After clocking out from his second night on the job, Spike finally understood why so many referred to Wednesday as "hump day" – this was because by the time he clocked back in roughly fifteen hours later, he felt as if he'd been roughly taken from behind by Angelus in the good old days without a. warning, and b. without so much as the benefit of sweet talk, chocolates, or even a drop of WD-40, had the stuff been around in the late 1800s.
It began on Spike's way home from work: there was a major blockage on his usual sewage and storm water route beneath Jacinto and Main.
Risking immolation, Spike crawled out of the nearest manhole and stuck to the alleyways until he could get to the next clear sewage access point— which was when he encountered Buffy on her way to working the morning breakfast shift at Doublemeat Palace. Happy to see her, even if he now stank of stale pizza grease, he'd hopscotched his way through the early morning shadows, only to have the Slayer pointedly walk to the brightly lit side of the street while silently giving him her best, "Ewwwwwwwwwww!" look.
Dawn, who was with her, started eagerly towards him, only to have Buffy yank her back before hustling her towards school.
This too, was disappointing - annoying as the Niblet was, Spike was interested in hearing about how she'd done as Juliet in her junior high school's recent staging of Romeo and Juliet. Having played the same role more than once himself at the all boy's schools that were the norm for his day (Lady Macbeth had been a relief… sort of.), he'd wanted to compare notes and apologize (sort of) for having missed her stage debut.
Later that morning, after washing the pizza stench and the burnt ends of his hair out in the DIY rigged cold shower he'd cobbled together under his crypt from the showerhead he'd blagged from Xander's apartment and a hose (Xander's dad's), Spike discovered that the car battery he'd been using to power the fridge he'd been storing his food supply in was leakily eating it's way through the marble floor.
Finding a replacement fast meant lurking around the municipal parking garage across the street from the county courthouse until he'd found an unwatched farm truck to nick a heavy-duty battery from. The large, burly redneck that owned the truck had all but beaten the shit out of him when he caught Spike with the hood popped and his truck battery disconnected and under Spike's arm.
Smarting and with a second limp he hadn't started with, Spike settled for the battery of a BMW, which was smaller, and wouldn't hold as big a charge – size and capacity aside, unlike the redneck, the yuppie owner easily backed down when Spike loomed over him in threatening silence, his two farmer blackened eyes and bloody nose doubtlessly contributing to the speed of the owners decision that a battery was a small thing when compared to a human life. His.
Domestic issues settled, Spike fell asleep in front of the telly (well he would have except that the cable company found his illegal tap and disconnected it while he was out "shopping" for a new battery) until noon. Noon was when something very large and very angry had awakened him by screaming nonstop in what sounded like Klingon.
Damn, Charlie, his bookie from the U.K., had tracked him down and wanted its money.
Charlie, a squidgy... thing... that oozed slime... onto... everything it touched... and was too gelatinous to physically assault... refused to leave until it got the two year's brass Spike owed on a couple of dog races at Bellvue, which Spike had skipped out on for the simple reason that he didn't feel like honoring the bets.
Charlie wouldn't settle for kittens or even Spike's last case of Girl Scout Thin Mints (worth more than kittens in the demon world because they kept better). No, it wanted dollars if not pounds and it wanted them NOW, mate, or it wouldn't leave.
Seeing as Charlie had settled on top of Spike's duster, had engulfed his entire bootleg collection of early Ramones tunes, and wasn't afraid of fire, a thoroughly cheesed-off Spike found himself asking Anya for scratch.
Anya was a tough customer who demanded compound interest. Still, she was the only person he know who actually HAD money to lend, plus he wasn't going to be paid until Friday, and anyway, he wanted his duster back and Charlie out – though lactose intolerant in addition to being a rapidly expanding mess in his lair, Charlie had absorbed all of of Spike's Ben and Jerry's "Cool Brittania" freezer stash. So what if it was half melted from the battery dying?
Spike's only consolation with dealing with Anya and the signed, witnessed loan she'd given him at ruinous interest (she too wasn't interested in Thin Mints or kittens, either) was that while the register was open, she'd turned away to answer a customer's question and he'd dropped a random handful of pennies in the drawer. Ha! Let demon girl try to figure out where that extra penny or six came from in the day's take tonight after closing when things didn't add up! (And the fact that's she'd probably whine nonstop to Giles about it just made it all the sweeter.)
One debt swapped for another, duster aired, guts emptied, Ramones mourned and floor mopped, Spike found that he'd spent so much time dealing with various unexpected obstacles to a decent day's sleep that it was time to go back to work.
Worse, he was half an hour late so that by the time he went billyo up the ladder of the nearby manhole, Mrs. Schnelz was waiting for him by the time clock, a stern look on her bulldog face and an invoice for the smashed monitor, the broken VCR, and the previous night's uniform, including the half-eaten pants, in her gnarled hand.
Wanting to rip the time clock off the wall and beat her to death with it, Spike ungraciously accepted the elderly office manager's alternative to blowing half a week's pay on various collateral damages from holding a job by agreeing to remove a thoroughly dead raccoon from deep beneath the crawlspace under the main show stage after changing into another one of Jeremy's old uniforms and accepting her gleeful offer of a garbage bag and a shovel.
Being a death-dealer had always been one of Spike's biggest kicks. However, dealing with the aftermath of his calling, particularly if it was blown up like a balloon in the summer heat and made noises like said balloon slowly deflating while accompanied by smells that even Charlie would find offensive, not so much.
After tossing the manky carcass and its maggot entourage into the dumpster out back and then hurling breakfast after it, a woozy, nauseated Spike crawled under the desk in Security and fell asleep on the floor using his rolled up duster as a pillow around eleven thirty.
Half an hour later as the hidden clock tolled midnight, Freddy slowly lumbered off of the main stage and began purposefully marching in his direction.