Xander felt as if someone had taken the cherries off a cop car and strapped them to his face. The lights were smothering and everywhere he turned they just seemed to get closer and brighter. They were such a blazing red that he thought he felt them searing through the protective coating on his eyeballs. Did eyeballs have protective coating? They must. He had poked himself in the eye a hundred times and he wasn't blind yet. And why was he thinking about something so lame, anyway?

It wasn't even his idea to come here. He had followed a bunch of guys he knew from the swim team because he figured it might help him get over Cordelia. They ended up in a warehouse that looked like Frankenstein's Castle melted down and molded into a square. Almost everyone inside was stoned and the only thing of any worth to him were the bottles of Evian they sold at the door. He bought one, took a swig and left it with his friend Gage while he took a leak in the bushes behind the building. When he returned they were giggling like preteens at a Backstreet Boys concert. He took three swigs of his water before the giggling turned into full-blown laughter.

"You didn't," he said. But he could tell they did. "That was a totally 90210 thing to do," he mumbled before he walked away. He was pretty sure that they shouldn't be letting him go walking around on his own, but they didn't make a move to stop him. With friends like those, who needed vampires?

Whatever it was they gave him, now he just had a headache. He had finally willed his teeth to stop chattering and he figured it was time to set up headquarters somewhere. He found a spot on the floor that was relatively vomit-free and slid down the wall until his ass was resting on the concrete. The nervous energy had dwindled down to full-blown lethargy and he closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wall.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there before someone called his name. By the time he got a good look, the person was squatting next to him. Oz.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

Xander smirked. "I was about to ask you the same thing."

Oz shrugged. "One of the guys in my band is after that blond girl."

Xander followed Oz's line of vision and saw his drummer chatting up a girl covered in glitter with a sticker on her cheek. "You mean the one with all the shit on her face?"

Oz nodded. "Apparently he likes people who wear stickers."

Xander raised an eyebrow. "Scratch and sniff?"

Oz shrugged. "I don't think it matters."

"What about the kind you peel off bananas?" Xander laughed loudly at his own joke and ignored it when Oz raised an eyebrow.

They were silent for a minute, watching a hundred pairs of legs move past them. Xander was pretty sure he wasn't stoned anymore. He knew that tomorrow he would be pretty pissed with the lizards from the swim team but at the moment he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Do you actually like it here?" Xander asked.

Oz nodded at the crowd. "I'd rather play strip poker with a Sumo wrestler than listen to another note of this music."

"Charming thought." Xander found the energy to push himself off the floor. He held out his hand to help Oz up and within minutes they had escaped.

They didn't talk much as they walked down the road. Willow was doing the girl thing with Buffy, hard as it was to imagine Buffy working the slumber party circuit. Xander was about to ask where they were going when Oz stopped in front of a small white house covered in chipping paint. "This is my place," Oz said. "Wanna hang here for awhile?"

Xander put his hands in his pockets, pausing for a minute to check out the house. "Is there any trance music or exotic drugs in there?"

Oz shrugged. "Not since yesterday."

"Then I am so there."

Everything inside was dark. Xander had to put out his hand to find the wall in the narrow hallway. He could sense Oz in front of him, a block of body heat moving in the darkness toward what must have been Oz's room.

Xander followed Oz through the bedroom door, lurching forward a little as he tripped over a pair of boots. Then he felt a soft pile under his feet that must have been clothes. Oz clicked on a little light next to his bed that did little more than cast long shadows across the room. Xander looked down and saw that it was clothes. He smiled sheepishly and stepped off.

Oz waved a hand. "Don't worry about it. The place is a mess."

It was a mess, but not uncomfortably so. Xander shoved aside socks and a pair of jeans and laid on the bed, extending his legs and trying to stretch the warehouse out of his system. Oz found a Bush CD in the dark and slid it in his stereo, the little green and red lights jerking back and forth in time to the guitar. Xander's favorite line jumped out at him. Do you love the way you hate? Do you hate the way you feel?

"Good choice," he said, sighing deeply. He was vaguely aware of Oz moving towards him to sit on the bed. Xander froze a little when Oz climbed onto the bed, crawling up Xander's body until their lips met in a warm, liquid kiss. When Oz saw that he wasn't going to be pushed away, he lowered his body and laid on top of him.

Xander wasn't sure what to do. He laid perfectly still, feeling Oz's warm hands run across his arms and stop at his shoulders. Oz pulled his tongue back so they could press their lips together and it gave Xander the perfect opportunity.

"What are you doing?"

Oz stared down at him, his features swimming in and out of focus. "I just want to do this." They were quiet for a minute. Xander felt Oz shiver a little before he said, "Do you want me to get off?"

Xander sighed, feeling those narrow eyes scrutinizing him at close range. "We can do this for a little while."

Oz rolled off, pulling Xander with him until they were both lying sideways. The kiss was urgent now, wet tongues slipping and sliding together until every little touch made Xander's body ache.

From that point, everything went in fast forward. Xander didn't notice the digits on Oz's clock climb and descend again, or the CD click to the end and start over. He figured they were on their eighth round of "Swallowed" by the time he knew that he couldn't hold his orgasm back for one more guitar solo. The kissing had given way to blow jobs. There was nothing strange about having someone give him head, but feeling Oz's cock rest against his tongue was weird and exhilarating at the same time. Now Xander's legs were shaking. His body was wrapped in the plaid sheet on Oz's bed. Oz was lying on his stomach, his face in the pillow and his ass in the air as Xander fucked him with an intensity that would have scared the shit out of Cordelia. Oz hardly made a sound.

Xander dug his fingers into Oz's hip as he tried to will his orgasm away. There was no way that was working. "I have to come," he said through clenched teeth. "I have to."

Oz glanced back at him. "Then do it."

That was all the urging he needed. Xander was sure he woke the neighbors with his long, drawn-out groan as a year's worth of frustration shot out of his body and into the body of his friend. He shook like Jell-O on a cargo train, the anxiety in him subsiding as he felt the rest of his orgasm drain away.

When he was sure it was over he leaned back on his heels, waiting for Oz to roll over and say something. He knew Oz hadn't come, or at least he didn't think he had. After a few seconds of Oz not moving, Xander climbed off the bed to search for his pants. Being naked suddenly felt weird.

Oz rolled over on his side, one idle hand drawing the sheet across him. Xander felt his quiet eyes on him as he got dressed. "I have to go," Xander said. "I didn't even realize what time it was." That was technically true. The alarm clock next to Oz's Halloween mask from Scream said 2:30 a.m.

Xander was fully dressed and ready to bolt when he decided that this was his friend and he had to make this right somehow. He stopped for a second, smiling at Oz as sincerely as possible. "I'll see you tomorrow, bud."

"Not if I see you first."

Xander knew that light-hearted comment was his ticket out of there. Oz wasn't pissed off, he wasn't pissed off and he could write this off as a fucked up thing people did when they drank spiked Evian. He would wait until tomorrow to figure out a way to forget it.