CHAPTER NINETEEN
About an hour past sundown, Buffy and Spike find themselves at Sunnydale's Wal-Mart Super Center amid throngs of quake victims combing the aisles for Rollbacks and avoiding the occasional spillage. Like many others, they have waited out aftershocks, which, on the Hellmouth, tend to stretch out days beyond the initial quake. After a week, most are assured that the seismic activity is over and they can save their Styrofoam plates for picnics. Hundreds of citizens are now carting away their new lives in paper or plastic.
Buffy is looking at a rack of faux-Fiestaware when Spike slams an economy size pack of baby diapers into the cart.
"Buffy, they have TV's here." Spike says enthusiastically. "Some of them are scratched and dented from the quake, but they work, and they're being sold on the cheap. $150 for a 27-inch Magnavox!"
"Spike, you got Pampers!" Buffy says, feeling the weight of the expensive diapers against the balance of her checking account.
"Yeah? So?"
"So? We can't afford diddly squat if we get those. Daniel's going through about twelve diapers a day. If we buy Pampers, we may as well be wrapping his butt in gold leaf," she says, shoving the offending would-be purchase into his hands.
"Buffy, there is such a thing as being frugal and there are such things as explosive bowel movements that get all over you and everything you own." He puts the Pampers back into her hands. "Think about it."
"I don't have time for this. Do you have to argue with me about everything?" She forces the diapers back into his hands. "Just go and get the store brand, OK?"
"Fine then!" he exhales. "Just don't come crying to me when your favorite halter top gets relegated to the rag pile when Daniel takes one of his epic shits." He turns and walks down the aisle. Midway, he jettisons the diapers, hurling them high into the air and knocking over a row of coolers on the top shelf. From the other side of the aisle someone yowls, "Ouch!" Spike smiles broadly. "Oh, Slayer, dearest," he says in a sing-songy voice. "It seems there is a bit of humanity that needs protecting from a vampire on aisle nine."
She is holding a coffee mug at the time, one that her lover will probably use for his nips of blood. Without even thinking about it, she launches it down the aisle. But her aim is off. She misses him by a hair, by a flaxen hair on his infuriating head.
God, why have I been letting him get to me lately? she wonders to herself, combing her fingers through her hair. She wakes up some mornings and sees him lying beside her and it's just like the old days when they were adversaries: she just wants to beat the crap out of him. It's not that he's changed or that he is less helpful than before. Some mornings he is by Daniel's crib before she is, hearing his cries while she's still clinging to sleep. She finds reasons to be irritated by him more often than she used to. A few mornings ago he went into the bathroom to shower and let one of her silk panties fall from the curtain rod and onto the floor where it was subsequently drenched because even after all this time of living in civilization, he still forgets to put the curtain on the inside. She screamed at him for an hour. Just this afternoon he was singing I Wanna Be Sedated and every time he got to the chorus she wanted to just fling him headfirst outside the window. She views him with a stranger's eyes sometimes, like he's some random subway rider who keeps elbowing her accidentally at every stop. She has often asked herself, "Could I love him more?" Lately she has been asking herself, "Do I love him anymore?"
"It's all right. Everything is going to be all right," he tells her over and over on nights when she can't sleep, when he knows that her mind is fixed on the Hellmouth and what may be coming out of it next, or if there is anything at all. There are the romantic musings he intones while nuzzling her neck and letting his hands roam under her nightgown. "I love your shoulder, Buffy. I wish sometimes I could make myself small and just live on it, rolling my whole body there." She feels nothing. She crawls away to her own side of the bed and he knows, at this point, that following her is a no-no. This doesn't keep him from trying the next night, though.
He sleeps beside her, dead. There's nothing about his countenance that suggests that he is anything other than a dead man when he sleeps. Sometimes his face takes on his demon self and she knows he is either recalling his hunting days or is hungry for a feed. She rises from the bed, takes her leave and sits silently in the den, occasionally curling up on the sofa and drifting off to sleep while reading or just staring off into the darkness. She will listen from time to time to the arguments between the couple in the adjoining apartment, but she can only imagine what they are fighting about. She doesn't understand Spanish.
She doesn't understand what she and Spike are fighting about, if they are fighting at all. When she woke up to the quake, she had a new understanding, a new outlook, and it wasn't something that she welcomed with open arms. This was the realization of the good girl who longs to be bad and has run wild for a time, mad with the notion of being rebellious with her arm around the guy everyone has told her she is too good for. She doesn't know if the novelty had worn off or if he was never the guy she thought he was. At any rate, as she thinks about him in aisle eight of the Super Wal-Mart past seven on a Friday night, she is shocked to hear herself mutter:
"Killer."
Spike is in the baby section, searching for the store brand diapers. His eyes fall on a tube of Desinex and he remembers that Daniel has been having some irritation on his bottom from the multiple changes he goes through in a day. He reaches for the Desinex, but them remembers: they're on a budget. Best to get the store brand to avoid another fight.
Why have we been fighting? He asks himself again. It just seems to him that the earth's restlessness has unleashed a whole lot of trouble, even if they have been unable to discern what exactly is escaping from the Hellmouth this time.
There wasn't anything there, no new energy being emitted. He knows this because he went to the Hellmouth himself one night after patrol. The place was quiet, tomb-like, almost engaging to him. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. Lately the old high school has been a shrine to graffiti artists who stake their claim by leaving such amusements as, "Fried Mayor here" with an arrow drawn towards the ash remains of the snake form still rotting away to nothingness after five years. Further exploration of the ruined space reveals that Jason is still the cool J and Tiffany and Graham as 4-ever.
Nothing new from Hellmouth central. But still, Buffy thinks there is.
He is accustomed to her rejections, but not in their bed, where they have slept together for over a year and have created a child together. These days they retire early, at nine o'clock, and they go to sleep quickly, unless Spike is feeling adventurous and tries again with the seduction. He loves her bare shoulders and he kisses them, laving affection and praise on them. But she always turns away.
At night he dreams horrible things, visions he could never voice to Buffy because she would worry, or, even worse, she wouldn't care. He can't read her these days. He dreams that Daniel is being taken away. He dreams that he sinks his fangs into multiple necks, trying to find the person responsible. His body gorging with blood in his dreams, he wakes thirsty and alone. Then he walks to the kitchen he finds Buffy on the sofa, sound asleep.
He doesn't know what has driven her away from him, because he has been as loving and supportive as any man could be through this. He wakes before she does some mornings and guides the nipple of a bottle of Buffy's expressed milk into Daniel's mouth so that she won't have to get up. But it's never as good as the real thing. Daniel is old enough to tell his parents what he wants. And what he wants is Buffy.
Spike wants Buffy, but not the way she is. After months of warmth and terms of endearment and lusty touches under the covers, she is as distant as she was when he first fell in love with her. She knew whom she was falling in love with. Now she seems to be realizing what she was falling in love with.
He has changed to the point that drinking blood is almost repulsive to him, but he does it because it keeps him alive. He holds Daniel, sees his little, trusting face staring back at him and wants to cry, almost, because he has never known a more innocent face and has never felt such goodness run through him. He is bathed in holy water every time he holds his son and instead of burning, he is baptized.
He looks at the array of baby things, bundling teething rings and cushy toys under his coat. There are so many things to pacify the baby, but not one to appease the mother. He will find it one day.
He shakes his head. "Slayer," is what he says as someone on the loudspeaker begs for customer service at check-out counter fifteen.
Buffy is comparing prices between deli turkey, packaged or sliced, when she hears a feminine voice calling her name. She turns in the direction of the voice and finds a woman, crop-haired and care-worn, lumbering in her path with a cart full of everything from pre-cooked bacon to refrigerator magnets.
"Candyce!" Buffy says, taking a few minutes to put a name to the face.
"Oh my goodness! It's been ages!" Candyce says.
"Yeah. Since last Christmas," Buffy says, seeing many late nights with a screaming baby crammed in the spaces of Candyce's premature wrinkles and wondering if she might be starting a few of her own.
"How've you been? Oh! Silly question. I see how you've been. You've been busy!" she gushes, seeing the baby cradled in the front of the cart. "Wow. When did that happen?"
"About four weeks ago," Buffy replies.
"Oh!" Candyce says. "Boy or girl?"
"Boy. Daniel. His name is Daniel."
"What a little sweetheart!" Candyce breathes as she worms a finger under Daniel's lax hand. "Aren't they great?" she asks as the baby grabs her finger.
"Yeah. A lot of work, but he's wonderful," Buffy says.
"Every woman should be a mother. It's just the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'm sure you feel the same way."
Buffy doesn't answer. She knows there are mothers out there who can sit in sunny rooms with gingham upholstered journals and write in calligraphy all their feelings about babies and getting in touch with one's true self. But all Buffy can think about at the moment is how tired she is and how she just wants to go to bed.
"So, I guess your hubby is home with your little one, huh?" Buffy asks, changing the subject, hoping Candyce doesn't notice her suddenly prickly demeanor.
"Oh. Stuart." Candyce winces. "Oh, gosh," she says, smoothing her hands down either side of her jeans. "This just doesn't get any easier." Candyce takes a deep, steadying breath and anchors herself on the handle of her cart. "Um, Stuart died six weeks ago."
"Oh no. Oh no…" Buffy finds herself saying, goo-brained at uttering anything else in the wake of what Candyce has told her. "Oh, Candyce. I'm so sorry. What happened?"
Candyce shakes her head. "His cancer came back. He was in another round of chemo when he caught pneumonia. His immune system was just too weak to fight it. He went just like that." Candyce's gray eyes well up with tears and she blinks them away bashfully. "Whoo. Every time I think I've cried my last cry, another one catches me by surprise."
Buffy wraps a comforting hand around Candyce's suddenly trembling forearm. "I'm just so sorry, Candyce. You know, I only met him that one time but it seemed that you and Stuart had something very special."
"We did. We really did. But also, we knew we might not have a lot of time together, so we spent every day loving each other as much as we could. Stuart was always optimistic. The day he died, I was sitting by his bed and we were planning our sunroom addition that we hoped to build in the spring. He was really excited about it. All the building materials are still stacked in the yard, covered by a tarp. I think I'm still going to have it built just because, you know, it was something we wanted." Candyce laughs and a few tears spill from her eyes. "He said he could almost see Matthew finding a new territory in the house to claim as his own."
It is strange to Buffy that in her lifetime she has faced snorting demons, hissing vampires and at least one ill-tempered and badly coiffed hell god, but looking at grief, naked and raw grief, is sometimes the scariest thing in the world. In all sorts of situations she can just bound in and take control, but here, with her long-lapsed school acquaintance in such terrible pain, her super powers are completely useless.
"How are you doing? Really?" Buffy asks.
"Oh. I think I'm doing OK. But I've heard it's when people stop asking you, 'Are you doing OK?' that you're really back on track. I'm doing all right, though. I keep telling myself that better days are ahead, that one day I'll actually be able to take a deep breath without letting a sob out. Matthew keeps me going."
At this same time, Spike puts the store brand diapers in Buffy's cart as though already anticipating the child's BM's, shaking his hands upon delivery.
"There you go! One pack of store brand diapers. And a pooper scooper for when the inevitable happens," he says.
Candyce purses her lips as though she has gotten a bitter taste of the tension between Buffy and Spike and she takes a few steps back.
Undaunted by Candyce's shrinking response to his presence, Spike is ever the charmer. "Hello. Do I know you?"
"Spike," Buffy says. "You remember Candyce, don't you?"
Spike nods pleasantly. Buffy thinks she can discern a hint of a wolfish grin in Spike's face as he takes in Candyce's full-figured form.
"Your son is a little angel," Candyce says.
"I beg your pardon!" Spike exclaims heatedly. Then he demurs. "Oh. Right. You mean. Well, thanks. Thank you. We have been very blessed," he says, tightening an arm around Buffy's shoulder.
Buffy knows this show of affection is just for Candyce's benefit, but for a moment she is struck by the strength of his arm and the closeness of his body. How firm he is. In the fluorescent light he does appear dead to the world, his pallor made more intense by the dark clothing he wears. But as his arm leaves her, she feels its absence and wonders why he makes a point at standing two paces away from her, and how, in just a few days' time, they have become so remote. She knows why, though. She can't admit it to herself now, but she knows. She has been thinking about him as being less than human. To her credit, he is. But to his credit, he is not.
A collective memory arises before her senses like a field of sweet scented wildflowers. In the mornings when she is sleepy, barely functioning, not even able to walk to the cradle on steady feet, Spike is awake, albeit still under the seductive pull of drowse. She thinks about the times when she is so exhausted and she feels she will die if she is pushed just an inch further into what, by her birthright, she is already being forced into day by day. Spike is on patrol and he comes home, the dust of his vampire comrades still clinging to the leather of his coat. He reaches for his son and cradles him. "My baby," he says. "My sweet little Daniel."
Even now as the baby is waking from his nap, Spike is quick to shush him and make him know that there is someone around to love him and care for him. He just takes Daniel into his arms and pats his bottom, jiggling him up and down in his arms.
"You're a good father," Candyce says with admiring eyes.
"I try to be," Spike replies, kissing his son on the side of his face.
"Well," Candyce says. "Take care of each other. You have a great little family. You really do." She wheels her cart away from them, leaving the caress of her words.
Daniel is crying in short spurts against Spike's shoulder. Spike smoothes a hand over his back. But the baby is rooting against the cloth of his shirt and Spike gives a wearied look toward Buffy. "I think he needs you."
Buffy's breasts are huge, full to bursting. But suddenly she is a little needy herself. Why does she refuse to see the man in demon's clothing, and not the demon in man's clothing?
Her thoughts are arrested as she stares at the being with whom she has coupled many times, most memorably on a Christmas eve when she is certain they conceived their baby boy. On the day before the most holy of holy days, she and her demon lover seeded a child.
Buffy feels such love towards the both of them her heart turns suicidal in its efforts to betray any thoughts about souls and demons and her souled demon child. There are no demons present before her eyes. There are only the two males she loves more than anything in the world. Suddenly it seems very silly to be playing six degrees of separation with the Hellmouth. If Spike's love weren't genuine, he would be gone or she would be dead. And they certainly wouldn't have a baby.
"Buffy, he needs to feed," Spike insists as they baby is nearly clawing at him for sustenance.
She nods and takes the baby into her arms. "It's time to go home then."
The apartment is silent and dark when the pair enters. By the lamp of an in table, there is a note written in Dawn's hand. "At the library. Be back @8:00."
Buffy says nothing as she passes the note into Spike's hand. She untwines the scarf from her neck and places it on the easy chair. She then divests herself of the heavy coat and drapes it over the chair as well. Silently, she lifts her baby's carrier and transports Daniel into the bedroom. Spike follows her, not knowing where this is going, but he is going with her, no matter what.
Once in the bedroom, Buffy lifts their infant child from his seat and puts him in the cradle beside their bed. Buffy watches the child for several minutes until she is sure that Daniel will sleep. She nursed him on the way over. He should be fine for a while.
Buffy turns to Spike slowly, her face cloaked in shadow. Her approach is measured, her feet barely making a sound as she crosses the space between them. Standing in front of him, she cups the back of his head and she brings his mouth to hers. For a moment, their lips are stone as though they are marble statues attempting a mating ritual in a museum after hours. When their lips do move, they are trembling. A dark moan is shared between them as their mouths simultaneously open for one another.
Buffy's hands go to his back, searching for definition in the muscular space between his shoulders. His hands are wrapped around her waist, his thumbs kneading her bared flesh where her tee shirt doesn't quite meet the top of her pants. When his shirt comes off in her hands, he is almost as shocked as she is. When hers follows, Spike presses his chest against her weighted breasts, allowing himself to feel the heaviness of her milk and the extent to which her breasts have grown because of it. He groans under the influence of the peaked nipples and wonderfully formed orbs of flesh against him. He pulls away to look at them, to appreciate them, to revel in their size and shape. A drop of her milk escapes from her nipple and he laps it up, thinking it as sweet as cantaloupe juice. He drops his head to her navel, his tongue circling the puckered hole while he unfastens her jeans, popping each button with agonizing slowness. She arrests his hands and snaps his head back. This is not about her; this is all about him.
She gets to her knees and jerks the buckle of his jeans open in one quick motion. She unleashes his erection and, once totally unveiled, she guides the silken head of his throbbing member into her mouth.
Fully immersed in the seemingly endless cavern of her mouth, Spike steadies himself on the dresser. He watches her, taking him in, and he closes his eyes, reluctantly, as waves of pleasure overtake him and occlude his vision from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, going down on him like an eager, horny teenager in a locker room with a popular jock.
Her next move spins his thought processes out of control as she lands on his back on their bed, his jeans bunched at his ankles. Buffy doffs her own jeans, toeing them off, along with her shoes. Naked now, she is quick to straddle him. In one quick stroke, she impales herself on him.
His hands rise mummy-like to catch the twin ovals of her backside, pushing her just a little deeper. He almost cannot bear to watch, seeing himself spear her over and over again, his shaft immerging slick and wet with her juices.
She sweeps a hand over his face and commands in a whisper, "Change." And under her fingertips, his demon visage takes hold. She bends to kiss his mouth, loving the feel of his teeth raking against her tongue.
She brings him closer to her, at last coercing him into a seated position, until she is sitting on his lap, her legs crossed around his backside. She is bounding off and on him, delighted by the feel of sex again, overjoyed to know that this is who she wants to have sex with forever.
"Feed," she says.
His mouth is cracked open in a lock-jawed response to her request. He can't stop the gyrations of his hips, not now when he's feeling her warmth and her walls closing around him. And her need.
She takes him by the jaw and levels her stare with his. "Feed," she says again, without even a hint of fear. She lifts her hair from her neck and bares her throat to him.
Spike shamelessly salivates as his eyes devour the throbbing cord of blood underneath her skin. In an instant his mouth is there, his teeth drilling straight into her flesh. Buffy gives a strangulated cry and her body goes perfectly still. After the initial shallow piercing, his fangs delve deeper until the vein is tapped and is pouring torrents of fresh, rich blood into his mouth. Buffy slaps her body against his, her inner muscles now clenching around him. The combined sensations of her blood flooding his throat and her warmth enveloping him quickly force him to the edge. He commandeers the protrusion of the hardened nubbin between her legs,, working it over and over with persistent strokes until she screams and he does as well.
Hours later, with the lavender profusion of morning straining against the blinds, Spike is still licking the wounds he has created with a loving tongue while Buffy lies asleep. Daniel is now crying now from his cradle. Buffy rises slowly and instantly sees a vision of bright lights. Then her head is caught up in a dizzy sway that causes her to swoon and fall back into bed.
Spike retrieves the baby from his cradle, placing him gently into Buffy's arms. The child feeds hungrily from his naked mother as his equally naked father lies beside them. Spike's mouth bears the twin v's of Buffy's blood at the corners of his mouth as he kisses them both.
"Spike, I don't know what's coming from the hellmouth, or if anything is coming from it at all," Buffy says as Daniel takes more and more of her breast into her mouth. "But I know for certain that I can't fight it without you by my side."
Warmed by the blood inside of him and by the loving green-eyed gaze of the woman at his side, he feels a sob building within him. When it is unleashed, he spasms against her. "I couldn't live without you. I tried, once, and it was horrible. Darling, please. I want to be with you forever."
She rifles her hand though the springy curls on his head and captures his jaw with an affectionate hand. "And I want to be with you too."
"Then marry me," he says so quickly and so impulsively, as the words leave his mouth, he can't believe he's hearing them. Buffy draws in a breath, as though his proposal has pinched something deep inside of her. He clutches her hand. "Buffy, for all my posturings at being the subversive man for all seasons, I am an old-fashioned bloke. And I think that if two people have a child together, they should be married."
An invisible calendar flips before her eyes. She sees the months and the days of 2002, 2003, 2004, all leading up until her twenty-fifth birthday, the one she's not supposed to have, or, at least, the one that will her last. Each calendar is blank, empty without him. Her once mortal enemy lies naked in her bed and is asking her to spend the rest of her life, however long it is, with him.
"Yes," she says. "I will marry you."