Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

[1.]

The call comes as they frequently do, late in the afternoon after Spike wrapped up for the day. He’s used to it-to the on-call hours that rival any one more professional than him. Nurses and doctors work like he does. Sometimes, he makes more work for them.

When he enters the office, it’s Mao, serious-faced and Ivan, leaning tensely at the big desk. He’s hunched like a vulture, shoulders bunched  up near his ears in bad-postured anxiety. Spike expects clean-up or payback. Asset collection. 

There’s a man he doesn’t recognize in a wooden chair, dragged out of its place along one wall of Mao’s office. It sits center stage on the red and gold rug, the dragon design curling around it possessively. The chair disrupts the feng shui the Van are always so careful about. The man occupying it is lank-haired and gaunt, bunched up in place with the two men looking at him like a zoo animal. One about to spring loose from its cage.

Spike closes the door behind him and the man in the chair registers the motion  though it’s silent. Practiced. Some current of air catches his attention and he turns halfway. His gaze is shadow dark. Grey eyes. Silver hair. Everything about him is colorless and empty, sheen colored like a knife’s edge or a storm green sky.

This will either end in an acquisition or a burial. He’ll be hired or killed.

Spike opens the button on his coat, to open access to his holster, and the man in the chair turns away. It’s a pointed  snub. Spike’s not sure if the bravado is false.

“So, do you always stick your nose in Syndicate affairs or were you just looking for a quick suicide?” Ivan asks. Mao is silent behind his steepled hands, sitting small at his desk while Ivan looms. He’s the real threat in the room, though he’s the shortest man here in a matter of feet, looks like a businessman who likes to kick back at the karaoke bar, and get drunk after work. He has a face that’s forming kindness lines at the corners of his eyes.

He’s the one that will say ‘kill’.

“When I want answers,” Silver says, his voice all low and gravel. “I go and find them.”

It’s tough guy stuff. Like everyone in the room isn’t a tough guy in their own mind. Spike has faith in himself.

“We’ve got questions too,” Ivan says. His hands are on the edge of the desk, gripping tight. White knuckles like bird talons, dried up and for sale down at a market stall. Chinese medicine. “Why don’t you ask yours. We’ll see who gets answers in the end.”

Spike gets comfortable. His back to the door. He’s tired, and he doesn’t really give a shit about what this guy got up to, what he’s about. He has to stand here till he gets other orders, between Silver and the exit. 

“The war on titan,” Silver plays the statement like a card on the table. "Did you fund technology there?”

It’s a leap in the dark. Mao’s face doesn’t move. Ivan laughs openly.

“Do we look military to you?” Ivan asks, still chuckling. “ This asshole.”

He makes a ‘can you believe the nerve of this guy’ sort of gesture toward Silver, all theatrics. Neither Spike nor Mao give a response.

“Is that a no?”

“It’s none of your business what we fund,” Ivan points out. “What are you, a shareholder?” He moves his hand and tips something upright on Mao’s desk that had been resting flat before. A long slender arc. Lacquer black and gleaming in the light. A sword, Spike realizes. An honest to goodness katana, like an old martial arts movie. This guy brought a sword to a gun fight.

In spite of himself, and in spite of how much Spike wants a cigarette and to go home and sleep for fourteen hours, he feels his interest perking up. Was Silver—whoever he is—good enough to make that work?

“It’s my question,” Silver says. His voice is all tough-guy affectation. Is he flying by the seat of hi pants or just that confident? The thought sinks under Spike’s skin and settles, itchy and ready for exploration. He could fight this guy right now. See if he can knock all that wind out of his sails.

“We’re not in the medical business, boy,” Ivan says, flat edged and level. “I don't know where you got your information.”

It’s an offer, a fish line hook to give Silver the play to pull himself out or put around his own neck and squeeze.

“I’m not a boy.”

Ivan looks at Mao, the first tell-tale sign of who’s really calling the shots in the room. It’s a moment of deferral that they’d never show, unless they wanted a definite outcome from the situation. 

“You’re a veteran?” Ivan prompts. He doesn't say it with the reverence that the news reports fall over themselves to give the Titan vets. Those poor maze-rats running in the wall-less hell of Titan for no reason anyone outside the machine knew. “For which side?”

“There were no sides,” Silver says, and Spike can read the tension forming in his shoulder, binding up like a bird lifting wings to clap away a threat. Not that Spike’s ever seen a living bird more ferocious than a pigeon. Except maybe in those damn documentaries from Earth. “Just men dying for nothing.” 

It’s the first time he meets Vicious, and it ends bloodlessly. It’s rare enough that things end that way where he’s involved that it stands out in Spike’s mind as unusual.

-

The next time they meet they’re allies, uneasy guns on a gory mission. Spike never shies from that. It’s alive, being between bullets and the sound of gunfire and smell of blood. The frantic scramble of wild beasts trapped in that box—the dome where you can breathe and see without completely choking down in red dust and airlessness. Both fighting over resources for life, like lions battling it out over a kill. Vicious proves he’s earned the right to bring his sword to a gun fight.

Spike ask him out to drink afterward, to get a feel-around. If Vicious is going to be the dog at his back, he might as well know if he bites in all directions. 

Vicious wipes blood from his hands and looks Spike over; cold and grey. Distant.

“You were there to kill me,” Vicious says.

Spike’s surprised he remembers. He’d been the last man in the room, the door guard. It sends a wild thrill of anticipation through him. He pulls his pack of cigarettes out of his jeans pocket. “Nothing personal.”

It sounds cooler than Spike feels, hot at the edges like he can steam the blood back out of his shirt. It’s late July, but cold because mars is fucked up running on the conversion calendar. The blood on his collar is cooling from alive-hot against his skin to past dead-cold. A sticking splash shedding warmth it will never hold again. 

“You couldn’t have,” Vicious says.

Spike’s teeth clamp on his cigarette filter, lips peeling back as he lights it in a rictus snarl. “You want to find out?”

For now, they’re unknown against each other. Vicious can’t respect him until they discover how they measure up against each other. It’s an electric-current thrill to consider fighting until Spike wins, putting this new guy with no name but his self-prescribed title—the pretentious shithead—into his place.

For a moment they both get square and size up, only Vicious seems to unfold. He carries himself in a hunch like a sick wolf. Like his bite is going to transmit something infectious. He’s new. Spike shouldn’t be after him like this. Should barely be aware of the man’s presence, yet—

They match up, danger to danger.

Vicious pulls his gun in a smooth motion, and Spike is ready for him—chops the weapon out of his hand with a precision strike to the wrist and the gun clatters away with the sound of plastic palm-grip sliding on asphalt. Vicious doesn’t go for the sword next, so Spike leaves his gun out of it. Vicious fights like a man with defense force training, rigid forms to block Spike’s first two punches and stiff on his feet like a knife fighter. It won’t get him far in a street fight. Hell, who knows how this guy got out of the war, fighting with a sword.

“That all you got?” Spike pushes for more. The streets on Mars taught him to keep something in reserve. Never fight your hardest unless you really have to—later you can surprise an opponent. The lack of respect needles under his skin but he lets it roll off. Fight flows through him— be water. Flow.

Vicious lashes out against Spike’s guard, trying to punch through. Spike flows around, and the  man’s frustration makes him feel bright and satisfied. Gives him the power in the movement. He lets his momentum gyroscope and then kicks Vicious hard in the knees. It’ll bruise Spike’s shin, but he doesn’t care.

Punching up as he falls, Vicious hits spike with a cheap shot in the dick, flashing a bright-sharp pain like a light in his eyes as the guy’s boney fist drives into his nuts. It drags a gasp out of Spike, and he stumbles back two steps fighting the urge to hold himself. It’s a bright starburst of throbbing pain, asking urgently for Spike to just crumple up around it. It pulses in time with his heartbeat and makes him feel alive. He grits his teeth and forces through the cheap shot, using momentum and adrenaline. Spike kicks out despite the lance of agonizing protest radiating from abused nerves down the insides of his thighs, like electric piss. It smashes into Vicious’ chin and lands him flat on his back.

Spike takes the win in his mind, acutely trained to understand exactly how much violence is enough. He’s made his point. The fight's over.

For a minute he stays still until the vice-grip of his own pulsing heartbeat stops throbbing through his balls. The lower half of his lungs seems to slowly unlock afterwards, so he can catch his breath. Vicious lays on the ground and stares at the artificially blue sky, fading purple and dreamlike, to dark. Spike puts his hands on his bent knees and breathes in.

“Yeah,” he says, finally. His voice comes out rough, with a torn-edge sound from pain. “I could have.”

Vicious doesn’t answer for a long minute. HIs teeth are red with his own blood when he speaks again. “We’ll never know until the minute it happens.” 

Spike can feel his eyes rolling back in his head, feeling clear disdain for how hard this guy’s trying to disassociate into a darker reality. He puts out his hand. “They think nut shots are okay in the land of eternal darkness, or what?”

Vicious reaches up and takes Spike’s hand, really pulling to lever himself up. The ache between Spike’s legs flares up again as he braces himself and takes Vicious’ weight long enough to get him on his feet.

“Buy me a drink,” Vicious says. “And I’ll tell you.”

“ You lost,” Spike points out, adjusting his jeans, wiping his hand off on his thighs. “You buy the drinks. That’s how it works around here.”

-

The first time Spike met Annie he was fourteen and running wild. Barely civilized by most measures and already only going intermittently to school. He’d slouched into her shop after peering through the window a dozen times at the bright yellow packets of chips and candy within. 

At the time he thought with his stomach, and an animal’s cunning awareness that the hunt was dangerous. He slunk in when the woman behind the counter was reading a novel with the cover folded back so she could hold it in one hand.

He wanted the candy, but experience told him that was a target that would only satisfy for a short time. If he’s going to take the risk, he might as well go for the big reward. The back wall was lined with refrigerator cases full of beer. Lots of cheap brands on repeat. But there’s also a whole section of quick prepare food behind the skin mags and snack aisles, before the refrigerator case with milk and deli in it, along the wall directly ahead of the register. Spike perused cautiously, weighing his options.

He picked up a big cup of Rocket Noodles, pull activator handle an alarm-red color. The premium kind with shrimp. He examined the back for the expiration date and weighed options. It would go under his shirt, but leave an obvious bulge. He could palm it into one hand down at his side, walk out with the opposite side to the lady at the counter. 

He glanced up and found her watching him acutely, one thick forearm rested on the counter in a gesture of casual menace. The folded paperback was pressed flat under the palm of her hand like a rat trapped under a lion’s paw.  Her eyes were piercing green, and they saw right through him. 

Spike put the cup back. Put his hands in his pockets and sulked out the door. He’d always remember that moment—and he knows when she looks at him now, she still thinks of it—of Spike as a dumb kid that thought he was hot shit. 

It keeps him humble. He makes a point to come in and buy some noodles now and again, like he can make up for the sins of his youth.

“You really eat this crap?” she challenges.

Spike gives her a bright smile. “Yeah. I’m not a good cook.”

Annie’s decided she’s something of a den mother for the Red Dragon boys. She’s a bear of a woman and no one wants to cross her, but she puts up with a lot of tough guy egos. She rolls her eyes, put down her ever-present romance novel. “You know, Spike, I could teach you.”

He shrugs. He doesn’t really care to learn. It really doesn’t matter. “I don’t have many free evenings, either.” 

Her look changes slightly from giving Spike a hard time to something deeper. “They’re running you around? I can talk to Ivan.”

“Don’t,” Spike says. “I don’t mind it.”

“Well I do. It’s that Vicious guy, isn’t it?” Her face goes hard and she yanks the cup of instant noodles off the counter to punch the price into the register. “They’ve got you babysitting.”

It’s an interesting choice of words. Sure, they’ve been sent out enough together these last few weeks enough that he has to notice it. “No one’s said anything official about keeping an eye on him.”

Annie gives him a ‘you know better’ look. “I don’t trust him. That’s four woolongs.”

Spike fishes his wallet out, a battered old scrap of leather. “For the advice or for the noodles?”

“The noodles. The advice is free, for all any of you idiots ever listen to me,” Annie waves the noodles at Spike as if she’s trying to catch a dog’s attention with a treat. “I wish you’d eat better, too. You want a bag?”

“Maybe just a fork?”

“Don’t got one,” Annie says, passing the cup back to Spike. She rifles around under the counter and comes up with a couple of paper-wrapped bamboo chopsticks, handing them over. “Work it out.”

He takes them. “I always do.”

“And I mean it about Vicious,” Annie warns again. “I know you think you’re slick, but anyone who chooses a name like that…”

Spike laughs and pulls the ripcord on the Rocket Noodles, releasing steam and heat, cooking the noodles within in a flash, so all that’s left is to wait for the three minutes. Annie picks her book back up, signaling the end of the conversation. 

Two weeks, and everywhere he goes on the job, he’s had a shadow—a lonely scarecrow of a man in a too-big coat trying to cut an imposing figure. Spike sits at the wire table chained down outside—so it doesn’t gallop off into the sunset—and peels the top off his noodles too early, impatiently stuffing the first crunchy mouthful between his teeth. Thoughtful. It’s the first time Spike hasn’t felt completely like the one tracking mud into a room with the higher-ups. Mao likes him, but it’s with a certain level of tolerance for how badly behaved Spike can be. It’s kind of refreshing not to be the biggest ass in any room

So what is that guy’s problem? Spike wonders, jamming another oversized mouthful of noodles in his gullet, chewing angrily. What do they mean by making him my problem?

Spike chews and swallows, unsure what to make of all that. Feels like responsibility. Way more than making sure a shipment arrives on time or that nobody from any other syndicate is moving in on their territory. 

Well, just one more thing to worry about. Like Annie said.   Spike spools noodles onto his chopsticks and crams all of them into his mouth. Babysitting.

-

“I know we don’t talk business after seven, Mao,” Ivan starts, trimming the cap off a churchill cigar over the trash basket in one corner of the office, half-hidden behind a real wooden file cabinet—a genuine earth salvage, gated in at great expense. “But are you really sure about that guy, Vicious?”

He says the name—Vicious’ chosen one, a handle or descriptor that Mao has more often heard applied to wild animals—with almost superstitious care. Mao glances up from the ticker feed of stock closeouts across his desktop, and discovers it’s after seven, conversion time. He reaches for the cigar that's put itself out in his ah tray and leans back in his seat to straighten his back. He flicks his lighter and reignites his own cigar. The smoke has gone stale and harsh from sitting.

“What about him?” Mao asks after a moment to nurse the cigar back to full life.

“Are you sure you want him with Spike ?” Ivan asks, in a tone of exasperation.

Mao traces the lines of that demand back—Annie likes Spike, hence Ivan likes him, and Mao knows he’s been training Spike for years as a martial artist. They’re all three of them exasperated by how wild Spike still is. “I see what you mean. They’re a lot alike.” 

“Rude.” Ivan is quick to supply a description. “Nasty. Quick to leap into trouble.”

“I thought the last one was something we liked in Spike.” Mao jokes, to gentle Ivan’s nerves. “Spike will understand him.”

“When we first took Spike in, he was like a poorly socialized puppy. I thought the Van were insane.”

“You recommended him.” Mao reminds.

“Of course I did. Have you seen him fight? If it wasn’t us, another Syndicate would have taken him, or he’d have dragged real trouble into the neighborhood,” Ivan sighs. “There are days I regret it.”

“I think he could be a good influence.” Mao glances at the ticker projected onto his desktop one last time and discovers he’s missed the C’s and the scroll is reading somewhere in the F section. He reaches down and turns off the projector.

“On Spike ?” Ivan demands, half laughing. “You think anything’s going to get through that hard head of his?”

“Not Spike,” Mao tends to agree with Ivan on that front. Spike would rather head-butt a life lesson and spit in it’s face than learn a single life skill. “He’s affable and easygoing in spite of everything. He knows how to get along. Mostly.”

A few fights aside, anyway. Spike has honestly never met a fight he doesn’t want to have. Mao gets up, pushing his chair in and going about tidying up his office, accidentally dropping ash on the rug. “Vicious came out of the war. It’s still fresh for him, all the things he had to do to survive. I think if anyone we’ve got can relate to that…”

Ivan clamps his cigar between his teeth and goes to get Mao’s coat. “Why’s that our problem, though?”

“Because Vicious is right. It was our money in medical technology pumping into every aspect of the Titan war,” Mao pulls his coat on as Ivan holds it, hardly taking a mind at how Ivan has to bend at the waist to hold it at the right height for him. “It’s wise for us to look the fruits of our labor in the face every once in a while. It’s fine to see the bodies we leave in the streets, or attend funerals when it’s one of our own but now we’re walking among our own casualties every day.”

The veterans—few of them as there are—of the Titan war are shades and shadows of men. It’s a barely kept secret that there was nothing on Titan worth fighting for. In the name of advancement for the soldiers , any number of new technologies could be tested. So, the soldiers come home with more than the memory of fighting—those that come home at all. It’s going to haunt Mars for years, for a whole generation. The Van consider it an acceptable price, or a needed machination. Mao doesn’t see things through the lens of astrological alignment like they do.

“Plus, I guess, keep your enemies close,” Ivan relents. He hits the lights as they leave and codes the alarm for the evening. “If he figured it out, he might not be the only one.”

“That's the trouble when the trail is money,” Mao says. “So few people have any that it barely takes more than a guess at good odds to figure out where it originally came from. And he’s not an enemy, just a tool. We can point him.”

“That’s wishful thinking.”

“Well, I hope we can anyway. Think about Vicious, and others like him, when you see how fat your paycheck has gotten since we started selling Red Eye. He might have been one of the very first human rats we tried it on.”

“That’s his birth year. Spike’s too. Year of the rat.” Ivan laughs, and Mao thinks his sense of humor has always been a little morbid. 

“You pay attention to that stuff?” Mao asks, curiously. Superstition goes in cycles in the syndicate. The Van guide the actions of the organization based on a system of advice cobbled together from—in Mao’s opinion—a healthy dose of nonsense mixed with whatever they wanted to hear in the first place. It’s not his job to argue, but to make that nonsense produce results.

“No, not really. I was just curious.” Ivan steps onto the elevator as the doors whoosh open. There’s no one else this high in the tower after five. All this space—at a premium on Mars, or at least human-habitable space—in the heart of Tharsis and occupied by so few. It’s the real wealth of the Syndicate, when the view from his office window is almost all high rise box housing, cramming as many bodies as possible into the small amount of available space within the habitable crater. Mao watches the floors descend.

“You coming to poker night tomorrow?” Ivan asks, aftertime has passed to put the matter previous to rest.

“I thought it was blackjack?” 

“Spike’s been counting cards. You’d think a guy who can’t pass high school math…” Ivan grumbles, without finishing the thought. “He still does it in poker but not as well. He can’t resist seeing a bluff through to the end. Annie’s real good at robbing him blind that way.”

“You should invite Vicious,” Mao suggests mildly. “Bring him in closer, show him he can have a family.”

“You can do it.” Ivan laughs. “He doesn’t seem like he’ll say yes to fun. Are you coming?”

“I hate poker. I’ll come to blackjack.”

Ivan laughs. “You just like the lady dealer, Janice.”

Mao gives him a mildly reproachful look for his audacity but they both know it’s in jest. Ivan answers it with a look of his own.

“She’s a very lovely lady,” Mao relents. 

Ivan laughs. “All right, I’ll call her. You can ask her out, but Spike will take all your money.”

“Bring the brothers, too. About time we all spent some time away from work.”

“Nine p.m.” Ivan says, just as the elevator glides very gently to a stop.

-

“Hey, Spike—” a voice captures his attention up from his hangover as Spike waits outside a warehouse for the suits to finish their negotiations inside. He glances up to see Bull’s kid—a youngster, maybe six or seven—but a tough guy in Spike’s opinion. Spike feels like he’s out of place around here. It’s the wrong end of town.

“Hey,” Spike lifts a hand, squinting into the extremely painful sun. “long time. You on an errand for your dad?”

He scrabbles around in his uncooperative mind to remember the kid’s name. Or if he’s ever asked before. They’d just been a permanent fixture of Spike’s neighborhood, native to somewhere that no one’s native to anymore and still stuck with the short end of the medicine stick.

“You could say that. I’m looking for you.” Bull’s kid has deep brown eyes that are already masters of that ‘seeing through the universe’ thing that Laughing Bull’s eyes do so well. Meeting his gaze just seems to make Spike’s brain throb harder.

“Against all odds you found me,” Spike grumbles. “Don’t suppose your dad sent along anything for my hangover?”

The kid grins at him, white teeth in a bright victorious look. “He did, but he said to make you pay for it.”

Sounds like Bull , Spike keeps the thought to himself. Mostly. “How much? And that’s not the only reason you’re here, right?”

“Twenty woolongs.”

“ Twenty ?” Spike has to lower his voice when the outrage hurts his brain.

“Hey, delivery included. I came all the way from a different zona .”

Spike digs out his wallet. “How did you find me, anyway?”

“Dad read your chart. Threw some bones.”

“Your dad listens to too much gossip,” Spike digs cash out of his wallet. Seems like Laughing Bull always knows when he has that, too. Spike only pulls paper woolongs on blackjack night. He hands over the twenty woolong note. The kid passes him a little leaf-wrapped packet of powder. “What do I do with this?”

The kid shrugs. The woolongs vanish. Spike shrugs back and swallows the packet, leaf and all. A flood of harsh bitterness fills Spike’s mouth and he has to fight to swallow it and keep it down as his mouth fills with saliva afterward, and the taste stays on his tongue in a disgusting coat. He fights not to gag. “What is that?”

The kid shrugs again. “How’s your hangover?”

Hard to tell. His stomach gives an ominous rumble, threatening. Hard to focus on his pounding head when his ears are rushing and his stomach is rolling over like he’s about to empty it all over the parking lot. Spike swallows and doubles over to put his hands on his knees, becoming intimately aware of holding his teeth closed in sheer determination.

The kid bends over to watch, fascinated by Spike’s condition. “You’re real pale.”

Spike’s diaphragm gives a panicked surge and he brings up a hiccup that tastes bitter and foul, then all the pressure seems to ease at once, receding and taking his headache with it. Spike breathes out, and straightens up cautiously.

“See? It always works.”

“Ugh,” Spike manages. But he does feel better, in spite of how gross his mouth tastes. “Not worth twenty woolongs though.”

“With delivery.”

“Yeah, okay,” Spike feels another bubble in his chest and then lets out a long belch, feeling more like himself afterward.

“Gross.”

“ You’re gross,” Spike retorts. “Why else are you here?”

For a minute, the kid actually looks unsure, twisting one flip-flop on the pavement, his dusty brown toes gripping the strap. 

“I’m not handing over any more cash.” Spike tells him.

“ Alright, fine. Dad says—there’s new red-eyed cats stalking around the wrong end of town. They’re contagious—running into places they don’t belong.”

“ Huh? ” Spike is perplexed and he looks at the kid like he’s pulling Spike’s leg. “Animals? What do I look like kid, a zookeeper?”

The kid shrugs. “That’s the message, Spike.”

Seems like gibberish, but at least his head hurts less. “Okay, thanks? You better get back home. Tell your dad I’m grateful for the hangover cure.”

It’s not as good as the hair of the dog that bit him but his head’s clear. The kid waves to him and leaves him behind to puzzle over the message. Rabies isn’t really my problem.

-

It’s still on his mind when he collects Vicious later that evening. The guy lives in one of the box apartments, halfway up a multistory building. Right in the death zone—too high up to jump in case of fire, not high enough to make it quickly to the roof for evacuation. Rent’s always cheapest on these floors.

“You ready to gamble with more than your life?” Spike asks when vicious swings open the door to reveal his unsmiling and serious face. His bland expression doesn’t waver. Spike wonders if the guy had his sense of humor chemically castrated in the war. 

“I thought you were putting me on,” Vicious says. He hesitates in his doorway, still dressed from the day’s work. Spike doesn’t know why he’d say it.

“I got better things to do than pull your leg. Are you in or what?”

Saying Vicious is cagey about his social life is the understatement of the century, honestly. Spike waits. There’s no one else in the apartment, and that’s not a surprise. Vicious has the conversational skills of a knife on a whetstone.

“I don’t have a lot of money.”

“Could change that, if you’re a good player,” Spike only has so much patience for this. Mao told him to invite the guy, or else Spike would never even let Vicious know about it. It promises to make a real comfortable night so much worse. “Or just come get drunk, I don’t give a shit.”

Vicious wasn’t even fun when he was plastered. Just—if anything—more sullen. Spike is starting to genuinely resent being stuck as this guy’s guide dog back to humanity. He paws a cigarette out of his coat while Vicious fucking digests the last two sentences like a six course meal. Maybe he could use a good shit. Too many MRE’s.

“I don’t need comrades,” Vicious says, in his best ‘I gargled glass for breakfast’ voice.

“Okay. Sure.” Spike turns on his heel. Fuck you then. Waste of fuel to come here. “I’ll tell Mao you said that.”

Spike takes the stairs instead of the elevator, to run the irritation out of his system. He reaches the bottom sweating into his T-shirt. He pulls in air, and realizes he’s still holding his cigarette between his pointer and middle finger though it’s gone out. There’s a ‘no smoking’ sign down here in the nondescript building lobby. Spike ignores it and relights. At the door, he hears his name.

“Spike—” It’s Vicious, getting off the elevator. The building has one of those old fashioned spinning entrance doors, a relic of a past imported—like the conversion calendar—from another planet. It’s real tempting just to rush it and get it really spinning before he leaves. Like a cartoon or something—so fast Vicious can’t follow him.

“Yeah?” Spike says. His tone is childish even as he resists the urge to do something even more kiddy.

“Is business conducted at these games?” 

Spike snorts. This guy. The walking representation of someone crapping in your breakfast cereal. “They talk shit. Hit on the dealer—not Ivan, he’s married—tough talk each other. Sometimes you tell—well not you —sometimes funny stories about shit you saw last week. Are you in or what? Time’s wasting.”

He doesn’t give Vicious time to retreat into thinking again—or time for any more questions. He’s double parked in the fire zone. No one tickets Syndicate cars, but sometimes the cops get called anyway, or an irate citizen keys up his ride or some idiot slams into it because on Mars, ‘no parking’ usually means ‘no room to park.’ He hears Vicious step into the spinning door behind him and walks a little faster to be an asshole. It puts Vicious off-stride as he exits, and Spike laughs at him, jumps down the three cement steps for the building and heads for the car.

When Vicious gets in the passenger seat, face angry, Spike figures he’s getting under the guy’s skin. He can feel the reassuring snug fit of a holster around his shoulder, all the backup he needs if they’re going to keep partnering him up with this guy. 

“For the record,” Spike says, as he starts up the car. “You can’t get anywhere in this world if nobody likes you. You aren’t on Titan anymore. We aren’t comrades. We’re a Syndicate.” Spike doesn’t add what he doesn’t feel he has to; a family . “When somebody gives you an invitation, it’s a sign of respect .”

Even a military guy can comprehend that. Spike pulls into traffic and weaves through the lanes until he has open road. They aren’t too far from the bodega. 

“What good is that?” Vicious asks, stiffly.

“Around here it’s worth more than woolongs.”

-

Spike is only a few minutes late with their guest, and he settles comfortably at the center of the table, leaning on the edge and giving the hired dealer a charming smile. Mao kicks his shin under the table. It’s hard enough getting a date at his age without Spike poaching ladies out from under him. The dealer’s good looking, freshly forty but in that ageless sense. Nice figure. A body she spends money on. No wedding ring.

Around the edges of the play side are Shin, Annie, Ivan, Spike and then at Mao’s other side, Lin and the other new recruit. Vicious.

It proved important to split the brothers immediately after Lin’s first game. They had a way of pushing to each other, increasing odds of a good hand by busting strategically. They all cheat—that’s the problem with playing against gangsters.

The dealer—Janice—pours them all drinks and they all put cash up on the table. Ivan found her somewhere to come and run these games, and Mao’s been in love since he first saw her shuffle. She has a hell of a riffle and strong hands. It helps that she holds the cards in front of her chest to give everyone’s eyes permission to look.

“Hey,” Lin says, front he far end. “Cash on the table.”

Mao looks toward Vicious and Spike does too. He’s sitting stiffly with his hands on the table, flat-palmed and tense.

“I got him,” Spike says, smoothly. “Janice, split my chips. I lost a bet.”

“Aw, betting before you even got here?” she picks up smoothly, and the rest of the table relaxes again, the story so like Spike's history they just accept it. Janice counts chips for cash aloud. 

“It’s not like he’ll lose any of it anyway,” Shin calls from his corner of the table. “Spike always wins blackjack.”

Vicious only slumps out of rigidity after a second, his ice-chip colorless eyes landing on Spike as the man falls into lazy banter. The brothers Shin and Lin like Spike, he’s been showing Shin the ropes with more than a casual interest. Mao recognizes the look of a man on the move. But the look in Vicious’ eyes is calculated, like a bill counting machine’s laser focus, adding up the worth of a stack so something could be bought with it.

It gives Mao the chills.

“Alright, ladies and gents,” Janice shimmies into the tight corner behind the table in Annie’s store room. It’s just an old kitchen table from somewhere, wedged into a corner behind shelves of Bodega backstock. Ostensibly, it’s for breaks—though Annie never takes one and works the Bodega open to close by herself. It’s hidden away unsuspected and the dark store-front gives no external signal that they’re all here. More memories have been made at this table for the syndicate than at any board room table in the Monument Tower.

Janice winks at Mao when she pushes his stack of chips forward, and Spike nudges him under the table. His grin is all teeth and youth, assuming way too much about what Mao wants. There’s no point correcting him. It would just convince Spike that he’s right.

“I've heard some interesting stories today,” Lin says, composing himself after his first loss.

Vicious has been sitting silently except for his plays. He stood at eighteen, safe and bland as if he’s never played before. Or he’s trying not to lose Spike’s money, maybe it would ring like some kind of debt to him, if Vicious is the sort to worry about honor. Maybe it reminds him of something.

“Me too,” Spike says. “I got my damn fortune read.”

“Spike,” Ivan laughs. “You’re trying out for the Van?”

“Cost me twenty woolongs,” Spike grumbles, peeking at his cards as if they aren’t face up on the table for all to see. “And it was delivered.’

It catches everyone’s attention, even Mao’s, as Spike taps the felt mat for another card. He’s always understood the value of timing in a story, but Mao’s watched him hone the practice into mastery since they took him in. There are others who have been in the syndicate longer and from younger, but Mao’s had his eye acutely on Spike—as someone who could grow from a place of gleeful violence to understanding balance. Maybe. Eventually. If he ever grows up.

“Well, what was it?” Shin demands, looking at his cards like they have the answer.

“You go first,” Spike says. “Wisdom before mysticism.” 

Shin looks at Spike like he knows the wind’s out of the sails for whatever he says now. Regardless of content, they’ll all be waiting for Spike’s intrigue. 

“Dealer has blackjack,” Janice says, sweeping all the hands off the table and pulling wagers into the pot. Mao watches her set the cards aside carefully and draw a hand out for each of them, her talented hands confident with the fiddly playing cards.

“Well I keep hearing that the Tigers are in places they shouldn’t be,” Shin begins unspooling his story. “But when I send guys down to look they’re gone.”

Lin curses at his two card. Hard start for a hand. “Just along that one zona in central.”

“It’s not a good place for commerce.” Shin says. “It’s just—either one end of the place or the other.”

“They’re running you,” Ivan says. “Has to be.” 

“Yes, but why? You think they’re moving in somewhere else?” Shin gets a five on eight and glances over to see what face cards are showing. He seems to do rough odds in his thoughts, and he’s not as good at it as Spike.

“They’re selling Red Eye,“ Spike says out of nowhere. He just drops it dramatically on the table with his wager. He splits his hand—two aces—and plays both

“What?” Ivan demands. Mao secretly agrees with the question. “Where’d they get it?”

Spike shrugs. “Stole it. Made it.”

It’s to be expected that after any drug hits the street and makes a success of itself, it will quickly be analyzed and attempts made to re-engineer it. Red Eye has protections—it breaks down quickly outside containment, needs to be stabilized in a proprietary gel, but none of that is insurmountable. 

“They can’t be making it this fast unless they got the formulation from the scientists at—”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Spike points out. “They have it, and they’re selling it on Dragons territory. It’s a taunt.”

“You’re sure of that?” Shin asks. Lin leans over the table at the far side to look at Spike, like he expects they’re going to load up for a tiger hunt at any second and blow out of here.

“It was in my fortune,” Spike says, enigmatically. “Maybe it was worth that twenty woolongs after all.”

Mao makes a note to look into it, before he takes the leash off and allows for bloodshed. For tonight, it can exist unaddressed while Spike cleans them out of petty cash.

Vicious is still quiet in one corner, but Mao sees him take a drink at least, and listen .

-

“You held your own in there alright,” Spike feels loose and light with the alcohol and he drank enough that Annie’s maternal instincts kicked in and she made him park in the Bodega’s back lot and summon a cab home. The four of them—Spike and Vicious, Shin and Lin, stand smoking in the cool air of middle-night. Mars gets cold fast, all desert surface and thin atmosphere. 

“Should I return your investment?” Vicious asks, shoulders tight and eyes ahead. He’s still packed up inside his own colon, Spike thinks. But he at least pays enough attention to win, sometimes.

“What a strange way to say it. I won more than I gave you.”

Vicious has no answer for that, and irritation prickles under Spike’s skin again, a heat in his blood that has nothing to do with alcohol. Real soon, they’re going to fight again. He’s sure of it. 

“Just keep it.“ Spike thinks, buy yourself an enema before the shit backs all the way up into your brain, but what he says is almost as cruel. “Buy yourself some furniture.”

Vicious goes tense. Spike’s kicked his pride like Vicious kicked his junk when they fought. It seems to have about the same effect, and Spike feels a savage victory in it as he walks away, catching Shin by the elbow. 

“Let’s share a cab. I want out of here.”

They leave Vicious waiting at the cab stand, looking after the taxi they pile into in squinting indecision. It shouldn’t feel good to make the guy feel bad . What does Spike care? The seat is crowded with all their knees bent up, three grown men in an economy car. Spike doesn’t mind. These two are just the guys, the same as any other two on his side out of the countless syndicate members he can name.

“You won,” Lin leans around Shin to point out. This late at night and with this many drinks in him, his immaculate hair is coming  unglued in spikes and tufts. “What are you frowning for?”

Shin, between them, is utterly boneless with inebriation on the seat, arms over the back like he’s trying to hold it up and his hair dangling in his face. He rolls his eyes to Spike, too. “Yeah, you weren’t having fun today, huh?”

Spike isn’t fast enough to laugh it off. “Nah, it’s nothing.”

“It’s the new guy,” Shin says, dreamily

Getting him inside is going to be a two person job. “I can’t relax around that guy.”

“Good,” Shin says, airily. “Maybe you won’t spend half the day asleep on your feet again.”

“Mr. Yenrai usually has a good eye for recruits.” Lin says, providing the voice of reason.

“I hear the guy busted up a meeting and recruited himself,” Shin, the voice of alcohol.

“That’s the impression I get,” Spike says. “That he walked in and kicked over an ash tray.”

“Sounds like you.” Shin says.

“ You weren’t even there,” Spike snaps, suddenly and irrationally angry about the comparison. “Don’t talk about things that happened when you were a toddler.”

Shin just laughs about it, and his hand comes up absently off the back of the headrest and pokes fingers into Spike’s hair, brushing warm against his scalp. It’s a contact Spike doesn’t expect, but after the first moment of resistance, it feels good. He pulls away.

Up front, the Taxi driver keeps throwing them glances in the rear-view mirror every few moments, like he’s already planning what to do with the money he can get from selling their secrets if they let any slip. Spike bites down an urge to make real trouble for this guy by giving a false target. When nothing was there, the blowback would hit this guy. He doesn’t feel quite mean enough. 

“This is us,” Lin says, as the taxi slows. He gives Spike an entreating look, and Spike unfolds himself from the car.

“Wait up,” Spike tells the driver. “Leave the meter on. I’ll be back down.”

He helps Lin hoist his brother, one arm over each of their shoulders with Shin suspended between their bodies like the heavy load he is. 

“Sorry,” Lin says, as they muscle Shin onto the elevator. “His place is next to mine.”

“That ever get awkward?” Spike asks. It’s a rude question, but he doesn’t really care.

Lin looks askance at him.

“You know,” Spike says, as Shin sways between hem, exaggerating the motions of the elevator. “When someone has a girl over?”

Lin’s face gets a strange color, a stranger expression that Spike can’t read, and then he looks away. “The walls are good. And no one’s brought a girl over yet.”

Spike files that curiosity away for later. It’s not the response he expected at all. They bundle Shin into his place, and onto his couch by mutual agreement. Lin pries his brother's boots off his feet and lets them thump to the floor. This seems to be the extent of his familial duty. He leaves Shin there with the light on further in the apartment and locks the door behind them.

He hesitates, looking back to Spike with a serious expression on his face. His green eyes show stark severity behind the intoxicated shine, and he looks older than he is for a moment. “You don’t have to worry about him.”

It’s so serious that Spike’s buzzing, half drunk thoughts struggle to contextualize it. It must show on his face, because Lin clarifies. “Shin. He may talk a little more freely when he’s drunk, but he’s careful with our secrets.”

He noticed that driver, too . A spark of anger flashes up in Spike. “Don’t worry about it, Lin. I know.”

There’s no question in Spike’s mind of the loyalty among Syndicate members. If they aren’t loyal from love, they’ve all seen what disloyalty brings. Spike respects those rules if no others. He leaves Lin at his door and returns downstairs to the Taxi. He half expects the driver to have gotten the cold feet he should have, and left.

There the taxi sits, under a street light swimming with the red haze of Mars dust that the air scrubbers seem helpless to fully remove from the centermost portions of Tharsis. Spike gets back in, keeping his anger simmering behind an impassive mask.

“Where to, now?” The driver’s eyes meet Spike’s in the rear-view mirror. He thinks no one saw.

“Six blocks north and then a left,” Spike says.

“Rough area,” the cab driver puts the taxi in motion anyway.

“I’m a rough guy.”

The drive passes in silence, with the driver apparently unwilling to make more than the one passing attempt to get Spike talking. Even that is too much for Spike. After the turn, Spike points to a random building and undoes the snap holding his gun in its holster. When the taxi stops, Spike pulls the gun in a quick motion, and presses it to the back of the man’s head.

The cab driver yelps, starts to protest. “I don’t carry that much—”

“Shut up,” Spike doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t even feel his heart rate speed up. The driver snaps his teeth closed, his body rigid. Maybe he’ll even learn from this. 

“The next time you pick up some guys having a good night, have the decency to go deaf to everything but where you’re going.” Spike warns. He shouldn’t let this go at all. The level of disrespect to his compatriots makes it a sleight he can’t ignore. But everybody gets one warning in this town.

“What?” The taxi driver holds his hands up belatedly, as if demonstrating he’s unarmed. 

“What I mean is, if you get a bunch of Syndicate guys talking in your back seat your taxi driving days will be real short if they see dollar signs in your eyes,” Spike looks at the meter display in the back. He activates the pay screen with a slap of his free palm. “Understand?”

“Yes sir, I understand.” to his credit, the driver doesn’t try to deny his actions.

Spike palms a pay-card, anonymous, against the reader. The cab deducts his fare, and Spike gets out with his gun still aimed at the driver. “Count to five and think about your future.”

Spike steps back and the cab peels out with a rumble of engine and a squeal  of tires, the rear passenger door slamming shut on its own from the momentum. Spike holsters his gun, feeling the fuzzy remains of a good evening vanishing like the streaks of tail lights in the night.

-

Chapter Text

The shrilling phone drags Spike up from sleep and into an uncertain haze of heavy awareness. He isn’t as hungover today, but the waking isn’t easy as he comes up from dreams that feel as heavy and sticky as his body. He’s sweaty through the thin undershirt stuck to his chest, and consciousness brings awareness of how rank he smells.

It’s fully light outside. The phone keeps ringing. Spike drags his sprawled and leaden-limbs in and gathers himself up off the couch. The fabric seems to peel away from his body, and his mouth tastes like whiskey and bad decisions. His eyes adjust into focus on the phone vidset and Spike slaps it out of the cradle and onto the floor, intending to leave it there.

He groans, smelling old sweat and whiskey, sore from sleeping in a tangle on the couch, and lays back down on the cushions. 

“Spike?” The voice reaches out of the phone and bores into his brain, waking up his irritation. Vicious .

“What?” Spike snaps. He doesn’t reach for the phone yet.

A pause. “Your connection is bad.”

“My whole damn day is getting worse by the second. What? ”

Vicious mutters something Spike can’t hear, so he reaches for the phone sourly. It better be good, or Spike’s going to throw the whole phone into the toilet. It won’t work, modern phones are practically indestructible. Simple technology is the hardiest. But it would feel good. He turns the viewscreen up. Vicious blinks at him as his picture clears up, probably from an extreme close up of Spike’s carpet. 

“I found it.” He finishes saying. Grey eyes make a quick sweep of Spike as he sits up. No doubt taking in the sight of him in his boxers and undershirt. He stops talking.

Spike’s question is interrupted by a yawn he can’t stop. “Found—what?”

Vicious’ eyes snap back to Spike’s face. Can’t be the first time you’ve seen a guy in boxers before. Spike probably doesn’t look great, but when you call a night worker before ten a.m., you get what you get as far as presentation. 

“The lab,” Vicious says. Somehow with less of an awkward ‘I’ve never had a human conversation before in my life’ pause than usual.

“ What lab?” Spike needs a gallon of coffee, a shower, and so many cigarettes. He rifles around in the semi-damp couch cushions, aware that the spots where he’d been laying are moist. He comes up with a half-crushed pack of cigarettes.

“Are you listening now?”

It’s almost human of him to be annoyed by Spike’s slow catch-on. “Gimme a minute.”

Spike lights a cigarette after digging a lighter out of his pants—thrown in a pile on the floor. He lights the cigarette and drags air through it into his lungs until the nicotine kick hits his system. He holds it till he’s ready for whatever bullshit this is going to dump into the middle of his day. “Alright. From the top.”

“I’ve found the lab where the white tigers are manufacturing Red Eye.” Vicious drops all of it in one sentence. No further explanation.

“They’re—what? Manufacturing it already?”

“Has any of it gone missing? Enough to resell?”

Spike has no idea. He hasn’t heard anything about that—it’s above his paygrade, but Red Eye’s a pain to manufacture. If that much of it went missing there’d have been some casualties involved. Either in an effort to protect the loss or in retribution for something so costly. “Not that I know of. So they must be making it.”

Vicious looks up at him impatiently. “Are you going to need your hand held to reach every point I just made?”

Spike hisses smoke through his teeth like an angry cat. “You found a lab. You’re sure they’re making Red Eye there? They still make cocaine in the Tigers. For when grandpa wants to get high.”

“It’s not cocaine coming out of there.”

Spike’s not impressed, even if he knows he should be. If Vicious is right, it’s good work. But no one asked him to do it. “How’d you find all this out?”

Spike feels itchy where sweat is cooling on his belly, and scratches rudely. Vicious’ eyes follow his and a look of irritation crosses his features. “I intercepted one of their runners and convinced him to talk.”

“You what?”

“He had the Red Eye on him,“ Vicious continues.

Spike scratches under the hem of his boxers, and makes note of Vicious following the motion, too. Just another way to annoy the guy that doesn’t cost Spike a single wulong. “Did you kill him?”

“Yes.” 

That’s a mess . Hopefully he really got rid of the body where it won’t be discovered. “Why the hell are you calling me then? Call Ivan.”

“We could go get the place,” Vicious says. “Shut it down and send an indelible message in blood.”

He means without asking . It gives Spike pause. It’s ballsy for a new guy. Intuitive. But also shows a sort of recklessness Spike’s been reprimanded for in the past.

Spike puts his cigarette out and gets up. “We won’t have any backup.”

“We won’t need any.”

Spike feels a peak of interest forming in his middle. He grabs his pants off the floor. “Get over here then. I’ll help you, but I need a shower first. I always heard I should at least wear clean underwear if I’m going to die.”

There’s a pause and Spike figures Vicious is going to hang up. He’s halfway up the hall, when the quiet response from Vicious reaches him.

“If you die it won’t matter. Death voids your bowels.”

Cheerful . “Maybe then you’d let go of all your shit .” Spike calls back and closes the bathroom door.

-

It says something about how far Spike’s come that he thinks about a safety net as Vicious drive them to the lab only he’s seen. He decides better of it, in the end. He wants a fight, he’s aching and ready for it, feeling the tight embrace of his holster around his ribs and shoulders, and the promise of satisfaction as he smokes. This is a Tigers neighborhood. Could be trouble at any moment for them. Spike lights the third cigarette of the trip, eyes out for any sign of trouble.

“What’s security on this place like?” Spike asks, because Vicious seems content to glower over the wheel and let Spike go running in blind—if he’s not running in blind himself.

"Not as heavy as it should be.”

“Hey,” Spike says. “That’s not a number.”

“One outpost. Up top. It’s not manned all the time. Just when the lab is working.” Vicious clarifying is like pulling teeth.

“This is a one-level place?” Spike’s gut sinks. There’s very few single-level locations in Tharsis and all of them are Syndicate owned, this close to the middle of town.

“Yeah. A bridge-between building.”

A death trap . Spike’s body goes tense. He’s about to warn Vicious to turn around when his eyes lock on a Syndicate guy he recognizes—brilliant bottle-blonde hair stuck out in all directions, and a subcompact machine gun stuffed down the back of his pants with a casual threat implied. He’s carrying a bag of groceries, honest-to-god brown paper sack, with a box of brightly colored snack food sticking out the top. HIs eyes meet Spike’s as they pass, and he drops the bag of food and grabs for a phone at his belt.

“ Shit ,” Spike swears. “We’ve been made. Hurry up!”

“What?” Vicious asks, but he flattens the accelerator anyway, without Spike having to repeat himself. A spray of small arms fire follows the car, just short.

“So much for the element of surprise,” Spike grumbles. “Keep us steady. Get us there.”

He rolls down the window and leans out in an isosceles stance, holding as steady as he can on the Tiger thug. It’s too far for accuracy, but Spike aims center mass and takes the shot, the slide working and casing blasting away on the wind. The guy crumples back down into his groceries, splattering the box of cheap Twinkies on the pavement.

“Did he get the call in?” Vicious asks. 

“Who knows. I didn’t kill him, either.”

Safe to assume they’ll have a waiting ambush, if they’ve guessed where Spike and Vicious are headed. Why wouldn’t they? It’s right up the street. Spike drops back to his seat, flicking his eyes ahead as Vicious blasts through an intersection. 

The building stands out ahead of them, the only one that can be seen over, jammed into the alley space between two much taller buildings. Spike is sure those have outposts in them, serving like castle towers that can fire down on anyone approaching the building nestled between, while it vents its toxic steam low enough in the atmosphere to disperse before it hits the air quality sensors higher in the atmosphere of the terraform dome. 

“What’s the plan?” Spike clutches his gun, just one automatic pistol, plus whatever Vicious is packing. It doesn’t feel like enough.

“There are grenades in—”

A spray of machine gun fire blasts through the hood of the car, shredding through one corner of the windshield and past Spike’s head in an instant of heart-stopping trajectorial luck. The car continues forward on momentum, but the engine gives an ominous clanging noise before Spike sees something tear through the hood and out at velocity, the pull of engine power changing to the uncontrolled forward momentum, blasting over the curb with a teeth-clattering bang and barreling toward the front of the lab.

Spike kicks open the passenger side door and bails out in a roll as the car careens through the small parking lot. The world revolves in a furious, jarring circle as he hits shoulder-first on the unforgiving pavement. His heart is hammering in his own ears and between bouncing impacts, he feels like he’s floating.

Behind him, he hears another spray of machine gun fire, and then the heavy thud and shatter of the car slamming into the front of the lab, creaking and crunching. There’s shouting, too. Panicked and loud—the chemical smell of something releasing. Just a whiff of it makes Spike’s lungs seize as he coughs, kicking to his feet with his eyes watering. He struggles to make sense of the picture the last few seconds of action has created, looking back toward car.

It’s through the front wall of the boxy laboratory building, only the rear-wheels visible—still spinning and screeching as the damaged engine accelerates wildly—filling the building with black-burning rubber smoke and pouring it out again.

Vicious . Spike can’t see the whole front of the car, and as he gets to his feet a chorus of aches spread through his body. Shouts from the street behind him, from the roof of the lab as small booms clatter forth in rapid succession inside. Something worse than rubber is burning. The wavering fumes sting his eyes before he finally spots Vicious unmoving in the parking lot gutter, and some Tigers closing in on him. Spike whips his gun up and fires two quick shots, already on the move.

One drops, and the other man wheels on Spike and fires back, eyes wide and shots frantic as he empties out his clip. When the first shot doesn’t hit, Spike weaves, aims—returns fire with two well-placed shots center mass as one punches through the meat of his thigh with enough force to make Spike stumble. It’s more impact than pain yet, though when he tries to put his weight on it the leg screams protest. He sweeps back toward the machine gun nest as he back up the last few feet to Vicious, only now starting to stir.

It’s abandoned. On the ground, just outside the building are several men gasping and clutching their necks and faces. There’s a soft pop-pop-pop of something inside the building and the wavering heat mirage shimmer in the air of some kind of gas. A spark catches from one of the spinning rear tires as the last of the rubber shreds away from the rim.

Spike grabs Vicious and heaves him to his feet, aware of the raw, desperate pained sound he makes as he puts his weight on his injured leg and lifts Vicious to his feet, the leg threatening to buckle. “We have to get out of here—”

Vicious lurches up, urgently at the sound of steel rims scraping on pavement. Spike has no idea what kind of chemicals are blasting out of the lab, or how hot it needs to be before grenades explode, but his mind is screaming a warning to get the hell out of here. He grabs two handfuls of Vicious’ shirt and drags , stumbling into the street. Vicious gets his feet under himself as Spikes’ legs try to buckle.

“Lean on me,” Vicious hisses against Spike’s ear, holding him up by his shoulders. They lean together, hurrying up the street before it all goes up—which it does, in a ball of fire and a blast of heat and debris, after something finally caught.

The concussive blast overwhelms Spike’s hearing and throws stucco and brick against his back, so hot even from a distance that his back drenches with sweat. He can hardly think straight, his ears ringing with his pulse in a rapid oscillating whine. Everything else drops away. Vicious puts his mouth right against Spike’s ear and shouts—but it’s too muffled and indistinct even if the unexpected and intimate contact sends a jolt and thrill down his spine. 

We’re deep in White Tiger territory , Spike’s thoughts struggle up like bubbles under the surface of his mind and into the awareness with some popping sensation going off in groups. What a mess. If we get out of here, I’ll have to tell Mao.

Vicious yanks him a in a different direction and Spike goes, hissing at the change in his balance, putting pressure on his leg. The inside of his pants leg is full of blood, hot and slick and pulsing-mercifully not with the pressure and spray of arterial flow, but he’s aware of blood pooling in his sock, leaving his shoe sticky as they cut down an alley, looking for an escape.

-

It’s all over before eleven a.m., except the fallout which is impossible to gauge without a wider view. They make it back to Spike’s apartment, leaving chaos behind them. The adrenaline has faded enough now that Spike’s leg is just burning with agonizing pain. He limps in and practically drops to the ground, praying no one’s followed them this far but he can’t go another step without collapsing.

He slumps back against the wall next to the door, ears ringing and still muffled but he’s recovering from the concussive wave slowly. Vicious steps in and closes the door. It puts a wall between him and the world, and even though it’s only a flimsy piece of wood, it feels immediately better.

“Show me the wound,” Vicious says, loudly enough to cut through the fuzzy feeling in Spike’s head.

Spike points obstinately at his thigh. He’s not excited to peel his jeans away from the injury. He knows it’ll have to be cleaned, but Vicious can figure it out. It was his bad idea to take on the lab with only two men and some grenades.

Vicious pokes his fingers into the torn jeans and yanks, ripping the denim. Spike gasps as the sudden motion jostles his leg and and sends a fresh, bright jolt of searing pain through it. He grabs out, blindly and gets hold of Vicious’ shirt by the collar.

“First aid’s in the kitchen,” Spike hisses. “And bring some damn scotch!”

Vicious looks like he wants to protest, but he goes to the kitchen—a little closet sized space in one corner of his living room-slash-bedroom. The whole place is basically this one room, with a short hall jutting off the back to access the bathroom and a tiny coat closet. All the apartments are laid out this way, jammed in side by side so that Spike can hear toilets flush in the neighbor’s as he takes a shower.

“Where’s the scotch?” Vicious calls, as Spike frowns at the hole in his thigh and the bloody mess it’s leaving. He glances up to see Vicious going through all his cabinets. He feels both irritated by the intrusion and amused by the show of humanity. He’s found the medical kit, anyway.

“In the freezer!” Spike feels through the cold, congealing blood on the back of his thigh and finds no exit wound  behind the entrance, just his fucking luck. The whole area is tender and bruised, but the wound is off center from the bone and it doesn’t feel broken. Exhausted by this effort, Spike lets his head fall back against the wall.

Vicious returns with the scotch and plastic kit, pressing the bottle into Spike’s hand as the layer of condensation on it frosts over. The freezing glass against his palm revives him some, but his hands are too slippery with his own blood as he tries to get the cap off.

“I couldn’t find an exit wound,” Spike says. 

“It didn’t hit an artery,” Vicious says.

“I’d already be dead. Bone’s not broken either.” Spike finally gets the bottle open and takes a long drink of scotch as Vicious cuts the leg of his pants off, leaving a bright smear of blood on Spike’s carpet. As they come away from the underside of his leg, there’s a peeling sensation just behind his knee and then a fresh wave of pain.

Spike nearly chokes on his drink, pulling the bottle away from his mouth with a slosh. “ Ouch!”

“Found the exit wound." Vicious throws the ruined pants leg aside.

Spike is too busy gritting his teeth to feel more than bare relief. Vicious roots around in the kit and comes up with the antiseptic foam, pulls the activation cord to charge the can, and then rudely puts the nozzle into the wound on top  of his thigh and lets rip.

Pain jolts through every nerve of Spike’s body, jerking him rigid as if charged by a powerful electric current. He feels like he’s going to hit the ceiling, as the foam burns a worm of agony through his thigh, pushing out in a spray of bloody foam as it reaches the exit hole. He claws at the carpet, cursing. For what feels like forever, his lungs and body feel like they won’t unlock again. 

“Shit!” Spike shouts, voice tight, and his fingers squeezing the bottle neck. It doesn’t feel adequate—like there should be a swear word several orders of magnitude higher to account for how much it hurts. When he can breathe again, Spike plugs the bottle into his mouth and drinks. After all that, the burn of cheap, frigid whiskey feels like a smooth, friendly handshake.

“Lay all the way down,” Vicious says. He takes the bottle from Spike and sets it aside. “So I can elevate it.”

The immediate hot rush of pain followed by a hefty measure of alcohol means Spike’s in no mood to do anything other than mindlessly obey, slumping sideways down the wall as Vicious elevates his leg, propping it up on the coffee table. Foam and blood drips frothy from the wound at both ends. Vicious packs gauze against the injury and bandages it tight, repeating for the underside as Spike stares up at the water-stained ceiling and feels consciousness undulating around him, sometimes nearer and sometimes further away. It never fades completely out. 

“Hey,” Spike says, after a minute that he’s sure is actually longer. As Vicious finishes securing his whole thigh in bandages. “You better turn on the news. That’s a hell of a mess we left.”

Without any words, Vicious gets up to oblige. He moves out of sight as Spike tries to gather his thoughts together. Adrenaline has faded. He hasn’t eaten today. The sound of the viewscreen activating , and faint pornographic moans as whatever adult channel Spike left it on last night starts back up. Vicious changes it quickly to the news—which is, of course, covering the explosion. It’s still on fire, the whole building collapsing in  at the front, leaving no sign of the car except burnt and twisted metal amidst the rest of the building’s crumbling facade. A huge cloud of smoke billows skywards as the fire crews pump water and fire retardant foam on the chemical blaze that now threatens the two buildings it was built between.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and there won’t be any survivors.

The phone rings. Vicious brings it to Spike from where he’d left it on the carpet that morning.

“Don’t answer it,” Spike says.

“It’s Mr. Yenrai.”

“ Don’t answer it,” Spike insists.

Vicious accepts the call, after aiming the screen more closely in on Spike. Fuck you, I’m throwing you under the bus.

Mao appears to be standing in his own kitchen, wearing his shirtsleeves and an apron at his stove. His posture is easy, but his eyes are acute. He takes Spike in with that ageless patriarchal look that Mao has somehow perfected, despite having no children of his own.

“Have you seen the news?” Mao asks, mildly. He’s moving something in a pan with a spatula. It’s a late breakfast for him, by Spike’s estimate. 

“Just turned it on,” Spike says, truthfully.

Mao looks up from his work at the stove to take Spike in, tousled and pale-faced, prone on his apartment carpet and obviously in the aftermath of more than a night of playing blackjack with friends. 

“It’s a real mess,” Mao says. It’s not quite an accusation. “Seems like all the people involved may really be in trouble.”

It’s mild, and as usual Mao talks around the issue when on the phone. Spike is torn between flat denial of involvement, and only owning up to as much as the old man can find out. Of course, there’s always more to the truth than on the news, but if Mao’s sources can’t find it, it might as well never have happened.

“I bet they’ll be sorting it all out for a while.” 

“Well. I hope someone got a message,” Mao flips a pancake with his spatula. “You alright?”

It’s an offer for a doctor—a syndicate owned man so no reports wound up in the wrong hands. Spike’s leg gives a throb. Experience says he’ll heal alright, he just needs antibiotics. Asking for them will serve as an admission.

“I’m fighting off an infection.”

Mao sets the spatula down and looks into the device camera, his mild brown eyes showing patience and disappointment. “I have a personal formula of Qinghe Baidu. I’ll send some over. Have you seen Vicious today?”

“He’s here,” Spike admits, and, “I hate Baidu.”

Enlightenment enters Mao’s eyes. He places both hands flat on the counter in a bracing motion. “I am going to start naming my extra chins after you two. Take your medicine. It won’t be the last time you don’t like how it tastes.”

-

When the call terminates, Mao is already composing a list in his head of all the tasks he needs to accomplish by the end of the day now, when all he’d intended to do was check the stocks twice. No woman likes a man who can’t stop working . It’s why he left behind the prestige of working in city administration and planning to join the Syndicate. His history in crisis management still comes in handy, but the hours are better. The pay is better, too.

“Breakfast! For me?” A voice pulls him from his thoughts, and Mao turns half over his shoulder with a smile, letting the worry over the wayward actions of his subordinates fall away. Janice in one of his long dress-shirts—though it’s too short to fully cover her ass, since it’s his. It looks lovely on her, just an intriguing glimpse of black panties and her shapely thighs from the front. Playful, almost. 

“For both of us,” Mao says, pushing his list aside in his thoughts. He’s still irritated with Spike running wild, but when she reaches out and turns off the news in passing, he doesn’t protest. Mature women always have the best sense.

-

Chapter Text

“I’ll bring it over and talk to him,” Ivan offers, later that evening. The roads are slowly opening again now that the chemical fire is under control. It’s shut down the entire Zona of the city, sending toxic fumes into the surrounding neighborhoods. Evacuations of the area are still in effect.

“Really,” Annie says, twisting a dust rag in her hands behind the shop counter. They’ve closed the Bodega down early for once. Ivan stopped by to tell her the news. “What’s gotten into him?” 

“A bullet, but it got out again.”

Annie reaches out and taps her husband reproachfully on the back of his arm. “You know what I mean. For Spike to even be awake before two p.m. on a Saturday means trouble.”

Ivan taps the counter twice, agreeing. “He likes trouble, though, Annie.”

She sighs. “Bring him some food. That boy’s made of fence posts stapled together. He’ll need something hearty to heal right.” 

“If you want my opinion, he’s not sewing enough wild oats.” Ivan gets up off the stool and takes the paper bag with medicine in it.

“I don’t even want to know about that.”

“You can’t mother them all, Anastasia—”

Her green eyes flash up at Ivan, fierce in her beautifully round face, and Ivan is reminded that her maternal instincts are a ferocious thing—a leopardess or wolf defending a cub, but just as capable of using her sharp teeth as a rebuke. “No, but I can mother the ones that need it.”

Ivan sits back down on the stool and takes her hand. He knows his wife well enough to know she’s worried. She’s always liked Spike.

“He’s a tough guy,” Ivan reminds her. “Not the kid who came in here and robbed us blind every time he thought he could get away with it. He was a tough kid, too.”

“He had to be.” Annie sighs. “His poor mother. She just never got used to it here.”

“He’s just one of a dozen of our guys with that story. One of a hundred, maybe.”

“Oh yeah? You play favourites, too. Even old Merciless Mao is lenient with him.”

Ivan laughs. The nickname is ironic—Mao tends to be the hand of temperance that keeps the syndicates from devolving into all out turf wars over a crappy back-zona neighborhood nobody even wanted to spend resources to keep an eye on.  The kids—lieutenants and loose guns—are really touchy about respect. Haven’t earned enough of their own yet to not feel delicate about it. Jizz and testosterone backing up into their brains. That’s syndicate life. Always a bunch of fresh faced lieutenants because god knows it’s bloody enough out there that reaching thirty is a badge of honor. If it’s not the Syndicate, it’s the damn government sending kids off to die on distant moons over nothing.

Then again, that’s us, too . Ivan thinks about Vicious again, about how Mao considers him a warning about their responsibility. “I guess I agree with you, Annie. He’s rude and he tracks mud in everywhere he goes, always hungry and about as mature as a two year old without a nap—”

“Just as likely to get into fights on the playground—” Annie puts in. She turns around and selects Spike’s brand of cigarettes out of the back wall of tobacco and sets a carton down on the counter next to the bag of medicine. “Did Mao say how it went with Janice? Before—all this?”

“No idea. He had that glow about him, though.” Ivan picks up the bag and cigarettes. “He’s not a kiss-and-tell sort of guy.”

Ivan leans over the counter to kiss his wife’s cheek, and then her lips when she turns her head. Some of the worry has left her, at least. “Not like you.”

“Babe,” Ivan puts on his best tough-guy voice. “My wife’s the greatest in all the planet. How am I supposed to shut up about it?”

“I’m also the toughest in all the planet,” Annie reminds him. “And don’t you forget it.”

She shows him a muscled bicep and he nods agreement before letting himself out.

-

Spike drifts on a hazy sort of awareness in his apartment. With a lot of doing, he’s gotten up on the couch, injured leg hoisted up on a stack of pillows above the height of his head. His leg is still pulsing and painful with the throb of his heartbeat and the memory of antiseptic debriding foam working through the injury like a pipe snake haunts him.

He’s exhausted now, and now that the pain from his leg is only a dull roar, all the rest of the aches in his body make themselves known—his shoulder from jumping out of the speeding car, his lungs feel raw and stinging from even the few breaths of whatever it was burning up in the lab. 

Nothing to do now but regret my decisions. There’s no doubt he’s out of commission for a couple days. He’s not looking forward to trying to get to the bathroom. Angrily, he goes over the morning’s events in his mind as he watches the light projecting through the slatted window protector onto the opposite wall, slowly crawling toward the ceiling as the planet slowly rotates toward darkness, then as the sun dips below the wall of the massive crater Tharsis is sheltered in, it gives a sudden jump into sharp pink light on the ceiling and then goes dark.

It was all wrong, right from the beginning.  It’d be easy to blame this all on Vicious, but Spike agreed out of—what? Challenge or boredom or bloodlust? Maybe a desire to fly into one of those hair-thin moments where he feels most alive because he could stop being that way at any time between beats of his heart or rounds chambering in his gun?

Spike smokes, and after a long moment of feeling sorry for himself, he has to laugh a little— Mr. Too-perfect and his fucking terrible plan. What had it even been? Driving up to a death pit in broad daylight? It was never going to work.

A knock at the door. Spike checks his gun—he’d told Vicious to leave the door unlocked so he didn’t have to get up and hobble to the door when his medicine came. He’s in a more defensible position over the back of the couch, anyway. He presses his gun out of sight into the couch cushion, so a shot would hit anyone in the doorway in the groin-to-knees area.

“Come in,” Spike calls.

“It’s me,” Ivan’s voice comes through the thin wood, and Spike flicks the safety back on his weapon, pushing it back down into the cushions. The door opens and Ivan steps in with a plastic bag, a carton of cigarettes and the smell of food. “Dark in here.”

Ivan flicks on the light and Spike has to blink for his eyes to adjust.

“That took all day,” Spike says, as Ivan displays the paper pharmacy bag. One side is bulgier than the other. Qingen Baidu. Damn.

“For some reason , half the city is shut down,” Ivan shuts the door behind him and tosses the medicine bag to Spike. “I had to fly over to the doctor in a hopper for the prescription and then to the pharmacy. Airspace around here is restricted while the air quality machines try to eat all those dangerous chemicals out of the atmosphere, so it took a while to get in.” 

Spike catches the paper bag with a crinkle and a wince as his body protests the sudden movement. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

SIvan fishes around in his coat and drops a carton of cigarettes and a digital noise machine on the single empty space on the closet-sized kitchen’s counter. “Officially, anyway. You hungry, Spike?”

It’s an interesting precaution, but Ivan’s always been cautious. He’s a rare age for a syndicate man, so Spike’s inclined to believe that’s working out for him. The device will scramble any digital signal out of here, so anything they say stays private. Old-school spy tech. Spike nods.

“I could eat. Maybe not a lot.” He paws the bag open and discovers that there’s just antibiotics and the TCM compound. “No painkillers?”

Ivan shrugs. “I thought you liked pain?”

Spike wants to protest that it’s different, but he catches himself. Ivan doesn’t mean it that way. “This is more than a couple of tabs of aspirin’s worth, Ivan.”

Ivan arches his brows with a bland expression. “Just take what you have for now. The syndicate can get you a stronger painkiller than anything from a doctor. You don’t just keep anything around?”

“My landlord’s real nosey,” Spike says. “And a real stick up my ass.”

Ivan laughs at him. “Sorry. He must really be something if you listen to him. Especially given the situation in which we currently find ourselves. What the hell happened, Spike? And none of that ‘I don’t know nothing’ bullshit. Where’s Vicious?”

“He went home.”

“He just left you here?”

That’s a loaded question. Spike lays back down. He’s tired of holding himself up. “It’s not like we’re attached at the hip. I got tired of looking at him. He’s a shitty conversationalist.”

I didn’t like him sitting here looking at me while I recovered, Spike keeps to himself. It felt like the vulture was right here to see if I was going to die.

“Yeah, he really is. You sure no one followed you back?”

“No. I saw a guy I knew on the way over to the lab, too. Tigers guy. The one with the really bad bleach job. He knew me back—I shot him, but I don’t think I killed him.”

“Any chance the explosion or gas finished the job?”

“Sure, but when am I ever that lucky?”

Ivan is still in the kitchen, rifling around in the drawers and cabinets. Second time today , Spike thinks. It’s less of an intrusion when it’s Ivan, somehow. Finally, he must find dishes. “Tell me about it. What the hell were you two assholes up to?”

“Vicious found the lab. Said that’s where they were making the red-eye.”

“He found it—when? Between yesterday evening and this morning?”

“I guess so. Maybe the guy doesn’t sleep.” Spike jabs the smoldering filter of his cigarette out in the jammed-full and overflowing ashtray on his coffee table. “Maybe he knew before, I didn’t ask. He said he grabbed a courier. Got the info that way.”

“You weren’t with him?” Ivan comes back with a bowl of mucky looking pale yellow stuff. It smells like rum.

“What the hell is this?” Spike picks up a spoonful and inspects it, then pours it back in the bowl. No lumps. It’s not soup?

“Kogel-mogel. From the deli up the street. It’s supposed to make you feel better.”

“It’s already making me feel worse ,” Spike says, dropping the spoon back in the bowl with a splash. “What is it with you guys and folk remedies?”

“Just trying to help,” Ivan holds up his hands defensively. “There’s rum in it. I thought you’d appreciate that, at least.”

Spike sets it aside on the coffee table without further comment, jumping to an earlier point in the conversation. “And no , I wasn’t with him. I rode out last night with the brothers, then came home.”

Spike vaguely remembers threatening the cab driver, but it all seems like forever ago. “He called me this morning.”

Ivan digests that, sitting down on Spike’s second hand dump coffee table and picking up the bowl of kogel-mogel for an inspecting sniff. Then he takes a sip for himself. “It’s fine, you big baby.”

“Great. You eat it, then.” Spike suggests. “Anyway we were just going to hit it.”

“You didn’t ask?” Ivan questions. There’s a harder edge to it than there had been before. “Or make a plan? You were just going to go in broad daylight and—what?”

“Throw some grenades,” Spike says, petulantly. He’s aware of how stupid it sounds.

Ivan sets down the bowl to cross his arms over his chest and leans back. “Spike.”

“Yeah, I know,” Spike says. It was a stupid idea and they wound up practically throwing themselves in, instead. 

“Great. Good.” Ivan says. “So you better know to lay low until Mao and I get this sorted out. That means off the leg and out of pool halls and no more stupid stunts. Once the Tigers figure this out, it’s going to put a great big target on your back—and it’s going to be a hell of a thing to clean up.”

“We can hope they don’t…”

“We can hope monkeys fly out of our assholes and do our bidding. What we should hope instead is that the White Tigers don’t come to our doorstep with video or pictures of you two clowns blowing the place up and demand your heads instead of a blood feud.” Ivan  pulls out his own pack of cigarettes and lights one, agitatedly. “Because then it’s up to the Van what we do with a couple of wayward enforcers that don’t consult a star chart before they start painting the town red.” 

Spike’s appropriately chastened. “I understand.”

“I’ll go talk to Vicious, too,” Ivan promises. “That ambition of his is going to get him and everyone around him in trouble someday. Eat your kogel-mogel.”

Resentfully, Spike takes the instruction, after swallowing his antibiotics.  But—for all that, Vicious had half-carried Spike out of that train-wreck of a situation and back to safety. He’d made sure Spike was alright, seen to the wound himself. It was more than a casual interest in an ally coming out alive. Spike finishes the food, all liquid, and Ivan leaves a light on when he leaves, reminds Spike to take his Baidu. 

If he wanted a scapegoat, he could have left me. I couldn’t have gotten out of there on this leg.  It’s not so far out of line with tactics Spike has used in the past; abandoning injured syndicate soldiers in the line of fire to secure his own escape. It’s expected. If you have to, then you’re responsible for making the enemy pay in blood; making good on the check written for your life by an ally. 

Maybe that’s the difference between real soldiers and syndicate men. Spike manages to sleep eventually, with his leg on a stack of pillows and his head on the hard couch armrest.

-

Recovery takes a full two miserable weeks. Spike’s on his feet again out of necessity after the first night, cautiously favoring his injured leg.  His leg still feels heavy and pulsing-sore, warning of the injury every time he moves it. It isn’t the first time he’s been shot—it won’t be the last, either. A syndicate doctor sent by Mao makes a house call at the first light of day, waking Spike with a start so bad he gasps involuntarily and clutches for his leg in blind pain. 

He re-bandages the injury with fresh cloth after a look at it—raw and tender but scabbing and mostly clean mess coming out of it. He leaves Spike with synthetic heavy duty pain medicine and some kind of fancy plastic jug to piss in. Gross . By the end of that day, he’s tired of smelling his own stress piss and gets up to his bathroom. It’s miserable but by then the drugs have kicked in and left him in so much of a haze he only remembers his antibiotics—and whatever’s in artificial powdered rhino horn baidu—because Mao calls him repeatedly.

After that, Spike loses track of time. Sometimes Lin is in his apartment, and between periods of his awareness the space becomes cleaner around him. Somehow, the wreckage of blood soaked into his carpet even vanishes. The ashtray empties and a fruit basket appears on his coffee table, a fresh carton of cigarettes, and Spike must eat some of the fruit. It turns into a pile of peels and wilting grapes ( fuck grapes) before it vanishes again. He remembers eating and using the bathroom only as sorts of out of body fugue experiences.

Then he wakes up and the last of the synthetic drug has left his system—formulated in a syndicate lab somewhere for gentle let down—so no one learned any kind of lesson from withdrawal. It doesn’t make it any less dangerous, but Spike is grateful it doesn’t wring him out any worse than the injury had. He doesn’t quite have to hobble around anymore but his thigh is still bruised all rainbow colors and will only take his full weight for the space of a step. It’s like he can feel the rest of his body atrophying the longer he can’t stand up.

It feels restless and anxious, and Spike seizes hold of his return to consciousness to do what he can with hand-weights and short practice sessions, as much as to settle his mind as work his body. Seeing the same walls every day is about to send him off the deep end. Lin stops by, letting himself in with a key Spike doesn’t remember giving him. He seems surprised to catch Spike mid-kata. “Good to see you up.”

He finishes stepping in, carrying a bag of food, and Spike briefly remembers the encounter with the Tiger Syndicate man—gunning him down on the street with his bag of ding dongs. Spike brushes the memory off. “I’m starving, so please tell me you brought more than some folk remedy or a dried out frog.” 

Lin looks at him uncertainly, his severe hairstyle and too-serious face cut out to make school nun expressions. “It’s food. Chicken soup.”

“How about something chewable ,” Spike complains. He settles carefully on the couch and grabs for his pack of cigarettes. 

“I tried to suggest sandwiches, but Mr. Yenrai was adamant this would make you feel better.”

“I got shot ,”  Spike snaps. “It’s not a cold .”

Lin accepts that serenely without comment, and brings Spike a bowl of soup anyway. With a spoon, and a little package of crackers. Spike’s hungry in spite of himself. He shovels food into his mouth. 

“Sorry you go stuck with this,” Spike says, realizing the extent of extra work this must have been for Lin. He’s not sure how long he’s been incapable of caring for himself in more than the most basic of ways, but it’s been a few days at least.

“I volunteered,” Lin says. “I worried they would assign Vicious otherwise.”

It seems like a strange statement until Spike realizes it’s Vicious’ mess to clean up. His bedside manner is atrocious, as well. Spike’s grateful, but also curious.

“How’s all this going over?” Spike asks, pushing the last of his soup around before he just sets the spoon side and drinks it instead. “Am I on the shit list for the rest of my life?’ 

“The Van seem okay.” Lin reveals, sitting down on the floor and leaning back against the coffee table. He pulls one of his peculiar black-clad clove cigarettes out of a silver case, and lights up before continuing. The scent of clove and tobacco is almost as sharp as incense in the air, cutting through the stale-air smell of Spike’s apartment. “They say it was predicted.”

That surprises Spike, then—”Good way to cover their ass so they save face.”

Diplomatically, Lin doesn’t contradict either Spike or the Van. He’s always had the gift of keeping his opinion to himself. “Mao isn’t all that happy about it, but so far the White Tigers are too busy chasing their own tails. Trying to figure out how we knew where the lab was, so quickly after it became productive.”

“Ask Vicious,” Spike grunts. “But they’ll know it was us.”

“Undoubtedly. Probably down to which of us it was.” Lin glances at Spike’s leg. “You should make sure you’re ready for that before you make yourself known too far outside comfortable territory.” 

“We’ll see if they have the guts,” Spike says. “Maybe they’ll reconsider moving in on our territory.” 

“It was a costly mistake. Let’s hope they don’t want to get their money’s worth in blood.” Lin looks up at Spike, with an unspoken question on his face.

He doesn’t know why I did it. Spike’s not all that sure either, but it worked out in his mind, that’s what matters. They struck a blow and lived to hit again another day. After a moment, he glances up and finds Lin smiling unexpectedly. 

“They really didn’t know what hit them,” Lin reveals. His eyes slide away, mischievous. “It’s almost tempting to hit them again while they’re off-balance.”

Spike laughs. “They’ll have their guards up.”

“I bet.”

Spike finishes his soup. “Ask Mao. I’m in, as soon as I’m back on my feet.”

“Just keep your own guard up.”

-

Chapter Text

Vicious doesn’t miss any more blackjack nights after that first invitation, and he slowly begins to unfold as he and Spike find a channel for their violence against the rival syndicates. After the attack on the lab, the Van have decided the Feng Shui is right for red, and for a time the streets are terrible—all along the edges of Dragon territory; the beast is awake. Uncoiling with machine gun teeth and a rattling growl as it chews up and spits out the city, swallowing outward like a snake engulfing one block at a time.

Spike’s developed a healthy and ferocious paranoia; a sixth sense for when a street is about to erupt. Somehow, he and Vicious build a bridge to trust. They don’t talk much. 

“The streets have been such a mess, lately.” Annie observes mildly, as they all sit in her back room and wait for Janice to arrive. She’s late. Mao’s foot is kicked up on the rung underneath his chair, jogging the heel up and down in a way that has Annie and Ivan exchanging looks. This week, it’s a tight group. Shin and Lin are out after a retaliatory strike caught them off guard in new territory. Shin caught a stray skim from a bullet, and Lin’s taken on his care.

Spike is surprised he’s glad to know they’re both alright. There have been hits all over the place. It’s a war on all fronts but for so long that’s just been what Spike’s life is. The idea of expecting anything different or that anyone he knows isn’t always in danger is strange. He expects the same for himself. 

“Well, while we wait,” Ivan puts him, cautiously, one eye still on Mao’s anxious tic. “What’s going on for New Year’s this year?”

“The Van have a ceremony in mind for the commencement of a proper year,” Mao seems to come out of himself, and he reaches for his drink to wet his mouth.

Spike leans over the painted felt cover laid out on the table to pick up the deck of cards and shuffles them for something to do with his hands. The wax-back cards slide through fingers well-practiced with the motion, snapping card sound punctuating the conversation as drifting cigarette and cigar smoke fills the room with a haze.

“What’s that mean for the rest of us?” Ivan asks.

“Nothing, I suspect—or, the usual. Company party.” Mao laughs. It’s a little on-edge. “Something daring if I know them. It’ll be all-guards on deck this year.”

Spike’s aware of Vicious sitting with his usual reserve at the far-end of the table, his eyes on Spike. It slips under Spike’s skin like a knife beneath an orange peel, rendering him aware of the man’s presence in a sharp way. All of the violent momentum is a result of his influence—it’s out of line, and everyone in the room is aware of it, but the politics pull on them all like the puppet strings of fate that the Van believe in. Vicious has used the whole machine against the men ostensibly in charge of it. It reveals an uncomfortable weakness in the whole system.

“What a pain,” Ivan says.

“It’s always a great party,” Spike says, dropping the thoughts his mind’s been worrying in its teeth in favor of baring his own in a grin instead. “You just don’t want to stay up late anymore, old man.”

“That’s fine for tomcats like you,” Ivan hooks his arm around Spike’s neck and almost pulls him out of his chair, rubbing a work-roughened hand through his already wild hair in horseplay. “But I’m respectable now.”

“Like hell,” Spike shoves and it upsets his chair under him, sending both he and Ivan to the floor.

“Ivan,” Annie protests, jostled, but she just rescues the bottle of good scotch when Spike slams Ivan into the legs of the table, laughing in spite of the sharp pain in his mostly-healed leg. It’s just a halfassed contest of strength as Ivan wrestles Spike over and sits on him with more than an expert’s touch.

“I taught you everything you know you little shit,” Ivan reminds, but there’s pride in his voice.

“Not everything,” Spike jabs an elbow back into Ivan’s side and is surprised when he catches it. It turns into a twist against the joining and Spike lets his body go loose rather than resisting, before jackknifing under Ivan like a leaping fish and sending him crashing over against his own empty chair.

Annie grabs him next, one big arm around Spike’s neck as he starts to get up, holding him like she used to when he was a kid, all solid and unmovable like the rock of ages. “Horseplay goes outside .”

She turns a sharp look on her husband, next. “This isn’t a gym.”

Mao watches it all unfold with an impassive expression, and that tired look he gets sometimes when he’s feeling his patience stretch.

“Okay,” Spike holds his hands up in surrender. “We’ll be good.” 

Annie loosens her grip and Spike slips free. The table is a mess of slopped drinks and upset ashtray, and because they caused the mess, Spike and Ivan set to work cleaning it up. From the front of the Bodega, there’s the sound of the door’s bell chime

Everyone in the room goes tense, and Spike gets a hand on his gun, sees Ivan do the same. In the silent moment that follows, Vicious produces that ridiculous sword he carries everywhere from under the table. 

The bodega cat, sitting on top of a shelf near the door into the stockroom, lifts its head with a curious flick of its ears.

“Sorry I’m late, fellas!” Janice’s voice reaches them from the front room before she peeks in, with a smile. Everyone’s tension evaporates, and she gives an especially bright smile to Mao. “I just had the worst luck today—snapped a heel on the way over and the traffic was just crazy.”

She holds up a pair of heels by the straps in one hand, smiling in her pretty and sheepish way. Her bare feet are clad only in sheer black panty-hose, dusty and red from the Mars dirt. 

“Oh, honey,” Annie gets up. I’ve got some of those fold up flats in front for the night club across the street—let’s get you a pair.”

-

“I have been extended an invitation to the New Year party,” Vicious says, as they wait at the taxi stand again. 

Spike leans comfortably against his too-steady shoulder to shield his lighter’s flame from the breeze , and because he’s had enough to drink to be unsteady on his feet. His thigh hurts. The statement makes Spike snort. He has to click the flame on the lighter again to get the cigarette lit.

Vicious glances sharply at Spike, to determine if it’s laughter at his expense.

“I was sitting right there,” Spike reminds, drifting. “Besides, it’s you and everyone else. They do it every year. Bring your girlfriend, if you want.”

“I don’t.”

“What? Have a girlfriend?’ Spike says it flippantly—it’s no surprise that Mr. Personality doesn’t have one. Spike’s only just getting to like him enough to have figured out that for all his acid looks and having the stiff body language of someone with a twelve-gauge shotgun barrel sixteen inches up his ass, Spike can take liberties with him. Lean on him, poke fun. It’s not that he doesn’t think Vicious will explode, but Spike can handle his shit if he does. 

He kind of wants to see what would happen, even. Wouldn’t mind the fight.

“Want to.”

It doesn’t clarify anything at all. “What, go to the party?”

“It’s useless.”

Spike laughs at him, really this time. “You just don’t cut loose ever, huh?”

He knows that’s not right. He’s seen Vicious fight, had him at his back in combat. He goes loose and alive, too. Spike recognizes that mirror of his own existence in Vicious. On that level, maybe beyond anyone else in his life, they understand each other.

“Is it just an excuse to flaunt wealth?”

“No,” Spike says. He pulls a long drag off his cigarette. “It’s a reward. Hell, we all bled for the syndicate this year. We’ll bleed more next year. For one night, the reward is that we’re all fucking kings. It’s not the only party, but—” 

Spike gestures broadly. 

“But?” Vicious’ grey eyes bore into Spike’s seeking a key to understanding.

Spike gets distracted by the colorless depth. There’s just—nothing in them. It’s like an emptiness that echoes all the way down. The only light that might not get trapped in there is the reflection of a muzzle flash.

“You’ll see,” Spike says. He’s not sure Vicious will. “It’s a window into the way life can be if you’re fucking born with it. It's the soul the rest of us are fighting to have.”

Vicious doesn’t look convinced. Spike ignores him, straightening up. He doesn’t know what will ever reach the man. Doesn’t care. His leg hurts and the night is hazy, turning on a faint gyroscope of intoxication. It feels exposed and raw. He’s aware of the empty street ahead of him, of Annie’s behind him.

“Do whatever you want.” 

“Do you want to share a cab?” Vicious asks.

With the tension running under Spike’s skin like an electric current, all kinetic and promise and that distant agony in his leg, Spike isn’t sure he won’t try to tear Vicious’ throat out with his teeth if he has to spend much longer with the man next to him. 

The memory of that brilliant flash of pain as Vicious treated Spike’s wound, and that expression of utter callous disregard for his agony on Vicious’ face as he did it blazes hot in the back of Spike’s mind. Even the remembered pain leaves Spike half-hard in his pants, breathless and frustrated.

“No.”

The cab finally arrives and they share it anyway, quietly. Vicious taking liberties with Spike’s boundaries the same way Spike pushes on his. At home, Spike throws everything on the floor in the spot he’d collapsed that day inside his door. He turns the shower on hot, hunches his shoulders into it and lets loose. He pushes one thumb into the scar and presses until his mind goes hot-white, the other hand wrapped around his cock and pulling until he cums under the spray, breath quick and wrenching. It recedes slowly, like thorns scratching over his skin, and takes something away with it as the evidence rinses down the drain.

-

The holidays all run together at what would have been the end of the year on Earth. It only aligns with the end of the Martian calendar every few years. Seasons feel like they just happen, with the whole universe operating on conversion time. Marching along to a lunar calendar that doesn’t even make sense on the world it was conceived on anymore—the moon’s orbit is erratic and unpredictable and wobbling now, with half of it blown out. No one lives on that planet anymore, they only exist there.

It makes about as much sense as anything else the Van does—their star charts and astrologers are operating on ancient earth positions. So—on Mars, the new year comes twice. It’s on the backslide of the Martian orbit this time—a cold new year, the kind that aligns with the way old movies show. Western ameri-centric New Years. Spike dislikes having to dress up for the event, even knowing that by the end of the night he’ll have shed his coat and tie somewhere. He does his best to tie the damn thing, and leaves it loose at his throat.

Spike steps into the sixtieth floor of the tower, all brilliant lights and a swarm of bodies, many he wouldn’t recognize on the street. Anyone who’s been a member for longer than a year or proven themselves beyond doubt is invited—and the ranks are swelled by serving girls with gorgeous endowments in meticulous red dresses. They’re hired in from syndicate owned casinos, paid handsomely enough for the work that he hears that party freelancing is hotly pursued. There are also a number of dates—plus ones—all competing to show off the finest designer clothes.

It’s a stunning display of power held in the public heart of the Monument tower. It’s a place that’s out of reach to nearly everyone here at all other times of the year, decked now in flowing red, prosperity colored silk and trimmed in gold, music pulsing and flowing from the far corner of the twisting fabric maze where there will always be something new just out of sight. Dancing or gambling or some film star. Food and booze and debauchery, hidden in those red silken corridors that only exist for the night. 

The center of the room is open and massive however, with the viewer commanded to look to the far end where the story-tall windows show a truly impressive view of the whole city of Tharsis, subjugated below the tower. From this angle, carefully chosen so the Syndicate’s Monument tower is taller than anything in the immediate skyline, it’s like the city itself is on its knees and ready to suck his cock. The rest of the huge, empty floor that’s only ever used for functions like this is segmented off behind ceiling-to-floor silk curtains. From here it looks like one uninterrupted wall, but Spike knows from experience that behind them are miles more of the red silk. Leading off to a dozen delights. 

Spike heads for the window first, to really take in the view along the way. He collects a martini off a serving girl’s tray and a promising wink from the girl before he weaves his way through the pulsing and moving crowd to the window.

It’s spotlessly clean. Stepping up to it spins a helpless vertigo over him. Outside the city reveals itself against the absolute dark of the night only by the edge-lights of the buildings and the square of shadow against dark—going on and on to the crater’s edge. It’s a different version of the city than he’s used to at street level. Maybe both more and less real than the dusty streets he knows so intimately.

“Spike!”

The voice pulls him out of his introspection and Spike looks up to see Shin, pink-cheeked and making his unsteady way through the crowd. Already drunk. Good for him. Spike had been so sure he’d get thrown out of his first Syndicate party he’d started it by drinking one of everything he’d laid eyes on. The rest of that night was honestly a brilliantly colored blur, but he’d woken up in the pool locker room between two naked serving girls in the first light of morning and he hadn’t been too hungover to make the best of a second round.

“Shin,” Spike greets, steadying him by the shoulder. “How are you enjoying yourself?”

Shin gets mastery of his balance and starts to talk, then his eyes rivet to Spike’s sloppy tie. “Here.”

His hands come up and pull the knot loose, turning Spike’s shirt collar up and rearranging its alignment. He has to lean in to do it, and Spike realizes he smells like coconut and tiki drinks. It’s endearing and somehow kiddish for a guy that Spike’s seen demolish a man’s kneecaps with a shotgun blast, or calculate an explosive payload just enough to wreck a rival’s car without endangering others on the road. He starts the complicated process of retying the tie, his breath warm on Spike’s neck and under his chin.

Spike lifts his Martini and has a long sip, while Shin gets the knot together. Drunk and backwards, and it’ll still probably look better.

“You don’t have to fuss.”

“If I don’t, Lin will catch you.”

“He’ll catch me anyway,” Spike points out. He turns his cheek so that as Shin brings the big end of the tie up and over it doesn’t slap him in the face. “Half the time he’s fixing your knot.” 

“I have decided to wear only bolos. I’ll get it right this time.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Spike warns, but the process is practically over anyway. He finishes his drink in one big swallow as Shin steps back from intimately close and draws the tie’s knot tight against Spike’s throat. He folds the collar back over, and smooths it down. It’s almost unnecessarily handsy, but Spike is pretty sure he’s been picking up on these signals for a while. Runs in the family. “

“It’s my time to waste,” Shin says. True to his words, he’s wearing one of those ugly bolo ties. 

Spike sets his empty glass down on a passing tray, seizes Shin by the shoulder and spins him with the natural sway of his body to let him look out the window.

“When you were a kid,” Spike grabs another drink—they never skimp here—”Did you ever think about what was going on in the tops of these towers?”

Shin’s reflection in the glass, a result of the strong interior illumination overlaid against the city constellations below. The question seems to give him pause, and then he lets go of it—of any semblance of seriousness. Shin laughs it off. “The tops of those towers might as well have been off in space for all I thought about them.”

Spike knows what he means. Despite the gates—and everything in the galaxy within reach of a few hours or days of travel, once you got past the Karman line—but that glass ceiling is as impenetrable and impossible to the vast majority of humanity as the gates of heaven. And before you even get to the dark blue of space, it’s a long way up from street level.

“Well,” Shin continues, taking a last look. His cheeks are still flushed pink, but his eyes are a little more serious now. “We made it, didn’t we? Good a reason to celebrate as any other.” 

He gets it. Shin’s face and attitude are a fair echo for Spike’s own, a few years past. Spike wonders if Vicious ever will, or if the war neutered that part out of him along with the whole rest of his personality. He finishes his second drink. “Let’s go find where they’re playing cards.”

They weave their way into the maze of silk, dividing the sides of the huge floor into private seeming chambers. It’s designed to move bodies deeper in, to get someone lost and involved and it’s always worked on Spike’s intoxicated mind with a sense of unending discovery. As if around any corner you could step into something altogether unknown to you. The vibrant red silks almost overwhelm the color receptors in his eyes, and muffle the music to a faint pulse, rendering the golden light inside ruddy and ethereal.

They find a ‘room’ created as such out of silks, with a few card tables—loans from the syndicate owned planetside casinos. In a few years they may need to up their game, once that massive orbital monstrosity— Spiders from Mars —gets finished. The dealers are all professionals, too, very sharply appointed in nice dresses with trim red vests, all low cut and showing skin equally between the male and female dealers.

It’s the one rule—look, enjoy, but don’t touch without permission. Spike’s never had a problem with that—he’s happy to look and usually gets a favorable answer when he asks for more. He doesn’t have any respect for guys who can’t take no for an answer.

He picks a table that he and Shin will have for themselves, with a pretty brunette dealer. Her hair is done up severely and her nails lacquered the exact brilliant red of the walls, the tips golden and gleaming. It catches the dim light and glitters as she shuffles.

“It’s draw poker,” she says. “You boys in for cash or fun?”

“I’m in for cash,” Spike digs out his wallet and Shin does the same, settling on the stool next to Spike’s and under the table’s edge, their knees brush. It could be accidental but Spike would bet otherwise. He pays in a couple hundred bucks, and watches Shin struggle to match—his wallet’s got the money in it. But, those instincts from days of never having enough die hard. Even when you can afford to eat well, or play hard on occasion, it feels like you’ll never see money again. It hurt the first few times. He’ll get over it—now that they’re in the syndicate and solid, the money will stay steady and he’s far more likely to die than spend it all. You can’t take it with you.

“Alright, let’s have a good time fellas,” The dealer has a gorgeous smile, and clever hands. Her nametag says her name is Sandi, and Spike takes note. He always plays a split hand at these things—even though he’s pretty sure where the evening is going, it can’t hurt to have more than one possibility at percentage.

“Thank you, Sandi,” Spike says smoothly. He takes his hand of cards and looks at the flop, getting a feel for his chances against the hand Sandi is showing. Under the edge of the table, he lets his leg rest against Shin’s, knee to thigh.

For a time, they just play. Girls come around and deliver drinks and Spike doesn’t refuse any of them. He drinks, Shin drinks less—he has a head start, and they play some honest poker. Sandi’s good—she doesn’t cheat, but keeps the game going for enough back and forth, no one really up or down. Spike could play, looking at her and with Shin leaning against him in a slowly more insistent way, for hours. Maybe he does. Time drifts slowly and he draws it out until Shin’s patience must be stretching.

Under the table, he drops a warm hand on the inside of Spike’s thigh and slides up along the inseam of Spike’s suit pants until his palm fits boldly on Spike’s groin and neither of them so much as show a reaction above the table. Spike’s been waiting, flirting as much with Shin as Sandi.

It serves as a sort of raise, a bait for Shin to lean into him harder, rub his palm with delicious friction over Spike’s cock in his pants, now that he has both the coverage and the excuse. It feels good , a thrill of illicit pleasure that twinkles as brightly as the city skyline below and almost as erotic. Measuring his voice carefully into something smooth, Spike folds.

“Sandi, thank you,” He leaves everything he started with on the table as a tip—a payment for knowing her stuff and keeping the game interesting. Beside him, Shin cashes out too. “I have to use the little boy’s room. Will you be around later?’ 

She smiles, leaning down to pull in the chips and give both men a more than inviting peek down the front of her vest. “Sure, I’ll be here until after the midnight toll, or people are too tired to play, Mister—?”

“I’m Spike,” he introduces casually, and under the table, Shin squeezes his cock through his pants with more than a little promise of more. Then he takes his hand away and they get up, back into the maze of silks.

The feeling of existence gets slippery in these moments of promise—when violence could erupt at any moment or when it’s in the dim between anticipated bright points. Shin finds his way to an elevator. The car’s occupied, but Spike presses a random button in the middle floors—office spaces all half-used or downright unoccupied—the non-existent employees that account for the money that comes in and out of this place. No one ever checks to see if there really are workers there. The cover is thin, but the syndicate can smear it on thicker as needed for appearance’s sake.

The others on the elevator are riding further, but Spike and Shin find a darkened floor of offices, cubed off little rooms, each with a desk and unused chair inside. The Syndicate hasn’t bothered with computers, but the doors lock. Spike knows from previous parties they won’t be the only ones making this use out of the spaces.

Shin starts pushing at him, getting boldly in his space as Spike shuts the door behind him and he leans hard against Spike with his hands in Spikes’ lapels where he’d started the night. They’re both drunk enough that it off-balances Spike hard into the flimsy door panel, rattling it as Shin crashes his mouth against Spike’s neck and bites him hard enough to shock a laugh out of him. Spike flicks the lock and grabs hold of the back of Shin’s suit jacket, pushing forward and using the guy’s clothes as a lever to get him further into the room.

He doesn’t have anything to say—and that suits Spike just fine. The stinging impression of his teeth in the skin of his neck is enough. Spike shoves him against the desk to see if he’ll fight for it—Shin’s not all that bad in a fight, but he’s a better shot than a right hook. Shin sits on top of the desk instead, his hands seizing at Spike’s hips, pulling at his belt, yanking the tail of leather out of the buckle and then undoing the buttons beneath while Spike kicks the office chair out of the way. It rattles over the carpet and hits the wall behind him.

He leans into Shin’s body as he pulls Spike’s fly open and gets a hand inside, both of them watching as his strong hand curls around Spike’s cock and pulls eagerly. He’s not gentle about it and Spike gets achingly hard after just a few hurried and sloppy strokes. He gets his hands under Shin’s ass and shifts him forward on the desk, getting his pants open and yanking them down over his hips. His cock is flushed red and ready, hard and long-slender, attractively weeping pre-cum in an eager stream down the underside.

Maybe Shin has a plan in mind for this, but he hesitates long enough that Spike gets a great idea, one tight-gripped stroke down Shin’s length to smear the emissions down his shaft and draw forth a high-pitched moan from Shin. It’s just enough of a power trip for Spike to know that he’s the cause of this, that he has the power to take Shin apart this much almost without touching him yet. He’s eager to discover what a real effort will get him.

Spike drops down onto his knees, the footwell of the desk meaning he can lean right in and guide Shin’s cock into his mouth with one hand and still see the absolute shock write itself on Shin’s face, the broken moan as Spike swallows down, sending a harsh shiver down Spike’s back. Shin gets a hand into his hair and pulls, fingers clumsy and tight, demanding. Spike closes his eyes and breathes in, then lets Shin take control. He feels the heat and velvet-rough texture of the veins along the underside of his cock against his tongue.

He gets it real wet as Shin gasps and whimpers, as his fingers pull aches into Spike’s scalp and he gives short, urgent pushes with his hips, the head of his cock on the back of Spike’s tongue until Spike is ready, finding his focus and leaning in. It’s not a smooth sensation, but Spike’s good at it—swallowing hard with a wet-harsh sound as he lets the head of Shin’s cock stretch his throat wide and—

“Spike!” His own name breathless and without any note of scolding. Instead, it’s high-pitched and warning, desperate and a gasp punches out of Shin as Spike pulls back and the aching stretch in his throat eases. He breathes, changes angles, and takes Shin again—this time deeper as Shin shoves his hips forward greedily, one hand planted wide on the desktop behind him and the other pulling Spike in hard by his hair. He rolls his hips up through a few strokes, pushing deep.

“Oh, gonna—” It’s a warning. Satisfactory. Spike lets Shin yank him in further until he can feel the first pulses of his cock against his tongue. He pulls back, ignoring the cry of protest, and the clutching hand in his hair, but he gets his hand on Shin’s cock and strokes him through his release, shifting to one side of the jets of cum that pulse and drip from his cock onto the cheap carpet between Spike’s thighs, puddling and running together.

Spike sits back to catch his breath but feels Shin shift forward. Spike glances up just in time to catch Shin as he eases off the edge of the desk and down onto the carpet in a slack, breathless heap against Spike’s chest, holding on. Spike’s drunk enough to allow it for a few moments, despite the sappy too-intimate feeling. It makes Spike’s erection flag.

Shin’s breathing slows, then evens out and Spike realizes that he’s just—asleep. He manages not to laugh so as not to wake the poor guy up. He eases him down on the thin carpet away from the mess. He gets up to stretch the tension out of his body, pulling his pants back up and yanking his tie undone again. The dummy office doesn’t have a window, so Spike just settles down in the cheap chair and lights a cigarette.

Shin’s breathing is deep and even, and there’s no way he’s black-out drunk—just real relaxed. It’s a little frustrating, but also kind of a satisfying feeling. Sucked his brains right out.

Halfway through his cigarette, naptime ends and Shin comes out of his doze like sleeping beauty, blinking awake and pawing at his eyes.

“Happy New Year,” Spike says, sing-song. Shin starts, and then glances over toward Spike, his green eyes focusing. 

“Shit,” Shin says, tucking his shirt in, doing his pants back up. “Sorry, Spike, I—”

“Fell asleep,” Spike shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.”

Shin sits up, his hair falling in his eyes, all undone from the exertion. ‘You sure? I could—”

“I’m sure.” Spike says. Better to leave ‘em satisfied and me wanting. “Ready to get back to the party? I’ll go up in five minutes.”

If Lin figures us out it’s going to be a mess. The risk of confrontation and wicked feeling of getting away with something leaves a further tingle of excitement in the back of Spike’s mind. 

Shin nods, picking himself up and stretching his back. “Hey, Spike?”

Spike glances up, waiting for whatever shoe is about to drop. 

“Let’s try that again sometime,” Shin suggests. Then he gives a shrug and heads out, straightening his clothes as he goes. He doesn’t leave Spike any time to answer.

Spike’s not the sort for relationships. It’s like odds in blackjack—the more times you do well, the less chances lie in the rest of the deck. Spike finishes his cigarette, considering his prospects, and then heads back upstairs.

-

Spike feels charged as he returns to the main party, electricity in his blood as he steps off the elevator into the milling post-midnight crowd. He has half a mind—as he weaves around the people deciding whether to stay or go—to go and see if Sandi’s still here and try for a payout on his side hand.

He’s intercepted—with a flash of instant guilt—by Lin as he makes for the silk maze.

“Have you seen Shin?” Lin looks at spike, his unfolded collar and partially untucked shirt, but his eyes latch onto his undone tie in particular. “I’m going to fix that.”

It’s not shame that makes Spike play it cool—just that it’s not anyone’s business. He submits to the attention, remembering Lin’s earlier comment— no one’s brought a girl over yet. A terrible idea starts to come to life in the back of Spike’s brain.

“Not since earlier, but I’m sure he’s around,” Spike tells as much of the truth as serves his purpose. Lin fusses far more clinically with his tie, his hands confident. Quick, efficient gestures. “We were supposed to leave an hour ago.”

Spike’s mouth twists involuntarily and he has to quickly look away. About an hour ago, Shin was real busy. “It’s his first party. I'm sure he’s just having a good time.”

Lin finishes with Spike’s tie and smooths his lapels with a gesture that stops suddenly—he pulls his hands away on encountering a damp spot. Spike feels a wild hitch of air through his diaphragm when he realizes what it is. It’s a manic instant that would be panic, if it wasn’t hilarious.

“You’re damp,” Lin says flatly.

Spike grins at him. “Spilled a drink?”

For once, his self-preservation instincts kick in. Sure, it’d be a hell of a bag—two brothers, one night—but they’re the ones he’d be bragging about it to. Lin wouldn’t think it was very funny, anyway. There’s always next year.

It’s believable enough that Lin accepts the answer without further comment, wiping his hand surreptitiously against his trouser legs. “If you see Shin, tell him I’m ready to go home.” 

He struck out somewhere, Spike guesses. “I will. Night’s still young, Lin. Go have some fun.”

In response, Lin gives Spike a frank look as they part company. Spike wonders where his other friends are—so much as he can call anyone a friend, anyway. Ivan and Annie—he should at least say hello and pay his respects to Mao. Besides, he’s curious if Mao brought Janice. That’s a hell of a development, in Spike’s opinion.

He rescues some kind of drink with a cherry in it off a passing drink tray, and swallows it in one gulp—it burns when it hits his throat, still raw from deep-throating Shin. He leaves the cherry in his mouth, working it around idly with his tongue as he searches. Spike doesn’t mind going down—gives you all the power in most situations. It focuses him and his partner while his own head stays clear—but he hates swallowing a guy’s load. Tastes foul , and it always seems to stay in his mouth too long. 

Spike finds that Sandi’s table has been taken over by a young man, and there’s Mao and Janice, as well as Ivan and Annie, sitting neat as a pin in four out of the five chairs. He takes the last one. 

“Spike,” Annie greets, and then she yawns. She’s dressed up in a lovely dark maroon dress, her gorgeous hair styled in a way spike only rarely gets to see. “Glad we caught you. I’m about ready to go home and sleep .”

Her yawn is contagious to the whole table, as Spike waves around to Mao and his date. The stools are too tall for Mao and he has to sit with his feet up on the rungs. That arrangement always irritates him, but he has a considerable pile of chips at his elbow. He must be doing okay. Maybe Janice is a good luck charm.

“Don’t you have a day off tomorrow, Annie?” Spike buys in for only a few bucks. He doesn’t want to trap himself at the table for too long if the old-guard is about to oblige their circadian rhythms.

“Half a day. We open at noon.” Annie rearranges her hole cards in her hand. “And it’s today , technically.”

“Exactly. You work too hard.” Spike’s first hand is trash. He strings it out to see the flop. “You folks aren’t that old. Do you forget how to party when you settle down?’

It sounds like a slow path to death, in Spike’s opinion. He doesn’t understand the desire to try to make a life where every day is a routine, seeing the same people. Sleeping in a bed with one person until you die. Morbid. To him, it’s like what happens when you stick a housefly in the fridge—the whole system slows down and the fly gets slower and slower until it dies. Maybe if you took it out and warmed it up again, it would speed up, but it would never be the same fly again. Spike can’t imagine living that way.

“This is the adult table,” Mao grumbles, and Spike resists the urge to laugh at it—it seems funny coming from the guy whose feet don’t reach the floor. “Come back when you’ve grown up a little” 

“Heaven help you if you make it to thirty,” Ivan agrees. “I raise.” 

“ Why? ” Janice complains. Her chips are very low. She pouts her pretty lips into a concentrating moue as she studies her cards, and tries to come to a decision.

“I don’t intend to,” Spike says, all carefree bravado. He sees Ivan’s raise, then pushes all his chips forward.

It earns a disapproving look from the whole rest of the table. Spike grins in the face of their incredulity. 

“I fold.” Mao says.

“All in,” Janice pushes her last few chips forward. Spike likes her audacity. He wouldn’t have guessed she was what Mao would be attracted to, but hell, why not. She’s a lot of lady, for someone in her forties. “Might as well make my last hand a bang anyway.”

“It’s all bang around here,” Annie laughs. “I’m out. Ivan already owes me three hundred woolongs.”

“Babe, you know I’m good for it,” Ivan laughs. 

“Every red cent,” Annie says. “I’ll be keeping track.”

She lays down her cards and Ivan considers his hole cards. “Alright, I’ll call.”

The dealer sets down the last card. Spike’s got two pair, but they’re weak. Ivan has a low flush, Janice has a pair of queens. The dealer pushes the pot to Ivan, who carefully surrenders the promised three hundred to his wife.

“Well played,” Janice grins at them. “I had such a fun night! It’s so much here, huh?”

“And it goes on all night,” Mao says. “But we won’t miss anything after this point.”

“That’s good ‘cause I can’t wait to get you home!” 

Watching Mao Yenrai flush dark under his brown eyes and red at the back of his neck is a sight Spike’s going to treasure for a while. Mao hurries the act of pulling on his coat. “I’ll call the chauffeur.”

“Hope he’s not been drinking.” Ivan says.

“He’s the puritanical type,’ Mao says, pulling his coat straight on his shoulders, then hesitating. “Speaking of, has anyone laid eyes on our new recruit?”

Spike realizes he hasn’t.

“The real serious guy?” Janice asks, putting a finger on her red-painted lower lip thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think I’ve seen him tonight.”

“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Mao says. “The man’s allergic to olive branches.”

“He was here,” Annie says, helping Ivan get his coat on. “Earlier, anyway. I almost ran right into him in one of the silken hallways.”

Mao accepts that, and glances at Spike. “Make sure he doesn’t spend the whole night lurking, will you? It’s probably disturbing the other guests.”

“Why’s that my problem?” Spike complains, loosening his tie again and pulling his much-reduced pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

“He’s your partner.” Mao drops the information into the atmosphere like something foul fished down from on top of a cabinet. 

Spike hesitates—it’s a promotion (for both of them) and he’s not sure how to take the news, exactly—especially tempered as it is with the information that it comes chained to not just new responsibilities, but Vicious, too. The money will be better, the annoyance will be worse.

“Spike,” Mao says, bringing his attention back with a smile that’s just mischievous enough to say that this pain in Spike’s ass is in fair trade for all the headaches Spike’s made for him over the years. “Happy new year. May it be very prosperous for you.” 

It’s delivered with a very amused tone of voice, and a finality that brooks no argument. Janice tucks her hand through Mao’s arm at the elbow, and they’re off. Spike lights a cigarette and thanks the dealer, then goes to find Vicious, if he’s still here.

-

It takes a while. Vicious is nowhere in the main room, certainly not dancing. Spike winds his way through the corridors until his eyes feel overwhelmed by the bright red color. There’s any number of little rooms—and by this hour of the night everyone’s brazen enough to accept any semblance of privacy.

Spike finds Vicious in a far-flung corner, settled in a high backed chair with his shoulders hunched like a vulture, a big cigar in the ashtray at his elbow—some kind of fancy stand affair made out of expensive wood.

Across the marble floor in the opposite corner of the room, there’s another chair, this one occupied by two bodies. Entangled. Everything’s covered by the woman’s skirt but Spike can’t mistake the rhythmic motion, or the pair of panties swinging lacy and hypnotic from her ankle. Vicious has his eyes fixed on the pair, showing nothing on his face in the dim red light. 

A voyeur, huh? Spike wouldn’t have guessed. He follows the perimeter of the room to Vicious’ side, stepping quietly so as not to interrupt the couple’s passion.

He leans down and puts a hand on the arm of Vicious’ chair, leaning in close to his ear. Aside from the way Vicious’ grey eyes flick toward Spike, he gives no indication he’s aware of his approach. “Enjoying yourself?”

Vicious breathes in, looking at Spike and seeming to rake over his whole appearance with his gaze. It’s intense enough that Spike is sure Vicious can read every step Spike’s taken this evening. Before Vicious can answer—if he’s going to—the woman lets her voice loose. Softly, but the room’s so quiet there’s no missing her soft gasps and urgent, guttural come-on calls. It’s thrilling. 

Vicious gets up, and they leave before the grand finale, Vicious taking his cigar with him. It’s late—after two—and it doesn’t take long to reach the elevator.

Going home, maybe? Spike steps into the car after him and watches as he punches the button for the parking garage.

“Not enjoying yourself?” Spike taunts.

Vicious glares into the mirrored surface of the elevator doors. “You said I’d see it, here.” 

Spike, ignoring the no smoking sign the same as Vicious’ still-smoking cigar, lights a cigarette. He doesn’t follow the statement, but there’s an unexpected tension in the air, radiating out of Vicious, from the set of his shoulders down to his tight knuckles. “Huh?”

“You said I’d see what the Syndicate is creating. What you’re fighting to have.”

Spike barely remembers the conversation. He laughs, when the memory surfaces, from weeks ago. Vicious rounds on Spike abruptly and grabs him by the tie, slamming him against the far wall of the elevator car hard enough to daze. “You’re not fighting for anything. “

It’s bright and sharp enough to make Spike’s heart thump, even as he grabs Vicious back and shoves against him. Vicious is strong and he has Spike at a disadvantage of balance for the half-second it takes to bring the cigar up, and crush the ash-end against his skin before the red-hot cherry of the burn touches Spike and makes his whole body jump with the harsh agony of it—like the first real thing that’s touched him all night.

Spike gasps and shoves, writhes against the wall behind him for purchase, but he can’t get away from it. Vicious’ gaze is fixed on Spike’s lapel, where Lin had brushed against the wet spot earlier. Like he can smell the sex on Spike.

“These people don't have the secrets to a soul,” Vicious says, low and clear over the agony burning through the layers of Spike’s skin to something deeper. Raw, red agony as it cores into him, smoking, filling his nose with the scent of tobacco and his own burning skin. It’s like a lens over his thoughts, focusing Spike right here and now.

“It’s just as empty as everything else,” Vicious says, over Spike’s pained groan, before Spike gets both his hands on Vicious’ wrist and pulls until he pries Vicious’ hand away, and Spike can catch his breath.

“That’s the fucking point ,” Spike hisses. HIs neck feels red and raw and the first touch of cold air on the wound hurts almost as much as the ember had. He plants his hands against Vicious’ chest and shoves —trying to put space between them. He can’t figure this out at all.

Vicious holds on, the cigar dropped to the metal floor of the elevator underfoot. He shakes Spike hard, banging his shoulders back against the wall hard enough to bruise. “But it’s nothing .”

Spike laughs at him, and it only seems to make Vicious angrier. “What’s the matter? Of course it's nothing—you fought all that time on Titan for nothing, too. Are you surprised? ”

Spike’s tone is taunting—nasty with the intent to wound back, to do enough injury to put Vicious off balance. Spike jerks his knee up, trying to get Vicious in the groin, but Vicious makes a sudden move at the same instant to grab Spike by the balls and squeeze in warning that any injury would be returned.

“They don't have anything different from us?” It’s not quite a question, almost sounds desperate for an answer—for any answer to put his world back together. For the first time, Spike realizes that the nothing inside Vicious is truly nothing; that in that specific and hollow way, they align. 

“If it’s nothing, Spike says, taking his hands away, showing his flat palms in half a surrender. Vicious’ grip on his junk loosens. “Then why are they all so goddamn happy ?”

The elevator slows smoothly then stops, and Spike pulls away from Vicious. “Change your name to ‘Jealous’ if you’re gonna start a damn fight every time I get laid and you don’t.”

Spike steps off the elevator into the garage. Vicious stays on, like he’s going to ride the thing into hell. Spike inclines his head in a ‘come along’ motion, one hand up to rub the burn mark, stimulating sensation out of it. He throws down the challenge half on a whim, and because no matter the answer he’ll learn something valuable.

“Well? You want to at least learn what you’re missing?”

Vicious makes it off the elevator after slapping open the closing doors.

-

Chapter Text

It’s late when they make it to Spike’s apartment—well into the Lunar New Year and Spike would bet they’re going to see the sun come up. Spike closes the shutters on the window and forgets that the time’s past four a.m. Vicious is standing inside the door like he has no idea how he got here, and staring down at a spot on the floor. 

“How’d you get the blood out?”

“Ask Lin. I was unconscious for a week.” Spike doesn’t want to talk about cleaning. He doesn’t want to talk to Vicious at all. His apartment feels somehow smaller with Vicious in it. There’s hardly anything to it, anyway. A long room, and everything open and bare from couch to bed. There’s a short hall at the back—the only hidden space is the bathroom. Mars has arranged them all in boxes.

Spike turns on the sink in the kitchen, runs cold water into a cloth and places it over the burn. The immediate sting blooms bright through Spike’s half-drunken haze, pulling a hiss between his teeth. That’s going to leave a hell of a mark. Spike feels it cautiously, looks at the diameter of the pink-blood circle on the cloth, and feels irritation.

“If you’re just going to stand there, you can go.” Spike says, flippantly.

Vicious stands by the door like a gargoyle, and Spike suspects he’s drunk or disassociating or both. Where’s the guy pawing me in the elevator? A bright flash of anger hits Spike, then. He throws the cloth at Vicious so it slaps him in the face. Frustratingly, Vicious catches it. “You’re already sullied by someone else.”

“What are you worried about? Sloppy seconds? Are you really jealous ?”

Vicious’ eyes glint, and Spike realizes he’s hit a mark—a very satisfying one. “You want to lay a claim, you'll have to do more than play hands in the elevator.”

Spike doesn't belong to anyone. The idea that he might is funny. Vicious has other ideas—lunging for Spike from a standstill. He can see it coming, but Spike’s blood surges and he lets Vicious get a hold on him to see what will happen. He has confidence in his own abilities to fight his way free. He has yet to meet his match when it comes to fighting, even dirty.

Vicious hits Spike with his full weight, and Spike gets hold of him by the shoulders, and drives a knee up into his stomach as Vicious slams him into the back wall of the kitchen and then hard into the waist-high counter, bashing the point of Spike’s hip against the edge in bright pain. Spike grabs hold of Vicious by the front of his rented suit and feels him go tense as stitches pop. Fuck your deposit.

He throws Vicious over sideways, slamming him against the refrigerator unit and crumpling the both of them to the narrow space of tiled floor between counters and appliances. Vicious bares his teeth and for a few moments they’re really just fighting, looking to find a point of leverage or a weaker spot. Spike slams a blow into Vicious’ sternum, and Vicious rips the sleeve off Spike’s jacket with a popping, zipping tear.

Spike rears his head back and kicks up—but Vicious catches his thigh and then with knowing precision—as if he’s been thinking about it— fantasizing about it—he digs his thumb into Spikes’ scar and pushes. Hard, until he grinds down into the weakness of muscle. Spike’s brain blots to white-hot agony, aware of nothing but his own pulse and the pressure —a lightning jolt of pleasure flashing in Spike’s blood the instant Vicious lets off, shoving Spike flat to the floor and ripping his shirt at the buttons. He leans down and fixes his mouth over the burn, sucking blood up under the skin and pushing his tongue into the injury until Spike cries out, unable to catch his breath around the dizzy, hard-pleasured feeling it curls up in his belly.

Vicious makes good on his win, pressing one hand on Spike’s belly as he pries his pants open and off his hips, subjugating Spike to his victory. It feels right and— alive , his heart pounding in wild readiness as Vicious holds him down, taking advantage of the shocked-slack nerves still pulsing with pain. Spike’s eager for it. For the novelty of being thrown over, bent against his own weakness. It’s exciting enough that when Vicious seizes his hips and flips Spike over, he doesn’t fight too much.

Vicious grabs something off the counter—cooking oil or something—and pours it onto one hand as Spike struggles with his tangled up clothes binding against his knees.

“This is your place ,” Vicious snarls, and he seizes a handful of Spike’s hair, pulling his back into an arch. “And I’ll put you in it every time.”

It’s a snarl and a promise, as Vicious yanks savagely on Spike’s hair and pries two fingers, slick with something base-and-oily smelling into Spike’s asshole. He works Spike open relentlessly, pulling Spike back onto his fingers by yanking sharply on his hair.

Spike grunts as they plunge deeper, lifting one arm to brace on the cabinet front, to keep from having his face shoved into it. The oil drips down over his balls, as Vicious gives his fingers a few deep, indelicate thrusts to push the slick deep. It stings some, far from gentle, and softness is the furthest thing from what Spike wants.

He pushes back into it, feeling unrelenting tile under his knees and the waistband of his pants and belt still looped around his thighs, bunched up over his knees. Vicious pulls his fingers free with a slow drag and replaces them with the head of his cock, against Spike’s entrance, slick enough to slip the first time he pushes for entry. It feels impossible, as Vicious pulls his hair, guiding his cock insistently against Spike’s unstretched entrance before the resistance gives and Vicious shoves hard, his hand seizing Spike’s hip over the forming bruise from the counter edge.

It punches a groan out of Spike at the plunging feeling, opening his body to Vicious’ dimension—hard, velvet hot and slippery as the stroke ends, Vicious’ hips pressing against Spike’s ass as he bottoms out. It’s rough and stinging and impossible to ignore, and yet for all of it, Spike’s cock is rigid, hard and ready, dripping precum onto the tile. It’s a red-ache of just enough pain. It puts Spike here and now , unable to be anywhere else but impaled on Vicious’ cock for the three heartbeats it takes his body to go loose and easy for it. 

Vicious’ hand unclenches from Spike’s hair, releasing the sharp pressure on his scalp before carding softly through instead, almost like a word of praise without anything said. He rolls his hips and it’s a feeling that’s almost an ache—too full, too much, too fast and Spike arches his back, eyes unfocused and full of the dirty pattern on the floor tile. Vicious fucks into him mercilessly with long strokes at first, then as Spike’s breathing hitches into desperate gasps in harsh, shorter thrusts.

It’s complete, harsh and heavy and brutal. The sound of flesh slapping and Spike’s occasional reluctantly surrendered groan or cry when the raw feeling of too-much overwhelms him. It’s not a good fuck—Vicious is making no effort to do anything for Spike but fuck him like he might as well be there, as hard as possible.

Spike lifts a hand from bracing on the floor and curls it around his own weeping cock to stroke and Vicious snarls a warning, and slaps Spike’s hand away. “Don’t you dare.”

“Or else what?” Spike’s voice is tight. 

Vicious wraps his hand around Spike’s wrist with his thumb between the small bones and squeezes until Spike lets go, his hand going numb. It hurts, but the pain is grounding.

“Cum from me fucking you or not at all,” Vicious demands, leaning low and possessive over Spikes’ back, making the hair on the back of his neck bristle. It’s almost enough to ruin Spike’s building release, but Vicious doesn’t relent from his rough pace, either, and he shuts up, which helps Spike along. It builds and coils in Spike’s belly ,and he grabs for it, feeling Vicious’ pace start to falter and stutter out before he seizes Spike’s hips and hauls them back against his own with a possessive finality, cumming as deep inside Spike as he can manage while his teeth snap shut on Spike’s shoulder and bite down.

It startles him over the edge, plunging Spike from nearly there to cumming ropes on his kitchen floor before he realizes it’s happening. His voice drags out of him, too, raw and harsh and helpless. When his body goes slack with release, Vicious shoves him down in his own mess and drags his cock free half hard and while Spike’s still sensitive. He leaves Spike there on the floor, done with him.

Spike eases over onto his back, sore and damp on his belly, disheveled and debauched from head to toe. Satisfied. Vicious pauses at the end of the tile, picking up the cloth Spike threw and throwing it back at Spike. It’s all he leaves Spike for comfort, tucking himself back into his abused suit and leaving the apartment.

-

The new year moves on and Spike makes tenuous peace with Vicious now that they’re both low level capos above the common soldiers—heading jobs instead of simply pulling them. Vicious proves to be ruthless and dogged—he doesn't care about a price in lives or money. Respect is worth those resources and Vicious makes sure none of the other syndicates forget their name—that the Red Dragons run this city and no one else.

“You need something in your blood,” Vicious says, one day while Spike is sleeping past noon in his desolate apartment, his usual pastime when he’s not working or wandering.

“That’s your vice, Spike says. He’s seen the empty red-eye vials in the footwell of Vicious’ new car, rolling around as Vicious drives the streets of Tharsis too fast, too slick and sliding tires of the the turns as they take the corners on the way to the next raid. 

“No,” Vicious says, simply. “Don’t you do anything else?”

He reaches out for Spike’s arm, draped over the back of the couch as he lays sprawled. It’s a denial of the point wholesale—Vicious doesn’t think he has any vices, he’s mastered himself and there’s no heart inside him to sway, of course. He doesn’t mean drugs. 

He’s physically familiar with Spike now that they’re fucking—no other word for it; there’s nothing soft about what they do. He pulls at Spike’s wrist to encourage him up off the couch. Spike offers no resistance but refuses to get up, either. He lets Vicious haul his limp wrist and stays childishly in place, betting that Vicious won’t want to expend more energy to get Spike up than Spike is willing to, to stay on the couch. It’s bad odds. 

“You want to go to a race?” Spike asks, still refusing to move any further.

Vicious loses patience and kicks the back of the couch swiftly enough to rock it forward on its stubby, low legs. Overcoming even its low center of gravity by hitting it high enough to turn it into a fulcrum against itself. It starts to flip and Spike’s self-preservation kicks in. He twists free onto his feet as the couch crashes onto his coffee table like Vicious so often crashes through his life. It sends the overstuffed ashtray and empty beer bottles flying with a crash and a rattle, a rain of old ashes and cigarette butts raining down onto the badly abused carpet. 

Spike straightens up into a face-off with Vicious, annoyed by the rudeness he lives every second of his life by. “What the hell?”

“We’re not playing games. Get up.”

“You hardly seem to do anything but play some kind of game.” It’s petulant and Spike knows it, but so is trashing his living room because Spike wasn’t getting up fast enough. “If you want to go, let’s go. There’s a MONO race going on.”

Spike doesn’t really want to, but he wants to clean up this mess even less, so he leads Vicious out. He lights a cigarette outside, heading for his car. “You better not be a shit-head about it.”

The amount of blood spilled in the streets these last few weeks has been shocking. He wonders if Vicious is making a point in savagery or earnestly trying to wipe the Blue Snakes and other syndicates off the map. He’s tired of going out just to shed blood every time. He sinks into the driver’s seat of his car as Vicious slips in the passenger’s side, and Spike rolls down his window to let the smoke trail away.

“Do you know about the age of the jaguar?” Vicious asks.

It’s a word— Jaguar —that Spike doesn’t hear every day anymore. But the casual mention of the animal displaces time and space around Spike, transposing him back into his own memories as he lights a cigarette. He stops, and he remembers a time twenty years ago. Tharsis was younger then. Refugees from the gate crisis crowded into tiny crate hovels. He remembers his mother, deathly still in a chair made of discarded shipping pads, leaning so far forward her eyes nearly touched the tiny television screen. Watching a documentary about animals that didn’t exist anymore. Maybe that had started to cease existing even before the gate exploded.

“Look, Spike,” the memory of his mother—all alone. Always alone. “Look how beautiful it was. We came from such a beautiful place…”

His mother survived the destruction of earth, a beautiful child who watched her parents die in the immediate and violent aftermath of the Gate accident. She lived, but even though she was only a little girl when the Earth died, she never really left it. Her mind was always there.

She’d watch those damn nature stories—a soft, soothing voice describing the beauty of a planet that humanity would forget ever living on someday. Hell, who knows? Maybe she’s still watching them. That same emptiness in her face.

Spike walked out when he was fourteen. To the best of his knowledge, she never looked for him. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him—maybe, who knows? He’s still unsure where he came from—it was that she lived somewhere else and forgot to exist inside the loop of time.

He’s met other ghosts of the Earth. Old men who were there when the gate went; the displaced generation of children shoved out on lifeboat rockets as many parentless and left to grow up half feral on Mars or Ganymede or any of the other hastily assembled and tragedy prone colonies. 

“Spike,” Vicious calls him back to the present. “Pay attention to the road.” 

“I’m fine. You were saying something?”

“The ancient people of South America saw the Jaguar as a herald of a new age—one that had to be birthed by fire and blood.”

Spike exhales smoke into the night. “I’d say that’s some serious labor pains. Don’t you think we’ve had enough fire and blood?” 

“The Van say that their fortune tellers see a strange beast presiding over these next few years. A great two-headed monster with fangs and claws, cutting through the universe and dragging it into a new light.”

He saw the Van? “You believe that shit?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe, it matters what I can use,” Vicious watches the city go by outside the window.

-

“Don’t you think it’s time to slow down?” Mao stands in one of the secret chambers at the top of the Monument and addresses the Dragons—three wizened figures held in stasis outside of time. They were born on Earth and remember it. “Pressure is one thing, Honorable Van, but this violence…”

The three of them, cocooned in silks, and behind their glass walls have always reminded Mao (in his very private thoughts) of boiled silkworms, waiting to be unspooled. They all bore into him with their gazes, perhaps having a private internal conflict about his audacity, though Mao comes with his head bowed and his hands at his side. 

“The violence is ordained,” the Van says, Sou Long speaking with one voice for all three of them. To one side of the chamber, Mao is aware even now of the visionaries—chained in more than a metaphorical sense to the banks of computers, reading and interpreting the thousands of minute computations generated every second. Reading the winds of the galaxy with some ‘gift’ only the Van could discover. 

“It’s too much pressure,” Mao tells the floor, body stiff with holding the bow. His back is not as young as it once was. “We may take out one rival with such pressure, but a tormented animal will strike out with greater force than expected.”

“We will do what we must, and endure what losses we need to,” Wang Long this time.

Easy for you to say, up here in your Heavenly Kingdom. Mao lets nothing show on his face. There may be tigers at his back, but one has more to worry about with dragons at the front. His next move is cautious. “Vicious moves beyond his station—”

“Vicious answers to us ,” Wang Long says with all the finality of snapping teeth. “You delivered us a very sharp instrument and we are satisfied to use it.”

Mao nods, as if he is relieved to find out that Vicious is going around his authority and to the Van directly. That’s a blade cutting us all, he thinks. We’ll all bleed before he’s done. “As you say, Honorable Van. I’ll stay out of his way if he’s acting on your behalf.”

“Your work is valuable too, Yenrai,” this is the voice of temperance. Rheumy eyed Ping Long, always slower to speak but ringing with authority. “Do not go away slighted. After this era of blood, no one will challenge the Red Dragons. Even now, our reach grows longer.”

We will be lucky if no one severs it at the elbow. “Thank you, sirs.” Mao takes his leave, backing out in a bow. His mind a whirl of thoughts as he moves through the antechamber, full of the Van’s personal guard. They’re a humorless lot; expressionless and with eyes hidden behind dark glasses. The room is relentlessly cold to keep them alert as the royal guard used to be at post. At the elevator doors—hidden behind a gilded entry cage that would hold an evasion at bay, Mao steps up and pushes the button. It’s a death trap, making a cage around the elevator doors for the guards to fire into if necessary. 

Ivan waits just next to the doors, dressed nicely and at attention. It always strikes Mao as a little funny. Ivan’s usually uncomfortable when he’s not in a tracksuit and trainers, and he doesn’t look fashionable either way. 

When the doors open they step on in unison, without a word. The gleaming golden gate closes behind them, then the elevator doors. Ivan presses the button for the floor Mao’s office is on. They ride in silence, as if they are still being monitored—maybe they are. The five floors below the Van’s sanctum are supposedly empty, as a defensive measure.

No signal gets in without a hard line, and nothing gets out. Rumors abound that the floors are an oubliette for people the Van wants to punish; that they’re full of the Van’s harem of pleasure slaves; that a horde of genetically engineered monsters live there, waiting to disembowel trespassers. When they drop below this mysterious barrier, Mao’s personal digital assistant shakes to life in his pocket.

“Well?” Ivan asks, eyes up on the floor indicator to be sure they're past Schrodinger's monsters. 

“Let’s get coffee somewhere,” Mao says. Now that he can breathe again, his mood is sour.

“That bad, huh?” Ivan changes the activated button to the ground floor. There’s a little café wedged into the bottom of a real office building up the street.

“Let’s just say I believe my level of regret for the Titan war is about appropriate.” Mao fishes the device out of his pocket and begins the tedious unlock process so he can see what he’s missed while he was wasting his time—as he so often had with city planning—with upper management.

“Yikes. So we were right?”

“He’s coming right to them.” Mao’s screen unlocks, revealing a flurry of missed calls and messages. Far more than he’d usually have after only half an hour of inattendance to his messaging. Three are from Janice. Mao’s heart gives a surge. There’s not enough of a connection to call back immediately in the elevator. He checks his text messages.

“Well, shit, Mao,” Ivan sighs. HIs voice half fades from Mao’s awareness as he reads the flurry of texts. “You know how much I normally love getting to say ‘I told you so?’ Well in this case, I kind of hate it.”

The first texts are from the security duty he put on Janice—she’d hated it, but consented eventually. 

“Mao?” Ivan repeats. “You alright? You got really pale.”

“There’s been an attack.”

“Shit. Where?”

“Janice. She was just out shopping.”

“Well, let’s get there.”

Except there’s no force on earth that can rush an elevator down fifty floors, and Mao speed-reads through the points of information. Two men badly hurt or dead, and Janice okay but scared. Spirited away by Shin to a safe location. It’s the last message that jabs hurt through him.

I can’t do this anymore, Mao.

-

MONO racers don’t run on tracks—just over the unpopulated and barren stretches of rocky Mars surface. The observers watch from a portable bubble of atmosphere; dangerously flimsy. Sleek single-person crafts compete, always catching Spike’s eye, going at speeds that make him catch his breath. He glances over at Vicious, half expecting his usual dour, inwardly turned expression to be dialed up to eleven.

Instead the guy’s head is on a swivel, taking everything in. Spike’s surprised. 

“ You like this?” Spike asks. The man looks distracted—his empty eyes roving over the crowd like he’s trying to find a weak wildebeest to single out and run down.

“It’s a diversion.”

Spike stops looking at the ships racing over the flats and turns fully on Vicious. “For what ?”

“No, I mean, it’s diverting,” Vicious says.

Spike wonders if he’s capable of having a normal conversation. “So, you like it?”

“I’m familiar with it.” Vicious is distracted by something, still searching the crowd in the small dome, hands in his pockets but his eyes restless.

“Who are you looking for?” Spike hopes it’s not a target of some kind. How would Vicious even know what they were going to do? Had he played Spike so completely that they were working some nasty job of his even now? Spike’s gotten good enough at reading Vicious that he doubts—in no small part due to the fact they’re both only carrying their handguns under their jackets—that’s the case. Vicious is crazy and recklessly bold, but he goes into danger equipped to handle it, after that first nearly humiliating attack on the lab.

Vicious looks at Spike with his eyes too-lumescent and bloodshot. Red Eye? No, just the last edge of a long ride. “I first saw these races with another.”

Frustrating and cryptic. Spike wants a cigarette. His damn partner is bugging out—synapses blasted by the world slowing to a crawl because the drug makes everything inside him race faster than those ships out there. “Let me ask you something.”

Vicious stands there without response as Spike pulls out his cigarettes and lights up. Spike continues with the cigarette between his teeth. “Did you find your personality in a box of the worst breakfast cereal or what? Just say whatever the hell you mean. I’m tired of your cryptic shit.” 

Vicious narrows his eyes at Spike. Yeah, fuck you too. Spike’s about to call the whole thing off, and leave Vicious there to find his own way home. Vicious maybe finds some connection here to some nebulous part of his seemingly nonexistent past before the Titan war. So what? Who gives a shit?

“It was a woman,” Vicious says, at last. “We met when we were young and she loved—”

It stops Spike from leaving, at least. For second, he thinks Vicious will say they were in love, as impossible as that seems to imagine. The man dug his own heart out before he left the womb. Then the racers whip by on the informal course in front of the spectator dome and the crowd erupts in a roar as the whole shelter shakes and ripples dangerously. She loved racing, Spike realizes, feeling a little thrill, too. One thing wrong and they’d all be in trouble. Airless and weightless on the red dirt.

“And you think she’s still waiting for you now?” Spike doesn’t intend for it to come out as callously as it does. He exhales smoke and grins. “You could try calling her.”

Vicious hunches his shoulders like an angry bird about to strike out at a still body to see if it’s a corpse, yet. “Her number is disconnected.”

It’s a surprisingly normal answer for Vicious. Spike wonders if this search has been ongoing since he got back to Mars, or if Spike’s invitation reminded him to look for her again, now. Fixated in his slow-moving thoughts like an iron spike driven into polar ice, drifting forward relentlessly.

Spike softens a little. “You think you’ll find her here? What does she look like?”

“You’d know her,” Vicious says, in a low voice. “She shines .”

His interest immediately wanes again. “That’s real interesting. A shiny lady. I’ll keep an eye out.”

He has no intent of doing any such thing. Now that the race is over, he bets he can saunter down to the winner’s circle and exchange racing tips with the pilot. He has his eye on a race in the future, the idea of competing, with a gift from an old friend of his.

Vicious lets him go, evidently ready to go on with his own search. It stays in the back of Spike’s mind, though. What kind of woman keeps Vicious looking for her? His mind conjures images of a nine foot tall black-clad woman, like a horror movie nun with six inch claws for nails and fangs. Her face looks, without Spike intentionally picturing it, like Vicious’—severe and sharp and heavy-eyed. Well, I’d sure as hell know her if I saw her, he has to laugh at himself. And I’d turn the other way.

-

There’s a message from Mao when they make it back to the city and the relays that carry signal to his phone. Spike feels easy and satisfied after talking one of the pilots into letting Spike try out his racer. The speed sits in his blood, like Vicious’ drug. Vicious himself seems unsatisfied. Spike’s not sure he ever is. He let Vicious drive.

The city’s dark as night sets over it, driving safely in the enclosed highway on the approach. Overhead the stars are bright and close, clear without any intervening atmosphere. The planet has any number of attendant satellites, and—just visible as a neat white light, the gate. It could take them away from here. Anywhere in the galaxy. But is any of it better than this?

“We’ve got to go in,” Spike says, reading Mao’s message. “Something’s gone wrong.”

Vicious glances over at Spike, white-knuckled on the wheel. “What?”

“A retaliatory strike, I guess. They’re still sorting the pieces.”

There’s very few details in the message, and Spike is sure that’s deliberate. He shakes his head when Vicious looks at him for more. “That’s all I have. Mao says to meet him at the hospital.”

That’s enough to mean it’s serious business. If it’s just a regular soldier injured, Mao would send a card but not get involved personally. It’s a matter of optics. 

Spike puts his feet rudely up on the dashboard, and settles in for a long night’s work. “We should get coffee along the way.”

Vicious must agree. Wordlessly, he guides them onto an exit and into a fueling station. Spike doesn’t see him get a coffee, though Spike fills a large cup for himself. When Vicious comes out of the service station bathroom, his eyes are wide open.

-

Chapter Text

“It’s a shame, Mao, I really liked her,” Annie says, as they settle into a private meeting. Just the three of them at the back table of the bodega. She’s seen the way Mao’s been this last half a year. That new light in his eyes.

“It’s fine,” he waves off her concern, unconvincingly. “She’ll be safe out of the city. I got her a job up on that monstrosity they just opened. Spiders from Mars. They’ll pay her well, and Gordon will take good care of her if it means I owe him a favor in the future. He doesn’t have any allegiance to the White Tigers—they’ve been trying to shut him down.” 

It seems like a lot of explanation—Annie realizes he’s trying to reassure himself as much as them. She puts a hand on his shoulder. “That’s good of you.”

“I had to beg her to forgive me for dragging her into all this.” Mao takes a deep breath. Annie watches him steady himself.

“You did the right thing. It’s going to get worse before it gets better again,” Ivan says. He sits down at the table after circling around the front, just to be sure no one was watching the building. “It’s just a matter of pride and honor at this point.”

“Someone should put a leash on those dogs,” Annie agrees.

“Nothing to be done. The Van are alright with paying the price in blood. To them, we’ve practically wiped out a few rivals. That’s worth the lives we’ve traded.” 

“It’s just strengthening the Tigers,” Ivan sighs. He pushes his glass back and forth on the bare break table—Annie rolled up the felt card surface and put it away before Mao arrived, thinking it would be easier for him “Without the smaller guys taking attention it’s going to come down to us and them—and all resources invested on both sides. At least for now, there's still the Blue Snakes between us.”

Mao nods. Annie has been hoping it wasn’t going to get this bad. There were times in her youth when the Syndicates were first scrabbling for a hold in the cities and outlying colonies, where everything was lawless and violent, and the sound of gunshots were a constant lullaby.

“You know,” she sits down with them, heavy between them on a creaking, salvaged chair. “When I joined you guys, I swore it would be different. That it would be stable.”

“For a while, it was,” Mao says. “But the trouble with money and power is there’s always more to be had.”

“I’ll drink to that, "Annie raises her glass and Mao and Ivan reluctantly follow the gesture. It’s not celebratory, but a funeral dirge. They all drink. “To better times again.”

There’s no fixing the world or all the humanity in it. If there ever was any hope of that, it shattered along with the Earth they all came from. It parted humanity from humans and cast them loose to wander among the stars. Cut free of the anchors of their history. Into a new enlightenment and a fresh dark ages at the same time.

Annie worries about the future, but if she wasn’t here someone else would be—building something completely outside of her control. “What do you want to do, Mao?” 

“I’m not sure. I thought Spike could temper things,” Mao says. “Maybe I should get him out of there.”

“Spike ?” Annie demands.

“He did, to an extent,” Mao says, defensively. “And I still think out of that group of youngsters he has the cunning to—”

That’s news to Annie. “You think he’s going to replace you someday?”

“I think so. If—Vicious’ ambition can be channeled…” he sighs, and looks up at Ivan. “But I think it will be a long time until we retire, my friend.” 

“Gangsters don’t retire,” Annie points out.

“This one plans to,” Mao says. “We have to build a world where we can, first.”

It’s strangely ruthless sounding, coming from Mao. Annie hears the way he gathers his resolve, readying to do what he needs to. At the end of the day, they all have their hands in the belly of this beast.

“We’ll need a new card dealer,” Ivan offers, cautiously. “And—”

A noise from the front causes all three to go quiet, something thumping to the ground. Annie glances toward the hidden back door—the escape hatch that makes the rent on this whole place worth it. They all hold still, waiting for the next sound with their hands on their guns.

The jingling of a bell collar and then another soft thump.

“The cat ,” Annie says. “He sleeps eighteen hours a day and wakes up just in time to give me a heart attack.”

“Does he even catch any mice?” Ivan asks.

“More than you want to know,” Annie says, getting up. “I’ll go pour him some kibble.”

-

Spike’s had the Swordfish for as long as he’s kept anything in his life. It’s a hassle to store, but it comes in handy more often than not, when he’s escorting shipments in from outside the city or he needs to get away and see Mars stretch out under him. He’s as affectionate for the old hangar-queen of a racer as he is for anything. Even if he has to track down her creator wherever he’s gone off to be eccentric every time she needs a real repair. 

Things have been busy lately, but not so much he forgets to spend some time with what he loves. That means, after getting his finger on the pulse of MONO racing, Spike ponies up the entrance fee for a race and tries his hand in.

“Don’t make a fool of yourself,” Vicious says, by way of wishing Spike luck.

“You’ll know a fool by the company he keeps,” Spike fires back, and closes the cockpit. He hadn’t invited Vicious, the man just comes places. Maybe he’s still looking for that woman. Spike’s here for a different kind of thrill.

His competition seems like all kids. He’s not that much older but he’s got height on most of them. He’s got the experience too, even if it is just pushing the ship as fast as she’ll go and leaving the PDM in his dust. If you riled them up, they get pretty determined it turns out.

Out here, over the natural course the canyons make, there’s no official scaffolding. They broadcast the start signal via old radio waves, ancient but effective technology. It gives off three rapid beeps, then two— Spike opens the throttle and gasses the engine— then one pulse and a sustained tone and the race is on. A roar of engines and the feel of that sudden jolt and lurch into weightlessness, as the racer overcomes the sound barrier before the pressure and crush of going so fast reaches up to yank Spike back in his seat even in Mars’ thin atmosphere. The sound of the other racer’s engines is muffled and deadened. Sound doesn’t travel as far in the cold, thin carbon dioxide. He can feel the thump and thrum of his own engine and it’s bright and alive like a beating pulse.

It’s all animal instinct as he works the controls and pushes for more, asks and receives, and as much as Spike likes a wild night with a woman, this is somehow better. 

Like the imminent threat of death on the hairpin instant of decision as he eases out in front of the rest of the pack sharpens and narrows reality around him. Spike turns on the ship’s axis and squeezes the Swordfish’s wings through the narrow canyon pass as the others have to struggle over the obstacle. Spike pours on the speed, eyes locked on the gap at the end of the canyon ahead, trying to beat the racers going overhead.

One of the other racers beats Spike to the pass, and it cuts down sharply at the end of the canyon, slamming down into the racing lane again. He cuts it too close and hooks a wing into the long front-foil of the Swordfish, yanking both crafts suddenly into a dangerous drop that spirals into an end-over-end spin, descending toward the planet surface as the controls screech at Spike to eject, his body slammed against the restraint.

He pumps the brakes instead, whipping the ship into a counterspin that tears his ship loose from the other and leaves the Swordfish missing a little more than paint. “Shit!”

Spike grabs for his comms as the other racer impacts the surface below him and scrapes to a stop against a pile of rocks. “Watch where the hell you’re go—”

The next racer slams into Spike at full speed as it screams toward the next narrow pass and Spikes’ head slams into the plexiglass pilot shield hard enough to lose track of himself as the racers spin and crumple, plummeting. The cockpit section ejects at a crazy angle and the red planet surface fills his view and comes up hard and sudden before the bubble slams down with a bone-grinding crunch and crumples inward, bits of broken shielding bursting toward Spike, and lancing pain through his cheek, the hiss of escaping oxygen as it depressurizes wrenching him in the restraints. Pain lances through his shoulder as the pod bounces up again to bleed off more momentum. The flight harness clutches a bruise over Spike’s chest and belly, slamming his diaphragm so hard he retches. The console is crumpling up next to him, some part tearing free and slamming into his face, jagged metal filling his view before it blacks out to nothing.

-

She walks into his office with a confidence and certainty that assures Mao she belongs there. Mao called her here, and he knows her—but he remembers her as a younger woman. At the time, her expression had been harder and colder. Now she has become the sort of woman who has soft eyes but a hard core. Beautiful and collected carefully, like a bouquet for a funeral.

“Mister Yenrai,” she says, and inclines her head with her hands folded down against the tops of her thighs as she bows. “It’s good to be back in Tharsis again.”

“It’s good to have you,” he says, and means it. She’d entered the ranks just after the start of the Titan war, coming to the syndicate in the nicest cheap, second-hand woman’s suit that she could find, with wickedness and determination in her brilliant sapphire eyes. A woman stacking whatever she could under her feet to reach for a ladder out. Now she’s raised herself up, and Mao feels pride on her behalf. “I hope your move from Alba went smoothly? Your new apartment is to your liking?”

“It’s a nice place,” she says—as if she hadn’t turned down three others of the finest quality for one only a few stories off the street, simple and almost run-down but the individuality and privacy of the place carries a deceptive worth. “I’m almost all moved in, and I got your gift.”

“It’s a bit literal for a housewarming present, but the weather here is colder than you’ll be used to in Alba,” Mao smiles at her, and she answers it—almost more like a defense mechanism. “I’m sorry to pull you from your work at Cherious, but I’ve got a man down and Ivan’s running his head off.”

“I’m happy to be here as your assistant,” she says. “But I don’t do secretary work.”

“No, I know better.” She’s beautiful and womanish, but far from someone to be trivialized to her typing skills. “I’ll still need your connection to Cherious. Supply chain troubles within the city have become difficult to negotiate, and it’s easier to rely on lab sources outside the city. Since the ones inside the city keep getting blown up .”

“I understand,” she reaches up, pushing her shining blonde locks back off her shoulder, and they glint in the daylight flooding Mao’s office, like spun gold with the health of youth. “I’m prepared to make sure our sales don’t decline due to something avoidable.”

Her professionalism, compared to the pack of wild, testosterone fueled boys he deals with is a breath of fresh air. “We’ll do our best to be sure you avoid attention, but I hope you still carry a gun.”

“These days? Who doesn’t. Just not when I’m at home.” She smiles. “Will that be all, Mister Yenrai?”

“You can call me Mao,” he assures her. “I don't demand a title from people I like.” 

She nods once, and he lets her leave his office, mind on the next problem. Spike has gone and injured himself for real this time—not something they can breeze through with a back alley syndicate doctor or a couple weeks off his feet. It’s permanent damage, the doctors say. He’ll recover, but—in the meantime, Mao needs someone he can trust. Of course there’s Ivan, but he’s just as ragged as Mao said. 

Things are changing fast and dynamic. Mao has his finger on the pulse—and what he hears from it is that guns are coming into the city. The Blue Snakes are nearly done for, but they haven’t spent all their resources yet—just lost most of their soldiers. They’re hoping to make up for it in tech and firepower before the Red Dragons sweep in and—

“Mao?” Ivan’s voice from the door. He has it open just a crack. “I just got back. You busy?”

“Only superficially,” Mao says. “How’s Spike?”

“That woman I saw on the elevator our new recruit?” Ivan whistles demonstratively. “Tall drink of water and not afraid to wear heels?”

“That’s her. Annie will want to meet her, I’m sure.” Mao laughs. Out of any of them, Annie will know her at first glance. He repeats his question. “How’s Spike?”

“Beat to shit.” Ivan closes the office door. “Lost an eye, the damned idiot. Broke a bunch of bones. Barely lucid but he made me promise to get a scrapper out to tow that busted up death machine out of the wasteland for him.” 

It doesn’t surprise Mao. “An eye? Hell. How’s he taking it?”

“I’m not sure it’s really sunk in.” Ivan lights a cigarette and rescues a stand ashtray from one corner of the room to bring it closer to Mao’s desk. Mao remains looking out the window as the sun sets over Tharsis.

“We’ll get his ship,” Mao decides, watching the dust swirl over the city as the lights come up. Some sectors are a crazy jumble of different languages written in neon, all crowding together. “ And get his eye fixed. He’ll need it to shoot square.”

Ivan hums an agreement. “You don’t think we should leave the racer?”

“No, are you kidding? It’s one of a kind and one of the few things he’s loyal to. We should encourage that.” Mao holds his place for a long minute, watching cars move below.

“It’s one of a kind alright. How’s he going to fix it?”

“He’ll find the mechanic,” Mao says. “Make sure you get all the pieces.”

“Mao—” Ivan protests, with a laugh. “I’d need a team of men with metal detectors, and there’s at least two other busted up ships out there.” 

“Make Vicious do it,” Mao suggests. “It would keep him busy for a while.”

“Now that’s an idea. Except it’s beneath him and he knows it.”

“It’s an effort of friendship.” Mao steps away from the window and gives a glance to his watch. It’s after six. 

“That’s definitely beneath him.” Ivan leans on Mao’s desk casually, eyes watching Mao’s movements. 

“You don’t think he’s friends with Spike?”

Ivan’s expression turns frank and hard. “No. I think he’s goading Spike to his purpose.”

Mao’s inclined to agree, but there’s something more, too. The pull between Spike and Vicious doesn’t just go one way. It has a strange gravitation, influences and causes influence in return. “It’s like a thread of fate.”

“What?” Ivan looks at him incredulously. “Are you starting to believe that stuff?”

“No,” Mao sighs, relenting. “Just too long with the Van. Let’s go for the night.”

“You should go see Spike,” Ivan suggests.

“He wouldn’t want me to.” Mao folds up his work and returns it to the vault beneath his desk, locking it into safety. “Even if he won’t remember. He doesn’t like to be seen as weak.”

“He still needs a human connection.”

“I’ll send a gift basket. Lots of nicotine patches. I haven’t forgotten how sour his mood was last time he was in the hospital.”

-

Tharsis comes back into her memories like a slowly melting snowcap comes pouring back down a mountain. It helps that it’s springtime, though it doesn’t align with the month based on the old Earth calendar. Spring spreads out over six months on Mars, more or less. She navigates the streets in a car now, instead of on foot or by bus, and the rapid pace of changes and decay leave her falling a step out of time. As if she almost remembers.

The melody is just out of synch with her thoughts, signs different and places re-occupied. These streets where she ran free as a child—the several square blocks she’d dreamed beyond until everyone she cared about left her behind. Then she’d met him , and finally learned that the world beyond her small run wasn’t so different, once she learned to see it with her eyes open.

The apartment she’s chosen overlooks the street where she was born, though it’s not the same building the location is ideal. A little garage in the back, tucked under the functional-if-aging balconies of the apartments above the two storefronts on the ground level. She pulls in, leaving the car. She can fly a mono-craft, but Tharsis is still designed mainly for ground level travel. The car’s a classic, but not so nice as to draw too much attention. Upstairs—stairs are the only option built utilitarian and in haste as the city grew up at a desperate pace to try and keep up with the exodus from Earth—the floor is recycled wood and creaky underfoot, with bare white walls.

She doesn’t care about any of that, just that view from her bedroom window; down onto the street where children play. It’s quiet at this hour of the night, but in the daytime the street is alive. There’s a florist and a little grocer. She’s been to all of them, and none of them remember her. It’s a power she has; the transformation from her early life.

It’s sparse and empty, but she loves it here. Soon she’ll exist in the echo of her younger self, and give new power to the self of her memories. It feels right, somehow.

In bed, as sleep draws near, she watches the colored light on her ceiling and listens. Somewhere in the city she hears—only for five minutes—a distant burst of automatic weapons fire. Not so near as to threaten, but not so far as to be completely safe.

Then she sleeps and dreams of the future.

-

If the ordeal of recovery after the crash is a blur, Spike’s memory of the procedure to replace his eye is crystal clear. Like an out of body experience, even though he was deeply under, he was aware , by some necessity of wiring in the new nerves. As the eye came online, he could see himself, paralyzed but only somehow strangely awake. Hell maybe it was all just a dream and his mind leant it clarity to align with what he knows happened.

He’d broken a decent amount of bones too, but there’s been enough advancement in medical technology that throwing money at that problem more or less solves it. The thing he’s more worried about is his ship—explaining what happened to her to Doohan. He’s in a bad mood on a good day . Spike refuses to imagine working so closely with any other ship. His cars come and go, but the ship? He’s lucky to still be alive and he attributes all of that to the Swordfish.

Ivan’s waiting to pick him up at the hospital entrance—Spike feels like a half-starved animal emerging from a winter cave. He stops two steps out of the doorway to light a cigarette after a month of nicotine patches and sneaking into the stairwells for half a cigarette palmed out of a nurse’s purse. His body still feels scraped out and sore and it’s been tricky to get used to one eye that never deviates from perfection. It’s outside the loop of his abused body and never becomes so adjusted to dim that it takes too long to dilate in the light. Spike pulls a quarter of the cigarette to ash on his first inhale and feels the first hit of real tobacco in his system while Ivan leans on the car and watches him.

“You look like you’ve been through hell,” Ivan observes. Spike grins at him in answer—bright. Triumphant.

“Through and out, yet again.” They’ve given Spike crutches to get around with ‘for a few weeks’ and despite his arguments the nurses wouldn’t let him walk out without them. “And not for the last time.”

Spike leaves the crutches on the bench near the door and limps to the car without them, letting Ivan get the door. He has to take a lot of his weight on his arms as he lowers in, and his shoulder is still sore. He makes, though, plopping down in the low bucket seat and stretching his legs into the foot well.

“How long ‘till you’re a hundred percent?” Ivan asks, settling into the driver’s seat. “I should kick your ass at the dojo for the risk you took, racing like that.”

“I’ll go one on one with you now, old man,” Spike offers in earnest, eager to feel out where his weaknesses are and get to work shoring them up.

“I believe you would,” Ivan laughs. “But no. Annie would kill me. She wants me to bring you by so she can feed you.”

“Even her cooking is better than the hospital food.”

“Maybe she’ll kill you first.” Ivan gives Spike a warning look. “She’s worried about you.”

It’s such a strange thing for anyone to say. Spike’s fine and on his feet again—what’s there to worry about?” “Did you get my ship?”

“Most of it. The big parts, anyway. I think the pod’s a wash, but maybe the chassis can be pulled straight. You’re sure it’s not time for a new one?”

“Nah. You can’t replace something that’s one of a kind.”

“That’s an attitude I wish you’d take toward yourself.”

Spike shrugs. “I take repairs pretty well.”

For a moment—the space it takes Spike to finish his first cigarette and light another—they go quiet, Ivan focusing on driving in the central city traffic. 

They hit the travel lane back toward the southeast sector of the city. Even from here—on the elevated highway that brings them up out of street level and the way sight lines are cut short by the crowd of buildings—Spike can see the Syndicate’s Monument building lifting and looming over the skyline. The top thirty floors seem to emerge from the outer coat of the center like the hilt of a sword from a scabbard. In the daytime, it’s just the suggestion of a sheathed blade, but at night golden light blooms out of the join and upwards toward the top, as if at any second the blade might be drawn with a flash and cut their blinded foes down.

“So what’d I miss?” Spike asks.

“Are you sure you should be worrying about that, yet?” Ivan asks. His hands are firm on the wheel.

“Come on, Ivan. That answer says I can’t afford not to worry.” Spike watches the city crawl by outside the window. Ivan’s not a slow driver, but he itches to be going at jet speed again. It’s the knowledge that it will be a while before he can, burning deeper under his skin than any injury.

“I suppose. I just figured you’d want some time to get back on your feet, first. We’ve got guys watching your place, and we checked over the parts of your racer we did find, but there’s no sign of tampering.”

“Those idiots crashed into me, did you check them out?”

“Well one of them went to the morgue in pieces, and we were able to find some connection in the guy’s past to the Blue Snakes but—far as we can tell he wasn’t there on syndicate business.”

“I wasn’t either.”

“I don’t think anyone even knew you went except Vicious, Spike. I’m inclined to believe it was actually an accident.”

“What about the other guy?” Spike asks. “He make it out?”

“The first guy that hit you? Yeah. Tore an engine off his racer but nothing worse than that and a few bumps. He’s not affiliated. Rich kid with an expensive hobby. This shook him up, though.”

“He’s not the only one.” Spike is starting to feel an ache in his lower back from sitting up too long. He ignores it—it’s not too much longer back to his place. “Probably his first brush with death, though.” 

Ivan glances over at Spike without taking his eyes fully off the road. Spike can tell he has something he wants to say. One of those adult things that seems to hardwire itself into your brain whenever you tick the clock over past thirty. As if Spike hasn’t seen just as much shit in his life at twenty. Ivan decides not to be tiresome and goes quiet, instead.

“What’s Vicious up to?” Spike asks.

“Didn’t he come see you?”

“Hell no.” Spike snorts. “As if. I’m lucky he didn't send an assassin.”

“Don’t joke. I’m pretty sure if he broke an arm, he’d cut it off himself.”

“He’d tell it weird poetry about being a weakness, first.”

Ivan snorts, but if he has an opinion he wisely keeps it to himself. “Still, a partner should visit. It’s just respect.”

“He’d visit if I’d won the race.” Spike doesn’t really care. He’d rather people left him alone when he was too out of it to answer. The idea that someone has memories of him that he’ll never be able to dig out of the hospital haze again isn’t really appealing. Plus it makes me feel like I’m on my death bed. It’s just obnoxious. “Then I’d deserve the respect. What else?”

“Oh. You won’t believe this,” Ivan seems to remember suddenly. “Mao brought in one of our people from Alba to help cover while you were out—”

“A replacement?”

“Spike,” Ivan flicks the blinker on for the exit down to street level. “Shut up and listen to what I’m trying to tell you. Vicious knows her, it turns out. They grew up together or something. I never would have believed it. Can you imagine that guy as a child? It’s easier to believe he sprung fully formed out of a pumpkin patch.” 

Huh. He found her after all or—she found him. He laughs, just as surprised as Ivan sounds and just as disbelieving. “What’s she like?” 

“Boy, you’re not going to believe it. You just have to see for yourself.”

The picture of Vicious in a dress enters Spike’s mind again. Laughing hurts his ribs and lower back, though, so he doesn’t do it. 

“She’s great at her job. We have to pull in from our lab supplies to keep things going. Too dangerous to keep an operation running in Tharsis for too long right now. The White Tigers keep retaliating. The Blue Snakes are bringing in weapons. We stop it where we can, but no sense giving them an easy target. For now, it’s quiet. Somebody’s up to something. Maybe planning to hit us hard, using the Blue Snakes as a vanguard.”

“Crush an enemy between your front and a second enemy? That’s real Sun Tzu of them.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d read that.”

“I haven’t,” Spike shrugs. “ You keep talking about him when we’re at the dojo.”

“Anyway, she’s kept the supply chain from Alba secret and steady. Haven’t lost out on any shipments or business yet. Mao likes her.” 

“Maybe she’s coming for your job, then.” 

“Hell, if she wants it. Lately it’s at least a two person job.” Ivan turns down the street Spike lives on, and gives a wave to the two Red Dragon soldiers sitting in a car watching the building’s entrance for any signs of trouble, casually. He pulls into the parking garage.

“Where’s my ship?” Spike remembers to ask. Ivan fishes in his shirt pocket and comes up with a folded piece of paper, handing it over between his first two fingers like a waiter with a bill.

“It’s all loaded on a trailer still. You can ship it wherever your grease monkey is, these days.”

Spike takes the paper and puts it into his own pocket. “Thanks, Ivan.”

“I’ll be by later with some dinner. Remember to call Annie at some point, or I make no promises it won’t be cold borscht.”

“ No thank you.”

Ivan gives him a bright grin that suggests Spike should follow his advice, then pulls the passenger side door closed and leaves Spike to limp up to the elevator, regretting that he left the crutches behind when he sees the ‘out of order’ sign.

-

Chapter Text

It’s nearly an hour later when Spike collapses into his twenty fifth floor apartment, every part of his body a screaming cacophony of pain. He’s done his best to keep up—and surpass—the physical therapy but it’s evident that the time spent healing and the injuries have left weaknesses that will need to be shored up.

For now, Spike just lays down on his couch and tries to catch his breath. He’s hungry enough now that he doesn’t care if Ivan brings him cold borscht. He digs for his phone, pulling the screenset off the end table—three dozen messages from people out of the loop. Some from Vicious—he’s in the loop, he was there when Spike crashed.

Vicious tends to use Spike’s answering machine as a cache of information, delivered with his infuriating mix of obnoxious vaguery and bullshit. Spike ignores all of it and calls the building superintendent to complain. The wait while the phone rings is long. He gets through to a full voice mailbox.

“This is Dolf, leave a message. I know the elevator’s broke. Part’s coming. Use stairs.” Then a beep and the message that the message cannot be saved. Spike makes a frustrated noise and throws the screenset on the coffee table—it slides over the clean surface and thumps to the carpet on the far side. Good .

Except it immediately begins ringing. Just my luck . Spike grunts and debates just leaving it. He can’t see it from here, but it’s understandable if he just comes home and sleeps , right? If it’s Annie and he doesn’t answer, he’s in for a lecture later. The phone keeps ringing while Spike debates internally whether the lecture later or trying to get up now will be the worse ordeal. He slaps a hand out and drags himself half onto the coffee table, rather than getting up properly. With a grunt, he hauls himself across the surface, fully acknowledging it’s lazy but his body hurts too much to care. Just as he reaches the far edge, the ringing stops.

“Shit,” Spike grumbles. He lets his body go lax, feeling the soreness in his muscles. He could get the phone and call back. Or, he could just get back on the couch and deal with it later. He’s just pushing himself up to do the latter when the ringing resumes. 

Spike grabs the screen off the floor, rolls onto his back on the table and activates it. Vicious’ face fills the screen with his familiar scowl, eyes hard and flicking pointedly past Spike’s head to the surface of the coffee table, scarred and pitted with years of horseplay and lack of care. 

“Spike,” he says. It’s a greeting, Spike guesses. He’s sitting in a chair with a high back at his place, Spike guesses.

“Vicious. What’s up?”

He almost expects an order to go out on a mission, to pick his gun back up and get back into the trenches that Vicious treats the streets of Mars as these days, pursuing each new block as recklessly as he’d flung himself into the battles on Titan. Vicious just seems to want to see him, to judge Spike’s condition for himself from the clinical distance of a screen.

“Are you any good at pool?”

The question is the last one Spike expects, and Spike is sure he gapes senselessly—he’s still in pain, so he has an excuse, anyway—for a few seconds. Jesus, is he asking me to socialize or if I’m good enough to go undercover or for lessons or what?

“Yeah,” Spike says, because he’s been hustling pool for cash since he was seventeen. “Lost my virginity that way.”

He doesn’t know why he says it except Vicious annoys him and it’s the truth and he wants to see if it throws Vicious off enough to show an emotion—any at all—on his face. It doesn’t. 

“Come play. This evening.” Vicious commands. He’s using Spike’s injury as leverage—the fact that he’s been in recovery means Vicious has been the one giving orders, leading the soldiers into conflict. If there’s one thing Vicious has it’s that he won’t hesitate to go first into combat, and last out, all grace and death. It wins him loyalty.

This is a challenge . Spike is injured, but he can’t afford to lay down and rest. It’ll cost him in respect—Vicious’ especially—to say no. His body feels like an arrangement of bones thrown loose and grinding into a leather bag.

“Where?” Spike asks.

“C’est La Vie. Not too far.”

“Be there in forty five minutes,” Spike says, with no confidence that he will be. “The elevator in my building’s out.”

-

By the time he reaches the hole-in-the-wall place, having swallowed enough syndicate strength painkillers to get him down the stairs, they’ve really started to kick in. The place is a hellish little dark hole in the wall, and Spike is floating above his own body when he enters. He feels steady and solid—apparently the pain is enough to keep things in balance without spiraling off into a true opioid high. The evening is threatening rain and the light—red neon blaring out from the sign is haloed by dust in the grey Martian atmosphere. He knows it’s not his eyes—one’s a closed system now, feeding perfect images into his brain whether or not it’s willing to accept them.

Spike pushes open the door into the dark and smoky bar, and hooks left after waving to the bartender. It’s not his first time here. He knows where the pool tables are. This was where he learned the ins and outs from a woman twice his age and three times as skilled with a cue. She’d taken his cash and his seventeen year old delusion that he was hot shit. Not his virginity, that was later. Another woman; a lot of beer. The room is a familiar anchor in his drifting thoughts as he enters it.

There are a few people in the dark space, three pool tables with low-hanging lights and attending players. His eyes focus on the nearest and hold—a woman with luxurious blonde hair just at the edge of the light. The curves of the curls fall past her shoulders and lead his eyes to the tight jeans perfectly describing her ass in lines that read like poetry to his hungry eyes. She stands out in the room, somehow brighter than her surroundings. 

As if suddenly aware of his eyes on her, she lifts her head and half-turns. Spike registers the pool cue in her hand and Vicious looming out of the shadows behind her, bent over the table with the halogen light pushing through his colorless irises to illuminate them from within like an animal’s. He realizes who she is in the instant her blue eyes touch his gaze—like a lightning bolt crackling out from one of those electric globes and transfixing Spike through.

It pins him in place, stupid and mute, striking something like a bell in his ribcage. He knows it’s HER in all caps, and somehow Spike knows just then, in that idiotic instant, that’s how he’ll always think of her. Maybe it’s just the drugs.

“Spike,” Vicious beckons him, using his name to put motion back into Spike’s petrified and slack limbs like calling a dog from a hold. Spike answers it, moving forward like a puppet on tangled strings, aware of her eyes on his every motion. His body feels unspeakably heavy with her awareness on it.

“This is our new coworker,” Vicious says, somehow still sounding possessive. “Julia.”

It rings alive. He manages to use the spell of her name to break the trance of her beauty. 

“I’m Spike,” He says and his voice comes free puppyish and bright. He offers his hand on some broken instinct. “Vicious is my partner.”

She takes his hand before embarrassment can make him withdraw the offer, smoothly crossing the bridge to meet him on the field of his own awkward uncertainty, with an easy attitude that puts his feet back under him. “Julia. He’s told me about you. Are you feeling better?”

It’s easy, suddenly, drifting and familiar without any right to be, her eyes fixing on his and then searching them both like she can read down into him. He doesn’t mind that she looks at him—not at all. She’s a pretty woman, her eyes somehow kind and so sharp they could cut through a wicked man’s heart with a sweep of her gaze and the decision to discard him afterward.

“Well enough to play some pool,” Spike assures her with a smooth lie, and he goes to select a cue from the rack and make that the truth. He’s not sure he can picture what Vicious must have said about him to her already. Frustrated curiosity drives him to play with more intent than he might have in a friendly game, otherwise. A desire to measure up past how Vicious may have put him down.

“We putting any money on this?” Spike throws the challenge down at Vicious’ feet.

“I thought perhaps—drinks?” Julia suggests smoothly, interjecting herself into the middle of their standoff.

“Deal.” Vicious says, eyes on Spike in a clear threat and warning. Possessive, like a lion crouched over a den. Who knows how he thinks of what’s inside. Maybe they’re dating already, maybe he thinks they never stopped. Spike’s been out of the loop for almost a month. He gives Vicious his most jackalish smile and leans over the table.

They don’t play on any premise of being out of practice or new to the game. Julia, however, has an eye for it and as she bends low over the table, the effect is undeniable. She knows who she is, and she knows who men are, how they look at her. She trounces both of them, then laughs at them trying to show each other up. 

“I’ll buy you both drinks, boys,” Julia promises, smoothing over the draw game. Maybe she has her finger on the pulse of how close this is to erupting into actual violence Spike is grateful He’s sure he can fight, if he has to, but only because he’s had enough drugs that he’s not feeling connected to the meat of his body.

“So you’re working for Mr. Yenrai,” Spike asks, cautiously.

“Yes, I’ve known Mao for years now,” she says, settling down at the bar, when they’re done playing around with big sticks. She’s in utter command of her surroundings, and Vicious interposes himself next to her, leaving Spike an empty seat on his other side. Spike considers this, and pardons himself with the guy sitting on Julia’s other side, playing a free drink for a trade in seats. The man looks once at Julia, and then at Spike and Vicious, glowering around her shoulder, and decides that his chances with the free drink are better. Spike pays out for a very expensive whiskey-rocks and opts for a soda-scotch for himself. He drinks slowly, aware of his intoxication still by the detached aches in his body, floating like an aura around his lower back and hips.

He leans on the bartop and gives her his attention instead. “I heard you grew up here.”

“We did,” Vicious says from her far side, low.

“Not that far from here, actually,” Julia agrees. “It’s not that interesting. Aren’t you from Tharsis, too?”

It’s small talk of the worst order. Spike usually hates it, but he won’t argue it with Julia. They’re coworkers now if nothing else. He shifts on his stool. “Yeah. You’re right, it’s not that interesting. Just the usual.”

“Did you serve on Titan?” she asks, casually.

Vicious goes tight at even the name. Julia doesn’t give any indicator of noticing, but Spike suspects that she has a specific attunement to Vicious’ potential danger, to how wound up he is at any given moment. The same keen awareness Spike has, though maybe for a more involved reason. Probably, with the way Vicious sits and hovers—with the way he’d been searching for her like a lost limb, they had once been romantic. 

He can hardly imagine Vicious being so now—if he ever even was before. Spike knows Vicious served three years on Titan, that he’d been eighteen when he enlisted. Bare facts that paint a picture, now.

“No, not me.” Spike wonders if that’s a disappointment to her. Maybe she likes soldiers? “I was already running with the Red Dragons by then. They decided not to even try to draft me.”

At eighteen, Spike hadn’t had a permanent address in four years, bouncing between homelessness or hotels, alleviating his hunger with theft. “Annie got tired of my shoplifting and said if I was going to keep stealing I might as well really get into trouble the right way.”

“You stole from Annie?” Julia laughs at him. “She could have strangled your head clean off your skinny neck.”

Spike laughs. “She practically did, a few times.”

He can sense Vicious radiating his displeasure, so Spike pumps his own brakes. Julia’s gorgeous, and her smile could pick a lock and throw away the key. Maybe it has—she’s got a place in the Syndicate that’s impressive if she’s only been a part of it for a few years. Longer than Vicious, anyway. While he was away at war, she was hardly idle, and hadn’t stayed behind to wait and twist a handkerchief over his fate. Spike wonders if that burns Vicious up, or if he had expected her to make moves like this.

Is it possible they’re going to make a run for control of the Syndicate? Spike can’t imagine that’s the case—it implies more patience and foresight than Vicious usually displays. Honestly, Spike doesn’t care that much. It seems like aiming so high that all your troubles come back. 

“So how’d you meet?” Spike asks, watching Vicious. It's more than Vicious has ever given up about himself, as tight lipped and defensive as he is about everything. 

“We were very young,” Julia says.

Spike tries to picture it, and Julia he can imagine as a child, fair-haired and maybe round-faced. Maybe, with the way he’d just seen her play pool, she’d have been as dirt-smeared and skin-kneed as Spike had been as a kid. When he tries to picture Vicious as a child, it won’t come. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” she says, and Vicious’s presence subsides back from her other shoulder. Maybe it’s not actually important—from here on out, that’s the story Spike can have. 

“Well, here’s to happy reunions,” Spike says, raising his glass for a long drink.

-

Julia leaves them behind at exactly midnight, like a fairy tale. Spikes’ body is starting to ache again, agony crawling in at the edges as the drugs wear off. Spike’s too many drinks in to drive without spending some time sobering up. Vicious looks like he always does.

“You were right,” Spike says, leaning against his own car in the parking lot, smoking in the cold night air. Overhead, past the glimmer of atmosphere within the terraformed dome, the stars seem very close. “I knew her when I saw her.”

Vicious’ eyes get harder. It’s dark, just one light in the parking lot that hasn’t burnt out, but the darkness on Vicious’ face is deeper. Spike wonders why Vicious called him here, if not to gauge Spike’s reaction to Julia. Does he love her? Maybe in some juvenile and jealous way. He's got nothing to worry about from Spike, in that regard. Spike’s never loved anyone in his life.

“Don’t worry about it,” Spike says, cocking his head back to breathe smoke skyward, pretending that his lean against the car is casual rather than to take pressure off his hips and lower back. “I’m not the sort of guy to lose my mind over a pretty face.”

It’s a subtle jab, the sort of underhanded knife Spike’s gotten pretty good at slipping in between Vicious’ guard, the way Vicious gets under his at moments with his casual cruelty. Vicious’ expression actually softens some, and then he laughs, a two-note chuckle.

“How little you understand.” Vicious moves before Spike can catch up due to his drunkenness, and slams against Spike, pushing him hard against the back door of his car, the fingers of his left hand held tight together like a blade and pushing up under Spike’s sternum, digging until the air shocks out of Spike. Bright warning pain shocks into him, cutting past the haze of intoxication and fading high to dizzy him with a brilliant point of contact , the intrusion of reality into the insulation Spike’s been building from it.

Spike’s teeth snap shut hard enough to clip the cigarette filter out of the paper, filling his mouth with the taste and texture of cheap, tobacco soaked cotton as Vicious grabs at Spike’s belt and yanks it free of the loops of his jeans with a rough tug and the slither of soft leather. Fighting to shove Vicious back enough for a thin trickle of air into his lungs, Spike starts to drop his shoulder and push Vicious back when the crack of impact—doubled-up belt leather on the inside of Spike’s thigh—proceeds pain blooming out bright from the lash and Vicious eases his knife-hand push under Spike’s ribs so Spike can pull in a pained gasp.

He shoves out, getting his hands on whatever part of Vicious’s oversized coat he can claw an anchor into, but the month off his feet and the lingering injuries betray him, the cocktail of drugs and alcohol in his system leaving him off balance. Vicious strikes the inside of Spike’s other thigh with the leather, then the outside again over that old bullet wound and grabs a handful of Spike’s shirt to pull him down until Spike hits his knees on the rain-wet pavement, back pushed against the solid car door behind him.

These are the rules—this is that wolf-pack reality he lives in and best understands. A winner takes all and the loser submits—it’s alive and real this way, and Spike likes it. He likes fighting for his place, being put in it or putting others in it. There’s sex that isn’t like this—not brutal and primal—but he hadn’t missed that the month he’d been healing. This, he had. Vicious makes a sudden motion and leashes the belt around Spike’s neck, looped through the buckle and pulled tight to square the hole in the metal buckle hard against his adam’s apple fast enough that Spike claws his fingers under the leather on pure protective instinct.

Vicious gives it a sharp jerk, like a choke-chain correction, and Spike grunts without intending to, tries to pull in air before his windpipe is squeezed off completely. Vicious’ hand works his own fly open, presents his cock hard and eager-purple at the head. “Take it and you can breathe.”

Spike’s jaw is open anyway, wide in the instinct for air. There’s only the body of the car between them and the street, but Vicious would stake a claim in a crowded room if he caught the opportunity for it, and Spike doesn’t refuse him when the head of his cock eases past his pulled back lips into his gasping mouth. The belt eases and Spike chokes air in around Vicious’ cock pressing his tongue flat.

“Mind your teeth,” Vicious warns. The tail end of the belt is wrapped once around his knuckles and when he flexes his fist it squeezes Spike’s throat down to a trickle. His other hand grabs a fistful of Spike’s hair at the crown of his head and he pushes until Spike gags, out of practice and dizzied. His mouth floods with spit and Vicious rumbles a soft sound at that, almost like approval. The wet concrete soaks the knees and shins of Spike’s jeans, grounding him as Vicious uses his throat. The squeezing belt keeps him dizzy with the edge of breathlessness. His own cock is a rock-hard bulge shoving painfully against the inseam of his jeans, but Spike’s hands are steadying himself on Vicious’ coat over his thighs, as he works on thinking through the haze of danger. He relaxes his throat and ignores the way he’s coughing and gagging, drool pouring down onto the concrete in stringy disgusting lines as Vicious takes him apart just by fucking his mouth.

When he finds a rhythm, the pressure on his throat eases like a reward, instant and sweet, sparks at the edges of his vision—fixed on Vicious’ s fist with that belt in it—dance back. It’s thrilling and dangerous, but Spike lets it disassemble him into sounds from low in his chest, heavy and greedy groans before he sinks deep on Vicious’ cock and feels the first warning swell and twitch against the rough flat of his tongue.

Spike reaches down to rub his cock through his pants and the belt jerks tight around his neck, Vicious’ grip pulls hard at his hair. “No, you fucking mongrel. You get—”

He shoves his cock deep down Spike’s throat, to force him to swallow as he cums, with a snarl and a savage yank on Spike’s hair, bright-sharp pain in Spike’s scalp and the rush of his hammering, desperate pulse in his ears as unconsciousness threatens to spark up with the belt’s metal buckle digging savagely into his throat. Vicious holds him there until he’s done, then shoves Spike back against the car door. For an instant, the belt is so tight on his neck and the edge of his own consciousness so near that Spike wonders if Vicious really is going to kill him. It’s a bright-sharp thrill , a sick twist of ‘ go on and fucking do it, coward ’, before Vicious drops his hold on the belt and Spike claws it free to gasp in air.

“ Nothing ,” Vicious hisses, looming over Spike with all his composure intact. “You get nothing.”

Spike breathes very deeply and looks up, his new eye fixing with perfect focus on Vicious’ face. He’s still dizzy and hard, but defiance wells up in him. Spike shifts, leaning to one side and bracing himself with one hand, reaches into himself to pull on his own gag reflex, an old and juvenile trick. He disgorges a pool of spit and Vicious’ cum and just the last sips of scotch onto the filthy pavement and leaves it to steam.

“Fuck you,” Spike says, all challenge. He yanks the belt off his throat, and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand to get the taste out. Spike doesn’t mean it—except that he’s hard and frustrated and Vicious won’t give him what he wants.

He drives home with his head still spinning and grateful for the empty streets—it’s not safe after dark. In the bathroom mirror, Spike gives himself pause—the clear-defined red welt of the belt buckle stands out against the skin over his adam’s apple where tomorrow it will show vivid and purple. But his mind is sharp and clear, and he feels alive .

-

Chapter Text

“How about Tuesday evening?” Mao offers, one hand holding open the paper schedule book on his desk as he considers how he got here—so busy he can’t even schedule a date easily. “We could pick somewhere nice up here, we wouldn’t have to eat too late that way.”

The young woman’s face—she’s in her early thirties, but Mao’s definition of ‘young’ expands every year he has to work in the testosterone and adrenaline fuelled environment—suggests she isn’t so crazy about the idea. “I thought we could go uptown—and maybe to that new club up there on Asimov boulevard? It’s three levels of dancing!”

It sounds like more levels of dancing than Mao could handle in his twenties. He has to be at work the next day at nine. “I’m not much of a dancer, I’m afraid.”

“Aw,” Maureen pouts dramatically into the camera, showing off her mauve lipstick and looking even more like a kid—except for the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. “Mao, don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought it would be a little more fun—you know, action packed or wild and crazy—to date someone in a Syndicate.”

You watch too many movies . Mao misses Janice intensely and wonders if he should have stepped out of the dating game while he was ahead. At least she had a sensible head on her shoulders.

“Is Tuesday no good?” Mao asks, mildly. He is intensely aware that he isn’t alone in his office and taking longer on a personal call than he both should and expected to.

Maureen sighs and nods. “But Saturday, will you take me dancing? You don’t have to dance if you’re embarrassed, I can dance for you!”

She puts enough emphasis on the word that it toes the line of inappropriate. Mao flicks his eyes up to Julia apologetically, but she’s got her ‘professionally disinterested’ face on, settled on one of the couches at the back of the room and looking out the window at the city below with her hand beneath her chin. 

“Saturday, yes,” Mao agrees, as much to get her off the line than out of any real interest.

“Is there someone else there with you?” Maureen asks, suddenly suspicious.

“My assistant has just stepped in,” Mao lies smoothly as any politician, with years of experience on his side. He returns his eyes to the screen. “I’ll pick you up in my car, Tuesday at seven?”

“Uh huh,” she says, sensing his dismissal and deciding if she’s going to fight it. Mao terminates the call and tucks the video screenset into a drawer where it won’t tempt him to call and apologize. He does not think he will be pursuing a long term relationship with Maureen.

Julia glances up at him from her position on the couch, a sly look under the careful neutrality of her features. “Mao, you do too dance. I’ve seen you do it.”

“Ballroom. Not her sort of dancing,” Mao reaches up and rubs one cheek under his eye as if smoothing some emotion off his face. “And I’m afraid Maureen is quite tall. Wears very high heels.”

“That doesn’t really bother you, does it?” Julia laughs, as always seeing right through the diplomacy. It’s what makes her so good at it herself. “You just miss Janice.”

“Who told you that?” Mao asks, knowing full well she can just see it for herself. “And, no, I normally don't mind, but she’s stepped on my feet a few times.”

“A grave issue.”

He settles down in the chair opposite, casual and reaching to bring the ashtray on the low table between them closer, pulling out his cigarette case and shaking one free. “Can I ask you for advice?”

That surprises Julia. She turns back to him, her blue eyes giving her full attention to Mao. The whole of her gaze is like a weapon in its own right, a perfect companion to the handgun he knows she keeps holstered at the small of her back where it won’t ruin the shape of her sweater. Laser-honed and always well aimed. “I’ll do the best I can.”

“Do you think I should just give it up?”

She looks at Mao like she’s trying to suss out if there's an answer he wants to hear. Then, gathering herself, she gives a thoughtful and real suggestion. It’s something he’s always admired about her. How genuine she seems among the ranks of tough guys barking about honor and respect as if those were concepts you could sustain yourself on.

“I think you’re not ready to give up, Mao,” she says, tossing her hair back from her shoulders. “But I’m not sure you should settle for anyone you like less than Janice. That might mean you’ll be looking for a long time.”

He sighs. She’s right. Mao knows it. “Should I call and tell her Tuesday’s off?”

Julia looks back out the window and considers that. “You know, I don’t really date that way.”

She’d hardly have to. One only has to look at Julia to perceive the quality in her that pulls you in. She’s got that air of mystery and easy competence that had drawn Mao in even when he was younger. He’d bet dates are tiresome for her; men doing their best to present the sows-ear of themselves as a silk purse.

“But,” she continues. “I wouldn’t call it off. Some people are easier to live with after you’ve slept with them.” 

It’s a bold and true-enough statement that Mao laughs. “And some aren’t.”

She tips her head in agreement, and Mao settles in for business. “Sorry to bend your ear, Julia. And to make you wait. What can I really do for you?”

“I just came to say our routes have been very clear this week. Everything made it into Tharsis without issue.”

It should be good news, but it strikes him as it must have struck her if she’s here. “You think the White Tigers are getting ready for something?”

She tips her head in acknowledgement. He doesn’t like it. The Blue Snakes are coiling up to strike too—at any moment, surely. That’s worth waiting for. The Red Dragon is well fortified against attack—the Snakes will smash themselves to pieces at the dragon’s feet and get eaten up. If the Tigers strike too—either at the same time or fast in the aftermath—it will be trouble.

A knock at the office door pulls his thoughts from these considerations. He expects it’s Ivan with news or a runner with a dispatch so he excuses himself to get up and answer his door. When he pulls the panel open it reveals Spike, leaning in a way that’s so casual Mao suspects he’s hiding an ache from his injuries.

“Spike,” Mao greets, handling his ego carefully by gesturing Spike in and turning immediately back into his office so Spike can limp if he needs to. “I wasn’t expecting you back for a couple of days.”

He glances back to find Spike stopped just inside the door with his eyes locked on something over Mao’s shoulder. They’d done a real job on them, Mao decides, no scamming or cheap parts and the replacement moves and focuses beautifully in synch, expresses Spike the way his eyes always have. It’s a slightly different color in the bright daylight. They’re trained now on Julia, and his whole body is frozen for a longer instant than can just be passed off. Then he picks his composure up like dirty laundry off the floor and finishes wandering in.

That’s interesting, Mao thinks. Spike’s always been a smooth operator in his experience. He’s seen the man confidently spirit away with any target he sets his eyes on. He wonders if the crash has shaken Spike’s confidence a little. It’d be the first sign that anything gets into that thick head of his.

“Well,” Spike says, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched up as he slinks over to Mao’s desk and investigates the contents. “I got bored and came back to work.”

There’s a mark on Spike’s throat, under the popped and partially buttoned shirt collar but not hidden completely. Bruised dark and purple. Distinctly—as Mao looks at it—rectangular. It’s vivid and fresh. Spike moves and Mao sees clearly what it is. The squared and hollow-centered impression of a belt buckle. If Mao isn’t mistaken, it matches the dimensions of the one holding Spike’s pants on his board-straight and sapling narrow hips.

“No objections from me,” Mao says, waving Spike over. “I’m not the one who has to explain anything to your doctors.”

Spike approaches cautiously, and Mao reaches up to put a hand on his shoulder. “Any luck getting your racer fixed?” 

“I called Doohan and he hung up on me,” Spike relaxes some when he realizes Mao isn’t about to lecture him.

“I think that means you’d better go in person.” Mao satisfies himself that Spike is more or less in one piece, if a little haunted by his experience. “Why don’t you take the day, load your ship up, and take it to him. It won’t be easy for him to see the wreckage, but it will be impossible for him to leave it that way.”

“You want me to stick my head in the lion’s mouth.” Spike blinks at him.

“If you can tame that grouchy old hermit, anything I have for you won’t be a challenge.” Mao grins up at Spike. He’s fond of the young man. Wants to see Spike do well. Sometimes that means he’s going to have to face his own consequences. “And I know young men and their racers. It would be on your mind. Fix the ship.”

And quit trying to spice up your sex life. Mao keeps that opinion to himself. There’s a lady present. He pats Spike again. “Ivan could use a spar again sometime soon too, I think.”

“This is like a list of chores,” Spike complains. Mao gestures him out.

“It will get longer the more you stand around my desk complaining of nothing to do.” Mao realizes he sounds like his own father had, twenty years ago. He’s helpless to take the words back, and maybe he wouldn’t even if he could. “There will be more than enough for you to do soon, Spike.”

“Hope so,” Spike grumbles, throwing a last look over his shoulder at Julia on the couch as Mao ushers him out again.

Mao glances back at her too, and discovers Julia has gone back to looking out the window, giving no indication why Spike was looking at her like a whipped dog. Except—that mark on his throat— No, surely not.

“You’ve met each other?” Mao asks Julia after Spike’s gone. He’s mildly curious now, but he keeps any indication of intrigue out of his tone.

“We played pool the other day,” Julia says, with a smile. “Vicious introduced us.”

Mao presses the sequence of buttons on his desk that will indicate he’d like a coffee to a runner downstairs and makes it two. “Small world.”

“By design. It’s funny I never ran into him as a kid. We all grew up here, just a few blocks from each other…”

“There are some people you meet that you can’t help but feel it’s a wonder they ever grew up at all.”

“He was in a crash?” Julia’s curiosity seems casual enough, but the interest surprises Mao. 

“Not that long ago. He’s only out of the hospital this week.”

Julia looks back out the window, thoughtful. “It’s funny how men take those things seriously.”

“You’re in the wrong line of work for common sense.” Mao sighs. “No one ever wants to admit a weakness around here.” 

“I can’t stand a man like that,” she says, very firmly. “All they do is leave people behind.”

-

Doohan takes one look at the mess loaded on the transport trailer and then comes back and kicks Spike directly in the shin. Hard .

“Ouch!” Spike clutches the injury up off the ground like a wading stork. “It’s not my fault!”

“Were you flying it?” Doohan demands, squinting cantankerously up into Spike’s face. His sun-dark and machine oil stained skin doesn’t do much to hide the red flush of anger in his face.

“Yeah, but someone hit—”

“Then it’s your fault, you idiot. Load it inside and get out of my way.”

“You’ll fix it?” Spike feels gratitude penetrate the pain of his stinging shin. He’d half expected to get turned away or told to fix it himself. Doohan would be well within his rights to finally wash his hands of Spike entirely, but—

“Boy if you ripped up the Mona Lisa and brought it back to DaVinci—”

Spike has no idea what he’s on about. He does his best to follow along with the angry tirade anyway. The least he can do for someone doing him a favor is listen while they yell at him for needing it. 

“You think he’d settle for leaving it on the floor?” Doohan peers closer still into Spike’s face as if seeking an answer to his demand and then blinks, hesitating. “Your eyes are different colors.”

It bothers Spike that he notices—that for the rest of his life, people will notice. All he can do is shrug it off. “Lost one.”

Doohan looks back toward the smashed up MONO racer and does the math quickly in his mind. He throws up his hands and points at Spike. “It’s going to be a while and I hope your pockets are deep these days. I’ll have to fabricate parts.”

“Whatever you have to do,” Spike says, with half a thought to his bank account. It’s in pretty good shape. Working for the syndicate is well worth it, but Doohan is going to make him hurt for this. 

“We’ll practically have to re-christen it before it’s done,” Doohan is still grumbling to himself. “Get inside and then get to work. My shop needs a good clean-up, that’s where you can start.”

-

She’d thought it would look different from the other side. From above the poverty line and beyond the war, but—it’s remarkably similar. Every night, there’s still that distant sound of gunfire. Nearby, changed but still quiet, still with the promise of all his violence withheld behind a thin dam of control—Vicious. Appearing like a ghost come back from the war, pale and translucent.

He doesn’t offer now, but demands instead, secure in the power of his position and favor. She obliges, because she sent him to die. He’d worked it out somehow, her game. The work she’d done for the Titan resistance faction, out of the hope that somebody, somehow, would realize no one was fighting for anything but the Syndicates and pharmaceutical companies. She’d been too young then to realize everybody already knew.

It’s not only guilt that keeps her from cutting free of Vicious’ ties but there’s some part of that in it. It’s curiosity, too—to know how her sacrifice has slipped the noose and come back to haunt her in the streets of the city they both couldn’t escape the gravity of. 

Does he know? It shouldn’t matter; Julia should have cut and run back to Alba as soon as she saw him here. Whether he knew or not, he’s a danger. A captivating flame ready to burn up sulfur bright. It’s not her job to temper that. It’s the thought, rattling chains in the back of her head, that there’s no running from her ghost like this. She will have to get an answer to her question. She will have to know . It won’t let her alone, even if by some miracle Vicious would let her go.

He turns up on her doorstep—the thrill of inviting the wolf into the house and trusting he’ll follow the rules of domestication if she just feeds him enough. Vicious brings flowers and his brooding, damaged demeanor.

“Would you like some music?” she asks, as he sits— occupies — a chair in the little box of her kitchen, hunched in it as if he might need to fly out a window at any second like a bat.

“What was that old song?” Vicious scrapes out in his harsh, dry tone. As if he’s still carrying Titan’s sand in his throat. She wants to ask why— if he puts it on. Who this whole sullen act is supposed to impress. “From the music box you gave me.”

He knows. Julia knows he remembers. They’re both just playing this game out for some reason beyond what she’s able to discern. She starts dinner in the pan and looks at the roses settled in a vase at the window; beautiful captives of Mars cut short and destined to die slowly under the grey and raining sky. “It was, ‘Goodbye, Julia’.” 

Tension holds in the air for a second, until she laughs it off. “I was really mad at you for leaving, you know. Going off to some place I would never see.”

It forestalls whatever he was going to say, and the truth of it is real enough to shock her, too. She stirs the food savagely. “I hoped you’d listen to it and cry. But now—well.”

Can she say she cried over it? Or did she cry in self-pity at watching all her friends go away, at the prospect of stepping out of her childhood and finding the world wasn’t what her imagination promised. “I hope you haven’t.”

Vicious looks at her for a long time, with his colorless eyes cold and certainly tearless now. She considers her future. Funny how it keeps coming around—first to the Syndicates, then to Cherious Medical. Now, even further back, to the boy in her past. Transformed into a golem of his former self.

He eats dinner in silence and she supposes there’s nothing to talk about. But, eventually, she’s tired of serving this automaton. “Don’t you laugh or smile anymore?”

“There’s no reason to.” Vicious says.

She wonders if there’s anything he would consider a reason to, or if he means he never will again. It seems a very dismal sort of life. He used to, she remembers. He used to smile when he saw a ship or car he liked, or when he woke up next to her—when they were learning life together in the earliest stages of adulthood, both racing out of their parents homes and into what they thought was real life on the streets.

She gets up, urge or instinct, unsure why it matters so much that she knows—if Vicious is all that’s left of her friend. The table in her kitchen is small and round, a recycled plastic top and one chair on either side. She moves around the table’s circumference, her hand trailing on the surface as she steps toward him. Then, as they used to, she leans down and kisses him. First, on the forehead, and then shifting, bending lower, her mouth against his. 

For a moment, there’s no response. He sits woodenly, his mouth a firm line under hers, as he tries to resolve if this fits into his new picture of himself. She straightens up again, supposing he really has lost himself.

“I gave it away,” he says.

She can’t follow what he’s talking about, at first. She leans back, gathering her arms to herself to steady her feelings. “Gave what away?”

“The music box. It never made me cry.” He stands up, looming over her, his eyes on her face as he looks for her reaction to his words. Searches her eyes like he’s seeking a target beacon across miles of sand. “I gave it away.”

It surprises her. She laughs, and it sounds fragile even to her ears. “You don’t usually let go of your belongings.”

Vicious lifts his hands, reaches for her. She steadies herself, aware of the gun at the small of her back. But he just gathers her against his chest. It feels cold of comfort, being held close to the stone monument of a void. “You don’t belong to anyone, Julia.”

It reaches her. She folds her hands into the lapels of his coat, hiding her eyes against his chest. In spite of herself, it’s comforting.

“But we made each other,” Vicious says, low in his chest and against her ear. He runs his hand ever so softly through her hair. “You forged me to fit you.”

She never wanted this coldness. Julia reaches up to frame his too-serious face with her hands and pulls him into another kiss. This time, he thaws into it slowly and his body warms up when she touches him—the places she remembers from those years ago to bring life back into him. He follows her from the kitchen when she leads.

-

Chapter Text

Mao’s toiling through his Tuesday night dinner with Maureen when it happens. Maureen’s in the middle of explaining the tedious process of gene banking for the future genetic diversity of the species—it involves enough use of the word ‘sample’ that Mao first eyes his rice pudding with fading interest and then outright disgust as it puddles itself down into a runny, white, half-congealed mess on his plate. He’s about to shove it away completely and fake a stroke when he sees Ivan march into the place with such urgency that he’s positive someone, somewhere, is emergency level dead. Thank god.  

“One second Maureen, if you please.” He gets up a bit faster than is strictly polite without making sure she’s ready first and meets Ivan a few steps away from the table.

Ivan leans into his ear—annoyingly he has to bend down a bit—”I need you to come out of here with me, right now.”

Mao nods understanding, and responds in an undertone. “I have to ditch my date. Or does she need to get somewhere safe?”

“I can have a car come around from her. She’s probably not in any danger, but things are happening,” Ivan mutters, with urgency but not panic.

Mao goes back to his table and lets Maureen down gently. She seems thrilled by the interruption, as if the prospect of danger—imagined though it is—excites her. She’ll make someone an excellent crime girlfriend. Just not me. He pays the bill, gathers his coat, and follows Ivan out.

There’s a car waiting parked in a fire zone, and Mao gets into the passenger seat, feeling better than he should to have a layer of bulletproof glass between himself and that date. Ivan climbs into the driver’s side, and puts the car into gear.

“Is it the Blue Snakes at last?” Mao asks about the pot that’s been simmering the hardest first.

“Yeah, but not in the way you’d think.”

“Just tell me, Ivan. Where are we going?” Mao reaches up to loosen his tie and undo his sport coat buttons, feeling constricted by them. He’d worn a nicer than usual suit to work that day in preparation for the date. Mao’s pretty sure he needn’t have bothered.

“I thought you’d want to see for yourself, so you’d believe it.”

“How bad is it, Ivan? Where’d they hit?” Mao’s already doing calculations in his head, trying to sort out who he’ll put on damage control, where they can redirect resources from.

“Nowhere,” Ivan says. “That’s just it. The Blue Snakes are wiped out.”

“What? How did that happen? They’ve been building up their resources for weeks.” A police raid, maybe? PDM usually stays out of Syndicate business but if they had sensed that one was weak enough to take out with one quick maneuver, they could have done so in an attempt to curry favor with the others—and show the public a good face.

“Looks like the White Tigers, actually.” 

“ That is a surprise. An eleventh hour betrayal? You’re sure?”

“Come see for yourself. We cleared the scene, but you’ll want to see it before the cops tear it up.”

Mau would like to point out he’s in administration and organization, not a detective. He doesn’t investigate crime scenes, but he goes along anyway. Ivan pulls up cautiously to an old warehouse and parks carefully away from any cameras on the street. The car has an old scramble transmitter, chopping up any digital feeds from cameras anyway, but he’s glad it means they won’t have to answer perfunctory questions from the police later.

Mao steps out, aware of the pair of Red Dragon soldiers ahead of them, minding the fenced entrance to the warehouse lot. There will be others nearby or inside, but—there’s still the smell of gun discharge and powder in the air. Under all that, blood and guts and the various smells of death—fresh, anyway. Distastefully, Mao fishes his pocket square out and puts it over his mouth and nose as Ivan steps into the warehouse through a partially open, bullet-pocked steel door.

Inside, the scene is as messy as any Mao has been witness to.

“Watch where you step,” Ivan warns, picking his way over the bloody tracks already left on the floor. Mao picks out tire treads and a few other footprints tracked almost carelessly in the blood—signs that a lot has been done here in a hurry.

The bodies are shoved into a pile with a tell-tale streak of slick gore leading to them that indicates they were moved there with some kind of industrial cargo moving device. A forklift, maybe. The Blue Snakes wear black suits with a glittering pin on the lapel, old fashioned and without any desire to brazenly announce their allegiance from a great distance. Now, it results in a jumble of black suited limbs and bodies, stacked and discarded like so many old, broken dolls. It’s a gruesome sight, made all the worse by the fact that the warehouse is otherwise empty. Mao steps carefully around the trails of blood and looks a little closer—each discernible face has a hole through the head—the assailants had made sure no man would live to tell what happened. He sees no indicator that the attackers suffered any casualties.

“No other bodies? These are all Snakes?” Mao swings around to Ivan—very few of the men in that pile are young. The last echelon of the Blue Snakes—the head of the beast, meaning the men who usually pull the strings and kept the Syndicate on the rails. No line of defense left between them and danger anymore because Vicious has been relentless in his strikes and chasing down survivors and strongholds.

It’s one thing to be aware of the violent end that probably waits for all of them, hiding cat quiet behind a corner. It’s another thing to see it played out, and all too easy to envision himself in echoes of those corpses.

“Yeah, all Snakes. If the Tigers lost anyone, the bodies went out with the weapons. Not a gun in the place.” Ivan settles at Mao’s shoulder, both of them looking at the bodies and most likely thinking the same thing.

“These look like old guard.”

“Our tipster says the whole leadership was here,” Ivan says.

“Stupid of them.” Mao glances up at Ivan, pointing an indicator of how stupid it is for the two of them to be standing here, even if they’re only players in Tharsis. The Van would quietly replace them, or shift new leadership out of reach and into another city if they were lost.

“We cleared the place, don’t worry. But I'm not digging into that pile to be sure the old man’s in there. Leave that to the police.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Mao says, muffled by the pocket square against his face. It smells like open bowels and piss. “We can read the list of dead in the paper next week. If the head of the Snake is alive, it can bite again.”

The utter emptiness of the rest of the place is unsettling. There’s not a shell casing left—though of necessity there are probably bullets in the bodies and walls. The tracks of the moving machine go all through the space however, and Mao has a pretty good idea that this place was full when this all went down.

Outside, Mao pulls the handkerchief away from his mouth and breathes cold night air again. “Get our men out of here. Send in the cops. That mess shouldn’t stay like that, enemies or not.”

“You got it,” Ivan leans aside to give the order into his comms device, reaching the ears of the stationed soldiers, releasing them from their posts. He heads back to the car—they’ll need to go back to the Monument tower. It will be easier to organize from there—to defend that position if they have to, if the Tigers decide to strike immediately after double-crossing their smaller enemy and eliminating a threat to both Syndicates. 

Ivan joins him quickly and lights a cigarette—probably to clean the taste of death from his tongue. In a scene like that, it hangs in the air. “Looks like we still have a lot of weapons to worry about. I’ll bet you anything we missed a strike tonight but—”

“We’ll see all of it again. Smart of the Tigers.” Mao has to hand it to them, it was a brutal stroke. An enemy’s assets were hard to reach in the banks—Syndicates carefully and jealously guard their money. But in the liquidized form of weaponry—brought together to arm members for a ferocious strike, it was immediately reachable. He makes a note never to fall for that trap.

“So, what should we do about this?” Ivan asks.

“I’ll inform the Van. They’ll want to read the situation.”

“Astrology again.” Ivan sighs. “I don’t think putting new side tables and elegant—fish statues or whatever in the Monument is going to—”

“Mind your words, Ivan,” Mao corrects, gently. He knows his man is shaken. “When danger looms outside, a unified front will make the weaknesses harder to strike.”

Ivan takes a deep breath, and nods. He knows that there’s no reason to give anyone the idea he doesn’t have faith in the leadership of the Syndicate right now. “Sorry.”

“Call in the Lieutenants and get them on the same page. I’ll reach out to Carlos. It may be now that the White Tigers have such a big stick we can convince them to walk softly. 

“Can you get the Van to agree to that? Or Vicious?”

As they leave the warehouse well in the rear-view mirror, Mao can hear the distant sounds of sirens howling to live, like wolves converging distantly on a hill. “I hope so. We’ll have a lot more to worry about than my love life if things get much worse.”

-

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Spike shrugs at the late-night summons when he sees how many of them are there. The police are out in the city in force, too, like a swarm of flies hurrying for food left out in the summer. Spike doesn’t see anyone notable missing from the gathering.

“Do you think the Blue Snakes are ready to hit us, finally?” Lin asks, sticking close at Spike’s side. He’s become a close attendant—Spike’s head soldier. He has a better head for arranging tactics that need more than a head on assault. Shin’s nearby, too.

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.” Spike stretches up on his toes, looking for Ivan over the crowd. “I just got back from halfway across the planet.”

“Did you get your racer fixed?” Shin asks.

“Yeah, but Doohan really put me through the ringer,” Spike admits. “Made me clean up his whole shop. Then asked me what was in my bank account and said, ‘that’ll do’.” 

It hurts a little, but Spike paid it. It felt better to have his ship back than to be sure he has rent for the next month. That’ll come soon enough, he’ll just have to beg his landlord to wait for his next paycheck. 

“Ouch,” Shin sympathizes.

“Well, easy come, easy go. After this, I better win my next race.”

“It’s unlikely you’ll have time.” Lin points out. “They don’t call us all together in the middle of the night for…”

Lin’s voice fades out of Spike’s awareness as the elevator comes up again, catching his attention and drawing his eye. He already realized he hasn’t seen Vicious yet, but he lives in a bad part of the South zona. What Spike is anxious about is—the doors swing open, and reveal both the expected Vicious, immaculately put together and carrying his sword with the braids wrapped loosely around his hand and Julia, just next to him. Her clothing is informal, but well put together for someone rousted out of bed at two a.m.

And together. Without even an attempt to appear separately. It should be expected, Spike guesses, but it ruffles him the wrong way. 

“Are they dating?” Spike asks Lin. The guy’s the most reserved and put together of his agents, but he has a nose for gossip. If anyone knows, it’ll be him. Shin glances over and looks intrigued, Lin stops saying whatever it was he was saying before and glances toward the elevator. His eyes focus.

“There’s not a lot of speculation about Vicious,” Lin says, diplomatically.

“You mean nobody really wants to know about his sex life,” Shin puts in.

“Who knows?” Spike brushes his own impulsive question off, hoping it came off as more casual than it felt. It was a strange instinct anyway. What does he care who Vicious is fucking? It’s not like Spike isn’t doing as he pleases either, and a few casual frustration fucks aren’t anything to get possessive over.

He rubs casually at his neck and lets the whole thing go with, “It’s just strange to think he has any kind of past at all, I guess.”

Lin glances at Shin, who shrugs. Spike pushes through the crowd, away from the elevator and toward the windows. This floor—all open and wide, bannered in Syndicate red and gold—seems even bigger without the big silk drapes sectioning off parts of the room. Spikes’ not used to it this way. It usually goes empty and unused except for functions, and Spike doesn’t usually attend those.

After a few minutes, Mao finally appears with his two bodyguards and Ivan sticking close by his side. He steps up to a low podium, and it’s strangely official. He has no tie on, and he’s in just his rolled up shirt sleeves but his features are serious—pinched and tired in a way Spike doesn’t see very often.

He looks like a politician who just had the rug pulled out from under him.

“Good evening. I understand it’s quite late,” Mao says, voice rough with a long, exhausting night. There’s a mic in the podium, tuned to pick up only his voice and amplify it through a hundred hidden speakers, so he can keep his tone conversational and still be heard clearly throughout the crowd. “It’s the sort of news I want to deliver in person so as not to lessen the seriousness of the situation.”

It’s a diplomatic way of saying to listen, and pay attention. Spike keeps his gaze on the city below, his eyes attracted to the distant place where the police cars are converging downtown, a lot of crazily flashing red and blue lights painting the buildings around it.

“I haven’t yet confirmed it completely, but the safe bet is that as of this evening the Blue Snake Syndicate has suffered a fatal blow. The evidence suggests it was a double cross by the White Tigers.”

A murmur goes up in the room, and Spike pulls his eyes away from the window to look at Vicious, immediately suspicious of the convenient setup. 

“No matter what the situation is, it seems likely that a large stockpile of weapons has been seized. For now, I expect you all to be on your guard but do not —” Mao stresses the word carefully, and Spike glances from Vicious’ face—impassive and as usual, unreadable—back to Mao. He’s looking at Vicious, too. “Engage in any hostilities of your own making. You may find yourself run into an ambush of greater hostility than you are prepared to handle.” 

A murmur goes up from the crowd again, half concerned and half the usual tough guy stuff mixed with contempt. Spike lets it go. If the other side doesn’t start anything, then he’s fine staying out of trouble. Starting a shootout is more effort than he wants but—weapons or not, he’ll finish one any time he can. He knows Vicious feels the same way—at least as far as ending a fight. He seems to have no trouble starting them, either.

“We’ll bring you more information as we have it. For now, hold off on any nonessential operations,” Mao continues. Questions erupt at that, any number of operations to sort essential from non. 

It’s Vicious’ voice that rises suddenly out of the pack with a demand audible to all. 

“You want us to slink around the city with our tails between our legs? What kind of image is that for the most powerful Syndicate on Mars?”

“Until you’re assured it won’t be cut off,” Mao answers, sharply, his voice amplified but still calm. Loud enough to match Vicious. “I’d keep your tail and every other part of your ass firmly tucked. It doesn’t do us any good to find an ambush by shoving our hand into the snare. Information is what we need, not more bloodshed. Are we clear ?”

The message—as much for Vicious’ subordinates as the man himself—comes across clearly. Action outside these lines is insubordinate and depending on severity, perhaps treasonous enough to really punish. Vicious lowers his eyes from Mao’s, revoking the challenge, but it’s likely to come up again. Spike doesn’t like it—Mao has held them both under wing this whole time. Made sure they were here in this room to begin with, instead of still just languishing as common grunts. 

Spike’s a nobody, from nowhere. Poor as a kid and fatherless, stealing from the convenience store that turned out to be part of something bigger. It was an act of fate that Spike’s nose for trouble had led him into something better. On the turn of a coin, he could have been just another body in the street. For that, he owes a lot to Ivan and Annie and Mao, and what little concept of loyalty and family he has he holds for them. It’s obnoxious that he finds a sense of family conflict when Mao and Vicious clash. Somehow along the way, Vicious has become someone who matters. Spike doesn’t want this division.

“Be careful out there. If you need anything, come to me,” Mao says. “Make sure your men know to watch their step.”

Mao steps back from the podium, finished, and several people swarm toward him. He meets them on their level and Spike cuts through the crowd to Vicious. 

“What was that?” Spike demands, voice pitched low.

Vicious turns halfway to look at Spike, eyes cold and narrow. “If people don’t want their actions questioned, they shouldn’t do questionable things.”

Spike can feel his whole body bristling for a fight. “That’s bullshit.”

“Is it? Or is letting an opportunity to further press our advantage pass us by? What will it look like, if we sit back now and do nothing? Are we so weak? Or is it only that our leaders are afraid…”

Lin moves promptly into Spike’s way, putting a hand on his shoulder—not to restrain, just to put a point of grounding contact on Spike. He’s right—it’s not the place. Even if Vicious is being a shit—it’s not wise to enter into open conflict in a room full of their peers. He’d be displaying the sort of weakness Vicious is implying.

“Vicious,” Julia says, quietly. “I’m sure Mao only wants all the information before he chooses a course of action. Perhaps the Van need to consult a reading, or perhaps there were bigger weapons than we thought that made it through.”

Like that, she gives them both an excuse to back down, and Spike relents. He wants a cigarette—but even more, he just wants things to go back to how they were in the beginning. When they could play poker and all laugh together. Maybe with the Tigers in a standoff, things can return to the tense stalemate that allowed for that before. Spike straightens himself up. “Well, we’re all up anyway. Let’s go get a drink.”

“It’s a wake, after all,” Vicious puts his hand over Julia’s, and lets the conflict fade into memory.

-

Chapter Text

She sits by herself the next time Spike sees her, settled at a bar seat and alone with a slim cigarette trailing smoke as it burns away to nothing in an ashtray by her elbow. Every time Spike catches sight of her somewhere unexpected, it feels like seeing a mythical animal. In this case, he’s here because he knows she frequents the bar, but somehow he didn’t think she’d be here—that she’d never quite be where he expects.

Even Spike has to admit she’s objectively beautiful, all the more shining, warm and alive in the cool gray of a rainy afternoon and the cold fluorescent in the bar. She sits alone, and Spike shrugs out of his wet coat, brazenly inviting himself into her circle of solitude. This year will end strangely, in a transitory season. Due to the mis-alignment of years between earth and the Mars Conversion Calendar, seasons take longer to pass. It feels strange that they’ll celebrate the next new year in the rainy (artificial) early fall weather.

“Spike,” she says, looking up from her drink as he sits next to her. Her eyes are the brightest thing about her, timeless and deep blue. “Are you following me?”

It’s not quite playful—on that edge of the defenses that women hold up, testing the waters without risking angering their target. Spike proceeds with caution. He’s not interested in ruining her night, just trying to be companionable.

“No, not following you. You brought us here the other night and I liked it,” Spike says by way of making peace. “I’ll get a drink and go, if you want the place to yourself.” 

She looks at him like she sees directly through his attempt at nonchalance. Spike resigns himself to drinking alone, and he doesn’t mind. He shouldn’t have come or made her uncomfortable, she just intrigues him. “Well, I guess we should get to know each other.”

It’s enough permission to stay in her company. “There’s no rush. I’m curious, but people have their secrets.” 

“And what kind of secrets do you have, Spike Spiegel?” She asks, picking up her drink. Her eyes don’t stay on him long, and for some reason, he’s acutely aware of that.

“I have a few,” Spike says, but all of them seem crude and inadequate now that he’s sitting next to her. So he just picks up his drink and has a long sip.

“Let’s see,” she says, looking at him at last. He’s heard games like this before, usually less than kind. Her voice is only disinterested, as if she’s tired of everything. “You’re a very dangerous man with a dark past. Every few days you have a brush with death.”

It’s succinct, and Spike has to laugh at her brazen dismissal of anything he might have to say. “Yeah, I guess that’s about right. Except—you and I work together, technically. So, you’re a very dangerous woman with a dark past. Maybe slightly fewer brushes with death.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she says. “I know you had a crash recently. Why don’t you tell me about that?”

It’s a strange request, but Spike can’t really deny it. “I was racing. I got hit.”

“Did you win?” she rests her hand under her chin, elbow on the scarred bartop. She looks him in the eyes at last, measuring him up for the kill, he’d guess. Deciding whether to sever his attempt at the knees or let him keep stumbling onward. 

“No,” Spike says. “Didn’t even make it halfway.”

Pride means he should defend that, somehow. Push the responsibility on someone else. Hell, it’d be fair to, but it feels cheap to look into her extraordinary eyes and make excuses. He knows she likes MONO racing, or at least Vicious said she had. So, he doesn’t bother trying to push the responsibility elsewhere—she’ll know better.

“And you will next time, I assume?” She swirls her glass in her other hand, but doesn’t look at it. “Win the race?”

Spike isn’t sure if she’s challenging him or dismissing his changes. She’s looking for something, but he can’t guess what. “I don’t know. You can’t put a price on winning, but losing was pretty costly.”

That doesn’t seem to be the answer she expects, and the way she goes slowly from reserved to interested is a delight. “What’d you pay?”

“To fix my ship? Everything I had.”

“For what? A MONO racer?”

“For the only one like it,” Spike says, genuinely proud of the Swordfish even if Doohan insists that after such an extensive rebuild, it now has to be redubbed the Mark II. “You should see her. She’s worth it.”

Julia gives him an intrigued look, as if she’d like to judge for herself. She looks confident in her own ability to ascertain the worth of his ship. “And that’s all?”

“I lost an eye, too,” Spike indicates, brazenly. He’s still sensitive about it, but putting it forward of his own volition robs it of some of the power it has. 

“I noticed they were different colors when we first met,” she says, and that’s all. 

“Vicious said you liked to see the races when you were younger.”

She nods, picking her drink up. “I was always enamored of the idea that something could get me out of this place. As fast as possible.”

Taking a long sip of her drink, she seems to look at Spike for signs he understands. He thinks she sees something, and settles into that as a conversation, trying not to go back and forth until they can find something to agree to talk about.

“So why are you still here? Haven’t you found your wings yet?”

“It turns out that there aren’t any fast enough to really get you away from this,” she says, waving him off. “And where is it really different from Mars, anyway? It’s part of the human condition to live like we are.”

“Human condition, huh? You think about that a lot?” Such pragmatism seems strange coming from a beautiful woman, but—” You sound a lot like Vicious when you talk like that, you know? Is that why he likes you?”

Spike drops it down rudely without meaning to. It sounds jealous, in a way he’s sure he doesn’t feel. Jealous of which , even? Why?

She doesn’t betray even a hint of surprise. “You tell me, Spike. What is it about anyone that draws Vicious to them?”

It’s not quite an accusation, but Spike knows that she knows. Maybe not to the full extent of detail, but the important parts. He shakes his head, admits defeat. If it’s between the two of them, it’s impossible to guess the common thread. Maybe there isn’t one, except in Vicious’ mind.

“It’s not—official or anything,” Spike finishes his drink quickly, thinking about the wet pavement through his jeans on the night he’d first met her, how it was Vicious staking a claim on both of them.

“No, it never is with him,” Julia says.

“Was he like that even as a kid?” Spike resolves to get truly smashed, flagging down the bartender for a refill. If they’re going to end the night as anything other than strangers in orbit, he’ll need to.

“He was always quiet,” Julia says. She shifts in her seat. “War was what sharpened him. Well, some of it. Maybe what he came back to isn’t so different.”

Spike suddenly doesn’t want to talk about Vicious anymore. He doesn’t know how Vicious is with her, but Spike hopes it’s not cruel. That the cruelties of the world don't fall on her shoulders from his hands. 

 “I’m not jealous, Spike,” She says casually. “It will be easier for you if you aren’t either. He won’t let either go.”

She says it like Spike’s not his own person, and he laughs, bright, shaking his head. “It’s really not like—” 

She looks at him; through him like a shot and it pierces him into silence, his denial dying with his certainty down in his chest. “Do you play pool?”

“You know I do.”

“ Without cheating,” Julia specifies. “There’s a table in the back. I want to see what you’re really made of.”

She slides off her chair with an effortless grace and he follows, because she leads him through the darkened hall and into a space dimly lit and badly arranged, with just a pool table in a room otherwise lined with stacked chairs. She doesn’t say anything else—they just play. She runs the game from start to finish, and she plays like someone who knows where she stands. Handles the cue without playing with it, though Spike’s eyes are on the curl of her fingers around the shaft. Her nails are neatly manicured, her grip confident.

But her eyes as she leans down and lines up a shot, drawing the shapeless warmth of her sweater against the curve of her back and perfect ass—and okay. Okay.

Spike loses and he doesn’t mind any part of it. “Any time you want to play, all you have to do is ask.”

“‘I’ll take your money,” she says, clearly amused by his bravado. “You said you didn’t have much.”

“I don’t,” Spike says. “But maybe I’ll get better and you’ll take less of it?”

She smiles at him for the first time—really at Spike and into him, transfixing him through and through. “You are smooth, aren’t you? I bet he doesn’t see that about you. Alright then, hustler, you’re on.”

-

It falls into regularity with damning speed—and as often as not, Vicious joins them. Spike and Julia talk around his silence until it becomes comfortable—usually around the third drink in. Somehow, it works, staying easy. Julia tells stories from Alba City and avoids any other parts of her past. Once they learn the waltz steps around the hole in the floor, it’s easy. They could talk about nothing all night, and it wouldn’t matter. The connection is built from one moment forward, for her and Spike. It’s a relief.

She’s aware of Spike’s mismatched eyes on her but unsure what he’s really hungry for. He keeps his hand close to his chest for a man who wears belt bruises on his neck and burns on the backs of his arms in the shape of cigarette ash-ends. Maybe all he wants is a steady understanding. She knows—though Vicious and Spike rarely so much as stand near each other—that the marks are from Vicious’ hand. She sees the way Spike pushes him, occasionally shoving into his space or saying something that will provoke. 

Once, when Vicious suggests making a move before the new year in defiance of Mao’s orders and the Van both, Spike lunges for him and it devolves into a fight, no weapons but Spike flows with confidence and Vicious savagery and Julia almost thinks they’re about to start fucking right there in the bar parking lot. Spike wins as much as anyone wins anything with Vicious.

“Just shut up and wait ,” Spike snarls, fist cocked back as Vicious reels—he fights dirty, she’s noticed, and Spike doesn’t exactly fight clean, but honorably. “It won’t fucking kill you to listen. Show some damn respect.”

Vicious has no answer, but Spike won the bout—the right to be listened to even if he looks a sight afterward, getting up stiffly. His knuckles are scraped and his movements tender. She remembers how flippantly he said he’d been in an accident. Julia’s no tender youth with a bleeding heart—she’s seen men Spike’s age and younger die. If not in the war, in the Syndicate conflicts. But, her heart gives a twinge anyway.

She and Vicious always leave together. Julia pretends not to see Spike running his lines out to find some other blonde to go home with. He’s got a side to him that’s soft, under the hardness he gives to the people he’s loyal to. She bets—even as she takes Vicious home and dresses his wounds with little bandages and stinging disinfectant— she can convince him to take in the appeasement of her nurturing. She bets Spike treats those girls well. Finds that she hopes they treat him well.

“Vicious,” she says, taking his hands when they’re done cleaning up. “Come to bed with me.”

He never refuses her request, but even as she warms up his body, strips him down and lays him back; he’s so cold. Not his skin—it flushes color and when his cock gets hard the head goes as purple and ready to her touch as any other man’s. But he’s as distant as ever. A man under six inches of clear ice, as she leans down to put her mouth on him, and so long under the surface he only looks out without reaching. 

She teases the head of his cock with her tongue and he stays silent but his breathing changes, and she wonders how often he stole moments like this in the trenches on Titan, and with who. Then she lets that go and sinks deeper, wetting him with all her mouth can reach before she draws up and off, working his cock in her hand. On her bed, on his back, he seems larger—even stripped bare of the layers of clothes, he takes up so much space with his limbs splayed out and fingers clutched in the sheets.

Julia wants to take him apart, but she worries—without fully understanding why—that she’ll lose a piece. Instead, she soothes his body, straddling his thighs and pushing the flat of her hand over the scars on his belly, up to his chest. She works the edge of her thumbnail against one pale nipple, a slow drag back and forth until his hands finally come off the bed and touch her. 

He takes her by the curve of the hips and pulls, looking up at her but also through her, and his hand leaves her left side and curls under her body as she sits up, thumb clever on her clit in a way it hadn’t been before he left for the war. With his cock standing over his belly, shifting and swaying with the surge of his interest, and the steady motion of his hand on her, he doesn’t meet her eyes. His thumb presses and circles, and his first two fingers find where she’s growing wet and sink in, to stroke teasingly without pressing in. Feeling the warmth and heat of her entrance. He keeps his control, pushing her to let go of hers. One day, when she isn’t so impatient, she’ll crack him open; break his control on the wheel and see what emerges. In a way, she envies the ease with which Spike does it, even as Vicious’ circling thumb presses her to gasps. 

She lifts on her knees and takes him, then. She’s so slick and soft there’s no pull of resistance as he slips deep into her cunt and leaves her full and gasping, soft little cries because it’s good , for all that he's somewhere else in his mind—on some other front, in some other time. He doesn’t fuck her so much as she fucks onto him, straightening her back and leaning forward to roll her hips and dig him into her. He won’t come, she’s learned, until she’s satisfied. So Julia satisfies herself, lets the length of his cock do the work. 

Slow, but relentless, and Vicious still doesn't look at her—he has an arm thrown over his face, mouth in not quite a grimace, but his other hand is still on her hip pulling with her rhythm. There’s the sound of rain on the roof, and Julia looks out the window into the city; the neon light smearing into brilliant refractions of light melting like snow down her window pane. Mars and all her memories of it seem to come apart as she rides relentlessly to her own completion, gasping softly and feeling her body get tight— tight —that heavy and flirting sensation in her belly and cunt, always on the verge of crashing down or drifting back out of reach. This time her body grips and releases, pulsing hard around his cock as he almost seems to slip deeper still before it crashes down with a cry torn from her and swallowed into the thin walls. She eases down onto her small bed with him afterward, as his hands rub into her back, open-palmed.

She can never tell if he’s come or not. He never pursues his own pleasure or complains. She settles against him, fitting her soft curves against his side above the blanket and watches his face until his eyes focus. She takes a cue from Spike, and asks at the risk of his anger while their bodies are still hot and slick for each other, sweaty and revved like racing engines.

“Why are you cruel to him?”

He doesn’t have to clarify who, but his gray cold eyes lock on hers and warm just a little. Whether because she asked or just at the thought of Spike, she can’t tell.

“Because,” Vicious’ voice comes from low in his chest, not quite toneless. “He likes it. You should see how hard he gets for it.”

Vicious suggests it with the acid of warning on his tongue—that he will indulge them only at his whim, to get the opportunity. She hadn’t been asking for that, not truly, but the thought quickens inside her.

“He’s only alive in moments and instants,” Vicious continues. “He doesn’t care about living. The pain—the way I put him on his knees when he demands to be. He understands that. Even more than he understands when I beat him fighting and then fuck him like a trophy. It’s part of his struggle to be born.”

It’s wrapped up in so much Vicious-speak, but Julia thinks she understands. She doesn’t need another half-wild and immature man, but—she’s drawn to Spike.

“I give him what he needs and it binds him to me,” Vicious continues. Maybe it’s tingned with an edge of cruelty.

Is that what you think I do? Julia presses a kiss to his skin, acknowledging his point. Perhaps it is. “You don’t show him kindness, ever?”

“He doesn’t want it. Doesn’t need it. It won’t forge him into what he needs to be.”

“What he needs…?” she repeats it as a question, and then laughs. It’s not funny, not really, but it’s just like men. “Are you worried you’ll fuck him so well he goes soft?”

This gives Vicious pause, and then he shakes his head. “Why the curiosity?”

It’s venomous and acid-laced. Julia reaches up and rubs the cobra under the chin, along his neck and shoulders, giving him the supplication he needs for reassurance. She’s not going anywhere.

Vicious is her mess to clean up. 

“I think it’s natural to be curious,” is all she says, and lets him work out his own ideas.

-

In the liminal space before the Lunar New Year, Mao keeps a tense line of communication open with the White Tiger Syndicate, and makes sure the flow of money to his informants within that organization stays strong enough to keep them loyal. 

“You’ve done well, but soon a time of action will return,” Wang Long advises. Mao stands at their feet, below the veiled chambers where they seem to float overhead. Since the discovery of how many weapons the White Tigers have come into possession of has reached them, they’ve redoubled their personal guard. The room is lined with handpicked men, all standing at attention. Mao appreciates the caution, though the message is somewhat weakened by their statements.

“If that’s what is called for,” Mao says, grimly. “Though I think it’s an error to wake a sleeping Tiger. They have very long fangs these days.”

“Perhaps we can stir them to action against themselves,” Ping Long says, his ancient and narrowed eyes on Mao with displeasure. “Do you doubt what the stars say?”

“The stars don’t care how much blood of ours it costs to make their next rotation,” Mao straightens his back, deciding to take a stand. “If you start this war, the cycle won’t stop until many more have died.”

It meets an angry silence, the three all turning their ancient attention on him in disapproval. Mao does his best to stand firm, aware of the legion of unquestioning men lining the walkway and beyond them, the fortune teller’s guild moving in the dim corners of the room where they go on farming predictions, pointedly oblivious to anything but their streams of numbers.

“They should be ready to die for the betterment of the syndicate,” Ping Long says, flatly. The disapproval of the Van almost seems to fill the room entirely. It’s a fine thing for an ancient statue with a wall of personal guards to say, enshrined in an armed fortress. “As should you.”

It has the ring of a threat to it. Mao has had quite enough bullshit for one year. He has seen the pile of corpses that were all that remained of a once great rival. “I would, I think, prefer not to. I accept the risk, but I won't press my luck to find the point where it must happen.”

The three sets of eyes stay hard on Mao, obviously displeased with his defiance. He bows again and means to take his leave, skirting the edge of being shot for insubordination. He’d just said he’d rather not die.

“Wait!” Sou Long commands. 

Mao’s body goes tense, but he does as commanded. 

Sou Long has the attention of all in the room, the other two members of the van turning their ancient heads toward the third in creaking regard. Sou Long’s eyes burn into Mao’s, reaching some connection to some bit of information from a future reading, most likely. It’s impossible not to feel as if your every action plays into something they expect, standing in this immaculately arranged room that always has the haze of incense. It makes his defiance feel cheap and pointless.

“Yenrai is right to protect our assets,” Sou Long moves slightly, with great effort. The tiny, shrunken and curled figure is always arranged neatly into a crouch, hands folded. Now, one of those mummified extremities lifts slightly. “Without our men, commerce halts. Making war is not profitable in the immediate.” 

“We will destroy our enemies,” Wang Long asserts. “Have faith. Vicious will cut through them with acuity. But not until the year of the Red Fire Dog. We are assured that all pieces are in place to reach a win by the end of the Year of the Pig.”

“Your foresight is very far reaching,” Mao relents. At least, when we are all dead, there will be peace. In the back of his mind, Mao is sure Vicious would do it, if he thought he could.

“This year, we believe the color of auspicious intent to be the blue of unbled blood. See to the appropriate arrangement for the party.”

Mao pulls in a breath, but offers no argument. He will not convince them to take any other course than the one they’ve decided is foreordained. He takes his leave with a numb mind and goes downstairs through the caged elevator, aware of the eyes of every member of the Van’s personal guard. He’ll have to ask Ivan about potentially getting a man into their ranks that they can trust—to be sure what is actually in motion. These days, it feels more and more like he’s at odds with the Van. They have always worked in layers and secrets, but Mao’s patience for working from a position of limited information while trying to run a massive organization and keep them on the rails is running thin.

Back at his office, he’s trying to source a frankly ludicrous amount of blue silk for the Lunar New Year’s alignment of the Monument, when Ivan peers into his office.

“Hey, Mao, I—”

 “Do you have any idea where I can get my hands on three thousand yards of blue silk?” Mao growls, in an utterly foul mood. “It all has to be the same color, of course .”

“Blue?” Ivan blinks. He steps further into Mao’s office, picking up on his anger, and closes the door behind him. “What do you need blue for?”

“The appropriate feng shui for the year of the red fire dog.”

Ivan tilts his head, tugging at his tracksuit jacket. He’s obviously come in here for some other reason, he has something else to unload on Mao’s plate. He holds onto it for a minute. “That’s next week.”

“I know it’s next week.” Mao hears how dangerously close his tone is to snapping. “The Van has decided that the silks need to be blue this year.”

“The meeting went badly…” Ivan doesn’t quite ask.

Mao slams his palms down on his desk and stands up. “It wasn’t a meeting. It was a dictation of my fortune—’frustration and an empty social life await; long hours at work only reward your superiors.’”

Ivan’s eyebrows slowly arch toward his hairline. He shifts his weight, measuring his next words carefully.

“So unless you have any suggestions— ”

“ How blue do they have to be, Mao?” Ivan asks, nonsensically.

It’s enough to defuse some of Mao’s anger, being a completely ludicrous question. “Not orange or purple, I suppose. Blue , Ivan.”

“You could dye the red ones?”

It stops Mao’s racing thoughts dead in their tracks. He sits down. “Is that—how much dye would that take?”

Ivan shrugs. “Less than three thousand yards of blue silk in a week would cost.”

Mao taps a few keys on his computer, bringing up an industrial dyeing company. “I can just order replacements for the red next year. Ivan, I owe you a drink.”

“Uh, hold that thought.”

Mao looks up, remembering that Ivan had come in on some kind of business. “What do you have for me?”

“Spike’s in jail.”

“ What ?” Mao gets up again. “Those idiots—what for? Is Vicious with him?”

“Speeding, I think. It’s just Spike. The commissioner called to apologize, but apparently the arresting officer is a real hardass. We’ll need to go down and bail him out, and get his ship out of impound.”

That damned racer again. Mao grabs his coat and hat, glad to have a chance to unleash hell.

-

“I just couldn’t shake the guy,” Spike explains, sitting handcuffed in an interrogation room. He hasn’t made it to booking yet, marked as one of the Red Dragons and as such afforded the courtesy of a call to his superiors. “It was only speeding.”

“How fast were you going ?” Ivan asks. Mao just stews. The syndicate and MPF have an understanding. Anything short of flagrant disregard for the law merited no more than a blind eye, usually. Speeding certainly should not have gotten more than a ticket to be ripped up and forgotten.

Spike shrugs, laissez faire. “Redlined it. Sorry, he was sniffing around, so I thought I’d see what kind of dog he was. Bloodhound or greyhound, you know?”

Mao remembers Spike is supposed to be escorting Red Eye off the planet—just as far as delivery to the gate. Even the White Tigers won’t risk starting trouble in hyperspace. There are enough stories about ghost ships from the gate crisis still wandering the galaxy these fifty years later that nobody wants to find out what that slow death is like, except theoreticians. Maybe not even them, outside of theory.

“And you found out he was a bulldog,” Ivan says.

Spike’s eyes avoid Mao’s and he shifts in his seat to give the impression of someone casual. “Yeah and a total hardass. Couldn't shake him. Can I have a cigarette? He said no smoking in here and took mine.”

Mao digs out his pack and considers the small interrogation room. He never trusts that these things are private. He offers Spike a cigarette, then lights it for him. Spike’s hands are cuffed awkwardly to the crossbar of the chair he’s sitting on. Experience with the man’s pickpocketing skills suggests he’s made a proper annoyance of himself for his arresting officer. “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a misunderstanding. I’ll work it out with the commissioner. Sit tight.”

Mao lets himself out, leaving Ivan to keep his eyes on Spike. The trouble with a corrupt police force is it’s all rotten in different ways. Most of them will fall in line with the commissioner—bought and paid for—but not just by the Red Dragons. There are some that work directly for the rival Syndicates, or vigilantes who figure that one less Syndicate punk is easy enough to cover up when no other officer would testify to it and the safety of the police HQ covers for a multitude of sins.

Spike can take care of himself, of course, but Mao won’t risk it. Better he has Ivan with him.

“Mr. Yenrai, I’m sorry to pull you away from your work,” Commissioner Lede calls from his office up the hall. Mao joins him, taking off his suit coat to cool off. It’s uncomfortably hot in the police HQ.

“It’s no trouble, Commissioner Lede. I appreciate your discretion in the matter.”

“Yes, well, I’ve suggested that Detective Black be a little less enthusiastic when he’s outside his home jurisdiction, but you know those ISSP guys.”

“No harm done. I’ll be happy to pay the fines incurred and for any damages.”

“I knew you’d be reasonable about it,” Lede turns over a private tablet, ready with a receptive and secret bank account. “I’m sorry too. They call this guy the Black Dog. He’s out of Ganymede I guess. Those guys all get too much seawater.”

“I suppose he’ll be reassigned somewhere his talents have a better outlet?” Mao suggests, mildly. He pays the bribe without further remark, and Lede nods. 

“If you ask me, he should have stuck to Ganymede.”

“Ivan is with Spike. I’ll collect them outside.”

“You don’t want to gloat?” Lede half-jokes, issuing the order digitally for Spike’s immediate release.

“I’m allergic to dog bites,” Mao says, mildly. He sees himself out and waits for his companions at the bottom of the precinct stairs, smoking a cigarette. After ten minutes, Ivan and Spike emerge sharing a private grin as they reach freedom.

“Thanks,” Spike says at the foot of the precinct stairs, his posture hunching some in casual deference as he approaches Mao. “For bailing me out.”

It’s appreciative, and Mao can’t help remembering Spike at sixteen, wild and rude, uncivilized and unwilling to express his gratitude for anything. He’d come into the Syndicate full of too much fight and no love for authority or anything but the next thrill. The way he ducks his head in respect to Mao now comes only through the efforts of persistent and gentle favors and kindnesses, the sort of respect you can only get from a former stray. It warms his heart, at least until Spike continues.

“I know you had that date tonight. Hope I didn’t interrupt—”

“ Shit, ” Mao remembers, pawing his communicator out of his jacket pocket, finding six missed calls. Cassandra. She’ll never forgive me.

“Sorry, I completely forgot.” Ivan winces. Mao just puts the phone back in his pocket. It’s too late now to salvage the situation.

“You can make it up to me by helping to arrange the transport of all that silk.” Mao sighs. “Come on, Spike, let’s get you home. Did the shipment make it alright?”

“Yeah, it should have. Once that guy set eyes on the Swordfish II, he didn't seem to see anything else.”

“That’s a small blessing,” Mao says. “There's nothing in there they’ll dig up at impound?”

“Nope,” Spike says. “Just her papers. I learned the hard way not to keep a bunch of junk in there.”

It’s a far cry from what the inside of Spike’s apartment looks like on an average day, but Mao can bet that the first few times any crap in the footwell came up to slap Spike in the face mid-maneuver were enough for him to learn to clean his shit out and use the sealed storage for any ashes and cigarette butts. 

“Good. We’ll have it back to you in the morning. Ivan, get Spike home.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t live that far from here. A walk will do me some good.” Mao is suddenly in need of a solid twenty minutes of silence, anyway. 

“Is that safe?” Ivan asks.

“It should be,” Mao says, and turns to go. It’s a cold autumn night. The year of the Red Fire Dog will start just in time for the cold and rainy season. That it will also bring with it an intense struggle to survive shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Mao’s thoughts turn toward the idea of retirement, as impossible as it seems. It’s a distant dream, the idea of living on his own means, without requiring the protection of his position. Both from rivals and the inevitable changing winds of his own Syndicate.

If he’s lucky, he will reach old age and become one of the fossilized council of the Van, enshrined still living into the monument tower. If he is not, his body will be discarded and left—like the pile of men from the Blue Snake.

Maybe that’s the kinder end. It doesn't mean he doesn’t entertain the notion of dropping everything and running away to Spiders From Mars, letting the Van figure out their own ridiculous silk requests.

-

Chapter Text

The blue silks alter the color of the light completely and change the atmosphere of the massive function room, somehow making the celebratory atmosphere into something more austere. There’s a live band somewhere playing jazz, and Spike swims down into the atmosphere like diving down in the water. 

The blue light renders the place into a strange beauty and casts a blue shade on the city through the window. Spike is drawn into that backdrop, slipping past the crowd and up to the wall-wide view down into the world below. It feels like truly the end of a year—the forecast promises snow and a freeze by the end of the week. Of course, it’s all predetermined, they set the condensation inside the terra-formed dome, and keep tight rein on the temperature as well. 

“Spike,” Lin greets him softly at his elbow, appearing with his usual flair for silence and unobtrusiveness until he wants to be known.. “Seems like the Van have a different idea for the manifestation of destiny this year.”

“We’re entering a blue period, I guess,” Spike says, wryly. He paws a cigarette out of his pocket and lights up, seeing Lin mirror the motion in the reflection, ghosted on the glass over the darkened and twinkling city. “I don’t like it.”

Lin has nothing to say to that. He smokes and the scent of cloves twines into the air. Spike has never been good at holding onto melancholy. He watches the city below, about to shut down for the next week, but not before one last party.

“You’re going to keep an eye on Shin this year?” Spike wonders, a little mischievously.

Lin shakes his head. “Not a chance. He knows what he’s in for, now. He didn’t last year.”

Spike wonders exactly how deep Lin’s knowledge of that goes. No sense worrying about it. “And what about you? Going to cut loose and enjoy yourself this year?”

“I’m here for you,” Lin says, with a flat delivery of subservience that somehow strips the line of all innuendo—and wraps back around into it, in Spike’s mind.

“Oh yeah?” Then I order you to get trashed.” Spike laughs, turning away from the window to look Lin in his eyes. He’s as immaculately groomed as always, neatly dressed in a dove gray suit and not a hair out of place. 

“And you’ll restrain yourself?” Lin challenges.

“Don’t be insubordinate.”

“There’s some concern that so many of us together may present a target too tempting for our rivals to avoid,” Lin says, the black cigarette moving slightly between his lips as he speaks and then he lifts his hand to pull it away, speaking into the cup of his fingers. “And I can drive you home afterward.”

Spike looks around for a serving girl—they’re all in modest blue dresses this year—and a drink. Lin’s talking about it makes Spike want to wet his whistle. “You know that it’s always a truce at new years, even if no one talks about it. Besides, I could take a cab.”

“You could, but that’s not very defensible.”

“I don’t expect you to protect me at the expense of your own evening,” Spike waves a girl over and picks a martini off her tray—then a second, holding it out to Lin. “Relax. If I get that drunk, I’ll go downstairs and sleep it off in an empty office. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Lin looks at Spike defiantly. He’s a good man, loyal and right-headed. He’s right that it could be a dangerous night. It wasn’t just guns and ordinance the White Tigers stole—it’s real explosives, too. The monument tower is truly an impressive stronghold, and even if they were all drunk, walking into a room full of Syndicate soldiers and capos is unwise.

“They’re having their own party, too,” Spike reminds. “And we’re in a truce. For now.”

He lifts his own drink to his mouth, still holding the second one out to Lin as he has a very long sip. Lin makes no move to take it as Spike finishes the first, feeling the warmth and faint burn spread from his throat. “If you really want to take me home later, all you have to do is say so.”

Faint color in Lin’s cheeks is the only indicator that Spike’s hit anything like a mark. He pushes the drink into Lin’s hands and steps back, leaving it in his possession. “Think about it. I’ll see you around.”

This year the silken hallways seem dimmer still and Spike loses himself in them until he finds his friends playing Blackjack and joins them—Ivan and Annie, Mao and on the far end, Julia sitting in perfect elegance on her stool.

“I’ll buy in,” Spike digs out his wallet and puts down cash. He’s finally in a “Red Envelope’ echelon of the syndicate hierarchy, where a yearly bonus arrives to seed prosperity for the new year. It means he can afford to party without reserve.

“This is the end of our good luck,” Annie laughs. “Spike, play fair.”

“I always play fair,” Spike shrugs. “It’s the house that has the advantage.”

“Have you played with this slug before?” Annie asks Julia, making the insult into an affectionate one. “He counts cards, just so you know.” 

“He cheats at pool, too.” Julia shrugs off the report of Spike’s wrongdoing, looking him right in the eyes across the front curve of the blackjack table. Her eyes are intensely blue here, drinking in the reflections of the hanging silks and seeming to somehow shine forth with new radiance. “I still win, though.”

Annie laughs. “Good for you.”

“I’d like to meet my equal at the table,” Spike plays along, tone light and playing.

“Well, good luck to the rest of us,” Mao grumbles, and gestures for the dealer to include Spike in the next hand.

“No luck with Cassandra?” Annie asks Mao softly, as the dealer begins passing cards to them one at a time.

“She won’t return my calls. It seems pointless to explain to an answering machine,” Mao’s hand is awful. A solid nine. He grumbles. “To be honest, I’m beginning to wonder If I shouldn’t just give it up entirely.” 

“Don’t be that way,” Annie advises, reaching past Ivan to put her hand reassuringly on Mao’s wrist. “You’ll find someone.”

“I’ve found several,” Mao laments, picking up his glass of whatever and draining it in one long sip. He turns his eyes on Spike accusatorily. “It’s keeping them that’s proving to be troublesome.”

 “Don’t look at me, I only messed up one date,” Spike defends, tapping the mat for another card.

“ One ,” Mao exclaims pointedly. “I seem to recall having a steadier schedule before you and Vicious got it into your head to blow up a laboratory, and then double down on aggression.”

“Hey, it worked out.” Spike hadn’t realized Mao thought anything of the occasional skirmish. “We still control Red Eye production and distribution in the city.” 

Mao sighs. His expression doesn’t change much, but he surrenders his hand at seventeen when it begins to look like card soup. “I suppose you’re right, but the current situation is that I’m out of luck.”

“You just miss Janice.” Annie holds strong at twenty.

“Yes, but I can’t blame her. It’s safer, the life she’s living now. My contacts say she’s seeing a nice pit boss.” Mao sighs again.

“Aw,” Annie gives another pat to Mao’s wrist. “Well you’ll always have friends. Come over tomorrow evening when your hangover is gone. I’ll cook.”

Mao’s expression does change at that offer. Smoothly, he makes a counter-offer. “I wouldn’t want to put you out. How about I have the chefs make some Cantonese, and I’ll bring it with me.” 

Somehow, Annie doesn’t take offense. It probably has to do with taking the pot on this hand when the dealer busts. Half hopefully, Spike casts an appraising eye on the dealer, but while she’s pretty and dressed in a tasteful but well-accentuated dress, she’s too young. Mao’s looking for more than a casual fling—not that Spike gets that, but maybe it’s his biological clock ticking away?

“Hey, Annie,” Spike says, ponying up the next bid. “Any more room at dinner tomorrow?”

“You’re going to be useless all day and don’t pretend otherwise,” Ivan answers. “I know what you get up to at these parties.”

“Yeah, but Cantonese is real good for hangovers,” Spike considers his cards, and the other cards on the table, doing a rough estimate in his thoughts. “And Lin seems to think I need a babysitter.”

“He’s right to be cautious,” Mao’s hand is better this round. He takes a hit and stands at nineteen. “But they’ll be as busy as we are this evening.”

“Have we ever thought of making a raid on New Year’s? Their guard would be down,” Spike suggests.

“If you open the door and behave rudely, you must be ready to let rudeness in,” Mao grunts as Ivan hits twenty, glowering at Ivan’s smile. 

“What’s that mean?” Spike asks.

From the far end of the table, Julia speaks up. “It means all bets would be off. We would have no chance for quiet or truce on our side, either.” 

Not if we wiped them out, Spike thinks, but Syndicates always have fail safes. Even the Van—if the Monument Tower is attacked now, they have some number of plans to escape. He’s sure they’d gladly sacrifice all of their underlings—even their hand-chosen bodyguards—to make a getaway. Even the Blue Snakes have one or two survivors, but they’re powerless and friendless. It might not be that way with the Tigers.

“Guess so,” Spike says, and then to show off a little, “I wouldn’t mind. Life’s dangerous already. What’s a little more?”

Julia turns away from him, disinterested. 

“Maybe you do need a babysitter,” Ivan grumbles. “Do me a favor and try not to ruin Lin’s night completely. It’s hard enough to get him to relax even a fraction.”

Spike knows, he’s been partnered with the guy as his second for months. He figures he’s supposed to learn something from it, but he hasn’t quite figured out what yet. “Don't worry. I’ll make it up to him, somehow.”

Ivan and Annie exchange a look, and Spike makes no effort to correct them. He doesn't care—this is the sort of party where no one should care, anyway.

“Speaking of trouble,” Mao interjects, changing the subject. “Where is Vicious?”

“He’s here,” Julia says. “Big crowds just—overwhelm him.”

That’s an interesting way to put it. Spike glances at her, and she’s looking at her cards. She doesn’t elaborate. So she came with him again. It makes Spike’s mood sink inexplicably, maybe because some part of him hoped for a chance at the rawness and anger he got from Vicious last year—though he has no right to expect anything, just the same way Vicious holds no claim on him.

Spike plays one more hand then begs off, making an excuse of his empty glass and wading back into the crowd, losing himself in the maze of blue silk.

He’s looking for Vicious but finds Lin after his fourth drink, first. It’s still early, not quite eleven. Lin still looks sober and reserved. Spike wonders if the guy ever comes apart. He leans over Lin’s shoulder where he’s sitting, playing Mahjong with a group of others, like he’s someone’s grandmother. 

“Your guard is still up?” Spike asks close to Lin’s ear, hoping to provoke a jump. He doesn’t get one. 

“Yes.”

“You haven’t even had a single drink?”

Lin shakes his head and picks up two tiles, setting them down on his side of the board. “No. So if you are ready to go for the evening, I can see you home.”

It’s a surprise to Spike. “You think I’d leave this early?” 

“If you have no reason to stay.”

It’s a cold answer, and yet very close to how Spike’s been feeling about the evening. There’s free booze, or a chance to win money, shooting the shit, and all of it feels strangely hollow. “Funny, it’s like they say about the color blue. It’s melancholy. Maybe I’m not ready to go yet, but we could get out of here?”

Lin goes a little still—not quite stiff, but he’s processing the request. Deciding whether to take it at face value, or read the undertones in Spike’s voice in combination with his earlier offer. “If that’s what you’d like.”

Lin dismisses himself from the game, and bids goodbye to his companions as he follows Spike out of the maze.

-

Spike is just deciding against the idea of using the same room he and Shin had occupied the previous year when Lin reaches out to catch his sleeve in two fingers and tug him away from the elevators all together. 

Curiosity wells up in Spike—his well behaved and stern, straight laced friend has more of a daring side than Spike would have guessed. He moves toward an unmarked door into the building’s back passages. Spike’s never even considered the stairwell before. After the atmospheric and blue-touched light of the party, the harsh yellow light and white walls of the undecorated space assault Spike’s vision. He blinks until his eyes adjust.

“Up or down?” Spike asks, hoping there aren’t going to be too many flights of stairs between him and getting laid. 

“Right here is fine.” Lin’s hand pushes at the small of Spike’s back, firmly enough to shove him the rest of the way through the heavy fireproof door and then to the wall next to it as it clacks closed with a faint echo in the vast stairwell space. 

“What?” Spike glances back toward the unlocked door they just came through, but Lin plants a hand in the center of his back and pushes Spike against the wall, leaning in to make it clear that he’s unbothered by the possibility of being caught.

“You can say ‘stop’ if you need to.” It’s a challenge that sends a thrill of surprised excitement down Spike’s back—Lin’s reserve has been hiding this, the whole time? 

“Whatever you got, I can take.”

A firm hand paws around the front of Spike’s pants, palming over his zipper and rubbing pointedly at his groin, coaxing the first surge of interest into an erection through the cloth. Pressing the zipper against Spike’s stiffening cock. “That’s a dangerous hand to play, sir.”

It draws a hiss out of Spike, and he pushes forward from the wall, shoving against Lin to seize the advantage in the situation. 

“I like my odds,” Spike assures him, grabbing Lin’s belt and turning him by the hips, pushing forward until Lin is pressed against the safety rail opposite, both of them looking down over the edge into the concrete abyss. 

“Are there any odds you don’t like?” It’s surprisingly almost playful, as Spike leans on his back, bending them both over the rail and letting Lin take the bulk of his weight. Lin keeps one hand on the rail, and reaches back to undo Spike’s zipper without looking, pushing a cool palm inside and against the heat of Spike’s cock. 

“None I’ve found yet,” Spike feels drawn into this playful and assertive side of Lin’s. The way he takes what he wants without asking, confident strokes through Spike’s underwear as they both lean over the guardrail. Spike anchors them with one hand on the rail at Lin’s side, looking down over Lin’s shoulder. Half drunk as he is, he feels like he’s drifting, and his eyes unfocused. It renders the drop into something incomprehensible as the friction on his cock warms Spike’s blood and speeds his heart rate—a thing Spike could fall down into and plunge forever. The rest of the monument tower is lavishly decorated, but the stairwell is only functional white paint and concrete. 

With his eyes unfocused, the median gray of the drop is the color of Vicious’ eyes—nearly colorless and deep.

Spike closes his eyes then and straightens up off Lin’s Back to work on getting his pants undone. He paws rudely at Lin’s belt buckle, then the fly of his pants, throwing his own words back at him. “You can say stop if you need to.”

Lin actually laughs, straightening his back to push himself up with his hands on the rail. He turns to press his back to it for long enough that Spike can peel back the front of his immaculately pressed suit pants to reveal Lin’s cock outline in stark curls of high end lace—a surprise in vivid and stark black, semi sheer with his skin showing through in places and his cock cradled like a fine artifact in the lace. Spike makes a hungry noise in spite of himself, eager and interested by the unexpected development. The lace feels rough and catching under his fingers on the outside, and he wants to put his mouth on it and get it wet enough to stick to skin; suck until it leaves impressions on the cock beneath. 

When he hooks a finger beneath, the fabric is silken and soft on the inside, fitted tight against skin. “This only for special occasions?”

Lin turns pink, his knuckles white on the guard rail as Spike gets ahold of his cock through the panties and strokes—maybe Lin wears them all the time, one more layer of tight control and yet also a defiant secret. Some part of him that wasn't the selfless, devoted lackey to the syndicate. Under the outer layer, Spike is delighted to discover this sign of individuality.

Lin doesn’t answer, and Spike peels the underwear down just far enough to let Lin’s hard cock free so he can repay the favor of riling him up, stroking his length in firm pulls as he tries not to feel so aware of how open this space is—of how anyone could come through the door and catch them. Not that it would be unexpected this evening.

Spike glances up and sees Lin watching Spike’s hands on his cock with a bare and hungry look in his blue eyes. Seized by a sudden urge for conquest, Spike considers what’s at his disposal. “How ready for this are you?”

Lin, after all, is the one with foresight.

“I wouldn’t dream of making assumptions,” Lin answers frustratingly.

“Are you carrying any lube or what?” Spike demands, rubbing his thumb hard just under the head of Lin’s cock before he turns him around to press his front against the rail again, setting his hands at Lin’s hips and pushing his own forward to rub his cock lewdly over the man’s lace-covered ass, both their pants draped just above their knees. 

The answer takes a little longer than Spike would like, though it’s because Lin is pushing back against Spike in return, trying to drive him just as wild—losing his composure at last. Spike wants to take him apart and see his hair come undone. It’s going to be tricky without any—

From the inner pocket of his suit coat, Lin passes back a packet, pressing it into Spike’s hand at his hip. 

“You really are always ready,” Spike chuckles, accepting the packet and tearing into it with his teeth, flooding his fingers with dripping goo and leaving a watery film in his mouth. He leaves it in his teeth, pressing one hand to Lin’s shoulder and reaching down, tracing the border of lace over one of his firm, round ass cheeks and leaves a smooth, sticky trail as he pushes his way beneath them from one side to rub at Lin’s entrance, feeling how warm his body is, how soft and vulnerable he feels as Spike pushes his fingers past the initial tight ring and Lin drops his guard and moans into the brace of his arms on the railing. It echoes obscenely back to them from the empty space below.

“You done this before?” Spike asks, deliberately poking at Lin’s pride. “Or just thought about it?” 

He’d been ready for it and the way he opens up for Spike’s fingers feels like experience, the wide stance with his pants around his thighs and the way he tenses and relaxes with each push. Spike wonders if Lin’s ever thought about this with him , and it’s heady and intoxicating. Has he taken himself apart—or let someone else—and thought about Spike? Pressing in deeper, Spike pries Lin open insistently—even if he hasn’t , Spike will leave him something to dream about. 

Lin sighs and pushes his hips back, supporting himself on his arms. The hint of lace under his shirt tails holds Spike’s gaze, and the catch of it against the back of his knuckles is visceral and sexy. He smoothes a slicked up hand over his own cock. He pushes Lin’s underwear down barely, into a lacey bunch over his thighs, and leans over Lin’s back and fucks into him. Slick and tight heat just as welcoming as it had been for his fingers, enveloping the head of his cock.

“Oh—” Lin sighs out, leaning low to push his hips higher and back, taking Spike deeper. Spike seizes the railing on either side of his waist to steady them both, leaning low over Lin’s back and peering down over his shoulder into the oubliette depths of the stairwell, snapping his hips forward with greedy force into the other’s body. Somehow—practice maybe—it’s easy.

Lin’s velvet-hot and it pulls Spike down into just the sensation of grip and squeeze, drag and slide on his cock, mounting tension low in his belly and high in the backs of his thighs. He doesn’t take his time, instead shifting one hand, shock-cold from the guard rail, to get it wrapped as tight around Lin’s dick as Lin feels around him and strokes as fast and relentless as the pushes of his hips. They both grunt and gasp in the echoing space, the impacts and sounds of their fucking echoing and bouncing back in Spike’s ears.

The pulse and grip of Lin’s body on his cock warns Spike when he’s close, and Spike sinks deep and strokes him hard, pulling out just as they both start to tip over so he can paint his release in thick jets over Lin’s lace-clad thighs; a picture of white filth on the pristine black patterns. 

It’s a hell of a look when he pulls that underwear back up over the round of Lin’s ass, wet lace panties on flushed skin.

When he has his breath, Spike leans back to look over his handiwork, leaving the crumpled lube packet on the floor for the janitor to worry about. His mind is warm and fuzzy with the aftermath of release. “I hope those aren’t hard to clean.”

Lin straightens up, reassembling his poise almost immediately. He adjusts his clothes, and the lace vanishes back under his suit, which he brushes back into pristine order. “I’ll send you the bill.”

Spike laughs, stuffing his shirt tails back into place, straightening his belt to less effect. He finds a cigarette to smoke, and offers one to Lin, who waves it off. “I’m going back before it’s suspicious. Fix your tie before you return.”

And that’s it—gone as if he hasn’t just been fucked within an inch of his life, and just as composed as ever, leaving Spike to wonder just how often Lin gets up to this sort of thing…

He breathes smoke into the stairwell air, and thinks— good for him.

-

Chapter Text

It’s like being in the middle of one of those games you used to play in middle school when you liked someone. Julia watches Spike wander off, and she’s aware that Vicious is out there, stalking around too, doing his best to burn off whatever the anxiety of the crowded space is doing to him. Maybe—stalking his prey or something like that. 

By now she knows what Vicious and Spike get up to, and after spending enough time as a sort of go-between like that mutual friend you pass notes through, she’s pretty sure what she wants out of this. She’s putting in the work, too, after all. Spike’s not a bad looking guy. Eager and strangely earnest for a guy she’s seen shoot men dead in a firefight without hesitation. Julia doesn’t blame Vicious for wanting to take him apart. Just maybe he goes about it in the wrong way.

She plays a few more hands, glad when the table talk turns away from Mao’s love life—poor guy—and onto the past year.

“ISSP seems to be getting harder to wrangle,” Ivan laments, smoking a cigar and playing more conservatively now that Annie’s tapped out. She’s still sitting comfortably at his elbow, watching the game go by and listening. “I’ve paid out a lot of bribes this quarter. 

“Did you get rid of that one guy?” Mao asks, as if just remembering. “Get him reassigned, I mean?”

“Didn’t have to. The commissioner sent him packing back to Ganymede.”

Julia considers her dangerous seventeen, and ignores the odds. She takes the hit and busts to twenty three, with a sigh. Perhaps she can find something other than cards for the rest of the night?

“Good. We barely operate on Ganymede.” Mao also busts, and grunts. “Dealer, this deck is ice cold. How about a fresh one?”

“You only say that when Ivan is winning,” Annie laughs. “Come on, it’s almost midnight—let’s go track down some champagne.” 

“Alright, I suppose,” Mao stretches. “Will you come along with us, Julia, or did you want to go and enjoy some younger company?”

It’s a gentle encouragement from Mao. He smiles when Julia nods, getting to her feet. Ivan picks her coat up off the back of her card table stool and holds it up for her, as she slips back into it.

“It’s not that I don’t enjoy your company,” Julia says.

“Oh, stop,” Annie takes her hands. “Happy New Years, dear. Be safe when you go home. Take a taxi if you need to.”

“I will,” Julia assures, but her head still feels clear enough to keep her from worrying. Really, what she wants most is something fizzy to drink. Sparkling water, maybe. There’s a bar somewhere for those that can be bothered to find it to make a request instead of taking a premade drink from a serving girl. This close to the countdown, they’re all carrying champagne. She goes seeking for the bar, as much to be moving as to abstain.

“Julia.” The voice is low and close at her ear, and Vicious is suddenly at her elbow, unexpectedly. She keeps her startlement internal, but turns on him quickly. 

“Where have you been all night?” she asks. He doesn’t look drunk, doesn’t smell of alcohol, but there is the look of Red Eye fading from his system. She’s beginning to worry about the habit; the way it’s continued even without the threat of conflict that was his excuse for using in the first place.

“Wandering,” Vicious says.

“Have you found Spike?” 

His eyes, bloodshot, land accusatorily on her to leave her pressed against the question. She answers his look fiercely with one of her own. “I know you were looking for him.”

“He wanders, too,” Vicious says. “At these parties especially. I didn’t realize he had your eye.”

Julia plucks a glass of champagne off a passing tray, giving up on the idea of finding another option. “Is that how you want to play this, Vicious? Where you possess everything, without being willing to claim anything officially?”

He studies her as if he’s never seen her before. Maybe he hasn’t if he’s only ever been looking with half an eye and a lack of respect. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s compromise,” Julia says, hooking her arm around his and guiding him back into the crowd. She tosses back her champagne and leans her cheek against his high shoulder. “Instead of staying around here until you can pounce and leaving me waiting until you’re done, let’s both take him back.”

“Back?” Vicious walks with her willingly enough, as if she’s firmly in charge of this raging monster, and usually she finds that’s enough to get her what she wants, or where she wants to be.

“Home, Vicious,” she says, bracing for the outcome of her brazen statement. “With both of us, this time.”

Vicious goes quiet for a beat, as if letting that sink in, and then touches her shoulder, turning her slightly to look her in the eyes and tilt her head up as his steps hesitate in the blue corridors. “Is that really what you desire?” 

He’s looking for something in her eyes, but what she can’t imagine. He can hardly demand fidelity from her when he has left her side as often and thoughtlessly as she suspects he leaves Spike’s. 

“Yes. For a night. It will be fun, won’t it?” She meets his gaze. She isn’t sure why she insists, except that it’s a hold on him she hopes to squeeze in return. He often enough holds it above her head. 

“There’s going to be a problem, then.” Vicious says, eyes shining just a little with anger. For an instant, she thinks it will turn toward her with the blade—the edge of it she’s seen him use on Spike, that he says Spike likes.

“What?” She asks, turning her cheek again. If he tries to demand my gaze again, she thinks, but she has no completion for the thought, just the beginnings of anger.

“He’s gotten lost in the offices with that nursemaid Lieutenant of his,” Vicious reveals. 

“ Has he?” Julia knows well enough how to read the meaning and anger in Vicious’ tone. “Lin you mean? Good for him. I thought he was taking a vow of celibacy or something.”

She likes Lin, honestly. He’s too serious, and holds honor in front of himself like a shield, held forth to keep the world at bay, but he’s loyal and right-headed. 

“He shouldn’t dally—” Vicious starts.

“Oh, shush,” Julia cuts him off. “He dallies with you , don’t be jealous.”

“I don’t want his attention divided.”

The way Vicious says it so ruthlessly, she knows he means more than just the division of his sexual energy. It’s that darker, deeply possessive part of himself that rears up occasionally though he tries to mask it from her as much as he can.

He doesn’t belong to you. She keeps her thoughts to herself. No more than I do.  

Maybe it’s the remains of the war haunting him; those years where nothing on or in his body belonged to him—not his clothes or gun or even his blood cells. They’d been unable to ever possess the ground they died for—that hellish sand-covered wasteland. She’d sent him there, and in her heart, she hopes to guide a part of him back.

Like a burial of the remains returned home to their place of origin, where none of them have been able to go since Earth fell. Maybe someday, or maybe it will cease to matter as humans spread out further in the galaxy. Gate Co. expands their frontiers every chance they have and with all the resources they can get their hands on.

“We can wait,” she suggests, with a shrug. “It’s almost midnight anyway. Let’s do the toast and then catch him afterwards?”

Vicious sets his jaw then nods. She suspects, were this not her idea, that Vicious would have found a way to make his ire known anyway. He holds his grudges

The crowd gathers in the main “room”, and the lights turn down to display the countdown projected on the center of the floor. Some combination of the old solar year tradition and Lunar Years in the more widely used calendar of the twenty first century—now that Earth’s population has been reshuffled and dealt randomly into colonies like cards. It’s a little more somber this year, but voices still count the time down, ending in a big cheer. Vicious is silent next to her, but his eyes are sharp on the elevators. 

Somewhere in the last three seconds, Spike appears in that general direction like he’s never left—his suit still a disheveled wreck and his hair at least as much of a mess as usual. He has his hands in his pockets and an air of lassitude, slinking into view with a lit cigarette and his eyes lifting from the polished marble floor only as the cheer goes up. 

He meets Vicious’ gaze first, by the way his step just barely hesitates. His half-lidded gaze doesn’t change, tracking from Vicious’ gaze stabbing an accusation in his direction and down to Julia, leaning at his side. His eyebrows go up, wryly, and he keeps his eyes off hers, wheeling on his heel back toward the elevators and pressing the ‘down’ button.

Vicious jerks into action while people are still cheering and clapping, pulling her along into step with him as he rushes to cut Spike off from escaping alone. He has to throw a hand out to catch the door from closing them out—the doors had activated nearly instantly for Spike.

It closes again smoothly behind them, leaving only the three of them on the elevator. Spike stands with an inquisitive gaze as if he can’t possibly imagine what they might want.

“Leaving early?” he asks.

“There are still opportunities for the night,” Vicious says, stiffly. Julia steadies him with her arm looped through his.

“Sure,” Spike says, displaying his hands out of his pockets with the fingers spread wide like he’s pantomiming fireworks. “It’s a whole new year.”

“Will you need to put Lin’s mind at ease if you leave with us, Spike?” Julia shifts next to him in the small car, and reaches across the short distance to take his arm with her free hand without letting go of Vicious. Spike’s a clever guy, he’ll get it.

Spike exhales a breath like he’s been holding it, the corners of his mouth turning up in a grin. “I’d say I left his mind pretty at ease.”

-

He steps into her place like he expects an ambush, shoulders up as he follows Vicious and her into the apartment, respectfully wiping his feet on the mat as they shed their coats. She has a near certainty that this isn’t Spike’s first rodeo, but his attitude is strangely polite and demure. Almost cowed. Maybe he’s still feeling pretty sated from whatever he’d been up to before they intercepted him.

“Let me take your coat, Spike,” She reaches up to take the lapels and he shrugs out of it, as if expecting her to tug it away. For a wild man, he’s obedient. She likes that, the way the power of something new feels in her grip. She loops his coat against his waist, and pulls him forward toward her a step, off balance.

It brings him into the here and now, his eyes meeting hers and focusing. “I wasn’t expecting—”

“And you shouldn’t,” Julia assures him; she’s aware of Vicious moving behind them, putting his coat away and taking down her bottle of good scotch from the cabinet over the sink. “ Expect , I mean. I’m going to ask, you’re going to give. That’s all right?” 

He could say no, but she’s a pretty good judge of character. The genuflection he gives is warm and willing, when she sees it. “Yes, Ma’am.”

His voice drops an octave, and she laughs. The way she expects a more warmly willing and expressive submission from Spike is a heady feeling. In truth, she’s been missing it—and the chance to indulge the habits Vicious has—how she’s seen him wait, at times holding himself back to watch.

“We’ll take care of you,” she promises, whisking the coat away from him at last to put it away. “But stay all night.”

“I usually—”

She already knows. She’s never seen Spike come in the same clothes or late the next day. He only gives his pain up, or his pleasure, but his time—that’s something she can have for her own. She leaves him standing awkwardly on the kitchen tile, sentence unfinished, and tucks his coat into the little closet in the hall.

“That’s my condition,” Julia says.

“Does he stay?” Spike’s gaze is on Vicious and it’s almost an electric charge between them for an instant. They both sense a weakness, and—like men , she supposes—refuse to show their bellies before anyone else has. 

“Yes,” Julia says. “When I ask him to.”

Vicious doesn’t contradict, instead pouring himself a drink. She declines a glass—the faintly floating sensation of the champagne is still with her. She retreats into her bedroom first, to shed her heels and the accessories she’s chosen for her dress, setting them back in their respective places, and turning to find Vicious settled in a kitchen chair he brought into the room, one booted foot kicked forward as he watches her. She lifts her hands deliberately to take her earrings off. “You could have invited our guest.” 

“He’s cleaning up,” Vicious says, eyes going toward the door back into the hall. Now that Julia listens, she can hear running water and she laughs. 

“Fussier than I thought,” She puts her heels onto their place in the little shelf in her closet, and feels the sudden lack of height. “Are you just watching, or can I invite you over? Is he touchy about others knowing he—”

“No,” Spike appears in the doorway to her room, his black-socked feet silent on the carpet. “I’m not touchy about it. After all, I think you’re the sort who can keep a secret.”

He rolls his eyes toward Vicious. “It’d mean we’re all keeping some, huh?”

Julia is surprised by a lot of things about Spike, but that he’s got an idea of restraint and waiting for permission, that he’s differential surprises her. She reaches out for him, and he answers her demand. She reaches up and puts her hands gently on his chest, undoing the loose and rumpled tie. It’s only two or three uncoordinated steps as she strips him, turning him so his back is to her bed as she takes his shirt, peels his pants off his hips without protest as his own hands come up to undo the series of clasps at the back of her dress, and let it puddle to the floor underfoot. By the time the backs of his knees hit her mattress, they’re both bare. 

Julia pushes him down without mercy, aware of Vicious’ eyes burning on them from the edge of the room. Spike’s attention stays on her, his lean body laid out bare on the bed. He’s all limbs and angles, lanky and sexy anyway, despite being too skinny, narrow-hipped, flat-assed. He holds himself well, even with that perpetual slouch of his.

She reaches down under the bed for a black case where she keeps her things, and stands up with the strap-on in her hands, leather-black and solid. Spike’s eyes touch it, taking in the size and dimensions, and then lift to hers. She swears she sees them light up.

“You ever done this before, tough guy?” she asks, fastening the straps around her hips so the thick, shiny-pink and lewd silicone cock juts out from her pelvis.

“Not exactly this way,” Spike’s eyes are on her, and there’s a look as wild as his hair in them, excited and half-concerned by the size of her dildo. “But I’ve been around the block before.” 

She glances back at Vicious, just to be sure he’s not all false bravado, and he gives a slight incline of his head, agreeing with Spike’s assessment of his own ability. Turning her attention back to Spike, she gives the dildo a few long strokes and his eyes lock on the motion, girth sliding through her fist. “Good. Then you can be good for me, take what I give you?”

“Yes,” Spike reaches for her, offering a willing hand. He’s willing to show what he wants on his face, let himself wear it openly. She likes that about him—likes a lot of things about him, now that she thinks about it. She's excited to see how he looks, stretched open and begging for more.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, please, ma’am,” Spike says, automatically.

It warms her blood, sends a pulse of hot interest down into her loins. Julia used to wear a strap with an internal dildo, too, but she likes it better to have all of her focus when she’s taking a man apart, and then he can do the hard work of making sure she’s satisfied afterwards himself.

He starts to roll over like a dog in heat when she steps forward, and she stills the motion with a hand on his side—she wants to see his face. He’s half hard already, naked cock flagging up as he takes in the powerful picture she makes.

“You want any mercy? Want me to stretch you out?”

His eyes dart down to her dildo, estimating the size against his own capabilities. “You’re going to.” 

She smiles, presses the bottle of lube into his hands. “Get me ready, tough guy.”

He’s not all macho bullshit after all. He takes the bottle, pops the top open, and pours a puddle of lube in his hands before reaching for the strap on with both. He works it good and slick between his hands. “I can take a little pain.”

“I bet you can,” she says. “But I want to show you how good I expect you to make me feel when I’m done with you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She takes the bottle back and reaches down to lay him back at her mercy. For all Spike’s grace, he’s tough to fold onto her bed sideways, his legs hang off from mid-thigh. She pulls him closer, eases a pillow under his hips, and reaches between his legs with slick fingers, ignoring his eager straining cock. 

She has small fingers and big taste in dildos, so she presses two at his tight entrance and pushes, curving until she can pry into him—tight and hot inside and with surprising ease in the give. Maybe he just stays in practice. She lets her fingers quest deep, pushing slick lubricant as far as she can reach while he wills his body lax and grabs at her blankets. He’s quiet , like this. She wants to run him so ragged he has to use his voice.

So she eases her fingers free and guides the thick, pink head of her dildo against his barely stretched hole, holding the shaft tight in her fist to keep it from slipping as she pushes insistently with her hips. There’s a long moment of resistance as she waits for the inevitable yield, and then Spike pitches his hips with a roll upward, and there’s a give , letting her sink the head into him with a lurch.

It punches a gasp out of Spike, and she can accept that as approval—but she bets he can do better. She smoothes her hands up his hairy thighs, along the backs toward his ass, flat and unsatisfying as it is. It’s enough that she can grab a handhold of asscheek and press her other hand steadying on the side of his hip. She pulls him toward her as she pushes, opening him up on the relentlessly firm length of her strap-on. His mouth goes open and loose as he pulls in air, eyebrows creasing over his dazed looking eyes. Funny how one always looks perfectly focused. She wonders if that disoriented him ever, but frankly that’s a question for another time.

She gives a shove the next time his breath spills out, sinking several inches deeper and then dragging back to let him feel that length, solid and insistent, before she gives him any more. It tears a soft noise out of Spike, and she can see how tense his belly muscles are, the way he’s starting to sweat already, how pretty he gets as he falls apart.

“Never felt anything that hard before, have you?” she prompts, pushing deeper still. 

His answer is an uncontrolled jumble of noise, and she rewards him with a deeper thrust still, relentless until he’s practically shouting—it’s not pain; just helpless sounds of surrender—and she’s got him open enough to take her pink, relentless cock to the hilt. Behind her she can hear the sound of Vicious’ breathing, quick and harsh. She smiles to herself and shifts, tossing her hair back so she can look at him over her shoulder, pushing harshly into Spike as she does so.

He’s got his hands on his knees and his eyes on them, gripping white-knuckle tight at his own legs. The suit pants he’s still wearing bulge obscenely over his erection, untouched but hard enough that she can see the clear definition of it’s familiar shape through the fabric. 

“Behave yourself,” she calls to Vicious, though she can sense that the sound of her voice pulls Spike’s attention up from the depths as well. “I’ll let you have him next, all open and loose…”

There’s still some drag as she fucks into Spike, bottoming that pink dildo out in his guts, far enough that she can see the motion in his flat belly when she thrusts, fascinating and visceral.

“If he ever gets loose,” Julia leans down over Spike, into a more intimate position and rolls her hips in a long, insistent motion that works the dildo deep inside him. “Your body’s so tight. I thought you said you knew what you were doing?”

Spike blinks twice, and she sees his thoughts try to engage before finally catching enough for words. His voice comes strained and tight from his chest. “Normally not with giants—”

She reaches down and traces a nail gently along the underside of his straining cock, teasing along the hot skin and watching his expression change, waking up into something hungry and desperate. It’s not enough to get him off, but it tears a broken groan out of him when she touches the edge of her nail just under the head of his cock and rubs back and forth ever so lightly.

He rolls his hips then, fucking himself on the strap-on for the sensation, some duality of the delicate touch and the heavy fullness sending pleasure through him in a wave she can almost see, his cock weeping a slow pulse of precum out onto his belly and sliding along the shaft.

The slide gets easier, then, his body stretched and willing for her so the thrusts finally go smooth, long and deep. She keeps it slow, heavy, moving deep with a stroking motion until the slow dribble of precum along his rigid cock is nearly a constant flow. She’s sure she’s working right against his prostate, drag and slide. She takes her hand away from his cock, determined to make him come apart just by fucking him.

“Harder,” Spike begs, then remembers himself. “Ma’am, please. Harder.”

She straightens her back and obliges, pulling the dildo all the way out with a pop as the head sips free and then shoves back into him. He cries out, gripping the sheets, then he reaches for her, his hand finding hers on top of his thigh and gripping hold, fingers weaving together as she pounds into him, barely four hard pushes of her hips and Spike throws his head back and cums.

She doesn’t let up, riding him through it until he’s soft again, trying to catch his breath around the over-sensitive feeling that pitches his groans into broken and overwhelmed territory. Then she drags herself free, patting his shaking thigh and feeling the full weight of the strap-on at her hips again.

“Vicious?” She asks, glancing back. He’s still sitting in that same position, his eyes locked on them. “He’s all ready for you.”

She undoes the buckles and lets the strap-on fall to the side into a pile of their clothes. She’s wet, hot and nearly dripping with eagerness. Vicious gets up when she starts to stroke herself, and he cups a hand against her breast, thumbing a nipple with reverence, leaning his mouth into hers for a long kiss, but the hunger in his eyes when he looks at the wreckage of Spike on her bed is clear.

He sheds his clothes finally, his cock springing free as he discards his pants. Spike’s soft and cooperative, nearly boneless as they shift him over onto his belly on the bed until Vicious slaps him hard on the outside of his thigh to bring him out of his afterglow. It brings tension back into his limbs and he gets his knees under him just as Vicious fucks greedily into his loose hole and with a merciless pursuit of his own pleasure, even as Spike stretches himself on his elbows and looks up at her from the mess of his hair, stuck down with sweat as his body strains to keep up.

Julia settles down at the head of the bed, arranging herself open kneed and inviting in front of him, and Spike glances up at her in understanding, then reaches, stretching himself forward even as Vicious hisses a curse and claws lines into his side. Spike hunkers lower on his elbows and puts his hot, eager mouth on her cunt without reserve, licking deep into her wet folds. The touch is electric and sweet, as he pushes into it, rubbing with the rough flat of his tongue over her clit. It’s so earnest and eager, and she sinks her hands into his hair down to the sweaty scalp and guides his mouth with a savage hand.

Vicious slams into Spike hard enough to make him groan and hum into her, barely audible over the slapping of skin; Vicious’ animal growling as he takes his pleasure from Spike’s loose body. She feels the run of tension go through Spike when Vicious reaches under his raised hips and must curl a hand around Spike’s cock, pulling and stroking until he forces a response.

She lets her eyes close and her head fall back, focused down on the growing heaviness in her belly, the way the mattress rocks and shakes as Vicious takes and takes and demands until Spike is moaning between them—almost in protest at the overstimulation, but it’s lower in pitch, dragging up from the depths of his sensation.

It feels amazing, the way he surges against her rhythmically, the pressure increasing and rolling back. Hot and heavy, building. The feeling rises up in her belly, tightens the muscles in her thighs until it drops down out of her, releasing in a flood and the grip and release of her cunt on nothing, aware of the empty feeling seven as she purrs through her release.

Spike tugs back against her grip, in order to breathe again, rough groans pouring against her thigh. Vicious isn’t done yet, still fucking into him with a relentless desperation, past overstimulation. Finally, savagely, Vicious yanks free and cums on Spike’s back in long jets as Spike sinks down on the mattress, panting.

Julia watches Vicious as he sags back on his knees, and then she reaches for him, pulling him against her when she starts to see the light of cruelty waking in his eyes as he looms over Spike’s helpless form. He leans into her, his rough sword-calloused palm against her side and stroking softly, subdued. It won’t last long but—they have all night to work it out.

-

Chapter Text

Spike wakes up half smeared off the side of the bed, aware of the brush of the backs of his knuckles on the floor, and the extreme ache in his hips, the small of his back, the tops of his thighs. It’s too warm and his joints feel full of sanding grit, stiff with use. Like a wrung-out dishrag, and his bladder full of all the dishwater. He can feel a strange pressure against his side—and then when he possesses more of himself he can feel the rhythm of someone else breathing against his back. 

His eyes come unglued slowly, and focus on a bright patch of sunlight spread out on the floor in the perfect shape of the window—with a vase and an old rose bending over the edge of it. The realization of where he is only rises up slowly in his awareness. I thought I’d wake up like it never happened.

There’s no arguing with the sticky patches of sheets pressed onto embarrassing parts of his body—or the sore ache in his ass as he shifts, pulling his arm back in to push himself up. The muscles feel weak—as they do when he’s gone too far in a fight or a workout. He turns cautiously, pulling stuck-on blankets off with an unpleasant catch-and-peel as it yanks the occasional gummed up hair off his leg.

Julia is still asleep, and on her far side, Vicious is too, with his hands curled up in the blankets over his chest. Her golden curls and his fine white locks are spread on the pillows and intertwined softly together. It’s a strangely intimate scene, softer than he’s ever seen either of them—or felt, himself. It’s something about the golden morning light on their sleep relaxed faces, the casual tangle of limbs. He finds that Julia is lying on his other arm and  it feels leaden and insensate—pressure dead—once he works it free, before the pins and needles wake up. He needs the bathroom so he goes with one last look back as they shift to fill the space he left.

He’s never seen Vicious sleep before. It will be easier if he leaves before they wake up—it’s always colder when the afterglow fades. He’s used to being long gone well before now, but he’s kept his promise to Julia, at least. He takes a quick shower—just water, rinsing the worst of a very long night away.

Did all that really happen? There’s bite marks peppered on his skin, possessive and left in visible places. He could hardly believe it, but his head is pounding and his clothes are lost, and well—it’s a new year. Maybe he shouldn't expect this to ever happen again—if so, he wishes he’d watched what Julia was doing to him a little more closely. 

She really just makes Spike willing to roll over and show his belly. Hell, who doesn’t, these days? Vicious makes Spike submit (or, on the occasion Spike comes out on top in a scuffle, he makes Vicious submit) but all she has to do is ask. She has a power in her voice and bearing and gaze. It sends a thrill down his spine even in the spray of cool water and with her out of his sight.

He shuts the water off, scolding himself. Vicious is a lucky man. Spike’s’ not the sort to play around and fall in love after a little sex. He’s just tired and still running on endorphins. He has to find his clothes before he leaves, so he ventures back into the bedroom with a towel around his hips.

They’re still asleep. He wades into the battlefield. He finds his suit pants easily enough. The socks are a loss. He settles down on the chair Vicious brought in, and bending sends a rough ache through his thighs, pressure on his ass dragging up a clear memory of why it’s so sore.

He can't see his shirt anywhere, and through a faint haze, he remembers Julia took his coat and it’s in the closet in the entryway. If he has to, he can just wear that out. His eyes land on his pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. Still a couple in there. His wallet’s still in the back pocket of his pants. Spike pulls them on and then steps carefully so as not to wake them, picking up his cigarettes. He finds his shirt at last, mussed into the pile of blankets, emerging from under the curve of Julia’s soft, bare side and leading his eye up over the naked and beautiful curve of her breast; the nipple bare and pink in the sunlight. It’s almost shocking, even though Spike’s already seen her naked, but the daylight changes things.

He reaches out for his shirt, then lifts the blanket to smooth it over her. She opens her eyes—aware enough quickly enough that Spike guesses she was dozing lightly. She smiles at Spike—wicked and sweet at the same time, and gives a luxurious stretch that bares her breasts again.

“Good morning,” Julia says, stretched out against Vicious’ side in an extremely attractive and kittenish pose. “You want some coffee before you go?”

In that instant, Spike almost reaches the realization that he doesn’t want to go. Vicious mumbles an incoherent “huh?” against the pillows and she touches him soothingly; idly, even—until he eases back into his deeper slumber.

“I shouldn’t.” Spike keeps his voice soft. He doesn’t have to use too much imagination to understand that she’ll want coffee ready when Vicious wakes up. 

“Suit yourself,” she says, getting up and gesturing across the room to her closet. “Hand me a nightgown?”

He’d rather keep looking at her naked and curving body. Spike obeys, opening her closet on silent tracks before selecting a long, lightweight nightgown from inside. It’s a demure thing—not a lacy teddie, but a long t-shirt. She pulls it on over her head with a very attractive shimmy. 

Honestly, Spike’s starting to feel a little shocky about this whole thing. It’s almost surreal, and the warm daylight and her soft nightgown showing something deeply human is more than Spike usually handles. 

In the kitchen, his eyes lock onto the back of her very lovely thighs, and the way they disappear under the hem of the nightgown. It leaves him strangely warm in the middle, like the mood is building up in him again, even with an exhausting night and how little actual sleep he got, well, he’s a young guy. She’s a young lady. They’ll bounce back.

“You don’t have anything going on today, do you?” Julia asks, as she moves around her kitchen getting the things together for coffee.

The question takes a second to penetrate Spike’s thoughts, and he answers honestly without thinking about it. “No, it’s a holiday.”

Julia sets the coffee pot to brew, and then turns around, leaning against the counter and meeting his gaze when he drags it guiltily away from her legs. “Why don’t you stay a while, then? There’s nowhere to be and you look hungover.”

He feels hungover, and his thoughts give a sluggish surge as he figures out what she’s really asking—for him to stay. For the day to bring more of what the night was.

“I’m the sort of guy,” Spike says, cautiously, circling around to get a coffee cup down off a hook to one side of her kitchen. “Who doesn’t usually like to overstay my welcome.”

“I’m inviting you to stay as long as you like,” Julia says. “I like you, Spike.”

It’s delivered playfully and softly. Casual. 

“Aren’t you and he—?” Spike jerks a thumb back toward the bedroom to indicate Vicious.

Julia gives him a frank look. “Are you an old fashioned man?”

Behind her, the coffee pot growls to life, and the scent of brewing coffee enters the atmosphere. She glances at it, and then returns the volley after Spike’s had a moment to think about it. “Aren’t you and he—?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Spike scratches the back of his neck and finds a bite mark there. “But it’s not exactly—” 

Julia arches her eyebrows at him, tilting her chin up as if indicating he’s making his own point. He thinks about it, before he continues, a little cautiously. “Sorry. So you’re not exactly an old fashioned woman, you mean?”

“It’s not really the life for it,” Julia says. She turns and a veil of her hair—somehow not tangled into a knot—moves around her shoulders. It’s still soft and lustrous, despite their previous evening. “And if you think only boys like to play around, I’m happy to educate you.”

Spike accepts that. He’s not the sort of guy who’s going to rock the boat like that. If that’s what the lady wants, she should get it. But—the question is, how will Vicious feel about it. He has a possessive side and Spike’s seen it. Still—it’s not something he wants to complain about, exactly. “Well, pour me a cup of coffee and we’ll talk about it?”

-

They don’t talk much about it—Vicious wakes up and sleep-walks through a sullen cup of coffee and a clean up. The day stretches and passes, lazily and without any ambition for what to do with the hours. They hardly leave bed, except to smoke or use the bathroom. The sun has set again when Spike’s sure he’s got no orgasms left in his body without the fortification of a three course meal and enough water to rehydrate the dried out husks of his nuts. Julia’s kitchen has a little window over the sink, so Spike posts up on the counter for his cigarettes and leans back against the top cabinets with the window open so the smoke doesn’t fill the place up. He feels tired and lax. Like all the strings and sticks puppeting him on a normal day have been cut. 

He just lets the time pass, existing in the moment, eyes unfocused and watching the far wall. The way shadows shift across it when cars drive by on the street below serving like a slow moving pendulum. I should go home. He’s pretty sure this is going to be a regular thing, even for all Julia’s words about expectations. Leave it to him to do everything so backwards. He's been on traditional dates less times than he can count on one hand in his life. He’s never had the desire to sit around a table and eat food while trying to get to know someone. Hell, getting to know people at all has seemed like an eternal waste of his time. 

It never works out for Mao, and the guy’s always in dead earnest about it. It’s not like Spike will have that much more luck. Last week I shot three people , Spike remembers. It’s not exactly good small talk. But—these two already know him. They know his life. Vicious has the same blood on his hands, and Julia’s involvement is different but just as deep.

There’s no secrets to find out. No new risk to any of them that they don’t already share in. Honestly, it’s an arrangement that’s pretty ideal—if any arrangement can be. It’s just that there’s still some feeling of wariness and uncertainty toward the idea. 

Vicious emerges from the bedroom, his hair in a bird’s nest tangle, body covered in marks and scratches on his extremely pale skin, vivid over old scars. He looks at Spike with warning eyes—as if Spike had better not say anything. In a peace offering, Spike holds out his pack of cigarettes.

Vicious takes one, settling on the counter on the other side of the sink and accepts Spike’s lighter, too, when he offers it. “She’s asleep.”

 “Seems like a good idea,” Spike leans his head back against the cabinet so he doesn’t have to hold it up anymore. “I’m going home to sleep soon.” 

“Wise. She’ll keep waking you up all night if you stay.”

Spike files that away for later. He’s never been averse to the idea, but this marathon was run unexpectedly. “Stay hydrated.”

“Spike,” Vicious says, voice tired but with a new pitch to it. “It’s a new year.”

“And?” Spike prompts, wondering where he’s about to follow that statement. 

“New opportunities await,” Vicious says. “Rising up and ready to be seized. Think of the way the syndicate could flourish, if we can knock down our rivals at last.”

Spike has to stop himself from laughing, because Vicious is serious . He takes a minute to smoke. “That’s not really the usual sort of pillow talk I get.” 

Vicious rolls his eyes toward Spike, but he’s too tired to be really unpleasant about it. Maybe Julia is onto something—enough sex and his personality floods over with endorphins even he gets better. “I’m talking about making a strike on White Tigers brass before they can expect it.”

“What, like—now? Their HQ will be as empty as the Monument building is today.” Then Spike realizes that might be to their advantage. Cut the head off the snake, and make sure the fangs are crushed? It would collapse in on itself for a while, while they tried to sort out their new leadership.

“When better? Why do you think the Van hold their bodyguards so close when the rest of us are cut loose…”

“Yeah, but the Tiger heads have their own security. You can bet they’re no joke, and well armed.” Spike is still thinking about it, though. If they could manage one quick, clean cut and then use the confusion to clean up. Move in on contracts and territory, but—”Mao won’t like it.”

“Mao doesn’t care if we look weak. He has let his blood cool, if it was ever hot. But if we present our victory on a plate, even he will accept the spoils.”

“Do it without telling him? Could get us really in trouble if it goes wrong.”

“We don’t let it go wrong,” Vicious says. “This is the bid. We don’t ask for power, we seize it.”

It’s the single-track that Vicious gets onto sometimes, the fixation on power and advancement. For once, Spike senses something just under Vicious’ surface. Some part of him that might be lured up into a real answer, if Spike takes advantage of the bodily bonds and weaknesses in his armor. So, for once, instead of brushing it off, he asks . “Why are you so interested in it? What are you going to do with that power?”

“People with power get answers to their questions; they can deliver truth to themselves. Command it.”

It’s a strange answer, but everything about Vicious is strange. “Seems like just as often they make up their own answers.”

“Perhaps that’s true.” Vicious finishes his cigarette and grinds the remainder out in the bottom of the stainless steel sink basin. “Will you help me do it? No failure—we’ll either do it or die. All in.”

It’s a big gamble. Spike comes up against these odds so often it hardly seems worth mentioning. Always before he knew he could count on the Syndicate at his back. “You make that sound clean, Vicious. A tiger likes to play with its food. I don’t mind dying, but—”

“It won’t be torture,” Vicious says. “I’ll see to it.”

It’s brutal and cold in Julia’s warm kitchen, but Spike understands it as a practicality. Vicious would see them both dead, cleanly, before they could be given up to be broken. It’s a reassurance, but—

“Can I think about it?” Spike asks.

“You have five days.”

Then the holiday will be over, and the opportunity past.

-

At home, Spike drags himself through a shower, feeling the grit and tacky patches rinse off his skin. He should be thinking about Vicious’ proposal , about the possibility of moving fast into dangerous territory, but his memories are still full of closeness and touch. The way Julia’s skin tasted after hours of fucking and how Vicious wound down as if he wore out—but he’d never admit it. 

When he emerges, his phone is ringing on the charger. He answers it and Lin’s face fills the screen. “Yo.”

“You’re alive.” It sounds accusatory. Spike almost forgot he’d dragged Lin away from the party for a little alone time, too. He meant to check up with the guy earlier than now, anyway. 

“Yeah.” Spike’s back is aching like he’s eighty years old and there’s a bone-deep weariness of soul calling him to climb into his bed and sleep for eighteen hours. “I’m fine. Tired, though. Don’t worry, I didn’t drive myself home.”

He’s pretty sure his car is still in the parking garage of the monument tower.

“That’s not what I was worried about,” Lin says.

“Sorry. My phone ran out of charge.”

“I came by your place.”

“I wasn’t here until just now. Got in about an hour ago. I wasn’t up to anything that’s going to be a problem, Lin. Don’t worry so much.”

“It’s my job to ensure someone’s watching your back.”

“Oh yeah?” That’s news to Spike. He gives up on standing for the rest of the conversation and yawns audibly as he drops onto his bed. “That’s a terrible job. Who gave it to you?”

“The Van. Well—” Lin temporizes. “By virtue of assigning me to be your honorable second.” 

“You’re doing fine.” Spike tells him. “I didn’t do anything but…”

But finishing the way he intends to will make him a liar—what he’d been up to was harmless and couldn’t drag Lin into any trouble. What he’s considering—at Vicious’ urging—could have consequences for people other than himself. It’s the first time that’s ever really reached him. They all know what they are—they’re Syndicate men. They live a fierce life and accept that it might be a short one, quickly over but hopefully hard sold to the people who took it from them. This however—blatant disregard for orders—could splashback on others close to them. Like Lin, his subordinate.

“But?” Lin prompts. “Spike, you know I just want to be ready to support—”

“Lin,” Spike says, more sharply than he intends. “It was just having a lot of sex. I’m a husk of a man. The way you can support me right now is to let me sleep it off.”

A beat of silence, and then Lin says, with a tone of relief, “I understand.”

“Get some sleep,” Spike says, yawning again. “You don’t have any messes to clean up yet.”

If he has any suspicions about the last stipulation, Lin keeps them to himself. Instead, he launches on an unexpected tangent. “About the party…” 

Regret drives down in Spike’s middle. Is this going to get weird, now? He does his best to toss it off. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll protect your virtue.”

There are plenty of things you don’t talk about in the Syndicate—who you slept with, and the state of their underwear isn’t a matter that needs discussion.

“I’d prefer if word didn’t make it around to my brother.”

Jeez. Spike had almost forgotten he’s gone sibling two for two consecutive years at the New Year’s party. You and me both. “I’ll keep a lid on it.”

That might include a little talk with his new—what? Fuckbuddies? It seems crass even for Spike, but he’s not sure what else to call it. “Believe me, I don’t usually kiss and tell anyway.”

“I know sir,” Lin says. He sounds reassured, anyway. “Sleep well. May your new year be prosperous.”

Spike wishes Lin the same, then hangs up. His body’s exhausted but his mind’s awake. He fires off a call to Julia, who sounds fresh and bright when she answers the phone. Women.

“Spike. Did you forget something? I think I found your socks…”

“Guess I did,” Spike says, with a smile at  nothing in particular. “Hey, uh—about the party.”

“Mmmhmm?”

“I think maybe any gossip about—well—goings on could stand to stay unsaid?”

“Are you ashamed? Spike, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Not us ,” Spike says. Honestly, they’d all left together. Words would be said, but they’re a known trio anyway. If the talk goes on long enough while it’s not even true, it kind of takes some of the power out of it, in Spike’s opinion. “Though I wouldn’t even know how to answer any questions about that.”

“So don’t,” she says, brightly. She’s enjoying this.

“Anyway, before we all left together—”

“Oh. Oh. Really? Vicious was right?”

Of course he’d know. “Uh. Hypothetically, yes. But it’s better if that doesn’t circulate. It might cause a little familial strife.”

There’s a pause, a long one, while she draws some kind of conclusion from that statement. He hopes, honestly, she just doesn’t say anything but he can sense her questions. 

“Okay,” she says, finally. “I won’t say anything. Vicious? Who knows. He’s not the gossip type, but maybe you should tell him.”

The very idea is mortifying. “You can’t talk to that guy.”

“You two seemed to be talking okay before you left,” Julia points out. “What’s the difference now?”

“That was syndicate stuff,” Spike says. 

There’s a pause, and then she asks, carefully. “You’re planning something?”

“Why does everyone think we’re up to no good?” He can feel the guilt already dropping hooks into his tired thoughts.

“Well? Am I wrong?” Julia asks. “Mao told me about how you and Vicious went off half-cocked on that White Tigers lab and that’s what made tensions so high in the first place.”

“This would fix all that.” Spike regrets the outburst immediately.

“ What would?” 

“We’re going to go after the kings.” Spike lowers his voice, testing the idea out as if he’s already committed to it. Why shouldn’t he be? “Take them out while their men are celebrating.”

“What?” All the levity drops out of her voice. “You’ll need an army. Have you cleared this with Mao?”

“No army. Just him and me.”

“Spike—”

“We could do it.” He’s confident in the moment that they could. Between him and Vicious, nothing would stop them. 

“It’s not about that.” Julia’s voice goes quiet. Emotional. Spike’s not ready for how that affects him. The way it shoots down his desire to brag or strut. In fact, it shuts him up completely, an image of her eyes in the half light of where he’d first met her flashing into his mind. That well-deep sadness before she’d put the rest of her face on, in the dim of the pool hall.

“Aww,” Spike’s voice carries on, taunting without meaning to be, not really. It’s just the first juvenile response that comes up when he feels defensive. He wants to ward all these unexpected feelings off. “Are you worried for me?’

Her silence is telling, angry and short. Then, she just hangs up.

Spike looks at his communicator screenset as if to be sure the call’s really terminated—it shows him a blank, accusatory screen. He lets his hand fall to the mattress, considering her words—what they really mean. What depths to her are behind them that he doesn’t know?

It’s a strange thought, even for him. He lays in the dim of his room, alone, and looks up at the darkness. He calls Vicious and leaves one message.

“I won’t do it.”

-

Chapter Text

“What should I do with all those yards of blue silk now, Mao?” Ivan asks him, three days after the party’s over.

“Well, no chance we can dye it red again, can we?” Mao asks, with a tired sigh. In all honesty, his hangover’s only now starting to let its claws loose. The older he gets, the longer it takes it seems. It’s enough to almost make a man stop drinking.

“We’d have to bleach them first, probably.” Ivan suggests. “Not sure. Be easier to get more red silk and store both sets.”

“It’ll be just my luck that they decide they want gold next year—or green, maybe.” Mao settles down at his desk, glancing out the window at the city below. “Don’t they know what the storage fees are?”

“Can’t we just keep it here? I mean, all those floors with fake offices—do you really think we still need those? How long’s it been since some hot-shot politician tried to come in and audit us anyway?”

“Since we had the last one assassinated.”

“See, I bet we could just mock some cubicles up in front of the elevators and see what that looks like. Then keep storage behind it.”

“Well. We’d have to be careful about the windows.” Mao sighs. “But I guess that’s not out of the question. Except we already have a few false floors…” 

“Honestly, if they find one that’s just silk storage, it’ll be better than munitions.”

Mao has to admit Ivan is right, again—though the munitions in the tower are all legal property of the Van. Any questions would be met with violent rebuttal and an assertion that they had them within rights. 

They keep illegal arms elsewhere, mostly outside Tharsis city. It’s part of not keeping all their eggs in one basket after learning from the Blue Serpents that Tigers can be egg poachers. 

“Well, it hardly matters. They’ll remove the blue silks for cleaning and storage, and I’ll order red ones. We’ll work out where to keep them later.” Mao can see the crews on the security camera footage of the Function Level anyway, hard at work on just that. “How do you think this year will work out?”

“I don’t know. I think the Van is going to push for aggressive expansion.”

“What if I pushed for peace instead?” Mao idly spins a fancy black lacquer pen on his desk, eyes on the monitors but paying attention to Ivan’s response in his peripheral vision. 

Ivan reserves his answer for a minute, looking up at the distant ceiling in thought. “I think they aren’t going to care who’s wrist is severed when they let the blade fall on those efforts, my friend.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” There are three truly ancient men downstairs with the rest of the work crew. They look far too old to be doing any of the work—and they’re just standing to one side of the hall, brooms in hand and chatting. Probably about the ‘good old days’. “Well, then make sure everyone’s on guard. If they are keeping plans for me, they’re willing to risk any number of our men to do it.”

“If we can knock them out fast enough—”

“LIke they did to the Blue Snakes?” Mao asks, pointedly. “They’re not stupid. Neither’s the Van.” 

“I’ll let people know, but don’t you think that might—”

“Throw gas on the lit match?” Mao nods. The three old men on the monitor go on talking and reminiscing. Mao wonders what they did as younger men, to have the luxury of such memories now. “Yes, I suppose. But I can’t throw water on it.”

-

Spike sleeps through most of the next day, though he’s awake enough when his phone goes off that he comes up quickly, sprawled on his couch with a cold cloth on his forehead and a glass of water half-balanced in his sleeping hands. He drops it, and then the sodden cold soaking into the crotch of his pants wakes him the rest of the way up.

“What—” he grabs for the vidset, and holds it up to answer.

“You should have been here,” Vicious says, his tone heavy with something. It’s a  voice only call.

“What?” Spike has no idea what he’s talking about. “Is Julia okay? Are you?”

Last he’d seen either of them was in context to each other. Vicious hovers dangerously silent on the other end of the line for a long moment before answering.

“I’ve been partially successful in cutting a tail off the tigers.” 

“What the hell do you mean? It’s still—” Spike checks the communicator screen for the date and then is sure. “It’s still the Lunar New Year, Vicious.”

“I was subtle. It won’t be traced to me.”

“Oh yeah? Spike sits up, peeling his wet clothes off as he goes to get a clean pair of pants out of his closet. “When have you ever been subtle?”

“There are ways to cut deeper than with a blade.”

“Christ.” Spike feels a sinking sensation. “Well if you were so untraceable, what’d you need me for?”

“I could have gotten more of their leadership, but I wasn’t fast enough alone. Word got out and now they’re suspicious of their feasts.”

“Poison?” It seems a dangerous door to open. “Did you hit anyone but your target?”

“Only the family mutt. No tangible loss in value or life.”

“What would you have done if it was a kid?”

“No life is precious in this world.”

Spike’s patience runs out. He yanks his new pants on. “Where are you? Did you talk to Julia about this—or Mao or anyone ?”

“I don’t answer to Julia.”

Spike is sure Vicious barely answers to his own sanity. “You’d better go in and deliver this to the Van directly.”

“I intend to. Will you stand with me so we can claim our rightful place? The position of Capo is a tenuous one for cowards.”

Undermine Mao? And by extension, Annie and Ivan? Spike recoils from the idea of going behind their back. He doesn’t have a lot of touchy-feely ideas about family—his own had let him down. Ceased to care about him the moment she realized he was just another tether to this world. The family here isn’t perfect—but Ivan taught Spike his first lessons in Martial arts, and Annie had given him the idea to count cards and up his chances at the casino. Mao is the closest thing to a father in Spike’s life. Yet again, the person wedging a divide in is Vicious.

“Forget it, Vicious.” Spike says. “If you get too ambitious too soon you’re not going to get a reward, you’ll get flattened. ”

There’s a long and icy silence on the line, and Spike wonders if he’s just slammed the door on—Vicious, yes, but also Julia. After the moment passes, Vicious asks a question out of left field.

“Did you know about Cherious Medical?”

“What?” Spike can’t figure out where this is going. “That research place out in Alba?”

“The one that developed all those war drugs—one of which we now pedal, refined for the street.”

“Red-Eye? All the syndicates make that now.” Spike has no idea where this is going.

“But do you know why it was developed?”

Spike has never once in his life cared. “Enlighten me. If we can get to the point I can decide if I care.”

“It’s a war drug, Spike.” Vicious says it like that should mean something to him—but eventually the thought penetrates. “It made us all unstoppable. Stronger, faster. We forgot the terror of our own situation and and became the warriors only written about in legend. Angel-winged and many eyed and terrible.”

“Is that why you’re still hooked on the stuff?” Spike fires back. If silences could kill, the one that follows is practically murderous . 

“No. I use it as a tool.”

“A tool for what ?”

“I came to this city to find the source of the Red Eye. To kill who put us out there in those barren fields of death.”

“And what—that’s Cherious Medical? You’re saying they started the war to test their new drugs?”

“It goes deeper than that,” Vicious says. “Cherious sent drugs; we took them to live in a place that wanted us dead. Our enemies took different drugs. Fought to stay alive. We all forgot what we were fighting to do, other than live.”

Spike’s getting tired of this story already. It’s a glimpse into Vicious’ past but it hardly forgives his present, in Spike’s opinion. “Is there a moral to all of this or are you just sad you never made it out of NIMH?”

“We did that.”

“We did what? Who’s ‘we’? Humanity?” Spike is really starting to worry for Vicious’ sanity. 

“Cherious Medical is funded by our syndicate.” Vicious says, and it’s the first thing that’s made sense to Spike for the whole call. 

“Are you saying you joined the Syndicate to tear it apart from the inside?” Cold concern strikes Spike at the very idea of treason. It could kill Vicious and everyone associated with him—severing the limbs to stop the rot. Spike doesn’t care about his own precarious position through his association with Vicious. He has allies and years of service, but Julia—she’s closer than even Spike is at Vicious’ side.

“Did you immediately think to turn me in?” Vicious says softly. “The serpent is eating itself, Spike. Will you emerge triumphant from its guts?”

“ Vicious ,” Spike warns. “You can’t—”

“I’m not.”

‘Then what—”

“If the Red Dragons are the Midgardsormr, we had best be the strongest. It will need wide jaws to eat the whole world.”

It’s back to the half-mad bullshit. Spike is immensely tired all of a sudden. “Just tell me you’re still loyal, Vicious. That you’re not trying something stupid.”

Further icy silence, then quietly, “Tell me why you decided not to come with me when I made my strike, Spike?”

“Julia warned me,” Spike fires back, trying to reach him. “Maybe you’ll listen to her , she’s got the most sense.”

Quiet again. It has the flavor of anger. Spike shakes his head, then remembers it’s audio-only. “Vicious. We can still make this right. Work it all out. I know you’re upset about Titan, but—”

But what? Even Spike—who wasn’t there—can't imagine anything to make up for the years of life stolen from Vicious and all his comrades in the war. Nothing could return lost time, little could restore lost humanity.

“There’s nothing to work out. I will go to the Van with my kill, and you’ll be left behind.”

It rubs Spike the wrong way—it’s supposed to, probably, to goad him into doing something ill-advised out of pride—or fall in line. Spike considers how he’s going to have to draw his lines and finally. “Alright. If that’s how you want it.”

“You know it isn’t.”

It’s the closest to a human sentence in this entire conversation—something like a request instead of the usual demand for compliance. Vicious could deliver words in that tone with his hands wrapped around Spike’s neck and squeezing . He almost feels the same urge to surrender to the man’s authority here. Like it’s been hardwired into the back of his brain, encoded with pain and sweat. Vicious is a cruel person to submit for.

“I won’t help you tear the guts out of the syndicate, Vicious. No matter what reasons you say you have.”

“When did you learn to be afraid?” Vicious snarls. Spike knows it’s a wild jab in the dark, but it connects. He throws one back, just as wild with as much intent to wound. 

“When did you become a slave to your own ambition?” Spike terminates the call, angry and hurt. He dials Mao next.

-

“Are you alright?” Mao hasn’t had an unexpected call from Spike in some time—and this time there’s something on his face, deeper and more serious than Mao usually sees on the sleepy and laconic features of his lieutenant. “It’s still New Years, you know. I hope you’re not planning on calling out sick already.”

He’s in his kitchen—alone, like he always is these days—carefully folding shumai in the recipe his mother had hoarded here from earth, written on a little much-stained scrap of paper probably made from a real Earth tree. There was a point in time when Earth still had enough of those to chop down and write recipes on. It’s a treasure in both ways. Heritage and location. The steamer he’s going to use isn’t his grandmothers—made instead of Mars-grown bamboo. How often had he heard his mother lament the loss of the steamer? If Guangzhou wasn’t a crater on the face of the earth, Mao would send a recovery team. He could afford that sort of thing, these days.

“It’s Vicious,” Spike starts, his eyes shifting down and away. 

Mao’s pleasant domestic thoughts end abruptly. “What’s he done?” 

“He’s going to the Van now. I think he killed one of the Tiger elders.” Spike glances up in the manner of a dog checking how mad his master is that his slippers have been chewed up. 

“In the open ?” Mao puts down his shumai immediately and goes to wash his hands. “ Today ?”

It’s a colossal breach of respect and etiquette, a reversal of all the efforts of emerging from the plunging free-for-all of violence that reigned in the streets as Mars established itself as the new capital of humanity. 

“Today, but not in the open, I don’t think.” Spike sighs. “It wasn’t with him.”

Well that’s something, at least. “Spike. Come over and have some dinner. Be careful out there. I trust the security here more than your apartment.”

“I can take care of—”

“And we should discuss this in person.” Mao lays down the law as gently as he can. “I need to know what you know.”

-

“We should just cut to the chase and give him over,” Ivan suggests. It’s tempting, given the state of things due to Vicious’ interference. “We could claim that the Tigers figured it out on their own.”

It nags at his sense of loyalty, but he’s had three crews of his walk into traps this week just in retribution for the possibility—nearly a certainty and worth betting on the odds—that the hand that struck the blow was a member of the Red Dragons. There’s no trail. Vicious was smarter than that, somehow—but even a dozen trails pointing away from the Dragons would leave a doubt in the minds of the Tigers. Rightly so.

“Don’t say that,” Annie reaches out, and pats the back of Ivan’s arm, to remind him where he is, that he has his feet on the ground. “We’ve got loyalty on our side.”

“Tell Vicious that,” Ivan grumbles, but she’s right. If he sells out on the morals the Red Dragons need to keep—the ideals he and Mao have fought to install as important into the ranks of the soldier and capos—well, he’d be excising one cancer in favor of a bigger one. 

“I wish I could,” Annie says. She sits behind the counter and casts her eyes toward the back of the shop where not so long ago they’d all sat and played cards like the future was assured. “But I have no idea how.”

“It doesn’t matter. I think it’s only going to be so long now before we start to see that cache of Blue Snakes weapons come out.” Ivan follows her gaze—and his heart feels heavy. Tharsis is already a dangerous place, but even Annie’s resilience doesn’t make it feel safe here anymore. He’s so aware of the big plate-glass window at the front of the shop. “I spoke to Mao.”

“I hope a lot. If anyone can—”

“Annie,” Ivan takes her hands. “I want you to leave the city for a little while.”

Her eyes go wide at the suggestion, then harden as she gets angry. “ No . Don’t you dare. Like I’m not just as deep in this—”

“Anastasia.” Ivan keeps his tone soft. “I mean you close the shop and I shut down the dojo—just for a little while.” 

Her mouth goes firm, but her eyes—hard and angry as they are—get wet, too. She shakes her head. “From the start, I’m as much a part of all this as you are. I haven’t closed the shop even once in all these years, and I won’t do it now.”

He knew she wouldn’t like it. He can hardly blame her. He hates to ask her, hates to feel like with all the power of the Syndicate behind him he can’t protect her here, at home, in the seat of their own power and territory. He takes a deep breath to argue, and she throws his hands down.

“Will you come with me?” she demands. She knows what the answer will be. 

“Mao needs me.”

“And you need me. Hell, Mao needs me too. You’re both family. ”

“But you don’t have to be in danger.”

The shop door rattles suddenly. It’s locked, but it sounds like someone really wants it open. Ivan and Annie go rigid He pulls his gun out from the holster and sees Annie reach under the counter.

“Hey, are you open?” A slurred voice calls from outside. A drunk, someone who couldn’t read the shop hours or take the hint of the closed steel window shutters. They both go tense and silent. Ivan unconsciously leans closer to the counter, ready to go over it into cover if he needs to. Annie’s got the shotgun she keeps to ward off any armed idiots who don’t know that this place has better protection than just a stubborn shop keep and good CCTV.

The door rattles again, and the bodega’s cat uncurls from his place next to the heater and ventures into the middle of the floor with an indignant meow.

“Oh, just a cat…” The voice outside slurs and then subsides.

For a moment, everything stays tense, and then Annie slowly relaxes. “I’m not going without you, Ivan. Mao can pull this off—it’s going to be rough for a while but we always came through before. Maybe—maybe the Van is right to back Vicious, after all this.” 

It doesn’t sound like her—she sounds tired and resigned. Like she’s trying to find a way to accept all of this. “Anyway, I don’t care. What are we fighting for, if we aren’t together?”

“That’s awfully mushy,” Ivan says, gently.

“Oh, to hell with it!” Annie waves him off, replacing the shotgun under the counter. “Let’s go home, Ivan. It’ll look better in a week. We have men and weapons too, you know.”

“And better of both,” Ivan says, though he can only  hope it’s so. He holds her coat for and they go carefully out the back.

-

Chapter Text

“Spike,” Julia's voice carries some quality that makes him go cold when he gets the call, finishing a clean up scene with Lin that made his mind go numb and quiet for the sheer brutality of it. He drops what he’s doing—carrying a corpse—and his back goes straight. Alert and rigid.

“What is it?”

“It’s Vicious. He’s here and—”

Beside him, alerted by his posture and attitude, Lin straightens up as well. They’re cleaning up yet another shootout, just one step ahead of the cops as usual. This time, the Tigers got the worst of it. 

“Are you safe?” Spike asks, immediately. Concern hooks into him, leaving him acutely aware of the distance between here and Julia’s apartment, of every minute it will take him to get there. 

“I’m okay, but he’s—I don’t know what to do. I think it’s Red Eye,” she says, her voice small. She pauses, then says even more softly, “I think it’s too much.”

It’s a tangled moment while Spike works that out—the mess of fresh bodies here on the pavement, and Julia calling for help from across the city. 

“Is he there? With you?”

“Yes, but—he’s not okay at all.” She lowers her tone and Spike can hear the humanity and desperation in it. “He won’t go to the hospital.”

“What is it?” Lin asks, softly, reading Spike’s expression.

He answers both of them. “Julia, I’m coming to you. Try to keep his temperature down.”

“Okay,” she says, softly. “Spike, thank you.”

“Keep him calm, but if he gets…” Spike looks around at the bodies, each short neatly someplace lethal. “If he gets dangerous, if he so much as looks at you wrong, get out of there.”

She goes quiet at that, hesitant in a way Spike can’t parse. It reveals a depth of loyalty that must be anchored on something he can’t see—her determination to save Vicious doesn’t seem to fully resonate with the picture of him Spike has in his thoughts. His dangerous habits and reckless disregard for his own life. 

“I mean it,” Spike repeats. How was it that he’s gotten to be the one someone— anyone calls—when they’re in such dire trouble? “Gimme a second.” 

He cups his hand over the communicator, awkwardly balancing it. “Lin, there’s trouble.”

“I’ve got this, sir,” Lin’s professional facade doesn’t slip a fraction.

“I owe you one,” Spike heaves the body he’d been carrying into the dumpster he’d been aiming for.

“Just take care of what you need to.”

“Call me if anything goes wrong.” Spike still hates to leave Lin without backup. “Make sure Ivan knows where you are.”

Lin’s eyes betray no judgment. Spike’s sure there’s some going on in his thoughts. The guy’s only human after all. He doesn’t look the gift horse in the mouth, instead uncovering the microphone of his communicator and turning to go as he continues the conversation. 

“Vicious has been busy tonight,” Spike tells her. “I’m cleaning up his mess already.”

“He came in bloody, but said it wasn’t his.”

“Alright. I’m coming to you. You want me to stay on the line?” Spike’s car isn’t too far—they’d traded it for a waste disposal truck up the street. The truck would transport the dumpster with the bodies in it to waste disposal. Neat as that.

“Please.” 

If Vicious hadn’t won—maybe if he hadn’t taken enough Red Eye to hype up a stone statue—it would be his body vanishing in the night and an unknown fate. “Just try to keep him quiet.”

“I don’t think he’s conscious,” she says.

He sets the communicator on the dashboard and digs around in the mess of old food wrappers and other trash in the back seat until he comes up with a little black zip-up kit. It’s not quite a first aid kit in the traditional sense, but it’s got what’s important. He double checks just in case.

“I’ve got some Narcan and some other shit,” Spike tells her, putting the car in gear. “Just hang on, I’ll be there soon.” 

He’s not sure how to handle the genuine worry for them—the both of them—that he feels. Where it comes from. How it came into existence without him looking for it. The streets fly by, Spike ignoring the red lights and limit signs, driving reckless in the early morning hours and praying his luck will hold. He can hear her silence on the open line, her worry seeming to fill the car with him. She doesn’t offer Vicious any words of soothing or coddling. Spike wonders if she’s frozen between her own fear and what Vicious would allow of comfort. For any of them. The speedometer redlines and the sounds of the car’s engine drowns anything but urgency in Spike’s mind.

He leaves the car in the fire lane outside Julia’s building. It’s a Syndicate vehicle, so the cops should leave it alone if he doesn’t leave it all night. He grabs the comm off the dash and the little black bag and heads inside, forgetting to tell Julia on the open line until he has to run up the two flights of stairs. “I’m almost there.”

“I’ll leave the door unlocked,” She says, and he can hear rapid breathing under her words now, a frantic pace and labored breathing without the car’s engine drowning it out. Spike nearly bowls over a man as he bolts up the stairs, wheeling around the landing and trying to keep on his feet. The Janitor stumbles and Spike steadies him, avoiding the wildly swinging trash bags in the men’s hands.

“Watch it!” The man snaps.

“Sorry?” Spike pivots around him in the narrow space. Who the heck takes the garbage out at this hour? He makes it up to the third floor, Julia’s homey little place above the cafe and finds that the door is unlocked, just like she promised. Even for the short space of time it took Spike to get here, he doesn’t like it, the idea that anyone could walk in with half the city on alert and armed to the teeth. The man who lit the fire is here , sprawled in the kitchen with his limbs flung wide and Julia crouched by him, communicator still in one of her hands.

Spike shuts the door behind himself and trips the lock, feeling like that’s not enough between them and the city. “How long’s he been like this?”

It doesn’t really matter but he feels like he should ask questions to keep the pace of time moving forward. He juggles the things in his hands until he can get the pack of cigarettes loose from his inner pocket. His nerves are screaming for nicotine. It takes three catches for his lighter to produce a flame so he can light it. Out of gas. I feel that way, too. The crowds at Vicious’ side with the cigarette clamped in his teeth.

“He came in about an hour ago,” Julia explains. Her tone is level and without panic, a hardened edge to it that Spike recognizes as determination, held over anything else she’s feeling like a shield. “Then he just fell over.”

Spike crouches down next to Vicious on the other side, hunting around for Vicious’ pulse, but it’s beating so fast and hard he can see the vein under the skin, pulsing in his neck with a rapid beat. His body is warm to the touch, Spike’s cold hand leaving a white impression on the flushed and sweating skin where he touches. Fevered and pounding, the fine veins gone dark in Vicious’ dilated eyes, open and staring at the ceiling. The left eye has hemorrhaged, blood staining the white in a creeping spread. It’s bad. He just knows, instinctually, that it’s serious. Something about Vicious in utter dispossession of his faculties, spread helplessly on the kitchen tile like a sea creature thrown onto the shore. 

“I’ve got an—” what’s the word? Does it matter? It slips Spike’s mind so he goes for the next one that occurs to him. “Antidote, but…”

For just an instant they both hover helplessly over Vicious’ body, looking each other in the eyes. Spike doesn’t want to be the one to say it—that maybe this is the better solution; for all the violent momentum to chug to an end by Vicious’ own hand here and now. They could turn over Vicious’ body to the White Tigers, they could pick their lives back up out of the wreckage of the places Vicious has smashed through. 

And wouldn’t it be better that way? Spike thinks, in his most private thoughts, looking into Julia’s eyes and knowing she’s circling the concept, too. For everyone?

Though unspoken, the moment hangs around them clear and communicative. Then Spike has to shake free of it. Julia, too. In that instant, they forge a pact—a deeper understanding between them. It would be better , yes, to seize this easy and unpoetic ending, but it would make them no better than Vicious. Grasping for the fastest, easiest means to get what they want.

“He’ll probably puke when I give it to him,” Spike explains. “Let’s get him in the bathroom.”

The truce of silence broken, they both spring into action. Julia picks up the bath mats and Spike drags Vicious’ limp body—breath heaving and turning into unconscious grunts of protest as Spike moves him. Space in the bathroom is tight. Spike pulls one of Vicious’ sleeves up, pulls the cap on the premeasured syringe that comes out of his kit with his teeth and does his best to get it into the distended vein. He misses and swears.

“Let me,” Julia says, trading places. Spike is only too glad to hand over the needle and pin Vicious’ arm down to the floor. It must work, because once she pushes the plunger, Vicious gives a wild surge in the tight space, shoving Spike back against the edge of the sink hard enough to make him see stars.

He comes up wild and loud, and then drops back again, choking and gagging. Spike and Julia both prop him up against the toilet urgently, so he can dump his guts there and not on the floor. There’s something unparalleled in the intimacy of holding someone up while they vomit . Something weak and human about Vicious being helpless to his own body, by his own hand. The folly of his own actions all piled up with only one possible result. 

It doesn’t last long. There's nothing in his stomach to bring up except colorless acid, but his body works hard, jerking and spasming as the drugs wage war and empty him out. Then Vicious sags, shivering all of a sudden. He smells like sweat and blood.

“Let me up,” he rasps.

“I think you better shower next,” Spike says, hearing the irritation and unkindness in his own voice. Of course Vicious wouldn’t be grateful—even though they’re both present. Spike expects he’d deny it to their faces if they ask in a week whether he’s recovering okay. He hoists Vicious up, and lets Julia strip off the man’s coat and shirt, while Vicious shudders and shivers in his arms. He still feels hot, especially when Spike palms against bare skin under Vicious’ armpits, holding him upright against his sagging surrender to gravity. 

Spike wrestles his uncooperative form into the shower, and wrenches the water on while he’s still standing there. The spray of cold water in Vicious’ face is what seems to bring him fully around with a wordless protest at the indignity. He jabs an elbow back into Spike’s side hard enough to dash the breath out of him.

“Just hold still ,” Spike commands. He shifts his grip to a restraining hold, one arm locked around Vicious’ chest like a vise, interlocked with his other arm hooked under Vicious’ arms and holding without squeezing. It’s easier than it should be, and Spike feels tension slowly regathering itself in Vicious’ body, as his pulse rate slowly returns to normal against the inside of Spike’s restraining wrist. The temperature changes, the fever subsides.

“Where—?” Vicious manages before visibly getting ahold of himself. He doesn’t finish the question. “The water is too cold.”

“You have a fever,” Spike mutters, feeling the frigid water through all his layers of clothes now soaked to his skin. He reaches back—cautiously letting go of his hold on Vicious in case he starts swinging again. He seems to be done. Spike slowly turns the water to warm, then when he’s sure Vicious is conscious enough not to drown in the spray, like a deranged turkey, he lowers him to the floor of the tub. He starts peeling off his own clothes to discard them soaking wet into the bottom of the tub. Pink runnels of blood swirl away out of Vicious’ dark suit pants, but he doesn’t look harmed beyond—well, the obvious aftereffects of near death by Redeye overdose.

“You’re responsible for that mess downtown, aren’t you,” it’s not a question. “The one Lin and I had to clean up.”

Spike drops his shirt to the porcelain tub basin with a set slap, his shoes next, squeaking on the tub floor as he has to balance to get his socks off, and then dropping each one with a thump into the tub basin.

“What mess?” Julia has cleaned up some, returning to the bathroom with a few fresh, clean towels after taking Vicious’ dirty coat and shirt away. 

“Bunch of dead White Tigers guys, just left in the street.” Spike says, as much to Vicious as Julia.

“It was an ambush,” Vicious says. “At a usual drop location. I was going for information.” 

Spike drops everything but his boxers. “Bit off more than you could chew? Real surprising.”

He can’t keep the sarcasm out of his tone as he climbs out of the shower. “Lin and I cleaned it up. You better get out and towel off. You’re in for a hell of a hangover headache, and soon .” 

He takes a towel from Julia and leaves Vicious to her tender mercies as he dries off. He doesn’t trust himself not to yell or strangle Vicious after all this, and he wants a cigarette and a cup of coffee.

-

Once Vicious is settled in her bed, sleeping with the blankets drawn over him and up to his chin to stop the tremors running through his no longer fevered body, Julia feels the late hour and stress of the evening catch up with her. Seeking a warm drink and the space to catch her breath, Julia finds Spike in the kitchen—his ridiculously long legs sticking out into the center of the floor from under her table where he’s seated.

“He said he wanted to go after Cherious Medical,” Spike says, as she comes in. “For what they did in the war.”

She shifts uncomfortably. “By starting a war here? In the streets?”

Already high tensions have run hot—the normal inclination of Dragons and Tigers to exchange a spray of gunfire and then make a getaway with their hides intact has escalated to deadly force—on both sides. If it becomes a matter of revenge as well as pride— well . No need to speculate. It’s coming.

“It doesn’t make sense to me either. He says— '' Spike looks up at her, then, his miscolored eyes painted brilliantly by the harsh fluorescent kitchen light. “Did you know? That Cherious used the war to do their research?”

Julia feels the weight of it pressing on her like slow stacking stones—fear and sadness and responsibility . Helplessness. She leans back against the counter and admits, like in a confessional from her youth. “Yes. And then—and then that the Red Dragons owned the company.”

She swallows, looking down at the tile for a long moment, before she looks up to face him again. He has all that funny loyalty and honor, all that Syndicate pride. She’s seen how Mao favors him, seeing something under the rough stone of his exterior. There’s no judgment in his eyes. Poor, stupid man. He doesn’t care—he’s distanced himself from the harm the Syndicate causes to those outside of it. 

“Well,” Spike says, cautiously. “I guess it was news to him. What his goal is, I’m not actually sure, however. Take down the syndicate or…just spill blood until he feels better.

Julia knows Spike expects her to have an answer, but she doesn’t. Not fully. Instead, she sits down opposite him. “He’s been after an answer to something since he came back from Titan. Maybe he thought he went there to get an answer, but there wasn’t any.”

“What’s the question?” Spike asks, pulling the ashtray closer. He lights a cigarette over it, careful to keep ash away from her cheap tablecloth.

“Maybe he could tell you.” She reaches out and he passes her the freshly lit cigarette, lighting another for himself. She puts it to her mouth and has a long draw—it’s a more expensive brand than she bothers with, usually. 

“We could ask.” Spike lifts a hand and rubs his face, a tired gesture. It’s interesting how she’s seen him aging and maturing though he’s still a young man. Her time at Cherious taught her that a brain isn’t fully mature until 25, which is why experiments on 18 year olds gave such critical results. Annie told her that Spike was fully wild not so long ago, and for a while she hadn’t seen what Mao seemed to. Just a young man, with no idea of attachments and too much loyalty. Throw him in with any number of other Syndicate guys and it would be nearly impossible to pick out something unique about him.

Now, maybe, she’s starting to understand.

“Spike,” She says, inhaling smoke and watching his eyes carefully. “Is there any question it could be that would make his cause one you want to follow?”

“Dunno,” Spike says, and he looks away toward the hallway leading to her room. “I guess that depends on if he has a plan or if it's just another situation where he plans to drive right into the problem and see if it explodes.”

“What?” Julia can’t make heads or tails of the statement. She sort of understands but—what a strange metaphor. 

“I mean, if he has a plan this time.” 

The idea leaves her cold. Vicious doesn’t care who he hurts, she thinks. Spike’s willing to follow him? The idea that he’s willing to ignore direct orders…why? What’s he digging for? In the back of her thoughts, she fears she knows—he’s looking for an answer to the betrayal. Whether the device in his music box came from her or came after—placed there in inspection or secret, maybe? He’s surely looking for an answer for that—and whether he can blame her for it or he finds a new target to turn his anger on.

He hasn’t asked her about it. That’s what tears her up inside, most nights. She shakes it off—that’s her weight to carry. Can’t Vicious be called back from the edge? Won’t he ever heal and start to return to the real world? Julia’s been holding out hope that he can. 

Spike is still looking at her, leaned back in the chair in a posture of defeat. The harrowing times have caused us all to age faster, she thinks. It’s deeply unfair for them—they had already lept out of their youths long before they were ready and into the harsh and hard-scrabble world seizing for their survival. Chasing the fictional rabbit like those cruel dog races from the old earth.

“What do we do?” Spike asks, looking to her for leadership and certainty, for a guiding hand. She’s so confident about that in bed, but this —she’s never asked for it.

She reaches for his hands, and Spike gives them to her willingly and without reserve. “I need your help. We can bring him back.”

Spike’s nose wrinkles at that, a clear doubt in his mismatched eyes. “I think all I’ve ever known is—”

His fingers are intertwined with hers, like a child’s might, and he gives an indicative and reassuring squeeze. It’s probably more polite than what he’s thinking.

“I know that underneath that,” Julia says, keeping her voice firm. If she sounds certain enough, maybe that will make it time. “There’s a reasonable man in there. He wants answers, Spike.”

At the sound of his name, Spike’s fingers flex on hers again. I f Vicious is a man under layers of ice, Spike is just under the water’s surface and reaching. 

“He’s getting them.” Spike says. “Each new one he digs down to only makes it worse. He doesn’t like the answers.”

“I think—the two of us together…” she says, because it’s her mess, but now that she’s in the middle of it she needs help. The whole city needs help, before Vicious sinks his teeth into its jugular and tears. “We can convince him to forget the questions.”

Spike laughs, startled. “What? How ?”

Shatter the ice layers, she thinks— reach into all those bandages and undo the mummification process. Raise the ghost from the dead and—what? Tether him back to the world? She tries to picture Vicious in the future, letting go of his possession, settling down and becoming—

“You can’t see it either,” Spike says, voice gone low. His eyes drag away from hers. He looks away to one side, and it’s like a broken circuit when they aren’t looking at each other. “I look at him and I can’t see any part of his past. You look at him and you can’t see a future.”

Spike gets up, squeezing her hands one last time. “But for what it’s worth, I never thought about the future very much, either. You say we can bring him back—okay. Okay.”

The repetition seems as much like a self-directed reassurance, and Julia understands. She’s not sure if it will work either, but if she believes —if she and Spike put their strength together, this can still work out. They can pull it back from the brink or—or what, she’s not sure. Stop it all, somehow. Interweave between Vicious and the source of his pain, the drug he seems to want to destroy while it destroys him in return. The snake and the mongoose, fangs interlocked.

If they can’t pry them loose of each other, in the end—she’ll do what she has to, to atone for her betrayal. To keep his resentment from leaking out further like poison.

“So, what now?” Spike asks.

“We stay alive, and we do our best to help Mao, and talk Vicious back from the edge.”

“The Tigers aren’t just going to forget someone poisoned one of their leaders to death in the middle of Lunar New Year. It’s not a bad guess that it was—well if they can pinpoint Vicious, I bet the Van will give him up fast enough to make even his head spin.”

He’s not wrong. The Van are extremely practical about the lives of their men—each like a chess piece on the board. Even a rook or bishop is a sacrifice to make at the right time. Julia wishes Vicious had just had a little more patience, or that she could have reached him a little sooner. “I hope that doesn’t happen. Maybe if we can convince him that’s coming—and it is if he doesn’t slow down…”

“He has to know there’s a line he can’t cross.”

“I wonder if he ever looks down anymore,” Julia says, thinking of how often Vicious’ eyes are red and raw with the drug these days, how close to death he had just come right here in her apartment. 

“We have to get him off this Cherious Medical thing,” Spike says. He pushes smoke through his teeth and stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray on her kitchen table. “He’s dragging Tharsis into that war he never left.”

It shouldn’t surprise her, how insightful Spike is—he gives an air of detachment and disinterest, but he’s always paying attention, even when it looks like he’s just sleeping on the couch. He’s sharply attuned. Somehow, he always surprises her anyway. Maybe it’s just another mark he takes pride in hitting.

-

“What I was thinking was,” Spike tries, in the silent elevator ride up to Mao’s office the next day. “We wait for the Tigers to make the next move.”

Vicious looks even more sunken-eyed than usual, his body held stiffly and his eyes on a fixed point on the inside of the elevator doors. He doesn’t respond.

“We could lay low at Julia’s place,” Spike says. “Until you’re feeling better.”

Vicious doesn’t give any indication that he’s even listening to Spike. His eyes are focused, though. Maybe he’s still hungover. Spike believes he deserves it, somewhere vengeful in his soul.

“I didn’t get much sleep either, you know,” Spike snaps. No effect. Vicious is as inscrutable as ever somehow. As inhumanly above every aspect of his past except the trench he’s dug himself down into.

The elevator passes three floors before Spike tries again. “Julia and I—”

That gets Vicious’ attention, his eyes shooting toward Spike in immediate suspicion. Where does that jealousy come from? It’s not as if he cares about either of us when we aren’t having sex.  

“—we think you should stop,” Spike says. “The drugs. The violence.”

Vicious’ eyes go narrow. “You’re plotting together.”

“No,” Spike says and the accusation only makes him feel tired. “Vicious you killed six people yesterday. You almost killed yourself .” 

Even as he says it, he knows it won’t be enough. That it’s an argument based on logic that can only be realized through compassion. Vicious doesn’t have any, not even for himself. Just drive and forward momentum.

“I didn’t die.” Vicious says. “Our enemies won't—”

“You kicked the damn hornet’s nest,” Spike reminds him, savagely. “Whatever our enemies are doing, it’s your fault. Don’t you ever listen to anyone but your own stupid ideas?”

Spike’s not sure he listens to himself, either. “What are you going to do when you go too far and the Van won’t back you up?”

Vicious looks at Spike coldly, meeting his eyes as the elevator comes to a stop. “We all eventually outlive our usefulness.”

He says nothing else as he moves off the elevator and into Mao’s office. The words hang in the air in a way Spike can’t figure out.

-

Chapter Text

Mao gets immediately to business, doing his best to sound coldly neutral as he and Ivan meet Spike and Vicious. He can hardly stand to look at the latter, though he has to grudgingly admit the strike against the Tigers had been strategic enough to take them off guard and leave them scrambling for answers—it’s given Mao enough breathing room to at least make some preparations for the retaliations that are coming. 

“I have work for you two,” Mao says curtly. In a way, it’s unfair to extend his ire to Spike, but Mao can’t afford to thread too many needles at the moment. Perhaps Spike will take the job as seriously as Mao needs him to. “As you know, we’ve had our hands full, and the Tigers have been using whatever opportunities they can get to spill blood.”

Mao sighs. It doesn’t seem like a strong enough statement, but he’s too exhausted to draw this out. “Ivan and I have arranged for a weapons shipment to be delivered at the edge of the city. If this is going to keep escalating, I can’t justify sending our men out with only small arms to defend themselves.”

He gets to his feet, feeling the restless weight of the decision. The Syndicates exist based on a delicate balance of providing prosperity to themselves and kickbacks to officials and the city itself. If the violence it takes for control results in enough spillover damage and bystander casualties, the people won’t bear it. All out warfare in the streets might bring their victory over a foe—but dropping explosives in the city, spraying enemy strongholds or soldiers with machine gun fire is rarely a clean way to excise them. 

“Spike, Ivan. I need you to go and recover the shipment from a drop point in an old church. I don't feel l have to tell you how important it is that this goes smoothly and none of the cargo is lost.” Mao instructs.

“I can assist,” Vicious begins to volunteer, but Mao turns away, cutting him off with a gesture.

He meets Spike’s gaze. “Nothing flashy, you understand? I’d prefer you did your best ghost impression. I want this to be the ace up our sleeve, not a big stick in our hands.”

Spike blinks, as if surprised by the personal instruction. His face has been getting more severe lately. It takes a longer moment than it should for Mao to remember that he’s still so young . Spike nods, and then lapses into a bright grin, all confidence.

“I’ll leave my racer at home.” 

Mao nods, seriously. “Let Ivan drive. I’m sending you by transport helicopter anyway.” 

He glances over at Ivan, and gives a nod. He doesn't miss the way Ivan hesitates, his eyes drifting toward Vicious.

“As for you, I have something else,” Mao turns firmly on Vicious, next. He’d thought about this—it’s for the best he splits Spike off from him for now. And if the Van can use Vicious’ ambition like a brand in the fire, he can too. 

Spike and Ivan take their leave, Spike glancing back once. Mao turns his attention fully onto Vicious. The man’s face is always pinched and harsh in expression, but today the dark bags are deeper and heavier under his eyes—he looks thin-skinned and bruised and the sclera of his eyes are pink and irritated. Mao recognizes the signs of Red Eye. Not just use, but abuse. He hopes that for the price Vicious is paying in health, he’s filling that void in himself for a little while.

“Would you like something for your head?” Mao asks, trying to keep his tone solicitous, rather than sarcastic. “I’ve started keeping zhi fu zi with xin ye in my desk.”

Vicious looks at Mao in surprise, perhaps gathering his thoughts. Mao doesn’t think he expected the offer. He can’t quite stop himself from adding, wryly, “It’s become necessary since my underlings began causing me more headaches. My acupuncturist will only see me twice a week.”

“My head’s fine, “ Vicious snaps, his tone scathing with superiority, as if he’s above the entire concept of headaches. It doesn’t fool Mao. He looks like a walking brain bleed. “What do you have for me?”

“I need you to make a spectacle of yourself on the other side of town,” Mao instructs. “Keep attention away from Ivan and Spike. You’re good at causing a scene, so this plays to your strengths.” 

He can see that Vicious doesn’t like the idea, but good . Maybe he’ll realize that sometimes the work he does results in more work that no one wants to do. It’s only fair he’s stuck with the consequences. 

“You’re throwing me to the wolves.”

You threw yourself to them when you attacked without my orders. Mao draws up straight, letting his hands rest palm-flat on his desk. He’s acutely aware of how much taller Vicious is than he, of the sword carried at his side with its one cruel edge thirsty as Vicious is for blood. For now, Mao holds the power. He’s got to make the best of it. “You’re something of a wolf yourself. For once, I’m taking your leash off, and you suddenly don’t like it? Then survive, and make sure Spike and Ivan come back.”

“Some of us have to be wolves,” Vicious says, voice as cold and harsh as snapping jaws. “When surrounded by dogs.”

At least dogs know the meaning of loyalty. Mao watches Vicious turn to go, as if he’s had the last word on something important, and it’s not until he’s left the room that Mao relaxes enough to sit down again. All the pieces are in play now. Much as Mao wants to hold something in reserve, he just has to trust the skill of his men, and hope the cards dealt to him won’t go bust before the syndicate takes a win. 

-

By now, Spike has a pretty good feel for Tharsis city. For all its soaring heights and hidden misery. But the old broken-down church that Ivan guides them towards is unexpected in the Martian landscape. Though the roof has seen better days as they round the dilapidated building with the helicopter, the four walls are still mostly intact. It looks out of place and strangely abandoned for a city with a premium on space. Spike doesn’t even see any signs of homeless encampments against the sheltering stone walls. There are people living even in the city’s refuse disposal site, clinging to the edges of breathable atmosphere, but not here?

“This isn’t far from Julia’s place,” Spike realizes, as he tracks the surrounding streets.

Ivan gives him a sidelong look, a bit more scrutinizing than the statement requires. Spike realizes his slip up too late. 

“I didn’t think you’d know anything about that, Spike…”

“Don’t read into things.”

“I’m just making an observation,” Ivan says, looking extremely mischievous, like he’s learned a juicy secret. 

“Why’s it so empty, Ivan?” Spike asks, as they circle around the abandoned church in what feels like an overabundance of caution. 

“I don’t know,” Ivan admits. “I've heard the urban legend is that the whole building was flown up brick by brick from Earth, and since then it’s been haunted by the souls of the people that were left behind to make space for masonry.”

“Pretty grim stuff.” 

“You said it. It hasn’t been used in years, and rumors of a curse keep even the itinerants away.”

“Who has any use for religion these days, anyway?”

Ivan laughs and gently sets the chopper down on the wide landing at the top of the steps. The early winter weather is gray and dismal, the sky overhead stealy and ominous. It looks like rain, and Spike’s breath fogs in the air before it cools in his lungs.

“You better pray for help lifting boxes, if you want to get out of here before dark,” Ivan teases. “I bet they’re going to be heavy.”

“No problem,” Spike lifts his hands behind his head, bragging. “I beat you at the gym last week, remember? I’ll get whatever you can’t, old man.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ivan cautiously pulls open one of the smaller side doors to peer into the dark interior. “Age before beauty.” 

Inside, the air is dark except for faint light pouring through the stained glass windows, colors dulled by the layer of grime collected on them and the overcast sky. A pile of crates large and small sit in the space between the rows of pews, some too big to lift by hand. Dust floats in the disturbed air, drifting with some faintly sweet smell. Some of the rows of wooden benches, too big to steal, are disturbed and askew nearest the door, but as Spike looks toward the front of the nave they realign into straight rows on either side of a main aisle, leading up to the Sanctuary where maybe once there was a raised podium. Stairwells frame that, leading up to a balcony set before a huge, round window. Miraculously, it looks fully intact. 

Ivan gives a low whistle, echoing Spike’s thoughts. “Imagine that grand old thing coming from Earth?”

The audacity of such an undertaking seemed so crudely human that Spike’s dumbfounded by it. The moment of awe is suddenly interrupted by a movement in the corner of Spike’s good eye—the sound of something loose moving under someone’s foot. 

“Spike!” Ivan’s voice holds a note oc warning, sharp and hooking into Spike’s already singing reflexes. He paws his gun out of its holster and drops down on sheer instinct. The air fills with the ringing echoes of automatic gunfire and chips of stonework fray over Spike’s head, splintering pews exploding as Spike shoves himself between them.

His ears are still ringing with the first round of echoes when the surge of adrenaline hits him, and he dares a glance over the top of a pew. He can see several men clutching machine guns aimed toward the back of the nave, in his general direction. A few single-shots answer from the direction he’d last seen Ivan in.

He manages to fire off three return shots from his hand gun, tagging one guy center mass before two others open up, shattering through the back of the pew so close to Spike’s head that a splinter tears through his cheek before he throws himself flat on the floor and crawls along the row to a different position. I’ll never make a dent in them with just a handgun.

He has to get to the crates. Better pray there’s something in there he can use. He stays low until he reaches the end of the row of pews. The spray of gunfire hasn’t died down, so Spike counts to five, tracks the sounds of reports and the location of impacts.

Praying that a pause means a reload or lowering of their guard, he dives for the crates, spraying a few shots wildly toward the sanctuary of the church in the rough direction of where he last saw the other men. 

A rapidfire stream of bullets answers and Spike shoves himself behind the crates as a spray of fire blasts a hole clean through the top third of the box. Spike can’t do anything but get as low as possible, hunched with his arms around his head as if the highly powered rounds will do anything but break his arm before they go clean through his skull. 

Time seems to slow. The bottoms of the crates—full of weapons that hopefully won’t explode if a bullet hits them just right—seem solid enough to serve as tentative cover, so long as none of them get the idea to come around and finish the job. Behind the other crate, he can see Ivan on the ground, limbs flung out from how he fell. Very still. The sounds of all the shooting seem to deafen anything else, filling the church the way choral singing might have, in the decade just after the Gate accident. 

Whatever God is here had no more answer for that than this hellish scenario. Ivan’s hand is stretched back toward the door they’d come through, a trickle of blood winding toward it like a regret or a longing to get back. 

Spike plunges his hand into the blown-out side of the crate, and feels something soft and then a rake of pain as he pushes his hand in deeper. Something irregular and pointed catches his sleeve and he grabs a handful and yanks back. A thick, floral smell fills the air as Spike yanks free a bouquet of flowers—red and vivid as blood. 

For an instant, his thoughts run too fast to track— Roses? He remembers how Julia often has one on her bedside table, a *real* flower, carefully nurtured in this foreign atmosphere. What? Had Mao set them up? Unwilling to believe it, Spike plunges his hand back into the crate and feels hard steel under the velvet petals. Relief washes through him as he yanks free a machine gun of his own. 

He’s going to take as many of these bastards with him as he can. He checks the magazine—by some miracle it’s already loaded and ready. Spike flicks the safety off, and hefts the weight in his hands. He’s going to kill as many of them as he can. He’s going to make them pay for Ivan, and protect the shipment of weapons. For Mao and Annie and the syndicate.

He sets his jaw and stands up, honing in on the men at the front—a quick spray of fire aimed at center mass while they’re trying to react crumples them. Next he shifts to the other corner, the next man firing a panicked string of shots into the ground at Spike’s feet, running a line that ends with a thud of impact in Spike’s thigh before Spike returns fire with more accuracy, blowing the guy’s head apart with two closely spaced shots.

 Four men. Three down. Where’s the last? Two more shots hit Spike as he wheels around on instinct. The last man has a familiar spiky shock of bottle blonde hair and a grim set to his mouth that tells Spike he’s been recognized in return. You again.

Their eyes meet. Spike’s been shot straight through twice in the gut, but adrenaline doesn’t let him feel it yet. The White Tigers guy raises his gun again. It’s over. Spike knows it’s over. Faster than the other man, he pulls the trigger and holds it, shredding through the bottle-blonde’s chest and sending his return shots wide. One still punches through Spike’s arm above the elbow, shattering bone and making the hand gripping the forward stock of the machine gun go numb. 

Spike gasps and drops down next to the crates again. He glances over at Ivan—no movement. It’s over. Spike has protected the shipment, avenged Ivan’s death. His shirt is soaked through with his own hot blood, now cooling rapidly and sticking to his skin. Probably revenge for myself too. Spike paws into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. It hurts . Everywhere.

He leans back against the crate, trying to get up the strength in his broken arm to work the lighter flint. Letting his eyes close, Spike feels one clear certainty enter his mind, as it empties of all other awareness.

I don’t want to die. The image of Julia, sitting alone on a bar stool, facing away. The brilliant curls of her hair are the only thing that seems to have any color, until her head lifts in awareness of his presence—until she turns with that smile of hers. I don’t want to die without seeing her again. I can’t, knowing I’m not with her.

There are other reasons. A dozen. A hundred, maybe. They’ve never mattered before, and all they are now is a din crowding at the edges of his fogging mind. It’s not far. I said it myself.

Spike drags himself up onto his feet, ignoring the weakness in his injured leg, clamping his broken arm to his middle like he can hold the blood in. He sets his eyes ahead, on the door that Ivan’s hand is stretched back towards as his first goal. He takes the first step, and then the next, eyes up and steadying himself on the splintery remains of pews as he passes. Each step is momentous, but he’ll take as many as it needs.

-

Chapter Text

It’s an hour past when Mao expects Ivan’s call, and the anxiety has been mounting. His reports say Vicious lived up to his end of the bargain on the far side of town. Causing outrage is certainly his specialty. It’s not impossible that they’ve split focus—or even that there’s internal division depending on which members want revenge for their fallen leader. 

This should have been enough time for them to either load the goods and return—it’s not that far by helicopter—or radio back if something is wrong with the shipment. Vicious has already reported back.

Twenty minutes ago he sent Lin to investigate. Mao tries not to tick out each second with his anxiously jogging heel, but it feels like it must be past the event-horizon for good news—or even confusing or accidental news.

When his communicator rings he snatches the vidset off his desk. The screen fills with Lin’s severe features. “Mao. It’s bad.”

Two words are all it takes to topple him back into his seat. He hadn’t even realized he’d been standing. A dozen thoughts crowd his mind all at once— It was a setup. I shouldn’t have sent both Spike and Ivan. We need those weapons. How could the Tigers know? Or did they just run into bad luck?

“Mao? Sir?” Lin’s voice brings him back. 

Mao, using his decades of experience, resigns himself to the disaster. Burying his head in the sand won’t fix this any faster. “Give it to me, Lin. All of it.”

“There was an ambush,” Lin’s face is a mask of perfect control but his eyes seem to be looking past the screen’s field of view. “Ivan’s dead.”

It hits like a punch to Mao’s solar plexus, knocking the world into a moment where everything is still and unmoving. He hears the words; understands the meaning of the sentence on the whole, but internalizing it feels as gargantuan a task as a snake swallowing an elephant. He gets to his feet again, punching several buttons on his desk.

“I’m coming to you. Secure the area. Call in as many men as you have to.”

“It looks like they took out the ambush, sir.” Lin doesn’t look pleased with the order, but he doesn’t countermand it.

No one dared to argue with Mao when he’s determined, except Ivan. “Good. If any of the Tigers are still alive, find out how they knew.”

“They aren’t.”

Mao could spit. He locks up in a rush, heading for the helicopter pad on the roof of the Monument building. His thoughts are a useless scatter so Mao follows his instincts instead, only remembering to ask as he rides up toward the roof. “What about Spike? I sent him with Ivan.”

Lin visibly looks around the area. “I haven’t found him yet. The helicopter is still outside and the cargo crates are here. A little worse for the wear, but…”

“Start loading it into the helicopter,” Mao says. “Find Spike.”

He doesn’t dare give voice to his desire for that to mean alive —it would be just like Spike to leave the scene only to die in an alley nearby. Like dogs hit by cars running off into the streets again. It’s too much to think about, yet. He terminates the call and gives the order to his pilot. It’s not far by air, but as he looks down over the icty blocks they should have the tightest dominion over, the buildings and gridded streets he’d once dreamed of helping design, it looks as cold and foreign as the frequently rearranged face of the blue earth, visible in the vast space beyond the reach of the city’s atmosphere.

That world that long ago dreamed of dragons and birthed the Van long before they could endeavor to stretch their claws forth and snatch the red planet in the heavens up like a pearl.

By the time he arrives, his thoughts are still and in order. The scene outside is busy with Syndicate men under Lin’s tight control. Mao trusts that the man has controlled the information leaving the scene. He’s not looking forward to his evening. The last thing he needs is word reaching Annie before he can bring her the news himself.

“Sir!” Shin waves him over as the helicopter blades slow overhead and Mao ducks down to move free of their circumference. He sends the pilot away. He’ll send for a car after this, and escort Ivan’s body back himself. There’s no sense having two syndicate birds sitting there like a prime target. The rain is heavy and unrelenting. 

“Have you found Spike?” Mao asks, following Shin into the side door, half-soaked just from the few steps across the stone steps. Inside, it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the gray dim. There’s a massive rose window, miraculously whole, the bright glass valiantly holding onto its color against the layer of grime.

Ahead, in the aisle, stands the emptied crates in a flurry of red flower petals—the heavy gunpowder smell in the air cut through with the smell of crushed roses and fresh gore, all these things masticated up by the violence and spilled on the floor.

“There’s four of the Tiger’s men. Looks like they were waiting just to ambush our guys,” Shin says. Mao’s eyes fall on a figure laying splayed next to the crates. Someone’s taken their coat off and laid it over Ivan. One hand stretches out, blood-streaked and back toward the door, his face covered beneath the fabric.

“We found a few smoked cigarettes in the rectory. I don't think they were here that long,” Shin continues. “Lin is out searching the grounds for Spike.” 

The words seem to fade into the distance. Mao steps closer to Ivan’s body and looks down at it, covered, still and unbreathing. It was an ambush and Mao sent him here. You fool. Mao’s not sure who he’s more upset with. Himself, or Ivan— you should have known better. He looks for a long time, because the compulsion is to be sure , to look until his own chest aches from holding his breath, and still Ivan hasn’t moved or drawn a breath. There’s something big and overwhelming forming in the back of his mind, congealing into a hard knot of certainty—as of yet, undefined. 

His communicator buzzes in his pocket and he answers it idly, like a man in a dream. Julia’s face fills the screen, her brow furrowed. “Mao, where are you?”

“Julia.” He looks around, as if taking it all in for the first time, then answers cautiously. “I’m investigating something. Are you alright?”

“Spike’s here,” she says, and it sends a spark of hope into the dark. “He’s hurt—badly. I think something happened with the White Tigers.”

“Where are you?” 

“Home. He came to me…”

Sensible, in its own way—her apartment isn’t far, if Mao thinks about it. “I’m sending a doctor.”

Mao turns to Shin at his side, making sure that he’s taking note of the instructions Mao is giving. He snaps to attention and reaches for his own communicator. “Lin will accompany him to you, personally. Don’t open your door for anybody else.”

Her face doesn’t show any fear—just resolve. If anyone will get through all of this as solid as a rock against the waves, it will be Julia. Spike will be safe in her care, too. He’s immensely relieved to know Spike’s alive. 

“Alright,” she says.

“I’ll be by your place as soon as I can. I’ll tell you what’s happening then. Keep Spike safe until I get there.”

“Of course, but—Mao,” 

He meets her gaze through the screen.

“Send the doctor quickly, please.”

He understands, and looks to Shin, who nods. “He’s already on the way. Do you need anything else?”

She shakes her head. 

She’s a hell of a woman, Mao thinks. Someone strong and capable grown tough in the harsh environment. The syndicate is lucky to have her. “Stay safe yourself. I’ll see you when I can.”

When he terminates the call, the full weight of the knowledge has formed in the back of his mind. “Shin, send the helicopter back to HQ and bring around a car. I need you to drive me somewhere.”

Shin nods, solemnly. For the occasion, his ugly bolo tie seems gaudy and inappropriate. It doesn’t matter. I have to tell Anastacia. His steps as he leaves the church feel heavier than they ever have before.

-

In his dream, Spike can hear the water nearby—he can smell it, too, fetid and green runoff that emerges sluggishly from beneath the drifts of refuse nearby. He hasn’t been here in a long time. He doesn’t belong anymore—not since he’d given up his past and stopped picking through refuse. Scavenging had been his childhood—like so many others. Stealing was a graduation of sorts.

Somehow he knows where he is in the inexplicable mounds of consumer-age junk. So much had migrated from Earth, precious once or thought to be potentially useful; treasured by people who had since died and discarded by their descendants. Earth’s trash all mixed in with the usual rotten food and sullied diapers. But at one edge, Laughing Bull has reclaimed a patch of raw, red, honest dirt. Swept clean of anything sharp or dangerous and arranged around a fire pit and somehow—a clear, wide-lense view of the night sky hanging beyond the edge of the crater and artificial atmosphere.

Spike turns around from this view to see the hut put together with the remnants of Earth humanity, a stately arrangement evocative of some nomadic lifestyle lost to time and yet now all of humanity understands it on some level. There’s a fire banked low and sending up a steady trail of smoke. As his eyes follow it to the dark sky a streak of light catches his attention. Another and another—something burning up miles away in the atmosphere. His mother had called them falling stars.

But he remembers Laughing Bull saying something, too—what was it?

“The soul of a warrior,” Bull’s voice comes back to him, reminding him. Spike drops his gaze toward the tent opening, expecting to see Laughing bull sitting in the shadows inside with a pipe in one hand as he always had when Spike was a kid. The hut is empty.

Overhead the stars bleed down in stretching light, smearing out of existence in their hundreds. It’s slow and silent, but somehow chilling. Had it looked like this on earth, when pieces of the moon began to fall?

At the back of his awareness, Spike becomes aware of a melody. The sky seems to be stretching down to meet him, getting bigger and blacker as it empties itself of points of light. Gravity feels like it’s losing hold and reversing around him. He can’t look away as it gets closer, and it feels like at any second he’s going to break the surface. He’s somehow no longer under the sky but above it, about to fall in.

At the precipice of gravity, the melody pulls him back. I know that voice . It’s not a song he recognizes but something soft and sad; a sound to fill the space of silence, distracting and soothing.

Julia .

A moment of floating. There’s something warm in the certainty that he’s not alone above the sky. He looks down and his feet are on the Earth again. Beside him is Bull’s kid.

“Hey,” Spike says. “Did you bring me another fortune?”

The kid looks up at him with dark eyes full of space on the left and a brilliant nebula on the right—everything in one eye and nothing in the other.

Then Spike wakes, coming up slowly with the melody in his ears. It guides him past the groggy edges of unconsciousness. His whole body hurts and feels tightly bound. The soft cream walls and gray light make him aware that he’s not at home. Around the aching and pain, he feels relieved. Nearby, he can hear Julia humming to herself. Whether it’s meant to soothe her nerves or his he can’t tell but—it’s charming. Captivating and brilliant like the rest of her, shining and alive.

I guess I made it somehow… He had wanted to see her again so much it consumed him, and then suddenly, though he had no way of knowing how far his feet had carried him, she appeared before him. It was completion. Absolution. It had been enough to finally stop.

“Hey,” Spike’s voice pulls her attention onto him, her blue eyes softening when she looks at him and the whole world seems to soften at the edges, too. “Sing for me—”

It’s what guided him through the dreams, out of the swallowing skies and back here. Even talking takes so much effort. He knows he’s going under again.

“Just like that.”

-

For a time her world becomes a little smaller. She doesn’t leave Spike; that he’d come to her at all feels strange and ephemeral. He was so near to dead for a while that the line blurred in her mind. Julia caught herself thinking on both sides of “if”— if he lives, if they need to make arrangements for a cremation, if by next week things have changed…

It’s only practical, but it feels strange. Spike’s young, but in syndicate life that means nothing. Ivan hadn’t been that much older. Mao’s doctor is very good and he spares nothing. Julia’s living room becomes a beeping nest of equipment, incubating something delicate. All she can do is stay by him and listen. By the fourth day, he’s strong enough for many of the support devices to go—the miracles of modern medicine, if you could afford it. Even then, supplies and access are limited.

“He’s young and healthy,” the doctor says, as he packs up the machine that's been feeding antibiotics into Spike’s body. “He’s got willpower, too. It’s lucky.”

She doesn’t really know if it is, in this world. “Can I call you if anything goes wrong?”

The doctor hesitates, then concedes. She gets the sense that he only offers because she won’t call. “Have Mao contact me.” 

Mao, she knows, is busy arranging Ivan’s funeral, and coordinating strikes against the Tigers. Vicious has used the attack on Ivan and Spike to call for retaliation, using the psyche of ‘hit back harder, an eye for an eye,’ to his advantage. Mao can’t afford to pull him back. Even now, she can hear the occasional sounds of distant gunfire, springing up and dying down out there in Tharsis city.

Somehow she knows that even if Vicious manages to kill everyone in the rival syndicate, it won’t be over. He’ll turn on the Red Dragons, next. Whatever he is now—he’s not foolish. He’s gathering power. Enough to go after the Van.

Her calls to Vicious go unanswered, leaving her alone to take care of Spike. Lin checks in twice a day, and Mao with the harried concern of a man carving out minutes he can't afford.

“The doctor sent me reports. They look terrible, but he seems optimistic.” It’s a voice only call. She wonders if he’s slept. “I’m asking for your opinion.”

She looks over at Spike, still and asleep on the couch. There’s a rhythm to his breathing. “He’s come around a little. A few times. Not for very long.” 

“He might not remember it.” Mao sighs. “I’d like to be able to talk to him.”

“You’ll get a chance to, Mao.” She’s still got her eyes on Spike, like he might fade away or sit up at any instant. He’s always a surprise like that. “He’s a young, healthy man with willpower.”

“I’ve almost finished arrangements for Ivan’s funeral. Do you think…” Mao hesitates for so long that Julia impolitely assumes the end of his sentence, suspecting he regrets having to ask. 

“Spike will want to be there,” she assures him. “When is it?”

“This Sunday.”

“So soon?” It’s only four days away, less than two weeks since the man’s death. Julia casts her eyes toward Spike on the couch, his brow furrowed but the rest of his body lax. 

“Anastacia can’t stand to let it go on any longer than it has to.” Mao sounds tired, resigned to seeing this through t cost to only himself. “I don't blame her. I’ve only managed to get it put off this long so that I can be sure it’s done right. The autopsy was unenlightening.” 

Julia hadn’t expected it would reveal anything that the surface hadn’t already shown. Ivan was shot to death in a surprise ambush, the same that happened to Spike. It’s only luck that means Spike is alive and Ivan’s dead. A very thin line of differentiation in who took the brunt of the first volley. She’s glad that Spike killed all the men there. It’s not the last ambush the Red Dragons will walk into—this is the world Vicious has built around them. She has her strong suspicions about who arranged the whole thing, but she isn’t ready to voice it yet. 

“I’ll get him on his feet fast enough to be there,” Julia assures Mao. “he’s been out from under a few times—it just hasn’t stuck yet. It will.”

“I hope you know how much I appreciate you.”

Despite everything, it leaves her feeling warm. “I don’t think it’s time for that kind of talk, you know.”

“What kind?”

“It sounds like tying up loose ends before a goodbye.”

“These last few days have assured me that you never can know when that time is coming.” 

She knows he’s right, but she doesn’t like it. It shouldn’t be this way, even for the dangerous lives of Syndicate men. Julia wonders how many before her have felt the same thing. Has anyone human ever lived in a time where they felt secure for longer than a moment?

“I know how much you appreciate me. We all do, Mao.”

She hopes that reassures him some. It’s been hitting him hard—Ivan was more than a coworker or an underling, but a close friend and confidant to Mao. Family. The loss on a job Mao had ordered him to do must feel unbearably heavy, even to a heart hardened by years of Syndicate life.

She hears him take a shaky breath and the humanity of it shouldn’t be startling. She knows this man—better now than when she met him years ago before moving to Alba. She’s spoken to him on the same level open and earnestly for years now. As much as any Capo can be, he’s a good man.

“I’ll call you again soon, Julia. Take care of yourself.” 

When the call ends, she feels alone somehow. She hasn’t been out, except to take down the trash at paranoid hours, for days. It doesn’t seem possible to leave Spike alone yet. He’d come all the way to her , rather than collapsing at the scene or staying with the helicopter, or even seeking out medical help. It’s a strange feeling; to be chosen. It hadn’t felt this way when vicious came back to her alive, so why…?

Julia sets the communicator aside and goes to sit by him, like the proximity will help her understand him. Someone she knows, who intrigues her, but how had they become so close without her realizing it? She hadn’t asked for it, hadn’t been looking for anything but a chance to oblige herself. Or maybe that’s just what she tells herself. She’s loyal to Vicious—they’ve created each other, and she has no strong desire for romance, exactly—but is it that in spite of everything, Spike still has his heart? Is that what she’s been missing? It makes her feel almost vampirical. What can she do about it?

Then, ultimately, selfishly, she decides she doesn’t want to do anything about it. She reaches out with her hand and covers Spike’s.

-

When he comes around again, his body aches all over but it’s the distant feeling of an old injury. He’s warm, and the light in the room is the golden glow of morning sunlight. There’s a pressure against his back that he recognizes as another body—soft curves and comforting closeness. 

He knows this room. As he studies the square of window light projected on the floor, the hazy half-dreaming memory of coming in here washes through his mind. He remembers leaning on Julia—her bracing hand on his chest, her soft voice encouraging in his ear. He shifts—and it pulls at his healing wounds.

“Spike?” Her voice, soft against his skin. “You awake?” 

He turns enough to see her sleep-rumpled and beautiful in her nightgown and the warm morning light. It’s a moment of quiet breathlessness, her blue eyes still soft with sleep when they meet his. It aches through him, somehow worse than his gunshot wounds. It’s like a glimpse into another life, some other time. Something that could have been in a world that wasn’t so hopefully fractured. 

“Spike?” she repeats.

“Yeah,” he says, remembering to answer at last. “Sorry, I was just daydreaming a little.”

“Haven’t you dreamed enough these last few days?”

“Days…?” Has it been that long? “How long was I out?”

“It’s been over a week now,” she says, lifting her arm from around his middle. He only realizes it was there as it moves, and it feels like an anchor has been removed. She brushes her hair back from her face, rubs the back of her wrist over her eyes.

“A week?” It seems impossible. Spike doesn’t have enough memories to add up from the missing time. “Ivan—”

“He didn’t make it,” She says. “His funeral is soon. Mao was hoping you’d feel well enough to make it.”

He can’t imagine not going. It seems real, somehow, but distant. As if Ivan had passed away ages ago. “I’ll be there. How’s Annie?” 

Julia sits all the way up at that, her face worried. “I haven’t spoken to her directly, but—Mao says it’s been rough. I can’t imagine what she’s going through.”

Spike can’t either. As little as he thinks of committed relationships, Annie and Ivan have been together for years. It’s difficult to imagine one without the other, but… that’s the reality of things now. Ivan had warned him in the church—it saved Spike’s life. There but for the grace of god…

“They were waiting for us,” Spike says, remembering. “Somehow they knew we would be there. That a shipment was going to that place.”

Julia looks at him seriously. She believes me. They’ve found some evidence or a lead. Something beyond that gut suspicion he’d had when the Tigers had come roaring machine gun fire out of the depths of the cathedral.

“Where’s Vicious?” He asks, acting on instinct. It comes as a certainty more than a train of thought. Of the people who knew—Well, Vicious wasn’t there. He trusts Mao, knows that despite arming the Red Dragons that Mao is looking for an opportunity to de-escalate the conflict. Vicious, however…

“He’s out marshaling revenge,” Julia admits. The warm light in the room seems to recede from her figure all of as sudden, and Julia tucks her knees up to her chest. “You know how it is out there. Someone has to pay for this attack, just like you and Ivan had to pay for the death of the Tigers elder.”

“I know.” Before now, Spike just accepted that was the way of things. If someone hit you, you hit back harder—sold your life as dearly as possible, if that was what it took. Somehow, that’s changed for him. “Julia. Why are you still with him? Do you love him?”

He knows it’s not romance—or maybe it is, but not the kind they write about. It’s a romantic suffering—a possession of each other.

“I loved him when we were younger.” 

“And now?” It seems desperately important that he knows. The answer could hurt him worse than the ambush. He hadn’t thought that he’d ask before he was sure, but it comes out anyway.

“It’s very hard,” Julia looks at him, her blue eyes seeing right through him; somehow penetrating further into him than anyone else has delved. All the digging he’s done with strangers—people he barely knows, trying to touch some part in his depths that would make him whole, and she’s the one who has been able to see that void the whole time. “I think I’m done loving men who run off with no thought of dying.”

It lances through Spike like an accusation. “There are things worth dying for.”

She looks Spike harshly in the eyes, her attention sharp enough to pierce. The anger is pure and beautiful. “Nothing you’ve experienced yet, Spike Spiegel.”

He reaches for her achingly, because he knows there aren’t words to express the wakening feeling that he is beginning to understand. He cups her cheek, his aches beginning to fade when she doesn’t pull away. There’s a moment where they both hesitate and then Julia reaches for him, with a heavy sigh, relenting from the hard isolation she imposes on herself. She leans over Spike to kiss him, slow and long. 

The light turns grey as they hold each other and draw nearer, Julia straddling Spike’s hips on the bed and fucking him with slow, careful motions, doing the work his battered body is too sore to. They both keep as silent as guilty trespassers, with Spike’s hands feeling shaky and reverent on her skin. Release only builds slowly, Spike’s body almost unwilling to divert the energy from healing. She’s patient and relentless, her soft heat around his cock like a welcome.

Her mouth opens in silence when she comes with his thumb pressing and circling her clit, the back of his knuckles against her soft belly and the coarse hair over her pubic mound tickling with the motions. Afterwards, she sinks down on her elbows over him, and he’s captivated by the feel of her body against his, even with her holding her weight off his wounds.

He touches the curve of her back, reaching up to rub her shoulders through the nightgown. She’d only hiked it up. There’s a feeling of guilt—a certainty that Vicious won’t approve of this. It feels tentative and dangerous—unsteady as Spike’s healing body. They shouldn’t, certainly not behind Vicious’ back given how possessive he is, but it doesn’t feel wrong , either. 

After a long moment, she gets up. In the doorway she pauses, and Spike can see the sweat glistening on the back of her neck. “You aren't going to run off to war now, are you?” 

She doesn’t turn to look at him while she waits for his answer. 

“In the church,” Spike says, confessing now like he never would in a confessional. “All I could think about was seeing you again.”

She doesn’t answer. But over the course of the night, they tangle and chase their pleasure again and again, her touch demanding of him, yet soft. It feels like an acceptance when he enters her; slow and sacred. Every time.

-

Chapter Text

The funeral is a sea of black suits and well-armed men. Everyone turns out for Annie, and the solemn air is absolute and unanimous. She holds resolve on her round face through the service, and next to Mao as his car follows the hearse in the procession. He’s paid to keep the route smooth, and police wait at every intersection between the funeral parlor and cemetery, giving the procession the right of way.

It’s not until they begin to lower the coffin into the ground that Annie’s resolve crumples and tears through. A sob gasps out of her and her eyes well up, and though Mao does his best to steady her as she sobs and her body sags, now that the flood wall has broken in her, the wails come like a flood.

She’s as helpless against her grief as anyone who loses everything is, her voice angry against the lapels of Mao’s carefully starched funeral shirt. “You said we’d get to retire, damn you!”

Her grip on him is enough to shake him with the force of her sobs. She’s a tall, powerful woman and he has to reach up to put his arms around her shoulders.

He has nothing to say. No one but Ivan himself could comfort her. As the last rights are finished, the men break up quickly. Perhaps, Mao thinks, as his collar soaks through with tears, they’re afraid and uncomfortable. Such open grief does not fit into the otherwise simple worldview of Syndicate life. Or maybe they didn’t know Ivan all that well or—they all feel how tempting a target it makes to have so many members gathered in one place. 

The Van, of course, have not come. Mao wonders bitterly if they would even attend if it was one of their own. Maybe they’ve all arranged to die together. It’s a strange idea—they have been alive since before the gate accident and seem to plan to go on living longer than anyone has any right to. 

When the funeral is over, it’s just a small core of dedicated friends that remain. Vicious is somewhere nearby—he’s been using Ivan’s death as a banner flag for his agenda, and he can’t afford not to be here. In Mao’s opinion, he doesn’t sell his stoicism as grief. Certainly, he offers nothing to Annie as Mao does his best to reassure her, with her taller form huddled against his.

There’s no way to nicely disengage from a funeral, but Mao’s schedule continues today, little as he’d like it to. What he wants is to go hold a proper wake in the back of Annie’s shop, drinking cheap convenience store alcohol and playing cards until they all can laugh again. When Julia manages to meet his gaze, she seems to wordlessly understand his need. She steps forward to touch Annie’s shoulders, to take over holding her. He trusts her to take care of Annie.

“I’m not going far,” Mao assures gently, as he unwinds Annie’s strong hands from his shirt. The starched material has crumpled into new creases with the force of her grief, leaving a crumpled impression like ruined earth on tectonic plates. Julia gives him a nod as Annie huddles close to her.

“I won’t leave her,” Julia says. 

Mao scans the few remaining individuals, seeing Spike standing apart. He looks hellishly pale, almost green-skinned and translucent after his ordeal, but he’s standing on his own two feet and leaning on his pride. Mao offers a light for his next cigarette.

Spike doesn’t quite startle but he seems to come out of himself, eyes focusing again as he leans down to light up. He pulls a long drag as he straightens up, the cherry flame flaring up. “It doesn’t seem real.”

To Mao, who’s spent decades of his life in this game now, it’s all too real. “That’s the unfortunate truth of death. It hits as hard no matter when it hits. How are you doing?”

“Better. Your doctor knows his stuff.” Spike breathes smoke out into pale, hazy air in a cloud. “He taught me to fight, you know? Figured I had promise, even though he had no reason to.”

“Seems he was right,” Mao points out. Martian cemeteries are as much stone as possible, doing their best to look like a monument, but little green as is willing to grow in the red, rocky soil. Just enough to cover—patchy and threadbare. Even for the honored dead, the resources it would take to grow anything nonessential are only given begrudgingly. Mao’s eyes find nothing to land on and stay—sliding off of every surface. “ I think he was right.”

Spike gives him a curious look.

“What’s coming is difficult,” Mao stops to light his own cigarette after shaking it free of the pack. “It’s going to take years to sort this out. A war of attrition. Both sides are too strong for a quick, decisive battle—but when everyone’s exhausted and worn thin, there will be an opportunity to make a new foundation.”

Laying bricks over graves, if only the bones can lie easy beneath. If only both sides can eventually realize that there’s only so much blood to bleed—and the Martian soil was already red when humanity got here. It’s a bleak game, a promise of exhaustion and loss, but Mao has enough experience to almost serve as foresight to the far side.

“A foundation for what?”

“Stability.” Mao wishes he were sure it would last. “The world can’t go on like this. I’m looking toward the future, toward one that rewards loyalty with more than inevitability.” 

He looks up at the sky beyond the edge of the dome, and his eyes finally land on something—one bright clean of a closer object in orbit—and hold.

“Yeah?” Spike asks. His voice is soft. The years have begun to polish his brashness off. “Sounds like that’s all just a dream.”

“I’ll need someone beside me. A right-hand man.” Mao looks at Spike to see how he’s taking it. Spike is looking at him with a curious expression on his face, like he’s not sure what he’s hearing.

“I’d like it to be you,” Mao says.

Spike blinks. His first expression isn’t quite a wince. It’s the right reaction. The burden isn’t a light one—and with the increase in wages and power, the freedom has its own restrictions. Spike’s eyes flick toward Vicious. That’s the other issue.

Mao knows Vicious, Julia and Spike are close. He couldn’t put a more specific descriptor on it—he doesn’t care to, so long as they all three do their jobs. He’s never had a full picture of Vicious’ ambitions, but he hopes that by putting Spike at his own side, he’ll be able to pull Vicious to something adjacent to, if not in alignment with the Van’s wishes. It’s a strategically dangerous move, hoping to turn a loose queen around at the back of the chessboard. It won’t go easy. Spike having power that Vicious doesn’t will drive a wedge between them.

“I’d like to see the future you’re picturing,” Spike says. “But I’m barely back on my feet.”

“Take your time,” Mao says. How Spike has matured—learning to slow down before life slams his hell-for-leather pace to a sudden halt. “And get better. I know you’ve been through your fair share. I’m grateful to you.”

Spike glances at him, curious.

“For getting those bastards right away,” Mao says, feeling the grim satisfaction of revenge ringing hollow down into the empty place left by the loss of his friend. “And saving me the trouble of taking out a bounty.”

“It was a matter of survival,” Spike says. He pauses, looking back toward the fresh grave. “And it won’t be the last one.”

-

Vicious sees them leaving together—and a suspicion crosses his face as her eyes meet his, but Julia hasn’t got it in her to play the games it would take to allay his suspicions. She’s made no attempt to hide it, during Spike’s recovery. Hearing the details of the ambush from Spike has only strengthened her theory as to the responsible party.

With the way Mao is looking at Vicious and arranging his pieces on the board, she doesn’t think she’s the only one who has the hunch. She’d like it if she was wrong, but with the look in his eyes as she shows Spike into her car after the funeral, he’s not in the mood to talk.

“He offered me a new position,” Spike admits into the cold atmosphere. It’s cold and rainy, like a funeral would want. In the passenger seat, Spike lights a cigarette.

“Mao?” Julia asks for clarification, just to hear him say it. She knew it was coming. Rushing forward with the finality of a front line advance in combat. “He offered you Ivan’s place.”

Spike turns toward her, and the way his eyes catch in the half-light leaves a strange color in the one she knows is artificial. A glint and reflection—her own face looking back. She turns her eyes back to the road.

“Yeah, he did.” 

“Vicious won’t like it.” Julia doesn’t mean it as a warning.

Spike shows his teeth. “He’d better learn to live with things he doesn’t like.”

He makes the rest of us do that so often, Julia allows. Her hope for him is flickering, but still alive. She wishes—maybe naively—that there’s someway to guide Vicious back to sense. That somehow, she and Spike can reach him. It seems like no matter how far they reach, he’s always just beyond their fingertips.

The promotion is going to make a conflict, no matter what. Vicious wouldn’t target Spike, right? Or—is Mao planning to turn them against each other, using Spike to kill Vicious? If her suspicions are true, it would be fair vengeance for Ivan. A fair punishment for the treason of turning against his own. If the men find out Vicious was behind the ambush at the church, they’ll expect a swift and vindictive retribution.

It settles into her knowledge like a sinking stone into dark waters. She knew Ivan, counted the man as her friend, held his wife at his funeral. And it could have been Spike. Easily. If Vicious was behind it, it’s likely that was his intent. The breadth and width of the coldness in such an action hits her hard enough to make her shiver. It sets inside her like forming ice, hardening her resolve at last.

“Will you take it, Spike?”

It pulls him back from the distance of his thoughts as the streets slide by outside the windows. 

“I don’t know,” Spike says. “I should.”

Julia agrees. The syndicate needs his temperament. He’s not there yet, but Julia sees a forming steadiness. The sort of rock solid certainty of the right course that has served Mao so well in getting the Red Dragon Syndicate into the position of superiority it enjoys today.

“If you do, he’ll come for you.”

Spike’s expression goes a little more firm. “Then I guess I’ll be ready when he does.”

Ahead, her apartment looms out of the dim rainy sky. She can almost feel the finality of what’s coming, like a gentle hand at the back of her neck, pushing her hair against the grain. 

“He won’t give up on his efforts to take over and the Van think they’ve harnessed lightning,” Spike continues. “Maybe we both did, too.”

The cold of the air reaches her as if a draft slides into the car with them. She only feels warm and steady again when Spike reaches out over the center console and takes her hand. 

-

Will you take it?  

The question haunts him for the three days that follow. He knows Julia is far from a cold woman—she still has the vibrancy of life to hum and sing to herself in her apartment. The softness to comfort Annie, warmth when she looks at Mao—or Spike.

Being here, in the middle of this, had left the question cold in her voice. With the certainty that if Spike takes the job, it will pit him against Vicious forever.

As if he hasn’t already made that choice. Spike is certain the ambush at the church had been Vicious’ doing. If he hadn’t ordered it, he made sure the information was in the right hands for it to happen. Ivan’s dead because of him.

Julia had hesitated at the idea. Spike still feels unsure of forcing this to a conclusion that will prove deadly for one of them. He and Vicious have been tangled with their fates intertwined since they first crossed paths. Spike doesn’t love him—hell, he doesn’t like Vicious, most days, but they have a strong connection neither could deny. More and more, Spike’s sure they’ve become each other’s problem since they met. Thrown together by circumstance and then somehow into alignment under each other’s skin. 

Now they’re part of each other, though neither asked for it, and so close they could destroy each other. It’d be like two vipers striking and sinking their fangs into each other in a writhing mass. Maybe Spike’s lucky that before now, all Vicious has done is spit venom.

It’s just that now, if they strike each other, whichever one wins, their coils will squeeze on more than empty space. Maybe Spike will win, but it will cast him into the line of fire of the Van—and how will Julia feel? Can they do this? Fighting the dragon from the inside, while holding its body up—for all the rest of the years of their life?

Two years ago, the thought would have thrilled Spike. A challenge to survive, and nothing to lose or distract him from giving his all and burning up in the attempt. Now, with his body aching and the awareness of Julia moving somewhere in the kitchen up the hall, humming to herself, it only feels like a cold chore. 

She keeps her paperwork arranged at the kitchen table while she does the carefully coded inventory paperwork, the soft tapping of her pen against the table surface. He can’t imagine giving up these simple, quiet moments in trade for more danger.

The plan—he won’t get out without one, no one does—starts to form somewhere behind the ache in his ribs. Between the notes of the old song Julia hums as she works. It feels hasty and clumsy but perhaps it’s within his power to execute, and in this case any sloppy loose ends might work in his favor. He scribbles a note in sloppy handwriting, crosses it all out, throws it away, tries again. Finally, when it feels right enough, he folds it over and over, into something that would fit in a palm.

He picks up his coat to go out, and pauses in the kitchen to watch her with her head bent and eyes trained on the paperwork, but unfocused and distant. Her mind is somewhere else. She looks up as he enters the kitchen, pulling his coat on stiffly. 

“You’re going out?” she asks.

“To see Mao,” Spike says.

She realizes what he means and gets to her feet—not to stop him, but to look him in the eyes. 

“I’m going to take the offer. I’m going to face Vicious.”

Julia looks at him with a cold profoundness of understanding. She knows what he means—that Spike intends to meet this head on and wrestle it to an end.

She stands apart from him, a picture or a statue on the subject of undying and misplaced loyalty. It’s her nature—or her desire—to undo some mistake of hers that she thinks caused Vicious. Julia is as much in his hold as Spike. 

“When this is over,” Spike feels the constriction of bandages around his chest when he breathes in. Slips the piece of paper out of his pocket, a location—a time. “I’m leaving the syndicate.”

“You’ll be killed.”

“I’ll let them think I’m dead.”

It’s the only way out when you’re this deep—letting them think they’ve buried you. “I’ll be waiting at the graveyard. Of course, I’ll be alive.” 

He doesn’t reach for her. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if she doesn’t take his hand. He just holds out the paper toward her.

“I can’t come with you.” It doesn’t sound very sure.

“Come with me,” Spike coaxes. “We’ll leave here. We’ll escape from this world.”

“And then what are we going to do?”

“We’ll live a life of freedom somewhere.” Outside, it’s raining, and the water is running on the window-glass, muting the rest of the world into indistinct softness, like you could reach out and wipe it away before stepping into something you’d never seen before. “Just like watching a dream.”

-

He’s barely out of Mao’s office when the call comes. Spike’s expecting it. He answers, voice only, and puts the communicator up to his ear.

“Spike.” It’s Vicious.

His heart hardens to this. “Yes?”

“Did you seize it?”

It’s such a strange way to ask, but Vicious has always come at things from the side. Never straight on until he was striking for a kill.

“Yes.” There’s no reason to use more words than necessary.

There’s no pause for surprise or congratulations. “I have something for you. At the church.”

Spike knows the one. He’d been there that morning, banking on Vicious’ sense of the dramatic. Laying his own trap in anticipation of this. “Oh yeah? Will it answer some of my questions?”

“Yes.”

The serpent has turned to face him, now. “When?”

“Just come now.”

Spike’s ready for it—all the resolution to see this through worn like a shield under his trench coat. “I’ll be there.”

And then he goes. It’s funny , he thinks as he approaches the hulking gray building with its gleaming windows, his gun hidden in a red rose bouquet. How far any chance of salvation is from this church. He’s ready for all of this to be over, sure that when it’s done—the sounds of gunfire and explosives ringing in his ears, the nearness of bullets whizzing by—this is the only road to freedom. In his mind, Spike is already waiting there, between the graves. Among them, but not in them. 

He and Julia are above the ground, ready to ascend. Even as the number of his enemies start to overwhelm him, when bullets hit their mark and tear through his body, he’s already leaving the atmosphere. Flying above it in the rebuilt Swordfish and ready to leave this cold red rock behind, alone in space. 

He and Julia don’t need it anymore.

-

Chapter Text

The period after turning in his badge is a blur for Jet Black. He doesn’t do anything so immature as to go on a bender, but he does have a brief moment where he considers vigilante justice. The reports of increased violence in Tharsis draw Jet back to a scene of old disgrace. He’d been warned off of the city—the first step down his path to true discovery. Enlightenment had cost him dearly—an arm and a leg, like that old saying—to discover that nothing in the galaxy was free of Syndicate influence.

He doesn’t really have a plan, but Jet has a used ship and a gun in his pocket and no badge—therefore nothing—to lose. At the edge of the city, there’s a river where the runoff collects, flushed out of the streets before running through a purification facility and back into the atmosphere of Tharsis as rainwater. Jet stops on a bridge and watches the flow carrying trash below him. It’s high—the last few days it seems to have rained relentlessly.

A flotsam of used syringes and soda cans float amidst slicks of unidentified oily sludge. It’s funny that the only time the city smells clean is when the rain is falling. Then, when it’s run off the streets, the water that gathers her smells unclean and carries the garbage out of the city. 

And it’s all trash, Jet thinks. Everything humanity makes.

His eyes fall on a dark shape at the edge of the concrete river bank, something big washed up in a heap along one side. There are big, black birds poking around it, investigating the soaked brown heap. It takes Jet longer than he’d like to admit to realize it’s a body.

Instinct compels him to rush over and investigate. The birds shriek at Jet, and surrender their perches only reluctantly as he half-slides down the steep concrete bank to the level just above the waterline. Their wings make dull sounds in the wet air. He holds on with his prosthetic and reaches out. A year earlier he’d have been worried about tampering with evidence. Now, he’s not a cop anymore.

He hauls the body up, the wet scrape of clothes on concrete filling his ears. A thin trickle of surprisingly red blood drips over the edge when Jet gets the body up onto the flat lip of the parallel walkway. 

It’s only when he turns the man over and his eyes move, trying to focus on Jet’s face, that Jet realizes he’s alive. The front of his coat is peppered with bullet holes, bleeding thinly. Jet recognizes the guy—one of the few that got away. Jed had caught him once, flying at a speed that said he didn’t care about his own life.

Doesn’t look like much has changed. What was this guy’s name again?

“Looks like you finally got your man.” The voice is a whisper, exhausted and thin. 

Jet claws for his communicator. “Don’t talk. I’ll get you to a hospital.”

The red-brown eyes land on Jet and finally focus. It’s startling to see someone alive, but with the spark of living gone dead in his eyes. “No hospital.”

Jet hesitates. Even if it’s this man’s wish, he can’t stand by and just watch him die. “What? That’s crazy.”

Unless it’s not. Who knows where the syndicate has eyes these days—and if they’re looking for this guy.

“Just get me off this planet,” the man requests, as if asking for a last meal.

In the years after, Jet couldn’t say why he did it, exactly. Just that something in him felt responsible. Spike felt light when Jet picked him up and carried him back to the ship he’d bought with the last of his savings. 

Maybe because he was the Black Dog and he never let go, no matter how deep his hold would drag him.

-

THE END.

One time, the Cat was not raised by anyone.

He was nobody’s cat.

For the first time, he was his own master.

The Cat liked himself this way the most.

He was already a beautiful tabby cat.

Now of course he became a very strong wild cat.