Chapter 7: Blessings
"Augggh!"
The scream incited a wave of panic in Buffy immediately. She sprang upright from her comfortable groove in the sofa where she spent most of the quiet afternoon reading and tensed at the sound of her best friend's cry, poised for a fight. She instinctively grabbed a nearby stake. "Willow?!" She stormed the stairs and down the hall, bursting into the master bedroom expecting to see a tentacled, three-headed monster or a serpent-headed Medusa of darkness overtaking her helpless friend. You just never knew what to expect on a Saturday on the Hellmouth.
The one thing she didn't expect to see was Willow in front of the full-length mirror with her shirt propped up over her belly, wringing her hands in dismay. "My stomach!" she screamed.
Buffy gazed down, still jarred with fleeting worry, at Willow's slightly bulging stomach. " . . . Looks fine to me," Buffy replied confusedly. Suddenly straightening with delayed worry, Buffy's eyes went wide with fear. "Is the baby alright? Are you hurting?"
"Am I hurting?! Of course I'm hurting!" I can't fit into my jeans anymore! My favorite jeans with the kitty diamond patch on them, I just bust out of them! God, I'm hideous!"
Buffy relaxed, contrasting with Willow's frantically anxious manner. "Oh. Willow, is that all? You look great."
"Easy for you to say," Willow screeched. "You're Miss Size-Zero Princess, you're not sporting the latest in pot-belly fashions like I am!"
Buffy chuckled at her best friend's spontaneous vanity. "Willow, it doesn't matter, you're beautiful all the same." It was true. To tell the truth, she had never seen Willow so beautiful, though obviously the fact that she was carrying her child left her slightly biased. The pregnancy added curves and roundness to usually stick-straight thin Willow and made her softer somehow. It made Willow finally stop looking like a sprite, more like a woman.
"Again speaking from that rail-thin standpoint. With your Slayer workout routine, you'd never have to worry about turning into a Pudgy Peggy like me. Oh goddess! I can barely see my toes!"
"That's because you're wearing socks," Buffy deadpanned with a smile.
Willow sighed. "I can't handle this Buffy. This is starting to be real. I'm starting to get into moods. I make trips to the bathroom as often as a person uses a word with the letter "e" in it. And worst of all, I look like a whale."
"Willow, if you looked like a whale, it would be an anorexic Free Willy at the most." She started to laugh, but judging by Willow's stony expression, this joke didn't do much to ease her worry. Sighing, she sat down on the bed, with Willow settling next to her. "Look, I know this is hard for you. I'd say it's hard for all of us, but I'd be lying, because I have no idea how you're feeling right now." Buffy resisted listening to the voice in her head that reminded her that she wanted more than anything to have an idea of how Willow was feeling. "The only thing I can tell you is to stay strong. I know it might be selfish, imposing my child on you and everything."
Willow straightened. She didn't know why, but the words "my child" bothered her. At first, she knew that she'd say those words with relief, comforting in the implication that she had nothing to do with this child and that her womb was a casual kind of boarding house for the miracle child. But now . . . it's not like she had fully accepted the idea of this child. She had yet to embrace the baby growing inside her without apprehension and worry. But she was slowly getting used to it. And getting used to it meant becoming more aware of the fact that it wasn't simply Buffy and Spike's child. This child would have never existed if it wasn't for Willow using the majicks. She was the one who had inadvertently grasped the child's essence from some faraway, alternate universe and brought it into being. And even if it was just a byproduct of some horrible and chaotic and terrible mess that Willow had caused, it still meant that it was as much of Willow's child as it was Buffy's . . . Wasn't it?
"Oh . . . it's . . . it's okay," Willow replied, donning breeziness. "Kind of imposed it on myself when I decided to go on Wiccapolooza and stick my nose in dimensions it didn't belong."
Buffy smiled sincerely. "I can't tell you how proud I am of you."
Willow cocked her eyebrows. "Buffy, you are aware that we were just discussing my magic-bingeing, Armageddon-aspiring escapades just a sentence before, aren't you? I don't think it's much cause for pride."
"Yeah, but you rebounded from that. All by yourself. You fought through all the struggles and setbacks and here you are, stronger than ever. And this . . . this gets inconveniently dumped on you and you just take it in stride. I . . . I don't even know if I could do it."
Willow placed a warm hand over Buffy's. "I know you could."
Buffy nodded, but wondered if she's ever get the chance to find out. Suddenly, Spike sleepily stumbled into the room, wiping the daylong nap out of his eyes. "What the bollocks is going on?" he yawned. "I wake up to the sound of hysterical shrieking, can't a gent catch a few Zs now and then in this house?"
Buffy turned away from Willow to her irate boyfriend. "Sorry honey, Willow had some standard pregnancy jitters. No big."
Spike nodded and collapsed into the queen-sized bed heavily. "Right. Freaked out when you realized your Levis are a little snugger than usual?" he murmured with his head buried in the pillows.
Willow frowned maddeningly, alarmed that he had guessed so easily. "Is it so obvious?! I knew it! I'm just one walking tub of lard!"
Buffy smacked one of Spike's black-clad legs. "Thanks a lot, Oh-Tactful-One. I had just repaired the damage and you lurch in just to smash it into insecure pieces all over again."
"Don't mention it." Spike's voice came muffled from the pillows.
"I think I'll weigh myself again," Willow whimpered. "See if I've gained an weight in the last two minutes." Getting up, she scrambled to the bathroom.
Buffy frowned at the drowsy vampire's form. "You know, you could try and be more understanding with Willow. This is hard for her."
Spike rolled and sat up, propping himself on his elbows. "This is hard for me. Dragging myself to daylight doctor's appointments, compromising my space for a hormonal, yelping witchlet."
"A hormonal, yelping witchlet that's carrying your child," Buffy reminded.
Spike groaned and covered his face with a pillow. "I know. It's a miracle. It's a godsend. An almighty bloody blessing. But does that mean I'm gonna have to go sleep-deprived for the next nine months?"
Incensed, Buffy hit him with a pillow, but with her Slayer strength, it was considerably more injuring than a playful pillow fight. "God Spike, how selfish can you get? This is our child we're talking about." How could he be so complacent about this? How could he only care about garnering more hours of sleep for his already lazy-ass itinerary of 18 hours a day? This was the man she dreamed about having a child with and he didn't even care now that child existed.
"Yeah, yeah it's our child. But it doesn't feel like it does it? It's Willow's, more like. She's the one who gets the morning bouts of nausea, she's the one who keeps the little critter alive and kickin'. She's the one who wakes up with it and goes to bed with it. I mean, if it was you, I guess it would come naturally. It would feel more like mine I suppose. I would be able to help you and be with you when you got sick. I'd be able hold you and the baby in the arms when we go to bed at night. That connection with you----that would make the whole idea of this kid even more real. I would be able to understand it like I understand you. But it being Willow's . . . I don't know, it's just beyond me."
Buffy sat still at stared at Spike. One thing that constantly annoyed her about her boyfriend was his great capacity for cutting straight to the issue. He was right, she knew that the child Willow was carrying was her baby . . . but she didn't feel it. Even the love she felt for it was hazy. It was like some warm, cloudy emotion for something she couldn't recognize or touch. This child was merely an abstraction to the three of them and she wondered when it would ever stop feeling that way. Suddenly down, she crawled over and spooned herself into Spike was he lay sprawled on the bed. He began stroking her bare arm as she rested her head on his chest and stared wistfully at the ceiling.
"Spike, if you could have a child with me, would you?" she asked, sounding as lost as a child. Now why did she ask that? She knew full well that he would say.
Spike leaned up over her and looked at her seriously as she knew he would. "Buffy, of course you know I would. I would give anything to. It would make me the happiest man on earth to have a child with you. Well, even happier at least."
She smiled wanly. She knew that would be his answer. And yet, she needed to hear it. Maybe, just maybe, if she knew that he wanted this as much as she did, they could just wish it into existence. But it was futile. The way wishing that she wasn't the slayer, that she was just a normal girl and that Spike was a normal boyfriend with no allergic affliction to sunlight was futile. After all these years, she still longed for a normal life as much as she did as flighty teenager who merely wanted to curl up with a Seventeen on a Friday night. Why couldn't she ever accept the blessings she had been given? It had taken her forever to see Spike as a blessing, what if it would take as long to accept this child?
"This child will make you happy, Spike. This will make us both happy." She whispered, burying her face into the crook of his neck as if she was seeking secret assurance there.
"Mmmm," Spike responded, already drifting back to sleep.
Just then, Willow meandered back into the room, hearing Buffy's affirmation. She suddenly felt impossibly lonely at the sight of the lovers comfortably holding onto each other in a way she hadn't done for a long time. Almost instinctively, her hand went to her stomach, pressing hard against the bulge and wishing for a blessing of her own.
AN's: Just to clarify and in response to one reviewer's worries, this fic will not turn into a Willow/Spike ship. This is strictly a Buffy/Spike affair, and most respectfully, bollocks to anyone who can't stand that ship. The world is a better place because of it ;). Also, sorry for the hold-up in updating, I've also updated my other fic "Fortunate Son" if anyone wants to check that one out. Thanks to those who have reviewed, you guys are frankly what make the world so nice, lol. Oh and also, I recommend checking out my first original work here called "The Swiss Army Romance" for anyone who wants to venture out of the Buffy world of fiction. It's not too bad, hope you'll check it out.
