TITLE:
Darkest Before Dawn 31 "Tame"
AUTHOR: Nmissi
PART:31/?
DISCLAIMER: I own Nothing and No one.
Especially not Spike. If I did,
what makes you think I'd share him with you?
DISTRIBUTION: Want it? Take it. Just let me know where it's going.
Feedback:
Please. Nmissi@aol.com
SUMMARY: The way the world would work if I wrote the Buffyverse.
She paused inside the doorway,
taking in the scene laid before her with new eyes. The living room, to her
left, was disheartening. Beer cans lined the coffee table. Today's newspaper
lay spread about the floor, in pieces. As she walked into the room, she tripped
over a boot.
Her ire rose with each step. Beer
cans. Cigarette ashes on the carpet. Dirty socks in the floor.
She was supposed to bring a baby
into filth like this?
Oh God. Where did that thought come
from? Buffy had been very carefully NOT thinking about it as a "Baby". No
matter how she juggled the dates, no way could she make this kid Riley's. Which
meant that it was Spike's- an irony too twisted to contemplate.
"There's one the Council of Watchers
didn't have a prophecy for." She said to herself, "Nope. I don't think there's
a big dusty book out there someplace warning that William the Bloody was going
to get a heartbeat and a healthy sperm count."
She picked up the beer cans and
tucked them into the crook of her arm, as she went on in to the kitchen. She
tossed them at the recycle bin, as Spike greeted her.
"Morning, Sunshine."
He was sitting at the kitchen table,
sipping on a can of Budweiser and reading the classifieds. One bare foot was
propped on the edge of the table.
He was also
smoking. In fact, the entire room was a little hazy with it.
She sat her purse down on the table,
and spoke to him.
"Spike, You can't smoke in the house
anymore. You'll have to move it out onto the back porch."
He looked at her in disbelief.
" And just when did you become the
poster girl for the temperance society?" he asked.
She looked at him in bewilderment.
"Huh?"
He shook his head at her.
"I mean, it's one thing you giving
up the smokes. Fine. Bully for you- Always thought it was a nasty, unfeminine
habit for a woman anyway."
She opened her mouth to go off on
him, but he shut her down with a glare.
"And hey- More Ciggies for me that
way. But what gives? You don't like them anymore, so you're telling me I can't
smoke them in here? I have to go lurk in the bushes again?"
He snorted at her.
"That's hypocrisy, Slayer."
Enough. She'd had more than enough.
It was choking her in here. She opened the windows and the back door, and
flipped on the fan.
He made mocking noises behind her
back.
"Oh, come off it, woman. It can't
bother you that bad; you were smoking them yourself last week."
She whirled on him, angry and
unthinking.
"They're bad for the baby."
As soon as the words were out of her
mouth, she wished them back. This was not the way she'd meant to break the
news. Okay, she hadn't really come up with a way to tell him yet, but she was
relatively certain this one was not in the top ten recommended ways to inform
the prospective parent.
He looked at her askance, his head
cocked to one side.
"Come again?" he asked.
She strode over to him, and reached
into the side pouch of her purse, pulling out brochures from the clinic, lots
of pretty pamphlets detailing her options as a Young Unwed Knockup. Everything
from natural childbirth, to legal abortion- All bases covered. It was standard
fare at the campus clinic.
She tossed them out onto the table
before him.
"I'm six weeks pregnant. Put out
that damn cigarette before I do it for you; someplace on your skin."
He ground the fag to a blackened
stub, inside the green glass ashtray, and struggled to make sense of what she
was saying.
"Buffy, I-"
His brow furrowed, as he searched
for the right words.
"I don't understand."
She gave him an ugly smile, hard and
cynical.
"Oh, come ON, Spike. You're how old?
I'm sure you know how it works. You've shared my bed for months."
"But I didn't- Buffy I swear- I
didn't think we could-"
She shrugged at him then.
"It didn't occur to me either,
Spike. I mean, I thought the ONE thing I might not have to worry about, being
with a vampire, was the whole "protection" issue. No "Will he or won't he,
Should I be the one to bring it up?"
She gave him a hard look.
"Angel had already explained it to
me. You guys are dead, and life can't come from dead things."
She turned her back to him, and
started stacking dishes in the sink.
"I didn't even consider-."
She stopped filling the sink, and
turned back around to him.
He was still sitting at the table,
the pile of papers in his hands.
"You know, I'm tired. I think I'm
gonna go upstairs and get a nap."
He looked up as she left the room.
Then with shaking hands he collected his beer and his ashtray, and went out
onto the porch.
They'd penciled her next appointment
date onto a little white card. He turned it over in his hand.
Somehow, this made it all more real.
He was really human, there would be no going back. He'd been existing in a sort
of mental limbo; a vampire in a human shell. He'd counted time in bottles of
Jack Daniels, in cans of beer, in cigarette butts. For the first time he realized he was no longer outside of time;
but moving with it. He was aging, changing. Every day was one day less he had
left to spend on this earth. He would henceforth count time in minutes, days,
years. And some sixty or seventy of them from now, he would lie down and die.
If he didn't pop off in a fight
sometime before that. Or contract lung cancer. Or get cirrhosis of the liver.
Yeah, that was more like it. He
might still have some demonic strength, some advanced healing abilities- But he
was mortal. He could die.
He hadn't really given it a great
deal of thought before now.
His eyes stared out, unseeing, into
the morning light. In his mind's eye, he could make out the faces of children,
he could see again his sisters and his brothers, as they'd been in life, as
they'd been in the nursery, round baby faces, drooling baby smiles, rosy baby
cheeks.
His mind wandered out to the faces
of his victims. There were children among their number as well. Angelus LIKED
children. And in the first, early years of his turning, William had tried
desperately to prove himself to his grandsire, to prove himself demon enough to
deserve his affection.
Oh yes, there had been a great many
children in those early years, because Angelus liked the easy kill of a
frightened innocent. He'd lacked Spike's taste for the chase and for the
battle.
Infants were fragile, and delicate.
They got sick easily. They were incredibly breakable. He remembered the feel of
their small bodies in his hands, the way their bones crunched-
Spike leaned in to the hydrangea
bushes and vomited up two pints of Jack Daniels and half a beer. His stomach
heaved itself empty, but the shudders continued, as his brain replayed the
events of his past for him in living color. He sprawled on the wooden deck
stairs, resting his head against the railing as he fought to catch his breath.
Finally the dry heaves ceased, and
he got slowly, tiredly to his feet. He trudged back inside of the house.
His eyes swept over the countertop,
where his bottles of liquor were lined up enticingly. Their colorful bottles
promised sweet oblivion, a world without miracles, or babies, or sweet little
girls who might die on you one day. They promised to make him forget it all,
everything that tormented him.
But the papers on the table caught
his eye again, and he walked over and leafed through them.
Dietary recommendations. A
prescription for prenatal vitamins. "Baby Roulette- What every mother should
know about teratogens."
There was also another booklet,
underneath the vitamin prescript. "So you're about to become a family!"
A pretty couple cuddled on its front cover, clutching a disgustingly
pink-cheeked infant.
"Bollocks. I'm not some domesticated
'Husband'. And I'm definitely not the 'Daddy' type."
Nonetheless, he found himself at the
sink again. He washed up the dishes, leaving them on the drainboard to dry.
Then he looked over his bottles, and began opening them up. One by one, he
poured them each down the sink. Stolichnaya vodka, Jim Beam and Jack Daniels,
good Kentucky bourbon and fine malt scotch, all piled into the recycle bin. He
then fetched himself a beer from the fridge.
He stopped at one this time.