Title: The Lucky Guy

Author: Lucy Van Pelt

Rating: R

Pairing: Our beloved Buffy and our even more beloved vampire Spike

Spoilers: None. None whatsoever. This is my own comfy Buffyverse.

Disclaimer: These characters belong to other people. I don’t own them. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t have written that torrid attempted rape scene in Buffy’s bathroom. I have too much respect for them.

Summary: Buffy and Spike have it all. A blissful love life, a five-year-old child they adore and an apocalypse at every turn. This is my take on why Spike would have sought out his soul.

Author’s note: This is the fifth installment of the series that began with Protection over two years ago. My God, I need a life.

Dedication: To Lynn. My encouragement, my cheerleader, my friend.

* *

CHAPTER ONE

A trio of teenaged boys shuffles down the long corridor of the fifth floor of the Sunnydale Heights apartment building on a Tuesday night at 9:00. With their bedtimes approaching and school tomorrow, they all know that they have to quickly disperse and return to their homes to spout off monosyllabic answers to their parents’ close-ended questions. How was school? Did you learn anything new? How do you think you did on your science quiz? But they have one last stop to make before going home.

They pause now before apartment 5E. From inside they can hear canned laughter coming from a TV set and occasionally the chortles of the viewer. They know a young couple lives there with their five-year-old son. These people are long-time residents and they always have a decorative wreath on their front door. They give out the good candy at Halloween. The husband drives an old car, a Dakota, one of the teenagers thinks. Black as asphalt, windows tinted, rust stains everywhere. The wife has an immaculate mini-van that she has yet to get a handle of. On many occasions she has almost plowed down each one of them in the parking lot, always mouthing an apology with her well-glossed lips. The husband is not so courteous. He roars into the parking lot in his aged car, the motor loud, the stereo louder. He smokes, and not many people do that anymore. They always see him carrying cigarettes by the carton into the complex, smoking all the way to the door of his apartment. He must always stub them out before he unlocks the door and enters his home. Before the threshold are dozens of black holes marking the end of his nighttime jaunts to the grocery store for his nicotine fixes.

“I wonder if he’s home now,” one boy wonders.

“Yeah. I saw his car in the parking lot,” another boy answers.

“What do you think he’s doing?” the third boy asks.

The first boy shrugs. “Whatever vampires do at night.”

“I still think his wife is a vampire too,” the third boy says.

“Nah. She goes out during the daytime. She works at the Y. My sister’s taking her kickboxing class. And she has to pick up their kid from school,” the first boy says.

“See, that’s another reason why I don’t think he’s really a vampire,” the second boy says.

The other two boys raise an eyebrow to this.

“Well, vampires are…vampires. They’re like dead humans, right? And I don’t think that dead people can really…do what you have to do to have a kid.”

“Maybe the kid’s not his,” the first boy says.

“Or maybe he’s on some vampire Viagra,” the third boy snickers.

“That kid looks just like him. It’s creepy. They’re like Dr. Evil and Mini Me in those old Austin Powers movies,” the second boy says.

“I talked to him the other day,” the third boy says.

“Oh, you did not!” the first boy says with a massive eye roll.

“Did too!”

“OK, so you did. And what did you talk about?”

“Well, we didn’t really talk. He held the door open for me at the stairwell and I said ‘thanks’ and he said, ‘you’re welcome.’”

“I talked to him too,” the second boy pipes up. “He was smoking outside two nights ago and I said ‘s’up?’ and he said, ‘Not a whole lot.’”

“Oh, come on. I’ve said ‘s’up’ to him before. But none of us really has talked to him,” the first boy insists.

The third boy shrugs. “I wouldn’t know how to talk to a vampire. I mean, what do you say? ‘How’s that blood-sucking going? Seen any good movies lately?’”

At this point a peal of female laughter from inside startles them all.

The wife of the vampire enjoys her sitcoms, it seems.

“What do you think he’s doing?” the first boy says softly, fingering the dried eucalyptus of the floral arrangement hanging on the door.

“He’s sleeping in his coffin,” the third one says.

“No, they wake up at night,” the second boy says.

“Because that’s when they go out and look for blood,” the first boy informs them. “He transforms into a bat and flies around Sunnydale looking for victims. Once he has found his prey, he appears in his human form, the lean, pale, muscular specimen of manhood he is, and says, ‘I am a vampire. I need your blood.’ And with that, he bares the victim’s throat, sinks his retractable fangs into the victim’s neck, and drinks until the victim falls limp.”

A shared shiver goes through all of them as they involuntarily step away from the door.

“Mom’s expecting me,” the second boy says.

“I’ve got homework,” the third boy says.

“Snoop Dogg is on Larry King Live,” the first boy says.

The first boy’s comment is met with peevish glances.

“What? I like Snoop Dog!”

“Snoop Dog,” the second boy laughs as the three of them begin to walk away from the door. “He sucks.”

“He sucks big time,” the third boy says.

“I like his old stuff,” the first boy says.

“You suck,” the second boy says.

“Old style. It’s coming back,” the first boy asserts.

“Yeah, right. Keep dreaming,” the third boy says.

“‘So he went home with Pooh, and watched him for quite a long time…and all the time he was watching, Tigger was tearing round the Forrest making loud yapping noises for Rabbit,’” Spike reads in a soft, bedtime-is-near lilt. His blond ringlet-haired son lies beside him, head pressed against his shoulder. The little boy’s blue eyes pretend to read along. “‘And at last a very Small and Sorry Rabbit heard him. And the Small and Sorry Rabbit rushed through the mist at the noise, and it suddenly turned into Tigger; a friendly Tigger, a Grand Tigger, a Large and Helpful Tigger, a Tigger who bounced, if he bounced at all, in just the beautiful way a Tigger ought to bounce. ‘Oh, Tigger, I am glad to see you,’ cried Rabbit.’” Spike smiles and places a bookmark at Chapter Eight in The House at Pooh Corner. He ruffles his son’s unruly blond locks and pulls the covers up around him. “That’s all for tonight, Daniel. Time for bed.”

“I’m glad Tigger got his bounce back,” Daniel says, bunching up the covers in his hands.

“Me too,” Spike concurs. “Wouldn’t be much of a Tigger if he didn’t have his bounce, would he?” Spike leans in and presses a kiss on his son’s forehead. “Now goodnight. Sleep well.”

He is about ready to snap off the bedside lamp when Daniel fires a question at him.

“Daddy, when you were a little boy, was that a long time ago?” he asks.

Spike settles back momentarily onto the bed. “Yes, a long time ago.”

“Did you know Mommy then?”

“No,” Spike says with a sigh. “Your Mummy is a great deal younger than me. We’ve told you that.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot,” Daniel says.

“Now goodnight, Daniel,” Spike says, reaching for the lamp again.

But he knows he won’t get off that easily.

“Daddy, are you old?” Daniel asks.

“Yes, very old,” Spike says. “Now quiet down---

“How old are you?”

Spike thinks about this. Anything more than Daniel’s five years seems ancient to him, so it doesn’t matter how he replies. With his son’s lack of knowledge of numbers in mind, Spike says, “One hundred thirty two.”

Daniel tries to cover his yawn as he asks, “Is that old?”

“That’s really old.”

“Am I going to be old like you one day?” Daniel asks.

Spike grins at his son and smoothes his cheek. “No, you won’t. You may be old, but not quite as old as Daddy.”

“Why?” Daniel asks.

This is something that Spike doesn’t want to get into right now. It’s something Spike hopes to avoid all Daniel’s life. But how to answer now? Finally Spike says, “Because you’re not like me. You’re a little boy now. And when you’re old, you’ll be old like Daniel. And I’m old like Spike.”

“Like Spike,” Daniel repeats. He hears his mother call his father Spike and it’s weird to him. Daddy is Daddy and Spike is someone else. Spike is the man that Mommy talks to in non-musical tones. Mommy talks to Spike in the kitchen after dinner is over and Daniel is on the sofa watching TV. Now Spike is the one who is old like he will never be like. “You’re William,” Daniel says.

“I am William. That’s my real name,” Spike says.

“I can spell William now,” Daniel says.

“I know. I saw it. On that drawing you brought home.” The “a’s” were backwards, but his son spelled out his own full name next to his crayon illustrated self-portrait. In silver he wrote, Daniel William Hogan. He was so proud it was as though he were seeing that name written on a sheepskin Harvard diploma.

“Jesse couldn’t spell his middle name,” Daniel says.

“We’re not all born geniuses,” Spike says.

Daniel cocks his head at the unfamiliar word. “What’s geniuses?”

“It means people who are really smart,” Spike says.

“Am I a geniuses?” Daniel asks.

“You certainly are. At avoiding sleep. It’s time for bed now. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

The little boy presses his curly head deep into his pillow and looks with a heavy hooded stare at the window. The shade is drawn tight. No light ever comes into this room or into any of the rooms. This is something Daniel has grown up with as a rule, along with the edict against building a fort out of the sofa cushions and using the bed as a trampoline. The apartment is dark all the time and lights are used even when it’s daytime. “Is it dark?” Daniel asks.

“It’s after nine, Daniel. It’s very dark outside. And you should be asleep.”

“I can never tell,” Daniel says. “You’re ‘lergic.”

Spike smiles. He and Buffy have told Daniel that his Daddy is allergic to the sunlight and that’s why the apartment has to be kept dark. “I know,” Spike says.

“One day you will you not be ‘lergic,” Daniel asks.

“Probably not,” Spike says. “It’s not one of those things you get over. Like that cold you had last week or that stomach bug you had the week before. It stays with you. Daniel, it’s time for bed. It’s been time for bed.”

“I’m not tired,” Daniel says.

“You will be when you get up tomorrow morning.”

“Can I have the TV on?” Daniel asks.

“No you may not! You have to go to sleep!”

“Why?”

“Because Daddy says so, that’s why. So here.” He folds the covers over his son and kisses him once again. “Night night.” Spike turns off the bedside lamp and heads for the door.

Halfway to exiting, Spike is called on again.

Spike harrumphs and makes a slow turn. Daniel’s blue eyes sparkle, even in the darkness.

“You forgot to say what you always say,” Daniel says.

“Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Spike says. “Good night, Daniel. And if you have monsters in your closet, Mummy and Daddy will kill them.”

Pleased with his father’s parting line, Daniel snuggles under his blankets and at least makes an attempt at going to sleep.

Spike ambles into the living room, a sustained “argh!” flowing from his lips as he crosses the room blind with his hands over his eyes. He flops next to his wife on the sofa and lets his head fall back on the cushions.

“Oh, that boy!” he says. “What he won’t do to get out of going to sleep!”

“You can’t really blame him,” Buffy says pragmatically. “He is the child of two creatures of darkness.”

“It’s as though he thinks that sleep is what other people do. And he wonders why seven o’clock comes so early.”

“He’s always been that way. I mean, remember when we first brought him home? He didn’t sleep for days. And neither did we.”

“He’s more exhausting now than he was then. At least when he was a baby he didn’t say, ‘What is this smelly brown substance in my nappie and how did it get there? Why does everyone talk to me like I’m an idiot? What’s this white stuff coming from Mummy and why can’t I get enough of it?’”

“Aw. I miss those days when he was so small and sweet. I just can’t believe I’m the mother of someone in kindergarten.”

Daniel’s shift into the beginnings of academia has been hard on Buffy and Spike realizes this. Though Daniel did go to pre-school, there was something shockingly formal about entering elementary school. When she packed his lunch for his first day, she cried. And when she handed him his Fairly Oddparents lunchbox, she held back tears and then let them flow when she deposited him at the drop off spot. He looked like such a little man and not a little boy. He didn’t turn five until four weeks after school started. Four still sounded like a little boy’s age. Five was heading straight for ten and independence and not needing Mommy so much anymore. She remembers when she weaned him from nursing and he started smacking his lips at the site of jars of Gerber rather than her breasts. He uttered his first “mmm!” when he tasted applesauce. Her breast milk never rated a “mmm!”. Spike lay in bed with her afterwards, sucking her nipples and murmuring “mmm!” during the most therapeutic, and more than a little Oedipal foreplay she has ever experienced.

“Listen to what he did tonight at supper,” Spike tells his wife. “I put one of his kid’s meals in the micro to cook. One of his favorites: frozen chicken tenders, corn, and that chocolate thing that I think is supposed to be some sort of pudding. But he said he didn’t want it. Said he wanted fish sticks and french fries. I told him we didn’t have fish sticks and french fries. Still he said, ‘But I want fish sticks and French fries!’ Scrunched his face up, put his fists at his side, sort of the stance you take when you’re brassed off about something. I told him I couldn’t make them magically appear like Willow could. So then he says, ‘Daddy, can I go to Aunt Willow’s house for dinner?’”

Buffy throws her head back and laughs. “I’m sorry, honey. But you left yourself wide open for that one.”

“So it seems.”

“Did he eat?”

“Yeah, he ate.”

“The kid’s meal?”

“Most of it. It was made a little more palatable when I started to eat it.” Spike notices the pile of opened envelopes on his wife’s lap and the checkbook on her knee. “Bill paying time?”

“Oh yes,” Buffy says. “My direct deposit will hit the bank on Thursday, so hopefully they won’t get there until then.”

“Anything I can do?”

Buffy wrinkles her nose. “You got $12,000?”

“Not on me. No.”

“Then you’re worthless!”

“Buffy, are we that much in the red this month?”

Buffy sighs. “No. I was just thinking that $12,000 would be what we needed to put a down payment on a house.”

“A house? Where did that come from? How long was I in there with Daniel?” Spike asks, suddenly agitated.

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I mean, Daniel’s five now. When I was five I lived in a house with neighbors who lived in other houses, not in the same apartment complex. Real neighbors who had backyards, green lawns and gazebos and sometimes pools. There was an old woman named Jean. She used to make these great little Mexican wedding cookies. They were made of powdered sugar and some kind of sweet dough. I would go over there just to smell them baking. And then there was my friend Frances. She was older and I thought she was cooler than cool. She and I had roller-skates and one time when we were skating together she fell onto a board with a nail in it. I had to hold her hand when she got her tetanus shot.”

“So you want us to move into a neighborhood where there are geriatric bakers and clumsy friends?” Spike offers.

“No, honey. I’m saying that we’re out-growing this apartment. Face it. When Dawn comes home from college she has no place to sleep except with Daniel and then we have to listen to her bitch and moan about how Daniel hit her with twenty questions all night and then smacked her in the face when he finally did get to sleep.”

After Dawn left for college, Daniel took over her room. Where there were once glossy posters of boybands, there are now team pictures of Manchester United and All England Football. Daniel idolizes NBA stars Jason Conley and Shaquille O’Neil and they are well represented as well, despite his father’s insistence that basketball is a girl’s game. Spike thinks that basketball is rubbish. Daniel asks Spike was rubbish is.

“You have something in mind?” Spike asks.

“This,” Buffy says, shoving a folded newspaper his way.

There is a picture of a house, circled in red. Three bedrooms, two baths, spacious living room, eat-in kitchen. Good starter home. Spike looks at the picture of the dilapidated split-level and swears he’s looking at a Calcutta row house.

“Buffy, when I see the words good starter home that screams trips to Lowe’s and the both of us covered in paint and plaster. I’ve lived in crypts more palatial than this rat’s nest.”

“It’s not much, but it’s all that we could probably afford.”

“125 grand is still pretty steep for something like that.”

“Houses here are expensive. Our house on Revello cost $450,000.”

“Yeah, but your Mum had a posh job at an art gallery and child support payments coming in. You work at the Y and I play Mr. Mum.”

Buffy sighs, her dreams of home ownership dashed by nagging reality. As she drums her fingers on her knee, the diamonds in her platinum engagement ring catch the light of the table lamp. The most expensive thing she has and it’s on her finger. They have such horrible money problems and yet she wears a diamond and platinum ring, paid for with all that Spike had in his crypt, including the broach of a woman who lived during the 1920’s. The dead woman was Spike’s crypt mate for many years and he didn’t think the broach had much value until he passed it under Anya’s jeweler’s loop of an eye and she declared it priceless.

“Don’t even think about it,” Spike says with the same sinister hiss he used to employ when threatening her with bodily harm.

“I wouldn’t,” she says, giving her ring a little polish with the brush of her sweater-clad elbow. It is too precious to her. Sometimes it makes her gasp to even look at it and see its near twin on her husband’s finger. She remembers the first time they patrolled as man and wife and, after dusting a dozen vamps in an epic cemetery purge, they gave each other a high five and their rings clashed together. They were both momentarily stunned and looked at each other with new eyes, their sacred bond suddenly made more real with the clink of metal.

He is different now and so is she, but their marriage has never been stronger. Physically they have both changed. Shortly after they were married, Spike began to experiment with growing out his locks and accepting the dirty blond hair he sported as a human. Without the heavy applications of bleach, his hair sprang to new life, frizzing to a near afro at one point. He tames it with gel and a low hairdryer setting. He does tint his hair occasionally, highlighting the curls with a sprinkle of gold, to make it appear his hair has been sun-kissed, though he can never see the sun, ever. He is still youthful; his face will never show the weight of his years or the extent of his sins. He looks just as he always has: strong, muscular, handsome as hell.

Age has made Buffy more angular, more lines and planes as opposed to hills and valleys. Since shifting from shift work at the Bronze, she has been teaching kick boxing classes at the YMCA and working as a personal trainer to the fabulous and flabby in Sunnydale at Fitness Plus. Her body has never been more toned and she has never been more into her game. As agile and quick as any upstart teenaged Slayer, she still can dust vamps as accurately as she did when she was in her high school heyday. Her face has matured and when she looks in the mirror she sees her mother’s face staring back at her. Sometimes she understands how a human can live forever. Humans replicate themselves in their children. She is beginning to realize her own Joyceness.

But she is not Joyce. She is Buffy. She has to be resourceful every day, whether she’s improvising a piece of wood from a picket fence as a stake, or robbing Peter to pay Paul when agonizing over how to get through another month hand to mouth.

And Daniel needs school clothes. Not just clothes to look good and impress his classmates, but clothes that fit, pants that don’t look like he’s anticipating a dyke breaking. His pajamas are too small now. He’s grown an inch since the start of the year. At the rate he’s going, he’s going to be taller than both his parents by first grade.

Buffy exhales a breath. “It’s just so hard sometimes.”

“I know,” Spike says comfortingly. And he does know. If he could work, he would. Even though his marriage to Buffy would secure him a legitimate green card and residency in the U.S., there is that annoying death certificate which states he was deceased over a century ago. He would work for Buffy, work until his knuckles sprang from the skin on his hands, but he is not authorized to be among the working class. He stays at home with Daniel. He keeps house, minds the marketing list, watches a whole lot of Lifetime and Price is Right. He thinks that Markie Post is a better actress than most people think and that Bob Barker is a vampire masquerading as a human. Just like him.

“It just seems that every time I turn around, something is costing us money,” Buffy says, eyeing the $35 late charge that was tacked onto their Visa bill. What she could have done with that $35…

“There are some things that don’t cost a thing.” Spike rolls his head in the direction of the bedroom.

Buffy grins at him. Then caution flares in her face. “But do you think Daniel’s asleep already?”

“We could check.”

Spike takes her hand and the two of them walk together to Daniel’s room. A crack in the door reveals their child’s sleeping form. Quietly, Spike closes the door.

“We’re all set,” he says, eyes gleaming.

She doesn’t have to even look at him to see the lust in his eyes. She can feel it beaming from him and falling on her shoulders. Now she feels his lips brush against her exposed skin, where the collar of her sweatshirt doesn’t quite meet her neckline. She smiles as he stretches the collar, letting a little more skin show, and kissing her there as well. She allows her head to fall to one side and closes her eyes, a little smile taking hold of her lips.

They inch towards the bedroom, their hands on one another as soon as the door closes. Spike sweeps her into his arms and deposits her neatly on the bed. One of Spike’s hands finds the waistband of her sweatpants and he is running his fingers through the soft down underneath her lacy lavender panties. He doesn’t have to do much coaxing in that area; she is already wet. She became wet the minute she heard him say that there are still some things that don’t cost a thing.

It’s amazing how he can still make her feel like a hot and horny teenager after all this time. It’s as though she is feeling seven years slough off her with the lusty touch of his hand on her most private parts.

“You’re tense tonight, sweetheart,” he murmurs over her skin as his lips brush against her abdomen.

“Mmm…the bill-paying and work and thinking about houses and…OH!” He is caressing the damp flesh between her legs with a few quick lashes of his tongue. She lifts her backside enough for him to draw her pants down her thighs and push them off onto the floor. She opens her legs and allows him better access as lets her head fall against the pillows. “Oh, God…Oh, God…” she mutters, tweaking her nipples through her shirt, hoping that’s where he’ll go next.

All at once, there is light in the room, a new light introduced by the opening of the door. Over Spike’s shoulder, Buffy can define her son, standing in shadow, at the threshold of their bedroom.

“Spike, stop! Stop!” she urges, panic rushing through her.

“Mmmm?” is Spike’s busy-mouthed reply.

“Spike, Daniel’s here!” she whispers sharply.

Spike whips his head around and is on his feet instantly as Buffy shoves a pillow between her legs to cover her nakedness.

“Daniel, you’re supposed to be asleep!” says angrily to his son.

The little boy is slow to answer, as though his mind is trying hard to assemble reasons behind his parents’ activities here in the dark. “I was. But I woke up and I needed something to drink.”

“So go get something to drink!” Spike retorts.

“But I can’t reach the sink, Daddy.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Daniel!” Spike snorts loudly as he takes his son by the hand. “This has got to stop. You have got to learn that night is when you sleep and the daytime is when you’re up and playing and learning the golden rule and all that. Your Daddy learned how to sleep at night.” They are at the sink now, and Spike is filling a glass with water. He hands the glass to his son and watches him drink in shallow gulps.

When Daniel is finished, he hands the glass back to his father. “You used to sleep during the daytime?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t have your Mummy to sleep with and now I do. And right now I really, really want to sleep with your Mummy. I really do,” he says, the bulge in his pants still acting with a mind of its own.

“Is that what you were doing? You were going to sleep?”

Spike isn’t quite sure how to answer this, but as he’s hoping for some last minute inspiration, he hears his wife’s voice.

“Daniel, come here, sweetie. Let Mommy put you to bed,” Buffy says.

Daniel pads off slowly to his mother in his footie pajamas and takes her hand as she escorts him into his room. Before the door seals off their conversation, Spike hears his son say, “Daddy used to sleep during the daytime. Did you know that, Mommy?” To which Buffy replies, “Yes, your Daddy used to do a lot of strange things before we were married.”

Spike steadies himself at the sink, running the faucet and dousing his face with a cool stream of water. His vampire vision illuminates the hard water stains on the sink and his hearing is assaulted by the drippy faucet, which just won’t be fixed. They’ve had the super on it for weeks, and every time he promises that all he needs is a “special kind of washer” and it will be fixed for good. Spike and Buffy suspect that the “special kind of washer” will come in after the floor has been flooded, as was the case with the refrigerator, which wasn’t fixed until it nearly vibrated itself across the floor and into the hallway to terrorize small children and non-English speaking grandparents.

Buffy slips out of Daniel’s bedroom and quietly closes the door behind her. Spike meets her at their bedroom.

“Is he all right?” Spike asks warily.

“Yeah. I don’t think he saw a thing. I told him I had a stomach ache and you were rubbing it for me.”

He smiles at his petite wife’s ingenuity. “Do you think he believed you?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. He seemed all right with it.”

He lowers his head and nuzzles her neck. “Now where were we?”

“Um, honey, I don’t know about you, but my mood is totally blown. I’ve got more bills to pay and I think I should keep watch for a while. He didn’t seem to be ready for sleep just yet. So in case he wakes up, I’ll just sit in the living room. You can sit with me if you want.”

He sighs. “I think you’re right, Buffy.”

“About?”

“I think we need a new place.”

“Yeah,” she says, cupping his chin in her hand. “That’s a definite.”

CHAPTER TWO

“OK,” Buffy says, delivering an uppercut to the three-piece suited vampire who has just discovered that hell really is other people. “I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Yeah?” Spike says, in mid-tussle with his own fresh kill, a Steve Austin wannabe, complete with the John 3:16 written across his black tee shirt.

“If I can consolidate---omph!---all of our major credit cards, pay them off in, like, four years, I’d just have to make one payment once a month. And it would be---oh!---about four hundred dollars.” Buffy spins the newbie into a nearby tombstone. He rises again, undead and kicking, and she counters with a lethal punch to his chin, which only serves to daze him. But she was expecting that. She wants this fight to last. It’s helping her think things out.

“Sweetheart,” Spike says, jabbing his vampire as though he were a punching bag, “Do you know how much a of strain a house payment would put on our financial situation? I mean, you make, what, $25,000 a year?”

“$25,136,” Buffy corrects. “Plus, I get under the table money from the clients who want private self defense or Pilates lessons in their homes.” Buffy notices that the coat the vampire is wearing still has its price tag attached. $675 for a shroud that will soon be dust. She knows she has to lengthen the fight just so the bastard’s family will get their money’s worth.

“And how much is that?” Spike asks, stretching the vampire’s arm behind his back to the point where he can hear muscle detaching from bone.

“Oh, about $400 dollars a month,” Buffy says, connecting again with her prey’s chin.

“Then you’ll need to find a lot more fatties before we can even THINK about setting up house somewhere else,” Spike says. Then to the vampire he says, “Say Uncle. Uncle.”

“You mother fucker!” the vampire spews.

“Watch the language, mate. I’m a family man now,” Spike says, snapping the vampire’s arm completely out of its socket.

“Don’t call my clients fatties,” Buffy says petulantly as she thinks going Beowulf on her own opponent might not be a bad idea. “They’re nice women who have just found that food is their comfort.”

“Then maybe you should feed them for a week and then they’ll learn that food can also be their torture,” Spike says, slamming the heel of his boot against the backside of his opponent and sending him to the ground, groaning and hissing.

“I’m choosing to ignore that remark because we have bigger fish to fry right now,” Buffy says, tossing her husband a “have stake, will travel” look.

“Yeah. Fish that you will over-salt and ultimately burn in the skillet,” Spike returns, laughing as the vampire he is fighting still thinks he has some chance at victory. He is actually trying to swat at Spike with his useless arm.

Buffy shoots him another glare.

“Sweetheart, just remember, I’m considered a member of polite society now and a splinter in my heart would be manslaughter,” Spike says, fisting the vampire’s collar in his hands and bringing him to his feet.

“You know,” Buffy says, pulling her stake out and angling for the vampire’s heart, “Sometimes I still loathe you.”

“Yeah, but sometimes you still love me,” Spike says, readying his own stake for his own vampire’s heart.

“Sometimes,” she says, plunging the stake into her vampire’s heart. The price tag is the last thing to combust.

“Most times,” Spike says, delivering his own fatal blow to the faux Steve Austin who seems so shocked that a little thing like a stake could put an end to something so virile and so bald.

Buffy is standing there, stake in hand, dust still settling. She looks over at Spike who is in a cloud of dust of his own making. Always, after the kill, he has to take a moment to congratulate himself and she’s witnessing this now. He is aglow in death. But now he looks over at her. His eyes are alive. Though set in the face of a man dead a hundred plus years, his eyes have more life in them than any she has ever seen when he looks at her. When he looks at her, he is looking at the now, not possibilities. He’s looking at her, in the moment, and loving every second that he has been chosen to stand at her side and be hers, for the forever they are allowed.

“So you’re saying there’s no chance in hell I can afford anything better than the apartment we live in now?”

“Sweetheart, I agree that we need to move to a bigger place. I just don’t want you working any harder than you already are.”

“It doesn’t have to be a palace,” she says. “Honey, I’d live with you in a sewer. You know that.”

“I may hold you to that one day,” he answers.

“I want Daniel to grow up in a place that doesn’t smell like kitty litter and ramen noodles and…despair.”

“So long as it’s not a doublewide. I’ll be almost anything for you, but a PBR swillin’, Toby Keith lovin’, Dixie Chicks hatin’ vamp, I will never be.”

“Just so long as you’re the Buffy lovin’ vamp.”

“Love’s bitch. At your service.”

As Buffy is contemplating ways that Spike can service her in the graveyard, someone is intruding on their moment.

“Excuse me,” a voice says.

They both turn in the direction of a woman, or someone who was once a woman, now a vampire. She is dressed smartly in a conservative suit, skirt cut just below the knee, square-heeled shoes suitable for the office. Despite the twisted gnarl of a face her incarnation as a vampire has given her, her visage is perky beneath the arch of a pageboy hairdo.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” the new vamp says, chuckling lightly, “I couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying from my little crypt with a view. I can’t believe my family opted for a crypt. I thought for sure they would have buried me and left me for forgotten. I guess it’s only when you’re at the exit door when you realize your value.”

Buffy and Spike look at her as though she has just been left behind by an alien mother ship and they are thinking of ways to phone her home.

“Hi!” the new vampire says brightly, extending her hand. “I’m Dolores Hanssen. Or I was. Before I was sired. God, if I knew what I didn’t know then. You just can’t trust a guy in an Armani suit if he’s room temperature. Oh, well. I learned my lesson. I don’t really mind being undead. You meet a lot of interesting people. You kill a lot of them, but I guess that’s how it goes when you have to live by blood alone. But still, I miss life, you know? You probably know,” the perky vampire says, nudging Spike.

“Right now, I’m missing your point,” Spike says, the borrowed blood in him starting to boil.

“Oh, Tiger. Grrr…You have your work cut out with this one,” the vampire says to Buffy. She laughs again in that patronizing way that makes both Buffy and Spike ready their stakes. “Hey, whoa there. I’m here to help you. You’re looking for a new house, right?”

“Yeah,” Buffy and Spike say in unison.

“I’ve got just the place for you. Not too sunny, just a fringe on the outside of Sunnydale city limits. Needs a little work, but it has great possibilities. A stone fireplace in the living room, three bedrooms, two full baths, one half bath in the basement, which is finished. I used to work in real estate and I was about to show this house to a couple, but, what can I say? A few strawberry daiquiris, a vamp named Tony, and a night of enchantment in an alleyway led to…other things. But I’d still show you this place, even if I don’t get commission. It’s an ego thing, I guess.”

“How much?” Buffy asks, already entranced by the idea of a finished basement and three, count them, three bathrooms.

“Why don’t I show it to you first and then you can tell me if it’s worth the asking price?” the woman says.

Buffy turns to Spike. “What’ve we got to lose?”

“We can both take her if she’s luring us into a nest or something,” Spike says.

“I’m not worried about nests. I’m just thinking what she’s describing is just what we’re looking for.”

“I suppose we could take a look at the place.”

“I’m curious.”

Buffy and Spike turn to the woman. “We’d like to see it.”

“I’m going to destroy you with my super, super strength!” Daniel Hogan declares for the benefit of the well muscled, loin cloth-clad action figure in his hand.

“You can’t destroy me! I’ve got super, DUPER strength. Now you DIE!” his playmate, Matthew Phelps, counters, voicing the superiority of his own action figure, a well-jointed GI Joe who has recently lost a hand, but can still contend with the best of them.

The two boys clash their plastic heroes in a duel to the death and the handicapped GI Joe is an early favorite, but he loses steam as his handler grows tired of the storyline and lets him fall on his face, to be stomped on and martyred by the mini-Ted Nugent on steroids figurine.

“This is dumb. Let’s do something else,” Matthew says.

Daniel, who was enjoying the game, is nonetheless willing to concur with his older and therefore cooler friend. “Yeah. This is dumb. We can watch a movie. We just got The Matrix V on DVD.”

“Seen it. It was dumb. And all the guys in it are stupid and they dress like your Dad.”

“Yeah. But my Dad’s great,” Daniel is quick to say.

“Yeah, he’s all right.”

“My Dad takes me to the park at night. We get to play on the jungle gym all we want. You wanna go with us sometime?”

“I guess so. It’s kinda weird to go to the park at night,” Matthew says as he picks up a Nerf football and begins to toss it into the air.

“My Dad’s ‘lergic to the sun. He can only go out at night.”

“Yeah, that’s what you told me before. About a gazillion, million times,” an annoyed Matthew replies. He rolls over on his stomach and lets his chin rest on the football. “I guess it’s neat that you get to hang out with your Dad and all.”

“Where’s your Dad, Matthew?” Daniel asks.

“He’s dead, you dummy!” Matthew says, punching Daniel in the leg.

At the age of five, Daniel knows two things: you can only find things out by asking questions and Mommy and Daddy will always be there for him. They will always live together in this little apartment and he will always be their son and his Daddy will read to him every night and his Mommy will take him to school every day and he will come home and watch television and have dinner and go to the park with his Daddy. Now he knows something else: if you ask the wrong question, you get punched. And Daddy can die.

“Your Daddy’s dead?” Daniel has to add insult to injury. And he does get injured again.

“Yeah, my Dad’s dead. So what? Your Dad’s such a wimp he can’t go outside when the sun’s out. If my Dad were alive, he’d be taking me to the park all the time, and to the pool and to Disneyland and to movies in the afternoon and to Applebee’s. Your Dad can’t do that stuff.”

“But one day, maybe, he won’t be ‘lergic,” Daniel says, suddenly solemn in his thoughts of a world without Daddy.

“Or one day he’ll be so ‘lergic he’ll die like my Dad did.”

“Was your Dad ‘lergic too?”

“No, he had cancer.”

“What’s cancer?”

“It’s something that makes you die, stupid!”

A thought comes into Daniel’s head. What if Daddy really isn’t ‘lergic and has cancer?

Daniel leaps to his feet and dashes into the next room where Matthew’s mother, and his sitter for the evening, is curled up on the sofa watching TV.

“Candyce, when are Mommy and Daddy going to be home?” he asks.

Candyce doesn’t remove her stare from the TV as she says, “Oh, sweetie. They said they wouldn’t be long. A couple of hours.”

“Is it still a couple of hours before they’re coming home?” he asks.

“They’ve been gone about an hour. They’ll be home soon.”

“Can I call them?”

There is a sob in Daniel’s voice that distracts Candyce from the goings on in the crime lab on CSI: Detroit and she turns to the little boy to find his face ashen and his eyes wild with fear.

“Oh, Daniel,” she says soothingly, cupping his quivering chin in her hand. “What’s the matter?”

“I need to talk to Daddy.”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“I just need to talk to Daddy.”

Candyce nods. “OK. I’ll call them for you.”

“Here it is,” the realtor/vampire says as she opens the door with a twist of her now powerful hand. “We can all go in because no one lives here anymore.”

Spike acts as though he doesn’t quite believe her and puts the toe of his boot against the invisible barrier he thinks will be there. But she is right; he is invited in without a bit of deliberation from the powers that be.

The outside of the house looked ordinary: a box-like house with hedges for trimming and a lawn for cutting and a sidewalk for sweeping. But inside, once the light is switched on, it appears like something that has been pulled from a magician’s hat. Voila! Where there was once nothing, there is everything in the world Spike and Buffy could possibly desire in a house.

“The stone fireplace is really quite unique,” the realtor/vampire tells them. “There was another house here on this site and it burned around the turn of the century. This house was built up around it. So you have a little of Sunnydale’s early history right here in the living room.”

Buffy swipes a hand across the coolness of the stone and marvels at the black stains of decades of fires in the hearth, imagining the glowing faces gathered around the fires that burned there. “And it still works?” she asks.

“Oh yeah. Completely functional.”

Spike is taking his time, walking across every board, looking for signs of creakiness or foundation failure. The floors gleam as though freshly Swiffered and polished. “Hardwood floors?” he asks.

“Yep. Hardwood. Yellow pine,” the realtor/vampire says. “Just wait until you see the kitchen!”

The kitchen is fully furnished with stainless steel appliances that look as though they were installed yesterday. Already Buffy and Spike are imagining the refrigerator completely covered in Daniel’s finger paintings. The recessed track lighting reveals another blemish-free hardwood floor and plenty of room for a large kitchen table. The window over the sink overlooks a yard where there is a small playhouse with its own deck porch.

“The family here had a son. Sometimes he would sleep out there,” the realtor/vampire explains. “Oh, and by the way, this house is close to the elementary school. But, I guess that’s not really a concern for you two.”

“No, we have a son,” Buffy says, looking at the playhouse covetously, thinking this is the best feature she’s seen so far.

“You do?” the realtor/vampire asks. “I learn something new about our species every day! I didn’t think we could---

“You can’t,” Spike says, trying to spare the neophyte vamp of any delusions of re-starting the ticking of her biological clock “But I did.”

“But how?” she asks, still floored.

“We’re still not really sure, but, hey. It happened,” Buffy shrugs. “Honey, can’t you just see Daniel out there playing for hours and hours? And she’s right. The elementary school is just around the corner. That would cut down on my driving time in the morning.”

Spike nods and smiles. “That would mean a little bit more time for…” He winks at her and inserts his thumbs into the front pockets of her jeans.

Buffy nearly blushes as she catches the implications of his words.

“Would you like to see the bedrooms?” the realtor/vampire asks.

The pair follows the realtor/vampire up the newly carpeted twelve steps to the second floor. The realtor/vampire is close behind them and she instructs them to turn right at the top of the stairs. Down the long corridor an ivory-colored door opens to a large room that is entered by two steps leading down to yet another hardwood floor.

“Wow!” Buffy says, her voice echoing. “It’s so huge!”

“There were bunk beds in here. Where the son and a friend could sleep,” the realtor/vampire says.

“And the parents?” Buffy asks.

“Down the hall. The crowning glory of the whole place,” the realtor/vampire gushes.

Buffy and Spike are led down the hall now to a giant room that could very contain their whole apartment. When the door is opened, it appears they are looking at a gymnasium.

“The former owners had a California King bed in here. They put it right in the middle of the room.”

Buffy and Spike are looking back at the hallway, thinking it will be a suitable runway for Daniel’s early morning take-off’s in which he lands in their bed and giggles at Spike and squeals, “Daddy’s naked! Daddy’s naked!”

“You should see the bathtub. The lady of the house used to love her baths,” the realtor/vamp tells them.

Buffy opens the door to what she thinks is some kind of a woman’s paradise. The immaculate blue tiled floor leads to a sunken Jacuzzi tub. To the right of the tub is a separate shower with gold fixtures, completely enclosed in glass. There are two marbled sinks and plenty of space between the sinks for Buffy’s jumble of beauty products and sweet perfumes. She is looking at herself in the mirror, entranced by how large her pupils look in the light of the two dozen 75 watt bulbs that glow around the mirror above the sinks. The one who can’t look in the mirror is lowering himself into the Jacuzzi tub, dreaming of how the jets will hit him in all the right places.

When Buffy eyes her husband, in such sublime ecstasy, she can’t help wanting to join him in his pretend bath. She makes her way over to the tub and gets in with him. She is thinking about all the vanilla-scented nights she will have in this bath and all the trouble she will have getting out, especially if Spike is with her. His arms enfold her as she rests her head against her chest. The realtor/vampire knows her presence is no longer needed and she pads down the hall for the duration of the permanent newlywed’s bathtime.

“This is perfect!” Buffy says gleefully.

“Yes, it is,” Spike says, resting his head against the back of the tub in a gentle sigh.

“So what do you think?” Buffy asks as her husband strokes her hair.

“I think this is a dream,” he replies, kissing her left temple.

“It’s probably really expensive,” Buffy sighs. “Hardwood floors? A stone fireplace? A Jacuzzi tub? All add up to something Buffy and Spike can’t afford.”

“$550,000,” the realtor/vamp says from the hallway.

Buffy frowns as Spike dampens her forehead with another succulent kiss. “See? Something we can’t afford.”

“So we can’t get this house,” he says to her. “We can refinance. And I can look about getting one of those under the table jobs myself.” He smirks and laughs. “God. When a man says that, it sounds so naughty.”

“You’d really go out and get a job?”

“Of course. I have many, many talents.”

“Under the table?”

“You know what I do under the table is among my many talents,” he says, snaking his tongue out between his teeth.

“Bad boy!” she says, playfully slapping him.

“Yeah, but you love the bad boy.”

“But I love the good boy too,” she says, swirling her fingertip over one of his pronounced pecs.

“Good boy’s only here because you loved the bad boy, sweetheart.”

Buffy smiles up at her sweet husband. He has always been able to put things in perspective for her, even when they were bitter enemies. She knows there has never been a person alive or dead who knows her as well as Spike does. Sometimes their simpatico takes her breath away.

“My baby,” she says, cupping his chin in her hand and inclining her mouth for a kiss.

Just now, a cell phone rings.

Buffy pats herself down for the cell phone, but she doesn’t have it. Spike rifles a hand inside his jacket and extracts the Nokia both he and his wife use when they are out and about and slaying. Someone is calling them from home.

“Yeah,” Spike says as he strokes his wife’s hair. The he suddenly goes stiff and clutches his head. “Daniel, what’s the matter? Daniel…Daniel, calm down. What’s wrong?”

Buffy can hear her son sobbing on the other end. “What is it?” she asks, her heart fluttering.

“I don’t know. He’s not making any sense. Something about my being allergic to cancer or something.”

Buffy grabs the phone, commandeering the situation with the hush of her soothing words. “Daniel, honey, Mommy and Daddy are coming home right now. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t want Daddy to die!” Daniel says through uncontrollable sobs.

“Honey, it’s OK. We’re coming home. Don’t cry, sweetie. Please don’t cry. We’ll be home very, very soon.”

“You’re coming home right now?” Daniel sniffles.

“Yes. Right this very minute. I love you, sweetie.”

“I love you too, Mommy. Come home!”

“We are. We are right now.” Buffy snaps the phone shut and leaps out of the tub, offering a helping hand to her husband. “We gotta go.”

“I sensed that,” Spike says, taking his wife’s hand. “Is he OK?”

Buffy shakes her head. “He seemed kind of freaked. He needs us.”

Halfway down the stairs, the realtor/vamp calls to them.

“Hey, you guys! Are you taking the house?” she asks.

Buffy and Spike look at each other, knowing that in their wildest dreams they couldn’t even begin to own such a house.

Somewhere in the middle of Oak Street, Buffy is still wiping the vampire dust off her champagne-colored jacket.

“I’m glad we killed her,” Buffy says, “Showing us something we could never have.”

“I think we’ll still find something. Perhaps not as nice as that house, but something just for us,” Spike answers, his steely gaze aimed at the horizon where there is the most luminous moon he has ever seen. It is orange and aglow with equal parts of smog and sun. He draws Buffy closer to him as they head towards the brilliant moon. He only hopes this is a harbinger of something good.