CHAPTER TWELVE
In the middle of her fourth month of pregnancy, Buffy rediscovers her appetite. Unfortunately for Spike, this occurs most often in the middle of the night.
Buffy lies on her back, alternately hugging the covers to her chin and shoving them all to the foot of the bed. She can't seem to get her pillows exactly right either. With just one, the cushioning isn't soft enough. With two, there's too much elevation. Spike, on the other hand, has been sleeping soundlessly for more than two hours, turned on his side, completely oblivious to her restlessness, though at times her violent shifts have jostled his white head from its resting place.
She can't stop thinking about something she saw in the paper today, something she had to read over and over again before she could finally believe it. And the memory of it is making her mouth water.
At last she rolls over on her side to look at her lover, silent and sweet in his slumber. She hates to do this, but if she doesn't, she will not sleep. And a girl in her condition needs her rest.
"Hey," she whispers, poking Spike in the shoulder. "Hey!" she tries again, more insistently this time.
His eyes flutter open as he jerks awake. "What's wrong? Are you in pain?"
"No. No! Nothing like that. It's just that I was thinking. They have this new Breyer's ice cream. It's Almond Joy flavored."
Spike blinks back at his girlfriend for several minutes before what she is saying completely registers. "Buffy, I was sleeping!"
"Yeah, I know. But I wasn't. Because I was thinking about the ice cream and how I want some."
He stares back at her, incredulously. "You mean, right now?"
"Well, yeah," she answers slowly, suddenly bashful in his gaze.
He flips over onto his back, lying with a hand fanned over his face. He looks over at the clock through his fingers. It's twenty after two. Just when he's finally getting used to sleeping at night, this is what she pulls…
"I don't suppose you'd settle for an ice cream brunch, say, around elevenish tomorrow?"
"But that's hours from now!" she whines, prodding the back of his naked calf with her toes. "Please, honey? I mean, it's all I can think about right now. Nuts, chocolate, coconut…and it's in ice cream! It's, like, a pregnant woman's dream!"
He still can't believe what she asking him to do. And moments later, when he's on his feet and looking for his clothes, he can't believe he's actually going to do it.
Love's bitch, he says to himself as he shoves his tee shirt into his jeans. I am love's bitch. Love's sodding lap dog. Love's constant concubine. Love's bleeding---
"Thank you, honey," she says, eyes shining in gratitude.
She looks so lovely in her contentment now, extending her hand to him. Under the whisper thin sheet, he can discern the rise of her burgeoning breasts and under them, the concave belly that makes itself more and more evident every day. Just this evening she was in the kitchen, reaching up into the cupboards to put away the dinner dishes, he caught a glimpse of the undercarriage of her belly cradled in the waistband of her sweatpants.
He can't help smiling as he takes her hand. "All I can say is, I'm getting some when I get back," he warns, kissing her across her knuckles.
"Don't worry. I'll share it with you."
He leans in close to her now, growling into her ear, "That's not what I meant."
"Oh. Oh! Well, I guess."
The blush he is still able to inspire in her cheeks cheers him.
He gives her a wink before shoving off. "Just don't make a habit of this."
"I won't. I promise," she says resolutely. "But just in case, maybe you'd better stock up. I'm going to be pregnant for a long time."
A few nights later, there is a repeat performance. Only this time, it's beef jerky she wants.
"I'm sorry," she says as Spike stumbles around the room collecting his clothes. "It's just that Travis and Dawn finished off the ice cream today and I was watching TV and there was this Slim Jim commercial. And I thought about how I haven't had a Slim Jim in a long time. Then we had dinner and I wasn't hungry anymore, but now I am."
"Right," Spike says, pulling on his boots. "Slim Jims."
"They usually have them right by the register at the Stop n' Gulp," she says. "You won't have to look for them."
"Fine."
"Thank you, honey," she says, running a hand through the springy curls on top of his head.
He can still smile at this point at the enchantment in her appreciative purr.
Five nights later, it's frozen Snickers bars she wants. Then, two days after that, cheap frozen pizza. On this particular night, it's Velveeta on Club crackers she pines for.
He turns to her before he leaves, thinking about what she said when she started having these cravings. I'm going to be pregnant for a long time… "Buffy, do you suppose you could have one of your prophetic dreams that might tell us what you might be fancying next in the middle of the night?"
"Nah," she says, pulling her knees to her chest as much as she can. "I wish I could. It would take the guesswork out of my weekly grocery trips. Besides. The last dream I had was about all my teeth falling out and I was trying to find a dentist to put them back in, but all the dentists in town went to Las Vegas to work for Seigfried and Roy."
A few nights later, Spike wakes to Buffy stroking his cheek gently, saying over and over again, "Wake up, honey. Wake up."
He automatically sits up and slides his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing his face. "What is it this time? Those Fudge Oreos we saw a commercial about tonight?" He is seriously thinking about canceling their cable service. But that would mean disconnecting TVLand. And Hogan. Hogan!
"No," she replies.
"Those new tortilla chips you can find in the aisle right next to Pringles?"
"No," she says, tickling the back of his neck.
"Kraft Macaroni and cheese?"
"No."
"Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing?"
"No," she says. "It's nothing I want you to get for me. It's something I want you to feel." She grabs his hand and drags it over to her stomach.
Under his flattened palm, over the warmth of her flesh, there is something just skimming the underside of her belly in its floatation inside of her.
He turns, pressing his hand closer to her skin, hoping to feel more.
"I woke up and I felt this fluttering. Like a blind moth had lost its way inside of me. And then I felt it from the outside," she explains.
"Oh," she says. It seems the little thing is shy to touch. Maybe his cold pat is sending him away. But he felt that first small quiver. He has seen him. He has heard him. And now he has felt him.
Every once in a while the thought seizes her that she is no more capable of taking care of a child than she is solving the problems between the Israelis and the Palestinians. When her mother died, the bottom dropped out in her life and all things that were real to her vanished. The bond with her mother was the only real relationship in her life. Though Dawn is as true a sister as she could have and she is made from her blood, she is not really her sister. This is hard for her to believe when the memories trot themselves out in her mind for show. The Barbie hair-cutting incident…the actual haircutting incident in which Buffy cut Dawn some jagged bangs with her blunt scissors, the time when Dawn read Buffy's diaries, the time when Buffy read Dawn's diaries, the time Dawn thought Angel was evil, the time Buffy thought Angel was evil…
But this baby.
She is so scared sometimes she feels like she cannot hold on. She feels so beyond control at times that she thinks someone else has commandeered her life and she's watching from the sidelines. She is so helpless some days that she wants her mother to come back, just for one day, to hold her and tell her everything will be all right.
But then she has that feeling. That sense of rightness. For every time she is paralyzed with fear for what is to be, she is pacified by moments like these when she sees her lover's hand sliding over her stomach and the joy in his face, more prominent than the high cheekbones, more vivid than the blue of his azure gaze.
"I think the show is over for tonight," she says, drawing her fingers through his hair and placing a kiss on his non-pulsating temple.
He leans his head against her stomach once again, inviting the swoosh of the baby's heartbeat into his ear canal. His hand remains there, all night, just in case there's an encore.
A few nights later, Buffy is lying awake again. She whispers into his ear, "Almond Joy."
He can all but set his inner alarm to these awakenings now. All of his clothes are at the ready, so that he can just slip them on and be off.
"The ice cream or the candy bar?" he asks, swinging his coat onto his shoulders.
"Both!" she says giggling, pulling the covers over her mouth, just enjoying the pre-sugar high giddiness of her request.
At the supermarket, the obviously sleep-deprived checker slides the carton of ice cream not once, not twice, but three times over the scanner before the price registers. She stifles a yawn as she asks, "Expecting a baby?"
Apparently not only is Buffy starting to show, but so is he.
"Yeah," he says, passing a five-dollar bill to the checker.
"Thought so. When I was pregnant, I was sending my husband out all the time at night for everything from deviled ham to olive loaf."
Spike nods as he takes the change in his hand. He stuffs the dollar bill and coins into the front pocket of his jeans and heads for the automatic doors.
It's dead quiet tonight, and for a moment he thinks he's the only creature stirring at this hour. As he's making his way to the DeSoto, he hears something, coming from the rear of the supermarket. It's unmistakable to him as to what it is. It's the sound of a woman's desperate scream.
Quickly, he throws the groceries into the front seat and runs in the direction of the now strangulated cry. Looks like he's in for a spot of violence before bed. And this was supposed to be his night off.
In the alleyway behind the supermarket, the scene is revealed to him in shades of black and gray, but it could not be made any clearer to him even if he were viewing it all in bright colors. A woman struggles under the hulking figure of a vampire, her eyes wide with terror, her fingers clawing uselessly at her attacker's back.
"Tacky, tacky, tacky," Spike says, clicking his tongue as he strolls in the alleyway.
His words temporarily distract the vampire who growls his displeasure at the interruption of his meal.
"You must be new, otherwise you would know that this is not the way we do things around her," Spike says, extracting a stake from the inside of his jacket.
The vampire must think that his quick snack is not worth the fight because all at once, he pitches the sobbing woman to the ground and takes off.
"Hey! Come back here! You don't run away from a staking! It's bad manners!" Spike yells after the vampire. He throws the stake, knowing that he's hit the mark when the figure bows and disappears into flakes of monochromatic dust. He shakes his head disapprovingly. "These young ones today. All cowards. Afraid of their own shadows, they are."
He turns his attention now to the woman on the pavement, still choking out her hysteria.
"You all right?" he asks, offering his hand to help get her to her feet.
She lifts her face to his. Smudges of mascara star her eyes as the tears continue to fall. Suddenly, she springs from the ground and propels herself into Spike's arms.
"Oh, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she lets out in one sob-throttled blast as she clutches him.
Spike's arms remain stiff at his side. This is not the reaction he was expecting to say the least. As thrown as he is by the woman's actions, he is beginning to see something he has not noticed before. The woman isn't a woman at all. She's a young girl, maybe not even eighteen yet. She is wearing a perfume fragrant with wild berries and even through her tears she is still chewing on a piece of gum. The warmth of her arms is permeating the density of his leather coat and he shivers as though someone has run an ice cube down his back.
"I was sooo scared. I kept thinking, 'Please don't kill me, please don't kill me,' but I couldn't say it. God, I'm supposed to graduate from high school in June!"
There is something else he is noticing now: the scent of her shed blood soaking her store-issued blue blouse. It's right under his nose and she is holding him in such a way that he cannot turn his face. Her wild, curly hair is obscuring the marks her attacker left, but his keen eyes discern the red streaking the blond locks, making them appear amber in patches. Without any effort at all, he inhales deeply, the scent now coating the insides of his nostrils, coursing down his throat, warming his stomach. A flicker of a flame ignites inside of him as though from a fire stamped out and smothered and thought safe to be left unattended. He is suddenly taken by an urge so potent he is dizzy with need and hunger. His inner self shakes himself awake and before he can coax that part of him back into its slumber, a low growl emerges from his lips. He feels his head being dragged by an invisible force to the girl's neck
The familiarity of the alleyway resurrects the plaintive voice of his beloved, asking him between pants and thrusts, "You won't kill, will you? Promise you won't kill." And he hears himself swear to her again that he won't.
His head snaps back now. With all the strength he can muster, he tears the girl away from him. He ducks his head so that she can't see that while in her embrace, he rediscovered his demon.
"Run," he says in a low voice, steadying himself by bracing his hands against his thighs.
Startled, the girl stammers, "Wha---? Is something wrong?"
"I said run!" he howls.
He hears a bit of hesitation in her first steps away, but then she breaks out into a full gallop. When he doesn't hear her footfalls on the pavement anymore, he rises slowly from his crouched position, a vague sickness causing him to sway.
He takes a few steadying breaths. He puts a hand to his face, feeling the coarse bumps across his forehead. He traces his cheekbones to his mouth, drawing his thumb over his fangs, breaking the skin without so much as a wince.
With a shout, he flings himself against the brick, the bones forming the ridge of his cheek nearly shattering on impact. His hands come up to press against the cool surface of the wall. He remains there for many minutes, trembling, afraid that the next step he takes will be in the direction of the girl with the berried perfume and the blood-soaked hair who will graduate high school in June.
"I'm not a monster," he says." "I'm not a monster…I'm not a monster…I'm not a monster."
All of a sudden he hears the wail of a siren piercing the quiet of the night, very near. He can only hope that the young girl is being taken away to the hospital and far away from him.
"Mmm, melty," Buffy says, pulling the lid off her ice cream before delving into it with the spoon she keeps in her bedside table.
Spike still remains at the foot of their bed, having passed the ice cream to her and the candy bar as well. He feels he can't step further because there is something off limits about her tonight, something in his own mind that warns him away.
"You want some?" she asks, offering a dripping spoonful to him.
"No," he answers readily.
"Your loss," she says, taking the spoonful into her mouth.
I shouldn't be allowed near her, Spike thinks to himself. She is only allowing me to come so near because she has convinced herself that I'm not a monster, but I am. I am because tonight---
He tells her everything. He confesses all that happened. He tries to voice his need and he sees her quiver. He sees her draw a protective hand against her stomach.
"OK," she says. "OK. OK," she says, as though repeating "OK" will make everything all right. "But you let her go."
"Because I love you," he can only answer, crawling into bed, black boots making scuffmarks against the floral sheets as he creeps towards her.
But this doesn't answer anything. Over the swell of her belly, Buffy's hand almost touches his. Almost. The inch gap between their fingertips seems like a wide savannah that neither of them can navigate without losing each other completely. They stare at the chasm for many minutes, with the ice cream melting under the heat of the bedside lamp and the night deepening. It's three thirty when Spike undresses and takes his place beside Buffy and they slip into a dreary slumber that couldn't possibly be qualified as rest. Several times Buffy awakes to the gentle agitation of her child paddling restlessly inside of her and she falls back into a prickly sleep. She feels her lover beside her, his back turned to her. The curves of their spines form inverted parentheses in which they fit all the things they can't voice to each other. They awake dead from their mutual restiveness, nearly blind from watching the dark, nearly deaf from the voices in their heads damning them to the break of dawn.