*****

The Bronze, on a Saturday night.

The opening band was still playing, and there wasn't much of a crowd yet, just a couple of groups gathering at the tables in the back, a few people scattered around the edges of the dance-floor. And one boy, down near the near the front of the stage, right in front of the big speakers. He was dancing intently; not wildly, but *focussed*, his whole body moving in perfect time to the rhythm. His white T-shirt had a V of sweat down the back already, and his black pants rode low on his hips. When he raised his arm to sweep his long dark hair back from his face, pale skin showed between T-shirt and waistband.

Xander caught his breath.

Another boy, off to his left, sitting by himself at a table, baby-sitting the drinks while his friends danced. He had broad slavic cheekbones, full lips, an oddly delicate chin. His hair had been cut so short it was nearly shaved, and he seemed self-conscious about it, kept touching the bare skin at the back of his neck, running his hand over the curve of his own skull. Xander wondered what it felt like, if his fine sandy hair was bristly against his palm or soft like fur... the boy had elegant hands, long strong fingers.

He could let himself notice these things now. Not that he *hadn't* noticed before. But before, noticing his own noticing had opened such a pit of fear and shame and panic in his belly that it had been too dangerous to think about, and he had noticed sideways, from the corner of his eye, with the edge of his mind.

But now it was safe. Now he could look all he wanted. Look around him at all the men and boys here. See their shoulders and strong necks, their asses, the tight-packed fronts of their jeans. He could *notice* this wealth of male flesh, take it all in and let it build hotly inside of him.

And then take it home to Giles. Give it all up to him, all the blunt-nailed hands and broad shoulders, all the asses and imagined cocks, the hot pulse of pleasure they fed in him. And Giles would take it from him, and keep him safe. Keep it all under control. Because otherwise, it was ... it was good, yes, this freedom and this pleasure. Frighteningly good, the things he could feel inside himself now, all this want and hunger and ... and there were places it could take him where he didn't think he wanted to go, not yet. He wasn't quite ready to be free.

And Giles was just dangerous enough to keep him safe.

It wasn't something he could explain to the others, nothing he could put into words, but he couldn't deny the truth he felt inside himself. Giles scared him a little. Not just the streak of Ripper-violence that was closer to the surface than he would ever have guessed, though that could be alarming enough. What was more frightening was the power Giles had over him. The way he could, with just a tone of voice, make Xander feel like nothing, nothing at all, small and insignificant as a speck of dust. He thought sometimes that if Giles really *wanted* to hurt him he could take him apart without even lifting a finger. It made Xander angry sometimes, that power, angry with all his years of tamped-down fury, so angry he scared *himself* a little.

But that was what made the rest of it so sweet. So achingly, blindingly necessary, all the other times when Giles held him tight, touched him so lovingly. *Fucked* him, with so much attention and care, until Xander was limp and sweaty and all the fear and noise inside his head was quiet.

And the other thing too. The way Giles didn't mock or laugh when what Xander needed was...

He didn't like to think about it too much, really. It was *embarrassing*, like the worst of the stories in those fateful magazines that brought him here. And sure, he'd read those stories, sometimes more than once. But until that one night he'd never thought about trying to make it real.

They'd fought that night. A real fight, hot and loud and furious, and Xander had said some things that had made Giles' head snap back as if he'd slapped him. And somehow that sight had just made Xander angrier, and he'd stormed out of the house and gone to the Bronze, rage in a tight hard knot inside of him that wouldn't go away. He'd tried - danced until his shirt was soaked with sweat. Ignored his usual limit and drank until Willow started shooting him concerned little glances. But none of it had helped, just winding him tighter and tighter. And then one of the boys he'd been watching caught his gaze and held it, and for the first time he hadn't looked away.

They'd ended up in the alleyway outside, exchanging energetic, untender kisses as they fumbled their pants open and jerked each other off. It had been quick and dirty and shamefully exciting, and Xander had come in brief minutes, making the other boy laugh breathlessly and pump harder into his fist. Afterwards he'd cuffed Xander companionably on the shoulder, saying, "Catch you later," and strolled back into the club. Xander, still leaning weakly against the grubby wall, had felt suddenly lost and empty and vaguely sick. He'd left the alley and started back towards Giles' without even going back inside for his jacket.

He'd climbed into the shower when he got home and stayed there a long time, but his hands were still shaking when he turned off the water. Naked, he'd walked to the bed and stopped beside it, staring down at Giles' sleeping form and the empty place next to him, and for the life of him he hadn't been able to take that last step and crawl into the bed.

He'd dropped to his knees. "Giles?" he'd said, a little desperately, "Giles?"

Giles had jerked awake and stared at him. Concern on his face first, and then, looking at Xander, the Ripper-gleam rising in his eyes, always closer to the surface at night. "Oh my," he finally said, voice utterly grave, "You've been misbehaving, haven't you? I suppose we'll have to do something about that."

Xander had nodded, his heart in his throat, and Giles, in an unexpectedly fluid movement, had swung his legs over the side of the bed and hauled Xander up across his lap, belly-down, ass in the air. It had been ridiculous, he'd known how ridiculous, but neither one of them had laughed. Then Giles's hand had come down hard across his ass and this was no game, it came down hard and *hurt*.

He didn't know how many blows it took before he started to cry, but he hadn't tried to stop himself, humiliation and pain taking him apart but all of it so *right* somehow. And finally Giles was just stroking him, hands gentle where his flesh burned and smarted, and Xander had drawn a shaky breath and realised he was hard as steel.

"Fuck me?" he'd said to Giles. And Giles had. Then held him tight and brushed the sweaty hair back off his face and told him how good he was, how strong and brave, and Xander had drunk it in like water in the desert and slept as sweetly as a child.

They never talk about it, he and Giles. But it seems like Giles knows when he needs it. And sometimes, during those gasping, bucking, spiralling moments afterwards when Giles is thrusting into him, Xander almost lets himself say it. Silently mouthing the word where Giles can't see. "Daddy..."

And maybe Giles can't see it, but he does what needs to be done. Giles punishes him for it and forgives him for it and holds him tight and smiles at him, gently, in the morning.

============================

Giles recognises the look he sees in Xander's eyes some nights. More than recognises it. *Remembers* it, what that look felt like from the inside.

Remembers the loneliness.

Though at the time he hadn't even known what he was feeling. He'd been younger than Xander is now, of course, but it had never even occurred to him that he *could* be lonely. There'd been hundreds of boys at his school. Dozens of them in his House alone, his narrow cot just one in the long row in his dormitory. Boys all around him, an echoing racket of them in the dining hall, a constant fidget and rustle of them at assembly and chapel, a slippery, shrieking, sniggering mass of them around him in the showers and change rooms. If anyone had questioned him, he would have said that what he truly longed for was a little solitude, a moment or two to himself.

He hadn't longed for friends. In fact he'd felt something close to contempt for most of the other boys, with all their dirty jokes, their school-boy crushes and homesick tears. He'd never understood the desolation of that homesickness. He might have wished for his own solitary room at home from time to time, but it was never with any particular melancholy. The school was, if anything, less strict than his father, and he'd been kept too busy to feel sorry for himself. The work was interesting enough, and his father, mindful of his future duties, had signed him up for extra lessons - ancient languages with Donnelly, a stocky, sad-eyed Irishman; fencing with Smithson, a supercilious junior athletics master whom Giles had politely loathed. And of course the occult, his instructor in that subject the senior history master, who would lock his study door and uncloak for Giles a shelf of ancient leather-bound books that few others ever got the chance to see. He simply hadn't been aware that there was something he was missing.

Then one summer term ...

He would never have expected it. Aitken was a sweet-natured blond boy a year Giles' junior, and truth be told Giles had never paid him much notice - he wasn't one of the brightest of boys, or even the most lovely. But one evening Giles had found himself in the showers next to Aitken, and he'd looked over and seen him tilting his head back into the spray, eyes closed and vulnerable, and ...

And a sudden wave of heat had moved through him with a force that literally made him stagger, his knees going weak while his cock swelled helplessly.

He'd turned away, grabbed his towel and robe, and skulked out of the showers as inconspicuously as he could, appalled at himself, wondering if anyone - if Aitken - had noticed. And for a day or two nothing had happened. Then he'd gone out collecting samples for a botany review, and as he crouched over a small patch of Galium Aparine a pair of feet that he'd known right away were Aitken's had appeared in front of him. He'd looked up, and Aitken had smiled, cocked his head at the copse of trees next to them, and held out his hand. And what had followed had been clumsy and awkward and wonderful.

For about a month they'd done it whenever they could, rubbing each other nearly raw in the cricket shed, the bushes behind the library, the change-rooms of the pool. Giles had been shocked at himself. He'd never thought that his body could dominate his mind that way. Thoughts of Aitken intruded whenever he tried to study or write. Sometimes a mere glimpse of Aitken in the halls was enough sometimes to send him hurrying away somewhere private. The hours he spent away from him seemed to slow to a crawl. If he'd read it in a book he would have thought the whole thing funny and slightly pathetic. But it hadn't been a book, and he hadn't had the slightest idea of how to deal with it.

Looking back he thinks that he'd shocked poor Aitken a bit too - he'd probably expected nothing more than a quick wank in the woods, and eventually he'd started to get restless and uneasy at Giles' intensity, the way he could spend a quarter of an hour at a time simply contemplating the fine, sandy-blond hair in Aitken's underarms, or the texture of his small pink nipples.

They'd been caught eventually, of course. Secrets were never kept for long at school, and in his preoccupation Giles had lost all sense of discretion. He'd talked Aitken out to the bathing pool one night, with vague romantic notions of seeing him naked in the moonlight, and Robertson, one of the House prefects, had swaggered in at a particularly embarrassing moment, a malicious grin on his face. "Don't let me stop you, gentlemen," he'd said, "your bums won't be up to such exertions for some time when I'm through with you, so you may as well finish what you started."

Back in his study, Robertson had caned Giles first, ten hard strokes across his buttocks while Aitken watched, eyes wide with fear. Then he'd sent Giles back to the dorm. The next day, in the showers, there'd been no cane marks on Aitken's body, and he wouldn't look at Giles at all.

And Giles had never meant to tell anyone. But that afternoon he'd had a lesson with Mr. Donnelly, and ... maybe it was the sadness in the man's eyes. Maybe the fact that, though his sumerian was flawless, he spoke english with a heavy irish brogue that was a cause for mockery amongst the boys and masters alike. Or maybe it was just the way that Donnelly had peered at him with what looked like real concern and said, "Are you all right, Giles? I've never seen you so fidgety."

"I was caned, sir," he'd said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

Donnelly, rather than looking disapproving, had simply said "Hardly the sort of thing you make a habit of. What have you been up to?"

Giles had tried to smile ruefully, but to his own horror the smile had fallen apart half-way through and he'd felt tears well in his eyes. Under Donnelly's gentle brown-eyed gaze he'd ended up spilling the whole sad tale, surprising himself with the intensity of the loss that he felt.

Donnelly had handed him a handkerchief and placed one large, warm hand on the back of his neck, saying, "Poor child. You're sent away to this great barn of a place for years on end and then they punish you for wanting a bit of human touch." And there was such compassion in his voice that Giles had had to choke back a fresh wave of tears.

"Stay right there," commanded Donnelly, and disappeared for a few moments into the depths of his rooms, returning with a small tin of salve. "I can't do much to mend your heart, boy, but I might be able to alleviate your seat a little. I can give this to you to take with you, or do you want me to - " he gestured delicately.

Wordlessly Giles had nodded. Donnelly had got him to lie face-down on the scuffed chesterfield at the back of his study, then lowered his pants to just below his buttocks. Big fingers gentle, he had smoothed cool salve onto the welts the cane had left...

It had made Giles shiver, the careful touch and the coolness against the burning welts as he lay there, bare-arsed. Donnelly had kept talking gently as he spread the salve, inconsequential things, his tone warm, and Giles had never been so grateful for anything as he was for the simple kindness in the man's voice. And he'd wanted...

He hadn't even known what he'd wanted. He'd wanted Donnelly to slide his hand between his legs and touch him. Wanted him to put his hand on the back of his neck again and tell him that everything was going to be all right. Wanted to climb into his lap and press his face to his chest and be held and rocked like a much younger child.

Finally Donnelly had finished, and said, "I'm just going to wash my hands now," discreetly leaving Giles alone to pull his pants back on and try to hide his erection.

The rest of that term had been hellish. It was as if the loss of Aitken had opened the door to a lifetime's worth of loneliness, not just the crowded loneliness of the school, but the unguessed at loneliness of his home, the long silent corridors and his parents travelling or busy at watcher business. He started waking up in the middle of the night with an ache in his chest so sharp he went to Matron about it, afraid that he was dying. She'd listened to his complaints, looked him over, and finally said, "You're not dying, Rupert. You're just homesick."

She'd offered him cocoa and biscuits as a remedy, as if he were still in the junior school, and he'd fled in embarrassment, knowing that if he was homesick, it wasn't for any home he'd ever actually known...

And on top of everything else, Robertson made him the darling of the prefects cane for the rest of the term, watching him vigilantly for the slightest of infractions. And after a while Giles had come to almost welcome it. It felt... appropriate. Seemed to focus all his pain and shame and, however briefly, purge it from him. And also...

Also because he could, sometimes, go to Donnelly again afterwards. Not every time. He was shy about it, cautious, afraid that if he asked this of him once too often Donnelly would send him on his way. But when he grew brave or desperate enough, he'd go to him again, and Donnelly would lay him out on the couch and with his big gentle hands smooth the cool salve onto him. "Robertson's got it in for you this term," he'd said once, a question in his voice, and Giles had just shrugged. He was afraid that asking anything more might threaten the delicate thing that was happening between them, the comfort he took from Donnelly's hands. He wonders, now, if Donnelly had seen the need in his eyes as clearly as he can see it in Xander's.

Nothing else had ever happened between them. He'd found out, many years later, that Donnelly had lost his wife and son in a car accident just before he came to the school. He'd felt a little ashamed then, that his own pain and need had blinded him to the depth of Donnelly's own sadness. But he wonders, now, if there had been a comfort in it for Donnelly as well, the way there was for him with Xander...

He has no idea if what he's doing with Xander is the right thing to do, or if he's just damaging him further. But when he touches Xander's young man's body he can feel it: the child still far too close to the surface; the homesickness that has nothing to do with his actual home; and the inarticulate shame that Xander feels over both. And on the nights when he lets it happen, and holds Xander afterwards, limp and tear-stained in his arms, he tells himself that he can feel that homesick boy grow up a little more each time.

End.