diff --git a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SortedDocValues.java b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SortedDocValues.java
index 15a5da0cd2f..d27f89b6415 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SortedDocValues.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SortedDocValues.java
@@ -110,20 +110,10 @@ public abstract class SortedDocValues extends BinaryDocValues {
       } else if (cmp > 0) {
         high = mid - 1;
       } else {
-        // nocommit: we shouldnt have to set spare at all if its actually a spare, but its not!
-        // ant test  -Dtestcase=TestFieldCacheRewriteMethod -Dtests.method=testRegexps -Dtests.seed=AFC4A08B212CE143 -Dtests.slow=true -Dtests.locale=th -Dtests.timezone=Canada/Mountain -Dtests.file.encoding=ISO-8859-1
-        spare.bytes = BytesRef.EMPTY_BYTES;
-        spare.offset = 0;
-        spare.length = 0;
         return mid; // key found
       }
     }
 
-    // nocommit: we shouldnt have to set spare at all if its actually a spare, but its not!
-    // ant test  -Dtestcase=TestFieldCacheRewriteMethod -Dtests.method=testRegexps -Dtests.seed=AFC4A08B212CE143 -Dtests.slow=true -Dtests.locale=th -Dtests.timezone=Canada/Mountain -Dtests.file.encoding=ISO-8859-1
-    spare.bytes = BytesRef.EMPTY_BYTES;
-    spare.offset = 0;
-    spare.length = 0;
     return -(low + 1);  // key not found.
   }
 }
diff --git a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SortedDocValuesTermsEnum.java b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SortedDocValuesTermsEnum.java
index 4151a47563b..6dd1bec15ed 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SortedDocValuesTermsEnum.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/SortedDocValuesTermsEnum.java
@@ -42,6 +42,10 @@ public class SortedDocValuesTermsEnum extends TermsEnum {
     if (ord >= 0) {
       currentOrd = ord;
       term.offset = 0;
+      // nocommit is there cleaner way ...
+      // term.bytes may be pointing to codec-private byte[]
+      // storage, so we must force new byte[] allocation:
+      term.bytes = new byte[text.length];
       term.copyBytes(text);
       return SeekStatus.FOUND;
     } else {
@@ -60,7 +64,6 @@ public class SortedDocValuesTermsEnum extends TermsEnum {
   public boolean seekExact(BytesRef text, boolean useCache) throws IOException {
     int ord = values.lookupTerm(text, term);
     if (ord >= 0) {
-      term.copyBytes(text);
       currentOrd = ord;
       return true;
     } else {