CHAPTER EIGHT

Spike looks down at the jumbled mess of tree lights on his lap, feeling like a three-toed sloth trying to make a cats in the cradle out of silly string.

“So, what possessed you to tie these lights into knots when you took them off the tree last year?” Spike asks grumpily, lifting the strands off his lap.

“We didn’t.” Dawn replies. “They just always end up that way somehow. It’s like some tree light conspiracy. I think they miss being all lit up and shiny, so they take out their revenge by playing Twister between seasons.”

Spike laughs a little as he tries again to pick apart one particularly difficult knot. “There was a time when people put real candles on real trees,” he says glumly, looking over at the artificial Douglas Fur awaiting O Tannenbaum status.

“Yeah, and people’s houses went up in smoke because they put real fire on real flammable trees.”

“In those days, we cut our trees down ourselves. They didn’t have a chance to shrivel up and die in a car park beside a trailer.”

Dawn looks over at the tree, remembering combing the aisles in Target, looking for the perfect one. This was it, attractively priced at $89.95. And it would never die. Her mother was tired of her tears when their real trees got kicked to the curb after the holidays, so the artificial route seemed to be the way to go. Her mother burned greenery-scented candles to create the illusion of having a real tree in the house. All of Buffy’s candles are called things like “mists of love” and “sensual splendor.” Not exactly the stuff of sugarplum dreams.

“You all right, Bit?” Spike asks, seeing her far-away look.

“Yeah,” she says, shaking off any more emerging memories of Christmases past. “Jeez! You still haven’t gotten that knot untied?”

“No. And I’m about to rip this bloody thing apart,” he says, taking the strands in his fists, pantomiming the threat without actually carrying through with it.

Seeing this subtle display of masculine pride, Dawn says teasingly, “I’ll bet if Travis were here, he could get it undone. He’s got such long, limber fingers.”

“And I’ll bet that’s what first attracted you to him. ‘Oh,’” he says, blanketing his baritone with a lilting alto to mimic Dawn’s voice, “‘He has such wonderfully long, slim fingers. He could undo a lot of gnarled tree lights.’”

Dawn giggles. “Actually, I liked the way his hair fell in his eyes all the time. Still do.”

“I guess that does up his stakes in the good catch category. If he can’t see you for all the hair in his eyes, then you don’t have to fuss too much about your appearance.”

“Oh, he sees me just fine.” A frown slowly builds on her face and she drops her eyes. “But I don’t know if he’ll be seeing me anytime soon. His parents grounded him into oblivion because of the accident.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem fair.”

“His parents are weird. I mean, you saw them. They freak out all the time about stupid shit. Like, one time Travis forgot to pick up the grass clippings after he mowed the lawn. His mother locked up his Playstation for a week. It’s funny. Whenever I’m over at Travis’ house, his mother is always super nice to me. She’s always getting me stuff from the fridge and asking me about my classes and stuff. She asks me how Buffy’s doing and all. But I get the feeling that it’s all just a show. That she really doesn’t like me and hates the fact that I’m going out with her son.”

“Probably because she has it in that harridan head of hers that she should be the only woman in Travis’ life. I’ve known mothers like that. Point of fact, I had a mother like that.”

“I don’t know. She makes me really uncomfortable sometime. The way she looks at me. Like she’s thinking about killing me while she’s serving me milk and cookies. And I know that look. I mean, I have grown up in Sunnyhell and I did have some Limited addict god wanting to express me to death.” Dawn entwines her fingers in the web of green wires and darkened lights that appear as blood droplets on Spike’s lap. “That’s one thing about you. I mean, even in your Big Bad days, you never looked at me as though you wanted to kill me.”

Spike eyes her and smiles. The monks probably supplied her many memories of sibling rivalry and bitter strife over just whom would be the worthy recipient of the prize in the cereal box. The first Dawn memory for him occurred on a darkened street. The Nibblet was outside her school, waiting for a parent pick-up. Her eyes were defined in deep black and her face was tanned from stage make-up. She shivered as Dru drizzled a command in Spike’s ear in her spider web poetry. “That’s the girl…the Slayer’s sister. She makes shapes in the air that don’t make life.” He wondered then what she meant, but didn’t ask her. He saw Dawn and it was as though a shield went up. He couldn’t touch her. Whatever sweetness Angelus had seen in Dru and wanted to destroy, Spike saw ten fold in Dawn and wanted to maintain. He saw Dawn step up into the front seat of the SUV, into her mother’s enthusiastic embrace. “I’m so proud of you, Dawn,” the elder Summers said. He then saw the sign outside the school, all lit up. “Our Town. Presented by the Sunnydale Juniors. 8:00.” Dawn only had a walk-on part, she explained to her mother. She didn’t have any lines. Dru urged him again, “That’s the girl. Her fire is of copper old.” But by that time Dawn and her mother had driven away and Spike breathed a sigh of relief.

“I could never kill you,” Spike says.

“Yeah. Because you knew my sister was the Slayer and she would kick your ass,” Dawn says, pursing her lips in a certain victory as she pulls a knot free on the string of lights.

He looks at her now, her little girl features falling away to the natural nips and tucks of early adulthood. There is something about this girl that eternally bemuses his heart and makes it warm. He secretly loved the times when she came to his crypt. When Buffy placed her mother and Dawn in his care, and Dawn didn’t like Passions, he found something that they did like. Judge Judy. He remembers how they both rooted for the plaintive, whose lawn had been continuously used as a toilet by a Rottweiler whose owners didn’t give a shit. He remembers Joyce’s sudden headache and Dawn’s concern. “Mom, are you all right?” she said. And he was concerned as well. Up until that point he didn’t know he cared. More importantly, he showed Dawn he could care.

“Yeah. That’s it,” Spike finally answers.

Buffy enters the room carrying a large pitcher of thick, yellow liquid and a stack of red Solo cups she swiped from the Bronze before it closed for the Holidays.

“Who wants eggnog?” she asks cheerily, setting the pitcher down on the coffee table.

Both Dawn and Spike spring up from their seats to join Buffy over by the coffee table. They each take a cup while Buffy swirls the traditional Christmas grog around with a ladle.

“Now, you guys can have all you want. I won’t be partaking,” Buffy says, putting a hand to her stomach.

“Why? Did you make it?” Spike asks warily.

Buffy gives him a leveling glare. “No! It’s just that I’m still a little queasy from last night’s telethon with Ben and Jerry’s kids.”

Spike lifts his tumbler for a ladle full. After it’s filled to the rim, he takes a sip. “Hmmm…this is missing something.”

“Really? I sprinkled some nutmeg in it for flavor.”

“I’m sensing that this is a whole lot more egg than it is nog, Buffy,” he says, smacking his lips together.

“You want nog, go get your flask. With two underagers in the house, I left the bourbon out.”

“And I suppose we’re doing without the traditional Christmas crackers as well?”

“Crackers?” Buffy asks. “We have some saltines. Do they count?”

Spike takes his cup, grumbling about how Christmas has certainly changed since he was human.

The Christmas spirit is finally ignited when the lights are unstrung and hung on the branches of the scentless tree. Buffy does light some candles, some vanilla scented ones that almost smell like the eggnog they are drinking. She thinks the spell she is attempting to cast is working when Spike begins to hum The Christmas Song. Then he begins to sing:

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost ripping off your nose. You’ll find Carol being hung by a pyre and vamps as white as Eskimos.”

“Very good, Spike,” Dawn says as she fixes a glass ball ornament to the tree.

“You think?”

“Oh, yes. Instant classic,” Buffy says, adjusting her ornament on the tree. “Somewhere up in heaven, Bing Crosby is kicking himself for wasting his time in the studio recording that White Christmas crap.”

Dawn is standing over the shoebox of ornaments, one hand on her hip as she ruts through the jumble of shiny glass balls and ceramic figurines. “Buffy, I thought we had more ornaments than this.”

“We did. A lot of them were broken in the move.”

“Hey!” Dawn says, pointing a finger at her sister, “What ever happened to that snowman we used to have? You know. The one that lit up?”

“I don’t know. I found him all smashed up in the basement shortly after Spike roomed with him,” Buffy says wisely, gazing at her nonchalant lover who is piercing a limb with a Barbie collectible ornament. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, sweetheart?”

“Not at all,” Spike says, continuing to busy himself with the ornament’s placement on the tree.

“Where’s that snow baby ornament we got last year?” Dawn asks. “Ah. Here it is.” She strides back over to the tree, leaving her sister to dig around for her next selection.

“Buffy, since I’m not too particular about what I’m putting on the tree, you want to hand me another ornament?” Spike asks.

There is silence from her.

“Buffy, could you---

But then he sees her.

He sees the angel in one hand. The star in the other. The angel, favored, in the right hand. And she looks at longingly.

And he sees enough.

Buffy walks into their bedroom as she normally does, yawning, stretching, clothed in her pilled, flannel pajamas for this time of year. Little snowmen sled down the snowy landscape of her sleepwear. But tonight is mild. Tonight is less than Christmasy. Tonight is balmy and warm. Buffy smoothes lotion onto her forearms right before climbing into bed. Spike is already there, up to his abs in blankets, remembering still. “Well, I can tell it’s Christmas,” she says, pulling back the covers and sliding in beside him. “I’m completely exhausted and have lost the will to go on.” She yawns again and plumps up her pillow. “Look, for Christmas dinner tomorrow, I’ve decided to go the non-fussy route. We’re just having a regular meal, OK? No goose, no stuffing, no cranberry sauce. Just some hamburgers and mac and cheese. I’m not even going to attempt being traditional just to have you and Dawn make faces at each other across the table.”

Spike says nothing, wondering how in the world she can be so complacent while beside her, a storm rages.

She giggles a little and draws sleepily against his forearm. “Dawn’s going to be so excited when she sees that laptop. I want that to be the first thing she opens. No! I want it to be the last thing. Make her wait for it. Make her think she’s not getting it.”

Her sister is the one who’s not getting it, he thinks darkly, shifting his body until he lies against her in a comma, his face pressed against his pillow.

“I just can’t believe it was that cheap. I mean, I’ve looked at all the catalogs and have gone to all the office supply stores for months and months and I’ve never even seen one priced that low. That was some sweet deal. Are you sure you didn’t pull a Winona?”

A blast of Spike’s heated exhalation tunnels through his pillow. “Look. I got Dawn the sodding lap top. I showed you the bleeding receipt. What, do you want me to tell the sales clerk to show up on Christmas morning for verification? His name was Chip. Ironically enough.” He closes his eyes. Memory. “If I were Angel, you’d just assume I had done something noble and right to get Dawnie’s laptop.”

“What the hell brought that on?”

Memory. “You were thinking about him tonight.”

“When?”

“Oh, come on!”

“No, when was I thinking about him?”

“When you were holding the bloody star and the angel, that’s when!”

“The star and the angel? The toppers for the tree? Oh, honey---

“I know you were thinking about him.”

“I was thinking about how Mom used to ask us if we wanted the angel or star on top.”

“I can only guess which one got your vote,” he snorts.

“Oh, Spike. Don’t be like this.”

“Funny you should say that because if I weren’t like this, you wouldn’t even walk down from your ivory tower to chuck me on the chin.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He swivels about to face her, sending the covers into wild torrents of waves. “Like this. Cold. Dead. Without a pulse.”

“Spike---

“Tell me that my touch doesn’t remind you of him!”

Her eyebrows knit a warning flare. “Shh! Quiet! You’ll wake---

“Tell me that you don’t think of him when you’re in my arms!”

“---Dawn.”

“Tell me he’s not on your mind the whole fucking time when I’m inside of you!”

“That’s enough!” she shouts, equaling the tenor of his rants. A vein on her neck emerges like a slow, slithering eel under her skin. He sees her green eyes flash and for a minute sees nothing but pure demon blazing on the inside.

The room is quelled by an abrupt hush that entombs the two of them in a bitter silence. Buffy’s body is tense next to him and she flits at the sleeves of her worn pajamas with a jittery hand. He knows she is thinking about ways to undo this, to wrap everything up in a neat little bundle and make it all pretty and perfect. But what they are is never pretty, certainly never perfect. They are nature’s anomaly, a projectile of fisted rebellion against the order of things. He looks down at the sheets that are knotted in his calloused hands. Floral, combed cotton, textured in their togetherness. Their mingling scents waft up from the fabric and he nearly succumbs to the ether of her sweet vanilla and his own aroma of old oak and soil. This is the bed where he first made love to her, where he first came to the realization that she was fire and sunlight and all the elements that could kill him. They sink into this cocoon of warmth and softness every night, spooning, kissing, nibbling, touching, loving. But at times like these, even as he lies beside her, he realizes he’s closer to being that desperate creature, chaining up his love in the catacombs of his crypt, begging her for some confirmation that the something that has been between them since their first encounter is what he has been seeking all his life.

He turns slowly towards her. He feels her inch away. He has invited something into their bed this evening, something that has always had a place under the covers, but until now has been banished. What is it in her eyes now? A comparison, a mental note taking of everything he is in relation to everything she wants? She is loved by a demon, a soulless creature that shares her bed, shares her life. He sees the questions in her eyes and wants nothing more than to kiss them away, but that’s not what she needs. The specter of Angel looms heavily over their bed. He can almost see his grandsire’s boyish face in the eyes of the girl whose inquiring gaze is nearly pulverizing him with fear.

“I do still think about him,” she says quietly, dropping her eyes to her hands, at once hoping he hasn’t heard her and hoping he has heard her clearly. She hears a catch in his throat, but cannot yet look at him. “But never when we’re together.”

“Why…HOW could you still have thoughts of him?”

“I’m sorry. I just do. He was my first love. Not so easy to forget. It’s not like you wake up one day and the three years you loved someone don’t matter anymore. I wish sometimes that that were possible. But part of me doesn’t want to forget that time. Because I can look back and see how much I have changed, how much I have grown. How much I have gotten away from that person I was. I really was a different person then, Spike. I was a baby. I looked to Angel as someone who could protect me, who could teach me about what I was and what I was about. But I know who I am now. I don’t need someone to define me anymore. I just need someone to love me, to be with me, to care for me and the things that are important in my life.” She reaches for him, terrified that her touch will propel him further away. She pulls his face to hers, pressing her forehead against his, until all she can see are those two giant orbs of blue pooling into one. “You’re everything to me. You’re…my partner. You’re my lover. You’re the person I always turn to because I know I can and you’ll be there for me, no matter what. I don’t even feel like a whole person when you’re not with me. It’s like I’m always looking around for what’s missing. And I find it when I’m in your arms again.”

A thought occurs to him, one that formed in his mind the first night he slept with her and awoke at three in the morning to find her bathed in moonlight, her arms spanning the width of his chest and her breath falling softly on his skin. “You lie very sweetly, love.”

When he says this, she is glad for him that she isn’t the person she once was. A remark like that would have sent him the way of dusty death just a year ago. She is not a liar. She had told him the truth. She does think about Angel. Only because she can’t not think about him. But not when Spike is close. When he is close she only thinks about him because he drains her of all rational thought until she is babbling incoherently in her mind, “I love this man…I love this man…”

The Buffy she was a year ago wouldn’t even attempt to do what she is about to initiate.

She loosens her hands from his head and drops them to the first button on her pajamas. Like a proud mare, she tosses her fallen hair away from her eyes so that she can look at him while she undresses. He is watching her, holding that awe-filled stare he had the first night she allowed him to kiss her and hold her. She tosses the pajama top aside, and then brings her attention to the elastic waistband of the bottoms. She slides them off, slowly, and sends them onto the floor. Naked now, she straddles him, taking his face in her hands again and kissing his mouth.

Against his lips, she breathes, “Spike, I love you. I love you so much.” She fuses her lips with his scarred eyebrow, tracing the trenches with the point of her tongue. “I love everything about you,” she continues, licking down his face, down to his neck. She tries to find the scar that Drusilla left years ago in the fetid alleyway when he asked for rebirth. Time has healed that wound. There’s nothing left but smooth, silvery skin. She kisses him there and then hooks her lips around the projection of his collarbone. She latches onto his left nipple and fondles the right. “Let me make love to you, Spike,” she shudders in a whisper. Her mouth now is taking on the landscape of the quilted flesh of his abs. She licks the outline of each precious square and notes with pleasure that his member is rising slowly to meet her gaze. “Let me make love to you.”

She doesn’t wait for a response. She takes him in her mouth. She feels the muscle tighten under each stroke of her tongue. She licks around the head and he presses his hands on either side of him, trying hard not to touch her. She hears him moan and presses on.

Fully sheathed in her mouth now, almost down her throat, he can’t fight the desire to feel her any longer and his hands go through her hair, combing the golden goodness while her fingers roam through the stiff hairs where her mouth is creating such a forgetting spell, he can’t even remember what it was they were fighting about.

She feels him jerk in her mouth and her lips slide up his shaft. Fully in control, she squares her hips with his and lowers herself onto him, bit by bit. She allows him to feel that sensation of being cloaked in her warmth before rocking against him, slowly. The lamplight reveals everything. He looks down and can see where they are joining, becoming one. He looks up at her face and sees the power there and feels it all around him as her inner muscles clamp around him and he sees heaven and hell combined in a surreal portrait of his own life and death.

He fills his hands with the soft contours of her backside and rams his head against his pillow as her pilfering of his being becomes more insistent and more demanding.

“Deeper,” she murmurs, bowing her body until her torso lies between his legs.

He rises from his prone position and takes command, drilling into her now, moving with the swiftness of fire. She drapes her legs over his shoulders and he drives into her so deeply she has to cup a hand over her mouth to stave off a scream. He couldn’t stop moving, even if she did produce a stake at this point and drive it through his poor, lost heart.

“Darling…” he breathes.

“I love you…” she spills out in a shallow gulp.

“I love you too…”

“Oh, Buffy…I’m going to…”

“Yeah…”

“I’m going to…”

“Oh…”

There is one last thrust. Every muscle in his body jumps in her embrace. She too is aware that her body is moving involuntarily. When he starts to slip away from her heated walls, she grabs him in objection.

“No!” she warns.

He is snared by the panic in her eyes and the urgency in her grasp. Sudden understanding floods him and he soothes her by stroking her hair and kissing her softly.

“I’m not ever going to leave you, Buffy,” he says against her cheek.

“Promise?”

“Angel left you. I left you once and it almost killed me.”

Angel left me because he wanted me to have a chance at a normal life, Buffy thinks to herself. What she has with Spike will never be normal. It may never even be a life. But it is all theirs. She knows this when she feels his hand reaching for hers and she smells their collective scents rising from the ashes of their lovemaking, so soft and sweet. A garden of topsoil and flowers, given breath by a forbidden sun.

“My William…” she whispers, trailing a hand down his back as he settles against her breast.

“Always,” is his sleepy answer.

Across town at St. Catherine’s Chapel, the parishioners stand in pew after pew of soft candlelight. The hidden organist lays his hand on the keys and creates the melody they are all following in various pitches and tones. It is midnight now, Christmas, the holiest day of the Christian Calendar.

Travis Singleton stands between his mother and father, holding onto the hymnal, but not looking at its pages, nor does he sing with the rest. His eyes are watching faces of the faithful around him, their sullen expressions shadowed in the flickering of the candles they hold. Twice his mother nudges him, a silent entreaty for him to join in the song. He will sing for a couple stanzas, and then continue to peruse the neighboring pews, watching, trying to see if what is in their faces comes even close to what he’s seeing in his mother’s haunted expression.

His mother’s face is shaded at once in dread and hope, something that becomes more apparent and more shocking in the defusing light on the candle in her hand. The tears began when her lips formed the words, “Mother and child” and they continue to fall in time with the wax. She alternately closes her eyes, then throws them open wide as though having a revelation in her head. At the moment she is staring ahead, the words on the hymn on her lips. On the last verse, she coaxes Travis to sing once more and he refreshes his memory by glancing at the first line.

By this time, he notices that his mother is not singing at all. He inclines his ear closer to her so that he can hear her words and when he does, he knows she’s not thinking about anything related to the silent night of the song. There is another birth on her mind. One she has been talking about non-stop since they arrived in Sunnydale. One that was on her mind even when the movers broke some of her finest china and she had to remind herself once again that they were all there for a reason and even a petty annoyance like that would be worth it in time.

“The child will come, the child will come,” his mother keeps whispering, her eyes now fixed on the altar and Christ’s stricken form on the cross.

Midway through the last verse, many voices have abandoned the tune and are now whispering as well, a murmur that sounds like a low rumbling, as though the building itself is groaning inwardly. By the time the organist reaches the end, there are no more voices raised in song; there are only frantic whispers and a building hysteria that is making Travis shift in his shoes, feeling as though the floor might give way any minute and swallow them all whole. Put them all in their place, including him, for ever going along with their desires.

“The child will come, the child will come” resounds from floor to rafters until the minister takes the pulpit, raises his hand and snaps the congregation to collective attention.

“Merry Christmas to all. And to all a goodnight,” he says.

With that, it seems whatever rapture had the parishioners by the throat loosens its hold and slowly smiles appear on their faces again. The candles are snuffed and smoke forms a dark, floating cloud that rises to the ceiling and billows over much hand shaking and deep embracing from parishioner to parishioner. Travis doesn’t escape the fray as he is nearly tacked and man-handled by Mavis Gulch who brands him with a spittle-laden lipstick kiss and tells him how much he’s grown in the last year. His mother is laughing now, talking excitedly with a woman in a light blue suit with an enormous Christmas tree brooch pinned to her lapel. His mother is complimenting her on it, saying she almost bought one just like it the other day. Travis squirms, knowing that once they get into the car, his mother’s laughter will bray through many insults about not only the woman’s choice of jewelry, but her mousy attire as well.

The five a.m. alarm sounds in the form of Spike’s gasp as he wakes once more from the same dream that seems to be a permanent residence in his subconscious, rediscovered night after night, never changing, never straying from the same frightening narrative. And his reaction is just the same as ever, as though it is occurring for him the first time all over again.

But this time Buffy and he are facing each other, both wide eyed, both breathless.

“We’re standing on a cliff together,” Buffy begins slowly through labored breath. There’s heat and fire all around. It looks like the whole world is in flames. We have to hold onto each other to keep from falling because the earth is crumbling under us. I’m crying because there’s something that I want you to do. I don’t even know what it is until I see your face change and your mouth comes close to my neck and you bite me.” She winces at the word bite and strikes the curve of her balled fist against his heaving chest. Her eyes find his in the darkness. “Is that your dream?”

“Yes,” he replies at length. “But how did you---

She brings her fingertips to his lips, tracing the gentle curves of the mouth that so vividly snarled in her dream as he bit down deep into her flesh. “I just had had it too.”

CHAPTER NINE

A sharp “ching” resounds in the air as Spike’s axe meets with the chain mail of the Hollaran demon he’s been sparring with for nearly a quarter of an hour. He’s tired of throwing punches. It is way beyond the time for the big guns. Buffy jumps on the demon’s back, wrapping her slender arms around the thick, football player width of the demon’s neck. She pulls upward and then to the left. No jubilant cracking noise results.

“No, no, Buffy. Hollaran’s don’t have spines, love,” Spike coaches as the blade of his axe collides again with his adversary’s breastplate. “You can’t break their necks.”

“No spines?” she asks, right before the demon pitches her to the ground. She springs back, her spine still in tact, her fists at the ready. “How do they walk?”

The demon spews some gibberish that makes Spike laugh.

“I’m a little rusty on the Hollaran’s lexicon of late, but I think he said that they walk over graves of Slayers.” He addresses the demon. “Two years ago, I would have been right with you on that sentiment, but now, you’re talking about he lady of my heart.” The smile on his face nearly matches the gleam of the blade in the milky moonlight as he charges again.

OK, I guess I’m useless again, Buffy thinks, wrapping her arms around her and taking a rest on the closest tombstone. It all wasn’t a loss, though. She did stake three fledglings. One who was dressed in a Backstreet Boys tee shirt. She is especially proud of this kill. Not only did she prevent this vamp from lunching on countless victims, but she also kept the poor girl from having to witness the sad demise of the once proud TRL faves.

“So who wears chain mail these days, eh?” Spike asks, taking another swipe at his growling prey. “Aside from you and Cher. At least Cher has a new hit single.” His blade nears the demon’s heart, but not close enough to kill him; just enough to startle him and put him off his game. “What have you got?”

Green blood flows from the demon’s chest and the monster dabs at it with a disbelieving paw. He growls something which Buffy interprets as, “You gave me an owie!” and he lunges for Spike. Ever the agile terrier of a man, Spike sidesteps the advance.

“You have to do better than that if you want to send me to the mat,” Spike says, flipping the axe in his hand like a smug bartender with a bottle of Skye. “I’ve got brains and brawn. And I’m bloody pissed off that you won’t die already!”

As the demon rises to the challenge once again, Spike cuts him low. In one swift lowering of the blade, he divides the demon’s head into two neat halves. Spike can’t be too amused by the sight of the demon going cross eyed, looking at his own brains flowing between the crevice the blade has created. When the demon falls to his knees and eventually lands on his back, that’s when the real work comes in. The mucousy gray matter flows onto the grass and Spike doesn’t waste any time stamping it out with the toe of his muddied black boots.

“And that,” Spike pants, watching the demon dissolve into quivering orange jello, “is how you kill a Hollaran demon.” He congratulates himself, watching the goo ooze through the blades of grass and pool by the grave of a doctor who probably charged too much for patient visits and deserves worse than having a demon’s remains slime his limestone monument. “You never get used to the smell, though. That odor of rotting peat moss combined with a homeless man’s shoe leather? Awful stuff. But he’s gone now. His bretheren will be out for our blood soon enough. You up for another round, Buffy?” He expects her to be somewhere near and within whispering distance. “Buffy?” he questions in the darkness, to no one, apparently. He swivels his head around, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, somewhere. His eyes come up empty of her. But then he hears something. A retching sound, not close, but just close enough and far away enough for her to run to and try to disguise her disgust.

He rushes in the direction of the moans he is hearing now and finds her, about fifty yards from where he killed the demon. She is clinging fiercely to the face of a tombstone, her cheek pressed against the cold stone. The moonlight reveals a fine spray of finely chopped vegetables on the face of the tombstone, as though someone has flung a can of soup against the engraving.

“You all right?” he asks.

“Fine,” she says as she gulps down another wave of sickness. “Must gave been something I ate.”

He thinks about supper. She stirred soup in a saucepan slowly for at least and hour and a half and when she finally sat down, it took her almost as long to finish it.

“You’re not becoming one of those Ally McBulimics, are you?” he asks.

“Oh, please, Spike! I know I’m skinny, but it’s all because of the job. I mean, a good slaying night shaves off at least 1200 calories. Not that I’m counting.”

He sits down beside her on the cold, wet ground. A period of intermittent rain showers has made the soil malleable and soft. The dirt contours to his backside as she curls into his embrace.

“So bad soup made you give this poor man a post-mortem tribute he never planned on,” he says, kissing her forehead and looking at the inscription on the grave.

“Oh! Sorry, Mr...” She squints and tries to pronounce the name on the tomb, “Scantalopoliliseski?”

“You weren’t so quick with the apologies a week ago,” Spike has to chuckle. “He was a vampire. You slayed him last Tuesday.”

“Oh well, then. No worries!” she brightens.

Her smile is tired and strained, and even in the dim, he can see her color is almost as green as the blood shed by the demon Spike just killed. “If you’re feeling sickly, you don’t need to be out in this dampness. Come on. Let’s get you home into a warm bath.”

“Mmm…that sounds good,” she muses, allowing Spike to help her to her unsteady feet. “You lead the way.”

Spike bursts through the door of the magic shop, a scowl on his face and purpose in his step. “Nice try, Buffy. I did some checking. Turns out, In the Bedroom isn’t a porn flick. It’s some angst-ridden weepy with that schizo bird from Carrie.”

“Fine,” Buffy answers, too tired after her training to fight with him. “We can see another movie. It doesn’t have to be that one. I just don’t want to see another movie that makes me feel as though I’ve damaged a chromosome watching it.” She takes a swig of her water. “Let me just get my coat and I’ll be ready to go.”

Spike is slipping on her coat when Giles approaches.

“So it’s a night out, is it?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Buffy says, whipping her hair out of the back of the coat. “I’m not Bronzing it tonight. After ten straight days being called, ‘Miss’ and ‘Hey you’, I think I’m owed some time alone in the dark with someone who can actually call me by my name.”

Giles’ expression turns ashen as though he’s thinking of the unseemly scenario Buffy could be suggesting. Then realization comes upon him. “Oh, right. The pictures.”

Spike cannot contain the satisfaction on his face from seeing Buffy’s Watcher so visibly shaken by thoughts of the two of them in the dark. He can almost hear the “wah wah” guitar porn music playing inside Giles’ head.

“See you later, Giles. I’ll be in tomorrow before work.” Buffy turns in Spike’s arm to leave.

“Oh Buffy,” Giles calls before she makes it to the door. “I hope you feel better.”

Out the door and into the night air, as the tinkling of the bell inside is silenced, Spike asks her, “So what was that all about?”

“What?”

“The ‘hope you feel better’ wish from your Watcher.”

“Oh,” she says, waving a hand in front of her. “It’s nothing.” Secretly, she is berating her Watcher, wondering how someone with such thin lips could have such a big mouth.

“Did you sick up again?”

“No.”

“Well, then?”

“What? It was nothing!”

“Buffy…”

She exhales sharply, fretting with the buttons on her coat. “Well, there was this one thing.”

“And what was that?”

“I sort of…sort of had a fainty thing during training today.”

“What?” he blasts.

“No biggie! I didn’t actually faint. I just got kind of light headed and had to sit down with my head between my knees for a few minutes. Then I was all better.”

Spike purses his lips and studies her for a few minutes. He says nothing; just puts a hand to her back and guides her gently in the direction of his car.

Once inside the Desoto, Spike continues his vow of silence and turns on the ignition. In the first rumblings of the old engine being forced to breathe life again, Buffy looks warily at Spike. He seems angry and annoyed with her. For what? Being sick? For not calling him after her little, insignificant spell and telling him. “Honey, great news! I almost fainted!”

Two minutes into the drive, Spike has still not spoken and Buffy realizes that they are not heading towards the multiplex. Nor are they on the way home.

“Wait. Where are we going?” she asks.

There is some movement in his jaw, but none on his lips.

“Honey, where are we going?” she asks again, slightly panicked.

“I’m taking you to hospital,” he says plainly.

“What? No! Spike, no!”

“If you’re puking up everything you eat and you’re getting the dizzies during training, you need a doc to look you over.”

“Spike, I’m not going to the hospital!”

“Yes, you bloody well are!” he returns angrily.

“Don’t yell at me!”

Taking his eyes from the road, he looks over at her and can only shake his head. “Sweetheart,” he softens, “I don’t mean to be cross, but I’m just concerned, is all. And you don’t seem to be worried at all. I mean, look at you. You’re exhausted all the time, you can’t keep anything down, and you’re almost as pale as I am. Getting woozy while sparring with your Watcher is one thing, but what if it happens while your going head to head with some nasty who could very well take a bite out of Buffy when she’s down for the count?”

She knows he’s right. There’s so little time in a Slayer’s life for personal concerns, even in matters of health. When you’re trying to save the world, things like a tummy ache and head rushes seem secondary.

“I am a little worried,” she says quietly. “But not enough to go to the hospital right now. Please don’t take me there, Spike. I hate that place. Nothing but bad memories there. I’ll…I’ll call my doctor tomorrow.”

“You will?”

“Yeah, I will. It’s about time for my 3000 mile check-up anyway. I’ll make the appointment first thing in the morning.”

“Right then. You do that.”

“Let’s just go to the movie, OK? Just sit and watch a flick and forget about all this for a while. That’s what I’m in the mood for.”

“I’ll even buy you some of those outrageously expensive chocolate covered peanuts you like. What are they called? Goobers?”

Just the thought of chocolate covered anything makes her momentarily queasy. But she doesn’t let on that she is anything but enthusiastic for what he is offering. “Yum!” she gulps.

Spike awakes very slowly and rolls his head over to where he customarily finds Buffy’s shoulder. He opens his eyes. Her pillow is empty. A quick swipe of his hand across her side tells him she has just vacated the bed; the sheets are still warm.

He slides his legs onto the floor, finding his jeans in a heap by the nightstand. He slips them on and pads out into the hallway. Immediately he sees that the bathroom door is shut. He listens carefully, hearing nothing inside. He raps against the wood cautiously with the knuckle of his index finger.

“Buffy?”

“Yeah,” comes the hoarse reply.

“You sick?”

“Just a little nauseous. I’ll be all right.”

“You need me to come in?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“What time is your doctor’s appointment?”

“10:30.”

“You be on time for it, love.”

“I will.”

Buffy sits on the lid of the toilet, staring at the end of the six inch wand she holds in a trembling hand. A little lavender plus sign deepens in color right before her eyes. But this can’t be right, she keeps telling herself. These things are only 99% accurate. There is a margin for error, she assures herself. Just a small, teensy little margin, but it’s there. Enough to call a presidential election. Is there a hanging chad that might sway the results in a different direction?

Or a pregnant one?

All the signs, all the symptoms, all the sickness…

She swallows a lump of nausea and lets the wand fall by her side as she presses a damp washcloth to her clammy forehead.

“I don’t need a doctor to tell me what’s wrong,” she says.

“Yep, that’s what it is. You’re pregnant,” Dr. Hemphill says casually as she strolls back into the examining room.

Buffy can only stare at the prematurely graying thirty-something woman, thinking that she has either walked into the wrong room or that she has been smoking the substance that forms the first syllable of her surname.

“No,” is Buffy’s automatic response. “Are you sure?”

“I’m 99% sure. But I’m going to do a sonogram just to rule anything else out.”

There is that percentage again, Buffy thinks. Is 99% just some agreed upon figure to stand for “you can almost count on it, but wait?”

“But I just had a period, like, three weeks ago.”

“That was before the baby set up shop,” Dr. Hemphill says, sitting gingerly on the wheeled stool by the examining table. “Now he’s all moved in and probably thinking about decorating ideas now.”

“You don’t understand!” Buffy says, tears beginning to thicken at the back of her throat. “My boyfriend is dead!”

“Oh…” Dr. Hemphill says, surreptitiously tucking Buffy’s chart under the sleeve of her arm as though suddenly the results are a tragedy. “How long has he been gone?”

“120 years,” Buffy replies absently.

Dr. Hemphill’s eyes widen. “Excuse me?”

“Uh,” Buffy amends. “A long time. Long time.”

“And you haven’t been sexually active since his death?”

I only became sexually active with him after his death. Buffy is glad for this question because it allows her an opportunity to laugh. But when she does laugh, her eyes spill over with tears. Her visible emotions mimic someone in the throes of grief, but she is not anguished. She doesn’t know what she is. For a fraction of a moment, 99.9% of the moment, she is happy, thinking. Thinking…

Oh God thinking…

“No,” Buffy replies finally.

Dr. Hemphill wraps a comforting arm around Buffy’s forearm. “You want to see your baby?”

Her automatic response is, “Yes.”

If there is a little being growing inside of her, she wants to know at least what it looks like, what it is. Then maybe, if she sees it, she can finally believe it.

Dr. Hemphill squirts a generous amount of clear jelly from a tube onto Buffy’s lower abdomen, then guides a T-shaped wand over the area, to the left, to the right, and then…

“There it is,” Dr. Hemphill says.

“Where?” Buffy focuses her eyes on the image right before her on the monitor. It all looks like white paint swirled into a can of black lacquer.

Dr. Hemphill uses the tip of her ballpoint to pinpoint the it. “It’s as small as the top portion of your thumb, but that’s it. That’s your baby.”

Buffy squints, thinking she’s already the most inept mother of all time because, try as she might, she just can’t see what the woman is showing her.

But then she thinks she does.

It’s very subtle. She has to stare at it as though looking deeply at one of those magic eye pictures.

Something jumps on the screen. A heartbeat, maybe. Something. A little life force she can see but not feel.

“What is it?” Buffy asks, transfixed by the fascinating image on the screen.

“It’s a little early to tell the sex just yet. Maybe by your fourth or fifth visit---

“No.” Buffy interrupts. “What is it?”

CHAPTER TEN

Buffy throws her feet out in front of her as she ascends to even greater heights on her swing. She is currently having a race with the just-out-of-toddler stage little girl on the swing beside her. There was no, “betcha I can swing higher than you” challenge. It just sort of started. There is something about this little girl. She seems more independent than the others on the playground, as though her mother, handsome in an oversize chambray shirt and black leggings and sitting on a nearby bench, came along as a companion rather than a supervisor. The girl’s red coat has all but slipped from her arms, the faux-fur trimmed hood flops behind her as she swings, trying to match Buffy’s effortless glides towards the heavens. The little girl has an Eskimo look about her. Her eyes are small and hidden like two twin cabochons of onyx on either side of her pert little nose. Her inchworm of a mouth smiles.

Finally she says, “What’s your name?”

“I’m Buffy,” the swinging Slayer answers. “What’s yours?”

“Karen,” the little girl replies. “How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?” Buffy asks teasingly.

“I don’t know. Are you older than my brother?”

“How old is your brother?”

“He’s twelve.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m much, much older than that.”

“Are you sixteen?”

“Mmm…A little older than that.”

“Twenty?”

“Add one more year and you’ve got it.”

The little girl looks thoughtful. Addition must be new to her. Buffy imagines that the girl is assembling little blocks in her mind. Twenty…add one more block and you get…

“Twenty one!” the girl says enthusiastically.

“That’s right!”

“Is that a kid’s age?”

It seemed like it…yesterday, but not today. “No, it’s not,” Buffy says softly.

“Is that a mommy’s age?” the girl asks.

“Yeah,” Buffy says, “It’s a mommy’s age.”

They continue to swing for a while in silence. There’s not much to be said between a twenty-one year old and a, she’s guessing, five year old. It’s not like they can trade opinions about the Enron scandal. But after a while there is more from the girl. By this time, another train of thought has Amtrak’ed its way through her brain.

“Mommy and I went to the zoo the other day. We saw some alligators and some hyenas!”

“Really?”

“Um hum. And there were some snakes too. I like snakes.”

There are some girlish squeals from the top of the jungle gym just a few feet away.

“Karen! Karen! Come on!”

The little girl skids her pink Barbie Velcro shoes against the mulch underneath her swing, abruptly ending their contest. There are no “nice to meet you’s” and Buffy understands this. The child has been called away for better things with kids her own age. Buffy is a mommy’s age.

A mommy.

Actually, Buffy is grateful that she is allowed to stop swinging, because she is now nauseous from the back and forth movement. She drags her feet along the mulch under her own swing and lays her head against the cold metal chain. Her heart is beating rapidly. She fans her face with her hands, swallowing hard in rapid succession.

There is a flash of red before her. Her eyes catch the flailing of small hands clutching the air. She jumps from the swing, running in quicksilver speed towards the jungle gym where the little girl has lost her balance and is falling fast towards the hard earth…

Into Buffy’s arms.

It has happened so quickly; both the little girl and the savior are blinking at each other with incredulity.

“Oh God! Karen!” a woman shrieks.

Buffy is setting the girl down into the mulch, onto her own two feet, and is putting her hood over her head when Karen’s mother meets them. It’s cold today. The little girl should have something covering her head.

The mother, still suffering from the late effects of panic, places a hand over her chest.

“Karen, are you ok?” the mother assesses her daughter’s condition.

“Yes, Mommy,” the girl says. “Buffy caught me.”

The mother looks at Buffy gratefully as she embraces her child. “You’ve got some quick reflexes, Buffy,” she says. “You’ll make a good mother one day.”

“Thank you,” Buffy replies. Her eyes are misting as she says, “I really needed to hear that today.”

“Yeah, hello,” Spike says anxiously into the phone. “My girlfriend, Buffy Summers, had an appointment at 10:30 this morning at your office and it’s 1:30 now and she’s still not home. I’m a bit worried.” At this time, Spike hears a key being inserted into the door lock. “Nevermind. She’s here.”

He slams the phone into the cradle and stalks over to the door. Buffy pushes her way in. She is wearing the camel coat that he often thinks matches her skin tone. But today, not so much. She is pale. She has been pale for the last couple weeks, but today she is…

Pale as death.

She lets her keys drop into the bowl beside the door. She remains fixed there and will not look at him.

Spike takes a step forward.

She edges away, closer to the door.

“What did you find out?” Spike asks warily.

Buffy bats aimlessly at the top button of her coat before finally unfastening it like a drunk. Spike begins to wonder if the doc loaded her up with some powerful drugs during her office visit. Some kind of opiate, it seems.

“Buffy?” he begs.

His exclamatory plea catches her attention, finally. “Hmmm?” she asks, dragging her heavy-lidded stare to his eye level.

“Your appointment! What did the doc find out?”

He watches her as she sets her purse down on the table by the door. She rummages through the contents, discarding a few yellow credit card receipts, a bottle of holy water and a wooden stake as she searches. At last, she produces a blurry photograph of…something.

Spike takes it into his hands, trying to decipher the rendering in black and white. “What’s this?”

Buffy takes a while. It is still so foreign to her to say, “Our baby” that she has to rehearse in her head how it will sound to him. She can’t say it cynically, because there’s no way on God’s green earth that something like this could happen between a vampire and a human. A Slayer, even. Instant protection, she always thought. Cold seed. Dead seed. She has felt his liquid invasion many times, and it was always as though she were treading into a chilly sea. Never did she imagine that at least one of his swimmers could reach the wall and make her a Mommy.

“That’s it,” Buffy says, pointing her index finger at the little, peanut-shaped blob of white hinged onto the wall of what Dr. Hemphill said was her womb. “That’s, um, a baby.”

Spike takes the photo, sitting in marionette fashion on the back of the sofa. This is a…baby? His? He of the dead body has helped produce…

Life?

He clamps a hand to his jaw as he continues to stare at the picture. How seems to be the only word his brain can manage at this point.

“Before you say anything,” Buffy begins, “I should tell you that a few days before Christmas, I touched a fertility god. It was in the Magic Box on the discount table, for Christ’s sake, and missing a nipple. I mean, a nipple! Giles said that it probably wouldn’t work, because once an idol has been injured, it’s never the same. But Giles said that it works by will. A woman wanting a baby touches the idol to her stomach. I didn’t know Giles meant that touching it to my stomach would mean…you know.”

He looks up at her face, so full of questions, so full of anxiety. She thinks she has done something. He thinks he has as well.

“That same day, I went into Helene’s House of Herbs,” Spike tells her. “I don’t know why. Well, actually I do. We had passed all those baby carriages in the mall. And I saw you wanting one of them, or what was inside of them. And I saw myself not being able to give you one. Helene said she would bless us, that she would ask for Gaia’s assistance, make an offering to Gaia in our names. She said that Gaia knows when two of her offspring have enough love in their hearts to bring another life into the world. I didn’t know that asking Helene would…”

And there is the black and white photo, held between them, in Spike’s quivering hand.

“I guess, in some ways, a small part of us really wanted this,” Buffy says in a small voice.

“I…guess,” Spike says. He has seen the baby now, obscured in Van Gogh swirls and he thinks, when he looks carefully, he can see an eye staring out at him from the middle of the photo. There is something he needs to do now; he needs to hear it.

He has that ear. That well tuned, vampiric ear. He lowers his face to her abdomen. After pushing up her shirt, he listens.

“Oh God…” he intones against her.

“What?” she gulps.

“The other night. I thought I was hearing another heartbeat. But now…”

“Yes?”

He places his cheek flat against her belly so that his ear is suctioning up all the sounds from within. Then he crumbles. His cold tears glide down her bare stomach, pooling in her navel.

She holds him close to her, trying to soothe his tremors. “Sweetheart, I know you’re upset and I was too. I mean, complete shock of it all alone almost sent me into cardiac arrest right there on the examining table. But we’re going to get through this. I just need you to be OK with this. I need you...” Buffy is startled now to hear a burst of steady laughter against her belly. “Spike?”

He lifts his completed elated face to hers, tears streaming down his face like the spent wax from a candle glowing from inside of him “You’re going to make me a Daddy! You’re going to make me a Daddy!”

“You’re…happy about this?” she asks.

“What, that the woman I love is carrying my child?” He brings his arms around her backside, hoisting her into the air, sending her legs wheeling in space. “Oh, Pet, you’ve just about made me the happiest man who ever died!” He plasters her stomach with kisses. Suddenly, just this one bare patch of flesh isn’t enough. He wants to feel all of her. He wants to thread the bobbin of her silky body through his fingers and create a tapestry of her for him to wrap himself in for all eternity. Buffy encircles her lover’s waist with her legs as they lumber in one combined form to the bedroom. Once on the bed, Spike’s hands are everywhere, simultaneously slipping off her shirt, her bra, all things that keep him away from every inch of her skin. His kisses are constant and breath taking. She relishes his lips on hers, but craves the air.

She begs for and gets a few minutes of quality oxygen time by asking him, “I was so worried that you would think I had cheated on you. That you would leave me.”

“That was your hormones kicking in, sweetheart. I know you’d never stray. What, did you think I would assume that you were boinking the barkeep? Hardly. You should know me better than that, love.”

I should, Buffy thinks as she draws him closer. This is her man, her one and only. As Spike immerses himself in the warmth of her skin once again, she sees his dazzled expression, as though he’s being allowed to dance in the afternoon rays of the off-limits sun. He loves her so much. Sometimes when her hand roams the muscular planes of his cold body, she has to constantly remind herself that he is dead; he is a cold, dead thing. A creature of darkness, a being who requires daily gulps of blood to exist. But then he looks at her; his eyes shimmer with that inner light that she can almost call his soul. She has realized for some time now that what she is seeing is her own soul reflected in those ice blue eyes. The first night they made love he removed most of the doubt that the thing he had for her was real. Every day they are together, he strips away whatever remaining qualm she might have about his true nature. There are other times when she is touching him that she thinks she is molding the clay of him into something human. Humans replicate themselves in their young. Under the tutelage of her hands, has he become a living being again? She shrinks away from the notion that she has such power. She creates death, nothing more. But somehow, the two of them, in their twin negatives, have joined together to make a child. A child! The plus signs she saw this morning still dance around the room as though some Crayola happy math teacher is sketching freehand wallpaper.

She places her thumbs in the hollows under his high cheekbones and kisses him, whispering against his lips, “You are the one true love of my life.”

“And you are mine,” he answers.

Hours later, after Buffy has been helped into happiness, Spike is lying with his head on Buffy’s stomach.

“I love you,” Buffy hears him say.

“I love you too,” she says, combing her fingers through his hair.

“I’m talking to the little one here,” Spike says, kissing her just above her bellybutton.

Buffy giggles as she feels the assault of Spike’s soft kisses against her stomach. “If you keep doing that, I’m going to get chapped abs!”

“We’ll get you some Vaseline, then,” he answers, continuing to kiss her, “because I’m not going to stop until he’s born!”

Finally he’s had enough and returns to his side of the bed, nestling his head in his pillow. She has never seen such a smile on his face. He is so full of love that if pricked, he’d bleed valentines.

“This is so amazing,” he says through a sigh. “I never thought…I never even dreamed that something like this could happen to me.”

“Well, guess what? It’s happening.”

“I know.” He reaches over for the watch dangling around Buffy’s neck. “Of course, you’ll have to give this up when he’s born.”

“Aw!” she pouts.

“Well, maybe not right away. When he’s older and can actually tell time.”

“Then we can tell him about the wonderful night you gave it to me.”

“And he can gag and make faces and say, ‘So you’ve always been gooey and romantic.’”

“They say that the romance ends when baby makes three.”

“Then we’ll have to spend every day after he’s born proving them wrong, love.”

He pulls her into his arms, kissing her lightly on the forehead. Settling into his embrace, Buffy asks, “So who are we going to tell first?”

“Mmm…I think the first person we should tell is coming down the hall and is about to open the front door right about now.”

Buffy hears that a new presence invading their quiet in the form of a jingle of keys being placed on the table inside the door. She hears footsteps on the floor leading to the kitchen.

The bedroom door is open.

Buffy grabs for anything that will cover her, in this case her pink robe that she knows will signal to Dawn like an unfurled tongue, “I’ve just been having sex.”

But by now, Dawn is so accustomed to the sight of her sister’s flushed, post-coital cheeks, she is not even embarrassed anymore. She sees Buffy readying herself for public viewing, cinching her robe around her with a slim sliver of her naked breast still exposed and thinks, “Why bother?”

“Hey Dawnie,” Buffy says, smoothing back her hair.

“Hey Buffy,” Dawn says, heading straight for the kitchen, sustaining a bemused smile of her face.

Buffy scampers behind her sister. “Umm…how was your day?”

“Good,” Dawn replies at the open door of the fridge. She selects a Diet Coke and depresses the tab. “And yours?” she asks, taking a sip.

Not as productive as a couple months ago, Buffy is prepared to say. She holds back and substitutes with, “Very good. But Dawn…there’s something Spike and I have to tell you.”

“OK,” Dawn says. “Where’s Spike?”

“I’m here,” Spike mumbles, fastening the last button of his jeans as he’s entering the room.

Dawn looks at them carefully, a haughty curl to her lips. “So what’s going on?”

“Um…something has happened. Something we didn’t plan on,” Buffy begins.

“What? You’re pregnant?” Dawn asks, sending her eyes rolling.

“Well, actually, yes.”

Dawn’s eyes fly open wide. Her eyes dart to Spike and then to Buffy, back to Spike, and again to Buffy. “But wait a minute. You can’t---

“But I am,” Buffy finishes.

Dawn focuses on Spike. “But you can’t---

“But I did,” Spike answers proudly.

She continues to stare at both of them. The moment of excruciatingly uncomfortable silence is followed by a burst of unbridled laughter from Dawn. She shakes her head and takes her leave, heading for the living room. “And they said irony was dead.”

Buffy and Spike exchange glances before following Dawn’s path. They find her collapsed in the armchair, hugging her stomach in a fit of giggles.

“Dawn, we’re serious,” Buffy says. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Oh, I know!” she says, wiping her eyes. “I just think it’s kind of funny. I mean, you are always telling me to use a condom, use a condom. And now. Oops! Anyways, I don’t know why you guys were all hand-wringy about telling me. I’m the easy one. You still have to tell Giles, right?”

Buffy and Spike both look at each other, a mutual feeling of dread manifesting itself in a single thought: He won’t take this well.

That night at the Magic Box, long after the last customer has waltzed across the threshold with whatever Anya was able to persuade them to buy, a tense and silent trio sits at the round table under a single burning lamp.

Buffy and Spike sit on one side of the table, Giles on the other. Contemplatively, Giles is twisting his thumb and index finger in front of his pursed lips. Buffy has seen this look before. One morning, Giles showed up at her apartment unannounced before she had a chance to make up her bed. She remembers his stare as he focused on the two pillows, both creased with the impressions of their occupants’ heads.

On his face he wears the look of fatherly disappointment and a learned man’s befuddlement.

Finally Giles clears his throat. “I suppose this is the clichéd response when one hears news such as this, but in this case I think it’s warranted: How?”

“Let’s just say that Spike and I haven’t been extremely careful,” Buffy replies. “Anyway, we were kind of hoping you could help us with the how part.” Or the why, she adds to herself.

Giles observes Buffy continuously curling her slim fingers around Spike’s hand, kneading the flesh over and over and he is returning the massage, roughly combing through her digits. Any other pair would be yelping from the pain of such a clutch, but they are fine. It appears that this touch is keeping them anchored to where they are.

“Well, expectant Slayers are not entirely unheard of in the annals of history, particularly in the middle ages when the average life expectancy of women was considerably shorter than today’s. Even in more modern times, there are a few instances in which Slayers have become mothers, most recently in 1927, when a young girl only referred to as Josephine in her Watcher’s journals gave birth to a baby boy which she turned over to an orphanage in New York. Some of my cohorts did some research on that and it turns out, the boy was adopted by a moneyed couple and went onto great prominence.”

“But what about Slayers getting duffed by vampires?” Spike asks impatiently.

“There’s not a single case of that.” Giles responds.

“Oh, I get it. Because I’m the first Slayer who’s ever bedded one, right?” Buffy asks indignantly.

“No, because vampires cannot father offspring.”

“Giles!” Buffy says, gesturing wildly at herself and the vampire beside her. “Us! Here! Telling you that, yes, it is possible because it has happened. Haven’t you been listening?”

“Are you trying to tell us that I’m not the father of this child?” Spike asks.

The look on Giles’ face answers in the affirmative.

“Oh, bloody hell!” Spike yowls, rising from the table and slamming his hand on the back of his chair, sending it crashing against the table. “I should have known you’d be like this. First Spike’s not good enough to be with your sweet little Buffy, now he doesn’t have the proper jizz to put a sprog in her.”

“Spike, stop…” Buffy mutters, suddenly not able to look at anyone.

But he continues his tirade. “I have sat here countless times before, listening to you prattle on about demon this, demon that and ‘my sources say that blah blah blah prophecy predicts blah blah blah apocolypse so cancel your bridge parties and canasta tournaments. We’ve got a fight on our hands!’” Spike shakes his head, slamming his fist into a row of neatly arranged books, making it appear that the bookshelf has lost some of its teeth. “But Spike’s a monster, a bloody fiend! One of these days I half expect to walk in here and find you all nattering on about ways you’re going to defeat me!”

“Spike, this has nothing to do with anyone’s opinion of who you are and everything to do with what you are!” Giles shouts above the din.

Spike swivels about, his shoulders arched as though he’s about to fling himself into battle. His fists clench and unclench at his side. His brow is lowered over the fierceness of his deep blue stare.

“Spike, please! Sit down!” Buffy urges.

Corralled by the sound of Buffy’s pleading voice, he grabs the back of his chair and puts it to rights again before taking his seat, his body forming agitated angles as he crosses one leg over the knee of the other and folds his arms.

As the heat of the emergency settles, Giles speaks again: “Spike, you have proven yourself time and time again to be quite useful to our cause and I don’t intend to imply anything untoward about your character, as it is now. It is obvious that you have come a long way since you first arrived on the scene and,” he lowers his eyes before uttering softly, “that you care for Buffy a great deal.”

Spike feels a slight twinge at the back of his throat at this admission. He allows his body to relax as he reaches for Buffy’s hand, tightening his fingers around her returning grip.

“But even so,” Giles continues, “You are, for all purposes, a dead man. And it is not physically possible for you to create a child, even with someone you love.”

All of a sudden, their sweet afternoon curled in each other’s arms is fogged by a settling, uncomfortable truth. What was romantic and full of possibilities now seems implausible and utterly hopeless. Prayers to Gaia and wishes on nippleless fertility goddesses on Christmas Clearance, all stuff of urban legends like sharing toothbrushes or using public toilets.

“So you’re saying that this could all be something mystical. Something from the cosmos,” Buffy ventures out of the mist of her own thoughts. She can’t bear to look at Spike all the way. She caught one glimpse of the hurt piercing his eyes and couldn’t look any further.

“It could be,” Giles responds.

Buffy is still not willing to accept this. “But a couple months ago when we came to you about the dream Spike and I had. You said that there were no apocalypses on the horizon, for once, and that we were just being overly anxious about our future together.”

“And that was true. Then.” He answers sullenly.

“But you think now that this baby could be a sign of… something. Don’t you?”

“Possibly,” he returns slowly.

Thickening shadows of trepidation are enveloping her, sweeping whatever smile she has worn that day, or any smiles to come, into the dustbin that it always her reality. She should always know not to think too positively or dream too large. She is the Slayer, after all. She is as indigenous to sacrifice as forests are to the Northwest.

“So,” she says, sucking back encroaching tears, “Another apocalypse. Oh, well. It’s not like we haven’t seen one of those before. So we find out who or what it is causing it and defeat it. Same old same old.” Buffy instinctively runs a hand over her stomach. There’s no swelling there yet. Her little one is still inconspicuous, a Spartan dweller inside of her, taking up only the barest of space.

Spike aims a flat gaze at the Watcher who is not only at a loss for words, but seemingly lost as well, and says, “You think that just because you’ve spent a lifetime mucking about your dusty books and staring down the forces of evil through your tortoise shell specs, that makes you a knowledgeable man. Well, here’s this, Rupert. I put my evil, demonized ear to this lovely lady’s belly today and I heard a heartbeat. Sometimes it was so fast it was as hard to catch as the wind, but I heard it. Over and over. And I knew as I listened. I knew with all my being, dead or not, that this child is mine. You don’t have to go digging out Gray’s Anatomy and size me up against a picture of a cadaver and say A=B. And you can sit there and go on about what I can and cannot do, but I know--- I know!” His hand now joins Buffy’s over her stomach. When he speaks again, his voice is tightened with feeling. “This child is a sign of something. It’s a sign to everyone who doesn’t believe we love each other that we really and truly do.”

Giles looks at the pair before him and he does want to be wrong. So help him God, he wants to be wrong. And he wants to take back everything he has said by putting a smiley face sticker on it all and telling them that everything will be great. Buffy once begged him to lie to her, he remembers, after she had to go through the unenviable task of staking an old friend. Buffy knows what harsh truth is. She has seen it clawing out of its grave.

This is a different Buffy now. An adult. An expectant mother. A Buffy who has looked long and hard into the darkness that is her work and has still emerged…a girl. A sweet girl, unspoiled by what she has experienced. He thinks sometimes that he has betrayed his birthright by getting too close to her, in turn making her not the fierce warrior he has read about. But then she’ll go and stake a vamp as though swatting a fly, behead a Le’acht demon as though cutting through butter, shelve her youth in favor of saving the world…

He watches Spike rub his knuckles over Buffy’s trembling forearm. He hears him murmuring encouragements into her ear, sifting her golden hair through his hands and placing kisses on her forehead. “It’ll be all right, sweetheart,” he says. “It’ll be all right.”

“It will be all right,” Giles concurs out of the obligation of his heart, now completely unstrung. “I’ll do a bit more research. This could be something…else. I don’t know what, but…” Buffy looks at him with new hope shining through the standing water in her eyes and he is more determined than ever. “I shall look more deeply into this.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dr. Hemphill told Buffy that she might do certain things on impulse during her pregnancy, and Buffy has warned her housemates about this. But nothing at all could prepare Spike and Dawn for what she does at the beginning of March.

She has been out all afternoon and Dawn and Spike were beginning to ask themselves where the hell she was. But when they see her, they know. And it’s so shocking to them that for many minutes they can’t say a single thing.

“Do you like it?” she asks, hopefully.

“It’s all gone!” Dawn says, putting a hand to the up-turned locks of hair an inch over her sister’s shoulders.

“It’s different,” Spike says. Her golden hair…

“But do you like it?” she asks.

“It’s all gone!” Dawn says again

“It’s not all gone. It’s not like I went out and got a Jean Luc Picard special,” Buffy says. But she sees Spike and Dawn’s disapproval. This was a mistake. Oh God…what was she thinking? “You hate it.”

“No,” Spike says. “It will just take some getting used to.”

And still, all Dawn can say is, “It’s all gone!”

Spike elbows Dawn. “You still look beautiful,” Spike offers.

“No I don’t! Not only am I getting fat…now I’m ugly too!”

Buffy and Dawn watch her, helplessly, as she disappears into a fit of tears into her room. They hear her crying. They hear her realizing what she has done. And it wasn’t a bad move, as impetuous as it was. She is still lovely Buffy, if somewhat shorn.

Spike tries the door. “Buffy?”

“Go away!” she says with a sob.

“Sweetheart, you know I can break this door down.”

“And you know I can stake you! Go away!”

Spike backs away from the door as though his fingertips are about to caress fire.

“She’s lost her mind,” Dawn says.

“No, she’s just exercising her right to be hormonal,” Spike says.

“How long do you think this will last?”

Spike shrugs. “It’s anyone’s guess.” Her golden hair…

“I remember when she used to get mad at me for borrowing her stuff. Mom always intervened, because if she didn’t, Buffy would just stay mad at me for, like weeks. This one time, Buffy accused me of having her blue sweater. God, she basically tore me a new one over that. I didn’t even have the damn thing!”

Spike remembers the sweater, stretched over the mannequin torso in his crypt and then over Harmony’s more ample form. He remembers touching the fibers, smelling her scent. Overwhelming. And now, her crying behind the door. More potent than the scent, more hurtful than her cold stare when he bound he in chains and begged her to love him.

“So, what are we going to do? Just wait it out?” Dawn asks.

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

“Eee…eee…eee?”

Spike snorts. “I think if I tried to get near her at this point, I’d be the one shouting eee…eee…eee and not in a good way.”

Anya flits around the Magic Box with a feather duster in hand. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, the slow time for the shop. Actually, the whole day has been a slow time. She has helped three customers, two of which were bald men looking for herbal treatments for hair loss. She couldn’t help them in that area, but was able to direct them to the pharmacy across the street to buy some Rogaine, on sale for $11.99.

Giles has been pouring over volume after volume of ancient text for the better part of the day. For the past few weeks, he has been dedicated to his research, completely neglecting his customer service duties in favor of note-taking and fact checking. This work is something Anya has not been privy too. Whenever she asks what he’s working on, his reply is always vague. “Oh, the usual. Demons and such. We are living on a Hellmouth, you know.” She senses his annoyance whenever her time to lean, time to clean busy work encroaches on his research. He always slams his book shut and walks over to the tea kettle to refill his cup. His tea intake in the past weeks has increased to ten cuppas a day, way beyond the Englishman’s standard per diem of three. Most days he arrives looking worn and haggard, as though he has slept in his clothes or hasn’t slept at all. She figures he needs the extra caffeine to keep him going.

Anya turns up the volume on the radio. Only one more hour until “All Things Considered” on National Public Radio. Noah Adams is promising an informative and heart-warming story on an Appalachian family marketing an apple butter that has caught on nationally.

Yes, indeed. It’s a slow day.

Anya drifts over to the section of books least perused by the public. These are the more advanced spell books, the ones with the big words that Wiccans may buy just for the street cred, but never actually use.

“Is Buffy coming in today?” Anya asks.

“No,” Giles says, still scribbling at the table.

“Strange,” Anya says. “She hasn’t been here for weeks.”

“Anya, I told you, she has been ill.” Once again he remembers Buffy’s pleading eyes. “Let’s this be our secret for a while. Until we find out what this is we’re dealing with,” she asked him. He nods again to her in his head.

“She’s been sick for a while. What is it? Fever again?”

“No.”

“Influenza?”

“No, not the flu.”

“Small pox? Oooh! I’ve heard that’s making a comeback. You know, that used to wipe out entire villages when I was a Vengeance Demon. A lot of times, I’d be summoned to exact revenge on someone only to find him stone cold dead in his house and supper still on the table. I got a lot of free meals that way.”

“It’s not smallpox,” Giles replies.

“Most of the time, it was terrible food. Cold English food was the worst. The stuff they put into pies and call a meal.” Anya shudders at the memory.

“Anya, please,” Giles begs, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Of course. Bad memories of yucky food. Good thing you’re in the United States of America now where food is actually edible, if somewhat artery clogging and genetically altered.” Anya moves her duster over the figurines gathered in a haphazard display between the spellbooks and the encyclopedias of demonology. “Has Buffy been to a doctor?” Anya asks.

“Yes, she has.”

“And what did the doctor say?”

Something I’m not permitted to tell you just now, Giles answers in his head. “That she needs to rest,” he tells her.

“She has seemed a little tense lately. Maybe she just needs to have her clit licked.”

Giles slams a hand down on his books. “Anya!”

“A very viable cure and a very pleasurable one as well. I know after I’ve had a bad week, a good clit lick is all I need to put me back on my feet.”

“And I would kill for a blowjob after working an eight hour day with you, but this is not the time or place to discuss such matters!” Giles explodes. And even as he hears himself utter the word blowjob, he still can’t believe that he was angry enough to say it.

“Oh, a blowjob! Have you considered hiring one of those women who work by the shipyards? Some of them are actually attractive and they need the money, judging by the way they dress.”

“Anya, as much as I’d love to sit here and talk about the finer points of oral gratification and prostitution, I do have work to do. So if you could just go about what you’re doing, I shall continue bandying about my books. All right?”

“Fine,” Anya says, continuing to dust. “But just for the record, this has been the most enlightening conversation we’ve ever had.”

“Well, I’m glad something good came out of my elevated blood pressure and total embarrassment.”

Later that evening, Buffy is lying on her bed, her face pressed deep into her pillow as she listens to David Gray’s Babylon, played low on her stereo. She hears a knock at the door and instinctively mutters, “Go away!” once again.

She hears the knock again and sits up against the headboard. “I mean it! Go away!”

“Oh, but please, Goldilocks!” Spike says in a cartoonish voice on the other side of the door.

“Spike, I don’t---

“Not Spike. Baaaybeee Bear.”

“OK, Baaaybeee Bear. Leave me alone!”

“Take pity, Goldilocks. Someone has eaten all my porridge and I’m oh so hungry! And some sod has sat in my chair and it’s all broken to bits! And now someone is sleeping in my bed and she’s still there!”

Buffy allows a smile to slip onto her face.

“Come in, Baby Bear,” she says, feeling like a trucker talking over a CB radio.

The door opens, just a sliver. A furry paw wedges its way into the small space. She watches as an oversized teddy bear struts into the room, her puppeteer of a lover maneuvering the bear’s limbs to simulate walking.

She has to genuinely laugh at the spectacle before her, because it’s just so silly and so…Spike. The things he will do to say he’s sorry. Sometimes she just wants to tell him to stop acting like one of Glory’s toadying minions. He has her now. They’re expecting a baby together, for God’s sake.

The bear hops up onto the bed, rubbing Buffy’s cheek with his paw. “Goldilocks, why are you sleeping in my bed?” The “bear” asks.

“Because it’s comfy and warm and it’s away from things,” she says.

“Na uh uh,” the “bear” scolds, tickling her nose with the tip of his paw. “What does Goldilocks say?”

She strokes a loving hand over the face of the bear. “Because it’s just right,” she replies, embracing both the Baby Bear and Big Bad, encircling her arms around the fractured fairy tale that is her life.

Spike leaps over her, landing squarely on his side of the bed, teddy bear still in hand. Buffy possessively acquires the stuffed toy, bouncing it on her lap.

“Is this for me or for the baby?” she asks.

“All for you, sweetheart,” he says, kissing her cheek and pulling her towards him.

“So there are some things I don’t have to give up because of the baby?”

“There are some things,” Spike answers. He scoots an inquisitive hand through her shortened hair, still loving the texture, the scent. It’s all there, just abbreviated.

They kiss for a long time, their mouths so fascinated by the brush of lips and tongues, time goes by and clothes are tossed.

Down to skivvies, Buffy finally thinks to ask, “Where is Dawn?”

“At the library,” Spike murmurs over her lips.

“God bless the Dewy Decimal system,” Buffy says blissfully.

And the dead man spends the rest of the evening buried in the once and future love of his life.

Dr. Hemphill emerges from Buffy’s elevated thighs, sloughing off her latex gloves and tossing them into the nearby trash bin. “OK. You can close up shop now. I’m done.”

Buffy sits up anxiously, removing her feet from the stirrups and sliding her legs over the side of the examination table.

“Is everything OK?” she asks.

“Yep. You’re doing very well. You may not feel like it now, but your pregnancy is completely normal. How’s the morning sickness?”

“Still with me.”

“The saltines and ginger ale aren’t working out?”

“Yeah, they’re working out. Usually into the trashcan or the commode if I can make it.”

“That’s rough, I know. With my first pregnancy, I felt like I was constantly in that space simulator NASA calls the Vomit Comet. Anyway, the first trimester doesn’t last forever. But if you can’t keep anything down at all, I can give you some medication for the nausea, especially if you’re getting dehydrated.”

“That’s good to know.”

After hearing this good report, Buffy is still concerned. There is something she needs to tell her doctor, but something she feels she cannot verbalize. How does one go about asking, “Is my baby evil? Will my baby signal the end of the world? Are there meds for that?”

Dr. Hemphill must recognize Buffy’s consternation because now she is soothing a hand down Buffy’s forearm.

“Buffy, is there something wrong?” she asks.

“No. Just first time pregnancy jitters,” Buffy answers with a brave face.

“I remember what you told me. About the father… not being around.”

“Are you kidding? He’s around me all the time! He can’t keep his hands off me most days,” Buffy says with a laugh.

Dr. Hemphill’s shoulders sag in confusion. “But you told me the baby’s father was dead.”

She did tell Dr. Hemphill that the father was dead. And he is.

“Oh! Well…what I meant was that the father was dead to me. We were having a fight, but the baby kinda brought us back together.”

“Well, that’s good. And he’s ready to be a parent?”

More ready than I am, Buffy thinks. “Yeah. He’s very supportive. But what I was wondering, um, about the baby. Is it normal?”

Dr. Hemphill shrinks back from Buffy’s query. “As normal as we can tell at this stage. Are there certain genetic strains in your family that you’re worried about?”

“Well, no. It’s just that…” The father is dead. She has only known about the existence of a fetal heartbeat through her lover’s ear. Would he lie? No. No! No? “Does the baby have a heartbeat?”

“Yes. Very strong and very fast.”

“And a soul?”

“Well, of course. We’re all born with souls. Some people just forget they have them.”

“Some people lose their souls,” Buffy says in a faraway whisper. “But they get them back.”

“Yeah, when they’re descending into hell and they’re not the martyrs some guy living in a cave promised they would be,” Dr. Hemphill laughs. “But anyway, it’s not my business to pass judgment on some terrorists gunning for approval by their god. All I can say is, yes, your baby has a heartbeat and a soul and you’re a strong and healthy young woman. At this point, there is not reason why you shouldn’t be able to deliver a perfectly normal child.”

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to deliver a perfectly normal child,” Giles says, ragged and bed-headed, the hush puppy rings under his eyes nearly looping towards the lines around his mouth.

“Are you sure? I mean, you’ve read everything?” Buffy asks.

“I’ve read everything from the original Watcher’s journal, in Arabic, by the way, to the latest issue of Parents Magazine.” Giles removes his glasses and massages his throbbing temples. “There is nothing to indicate anything is imminent except for the birth of your baby.”

Buffy and Spike cheer silently, exhaling breaths and clutching hands.

“So this is a miracle?” Buffy asks.

“It appears so,” Giles says. Even in the aftermath of his immersion in every text ever written about enceinte Slayers and end of the world prophecies, he still cannot believe that the very alive girl and the very dead man beside her are going to have a child together.

“Ha ha!” Spike declares elatedly. “Uncap your Mont Blanc and turn a fresh page in your journal, Rupert.” He cups Buffy’s jaw in his hand and strokes her cheek. “Buffy and I are writing a new chapter in Slayer lore. I came to Sunnydale to sire the Slayer. And she sired me instead.”

“Oh, honey!” she says, her eyes spilling over with tears, hearing the bizarre Hallmark greeting of his words. “You know how I get these days!”

Giles wants to turn away from their passionate embrace, but he can’t. He has to see how much they love each other, how much they want this child. As much as he has been defying Spike as a suitable suitor for his charge, he knows, in some ways, he is the person she needs. Just enough of her own darkness tempered with humanity. The way they smile and the way they blend together, like two halves of a gloomy heart becoming one. They are love. They are worked for, killed for, bled for love. And sometimes when he looks at them he can only shake his head and wonder, but lately he’s been thinking more positive things, such as, “This is right. They are good together. They will have this child and will be a family and their happiness will be complete.”

But he can’t let them off without a warning. There is the rejoinder that he is finding hard to voice in the display of their togetherness, but he thinks that they know, deep in their love-laden hearts.

“Buffy,” he says gravely, “just because there is no precedence doesn’t mean that...What I mean is, the child might be---

“Giles, stop, OK?” Buffy begs. “This baby is human. Heart and soul. I can sense when things are evil. I feel it in my gut. And this child inside of me is not evil. I feel like I’ve been given a wonderful gift, something that I’m not supposed to have.” She lowers her eyes and as she does, she sees the tears shimmering in the lower rims of her eyelids. When she lifts her head again, a droplet falls, slipping down her cheek and landing with a splat on her sweater. “This is what I want.” She says soulfully as she holds Spike fast, his blond head finding a comforting rest on her left shoulder. “I just turned twenty-one. I’m young, I know. But for a Slayer…I mean, the clock is ticking. There might not be a time in the future for this. It’s happening now because, obviously, something or someone has chosen this to be the right time. And, honest to God, I’ve never been happier.”

And Giles knows that what’s she’s saying is true. He only hopes that it will stay true.

Dawn flips open her laptop computer and switches it on. She sips at her Diet Coke as she waits out the one or two minutes it takes before she is able to click on the Internet Explorer button and log on.

Almost immediately after her Yahoo Messenger window appears, she is slammed with an IM from Travis.

t-dawg: Hey sweetie!

iamthekey: Hey baby!

t-dawg: Whatcha doing?

iamthekey: Just watching Spike and Buffy canoodle on the sofa. They’re watching Entertainment Tonight, but they keep talking to each other in this should-be-outlawed baby talk. lol

t-dawg: lmao

iamthekey: But I’m really weirded out now. And not just because of what I’m watching.

t-dawg: Oh? What’s wrong?

iamthekey: Nothing’s wrong. At least not yet.

t-dawg: Dawn, you’re scaring me. What’s up?

iamthekey: Well, I guess it’s safe to tell you now. Everyone else knows.

iamthekey: Buffy is pregnant :O

The cursor blinks on the IM so long that Dawn begins to think that Travis has been booted.

iamthekey: Travis, are you there?

t-dawg: Yeah, I’m here.

iamthekey: Where’d you go?

t-dawg: Nowhere.

iamthekey: I can’t believe my sister is going to have a baby. That’s just too fucked up, you know? I’m being aunted and I’m not even sixteen years old!

t-dawg: lol

iamthekey: And she’s so insanely happy about it. It’s like having a different sister. She was literally going around the house singing like she was in a musical or something. Way scary.

t-dawg: lol. Listen, I’d better go. I still have to read that chapter Mr. Morin assigned.

iamthekey: Yeah, me too. Expect a quiz on the New Deal.

t-dawg: lol

iamthekey: I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

t-dawg: OK, Dawn.

iamthekey: *hugs*

t-dawg: *hugs*

Travis sits for many minutes, his Yahoo Messenger window still on his computer screen, an IM from Eric Daniels displayed, awaiting a response. “Hey, T-Dawg! Wassup?” He scrolls down, putting himself on invis and leans back heavily on the back of his chair as he sips at his Coke.

His mother barges into the room, uninvited, as she always does.

“What are you doing?” she asks, emptying his wastepaper basket for about the seventh time this day. “And Travis? A coaster?” she urges, noting the sweating Coke can on Travis’ desk.

“Oh, sorry,” Travis apologizes as he places his Coke on his mousepad. “I was just talking to Dawn.”

Samantha Singleton nods as she scrapes out the torn scraps of paper from Travis’s trashcan. She suddenly takes interest in a jagged piece of paper that she’s about to be pickup for the garbage man. “What’s this?” She begins to eagerly dig through what she has just dispensed into the garbage bag. When fitted together, the pieces form a letter from Harvard, begging for a campus visit. “Why didn’t you show this to us?” she finally manages after reading the letter.

Because I knew it would mean another fight, Travis thinks. “It was addressed to me,” Travis tells his mother.

“But, Travis! Harvard wants to you come for a visit! That’s your dream! And here you are literally just throwing it away!”

“No, Mom, that’s your dream. Have you ever, even once, heard me say anything about wanting to go to Harvard?”

“Travis, when a school like Harvard seeks you out, you don’t run and hide. Do you know how rare it is to get a letter like this? At your age?”

“Mom, here’s the thing. I just got into high school. College is the last thing on my mind.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be. Honestly, I don’t know where your mind is these days.” She crosses her arms as an evil gleam lights her gray eyes. “Actually, I do know where your mind is. It’s on that silly little tramp of a girl.”

“She’s not a tramp, Mom.”

“How could she not be? Living the way she does under the example of her sister who whores herself out to vampires.”

“Mom, stop it!”

“The three of them living together under one roof in that house of sin and filth. I would pray for their souls, but one of them doesn’t have one. Are those really the kind of people you want to be associated with?”

Suddenly a bell sounds from Travis’ computer and an IM appears on the screen. It’s from Dawn. He finds his hands paralyzed as his eyes freeze on the screen and he realizes his mother is reading right along with him.

iamthekey: I know you’re offline, but Spike and Buffy are now not only doing the baby talk thing, they’re also talking baby names. Spike actually wants to name the baby Hogan Verizon! lmao!

Recovering his manual dexterity, Travis quickly exits out of the window. His hand slips away slowly from the mouse, streaking the top with a smear of sweat. He cannot look at his mother’s face. He is too afraid of what he will find there.

“The Slayer is pregnant?” Mrs. Singleton says slowly.

“Uh, actually, no---

“Wait, wait, wait…The Slayer is pregnant?”

A blush reddens Travis’ complexion and he aims his stare at his shoes. He feels his heart sink to his waist and sickness seizes his stomach.

“Travis, if the Slayer is pregnant…Travis, do you know what this means? Do you have any idea what this means to us? To all of us? It means were all saved!” His mother slams her hands together in a thunderous clap of victory. “‘The Slayer and a demon shall combine and raise for you a savior.’ As many times as I have read that and heard it from the pulpit, it all just seemed like some distant dream. But it’s happening! It’s finally happening!” She rakes her long, lithe through her sons unruly hair before giving his shoulders a rough massage. “Oh, Travis! This is wonderful! We don’t have to die! None of us has to die!”

For a sliver of a second, with his mothers hands kneading the skin over his tense shoulders, Travis wishes he were dead. He wishes he didn’t have to hear the cheer in his mother’s voice over the vileness of the events that have been set in motion with the announcement of the Slayer’s child. He imagines across town, Buffy and Spike are curled up on the couch, running through a list of names in their head for their precious dream child. He can almost see the wide grins on their faces and the playful slaps they give each other as names are spoken aloud and soundly rejected. Little Joshua. Little Ben. Little Sally. Little Lucy. Little Suzie. Little doomed baby who doesn’t have a chance and doesn’t have a clue what’s awaiting him when he is plucked from his mother’s womb…

“Oh, who should I tell first?” Travis’s mother ponders as she drifts in a reverie towards the door, hands clasped, eyes skyward. “Reverend Estey, certainly. Stanley. Mr. Chapman. Phyllis. No, not Phyllis. She won the blue at the last garden club for that awful arrangement of eucalyptus and iris. She can wait. Oh, Lord! I feel like a million pound weight has been lifted from my shoulders!”

Even after his mother leaves him, Travis still feels the blood on her hands seeping through the fabric of his shirt, cooling his skin. And he knows that if he looks close enough, he can see that his own hands are glazed with blood as well.

“Mom, isn’t there some other way?” he asks quietly.

“His mother blinks back at him, incredulity clouding her features. “Travis, don’t you think that if there were some other way…? We don’t…none of us wants…” Samantha Singleton purses her lips and finally says, “‘The Slayer and a demon shall combine and raise for you a savior.’”

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