Print page
The Magic Number part 3
The best way to learn more about the situation, he realized, was to get close to Red, promote the fluffy puppy angle. Between her and Dawn, dropping by the crypt to report alternately on traumas (Xander won't eat, he has nightmares) and successes (he's using a fork, he smiled), Spike kept pretty close tabs on the Harris front.
Then things heated up with Glory--minions everywhere, giant snakes, confusion--and suddenly he was back in the Slayer's good books. Or if not her good books, at least her ranks. A night or two after the anaconda visit, Buffy dropped by the crypt and told him he was needed back at the house.
"Won't I upset Nell?" he asked, because there were such things as principles.
"Don't push me," she said, and slammed the door when she walked out.
The idea was to keep Xander and Spike in opposite ends of the house at all times. They still didn't know why Xander was afraid of Spike--nobody'd cracked the code in the weeks since he'd reappeared, so they couldn't ask him. Spike suggested hand puppets, and Buffy almost kicked him out again.
"You're here in case Glory shows up," she told him in a private military meeting, locked in the bathroom. "If anything happens to me, you're the next strongest in line to protect the others."
"I know why I'm here," he said sourly, and when her back was turned, "Because you can't keep your eyes off me, you greedy little--"
"You're disgusting," she snapped, and slammed yet another door in his face.
Keeping out of Harris's way was easier than he'd thought it would be, since Xander spent most of his time confined to Joyce's old bedroom. It was the witches' room now; apparently Harris slept on a cot at the foot of their bed. Spike entertained a few brief mental filmreels of how he might himself exploit such a position, then found himself abruptly too busy to do much of that.
With two major crises happening simultaneously, the Scoobies were spread thin. Willow and Tara seemed to be focusing on trying to figure out what had happened to Xander and whether they could reverse it. Rupert was busy with the Glorificus question, and Buffy had her hands full making Dawn's life miserable.
"You're killing her yourself," he told her after watching her deliver a ten-minute tirade when Dawn came home late from school. Not the best choice of words, he could later admit. It led to a period of even higher household tension, and then an abrupt about-face in which Buffy took Dawn to movies, the mall, mini golf--anything useless and sisterly and unaffordable.
"I could raise her better and I'm a vampire," he groused to the back yard during evening cigarette sessions.
It all left him alone in the house during daylight hours--alone except for Xander, who was a silent, unseen presence somewhere upstairs, like the ghost of Joyce. One Thursday afternoon, dragging himself to the kitchen for another mug of blood, Spike saw the ghost. They practically ran right into each other, in fact.
Spike stopped short and so did Xander, both of them heading kitchenward from different directions. Before he could do anything about it, Spike realized he'd boxed Xander into the little hall alcove. He took a quick step back and held his hands out to show how harmless he was. Then he realized he had a mug of blood dregs in one hand, and hid it behind his back.
Xander, meanwhile, had pressed himself against the wall, as if he were trying to disappear straight through it. He'd gained some weight, didn't look quite so starved anymore. They'd cut his hair, but there was still grey in it. Still lines around his eyes and his mouth, and a red scar on his lip where the stitches had been, and fatigue stamped all over him like an expired warranty. Still breathing fast and scared through his mouth, whistling a little in the base of his throat.
"Don't pee," Spike said automatically, and then regretted it. Not fair, kicking a man when he was that far down. "Look, it's all right, I'm backing away--" He took slow, careful steps back the way he'd come. Xander stayed where he was. His face was turned slightly away, his eyes down and to the side. Avoiding eye contact, the way you did when you didn't want something big and bad to notice you. His breathing sounded like a saw chewing through wood. His larynx is just--
On the other hand, a Harris sighting was a rare opportunity to collect a little more information. Spike paused, considered, then said, "Xander." No reaction. "You know who I am?"
A slight flicker of the eyes, there. Red said it was like he didn't really remember any of them, or like he knew who they were the way you knew characters in a play, without caring much about them one way or another.
"You know what my name is?" Spike asked, wondering where he was going with this.
No response, but the breathing quickened, and he noticed that Harris's hands were behind his back, palms pressed to the wall. Head down, legs apart. Submisive posture, like a dog. Which Red wouldn't let herself say, but calling a dog a dog was Spike's specialty.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, feeling like an idiot. "I mean, I could. It's not that I can't hurt people, but I'm in a good mood and I like you." That was almost true, he realized. Harris was interesting, and that was almost the same as liking him. "I live here now. I keep you and Dawn safe. You know that?"
No movement at all. Whoever trained him had done a bang-up job.
"D'you remember anything?" Spike asked, taking a step forward in spite of better judgment. Maybe if he could get a better look at some of those scars--
Harris flinched, so abruptly that his elbows knocked the wall. Spike paused. A setback now would be bad. Better to just lay low, take it slowly. He had a good thing going here, all the free blood he could drink and full use of the cable.
"Right, off you go." Rikki was talking to pyromaniacs, and he was missing it. He turned and went back into the living room, still carrying his empty mug. Behind him, there was the rapid pitter-pat of little feet haring straight back up the stairs, as if the devil himself were in pursuit.
