"Wow." Xander tried not to rubberneck -- the phrase probably didn't mean what it meant back home, anyway. Vampires, necks, rubber... It made him think of vampiric condoms, which would be about as useful as turn signals on Anya's car. Still, this place was impressive.

"Yeah, it's big, it's overpriced, it's fancy. Come on!" Spike tried to plow through the crowd, away from the entrance to Ambercrombie's, probably intending to head directly for the collar section. He got about one foot from Xander's side.

Xander smirked. "They're having a sale. You're never gonna make it if you try going through the women's departments."

Spike grumbled as they scanned the crowd for a likely path. "Worse than shopping with Cordelia, this is."

Xander frowned at him, then pointed at an apparently unpopular aisle of women's blouses. "It looks like we might be able to get to the men's section through there." Spike immediately took off, dragging Xander behind him. Xander wasn't sure which he should protest first -- being yanked along like a kid on one of those spiral leash things, or being told he shopped like a girl. "Look, just because I stopped to look at that rack of ties inside the door..."

"Boring. Dress-up clothes. Girl-stuff." Spike looked back at him with a little sniff. "S'pose I should feel lucky you didn't ask me to hold your purse."

Xander rolled his eyes. "You expect me to believe Cordy trusts you with her purse? I think not. Anyway, I was thinking of buying four of those ties."

Spike yanked him a bit further down the aisle, then looked up curiously. That is, he looked up and feigned complete lack of interest, but Xander knew better. "Why four?" he asked, as if the answer would have as much value to him as Angel's explanation of why they shouldn't steal Gunn's truck to go offroading.

"One for each poster of the bed," Xander explained. When Spike's eyebrow began to raise, he added the finishing touch. "They're silk." See, now that was a much better expression. Utterly dumbfangled. Xander grinned and pushed his husband out the end of the aisle -- straight into the women's underwear section.

There he stopped, and felt his face take on an expression much like the one that had been on Spike's. Had been, because now Spike was chortling. "What's the matter, never seen unmentionables, before?"

Xander ignored him, and moved closer to the display of what he realized were corsets. He hesitated to actually touch one, but he found it impossible to believe... "Women actually *wear* these? Are we in the leather, bones, and bondage department?"

"No, dearie, the bondage department is upstairs," said a matronly woman who was passing by, wearing a nametag. She was giving him the same appraising look every vampire in this dimension had given him -- only this time he felt like she was only measuring him for how much commission she'd get if she were nice to him.

"We're just trying to get to the men's department," Xander stammered. He had a horrible feeling she was going to escort them...then *assist* them in trying things on. Hadn't Fairfax recommended a *man* at least, to help them? It was bad enough when female clerks tried to help him buy his underwear. He needed one who reminded him of Willow's mom, helping him buy a velvet collar?

She smiled kindly. "Are you sure you don't want a corset? They're on sale, and I'd be happy to help fit you for one. That model, for instance, is very popular." She pointed to one that had more laces and straps and things Xander couldn't even identify hanging off it than... than anything he'd ever seen in Morrie's. If there'd ever been any doubt in her mind that Xander was human, he was sure there wasn't any now. Shopping and gossiping vamps as far as twenty feet away were glancing over at him -- to see what had caused the sudden rush of blood to one part of his body, Xander assumed. And it wasn't even one of the parts he *liked* having blood collect in.

It didn't help remotely that Spike was looking him up and down, an appraising glint in his eye. "No," Xander said firmly.

"You don't have to be shy, young man. All sorts of people shop in this department, you know. I sold one of these to Oscar Wilde, just last week." When her dimples flashed, she looked less like Willow's mother, and more like Xander's own grandmother, which was not conducive to getting actual words to emerge from his mouth.

Spike, however, came to his rescue, in his own psychotic way. "Oh. Forget it, then. Don't want one." At the saleswoman's look of mild surprise -- she'd obviously noticed Spike's leering appraisal; hell, she'd have to have been blind to miss it -- Spike made a face. "Don't want my pet in anything that great pansy'd wear, do I."

The woman made an obvious mental back-pedal, and Xander took the opportunity to move a few more feet *away* from the corset and towards what he hoped was the men's department. Or shoes. He could deal with shoes.

"Perhaps you'd like to see this style?" she said, and Xander realized she'd turned her attention to Spike. Xander was torn -- go back and rescue his husband, before said dead man bought a corset for Xander, thereby forcing Xander to become a widower on his honeymoon? Or keep going, and pretend he didn't know Spike and didn't know who he was buying presents for.

Or he could veer into the belts and buckles department, which he could now see around the display of black lace and scary things. He left Spike to fend for himself -- who had the wallet here, anyway, smart guy? -- and went to look at the belts. Possibly nicer than ties...not that they couldn't get both. They did have a credit card verified for use in this dimension, after all, even if Spike didn't know anything about it.

Eventually, Spike showed up at his side -- with a shopping basket on one arm, something black and suspiciously corsetlike nestled in the bottom. Xander gave him a Look. "If you even think I'm gonna wear that..."

Spike gave him a Look right back. "Who said it's for you?"

When Spike finished rubbing his head and was about to launch into some pouting complaint about having been whapped, like they both didn't know he got off on it, Xander cut him off. "Who are you buying underwear for, Spike?" He tried to sound as jealous as possible, though anybody for whom Spike was likely to buy something like that would either give Xander hours of amusement as he watched them take their revenge, or they'd accept it graciously, and he and Spike could have hours of amusement imagining them wearing it. No real way to lose -- so the jealousy was just to make Spike wonder if he really was.

"Not gonna tell you, now." Spike stuck out his tongue.

Xander peeked into the basket -- not like he was gonna actually *touch* the thing -- and studied the garment. Black, black and black, with blood red satin laces. He frowned suspiciously at Spike. Then he felt the blood rushing to that other place, the one he liked much more than his own face, as a thought entered his head. The thought looked around, found no company to speak of, and proceeded to set up housekeeping, scrawling pictures of Spike and corsets on the walls of Xander's eyes by way of decoration. "Uh..."

"I figure we can have our own little private screening after we get home," Spike purred. "I'll pick up some fishnets, and some rice we can throw at the screen, and we'll have to clear a space on the living room floor so there's room to do the Time Warp..."

There were fingers snapping in front of Xander's face. He blinked, which cleared at least some of the crayola illustrations from his vision. "Huh?"

"You can be Brad, if y'like..."

Xander tried to remember who Brad was. "Bibble?"

Spike nodded, a serious expression on his face. "You can be Bibble, if you like."

Somehow, Xander managed to get the image out of the front of his brain, and packed near the back with all the others. Two brain cells fired up, and he frowned at Spike. "You're going *right* to the collar department--" which made the image come back, full force, only this time Spike was wearing the corset *and* the collar.

Xander felt his brain melting, and dripping out of his ears. He whimpered. How was this fair? He'd only wanted to enjoy his honeymoon, and here he was in public, totally unable to make Spike look like he did in Xander's head, singing and swaying his hips.

"Xander?" Spike's tone was that usually reserved for those conversations that began 'Did you get another concussion?'

Xander replied by slipping his hand into Spike's free hand, weaving their fingers together, and deciding that Spike, who apparently was capable of speech and therefore thought, could be in charge. Spike could lead him around, and Xander would just be brain-dead.

"Were you gonna buy that belt?" Spike asked, pointing at the one Xander had been fingering when he walked up. Xander managed to nod and make a sound composed almost entirely of consonants. Spike wrapped Xander's free hand around the basket handle, then dropped the belt in.

"No speaking Welsh on our honeymoon," he added sternly before he dragged Xander towards the men's counter at the back.

In the collar section, a youngish-looking guy in shirtsleeves and suspenders with garters around both of his upper arms gave them a polite smile. "Are you being served, sirs?" Xander knew there was supposed to be something funny about that, but his brain wasn't firing rapidly enough for him to remember what.

"Yeah, we'd like to see Mr.... " Spike turned to him. "Xan?"

"Guh?"

"Wotsisface? What's the bloke's name that Fairfax said we should see?"

Something kicked in on instinct in Xander's head, and he felt his mouth slowly forming words. "No, What's the third baseman. Fairfax said we should see Mr. Martin."

"Mr. Martin?" The gentleman's eyebrows rose rapidly, then his face became composed once more. "Of course, sirs. Right this way, please."

Xander let Spike lead, again, trailing along behind as though they were here to get only *him* fitted for a collar. His mutinous brain tried to predict what it would feel like to have a bit of velvet wrapped around his throat, which would then be caressed by Spike's long fingers....

"Watch it!" Spike's sharp tone broke through his reverie, and Xander looked around to find himself walking over the foot of a rack. "Best sit you down in a chair someplace, hadn't I?"

Xander nodded, and Spike looked around, then guided him over to a large, well-stuffed chair sitting beside a display rack of collars. Not just velvet -- there were leather collars, and silk collars, and metal collars, and collars made of things he didn't want to look more closely at. Spike set the basket at Xander's feet, and went to peruse the selections.

He looked quite serious, frowning at one collar, nodding slightly at another. Xander hadn't seen him take a shopping excursion so seriously since they'd gone to pick out wedding rings. Spike looked over at him, sharply. "Xan?"

"Glurble?" he repeated.

"You still with us?"

Xander nodded. "Uh-hunmmmm. With us. Yes."

Somewhere deep in his head, the little guy who paid attention to such things was burying his tiny head in his tiny hands and bewailing the fact that Xander's next line was probably going to be "Tell me about the rabbits, George." Xander blinked. Did he actually care, when the little guy who was holding the crayon had slithered to the front of his head again, and was drawing pictures of Spike wearing that fake barbed-wire collar that was hanging just above his head? At least, Xander hoped it was fake.

"Xan, watch my lips. Do you want me to get a blue one or a red one?" Spike was pointing to his own neck, where Xander obediently looked. He was also enunciating each word slowly and clearly, rather like he was Angel, telling them again why they shouldn't steal Gunn's truck.

"Yes." He tried to figure out why this answer, which he thought was a good one, made Spike look at him funny. There was a scrap of velvet cloth around Spike's neck, and Xander could see the plush, all laying down flat and begging someone to brush it back the other way. Xander reached out and did so, the deep, soft fabric barely catching on the ridges of his fingertips.

"Gaaaaaah," Spike breathed. Xander brought his hand back, and Spike stood there, blinking for a moment. Then he straightened up and turned to someone else. "This one."

Looking over, Xander found they'd been joined by another employee of the store, a man dressed in snazzier clothes than anyone else Xander had seen here, yet. He wasn't wearing a nametag, but he nodded at Spike's direction and moved forward to take the velvet collar. "If sir will allow me to take a measurement, we will have one made up for his Lordship by this evening."

"You're taking it off?" Xander protested, as he saw the man's hands going to his husband's neck.

The man -- Mr. Martin, he presumed -- paused, but only said in a calm tone, "This is the floor model."

"Um, yeah? It fits?" Xander looked at Spike.

The gentleman gaped for a moment, and Xander worried that he was going to swallow his tongue. Finally, he said, "Off the rack?" as if he'd found Spike and Xander tracking demon bantha poo into the dressing room.

Spike just gave him a look. "Yeah, off the rack. He can put me on the rack later, if he likes. Now -- you got one for him? Maybe an inch longer, midnight blue, yea wide..." As Spike described the collar with his fingers, it occurred to Xander that he hadn't even registered the color of Spike's, which was a carmine red that just matched the laces on that thing in the basket that Xander wasn't going to look at or name, even mentally, lest he have to reboot his brain yet again. He was having a hard enough time as it was -- red was definitely Spike's color; blue would just confuse the natives, anyway.

Mr. Martin knelt down, staring at Xander's neck as he reached for the gold-tipped tape measure that he was wearing around his own. After a second, Xander heard a familiar sound -- the building of a growl, low in Spike's throat. "I need to measure him for the collar, sir," Mr. Martin said calmly. Very calmly, for a man with Spike's hand wrapped tightly around the place where his tape measure used to be.

"Then do it," Spike told him, not relaxing his grip.

As the salesman -- or store manager, or whatever he was -- leaned over and brought the tape up to wrap around Xander's neck, nowhere near as tightly as Spike was holding on, Xander blinked. It suddenly dawned on him that this was a vampire with his face within inches of Xander's throat. A not-Spike, not-Angel, not Dru-the-fish-Auntie vampire.

He focused on the grip Spike had on the gentleman vampire's neck. Looked like a nice, solid, grip. Said gentleman moved away a moment later and nodded, still poised and acting as though nothing untoward had occurred. Nothing had, except Xander was surrounded by people who wanted to nibble on him, and he was buying an accessory which would tell them all that only one vampire was so allowed.

"When I was fourteen, the weirdest part of my life was math class, and Dana Miller's short skirts."

Spike blinked, almost completely hiding the worried, bite anyone who comes near you look in his eyes. "What's so weird about a bird wearing a short skirt?"

Xander shook his head. "Dana was a guy."

Spike appeared to consider this revelation for a moment, before asking, "And you chose to share this with me because? Or, er, did you want me to buy a skirt, as well as the corset? Perfectly happy to -- god knows I've got the legs for it."

"No. Um... no. I don't think so. Ask me again later. I meant..." Xander wasn't quite sure what he meant, just that he was looking at Spike with an expression of bewilderment and general confusion that he hadn't felt on his face since the day he'd been standing in the library, where the books live, and had overheard Giles giving Buffy the first of a billion Chosen One speeches.

He'd lived every day with weirder than Dana Miller's skirts, since that afternoon in the library. Gone from finding out vampires were real to helping kill them, to falling in love with one and trying to teach him how to do dishes when they got dirty so they didn't build up in the sink until you ran out of clean forks and the takeout people wouldn't deliver anymore because they were afraid of the sounds coming from your kitchen.

He was also back to speaking Welsh, apparently, because nothing with an identifiable vowel sound was coming out of his mouth. Xander looked up at Spike, to find that there suddenly wasn't very much up to look, as Spike sank to his knees in front of the chair. A long, slim finger reached out and touched Xander's face. "Hey," Spike said softly.

"Grr?" Xander replied. Spike grinned, briefly, before leaning close enough that Xander could see every speck of blue in his eyes. Then he could feel cool, soft lips pressing against his, and for a moment that touch was the only thing he could feel at all.

"Love you," Spike whispered, though he needn't have bothered. Mr. Measuring Tape sniffled, and looked like he wanted to get a tub of frozen chocolate and blood flavoured ice cream. That thought, oddly enough, didn't distract Xander in the least from the man kneeling in front of him, looking up at him with eyes now flecked with as much gold, as blue.

Except for the part where the first attendent-vampire was saying to the second, "Isn't that the most marvelous thing? I couldn't imagine at first why they were *both* getting collars, but, it's just so wonderful. I think I'm going to cry!"

"Your name wouldn't happen to be Mr. Humphries, would it?" Xander asked without looking away from Spike.

"No, it's Spike William Abelard Bloody Harris Wyndham-Pryce Gunn Chase Summers Rosenberg Jones Giles. The first," Spike answered.

"You're planning on there being more of you, not that I was talking to you?" Xander replied.

"I was thinking we could get Gomer to name one of the fry after me," Spike told him, looking as serious as he ever did when they were talking not-pregnant-but-possibly-egg-laying kids who had gotten them into this marriage thing in the first place.

Xander leaned forward and pressed his lips to Spike's, since there wasn't anything he could say that could possibly top the silliness of that remark. The gonna-cry-guy was making awww noises.

Xander looked over, and gave them a smile. "So when will these be ready?"

Mr. Martin showed no signs of having been watching, as he said, "Our tailor shall begin work right away, sirs, and you'll be able to pick them up within the hour. The red collar, of course, will require only a slight adjustment."

Xander was mildly surprised at the short amount of time -- but then again, how hard could it be to cut and hem a piece of velvet? He started to nod, when he realized this meant he and Spike would have to amuse themselves for an hour. At Ambercrombie's. With a credit card billed to home.

"Do you need us here?" he asked, not really knowing what was involved with tailor-made collars. Despite the weird turns his life had taken since he was...three, actually, the first time things started to get bizarre...Xander didn't have much experience with velvet collars and the fitting thereof.

"You're welcome to shop, of course, sirs. We'll need to check the fit of the collars once they're finished."

Xander stood up slowly, though he was reasonably sure he wasn't likely to collapse from the overwhelming must-shag-him-now-ness of the whole thing, anymore. Mr. Martin was re-hanging his tape measure, and looked like he was about to head for the back rooms behind the counter, so Xander, without even thinking, reached out and tapped him on the arm.

Hello, tapping bad-and-unchipped vampire on the arm, his mind tried to tell him. But it was a feeble protest, much like when he was lying in bed in the morning and Spike was tangled up with him until he didn't know whose arms and legs were whose, and his mind was saying 'Work? Don't you need to get up and...' Like it hadn't learned already that no, as a matter of fact, he didn't, not if he didn't want to.

Xander smiled when he realized that at least his forebrain had finally realized -- I'm with Spike, and he won't let anything bad happen to me.

So the dangerous vampire turned to look at him like any employee in a high-class department store once he'd established that, insane or not, Xander and Spike did possess a valid credit card, and said, "Yes, sir?"

"Which way to the postcard section?"

Mr. Martin pointed, and Xander dragged Spike off, this time. "Postcards?" Spike was protesting. "How touristy can you get, Xan?"

"Carla made me promise to send some back to the office. You think I'm gonna argue with her? Now behave," he ordered in his best 'I own this company and you *will* do as I say' voice, which he'd never dare use it on Carla, "or I'll mail you back by Federal Express, and you can explain it to her personally."

He waited for a snarky response from his glurble, but none came. Instead, Xander was getting looked at. He knew this look. Finally Spike said, "Do that again."

Xander rolled his eyes. "I'll talk dirty to you later, back at the hotel. Remember me saying 'Not in public'? I still mean it."

"Xaaaan," his big bad vampire whined. Then Spike looked cute at him. Xander rolled his eyes.

Then he grinned. In his best commanding tone, he said, "Spike, I want you to shop for stationary with me."

Spike blinked, then shook his head. "Naw, not quite right. It's more of the 'I'm not ordering you, I just expect it to be done' tone. Like when you tell Carla that you expect the proofs to be on your desk by Monday -- right before she laughs at you."

"You're critiquing my style?" Xander put an extra note of shock in his tone, noting that Mr. Aren't They Sweet was watching, again.

"Er... If I am, will you..."

"No."

Pout Number 1.25 again, second time today, and Xander firmly shook his head. "No. No and no. You can give me that look all night -- you can even try Number One on me, and the answer's still the same: no. Not until we get back to the hotel." When Spike reacted by slipping into something that really *was* dangerously close to Pout Number One, Xander gave him the sternest look possible, and added, "Do you understand me, young man?" He added a raised eyebrow, to complete the effect.

Spike merely took his hand, and led him towards the stationary section. The pout had been replaced by a truly shit-eating grin, however.

The little guy with the crayon in Xander's head was *writing* on the walls now, and Xander could read it, if he shut his eyes. It said "You not only have to wait around here for an hour before you can get those collars and take Spike back and shag him sillier, but you have to play the Dominant One for that hour, without turning Spike on so much he forces you to drag him kicking and screaming into a fitting room." Some people would have pointed out that there was a contradiction in terms somewhere in there, but those people didn't know Spike, and they certainly weren't married to him.

*****