Boglescatverse

by
Witling

Part Twelve

"I'd say it's working," Xander said, craning his neck to look around the kitchen doorway into the living room without losing the phone. Spike was bonded to the couch cushions, his eyelids at half mast, the remote dangling from one hand. The volume was still low, which was another little victory. He'd kept turning it up by degrees when Xander's back was turned, until Xander had come back in and just stood wordlessly by the venetians.

"No further convulsions? And he seems less debilitated?" There were pages flipping in the background; Giles was multitasking.

"No. And yes. He's commandeered the television."

"Ah, very good. Well, continue the dosage and I'll do my best to sort out the underlying problem. And if you're free this evening, we could use you on patrol. The cacodemon population is growing at an alarming rate."

"Ah, man. Saturday's ground chuck night over to the bingo."

Pause. "Yes, we'll see you at nine."

He hung up smiling, finished rinsing out the last mug, and dropped it into the drainer. The clock over the fridge read nine fifty. Practically time for another feeding. He'd kept the bogle scat glass quarantined.

He walked into the living room with half a glass of the world's foulest substance, and Spike's eyes slid sideways in his head to watch his approach.

"Bon appétit," Xander said, holding out the glass. "I assume you can do this part on your own."

Spike just stared at him for a minute, no expression at all, and then he let out a long slow breath and sat up. The muscles in the sides of his stomach hollowed. Xander blinked and looked away at the television.

"Who's winning?"

He felt Spike take the glass from his hand, and looked back. Definitely less debilitated. His wrist shook very slightly, and he paused to stare at it until it went still. Then he set his jaw, bolted the pink, and banged the glass down on the coffee table with a shudder.

"That was Giles," Xander said, staring at the pink foam sliding back down the inside of the glass. "He says he's working on it. Still. And, you know, cheerio old chap."

Spike was moving his mouth around like he wanted to spit. Xander eyed him.

"Do it and you'll be Swiffing with little bits of duster."

Sour look.

"May I take this?" He made a formal show of clearing the glass, took it back to the kitchen, and dropped it into the sink. On his way back through the living room, he noticed the volume was up again. "I'm going to work on the air conditioner. If I can hear anything above a dull roar in there, I'm coming back in here and installing a V-chip in both of you."

The volume went down one notch. Spike's eyes bored into his back all the way to the hall closet, and by the time he'd got his tools out and headed for the bedroom, he had smoking laser holes in his shoulder blades. Whatever. He was Air Conditioner Guy. It was something to do, at least.

It took a little longer than he'd expected. He got it out of the window and got the casing off, cleaned the filters, checked the fans, the coils, the motor. Nothing wrong with the wiring. No leaks, no cracks. A lot of southern California dust and particulate carcinogens, which he transferred to an old T-shirt and his own hands. It was stifling in the bedroom, even with the window open. No breeze. He sat cross-legged on the floor in boxers and an undershirt, tinkering with the carcass.

He was starting to think he wasn't going to be able to figure it out when he checked the filter hose and saw that it had come loose and filled up with gunk. There was an old newspaper in the wastepaper basket, and he snagged it and spread it out under the hose. It occurred to him, as he was shaking air cancer out of the hose, that he spent way too much of his life dealing with the gross.

The phone rang and he paused and glanced down at his blackened hands. Crap. He eased a sheet of newspaper free and stood up, wiping his palms. It gave him a whirling head rush. How long had he been working on this thing? The bedroom clock read eleven twenty-two.

The phone rang again and he muttered, "Couch comfortable enough for you, Spike?" and dropped the crumpled paper. If you were okay enough to take over the viewing schedule, didn't that make you okay enough to pick up a phone?

Apparently it did, because the phone stopped ringing. Amazement froze him for a second. Then he thought about last night's phone call.

"Oh, no way," he said, and started for the door. "You do not accept the charges."

The couch was empty; the television was showing cartoons, practically muted. When had the game stopped? He didn't remember hearing the shift. And where the hell was Spike?

He heard a low voice say "Look—" in the kitchen, and headed that way.

Just outside of the doorway, he paused and looked in. Spike was leaning against the fridge, bent half over as if his stomach hurt. The muscles in his side and back were jumping, and he was blinking hard at the floor. The phone was pressed to his ear. His free hand was pressed to his forehead.

"Look, you stupid twat—" he said, and was cut off. He seemed to be listening and thinking fast, trying to get ahead. His hand left his forehead and came down to the ground, the fingertips pressing white. "I'm trying to tell you—"

Xander stepped into the doorway and said, "What the hell are you doing?"

Spike jumped, jerked his head up, and dropped the phone. It hit the floor by his feet and he scrabbled for it, caught it up, and thumbed the cutoff.

"Nothing," he said.

Xander just looked at him.

"Wrong number," Spike said, and wiped his mouth with a shaking hand.

"Wrong number," Xander repeated. He kept standing there, and after a minute Spike hauled himself upright and stretched his arm out to put the phone down on the kitchen table. He was shaking again.

"Stupid punter," Spike said, and turned around against the fridge to open the door. He peered inside, picked out the milk, and stared at it. Then he glanced back at Xander, and seemed to see him properly for the first time. "What happened to you?"

Xander looked down at himself. His hands were still black, and he'd wiped them on his shirt without noticing as he'd walked out; he had black fingerswipes across his stomach. A few carbon smudges on his legs, from wiping away sweat tickles. Probably all over his face, too. Suddenly he itched all over, and all he wanted out of life was a cool shower and a nap in clean cool sheets. And exactly none of that was going to happen.

"Don't answer my phone," he said, and grabbed an LL Bean catalog off the junk mail pile on the counter. "And get the hell out of my fridge." He ripped a few pages out, started working on his fingers, and turned to leave. Spike was up to something, because Spike was always up to something. On dust's door, Spike would be up to something. And it would be stupid and predictable and in the final analysis lame, because that's the way Spike was. Because Spike was an ingrate and an idiot, forever and amen.

"Hey."

He turned halfway back, still working on his index finger. "Don't hey me, Spike. Just drink your scat and get lost."

He was almost all the way out the door when Spike said, "Why are you so pissed?"

He turned back and said clearly, "Because you're an asshole, Spike."

"'m always that."

He was standing with the milk in one hand, leaning on the refrigerator door, looking genuinely perplexed. And he had a point.

"Yeah, well. You're not always an asshole in my apartment, I guess. Maybe you could try to keep the assholicism down to a bare minimum while you're actually under my roof, okay?"

"What'd I do?"

Xander stared at him for a second, then looked down at his blackened fingers, the crumpled twist of glossy paper smeared with grease and dirt. He took a deep breath. "Just…just don't plan apocalypse on my home phone, okay?"

"Told you, pet," Spike said, his expression closing over slightly. "Wrong number."

Xander felt a wave of frustration, and swallowed hard against it. He raised his hands, white flag. "Sure. Okay. Whatever."

"I'm not doing anything," Spike said, a little more forcefully. His eyes were fixed on Xander, the old Jedi mind trick. These are not the droids… Xander stared back stonily, and after a second Spike dropped his gaze to the milk carton. He studied it for a second, then said, "Don’t know what you think I did, but I didn't do anything to get this." His hand drifted up and touched the back of his head. "Don't bloody know what's—"

He stopped, and they both just stood there. After a minute the refrigerator motor kicked in.

"That's not a museum," Xander said quietly. Spike looked at him in confusion, and he made a close the door gesture. He pretended not to notice how Spike transferred his weight from the refrigerator door to the counter beside it.

The clock read eleven thirty. Xander sighed.

"If we both get out of this alive, it'll be a miracle," he said, and then wished he hadn't. Spike just snorted, his eyes on the floor in front of him. A drop of sweat ran down the center of Xander's back.

"I'm going to go put that thing back together," he said. "You want a hand back to the couch?"

Spike shook his head, and he couldn't decide if that was a relief or a disappointment, so he left.

Part Thirteen

There was no possible way that God could have rested for the whole seventh day, because he must have spent at least most of the morning making air conditioning. The last and most perfect of his creations. And it was good.

Xander sat on the bedroom floor directly in front of the blast, his skin in goosebumps, sweat chilling in his hair, grinning so wide his front teeth were dry. Holy Christ, it felt good. He wanted to just lie down and fall asleep right here, in the square of Arctic sunshine on his floor, and when they needed him tonight they could just drop by with an ice pick and hammer him free. He'd heard Reykjavik was a nice place. Maybe he could get a timeshare. Commute.

From what he could hear, Spike was back on the couch watching soccer, or possibly making out a check to Apocalypse-of-the-Month. Whatever. It was quiet in the living room, and he was ambulatory now, he could take care of his own two o'clock sitting. After that… Well, if he kept getting better at the current rate, he'd be out of the apartment tomorrow. He and his baggie of pulverized fewmets could become the dim, fading memory they were meant to be. And Xander could get on with his life.

There was a weird ring to that thought, and he realized after a second that he'd just put mental irony quotes around "life." Well, he was Irony Guy. Irony Chef. Old Ironysides. It was his forté. His signature devilish charm.

He shifted and ran a hand through the chilly soaked hair at the back of his neck. The cold air was starting to seem a little too cold.

"I have a fantastic life," he muttered.

The air conditioner droned.

"Just because I don't want to go to the Ice Capades."

There was a sound in the hall and he jerked his head around, his neck cracking, his eyes springing open. Nobody there; he was hearing things. Every little creak, he thought he was going to have front-row tickets to the all-rattling, all-rolling Spike show. It made a guy jumpy.

The air was definitely too cold now, and he climbed wearily to his feet, looked at the mess of tools and paper at his feet, and thought, tomorrow. He'd deal with it tomorrow. Right now, he had a date with a cool shower and a few hours of oblivion. If he could kick Spike off the couch long enough to get it.

He started for the bathroom, then paused. In a hundred-odd years, Spike had probably covered a fair amount of ground. Probably had sleazy underworld pals on every continent by now. He turned on his heel, went back to the living room, and almost ran straight into Spike in the doorway.

"Gah!" He jumped back, a hand over his heart, while Spike clung to the doorframe. "Jesus Christ, Spike!"

Spike glared and swayed slightly. "Christ yourself," he said, and they both paused.

"That made no sense," Xander said.

Spike muttered something under his breath.

"Christ me?" Xander considered a second. "No. The language officially doesn't accommodate that."

Spike pushed off the doorframe and started back toward the couch. He walked slowly and with a slight stoop, his heels brushing the floor. Xander watched him for a second, then looked around the living room. The phone was on the coffee table.

"I'm taking a shower," he said, heading for it. "Let me help you not call Nairobi while I'm gone." He picked up the phone and started out. "And I'm going to sleep when I get out, so you can either shuffle off now or get flipped off when I get back."

Spike had just dropped back into the couch, his legs kicking up loose as the cushions hit the backs of his knees. He sat still a second, one hand braced on the arm, the other planted in the seat beside him. His forearms were shaking slightly, Xander noticed. And his face looked long and white and tired.

"You want—" Xander paused at the doorway and started to take a step back. "You want a hand back to bed?"

That got him an old-school Spike sneer, an eyebrow that probably definitely was ASL for Poof, and a slight disbelieving hiss of air, like a deflating balloon of Fuck you. He shrugged and tapped the phone against his chest.

"As I said, go Hobbes. See if I care."

He went down the hall to the bathroom with a molten BB of anger lodged in the back of his neck.

"My life is fantastic," he told the mirror, and turned the cold water on to a roar.

Cold air was great; cold water was better. He got out of the shower half an hour later with, well, not a song in his heart. But without murder there either, and that was a step in the right direction. Cool water and soap and maybe possibly just one or two quick little inner films of hands locked hard into his, a silver ring glinting. He felt a little lighter, a little better. A lot sleepier. Well, he was a guy. And whatever else that meant in this brave new world he lived in now, it still meant he napped after he came.

He towelled off, looked at the damp grimy pile of his boxers and shirt, and sighed. No way. He was becoming sarong guy, and if that didn't give Spike ammo for the next few millennia, nothing would. Fuck Spike. It was his apartment; he'd wear a tutu if he wanted to. Not that he wanted to.

He cinched the towel tight around his hips and saronged back down the hall to the bedroom.

"Don't get excited," he said, pitching his shorts and shirt onto the pile as he turned the corner. "I'm just getting—"

No Spike in the bedroom. No blankets on the bed. Just full-bore AC, droning away, raising the hairs on his arms. He paused for a second to savor, then turned and went back to the living room.

Mute golf on the television; a beautiful swooping blue sky, then a smooth green and a white rolling pellet. Spike watched golf?

No. Xander stood in the doorway, one hand at the tuck point of his towel, just staring. Spike was cocooned in a lump on the couch, eyes closed and mouth open, the remote clutched loosely in one hand. He'd bogarted every blanket. His bare feet were propped on the opposite arm of the couch.

Xander looked at the television, then back at Spike.

"Huh."

That didn't seem adequate, and he considered walking over and poking Spike to wake him up and administer a brief quiz: was this an altruistic act? Or possibly: what have you done with the real Spike?

Then the siren song of the AC filtered through. He was wasting valuable unconsciousness, standing here contemplating the koan of Spike.

He turned and went back to the bedroom, pulled the door almost closed, and fell full-length onto the cool soft mattress. Then through it into sleep.

He'd forgotten to set the alarm, but the sweet blue sparks winked out right on time, and he woke up staring at the clock. Eight fifty-nine. As he watched, it clicked over to nine. The cacodemon hour. He sighed and levered himself out of the trench he'd flattened in the mattress. Clothes. He'd heard they were all the rage in the outside world.

He got into one of his few remaining T-shirts and a pair of trousers that could take a little more splatter, grabbed a stake from the sock drawer, and headed out. The apartment was dim, almost dark. In the living room, tortilla chips zinged silently across the screen. Spike was still curled into the back of the couch, his face half-buried in the cushion. He'd hardly moved.

Nine o'clock, Giles had said, and it was a few minutes past already, but still, something bothered him about the way Spike was lying. Xander paused, one hand on the doorknob, then turned back and went to the couch. He put one careful finger out and tapped Spike's head.

Spike jerked awake, eyes peeled wide, his whole body shivering back and away. He was still wrapped in the blankets, and almost rolled right off the couch.

"Whoah—" Xander stepped back, hands up. "Sorry, sorry. You just—"

Spike was sitting up and staring at him, then down at himself, the blankets, the remote still clutched in one hand. He swallowed, dropped the remote, and started to fight his arms free.

"I'm sorry," Xander said again. "I didn't mean to spook you. I just though you were sick again, or something."

Spike got one arm loose and sat still for a second, staring at the coffee table. Then he lifted his hand and ran it over his face. The tremor was back. Xander shifted uncomfortably and tried not to notice it.

"You feeling okay? Maybe I should stay—"

Spike shook his head once, sharply. "Logy, 's all."

Xander paused. "Um. Okay. I'm going to assume that's—"

"Piss off."

Xander hesitated a moment longer, his brain a blocked intersection. He was late. He'd just terrified Spike. Who was shaking. Again. And the small dogs of Sunnydale were in danger.

"Piss. Off."

There was an edge of desperation in Spike's voice now, and that twanged something deep in Xander's belly, where he didn't want to feel anything twang. He closed his mouth tightly and stepped back.

"Yeah, okay." He had a stake, his keys, some money, ID. Everything. "Do you need—"

Spike gave him a single, furious, shaking finger without even looking around. Xander stood still a second, his weight shifting back and forth, heels to toes. Then he turned and walked quickly to the door without looking back again.

Except once, and of course he saw just what he expected. Spike sitting slumped in the tortilla flicker, one shaking hand running over the back of his head.