No Sticky End For Spike
"Focus, Spike!" she says. "I can't help you if you don't focus." Even as he barks back a cuss, his 'body' (or whatever the essence of a ghost is called), flickers out of sight. The spot he'd just been is immediately vacated; she lets out a sigh. "Spike? Are you there?"
She scans the room with her eyes, her body jerking involuntarily when he remanifests in front of her.
The remainder of his cuss comes out, he blinks and then swears again. "I just did that thing, didn't I? Where I move from place to place without so much as a pop."
"I think it's getting worse," she agrees.
"Now that's," he attempts to lean on the desk but without his previous form falls straight through it. "Bloody brilliant!" he says from behind her a moment later.
"Much worse. Are you sure I can't talk to the others about-"
"No! No. I don't want them pitying me."
"M'kay then. This could go a lot faster with help tough."
"I'll help."
"You know astrophysics?"
He stares at her blankly.
"Just me then." Smiling grimly, she retrieves a notepad form the lab table and flips it open. "This could take a while."
"I have all the time in the world. Well, until I poof out of existence which may be sooner than later, so not so much with all the time."
"Right Spike. I've got it."
"So what are we waiting for? Let's find me some of that solidness again." He begins to pace when she nods and scribbles furiously in her notebook. Objects including the lab table, microscope, and a heavy glass cage holding potent demon goo, don't stop him. Strangely there seems less goo than the last time she looked.
Apparently he is nor incorporeal enough because when he comes out of the glass container, there is a spot of the demon goo on the leather of his jacket. It begins to eat through it and a hole, small at first but then much larger reveals his arm.
"Hey! Ow!" Wide eyed, he removes the jacket and tosses it to the floor. "Wait. How did I? How did that?"
"I don't know," she says.
"Does that mean?"
"It could!"
"Test me," he says, holding out h is arm. "Touch it. Touch my arm."
Wide eyes fixed on his, she reaches for him. Slowly the distance between them is closed and then they are just as suddenly taking up the same space. She pulls back as if she just realised she was touching a demon's eyeball.
"Apparently not," she says. "It must be the demon goo that managed to get onto you."
"Right then. How so?"
"There's no way it would move you into this dimension Spike. It just isn't possible."
He frowns and drags a hand through peroxide hair and then proceeds to pace the stretch of floor in front of her. His movements are hypnotic, the way the luminescent lights highlight his cheekbones even more so and when he comes to an abrupt half it is all she can do to not jump in surprise. She settles for the smallest of squeaks.
"I'll keep looking," she says. "I'm not going to give up on you, Spike." The look he gives her is disbelieving but he mutters 'thanks' and walks (literally) through the door. He's barely a step from Angel's office when he feels the familiar tugging again. "Bollocks!"
fin.