I can't believe I managed to screw up the courage to do this commentary. Hell, I can't believe I managed the courage to ask permission. I also sort of can't believe that I managed to get the damn thing half-written without ever emailing it to myself, because I email myself files all the damn time. Just in case I might want to work on something when I don't have my own machine handy. So. I'm going to try to believe that the original file, irretrievable on my poor dead laptop was not full of thoughtfully articulate genius observations. Um, I'm pretty sure it couldn't have been, since I've never produced such things before. Anyway.

So this is my very favorite fic ever. And it's unfinished. And I'm pretty confident it isn't ever going to be finished. Which I am fine with. For a couple of reasons that I'll address later. This is the fic I have used (when it was still publicly posted) to suck a few people into reading fanfic in general. This is also the only piece of writing that has ever physically injured me.

Yeah. Okay, so a few years back? I was feeling a little stressed, and not sleeping. Or rather, I was falling asleep just fine around 1 am, but then waking up at 4. Or 4ish. Wide awake. And it was easier to creep into the kitchen with my laptop to divert myself with the internet than to lie in bed with my brain going in circles. So that's what I did. And I did my best to be quiet, which means at some point in the middle of this I snorted at something (ladylike, that's me!) and tried to hold it in and twitched hard, wrenching something in my neck. Couldn't turn my head for a week. I have no regrets.

And that would be what a dead Du Pont's Variegated Cacodemon looked like. Smaller, somehow. Less imposing. And with a rake sticking out of its back. I love this opening. I love that it starts focused in so tightly. And that it's a demon name made up of two freestanding modifiers and a prefix. I'm not doing the math right now (because I think I would have to do a little chart, like I used to for 4th grade word problems), but this implies many varieties of cacodemon are out there. Maybe this is an heirloom variety! Like with tomatoes.

Xander sighed, put a heel against the thing's cranium, and pulled the rake out with a memorable popping sound. Thank God for metal tines. And Dumpsters. And damn, he was almost out of Hefty bags. Living on the Hellmouth, you could never have enough Hefty bags. The kind with the drawstring were the best. It's like a tree of thoughts. I really like Witling's characterizations, and the particular strength of this story is the way it's lodged tightly inside Xander's head. Which is a place where connections are made very quickly between a lot of subjects, and half of the whimsy turns out to be the result of exhaustion.

He was back from the shed, shaking the bag open, when something moved behind him and he spun, Nijinsky for a panic-blind second, the rake raised. Spike was already stepping back, grinning, his hands raised in the universal sign for harmless, you idiot. Xander translates every gesture, and reads into everything everyone else says. Generally at his own expense, in a knee-jerk way. Not that I don't think he isn't interpreting Spike correctly, here.

The other thing that I want to point out here is the slight push-back on the cultural referents. Which I think is very true to the show - the references that are made aren't rooted in right now, or ten years ago, but just a little farther back. Or a lot further back. Not contemporary. It's re-run culture, pre-cable. It hits just the right tone - mid-century suburban. Stretching through to the seventies, or so. Nijinsky, not Nureyev or Baryshnikov. Xander's a strangely mid-century guy, now that I think about it.

"Holy fuck." Xander's arms were hard, loaded, and for a minute he considered bringing the rake down anyway. Wouldn't kill him. Might teach him not to go tiptoeing through other people's tulips. Ah, annoyance. And temper.

"For the love of God," Spike said, taking another step back. "Don't tidy me." Mocking: check.

Xander took a breath and lowered the rake. "Spike. And now, leave."

Spike craned his neck to look past Xander's shoulder. "Juvenile. You try sticking a fork in one of the adults, you'll understand why Du Pont's last words were 'Get it off me'." Belittling achievements: check.

"Uh huh. Right now, I just want it off my lawn. Before I have to explain it to city council." Xander shook the Hefty bag out with a crack and crouched down at the head. Spike's feet didn't move. "Help or move on, Spike."

After a second, Spike's hands came down and took hold of the proboscis. "Count of three, yeah?" I think Spike is helpful a lot of the time out of a combination of boredom and a desire to be included. He's kind of, well, not needy exactly. But very social. And conflicted about it.

The Dumpster was closer to full than he'd thought; they had to lug the thing two blocks down to the big blue bin behind the Cinerama and sink it in buttery topping. I love the idea that they have to go Dumpster to Dumpster, peeking in to figure out if there's still enough space to hide bodies. What sort of a ratio do you use for that, anyway? Also, there must not be a whole lot of Dumpster-diving in Sunnydale, I can't imagine it would be worth the risk. There was already an occupant; Xander couldn't remember the name but he remembered the little lamprey mouth and the chunk it had taken out of his wrist. Like some sort of undercover supernatural Orkin man. I also like the way that the demons in this story are vermin, and all small enough to treat that way. Doxol, or droxor, or something. Whatever. It sank. The Du Pont's took some prodding, and they both ended up with rancid petroleum product on their sleeves. I'm thinking now that the benefit of the drawstring Hefty is the way it doesn't seal anything close to airtight. Otherwise there'd be a whole floating bag issue. Am I over-thinking this?

"Filthy," Spike said, flicking his arms irritably as they walked back up the street.

Xander shrugged. He was exhausted. Apparently the adrenaline he'd used to tidy the Du Pont's had been his last. Shrugging alone made his shoulders ache. The thought of putting the rake away made him want to groan.

"That wasn't quite disgusting enough," Spike was saying. "Next time, could we bury the body in warm mayonnaise?" So I really wasn't bothered by the congealed buttery topping image, but warm mayo with dead and broken giant bug things in it? That freaks me out a little. I'll admit it: I have a mayonnaise phobia. I'm also freaked out by veins. Okay, my skin is crawling. Veins and mayonnaise. And it's my own fault. Yick.

"Spike." Xander rubbed the back of his neck, then heeled his hands into his eyes. He yawned, popping his jaw. "What time is it?" Verbing! There's a lot of verbing in Witling's writing, and it's effective. It actually makes things more immediate and visceral. When I do this, it's gimmicky. That doesn't stop me, mind. Okay, I was just pausing to appreciate that image. I mean, it's grimy with tired.

Pause. "Two thirty."

"Jesus Christ." He stumbled over the edge of the boulevard, opened his eyes, corrected course. "I have to be at work in five and a half hours."

The thought of going to work, spending another day like this, fried and stoner-eyed and tracking very slowly on the real world, was unendurable. He took a deep breath and rubbed his neck again. Unendurable was overstating things. It was endurable. Caffeine pills made it so. Also, fritters. Well. It is endurable. But there are limits. But I like the way that this train of thought falls down defeated, then picks itself right back up again. Like Xander goes through this every day. Like every day since he met Buffy he's done this, hit the wall of tired and tunneled right through to the other side. And he's at least twenty here, and working full-time, and it has to get harder every single day.

Someday, when they were finished saving the world and they all got to walk up the aisle and Leia put the medals around their necks, he was going to take the podium, nod graciously, and then just...sleep.

"Right. About that."

He looked sideways at Spike, who was looking sideways at him. Who looked away quickly when he saw Xander looking, and started fishing in his pockets. "You're going to work in a bit, right?" Heh. Okay, he's so sketchy.

Xander said nothing. He had a bad, belated feeling he'd just rubbed rancid buttery topping all over his face. Reaction, tangent. There's a rhythm to it. Spike pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket, tapped one against the pack, and lit it carefully. Probably afraid he was going to go up in a tarry bonfire of butter substitute.

"You work all day, yeah?" Spike was looking at him, the used car salesman look, and Xander sighed.

"What's wrong with your crypt?" he asked.

Spike muttered something, stuffing his cigarettes back in his pocket.

"What?"

Spike dragged hard on his cigarette, briefly contemplated something in the middle distance, then said, "Exterminator." Okay, if this isn't a lie? Do you think you can really get exterminators to fumigate crypts? I'd just use a bug bomb. Unless it was termites or something. Which isn't likely, since: stone.

"You're fumigating your crypt?"

Spike frowned. "Gets buggy. Helps to clean it out once in a while."

Xander opened his mouth, then closed it. Then raised his hand, index finger raised. "Okay. First. That's stupid."

Spike shrugged.

"Second. You're a vampire. You don't want to breathe fumes? Don't breathe."

Spike wrinkled his nose. "Gets in my clothes." His one set of clothes. That he's wearing.

"Third. You have nowhere else to stay?"

"Not just at the moment, no."

"Fourth. Spike. This is the third time." It's a trend, then. Also - wonder what the excuse was the other two times.

Spike flicked a glance at him, then went back to examining the treetops. "You've got cable." He's so...is he not making eye contact in order to be blasé about it?

Xander looked up at the treetops too. Nothing up there, as far as he could tell, but then he hadn't seen the Du Pont's behind the shed, either. Not until it was practically siphoning him.

They were up to his apartment now, and he started across the lawn, fishing in his pocket for his keys. Five and a half hours. Jesus Christ.

Spike grabbed his arm suddenly, and he jumped, almost lost his balance, and found just enough adrenaline to remember what slight panic tasted like. "What?"

Spike pointed at the lawn in front of him. The rake was still there, tines up, waiting for his foot. It looked funny when the Three Stooges did it, but right now it looked more like a broken nose. He bent down carefully and snagged the handle. Xander's such a zombie here. He's an easy mark because of that, and also because as much as he hates vampires in general and Spike (ostensibly) in particular, he's kind of a doormat. Or, you know, a nice word for doormat. Accommodating. Also weirdly lonely and socially needy.

"Yeah, okay. But this is seriously the last time, Spike."

He left the rake behind the hydrangeas, and they went up.

He stumbled twice on his way up the stairs--the second time with a muttered whoah, a moment of weightless teetering, and a brief vision of sledding straight back down to the landing on the back of his head. When you couldn't climb stairs without courting chiropractics, it was time to sleep.

His apartment smelled like home. The Sunday sports section was still papering the floor by the coffee table, and his whites were still languishing unsorted in the armchair. Six-thirty pm sun was slanting through the kitchen venetians. I can see this so clearly, smell it. Sun-warmed carpet, dust floating lazily through the previously still air. He shed his coat and shoes en route to the sink, drank half a glass of water with his eyes closed, and made for bed. Six thirty meant he had two and a half hours to examine the inside of his eyelids before he had to take a rake to any more cacodemons. It's good time management. Two modes: adrenaline and asleep.

The bedroom was dark and stuffy and hot. He yanked his shirt off, thumbed open his fly, and started shuffling forward with his trousers heading slowly south. Just before dropping onto the mattress, he actually looked at it. And stopped.

"Spike."

Nothing.

"Spike."

Somewhere under the blankets--and he didn't sleep with all those, he hadn't even known he owned all those--something shifted. He waited. Nothing. He leaned down, yanked his trousers back up, and buttoned them firmly. Oh, Xander. You and your body-shyness. It's sort of saddening, really. Then he lifted the bottom of the blanket and grabbed a skinny white ankle.

"Spike. You have negative three seconds to be out of my bed." He jerked the ankle, and got bare calf. "Also, you are to be wearing clothes."

Spike muttered something he didn't catch, and he tightened his grip. "One of us worked all day, Spike. Better still, one of us pays rent." He dropped the ankle and stepped to the side of the bed, where Spike's jeans and shirt were lying in a pile. "God. Do you have to be naked?" Yeah, I sort of agree, here. I mean, yes, of course Spike sleeps naked. It's canon. Also, vampire - he's naked or fully clothed. They are not creatures of the middle-ground.

Another mutter, and he bent over, hooked Spike's T-shirt with one awkward, swinging hand like a shopping mall prize grab, then stood holding it, staring hopelessly at the sprawled lump under his blankets. "I'm too tired for this."

No argument from the lump, so he thought briefly about the couch, a hundred miles away and requiring the shifting of cushions, the closing of venetians, the plugging-in of the Scooby alarm. There was no justice in his life. No justice, and no dignity. Yeah. Well, that's nothing new.

He dropped the T-shirt and poked the lump somewhere that seemed safe and dorsal. "Move over."

After a pause, the lump shifted. He dropped into the indentation it left behind, fumbled with the alarm clock, and let his eyes roll back in his head. Sleep peeled him smoothly up the middle. I love that image because I can imagine just how it feels. Falling asleep is so often couched in the same terms (falling terms. Yeah) - but this is using the reverse, and it's just as effective. Maybe more effective. And definitely right for the inside of Xander's head.

Daphne wanted to say thank you to all her sorority sisters for all their support and understanding, and it was a sweet seventy-three degrees at eighty fifty-eight in the pm, end of another sunny day in Sunnydale, and here came the Stones with "Satisfaction," and play safe, kids. Cat-in-heat guitar chords. Please God. Five minutes. Five more minutes with the collective unconscious. Paradigmatic alarm-clock feelings.

The world gaffed him, hauled him to the surface, and stood over him with its club raised. Water images for waking - but not the splash awake that's usual, but rather another reversal. I love this. I also love the way this is turned right around for Wesley in The Assistant, so that sleep is the violence, not waking. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Stucco. Navajo White. The light was shuttered, lemony, horizontal. shuttered, lemony, horizontal. Touch, taste, balance. He was hot, lying on top of the sheets. Still wearing his jeans. The waistband was cutting into his side. It's like every groggily unrestful nap ever. Gummy.

He groaned and rolled over to kill the Stones, then lay for a minute with his eyes closed, his forehead pressed to the cool wood of the bedside table. He'd spend Saturday fixing the air conditioning. Or sleeping. Or working overtime, because Innovative had sent the wrong insulation again, and someday, God willing, he'd have a job where he wasn't the guy who worked Saturdays to make up for other people's screwups.

He was pleasantly afloat in that world when there was a small movement on the other side of the bed, and he remembered: Spike.

He lifted his head and looked over his shoulder. Spike was there somewhere, half off the far side of the mattress under a moraine of blankets. He looked kind of...flat. Like he was mostly blanket. He hadn't moved. Glacial geography in stifling heat. There's all of this tension via imagery, it creates this sort of over-sharpened picture, focused down on single details so that the edges blur away. It's only like that on people (and sort-of-people). Like Xander's attention is pulled over magnetically.

Xander heaved his legs off the bed and pushed himself to his feet. "Rise and shine, dead guy."

He ran the shower cool-to-cold, then warmed it up slowly as he stood under it. His wrist stung: the lamprey bite. Droxol. Droxol? Now it was going to bug him. It's the little things. He toweled off, called his beard good, and wrapped himself in yards of good thick terry cloth before heading back to the bedroom.

It had got darker while he'd been showering, and the bedroom was murky and airless. He went straight to the dresser and rifled it for shorts, shirt, and staking trousers. An outfit that said I'm nobody's lunch. Over his shoulder, he noticed that the lump of Spike hadn't moved. A million details, fast fast fast. And none of them really standing out, just Xander, humming along, thoughts like static. Getting by.

"Spike." He was almost out of socks; on Saturday, he'd do laundry. "Hey. Rip. Time to get the hell out of my bed." He gathered an armload of clothes, checked his towel tuckage, and started back out the door. "Feel free to get less naked while I build to a repressed panic in the next room." Heh. Bathroom too steamy for dressing? It was a cool shower.

He hadn't dried off very well, which made it hard to struggle quickly into his shirt and trousers. Part of him was sure Spike was going to round the doorway while he was pantsless, and mock him for his construction tan. Modesty, again. Except it's not just that, it's hugely insecure. Didn't happen. Dressed, he went back to the bedroom door and stuck his head around. The Spike lump hadn't moved.

"Spike." He cleared his throat and took a step forward. "Hey. Spike."

Nothing, and he started to feel a funny little tickle in the base of his spine. Maybe he's dead, his brain muttered, and he scowled and flicked it in the cerebellum. "Lestat. Come on. Places to go, demons to rake." He took another step forward, and squinted in the darkness. "Okay, you're starting to seem kind of...deaf."

He stood there a second, then took the last few steps all at once, and poked the lump without letting himself think about it. Part of him was waiting for it to--what, crumble to dust? And that would officially be the creepiest thing ever, and he could just go straight to Sunnydale General and get fitted for the Valium shunt. Um. I think I would flip. And never sleep in a bed again. Even if I didn't like the guy. It's kind of a horror movie staple, waking up next to someone and not realizing they're missing part of a torso or something until later. Some other time he'd examine the fact that he didn't find it especially creepy just to have napped next to a dead guy. Well. He's always dead. And Xander doesn't find it creepy to watch TV with him, or inspect Dumpsters with him, so.

The lump was firm but yielding. It twitched slightly, and his heart started beating again.

"Spike, you moron." He pulled the sheets down and clicked the bedside lamp on. "Catlike reflexes, my a--"

Spike's eyes flickered open and then immediately squeezed shut again, his hand up to block the light. His mouth looked pained. The veins on his hand stood out blue. Xander regarded him for a minute, then carefully tipped the lamp to the wall. 60 to zero in no time flat. Xander's whole attitude changes here. Which is believable. Like I sort of said before: doormat. I mean: caring. Not much tolerance for anyone else in pain, unless he's in high rant mode.

"What'd you do, drink all day?" And he's being careful even though his first guess is that Spike did this to himself, irresponsibly.

Spike shook his head minutely, and mouthed something inaudible.

"You don't look so good."

The hand came down, and Spike squinted at him. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken.

"You sick?"

Spike shook his head, looked around the room as if surprised to find himself in it, and started to sit up. It seemed like it was going to take a while, so Xander walked around to the other side of the bed and picked up Spike's shirt and jeans. He turned the shirt right-side out and tossed it onto the blankets over Spike's lap.

"Time for me to go make the world safe for semi-viscous bipeds. And time for you to go home." He dumped Spike's jeans on the foot of the bed. "And by the way, next time you fumigate, book a motel."

Spike was staring at him blankly. He'd picked up the shirt, and was carefully, laboriously, reversing it again. Xander watched him do it, then watched him start to pull it slowly over his head, as if his arms weighed almost too much to lift.

"Spike." He was getting the cold creepy in his spine again. Spike pulled the shirt over his head, the tag turned up against his throat. He looked down at it in confusion. The crawl in Xander's back started up his neck. "Okay. Um. Spike? Are you feeling all right?" Spike's so slow in this, so muddled and quiet. It's completely wrong. Obviously wrong.

Spike reached up and touched the tag, grimaced, and started to pull his arms slowly back through the sleeves. "'m fine," he muttered under his breath.

"You're wrestling your shirt. And you look...peaky." He looked, in the sideways table light, like a deathshead. He'd looked fine the night before. Did vampires get the flu?

Spike yanked his left arm free, and there was a snap of ripping stitches. Then he just sat there, his head dropped, as if the effort had exhausted him. Xander swallowed.

"Okay. Um." He was supposed to be at Giles's place in...ten minutes ago. Spike was probably hung over, or maybe he had a cold or something. Whatever. Giles would know. Thank God for Giles. "Okay. Change of plan, Spike. You hang here, hold down the fort. I'm going to go pass the buck." All this faith in Giles. And in Willow, and in Buffy. And relief at the very idea of ceding responsibility. Because even though he isn't responsible for this, he moves into position to be. Automatically, without even realizing.

Spike didn't move until he went over and plucked nervously at a corner of the T-shirt. Then he raised his head and gave Xander a bleary, confused look. His eyes looked pale and poached. Yeah.

"You want a hand getting this off?"

He watched that go through the penny drop, watched the sneer start to work its way up, and just pulled the damn thing off over his head before it had a chance to surface. And this is a great illustration of how slowly Spike's moving. Glacially. Pushed him back into the mattress with a finger on his shoulder. Like glacial putty. "Just stay here for now."

He clicked the light back off, and was halfway out the door before he realized he was still holding Spike's shirt, and that he should probably leave that behind. Awkward distraction. Embarrassment even though I'm pretty sure no one is catching him at it.

"Okay. So." Buffy dropped the corner of the sheet and stepped back. "He's sick." Blunt. Clear. I like this Buffy a lot, she's smart, and caring, but not a genius, and not subtle.

"Yeah," Xander said from his station by the door. "Sorry, did I not mention that?" Willow gave him a look, and he gave her one right back. And. Right there. Best friends, in a way that I can believe. "He's sick in my bed, if I can petition the court to add a clause."

"Yes, Xander," Giles said quietly. "You mentioned that as well."

"'m not sick," Spike muttered. They all ignored him.

"Did you...eat anything new?" Willow tried. "Or, um, travel?" Hahahaha. Yes. And she is a genius, but also inept. In a really endearing, sweet way.

Everyone looked at her, and she blinked. Xander gave her a little smile. And everyone loves Willow. Which makes me crazy nostalgic for the first few seasons, when Willow was lovable. Before the show started spending more time telling the audience to love her than showing why.

"Okay," Buffy said again, sitting down on the foot of the bed. "So, Spike is sick. In Xander's bed. For reasons best--"

"I told you," Xander said. "He was supposed to be on the couch. And his crypt was being fumigated--" It was a flimsy reason when Spike sold it originally. And it just gets flimsier.

"--best known to himself," Buffy finished, raising an eyebrow at Xander. "And he's been like this how long?"

"I don't know. Since I got home, at least."

"And so far it's just...this?" Giles tipped his head to look over the top of his glasses at Spike. Spike stared back at him with slitted eyes. "Just this...fatigue?" That's kind of under-stating things a bit, no?

"Maybe it's mono," Willow said. "Oh! Hey! Maybe he got it from someone's blood, because it can be transm--" She broke off. Yeah. Just right. She can see the implications, she's just giddy producing possible solutions.

"Except he doesn't drink people blood now," Buffy said. She dropped a hand onto what was probably Spike's foot, buried under the blankets. "Does he." Her fingers tightened, and Spike made a strangled sound and tried to jerk his leg free. Buffy held on.

"Buffy," Giles said after a moment.

"What?"

He nodded at her hand, and she looked down at it with something like surprise. "Oops. Sorry." She let go, and Spike immediately yanked both legs up and curled into a ball near the headboard. Buffy looked back over her shoulder at him and sighed. "Okay. So...now what?"

Giles hesitated. "It's difficult to say. Spike himself is best qualified to explain this, and since he refuses to admit there's--"

"'m not sick," Spike muttered again, and Giles waved a hand at him.

"Precisely. Without Spike's co-operation, our options are limited." He crossed his arms and regarded Spike closely. "If you're not sick, Spike, then surely you can dress yourself and clear out of Xander's apartment." Okay, that's just snippy to be snippy. Which, again, in character. Giles has very little patience for Spike. I bet Spike reminds Giles of somebody, like his dad or some kid he hated at school or something. I mean, Giles reacts to Spike the way I react to guys who remind me of my dad. Possibly I'm projecting.

There was a pause, and then Spike started to sit up, bracing himself against the headboard. His arms trembled. When he started to slide his legs sideways, out from under the blankets, Buffy got up off the bed.

"I don't need to see this. Giles, he's sick. Let's let him sleep it off, and if he doesn't get better, we'll--" That went off a cliff, and Xander caught Willow giving him a quick, worried, we're all still on the good side here, right? kind of glance. Yes. Buffy, for all of her recognition that things can be grey, has a very black and white worldview. Willow is too thinky to not worry about that.

"We'll find out what's wrong," Giles said gently. Buffy gave him a tight smile.

"Right." And she's the general, here. They can only spend so much in the way of their resources on someone who is at best an occasional reluctant ally, and at worst an active enemy. At least while they're tied up in a situation. Which they are. Cacodemons, remember?

Spike was still inching out from under the blankets, and Xander waited for someone to tell him to stop. Nobody did. "Uh, we're going to get NC-17 here in a second, if he continues that thought." Xander has offloaded all responsibility. He's peanut gallery to the action in this scene, by his own choice.

Willow got interested in the windowframe, and Buffy turned her back and rolled her eyes. "Spike," she said, "get back in bed."

He paused, braced himself on one hand, raised the other, and gave her two shaky fingers.

"He's flipping me off, isn't he?" Buffy asked Giles. Giles looked noncommital and cleared his throat.

"Spike, Buffy's right. You're not well enough--"

"'m not sick," Spike gritted.

"Quite right. You're perfectly well, but you may be contagious, so if you'd do us all the favor of staying--"

"Contagious?" Xander repeated. "We never discussed contagious."

"Xander, it's fine, just wash your sheets." Buffy looked at Giles. "It's fine, right?" Yeah, since she's the medical expert here.

"Well, given that we don't know what he--"

"Man, I slept with him," Xander said. Was he tired? Yeah, he was. Well, he was always tired. More tired than usual? Maybe. And the Dro-whatever, fuck it, the lamprey bite, it itched. That could be a bad sign. What the hell kind of flu did vampires get, anyway? Xander-static. Xatic. He's just bitching, and he expects to be ignored. But that's just not how his life works.

The room was very quiet all of a sudden. He looked at Willow, then Buffy, then Giles, and they were all looking at him with more or less the same expression. He held up one finger. I'm guessing that expression is something in the family of wtf.

"Okay. Hang on. Napped. Not 'slept with.' And not 'with.' Next to."

"You napped with Spike?" Buffy was looking at him like he'd just admitted to selling The Watchtower in his off hours. "Who, by the way, is he naked and walking around right now?" Yes. Because "I napped next to Spike" is actually a considerably stranger statement. Particularly without context, and, let's face it: Buffy is inherently incapable of really getting Xander's context. She's not pushing herself to exhaustion every day, and she is bouncing back. It's her nature. She's like a weeble.

Xander glanced over her shoulder at Spike, who'd lost steam with one foot dangling off the bed and the blankets still safely in place. "Uh, no. And, yeah. But not intentionally. He wouldn't move." Giles was still giving him the fish eye. "He was supposed to be on the couch-- Look, forget it. Do I need to go get shots or anything?" Giles in incapable of getting the context, too. I think Giles has sympathy for Xander, and knows what his life does to him, in theory, but Giles is also, what, twenty years older? More? He wasn't called on to push himself like that at that age, and he can't really get it, I don't think. That is to say, I think Giles is likely to give Xander's youth credit for more resilience than it actually pays out.

Giles took a deep breath, the kind that meant he was questioning his career choices. Heh. You mean like every deep breath he takes? "Do you feel ill?"

"No."

"Tired? Disoriented?"

"Well, yeah."

"Headache?"

"Uh-huh."

"Stiffness in the joints?"

"God, yes."

Giles pushed off the dresser and gave him a quick, sympathetic look. "You'll live."

"Why don't you take the night off tonight, Xander?" Willow said. "You've been working a lot lately, and you look kind of...tired."

"You do," Buffy said, in the tone of just having noticed. Yeah. She loves her friends, but she needs these things pointed out. "You look sort of...Algebra 11."

"I'm fine," he said quickly. "And there's that whole cacodemon thing we've got going on--"

"We'll be all right," Giles said. "Willow's right, Xander. You're tired, and it hardly makes sense for you to keep on in this state. Get a good night's sleep, and let us know if anything develops with Spike." Responsibility, tossed right back at Xander.

"What, like he pays me back that twenty bucks he owes me?" Xander stood sideways in the doorway so Buffy could get past. "And why do I have to keep the sick vampire? Can't he convalesce at someone else's place?"

"He can't walk, Xander," Willow said, as she went past. "It's not like he's hurting anything by being here." But it's also not like they couldn't move him. But he's only making noise about it to make noise.

"Easy for you to say. You're not the one with hemoglobin-fresh pillow cases."

"I'll do some research when we're finished with the patrol," Giles said. "Tate and ffolkes has a fairly thorough section on vampire physiology, and the DDSM IV may be of some use--" :D

"Fascinating," Buffy muttered, pausing at the door. "You going to be okay with him here, Xander?"

"Only in the most grudging, inhospitable sense."

"Okay." She gave him a light, quick hug. "Get some sleep. And call if he acts up."

"Or...you know. Acts any more down." Willow hugged him too, and he had to admit, it made him feel better. Sometimes girls rocked. Giles didn't hug him, and that was best for all concerned. He does like girls. Likes and admires and enjoys being around them.

"We'll see you tomorrow," he said, and then led the way down the stairs. Xander watched them get to the landing, then closed the door and stood for a minute with his forehead pressed against it. Resting. In neutral territory. Something about doorways could be said here. in a high lit crit manner. But I fear I lack the tools. Which i can say with confidence is for the best. He could still hear their footsteps, and Buffy asking something he couldn't make out.

He sighed and started for the bedroom, pausing on the way to pick up Spike's T-shirt, which he'd left on the couch. Spike's boots were still out there, too, from the night before when he'd bedded down where he was supposed to.

"Well, thank you for contributing just a little more suck to my life," Xander said, walking into the bedroom and tossing the shirt onto the floor. "Now my friends think I'm sleeping with a--"

Spike was sitting bolt upright on the edge of the bed, staring at him with a look of pure, brainless panic. It's the first action from Spike not superslowed down since the beginning of the story, and it's a shock. Xander opened his mouth. Spike's eyes rolled white, his jaw snapped shut with a crack like a stick breaking. His head dropped back and he lost his balance, toppled, and slid off the bed to the floor. His skull made a heavy smacking sound. His fingers jerked and clenched.

Xander stood frozen, staring, and then Spike started to shudder and shake, board-stiff, his face waxy and hard, his back arching up off the floor. He was making a choked gasping sound. His heels rucked the rug.

"Holy--" Xander took one step forward, his hands out, then spun on his heel and ran to the door. Please don't be gone yet. He got it open, thundered to the landing, and yelled, "Giles!" panicpanicpanic

There was a sound of rapid feet in the lobby, and then the three of them were starting up the stairs, Buffy in front, one hand already in her pocket.

"Xander?"

He put both hands up--harmless--and gasped, "Spike--it's Spike. He's...seizing."

They came up the stairs fast, faces grim and worried, and filed back in. The drumming sounds were still coming from the bedroom.

"In there," Xander said, unnecessarily. Yeah, but...you say that. To the person you think is going to fix it. Giles was already heading in, and they followed behind and stood in the doorway in a gaggle. Willow gasped. Buffy took her hand out of her pocket. Together because what they're looking at is shocking. Shocking enough that Buffy actually stands down.

Giles was taking his coat off and kneeling down. "Get those blankets off the bed," he said, and when nobody else moved, Xander pushed through the girls and hauled the blankets off. A tiny pause here - Xander doesn't want to step up, gives it half a beat to let Willow step forward, as Giles' most natural assistant, or to let Buffy take action, since she's usually the one who does. But Xander has an everyday practicality that both Buffy and Willow lack. Or lack at this point in their lives. It isn't something he would value, or something they would miss - it just is. He stood behind Giles with them in his arms, trying not to look and completely failing. Spike's eyes were open, and his face was terrified. He was jerking like something snagged on a hook, like something someone was trying to get rid of. His chest bucked up, the ribs hard as an engine casing, and his throat convulsed, gurgling.

"Give them here," Giles snapped, and Xander held the blankets out. Giles took them and dropped them over Spike. He kept thrashing under them, but the sounds of bone bruising were muted.

"What do we do?" Xander asked. "Do we--aren't we supposed to put something between his teeth?"

"No," Giles said shortly. "Just keep back and let it run its course." He sat back on his heels and glanced around, then reached out and moved the water glass off the bedside table. Willow made a little sound, and Xander glanced back. She and Buffy were standing close together in the doorway, watching silently. Willow's face was pale and shocked. Buffy looked...the same, but harder. Yeah.

The thuds were waning, and he looked back and saw that Spike was slowing down. His throat clenched, corded, and went slack. His jaw worked. He blinked, and his eyes rolled, focused, and found each of them in turn. He swallowed.

Giles sat holding his glasses in one hand, rubbing his eyes with the other. "This hasn't happened before, has it?"

"No." Xander wanted to step back to the doorway with the girls, but it didn't seem right to leave Giles there alone. Or Spike. Divided between them already. because Giles and Spike aren't in anything together, other than the room, physically. "Is he--done?"

Giles put his glasses back on and gave Spike a thoughtful look. Spike lay still, his eyes half-closed, his jaw working steadily. "He may be. We won't move him just yet, though." He eased back onto the balls of his feet and stood up. "Do you have any blood here, Xander?"

"Uh--" He couldn't think clearly. He kept seeing Spike's belly, the ridges of muscle like the plates of a turtle's shell, locked solid and yanked by invisible strings. Kept seeing his fingers scrabbling at the floor, the look of terror in his eyes. "I'll check."

That gave him an excuse to get out of the room, and he stood staring into the freezer without any memory of the rooms in between, thinking, Blood, blood, blood, and totally ignoring the frosty red bricks under the peas until Willow came up and touched his shoulder. Then they both jumped. I love the idea that he keeps a good supply in the freezer. Likely they all do.

"Gah! Will--Jesus!"

She gave him an apologetic look, and glanced back over her shoulder. "Giles says to heat it up and see if you have any straws."

"Straws." He pulled a blood bag out and shut the door. "Check. I have none." He tossed the blood into the microwave and hit defrost. "Is he...okay?"

"Kind of woozy. He's back in your bed." She glanced back over her shoulder, toward the bedroom. "What do you think it is?"

"No idea. But I'm really hoping it's not contagious." Deflection.

"Yeah." She gave him a crooked smile, and he smiled back, and they both watched the blood go around and around under the dim microwave light. When it dinged, he took it out and poured it into a cup.

"You think he can drink?"

"If he can't, he's replacing the sheets."

They made a procession of two, Xander in front with the mug. The bedroom was dark except for the light from the hall, and Buffy and Giles were having a whispered conversation by the window.

"I got an order of blood," Xander said. "Who gets it?"

"He's sleeping," Giles said quietly. "Give it to him when he wakes up. And see if he can think of anything--anything at all--that may have caused this."

Xander stood still, holding the mug at arm's length. "Wait--he's staying here?" It's one thing to host a quiet vampire with mono...

"He's not in any shape to move," Buffy said. "I know it's not exactly a good time, Xander, but he has to stay somewhere--"

"What if he does that...thing, again? And did we ever finish that conversation we were having about the contagious?"

Giles crooked a finger and led the way back out to the hall. They all trooped out; Xander got halfway out, paused, turned, went back and set the mug down on the dresser, then went out again.

"If he has another seizure," Giles said, "do exactly what we did just now. Try to cushion it with something soft, but don't interfere. Don't touch his mouth, whatever you do." Good way to lose a finger.

"And if he bites his tongue off, how long does that take to regrow?"

"He won't bite his tongue off, Xander. Get him to drink that blood when he wakes up, and see if he can tell you anything useful. I'll go back to the shop and start researching this; Buffy and Willow will patrol as usual."

Xander looked at Willow, who was looking at Giles. Buffy nodded at no one in particular.

"We'll figure it out, Xander. Don't worry. Just don't let him Aerosmith your place too much." The 'don't worry' isn't a 'don't worry about Spike' - it's a 'don't worry, we'll get him out pretty soon.' But Xander's worried about Spike already. Even if he isn't ready or willing to deal with that. He's a soft touch.

"Yeah, thanks." He had the usual sinking feeling that that was it; there wasn't really any further conversation to be had. "When I start carpet-boogying like that, I want a wooden spoon between my teeth, all right? None of this laissez-faire sit-back-and-watch-it-happen crap."

"Yes, very good," Giles said, starting for the door. "I'll make a note of it."

"You have enough blood?" Buffy asked. Xander thought of the couple of bricks still in the freezer, left over from a baiting project they'd tinkered with back in the fall. Okay. Explanation. Wait! That blood's been there almost a year?

"I've got a few bags, yeah. But I'm not going to need them, right? Because you're going to figure this out, right? And he's going to be out of my place--"

"Right," Willow said firmly, turning in the doorway to hug him again. He hugged her back.

"Call if you need us," she said.

"Spoon," he reminded her.

And then they were all just footsteps, heading back down the stairs.

The phone rang halfway through Letterman, and he picked it up without lifting his head from the arm of the couch.

"Giles says no joy," Willow said. "And he wants to know if you can stay home from work tomorrow." And that right there is why I think Giles doesn't understand Xander's life. Or at least doesn't take it seriously.

Xander closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Uh huh."

"Was that, uh huh, can do, or uh huh I saw this coming?" She sounded tired too, and he shelved the answer he was going to give her.

"He didn't find anything at all?"

"Well, some German monk wrote a treatise on vampires with Tourette's, which actually sounded kind of like Spike. Just normal Spike, I mean. And there were some conference proceedings on lactose intolerance. But...no."

"Tomorrow's Friday," Xander said, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling. He'd turned the lights out, and the television volume was low. With the back cushions off, the couch was almost comfortable.

"Yeah. And oh gosh, I should have asked. He's okay, right? No more--" She trailed off, and he imagined the worried pinch between her eyes.

"Not so far. All is quiet on the vampire front."

"Good. And you're still okay with this?"

"I'm fine." He has a choice? He's going to tell her he isn't okay with it? That's just not him. I mean, he's going to gripe, as long as it's clear that's all he's doing. But otherwise, no. He's going to just keep going. He glanced at the hall to the bedroom. He could just see the edge of the bedroom door, pulled almost to, just a thin line of black running up the frame. "How was patrol?"

"Cacodemons are...crunchy." He smiled at the audible ick face. "And we need to figure out where they're coming from. It's Cacopalooza out there."

"It's the Zagat's listing. Brings them in every time." The television switched to ads and he muted it. "Just make sure Giles doesn't slack off the vampilepsy research too much, okay? I really don't want to see that show again."

"I'm pretty sure Spike doesn't want to give it, either."

He paused, examining the remote. "Yeah."

"So you'll stay home tomorrow?"

Again he paused, and glanced back at the bedroom door. Quiet in there. Hadn't been a peep since they'd left.

"Yeah."

"Thanks, Xander. You want coffee cake tomorrow?"

"Yeah. No. You have classes." This too - they know each other's lives and schedules. Xander + Willow = pals forever.

"I can skip."

"Nah. Thanks, I'm fine. I'll sleep late, read the paper, snap at the help. It'll be very."

"Okay," she said. "And hey, maybe he'll be fine when he wakes up."

"I'll keep an ear open for a lively string of expletives, yeah." He had a quick flash of Spike's throat, white and knotted, spasming. He looked at the television. Ford Explorer. He had to get one of those. It's like a switchback for his train of thought. Artificial distraction.

"Night, Xander. Call us if you need anything."

"Satellite. And a hoagie."

She paused.

"Kidding, Will." Because there is at least an outside chance that she'd take him seriously and rig him a dish.

"I knew that."

They hung up and he lay there for a few minutes, watching Letterman without sound. Without really noticing Letterman. The apartment was very quiet.

Finally he got up, chucked the phone back onto the couch, and started for the bedroom. His mouth was dry and the back of his neck prickled. The line of blackness between the door and the frame seemed very, very black.

He pushed the door open with one finger and stood on the threshold, peering into the darkness. Television light didn't go far. But that was probably good; if he was sleeping, there was no point in waking him up. Especially since a sleeping Spike seemed less likely to vividly demonstrate the tonic-clonic relationship. I had to look up tonic-clonic. Wikipedia <3

Still, Giles had said to give him the blood when he woke up. Xander squinted and made out a faint bundle near the top of the mattress, close to the wall. Too dark to see whether he was awake.

He cleared his throat and said quietly, "Spike?"

Silence to the count of three, and he started to ease back on his heels and turn around. His shoulders were loosening, and his mouth tasted like relief. Maybe Willow was right, and Spike would sleep it off. Tomorrow morning he might be fine, and they could talk about that twenty bucks.

There was a faint shifting sound, and he paused. Even in the darkness, he could see Spike uncurl slightly. It stapled the tension back between his shoulderblades, and suddenly Letterman seemed a galaxy away. Like that camera effect that makes normal-length hallways suddenly seem miles long.

"Are you--" He hesitated. "Are you awake?"

No answer, but a slow sound of a body on sheets, and he watched a kind of faint dim unfolding that took a minute to fall into place. Then he realized that Spike was bracing a hand on the mattress, pushing himself up to a sitting position. It was an even slower process than it had been the last time.

"Okay," Xander said. "Giles says you should drink something." He took a step forward and stopped. "There's a cup on the night table."

Still no answer, and he realized he wasn't really expecting one. He wasn't really expecting this to be easy. He just didn't know what to do. Or he knew, and didn't want to do it.

"That was a pretty lively show you gave," he said, taking another step forward. "I was expecting pea soup and crucifixes." Another step, and he could see Spike's arms shaking under his weight. "You sore?"

Spike lifted one hand and slowly touched the back of his head. The spot where it had hit the floor, and Xander heard the heavy crack again and winced. "Yeah, I guess that's a stupid question."

Spike lowered his hand to his face and looked at his fingers, then rubbed them together lightly. Is there blood? It's dark, but maybe. His other arm was shaking badly; as Xander watched, it suddenly buckled and Spike landed sideways on the mattress.

"Whoah--" Xander moved forward without thinking, hands out. He pulled up just short of touching Spike, and then just stood there, one hand out, hovering over his shoulder. "You okay?"

"'m fine." Spike's voice was thin and weedy, a trickle of piss. It made things more normal to hear him talk. Xander took a breath and reached for the lamp.

"I'm turning a light on. Watch your eyes." He waited, then clicked, and Spike already had his hand up as a shade, his mouth a thin bloodless line. His fingers were shaking. Xander tipped the lamp even farther away, so it was just a glow against the sheets.

"Okay. So, can you sit up?"

Spike's lips tightened even more, and he didn't move.

"If I help?"

A long pause, and then something that might have been the most fractional of nods. Xander swallowed and slammed the blast doors on everything that wasn't brisk and impersonal and Giles. Oh. It's a good model for keeping it together, yes. "Okay, hang on. I'll grab a pillow."

He harvested one from the kicked-off pile at the foot of the bed, and stood it against the headboard. "Upsa-daisy."

Spike's skin was cool and firm, the muscles taut beneath. He was lighter than you'd expect. Lighter than a guy ought to be. He kept his head down, his eyes in his lap, while Xander propped him up against the pillow. His lips moved minutely, and Xander paused.

"What?"

Spike raised just his eyes, and looked at him. His head wavered on his neck. "Poof," he murmured.

Xander jerked his hands back and straightened up. "Yeah, okay. Blood's on the table, and if you need anything else, please fu--" Righteous anger, the very best sort.

Spike was shaking his head, so faintly he didn't notice at first, then harder. It seemed like tiring work.

"Me," he said, and twitched the fingers of his left hand back toward his chest. Xander blinked.

"Oh," he said. Then he herded his wits and said gracelessly, "No. No, you're not a poof. You're just sick." Here's the thing about Witling's Spike: he's alien. He's not human. He's similar to a person, but he isn't one. So there's something just enough off that it breaks down communication when he's like this. I mean, I think it's straightforward, but the shape of his thoughts, his perceptions, is different. Of course, it's all complicated by the way it's filtered by Xander's pov. He's strange to begin with, but when he can't put energy into making communication work (or, in some of Witling's stories, doesn't care to), Xander's lost.

Spike stared at him, his eyes grim and bloodshot. After a minute, he repeated, "'m sick."

"Yeah. And I probably don't need to add the clause about my bed, do I?" Xander turned to the night table. "So, here's a cup of what I'm going to tell myself is tomato soup." He picked it up and held it out, ignoring the little voice in the back aisle of his brain. "It's kind of room-temperature now. Sorry."

Spike turned his head loosely, bobbling for a second like a dashboard dog, and stared at the cup without comprehension. Then he smelled it, or figured it out, and his gaze sharpened. He started to lift a hand, and his whole arm shook. Xander stood still, trying to ignore the voice. Spike narrowed his eyes and tried again, and this time the tips of his fingers touched the base of the cup, pushed at it, and fell away.

"Okay," Xander said. Brisk and impersonal was rapidly translating into false cheer. Spike looked shocked and humiliated, and...scared. Yes. Spike isn't always the strongest, the biggest, the scariest - but he's one of the most self-posessed, ad that's lost here. But now was not the time to think about that. "Okay, I'm thinking you're not quite up to this. How about just the drinking part?" He gestured vaguely with the cup, and Spike looked at him. Confused, not tracking yet.

"Just--sit back," Xander said, and when Spike started to lift his arm for a third try, he pushed it gently down. Again, cool skin under his fingertips. He didn't think about it, just pressed Spike's shoulder back into the pillow, and it was ridiculously easy to move him around. Ridiculously. Disturbingly. Again, putty.

"Giles is working on figuring this out," he said, just for something to say, as he sat down on the edge of the bed. "Here." He put the cup against Spike's lip, and Spike closed his eyes. All the resistance he's got. They sat there like that a moment. Then Spike seemed to settle his shoulders and make a decision. He opened his mouth, and Xander tipped the cup carefully, just the smallest bit.

"Nothing yet. But he's. You know. Working." Just the smallest sip, not even a sip. Spike's mouth was open and the blood ran in, a little rill. He had to swallow, so tip the cup back. His throat worked, pale as paper. There was a dot of blood on his bottom lip. Xander put the cup to it, and Spike leaned forward, lips open.

"I wouldn't worry. He's...Giles." Spike's mouth was eager now, and one hand was rising, trembling, the fingers curled weakly. He made a small sound in the back of his throat. Sounded like protest, like need. His throat clicked and Xander lowered the cup again and looked away. That's...debilitated, and helpless, and very sexual. I think Xander constantly is reframing. Desperately. And we aren't quite in on it yet, because again: he controls what we see, and he is very carefully shutting down a whole host of ideas, trains of thought. Cutting observations off from conclusions ruthlessly, before they form.

The room was stifling. He felt flushed, overheated. Spike shifted and breathed, more, and he lifted the cup automatically, turning back to make sure he got the angle right.

It was half empty now, and Spike's head was tipped back, his eyes closed and his hand reaching feebly. He was making clumsy wet sounds, mouth sounds. His throat was stretched long, the back of his head sunk in the pillows. Xander tipped the cup higher, and Spike angled with it, lips to cup, until they were vertical, nothing left. Then he bit the rim of the cup, and Xander jumped. This scene gets so tense and quiet, until that.

He took his hand back, and Spike sat with his eyes closed, his head still pillowed, licking his lips. There was a red thread running down his chin. Xander put the cup down on the night table, paused, then looked back, reached out, and carefully wiped the thread away with his thumb.

He could feel his pulse through his entire body. Very intimate. Non-sexually, even. It's an affectionate gesture, unmoored.

Spike opened his eyes and looked at him. It was a serious, considering look. And Spike is a pretty sharp guy. With people, at least, if not always with himself. And not always with schemes, but whatever.

Xander wiped his thumb on his trousers and picked up the cup. "Get some sleep," he said. He clicked the light off and went out, pulling the door almost shut after him.

He ran cold water in the cup and left it in the sink. Then went to the couch and lay in silence, not watching the television, not thinking. Because even diversions could lead back to whatever just happened, the way Xander's brain works.

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. Ugh. Couches are not made for comfort in the heat, that's for sure.

"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. Deny and repress. 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. There are a lot of middle-of-the-night showers in this. They make sense, I'm just saying. Also, in my own life, I am kind of a fan of middle-of-the-night showers.

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. Is this a truncated "what the hell?" Because on some level, I don't actually believe that Spike believes in Hell. Which, does that make sense? Okay, maybe not.

"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. Anger's easy. Fear is a horror.

"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." We never really see Spike afraid, in the show. Defiant. Intimidated, maybe. But not frightened. And this is a whole extended period of fear.

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. Except this.

"Spike?" Xander said quietly.

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

"Chip," he whispered. He doesn't act frightened about the chip, but it is a horrible thing, a control, something that can go wrong any time. And it does, of course, eventually. It isn't the problem here, of course. But it is the obvious answer.

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. Comfort here - human comfort. Except that it's all too much for Xander, and Spike isn't human.

Xander flinched, and Spike's fingers froze, then jerked away. His eyes flattened. Then they closed. And he's shut out, or seems to be shut out. Which 'he', right? Both. I meant Spike, though. Their relationship, such as it has been up to now, doesn't allow for such things. Xander massively overstepped the boundaries just a few hours ago, and he knows it. And he doesn't trust Spike, even as far down as Spike is right now. He doesn't trust that if he treats Spike like a person, it will be accepted.

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. Back to static.

He leaned over and hit the button on the clock. When he leaned back, Spike's eyes were open, watching him. And Spike has his composure back, and it all resets.

"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.

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. All of the blue in this story. Where blue is beguilement, hiding from itself.

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. It's a marvel he manages to keep the towel on through all of that.

"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. Well. It's important.

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." Xander and I both believe that the funniest jokes are the ones you make over and over and over and over. He never stops with the coffee/blood blood/coffee shtick. And it only gets funnier. Yeah. Makes you want to hang out with me, doesn't it?

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. Okay, again, modesty. Jeez. Called in sick and going to spend the whole day in your apartment? I think you can safely lose the trousers. Poor Xander.

"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." Wait, it gets too hot for coffee? Can't you just go drink it while enjoying a cool shower?

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 keeps dressing in the living room. I think we've seen that bathroom on screen, and I can't recall any reason it isn't usable for changing in. I also have no idea why I'm saying anything, as I hate getting dressed in the bathroom, and I would get dressed in the living room, too.

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. Yeah. Dread and happiness is about the sum of it. Repress, deny.

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. Like this whole interlude would just be snipped away like it never happened. Pinched out of reality.

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?" [echo]

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. I am torn between thinking that Spike is thinking, "what? what what what?" and thinking he's just refusing to play along for the scraps of control it gives him. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

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

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?" Yeah, I don't think Spike was paying attention when she originally said it. It is pretty funny.

"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. Like he can't believe Xander can forget the chip, because Spike can *never* forget the chip. The chip isn't ignorable for Spike. Xander gets to take it for granted - all he has to think about is the effect, not the cause.

"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 was he going to say? Clear sharp anger, there, and whatever it was, we don't get back to it.

"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. Yeah. A spoon would be splinters, I'm thinking.

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. Of course. Poor Xander.

"I have absolutely no idea."

Xander shifted and ran a finger through the wet arc of coffee his cup had left on the table. "So what you're saying is, you have no idea."

Giles raised his eyebrows and nodded over the edge of his cup.

Xander traced a star, studied it, then wiped it out with the side of his hand. Creating a physical distraction. Like counting to ten, but with a pictogram. "None," he repeated. Xander's worried, and scared, and annoyed about it, and can't really admit it. Which means he's pretty much omnidirectionally angry, I think. Except that he would never dream of admitting to anger at Giles. Just like he is never really going to lose his temper with anyone female. He's got very few targets he allows himself to let loose toward. Which I think, in canon, is why when he loses his shit in Spike's direction it seems so disproportionate.

"Xander, I've had approximately--" Giles shot his sleeve and studied his watch with a short-sighted, slightly pissy frown. "Three hours' research time so far. I'm flattered by your faith in my abilities, but--"

"Right. Sorry." Xander drummed his fingers under the table, then took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. A drop of sweat crawled down his spine. "Maybe I could help out. Paginate, or something." He offers his help and points out how incompetent he thinks in the same breath. Oh, Xander.

Giles's smile probably wasn't meant to be patronizing. "You're helping enormously by letting him stay here." And Giles doesn't disagree. Which isn't to say he agrees that Xander can't help with the actual research - but I do think he gets it, a little, that Xander's spread too thin. Maybe. It's anactive-seeming help, though.

"Right."

"Xander." Giles set his cup down carefully, and Xander felt himself tense. "I realize this may not be the best time, but if you'd like to have that talk now, I'm certainly willing." I love that this is a talk that's obviously on both of their minds, but we have no clue what it is, despite the story being in Xander's pov. Because he's the king of putting uncomfortable topics clean out of his head.

Xander stared down into his cup, and forced a half-smile. "That talk. Right."

"Or not. But you probably realize we're concerned about you--" So it's on everyone's mind. Not just Giles' and Xander's.

"I'm fine." As soon as he said it, he thought of Spike, the crappy liar, face-down in the sheets. 'm fine. He looked up and met Giles's eyes. "Really. But thanks."

Giles just looked at him, the slanting sun giving him wisdom wrinkles. He didn't seem to mind the heat. Maybe English people were heat-proof. Xander looked down again.

"It was sucky for a while, yeah. But it's been..." He paused, as if he had to calculate. "Seven months. I'm fine." Aha.

And it was sort of true, if you looked at it the right way. He didn't think about her every day anymore. He worked a lot. He was tired a lot. Sometimes he just wanted to watch television for hours on end, and sometimes he opened the refrigerator and realized there'd been nothing in it for a week. But that was normal stuff, bachelor stuff. Depression stuff. I like that he knows it, he just doesn't want to think about it. Just keeping his head down, waiting for it to abate. He'd had sex since. Once. asdfghjkl. Yeah okay go read Notes For a Gay Pamphlet right now. Or, you know, once you get to the end of this section. I am really fond of second-degree fanworks. And a fic based on a fic? Wonderful. Also, while you don't *need* to read that to get what's going on later, it doesn't hurt.

Giles looked down and rubbed the edge of his cup with one finger. "Willow is particularly worried," he said. "She thinks--"

"Willow used to worry when I ate Pop-Rocks." He's quick to cut off Giles before he's put into a position where he needs to refute Willow's fears.

"She thinks you're drifting away from us," Giles said quietly. In the silence that followed, he picked up his cup and sipped from it. But Giles doesn't fall for it. Seeing how he wasn't born yesterday. And also, has met Xander before. And is smart.

Xander sat staring at the wood grain, hating the faint hot prickle behind his eyes. It wasn't fair; he was tired. And sweaty. He couldn't cope with this right now.

"Well, that explains all the hugging lately," he said finally, and slugged some cold coffee.

Giles left a small pause, then got up and took his mug to the sink. Gives Xander a moment to not actually start losing his shit. Much.

"Buffy's concerned too," he said, turning on the tap. "We all are. If there's anything we can do to help--"

"Giles, it's not like I have lupus." That came out sounding mean, and he smiled futilely at Giles's back.

"Quite." Giles shut the tap off and pulled the dish towel out of the refrigator handle. He turned around, mildly drying his cup. "I think Willow's point is that you seem to have forgotten that fact, yourself."

Xander stared at him, then leaned forward and fiddled with the salt. "Tell me nobody's bought tickets to the Ice Capades." Hah. Well, this is a group of people who like to stick with proven solutions.

Giles set his cup down, folded the towel neatly in thirds, and threaded it back through the handle. "All I'm saying," he said, walking back over and laying a hand on Xander's shoulder, "is that we're your friends. And we're here." Standing behind him.

Xander nodded. Giles's hand was warm on his shoulder. His eyes were prickling again.

Giles's fingers tightened briefly, then let go, and he walked past and stood in the door to the living room. "The Cacodemon situation is getting worse," he said, glancing away into the living room. "There are more of them every night, it seems. Frankly, we're having trouble disposing of the...husks." And...subject change. Because that was a lot of talking about our feelings, frankly.

"Huh."

"And the small dog population is dwindling at an alarming rate."

"That's...what kind of small dogs?"

Giles's mouth twitched. "They appear to favor Yorkies and Pomeranians."

Xander nodded thoughtfully. "So, silver lining." Giles totally, transparently, sets that one up for him. It gets them back on an even keel, emotionally. Or, if not even, then status quo. A status quo keel.

"I'll refrain from relaying your comments to Willow." Giles pushed off the door frame and checked his watch. "I hope to have something on Spike's condition by this afternoon. Do you think he's still asleep?"

"He had a pretty vigorous workout this morning, so, yeah. My guess is he's dead to the world."

Giles studied a ding in the far side of the door frame. "Well, if the chip is indeed causing this, there's very little we can do to help. For now I think it's best to continue treating this as an organic--" Yeah, Giles knows this bit isn't going to be well received.

"Wait." Xander spread his hands flat on the table and held himself straight in his chair. "Hang on, rewind. What do you mean, very little we can do to help?"

"We're not neurosurgeons, Xander. If the chip is the problem...we have a problem."

"What kind of a problem? A How do we get him on a plane to the Mayo problem? Or a What kind of urn would he have liked? problem?" Panic.

Giles just looked at him. After a moment he said, "I understand it's difficult to watch anyone in pain, Xander. But perhaps you're taking this a little too personally." Yeah, well, I actually think Xander's reaction isn't out of line. Everything else aside, he's done a pretty good job of pointing out the two possibilities if it actually is the chip. And that those are both pretty awful possibilites. And from what we know about Giles, he's already working out how to sell what's behind door #2. Because door #1 presents difficulties in both the short and long term, and doesn't offer many benefits. To anyone other than Spike. And I'm not sure Giles would be completely convinced that there would be benefits to Spike, or enough to outweigh the dangers. It's like euthanizing a sick pet, the argument for the decision I can see Giles framing. Which - I like Giles. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's a different view of the sitution. I think it's the decision he made with Ben. Potential dangers, potential benefits. Ending pain.

"Maybe that's because he's in my bed." He paused. "Damn it, that did not come out the way--"

"Xander." Giles regarded him a moment, then sighed. "I do understand what you're saying. And I'm doing my best."

Xander sat there a second, then realized he was supposed to nod. He nodded. "Yeah. I know. Thanks." What was he thanking Giles for? He stood up. "I mean, for everything. The..." He gestured vaguely at the sink, the stunted conversation still hovering over it.

"I suggest you make some plans with Willow," Giles said, turning away and starting for the door. "Before she resorts to potlucks and board games." They do so much maneuvering around each other in this.

"Check." He followed Giles out to the door. "And...Spike?"

Giles paused, halfway out already. "What about him?"

"What do I tell him when he wakes up?"

"Oh." He gave Xander another careful look. "Tell him what we just discussed. And tell him that if there's a fix, we'll find it." Giles is surprised by the question despite all of the lead up to it. Which reinforces my feeling that he's thinking of Spike as some sort of pet-equivalent. Um. Not that way.

"Right." Xander nodded, and Giles raised one eyebrow, and left. Xander closed the door and turned back to the bright hot living room, the flood of sunshine on his floor. His whites were still crumpled in the chair. Spike's boots were still knocked under the coffee table. He stood for a minute, staring blankly at it all.

"I'm not going to the Ice Capades," he said at last, and started down the hall for a shower.

No insulation and no wiring left him with...not a lot to do, he realized quickly. He could only shower so long, and he only had enough face to make even a meticulous shave last half an hour. While he shaved, he considered cleaning the bathroom. Considered it, but didn't do it. At my house, you still get points for considering it. Well, I get points for considering it. From me.

He flicked the television on and watched depressing mid-morning television while he folded his whites. The apartment kept heating up. No sound from the bedroom. He started another cup of coffee, picked up the newspaper, stood enthralled for several minutes by a woman who wanted to divorce her husband and marry her Weimeraner. That was what the world was like. It made life on a Hellmouth seem almost...normal.

He was lying on the couch, feeling itchy and hot and wondering how many showers he was legally allowed to take in a twenty-four hour period I think as long as you don't also use the water to keep your lawn healthy, showers are still unfettered by legal restrictions. Which, okay, if you salvaged the waste water from your shower, and weren't using soap that kills plants, then would that be a way to get around water-saving restrictions? Or would you still get nasty looks? Whoops, tangent. I just really like showers. And feel vaguely guilty about it., when the phone rang. It startled him, and he grabbed it before it could ring again, sending a quick glance at the bedroom door. Giles, or Willow. Even if it meant going without coffee cake, he wanted it to be Giles.

"Hello?"

Silence. He waited, expecting to hear fumbling and tweed, imagining Giles pinning the receiver between ear and shoulder, the cord pulled taut across the room as he verified one last reference. They kept meaning to chip in and get the man a cordless. Giles would misplace a cordless.

"Hello? Giles?"

Nothing-and then, he realized, not quite nothing. Breathing. Quiet and low, contemplative. He took the phone from his ear, looked at it skeptically, then listened some more. More breathing.

"Listen buddy, I think you've got the wrong-"

Click.

He stared at the receiver again, until the idiot tone started, then hit the cutoff with his thumb. On the television, the Weimeraner woman's husband was talking about his feelings of abandonment.

Sometimes, the whole world was on drugs.

He got up and dialed the volume down on the phone, so it wouldn't be such a lively experience when it rang again. Thought about the air conditioning. Thought about Spike's fingers trying to dig grooves into the hardwood floor. Thought about Giles saying if.

Went back to the couch, lay down, slung his arm over his eyes, and tried not to think.

The phone didn't ring again until almost two o'clock. He was suffocating on the couch, heat-bludgeoned into a restless half-doze that kept backsliding into scrabbling hands and knotted legs. Twice he'd heard hard choking, a cracking sound, and leapt up with a pounding heart. When he got to the bedroom door, he found one sorry motionless lump of Spike. He'd dreamed it, that was all. When the phone rang, he almost fell off the couch.

"Hello?" He was thirsty, and his forehead was damp, and if it was the mouthbreather again, he was going to *69 the fucker and ream him a new one.

"I think I've got something," Giles said. "We're coming over now."

Hallelujah.

He went to the bathroom and washed his face in cold water, noticed that he looked slightly insane, and headed back to the bedroom, pulling his shirt off over his head. He'd sweated through Sunnydale U. Behind him, Spike shifted.

"Giles is a genius," Xander said, chucking his shirt onto the laundry pile and pulling a fresh one out of the drawer. "They'll be here in a few minutes."

Spike said nothing, and Xander turned to look at him. Spike was staring at him with a strange, weary expression. So Xander had his back turned to the room, but I'm still sort of impressed that he's managing to change shirts with Spike in the room.

"That's good news," Xander clarified, and then paused. "You...feeling okay?" God, not again. Please.

Spike nodded and let out something like a very small sigh. He braced one hand on the mattress and got exactly nowhere. Xander swallowed and yanked the shirt on over his head.

"You're going to be menacing Girl Scouts again in no time," he said, and without thinking about it, went over and took hold of Spike's shoulder. "And, hey. Bright side? You're going to owe me big-time."

Spike muttered something incomprehensible, and Xander pulled him gently upright [echo], propped the pillow behind him, and tugged the corner of the sheet up to the high water mark of modesty. "Well, bright side for me, anyway."

Spike nodded, his gaze lowered. Slowly, he lifted one hand and touched the back of his head. Xander watched, his relief crumpling.

"Hey." He took hold of Spike's wrist and pushed it back down to his side. "Enough with the negativity. You're going to be fine." Spike's hair was standing straight out where he'd just fingered it, like feathers disarranged, and Xander smoothed it down without thinking. There was a lump there, under his fingers.

Spike was looking at him, he realized. Not with his whole head, just with his eyes. Xander jerked his hand away, and stepped back from the side of the bed. Yeah. Xander keeps accidentally making these very gentle gestures. I think Spike has a clue on a couple of different levels, but I still think that it's still confusing and weird. Particularly since Xander so obviously *doesn't* want to have a clue.

"I'll go put some blood on."

He walked out quickly, not waiting for the teeny tiny inevitable Poof. It was just...like Giles said. It sucked to watch someone, anyone, in pain like that. It made him feel sick and helpless and he'd really had his fill, thanks. More than his fill. Someone else's fill on top of his own.

He watched the blood go around and around, waiting for the ding or the knock, whichever came first. Ding by a nose. He was pouring the stuff into a cup, trying not to smell it, when the knock came. He carried the cup with him to the door, and held it out as he opened up. Blood is a pretty gross smell. At least it isn't big mugs of raw chicken, I suppose.

"Coffee?"

"Yes, very clever," Giles said, walking past with a quick glance at the cup. :D "He's in the bedroom, I take it?"

"Yeah, but he's just finishing up. He'll do the bathroom next, and then-" Willow walked in with a smile and a little wave. "Hey, Wills." He glanced at the cup in his hand, and offered it. "Coffee?" See? It keeps getting funnier!

She peered into the cup and wrinkled her nose. "Ew."

"Transylvanian Blend. Great stuff, but you'll be up all night."

She smiled and he made a fangy face at her. They started for the bedroom.

"How is he?"

"The same. He had another-" He shook his free hand in midair. "This morning."

"Oh boy."

"Yeah. Giles knows what it is, though, right?"

She gave him an uncertain look. "He thinks he has something, yeah. But he's not-"

They were at the bedroom door, and she trailed off and leaned against the frame. Xander reached around and put the cup on the dresser. Then he used his index finger to push it as far away as he could.

Giles was sitting on the edge of the bed, turning Spike's eyelids inside out. Spike's mouth looked aggrieved, and he had one hand on Giles's wrist, fumbling to get a grip. Giles was ignoring him.

"-then we haven't got a chance," he was saying. "On the other hand, if there's something you're not telling us, it's unlikely we'll figure it out on our own. There's very little written on vampire illnesses." He let Spike's eyelid go and shook his wrist free. "Vampire existence seems overall to be fairly Hobbesian."

Whatian? Xander mouthed to Willow.

"Meaning," Giles said over his shoulder, "that when vampires fall ill, they seem either to go away and get better on their own, or else be killed in very short order." Like alley cats.

"Hobbes," Willow whispered, in an explanatory tone.

"Ah," Xander said. He reached back around the doorframe and poked the cup another inch away.

"So I'm working largely from tertiary sources and conjecture," Giles said. "And if there's anything you ought to tell us, Spike, you really ought to tell us now."

There was a pause. Spike raised his hand slowly and touched his eyelid. Then he lifted his head. His face was drawn and haggard.

"Ow," he whispered. Ugh to eyelid pulling, that's what I say.

Giles stared at him a second, then turned and opened a case he'd brought in and set on the bed behind him. "Right. Well, given that we have no idea what's causing this, we'll have to proceed by trial and error." He took out a Ziploc bag of white powder and a set of measuring spoons. "Xander, will you bring me a glass?"

"I will if you tell me that's not cocaine," Xander said. Yeah, I can totally see Giles knowing where to get cocaine on short notice. Heroin, maybe.

"It's not cocaine."

"Or protein powder."

"Xander."

"Because that stuff's scarier than drugs."

Giles turned and looked at him, and over his shoulder, Spike was staring at him too. His eyes squinty and hard, but the corner of his mouth turning up slightly.

"Bringing," Xander said, and headed out.

He had to rummage to find a clean glass, and the sink was full of bloody mugs. When Spike got better, he could start working on his tab by doing some dish.

"One glass," he said, handing it to Giles with a flourish. "And if what you're about to do with it is even remotely toxic, it now belongs to Spike."

"No, no," Giles said, setting it down and opening the bag. He paused and glanced back at Xander. "You may wish to mark it, though."

"Uh huh," Xander said.

"And you should wash it thoroughly."

"Spike, you own a glass."

"Hardly necessary," Giles muttered, in a peeved tone, and Xander raised his eyebrows at Willow. She raised hers back, subversive for a second, and then Giles said, "That blood-may I have it, please?" It is kind of an odd thing for Giles to choose to argue about. Proably he's tired from doing all his own pagination. Possibly he should have said yes to help.

"Something else that Spike can keep." Xander handed it to Giles, who set it down on the bedside table by the glass. He opened the Ziploc bag, measured a careful tablespoon of powder into the glass, and then poured a few inches of blood over it. The blood turned pink. mmmmmmm like strawberry quik. I think the interesting thing is how un-gross this is. Comparatively.

Xander stared at the glass, then glanced at Spike, who was staring at it too. He looked tense and suspicious. The words trial and error seemed to hang heavy over the bedside table. And it isn't like Spike hasn't been an experimental subject before.

"So..." Xander looked sideways at Willow. "A little closed captioning, here?"

"It's mostly plants," Willow said. "With a tiny little bit of...well, just a fraction...it doesn't matter."

Spike's head turned sharply toward her. He's barely got the energy to move, so this hard, defined movement has extra emphasis.

"Uh, Wills?" Xander cleared his throat and made a yes....? gesture. She tucked her chin into her neck and shook her head fractionally. Later, her hand said.

"Now, this may burn a bit going down," Giles said, lifting the glass to Spike's mouth. What, like holy water would? Or like whisky would? And I get the impression here that Giles has mostly tuned out the exchange between Xander and Willow, and the resulting tension in Spike. Not that he isn't listening, just that he's been involved in precise measuring and stirring.

Spike sat rigid with his mouth clamped shut, staring at Willow with hard sharp eyes. Willow studied the ceiling.

"Smooth," Xander muttered out of the side of his mouth. She colored slightly. Yeah. Willow is bad at not sharing information. Which I kind of respect. It isn't just that she doesn't think through how people might react to a given piece of information (though she doesn't), it's also that she really does believe that things shouldn't be secret. Generally. Specific secrets, she may believe in, but not as a practice. I don't just believe this about Witling's Willow, but about Willow in general. Which is why I had trouble with her in season six canon.

"This is for your own good," Giles was saying to Spike. "For God's sake, don't be a child. All it is is...well, it'll help with the fatigue, and it should stop the seizures completely."

"Plus, think of the starving vampires in Calcutta," Xander said. It's Giles' hesitation that turns Xander's attitude around. Once both Willow and Giles are refusing to say what's in the powder, it becomes an us versus them situation - and even though Xander has been assured he'll be told, I don't think he's willing to create a united front against the sick guy. Spike's his responsibility here, weirdly, and needs an ally. If this was less clear-cut, or Spike had the energy to argue, it would be different. If Spike had the energy to argue, he probably would almost immediately alienate Xander into siding against him. Out of pure cussedness.

"I worked all day to decoct this, and you pull faces at it." Giles tried to tip the glass, and Spike turned his face away.

"Maybe if you try the choo-choo-" Oooh, burned. Because yes, Giles is treating Spike like a child. And that's hardly something Xander's a stranger to.

"Xander." Giles lowered the glass and turned back to stare at him. Spike immediately tried to tip the glass out of his fingers, and Giles transferred it to his free hand without looking at him. Hee! I really do love the way that Giles doesn't even bother to acknowledge the physical resistance from Spike. Like Spike is a drunk kitten, not a vampire of historical note. "I was under the impression you wanted Spike out of your apartment."

"Well, yeah."

"Then perhaps you could refrain from making schoolboy remarks while I try to attain that goal."

Xander shifted slightly against the doorframe, feeling his heart kick up. Yeah, well, schoolboy remarks avoid direct confrontation. Which Xander is now forced into. "I just think you should tell him what's in it," he said. There was a pause. "I mean, he's the one who has to drink it."

Giles glanced at Willow, then looked down and swirled the glass, coating the sides with pink. Xander cleared his throat and stared at the floor. His cheeks felt hot.

Giles sighed, and Xander looked up. Giles was giving him a weary, strained smile. "Of course. You're quite right." He turned back to Spike. "I'm sorry, Spike. The main active agent is vermiculated bogle scat." He is right. Which is actually pretty annoying for Giles, who usually gets to declare what right means. Oh, also: vermiculated? Like, eaten and re-cast by worms? I would look it up, but I'm in the car right now, and sadly, no car-based DSL. Anyway.

There was a second's pause while Spike took that in.

"Bogey shite?" he croaked in outrage, and Giles whipped the glass around and tipped it into his mouth. Giles is sort of wasted as a watcher. He should be something requiring verve. Cattle-rustler. Spy. Something like that. Though I guess he sort of needs his ability to act fast as a watcher. Still.

"Don't mind the tingle." He kept a hand clamped beneath Spike's chin until they all saw his throat work. That's exactly how I give my cat antibiotics. With the mocking and everything.

"Fucker," Spike spat, as soon as his mouth was free. Giles peered into the glass, then held it out for Xander to take.

"Once every four hours, for the first twenty-four hours. Then twice a day after that."

Xander took the glass gingerly. "Um, days? Didn't you just cure him?"

"Not at all." Giles was looking at him as though there'd been a serious misunderstanding. "No, this is just the best I could do under the circumstances. We still have no idea what's causing this."

"No, right, I just thought-"

"It should stop the seizures," Willow said, looking from Xander to Spike. "Which is very yay, right?"

Spike wiped his mouth with a shaking hand and frowned at the sheets. Xander watched Giles order the measuring spoons and set them on the bedside table, out of Spike's reach.

"What if it's the chip, though?" Putting into words exactly what he knows Spike is thinking.

Giles paused, then sealed the Ziploc bag and set it beside the spoons. "As I said, if it's the chip, there's nothing we can do." He closed the case and stood up. "I think it best we assume it's not the chip."

"So we're just going to-"

"Xander." Giles pinched the bridge of his nose. "We're doing the best we can."

Xander subsided against the doorframe and stared into the pink glass. "Yeah. Sorry."

Giles walked out, and Xander and Willow glanced at each other. Then Willow looked at Spike.

"He really did work all day, making it."

Spike wiped his mouth again, and looked sideways at her.

"And stayed up until two o'clock, researching."

Spike looked grim.

"When you feel better? He likes Glenlivet." Willow smiled and went out. Xander watched her, then turned back to Spike.

"And she's supposed to be in Psych 211 right now," he said. Spike rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying."

He pulled the door quietly closed on his way out.

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." I'm trying to imagine Xander giving a cat antibiotics, now, and there's just no way. Not in his skill-set.

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." He just nounified an adjective, didn't he.

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." Uncanny = sort of one of the defining characterisics of a vampire, isn't it? Also, I love this image, Xander leaning back on his hands, staring upward, his gaze perpendicular to Spike's. And Spike staring at him from where he's crumpled at the top of the bed.

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. Actually, I sort of love this whole scene. Wait. I love this whole story. But the way this scene is blocked and paced in my head, the easy, tired peace of it at this point, I especially love that.

"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. The thing that's changed here is that the conversation no longer has a point. Xander's given up on the reason he came into the room, but he's chosen to stay anyway. And Spike notices that.

"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. Like Spike's speaking Greek. This actually happens to me a lot. 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.I love this, because that's exactly how it feels to have the rug pulled out from under you like that. Something you've convinced yourself isn't going to happen, so when it does you're completely defenseless, and that makes it so much worse.

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. This is a massive failure of communication. But it has to be. I mean, Spike understands people, gets them and is really good at figuring out motivations and what the hell people are thinking, but he's also coming from a completely different cultural framework to everyone else on the planet. His background and experiences shape him, as does his agenda. Agendas. Xander is made of defensive. And barely out of high school. And barely ready to have any sort of ease with his sexuality, with anyone other than Willow. Spike isn't attacking. He's...making conversation? That isn't right either. But everything Spike's saying here, while he's at his sickest, is truncated, boiled down, de-contextualized. And it takes an effort of will to get it out. I don't know what he thought he was doing, here. I don't know if he knew what he was doing. And I also think that Spike is a mess of conflicting impulses by nature. It's what makes him so compelling. He's constantly at war with himself.

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. Blue blue blue. Even when he's angry.

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

"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." Like a carapace of flipness.

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." No attempt to comfort, not now. No more us against them, no more "I'll talk to Giles."

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. I can picture this so clearly. And it makes me snerk a little. Poor half-asleep sweaty perplexed anger-derailed Xander.

"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. tgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg okay, that was commentary from my cat. She's not fond of alarms either.

"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?" I know it isn't rare, use of this internal monologue/exterior dialogue echo construction in fics from the pov of logorrheaic characters, but I love it. It makes me weak in the knees. Actually, I'm pretty sure I've aped it at least once. Either with Dawn in Sailor's Delight, or with Chuck in [residential]. I don't rememer which, and neither of those characters are actually chatty. Seeing how they both manage to go several days in their respective stories without speaking to anyone. Which makes me think possibly my use wasn't that successful. :/ That's beside the point, though. 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 bet there's a finite limit to how messy Spike's hair can get. Seeing how he isn't sweating into it. Just tossing and turning and glaring and seizuring.

"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?" Rumble! Like the Jets and the Sharks! Except you know that Spike is exactly the sort to bring a gun to a knife fight. When he shows up at all. So probably he doesn't actually get invited that often.

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. Oh, the timing! The way that spaces out on the page!

"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's talking himself out of being angry. Oh, Xander. Such an easy mark.

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. This is a step back - just a little earlier in the story, before Spike pissed him off, Xander would have wiped it away himself. A slow, gentle stroke with the side of his thumb, a sudden self-consciousness, scrubbing the pink off onto his jeans, getting distracted with something, other stains on his clothes, going off on a mental tangent of anything other than the sensation of sliding his thumb across Spike's lips. But not here - here it's done from a distance, no touching, and he actually moves away when it happens, physically.

"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. There's so much in this paragraph - tactile details, implied action, cool colors. Memories tied to adrenaline, to being kept safe.

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. Yeah. Because generally he *does* things, and thinks about other things. There's this extra physical distance between them at this point in the story, and it means he's limiting the outlets for his impulses - so they're thought rather than action.

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." Heh.

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. I think it's interesting that this is the most practical way in his head to off-load the task of Spike-minding. He can't come up with an argument against that holds up in his own head without making himself inherently unavailable. And the other options are people-free options - he's not thinking Buffy or Willow or Giles would tend Spike - just that they'd store him. It minimizes his value in the whole setup. Unsurprisingly.

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. Xander has all this small gratitude. Actually, that isn't right - he has large gratitude for very small things. Low expectations regarding his own abilities, his life. But high expectations of the people around him. It's what keeps him so unsurprised by all the little let-downs in his life.

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. It occurs to me now that every time Spike has tried to get dressed so he can leave, he's started with his shirt. This time he has no intention of actually leaving, so he just grabs the pants. I wonder that perhaps the friction between the two of them is part of what makes Spike willing to push into the rest of the apartment. Like enforcing his presence wasn't possible before, he was too ill, but it would have been pointless if it didn't cause some sort of tension. Like a tree-falls-in-a-forest thing. A koan: if there's no one to annoy, is Spike ever annoying?

"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?" Deflection.

Xander looked. Christie Brinkley was doing the side glide. Again, there's a sort of anachronistic feel here. Like even the infomercials in Xander's life are five year old reruns.

"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. This whole watching thing - Xander not crossing the line and offering help, but waiting for Spike to inarguably need it.

"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. Football, the meaning of life.

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

Spike stared back. "Started half an hour ago." So it took him thirty minutes to get out of bed and struggle into his jeans. Jesus. Okay, he has to be really bored with laying in bed. And I think we've all been there. I had la grippe a couple of years ago, and I couldn't stay conscious for more than thirty minutes at a time, but I still would have cheerfully crawled for the opportunity to see something more entertaining than my bedrooom walls - even if I couldn't have focused on it once I got it.

Xander took a deep