Boglescatverse

by
Witling

Part Five

There was definitely a law of diminishing returns governing couch comfort. He lay in darkness, the sheets raddled at his feet, staring blindly up with dry, hot eyes. The apartment was silent. There was sweat at the back of his neck. He was down to boxers and a T-shirt, the bare minimum.

"If it was vampire psoriasis, you'd have figured it out by now," he muttered to Giles. Or to the ceiling, which was up there somewhere. Why couldn't Spike have come down with a bad case of rickets, or night blindness? And if he did have to grab the brass ring of mystery ailments, why not in the comfort of his own crypt?

Except of course if he had, he'd be face-down amid the urns right now. Possibly donating skin to rats.

Xander swallowed, wiped a spider of sweat off his neck, and sat up with a sigh. The glowing dots of the spare alarm clock read three thirty. He was leaden tired, but there was no sleep in him. He'd got maybe three hours, and he couldn't remember exactly what he'd dreamed, but it had made sad snapping sounds and thrashed like a fish. He swung his legs off the couch and stood up.

"If it was sciatica, you'd have figured it out by now," he said quietly, and headed for the bathroom.

He stood for a long time under the cool water. Washed his hair twice, palmed his beard, dropped his hands to his feet and just hung with the water on the small of his back. Ended up sitting down at the end of the tub, his elbows propped, letting it run over him like rain. He'd go to hell for wasting the water, sure. Later. He dozed.

When he finally nudged the tap off with one foot, he was barely tethered to his skin. He got slowly out of the tub, dried off, and walked back down the hall with his sweat-damp clothes in his hand, the towel around his waist.

At the bedroom door, he paused and looked in. Without even television light, it was hard to see anything. But he heard a shifting sound, and pushed the door open a little farther.

"You awake?"

There was a long pause, and he waited patiently, feeling the varnished wood warm beneath his feet. Another sliding sound.

"Hell?" Spike's voice was quiet, ragged.

"No. My place." He ran his arm over his forehead; he was already starting to sweat again. "Do you want...more to drink?"

Silence. He let it go almost a minute.

"Spike?"

"Not--"

Xander stood still, feeling his hair drip cool water down the back of his neck, down his spine. "Can I turn on the light?"

"No." That was alarmed, and there was more shifting. Xander paused.

"Okay. How about the blinds?"

There was silence, and he could hear Spike thinking, Blinds? It was perfectly clear, four am clear.

"I'm opening the blinds," he said, and walked forward into the blackness. He didn't trip, didn't fumble with the rod. It was his apartment, he knew where everything was. The blinds parted like fingers, like the steeple opening up to show the congregation. He could see, at least a little.

He turned back to the bed, and saw that Spike was lying with his back pressing the pillow to the wall, as if he'd just fallen over like that. He was blinking up at Xander, looking pissed off and confused.

"Hell?" he said again, and tried to lift his arm. The pissed-off look slipped, and his face went blank and tight.

"Spike--" Xander sighed, balled up his sweated clothes, and tossed them through the closet door toward the hamper. "We don't know what it is. But we're working on it."

He looked back, and Spike was staring at him with wide, frozen eyes. The hand he'd tried to lift was tight in the sheets.

"You should eat more," Xander said, the calmness faltering. He looked away, down at Spike's jeans and T-shirt, a little rumpled hummock at his feet. "I can get you some--"

Spike closed his eyes. Xander's heart jumped and he took a quick step forward.

"Spike?"

Spike opened his eyes, baffled again. Xander eased back onto his heels.

"Okay, sorry. Just...do you remember the floor show?" He didn't mean it to sound like that. Spike still looked lost. "I mean, before. You had some kind of seizure."

Spike stared at him for a few seconds, then shook his head very slightly. "Fit." His fingers twitched back toward himself, verifying.

"Yeah. Before. On the floor." Xander sat down carefully on the edge of the bed. "It was...bad." He met Spike's eyes for a second, watched the fear start to grow again, and looked away before it really flowered. "Giles was here, he knew what to do. And he'll figure it out."

Spike swallowed.

"It'll be fine," Xander said, and looked back with a false smile. Spike was staring fixedly at the mattress in front of his face. His knuckles whitened in the sheet. Xander took a deep breath.

"You have any idea what could be causing this?"

Spike's jaw ticked. He didn't look up.

"Spike?" Xander put a hand out, remembered who and where, and pulled it back. "Has this happened before?"

Very small shake of Spike's head. The hand knotted in the sheet slowly unclenched and rose, shaking. He touched the back of his head. His face was rigid.

"Spike?" Xander said quietly.

Spike looked up. His eyes were wide. His hand pressed the back of his head.

"Chip," he whispered.

Xander sat still. After a minute, Spike swallowed and looked back down at the mattress.

"Okay," Xander said at last. "Okay. You think...you think it might be the chip?"

Spike didn't seem to hear. His arm was shaking, his hand searching the back of his head. Xander watched for a minute, then reached out and gently took hold of his forearm. Spike jerked.

"Hey. It's okay." He guided Spike's arm back down the mattress. "You cracked it on the way down, that's all." He paused, then took a breath and risked stupid. "You want some aspirin or something?"

Spike just stared at him, his face blanched. Xander patted his wrist and started to let go, and Spike's hand turned and scrabbled to keep hold. For a second his fingers were loosely caging Xander's hand, and his face was wide open. Face of a drowning man.

Xander flinched, and Spike's fingers froze, then jerked away. His eyes flattened. Then they closed.

Xander sat silently, listening to his heart race in the hollow spaces between his ears. Sweat was beading at the base of his spine, and behind his knees. Air conditioning. The alarm; he had to remember to set the alarm.

He leaned over and hit the button on the clock. When he leaned back, Spike's eyes were open, watching him.

"Shove over," Xander said, and when Spike narrowed his eyes and didn't move, he put the heels of his hands on Spike's shoulder and shoved him. Gently. Then he lay down on his back and wiped the sweat off his face with his forearm.

"Spoon me and die," he said, and closed his eyes for sleep.

Part Six

He was standing at the top of a hill, watching a cloud of little blue butterflies dance in midair in front of his face. None of them bigger than a dime, the sunlight winking on their wings. Their teeth made tiny clacking sounds.

Something poked him in the shoulder and he turned in annoyance.

He was lying on top of the sheets, on his back; apparently he hadn't moved all night. He still had the towel. Spike was on the far side of the mattress, flat on his belly, one arm outstretched. One finger in Xander's shoulder. His hair was messed up, and his face was puffy. His eyes were very blue.

"Blinds," he whispered, and Xander blinked. Then he realized he was lying in slats of sunshine, and that Spike only had about two feet of clearance before he got grill marks.

"Shit. Sorry." He rolled off the bed and twirled the blinds shut. "I thought I set the--"

The alarm clicked and went off, and they both jumped. Xander punched the clock and it shut up.

"Sorry. I forgot about the--"

The alarm in the living room went off and they both jumped again. Xander went out with a hand over his chest, his heart hammering in his ears, and killed that clock too. He stood for a minute in the middle of the room, his arms held out warily. Nothing else went off.

"Okay, then." He blinked, knuckled his head, and absently adjusted the towel. On his way to the bathroom, he put his head in the bedroom door. Spike was still belly-down on the edge of the bed.

"You okay?"

Spike's head didn't turn, but two fingers came up out of the sheets. Xander nodded.

"Duly noted."

His hair was standing up in baroque waves. Waves that said, Rollerboogie! and Brut--for men! He frowned and wetted them down as well as he could, then headed back out with water trickling down his back and chest.

"I'm calling in sick today," he said, ducking back into the living room for the phone. He dialed work and stood propped in the doorway, listening to the ring. "So I'll be around." Silence from the bedroom. "Try to control your--"

Daniel picked up, harassed already, and he took the conversation into the kitchen. No need for Spike to get in on all the valuable insulation-retrieval tips. He made coffee and then, with a feeling of total surreality, heated up blood in the microwave while listening to Daniel praise the perfect duct. Daniel said feel better, dude. Monday's wiring.

Xander said he'd be back by Monday, and hung up.

He left the phone on the counter and started for the bedroom with a mug in each hand. Halfway there, he stopped short and reassessed. Coffee, right. Blood, left. Okay.

He needed clothes.

"I didn't know if you take cream or sugar," he said as he got into the bedroom. "So I put both."

Spike rolled his head sideways on the bed and stared at him. With the blinds sealed, the bedroom was dim again, almost dark. His eyes were shadowed and burnt-looking. Xander hesitated, then put the blood on the night table, carried his coffee over to the dresser, and started digging for something less terry. "How you feeling?"

A pause, long enough for him to try the coffee, set it down, and shake out a Sunnydale U T-shirt that had seen better days.

"Crap," Spike said finally.

"Uh-huh." Xander kept sorting, found some shorts and trousers and that was plenty. It was already hot in the apartment, even for the towel-clad. Air conditioning. He'd fix it today. Except that meant messing with the window, and he'd be damned if he wanted Spike-shaped scorch marks on his sheets.

"If Giles doesn't call by ten, I'll call him." He tried the coffee again, and realized it was too hot for coffee. His upper lip was sweating. "Blood's on the table."

He started out, then stopped in the doorway, and made himself look back. "I mean, I'll be back in a minute. For that. Unless you can--?" He glanced at the cup.

Spike lay looking at him, his cheek pressed into the mattress, for a few seconds. Then his eyes flicked downward, to the cup.

"Sure," he said. His fingers started to push into the sheets, and his arms started to shake.

"Yeah," Xander said. "Because you're only mostly dead, right. Just...chill. I'll be back in a minute."

He dressed, draped the towel over a chair, and just stood for a minute with his toes in a square of sunlight. The windows were open, and the streets were quiet. He had the whole day ahead of him. No insulation. No wiring. Just...well. Spike.

He had a strange brief clip of the color blue fragmenting in front of him, glittering like the coins on a belly-dancer's shawl. It gave him a weird feeling of dread and happiness.

Giles was going to figure this out. Giles was going to fix it, and it was all going to get shuffled back into the deck, and in a few years he wouldn't even be able to remember it. Not Spike's skull whacking the ground, not his throat pulsing as he drank. All stuff he'd seen before, anyway. No big deal.

He went back into the bedroom, and found that Spike had maneuvered himself around into something close to a sitting position.

"So I'm thinking." He sat down on the edge of the bed by Spike and picked up the cup with one hand. With the other hand, he got hold of Spike's far shoulder and pulled him upright. "You good there?"

Pause. His hand was still on Spike's shoulder, holding on firmly. Spike glanced down at it with a slight frown, then rolled his head back into the pillow. He nodded. Once.

"Okay." Xander let go, and made himself lean on that hand. Casual. He put the cup to Spike's mouth, and again there was no immediate reaction. Spike just watched him over the rim, his eyes narrow and blue. "So, I've been thinking about what it's not. Just to, you know, shift the avenue of approach."

He tipped the cup slightly, and Spike's head was pushed back into the pillow, his eyes still trained on Xander's face.

"It's not seasonal affective disorder," Xander said. "Or...a compound fracture. Yet." He tipped the cup some more. "It might be anorexia, though."

Spike's eyes narrowed to slits, then closed, and his lips opened. He swallowed, and Xander tipped the cup back.

"You don't catch things from blood, do you?" he asked, looking away at the blinds, the tiny lines of blocked light. "I mean, what Willow said, about mono--"

Spike made a weak snorting noise. "Mono?"

"Well, no, not mono, but maybe you picked something else up. Demon mono."

Spike snorted again. "Demon mono?"

"Look, shut up." Xander raised the cup again, and Spike opened his mouth, drank, and swallowed. "Demon hep. I don't know. All I'm saying is, if you've been falling off the pig wagon lately, it's in your best interests to tell us. So Giles can--"

"Chip," Spike breathed, fixing him with a hard look. The smile was gone.

"Yeah, I'm aware, Spike. And it doesn't stop you from buying human from nefarious sources, and I don't even want to think about what else--"

Spike was shaking his head, turning away with his lips pressed together, as if he couldn't stand the effort anymore.

"What?" Xander lowered the cup. "Don't get all Steel Magnolias on me, okay? I'm just saying, the chip doesn't--"

Spike turned back suddenly, his eyes bright, his jaw ticking. "No," he snapped. "It's the--" He stopped short, looking in wonder down at his hands, then back up at Xander.

"What?" A cold feather ran up Xander's spine, premonitory, and he leaned back fast and put the cup down on the floor. "Are you--"

The bed was shaking before he had the chance to sit back up. He sprang up, stumbled back, and stood watching while Spike arched and bucked. Head and heels braced, his spine a popping bridge. The muscles in his legs cut like something skinned. His elbows drove into the mattress, his hands clawed air. There was a dull cracking sound coming from somewhere. After a second, Xander realized it was Spike's teeth, grinding.

He stood there for what felt like an hour, blinking and swallowing and not looking at Spike's face. When Spike seemed too close to the edge of the bed he moved forward with his hands out, but he didn't touch. Just let it run its course. Keep back, keep clear, and let it run itself out.

It took a fucking lifetime to do it.

Finallly Spike was limp, twitching, his eyes wide and blank, fixed on the ceiling. His throat was pulsing hard, his fingers jerking. The fitted sheet was wrapped around his ankle. Everything else was on the floor.

Xander took a step forward, and realized he was slippery with sweat. He forced himself to take a long, full breath. Then another. He'd seen worse. Plenty worse. No big deal.

He said, "Spike?" in a quiet voice, and got no response. No tracking when he waved a hand through Spike's field of vision. Just that locked gaze, the sign flipped to back in ten minutes.

Carefully, he separated the fitted sheet from Spike's ankles. Then he picked the top sheet out of the mess on the floor, and laid it over him. He was all angles, splayed and thin.

"I'm calling Giles," Xander said to no one in particular. He stepped backward, thinking with some numb, latent part of his mind that at least they hadn't spilled the blood--and caught the cup with his heel, sending it everywhere.