Boglescatverse

by
Witling

Part Nine

Once every four hours was a great idea, but this was a world of harsh realities. Xander sat on the edge of the bed holding the glass of pink blood, trying not to look too closely at it. Spike was wedged against the wall, staring at him over the defense of his knees.

"So you're moving in, then," Xander said, swirling the stuff and wincing at the way it coated the sides of the glass. "Excellent. We'll have to get a whiteboard for the chore chart."

Spike lifted his lip in a silent sneer.

"Come on, Spike. I'm not exactly doing this for my health."

Hunkering, and glaring.

"Look, I wouldn't drink it either, except it's the only way you're getting out of my apartment and if I were you I'd probably really want to get out of my apartment by now. I mean, it's been—" He checked his watchless wrist. "Forever."

The closet door was standing open, and the pile of sweated T-shirts in there was getting pretty tall. He'd have to do laundry soon. Even with the blinds closed, the bedroom was a kiln.

"Spike." Xander raised the glass again, and Spike dropped his head like a bull. His eyes were hard and watchful under his brows. Xander sighed and rested the glass on his knee. "Is it hot in here, or is it just me?"

Spike didn't move. Well, hard to blame him. Xander had already tried the disarming-conversation method, but after Giles's surprise blitzkrieg, there was no disarming Spike. Xander took a last look at Spike's beetled brow, then put the glass on the bedside table and raised his hands in surrender. "Okay. Fine. Go Hobbesian, see if I care."

For a minute Spike's gaze was trained with loathing on the glass, and then it flicked quickly back to Xander. Slowly, he lifted his head.

"Big baby," Xander said.

Spike blinked, and his mouth worked. "Ever," he said, and paused. "Seen a bogle?"

Xander thought. "They the ones with the mucous stalks?"

Spike shook his head slightly, and made a feeble fluttering gesture by his forehead. "Legs."

"In their heads?"

Spike shuddered. "Everywhere."

Xander thought some more. "No. And if we ever get them here? Blindfold me." Spike smiled faintly.

Xander sighed and looked around. The room was a wreck. The kicked-off sheets and pillows were piled at the foot of the bed, and the rug was still wadded half-under the night table. He'd got blood on the corner of it when he'd kicked the cup over. More laundry.

Spike shifted, and he glanced back automatically. "You okay?"

Spike paused, looked at him, and nodded. He was just shifting down a little in the pillow. Xander glanced at the glass again, thought about making another pitch, and felt the tensing under the sheets beside him.

"You're uncanny, you know that?" He leaned back on his hands and stared at the ceiling. "All I can say is, if you still lived and breathed, you'd have a clothespin on your nose and you'd have drunk that stuff by now."

Spike was silent. But not a bad kind of silent. When Xander glanced sideways, he caught a wisp of smile at the corner of Spike's mouth again.

"I could get used to you like this. Without the talking." That got him a pretty good sneer. He looked back at the ceiling with a smile. "Peaceful."

Feeble snort.

"So." A bead of sweat trickled down his spine, and he spent a moment examining how strange his life was. "Seen any good movies lately?" No response, and he glanced back over. Spike was watching him with a strange expression. Not the half-smile, and not the bulldog look of scat refusal. This expression was more…interested.

"What?" He resisted the urge to wipe his face, check for green. "If you're thinking of hitting me up for matinee money, you can—"

"Poof." Weak, but decided. Xander frowned.

"No, we covered this. You're just sick. You drink the scary pink stuff, you get—"

Spike shook his head fractionally. His gaze was level and intent. "No," he said quietly. "You." For good measure, he half-extended a finger in Xander's direction.

For a second it didn't make sense at all, and he sat there wondering what Spike was trying to get across. Then the transmission completed, and he sat frozen, staring at Spike, at the finger pointing at him. His brain felt jammed. His face, he realized, was flushed. And that was just like answering, wasn't it? Except it wasn't the answer he'd intended to give.

He realized his mouth was open, shut it, and shook his head. There didn't seem to be any point in saying anything, but shaking his head was the default. It wasn't like he'd agreed to have a conversation about this. It wasn't like he owed Spike any kind of explanation.

"'s okay," Spike said quietly. And somehow that was just the lamest, worst thing he could have said. Xander felt a rush of giddy anger, and smiled tightly.

"Gee, thanks." He sat up and reached for the glass. "I'm going to go pour this down the drain."

In the bathroom, watching the Coriolus effect, he wondered what the hell was wrong with his life. And whether Willow was right. Whether there was some reason he was home alone, tending a dead guy with a possibly contagious disease, while his friends went to class and did research and generally had lives. A dead guy who could fuck with your head even when he hardly had vocal function.

He shut the tap off and stared at himself in the mirror. Messy hair, sweaty lip, construction tan. "Poof."

Right on time, there was a sliding thump from down the hall, a choked gargle, and then a series of hard banging sounds. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the cool surface of the mirror. Just for a second. Blue chips danced in the darkness.

Then he turned and ran back down the hall to the bedroom.

Part Eleven

"Thank you for your patronage." Xander took the glass away from Spike's mouth and stood up. "Next one's at two. Be there or be square."

Spike raised a hand slowly and wiped the pink from his upper lip. He was making a bogle-scat face, and his eyes were still punched-looking and sunken, and the cut on his forehead from the last seizure was scabbing over black. But he seemed stronger. Less trembly. Less liable to pitch headfirst to the hardwood and start mamboing. That had to be good.

"Get some sleep." Xander dropped the measuring spoons into the glass and clicked the bedside light off. The blinds were closed; the room was dark except for the rectangle of light from the hallway. He started for the door.

"How much?"

He turned back. Spike was propped against the pillows, squinting at him, his hand still at his lips. Definitely a less trembly hand.

"How much what? How much this?" Xander raised the glass. Spike nodded. "I don't know. Giles said every four hours for the first day, then twice—"

Spike nodded and made a yeah, yeah gesture. "How much?" he repeated. His hand went up to his head and his fingers pressed the temple, as if it hurt.

"I don't know." Xander looked down into the glass. "Until he figures out what's really wrong, I guess."

Spike stared at him, his lips pressed tight, and for a few seconds Xander stared back. Spike looked thin and tired and wrung-out. Like he wanted to be told, just three more times. Just twice. And then this'll be over, and you'll be fine, and you can go back to calling people poofs.

"I'm just the messenger, Spike. Next one's at two. "

He pulled the door almost closed, and went to wash out the glass.

He'd set the alarm but the phone rang first, jerking him out of a weak, heat-filtered doze and almost flipping him off the couch. His first thought was Giles. Giles and Willow and Buffy and something about cacodemons, small dogs, possibly apocalypse. A phone call after midnight was never good.

He grabbed the phone, fumbled, stabbed, and barked, "Hello?"

Silence.

He swallowed and wiped sweat from his forehead. Jesus, the place was an oven. What time was it? He'd knocked the clock off the table. He searched for it with hot, clumsy fingers.

"Hello? Giles?"

Nothing, and he stopped searching for the clock. Then he realized he could hear breathing, and after a moment of shock, righteous anger flooded the gates.

"Listen, you fucker—"

"Is Spike there?"

That stunned him to silence. He sat with his mouth open, listening to the breathing. After a second he took the phone away from his ear and looked at it. Then he put it back.

"May I ask who's calling?"

Click. Then tone.

He took the phone away again, looked at it, then hung up and dialed *69. That phone number was blocked, and not accessible to this service. And somehow, he hadn't really expected it to be.

The alarm went off next to his fingers, and he jumped and swore and almost dropped the phone. Jesus fucking Christ. He punched the clock off, dropped it, picked it up again, and put it carefully on the table. Then he put the phone down next to it. He sat for a minute on the edge of the couch, feeling sweat trickle down his chest, waiting. Nothing went off.

"Okay then."

He got up slowly and started for the kitchen, rubbing the back of his head and plucking at his shirt. Blood. Right. Who the hell was calling Spike at his apartment? What the hell was Spike doing, giving his number out?

"What the hell are you doing, giving my number out?" He measured, dumped, and swirled to help the process along. Spike was sunk deep in the wall of pillows, his eyes still only half open, his hair highly messed up. He'd been awake when Xander came in, but just barely. It had taken some levering to get him upright.

"I mean, I realize you have a highly active social life with the dregs of society," Xander said, letting the blood settle. "And they can't hardly host a rumble without you, but Jesus, Spike." He put the glass to Spike's lips. "Could you maybe not give out my home address, next time?"

Spike swallowed, blinked, and rubbed a hand over his head. Then he pulled his head back into the pillows, so the glass wasn't at his mouth, and turned his head to Xander.

"What," he said blearily, "the hell. Are you talking."

Xander waited.

"About?" Spike said.

"I just got a phone call for you," Xander said. "It's two am, Spike. And random thugs are calling my house. For you." He pushed the glass forward, against Spike's lips. "Drink this fucking stuff, would you?"

Spike tried to turn his head and couldn't. Xander tipped the glass until the stuff was against his lips, and after a second's pause he closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and drank. He made the scat face. Xander lowered the glass and grabbed the measuring spoons off the table.

"Spike." He stared at the white, tired face. The pink foam on the lip, the glassy eyes, the hands traveling nervously over the sheet. The black beadwork of scabbing on his forehead. His throat was still working, still processing the scat. Giles had said it might burn on the way down

Xander sighed and stared down into the dregs of pink in the glass. "Spike," he said again. "Just—" Then he couldn't think what to say. Just don’t be such an asshole all the time, Spike. Just don't be so…predictable.

He looked up, and Spike was still staring at him, blinking, his head wobbling slightly on his neck. He looked like he was about to fall over. He still had pink on his lip.

"You've got a little—" Xander pointed at his own mouth, and Spike took a second to work that through, then lifted his hand and wiped the stuff away. Xander stood up.

"Six o'clock," he said wearily. "Same bat-channel."

He clicked the light off, pulled the door almost closed, and debated for almost thirty seconds before turning the phone off and falling face-first onto the couch.

Once every four hours was a great idea, and when you actually put it into practice, it worked wonders. Six o'clock rolled around without a single seizure, and when Xander knocked lightly and walked in with the early morning buffet, Spike was laid out on his back at the top of the bed, deeply asleep and looking better than he'd looked in days.

"Bogle scat," Xander said, glancing at the glass in his hand. "Who'd've thunk."

Spike gave a little twitch at his voice, and he paused. The sheet was wrapped sideways up around Spike's body, crimped at the top as if he'd been grabbing it during the night. His arms were outflung, the fingers loose and lax, the palms strangely vulnerable. The veins in his wrists were blue. His muscles were smooth and pale, like white stones under his skin. Xander knew what they felt like; plenty of times he'd grabbed an arm, or been grabbed and hauled out of harm's way. Got a hipbone against his tailbone once, and they'd both yelled.

His face looked calm and plain and pale. Turned away into the pillow, the privacy of sleep, other things. He'd been a friend, in some ways, for years now. He looked…familiar.

Xander knew what the arms felt like, but he had an urge to touch one now. Just put a finger down and test the egg of the bicep, see what it felt like when it moved under the skin. Soft and sleeping. Not agonized, not hard.

He was thinking about touching Spike's arm.

He took a step back, and fell over the rucked-up rug. He landed hard on his ass, coughed out a yelp, and tried to save the glass. Failed. It went everywhere, and then he was on his back, covered in pink, the glass spinning next to him and a shifting sound on the bed above him.

Spike peered over the edge of the bed. For a few seconds he looked confused; then a smile seeped over his face.

"Maybe you should drink some of that shit yourself, Harris."

If there was no God, at least there was early-morning weekend television. Aerobics and Looney Tunes and Chuck Norris flogging home workout contraptions. Proust had his madeleine and bully for him; if there was coffee and cereal and food dehydrators, the comforts of Saturday morning childhood could always be retrieved.

The coffee was good, even though it was too hot to drink coffee. Air conditioner. He was going to fix that thing today if it killed him. As it might well do, in this heat. And then Spike could go recuperate in Willow and Buffy's storage locker, or in Giles's pantry. You can't take it with you, after all.

In a few hours Willow or Giles would call and ask how things were going, and he'd be able to report that Spike was no deader than he'd been on arrival, and that would be some small victory, even if it wasn't the kind they wrote epics about. But that was in a few hours, when normal people were awake. Right now, it was six thirty on a Saturday morning and the living room was an EZ-Bake even with the blinds sealed, and he was quite possibly the only waking soul in Sunnydale.

There was a shuffling sound, and he sat straight up and stared. Spike was standing in the bedroom doorway, one hand clamped to the frame. He had his jeans on, but not his shirt. He looked weirdly wrong and shocking, like an apparition.

"Are you—?" Xander put his cup down and stood up, then didn't know what to do. Spike wavered slightly. He looked past Xander at the television set.

"What's this shite?"

Xander looked. Christie Brinkley was doing the side glide.

"Infomercial," he said. "You want me to turn it down?"

"Want you to turn it off," Spike said. He took a deep breath and let go of the door frame. It was maybe ten steps to the couch. Xander watched him totter the whole way, heel-to-toe, his hands out for balance. When he was still a few feet away he reached out for the arm and missed it, reached again, and started to tip. Xander stepped forward and caught him up with one hand in his armpit.

"You walked," he said, helping Spike rotate and sit on the couch arm. "You're walking."

Spike sat for a minute, staring at his lap, not moving. Then he lifted his head, glanced at Xander, and looked back at the television.

"Match on forty-two," he said.

Xander stared at him. "You Bataaned out here to pre-empt my viewing?"

Spike stared back. "Started half an hour ago."

Xander took a deep breath. "What kind of match?"

Spike gave him a withering look.

"Spike, I'm not a soccer fan. I don't watch soccer. You want to watch soccer? Get your own channel forty-two."

Spike looked at him for a minute, then started to lean back across the couch and reach for the remote. Xander watched the muscles in his belly shake and lock, watched his arms start to tremble. He had a quick flash of fingers scrabbling at the floor, a jaw bolted, the teeth grating.

He leaned down and snatched up the remote. "If I give you this," he said, pulling Spike upright with one hand and holding the remote in front of him, "you agree to observe certain rules. No random flicking. No warp drive. If I say I want to see something, you—"

Spike had the remote out of his hand before he could finish, and they were on channel forty-two before he could turn around. The crowd cheered.

Xander closed his eyes briefly, then walked around the coffee table and dropped into the far end of the couch. "Glad to see you're feeling better," he said sourly, and reached for his cereal.