Fred studied the vanilla and strawberry confection, an ice cream sundae with lashings of strawberry sauce in a crystal bowl. A melting present Diane had brought to cheer her up. Herein lay Fred’s dilemma: how had Diane figured out that she liked ice cream? She smelt a rat and the rat smelt like strawberries.

 

Spike was reduced to a near hull, alive only when she administered his 6 a.m. shot and deteriorating from then on in.

 

When not sulking in the tree or crying in the bathroom, Dawn screamed the place down, an attempt Fred suspected, to snap Spike into wellness. Two days of this had shredded Fred’s nerves to nothing.

 

And Xander, The Good Lord knew Xander argued about everything. They were at the moment tied in battle about ditching Diane’s preparation, “let’s see how he does for a few hours,” he’d said – seventy-two hours ago. She noticed the possessive warning in Xander’s voice when he talked about Spike lately and she didn’t dare make another unilateral decision.

 

“Fred,” Dawn burst into the room, “we’re gonna…is that ice cream you’ve got there?”

 

“Yep. Two whole flavors. Strawberry and vanilla. Yummy.”

 

“Well are you planning on eating it? Because if you’re not…”

 

“Eyes off – it’s mine,” Fred mock glared. “What were you saying before?”

 

“Xander and I are gonna explore the Ranking some more. D’you need any help before we go?”

 

“No thanks Dawn. Go, explore, conquer.” Fred toyed with the spoon Diane had stuck into the ice cream, “how long will you be gone?”

 

“Dunno,” Dawn shrugged, turning to leave, “hours.”

 

Fred dumped the ice cream – dish, spoon and all  - into the waste bin, thinking she must appear naïve. Death’s Angel burnt the soft tissues of mouth and throat on ingestion. The perfect way to disguise the death shroom was to slip it into a cold, strawberry flavored concoction, like this wonderful sundae for example. Although she wasn’t accusing Diane of foul play, she saw absolutely nothing wrong with being vigilant.

 

Diane’s preparation went into the bin next. Fred ditched the entire batch, cleared a space on the worktable, picked an empty ceramic bowl and hurried to the furnace room. She filled the bowl from the stash of shriveled Death’s Angel slices and returning to the sickbay, started preparing a new batch of sedative.

 

If Xander asked, she’d say he hadn’t been around to consult. Thinking about it, Xander didn’t spend much time in the sickbay during the day. Look how he’d gone sightseeing without checking on Spike. It seemed to her that if he cared enough to interfere with her treatment plan, he ought to care enough to stick around and witness the results of his interference.

 

Someone had been meddling with Spike and maybe it was exhaustion speaking, but anyone who handled Spike’s meds was a suspect, Xander not excluded.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Xander and Dawn found the Fifth Ranking market where they had to show their maroon bands to get in at the gate, but didn’t have to pay for anything.

 

“You already paid,” they were told.

 

They also came across the dining room and were told not to worry about a note from their Amo, “Jude informs me that Master Spike is indisposed,” the guard said, bowing aside.

 

Thus advised, Dawn and Xander made full use of the facilities. Sitting at a small, inconspicuous table, they ordered a little of everything off chef’s ‘Specials’ board and went through amazing amounts of milk shake.

 

A tense moment when Xander asked how Dawn was holding up. She ate several spoonfuls of the ice cream she made a point of ordering before replying.

 

“Don’t make Tresten mad again Xander. Promise, cross your heart.” Xander solemnly crossed his heart. “Then I guess I’m doing fine,” Dawn smiled warmly.

 

Another tense moment when Dawn pointed her spoon at his wrist, “something bite you?”

 

Xander flicked his wrist over so his pulse thumped on the table, “mosquito.”

 

Dawn’s eyebrow shot up, “Big bruise.”

 

“Huge mosquito.”

 

Dawn slouched back in her chair, loosened the drawstring of her regulation pants and softly groaned, “too full now. Shouldn’ta had nut sprinkles on that ice-cream.”

 

Xander chuckled, Dawn giggled and so it went. They were two good friends making believe they were in a regular diner in not so regular Sunnydale.

 

*    *    *    *

 

“Pardonnez moi?” Jude slowly set the cooler down.

 

Fred dug her hand into the crushed ice, shook a bag from the bottom of the cooler. “Drink it,” she said, thrusting it at Jude.

 

“Mam’selle-”

 

“I don’t trust myself so I’m sure not going to trust you. Drink it.”

 

“And if I do not?”

 

“Then I’ll have my answer,” Fred said.

 

Jude took the bag to the table, sat on a stool and drank, slooowly, Fred thought. She picked up another bag, peeled open a 20ml syringe, attached a hypodermic needle and filled the syringe with blood from the bag while at the same time trying to estimate how quickly a demon of Jude’s species metabolized a meal.

 

An hour? Two maybe? No way of estimating, she decided, standing behind him. The artery was a reliable litmus test though, things happened quickly when an artery was involved. Fred stuck the needle in and her finger didn’t hesitate on the plunger this time, pumped the cold blood into Jude’s artery. He yowled and knocked her hand away, dislodging the needle.

 

“You are most alarming,” he said, clasping the side of his oozing neck.

 

“Alarming,” Fred’s laugh bordered on a sob. She drew a stool to Spike’s bedside and folded her arms on her knees, “Let’s talk Pylea.”

 

Half an hour later, Jude was still percolating about Pylea, still flushed with health – as healthy as a green warted demon can look – and Fred had her answer. The blood wasn’t a problem.

 

“He needs to purge,” she folded the sheet away from Spike’s hip and stripped the sticky tape from the I.V. needle, unhooking the line.

 

How did an underweight puny purge a sleeping vampire by herself, she wondered, standing at the head of the table with one hand on Spike’s shoulder and a bag of blood in the other.

 

With Jude’s help, it turned out.

 

Jude sat Spike up, forced his jaw open and his head back-tilted while she poured blood down Spike’s throat. He snarled awake and Jude scolded him in some kind of French and whatever it was he said to Spike, it calmed him. He voluntarily drank the blood she kept handing him, looked ready to hide as she coaxed him with the tenth bag, but drank it.

 

“Are you daft?” Spike lucidly asked five more bags later. “Take the bleeding bandages off else I’ll burst.”

 

Jude cut the bandages away from Spike’s chest and went to the market for a bottle of oil when the skin on Spike’s distended stomach looked like it would crack. Spike looked away from the twentieth bag, “try a mouthful,” Fred coaxed.

 

Misery on his face, he drank it all, lay back and closed his eyes, creaking out a groan.

 

Fred warmed the oil in her palms and rubbed it over Spike’s stomach, frightened by the bubbling in there, those kicks like a baby saying hello. Another half hour and the kicks stopped, there wasn’t any purging going on and Fred perspired as Spike’s temperature reached freezing despite her now desperate rubbing of his obscenely swollen abdomen.

 

“Oh Jesus I’ve killed him,” she whispered.

 

“’t’s not that easy,” Spike slurred.

 

“No,” Fred smiled.

 

Then Spike struggled to sitting, beset by hiccups. Blood so dark as to be black dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

 

“Spike?”

 

Hiccup.

 

“Spike?”

 

Hiccup.

 

“Mi Amo?”

 

Head shake from Spike, helplessness.

 

Fred shook her head too, “No,” she said, “not that easy.”

 

Walking taller than she felt, Fred went to him, wound her arms around him from behind and heaved him to the edge of the table, hoping Heimlich would come through for her.

 

Once, twice, third time Spike threw up. Noduled and shiny skinned, a mass of strawberry scented black poison fell on his lap. A black stain grew on the sheet under him, spreading out from his seat.

 

Fred didn’t want Jude seeing Spike in this state, puking his heart out and sitting in waste.

 

“We’ll be fine now Jude. Thank you.”

 

Jude placed the pail on Spike’s lap and left her holding his head above it.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Black, thick purple, dark red, bright red, smell of a copper electrode and Fred knew the real healing would begin, clear spittle slopped into the pail and she kissed the back of Spike’s head.

 

“Are you able to hold your head up?”

 

“Reckon so,” he said.

 

She lifted her hands away, Spike’s head wavered but stayed upright and she went to stand at the foot of the table so he could see her.

 

“Who am I?” She asked, encouraged by the bright eyes.

 

“Freddy. My mouth tastes like shit.”

 

Fred poured a glass of water, held it out with the mouthwash Xander kept on the alcove shelf. Spike looked at his hands and breathed a patient sigh.

 

She tipped the mouthwash to his lips, waited for him to gargle and spit then held the water glass for him. “Are you about ready to take the mittens off?”

 

“Yeah, the arm and leg bands too.”

 

“Okay,” Fred put the glass and mouthwash back on the shelf. “You know your own body best so I need you to tell me if you can bear the pain.”

 

“Course I can,” he said indignantly. “Why?”

 

“We…I, I took a risk, cooked up some potent pain killers, they went splat in my face and I don’t want to try again if you can get by on aspirin.”

 

“Aspirin luv? For this?” Spike tentatively moved his leg, “try again, you have my blessings.”

 

She covered her smarting eyes with the heels of her palms. “Scare me like that again and I’m liable to punch a hole home.”

 

*    *    *    *

 

Fred looked at Spike, not sure where to start.

 

“How do we get you cleaned up?”

 

“Take the bandages off first. That way I can move.”

 

Bandages off, soiled sheets, blankets and pillows dragged from under Spike and arranged on the floor around the table.

 

“I’ll be right back,” she told Spike.

 

He nodded, jaws clenched and face gray.

 

Fred took the pail to the bathroom, sluiced it out and used it to carry warm water to the room. She cascaded the water over Spike, watched it wash blood clots and month old blood onto the beddings on the floor.

 

“Thank you,” Spike said, shivering on the wet marble slab as a night breeze stole into the room.

 

Eyes smarting again, she piled the fire high with wood, spread a towel on the hearth and went out for a sponge, shower gel and another helping of water. Fred then rolled her sleeves and sponged Spike down with the pragmatism of a nurse, leaving no part of him untouched. She had him hang his head back over the edge of the table and rinsed his hair out, catching the spill in the pail. Tooth brushing was next; Spike’s hands weren’t up to fine motor skilling yet, so Fred stepped into the role of dental nurse, brushed those molars, canines and incisors.

 

“I’d say we’re now intimately acquainted,” Spike said, wrapped up in the towel and sitting on a corner of the table.

 

“I guess we are,” Fred padded the table with fresh linen and blankets, swiped a couple of pillows from Xander’s bed and brought Spike a pair of pants from his ‘Welcome’ pack. “How was it for you?”

 

He grimaced. “I’ve had better.”

 

She laughed, helped Spike on with the pants, stowed the empty pail under his table in case he needed it later. I.V. re-attached to feed him through the night, she sedated Spike, prepared the next day’s batch of sedative and dog-tired, back bitching, was not in the mood for Dawn when she bounced in with a smug, “I had ice cream.”

 

“Good for you,” Fred punched a cork into a test-tube and scooped the soiled blankets off the floor. “I re-made the sedative and started Spike on it. If you’re gonna be mad at me, Xander, do it in the morning. I’m putting these on the fire, showering then going to bed. You need to change Spike’s drip at midnight, three a.m. and again at six. Remember to dose his three a.m. bag, the prepared syringe is in the red bowl on the workstation.”

 

*    *    *    *

 

Xander opened the windows, banked up the fire and mopped the floor again, insomniac after coming home to a floor patterned with red and black splatters, hectic footprints leading to the door and back and around Spike’s table. Stale-strawberry and old blood scent in the air.

 

Asleep with no sign of tremors, Spike looked tons better. His skin was flushed pink, the hole in his side had scarred over and his cheeks had filled out a little. Xander perched on the table and placed Spike’s hand on his knee, so grateful to Fred as he stroked each mended knuckle, buffed each clipped fingernail with his own callused fingertip. He stopped buffing when Spike slowly wagged his first finger.

 

“You look weller, Spike.”  

 

“And you don’t like it,” hoarse like he had a sore throat. “Want to keep me weak, tied down for the exorcism of you fantasies. Not enough that you have me like I am, want me like I used to be… awed by new immortality. Fucks you up that after the pounding and spilling, tomorrow you’ll be back just as hard and still possessed.”

 

He wasn’t sure whether Spike was talking to him or Angelus, but his cock sure was having fantasies. “I don’t want you weak, which means,” he gestured at the I.V. stand, “time for your pre-breakfast snack.”

 

Spike pursed his lips, quiet as he looked at Xander with an odd mixture of disinterest and craving. “Touch me,” he said, guiding Xander’s hand to his crotch, “Angelus? Please touch me.”

 

Xander’s disappointment at being called by that name was fleeting, overpowered by the hoarse whisper that made him bitingly hard. Not only did he touch Spike, he kissed him also. Pressed his wrist to the ensuing soft O of Spike’s lips and panted as the pain of Spike’s fangs ecstasized him, making an electric circuit of his spine. They were becoming good at this, Spike taking small sips from Xander’s wrist, using his fangs just enough to keep him panting, and Xander using long strokes on Spike’s cock, jacking just hard enough to keep him groaning. A muscle jumped in Spike’s throat and Xander speeded up his fist, scraped a callused thumb over Spike’s cock-head.

 

Spike always came when he did that, turning his head away like he was ashamed. And Xander never did anything about his hard-on, because that wasn’t how it worked. He gave Spike plasma and orgasms and Spike got strong again on the illusion of Sire; that was how it worked.

 

He tidied and dosed Spike, went to his own bed and climbed in, telling himself he hadn’t taken advantage of the vampire. It wasn’t possible to take advantage of Spike, not even when he was sick out of his mind. Xander nuzzled his cheek into a pillow, closed his eyes and was still awake when it was time for Spike’s six o’clock bag.