“If it would only snow…” Giles thought bleakly, tipping the bottle of Glenmorangie more or less in the direction of his glass. Less than a third of the intended two fingers of scotch wound up in a puddle on the coffee table and he considered it a job well done.

It didn’t matter if he spent a thousand more Christmas Eves in Sunnydale; the persistent Southern California warm weather, the donning of scarves and boots only as fashionable accessories, the bloody-minded ‘snowless-ness’ of it all; it was going to make him homesick every time.

The cards from overseas with their warm ‘miss you!’ sentiments, not to mention the great tin of shortbread from Olivia, only contrived to make him feel worse.

Surprised to find his glass empty, he leaned forward to refill it, and in the process knocked over the awful electric menorah that Willow had given him; two of the ‘candles’ flickered and went dark.

When he tried to right the thing, he over compensated and it hit the table on the other side. One of the arms snapped off. He picked it up with a growl and threw it at the wall with drunken accuracy, wincing as it sailed through the pass-through to the kitchen, landing in the sink with a crash that bespoke of broken teacups…

He thought he should get up and investigate the damage. And then, oh yes, and then he would find something dull and documentary style on the telly, eat his shortbread and try to sober up.

Thus decided, he picked up the bottle of scotch and chose to forego the glass for the time being.

“Hello, Rupert.”

Giles nearly choked on his scotch, and the bottle went flying.

Spike caught the bottle neatly in mid-flight, sniffed cautiously at it, then with a mean grin and a flash of gold in his bright blue eyes, he tipped the bottle and drained it, smacking his lips over the liquor when he was done.

“What do you want, Spike,” Giles demanded, more unhappy about the loss of his precious scotch than about the presence of the not-so-precious vampire in his home. Some small sober part of him suggested calling Willow about the spell that was supposed to keep the once invited vampire out, another small part reminded him he was perfectly capable of magicks all on his own, and then both small parts said ‘to hell with it’ and went off somewhere in search of another drink, leaving Giles to lean back on the couch and close his eyes to keep the room from spinning.

“And a Merry Christmas to you, too, Watcher,” Spike replied, carrying the empty bottle with him into the kitchen. He gave the broken china in the sink a quick look, turned to give Giles a more speculative one, then tossed the scotch bottle into the sink as well. Turning to the refrigerator, he opened it and dug deep into the back, finding one of a half dozen bags of blood he knew would still be there from when he had briefly been Giles’ reluctant roommate. A quick search for a cup of the ‘not-broken-in-the-sink’ variety while the blood heated in the microwave had him pouring thick pig’s blood into his favorite “Kiss The Librarian” mug moments later.

Giles had neither moved nor spoken during Spike’s mostly dead and limited version of dinner making, and the vampire found this slightly worrisome. Well, if he was being honest with himself, he found it mostly convenient—no lectures, no spells, most of all, no staking—but a part of him (the part he thought of, when he thought at all, as William the bloody boring) found a shred of concern for the Watcher, who seemed to be watching nothing more than the inside of his eyelids at the moment.

Thinking that Giles looked completely miserable, and content to leave him wallowing in said misery (there not being much else of the evil variety that he could do to the man), Spike drained his cup, licked his lips, and walked back in to the living room, intent on nicking some cash for smokes (he was down to his last half dozen) and heading out into the Christmas night.

He thought maybe Giles had passed out, as still no movement came from the general couch area of the room as he fumbled through the Watcher’s coat pockets, found lint, a few pennies and a ticket stub from the midnight showing of Dawn of the Dead at the Sun Theater. Another keen look at the figure on the couch for that one, and then he was checking the desk top, getting frustrated as was his short-attention-span way.

Deciding that tonight’s adventures in nicotine would have to be procured through some other means, Spike took the nickel letter opener sitting on the desk, just to be evil, and was taking his first step towards the door when Giles’ voice stopped him cold.

“Spike--?”

He took another step.

“Do you ever miss England?”

He froze, then turned slowly around.

Giles was still sitting back on the couch, but he’d uncovered his eyes, and the look he was giving Spike was at once both demanding and somehow helpless-a look the older man seemed to have a knack for. His eyes looked dull moss in the dim light of the desk lamp and the kitchen, and yet Spike thought he saw something flashing and emerald in them for a moment—

--and what the hell was he doing finding names for the colour of Rupert Giles’ eyes?

“Not often,” he caught himself admitting.

“I do,” Giles voice dropped to a whisper.

“Yeah, well, you’re the bleedin’ sap in this relationship, not me!”

That statement hung in the air like a piano full of fish while Giles continued to vary the green in his eyes at Spike, and the vampire returned the look, only in blue, and found himself dimly grateful not to have the ability to blush. Time spun out for too long to be comfortable for either of them, and then, finally, Giles covered his eyes again with a sigh, and Spike made a second attempt at the door.

“There’s another bottle in the cupboard.”

A six word roadblock.

“Glenmorangie?”

“Fiddich, I’m afraid.”

“Well…” This from the vampire who on a good day drank O’Ban and most days couldn’t even afford that.

Giles upped the ante; “Did you know the Passions Christmas special was on tonight?”

*****
 

“I like what they’ve done with Timmy’s well,” Giles said, waving his glass airily in the direction of the television.

“Yeah, the tinsel’s a nice touch, although I think the lights might be a bit too busy,” Spike offered, ignoring his own glass (Giles hadn’t actually been able to rise from the couch to procure tumblers and ice for them, but he’d given Spike excellent directions for doing so, and it had worked) and instead seizing the bottle from the coffee table. He also managed to ignore the Watcher’s drunken shout “Hey!” and simply tipped his head back to suck hard on the remaining liquor. He relished the warmth that briefly extended itself throughout arms and legs before settling contentedly into his stomach. He tossed the empty bottle aside and watched with some amusement as it rolled under the chair.

“You drank all my scotch!” Giles protested.

“Had a little help, Rupert; don’t recall drinking alone here.”

Giles thought about that a moment.

“I wish it would snow,” he said logically, apparently needing two bottles of scotch to come full circle.

“Are you daft?”

Spike had retrieved the Glenfiddich when Giles had offered it, and then sat down next to him on the couch to watch the television. Some two Christmas cartoons and a soap opera later, they were still seated side by side, although ‘seated’ was rapidly giving way to ‘slumped’ as they made their way through the very bad Christmas programming and the very good Scotch. Now Spike gave Giles a tap on the arm to emphasize his point about the foolishness of his words.

“It never snows here,” Giles continued mournfully.

“And this is a bad thing, how, exactly?” Spike shook his head, was vaguely surprised to find it made him a little dizzy, and managed to avoid thanking Rupert Giles for the excellent scotch and the equally excellent company when he was feeling lonely only by extending his fangs just enough to bite his tongue. Giles missed the flash of gold in Spike’s eyes, so intent was he on his melancholy Christmas exposition. He supposed it was habit.

“I don’t mean a blizzard exactly, or great drifts of Arctic proportions. I just remember a time when my mates and I would find ourselves pulling scarves over noses and caps down over ears as a flurry of unique ice crystals would be blown in out of nowhere—we’d keep ourselves just warm enough until we got to one of the shoppes, or one of our own flats—then, turn up the heat and make hot chocolate—well, yes, hot toddies too. Point is, we felt warmer than just the drink warranted, I’m sure, due to good company and good fun, and….and….well, there you have it….”

His words trailed off, and Spike was grateful to have some time to make sense of them.

“I think if it snowed right now, I’d dance around in it in bloody flip-flops!” This last statement seemed to take more energy than the previous diatribe, and Giles found his eyelids growing heavier.

Another minute for Spike to process, and then “Bollocks!”

Giles jumped at the shout.

Spike stood up to emphasize what he was about to say, staggered badly and sat right back down again. With a sigh and a glare that said, “I did that on purpose!”; he stared at Giles while appearing to put his thoughts in some type of order. In fact, he was mentally hunting for any thoughts at all at this point, and might have continued to simply sit there if not prompted by a combination of those changeable green eyes, giving him their best attention under the circumstances, and then this followed by the Watcher nudging him gently with a smile and saying, “You appear to be sleeping with your eyes open.”

Shaking off the drunken confusion, Spike frowned at Giles and said, “Right. Bollocks to your cold weather. You just think you like it because you don’t have to deal with it.” A pause, then an almost maliciously victorious smile as he felt himself coming to some sort of point. “You think you’re superior to it, that’s what it is!”

“I think you are drunk and being ridiculous, Spike,” The lofty arrogance he was aiming for was tackled by drunken slurring and glasses that slipped down his nose.

“No, no. I have a point here; I’m coming around to it is all….” Spike looked around the room briefly, spied his forgotten tumbler, devoid of scotch now but still heavy with ice cubes, and snatched it up with a look that said “Eureka!” without him actually having to vocalize the word and completely embarrass himself.

“Right then, a bit of science now.” He fished two cubes out of the glass, displayed them to Giles like a bad magician, and then crushed them in his fist. Giles found himself suddenly fascinated by the play of muscles in Spike’s wrist, slim, almost delicate fingers, and bloodless forearm.

“Pay attention, Rupert, you’ll like this bit.”

When Spike reached out lightning quick and grabbed his hand, Giles couldn’t help the resulting girly-yelp; he recovered quickly with a put-out “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” that was in no way emasculated by his glasses completely slipping from his face to fall in his lap. The shiver that coursed through him at the first touch of the vampire’s hand might have thrown the vote a little had either one chosen to acknowledge it; but they didn’t.

Spike twisted Giles' wrist until his glass fell from suddenly nerveless fingers; then he held the now open hand palm side up, and deposited the crushed ice from his other hand into Giles’, and closed it into a fist around the icy gift.

Trying to remain scientific and not drunk and needy, Spike ignored the warmth of Giles’ fingers, the pulse he could easily feel in the man’s wrist, and the subtle and sudden scent of arousal he picked up from his Christmas drinking partner. Instead, he held Giles’ hand closed a minute more, then pulled back a little and said, “Now then, Rupert, hold that pose and see what happens.”

“What happens is my fingers turn blue,” Giles groused, “Which may be clever fun for you, but I’d rather skip the frostbite when I can walk down the street in no more than a jumper on the coldest of days.” But for all his complaining, he didn’t move and he didn’t open his hand.

“Now there’s a visual; you might want to try pants with that jumper, old man—wouldn’t want the Scooby gang to find you all wanderin’ about with your tackle hangin’ out like a bleedin’ Christmas ornament—they’d have you locked up I’d wager.”

That visual made Giles giggle. He couldn’t help himself.

“Here we go,” Spike interrupted the funny movie in his head. “Now, Watcher, watch this.”

Giles noticed that the ice in his hand was starting to melt, and tiny drops of water were collecting at the corners of his closed fist, threatening to dribble down the sides. When the first drop fell from his hand and left a wet spot on the couch, he thought he should end Spike’s lame party trick now and find a towel; instead he moved his hand fractionally so that the water was dripping onto his pants instead, tossed his nearly forgotten glasses onto the coffee table, and watched with scotch-induced, slightly myopic fascination as Spike repeated the procedure. He scooped more ice into his hand, crushed it, but this time kept it locked tight in his own fist, and turned slightly so he could hold his hand right next to Giles’.

More water dripped, and it didn’t seem to matter to Giles. He thought he might have missed something vitally important that had passed between himself and the vampire; then he thought he might have drank the second bottle of scotch himself and now was having a grand hallucination as a result of alcohol poisoning; finally he simply let himself think of nothing; that seemed the wisest course, and the easiest.

“Look here,” said Spike, using the hand not currently clutching ice to pry open Giles’ fingers. Nothing remained of the crushed ice but a wet palm and the last dribbles of ice water, which were quickly becoming less icy by the second.

“It’s a miracle,” Giles proclaimed sarcastically. “You alert the media, while I contact the hall of records and have my name changed to Rupert Meltingwater.”

“Shut up,” Spike growled. That sound was enough to halt the flow of words from Giles’ mouth, and redirect the flow of blood in his body into a more southerly direction. He wasn’t sure if he was happy about that.

Spike still held Giles wet hand, and now he opened his own fist; the ice was crushed, but not melted.

“Heat,” said Spike. “You’ve got it, and you know it; what’s a little nip in the air when you know your body can cook snow? And what you can’t do on your own, you’ve invented jumpers, scarves, all manner of wooly, electric and microwaveable things to combat it. You wish for snow, mate, because you don’t have to have it; you don’t have to shiver in it; you don’t have to feel like it.” This last sentence spoken low and with a slightly mournful tone that made Giles look at Spike sharply; well, as sharply as it was possible to do with his glasses gone and his sight blurred by the drink.

“Spike, would you—“ he paused, wondering what he wanted to say, then wondering how he could best say it without coming off as some sort of dirty old letch, or foolish drunken poof. “That is—we’ve shared some God-awful television tonight—“

“I’ll drink to that….or maybe we already did,” Spike replied with something like a smile.

“And we countered that by sharing some damned fine Scotch.”

“Here here,” Spike agreed.

“So I suppose what I’m saying—what I’m offering—that is to say—“ pause, hands still outstretched, his focus on the ice in Spike’s hand and not the blue eyes he could feel nearly boring into him. “Would you like to share my heat…. such as it is.”

Spike debated this offer as he did so many things in his long afterlife—with very little thought at all. Instead he dumped the ice onto the floor, and brought his hand up to the side of Giles’ neck. He pressed cold digits to the pulse there and felt Giles shivering at his touch. After a few moments of this, some of the man’s body heat began to seep into his fingers, and the shivering grew less intense. Spike shifted closer, then closer still, and let his hand stray around Giles’ neck in a loose embrace.

“Are you sure?” Spike whispered.

Giles took Spike’s other cold hand in his wet but warm one, then clasped the other hand over it too, pulling until Spike had both hands around his neck and he shivered some more; this time less from the cold. And then, as he found himself sliding his own warm hands under Spike’s thin black tee-shirt to caress the strong muscles of the vampire’s back, and Spike nestled his head under his chin, he said, “It would make me very happy.” And he knew, despite the scotch, the melancholy, the bad television, it was the truth.

They shared Giles’ heat, and even made some of their own together, and hours later, Spike still lay wrapped around Giles, thinking he could never get his fill of this. He smoothed a stubble-roughened cheek, brushed away an errant forelock, and pressed cold lips to warm ones.

“Happy Christmas, luv,” he murmured.