Well, what makes you think we’re gonna get a Mexican hotel room for the Mexican equivalent of fifteen dollars and seventy-nine cents?”

“I dunno, I just figured this place would be cheaper, somehow.”

“This is Tijuana, for crying out loud, it’s not exactly the Third World. Most of the people who come to this place spend more than fifteen dollars on postcards or fire works or paper mache donkeys or whatever people come here for.”

Andrew turned his head as they passed what looked like a bar. “Hey, Jonathan?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember how you said you felt like drinking?”

“Yeah.”

“I think we both feel like drinking.”

“Was that a bar over there?”

“It didn’t say ‘bar’ or ‘bar-o’ or however they say it, but it had a glowing beer bottle in the window.”

“That means bar.”

Stirring up a thin soup of dust as they did so, Andrew and Jonathan about-faced and strode purposefully toward the glowing beer bottle in the bar’s window.

“So, what do you think?” Jonathan asked, trying to drink his shot without wincing. It was hard work not making the tequila face.

“About what, your deteriorating mental health?” Andrew replied, “Well, it’s definitely deteriorating.”

Jonathan bit his lip. “It’s a good plan.”

“Yeah, cos it doesn’t involve you pretending to be a prostitute,” Andrew hissed.

“It’s only you cos you wouldn’t know how to do the spell.”

“This wonderful spell that can make a Popsicle stick look like a big scary knife? How are you going to manage that, you can’t even tie your shoe laces without invoking the spirit of blah blah blah.” Andrew tilted his head back to drink his shot. Immediately after, he started coughing.

“All right?”

“Yeah, just, God, this stuff tastes like shit.”

“I think I’m learning that you don’t drink it cos it tastes yummy.

“And hey, I can so do a lot of magic stuff! It’s not even a real spell, it’s a glamour.”

“And it’s gonna make somebody think that a Popsicle stick is a machete?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Ooh, can you do one on yourself to look tall and scary?”

“No, it’s different.”

Andrew sucked on a piece of lime and winced. “I don’t understand why you can’t just rob somebody,” he whined, “Why do I have to pretend to be a hooker?”

“Cos it’ll attract somebody’s attention, and they’ll be distracted so I can get the jump on them.”

“Can’t we just be grave-robbers? Or professional plasma-donators?”

“It’ll be easy. Don’t be a chicken-shit.”

“Well, what if something goes wrong? What if they try to rob us?”

Jonathan only half made the tequila face this time. “Then we run like hell.”

Andrew examined his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Nobody’s gonna want me! I look gross!” he sounded aghast.

“You look fine,” Jonathan sighed. If only the room would settle down, quit moving like that. It was like the ice-floor dream again; the filthy bathroom tiles seemed to be shifting, the lines of grout in between them getting wider and wider.

“No I don’t,” Andrew pouted, “I don’t wanna do this. I’m drunk and I’m tired and I can’t remember the last time I had a shower.”

“Quit complaining. You said you liked taking orders.”

“Well, you’re not even nice about it. Warren at least pretended to be nice, pretended to like… us, for a while.”

He looked into Andrew’s eyes, which seemed to Jonathan like shot glasses full of blue liquor and whole cream. “I’m desperate, Andrew, we’re desperate. If this were Sunnydale and we were doing this for kicks, then I’d be nice. I’d laugh and I’d joke around and afterwards we’d go out for ice cream. We just have to do this and get it over with. I’m just as drunk and tired as you are, and that’s the only thing keeping me from curling up in the fetal position and dying here.”

Andrew had a pained expression as he looked at himself in the mirror again. Taking himself by surprise, Jonathan laid his hand on Andrew’s and squeezed it gently. “If I can figure out the Spanish word for ice cream, I’ll buy you some,” he said, slurring a lot less than he thought he would, “Come on.”

They ended up robbing some poor hick from Las Vegas, of all places, perhaps the only person in Tijuana who looked more out of place and just fucked than the two of them. It had been easy, and Jonathan was both proud of and unsettled by this. Proud, because he hadn’t lied to Andrew, after all, unsettled because now they had to especially watch their backs. The guy from Las Vegas hadn’t seen Jonathan, but he had seen Andrew. He made a mental note to buy a gray candle someplace and do a simple forgetting spell.

The Spanish word for ice cream was helado, they found out, after Andrew got frustrated and drew a picture of an ice cream cone for the guy behind the counter at the Mexican version of 7-11. Ay si, helado, he’d smiled and pointed to the back of the store. All Andrew wanted was ice cream and tequila, so that was dinner. They managed to find a place that had a room they could afford; it was a building that seemed to be made out of wire and plaster of Paris. In the street light, it was a cheery pale blue, like Andrew’s eyes, Jonathan noted.

“Hey Jonathan, what’s a… mary-con?” Andrew said softly as they walked up the stairs to the room, swaying from the liquor.

“I dunno, why?”

“Cos some guy just called me that downstairs.”

“I’m guessing whatever it means, it’s not good.”

“I hate Mexico.”

“I’m not such a big fan, either.”

The room was bare except for a bed with flowered sheets and a television so old that it had dials. One of the dials was missing.

“There’s only one bed!” Andrew cried.

“Just pretend I’m Warren,” Jonathan mumbled, and sat down at the edge of the bed. Andrew sat down next to him.

“Are we going to do this again tomorrow? The hooker thing?”

“Probably, unless you can come up with any better ideas.”

“Jonathan, I was really scared.”

“Yeah, I know, so was I.”

“What were you scared about?”

“Well, um, just the fucking glamour not working! Dumbass!” He slapped the back of Andrew’s head.

“What the hell? Why did you do that?” Andrew rubbed at the back of his head.

“It didn’t even hurt.”

“It did so… well, no, it didn’t. But that’s not the point. Quit treating me like I’m your slave or your girlfriend.”

“I thought that was how you liked to be treated.”

“That was with Warren. That was just the way he was, there was no helping it, so I may as well have liked it.”

“Oh. Well, how should I treat you?”

“I dunno, Jonathan! Can’t you decide that for yourself? I mean, we’re kind of dependent on each other, cos you need me for your robbery- thing, and without you, I may as well really be a hooker.”

“We need each other.”

“Yeah, I, I guess we do. So don’t hit me anymore.”

“You want a drink?”

“Yes, please.”

After enough time and enough of that horrible shit they were drinking, life looked awfully rosy, Jonathan thought. Time really does heal all wounds, and I guess alcohol sterilizes them… Nothing seemed real; he could hold up his hand and wonder if it was his hand, if it was even really there at all. Maybe we fell into another dimension, maybe we left the real world a long time ago…

“Huh?”

“What?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean what am I talking about?”

“You said something about, like, your hand or something, and being in another dimension.”

Jonathan hadn’t realized that he was speaking out loud. “Oh, just, um, thinking.” This isn’t my hand, the thought floated around his head like smoke; his throat tasted scorched and desiccated. “Hey Andrew.”

“Hey, what?” Andrew was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, as far as Jonathan could tell. He was sitting on the floor with the bottle between his knees.

“Was, uh, was Warren the first person you ever… ever did it with? Like the first guy person?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh.”

Andrew turned onto his stomach and moved closer to Jonathan. “Why do you wanna know?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Need help opening the closet door?” Andrew laughed. He snorted when he laughed.

“No! I was just… wondering. Anyway, shut up.”

“What’s your problem? You’re the one who said you were cool with it.”

“When?”

“In jail. You said it didn’t bother you.”

“Oh, I guess I did.”

“So, yeah, Warren was the first person I ever slept with, the first guy-person and the first anything-person.”

“Andrew, you have bad taste.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Hey, Andrew?”

“Hey, what?”

“If I was, y’know, would you, do you think you would like me?”

“What the hell kind of question is that?” Andrew tried not laugh, but then succumbed and giggled hysterically.

“It’s a, it’s a question-question, I don’t know!”

“Jonathan, if you want to have sex with me, just ask.”

“What, no! Can’t a person ask a question without having all kinds of things assumed about them?”

“Not a question like that!” Again, Andrew let out a bubbling font of laughter.

“I’m drunk.”

“You’d ask that question if you were sober if you thought you could get away with it.”

“Would not.”

“All right, whatever. And, yeah, Jonathan, if you were y’know, I would definitely sleep with you.”

“I didn’t say ‘sleep with’. I only wanted to know if you would maybe like me.” Jonathan took a drink from the bottle. The shit was horrible, but he was starting to really love it.

“As far as I know, you aren’t gay and I like you right now.”

Reflexively, Jonathan turned his head up and looked at Andrew. “Really?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why?”

“Cos, um, you’re cute as hell.”

A blush spread over Jonathan’s face and throat like a sandstorm. “Am not.”

“Um, yeah you are. You look like a china doll.”

“Oh God!”

“You do!” Now they were both laughing. Jonathan covered his face with his hands, unable to stand it. Andrew came down off the bed and tried to pull his hands away from his face by his wrists. “You do so look like a doll,” he said, once he had uncovered Jonathan’s face.

“How?” Jonathan rolled his eyes.

“Well, cos of your hair, cos it’s so dark it doesn’t look real,” Andrew ruffled his hair for emphasis, “And cos of your eyelashes,” Jonathan closed his eyes as he brushed his finger against the edges of his lashes, “And cos your skin is like porcelain,” he touched the back of his hand to Jonathan’s cheek, “And you look pretty when you blush like that,” both of them lowered their eyes. Andrew’s voice was very soft, it sounded like silks rustling. He cleared his throat and continued, “And because of your lips, cos they’re so dark they’re almost red,” he swept his index finger over Jonathan’s lower lip, “And they’re soft, I bet. They look soft.” There was something like pressure in Jonathan’s chest, something tied up, bound up in there. When Andrew touched him, the knots got tighter. Andrew’s finger was paused on his lower lip, moving back and forth over it like he was applying lip balm. He could feel his breath shaking out of him, like rattling sounds.

“Andrew,” he said softly, the end of his name coming up like a question. Andrew’s hands were on his face, his fingertips buried in Jonathan’s hair. “Yes?” he replied, the word expelled from his mouth onto Jonathan’s. Before Jonathan could think of something to ask him, Andrew had kissed him. Even though he had initiated it, Andrew was shy, almost guileless, almost as though he was unsure about what he should be doing. Really, they just sat there, their lips pressed together and slightly parted. For such a relatively inconsequential bit of contact, it was having a riotous effect on Jonathan’s mind and body. Air circulated between them, and for a moment, Jonathan felt as though Andrew was breathing life into him.

When they separated, he was left shaking. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

“I thought you wanted me to. I’m sorry.” Andrew started to get up, the bones in his knees creaked.

“No, do-don’t,” Jonathan stuttered. “No, it’s not that I didn’t want you to, just, I, I guess I didn’t really expect it.”

Andrew laughed, sweetly. “I did.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Well, I thought, I mean, it seemed like we were kind of working up to this. Even when I thought you hated me, even when you’re mean, it always seemed like, seems like, maybe you liked me. Like me.

“Hearing you talk about Warren, it almost seems like you’re… jealous. Sometimes.”

“Jealous?” He had prepared to sound outraged, but he couldn’t.

“Yeah, like you’re mad at him or you’re mad at me, and like you’re… jealous.”

“I didn’t know I sounded like that.” Yes, you knew, a voice inside of his head whispered. “I guess maybe I have been, sort of jealous, not necessarily because you two were, um, together. I just felt left out is all, and betrayed.

“Is this your way of trying to get me to trust you?”

“No. I don’t blame you for not trusting me. I may not know a lot about myself, but I know that I’m not very loyal. And that’s the truth, I’m not gonna lie about it. But, no, this isn’t part of some plot, or something. I can’t even think straight enough to plot.”

“So what is this?”

Andrew turned his head a little and then looked at Jonathan again, “I guess I just feel alone, and I want to feel like I’m not alone. I want to feel like I’m close to somebody.”

“You don’t have to kiss me to do that.” Absently, he licked at his lower lip, at the spot where Andrew’s fingertip had touched.

“I wanted to kiss you. I still want to. None of this is making too much sense to me. Tell me to back off, and I will.”

“No, no, don’t do that.”

“So what?”

“I dunno, I guess, so let’s just go to bed.”

“What, now?”

“Well, yeah, I’m tired, I think you’re pretty tired, too.”

“So go to bed to sleep, not to…”

He patted Andrew’s hand. “If I was gonna ask you to sleep with me, I’d ask a little bit differently than that.”

“How would you ask?” In tandem, they blushed.

“Well, I dunno. I guess I’d kiss you first and then I’d just kind of ask- God, this is embarrassing!”

“What’s embarrassing about it?”

“Maybe not embarrassing, but it’s so weird.”

“I guess so.”

“Like I just got used to the idea of you with Warren, which was all kinds of weird, and now I’m trying to get used to the idea of you with me.”

“Jonathan, let’s just go to bed.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

Morning shone through the skin-thin curtains on the hotel room window; the sun was like a billion sewing needles, a billion thorns, trying to break through the drapes, to stab to death the two bodies that rested in the rickety little bed. Jonathan lay on his back, his head thrown to the left, fitted into the recess of Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew was turned toward Jonathan, his knees drawn up, one making a bridge from his hip to Jonathan’s thigh. In sleep, or perhaps by happy accident, Jonathan’s hand had found its way to the place over Andrew’s heart.

With a start, Jonathan awoke. There had been the dream about the ice- floor again, skating rink slick and rolling like dice in a person’s cupped hands. He raised himself on his elbows and looked at Andrew, who was still asleep. Gently, he tossed around the thoughts in his head, like a juggler juggling multi-colored scarves. What would it be like, to kiss that mouth in earnest, as a lover, to kiss lips and throat and wrists and other things that he couldn’t quite bear to think of at that moment? What sounds did Andrew make in bed, did he moan or did he sigh or did he lie still and silent?

Strangely, these thoughts and others flowed freely. He couldn’t still be drunk, the vague music of headache told him so. He started to extricate himself from Andrew’s embrace, to go to the bathroom and get some water, when Andrew came awake.

“Where are you going?” he sounded fairly terrified.

“Bathroom.”

“Don’t drink the water.”

“Wha-”

“They always say when you’re in Mexico, don’t drink the water. It gives you, like, wicked diarrhea, or something.”

“Well that sucks. All there is to drink here is the damn tequila.”

“No, I think we finished that.”

“Well, that sucks, too.”

“Hey, Jonathan?”

“Hey, what?” he brushed Andrew’s hair away from his eyes. The dirt and dust in it gave it the color of old gold.

“Can I kiss you?”

“My mouth probably tastes like something died in there. Like a tequila demon.”

Andrew laughed, that bubbly giggle Jonathan was getting to like a lot. “I don’t mind. I’m probably just as bad. If you don’t want to, I understand.”

He leaned over Andrew, whose head still rested on the pillow and traced his fingers along his jaw line. “No, I want you to.”

They shifted so that now it was Andrew leaning over him. Sweet Andrew he thought. This kiss was deeper than the one they had had the night before. It lasted longer, gave Jonathan time to slip his hand up Andrew’s shirt, feel his skin, which was like new snow in color, he knew, and trembled slightly at his trespass. They were nervous, so it was an ungraceful affair, ungainly and awkward and a little strange. Still, to spite all this, it was perfect. It was perfect, because this was Andrew and he was Jonathan and they were fresh from certain doom, in the middle of the asshole of nowhere. Warren was officially dead and gone, Jonathan knew, he could taste it on Andrew’s lips, feel in it the fluttering of his tongue, hear it in the relieved-sounding sighs that passed from Andrew’s mouth into his. They would be all right, he knew, he was certain when Andrew rolled on top of him, and he placed his hand flat over his left shoulder blade. There, he felt the hot-cold, electric, sharp prick of a thorn.