As promised, Diane visited the sickroom at noon the next day. She brought the toads and Jude with her and Jude brought the cooler and a Runner with him. The Runner brought the mushrooms and waited in the maple tree shade for Jude. Xander had also taken refuge in the shade and the two men stood in uneasy quiet, watching heat waves put on a liquid dance above the baked, pale gray flagstones.

 

Jude was a while and Xander hadn’t had anyone to talk to all morning. He reached overhead to peel bark off a low-hanging branch as he appraised the Runner with a side-long glance.

 

“I knew a big tree once, had branches that tickled the sky like this one. I’d walk past that Cedar and always think it needed a swing or a hammock,” he said.

 

The Runner didn’t need much encouragement to fall into conversation.

 

Conversations were being had elsewhere in the compound; Jude and Dawn found common ground in their love for stories, Diane tried to convert Fred from a Physics devotee to a follower of Speleology.

 

“I’ll think on it,” Fred said, her off-hand smile clearly indicating that physics ruled.

 

As clear as Fred’s smile was the shift in group dynamics and though none could pin down how the shift affected Dawn and Xander’s positions, all knew that Fred ruled the sickroom.

 

Being chief, Fred devised and wrote out a four step treatment plan for Spike.

 

First step: keep Spike dosed on the venom. In the meantime start preparing the mushrooms to make the non-addictive sedative for when Spike is in less pain.

 

Second step: prepare Spike for the end of dependency by reducing venom use and introducing sedative. Meanwhile, start working on the tincture for when he’s in much less pain and can take oral medication.

 

Third step: take Spike off the venom completely and substitute with sedative.

 

Fourth step: Spike is almost well, use tincture only.

 

Fred was a long way from Step Four. Life was a blur of changing drips, dressings and sheets, slicing mushrooms in readiness for distilling the non-addictive sedative, ferrying the mushroom slices to dry-out in the furnace room, manhandling toads and doing all the other things the primary care giver did. Although it slightly irritated her that Diane took over making the sedative without asking, Fred felt too beholden to the cave doctor to pull her up on it.

 

When Fred tapped her pen on the empty pages of her notebook, watching Spike and waiting for changes to write down, it was Diane who brought her a cup of coffee and took the notebook.

 

“Rest a while, Fred; I’ll make a note if anything changes.”

 

When Fred’s eyes grew heavy or when the needle in her fingers started to miss its intended targets, it was Diane who wrapped a blanket around Fred’s shoulders, placing a pillow on the worktable with a terse, “you’re courting an accident with that needle. Rest” 

 

Fred appreciated Diane’s kindness, perhaps valued it that bit more because there was so little of it going in the Trail. She smilingly put up with Diane’s inclination to take over Spike’s treatment.

 

Dawn read the treatment plan and decided she’d like to try her hand at tincture-making. This would disturb the order of Steps, but try saying no to Dawn. She prepared more tincture than Spike would probably need, made labels that read ‘Xander’s Fault’ and stuck them on the dark brown tincture bottles.

 

Dawn also kept Spike up to date on things.

 

She told him that she and Fred had their own room but hang out in sickbay all the time, only using their room to sleep in. Fifth Ranking had a YWCA too, like Third Ranking only bigger, but they didn’t use the Y because they had their own bathroom in the unit, hooray.

 

Someone brought them food supplies, but wasn’t it a bummer that Xander was having trouble with the Dutch ovens? Everything he cooked got charred and had ashy bits in it.

 

“We’re on the ash diet,” she tittered into Spike’s ear.

 

Dawn told Spike that she couldn’t talk to Xander without yelling at him, so she didn’t talk to him at all. He said he was sorry, but Xander had said he was sorry before and he didn’t mean it.

 

“He breaks the rules and nothing bad ever happens to him. Xander has all that hair, he’s still buff and us three are trampy looking.”

 

*    *    *    *

 

Xander’s role in the care of Spike was to, “keep an ear open for him while you’re asleep and wake me if he wakes up or anything.” It was the end of day two before Fred wondered who brewed the coffee Diane brought her, replenished the oil in the lamps she used for reading, kept the fire in the pit going and lit the furnace, providing hot water on tap. She hadn’t noticed the two-man, sisal hammock in the tree before or the glossiness of the outdoor butcher’s block.

 

“Thanks for hanging up the hammock Jude, and the kitchen worktop looks great,” she said, swaying on the hammock.

 

“Neither can be credited to me. Monsieur Xander put in an order for food and cleaning supplies with the Runners. I expect the hammock was included in it.”

 

*    *    *   *

 

Spike’s bruises faded by the end of the third day. Fred and Dawn high fived, Diane and Jude smiled broadly. They expected to see further improvements on the fourth morning, but Spike’s skin hadn’t lost its sickly yellow tinge.

 

Fred asked Jude for an increase in Spike’s blood quota.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Day five brought no high fives.

 

Spike lay in deathlike rest on the table in the alcove.

 

Dawn was cranky and Fred restless.

 

What Xander was thinking or feeling was anyone’s guess, so collected was he.

 

“We’re gonna find the library Xander,” Fred stretched her arms overhead, rising up on her toes. “I think Spike will be okay, there’s enough in the bag to last two hours.”

 

“What time is it?” Spike asked an hour into Fred and Dawn’s departure, sandpaper voice, eyes glazed over.

 

Xander quit poking at the red coals in the fire-place, leant the poker against the wall and consulted his watch, “Three p.m.”

 

“Did you hide her in your long johns? She’s mine you know, my Princess. She’ll come back to me.”

 

“Drusilla?” Xander slowly crossed the floor.

 

“Keep up Angelus. Buffy, Buffy, you pillock! She’s my reason…Sire?” Spike dropped his voice to a whisper, eyes darting to the room’s dark alcoves. “The walls cry in the morning. It’s morning now. I should get up.”

 

Xander wrapped an arm around the pillar as far as he could and spoke for the sake of speaking, “You get up at sunset, Spike.”

 

“I know a bloke who knows a bloke what has a jar full of souls. Slayer’ll have me then. Pin my soul on my sleeve, wear it for her.”

 

The revelation tugged Xander’s mouth open but then Spike was talking again, fear mingling with the hoarseness of his voice. “I see you Angelus, hiding in the walls…dodgy bastard…stay away!” 

 

Xander withdraw to the other side of the pillar where Spike could not see him.

 

Chance meeting in the park, he was with Anya, the guy slowed down as he got closer to their bench, held thumb and pinky to ear and mouth, with middle fingers tucked in: call me.

 

“Who is he?” Anya asked.

 

“Just some guy from work,” lying, sweating with potential discovery.

 

A month or so of penitent fidelity, and Xander was meeting obscure men at obscure out of town motels, but he could not buy the long-lasting peace their bodies were meant to bring him. Just like Spike’s jar full of souls wouldn’t buy Buffy’s love.

 

“Jude’s too deep in the work ethic, seriously how many-”

 

“He woke up,” Xander cut Dawn off, peering round the pillar at the book-laden Fred. “I thought the venom was supposed to keep him under.”

 

Fred took one look at Spike and thrust the books at Dawn. Rushing over to the workstation, she snagged a prepared syringe and injected venom into the drip.

 

“What happened?” She asked.

 

Xander considered the question and discarded it as redundant, “I want to know how to work the drip.”

 

Fred stroked Spike’s temple as oblivion claimed him, “I’ve got it covered.”

 

“I’m not completely defunct, Fred.”

 

“Wanna bet?” Dawn picked out a black, leather bound book, dropped the rest on Fred’s worktable, stomped out to the hammock and threw herself into it.

 

“Give her time.”

 

“Yeah,” Xander looked from the teenager to the vampire, feeling that he had major sucking up to do. “Show me how this thing works,” he pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Over days six to ten, the venom wore off quicker. Spike hadn’t lost the jaundiced color and the wound on his shoulder blade broke open again. Despite the fact that Fred increased the dosage, Spike would wake up and follow her around the room with his eyes. He called her Princess.

 

During his snatches of day-time awakeness, Spike asked for Fred and listened to Dawn, saying very little to her apart from, “You’re not Darla.”

 

Daytime, Spike demanded nuzzling from Fred and she became proficient at telling his ‘I’m in pain’ growl from his, ‘nuzzle me now,’ growl. Equally skilful was her nuzzling with Spike: slow rub of cheek to cheek, his nose along her throat, her lips across his temple, three then four times a day.

 

Xander walked in on a nuzzling session, turned right round and sat on the hammock, thinking about Spike and the two hours before daylight.

 

On bad nights Spike only stayed awake for about ten minutes of those two hours and on a good night, he’d last an hour, sometimes more. Spike, who spoke almost exclusively to Fred at any point during the day, saved the last two hours for him, well for Angelus to be specific.

 

“Tell the walls to shut up, Angelus,” he’d start and after that, he’d ramble in every direction through his history of knowing Sire. Sometimes vicious whispering other times soft mumbling, pleading; always he wanted his sire close.

 

“Come sleep with me, Sire,” he’d said last night.

 

And Xander had stepped into Angelus’ size ten brogues, lying on his side next to Spike, which was the only way he could lay on the table for one without falling off. Waiting for Spike to ramble, unnerved when all he did was look at him, gaze starting at his hairline and caressing his brow, lips, side of throat before coming back to his eyes.

 

“You used to want me,” Spike fluttered his eyes closed. “That why you’re hurting me now, because you want me to leave? To take Dru and leave?”

 

“No Spike,” he rubbed Spike’s belly, “I want you to stay.”

 

“Then send her away, the little girl. Send her away Angelus, she’s not us,” no warning and Spike raised his head, lips to the corner of Xander’s mouth, tongue scraping there as he rumbled, “Sire?”

 

Asking and demanding in one skin tingling growl and maybe a good man would’ve discouraged Spike, told him he didn’t know what he was doing. But Xander had long ago concluded he wasn’t quality man. He turned his head the minimum needed to fit his mouth over Spike’s and kissed the confused vampire to sleep, very conscious of the erection prodding his forearm as he stroked Spike’s lower stomach.

 

And only now wondered if vampires synthesized a form of Death’s Angel venom in their salivary glands because he was feverish at the memory of those long Spike kisses.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Day eleven was cloudy. Fred sat at the workstation, waiting for a new change in Spike to write down in her note-book. That he was awake and watching Dawn as she chattered was nothing new.

 

“You look better,” Dawn stretched the truth, scooting her stool closer to his bedside. She lowered her chin onto the pillow and ran her gaze over the side of his face, “the yellow’s going.”

 

Spike lunged his head forward, elongated fangs snapping for Dawn’s nose. She jerked her head away, knocked off the stool the next instant as Spike’s bound-up hand clubbed her temple.

 

Yelping, Dawn crawled under his table.

 

Spike tried to pitch onto his side, succeeded in getting one shoulder off the bed. “Out. Get her out, Dru.”

 

Fred treble dosed him and dropped to her knees, dread weighting the hand she reached out to the trembling teenager.