It is very hard to cop a nap on the job when somebody is repeatedly whapping you in the face with a rolled up newspaper.
It is even harder to cop a nap on the job when the somebody doing the whapping is a ghost with little else to do.
And Jeremy Fitzgerald, the previous occupant of Spike's current shirt was not only a ghost, but a ghost with, you guessed it, very little else to do.
Anyway, having traded places with Mike who usually was the one bothering people with yesterday's news, he put a lot of enthusiasm and effort into it – out of the sheer sake of the novelty of it all.
Problem was, Jeremy was dealing with a vampire who, aside from a chip in his head and occasional random outbreaks of common sense, was used to doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, with a big side order of "who-cares-what-others-think".
Beneath the Security desk, Spike rolled over, wrapped his duster-turned-pillow more tightly around his head, and faced the wall, extremely determined to not have his well-earned collapse after an extremely shitty day interrupted.
Jeremy persisted.
Spike persisted.
The rolled-up newspaper that Jeremy was wielding in lieu of say, a baseball bat, was beginning to fray by the time Mike shoved past Jeremy, and with a look of extreme concentration, hauled back one ghostly booted foot and gave Spike a resounding kick in the ribs that also shook the sheltering desk so that Spike's big steel Thermos, left open and full of the night's meal, toppled over and landed messily on the worn linoleum like the aftermath of a really bad accident involving a semi with a cranked up driver encountering a suicidal white-tailed deer at 2 a.m. in flyover country.
"Oi, I was going to drink that!" Spike shot out from under the battered desk, "And you two wankers HAD to mess with me, didn't you?" Unable to lay rough hands on his two main pests, Spike settled for slapping dustbunnies, no dust RHINOS, from his shirt and hair.
"Freddy's coming."
"Eh?" Spike paused in the middle of picking a rhino out of his hair, "Who the hell is Freddy."
"Duuuuude! Remember that big, loveable bear you're supposed to be guarding?" Jeremy watched the rhino waft to the floor.
"Yeah, the one what pierced me face?"
Scribble scribble, Different Fred.
"So, how many soddin' Freddy-bears have you two wankers got?" Spike sadly kicked at the remains of dinner. He'd liked that Thermos, and now he'd have to steal another one off of Xander's old man – with any luck, Xander would get blamed and Spike would be there to witness the highly satisfactory row of two men who were more alike than the two of them would admit.
Mike pushed another note in Spike's face. Two, here usually it's one per store. This is a chain – we're the last link before the worn out ones get tossed into the landfill. Mike frowned, adding, Freddy's the brown one. You haven't met her. Yet.
"Her?" Spike picked up the thermos and sloshed it gently. There was a little O+ left— too bad the glass inner lining had shattered into a billion glass cornflakes. He was hungry, but not that hungry.
With a shrug, Spike tossed the remains of dinner into the nearby trashcan.
"Like, Dude, when Freddy gets a mad-on, look out – I mean, she made me the man I am today…"
"What, a bumbling idiot with about as much command of the English language as a road-kill toad? I'm scared. See me tremble?" Spike lit up while glancing at the monitors. Thing 1 and Thing 2 were right, a large brown sort of teddy bear with a battered top-hat was waddle-lumbering surprisingly fast in the general direction of Security.
"She springlocked me at the Rodeo Drive Toy location – I was, like shish-kabobed one lock at a time, dude!"
Scribble scribble, It wasn't pretty. I found the body.
The bear paused, bent down, and picked up the remains of a party hat that the cleaning staff had missed. It put the hat on its head and started clumsily dancing around.
"Doesn't look all that dangerous to me – about as easily distracted as Dru with a balloon!" Spike mumbled, "Now, you two wankers sod off, I got work to do in Parts and Service."