bigapplesauce | look what the cat dragged in [closed]

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look what the cat dragged in [closed]

[tw for gross blood and also death and maybe corpse things and being buried alive. fun all around.]

Spike stops going to work the Monday after he and Sunshine break up. Sunshine won't want to see him, it would hurt to see her, and every single moment his body makes feels like too much effort anyway. It would be too much to go down there just to feel more pain. The best he can do is go to the fridge and dole himself out a half-congealed serving of inferior blood before stumbling back to bed or the couch. He doesn't bother microwaving it anymore, just lets it sit out until it's melted enough to drink. Each disgusting serving hardly makes a dent in his steadily deteriorating health. He feels himself improve for shorter and shorter amounts of time each time until the blood seems to stop working entirely.

On the sixteenth, he wakes up with a start and pulls in a gasping breath. He'd stopped breathing. Breathing isn't strictly necessary for his survival, but it's part of what makes him feel alive.

He doesn't feel alive on the morning of the sixteenth. He feels like a corpse. He lies there, just forcing air back though his lungs and reassuring himself that this isn't over yet. He can breath if he thinks about it. If he makes the effort.

He needs to get up. Even if the blood is worthless, he needs to try to get to it. It's all he's got.

When he flexes his hand, his fingers resist the motion like rigor is setting in, so he pulls his fingers in until they form a tight fist, then releases it. He repeats the motion with his other hand, runs through the motions one more time, then drags his legs around to the side of the bed. He feels so cold. He can't remember ever feeling this cold. As his vision slips in and out of focus, he imagines a coffin collapsing around him and his mouth filling with cold, dark earth. He's dying here. Can I die like this, he wonders, or will it be worse than that?

He has to get up.

Every joint in his body protests when Spike stands and stumbles forward. He collides with the door frame and grips onto it until he's sure he can stay upright. He's so so very tired. His eyes slip closed and he sags against the door frame, his shoulder the only thing propping him up. When his eyes flutter open again, it takes him a moment to reorient himself. He can see where he needs to go, but it feels almost impossible now.

He pushes himself as hard as he can from the door frame, but he gets thrown off balance and falls to his knees. The action is jarring, and enough to make him lose consciousness for a full minute. When he comes back to, he pushes an arm under himself only to realize that he's not strong enough now to stand again. He wants Sunshine, or Aziraphale, or anyone that could pick him up right now, but there's no way anyone is coming. He doesn't matter enough to be missed.

He crawls the rest of the way to the kitchen area. When carpeting meets linoleum, he lets his body sag back down to the floor and drops his cheek down onto the smooth surface. This is pretty far. He made it. He'll just rest a while and then make it to the fridge.

Five minutes later, he stops breathing. He doesn't start again.

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The unexpected and oddly disjointed prayer cuts right through Aziraphale's head, interrupting all three the Poulenc record, the wrongly-attributed Shakespeare tragedy, and the 1890 Malbec he'd been enjoying in the shop's back room. The turntable falls miraculously silent; the wine miraculously disappears; the book returns, miraculously, to its place on the shelf. Aziraphale is gone.

He rematerializes at the source of Sunshine's summons, in Spike's apartment. The two of them are clinging to each other, balancing precariously against the kitchen counter, both looking like absolute Hell if one would pardon the expression.

There is another presence - two pieces of it, rather - but he can't bother about that at the moment.

"What happened?" he cries, stepping forward to take Sunshine's arm, half-supporting her. "Are you all right?" The question is for either of them, whichever wants to answer.

Oh good, backup. "You take her. She shouldn't touch me anymore." He lifts a hand from the counter to gesture vaguely, which turns out to be a mistake. His entire body dips down a fraction before he can replace his hand on the counter. "...Healing mojo," he finishes. As far as Spike is concerned, this is a very cogent and thorough explanation of the situation as it currently stands.

"I'm just gonna...sit back down." Aziraphale can get Sunshine and he'll just wait here. that's okay. He tries to lower himself carefully, but for the last foot or so he thumps down onto the floor.

Yes. An angelic power boost seems like a great idea. So does keeping her hands away from Spike, now that he's at least semi-coherent. She lets go of him and leans against Aziraphale, eyeing Spike the way Mel would eye a recalcitrant engine. "I don't know what's wrong with him," she says. "Or them," she adds with a nod towards the cats. "The little one's frigging... psychotic."

But hey, now Aziraphale's here. Everything's gonna be fine. She drops her head onto his shoulder, only half on purpose, and says, "Help?"

Aziraphale easily takes her weight when Spike lets go of her and slips down, and he's left helplessly holding her up while Spike slips further and hits the floor. They both need help right now, but Sunshine seems to need him more, so he'll have to let Spike flounder a moment longer before he can ascertain what's happened.

"It's all right, dear," he murmurs to Sunshine. He gives her a little burst of sunlight, traveling from his hands to her, warming her skin. He keeps his hands where they are, not wanting to let her go just yet, and levels an assessing glance at the cats which are not cats.

"What are you?" he asks them rather coldly.

The kitten toddles over to Spike and bats at his exposed hand, claws out. He's bigger, but he's also a lot slower right now and dodging a futile attempt at retribution would be at least a little fun.

What are you keeping in your flat? asks the black cat in return, paying the kitten no mind. A few claw marks are nothing to worry about; the vampire will be back to his old self soon enough.

"Get off, ya lil bastard." Spike swats back at the kitten, but it jumps out of the way of his hand before he can hit anything solid. He stares back at it's empty eyes, daring it to try again.

"They're bastards," Spike supplies, very helpfully. "Pop in just to annoy you and then pop out again."

Oh gods, that is so much better. Sunshine straightens, steady enough to support her own weight again, then gives both cats a dubious look. She has never wanted to kick a kitten before, and even though she's knows it's not a real kitten, it's still not a comfortable feeling. And now they're, what, interrogating Aziraphale? This is so frigging surreal.

She edges back over to Spike and cautiously holds out a hand. "Come on. We can at least get you to the couch." He won't look like such a goddamn mess if he's lying on the couch as opposed to the uncomfortable linoleum of his kitchen floor. How did he even get there?

Aziraphale, for his part, is not concerned with the groping about of his two friends - his attention is fixed entirely on the cat-shaped creature, and has been since its coyly worded question.

"I think it's time for you both to go," he says after a moment, glancing between the two deceptively cute entities.

That's a dare the kitten will certainly take, but hardly has it had a chance to snag its claws into his shirt before that person who had the indecency to fix a perfectly good dying vampire steps in to move him somewhere less convenient to the purpose of clawing.

The black cat stands and stretches with a luxurious yawn. Answers for answers, it comments loftily. Never mind, you have served your purpose. Good boy.

The kitten hisses, but at a look from the black cat it reluctantly winks out of existence, followed by its compatriot.

Spike gives Sunshine's hand a dubious look, as if touching it might make her pass out immediately, but in the end he relents and lets her haul him back up and over to the couch. The healing is definitely still working away on him, so he pulls away again once he's settled down.

As the cats disappear, he mumbles, "And stay out."

Not that telling it to stay out seemed to have helped before.

Once Spike is settled on the couch, Sunshine steps back uncertainly. Her half of the couch beckons her to flop down and make herself at home, but it's not really hers anymore, and she can't just make herself comfortable, here. As if there's any comfort to be had, given the situation. She just hauled Spike back from somewhere, and the last time anything like this happened, it was because the vampire in question was being pursued by some awful kali enemies. So what could have sent Spike into some weird vampiric hibernation mode? Are her wards not working?

She leans against the arm of the couch farthest from Spike, arms folded. "What happened to you?"

He frowns back at her. He's piecing together the timeline in his head, but things are still a little fuzzy. He was going for blood and then...she was there. He has no idea how long he was lying there before she arrived, but he's mystified about why she's here at all. The last time he saw her, he thought that she never wanted to see him again. Maybe Aziraphale told her to come over?

"Why are you here?" He dips his head down and runs a hand over his face. "Get out."

Sunshine stiffens, but doesn't move. All right, maybe she deserved that - it's too near an echo of the last words she threw at him for her to miss the parallel. But she'd been speaking rhetorically, and he's just being an asshole. Well, fuck him. She's not leaving. That's his modus operandi, not hers.

"I'm here," she says stiffly, because she really doesn't want to start screaming in front of Aziraphale, "because you managed to get yourself into such a frigging critical state that a magical talking carthaginian cat-thing showed up in my apartment and ordered me to fucking fix you." She glares at him for a few moments, letting him just soak in what she's said. Then, her tone gentler than she wants it to be, she asks, "So, what was it? Did the wards stop working? Did you tangle with some weird Other in an alley or something?"

The cat brought her here. Okay, that's not a possibility he would have guessed. So, she didn't come here because she was worried, she came because she was ordered.

He's thrown off by the gentle tone in her voice when she continues. It's contrary to every other thing she's said so far, and it feels too much like how things used to be. He doesn't know how to react to that.

"No other." he says finally, then huffs out a laugh. It's funny that she thinks some sort of demon could have done this to him. "The blood supply here's...bad. Tastes like shit and doesn't work. It was bad at first, but now it doesn't do anything at all. I looked everywhere - it's all the same." He keeps his head dipped down as he continues. It really does feel like he's looked everywhere. Maybe it's just that blood is different in this universe instead of whatever it is that they add to the blood making it not work. "I've been starving. For weeks. There's no way around it."

For weeks. He's been fucked up for weeks.

To hell with the 'no shouting in front of the angel' rule.

"You've been starving for weeks and it didn't fucking occur to you to mention it to - oh, hell, I don't know - maybe at least one of the two people you know who can heal you with magic?!" she snaps, incensed. "YOUR BOSS IS A LITERAL ANGEL."

Edited 2015-04-01 04:15 (UTC)

Once past the lingering unease he'd felt at the cats' presence, Aziraphale looks to Spike and Sunshine in hopes of some kind of explanation, which - he sort of gets. Mostly he ends up glancing between them in increasing embarrassment as their personal drama unravels aggressively, thinking I should probably do something, when Spike finally describes what's been happening to him - and Sunshine explodes before he can.

Not that he'd explode. He certainly wouldn't. But he does manage an incredulous, appalled "Weeks!" just as Sunshine launches into her tirade.

"Please, both of you," he says desperately, stepping closer, his hands waving in a terribly inadequate effort to calm them, as one might dispel smoke. "She is right, though, Spike, you should have come to me at once. That is I - I don't know what sort of blood it is you need, but I can at least-" Oh, why bother explaining when he can just do it.

He reaches out and touches Spike gingerly on the brow. It's not nutrients he's providing so much as something simpler, life, preservation. It may not be a permanent resolution but it will be enough for now.

Spike's lips quirk up a fraction when Sunshine yells at him. She may have been brought down here, but there's no mistaking that anger. She wouldn't be angry if she didn't care. She still cares about him, and that's nice.

He's distracted by Sunshine, so he's not very prepared when Aziraphale reaches out and heals him.

"Wh-" He scrubs at the spot on his forehead then looks up at him, shocked and pleased. He feels better than he has since he first arrived here, but he hadn't thought that was possible for something like him. Not from an angel. He takes a moment just to get used to feeling normal again before he looks back up at Aziraphale. "But I'm a vampire. I thought angels weren't supposed to help out abominations. I know you don't stick to all the rules, but that seems like a pretty big one."

When Aziraphale flusters his way into the mix, Sunshine fists her hands in her hair and spins on her heel. If she can't get at least some small semblance of distance, she is going to punch that vampire right in his stupid face (and probably slice herself open on his ridiculous cheekbones, but you know what, it would be worth it). She moves to pace in front of the television, furious with Spike for lying to her and furious with herself for not seeing through it. Those little healings he'd waved off as fixing something obtained in a fight and not some fundamental underlying illness - gods, she should have known.

Is this what skegged his dreams, too?

When Aziraphale heals him, as quickly and neatly as he does everything else, all Sunshine can manage is a flailing arm gesture that nevertheless clearly communicates: look at how fucking easy that was! This could have been done weeks ago. So much goddamn kali awfulness could have been completely avoided.

And then Spike refers to himself as an abomination, and forget the nightmare - this, this is what it feels like to actually be on the verge of killing him in the real world. "Are you shitting me?!" she squawks, dropping her hands. If Spike was just insulting himself, she might be inclined to let it slide, but the implication that Aziraphale is too stodgily superior to bother himself about Spike's survival is just gross.

Far from being insulted, Aziraphale's expression turns to one of even greater concern. He ignores Sunshine for the moment, crouching down in front of Spike, meeting his eyes steadily.

"You're not an abomination," he says. "You're my friend."

Well, it's true. Friends are becoming more and more common, aren't they? He's rather getting to like it.

"And you're her friend too," he adds, pointing unnecessarily at Sunshine. "More than that! You should have told us something was wrong, Spike, we'd have helped much sooner. You don't need to bear anything like this alone."

Spike leans back when Aziraphale kneels down in front of him, not sure what is happening. For a moment he thinks that Aziraphale is going to take his suggestion and take back what he'd done. He doesn't know how to react when he says that instead.

He feels a little unsteady under the angel's gaze, so he looks past him to Sunshine instead. One drunken night of camaraderie notwithstanding, as far as he knew, Aziraphale saw him as a convenience in his shop, not much more than a personified 'keep out' sign to shoo away potential customers. It's strange to be told that he's his friend.

"I thought I could find something in time and I could keep my business to myself. Then I wasn't around you, anyway." Actually, Sunshine had made a pretty big point of not wanting him around. So, all in all, who's at fault here, really. Not him, that's for sure.

He glances out the window. Seems like it's still morning, but maybe that's evening light? He realizes quickly that he has no idea how long he's been out. "Is it still Friday?"

And there goes Aziraphale, dialing up the 'angelic' to eleven and making her feel like a complete troll even though she's not even the target this time. That, combined with Spike's goddamn preternatural ability to convince himself that no one gives a shit whether he lives or dies is more than her already frazzled nerves can handle, and she has to turn away from the whole scene so they won't see her face crumple.

Spike's question drives the air out of her lungs, the sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. He was lying there for days, and he has no idea. "It's Monday. Gods, Spike!" She doesn't want to turn around and show off what a wreck she is, but she's still plenty furious, and that, tag-teaming with indignation, overrides her embarrassment. "Do you really think it isn't our business if you die on your kitchen floor?! Do you think I want that?"

"Sunshine-" Aziraphale gets up quickly, looking at her in obvious distress. Still, it isn't his place to make her feel better, he suspects - but is Spike up to that task? How does this sort of thing work?

He looks between them uneasily. "He'll be all right now," he says tentatively. "Perhaps if we can determine what was wrong with the, er, the blood, then..."

He trails off. He has the distinct impression this is not helping matters.

It's Monday. He was lying on the floor dying for days and nobody came by to see if he was alright. Sunshine may care about him, but apparently not enough to come by without some sort of cosmic feline intervention.

He pushes himself up from the couch and crosses his arms over his bare chest. He can see how distressed Sunshine is, and part of him wants to comfort her, but how? He's confused and upset, so he defaults to yelling back.

"Would either of you have come up for a little visit if a bloody demon cat hadn't forced you to? Why do you care now?!" This last is directed at Sunshine, because he really doesn't understand. "If it's just because I almost died, you can save it. You told me to fuck off last time I saw you!" In so many words, anyway. She'd let him know that his past was horrifying and that she didn't want to be involved with something that used to be like that.

"Well, it's not that easy to tell the difference between 'actually dying' and 'just about dying' when you've felt like the second one for ages without letting anyone know there was a problem!" Sunshine shouts back, hands fisted at her sides. Yes, fine, she'd known something was wrong, and she's not done beating herself up about it. But she's not frigging psychic, either. He'd felt a little bit worse than he'd always felt, which could have been attributed to anything because she didn't know the baseline reading was so goddamn dire. "You lied to me - repeatedly - and now you're mad that I trusted you? Fuck off!"

And if she can't trust him, and she can't trust herself, where does that leave them?

She doesn't bother pointing out that it takes two to pull off mutual avoidance. He's never gonna get that carthaginian memo. "That is not what I said!" she bellows instead, even as she starts to wonder what she's trying to accomplish, here, presuming she can hold it together long enough to accomplish anything. Which she can't. She knows she can't.

What is she even doing here?

She crosses to the door in a few brisk strides, giving both the apartment's other occupants a wide berth. And she knows she shouldn't say anything, because what's the point of a parting shot? Maybe she just wants to leave him with something, if she's going to have to deal with that fucking inscription. It doesn't matter why; the words tear themselves out of her the moment her hand grips the doorknob: "I never stopped. That's the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT."

Right. Great. Very helpful, Sunshine. She can't look at either of them, so she wrenches the door open and leaves, slamming it behind her.

The slam leaves a ringing silence that lasts for many seconds closer to a full minute than Aziraphale would like. He looks helplessly at the vampire, then at the door, then at nothing, neither target providing him any insight for how to proceed with this bizarre mortal quandry. He grasps ineffectually for something to say, before, finally, defeatedly, producing a large bottle of red wine - any vintage, he suspects it doesn't much matter - and sets it down within Spike's reach.

"We'll, erm," he says hesitantly. "We'll find some way around this - current problem of yours." Not, he suspects, what Spike is interested in talking about at the moment. He miracles himself a glass full of the wine and sips it prudishly.

The door slams and Spike is frozen, staring at the closed door in confusion. How can she even say that she never stopped caring? After his dream, she'd blamed him for what happened- she flinched away from his touch like he might try to attack her for real. How can she say that she cared about him then?

"Which one?" Spike asks, then heads towards his bedroom not expecting an answer. Instead, he continues, explaining "I'm putting on clothes."

Apparently he's been passed out on the floor in his underwear for days, so some clean clothes seem in order. He comes back in t-shirt, jeans and socks, grabs the bottle of wine and slumps down onto the couch. It seems Aziraphale hasn't seen fit to give him a glass, so he takes a swig directly from the bottle. He coughs a little when he does. He hadn't realized how dry his throat was. He takes another sip, easier this time, and it feels good.

Aziraphale had a suspicion some drinking direct from the bottle was in order, so a glass seemed superfluous. He frowns, watching Spike drink.

"The, er, the blood... problem." He adjusts his glasses uncomfortably. "I'm afraid I cannot help you with..." He waves his hand unhelpfully at the door. "Much as I might like to."

He hesitates, then allows himself to sit primly on the couch a little distance from Spike. "Are you all right?" he asks in a low voice.

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look what the cat dragged in [closed]

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