Boglescatverse

by
Witling

Part Fourteen

"Giles says they mainly seem to show up in Russia and the Baltic states," Willow said, ducking neatly and spritzing. "Apparently Minsk has a real problem."

"Minsk." The proboscis swivelled, nares flaring, and honed in on him. He cracked the bat down on it and it snapped off with a glurg of yellowish syrup. "Ah, Christ."

"Thorax," Willow reminded him over her shoulder, and he sighed and plunged the bat in. More syrup, all over his hands to the wrists. He was going to have to burn everything he was wearing.

The second one was chittering furiously, flailing its palps at Willow, who was backing up, spritzing like mad. Her cannister was failing, and as Xander watched, her heels met the husk of the cacodemon he'd just dropped. She eeped and toppled, and he swung the bat from the base of his heels and cracked the thing's head right out of the park. Well, into a tree. He heard the rustle-rustle-thump. Belatedly, he pointed.

"Wow." Willow squinted up at him from the grass. "Um, Washington crossing the Delaware?"

He sighed and dropped his finger. "Don't take this the wrong way, Will, but sometimes I think I need guy friends." He held out his hand and she took it to pull herself up. "And no, I didn't mean that the way it—"

"Giles is a guy," she said quickly, brushing herself down. "And a friend. A guy friend. And I too did not mean that the way—"

"Understood," he said. They both stood staring down at the husks. "Man, what are we going to do with these?"

"Um." She looked around perfunctorily. "I could do a little no-see-um spell."

"Or we could drag them into those bushes."

Pause.

"Okay."

They each grabbed a husk and started dragging. Halfway to the bushes, Willow gasped out, "Spike is a guy."

Xander's husk cracked slightly under his fingers. "Yes," he said after a second. "That he is."

"And I know he's not really a friend, but he's not really an enemy—"

"He's a jerk." Xander checked over his shoulder. "What do you think—through or around?"

"Through," Willow grunted, stamping on a marigold. "He's jerky, okay. But—" She backed into a rhododendron, paused, and changed angles. "He's not a total jerk, is he?"

"He's getting calls. On my phone. At two in the morning." Xander dropped his husk, kicked some token dirt over it, and took hold of the tail end of Willow's. "I don't know what he's doing, but I don't like it."

"He gets calls? From…friends?"

"I'm thinking more, associates."

"He's talking on the phone?" They dumped the second husk next to the first and Willow stood up and braced her hands in the small of her back. "He must be getting better."

"He's—I don't know." It was on the tip of his tongue to say, Yeah, he's fine, let's move him back to the finery and privacy of his own damn crypt, but he thought of Spike propped against the refrigerator, hunched over with his fingers pressed against the linoleum, the phone barely balanced against his ear. "He's getting better, yeah."

"Are you guys getting along?"

"So far only one of us is dead," he said, and a second after the glib slipped out he registered the slight oddness in Willow's tone. He turned and looked at her. In the leafy darkness, her face was hard to make out. "Wait—what do you mean?"

"What do you mean what do I mean?" She dusted her hands showily and started forging a route back out to the park. "Just, getting along. Which is a pretty weird expression when you think about it, because, you know, where? And it's like that in, like—" She paused. "Um, I can think of four languages right now—"

"Willow," he said, forging after her. "There are no secrets between us, remember?"

"No!"

"I know your very thoughts, right?"

"Sure!"

"And when you smokescreen? Infants can tell."

They were in the open again, and she turned to give him a sour look.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, reaching out and plucking a leaf out of her hair.

"Nothing," she said, and he just looked at her. "Okay. Maybe, just…Spike is a guy, you know?"

He nodded. "To the best of our shared knowledge."

"And, I don't know, I guess I just—I mean, we just—" She searched his face, and stopped. "But I don't want to be all, um, assumy and stuff, and it's none of my business except it would be if anything happened, because shovel—"

He blinked. "Okay. Remember when we talked about having the entire conversation out loud? "

"You're just going to get all freaked out, and it's dumb and stupid anyway, and we should probably catch up with Buffy and Giles, because cacodemons, and maybe they could use the no-see-um—"

"Willow—"

"Do you think maybe you and Spike—?"

He just stood there, waiting for her to finish. "Me and Spike—?" he repeated helpfully after a minute, prompting her with a hand. She twisted her mouth and looked at him, and then it hit him all at once, and he wondered what the hell had been wrong with him for the last two and a half minutes. Maybe the Raid had gone to his brain.

"Me and Spike," someone said in a weird flat tone, and he realized after a second that it had been him. He had both hands up in front of him, palms out, in a warding-off gesture. His heart was slamming in his ears. And he was pretty sure he looked flushed. Him and Spike was totally ridiculous. And insulting. And no.

Willow was watching him with wide eyes. He had no idea what was in his face, but after a second she dropped her gaze and stooped to pick up the cannister from the grass where she'd dropped it. She straightened up and fingered it nervously, her eyes on it instead of him. And he realized that he still hadn't said the no that he was supposed to say. The whole conversation, out loud. Right.

"No," he said, in as authoritative a tone as he could muster. "No, and no. And—" He felt a little surge of anger in his chest and tried to keep his voice level. "Just because he's a guy doesn’t mean— I mean, just because I'm— I don't have to leap on everything that crosses my path."

"No, I didn't mean—"

"And he's a vampire. Jesus, Willow. Vampire."

"I know, it's just—"

"And he's sick. I'm mauling sick dead evil guys, now? Thanks a lot."

"No! Xander, I didn't mean—"

"Forget it. Let's just find Buffy and Giles."

"Xander!" He was already turning away, and she reached out and grabbed his arm. Her face was pale and shocked, and she looked close to tears. He felt stupidly close to tears, himself. They both stank of demon goo and Raid. His shoulders ached and his throat was tight. She'd said we. That meant they'd talked about him behind his back. Xander and Spike. Jesus Christ.

"Xander. I didn't mean to upset you, I just—" Her fingers tightened on his arm, and she gave it a little shake. "You're all sad and tired all the time, and we hardly see you anymore, and I don't want to be Ms. Nosey Parker but I don't know, we were just hoping maybe you'd—"

"I'd start macking on Spike?" He stared at her. "This was your hope for me?"

"No, just… Just that you'd be a little happier." Her face was so miserable, it was like a jab in the gut. He felt sick. Exhausted and angry and sick.

"That's—" He took a deep breath and tried to smile. "That's nice, Wills. Really. Thank you."

A hopeful little smile touched the corner of her lips. "We care about you, Xander. We want to…you know. Meddle."

"Uh huh."

"Not necessarily with Spike, it's just he's the first person you've seemed to—"

"He's not a person," Xander said automatically. "Wait, the first person I've seemed to what?"

Willow seemed to brace herself. "The first person you've, well, cared about. In a while."

"I don't care about Spike." His voice sounded distant and flat. He stared down at Willow's fingers on the cannister.

"Well, you stood up for him about the…scat. And you're letting him stay in your place."

"He'll be out tomorrow," he said remotely, still staring at her hands. "And this conversation is so totally over."

She didn’t say anything.

"Over. Finished. And retroactively deleted."

Silence.

He reached out and took the cannister out of her hands, shook it, and listened to the bearing rattle. "We should get you a fresh one. And find Buffy and Giles."

She nodded, and they started walking. Halfway across the park, she asked, "Who do you think he talks to on the phone?"

By the time they found Buffy and Giles in the far reaches of the mall parking lot, there was a pile of husks to knee-level, and more on the way. Buffy was wielding an honest-to-God quarter staff, and Giles had what looked like a crowbar. Both of them were gooey.

"Where have you been?" Giles called, sparing them a glance as he fenced a cacodemon back against the pile of husks. "For God's sake lend a hand."

They waded in. The cacodemons kept pouring out of an outlet tunnel in a ditch below the lot, plenty to go around. Xander kept a tight grip on the Slugger and smashed hell out of anything with more than two legs. It was cathartic. Then it was tiring. Then he started getting blisters.

Finally the flow let up, and Buffy dispatched the final stragglers with the end of her staff, like giant bug kebabs. She flicked them onto the pile and sighed. "God. I am so ready to see the last of these guys."

"Seconded," Willow said weakly, sinking down to the pavement. "Thirded, even. Giles, do we have any ideas yet?"

Giles looked up from his glasses, which he was trying to clean with a gooey handkerchief. "Given that my entire evening has been spent spearing the creatures with a pry bar that I will now have to sink in a river, no."

They sat in silence, glumly surveying the pile of husks.

"Anyone bring a dolly?" Xander asked.

No one had, and forty-five minutes later they were still transporting husks to the mall Dumpsters and shrubberies. It was almost one o'clock by Xander's gooey watch before the pile was down to a single layer of bug corpses.

"There's a little more room in the TJ Maxx azaleas," Buffy said, grabbing a pair of husks and starting to haul. Xander leaned down for a grip, and something stabbed him in the shoulder. He leapt back, and something heavy came with him.

"Fuck!" There was a proboscis rammed into his deltoid, a cacodemon suckling at the far end. He kept stumbling back, trying to get away, and only dragged it with him. It left a trail of mustard-colored slime on the pavement. "Jesus—Buffy!"

She was already back, just a pair of little hands out of nowhere, wrestling the thing's head. Giles was shouting something about the thorax. Fuck the thorax, he thought. Cut the fucking thing off. His own hands were scrabbling at it too. The pain in his shoulder was sickening and deep, like an injection. His fingers were starting to go numb.

Then something splurged through the thing's chest and it fell heavily against him, twitching and leaking mucus. He yelled and tried to push it off, then yelled again when the proboscis stayed in his shoulder. Buffy got a hand on it and pulled, and there was an agonizing sliding sensation, and an extra three inches of cacodemon proboscis slipped out of his arm.

"Oh my God," Willow said faintly, from somewhere above them.

"Are you all right, Xander?" That was Giles, squatting down next to Buffy, who was staring at the proboscis with a kind of personal hatred. She'd staked the cacodemon with her staff, old-school style. Xander looked at both of them, then up at Willow.

"Ow."

Giles was inspecting his arm, then the segment of proboscis in Buffy's hands. "We got it out before it anchored, thank God. Can you move your arm?"

Xander raised it halfway, winced, and lowered it. "Uh—"

"Wait here," Giles said. "We'll finish these last ones up and be right back. And be careful, you two—there may be others that aren't quite dead."

"Xander," Buffy said, still holding the proboscis. "God, I'm so sorry. That could have—"

"It didn't," Giles said shortly. "Come on, one last trip and we'll be done."

Xander stayed put. His head felt strangely woolly, and a trickle of blood was running down his arm to his hand. He watched it for a minute, then wiped it carefully back up and flicked it onto the pavement. His whole arm throbbed. Spike and him. That was ridiculous. They had absolutely nothing in common.

He could hear faint arguing from the far side of the lot, by the TJ Maxx azaleas.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the ache in his armpit, the tingle in his fingertips. Flesh wound. Minor. God, he was tired.

"Right, let's get you to the car," Giles said, and he opened his eyes with a start. He must have drifted off.

"Why do I always have to get the giant tick bite?" he asked, pushing himself to his feet and almost falling over. Buffy caught him, and Willow took hold of his free arm to steady him.

"He should have a bandage, right?" she asked, as they trekked across the lot to Giles's car. "And do we have NeoSporin?"

There were bandages and NeoSporin in the trunk, as always. Xander sat on the bumper and flexed his hand while Giles duct-taped him back together and Buffy hovered, getting in the light.

"Buffy," Xander said finally. "It's okay. It's not your fault."

"I thought I killed it," she said. "It was supposed to be killed. I killed all the others."

"I know, Buff. It's not your fault."

"It was supposed to be killed," she said again, staring at the neat white bandage Giles was taping in place. Xander waved his free hand in front of her face.

"Buffy. Again. Not blaming, here."

"Happily, it's minor," Giles said, snipping the last strip of tape and dropping the scissors back in the box. "You'll be slightly sore, but there won't be any lasting damage."

"See?" He stood up, flexed manfully, and flinched. "Ow. I mean, see?"

"We'll drop you off first," Giles said.

In the back seat, just before they got to his apartment, Willow squeezed his knee slightly. He looked at her.

"Sorry," she whispered.

He shook his head, not getting it. Too tired to get it. His arm ached, his neck ached. It was just starting to sink in: he'd been sucked by a giant cockroach. Cross that off the list.

"For everything," she said quietly, and from her sheepish look, he realized she meant the Spike thing.

"No big," he said. "Just…no. Okay?"

She nodded. "Okay."

"I recommend Tylenol," Giles said, pulling into the curb. "And a good night's sleep. And how is Spike, by the way?"

"Annoying," Xander said, and opened his door. "Night, you guys. Buffy, not your fault."

"I know," she said softly, and tried to smile. He waved, closed the door, and started across the street.

On the way up, he had a brief moment of weightless teetering, a vision of the straight back down. His arm pulsed. What if it had anchored? He didn’t want to know. He wanted Tylenol and a couch to call his own, ten solid hours of sleep, and if Spike got any calls tonight he was going to be dialing with broken fingers in future.

He sorted his keys, let himself in, and closed the door behind him. Then he paused. Something seemed—off.

He took a step into the apartment and looked around the corner of the entryway. The television was playing mute M*A*S*H. A Henry Blake episode. There was stuff all over the floor—blankets, newspaper, stuff from the coffee table. The coffee table was tipped over. It all glowed in the light of the television. One bare foot glowed on the floor behind the coffee table.

Xander took another step forward. Spike's arms were outflung, his eyes were blank. The television light made him a classical statue, pale and perfect and still.

Part Fifteen

For a guy who'd been ridiculously, disturbingly easy to move around a day or two before, he was pretty dense. Xander got hold of his arm and the waist of his jeans and tried to heave him up, and the proboscis stick cranked to a white-hot needle in his shoulder. He let go in a hurry and just crouched down by Spike's side, waiting for the throb to stop. He should turn the television off and put a light on. Instead he looked around for the Ziploc bag, pulled it out from under a cushion, and carried it into the dark kitchen.

He found a glass and spoon by touch, his eyes half-closed, floating like a plastic fishing spinner at the surface of the darkness. The blood turning slowly in the microwave was fascinating. His arm tickled. Vaguely, he wondered when he'd eaten last. No time to grab anything on the way to the Box, and now it was past two o'clock. Did he have to work tomorrow? No, tomorrow was Sunday. Thank God.

The blood dinged and he pulled it out, poked the bag, and squeezed a little into a glass. A tablespoon of scat makes the medicine go down. He walked back into the living room still swirling the glass.

Spike was blinking, which was a start. Xander sat down cross-legged by his head, put the glass carefully on the floor a few feet away, and leaned back on his hands to watch some M*A*S*H. None of it made any sense, and then there was an operation, and he spent three seconds thinking about the Korean War, and communism, and all the ways that normal people died. Mostly they didn't involve being perforated by giant bugs.

Spike shifted, and he glanced down.

"How you feeling?" he asked. Spike curled his fingers, then tried to pull his arms to his chest. He got halfway and stopped. His eyes slid sideways to find Xander. The tip of his tongue wetted his lips.

"Did you take the stuff at two?" Xander asked. Spike just stared at him. "This afternoon. You were supposed to take some at two o'clock."

Long silence. The light made Spike's eyes look wet. Xander turned back to the television.

"Uh huh."

A few ads went by, while Spike slowly tried out his limbs in the bottom quarter of Xander's field of vision. When he started trying to sit up, Xander looked down again and picked up the glass.

"You need to take this."

Spike paused and looked at it. Then he looked at Xander. He swallowed, licked his lips again, and nodded.

"Okay then," Xander said, and hooked his free hand under Spike's arm to help him up. When he was roughly vertical, Xander put the glass to his mouth. He drank it. His throat clutched and he made a gagging sound, but he drank it. Xander kept him upright, staring at the television and waiting for the swallowing to stop. After a few seconds he realized his eyelids had fallen, and hauled them up to find Spike staring at him.

"'pened to you?" Spike's head was wobbling slightly on his neck again, and Xander gazed at him a second, then looked down at himself. He was goo-frosted, head to toe, slumped sideways, all his weight braced on one numbing palm, and he couldn't keep his eyes open. The hand in Spike's armpit was starting to shake.

He looked back at Spike, who was palsying more now. The floor behind him was littered with splayed magazines and old phone bills. The coffee table was still tipped over, legs stiff in the air like a game animal.

"Ah, fuck." Xander started to laugh, took his hand back to cover his face, and had to grab fast to keep Spike from falling over. "Fuck, sorry—" He couldn't stop giggling. They were like Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. Or Aerosmith. Cranky, debilitated, crashed out in the mess they'd made of his apartment. Totally incompetent. Not to be trusted.

"Sorry," he said again, gasping and leaning forward to wipe his eyes with his numb left hand. "Sorry, I just can't—"

"'s funny?" Spike asked sharply, and Xander snuck a sideways look at him and started giggling again. "Funny, am I?"

Xander wheezed. His stomach hurt; tears were blurring his eyes. He couldn’t stop. He took a deep breath and tried to fight it down.

"Bloody hilarious," Spike muttered, and Xander lost it again. He choked and started coughing, and after a minute something tapped his back. He looked around and realized Spike was trying to whack him. It felt like Giles trying to get his attention. He collapsed again.

He battled it down by degrees, and finally sat shivering, wiping his eyes. The goo on his trousers was deeply amusing. There was goo in his hair; he could feel it. He'd been a human juice box. He really needed to get some sleep.

"Sorry—sorry about that," he said, when he could talk again. Spike was just sitting quietly, and Xander felt a frayed thread of worry and checked him out. If he did that thing again— But he was just sitting there, a faint weird smile on his lips, staring back at Xander. "Wait—what?"

The smile disappeared, and he just looked like Spike. Deep double annoying with a ribbon of smug. Except it was hard to look smug with thumbprint circles under your eyes and a lump growing on your left temple.

"Okay," Xander sighed, and located his feet. "Bedtime for Bonzo."

He stood and hauled Spike with him, and together they started staggering for the bedroom. Halfway there, Xander slipped on a magazine and almost took them both down. The giggles exploded again.

"Well done," Spike said, somehow keeping his balance. "Lovely."

He sounded almost exactly like Giles, and Xander lost his shit all over again. When he finally regained motor control, he glanced sideways and caught Spike with the weird little smile again. He paused and blinked. "You're doing that on purpose."

"What?" The smile was gone; Spike looked tired and pissed off.

"You're making me laugh."

"Fuck off." Spike tried to jerk his arm out of Xander's grip, and Xander ignored him. "Wanker."

Xander just looked at him, and Spike said quickly, "'pened to your arm?"

Xander looked down and noticed that the stick had started bleeding again at some point; there were two long dark trails running down to the crook of his elbow. He frowned. "Oh, gross." He should clean it up, change the dressing. The very thought was crippling. He sighed and started them for the bedroom again. "Du Pont's fine plasma tasting. Don't get any ideas."

Spike said nothing, and Xander kicked the bedroom door open with his toe, got them in, and spun around to drop Spike on the bed. "Last stop. All dipshits off."

He let go and Spike hit the mattress and bounced. Xander stepped back. The blinds were closed, the air conditioner was on low. The bedroom was the coolest room in the house. And God, the bed looked good. He was momentarily body-checked by the feeling of cool sheets, cool air, a full mattress that you could starfish on if you wanted to. He was so fucking tired.

"Sleep here."

He blinked, shook his head slightly, and focused on Spike. Spike, right. Reality. He had to go hose off, get the goo off before it bonded, take care of his arm. He had to set the alarm.

It took a second for the words to settle gently against his cerebral folds and then sink in. Spike was already turning, shaking, curling on his side on the right-hand side of the bed. Xander's side. He was keeping right to the edge.

"You're here," Xander said, and then realized that was kind of a failure to sequite, and what he really should have said was No. Or possibly Fuck off. Wanker.

"Yeah." Spike drew his knees up and pulled the pillow down beneath his head. "Over here. Other side's yours."

Xander stood wavering, his feet throbbing, every molecule of his dumb traitorous body leaning forward to the lap of coolness. His body was air conditioning's bitch. "Gee thanks," he managed, knowing he'd been too slow.

For a minute they both just stayed where they were, in silence. Xander's brain had done that thing where it left without even counting the change in the till. He kind of knew to expect it by now, when he was this tired and the world handed him an unmade decision. His body was a traitor, and his brain was union labor.

Finally he just did the usual, and handed the keys to inertia. His body tipped easily forward and dumped him onto the cool soft mattress. He was disgusting; he needed a shower. He was going to have to burn the sheets. He didn't fucking care. He turned his back on Spike, squinched over to the very edge of the mattress like the straight man he sometimes still forgot he wasn't, and slept.