CHAPTER TWO
"OK," Buffy says, delivering an uppercut to the three-piece suited vampire who has just discovered that hell really is other people. "I think I've figured it out."
"Yeah?" Spike says, in mid-tussle with his own fresh kill, a Steve Austin wannabe, complete with the John 3:16 written across his black tee shirt.
"If I can consolidate---omph!---all of our major credit cards, pay them off in, like, four years, I'd just have to make one payment once a month. And it would be---oh!---about four hundred dollars." Buffy spins the newbie into a nearby tombstone. He rises again, undead and kicking, and she counters with a lethal punch to his chin, which only serves to daze him. But she was expecting that. She wants this fight to last. It's helping her think things out.
"Sweetheart," Spike says, jabbing his vampire as though he were a punching bag, "Do you know how much a of strain a house payment would put on our financial situation? I mean, you make, what, $25,000 a year?"
"$25,136," Buffy corrects. "Plus, I get under the table money from the clients who want private self defense or Pilates lessons in their homes." Buffy notices that the coat the vampire is wearing still has its price tag attached. $675 for a shroud that will soon be dust. She knows she has to lengthen the fight just so the bastard's family will get their money's worth.
"And how much is that?" Spike asks, stretching the vampire's arm behind his back to the point where he can hear muscle detaching from bone.
"Oh, about $400 dollars a month," Buffy says, connecting again with her prey's chin.
"Then you'll need to find a lot more fatties before we can even THINK about setting up house somewhere else," Spike says. Then to the vampire he says, "Say Uncle. Uncle."
"You mother fucker!" the vampire spews.
"Watch the language, mate. I'm a family man now," Spike says, snapping the vampire's arm completely out of its socket.
"Don't call my clients fatties," Buffy says petulantly as she thinks going Beowulf on her own opponent might not be a bad idea. "They're nice women who have just found that food is their comfort."
"Then maybe you should feed them for a week and then they'll learn that food can also be their torture," Spike says, slamming the heel of his boot against the backside of his opponent and sending him to the ground, groaning and hissing.
"I'm choosing to ignore that remark because we have bigger fish to fry right now," Buffy says, tossing her husband a "have stake, will travel" look.
"Yeah. Fish that you will over-salt and ultimately burn in the skillet," Spike returns, laughing as the vampire he is fighting still thinks he has some chance at victory. He is actually trying to swat at Spike with his useless arm.
Buffy shoots him another glare.
"Sweetheart, just remember, I'm considered a member of polite society now and a splinter in my heart would be manslaughter," Spike says, fisting the vampire's collar in his hands and bringing him to his feet.
"You know," Buffy says, pulling her stake out and angling for the vampire's heart, "Sometimes I still loathe you."
"Yeah, but sometimes you still love me," Spike says, readying his own stake for his own vampire's heart.
"Sometimes," she says, plunging the stake into her vampire's heart. The price tag is the last thing to combust.
"Most times," Spike says, delivering his own fatal blow to the faux Steve Austin who seems so shocked that a little thing like a stake could put an end to something so virile and so bald.
Buffy is standing there, stake in hand, dust still settling. She looks over at Spike who is in a cloud of dust of his own making. Always, after the kill, he has to take a moment to congratulate himself and she's witnessing this now. He is aglow in death. But now he looks over at her. His eyes are alive. Though set in the face of a man dead a hundred plus years, his eyes have more life in them than any she has ever seen when he looks at her. When he looks at her, he is looking at the now, not possibilities. He's looking at her, in the moment, and loving every second that he has been chosen to stand at her side and be hers, for the forever they are allowed.
"So you're saying there's no chance in hell I can afford anything better than the apartment we live in now?"
"Sweetheart, I agree that we need to move to a bigger place. I just don't want you working any harder than you already are."
"It doesn't have to be a palace," she says. "Honey, I'd live with you in a sewer. You know that."
"I may hold you to that one day," he answers.
"I want Daniel to grow up in a place that doesn't smell like kitty litter and ramen noodles and…despair."
"So long as it's not a doublewide. I'll be almost anything for you, but a PBR swillin', Toby Keith lovin', Dixie Chicks hatin' vamp, I will never be."
"Just so long as you're the Buffy lovin' vamp."
"Love's bitch. At your service."
As Buffy is contemplating ways that Spike can service her in the graveyard, someone is intruding on their moment.
"Excuse me," a voice says.
They both turn in the direction of a woman, or someone who was once a woman, now a vampire. She is dressed smartly in a conservative suit, skirt cut just below the knee, square-heeled shoes suitable for the office. Despite the twisted gnarl of a face her incarnation as a vampire has given her, her visage is perky beneath the arch of a pageboy hairdo.
"I'm sorry to intrude," the new vamp says, chuckling lightly, "I couldn't help overhearing what you were saying from my little crypt with a view. I can't believe my family opted for a crypt. I thought for sure they would have buried me and left me for forgotten. I guess it's only when you're at the exit door when you realize your value."
Buffy and Spike look at her as though she has just been left behind by an alien mother ship and they are thinking of ways to phone her home.
"Hi!" the new vampire says brightly, extending her hand. "I'm Dolores Hanssen. Or I was. Before I was sired. God, if I knew what I didn't know then. You just can't trust a guy in an Armani suit if he's room temperature. Oh, well. I learned my lesson. I don't really mind being undead. You meet a lot of interesting people. You kill a lot of them, but I guess that's how it goes when you have to live by blood alone. But still, I miss life, you know? You probably know," the perky vampire says, nudging Spike.
"Right now, I'm missing your point," Spike says, the borrowed blood in him starting to boil.
"Oh, Tiger. Grrr…You have your work cut out with this one," the vampire says to Buffy. She laughs again in that patronizing way that makes both Buffy and Spike ready their stakes. "Hey, whoa there. I'm here to help you. You're looking for a new house, right?"
"Yeah," Buffy and Spike say in unison.
"I've got just the place for you. Not too sunny, just a fringe on the outside of Sunnydale city limits. Needs a little work, but it has great possibilities. A stone fireplace in the living room, three bedrooms, two full baths, one half bath in the basement, which is finished. I used to work in real estate and I was about to show this house to a couple, but, what can I say? A few strawberry daiquiris, a vamp named Tony, and a night of enchantment in an alleyway led to…other things. But I'd still show you this place, even if I don't get commission. It's an ego thing, I guess."
"How much?" Buffy asks, already entranced by the idea of a finished basement and three, count them, three bathrooms.
"Why don't I show it to you first and then you can tell me if it's worth the asking price?" the woman says.
Buffy turns to Spike. "What've we got to lose?"
"We can both take her if she's luring us into a nest or something," Spike says.
"I'm not worried about nests. I'm just thinking what she's describing is just what we're looking for."
"I suppose we could take a look at the place."
"I'm curious."
Buffy and Spike turn to the woman. "We'd like to see it."
"I'm going to destroy you with my super, super strength!" Daniel Hogan declares for the benefit of the well muscled, loin cloth-clad action figure in his hand.
"You can't destroy me! I've got super, DUPER strength. Now you DIE!" his playmate, Matthew Phelps, counters, voicing the superiority of his own action figure, a well-jointed GI Joe who has recently lost a hand, but can still contend with the best of them.
The two boys clash their plastic heroes in a duel to the death and the handicapped GI Joe is an early favorite, but he loses steam as his handler grows tired of the storyline and lets him fall on his face, to be stomped on and martyred by the mini-Ted Nugent on steroids figurine.
"This is dumb. Let's do something else," Matthew says.
Daniel, who was enjoying the game, is nonetheless willing to concur with his older and therefore cooler friend. "Yeah. This is dumb. We can watch a movie. We just got The Matrix V on DVD."
"Seen it. It was dumb. And all the guys in it are stupid and they dress like your Dad."
"Yeah. But my Dad's great," Daniel is quick to say.
"Yeah, he's all right."
"My Dad takes me to the park at night. We get to play on the jungle gym all we want. You wanna go with us sometime?"
"I guess so. It's kinda weird to go to the park at night," Matthew says as he picks up a Nerf football and begins to toss it into the air.
"My Dad's 'lergic to the sun. He can only go out at night."
"Yeah, that's what you told me before. About a gazillion, million times," an annoyed Matthew replies. He rolls over on his stomach and lets his chin rest on the football. "I guess it's neat that you get to hang out with your Dad and all."
"Where's your Dad, Matthew?" Daniel asks.
"He's dead, you dummy!" Matthew says, punching Daniel in the leg.
At the age of five, Daniel knows two things: you can only find things out by asking questions and Mommy and Daddy will always be there for him. They will always live together in this little apartment and he will always be their son and his Daddy will read to him every night and his Mommy will take him to school every day and he will come home and watch television and have dinner and go to the park with his Daddy. Now he knows something else: if you ask the wrong question, you get punched. And Daddy can die.
"Your Daddy's dead?" Daniel has to add insult to injury. And he does get injured again.
"Yeah, my Dad's dead. So what? Your Dad's such a wimp he can't go outside when the sun's out. If my Dad were alive, he'd be taking me to the park all the time, and to the pool and to Disneyland and to movies in the afternoon and to Applebee's. Your Dad can't do that stuff."
"But one day, maybe, he won't be 'lergic," Daniel says, suddenly solemn in his thoughts of a world without Daddy.
"Or one day he'll be so 'lergic he'll die like my Dad did."
"Was your Dad 'lergic too?"
"No, he had cancer."
"What's cancer?"
"It's something that makes you die, stupid!"
A thought comes into Daniel's head. What if Daddy really isn't 'lergic and has cancer?
Daniel leaps to his feet and dashes into the next room where Matthew's mother, and his sitter for the evening, is curled up on the sofa watching TV.
"Candyce, when are Mommy and Daddy going to be home?" he asks.
Candyce doesn't remove her stare from the TV as she says, "Oh, sweetie. They said they wouldn't be long. A couple of hours."
"Is it still a couple of hours before they're coming home?" he asks.
"They've been gone about an hour. They'll be home soon."
"Can I call them?"
There is a sob in Daniel's voice that distracts Candyce from the goings on in the crime lab on CSI: Detroit and she turns to the little boy to find his face ashen and his eyes wild with fear.
"Oh, Daniel," she says soothingly, cupping his quivering chin in her hand. "What's the matter?"
"I need to talk to Daddy."
"Why, what's wrong?"
"I just need to talk to Daddy."
Candyce nods. "OK. I'll call them for you."
"Here it is," the realtor/vampire says as she opens the door with a twist of her now powerful hand. "We can all go in because no one lives here anymore."
Spike acts as though he doesn't quite believe her and puts the toe of his boot against the invisible barrier he thinks will be there. But she is right; he is invited in without a bit of deliberation from the powers that be.
The outside of the house looked ordinary: a box-like house with hedges for trimming and a lawn for cutting and a sidewalk for sweeping. But inside, once the light is switched on, it appears like something that has been pulled from a magician's hat. Voila! Where there was once nothing, there is everything in the world Spike and Buffy could possibly desire in a house.
"The stone fireplace is really quite unique," the realtor/vampire tells them. "There was another house here on this site and it burned around the turn of the century. This house was built up around it. So you have a little of Sunnydale's early history right here in the living room."
Buffy swipes a hand across the coolness of the stone and marvels at the black stains of decades of fires in the hearth, imagining the glowing faces gathered around the fires that burned there. "And it still works?" she asks.
"Oh yeah. Completely functional."
Spike is taking his time, walking across every board, looking for signs of creakiness or foundation failure. The floors gleam as though freshly Swiffered and polished. "Hardwood floors?" he asks.
"Yep. Hardwood. Yellow pine," the realtor/vampire says. "Just wait until you see the kitchen!"
The kitchen is fully furnished with stainless steel appliances that look as though they were installed yesterday. Already Buffy and Spike are imagining the refrigerator completely covered in Daniel's finger paintings. The recessed track lighting reveals another blemish-free hardwood floor and plenty of room for a large kitchen table. The window over the sink overlooks a yard where there is a small playhouse with its own deck porch.
"The family here had a son. Sometimes he would sleep out there," the realtor/vampire explains. "Oh, and by the way, this house is close to the elementary school. But, I guess that's not really a concern for you two."
"No, we have a son," Buffy says, looking at the playhouse covetously, thinking this is the best feature she's seen so far.
"You do?" the realtor/vampire asks. "I learn something new about our species every day! I didn't think we could---
"You can't," Spike says, trying to spare the neophyte vamp of any delusions of re-starting the ticking of her biological clock "But I did."
"But how?" she asks, still floored.
"We're still not really sure, but, hey. It happened," Buffy shrugs. "Honey, can't you just see Daniel out there playing for hours and hours? And she's right. The elementary school is just around the corner. That would cut down on my driving time in the morning."
Spike nods and smiles. "That would mean a little bit more time for…" He winks at her and inserts his thumbs into the front pockets of her jeans.
Buffy nearly blushes as she catches the implications of his words.
"Would you like to see the bedrooms?" the realtor/vampire asks.
The pair follows the realtor/vampire up the newly carpeted twelve steps to the second floor. The realtor/vampire is close behind them and she instructs them to turn right at the top of the stairs. Down the long corridor an ivory-colored door opens to a large room that is entered by two steps leading down to yet another hardwood floor.
"Wow!" Buffy says, her voice echoing. "It's so huge!"
"There were bunk beds in here. Where the son and a friend could sleep," the realtor/vampire says.
"And the parents?" Buffy asks.
"Down the hall. The crowning glory of the whole place," the realtor/vampire gushes.
Buffy and Spike are led down the hall now to a giant room that could very contain their whole apartment. When the door is opened, it appears they are looking at a gymnasium.
"The former owners had a California King bed in here. They put it right in the middle of the room."
Buffy and Spike are looking back at the hallway, thinking it will be a suitable runway for Daniel's early morning take-off's in which he lands in their bed and giggles at Spike and squeals, "Daddy's naked! Daddy's naked!"
"You should see the bathtub. The lady of the house used to love her baths," the realtor/vamp tells them.
Buffy opens the door to what she thinks is some kind of a woman's paradise. The immaculate blue tiled floor leads to a sunken Jacuzzi tub. To the right of the tub is a separate shower with gold fixtures, completely enclosed in glass. There are two marbled sinks and plenty of space between the sinks for Buffy's jumble of beauty products and sweet perfumes. She is looking at herself in the mirror, entranced by how large her pupils look in the light of the two dozen 75 watt bulbs that glow around the mirror above the sinks. The one who can't look in the mirror is lowering himself into the Jacuzzi tub, dreaming of how the jets will hit him in all the right places.
When Buffy eyes her husband, in such sublime ecstasy, she can't help wanting to join him in his pretend bath. She makes her way over to the tub and gets in with him. She is thinking about all the vanilla-scented nights she will have in this bath and all the trouble she will have getting out, especially if Spike is with her. His arms enfold her as she rests her head against her chest. The realtor/vampire knows her presence is no longer needed and she pads down the hall for the duration of the permanent newlywed's bathtime.
"This is perfect!" Buffy says gleefully.
"Yes, it is," Spike says, resting his head against the back of the tub in a gentle sigh.
"So what do you think?" Buffy asks as her husband strokes her hair.
"I think this is a dream," he replies, kissing her left temple.
"It's probably really expensive," Buffy sighs. "Hardwood floors? A stone fireplace? A Jacuzzi tub? All add up to something Buffy and Spike can't afford."
"$550,000," the realtor/vamp says from the hallway.
Buffy frowns as Spike dampens her forehead with another succulent kiss. "See? Something we can't afford."
"So we can't get this house," he says to her. "We can refinance. And I can look about getting one of those under the table jobs myself." He smirks and laughs. "God. When a man says that, it sounds so naughty."
"You'd really go out and get a job?"
"Of course. I have many, many talents."
"Under the table?"
"You know what I do under the table is among my many talents," he says, snaking his tongue out between his teeth.
"Bad boy!" she says, playfully slapping him.
"Yeah, but you love the bad boy."
"But I love the good boy too," she says, swirling her fingertip over one of his pronounced pecs.
"Good boy's only here because you loved the bad boy, sweetheart."
Buffy smiles up at her sweet husband. He has always been able to put things in perspective for her, even when they were bitter enemies. She knows there has never been a person alive or dead who knows her as well as Spike does. Sometimes their simpatico takes her breath away.
"My baby," she says, cupping his chin in her hand and inclining her mouth for a kiss.
Just now, a cell phone rings.
Buffy pats herself down for the cell phone, but she doesn't have it. Spike rifles a hand inside his jacket and extracts the Nokia both he and his wife use when they are out and about and slaying. Someone is calling them from home.
"Yeah," Spike says as he strokes his wife's hair. The he suddenly goes stiff and clutches his head. "Daniel, what's the matter? Daniel…Daniel, calm down. What's wrong?"
Buffy can hear her son sobbing on the other end. "What is it?" she asks, her heart fluttering.
"I don't know. He's not making any sense. Something about my being allergic to cancer or something."
Buffy grabs the phone, commandeering the situation with the hush of her soothing words. "Daniel, honey, Mommy and Daddy are coming home right now. Don't worry."
"I don't want Daddy to die!" Daniel says through uncontrollable sobs.
"Honey, it's OK. We're coming home. Don't cry, sweetie. Please don't cry. We'll be home very, very soon."
"You're coming home right now?" Daniel sniffles.
"Yes. Right this very minute. I love you, sweetie."
"I love you too, Mommy. Come home!"
"We are. We are right now." Buffy snaps the phone shut and leaps out of the tub, offering a helping hand to her husband. "We gotta go."
"I sensed that," Spike says, taking his wife's hand. "Is he OK?"
Buffy shakes her head. "He seemed kind of freaked. He needs us."
Halfway down the stairs, the realtor/vamp calls to them.
"Hey, you guys! Are you taking the house?" she asks.
Buffy and Spike look at each other, knowing that in their wildest dreams they couldn't even begin to own such a house.
Somewhere in the middle of Oak Street, Buffy is still wiping the vampire dust off her champagne-colored jacket.
"I'm glad we killed her," Buffy says, "Showing us something we could never have."
"I think we'll still find something. Perhaps not as nice as that house, but something just for us," Spike answers, his steely gaze aimed at the horizon where there is the most luminous moon he has ever seen. It is orange and aglow with equal parts of smog and sun. He draws Buffy closer to him as they head towards the brilliant moon. He only hopes this is a harbinger of something good.