"Will you marry me?"
It was the second time he had asked.
The first time, they were both under the influence of an accidental spell. He couldn't help thinking that it felt kind of the same.
The same rush of adoration every time he looked at her, the same flutter in his stomach whenever she looked back at him. The desire, the need to have her close all the time.
But it also felt kind of different.
This time, his heart was fluttering in his chest as he looked up into her wide, glowing eyes. She stared at the simple diamond ring caught between his thumb and forefinger – so much more elegant than his own silver band, which had served the purpose last time – and then into his eyes.
As he watched, her rosebud mouth changed from a tiny 'o' of surprise to the ecstatic grin he loved and then she was in his arms, her laughter bubbling in the air as she squealed "yes," in his ear over and over again.
"Hello in there," he whispered against the silky skin of her belly. "Little Buffy,"
Her hands brushed gently against his hair, stroking the curls with a touch as soft as a feather.
"Or little Spike," she said sleepily, and when she took a breath in, his head rose and fell with her body.
She'd only found out this morning, while he was out picking up Dawn from the airport, and when she told him, her face was lit up, one hand already hovering over her stomach. He was floating in a surreal bubble. Everything was soft and perfect and glowing. First there had been the two of them, and now there would be three.
He placed his palm beside his cheek, stroking his thumb across the flat skin of her belly. How long would it be before the first signs of life would become visible to the outside world?
"No!"He roared, "No way was that fair!"
Buffy pulled half-heartedly at his arm, but there was no stopping him now. The snooty upper-class kid who had gotten away with pushing over their son was not half as infuriating as his snooty upper-class father who was refereeing the game.
He jabbed a finger into the referee's chest, a feeling he hadn't experienced in years flooding through him. He was ready to pluck out the scrawnier man's lungs, the lungs that had neglected to blow on his shiny silver whistle on what was clearly a step out of line, and beat him around the head with them.
"You biased, cheating -"
"William, stop it -"
"-slimy, petty-"
"Spike!"
"- nasty little -"
Buffy clamped a hand over her hot-headed husband's mouth and drew on her Slayer strength to drag him away from the referee before he started something everyone else would regret.
The referee was not impressed with the string of insults still coming, muffled, from behind Buffy's palm and shouted something that was entirely inappropriate for a child's football game.
Spike broke free of Buffy's arms and tackled the other man to the ground.
A chubby baby with a mop of sandy blond hair was sitting on a patchwork quilt spread on the living room floor, watching the man on the couch. Her hair was her mother's but her eyes were the iridescent blue that was clearly not just babyhood. They belonged to her father.
The man on the couch looked up from his book, meeting the serious gaze of his daughter. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Spike screwed up his face in a poor attempt at what his features used to contort into, uttering a low growl.
The baby's serious face split into a wide, toothless grin, her tiny body shaking with giggles.
His face softened at the child's amusement. His vampire impression never failed to get a laugh; something that Mummy Dearest was grateful for when her second child was being uncooperative. In fact, the first laugh they had gotten out of the most recent addition to their little family was thanks to a growl and scarred eyebrows pulled down low.
The ex-vampire growled again and his daughter, now red in the face, laughed so hard that she overbalanced onto her side, face-planting on the quilt.
A surprised wail filled the air and Spike dashed across the room, hands outstretched, his amused expression replaced by one of panic.
The boy in the doorway looked at his girlfriend's father in terror. This was the man she had been steering him away from for weeks. She spoke about him often, but the man who doted on her seemed nowhere in the face he was seeing now.
His iridescent irises were hidden slightly by lowered lids, emphasising the faint lines that age had sketched in the corners of his eyes as he looked the boy in the doorway up and down.
His narrowed eyes gave him the look of a predator who was feeling rather hungry.
The boy shifted his weight anxiously.
The scar cutting through the older man's eyebrow kept drawing his attention. Hadn't she said he'd been some sort of street fighter?
He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.
"Dad, have you seen my bag?"
She was standing in the doorway and she looked stunning. Her father's face softened as he met her anxious gaze.
"It's on the front table, remember, pet?"
"Oh! That's right! Thanks," she said quickly, picking up the bag and kissing his cheek. "I'll see you later."
"Now you wait a minute, young lady -"
The door was already shut.
Buffy peered around the same doorway her daughter had been standing in moments earlier.
"He's terrified of you," she commented mildly, coming over to plant a quick kiss on her husband's temple.
An unhappy growl rumbled in his throat; it held no real threat, but over a century of being an animalistic demon meant that some habits died hard.
"Bloody well should be. I don't like the look of him." He added, still glaring at the closed door.
She laughed at that, and he had to give her an incredulous look.
"Oh, please. Do you remember how long it was before anyone in Sunnydale trusted you?"
His mouth twisted into an unhappy line and she kissed his cheek gently, drawing his attention away from the door as her fingers tugged through his curls.
"Uncle William!" Dawn's youngest squealed. "Uncle William, can you tell us another story about the Slayer?"
"Yeah!" her older brother chipped in.
The boy had a taste for the particularly dramatic stories, with lots of slaying.
Spike settled in his chair, a playful smile on his lips as he shook his head.
"I'm too tired," he told them tragically. "Why don't you ask Auntie Buffy? She knows loads better stories than me."
"No! Auntie Buffy always leaves out the good bits."
"She does not,"
"Does so! She didn't even tell us about the time the Slayer killed that gooey demon in her kitchen."
"You told them about that?" Buffy asked in alarm.
She wasn't entirely sure that a wall-crawling demon that suffocated the insane with its saliva was the best bed-time story, but Spike wasn't one to coddle. Much.
"Not everything," he protested.
Not the fact that she only had the knife to kill it with because the vampire stealing from her basement threw it to her.
Not the fact that she went on to marry that same vampire.
He hadn't told them that.
Sunlight streamed down on his salty skin and he could feel the gentle glow warming his body right down to his core. A few metres away, the steady in-and-out whoosh of the ocean made a therapeutic rhythm in the background. With a lazy yawn, Spike rolled onto his side, his sunglasses slipping down his nose a little. He blinked at the girl beside him. Soft, golden hair was streaming out from around her face like liquid, and he was unsurprised to find her eyes already watching him over her own glasses.
She was beautiful.
She was perfect.
She was his everything.
She was his.
He shifted over a few inches, the sand squeaking underneath him, to press his lips gently to hers.
"I love you," he told her, and though he'd said it a hundred times before, he still felt as nervous as the first time he'd known he really meant it.
"I love you, too," she whispered back, and it flooded his body with warmth the sun could never provide, just like the first time he'd known she really meant it.