"It's almost three in the afternoon," Angel says when Xander drags himself off the couch and down the elevators, down a hall with the vague idea of asking Harmony to hook him up with a laundry service. He's looking a little less pressed these days and they say you can judge a man by the cut of his suit. They didn't say anything about the smell and Xander's been hitting the Old Spice harder these days too.

"Still all about the social pleasantries, huh big guy?"

"You're late," Angel says like a guy whose nose is trying to keep its distance.

"Angel, I don't have anything to be late for." Xander's got the feeling Angel only wants to share the misery. Except Xander's so far past feeling misery - his or Angel's - it all slips by. He is Teflon Man.

So of course Teflon Man's feeling about the whole thing is wrong.

"You do today, my little Snickers bar."

Xander reviews the endearment in his head. Chocolate, nuts - sticky mystery stuff in the center - yeah, okay. Settles on, "I do?"

"Tomorrow night's the big company to-do and our glorious leader here's appointed you his stand-in for all the prep."

Xander's brain stalls out, grinds gears and strips whatever brains strip somewhere between Snickers and stand-in and skips right to: "Prep?" Sometimes he doesn't want to drink as much as he does - this is one of them - but he does it anyway.

It's a compulsion.

And it leaves him here and speechless with his mouth open like a freeze-framed fish.

"That's right, you handsome Jack of Spades."

"Angel doesn't even like me." Belatedly, Xander realizes that was the point and says, "I still hate you, you know," while Angel's settling into that big overcompensating chair behind that big overcompensating desk.

Ignoring everything he says. "It's an honor, Xander, and a real chance for the Council to make a difference through their Watcher. Big Halloween party - and you're all that's standing between it and the big evil Halloween parties they used to have." Angel steeples his fingers. "I'm sure you're full of ideas."

"Don't stuff the pinatas with entrails."

"There. You're the guy for the job."




The room doesn't spin when he drinks too much these days. It lays there dull and heavy and Xander's brain lays there dull and heavy too like a woolly mammoth in a swamp.

And like the mammoth, it's easy to give up. Close his eyes and wait for it to suck him under while the herd moves on without him.

Easy to let Spike pick up the remote and change the channel.

Easy to watch whatever's on TV - usually futbol, sometimes soap operas or nighttime dramas.

Easy to - just easy and some day if he's lucky somebody'll come along and chip him out of the permafrost and marvel at how little he's changed.

He rolls his head to the side and watches Spike who's got a surprisingly mobile face for a dead guy.

It's watching him - glances at the glass riding Xander's thigh at a precarious angle like a - metaphors fail him and he lets the glass drop to the couch. It's empty anyway.

"Hard day at the office, pet?"

He doesn't snark. Doesn't rise to the whole pet thing because it's slippery and hard to hold onto and Xander acknowledges the possibility he went too far too fast with the booze tonight. "I'm standing in for Angel - planning the Halloween bash," he says like Spike's any other guy he works with. He blames the vodka.

"That right?"

"Tis the season to be jolly if you're an evil lawyer." And then because it seems kinda incomplete to leave it there, "fa la la la la la la la la."

"You're three sheets to the wind."

Xander shakes his woolly mammoth head - slowly - and holds up a hand. It takes a long time to get there and waves once it does. "At least four. Four tattered sheets to the wind," he adds in his best impersonation of the count.

He can make a fool out of himself.

He's pretty sure he won't remember it in the morning.

And only Spike's there to see it anyway.

"You already think I'm a fool," he says comfortably.

"That's right," Spike agrees just as comfortably.

It's a whole comfortable thing and Xander's eye is closed again.

He thinks he feels Spike pat him on the knee.




There's a lot Xander doesn't remember the next morning - for any given value of next morning. A whole lot.

Purchases.

Posts in his Watcher's blog.

Meals.

Conversations like this one:

Spike's fingers are the ones running through his hair while he lies on the couch - he's aware of that. He's also past wig and aware he won't remember this to wig over in the morning so he relaxes into it and doesn't think too hard about the way Spike's thigh bone would run through his skull if Spike chose now to solidify. "What drove you here, pet?"

"Six white horses. Unless it drove the horses. I've always been kinda unclear on that," Xander says and doesn't move because the fingers feel kinda nice and anyway he's drunk. Beyond his control. Completely at the mercy of the evil and insubstantial undead.

"This about your girl?"

"I don't have a girl."

And the truth of the matter is Xander did quit drinking - once - about a month after stumbling off the bus in Cleveland and into the first bar he found. He quit cold turkey - spent three days shaky, sweaty, paranoid about everything until Willow asked him in a really tactful, roundabout and totally obvious way if he was drinking too much - before crawling back to the bar and drowning in doubles until he didn't think anymore, thus proving he was still the same old Xander-shaped person. Because he's always been a functional drunk. It's in the genes and he always knew thinking was dangerous anyway. It got you into things.

Things like Africa which he's pretty sure he would have taken Giles up on if he'd thought about all the good he could do there and wasn't drunk enough to get himself killed in a week.

He wanted to exist comfortably - not thinking - not go to dangerous war-torn countries to die.

Not dying was kinda the point.

But if he did, he wanted to die where he was safe and loved in the woolly mammoth graveyard where old woolly mammoths went to die in peace.

And he may or may not have said any or all of that to the fingers running through his hair.

He forgets.




Wakes up to drool on his pillow, fuzz on his tongue, hair in his socket and a skull-splitting hangover and thanks whatever god's willing to take responsibility for him he's never been the heaving kind of drunk.

He's not the hypocritical kind of drunk either so there's no vow never to drink like that again.

In fact he plans to drink like that again right now.

The night table's empty but there's a bottle of SoCo lying on its side on the other pillow like a bad one-night stand and Spike's on the couch watching pay-per-view porn like the bad roommate he's always been except he's got the sound turned off and the brightness turned low and the empties scattered around him on the floor and table are all Xander's.

He paws the bottle close to his chest, squints at Spike - who shrugs. "It was closest to the bed. Best I could do putting it within reach, wasn't it?"

Xander doesn't remember getting himself to bed and philosophically files it away with all the other things he doesn't remember, hauls himself up a few inches and untwists the cap. The first few drops run down his chin and he lets them, takes a deep breath and flops over. Tips the bottle back and swallows. Keeps swallowing. Sloshes more across his face when his arm drops down and he props the bottle against his side. His throat burns and his stomach rolls and his stubble scratches his wrist when he wipes his mouth.

"God, you're a slob."

"I have needs," Xander rejoinders from the corner of his mind where the fog's clearing and the pain's not so bad. He inches himself up the bed - props himself there for another long swallow and sets the bottle between his legs for a long stretch. He lifts the bottle. "Thanks."

Spike lifts a hand but all five fingers are out instead of the usual two so Xander's gonna take that as 'you're welcome' while he stumbles off to shower, dress and Old Spice himself into respectability.