The Magic Number

by
Witling

Part Seven

After about ten minutes, he had to admit that the situation was maybe a bit worse than he'd thought. Harris sat at the table where Spike had put him, staring down at the bowl of cereal in front of him as if it held the key to the ages. Spike had carefully fitted the spoon into his hot, dry hand, and he was still holding it. Hadn't used it, didn't seem inclined to. The cornflakes were past soggy.

"Look," Spike said, sitting across from him in a backwards-turned chair, his forearms propped to look casual. "Nummy cornflakes, full of vitamins. Your favourite, remember?"

Harris just sat there, tuned to some other station. There was a sense of absentia about him that hadn't been there before. Even when he'd been unresponsive, ignoring them, he'd still been at home. Pootling around in his own inner world, maybe, but he'd come if you called him. Now he'd just...gone.

Spike took a quick swig off the bottle and rubbed his lips. "Come on, Harris. Stop being such a bloody pathetic...look, you punched me, all right? Can't go punching people and expect them not to do a thing about it, can you?" Nervously, he flicked the cereal box with his fingertips. "Not like I bit you or anything. Still got the chip, remember?"

Except Harris probably didn't remember the chip, because he didn't remember much of anything. Too easy to forget that, because after all he looked the same, he was the same approximate shape and size as the irritating wanker he'd once been. Inside, now, he was a stranger. A stranger who couldn't talk or write or eat a bowl of cornflakes without help.

"What you need," Spike said, standing up decisively, if a little unsteadily, "is a proper meal. Cornflakes, that's bloody ridiculous. Need...some kind of proper, um, three veg. Meat and three. Fix you right up." He started for the freezer, trying foggily to remember what Americans actually ate. The Slayer just ordered pizzas all the time, maybe that was the thing to do. But pizza wasn't healthy, Dawn had printed out the nutritional table for Domino's and left it on the kitchen table during one of those sisterly cold wars, and it looked like a lingering death. Besides, if he used the money they'd left for pizza, he wouldn't be able to buy blood and booze with it.

"Salisbury steak. Wonderful." It looked revolting on the box, like someone had thrown up on it. He ripped it open and chucked it into the microwave. "Look at this, cooking for you. I'd call that pretty bloody nice of me, wouldn't you?"

He wasn't really expecting responses anymore, and he wasn't disappointed.

The dish came out warped and plasticky, filmed with grease. Probably should have read the directions on the side. He gave it a doubtful look, then turned it all out onto a plate and exchanged it for the bowl of cornflakes. "There you go. Tuck in."

Harris just sat there. After a minute Spike fished a fork out of the dish drainer and eased it into Harris's fist in place of the cereal spoon. He stood back and waited.

Nothing.

"Shit." Where were his cigarettes?

He stalked off the living room and found them, then came back smoking anxiously. Harris hadn't moved. On the wall behind him, the calendar loomed. Shit.

"Look, I get it, I was a bit rough and I'm sorry, I won't do it again. Totally out of line, really. Don't know what I was thinking. I'm very sorry."

Harris sat staring at the plate, steam rising into his face. Spike chewed off a thumbnail, spat it aside, then hauled a chair over next to him and straddled it. Leaned in confidentially.

"See, the thing is, I wasn't serious before, about Red not coming back. Or about her being mad at you. She's just gone for a week, she had to go do something very important and she said, she specifically said, to take good care of you and I'm doing that, aren't I?" He waved his cigarette at the plate of brown meat and grey vegetables. "Nice dinner, better than the Slayer makes, right?" It smelled like carrion; he was having to remember not to breathe. "They're all coming back, not to worry, just try...just have a bite--" He reached out in frustration and took hold of Harris's hand. Lifted it, shovelled a little of some kind of vegetable onto the fork, and raised it to Harris's mouth. "Eat that, will you?"

Harris opened his mouth mechanically, let Spike tip the fork in, and chewed. After a few seconds, he swallowed. Totally automatic, no expression on his face.

"Great, great job." His nervousness on the increase, Spike went for a second mouthful. "And that." Harris repeated without variation, his gaze hovering loosely somewhere around the middle of the table, his free hand in his lap. "Fantastic. Have you back watching Teletubbies in no time. Now you go ahead, keep doing that." Spike let go of Harris's hand, which sank immediately back down onto his knee and stayed there. "Fuck."

They sat in silence. Spike studied Harris's profile for any change. Nothing but a drop of gravy on his lip. Absently, Spike reached out and thumbed it away.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing," he said, dragging hard on his cigarette and reaching for Harris's fork hand again. "I'm not having my balls cut off and fed to me by those women on your account." With renewed energy, he forked up a mouthful of the meat. "Have a go at that, will you?"

Obediently, Harris ate it. And the next bite, and the next, and the next. Spike kept feeding him, one eye on the calendar, half his brain making rapid calculations. Seven days. No problem. He hoped.

Part Eight

What did you do with a comatose Scooby who didn't talk or fight or even blink much, who'd do whatever you wanted as long as you guided his hand? Once upon a time the answers would have been manifold and a lot more fun; post-chip, they were depressing.

"Nice Cheez Nips," Spike said wearily, navigating another semi-stale Nip between Xander's unresisting lips. "Oh look, they're going to find out Jack's not a poof, what will the girls do, better hide in the--oh, fuck it." He dropped his head onto the back of the couch, while the laugh track roared. "Let them stake me. I don't bloody care."

Harris didn't give any sign of having heard, which sort of took the drama out of things. Spike closed his eyes and listened to the telly for a few minutes, then sighed and sat up again.

"You used to like these things," he said, studying the Nips box critically. "Better than sex, you said. Well, you were drunk. And that mantis bint had just tried to rip your head off, which may have skewed things. But still." He sniffed the Nips: egregious faux-cheese tang. "God, you people are disgusting."

With a sigh, he tossed the box aside and stood up. "Come on, then. Telly and vomit crackers aren't doing it, let's try something else." Harris didn't move until Spike put a hand directly into his field of vision, prompting. Then he stood up. Zombie eyes, dangling hands. Waiting.

A little unnerved, Spike looked him over. "You're covered in cheese." Somehow, the process of Nips consumption had resulted in a drift of bright orange flakes down Harris's front, like nuclear dandruff. Spike brushed him down, noticing when his palm bumped ribs and hipbones under the baggy sweats. A bowl of cereal a day didn't build a man up, apparently. "And you're bloody skinny for a man who sits around on his arse all day."

Nips dust successfully transferred to the floor, they stood facing each other in silence. Harris's eyes were on the floor, or possibly on Spike's boots. Spike found himself fingering his cigarette packet neurotically.

"Um." What would Angelus do? No, wait, that was the wrong role model. What would someone less evil do? Spike didn't know a lot of non-evil people, apart from the Scoobies, i.e., Harris himself. That was an interesting question. What would Harris do, if he weren't a doorstop? Probably ask Red for instructions. Which led straight back to the original problem of Red and Glinda and a mold-covered cock for Spike.

"Right, okay, um..." With a new sense of urgency, if not direction, he pulled a new cigarette from the packet and lit it. "Dawn's not evil. I mean, she's got potential--clever little monkey, does a nice job on her sister's big fat head already, but that's not the point, the point is--" He dragged deeply and blew smoke into Harris's face. "Sorry. The point is, what would Dawn do?"

Dawn wouldn't have scared Harris into a coma in the first place, a little voice whispered, but he ignored it. Dawn would...well, she'd take care of the git. She was always at him, petting his hair and his shoulders, they couldn't sit down to watch South Park without her rubbing Harris's neck or painting his fingernails or something equally irritating. The thing was, Dawn liked Harris. Or she liked who he used to be. She was...nice to him. And as much as it burned to admit it, that was what had made the most difference in him since he'd reappeared. Niceness.

Spike fought down a wave of bitter nausea, and dragged hard on the cigarette. Dammit. Moldy cock. Christ. Fuck. Moldy, though. Bits falling right off. God damn the Scoobies, each and every one of them.

"I...like you," he muttered, staring at the floor. No sound but the bloody chatty telly. "No, really. I think you're...swell. Super. You're a bang-up chap, Harris. You're--" He broke off, looking around. "Hang on a minute." The whiskey bottle was nestled in the embrace of the armchair; he scooped it up and drank long, fast, and deep. When his head was reeling and his throat felt cauterized, he blinked the tears from his eyes and faced Harris again. "You're, um, nice. And you take a good punch, and you're entertaining sometimes, when you're not being boring, and you've got a devious streak in you, I like that." That was true, he realized. Harris could occasionally get a beady look in his eye that ran counter to the general Scooby credo of Oh No, We'd Never, That Would Be Wrong. If you turned your head and squinted, you could almost see how he wouldn't make a bad minion.

"You're all right when you're drunk," Spike went on, warming up a little. "And you don't whinge. Much. You told the Slayer to fuck off that one time. Oh, and you hate Angel. That's a plus." Without thinking, he held the whiskey bottle out for Harris to take. Instinctive gesture of comradery, thwarted by Harris's complete failure to notice. "You make a nice paperweight."

They stood there. Spike thumbed his lip and ran silently through the list again. Had he mentioned taking a good punch? Damn. "I'm not very good at this." He found belligerence again in another slug of whiskey. "Because I'm bloody evil, and you're bloody good, and I'm supposed to be ripping your throat out, not building your esteem." He went to light a cigarette, and found he already had one going. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

Harris didn't want anything, apparently. Spike stared at him, tempted to punch him just to see what would happen. A bruise would heal up in seven days, right? Witches wouldn't see it. But what if it didn't, or they came back early, or... He was headed for eunuch territory. Or worse. No law saying that they had to stop once they'd made his peter drop off. They could keep going--God knew what they could manage that would be worse than that, but they were lesbian witches, they could probably think of something.

The realization that he'd done something extremely, debilitatingly stupid sank into his brain suddenly, and with all the weight of three liters of Cutty Sark and a pint of tepid pig's blood.

"I'm going to throw up," he said, and made for the loo.

Thankfully, his stomach was just having him on. He rinsed his face with cold water, then sat down on the edge of the tub, dripping wantonly. The Slayer's pink bathmat smirked at him.

"I fucking hate you all," he said conversationally, then reached over and started the hot water running.

It only took a minute to get Harris up the stairs; he went where you drove him, after all. At the top, he veered automatically for his room, or the witches' room, or Joyce's room, whatever you wanted to call it. That was a good sign, Spike decided--it meant there was still somebody at home in there. Somewhere.

"Not yet," he said, snagging the back of Harris's collar with one finger. "Come on, this way."

Harris paused, then redirected and padded obediently down to the bathroom, where the tub was still filling.

Over that threshold, there were new levels of discomfort to be explored.

"Right," Spike said, realizing too late that he'd left the bottle downstairs. "Off with the clothes, then." Fond hope. Harris stood staring blankly at the hand towels, the ones with the little goats on them. Why goats? Never mind. "Come on, get undressed." Spike made a monkeyish sort of gesture with both hands around his torso, intending to convey: Shirt off. Your job. I'll be over here, reading the paper. "Come on, you know, take your--oh, fuck."

Harris didn't resist when Spike reached over, grabbed the hem of his shirt, and hauled it up over his head. "Arms up, git." God, he was a bony bastard. He lifted his arms, and the veins showed blue under his skin like some Roman's marble bathhouse boy. Then the shirt caught around his head and he started to topple.

"Careful." Spike caught him with a forearm, as impersonally as he could, but he still got a whiff of the sleeping drug, and of hot Harris blood. Unfair. Mouth watering, he pulled the shirt off the rest of the way and chucked it into the corner. "Don't want you cracking your head open on my watch. Wait till the others get back. Let them skewer the Watcher for it."

Harris blinked. His hair was pulled up in a couple of dark licks, which made the grey show more. Mentally, Spike added You're older to the list of things he sort of liked about Harris now. Grey in his chest hair. A lot of bad days had been taken out of Harris's hide, a lot of bits had been cut away, and that made him more likeable.

Not likeable enough that the next step was anything Spike wanted to put in his diary, though. "Any chance of you taking your trousers down on your own?" Harris drifted in oblivion. With a sigh, Spike hooked a thumb in the waistband of his sweat pants. "Don't say anything, all right? I want this to be special." He hauled them down, and there was skinny, naked Harris teetering in front of him, about to topple over again. Spike caught him by the hip and shoulder. Again, there was the cruel tease: warm skin and the smell of stoned, unresisting prey. Fucking chip. "Not to worry, women don't care about size. Much."

Lifting Harris's legs by the ankles got him into the tub, and a push on his shoulder got him to sit down. Belatedly, Spike thought to test the water. "Too hot?" He cranked on the cold, which made the pipes bang alarmingly. "Shit, hold on a minute--" Fiddling with the taps kept him busy until the tub was full. Time was, the plumbing would have been Harris's job, and all the taps would have worked fine. You keep the house from falling down, Spike added to the list. Then he amended it: Kept.

"Right, okay." He sat back at last, his shirt front soaked, one finger smarting where he'd pinched it in the faucet threads. "There you go. Nice hot bath, that's lovely, isn't it?"

Harris was slumped against the porcelain, his knees drawn up and to the side, arms over his chest. Foetal position. His eyelids had sunk, and he was watching Spike steadily from beneath them. Eye contact. That was something.

"Hello," Spike said, wiping his hands dry.

Harris didn't say anything, of course. After a few seconds his eyelids dropped all the way, and his head tipped sideways against the edge of the tub. Down and out.

"Is that all it takes?" With a wary sense of accomplishment, Spike eased back onto the balls of his feet, then stood up. "I don't know about you, but I could use a smoke and a drink."

Harris lay still, submerged and pinkening. Spike made his escape.