The Magic Number

by
Witling

Part Eleven

"Shit. Hang on a mo." Spike left his singles crumpled on the counter and walked back to the cooler. He grabbed a gallon of milk, defiantly didn't check the best-by date, and schlepped it up to the counter. Pilar hesitated. "Just bloody ring it up, all right?"

"Yes, fine." She made a calm down, weirdo gesture with her hands and started hitting buttons on the till. "You...drink milk?"

"It's for--" Spike hesitated. He hadn't been about to tell the truth, but he also wasn't sure exactly what his planned lie had been. "Kittens. For the kittens."

Pilar's face brightened. "You have kittens?"

"Yeah. Won 'em at poker. Gotta feed 'em for a bit, till they get bigger."

"How many kittens?"

He considered. "Four, five. Dunno."

"Will you keep them?"

"Till I eat 'em, sure."

There was a pause. Pilar's expression seemed to have crumpled slightly. It gave him a sense of satisfaction, of things being right with the world. He gathered up his cigarettes, beer, and milk, and raised a hand in cheery farewell.

"Ta then."

She gave him a minute wave in response, just a weak curl of her fingers. The bell dinged behind him.

He made it back to the house without any further demoralizing encounters, and with an even greater sense of having come out on top despite the odds. He had almost two hundred dollars in his pocket, donated without strings by the witches and the Slayer. Well, without strings if you didn't count the fact that they expected him to spend it on Harris. Which was laughable. He had cigarettes and whiskey and a week-old copy of the Daily Mail, from the only decent newsagent in town. He'd lured Harris out of his coma, and he didn't intend to put him into another one. And he'd had a pretty decent hand job, too.

Sometimes, life was little short of miraculous. He practically skipped up the front steps.

"Honey, I'm home!" He kicked the front door closed behind him and swung his bags onto the hall table. He could hear the television still playing in the living room, and he put his head through the doorway. Harris was still sitting in the armchair, right where Spike had tied him. "Miss me?"

Harris gave him a sleepy sideways look. It was some women's movie on the telly--something with cancer in it. Exactly the kind of thing that Harris would have hated if he'd had half a brain cell left. Spike grinned.

"There are times," he said, pulling the cigarettes out of the bag and tearing away the paper, "when it seems like life's got it in for me. The wheelchair--that was a low point." He fished a packet out of the carton, and chucked the carton onto the couch. "Getting turned in the first place was a real kick in the goolies, I don't mind telling you. First little while, I thought I'd go insane. Then, that bloody basement--" He flipped a cigarette between his lips and sparked the Zippo, pausing to point at Harris for emphasis. Harris watched the flame. "Tied to a lounger in your smelly basement, watching Captain Scarlet and listening to your parents come to blows...I tell you, I thought about staking myself. Well, I thought about staking you more, but I was very depressed." He blew out a column of smoke, and flipped the lighter closed. "Now, though."

The pause drew out. He watched a minute or two of the telly, conscious of Harris's dope-heavy eyes still on him. Some middle-aged woman was weeping in a doctor's office. Looked a bit like Joyce, actually.

"Now," he said sharply, coming back to himself and stabbing a finger in Harris's direction again, "I know it all evens out. Quid pro quo, right?"

Except the quo in question was watching him with eyes like the Buddha on opium, gentle and deep. Yes? the eyes said. Are we not all brothers beneath our skin?

"Keep the Ravi Shankar crap to yourself," Spike said, leaning over and jerking the end of the rope to undo the knots. "You start folding little paper peace cranes, I'm lowering your dosage."

Harris watched the ropes fall away without rancor, and Spike went off to the kitchen to put the milk in the fridge and heat up some blood. That didn't take long, and he was alone in the kitchen, so after a while he wandered back to the living room. Harris was still watching the bints smile bravely through tears. Godawful. Spike settled into the couch with a cigarette and a mug of blood, for ease of heckling.

But the one who looked like Joyce came back on and he wasn't in the mood to make fun of her, so he ended up just drinking his blood and smoking and actually watching it. It took him a few minutes to find the plot. Brave young newlywed with brain cancer, essentially. Tough but loving mother, namby-pamby husband, golden retriever. Why in God's name did people watch these things?

He sat watching, smoking cigarette after cigarette, while the chemo failed and the dog visited the hospital ward. In the armchair, Harris watched too. Neither of them said anything.

They were almost at the end--the namby-pamby husband had said his goodbyes, and it was down to the real stuff, the mother-daughter stuff--when the phone rang. Spike jumped, sloshing blood on his jeans, and grabbed the receiver off the side table.

"Hello?"

"Spike?" It was Dawn. He sucked hard on his cigarette and butted it, glancing at Harris. Who was sitting wide-eyed in his chair, as if he were watching Spike battle an orc.

"Hi, it's me. Dawn. What's wrong with your voice?"

"What--nothing." He sat up straight and frowned. "Nothing, I'm fine. How're things?"

"Fine. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine. Listen, everything okay there? No Glorificus?" For some reason he felt like he had to be formal, militaristic, abrupt. "Angel there? Everyone all right?"

"We're fine. They're downstairs, I was just going to bed and I wanted to say hi. See how things are going there."

"They're fine."

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"How are you?" he asked again, and winced.

"You're not drunk, are you?" She sounded worried, and he imagined how fast the Slayer would jump on that faint whiff of wrongdoing. By all rights he should be drunk, but in point of fact he wasn't, and he mildly resented the implication.

"'course not. You get drunk when you babysit people's brats?"

"I'm fifteen, Spike. I can't drink."

"Anyone can drink. Not that you should. Anyway, I'm not drunk, I'm just--what's Angel doing about Glorificus?"

She sighed, giving in to the segue. "Not much. So far we're just laying low, which means I'm not allowed to go see Melrose Place or Rodeo Drive or Sunset Boulevard or anywhere at all. I've never been to L.A. in my life, and now I'm here, and I'm going to die without seeing any famous people."

"Don't say that," he said automatically. "You're not going to die."

"Everybody dies," she said, deploying full adolescent angst. It meant she was feeling better, less frightened, and so it cheered him up a bit. "Anyway, I'm not supposed to be calling so I have to go in a second, but I had to see how you guys were doing."

"We're fine."

"You said that. How's Xander?"

"He's fine." He glanced at Harris again. Still there, still stoned. "He's watching telly."

"He doesn't like violent stuff."

"I know, bit."

"He likes being sung to."

"I'm not singing, bit."

"How's his sign language?"

"Um..." He'd completely forgotten about the sign language. "It's great."

"You're not doing it, are you?"

"Listen, when are the witches getting back, exactly?"

"They said a week, but I don't know." She muffled the receiver for a few seconds, then came back in a whisper. "I have to go. But I'm going to send something for Xander's birthday, okay? Tell him I'm going to send him something."

"His--" Spike gave Xander a hopeless look. "Bit's sending you something for your birthday."

"It's Thursday," Dawn whispered. "Will you do something nice for him? I'll try to call but I may not be able to, and it's his birthday, could you just, I don't know, be nice to him or something? Just for Thursday?"

"The witches get back Sunday, right?"

"Please, Spike?"

"I am nice to him, bit."

"I know, but--" She disappeared again, then came back in a rapid-fire whisper. "Just be nice, please, and I miss you both and I love you and tell him that please I really appreciate it Spike thanks a lot, bye."

Dial tone.

He sat staring at the receiver, feeling troubled. In the armchair, the source of all his troubles blinked slowly and wetted his lips with his tongue.

"Happy bloody birthday," Spike said, and hung up.

They watched telly all night and went to bed when the sky turned blue. Harris seemed ready-made for the nocturnal life, padding up the stairs into the dim upper story without complaint. He settled easily in his cot, under his blue flannel sheets and rumpled sleeping bag. Spike, in turn, dropped onto the witches' bed and lay staring at the ceiling, his hands laced behind his head. The air was still and heavy up there, and it smelled of women and sleeping drugs.

Harris slept for an hour or two, twitching occasionally like a dog chasing rabbits. Around ten he started sweating. Half an hour after that he sat bolt upright and almost fell off the cot.

Spike stayed where he was, just shifting his head a little so he could follow events.

Harris sat there in the darkness, breathing hard and looking around for traces of the nightmare. It took him almost five minutes to convince himself it was gone, it wasn't stuffed in the corner or under the armoire. Finally he wiped his hands over his face, screwed his palms into his eyes, swallowed, and turned to crawl up into Spike's bed.

Spike let him do it. For one thing, Harris was warm and he didn't smell bad. A little sweaty, but not bad. He was clean enough. His skin radiated heat beneath the soft cotton of his T-shirt and pajama pants. He lay on his belly, very close, his hip and shoulder against Spike's. His breath was warm on Spike's neck. It was invasive. Unselfconscious. Fascinating.

Spike lay still and let Harris do his thing, his middle-of-the-day nightmare thing, his new abdication of social norms. Did he do this with the witches? He must have tried it, which would explain the strange, shifty look on Red's face when she said Tara always spelled him to sleep. Be a damper on your romantic life, having a git like Harris worming his way into your bed every night. If you were a lesbian, at least.

If you weren't, though.

Spike closed his eyes and drifted, telling himself he wasn't that desperate yet, a hand job was a hand job and who cared whose hand it was, but this was Harris after all, and you had to remember your dignity sooner or later. Besides, he was tired. He needed sleep.

He woke up from a half-doze because Harris's hand was stroking his cock through his jeans. It felt incredible. It felt like he hadn't been touched in years, like every needle-point nerve ending in his dick was standing up and shouting approval and encouragement. He was getting hard. No, wait, he was already there. The jeans were chafing. He slipped a hand down his belly and helped out with the logistics.

Harris didn't freak out, didn't withdraw when their fingers brushed. He was preoccupied, panting against Spike's neck, thrusting awkwardly into the mattress and the side of Spike's leg. His palm on Spike's skin was hot and dry and efficient. He was good at this, Spike realized. Not at making it last, but at doing it now. Quietly and quickly, two corks popping at once. Even as he was thinking this, Harris gave a strange guttural clicking sound and grabbed Spike's hip, shoved against his side, and came.

God, he was fast.

He was equitable, too. His hand stripped Spike's cock, hard and fast and quiet except for the sound of abused denim. Spike turned toward him, got a hand on his shoulder, and pressed down. It gave him something to grip, something to jerk against. He could smell come and blood and sweat, and he replayed the moment of Harris releasing, losing control for those few seconds and stuttering physically, spilling into his pants. That was enough.

Spike came with a slippery alleluia of raunch tumbling through his mind's eye, all the things he didn't get to think about very much anymore. All the knees he'd hoisted, all the wet lips he'd kissed, every time he'd seen Angelus's cock sucked. It all merged with Xander Harris helplessly thrusting into the sheets, getting himself off. Making that sharp little sound when it finally overcame him. The sound that meant--this, here, now. God. Fuck.

"God," Spike gasped, trying to screw himself farther into Harris's fist. "Fuck."

It lasted longer than it usually did, and left him dazed and stupid. Very stupid. Their faces were inches apart on the mattress. They were both gasping. It felt natural, like scratching an itch. Spike turned his head the crucial three degrees and put his lips to Harris's.

For a brief, silent moment they were kissing.

Then Harris shoved him hard, and suddenly they weren't lying close together anymore. Suddenly personal space was a concern again, and Harris was rolling out of the bed on the far side, one hand over his mouth and the other waving blindly in the darkness. Trying to get away. Spike sat up, baffled.

"What the hell's wrong with you?"

Harris tripped and dropped from sight. Spike craned his neck, then got off the bed on his own side and walked around it. Harris was lying on the carpet with his hand still clamped over his mouth, his eyes closed. A big wet mark on the crotch of his pajamas pants.

"What?" He looked pathetic like that, and Spike crouched down and touched his shoulder gently. Didn't flinch, didn't open his eyes. "Should have told me you're not that kind of bloke, that's all."

Harris swallowed hard, but that was it. Oh, fuck. His mouth. Didn't like anything near his mouth.

Spike sighed and sat down tailor-style on the carpet. "Look, I'm sorry, I forgot. Can't blame me, can you? Temporary insanity, you know how it is."

Nothing.

"So I guess a blow job is out of the question."

He sat there long enough, with no company except for Harris's fast, unhappy heartbeat, that he started to worry that Harris was incommunicado again. This was not something he wanted to explain to the witches. Maybe he should draw another bath--that had been popular last time. But a bath meant a hassle.

He likes being sung to, Dawn had said. She'd sung a lot of Avril Lavigne, if he remembered right.

"I'm not singing," he said grumpily, and prodded Harris in the rib. "I'm not going to--look, it's not a big deal, it's just a kiss, never happened, Russians do it all the time." No response. "I don't know about you, but I could use a kip." Nothing.

He sat staring glumly down at Harris's hand, tight over his mouth like a child playing at Speak no evil.

"Oh, all right."

Softly, he began to croon. "Don't shoot shoot shoot that thing at me. Don't shoot shoot shoot that thing at me..."

Harris's eyes opened, and his hand slipped off his mouth. It was a quarter-time Muzak version, but still. Spike sang it most of the way through, mimed the drums, and jumped to his feet.

"You ever tell anyone I did that, I'll rip your tongue out." He paused. "Er, sorry."

Harris slept the rest of the day on the cot, apparently nightmare-free. Spike dreamed fitfully about finding giant birthday presents on the front step, and opening them to find lizards, puppies, frilly undergarments, and, shortly before dusk, a large damp zucchini.

Part Twelve

The really irritating thing about the Slayer being multiply mortgaged and deep in the red was that it meant basic cable. Basic cable meant no dogs. It meant Passions only came on once a day, and there was no entertainingly irrational Chinese-language channel. It meant that when the knock came on the front door at half past two in the morning, they were slumped in front of another women's weeper, this time with Mercedes Ruehl. Spike straightened up in a hurry, reaching for the remote. Harris gave the front door a dreamy, hopeful look.

"Stay here." Visitors at two am was not a good thing, he reflected, muting the set and wondering where his shoes were. Visitors at two am could in fact be a very bad thing. So far, he hadn't actually entertained the notion of Glory showing up here, looking for another opportunity to peel the apple. Or core it, this time. He hadn't actually thought much about her at all in the last couple of days.

He found himself wishing he weren't quite so drunk. And that Harris weren't quite so stoned.

Harris, the stoner in question, was rising slowly from his chair as if Spike hadn't said anything. The expression on his face was snookered but clear: They're back.

"Sit down," Spike whispered sharply, shoving Harris back into his chair. "Don't move unless I tell you, you got that?"

Staring hard into Harris's bovine brown eyes got him nowhere. With a growl, he started for the door. There was a hand axe on the table behind the sofa, and he picked it up as he passed. Nice heft, but he knew he was kidding himself. If the god was on the front porch, they were both screwed.

"Who's it?" he barked, one hand on the doorknob. There was a brief pause, while he tried to smell through the door. Nothing, except maybe a faint odor of cologne.

"Spike," said a voice, low and insinuating. "You're so…cautious."

Spike flipped the lock and opened the door a crack, keeping the chain on and the axe ready. The porch light was dim—a bulb had gone out and nobody'd replaced it—but it was indeed Gildersleeve standing there. Bolivar Gildersleeve, the Pincushion himself, the busiest half-man in Sunnydale's underworld. The garter snake, the impresario, the snappy dresser with a heart of carbon. The wheeler and dealer. The bloke with both ears always pressed firmly to the rail.

"Gildersleeve." Spike said it civilly enough, glancing around to make sure there wasn't anyone else cluttering up the place. "What do you want?"

"Heard you were watering the Slayer's houseplants." Gildersleeve grinned, and popped a few pins over his eyebrows in a suggestive way. "Well done you, if I may be so bold."

"Well done me," Spike repeated tonelessly. He had the axe in his left hand, behind the door. "I'm not looking to share, if that's what you're after."

"By no means. By no means, Spike. In fact, just the opposite. I came across an offer I thought might interest you." Gildersleeve hesitated, wetted his top lip with the tip of his blue-black tongue, and gestured minutely at the door. "May I come in?"

Spike pulled his head back inside and saw that Harris was making a slow approach, relying on the furniture for support. Frowning, he looked back to Gildersleeve. "Gave at the office."

He was swinging the door closed when Gildersleeve said smoothly, "It's about the chip."

Spike caught the door. Then he opened it again, and looked at Gildersleeve.

Gildersleeve smiled. When Spike brought the head of the axe into view, he didn't look concerned.

"May I come in?" he asked again.

There was a pause. Behind Spike, there was a muffled thump and a short intake of breath.

"Yeah," Spike said slowly, wondering what he was doing. "Yeah, all right."

He opened the door wider, and Gildersleeve slipped in like a shadow across the threshold.

"A lovely house." Gildersleeve was sitting on the edge of the lounger, a glass of white wine balanced on his knee, looking around with an expression of effete distaste. "Arts and Crafts, I think. Somewhere…underneath."

Spike sprawled a little wider on the couch, his boots up on the coffee table, the whiskey propped on his belly. Harris was on the floor by the far armchair, staring openly at Gildersleeve with a kind of dazed, slow-witted alarm.

"What's the matter with him?" Gildersleeve asked, without much interest. The wine glass indicated Harris, who blinked muzzily.

"Retarded," Spike said. "What's the offer?"

"Ah. You aren't known for your patience, are you?" Gildersleeve took a deliberate, prolonged sip of his wine, wincing slightly as it went down. Then he lowered the glass to his knee again and dabbed at his lips with the tips of his fingers. "The offer is to disable the chip in situ. That means 'in place.'"

"I know what it means."

"It means not having your head cut open. It means not risking death or…" Gildersleeve nodded at Harris. "Disability."

"Lovely offer. Who's making it?"

"My clients wish to remain anonymous. I can tell you, however—"

"'Clients'? Makes you sound like a pimp."

"I can tell you, however," Gildersleeve repeated, not deigning to notice the slight, "that they are renowned technologists. I don't doubt their credentials in the slightest." He leaned forward, glanced in both directions, and half-whispered, half-mouthed, "They do work for Wolfram & Hart."

"That's nice," Spike said. "Not your head, though, is it?" He took a swig of whiskey, and watched Gildersleeve try the wine again. "What's the price?"

"That," Gildersleeve said, with real pleasure, "is the best part. The price is something you are uniquely well positioned to offer at this point in time. In fact, I wouldn't have come to you if it hadn't been such a perfect trade."

Spike waited, saying nothing.

"They're scientists," Gildersleeve said smoothly. "They do research. They need research subjects. Sometimes these subjects are hard to come by."

"I'm not bloody putting myself up for research," Spike snapped. "That's how I got this thing in the first place."

"Not you," Gildersleeve chided. "Of course not you, yourself. I would never suggest such a thing. They need a human subject."

The room was quiet. Harris scratched his nose.

"Under normal circumstances—that is to say, before you found yourself in this unusual, ah, housekeeping role, it would have been difficult for you to procure such a subject. Ironically, the chip prevents you from harming humans, so you could scarcely have overpowered one—"

"I can overpower a bloody human," Spike said, ignoring the fact that it was a lie.

"But now, you have the perfect window of opportunity. The Slayer is away, you have access to a human whom you can easily coerce—"

"What's in it for them?"

Gildersleeve paused. "Who?"

"These…technologists. What do they get out of this?"

"I would have thought that was obvious. They need a subject—"

"Yeah, and why are they so keen on that, exactly? What's the research project?"

Gildersleeve raised his glass and sipped genteelly. "It really isn't my business to ask."

"But you know."

"Now how would I know something like that?"

"Because you always do." Spike sat up and leaned forward, his hand around the neck of the bottle. "Just like you knew I was here in the first place. Like you knew I had…access…to him." He jerked his head toward Harris, without looking at him.

Gildersleeve's nictitating membranes slid down halfway. "That's right, I always do know."

"So what is it?"

"What makes you ask?" Gildersleeve's head dropped to one side, its angle inquiring. "Why do you care what happens to a retarded human boy? Perhaps you're a little…" He broke off and inhaled significantly, his tongue flickering again.

"A little what?" Spike asked. His tone hung in the air, along with the smell of booze, sleeping drugs, and probably sex.

Gildersleeve shrugged. "Perhaps it isn't just the chip that prevents you from harming humans now. Perhaps it's become a habit?"

"I just don't like making deals with every little puff adder that shows up on my doorstep."

"But this puff adder," Gildersleeve replied, unoffended, "has something you want. Very much."

Spike let that sit for a couple of seconds. Finally, he sat back in the couch and took another swig from the bottle. He glanced at Xander. "He's been kicked around a lot already, is all," he said. "Didn't use to be such a waste."

"If you're attached to him," Gildersleeve said, "you can put your mind at rest. The research is painless. No vivisection, I can guarantee that."

"Yeah?" Spike fingered the bottle, studying Harris's profile. "What is it, then?"

"Very simple, really. There's no earthly reason for me to tell you this, but I like you, Spike. And so I will." Gildersleeve leaned forward and lowered his voice. "It's a portal."

Spike sat still. He was trying to think, but he had the feeling he'd be doing a better job of it if he could stop drinking. Unfortunately, having Gildersleeve in the room made him want to drink. "A portal," he repeated.

"A portal. They're experimenting with what they call a crosswalk, and I'm sure I don't know what that is, but it appears to involve a great deal of mathematics. They gave me a pamphlet." He sipped his wine. "I couldn't make heads or tails of it."

"Where's it go?"

"It seems to be not so much an issue of where as of when."

"What, it goes back in time?"

"Or forward. And from what I understand, it has a tendency to zigzag between parallel universes." Gildersleeve executed a demonstrative zig with his glass. "Purely theoretical, of course. But they've had good success with cats." He frowned. "I think."

"So…" Spike thumbed the rim of the bottle. "So I give Harris over to these blokes, they zap the chip for me. What about you?"

Gildersleeve touched his chest lightly, his expression clearly reading, Moi?

"Just doing me a favor, are you?" Spike smirked. "Good of you, Pin."

"The satisfaction of helping a fellow demon in need," Gildersleeve said smoothly, "is its own reward."

"They're paying you to get them a subject, you mean."

"An honorarium. I thought of you immediately when I heard of their need, and thought the least I could do was put your need up against theirs." Gildersleeve smiled. "As I said, it's a perfect trade. You lose the chip, Spike. For free. You can even arrange for the boy to be returned to his own place and time. I'm sure my clients won't care—and that way, no one will ever notice." His tone sharpened. "It's an offer you can't refuse."

Spike sat quietly, studying the level of whiskey in the bottle. On the other side of the room, Harris nibbled a cuticle. Gildersleeve took another look around the room, nodding slightly. What at, Spike didn't want to know. All of a sudden, the fact of the Pincushion sitting in Joyce's living room, passing judgment on the state of her carpets, was too annoying for words. Spike heaved to his feet, noticing with some part of his mind that Gildersleeve jumped slightly, but Harris didn't.

"You've said your piece," he said, starting for the door. "Now off you go."

"But the arrangements—"

"Haven't said yes, have I?" Spike opened the door and leaned on it. The air outside was sweet and cool, and suddenly he very much wanted to go for a walk in it. "I'll let you know."

Gildersleeve stood up, set his glass carefully on the table, and straightened his jacket. "I must warn you, the offer is for a limited time only."

"Thanks."

"Frankly, I don't see what you have to lose. If you give them the boy and lose the chip, you win. If you give them the boy and they aren't successful in defusing the apparatus, you're no worse off than when you started." Gildersleeve gave Harris a pitying look, shaking his head like a mournful uncle. "Really, you could look at it as doing him a favor. He's in no shape to take care of himself. He might end up in a universe where men like him are worshipped as kings."

"Men like him." Spike cocked his head. "You mean, blokes that can't get their own meals?"

"Quite. He'd have starved to death by now if not for the help of others. Natural selection, you know."

Spike picked a flake of paint off the edge of the door. "I think I know a thing or two about that, yeah."

Gildersleeve paused, his mouth a perfect O. Then he smiled, recovering neatly. "I wasn't talking about you, of course."

"Of course." Spike smiled back. "I'll find you if I want to."

"Quite." Gildersleeve executed a neat little half-bow, although his expression was slightly troubled now. "Until then."

It was almost admirable, how he could exit with such speed and yet still keep some of his dignity. Spike took a moment to appreciate it, then shut the door on the sight of the Pincushion melting into the shadows. He turned to find Harris watching him hopefully, clearly hoping he was going to open the door again to reveal someone better.

"Sorry," Spike said, flipping the locks on and grabbing his cigarettes off the side table. "That's all the fun there is. I'm going out back for a smoke."

Harris tried to follow him out, of course, but he locked the door behind him and stood in the back yard by himself, smoking and staring up at the stars.