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The Magic Number part 11
"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.
