Service Unit

Chapter Thirty – Broken

Spike's demon whined pitifully as Buffy tried to gently unwrap the manacle from around his left wrist. The spikes were buried deep and she kept murmuring, "Sorry. I'm sorry," as she pulled it free. The whining continued during the freeing of his right wrist then he buried his face in the cushion as she dropped the bloody manacles in the bag.

Buffy petted his head for a few minutes while he tried to deal with the pain, then she smiled reassuringly at him when he turned his head and looked up at her. "Okay. Can you lift up a little so I can see how bad it is?"

He started to raise his torso, pushing his hands against the bloodied couch cushion, then shrieked and dropped back down. Buffy had leaned down as he'd moved, and before he'd dropped, she'd managed to see a piece of wood about the size of a large taper candle sticking into his abdomen just above his pubic bone. He was impaled on her couch.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit. That's not good. Um… there's no way I'm getting you off the couch without it feeling like I'm gutting you. At least not while you're awake." She glanced over at Angelus. He was out cold, the big baby. "As much as I hate to say this, why can't you be like him? At least right now? A little pain and he passes out." The demon whimpered and Buffy laid her hand on his head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I don't want you to be like him at all, but I need you to be unconscious if I'm going to be able to do anything to help you. I don't have any drugs or anything here strong enough to work on a vampire and I'm sure as hell not going to hit you." She suddenly shot to her feet, wincing at the pain in her breasts from the sudden movement, then started for the hall. "That black stone! I can use that!"

She threw open the guest bedroom door and barreled through… then tripped over the dead demon just inside. She landed hard; right on her already throbbing breasts, and barely caught herself in time to keep her chin from cracking off the floor. She rolled to her back and finally let out that scream she'd been holding in. It reverberated off the walls of the bedroom, and when she finally ran out of air, she heard an answering keening noise coming from Spike's demon. She sat up, cradling her injured boobs carefully in her arms as she took a few breaths, then she called out, "I'm okay. I just fell. I'm fine."

The keening noise was interrupted by a sudden sharp shriek and Buffy called out again, "Don't move! I need to find something and then I'll be right back." She scooted closer to the dead trainer and started to quickly rifle his pockets. The third one she checked contained something slimy and squishy and she jerked her fingers out of it then wiped them furiously on his robes. "Ew. Ew. Ew… what was that? No… never mind. I don't want to know."

Instead of sticking her fingers in the next pocket, she just patted the outside. Seven patted pockets later – and honestly, how many pockets did the creepy little shit need anyway? – she felt something hard that was about the size of the stone she was looking for. She slipped her fingers inside and pulled out the knock-out stone and a bonus… the little silver stick. She clutched it in her hand and stood up, starting for the door. "This thing might be too small to heal some of his wounds, but I could probably use it to close some of the smaller stuff… if it doesn't take magic or need a demon using it to work. Guess we'll see."

When Buffy stepped back into the living room she figured out what had caused Spike's demon to shriek like that. He'd freed himself from the couch and was lying on the floor behind it, curled into the fetal position in the puddle of blood. He was crying and moaning in agony, his forehead pressed against his knees, and Buffy dropped down beside him. "Oh God, why didn't you wait?" She looked up at the broken back of the couch and winced. The indented section was a forest of ripped fabric and jagged pieces of wood, and all of it was drenched in Spike's blood.

She shuffled on her knees until she was near Spike's head then she touched the black stone to the base of his skull. "Please let this work. Please." It did. Spike's body went boneless as he fell unconscious. She took a deep breath and moved Spike's head, lifting his face away from his knees. He was still vamped out. Buffy stood and considered the blood covered vampire on the floor for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to move him without causing more damage, then she turned and headed for her bedroom.

She spread the blanket on the floor beside Spike then maneuvered him onto it as gently as she could. Once she'd gotten him laid on his back, she clenched her teeth and forced herself to examine the damage. His abdomen was a bloodied mess. There were four pieces of couch sticking into him like he was a pin cushion and there were several holes left from the other pieces that were still attached to the couch. His balls were swollen to nearly twice their normal size from the battering they'd received; the skin stretched tautly over them, making them look like a skin-covered softball sitting between Spike's legs. Dark purple bruises were forming on one side of his flaccid penis and it was curving abnormally. There was also a chopstick-sized piece of wood stuck completely through it near the base, making it look like a hot dog ready for a campfire.

Buffy bolted for the kitchen and had a quick 'discussion' with the trash can. When everything that was going to come up had come up, she stood and leaned against the counter, her stomach still pitching and rolling, and tried to get her mind to stop wigging out so she could think.

She had two vampires to handle; one she loved and one who was dust and just didn't know it yet. Angelus was secured, silenced, and not going to be any trouble for the foreseeable future, so she put him out of her mind and focused on Spike. There wasn't really anything she could do for his genitals, aside from taking the wood out of his penis and using ice packs to help with the swelling, so the first thing she had to do was separate vampire from couch. She'd have to check to see if there were any small pieces broken off inside him, too. She wasn't sure if leaving a small piece of wood inside him was dangerous or not, but she wasn't going to take any chances. Wood and vampires were not a good combination; you know, if it was a vampire you loved and wanted to keep around. And then she'd need to close up the holes so they'd stop leaking blood and heal faster. She could try that little silver stick on those and see if it worked, but if it didn't, she'd need to stitch them closed.

To do all that, she needed supplies. Her dinky little household first aid kit wasn't going to cut it. Not for this. Especially the looking around inside Spike's guts for pieces of wood part of the process. But if Giles found out what she was about to do… He was extremely tight-fisted with the Council's money, and if he knew she was thinking of using their expensive new equipment to save Spike, well…shitting kittens would be a pretty accurate description of his reaction. So she needed to call someone who wouldn't blab to Giles about what was going on, someone who could come and go from the Slayer Compound without anyone batting an eye, and someone who had been trained to use the equipment she was going to ask them to steal… er… uh… borrow. She needed to call Dawn.

She'd swished out her mouth and was wiping her face with a hand towel when she heard three hard knocks on her front door. She turned in that direction just as Paolo's frightened voice called out, "Miss Summers? Are you in there? Do you need help?"

Buffy hurried to the living room and opened the front door. She started to say that she was fine, but the words died on her lips when Paolo paled, then blushed, then turned around. Buffy stared at his back in confusion for a few seconds then looked down at herself. She was wearing nothing but blood and a torn open shirt. She wrapped the shirt around herself then stepped behind the door, poking her head around it. "Okay, you can turn around. Sorry about that."

Paolo turned, keeping his eyes on the floor in front of his feet, and said quietly, "Are you all right, Miss Summers? I've had reports of screaming and loud banging noises coming from your apartment and you look like you've been injured."

"I'm fine. Things just got a little… never mind. It's over now and there won't be any more noise. Did anyone call the Polizia? Because I really don't need a bunch of normals poking their noses in here right now."

"I don't think so, Miss Summers. I assured everyone that I would investigate the situation and if the authorities were needed, then I would be the one to call, but if they arrive, I will tell them you were moving furniture and it fell over. That should be sufficient to satisfy their curiosity and they'll be on their way. Is there anything else I can do?"

Buffy glanced at Spike then looked back at the man who was still staring at the floor. "Thank you for that, and um… yeah, you can do something. My sister is going to be here in a little while and she'll probably need help carrying some stuff up here."

XXXX

Buffy had managed to move Spike to her bedroom and had gotten him laid out on a thick pad of blankets on the floor. She'd thought about putting him in her bed again, but hadn't for two reasons – A. She didn't want to hurt him any worse by picking him up, and B. She wanted to wait until he'd stopped bleeding all over the place.

After she'd gotten Spike settled, she'd removed the manacles from her wrists and ankles then had taken a quick shower to wash off the blood. The punctures in her nipples had scabbed over – thank you, Slayer healing – but they still throbbed with every beat of her heart, and any movement of her breasts caused shooting pain. She'd put on a sports bra to help hold them still and had lined the cups with some folded gauze just in case they started bleeding again.

Once she'd cleaned herself up and had thrown on a clean pair of sweats, she'd gathered supplies and started trying to clean Spike up. She'd only worked on his front half and as much of his legs as she could reach without moving him too much, deciding to save the rolling him over until all the wood had been removed from his abdomen. The little silver stick had worked well on the scratches, gouges, and smaller punctures – including the two in Spike's penis – but the larger puncture wounds were too much for it. Those were still leaking blood and Spike's skin was getting sort of ashy from blood loss, but until Dawn arrived, all she could do was pack them lightly with some gauze. She didn't want to take the chance of driving any errant pieces of wood further into him and she also didn't want to go digging around trying to find them. She just had to wait until Dawn got there with the machine.

She was wiggling the second to last shard of wood free when she heard her front door open and Dawn's voice call out, "Buffy?"

"I'm in the bedroom, Dawn. Lock the door, will you?"

There was the thump of something being set on the floor then Dawn said, "Thanks, Paolo," and the door closed. The locks clicked into place then Dawn shouted, "Holy shit! Angel? What's all this blood from? What happened to your couch? What the hell is going on in here?" Dawn's footsteps hurried toward the bedroom and Buffy draped a hand towel over Spike's mangled groin just as Dawn stepped through the door, weighed down by a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a large plastic case hanging from one hand.

"I brought the stuff…" She slid to a halt and the case thumped to the floor. "What the hell happened to Spike?"

"Angelus happened. I'll fill you in later. Right now I need you to set up the machine. You do know how to use it, right?"

Dawn picked up the case and stepped fully into the room. She slipped the duffel off her shoulder then laid the plastic case on its side and flipped open the latches. "Yes, Buffy. I spent three days training on it and I've practiced on half a dozen different Slayers. What am I looking for?"

Buffy motioned to the largest piece of wood that was still sticking out of Spike's abdomen. "Pieces of my couch. I got all the big pieces except this one – it's stuck – but I want to make sure there aren't little pieces still in there. If I missed one and it moves or something and gets to his heart…" She nodded toward a pile of blood bags on the floor next to Spike's shoulder. "We also need to set up an IV to get some blood into him, but we can't do that until the holes are stitched up or it'll just leak back out. And you brought the tubing or whatever you'll need so I can get my blood into him, right?"

Dawn nodded as she lifted a portable ultrasound machine out of the case and set it on the floor beside Spike. "Yeah. I grabbed two field surgery kits, so I should have everything we need." She plugged the machine in then flipped a few switches, pressed a few buttons, and picked up the wand. She reached into the case and fished out a bottle then handed it to Buffy. "Here. Move all that gauze then squirt some of this anywhere you want me to look and smear it around."

Buffy took the bottle and looked down at Spike's belly. "Uh… he'll start bleeding again…"

Dawn shrugged. "Shouldn't matter. The gel is just to help the transducer transmit the sound waves. Mixing it with blood shouldn't hurt anything." She nodded at the hand towel. "You'll have to move that, too. That last piece looks like it's angled down behind his pubic bone and I'll have to put the transducer on his perineum to see what it's stuck on."

Buffy looked over at her younger sister and blushed slightly. Dawn rolled her eyes. "I'm not gonna play with anything, dufus. His junk is all yours."

Buffy sputtered, "Dawnie!"

Dawn rolled her eyes again. "What? Oh… you think my innocence will be lost if I see Spike's man-meat. His tube steak. His third leg, pleasure pickle, glowing sword of truth, beef missile… Um, Buffy, your face is getting kind of red."

Buffy's jaw had started to drop at the first euphemism and was now nearly to her chest. She sputtered again, "His glowing sword of what!?"

Dawn snickered, "Truth." She shrugged. "I read it somewhere." She knelt on the floor next to Buffy and reached for the towel. "I'm not a kid anymore, you know, and Spike's schlong won't be the first one I've seen. Yes, I've had sex, Buffy. Lots of sex. Wild and freaky sex. Deal."

Buffy muttered, "I so don't need to know that, Dawnie. So don't need to know that."

Dawn sighed. "Besides, I haven't thought about Spike like that for a long time. He's like my big brother, and yeah, seeing his junk is going to be weird and awkward, but he needs my help, so I'll get over it." Dawn lifted the towel away then dropped it with a gasp. "His dick is broken! How'd that happen? And his balls! Oh my God! What the hell went on here?"

Buffy squeaked, "Broken? What? He's broken?"

Dawn looked at her sister. Buffy's face had gone from beet red to deathly pale and she was trembling. Dawn wrapped an arm around Buffy's shoulders and set the ultrasound wand on the floor. "Buffy, breathe or something."

Buffy's voice was shaking when she asked quietly, "Will he be okay? Oh God, what did I do to him?"