Monday according to Dawn’s calendar. Spike slept for a solid twenty-four hours.

 

“Is this good or bad?” Dawn asked.

 

“It’s good,” Fred said from the doorway, watching Diane walk across the courtyard. She didn’t move aside to let the doctor in.

 

“May I?” Asked Diane, tentative right foot forward.

 

“Uhm, actually no,” Fred fingered the ragged ends of her hair. “It’s kinda crowded in there with too many doctors.”

 

A blush tinged Diane’s cheeks. She shifted her briefcase from right hand to left, “Sure, yes…if you need anything…”

 

“We’ll call,” Fred assured her. “Xander said he’ll send a dinner invitation when he’s learnt how to use the ovens.”

 

“I did?” The hammock creaked as Xander sat up. Fred cut him a skin-stripping glance and he nodded, “I did.”

 

“I look forward to it,” Diane laughed lightly and left, came across Jude with the cooler in his hand and a scab on the side of his neck. “A justly deserved gaming pit injury?”

 

“It is needle stab from the woman,” Jude picked at the scab. “She harbors cruelty in her bashful smiles.”

 

Diane’s laugh rang out no less cruel. “Most demons wouldn’t admit to falling victim to a woman as physically insignificant as Winifred,” she balanced the briefcase on the railings, opened it and slotted five corked test-tubes into Jude’s breast pocket. “Amo Spike’s medication. Entrust it to the child if Fred frightens you.” 

 

Boots scuffing the flagstones, Jude navigated Xander’s vaguely hostile gaze, avoided Fred’s suspicious one and set the cooler on the butcher’s block, leaving with the medication entrusted to his pocket.

 

“Was it something I said?” Xander asked.

 

“It’s something I did,” Fred stored the cooler in the outdoor kitchen cupboard and went into the sickbay to massage Spike’s arms and shoulders.

 

*    *    *    *

 

Tuesday: Spike drank four pints of blood, kept them down and seemed with it for the periods he was awake.

 

Xander went on an all-day shopping spree, terrified of Spike’s unglazed eyes. He came home in time to cook dinner and burnt everything he touched. He took a long shower, hoped Spike would be asleep as he noiselessly inched the bedroom door open. 

 

The table-bed was bare and a vampire occupied the bed-bed, wide-awake.

 

Xander was a frenzy of heartbeats and would’ve stuffed his not quite steady hands into his jeans back pockets if he’d had jeans on. He rubbed his ass instead.

 

“I’ll just…” he glanced over his shoulder at the hearth rug, “over there.”

 

Xander elaborated by taking a blanket and sheet from the wardrobe and making up a bed on the hearthrug. He was settling down when Spike asked, “that where you’ve been sleeping?” A kaleidoscope of lazy alert bored pissed off inflections in his voice.

 

Xander glanced at the king-size bed if not at its occupant. “Thought I’d give you stretch room.”

 

Spike stayed propped on his elbows until Xander got into bed with him. It wasn’t a restful night for Xander, difficult to get any kind of rest when Spike kept poking at the calluses on his palm.

 

*    *    *    *

 

His wooly mind got to him, a closed white door in his head where there should have been a gallery showing pictures of his month in bed. He opened the door and Drusilla was there, standing with her back to him.

 

“Star bright, star light, first twinkle I’ve seen tonight,” she giggled. “Twinkles are clover, Spike. Never leave home without your clover.”

 

When she turned round, she had Miss Edith in one hand and a needle up Miss Edith’s bum. Sometimes Dru looked like Fred, other times Fred looked like Dru.

 

He closed the door and opened it again; Drusilla with her back to him.

 

“…never leave home without your clover…”

 

He slammed the door, frustrated. He wanted someone sane, someone to tell him why Xander’s calluses made a strange kind of sense.

 

He flung the door open and Angelus was sitting in the room on a velvet-upholstered armchair, one knee over the other. He had indigo leather trousers on. The pouf sometimes made sense so he went in and asked, “where’ve I been?”

 

He was out in the corridor asking the white wooden panels of the closed door, yet knew he was inside the room with Angelus. Xander was inside the room too, and he wanted to see what had the boy groaning fit to burst. But when he went in, only Angelus was there, dark hair, dark eyes, dark grin.

 

“What’s going on in here?”

 

He was out in the corridor asking the wooden panels of the closed door.

 

“I hate this,” he said out loud. “Got jack hammers drilling into my head and a giant cheese grater exfoliating my skin.”

 

Dawn immediately put her book aside, “I made step four,” she said, going to the alcove.

 

Nibblet he couldn’t figure out. It was like she’d been as gone as him. Last seen on her knees having her hair mauled by Tresten, next seen this morning, sitting on a floor cushion and trying to read to him from a black, leather bound book, which was “all gobbledygook writing and interesting pictures.”  He didn’t sense her behind his mind’s door and she seemed somehow off, like a second hand hovering a tiny bit too long before ticking on.

 

She fetched a dark brown bottle and a spoon from the medicine shelf. “You’re starting on the tincture today – Fred’s orders.”

 

“Strawberry tincture?” He sniffed the cork.

 

“Mushroom, it’s got gin in it. Lots of gin.”

 

“Well in that case,” he drank half the bottle, mellowed in an instant. “Whoa,” he grinned.

 

Dawn caught the bottle as it slipped from his hand. “You’re only supposed to have a tablespoon every three hours,” she whispered, glancing out of the open door. “Shit. Fred’s gonna roast me.”

 

*    *    *    *

 

Surrounded by pillows and Dawn’s chatter, Spike hiked his trouser legs up and rubbed oil into his calves, peeved by the loss of muscle tone. Pink patches of new skin covered his knees, looked revolting. He clasped his hands on his knees, feeling like a naked ghoul.

 

“Thought you said the writing was all in demony,” he said up at Dawn, more to distract her from looking at him than out of a pressing need to listen to her cryptic readings.

 

She shuffled on the tree branch until she was sitting astride it instead of draped along it. “The parts in English are as clear as demony,” she said, turning the pages of her book. 

 

“Listen to this…side by side are two doors: one door requiring little labor, the other door requiring much, for it has four keys and each key bears two teeth. The former door is hailed as the Saint's Way, the latter as the Devil's Pass; the doors being sisters of true likeness.” She made a dog-ear on the page, “it’s a puzzle book.”

 

Fred came across from the fire-pit and squinted up at Dawn. “Is that puzzle book from the library Dawn?”

 

“Where else would I get a book?” Dawn asked tartly.

 

“Hey,” Spike frowned. “Attitude.”

 

“Yes Fred. I got the book in the library where books like to hang out,” Dawn smiled, saccharine sweet. “You think the doors are the way out Spike?”

 

“Don’ know,” Spike passed a hand over his scalp, prick of anger at the choppy tufts and unbelievably, at his Little Bit. “Way I remember it, Tresten didn’t say yea or nay ‘bout leaving.”

 

“No, he was more interested in teaching Xander a lesson,” Dawn made several more dog-ears. “Talk of the devil,” she muttered as Xander came in through the courtyard gates carrying a cotton sack.

 

Spike couldn’t credit his sharp physical reaction to the boy’s inelegant amble across the courtyard. He lay back on the hammock and dropped a pillow over his crotch easy like. That’s Xander Harris, he reminded his cock, we don’t give Harris the standing ovation. The thing was deaf, mimicking steel as he watched Xander put the groceries away.

 

Mushrooms were powerful aphrodisiac. Had to be the explanation for his desire to have Xander spread him.

 

Xander swept a floppy lock of hair off his forehead and curled his hand around the rope on head-side of the hammock. “Got everything you need?” He asked, looking Spike over. 

 

“Yes,” he said and fuck if there wasn’t a blush in his voice. “Pass the book, Bit. I read some demon languages, can maybe unpuzzle the puzzle.” Yeah, like why Harris had shag potential suddenly.

 

The shag potential tilted his head at Dawn, laughed, “What you doing up there, monkey?”

 

“Reading. Listen…side by side are two doors: one requiring little labor…”

 

Xander swayed the hammock, lazy rocking that sent Spike dozing to the closed white door.

 

*    *    *    *

 

The days staggered on like drunk snails. Fred said his healing was quicker, Spike thought it was like…drunk snails. Slow and unsteady. He read to pass the time, would’ve read more if Dawn hadn’t kept hogging the book.

 

“I’m bored,” he whined to Fred.

 

She brought him a cartload of library books. Books on Demonology, Astrology, a few on Tresten’s wise leadership. “Propaganda,” he said, tossing those on the floor. The ones on demonology he tossed aside also because he knew all there was to know about demons. Given the slim pickings, he polished up on his astrology and read Dawn’s book whenever he got the chance.

 

When he didn’t have his nose in a book, Spike had his mind on Xander. The boy cooked, kept the fires lit, shopped and put a stool in the shower stall so Spike could take the weight off his legs when showering. Worse than that, Xander curbed the disrespect and upped the friendliness. Too good to be true. Harris was a detonation waiting to blow him away.

 

No blowing of any kind took place and that he was glad of. Yeah he was horny, but not stupidly so and getting sweaty with the boy would be stupid, distracting. He had pain in his bones to prove it. Took his eye off the ball that night and paid dearly. No, no more groping with Harris, no snogs, no flirting, definitely no shag.

 

…you will teach the boy, you will scent him; if you can not desire him, let one who can desire him have him…

 

“Oh fuck off. Maybe I don’t want to bloody scent him,” Spike said, scowling at Xander when he came in with a mug of blood a few minutes later. “This is all your fault, you know.”

 

“I know and I’m sorry,” Xander said without missing a beat. “The crazy won’t happen again.”

 

Spike doubted it. “Just remember you fly solo next time you have a go at Tresten,” he warned.

 

Xander found room on the book covered bedside cabinet for the mug, brought him the tincture, put that and the massage oil in easy reach and loitered by the fireplace.

 

“Are you warm enough, you want I should put more logs on the fire?”

 

This provoked Spike like a poker stirring up burning coal. “Why are you being so, so,” he groped for the word, hands gesturing as though to pull it from his chest, “so nice.”

 

Xander criss-crossed some logs on the fire, “Hey, I’m a nice guy. I’m nice.”

 

“Behave,” a dry laugh-snort. “Hunting in graveyards on the pretext of White Hat slayage, guzzling on carnage when good boys are asleep in their beds. You’re more nutso than I figured if you think any of that is nice,” lazy smile at the tight faced boy. “Why d’you do it anyway? Not like you get paid for it.”

 

“Money’s not everything.”

 

“Nice cliché, try it on your friends on Bend Over Boulevard,” he enjoyed Xander’s unease: the finger skating on the bridge of his nose, the arm coming up in a self hug. Spike picked up the mug, blew on the hot liquid. “See if they’ll pocket that gem of wisdom instead of the fifty bucks they ask for.”

 

“You’ve been shopping on Crack ‘Ho Avenue Spike, ‘cause the guys on Bend Over won’t even look at you for anything less than a Benjamin,” Xander pushed his sleeves up his arms and collected the dirty mugs from Spike’s former bed. “I’m going to rustle up dinner – how’s a trough of carnage sound?”

 

Spike laughed, a bubbly chuckle starting in his belly and warming its way through him. Nodding his touché, he scrolled his glance down Xander and saw the bruises on his arms.

 

“Put those down and come here,” he said, balls and fangs tingling.

 

Xander set the mugs on the table, tugged his sleeves down, sat on the bed and wouldn’t look at him. Taking Xander’s hand, he folded the sleeve back, stopped before he got to the crook of his elbows knowing the healing bite marks tracked the vein there. Angling his head to try gaining eye contact, Spike scratched his thumb on Xander’s palm, frowning when he finally connected the texture of the calluses to a recurring wet dream.

 

Little pads of hard skin at the base of fingers, rough skin that grazed in the drag-smooth sensation of callus and pre-cum.

 

He’d been comatose and Harris had been copping a feel! It wasn’t on. He oughta box the boy’s ears or do something violent and evil to him. But within Spike’s minor anger was a feeling of being thrown. Xander hated vampires, wouldn’t support a vampire’s life like this boy chewing on his lower lip had done.

 

“Explain,” he pressed down on a callus.

 

“Construction work,” Xander closed his fist around Spike’s thumb, “and splitting logs for the fires here.”

 

Spike screwed his thumb out of Xander’s warm channel of fist, not falling for the dippy response. Xander could manipulate him into wanting him meant Xander had a functioning brain. He let the silence stretch until the boy squirmed and looked at him.

 

“I chose the mace and opened big mouth that night, came up with the bidding plan. So when you asked…” Xander shrugged and left it at that.

 

“I asked?”

 

Small nod from Xander, vigorous nodding from Spike’s demon. Sire, it assured him.

 

“Not Sire you dolt,” Spike knocked his wrist on his temple, “Childe if anything.” 

 

“Sorry?” Xander risked him a glance.

 

“You say you are,” he sank back on the pillows, closed his eyes. “Did you slip it in? Hard to tell you’ve been fucked when you feel fucked in general.”

 

“No, no…god, Spike.”

 

“Why – didn’t I beg?”

 

Pheromones, a jostling of the mattress, a sharp in-take of air.

 

Spike cracked his eyes open, saw a tanned arm with his marks on it, lips nibbled red and curved in a tempter’s smile, smelt shower gel on a hard male body sitting too close for nonchalance.

 

He shuffled off the bed, having to hold onto Xander’s arm to do so. “I’m out to test drive the legs. Come and steer me.”