Disclaimer: It may come as a surprise but I'm not Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy and therefore I do not own Spike or any of his many shagging and verbal sparring partners. I weep for the injustice of it all and play with these characters in the fiction I write because this is pretty much all the fun I have.

Written for txrabbit's birthday.

Beta'd by kitty_poker1

Read through before posting by toobusy2write. *smooches them both*

Attack of the Sniffles

by
Eyezrthewindows

Spike didn't remember much about being sick. He hadn't been human in over a hundred and a quarter years. When he had been, he did recollect it being pure hell: sweaty and smelly and disgusting and dripping and...well, you get the idea.

He was, however, fast becoming an expert at modern sickness, had first-hand knowledge and would kill another Slayer despite his soul-having ways to never have to endure this again.

It wasn't the normal flu, that was a given. He had vampire immunity to all diseases and illnesses -- and mortality.

This was demonic in origin, of course. He'd fought a demon -- wasn't that how it always went? Always a goddamn demon involved and never in a good way -- and gotten its mucus in one of his wounds and two days later he was burning with fever, shivering and sweating, and having partial hallucinations, in bed like he'd never wanted to again.

Yeah, he knew he was having unreal moments when he'd look up at the ceiling and find a naked Xander with long blond hair sitting next to the lighting fixture playing with himself and petting a chicken or when he'd see his sire staring at him from the side of the bed, complete with his tight leather pants and partially unbuttoned shirt trying to get him to come help him pick the perfect shade of purple for his new bathroom colour scheme. Angelus had even had paint samples.

He hadn't had such fucked up hallucinations since the time he'd eaten that hippie at Wood Stock.

How did humans live with being sick and messy and gross like this all the time? Couldn't they feel themselves dying as the days went by? It was disgusting and foul and depressing.

Spike wouldn't take that goddamn Shanshu Angel seemed to have a hard-on for, for anything in the world.

He sniffled, then promptly sneezed as his nose tickled somewhere deep inside and knocked the back of his skull against the headboard with the force.

He groaned and fell back against the pillow, weakly reaching for the half-full box of tissues at his side. He could barely lift his arm but he managed to grab one and honk a good portion of his brains out into it.

His head felt stuffy and his nose was full of...well, Christ, it couldn't be full of much; he'd just emptied a good pint of fluid into the last tissue!

With a grimace of disgust, he tossed the Kleenex in the general direction of the trash, leaving it for Xander to pick up later and bitch at him about.

An angry Xander was a beautiful thing.

Though, Spike couldn't take advantage of that and shag him like he always did when he got the boy riled up and percolating. Even he knew he was too disgusting and sick to have sex with.

And, ironically, he didn't feel like having sex. He hadn't even been hard for the last few days.

He sighed, then began coughing as his stuffed up nose didn't allow for sighing and the pressure built up uncomfortably like there was something growing in his sinuses. His ears popped loudly and he whimpered.

His watery eyes focused on the closed door, blood-shot and narrowed, and waiting for it to open and for his honey to come in and nurse him back to health.

It was only fair. Spike had done the same for Xander many times and this was only one rare occasion that he was going to be sick.

He'd play nurse-maid for Xander a hundred more times if it meant he never had to endure this again.

He was going to make damn sure to stay well away from that Mucus demon in future. Let the Slayer handle it. He'd watch and gladly cheer her on.

He snorked and snorted and snotted for ten more agonizing minutes before he had to concede defeat and called out weakly for Xander that he needed him.

Silence. Minutes passed. Spike pouted, lower lip trembling, no matter that he didn't have an audience to use it on. His eyes watered.

Oh, he was a right mess.

"Xadder!" he called again, slightly louder, then had an attack of coughing once he'd trailed off.

His throat burned and tickled and set him off into a mini-coughing fit once he'd stopped the last one. His coughs sounded wet and disgusting.

He felt nauseous. It was a sudden thing, like needing a cigarette or to get laid, but not any kind of good like those things. His stomach roiled as he felt something thick sliding down the back of his throat -- he swallowed hard.

His eyes widened slightly as he felt his stomach roll.

He shot over the side of the bed and emptied his stomach into the trash can Xander had put there earlier. His vomit ejected brutally out of his stomach, out of his throat. He gagged and shook and shuddered and continued to heave his guts out until he couldn't anymore.

He was panting by the time it was over and when his tearing eyes opened he looked down at the...mess and dry-heaved again.

He clutched his stomach and inhaled unevenly through his mouth as his ribs began to hurt due to the work-out they'd been getting. He flopped back down on the bed, wrung out and weak, shuddering and sweating.

He shook his head rapidly, trying to clear his blocked ears and failing. He stuck a finger in one and wiggled it, tilting his head, squinting as his breathing seemed louder and everything else seemed muted.

He sighed. His senses had never been off before. He was used to having extremely acute hearing and sight and smell. All of his senses were fucked.

He could barely hear Xander in the other room and everything was blurry. He couldn't smell a goddamn thing. He'd wager -- if he could keep anything down and the mere thought of human food or otherwise didn't make him want to heave up bile -- he couldn't taste anything, either.

He couldn't even speak properly. His sexy accent was useless.

He was miserable. He wanted Xander to come in and keep him company, share in his misery, make him feel better.

He felt pathetic and sad and lonely.

Xander was ignoring his sickness in favour of talking on the fucking phone; he could hear that much.

It was probably the demonic sickness talking -- well, more like definitely -- but he felt like crying his poor little scratchy eyeballs out.

"Xadder," he said softly, face crumpling into...a sad, crumpling thing.

The door swung open and Xander walked in with a tray, minutes later.

Spike clutched the blankets around his shivering body with weak fingers and smiled wanly, eyes lighting up as much as they could in his paler than pale, splotchy face with its swollen, peeling red nose.

Xander grimaced at him, then looked at the garbage and went a little green.

Spike's face fell. Then, sniffed as his nose began running again.

Xander's eyes widened and he quickly set the tray down on the bedside table and plopped himself down on the edge of the bed -- the side furthest from the pile of snotty tissues and the puke-filled trash can.

"Sorry I took so long. I was on the phone. And I was also making you some soup, even though, you know, you're a vampire and you don't strictly need it to get better or anything. Oh, and I brought you some high-powered meds that might possibly knock you out and let you sleep through the rest of this crap."

Spike's eyes lit up again. "Oh, blease, gib be da bills firds. Nod dat I dobe thig da soub's goob an' all...or dat I'b nod gradeful..."

Xander grinned. "I know. Here." He took two little white pills that had been sitting innocuously on the food tray and put them in Spike's sweating palm. "It's so weird feeling you sweat and have body heat that you haven't stolen from me. I mean, you fresh out of a hot shower isn't this hot."

Spike glared at him and beckoned for the orange juice, sniffling loudly as his nose began to drip down the patch of skin above his lips. He wiped his nose with a balled up tissue, grimacing as his raw nose burned even more. "Gibbe da juize, gid."

Xander glanced over the edge of the bed and made another face. "Guess I'd better clean that up."

Oh, but how he didn't want to.

Spike stared at him. "Blease, tag id away. Id's baging be sig again."

Xander took the vomit trash out, holding it as far from him as humanly possible.

He wrapped the small bin in a trash bag and threw it out. No way was he going to clean that out and have to endure that...nastiness. He'd just have to buy another one later. He hoped he had a bucket to replace it, though, since he really didn't want Spike to puke on the floor.

"Xadder! You didn' gib be by juize! I can' reage id!"

"Blease mag id stob," Spike sobbed. "Id's too hod. I feel lig crab! Dis is 'ell. I thig I'b dyig." He threw off his blankets and tried to take off his t-shirt but was too weak to do it and Xander forced his hands back down to his sides.

Xander held Spike down, easily keeping him in place even with the weak struggling. "Settle down, Spike. It's not that bad. It'll be over in a day or so."

Spike sniffled and stared up at Xander with the biggest, saddest, most blood-shot and watery eyes Xander had ever seen. "Blease? Knog be oud?"

Xander was sorely tempted to do the literal knocking out but...he'd have to wait until Willow got her herb-y stuff and for the tablets he'd given Spike to actually start working.

They really weren't moving along fast enough. He figured it was because of Spike's lack of circulation.

"Just wait a while...you'll go to sleep and it'll all be better. I swear."

Spike glared up at him defiantly, blinking sullenly around watery eyes, then relaxed and nodded hesitantly. "Fide. Whadever. Leab be alode. Wan' do die id pieze."

"You're a really pissy vampire when you're sick."

"I dode ged sig! Dad's why I'b actig lig dis! Dis id a...teborary thig, billog!"

Xander turned and coughed into his shoulder to hide his snicker, which Spike didn't even notice anyway because he was so out of it. "Right. Anyway, are you calm now? I want to get up and get rid of all these...nasty balls of snot you tossed everywhere but in the trash." His face screwed up. "And we don't even have a trash can anymore since you ruined the other one. Going to have to buy another..."

It was Spike's turn to snicker, and he did it wetly while wheezing and hacking and snorking until he was red in the face, which was quite a feat for a vampire.

"Shut up, Spike. It's gross!"

"Dud id for you lods of dimes. I do doe id's groze." Spike rolled his eyes, then blinked as he noticed them suddenly grow heavy. "Xadder? 'M hod. Cud you blease pud a code gloth od by foreheab?"

Xander let Spike go and smoothed back sweaty hair that had certainly seen better days. "Okay."

Spike sighed in relief once Xander brought back the cloth and shut his eyes and lay there, letting Xander run a moist washcloth over his hot skin.

"Thangs, Xadder."

Xander watched Spike's eyes flutter as they tried to open and then they stopped trying as Spike's wet, shallow breathing eventually evened out and tapered off completely.

The pills did their job, knocking Spike out for several hours while Xander gave Spike an injection that Willow whipped up -- it was healing herbs and some of the demon's blood mixed into a cocktail -- that she said would cure him more quickly.

Spike stayed out of it for a long time, only surfacing long enough to smile blearily at Xander as he gave him more pills or some orange juice, sniffle and hack and then go back to sleep.

When Spike finally regained true consciousness it was more than a day later and he felt lighter and so much better it was nearly too good to be true.

And when he finally realised he wasn't alone like the last time he remembered waking up, miserable and feverish and blah, he looked at the sleeping brunet by his side and smiled as he pushed back some hair that had fallen into his eye.

He sniffled just a little but he wasn't feverish, he wasn't sweating, he didn't feel any residual pain or heat...and, bonus! His senses were back to normal.

And he had a sleeping boy in his bed all for the taking.

His smile was slow and evil as he turned toward Xander and edged closer and...

...ended up panting and out of breath despite his not needing to breathe, and shaking all over like he'd been twelve rounds with Angelus' favourite cat o' nine tails.

He fell back into the pillows, wheezing, and shut his eyes because the room had suddenly started spinning and lurching all over the place. Opened them again when he felt a slight touch against his face and met concerned brown eyes blinking sleepily at him from beneath a messy curtain of dark hair.

"You okay?"

Spike swallowed hard, whispering because that was all he could do, "Yeah. Weak is all. Sodding demon. I've half a mind to go dig up its remains and kill it all over again. If I wasn't certain I'd get sick again, anyway. How long was I out?"

Xander craned his neck and stretched his spine so it crackled and popped and he groaned out his pleased relief. He relaxed again, propping himself up on one elbow, watching Spike. "Other than the few times I had to give you meds and stuff and you were all loopy? Over a day. Those drugs really knocked you out."

"Good drugs, those. I'm definitely feeling better. Thank bloody fuck."

"Wills made some witchy brew and told me to inject it near the wound that got infected...apparently, it helped."

Spike blinked and rubbed his healed arm thoughtfully. "Don't know how I feel about you playing doctor with my unconscious body, pet. Makes me feel...odd. Doctor's for awake moments."

Xander rolled his eyes. "Life's not fair, Spike. Get over it. At least you're better and..." He sighed, "...we can play 'doctor' some other time when you're not still...yucky from being sick."

Spike's eyes widened with outrage as he struggled to sit up. He fell back and cracked his head against the headboard again, sighing. "If I wasn't so ruddy weak I'd get you for that. I think I need some blood."

"Yeah, probably," Xander said, getting up and starting for the kitchen. "You haven't eaten vampire food in over three days. Be right back."

"Xander?" Spike said quickly, causing the boy to pause.

"Yeah?"

Spike fidgeted. "Thanks for taking care of me. I know I'm not the best patient and all...with me not being used to it..."

Xander strolled back to the bed and rubbed a hand through Spike's hair, further causing it to stick out all over, until his hand rested on the side of the vampire's neck just below his ear lobe. "Just think...you'll get to totally pay me back when I get sick again. And you know I will. Germs seem to gravitate to me nearly as much as demons do."

And with that, Xander went to the kitchen, leaving Spike staring, open-mouthed.

"Fuck," Spike muttered, melting back into the bed and pulling the blanket up to his chest. "Better milk this for all I can while I'm still able. He's no field of daisies when he's hacking up snot balls the size of my fist and yellin' about needing Vap-o-Rub."

Pause. Microwave hummed. Spike contemplated. Xander sang off-key to himself as he waited for the magical ding that would mean Spike's meal was ready.

Spike's eyes glittered. "Xander! Could you bring me some orange juice?"

"Sure thing," he called back.

"And a magazine! I'm bloody bored."

"Okay..." The microwave dinged and the door opened and shut.

"And some more tissues and some of my black varnish?"

"Spike..."

"Oh, and don't forget a wet cloth so I can clean up a bit. I'm in desperate need of a shower but I'm far too weak for that at the mo'."

"Spike."

"Maybe a comb and some hair-gel..."

"Spike!"

The vampire grinned and tucked his hands behind his head, laced them together and waited. "Xander?"

"What!"

Spike smirked. "And a dvd that's not some sci-fi crap!"

Xander growled.

Spike settled into the bed, comfy and snug as a bug in a rug, sighing as he closed his eyes.

Here Endeth the Story

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