The Magic Number

by
Witling

Part Nine

Spike left Harris soaking while he took care of more important business. I.e., drinking. The problem with putting a full-grown man into a bath was that sooner or later you'd have to go back and get him out of it, and he was going to be just as naked then as when you put him in. Without thinking too closely about any of it, Spike decided he wanted to be drunk for that part. Drunker. As drunk as he could get, off the diminishing supply of booze in the house.

"Fucking Scoobies," he muttered, stumbling over the carpet on his way back from the liquor cabinet. "Fucking we're-so-good-happy-fluffy-save-the-world fucking Scoobies." That was satisfying, so he said it a few more times, with variations, while channel-surfing. Fucking television. Never anything on. It was dark in the living room now, getting late. Dawn, in LA for the first time ever--how was she doing? Not that he cared, but...maybe he should just call, make sure they'd arrived okay. Tell her to go eat Chinese at Fong's, she'd like it there, the hot hot ginger beef was pretty good--

He'd hauled himself half out of the chair before remembering: the poof. She was staying at the hotel, with Angel and his "team." If he called there was every chance the poof would pick up, and Spike would have to hear his flat American accent and his flat unimpressed tone and his flat-out disapproval, and that would make Spike's brain leap frothing out of his ears and he'd start breaking things. Never failed. Not that he minded breaking the Slayer's things--he could always blame it on Harris--but he didn't need the agita. He subsided into the armchair and glared at the television, fingering the neck of the bottle. Fucking poof.

Half a bottle later, he switched the telly off and sat silently in the darkness, coming to terms with his fate. Upstairs was a wet, mute Scooby. Somehow, that was his responsibility. When he tried to trace the tangled path of his own wanderings, from Drusilla's first kiss to the Slayer's fraying lounger, he couldn't do it. He had the bad feeling that he'd come down in the world.

With a sigh, he stood up and trudged for the stairs. He hadn't heard a thing from up there since he'd come down, which made sense, since Harris wasn't exactly brimming with volition. Please God he hadn't pissed in his own bath, that was all. Spike swigged morosely on the landing, contemplated the last few stairs, wondered what the witches would do if he just left Harris in the tub for seven days, and stumped on up.

It was dark up there, and silent. Well, the tap dripped. Slayer was great at twisting the heads off vamps, but not so good with the plumbing. Spike had a brief, strange sensation, as if he'd put his hand out to pick up something familiar and it hadn't been in its usual place--he realized after a minute that he was missing something. Harris. Actually, Harris's plumbing skills. Then he realized it wasn't the first time he'd felt that. He'd felt it before, putting Harris in the bath, when he'd realized there was nobody left to keep the house from falling down. He paused, swaying. He missed...Harris's plumbing. Huh.

"Definitely getting soft," he muttered, staggering up the last few stairs. "Definitely...damned shame, is what it is..." Down the hall, hang a left, push the door open, and there was the plumber in all his glory. That ought to put a damper on the nostalgia.

Except it didn't. Because the plumber was slumped against the white side of the tub, and his own limbs were white as porcelain, blue-veined and slender. In the darkness you couldn't see the grey in his hair, or the marks on him--he could be a boy, almost. Someone's soft-lipped, black-haired, drifting Shropshire lad. Breathing so gently he almost wasn't at all, and again, somewhere in the back of his mind, Spike had a thought about a minion.

He was drunk, that was all. He was the kind of drunk you only got off two bottles of whiskey and a whole lot of despair. His judgment was, as they said, impaired.

"Come on," he said wearily, sinking down beside the tub and fishing for the stopper. "Let's get you to bed."

Harris opened his eyes and blinked at the ceiling, then at Spike. There was a curve of black hair pressed to his cheek, like a crack in his surface. His expression was mild and interested.

"Bed," Spike said, holding out one hand.

Harris stood up on his own, dripping and apparently not bothered by his own nakedness. Spike handed up a towel. Harris looked at it. Didn't move.

"Oh, for the love of God."

With his temporary sense of relief puddling back into his boots, Spike climbed to his feet. "They didn't have towels where you were, I guess." He waved his hand in a come here gesture, and Harris stepped out of the tub. Spike wrapped the towel around his shoulders like a cape, stuffed the ends into his fists, and gave his back a brisk rub. "There you go, nice and dry. Come on."

Harris followed him down the dark hall to Joyce's room, no questions asked. Come to think of it, a mute minion would be a lot less trouble than one that could talk. Or maybe the vocal cords would regenerate as part of the general affair--that would be a nasty surprise. Turn a mute halfwit so you'd have a handy footstool, end up with a snide, backtalking limpet that plagued you for a hundred years. That was why it was important to think these things through.

There was a clunk behind him, just as he went into Joyce's room. He turned back and saw that Harris had walked into the hall bookcase.

"Sorry." He clicked the light on, and Harris jumped, a look of sudden panic on his face, the towel clutched tight. "Shit, sorry." He clicked it off again, and Harris stumbled sideways into the wall. "Fuck, look, just come here." He got a hand under the man's arm and guided him forward. "Sorry, forgot about all this." He waved a hand vaguely at the darkness, then remembered that Harris couldn't see that either. "Sorry."

The moon was in the bedroom window, which made it light enough in there for Harris to see outlines, at least. The witches' bed was made up neatly with fresh sheets--smell of fabric softener, bleach, a faint lingering undertone of women having sex, no complaints there. Harris's cot was set up at the foot of it. It was a little camping bed they'd pulled down from the attic and made up with some old spare sheets of Dawn's. Blue flannel, with little animals on them. On top of that, an unzipped sleeping bag. Harris had kicked that half off the cot, and ditched the pillow as well. Overall, it looked like a dog's bed. But that, apparently, was what he liked.

"Right, down you go." Spike maneuvered Harris around so that the backs of his knees touched the cot, then pressed on his shoulder. Harris sat. Spike waited, and when Harris didn't fold, added: "Go to sleep."

Harris sat motionless, his hair still dripping down his neck, and Spike swallowed a fresh dose of irritation. "Lie down, will you?"

Harris didn't move. He didn't seem comatose, the way he had been earlier, but he also didn't seem inclined to do what he was told. He just sat there, as if Spike hadn't said anything. Spike gave it a minute, in case there was some kind of temporal rift between his mouth and Harris's ear, then reached out and pushed Harris over. Harris slumped onto his side with a creak of rusting cot springs. His feet were still on the floor, but strictly speaking, he was sort of lying down.

"Good. Great. Now...sleep." Spike turned and started for the door, rubbing the back of his neck to get the frustration out. Behind him, the springs creaked. He turned back; Harris was sitting up, still clutching his towel cape, staring at him. "Lie down."

Nothing. Spike tensed, then forced himself to relax. "Look, it's late, you're tired. Time for all good Scoobies to go to sleep, right?"

Harris just sat there. Little red ants of irritation marched across Spike's neck and temples, planting territorial flags along the way. "Lie down."

Nothing. He walked back to the cot; Harris stared up at him with those dark, silent eyes. He wasn't terrified, he wasn't comatose, he was just...not doing what he was told. Spike put out a finger and pushed him over onto his side again. Obligingly, he slumped.

"You going to stay put?" Spike took a step back; Harris watched him with horizontal neutrality. Another step, then another, and then one more--and Harris sat up. Spike ground his teeth together.

"Look, it's bloody naptime, all right? Time for you to go to sleep and me to go get drunker, and--" He broke off, wondering how he could have been so stupid. "No, I'll tell you what, let's have a drink together. How about that?" He rooted in his pockets and pulled out the little amber bottle. "Nice drink of...whatever the fuck this is. Ought to knock you right out."

There was a tooth glass in the bathroom; he went and got it, ignoring the fact that Harris got up and followed in silence. "Here, this is the stuff..." It smelled less spicy in the bottle, and how much had she said to put in the water? Three drops? Five? One? He couldn't remember, so he waved the dropper in the general direction of the glass and called it good. "Here, drink this."

Harris was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, and Spike reached without thinking to put the glass to his mouth. His eyes shot wide open and he stumbled back, lost his footing, and landed on his ass on the carpet. From there he scrambled backward on heels and hands, naked and crablike and wheezing.

Spike stood where he was, glass still extended, processing.

When Harris reached the head of the stairs, he stopped crabbing and got carefully to his feet. One hand on the bannister for balance, his head tipped, listening. His sides were going in and out like bellows, and he was making that high-pitched whistling sound, like someone sucking air through a straw.

"Right," Spike said quietly, putting the glass back on the sink. "I forgot, you don't like people messing with your mouth."

Harris flinched at the sound of Spike's voice, but held his ground. Spike sat down on the edge of the tub and massaged his temples.

For a few minutes, neither of them did anything particularly useful. Slowly, Harris stopped making the whistling sound. Spike looked out the bathroom window and thought about all the other places he could be right now. In the Tube, choosing dinner from among the straphangers. In Marrakesh, smoking high-quality dope. In a dank subbasement of a disused glass factory, chained to a wall while Angelus took the skin off his back with a cat o'nine and a potato peeler.

It was good to remember that things could be worse.

"Sorry about that," he said finally, when he realized that his cigarettes were downstairs and that sooner or later he'd have to go get them. "I didn't realize that feeding you dinner off a silver spoon was all right, but handing you a glass of water was bad and wrong." Tone, he reminded himself. Harris might not get the words, but he got the tone. You had to try not to sound too pissed off, no matter how much you wanted to separate him from his spine. "Anything else you'd like me to know?"

Harris adjusted his grip on the bannister and said nothing.

"You weren't really all there before, I guess." Spike stood up, picked up the glass of water, and collected Harris's towel off the floor. "And now you are, again. Lucky me."

He reached for the light switch, then remembered to say, "Watch your eyes." For all the good it would do.

It didn't do much; he flicked the light on, and Harris blinked and winced and squinted like he hadn't seen it coming, which he hadn't, because apparently he didn't speak much English anymore. Spike stayed where he was, glass and towel in hand, waiting for Harris to get used to it. While he waited he considered the long scars down the man's sides and arms. Whip marks. Still a puzzle.

When Harris was sufficiently recovered to blink at him with some kind of equanimity, Spike held up the water glass. "This is for you."

Harris just stood there. Spike slung the towel over his shoulder and started toward the stairs. Harris tensed, lowered his head in that bullish submission pose, but didn't move. When he was close enough, Spike held the glass out. "Drink this."

Harris's eyes flicked left and right along the carpet, as if he were looking for the trapdoor to open up for his great escape...then took the glass. His fingers were bigger than Spike's. The glass looked small in his hand.

"Go on," Spike said, when he hesitated. He cut a quick glance up to Spike's face, hardly long enough to evaluate whatever he was seeing there, then drank.

"I bloody hope it works," Spike said, watching Harris's throat move. "Because I swear to God, if it's seven days of this I'm going to need a lot more booze than I've got."

Part Ten

It worked. Sort of. Twenty minutes after drinking the water, Harris drifted in a waking doze, his face slack and all his movements slowed to quarter-speed. He followed Spike back downstairs and collapsed on the sofa, his face turned to the telly but his eyelids so low they were almost closed. Somewhere in there, Harris pupils glittered like black glass. Somewhere beyond that, Harris brain lay submerged like a mastadon in tar.

"Witches mix a good roofie," Spike noted, studying Harris briefly before going back to the wasteland of the television listings.

They were stuck in a trough of late-night rubbish, none of it bad enough to be really interesting, and after a while he fell asleep himself. He woke up with a start when something landed on the roof.

He sat straight up and stared at the ceiling, supersonic vampire senses deployed--then heard a wheezy grunt behind him and realized that it hadn't been the roof after all. Harris had fallen off the sofa.

He was lying on the carpet, staring around with an expression of surprise and dismay. Spike sighed and relaxed back into his chair.

"Bloody idiot."

Harris didn't answer, of course. He didn't seem to notice the comment at all, in fact--after a few seconds he pushed himself cautiously to his feet and started for the kitchen. He had some trouble walking straight. He was still naked.

"Where are you going?"

The twin moons of Harris's albino ass cheeks disappeared into the darkness of the kitchen. Spike waited warily. Just as he was starting to relax again, he heard the faint metallic scrabbling of a hand at the door chain.

"Fuck."

He got up, clamped a hand to his forehead for the ice pick that immediately impaled his brain, and went into the kitchen. Harris was at the door, messing with the lock.

"Cut that out." Spike stood still a minute, letting his brain pound, then went to the sink and drew a glass of water. "Stop it, will you? Go back to sleep." The clock on the microwave read 3:45.

Harris didn't stop pawing, like a cat that refused to listen when you told it, well, anything. Spike drank some water, then put the glass down and walked over. Before he was even halfway there, he knew Harris wasn't awake.

He can't sleep all by himself, he has nightmares. Red had said that, a million years ago when she'd walked him through his new job as Harris's keeper. And apparently it was true, because Harris was giving off a sleepy low-level adrenaline cloud, a smell like licking a battery. Spike's nose wrinkled.

"Just...go back to bed." He reached out, caught hold of Harris's shoulder, and jumped back when Harris spun around. They'd already done this dance once, out in the garden, and he didn't need another punch in the face. But Harris wasn't in a punching mood. He stared at Spike with wide, fear-blackened eyes for a few long seconds, then blinked, visibly shook himself, and floated up the last few inches to break the surface of sleep.

"You awake now?" Spike kept his hands to himself, watching Harris look around. Troubled expression, where the hell am I? expression. "You're in the kitchen." That seemed too vague, so he added, "Slayer's house. Slayer's kitchen."

Harris sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and turned the same look on Spike. Now, the translation was clearly, Who the hell are you?

"I'm..." Spike sighed and massaged his eyelids. "I'm your good friend Spike. My job's to walk around after you with a folded newspaper and a spray bottle." He gave Harris a smile that was mostly a sneer. "Been doing that all day already, and I'm fucking tired and fucking drunk, and please just go to fucking bed. All right?"

Harris stood there, considering. His eyes drifted away from Spike and off towards the sink. Spike turned to look--his glass of water.

"You want a drink?" He walked back and lifted the glass. "You want some water?"

Like a zombie, Harris took a step forward. Then he stopped. Spike raised the glass to his lips, sipped, and smiled. "Mmm. Water. Want some?"

He kept the glass raised, and Harris came stumbling after it, all the way back to the living room. At the couch, Spike handed it over. Harris drank it noisily, spilling a little down his front. Spike tried not to notice its progress towards Harris's trouserlessness. The television was showing some kind of local fishing program. Cable access. Christ.

"Good. Now go back to sleep." Spike gathered up the telly schedule and considered the booze that was left to him. He had almost a whole week left here, and he wasn't sure he could leave Xander alone in the house to get more--he should ease up. He sighed and flipped pages, then noticed that Harris was still standing beside the sofa, staring at him.

"What?"

He has nightmares, but he's okay if there's someone in the bed.

They stood there in silence, stalemated. Harris's lips were still wet. His fingers played nervously at the rim of the glass.

Through the shrieking of the four thousand infuriated baboons inside his skull, Spike said slowly, "Do you want to sleep upstairs?"

Harris's eyes flickered. Yes.

"In your own bed?"

Yes.

Spike waved a regal hand. "Right then. Off you go."

Harris's eyes widened slightly, and the baboons started pummeling and eating each other. Spike tried killing Harris with his brain. No luck.

It was amazing how irritating silence could be. It wasn't more than a few seconds before Spike heard himself say, "What if I walk you up there? That make you happy?"

Harris didn't seem to know what to make of that--he rubbed his jaw carefully, his eyes still on Spike's face as if he were waiting for the subtitles to show up. Spike sighed and dropped the schedule.

"Come on."

He trudged up the stairs without bothering to look back. He could hear Harris's bare feet following along behind, docile as a lamb now that he was getting what he wanted.

"Only poofs need to be put to bed," he narrated glumly, rounding the top of the stairs. "Sad, really. Full-grown semi-sentient thing like you." At the door to Harris's room, he stopped and made an ushering gesture. "In you go."

In Harris went, without a second look. Spike briefly entertained a fantasy of slamming the door and nailing it shut. Instead, he hovered in the gloom of the hallway and waited. Sure enough, Harris didn't lie down on his cot right away, but turned back to face the door.

"I'm not sleeping with you."

At the sound of Spike's voice, Harris shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, and scratched his head. Like a big, naked monkey.

"I'm coming in there until you fall asleep, and then I'm going to leave, so when you wake up you'll be alone and terrified. Sound all right?"

Harris didn't move until Spike crossed the threshold; then he slumped down on his cot and melted into the blankets. His breathing slowed, his heartbeat quieted.

"I'm only toying with you," Spike said, easing himself onto the witches' bed. It was soft and the blankets smelled good. The room was dark. He lay down on his back and laced his fingers over his belly, staring up at the ceiling. As soon as the Scoobies got back, he was going to LA. Going to pay a little visit to Angel and his bloody team. Maybe call in a little of what they owed him for this. He could get a flat. Dawn could visit...

"He keeps singing 'Blister in the Sun,'" Willow said, turning to frown at them over her shoulder. "That's not the way to make a cat yawn."

They both turned to watch him laugh, and he noticed that the chains on his wrists were tearing long red wounds in his skin, and then someone knocked on the door and it was Harris riding an elephant, with oompah music in the background, and the elephant could fly.

He flipped over into consciousness without knowing why. It was dark, the room was silent. He was...in the witches' bed. He'd fallen asleep there. He was lying on his back on top of the blankets, his arms up over his head in an attitude of surrender, all his clothes still on. He wasn't quite conscious enough to feel the state of his head, but he was receiving shadowy communications, whispers along the line, telling him that when he did finally break that seal, there would be no beauty in the revelation. His mouth tasted like cat shit.

Why was he awake?

He rolled his head to one side and noticed that he wasn't alone in the bed. Harris was lying next to him, curled in the other direction with a foot or two of mattress between them. In the darkness, the scars on his back made an interesting pattern, like a series of attempted sketches that had been vigorously crossed out. He was asleep, breathing quietly.

Spike blinked slowly. He considered lifting his left arm and poking Harris in the shoulder, telling him to get out. Then he considered lifting his right leg and getting out on his own side of the bed. Then he fell asleep again.

When he woke up again it was still dark, but a few things had changed. There was a warm body tucked along the length of his, a warm heavy arm circling his waist. He was lying on his side now, and there was hot, rapid breath on the back of his neck. Harris was lying behind him, gasping and shoving, and the zip of Spike's jeans was open. His belt was undone, and his shirt had been pulled up a few inches. His dick was out. Harris was jerking him off.

It all hit him in less than a couple of seconds, intermingled with a half-memory of dreamed oompah and gigantic fishes, and with the realization that he was urgently, frantically hard. Harris's hand was hot and fast, and Spike rode hips-first into it without a second thought, closing his eyes right after he'd opened them, and grabbing a fistful of blanket to add leverage. He could feel Harris's dick shoving into the small of his back, blunt needy stabs that made him jerk even harder into Harris's fist. They were both gasping. The headboard banged. Then Harris buried his forehead in the blanket, snapped his teeth, and soaked the back of Spike's shirt in a series of warm, wet pulses.

His grip didn't loosen, and in three, four, five more thrusts, Spike came too. It was white-hot and partially paralyzing. He heard himself make a sound like a man being gutted.

He drifted slowly back down, or up. Harris lay breathing into the blanket for a minute or so. Spike lay trying to feel his feet.

Then Harris rolled back onto his side, and his breath was hot on the nape of Spike's neck again. He disengaged his hand gently from Spike's cock, wiped off in a desultory way on the top blanket, and rolled over onto his back. Spike licked his lips and glanced down at the mess on the blanket in front of him.

He was still trying to decide what to say when he realized Harris had fallen asleep.

He woke up for the millionth time in pale gloom. It was morning outside, or maybe afternoon. He felt dead. The bed was cold and empty except for him, curled up flat under the blankets like a hibernating snake. Still wearing all his clothes, still innocent as a babe if you overlooked the fact that his jeans were wide open and the back of his shirt was stuck to his skin.

He lay for a few minutes, mostly brain-dead.

It had been a really good orgasm.

Eventually he had to form a plan, or at least get out of bed. He was relieved to be alone for this part of things, and it only took a few seconds of actual thought to reach a decision: deny everything. He couldn't quite believe any of it had happened anyway. Harris was catatonic, imbecilic, traumatized, and a berk. Harris had not given him a fantastically-timed handjob in the middle of the night, with no explanation or apology. Harris had not basically rubbed off on his back. Harris was American. Americans weren't like the French; they didn't do that kind of thing.

Picking his shirt uneasily away from his back, he headed down the hall to the bathroom.

The shirt was a loss, so he dumped it in the hamper for the Slayer to discover months from now, ran a hot washcloth over his face and under his arms and in the general, unexamined direction of his crotch, then loitered a little in the hallway, reading the spines of Joyce's self-help manuals. He couldn't hear anything downstairs except the television, which he'd left on last night. That realization brought on a memory of Harris scrabbling at the lock on the back door, which in turn dropped a lead balloon into his gut. Harris could be halfway to Modesto by now. Or, more likely, roadkill.

He came down the stairs at a lively jog, ready to see the front door standing wide open and a deathly spill of sunshine on the hall carpet. Things were still dim and shuttered. He took a quick stock of the bottles on the carpet, already heading through to the kitchen. Where Harris was sitting at the table in a T-shirt and pajama pants, a bowl of cornflakes deteriorating at his elbow, the previous day's paper open in front of him.

Spike stopped short in the doorway, and tried to look casual. "Still working on those funnies, I see."

The look Harris gave him was mild, but more alert than any he'd dredged up the day before. Not catatonic anymore, that was good. Not dope-addled, not panicky. There wasn't any particle physics going on in there, but at least he seemed to know where he was. All good, in terms of keeping Spike's anatomy intact and mold-free.

Also, they were both now wearing clothes. That was good.

"Right," Spike said, suddenly uncomfortable in his shirtlessness. "I'm just going to..." He made a vague backward gesture with one hand, then turned and started for the living room. Something niggled in a corner of his mind. It was one thing to decide to play it as if nothing had happened; it was another to find that Harris had beat him to it. There'd been no flicker in Harris's expression. Not a single spark of recognition or regret. With faint surprise, Spike realized he'd sort of been looking forward to taking that particular piss, possibly for years to come.

He hoisted bottles in front of the television, absent-mindedly gauging their contents even though the smell of the whiskey made his nostrils curl. The television yapped about laundry soap until he muted it with his toe. Then he realized that Harris was standing in the kitchen doorway.

"Yeah?" He turned, a bottle dangling belligerently from each hand, expecting to see the flood tide of American heterosexual panic.

Harris was yawning, scratching his belly with one hand. In the other, he held a milk carton. Spike stared at it. "What?"

Harris gave him a look of sleepy condescension, and shook the carton. Empty.

"We're out of milk?" Spike asked.

Harris walked over, held out the carton, and waited until Spike juggled the bottles and took it from him. Empty, yeah.

Message delivered, Harris walked past Spike, went up the stairs, and disappeared back to bed.