Protective Custody (1/20)COMPLETE

(Disclaimer: We own nothing. Joss owns all. You know the drill.)


"If I called Buffy like you asked then nothing would have happened okay? Look, I'm sorry okay? I'm sorry you got stuck with me, I'm sorry you're human and I'm fucking sorry you kissed me. I sure as hell am sorry I kissed you. Just...back off for a while. Can you ever do that? Back off?! Or is it against some sort of Spike
code."

Xander was proud of the way he managed to keep the tremor in his voice to a minimum. He had been trying so hard to get along with Spike and now everything was ruined. Spike was obviously disgusted by the mere thought of kissing him. That was more upsetting than it should have been.

"I can't deal with this." He muttered and made for the bedroom.

"Don't cry... he's going to bloody cry..." The words were barely above a groaned whisper as Spike walked to the still open front door. He smashed his fist into the invisible wall, yelping and bringing his knuckles to his mouth. Pain. This time self-inflicted. Another fine lesson brought to him by Xander's Wankers That Be.

He glanced over his shoulder toward the bedroom and heard no sounds. No crying, no muffled curses, nothing. Letting off a loud sigh of frustration, he slammed the door and headed for the couch. It was all the boy's fault... it really was. Imprisoning him here. Refusing to allow him to hear or see Buffy. Just because a bloody scroll said he was the boss, he was really lording it over on him. Well bugger that!

Xander's phone sat within reach. Buffy's number had to be in it. After one last look toward the bedroom, Spike took the phone and scrolled down the list of names. "Angela, Beatrice, Daniella - not the demon one, Hanna - very hot, Inge... but no Buffy, and all these...girls? He could have fooled me....Jesse...hopefully a girl-shaped Jesse, Klingon's Unite..." Spike blinked. Checked the screen again. Right, it was Xander. "... Laura, Mars Watch RPG, ..." he started to scroll faster, Red would be able to give him Buffy's number. "Star Trek Geeks Anonymous, WC... ah, the Harris method of filing names. Git." He scrolled to WC- Buffy, and hit the send button.

In the bedroom, Xander sat down on the bed, staring at nothing and letting misery overtake him. Spike was blaming him for everything. It wasn't fair. Not like Xander had wanted to be in charge of Spike. He felt a little guilty over the whole Buffy thing. He had no problems letting Spike talk to Willow or Dawn but he really felt like Buffy would do more harm than good.

Spike was having a hard time adjusting to human, he didn't need to find out that Buffy was dating someone else before even the metaforical body had gone cold. Dawn and Willow had promised not to tell him but Buffy...she was a wild card, you never knew what she might do. Besides, she knew Spike was back and she didn't even call
him.

It was for Spike's own good. It was. It had nothing to do with any unresolved feelings Xander might have towards him, nothing at all.

Okay, maybe it had a little something to do with it. But it was mostly because Xander didn't want Spike to get that defeated look on his face again. Stupid White Knight tendencies...Angelus was right, he did think of himself as Buffy's white knight. And Willow's and Dawn's. For some reason, Spike had been added to the list.

"I'm an idiot." Xander mumbled and let himself flop back on the bed. "Hey, the ceiling has a crack."

Buffy's machine picked up. Spike re-dialed two more times, as if it would make the result change, and finally gave up and listened to the message.

"Hi, this is Buffy. I'm on vacation in Rome, and Paris, and Rome, Rome, and… Rome..." Spike frowned, was there a certain purr to her voice? "So... speak at me, and I might call you if I can find the phone." He held the phone away from him and stared at it. Buffy? There was a mystery here.

Without leaving a message, he stormed...or tried to storm very slowly...to the bedroom and hovered inside the door frame. Good, no tears. He let out the breath he'd been holding, and pointed at Xander with the phone. "Say's she's in Rome on vacation. I want to speak to her. I bloody well need to speak with her."

Xander kept staring at the crack on the ceiling. If he squinted a bit it looked like hieroglyphics.

"I know she's in Rome. She's always in Rome. And I already told you there will be no talking to Buffy."

His voice sounded as tired as he felt. It had only been a few days but it felt like they'd been having this argument for years. What was he supposed to tell Spike, 'You can't talk to Buffy cause she's busy playing with her new boyfriend and that information will probably break your newly human heart'. Yeah, that would go down well.

Leaning against the door frame, Spike crossed his arms. "You're taking this whole custody thing a bit too seriously, yeah?" His frown deepened. "You can't keep me prisoner forever."

"'s not me keeping you here, Spike. It's the Wankers. Remember them? High and mighty beings who think they know everything?"

Xander turned to look at Spike, intending to gather up enough energy to glare at him. Instead of glaring though, he stared, eye widening with horror. "Spike! What...how...what are you doing?!"
Spike raised an eyebrow and drawled. "Not whacking off, yeah?"

Xander blushed and briefly contemplated waiting to see whether what was happening to Spike could be permanent.

"Yes, thank you Spike. Nice way to bring up the most humiliating moment of my life. I was talking about you going all Marty McFly on me."

"Marty who?" Now Spike was confused. "What? You don't like your jeans on me. I knew they gave me bulges in all the wrong places." He'd have to do something about that before he saw Buffy.

He pushed off the frame and advanced on Xander. "Stop looking at me as if you've seen a ghost... and stop trying to make me forget about the call, I know that trick."

Xander scrambled off the bed waited for Spike to come close to him.

"I swear, Spike, this isn't about the phone call." He said, still staring. As soon as he was close enough Xander took hold of Spike's left arm at the elbow and lifted it up for inspection. "See?"

Xander had drawn close enough that Spike smelled the fresh clean scent of soap coming off him. Immediately the image he'd joked about slammed into his mind, followed by the mind drugging kiss he'd hated every minute of.

"What..." He blinked and finally looked down. "My arm... my bleedin' arm is gone!" He looked up at the ceiling. "Give it back to me you wankers, I need it. The arms were the only things you gave me that worked right away." When he found his arm was still see-thru, he ground out a stream of endless curses and threats.

"Spike...SPIKE! Try to calm down okay. What where you doing before you
went all Mr Cellophane." Xander curiously poked at Spike's disappearing hand and tried not to freak out when his finger went straight through.

"We had enough poking and prodding this morning," Spike's voice was edged with desperation as he roughly dragged his arm away. Strange...the sight of other creatures' missing limbs never bothered him when he was hacking away with an axe.

"My arm...my human...flesh and blood arm..." he started to swear again, this time letting the phone drop from his right hand, and then using it to confirm his entire other arm was gone...slightly visible, but ... "I'm turning into a bloody hologram."

"I know. That's why we're trying to figure out what happened. You looked fine when I left the living room. What did you do after that?" Xander tried to sound calm and comforting but he wasn't sure he managed to hide the little bit of panic. Spike was disappearing!

"Nothing. I'm stuck inside this apartment... care to tell me what I could have done to get this?" Spike looked down at his hand again, and gritted his teeth. Anger slowly edged out panic. "Fine. Go on and erase me. I never wanted to come back, now did I?" At that moment, he meant it. Life might hold a lot of allure, but he'd felt the bite of it's pain more often than not. "Maybe they should pick their slaves a bit more carefully," he said, walking to the bed and flopping down, with his good arm flung across his eyes. "You probably should leave now, yeah?"

"Spike for fuck's sake, stop acting like a three-year-old and tell me what you did! If you can undo it maybe we can fix this!"

"Undo it... there's nothing to fucking undo. I’m over a hundred years old, and they've got me under your bloody custody. That takes the cake...bloody wankers." He drew in a few much needed breaths. "Stay home Spike, don't ring your friends Spike, eat...bloody fucking don't eat. I'm sick of the lot of them and of you." He lifted his arm and turned his head. "What are you still doing here? Or is this a viewing opportunity you can't bear to pass up," he snarled.

"You know what? I didn't choose for you to be under my bloody custody! I tried to be civil and get this over with without killing your pain-in-my-neck ass and all you do is abuse me! Do what you want Spike, have junk food for dinner, go out and party all night. Hell you can even call Buffy if you want. Not like you didn't go through my personal phone to get her number. Have fun! Deal with the 'dire consequences' whatever they are on your fucking own."

By the end of his rant, Xander was screaming at the top of his voice. "In short, fuck you Spike." He concluded and turned to leave the room.

"Fine. Good. Bugger off. It's better that way." He closed his eyes again, this time to prevent the boy from reading into his expression. The last thing he needed or wanted was his pity. His other arm was already disappearing and if he'd felt no pain before and thought it would be easy, the Wankers had just corrected him. Jerking his head to the side, he bit down on the corner of the quilt blanket.

The blanket had warmed him when he froze that first day he'd been given life. And it would silence his screams now as his insides started to shift... to be torn apart a molecule at a time.

Xander made it as far as the hallway before what he'd said crashed
into his brain. Dire consequences. He ran back to the bedroom.

"Spike! Dire consequences! If you don't follow the Wankers' directions you get dire consequences." He said as he came into the room. He stopped when he saw how much pain Spike was in. Stupid vampire, too stubborn for his own good. "Spike, we can undo it okay? Just...okay maybe you should apologise or something. Promise not to do it again. That could undo it, right?"

Spike had gone to the grave several times, and pain was no stranger. They could rip him apart, but they wouldn't win. The cloth in his mouth was wet by now, compacted-down as he bit harder, shaking like a leaf as he fought the urge to scream.

Xander watched Spike suffer, hating the fact that there was nothing he could do to help him. He fidgeted a bit, moving forwards and reaching out to touch him then moving back, not knowing if his touch would offer comfort or cause more pain.

“Come on Spike, please just apologise okay?” He asked, looking worriedly at the blond.

In the end, it was the look in the boy's eye that broke him. That forced him to swallow his pride. He spit the cloth out. "Yes...even though this is tuliped-up ...pardon me...in my flowery gardened opinion, I'm sorry...I won't do it again." It took a lot not to scream the words out, no one would ever know how much. And he hadn't cursed, yeah? He's used the WTB approved list of words, so they could hardly complaint. "So put me back! Please..."

Xander looked anxiously at Spike, expecting to see him come back.

Nothing.

“Maybe you should sound like you mean it?” He offered hesitantly. “They can be real bastards when they wanna be.”

Shit.

“I mean, they’re very nice powers and we wish them all the best and can we please have Spike back now? He didn’t do anything wrong, I mean, I asked him not to speak to Buffy and technically he didn’t actually speak to her so no harm no foul!”

"Yeah... what he just said," Spike said in a surly tone.

Xander rolled his eye at Spike’s pathetic attempt at an apology. Pain or not, vampire or human, Spike sucked at apologies.

“Well? I’m waiting!” He said, trying to imitate Willow’s resolve face and tone. “Bring the ex-vampire back.”

"Yeah... that too."

The bastards made them wait. A long time. A good ten fucking minutes when all they had to do was give him back his body with a single thought. Did they even have thoughts? Yeah...best not ask that one out loud.

Spike stretched his arm out, "Look... you think it's new and improved, or same crap, new day?"
Xander looked up from his position on the floor next to the bed. After waiting for a few minutes he’d decided to sit out and just glare upwards until the Wankers fixed things.

“You’re solid again?” He asked hopefully. “Try standing up. Maybe they brought you back same as you were before you screwed things up.”

"You just want to carry me, yeah?" He hesitated before he tried. What if Xander was right, what if he was going to be forced to start at the beginning?

Slowly, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Xander was already conveniently on his knees, so he gripped the guy's shoulder and raised himself up.

He took a step. Then another. Then turned and gave a lop-sided grin. "Looks like you're out of luck Harris, there will be no carrying."

Xander couldn't help but smile back at Spike. "Yeah, no carrying for you." He laughed.


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