From Part Five:
"Spike was the one," Xander began, then pulled up short. However sick he felt, there was no way he was letting loose with the details of what exactly Spike had been the one to do.
"Think he means he *saw* Spike two nights ago," Oz suggested.
"Oh yeah," Buffy said slowly. "Angel said something about the two of them . . . and a delivery?"
Willow nodded, and stood up. "I'm calling Spike too. Maybe he can help us figure out what happened to Xander, or at least where to start asking questions."
And before Xander could make a protest, Spike was summoned, and Xander was given crushed ice to suck on. *******
Xander sighed when he felt a cool hand against his face. Though he wasn't feverish, he did feel uncomfortable and hot, and he turned his head into the contact, murmuring grumble-y noises as he tried to shift further into the comforting touch.
"There, now," a very distinctive low-pitched English voice said, and Xander sat up all at once.
"Hey!" he exclaimed indignantly.
"What is it now?" Spike asked. Now that Xander had moved, he sat on his heels on the floor next to the sofa, hands on his thighs and looked extremely put out. "You seemed to like that well enough for the last ten minutes or so."
"I don't care what it seemed like I liked. You'd better keep your hands to yourself," Xander said in a furious tone. "I think I caught some kind of flu from you, and . . ."
"Spike can't very well give you the flu, seeing as he's --"
"Oh great -- you got here when?" Xander said to Giles. He shielded his eyes from the lamp shining in them to look up into Giles' concerned face. "And fine, I know he's dead. I'm not a moron. But maybe he gave me the flu anyway.
You know, just to screw around with me. Like germ warfare?"
Giles gazed at Spike doubtfully. "Well, I suppose it's not beyond the realm of --"
"Oh, bloody hell," Spike said. "If I actually knew how to start unleashing disease and mayhem, don't you think I'd begin with the wankers at the lab who decided to have a bit of fun with inserting small pieces of silicone in my brain? Didn't give him anything . . . anything *bad*, that is."
At that Giles moved closer and sat on the easy chair next to the couch. "Now, when you say nothing *bad*, do you mean that you did in fact give --"
"Hey now, where is everyone else?" Xander broke in.
Giles shifted his attention back to Xander. "Oh! Well, Willow has gone to fetch some ingredients that should at the very least lessen the effects of whatever it is that is making you ill. Of course, until we determine the exact cause of this malady, we won't be able to cure you."
Xander slumped back further against the couch. "And Buffy? Oz?"
"Have gone to speak to Angel," Giles said gently. "If there's anything unusual occurring, he may have some information that could be of help to us."
"So you think it's something to do with hocus pocus," Spike said.
"Hard to say at this point, but yes, that's a distinct possibility."
Spike nodded impatiently. "That doesn't exactly narrow it down, though, does it? Anything nasty could have caused it. I don't know where you'd even --"
"Yeah, like you wouldn't *know* about nasty, comma, doing the," Xander muttered.
Spike shut his mouth grimly while Giles looked between the two of them with keen curiosity.
Willow rushed into the room with her arms full of packages. "Okay! I got a bunch of different stuff so we'd have options. But first I want to start out with a kind of assessing spell -- maybe I can get a handle on what angle we should begin with for treating whatever it is that Xander's got. It's a little . . . well, I've got to poke at you a bit, Xander. But it won't hurt, and all you have to do is take off your shirt so I can try to get a read using different areas of your skin. It's just for the preparation part. When I do the spell, you can lie there as bundled up as you please."
"Fine, go ahead," Xander said. He shucked his t-shirt. When even that made him a little dizzy, he lay back down hastily.
"I'll just go make some tea," Giles announced, stepping into the kitchen to allow them some privacy.
But Spike lingered in the room. "You sure you know what you're doing?"
Willow never took her eyes off the spell book as she flipped through looking for the right page. "Of course I know--"
"Yeah, you think so, but how can you be sure the little tricks and puffs of smoke you're playing with won't hurt him?" He shifted uneasily in the doorway, watching Xander even as Xander mustered up the energy to roll his eyes at Spike.
"Spike," Willow said patiently. "The assessing spell can't hurt him at all. And I don't know what step we'll be taking next, so--"
"Oh, that's reassuring," Xander said in a faint voice.
"That's it," Spike said decisively. "I won't have you messing with him when you might--"
"Giiiiiiiles!" Willow cried out.
Giles rushed to the doorway, almost crashing into Spike. "Yes? What is it? Have you found out--"
"Make Spike go away," Willow said petulantly. "I'm trying to figure out what's up, and he just keeps--"
"Oh, fine," Giles sighed. "Spike, come into the kitchen. Perhaps you can shed some light on what may have caused this sudden outbreak, or lead us to its source."
"Yeah, alright," Spike said, suddenly subdued. He cast one look back at Xander, who was watching him with widened eyes.
"Now, don't you worry," Willow said briskly. "We'll get to the bottom of this in no time."
After tapping at his chest with some swabs and gesturing that he should put his t-shirt back on, Willow knelt in front of the coffee table and set to work. For a moment there was only the soft murmur of Giles and Spike speaking in the kitchen while Willow separated out her ingredients and mixed together the concoction, glancing at the directions from time to time. Xander watched her forlornly as he thought about her leaving for Wicca training camp after just two more days. She'd be gone for weeks. And he hadn't even gotten a chance to--
"Willow?" Xander asked quietly.
"Yeah?" she asked, tapping out a measure of roots into a mortar and preparing to grind them.
"Would this -- whatever the sick thing is -- possibly have anything to do with . . . um, me having sex with someone recently?"
Willow dropped the pestle and goggled at Xander. "Uh. Well. Oh."
"I was going to tell you," Xander hissed in a lowered voice. "But then you were going away, and you were all stressed out about packing -- I thought it could wait. But now with the onset of the possibly-magical symptoms, it seemed like it could be important for you to know that I slept with someone the other night."
Willow's brow furrowed, and then her face cleared as she nodded vigorously. "Oh! Well, uh, yay! For the sex-having, because it's good that you're -- but oh, bad, because maybe somehow you picked up something ooky? But no, that couldn't be it -- well it could, but not this soon. And did I mention yay, and how *fine* I am with this?"
"I don't -- well, it can't be the regular sex problem stuff," Xander continued in a whisper. "Because the person couldn't have given me anything like STDs or stuff, and they --"
Willow cleared her throat and shuffled over on her knees so that she was closer to the couch. "Xander, that isn't good. You shouldn't believe a girl, even if she's really nice, when she says that -- you should always practice safe sex. You know, we're having a presentation all about it on our floor next week. Maybe you should come! They give out free condoms and, uh, dental dams."
Xander gaped at her. "Okay, I'm not going to ask about the dental dams, but trust me, there's no way that the person could have passed anything along. It'd be impossible for them."
Willow looked ready to object all over again, but then she switched tracks. "Fine. There's no way you could have contracted something -- so why even bring it up? You were the one that asked if it could have had to do with you sleeping with--"
"Because the person that I slept with . . . well, they might be semi-evil."
Nodding slowly, Willow tried again. "Okay. Disease-free. But potentially nefarious."
"Exactly," Xander said, relieved.
"Xander?"
"What?"
"Why are we playing the pronoun game?"
"The what?" Xander asked hesitantly.
Willow gave him a pointed look. "You slept with 'someone'. 'They' couldn't have given you an STD. 'The person' could be up to no good."
"Oh yeah," Xander said. "Well, the thing of it is . . ."
Willow leaned in and her standard-level whisper dropped even lower in volume. "Did you have sex with a guy? Because yeah, that's a new thing . . . but you can . . . and should! . . . choose who you want to . . . oh boy . . . I mean, that would be so not be a problem, okay?" Willow moved even closer and flung her arms around Xander. "I love you no matter who you have sex with," she said in a sniffly voice. She backed away, still on her knees and swiped at her eyes. "But I'm still worried no matter who it is too. You know guys can contract things from each other, so the same-sex thing doesn't mean that you shouldn't use protect--"
"It wasn't just a guy," Xander exclaimed loudly in sudden frustration. "I slept with *Spike*. And yeah, he can't give me any sex diseases because he's *dead*. But he's only recently-chipped, and still pretty much evil at heart, so
I think he might have done something else to me. And that's what's probably making me feel nauseous and dizzy and like I want to cry all the time, and did I mention that I hurt *everywhere*? So if you're trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me, I strongly recommend asking Spike what kind of stuff he slipped me to a) have sex with him and b) make me completely sick!"
The sound of teacups dropping and shattering rang out from the kitchen.
"Whew, it's crazy out there," Buffy announced as she came into the room. Her cheeks were pink with cold, and she shivered a bit in the warmth of the house. "The Glaz'broth clans are ready to throw down, and Angel was in serious behind-closed-door talks with two of the representatives. I tried to get in to speak with him, but no go. Oz is waiting there just in case there's a break in the talks. And if he can't find out anything tonight, I promise that tomorrow I'll definitely figure out if Angel knows anything about Xander's forty-eight-hour demonic bug. And hey, what with Willow's magicky know-how, maybe we won't even need Angel's help."
She tossed her jacket onto a chair and rested her hands on her hips. "You know, with this Glaz'broth clan conflict . . . I'm not sure why the solution Angel came up with didn't work. He still won't tell me what it was exactly. But this does not bode well for fun and games and nights off for good little Slayers. Even the vamps are freaking out -- they can tell *something* is majorly wrong. Good, 'cause that makes them easier to kill; bad, 'cause it also makes 'em flee out of their hidey-holes and come at me all at once."
She stopped speaking as she took in Xander, red-faced and upset on the couch, and Willow, kneeling on the floor with her mouth slack-jawed in shock. "Um. Did I miss something?"
"Xander slept with Spike!" Willow blurted out.
"When? While I was gone?" Buffy asked in confusion. "Is he feverish and delusional? I didn't think he had enough strength to stand up, never mind--"
"No, no -- had sex with him two nights ago, pre-magical-flu," Xander muttered. He'd contemplated denying his earlier admission as the ramblings of his feverish brain, but since he was about to conk himself in the head to stop the aching and dizziness, he figured he might as well come clean beforehand.
"More like *all* night, two nights ago," Spike corrected as he returned to the room. He glanced at Xander as though he was trying to make up his mind if he should go over to him.
"Haven't you done enough?" Xander shot out. Still, he didn't shy away when Spike moved close to the sofa and loomed over Willow as though he was overseeing the proceedings.
"Yes, well," Giles said. He ignored Spike's protective stance over Xander, waved off Buffy's questioning sounds, and directed his attention to Willow. "Whatever the case with Spike and Xander's encounter the other night and our concerns about their . . . well . . . it remains that Xander is quite ill. We must focus our attention on discovering what we can do to ease his suffering."
Willow shut her mouth and gave a small nod. "I got skin samples from Xander already and mashed up the ingredients. Can you read the incantation while I burn the mixture?"
Giles sat on a chair near Willow, took the spell book from her, and spoke the words quietly while she moved the preparations to a small bowl and set them afire. Xander felt drowsy suddenly as he watched the small glow and listened to Giles drone on. The text was probably demonic, Xander thought. Either that, or Giles had suddenly put a bunch of marbles in his mouth.
Nothing major happened. No large flash of smoke, or room-illumination, or even a bad smell. What did happen, though, was that Willow went a little pale and clutched Giles' arm. The two of them exchanged a look.
"Well, are you going to tell us what's wrong with the boy?" Spike said after several moments had passed.
"Will?" Xander asked.
"Just a minute," Willow said. "Giles, can you--?"
"Yes, why don't we--" Giles responded, and the two of them fled into the kitchen.
Xander moved on the couch uncomfortably. When Spike's hand came to rest on his shoulder, he grimaced a bit, but unknowingly leaned towards the contact.
"Hey! Guys? That is so not fair!" Buffy called after Giles and Willow. "We don't keep magical secrets in this house! We're supposed to all find out everything at the same time. Right? *Right*? Guys?"
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