Print page
Notes: Hokay. The epic continues to sprawl! Here's another chapter of the Mute!Xander, Snarky!Spike Spander for _caeru's donation. And it now has a title! What ho! I call it: The Magic Number In honor of that great Schoolhouse Rock song, Three is a Magic Number, which was covered so memorably and jammingly by Blind Melon. Not because there will be any threesomes, though. Sorry. Also, this and future installments are also for the good and gentle _swallow who graciously allowed me to combine her request for "mean Spander" with _caeru's request for happy-ending angst. Because this sucker's running kind of long, and time, as always, is running kind of short. If you're still waiting for your fic, fear not. I have not forgotten thee. Lo, I am merely busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.
The Magic Number part 5
It became a routine before Spike had a chance to realize it was happening, much less defend himself. The witches left for study, the Slayer took Dawn to school and then went off to her own classes, or to beat the stuffing out of whatever the Watcher set up for her. Spike stayed home with the puppy and watched Reading Rainbow. It got so he knew what the glossy soap magazines in the supermarket line-up were talking about.
Harris was calm around him now, didn't even look up sometimes when Spike walked into a room. Slayer still kept tabs though, and Spike could feel her eyes burning little holes in him whenever the three of them were in the same room. Made for some good fun. "Six-letter word for 'useless,'" he'd muse aloud, then let his eyes light on Harris and scribble madly. Harris giving him one of those uncomprehending glances, the Slayer seething. When the phone rang, startling Harris into momentary idiocy: "Get that, would you?" Veins pulsing in Buffy's neck. Good times, as Harris himself might once have said.
Alone all day with the git, Spike had free run of the remote, a steady supply of Weetabix, and an increasing ability to understand the complex, subtle patterns of Harris's moods. He was learning to read the weather, as it were. Harris had good days and bad days. Bad days, he sometimes didn't come downstairs until past noon, and when he did, he was skittish, dark-eyed, lost in some private inner world. He looked smaller somehow, and had a tendency to creep. Like someone who'd just come from the wrong end of a beating. Didn't meet your eyes, didn't respond to much, was generally boring. Spike didn't interfere, just watched his program or read his book or worked on getting the Slayer's diary unlocked. Best thing seemed to be to ignore him, and after a while he usually got his bearings and perked up.
Good days were more interesting. Red and Glinda had started teaching him sign language, which wasn't going very well, but which seemed to have helped him twig to the fact that he could communicate if he tried. He seemed more alert, more anticipatory, more present somehow. When there was broad humor on the telly, Spike often looked over to see him watching with a little smile curling his lips. Alternately, when there was shouting or firearms, he got up and left. Spike spent an interesting afternoon flipping back and forth between I Love Lucy and The Wild Bunch, seeing how many times he could get Harris to smile, start to leave, smile, start to leave. Six, it turned out. Then the girls came home and the slate was wiped.
He got better at knowing when Harris wanted things. For all that he was a mute, shellshocked imbecile, he was fairly self-sufficient. There wasn't much guesswork for Spike, because there wasn't much for him to do. Harris fetched his own cereal in the mornings, got a glass of water when he wanted one, and that was about it until Dawn came home and made macaroni. It didn't occur to Spike that Harris might want anything else until he noticed the eyes watching him dunk Weetabix in his blood. Not what you'd call a hungry look, but...interested. Spike paused, considered, then held the mug out.
"Have a go, then." Mainly he was curious--how many taboos were gone, exactly?
More than he'd thought, it turned out. Harris took the mug, sniffed it, then sipped experimentally. Spike watched in silence. The expression on Harris's face was contemplative, internal, like a wine taster judging a glass. He took another sip and ruminated over the Weetabix. Then he turned back to the television, the mug held carefully in his big fist like an expensive item on temporary loan. Within ten minutes, he'd finished it off.
"Didn't say you could have it all," Spike muttered, partly to cover his discombobulation. Harris flicked a glance at him--the I've heard you glance, Spike thought of it now--and went back to the telly.
In a spirit of pioneering discovery, Spike started trying out new menu items. Red had been right--Harris wasn't much interested in food, didn't seem to taste it, but he was agreeable enough when you put something down and told him to try it. Didn't matter if it was wallpaper paste or a bit of soap. Ice cubes didn't go over well--the cold got through, apparently--although the wounded look Harris gave him after spitting them out was worth the price of admission. It took some coaxing to get him back to the table for a wary go at one of those little oatmeal sachets the girls all took for breakfast. Trust was restored. Plus, Spike had a new hobby.
It kept him busy for a few nights, drinking in his crypt and thinking up new possibilities--club soda, raw potato, dirt--and at the same time it taught him to read Harris's responses quickly and accurately. In the kitchen one evening, hanging about waiting for the Watcher to come over and be fleeced a little more, he saw Harris eyeing the cupboard over his head. Without thinking, or altering the sneer he was wearing for the Slayer's benefit, he reached up and opened it, fumbling for the crackers up there. Awkward moment--Red was just reaching up for them too. Spike snatched his hand back, and she jumped. Then she smiled.
Embarrassments like that aside, it was all going okay until Glory turned up and nearly killed Tara in the park. The Slayer stopped things from going too wrong, but Tara came out of it with a badly broken arm and a real scare, and Red got a new, haunted look. Rough luck, Spike reflected. Lost her girlhood chum to something totally random, some blip of the Hellmouth that turned him into a mental mushroom, and then there's Glory, having a go at her girlfriend as well. Being a Scooby wasn't the smoothest ride in the world, he was realizing.
Besides, he didn't much mind Tara.
Still, he wasn't prepared for the summit Buffy called two days later, in the living room at Revello Drive. She came and got him specially. It was the weekend, he was off duty.
"I'm charging double for this," he said, traipsing after her through the cemetery. "Just so you know."
"You're drunk," she observed, following no logic he could see. Of course he was drunk.
"Sharp as a tack, you are," he muttered, then tripped over a headstone.
The meeting was short, tense, and stunning. The witches were going away--there was some library on the east coast they needed to use, some spell they thought might send Glory back where she'd come from. The Watcher had taken a plane that morning. They'd be gone a week.
The east coast of where? Spike considered asking, but didn't. There was bigger news. The Slayer was leaving. Taking Dawn with her. Period.
Spike sat in silence, the room tipping slightly with the weight of the words.
"It's safer in LA," Buffy said. "Angel has the hotel, he has a team--"
"A team?" Spike broke in, his mouth unfreezing. "What, do they play cricket or something?"
"It's safer," Buffy snapped, rounding on him eagerly, as if she couldn't wait to fight over this. "I don't know whether you noticed, but Tara almost died--"
"That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard," he half-shouted, a bit slurrily. "LA's not home, she should stay at home--"
"I've already decided."
"Oh right, you're going to let the poof take care of her? Poof doesn't know her, doesn't give a damn about her--"
"I've decided, Spike."
"Doesn't give a damn about you either, if you think he's still in love with you you're an idiot--"
He knew he'd scored some kind of a point, because she punched him in the face. He hit the newel post going down, nice solid clunk in the back of the head, and by the time he got up again, there was general confusion. Dawn was crying, Red and Buffy were arguing, Tara was on the couch with a ruptured look on her face, her cast cradled in her lap. Harris had disappeared completely.
For a few seconds, Spike felt the savage urge to leap into it feet first, tell the little bitch just how stupid she was, say everything he saw coming down the pike for her. Then Dawn's tears registered fully, and he slumped back down onto the stair, rested his elbows on his knees, and wiped the blood off his chin. The whisky he'd been drinking--not bad stuff, on the Watcher's tab--was sour in his belly.
After a minute or so the shouting got to him and he stood up, hauling on the banister to do it. Felt a million years old all of a sudden.
They stopped yelling and looked at him, and he flicked blood onto the carpet and said, "Fine. We'll go to LA. But I'm not staying in the poof's hotel."
Both of them stared at him open-mouthed, as if he'd just dropped his trousers. Then a complex series of expressions went over Red's face, and she said, "Spike--"
He waited. After a second he raised his eyebrows. "Yeah?"
"Well, it's just--" She broke off and looked at the Slayer, which sent a chill down his spine.
"Yeah?"
"You're not coming to LA," Buffy said flatly. "We need you here."
He frowned. "What, you need me to bring in the paper?"
"We need you to stay with Xander," she said, and then had the grace to look abashed.
He stood there a second in silence. Things weren't clicking right.
"What--here?" he asked stupidly, all his fire momentarily squashed by bewilderment.
"We can't take him with us," Red said quickly. "It isn't safe for somebody like...like him."
"It's a library," he said in disbelief.
"Sort of. Not really. 'Library' is sort of a metaphor, it's more like a--"
He waited.
"Marketplace," she finished, with a glance at Tara.
"So take him to the bloody market. I'm not staying here and feeding him grapes while you lot are all off on vacation."
"It's not a--" Buffy started, but Red cut in.
"We can't take him," she said. "Spike, he can't talk, he doesn't remember anything, we couldn't take him where we're going."
"So--so stick him in the bloody hotel and let one of the team look after him."
"I'm not moving him," Buffy said. "And I'm not leaving him here alone. He's staying put, Spike. And so are you."
"I don't bloody think so."
"Or I can stake you and we'll figure out a plan C. I'm good with that."
Dawn gave a muffled sob and they all looked at her.
"I hate you," she said, staring at Buffy with wet red eyes, one hand shaking at her mouth. Buffy flinched.
"Dawn, you don't--"
"I hate you." That was steeped in all the bitter heart's venom a fifteen year-old girl could offer. Spike felt momentarily impressed.
"Dawn, this is the best we can do, it's the only way we can keep--"
Buffy didn't get to finish; Dawn was already trampling up the stairs, then slamming the door to her bedroom.
They all stood listening to the faint sounds of gut-wrenching tears through the ceiling.
"I'll go up," Tara said, and slipped out.
Spike turned to the Slayer, who looked like she'd just seen a puppy hit by a bus. "You," he said, "are the stoniest little harpy I've ever had the opportunity to kill but haven't. Yet."
Her face firmed up. "Yes or no, Spike."
He looked at Red.
"It's the best thing," she said. "It's only for a week. Or until Glory's history. That could be sooner, right?"
He looked back at the Slayer. No optimism there.
"We need you here," Red said gently.
Which was a nice way of saying that they didn't need him in LA. That anything he could do, Angel could do better.
"Please, Spike."
Upstairs, Tara hushed Dawn in almost inaudible tones. Something folded in Spike's belly. Felt old and familiar, the usual phantom punch of a woman in tears. God, he was a pathetic wanker.
"A week," he said, and walked out without another look at the Slayer.
Harris was on the top step of the front porch, huddled against the railing. He looked up when Spike stalked past, his eyes going straight to the blood on Spike's face.
"Fuck you," Spike snapped, and stomped out into the night.
