onlythebranch | [november 17]

The first few days of this had been entertaining as hell, between waking up with Spike, kicking some prick's ass when he sure as shit hadn't expected it, and startling Greta to the point where she'd come after him with a broom. He's been having a fine time overall, trusting Spike to be right, trusting that it'll end eventually and he'll go back to living in the body he's had for so long, but he's enjoying himself in the meantime.

It had been a fucking blast until yesterday.

He'd woken up with a headache the likes of which he's never known before. It wasn't like being hungover, wasn't like rolling out of bed still drunk, his mouth dry and still tasting of booze. Popping a couple painkillers and washing them down with a beer hadn't done much to touch it and he'd grumbled around his flat for most of the day, ill-tempered and in pain. His jeans had been snug, too, the stupid ones he'd picked up just because he was small enough to fit into them, and buttoning them across his waist had been uncomfortable and tight.

His plan had been to go out again that night, but between the uncomfortable jeans and the headache, he'd given it up, dressed himself in one of his regular shirts, as large as a dress on him in this state, and gone to sleep far earlier than he usually would.

Today is worse. Today he wakes up and it feels like his new and temporary vagina is trying to turn itself outside out. Like something is trying to dig its way out from inside his body with a dull, rusted knife. Like his asshole is trying to rip itself in half. He hurts from the middle of his back to his knees, all the way through, to the point where he kind of wants to weep from the pain of it all.

After a few hours, he calls Greta, but she doesn't answer, so in desperation, he sends a text to Spike. All it says is im fuckin dying, knowing damn well he isn't, and then he throws his phone down beside him on the bed again and curls into a ball.

Mad Sweeney is a man who loves pain. A man who actively pursues it, who has gotten off on being bitten by a vampire more than anything else in fucking decades, but this is different. This is fucking awful.

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"'Course I've fucking masturbated," he answers with a snort, though there's little heat in his voice. He's not sure he's capable of it right now. Not between the pain and Spike's hand on his back, although he finally opens his eyes to look at him. Whether or not it actually works, it might be worth a try.

He feels small and rather pathetic and irritated with himself for having to rely on anyone, but when Spike offers to go to the store for him, he can only nod. What he wants is a crate full of booze, just bottle after bottle to pour down his throat, but somehow he has a feeling that isn't going to help.

"Christ, if I'd known I'd have to work out fuckin' tampons..." he mutters.

"One of the many gifts of femininity," Spike snorted, and on a whim, he bent down to brush an affectionate kiss to Sweeney's temple. Realizing what he'd done, he sat up a bit stiffly, cheeks hollowed and his brow creased. "Right," he said, to no one in particular, then pushed abruptly to his feet.

"I'll pop 'round the corner and be back straight away," he said, already moving towards the door.

Sweeney only grunts in response, not wanting to admit that all of this is making him feel a little bit better, even if not physically. Spike fucking kisses his temple and rather than shove him off, Sweeney just wants him to stick around.

"I'll be fuckin' here," he answers. "Not like I'm goin' anywhere like this."

Women do this all the time. They do this without acting like giant fucking babies and Sweeney doesn't understand how. If he felt this way every bloody month, he'd cut out his own goddamn uterus.

With a bit of a fondly exasperated roll of his eyes, Spike slipped out of the door, grateful to have a moment to collect himself.

The truth was, he wasn't sure if he wanted to hold himself back from little gestures like that, moments of unguarded affection, and even a bit of romance, but such things settled uncomfortably around relationships like theirs. How much was he willing to risk, by changing the delicate balance they'd forged?

The shop really was just 'round the corner, and he walked there, lost in his own head. He ought to have known that casual wasn't his style, not when it came to someone he actually admired. Someone who made him laugh. Someone who made him feel good, and not simply when they were in bed together.

When he returned, hardly twenty minutes later, his mind was no more settled than it had been when he left, but still, he waltzed in looking rather chipper, brandishing a plastic bag like a prize.

"Alright, let's see what we've got here," Spike said, sitting down on the coffee table across from where Sweeney was still wallowing in pain. "Should've seen the look of sympathy the bird at the register gave me, when I dumped this lot on the counter."

Pulling his loot from the bag, he lined up a variety pack of tampons, liners, a bottle of menstrual pain killers, a heating pad, and with a smirk, a small pint of chocolate fudge swirl ice cream.

"Bet she thought you were a real nice guy, gettin' all this shit," Sweeney says as he works himself slowly into a seated position. A part of him wants to throw the tampons across the room, because he's not keen on shoving anything up there that's not Spike's cock, but he knows he'll need them soon enough, so he keeps his childish outburst to himself. For now.

"Can I take these with whiskey?" he asks, grabbing the bottle of painkillers first. He sees the heating pad, which is a nice touch, and the ice cream, which is even nicer, but he's not in the mood to dwell on the nice shit Spike does for him and why. Or why he likes it so much. Or why it is he called Spike before anyone else.

It doesn't count that Greta was first, because Greta's not someone he wants to fuck.

"Yeah, she's right. I'm a prince among men," he said flatly, lifting one shoulder as he got to his feet and headed into the kitchen to grab a spoon and a glass of water.

"Might want to take it easy on that, love. You hardly weigh ten stone," he pointed out, though he did grab the bottle of whiskey from the counter on his way back into the living room, putting it down within reach.

"I'm a hearty Irish lass, remember?" he asks dryly as he leans back against the couch, then reaches for the heading pad. It's the sort that plugs in, which makes it a lot less work for him once he's gotten it out of the box, and he leans to the side slowly, trying to determine what hurts before he does it, then plugs it into the nearby wall socket.

"Where the fuck do I even put this when everything from my ass to my tits hurts like it's being shredded from the inside?" he asks, although he lays the heating pad across his lower abdomen at the same time.

When Spike sits down again, Sweeney all but slumps against him, reaching for the water, then the painkillers. He ought to thank him for all this shit. For coming at all, for going out, for getting all of this, for staying. He's shit at it, though, shit at being a good person, even when someone deserves it. Instead he just tucks himself there against Spike's side, quietly opening the bottle of painkillers.

"Move it to your back, in a bit," he murmured, lifting a hand to rub between Sweeney's shoulders, without a second thought. It all came shockingly easy, in part because he was accustomed to taking care of women. It came to him like second nature, but it had never been just any woman. His mum, a lifetime with Drusilla, Andrea through her pregnancy... those women all had one thing in common.

He'd loved them all, wholeheartedly.

With the painkillers open, Sweeney pops two into his mouth, then swallows them down with half the glass of water. He doesn't want to admit that all this feels kind of nice. Shitty, since his insides really do feel like they're being shredded by some tiny monster that needs desperately to get out, but nice at the same time.

He doesn't get nice. He doesn't deserve nice. Neither of them are supposed to have something even close to nice and he knows he ought to be concerned, but really, all he cares about is feeling a little bit better.

"Umh," he mumbles, not a word at all, then reaches for the ice cream. Ripping off the top, he takes a spoonful, slides it onto his tongue, then passes the spoon to Spike. "How many times has this shit happened to people in Darrow? A hundred? And how fuckin' many of them have gotten bloody menstrual cramps?"

"Dunno. Perhaps all of 'em," Spike said, closing his mouth around a spoonful of ice cream. Normally, if he planned to eat, it was something salty, or that he could mix into his blood, but this really was rather good.

"Might've kept to themselves. Their own sad, personal traumas," he said, dropping a kiss to the top of Sweeney's head without a second thought.

"Seems like pretty shitty luck for someone like me," he says sourly, but maybe that's not quite right either. The pain is pretty goddamn awful, but Spike had come when asked and he'd gone out again to buy fucking supplies and now this, this moment right here, it's not so terrible.

He feels like a goddamn jackass for thinking that, but at least he hasn't done anything nearly as stupid as saying it out loud.

"Guess I did get ice cream outta the deal," he mumbles when Spike kisses him.

[november 17]

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