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The Magic Number part 9
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-worl
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."
