Dean didn't even bat an eyelash when he stumbled down the stairs in the morning, all bedhead, to see Spike's lanky limbs draped over the couch. He just yawned and scrubbed his eyes.

"Hey, Spike. You left your soup pot here last time. You still sleeping in, lazybones?" Dean approached the couch and his brows furrowed. "Spike?"

They did widen when he saw the bandaged hand. "Is he okay?"

Greg popped his head out of the kitchen, frying pan of bacon in hand. "Err…I'll know the answer to that if he wakes up this morning."

Dean swung shocked eyes onto him. Greg realized his mistake. "Not like that. He just had a rough night."

"Drunk?"

Greg huffed. "I wish."

"Not helping, Dad."

"Sorry." In his mind, Greg sorted through what tell his son. "There was an…incident. No loud noises, okay? Or touching without telling him first."

Dean's eyes only grew wider but he nodded. He shuffled off to grab some cereal with his bacon.

Greg saw Spike's pot on the counter from their latest supper together. It occurred to him that Dean had more exposure to him than anyone else on the team. One of Spike's books was sitting under the remote, a pair of his sneakers in the closet, he and Dean's silly doodles on the fridge whiteboard.

Huh. Greg set the pan down, utterly dumbfounded. When did all this happen?

He shook himself into the comfort zone of taking care of another person. No vomit in the bucket, he was pleased to note, but Spike was paler than the pillow under his head. He didn't look like he'd budged all night. Greg left out a pair of sweatpants and academy issue sweater for him, along with a towel.

"Are you guys on call today?"

Greg glanced up to see Dean hovering at the living room entrance, eyes worried. Greg's own eyes reflected back at him. He still hadn't gotten used to that.

"No," Greg admitted. "I phoned in and Spike is taking the day off."

Dean squinted. "So you are too? He can't just hang out here by himself?"

"In fact, our whole team is off duty for the day. We've had a lot of tough calls this month and I'm playing that card to the brass." Greg hesitated. "Spike's not allowed to be left on his own right now, not until his system is clear."

It was more than he wanted to say but it actually made Dean calmer. He seemed to stabilize. "I can watch him for you."

He's too much like me sometimes.

Greg ruffled his son's hair. "That's noble of you, Dean, but you have school. Vamoose. Let me take care of our resident tech."

"You'd better," Dean called, soft so as not to wake Spike, while he jogged upstairs to get dressed. "He has a terrible sense of self preservation."

Greg laughed, wishing Spike was awake to hear—and be indignant—about that one.

"Amen to that." Greg crouched down. "You should have called me yesterday, Spike."

He saw no reason to wake Spike and the man was dead asleep. In fact, Greg was a little concerned over how unresponsive he was. He slipped two fingers under Spike's jaw, where his collar met his ear.

Pulse is awfully slow.

Still, it wasn't enough to warrant a hospital trip. His skin was cool but not abnormally so.

Greg pulled the comforter up higher, so it brushed that spiky crop of hair, and used this motion as an excuse to rub the back of his knuckles over Spike's cheek.

"Alright, Spike. You sleep as long as you need."

He wanted nothing more than to tear that bar apart, comb CCTV for the man responsible so he could arrange a playdate with Ed's fists.

But he knew better. He knew better as a cop, and he knew better as Spike's friend, one who had specifically asked him to leave it alone.

Was it embarrassment staying Spike's hand? Shame? Fear? For once, Greg didn't know and that didn't sit well with him.

He waved Dean off for school and then promptly stood there looking lost. He hadn't had a day off in so long that he hardly knew what to do with himself.

Cleaning made the most sense. That or some renovations to the upstairs bathroom he'd been meaning to do, like replacing hinges and painting the trim.

But in the end, Greg went with his gut and decided to cook. He wasn't sure why, but he had the strong impulse to make something.

While a lasagna was in the oven, he sat in the beloved overstuffed armchair across from Spike and got into a Clive Cussler novel. After so much real adrenaline in the field, reading about mountaintop capers and 'bad guys' proved entertaining.

The house soon filled with the smell of garlic bread and cheese.

Greg wasn't sure what changed, but when his eyes flicked up from the book, he saw Spike gazing droopily back at him.

"Hey, bud." Greg was out of his chair and next to Spike in record time. "How are you feeling?"

Spike opened his mouth to answer—

And promptly went green.

Greg shoved the bucket to Spike's chest in time for him to curl over it. He sat up fully, dry heaves assaulting his body with the lack of food. They sounded ragged, hoarse.

When he was finished, Greg left to wash out the bucket. There wasn't much in it, just bile.

"You ready for that shower?" he asked, upon returning. "Can't feel good to be in those clothes, especially since they laid on the bathroom floor of a bar for part of the night."

Spike just stared at Greg like he'd never seen him before. "You stayed."

Greg paused.

"Thanks, boss. For everything. It means a lot. Didn't cause too much trouble, did I?"

"Of course I stayed." Greg plopped down next to Spike. "And you gave Dean a scare but he was actually excited to see you, even passed out."

Spike managed a thin smile. "Thought maybe I'd dreamt all that last night."

The words had been rehearsed in Greg's mind all morning. Now that he had the chance to say them, something stayed his tongue.

"Boss?" Spike looked at him, eyes an open book like always. Worried. Tired. Self-conscious. "You okay?"

"That's my line," Greg quipped.

Spike rolled his eyes, smile widening.

Greg twisted so he could look his young friend face-on. "I was going to ask you why you switched consent on your records from McCoy to me…but I realized that more importantly: why didn't you put your parents' names down?"

Spike's smile faded. "McCoy wasn't interested in getting attached, especially once his daughter went into rehab. When he found out, he made me take his name off."

Greg didn't take the bait. "That's not what I asked."

"And I was Lew's consent too, it was a mutual choice. He was happy to have my back in that way."

"Spike?"

"And my father was dying, you know?"

"Spike."

Spike took a big breath in and let it out. "It smells like Ma's cooking in here."

Trust your gut, Greg thought, amazed. He'd hoped the smell of cooking would make Spike feel safer. Talk to me, Spike. Please.

"You switched your medical consent not one month after your eighteenth birthday," Greg pressed.

There was that question again. He couldn't force it out.

Spike, if possible, went paler. "You don't want to be medical consent. Of course. I never talked about it with you. I'll call the hospital and get them to switch it—"

"Spike, hey. No." Greg set a hand over Spike's non-bandaged one. The long fingers stilled their fretting. "I don't mind a bit. I'm honoured. Just surprised, is all."

Spike looked down at their hands and then over at the armchair.

"Spike? You have zero obligation to tell me anything. It's not technically any of my business. But I'm not asking as your boss. I'm asking…"

That woollen ball surged up Greg's throat without warning, cutting off his air. Heavy. He wheezed around it.

Thankfully, Spike didn't seem to notice. "Ma wouldn't have had the fortitude to make tough decisions like that. She didn't like being listed, even when I was a kid."

Greg didn't miss Spike's use of past tense. He finally got his voice working. "And your father?"

Spike didn't move for a long time. When he finally did look up, the sound of Dean's footsteps broke the moment and the boy bounded into the room. His cheeks were flushed with autumn wind and soccer cleats flounced against his side.

"It smells amazing in here! Spike, had I known you sleeping over would make made Dad cook, I would have made it happen ages ago!"

Spike laughed and Greg chucked a pillow at his son. For a moment, all was right with the world.

Now if only he could remember how to breathe.

"No, boss, you missed the turn."

Greg shot a look at Spike, hair dripping from the shower, in his passenger's seat. His brows shot up. "Aren't we going to your mother's place?"

Spike didn't take his eyes off the road, scooching forward to point at a stoplight ahead. "Take a left. We can still get to the right street from here."

Greg followed Spike's directions for another ten minutes until they stopped outside a small, modern looking apartment building. Spike's car was parked in the lot, where he'd left it in favour of taking a taxi to the bar. Greg unbuckled his seat belt and trundled after Spike up the stairs.

Spike had stayed for supper but insisted on being driven home to sleep in his own bed this time—with profuse promises to call if he felt ill or faint.

He fished a set of keys from his pocket, with that signature robot key chain they'd all come to recognize, and ushered Greg into a renovated apartment.

Filled to bursting with boxes. They were as high as Greg's nose.

Greg's eyes bugged. "Spike?"

"Oh! Sorry about the mess. Just moved in last week. Haven't had a chance to unpack everything."

"That's not what I…did you and your mother have a falling out?"

Spike's head appeared around a stack of wrapped cutlery. "What? No, not at all. She…she needed to be near family, especially now with Pa gone."

You are family. But Greg kept quiet.

"Family is everything to us, you know?"

Greg nodded. "I do know."

Spike held his palms up and bobbed them back and forth, like a set of scales. "Guess just me wasn't enough to keep her here."

It finally clicked. Shock electrified Greg's bones. "She moved back to Italy?"

"We have a lot of extended family over there. With her grieving…it's what she needed, I guess. Waited around just long enough for me to find a place."

She left her own son here. Greg knew it wasn't fair to make her the villain in this story, and it certainly wasn't a surprise given how dedicated she'd been to her husband compared to their son, but he couldn't stop human nature. He's alone.

Given how resigned Spike seemed, maybe he'd been alone a lot longer than Greg noticed.

"But it's got high speed WiFi!" Spike chirped. "What more does a guy like me need? You want a drink, boss? I've got some pop around here somewhere…"

"No, Spike. That's fine."

"You know, I remember when we immigrated to Canada."

That was news. "You do? I thought they came here before you were born."

Spike shook his head, hair wilder than usual from the shower and humidity in the apartment. He was still insipid but more lucid than he'd been this afternoon. He'd even kept down some lasagna.

"I was five. Had to start kindergarten barely knowing English. Ha! I still remember teaching my second grade teacher how to use the projector."

They both smiled at that one.

"You ever get in trouble for setting things on fire at school?" Greg thought he knew the answer but he had to ask.

Sure enough, Spike nodded. "I used to play with explosives all the time, just little ones at first. Then bigger. I usually got away with it because I skipped a few grades and had nothing to worry about academically."

Greg chuckled. "And oh how it comes in handy now."

Spike held up his burn-scarred fingers. "Quite literally."

Greg glanced around at the Spartan apartment and quelled the prickly sensation creeping over him again. "Look, if you ever need help unpacking all this stuff—books mostly, I'm guessing—you let me know. I'd be happy to."

Spike's eyes lost some of their taut lines. "That would be great, boss. Thanks."

Greg took the long drive home, just for an excuse to mull over why the offer had tasted so ashy in his mouth. Why his heart kept skipping painful beats.