EPISODE TWO
"A Link between Two Bridges"

Giles climbed the porch steps of 1630 Revello Drive at a dawdling pace, not wanting to appear too eager. He wasn't eager at all really, so the deception wasn't that hard to pull off.

He hadn't visited the house since Spike had properly moved in. He hadn't been comfortable with the idea of their living together. At the time, he was still in shock from the Serpiente debacle and hadn't been capable of putting up much of an argument. When he had finally come to his senses, it had been too late. And by then Buffy was already pregnant, even if they hadn't yet been aware of it.

The Watcher sighed and knocked at the front door.

There was a faint rumbling inside, someone running down the stairs, and the door swung open to reveal Spike. The vampire was barely dressed, gadding about in a pair of black satin boxer shorts with red cartoon devils on them. His eyes were heavy lidded from sleep and his hair stuck up in unruly tufts.

"Why're you here?" he growled, less than pleased by the Watcher's presence on his doorstep.

A thankfully fully-clothed Buffy appeared at her partner's side. She slapped the bare skin of his shoulder hard enough to leave a handprint. "Don't just stand there, fuzz head, let him in!"

Spike ignored the blow. He scratched at the nape of his neck and padded off down the hall. Headed for the kitchen, no doubt.

"Hi Giles! Is there fairy news?" Buffy was uncommonly perky for this time of day and all but skipped into the lounge, her simple white sundress swishing around her rotund form.

Giles followed. "Oh, uh, no. Willow is coming in to work on it later. I actually wanted to bring you this." He shoved a small, elegantly wrapped parcel in her direction. "Belated house-warming gift. Or early baby shower, take your pick."

"Oh, Giles, you didn't have to do that." She lowered herself into a chair and toyed with the ribbon. "I'm real glad you did, though. Presents are always of the good."

While the gift was being unwrapped, a task Buffy undertook with painstaking care, Giles took the opportunity to study the decor. The room seemed cozier, more intimate.

"I like what you've done to the place," he said.

Buffy glanced up. "Less frilly, more Willy." She blinked and reddened. "I so didn't mean that the way it sounded."

Giles smiled tightly, not bothering to comment.

The signs of Spike's inhabitance were subtle, but obvious if you knew where to look - the leather duster on the hook by the front door for starters. Then there was the room itself.

The arty knick-knacks had vanished, so too many of the potted plants, and a greater number of bookcases now lined the tawny-hued walls, brimming with literary treasures. There were candles on every available surface and more cushions scattered about - a plethora of cushions in plush materials and jeweled colors.

A portrait of Joyce had pride of place on a side table, along with an old sepia-toned print of someone possibly related to Spike, but the assorted snapshots that had decorated the walls throughout the house were gone. In lieu of their familial warmth, there was a large gilt-framed drawing hanging over the mantle, a beautiful pencil sketch of Buffy and Spike in one of their self-absorbed embraces, completely lost in each other. The love depicted on their faces was palpable, and Giles found himself drifting over to seek out the artist's signature.

Ah, Angel. Of course.

He turned back around to find Spike watching him from the hallway. He'd made an abortive attempt to comb his hair and had conceded to modesty by pulling on a frayed pair of blue jeans and a navy shirt, the latter hanging unbuttoned from his lean frame. Beyond him on the wall by the staircase was a Sex Pistols poster - 'Never Mind the Bollocks...'

"What'd we get?" he asked, gesturing to the now-opened gift with the mug in his hand.

Buffy held up the little elfin Spike from the Aftertime Collection, companion to the Slayer that had been swiped the day before. The winged figurine leant against a porcelain tree stump and sneered at them, his tiny white head tilted to one side. A curved sword was held nonchalantly in one hand, giving him just the slightest air of menace - 'I'm cute, but I can still chop you into messes if I want.'

"Look," she gushed. "Aren't you adorable? Thanks Giles."

The vampire raised an eyebrow. "Assume that means I'm off the hook for the other?"

Giles inclined his head in acknowledgement and got a smirk in return.

"Here," Buffy pushed the miniature at him. "Put it up there on the mantle with skinny-me."

After complying, Giles took a seat on the sofa. "I've, uh, been doing some soul-searching of late, and I realize that I've been neglecting my duty to you as your Watcher. I've decided to rectify the situation by documenting any and all information on your link and it's relevance to the Pylean prophecies."

Spike dropped onto the sofa beside him. "That's long overdue, mate."

"Yes, I believe I mentioned that." Giles pulled a pen and notebook from the portfolio he'd brought with him. "Last things first," he said. "Your pregnancy. The symptoms have been shared equally?"

"Shared, yeah. Don't know about the equal," Spike said.

"Spike got the morning sickness and general all-round incapacitating nausea," Buffy reported. "I get the gigantic baby-belly, the cramps, the swollen ankles, the constant need to pee..."

Giles cleared his throat, embarrassed by the subject matter. "Be that as it may, you both experience the child's kicking?"

The Slayer nodded. "Spike takes the brunt of most of the big ones. It's like... " She frowned and made an absent gesture with one hand, struggling to find the correct description. "Like the link sort of protects me by shunting the major ouchies his way."

The vampire snorted into his mug and mumbled something under his breath that earned him a scathing look from Buffy. He ignored her.

Giles dithered a moment, staring at his notes. "You understand that if this particular trend continues, Spike will be the one enduring the bulk of your labor pain?"

The vampire sat up at that, choking on the mouthful of blood he'd just swigged. "What?" He slammed his mug onto the coffee table and wiped off his chin. "That's a load of poppycock, innit?"

Buffy was wearing the biggest grin in the history of the world. "That will be so incredibly cool," she said. "'Cause I've been worried about the whole 'pain' part of that."

"So happy to be of service," Spike mumbled.

In the midst of the subsequent glaring competition, both winced and rubbed their chests.

"Did I mention the heartburn?" Buffy asked.

Giles noticed that the vampire's actions were merely a fraction behind the Slayer's and marveled at their symmetry. From a Watcher's perspective, it was downright enthralling. He should have been involved sooner. Dratted inbred English stubbornness.

"Good thing Nipper's one of us, eh? Makes it worth the trouble." Spike sprawled back into the sofa cushions and let out an enormous belch. "There you go, love. Cures what ails you." He proudly patted the taut planes of his exposed stomach.

Buffy just smiled. "You don't have to keep calling him Nipper, you know. He has a name now."

"He does?" The baby's name had been a hotly debated topic for the entire length of the pregnancy. Giles was surprised they'd reached a settlement this early.

"Uh huh! Go us!" Buffy cheered, pumping a fist in the air.

"Seth Jameson Grey," Spike supplied, watching the Slayer with an amused expression.

"Seth?" the Watcher repeated. "A biblical name?"

"'S wrong with that?" Spike demanded. "Means 'appointed one'. Sort of another 'chosen' in the family." He drew a deep breath and quoted, "'...A perfect man, and his likeness was the express likeness of his father, insomuch that he seemed to like unto his father in all things.'"

"Hey, you didn't tell me that part!" Buffy protested. She gave her belly an apologetic pat, speaking directly to it. "God, I am so sorry. I hope I haven't cursed you."

"Ha bloody ha." Spike's smile softened the sarcasm in his voice.

She leant toward Giles. "That's just the Hebrew meaning anyway," she confided. "It means 'bridge' in Sanskrit."

Giles could feel his throat tightening up. "B-bridge?" he stammered.

"Which is another word for link, so it's an all-round multi-purpose kind of name."

The Watcher was reeling. All his wild speculations were rapidly becoming fact. It was incomprehensible.

"Oh, plus," Buffy continued. "George Clooney."

"Pardon?" Wasn't that the name of an actor?

"George Cloo-ney," she repeated slowly, over-stressing the vowels. "'From Dusk 'Til Dawn'?" When that drew no response, she shot a fretful glance at Spike who rolled his eyes at the Watcher's ignorance.

"It's a vampire flick, you daft git. Seth Gecko was his character's name. Right bastard, sure, but he kicked a significant amount of demon ass."

"Fascinating." Giles pursed his lips, unsure of what to say next.

Spike squinted at him curiously. "What's goin' on in that almighty brain of yours, Rupert? I can hear your synapses poppin'."

Buffy pulled her disgusted face. "That's gross, honey."

He gave her an odd look. "Yeah, I just got the visual from you. Don't ever think that at me again."

Giles glanced back and forth between the two and wished that he'd taken another seat. Being in the middle like this was comparable to being a tennis umpire. If he didn't move soon, the incessant Ping-Pong of their banter would undoubtedly give him a headache.

"Your wish is my command, oh Master Vampire," Buffy jeered. "Anything else while I'm becking your call?"

"You realize that made absolutely no sense?" Spike sought the Watcher's advocacy. "Did it?"

"Don't drag him into this!"

"Why not? Bit o' masculine solidarity wouldn't go astray. Don't often get it in this house."

"Oh, sure. Gang up on the pregnant lady. Real heroic." She was becoming flushed now, her cheeks tinged with pink.

"Hey, watch your pressure, sunshine." Spike immediately switched into attentive partner mode and was crouched at Buffy's side before Giles could even blink. "Ease off. That's my girl."

They sat there for a few minutes, eyes closed, hands clasped together, breathing in total synchrony. In - out, in - out, in - out...

After a while Spike smiled and brought Buffy's hand up to brush a kiss across her knuckles. "You're gonna kill us one of these days," he said.

"Me? You're the one who keeps being such a smart-ass. You know I just want to smack you when you're like that."

"Well, at least we're consistent, love. It's never once been any different."

"I'm so gonna kick your ass when I'm back in shape," she informed him peevishly.

Giles really felt like a fifth wheel at this point. He doubted if they even remembered he was in the room. That conviction was abruptly discarded when they both turned to look at him at the same time.

"Where was I?" Spike asked.

"Popping synapses," Giles supplied dryly.

The vampire scowled at him. "So, you gonna spit it out or what?"

"It's just that, I've been going over recent events and it occurred to me that I should have seen it earlier - your coming together that is."

"How?" Buffy asked. "We sure as hell didn't."

"Speak for yourself." Spike sniffed and got to his feet.

He didn't return to the sofa, but stood behind Buffy's chair and rested his hands on her shoulders. Buffy placed her own right hand over his left, as if to keep him from moving away. Not that he would.

Giles disregarded the comment. "Everything points to your union being destined. It even harks back to Spike being in the Master's line. Did you know that 'Aurelius' literally means 'golden one'? It could have been pertaining to him all along." He flipped back a few pages in his notebook. "And the Gemel Prophecy notwithstanding, I've reviewed several entries in the Watcher's Journals regarding a vampire with a soul. We've always thought that they referred to Angel alone, but now that we know Spike has always had part of his..."

"Is this waffling gonna get to a point anytime soon?" Spike interrupted. "I've got places to be."

Buffy tipped her chin. "You want I should stay here?" she asked him. "You can monitor the Watcher-speak through me while you're being Errand Boy. It's called multi-tasking, honey, embrace it."

"Brill." Spike leant down and gave Buffy an impassioned kiss that lingered far longer than was polite. He drew back, threw a condescending smirk at Giles, just because, then disappeared upstairs.

The Slayer watched his retreating form with starry eyes and a dreamy smile. She visibly shook herself out of her daze and peered at her Watcher. "Oh, um, soul?" she prompted.

Giles was too distracted by what he'd just heard. "He can monitor your conversations from afar?"

"Old news," she scoffed. "And mutual, too. He can't make a move without me knowing where he is and what he's doing. Or who."

"How very ... stifling." Giles scribbled something illegible in his notebook. "Where is he going anyway? I can't believe that it's more important than..."

Spike bounded back down the stairs, leaping nimbly over the banister to land with a thud in the foyer. He'd buttoned the shirt and pulled on his scuffed combat boots.

"I'm off," he announced. "Anything else while I'm out?" Buffy merely arched an eyebrow and he nodded. "Right. Later." He snagged his duster off the hook and jabbed a commanding finger at her. "Don't go anywhere." Then he slammed out the front door and was gone.

The house suddenly seemed very empty.

Buffy shifted, a frown creasing her forehead. "How bizarre is it that I miss him already?" She shrugged and focused back on the conversation. "He's going to the baby store down town. Now we've decided on a name he wants to have it pinned on the nursery door."

"You have a nursery?"

"Well, sure. Spike decorated it himself." Her lips curled and she adopted a hideous British accent. "'Don't want any of that bloody Nancy boy frippery in my boy's room'. That's a direct quote if you couldn't tell." She widened her eyes excitedly. "Wanna see?" She didn't wait for an answer, but extricated herself from her chair and headed for the stairs.

Giles had little choice but to trail along after her. As they reached the top, he couldn't resist peeping through the open doorway of the master bedroom, the one that had previously belonged to Joyce Summers and was now the domain of the expectant couple. He recoiled, taken aback by the profusion of mirrors.

Buffy let out a snort at his elbow. "I know," she said. "It should be opened up as a funhouse or something. We could probably charge the neighborhood kids admission."

"Why -?"

"Ever since he realized he could see himself again, he's gotten all obsessive about it. Vanity thy name is Spike." She shook her head, glossy curls bouncing. "Just means I get to see the mammoth mommy gut from every imaginable angle. Not pretty." She pulled him into the next room and gestured grandly. "Welcome to Nipper-land."

Giles scanned the room with some amazement. Spike had done this?

A polished-to-gleaming wooden crib had been set up in one corner, offset by an antique rocking chair in the other. Other than those basic items it didn't resemble a traditional nursery in the slightest - no soft pastels or cutesy animal motifs for this child.

Three of the walls were a stark clinical white. The fourth, adjacent to the crib, was painted a startlingly bright blue. The color seemed familiar and it took Giles a moment to place it.

"Spike's eyes are the same shade as the wall," he observed.

"No." Buffy corrected, a tender smile playing about her mouth. "The wall is the same as Spike's eyes."

"Mmm." Giles didn't acknowledge the nauseating sentimentality of the statement, but continued with his perusal.

There was a noticeable lack of harsh florescent lighting, but two rows of downlights situated along the ceiling cast a soft, unobtrusive radiance against the walls. The throw rug was a particularly vivid red, the same color as the frames on the prints adorning the walls.

He shuffled across to look at them more closely.

Abstract Expressionism - Jackson Pollock, no less. 'Number 22, 1949' and several others from same era whose titles he couldn't recall. They were, however, some of his more restless works and an unlikely choice for a child's room. But then Giles had long ago given up on the vampire doing anything resembling normal.

"It's rather, uh... unusual," he said finally.

"You have polite face," Buffy commented, amused. "I get that it's not your everyday sort of kiddy-chic, but it's tailor-made for Seth. Trust me."

Giles nodded and peered at her from the corner of his eye. "Have you given any more consideration to the idea of marriage?"

Buffy's face contorted in an involuntary grimace. Certainly not the reaction he had been expecting.

"We did kinda talk about it," she confessed grudgingly. "In the snippy argument definition of the word, and it wouldn't work."

Giles arched a brow at her tone. She sounded so final, and also rather like she was reciting a well-prepared speech. He wondered just how opposed Spike was to the idea. He would guess not very, if at all.

Buffy continued on, ignorant of his curiosity. "Besides the whole freaky 'married to Spike' thing, there's the name," she said. "Which I have to say is just wrong. I mean, even when you go the pretentious hyphenated route. Buffy Summers-Grey? Ugh!"

"I wouldn't have thought a name change would be as traumatic as that," Giles remarked carefully. As excuses went, it wasn't very convincing. "Spike has recently altered his, after all."

"Spike didn't so much change his name as do a little add and subtract."

"Oh?" The Watcher in him perked up at that. Snippets of information about a vampire's previous existence were always noteworthy.

She placed her hand on his forearm, in confiding-a-secret mode. "He likes to keep up the vamp mystique, so don't tell anyone, but his real name, his human name, was William James. We cut that down to 'Liam' and tacked on the 'Grey'. He won't tell me what his actual second name was, but I've got the sneaking suspicion it was Alexander." Buffy smile took on a decidedly evil bent. "I'll make with the stealthy memory-digging and let you know."

"Aha," Giles mused. "So, the 'Jameson' portion of Seth's name is therefore quite literally 'son of James'."

"Yep. See, it's all logical."

"Of course it is. Because you're both such rational people."

She peeked up at him. "Do I detect sarcasm?"

Giles shook his head negatively, then said, "Yes."

Buffy laughed. "I missed this, you know. Just us being us, without all the other stuff."

"Other stuff constituting Spike?"

"No, other stuff constituting the big end-of-the-world evil we're usually dealing with." She rested her back against the doorjamb, a pose that only made her belly seem more prominent. Giles tried not to stare at it.

"We're not without Spike anyway," she told him. "He's still here. He's always here." Her eyes glazed over for a second before she focused back on her guest. "Actually right now he's standing on the corner of Wilkins and Main, making obscene finger gestures and yelling at some guy in a Jeep, but you get what I mean."

Giles was impressed by her innate knowledge of Spike's comings and goings. "That's remarkable!"

"So get your little black book out and make remarks already."

~[*]~

"...Where you can shove that, you filthy wanker!"

Spike's verbal assault dissolved in his throat as he bit back a cry of surprise. One solitary thought popped into his head and began running on a continuous loop.

Buffy's using the link... Buffy... link... Buffy, Buffy, Buffy...

The vampire closed his eyes, savoring the feeling, and got a nebulous sense of the color blue and the Slayer's laughter before it faded again. He took a few involuntary steps forward as though to intercept the ephemeral sensation, to keep it within his reach, before reason returned. With it came the suffocating impulse to burst into tears. It almost made him want to heave.

Bloody William.

It had been so long since Buffy had initiated any contact that he'd almost forgotten what it was like. The last few months she'd been letting it lay dormant, leaving only the barest of connections between them. Enough to keep him on the mortal plane, enough to share surface thoughts, but not enough to let him into her deeper emotional center. She was keeping things from him and he was too scared to push, lest he pushed her away completely.

He realized that he'd stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and glanced about to see if anyone had noticed, self-consciously wiping any signs of moisture from his eyes.

Only one, it seemed, was astute enough to recognize something amiss, an elderly woman with a noxious cloud of blue-rinsed hair floating above the weathered landscape of her face. She stared at him for a long moment before scurrying away, pushing her over-laden shopping trolley to the edge of the curb to give him a wide berth.

Spike chuckled, her reaction lifting his dark mood. Thank God for comic relief. For a second there he'd almost been brooding.

He knew he still looked the Big Bad. He was a right handsome devil, and the combination of bleached hair, scarred brow and calf-length leather duster gave him an edgy don't-mess-with-me vibe. A sudden desire to reveal his true face sprang to life, an inexplicable need to do a proper job of making the old biddy quail. Muscles rippled under the skin of his face but didn't quite make the full transition to Grr-mode.

"That's right," he purred, eyeing her retreating form. "Keep well away from the bad, rude man. Dangerous I am. Evil."

Spike gazed after her as she rounded the far corner and then shoved his hands into his pockets, grimacing.

The words didn't sound right anymore. He felt like a fraud for uttering them, and like a sad bastard for setting someone's grandmum all a-flutter. He wanted to go and apologize, but stubbornly tamped the urge down.

A staccato tugging at his coattail caught his attention. He growled as he turned, eyes flashing yellow, ready to put the wind up whoever had dared to touch the sacred leather. The growl snagged in his throat.

She was absolutely tiny - tiny and blonde and all of four years old.

He melted instantly. "Well, hello cutie," he greeted, hunkering down so that he was eye level with the girl. She stared at him with huge round orbs that were almost too big for her sharp face. Sea green, just like Buffy's. "What's a tasty sugarplum like you doin' out here by her lonesome? Where's your Mum?"

"Dunno." The cupid's-bow of her mouth pursed thoughtfully as she regarded him. Spike noted with delight that she had mirrored his head-tilt. "At the store."

"The store?" He gnawed at his cheek, cautiously scanning both sides of the street. Bloody brilliant - nothing but stores in the immediate vicinity. "What kind of store?"

"Dunno," Sugarplum repeated, more interested in studying his face than finding her missing parent. One of her pigtails was askew and she wound the flaxen strands of it around her finger. "Your eyes changed colors," she informed him. "It was pretty. Do it again."

"Not right now, sweet bit." Spike surveyed the street a second time, searching for an anxious-looking mother amid the rank and file. No such luck. What was he supposed to do now?

"Wish Buffy was here," he muttered, only to realize that in essence, she was. He'd felt her presence only minutes earlier. He opened himself up, letting everything that was in him seek her out...

And hit an emotional brick wall.

The impact of it knocked Spike on his ass on the pavement. His heartbeat faltered, stopped and then stumbled on again, leaving him gasping for air and clutching at his chest, panic-stricken. Through the roaring in his ears he could hear a woman's concerned voice asking if he was okay and the lost girl explaining to the voice's owner that "the nice man fell down".

He had a vague perception of Sugarplum being led away and hoped that the concerned-voiced lady was her Mum. He really didn't have the strength or the inclination to go after them. Shock did that to a bloke.

Spike knew what had happened. He remembered the sensation all too well. It didn't seem possible, but for the briefest of moments, a fraction of a second, the link had broken.

A/N: Some of you may have noticed that I've added a little quote to the start of this fic. It's kind of a clue as to where I'm headed. I've also changed the rating from humor to drama - there's still gonna be fun stuff, but this is heading into darker territory. I'm writing angst now! No, really. LOL - Dee.