Slip Slide Melting

* * * * * * * * *
Part 4

It was a relief to Spike that Thomas was ignoring his emotional outburst of earlier as though it had never happened. Still, he figured he owed the bloke for making sure it happened in as private a setting as possible, and halfway down an alley between a butcher shop and a dry cleaner’s was about as private as could be imagined, seeing as the demons used the front doors these days.

He would never thank the boy, of course, because that would be admitting he had something to be glad for, but… maybe Andrew’s bloke wasn’t as stupid as most vampires his age.

He barely noticed when Thomas paused and showed a few papers to the vampire standing inside the small booth in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable street although he did give the fellow a nod when Thomas introduced him.

He noticed that he wasn’t given the guy’s name, but then again, the vamp was obviously some sort of guard. No need to know him, except… he remembered how Xander had always made a point of calling people by name when he could, back in the day, and… for some reason, it just seemed right.

“Yah. I’m…” He thought for a moment. “William Nemoy. Call me Will if you want. And you?” He extended his hand through the little window of the booth and shook the slightly trembling and surprised hand of the guard.

The minion blinked then gave the Master’s hand a vigorous and slightly too long return shake. “I… I’m M-m-micheals, M-Mister… N-nemoy…”

Spike nodded and quickly retrieved his hand. “Nice to meet you, Michael. I’m sure to feel safe with a great, looming bloke like you watching out, yeah?” He grinned and nodded. “Have a good night, mate.”

Michaels blinked a few times as the two vampires went on their way, then made a very visible entry in the events book that Mister William Nemoy was not only a Master, but a Master who was well worth going out of the bounds of duty for.

He then added every detail of their brief but so very affecting meeting, knowing it would strike the others just as it had struck him.

This was a Master worth following into Hell, if need be.

* * * * *

It was less than a block later that Thomas stopped and almost whispered. “You know he’s just hired help, right? I mean, he’s not… in charge.”

Spike shrugged. “A friend… well, a bloke I once knew, anyway, told me that when you’re working that kind of job and making shit for pay, the one thing that makes it worthwhile is when the customers make you feel appreciated.” He shrugged again. “Only took a few words, mate, and he knows I appreciate his efforts, yeah?”

And somehow Thomas had no doubt that the ‘friend, well, a bloke’ was the Magus Prime himself. Even though the man had never told him anything like that when they’d been together, it just… sounded like something he would have said.

“Fine,” he said quickly, taking Spike’s arm and pulling him down the street further, “whatever. This is the Vampire Sector. The Magus… I mean Xander. The Magus’s assistant.” Thomas frowned. He just knew he was going to screw this up somehow. Then again, everyone knew Xander was the Magus Prime, even if very few people knew what he actually looked like. Everyone but Spike knew, he corrected himself.

“Xander’s arranged for you to have Davidoff Archovich’s old place. He was killed a few months ago, so there may be a bit of dust around…” He blinked at Spike’s arched brow. “Not that kind of dust! Just the normal kind! It hasn’t been used since it happened and I don’t think the maid service has been too dedicated lately, so…”

“Thomas. Shut up. It’ll be fine,” Spike said sharply. “Cot in a basement, whatever. Long as nobody’s chaining me up, I’ll manage.” He thought for a second. “As long as nobody’s chaining me up or tying me to a bloody barcalounger, I mean.”

Thomas laughed and pulled the older vampire into the entryway of a tall, glass-and-chrome building. He slid a card through a slot, then stepped forward as one large sheet of glass rolled away. “I don’t think you have to worry about that here, Spike,” was all he said, although he made a mental note to ask the Magus Prime just why the older vampire had been giving off aroused-scent when he’d spoken about being tied to a chair.

If nothing else, he might get to see the Magus blush for the first time… ever.

* * * * *

“Bloody hell,” Spike said slowly, doing his best not to sound stunned by the flat he’d been given. “Suppose it’ll do,” he added grudgingly.

He’d truly expected Harris to send him off to some… crap hotel or something until after he’d given his ‘testimony’ on what had happened the night he’d died. Or rather, the most recent night he’d died.

He’d never figured the bloke for setting him up in this sort of style.

The foyer alone was massive, marble floor and hand-carved antiques against the wall. Big closet, suited to his duster and any number of other coats, just in case he decided to have a huge bloody party and invite every sodding vamp he ran into, apparently. And that was just the foyer.

The living room was slightly smaller, which Spike admitted silently was a good thing. Any more space and he’d feel more like he was in a bleeding Architectural Digest feature rather than someplace he was supposed to live, for as short a time as it lasted.

A lush-looking leather couch and matching loveseat, a thickly padded chair covered in some sort of fabric that begged to be touched… a wrought iron and glass coffee table with matching end tables, and best of all—the nearly unbelievably sized flat-screen telly on the wall above the fireplace, although that seemed an odd place for it.

And all of this set on the thickest, softest, plushest carpet he’d ever imagined, much less seen.

“Bloody hell,” he said again, the words leaving his lips on a soft sigh.

“Makes you want to just kick off your shoes and curl your toes into it, huh?” Thomas said with a slightly envious chuckle. “Hell, I’m surprised it’s still vacant. I guess the Magus knew he’d need it for something soon.”

Spike heard him, of course, but the bloke’s first words sounded too good to pass up.

He kicked his boots off after untying the laces and moaned softly as he stepped onto the luxurious fibers. “You got to try this, mate,” he insisted, taking a few steps and closing his eyes as those same fibers seemed to caress the soles of his feet. “In-fucking-credible, it is!”

Not ever having been a stupid guy—either as a human or a vampire—it took Thomas a grand total of two seconds to toe off his shoes and shuck his socks. His moan matched the older vamps’ as he walked slowly across the living room. “Oh… my… gods,” he sighed happily, “I SO need to do something nice enough for Andrew that he’s willing to spring for this kind of carpet. For one room, anyway… in like ten years, assuming I get a raise of like… a hundred percent, so I can chip in…”

“Bloody hell, work twice the hours, bloke. Worth it, yeah? Go marry bleeding Andrew. I’ll just stay here and shag this bloody carpet!”

Thomas groaned and flexed his toes, eyes rolling back as the silky strands wove between his toes. “Fuck… trade you, Spike… you can marry Andrew if I can ‘shag’ the carpet…” he blinked. “Uh, I’m joking… mostly…”

The older vampire laughed and shook his head. “Sorry, Tommy-boy. Your bloke’s not my type.” He sighed and glanced at his boots. “Guess we should check out the rest of the place, yeah?”

A sigh. “Uh, you could always look by yourself, right?”

Spike snorted. “Can’t have you defiling my new carpet, can I? Now, off of it and we’ll see what else Xander’s set me up with.” ‘And what I’m going to have to do to keep it,’ Spike told himself. “Guess it’s a good thing that Magus of yours lets his assistant hand out flats, yeah? Worked in my favor, anyway…”

* * * * *

It was while they were prowling through the rest of the apartment—master bedroom with king sized bed and attached bath complete with big, sunken tub; dining room containing an art deco table and chairs to seat twelve; office with what Thomas claimed was a state-of-the-art magetrix station, and a large balcony that wrapped around the corner of the building—that they heard the buzzer sounding.

It took a moment to find the intercom system, and another to figure out how to answer it.

Finally, Spike found the right button. “What?” he demanded.

“D-delivery f-for Mister N-nemoy,” a timid voice answered, “F-from the M-magus Prime’s office…”

“Bloody hell, what now?” Spike growled, even as he pushed every button he saw in an effort to let the bloke in. “If Xander bloody Harris is trying to make me move from this place, I’ll bloody well kill him!” Unless of course that was the bloke’s plan. Show Spike what was available, then suddenly be all ‘oh, sorry, my bad… you have to move to…’ some tiny, ugly little dump.

Yeah, that was probably it, Spike realized. The human had sent him off all sudden-like, hadn’t he? Been all cold and such. Must be sitting in the bloody Magus Prime’s office chortling to himself, right about now.

Thomas arched a brow as he wandered out of the kitchen to find the older blond snarling almost inaudibly in the foyer and he almost tried to ask gently about what the problem was.

Then he remembered who it was in front of him. Spike wasn’t the sort to appreciate gentle from what he’d seen so far, so…

“Okay, what’s crawled up your ass,” he said loudly, “Because you were fine a minute ago…”

Spike growled and explained as he waited for the fucker who was coming up with the keys to whatever disgusting hovel he was being relocated to.

Thomas truly wanted to laugh; mostly because the Magus Prime didn’t make mistakes… and besides, he knew how much Xander Harris wanted the blond in front of him, even if Spike didn’t know and the Magus didn’t know, himself.

It hadn’t been that hard to figure out once he’d seen Spike, after all.

Yes, every single one of the Magus Prime’s lovers had borne some resemblance to Spike.

Joseph had had the slicked back white-blond hair… Mike had carried himself with the same sort of cockiness and had loved his leather trench coat enough that he’d never been seen without it… and Jamie…?

Thomas sighed.

Jamie’d had the cheekbones, but that was about it. Not that he hadn’t been an attractive vamp. He had. But…

Thomas sighed again.

“I seriously doubt that’s what’s happening here, Spike,” he finally said, just as the soft knock on the door was heard and the overwhelming fear-scent came through the door.

* * * * *

Xander found himself pacing his office unhappily.

“What the hell am I doing?” he asked the still air. “Why am I lying to Spike?”

It was a good question.

Sadly, even with knowing so many things and having almost unlimited magical power, he didn’t have a good answer.

‘Because I don’t want him to see me differently’ wasn’t a good answer.

‘Because I want him to like me for me and not for what I can do for him’ was barely better.

Of course ‘because I want him to be my friend and lover before I tell him that I’m the guy in charge of nearly half of the world’ was the worst of the lot.

“And where the fuck did ‘lover’ come from?”

Xander groaned and threw himself onto the couch.

“Okay. I want him. I know this. And apparently I always have.” His brow furrowed and he shook his head.

“Alright, maybe I didn’t always want him. But… maybe he was there in the back of my head all the time once the magic removed all the other spells from me and I realized that I’m… not exactly gay, but… more male-oriented than otherwise.”

And he wasn’t sure he’d entirely forgiven Willow for those spells yet—even more than two decades later.

Of course, she was still one of his closest friends, so…

“Okay, and none of this is even remotely the point of this little conversation.”

His eyes rested for a moment on the eye patch that had resumed its usual resting place.

“I want him,” he said aloud, as though trying the thought on for size. “I want Spike. Huh.” It got easier every time he said it out loud. “In fact, I want Spike so much that I just gave him the former Master Vampire in Assembly’s old apartment.”

His brow furrowed.

“Why? Because I want him to be comfortable? Hell, Spike lived in a crypt, for fuck’s sake. I could have put him up at the Equinox Inn and he’d probably have been happy.” And that was true enough.

“Because he… deserves it?” His eyes closed as one forearm rose to rest across his lids. “He does deserve it, I guess. Even if he’s somehow wrong about the dragon, he deserves it just for sacrificing himself in Sunnydale. Add on there that he came back from the dead and kept trying to make a difference, and… oh, yeah, Spike definitely deserves whatever comfort I can give him.”

He deliberately ignored the little voice in his head that whispered dirty and naughty ideas of other comforts he could offer the vampire.

“And just because I want him, that doesn’t mean he wants me. Or any other guy, for that matter. Except maybe his Sire, and…”

“Fuck it. I’m making myself crazier than usual. Get a grip, Xander, and stop thinking about it.”

And that was the best advice he’d ever given himself, he realized.

Yeah, he’d just push it from his mind… “because that always works so well for me.”

Then again, Spike had pretty much made it clear that he couldn’t get away from him fast enough, so what difference did it make?

That hadn’t stopped him from calling around and arranging for a few things to be delivered to Spike’s new place, of course, but… “just being a good host. It would be rude not to… oh, who the hell am I kidding?”

‘No one,’ the voice in his head told him smugly. ‘You’re fooling no one, Xander.’

* * * * *

Thomas was still chuckling smugly as he entered the Hyperion and headed up to the suite he shared with Andrew. He’d known the Magus Prime didn’t make mistakes, after all, and the look on Spike’s face once the delivery boy had dropped the bags just inside the door and run before even being tipped had been just… priceless.

Even that look had been surpassed a few minutes later, though, as the two vampires stood by the kitchen table and stared at the truly obscene number of packets they’d pulled from the bags.

“Hey… how’d it go, Thom?” Andrew asked with a grin, pulling his lover into a swift kiss before continuing to the small refrigerator by the sofa and pulling a bottle of Chardonnay and two chilled glasses from within it. “Get Spike all settled in?”

The chuckles became full-blown laughs as the young vampire flung himself down beside the human, his head resting lightly on one slender thigh. “I think he expected something less than what Xander gave him… and you should have seen him! The Magus sent him a truly bizarre bunch of stuff. English stuff, I guess, and Spike thought he was being evicted, and…”

Andrew found himself laughing too while Thomas told him about everything that had happened; then he had to explain about Spike and Weetabix, not to mention Cadbury bars, Jaffa Cakes, and why exactly the older vampire had nearly fallen over laughing at the cans of Chocolate Kittens.

For his part, Thomas didn’t really get why Spike would want to eat human food, but then again… Spike had a soul and maybe that explained it. It didn’t much matter, anyway, he decided.

Spike was Spike. William the Bloody, in fact. He was a legend, aside from the part where he’d brought on the Change.

If the bleached blond wanted to eat food, then he could get away with it. Who would dare comment, after all?

He made a mental note to buy some of those same items. He had a feeling they’d be in demand once the world knew Spike—THE Spike—was back.

He might even turn enough of a profit to invest in one of those… carpets.

* * * * *

tbc...