CHAPTER FOUR

            "OK, I think that's probably enough for today," Buffy tells Candyce.

            Candyce slides off from the giant inflatable ball and begins her after workout stretches on the floor.  "Gawd, Buffy, I really felt that one.  That was really great."

            "And you're getting some great results now too, you know," Buffy says, uncapping her bottled water and taking a generous swig. 

            "Really?" Candyce says as she suddenly becomes conscious of the overlap of belly that is never more evident than when wearing stretch spandex pants under an enormous tee shirt.  "I still have a long way to go."

            "You'll get there soon enough."

            "I'll never be like you, though."

            Buffy knows that her friend is referring to her svelter-than svelte figure; the kind that almost doesn't make a shadow it's so tiny.  But no, Candyce will never be like her.  And she is lucky in that regard. 

            "Being Buffy isn't the greatest thrill in the world," the Slayer remarks.

            "Oh, come on, Buffy.  You've got the best body ever.  You're absolutely perfect."

            "Well, you know, I do have these stretch marks from Daniel," Buffy says, running her finger along the half dozen tiny white rivulets along her firm belly.  "They're not going anywhere."

            "They're hardly noticeable, unlike my thunder thighs.  And my huge, huge ass," Candyce says, scooting her legs together as though trying to camouflage their size.

"Spike likes your ass," Buffy says, remembering how her husband practically had to lick his lips the last time he watched Candyce leave their apartment.  She was wearing just a pair of faded blue sweatpants, but they stretched across all the right places and he grinned until Buffy playfully slapped him back into his skinny butt reality. All night he kept on commenting that Buffy's ass was best when she was pregnant…so full and round…he could have just eaten it.  "He says so all the time."

A look of discomfort clouds Candyce's face, and it has nothing to do with the fact that her fingers are wrapped around the toes of her right foot.  "I still feel bad about what Matthew said that night."

"You shouldn't be.  He's just a kid.  He says whatever comes to mind," Buffy says matter-of-factly, though the evening is still an influence on her family's daily life.  Daniel wanted to stay home just the day before so that he could watch Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood with his father because he swore it was a new one he had never seen.  But Buffy and Spike knew there wasn't a new Mr. Rogers' show.  Fred Rogers has been dead for years.

"But I know how much Daniel loves his father," Candyce says while stretching out her heel.  "I like to think that Matthew and his father would have been just as close as Daniel and Spike are.  You know.  Now."

"Spike's a wonder," Buffy says.  And she really means it.  Even now, in the still of the evening, when the dishes are cleared and the TV is on in soft tones in the living room in an attempt to lull Daniel to sleep, she looks from the sidelines and sees her husband, the erstwhile William the Bloody, lying soundlessly on the sofa, occasionally reading or doing a TV Guide crossword puzzle (he nails them in under a minute.  No man knows TV better, or a five-letter word for "beginner").  Daniel's eyes are glued to Sponge Bob or The Fairy Odd Parents, or to the numerous Harry Potter movies he has seen hundreds of times.  He likes his Daddy to watch TV and movies with him, especially after he found out Daddy grew up without moving pictures.  But Mommy has been watching movies since the release of the classic Valley Girl so she doesn't have to watch unless she wants to.  "It's all really a wonder to me."

"You're one of the lucky ones, Buffy," Candyce says, stretching over her other leg.  "To have a stay at home Dad.  And he's such a great father.  Do you and Spike ever think about having another child?  I mean, you're still young.  Do you ever think about it?"

"Oh…"  Buffy says.  And she can't think of anything else to say momentarily.  To the outside world, even to someone who has recently been brought in as an insider, there's no reason why this happy and vigorous couple couldn't have more children.  It's a novelty still for Buffy to have a friend who doesn't know about her true vocation and that she has been able to keep that under wraps, along with her husband's non-human status, for so long.  It's so nice to know one person who doesn't know about her and the dead man in her bed.  But that doesn't keep her from occasionally feeling guilty about her secretiveness.

Candyce sits up, seeing that her probing question has struck a particular delicate nerve.  "Buffy, I'm sorry.  Should I not have---?

"Not, it's OK.  It's OK.  Really.  It's just that…" She wonders how to phrase this just right without inviting unasked for pity or further queries.  "Spike and I probably won't be able to have any more children," is what comes out.  "It took us completely by surprise when Daniel was born."

"Really?"

Buffy nods.  "That doesn't mean that we don't think about it occasionally.  I know in his heart of hearts, Spike would love to have a daughter and Daniel never fails to include a baby brother on his Christmas wish list.  He'd be a great older brother, I'm sure.  But I just don't think that another child is in the cards for us.  Besides, we really couldn't afford another child and I think Daniel would be very jealous if Spike and I had another baby.  He wouldn't be able to manage."

"I really didn't mean to pry, Buffy."

"It's OK, Candyce.  I have a nice family the way it is.  We're really happy."  She tips her bottle towards her lips and takes another gulp.  "Speaking of Daniel, it's about time for me to pick up the little monster from school." 

"Is it almost three already?" Candyce asks incredulously. 

"Yep.  Time flies when you're being stretched into unnatural positions."

"Well, I guess I'd better get going to.  I've got to take Matthew for a pair of new shoes.  The way that kid grows.  It's just incredible.  You want to come with us?  Maybe we could take the boys for something to eat at the arcade place at the mall."

"No thanks.  While the idea of eating pizza while being entertained by an animatronic band singing country western music is tempting, I think I'll pass.  Besides, Spike gets really lonely by himself in the apartment all day.  He'll be looking for us to show up at the usual time."

"Well, then why don't you pick him up and we could all go?"

"No, uh.  He…Well, you see, Spike…he really doesn't like to eat pizza…not before eight o'clock.  He's…English and the idea of eating anything but buttered scones and lady fingers in the middle of the afternoon…it's just weird to him."

"Oh, stupid me!" Candyce says, bashing herself on the forehead with a clinched fist.  "Spike's sun allergy!"

Buffy knows the years since Candyce's husband's death haven't been easy for Candyce and she hasn't quite gotten over the feeling that she is cheating on her husband when she goes out on dates, so her social life is nearly non-existent.  An afternoon with friends and two kids is quite an outing for her.

"Oh, but hey," Buffy says,  "On Friday night, why don't we all go see a movie or something?"  Buffy suggests.  "I really need to get Daniel out of his Harry Potter/Winnie the Pooh rut.  The new Scooby Doo movie is coming out on Friday.  Daniel loves Scooby Doo and Spike really has a thing for that actress who plays Daphne.  He says that she looks like me, but I don't see it."

"That would be fun," Candyce says.

"Great.  So it's a date?"

"It's a date."

That afternoon Daniel rushes into the apartment brandishing a piece of construction paper like a battle flag.

"Look, Daddy!  Daddy look!" he exclaims, shoving the piece of paper into his father's immediate view.

Spike studies his son's latest artistic, made stiff with multiple applications of glue and layer upon layer of colored paper.  "Well, well.  What do we have here?" he genuinely wants to know.

"That's how the three of us would look if we were all jack-o-lanterns," Buffy beams as she removes Daniel's light blue windbreaker.  "The first one on the left is you, my dear."

"Oh, I see!"  Spike says, amusement flickering in his eyes.  "And look how handsome I am, even with fifty percent of my teeth missing and what appears to be a receding hairline."

"My teacher said it was really, really good.  Look!  She gave me a gold star!"  Daniel proclaims proudly, pointing to the foil emblem at the bottom of the drawing.

"Then we will have to find a special place for this beauty.  Let's go to the fridge."

Daniel trails his father into the kitchen and they both pause before the refrigerator.  Spike ruminates over what ojets d'art to replace without hurting his son's feelings.  He finally settles on last year's masterwork, a drawing of a curiously skinny Santa Claus about to slide down a chimney.  "Here.  We'll take this one down now and put it back up at Christmastime."  As he plucks the blue letter A magnet from the top of the drawing, a small piece of paper that is decidedly not one of Daniel's drawings flutters to the floor.  He bends to retrieve it and then can barely believe what he's seeing.

On a 3" x 5" index card is typed this tersely-worded message:

As of January 1, your rent will increase by $100 dollars a month.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the management of Sunnydale Heights.

Buffy walks into the kitchen, arms akimbo, a tired smile on her face.  "So, did we find a place for…"  She sees what Spike is holding and promptly stops midway through the kitchen.  She feels the sting of a flush building on her face as she knows she has been found out.  Quickly she dismisses Daniel, as the electricity of Spike's anger begins to fill the room like the coming of a sudden thunderstorm on a July afternoon.  "Daniel, why don't you go change out of your shirt so Mommy can wash it for you.  I think I saw a ketchup stain on it from your lunch.  I don't want something like that to set."

"OK, Mommy," he says, dashing off to his room.

"And put on something warm.  It's chilly in here today."

"OK, Mommy," he answers as he skips down the hall.

Finding herself alone with her husband, Buffy rubs a hand up and down her arm as he keeps her in his stare.

"When were you going to tell me about this?" he says in a silky hiss. 

"I'm sorry.  It just slipped my mind.  That's all," she answers feebly. 

"You've been paying an extra one hundred dollars a month for this glorified locker of a flat and you haven't bothered to tell me?"

"But see?  That's why I think we could swing a house payment.  I'm already paying through the nose just to rent a place to live.  I don't see why it would be any different handling a house payment."

"But Buffy?  A hundred dollars extra for a place that is cold as Mars during the fall and winter and hot as hell during the spring and summer?"

"I've managed.  I've had to make some cuts here and there, but we've gotten through.  Besides, honey, there wasn't really anything you could do about it.  You were taking care of Daniel full time then.  I needed you to be at home.  I wouldn't even have thought about you working outside the house."

Buffy doesn't know why she has said this and as Spike's eyes widen and the veins in his neck become engorged with blood, she knows that was so not the right thing to say. 

"Oh, I get it!  What could I have done?  Is that what you think of me?  That I'm some sort of fucking June Cleaver in a pearl necklace who's only good for cutting the crusts off sandwiches and keeping the house tidy?"

"Spike, watch your language!"

"Don't you fucking tell me what to do!  Oh.  I forgot.  That's all you're good for."

Buffy gapes at her husband and is about to sound off her own furious reply when Daniel comes into the room with half of his sweater on, one sleeve dangling like an elephant's trunk.

"Mommy and Daddy look!  I'm missing an arm!" he says, turning about wildly trying to find the missing sleeve.

"Fine.  Then we'll put you on tour with Def Leppard," Spike bites out.

Daniel eyes his parents with a newly piqued curiosity.   He sees their folded arms and their fuming faces.  He looks to his mother, who won't look at him, and then to his father, who can't seem to look at anyone.

"Are you fighting?" he asks timidly.

Buffy turns to her son and then crosses the room to him to straighten his sweater.  "No, sweetie.  We're having a discussion.  That's all."

"It sure sounds like fighting," he says, once his sweater has been righted and all limbs are present and accounted for.

"We just have something we need to talk about.  Why don't you go into your room and have some quiet time."

"Can I watch TV?" he asks.

"Yeah.  If you want to."

Buffy knows her young son must know something is wrong now.  She only allows him two hours of TV after dinner, never before and rarely in his room, unless one of his parents is there with him to watch. 

"Can Daddy come read to me?" he asks.

"Not right now, Daniel," his father says.

"Then can you watch TV with me?" he tries again.

"Daniel, your Mummy and I are talking right now."

"No you're not.  You're fighting.  And I don't want you to fight."

"Dammit, Daniel, just shut up and go to your room!" Spike explodes.  "Can you just do as your told for once?"

The tears come quickly and soundlessly at first, but then a sob rushes from his lips.  "Oh, Daddy!"  And he turns and flies down the hall to his room.

Buffy heatedly sighs and she passes her hand through her hair in frustrated strokes.  "Now look what you've done."

Spike closes his eyes and tries to let his anger pass.  And when it begins to leave him, left in its wake is the fleeting memory of his child crying because of something he has said.  Not only was it hurtful, it was also just plain false.  For all their faults as parents, they have truly raised an obedient child, one who may question why he is being disciplined, but one who will ultimately comply with his parents wishes, always.

"Christ," Spike mutters as he hammers his fists on the Formica countertop.  A million ways to say he's sorry flood his mind as Buffy's caress flits tenuously on his arm. 

"We'd better go to him," his wife says. 

"I know," he says, hanging his head down as the pounding anger in his head abates and more and more regret heaps up.

"Spike, you know I think of you as a partner in every way."

"I know."

"And you're a good father.  I can't believe how you've taken to parenthood."

Spike shrugs.  "Comes from being with a woman who played with dolls for a century, I suppose."

"More than that.  It comes from the heart.  You've always had such a great heart, Spike.  Even when you were evil, you had a heart, I think," she says, smoothing a hand through her husband's unruly curls…so much like her son's. 

Spike nods, feeling a stabbing in his heart from the memory of his son's tears spilling onto his face.  No soul, yet he feels.  No soul, yet he loves.  No soul.  He's an anomaly, to be sure, but a tortured anomaly.

"I can't believe I said that to him," Spike says.

"Make your apologies."

He does.  And Daniel understands.  Mommy and Daddy were having a discussion and Daniel shouldn't have come in on it.  He may remember that lesson or he won't.  Odds are he won't, but it doesn't matter this afternoon when Mommy and Daddy are on his bed laughing with him at old Scooby Doo cartoons and Mommy announces that they all will see the new live action movie on Friday.

One Monday afternoon, Daniel brought home a note from school saying that one child in his class had come down with the chicken pox.  And then one Wednesday morning, Daniel comes home early from school because another child has come down with the chicken pox, and this time the child is Daniel.

            Spike immediately goes into caregiver mode when his son arrives at the apartment.  He turns Daniel's chin from side to side, finding that there are only two pinkish welts marring his son's face and his skin is hot to the touch.

            "Not feeling well, are we?" Spike asks as he tugs the windbreaker from his son's arms.

            "I feel OK," Daniel replies.  "Except I missed recess!"

            Spike smiles.  "Don't worry.  You're going to be in recess until you get better."

            "But I feel OK, Daddy.  I don't feel sniffly or shirty."

            Buffy rolls her eyes.  "Shirty.  Great word you've introduced to our son."

            "What?  It's better than shitty," Spike defends.

            "Shitty," Daniel giggles.  "Shitty."

            "Oh, great.  Great, great, great," Buffy mutters, throwing her hands up in the air.  "Look, I'm going back to the Y.  Yolanda took over my class this morning.  I've got to go before she has them unlearning what they have learned."

            "What do I give him?"  Spike asks.

            "This," Buffy says, pushing a bottle of calamine lotion into her husband's hand.  "On all the pox.  They're going to start appearing like Adam Sandler movies on TBS very shortly.  I gotta go.  Bye, Daniel.  Mommy loves you."  She presses a kiss on her son's as yet unaffected forehead and then leaves the apartment. 

            About this time, Daniel scratches at his chest.  Spike knows the pox is spreading very quickly.

            "Come on.  Let's get you into some pajamas and into a warm bed," Spike says, taking his son by the hand.

            "I don't feel sick, Daddy.  Why do I have to go to bed?  Can't I watch TV with you in the big room?"

            "We can watch TV together in your room."  Bed rest, force fluids, give him plenty of chicken soup, is what Spike is thinking.  Spike is actually a little excited that his son is home during the day.  Days are lonely in the apartment with both Buffy and Daniel gone.  He will have to censor his usual TV habits (Daniel is NOT to be subjected to the evils of Regis and Kelly until he's old enough to understand why such entities exist), but it seems some quality time is close at hand.

            Spike undresses his son and leaves him standing naked in the middle of his room while he searches for clean pajamas in the hamper of clothing that hasn't been put way yet.  Among Buffy's thongs and Spike's graying black tee shirts, Spike finds the Spider-Man PJ's that Daniel waits for every time the timer goes off on the dryer. 

            As he's pulling the pajama top over his son's head, Daniel says, "I'm serious, Daddy.  I don't feel sick.  I want to play Wizard!"

            Wizard is a role-playing game that father and son have developed in the wake of Daniel's Harry Potter fascination.  It basically entails Spike speaking in an Obi-Wan-type voice, saying things to Daniel like, "You are a wizard.  And you should act accordingly" and Daniel waving a chopstick over furniture, shouting, "Kazaa!".

            "If you're up to it."

            "Can we go to the park later?  When it's dark?"

            "No, son.  You're homebound until those little dots get crusty."

            Daniel sticks his bottom lip out on protest as Spike finishes dressing him.  After he is fully clothed and under his covers, Daniel says, "Daddy?"

            "Yes, Daniel?"

            "I think this chicken pox thing is going to suck."

            Spike has to chuckle at this.  "Daddy will do all he can to make it bearable."

At 12:30 in the afternoon, more welts have appeared on Daniel's face, and some others are hidden under his pajama top as he rubs his chest.  Spike is bringing a tray full of nourishing orange juice and chicken and stars into Daniel's room.

            Daniel eyes his lunch with disgust.  "I don't want it."

            "Oh, come on, Daniel.  It's chicken and stars.  You love chicken and stars," Spike says, running a spoon through the steaming brew of processed meat and pasta he slaved over for at least three minutes and a half. 

            Daniel pulls his covers up over his mouth.  "But won't it make more?"

            "More what?"

            "More pox!"

            "Daniel, you didn't get chicken pox from chickens.  Is that what you think?"

            "Jesse said you get chicken pox from chickens."

            "Oh, and Jesse is the authority on diseases.  He can't even spell his full name.  Don't you mind him.  Here."  Spike scoops up a generous helping of soup into the spoon and blows on it until he's sure it won't burn his son's tongue.  "Take a sip."

            "Did you make it special?"

Spike always adds a crumpling of Wheatabix to his son's chicken and stars. That's what Daniel means by making the soup special.  "Yes sir.  It's special."

Daniel puts his lips tentatively on the edge of the spoon and takes a swift sample of the soup.

Before long, Daniel is taking the soup like a man, feeding himself, remarking that this is the most special soup he has ever had.  Father and son spend the rest of the afternoon watching PBS, because Buffy always stresses that if Daniel is home sick, he should be learning something.  Right before Buffy comes home, Spike puts in the DVD of Old School and they watch the scenes that make them laugh the most.

With PBS restored, and Daniel's body now awash in angry welts, Buffy comes home just in time to hear the neediness in her son's tone.  Sick time means Mommy time when she is home and for the rest of the day Daniel is Buffy's baby again.  Only when Daniel finds her reading of Pooh substandard does Daniel call on Spike, who reads a chapter to him and saves the day.

Late into the night of the second day of the pox, Buffy awakes to her son's presence in her bed.  He doesn't ask if he can come in, he just does.  And Buffy doesn't scold him.  He is suffering.  He has been told not to scratch and he wants to so badly that his only request at this time is, "Mommy, will you rub my back?"

"Sure, sweetie," Buffy says, trying to be awake.  She runs her fingers over the thin cotton of her son's pajamas, careful not to make her gestures resemble scratching.  "Go get the calamine," Buffy instructs Spike, who is now awake as well. 

Once the bottle is retrieved, Buffy lights the lamp beside the bed and begins to massage the pink lotion onto her son's itchy skin.

"They itch so bad," Daniel says, nearly hissing as the cool lotion meets his inflamed skin.

"Now, don't scratch them, sweetie," Buffy admonishes again.

"Yeah, I know.  If I scratch, I'll be a mutant like Xander."

Buffy doesn't have to ask who told him that.  Spike is cowering under the sheets, almost in the same manner his son employed trying to avoid more pox by chicken and stars. 

Finding himself under his wife's scrutiny, Spike says, "What?"

"A mutant like Xander?" Buffy quotes.

"Hey, it was all I had to go on.  I had to say something to make him stop scratching!"

Daniel yawns and says, "Why do you sleep naked, Daddy?"

            "Because, unlike you, I don't have any pajamas."  Spike says. 

            "Mommy and I could buy you some.  For Christmas."

            Spike smiles and stokes his son's cheek.  "Don't bother.  I don't like pajamas.  I prefer to sleep au naturel."
            "What's oh---

            "Au naturel.  Naked.  How I sleep."  He could add that he has waited so long to sleep next to Buffy that he wants to absorb every moment of his time with her in bed through his pores, but that explanation would baffle his young son.  Spike would have to get into the whole thing about how Buffy hated him for a long time and he hated her, and when he loved her, she still hated him.  Daniel likes to believe that his parents loved each other from the time they met and that's the story they're sticking to.

            "I don't want to wear pajamas either," Daniel announces, pulling off his pajama top.

            "No sir! This stays on!"  Buffy tells her son.

            "But if Daddy doesn't wear pajamas, I won't either!"

Spike has been aware, since Daniel came into his own being, that his son wants to replicate everything about Spike.  Spike took to fake urinating to show his son how to pee into the toilet (vampires do not have to relieve their bladders or their bowels; everything they intake becomes a part of who they are, which makes them even more the victim of the saying, you are what you eat.)  Spike remembers how Daniel dangled his tiny penis over the blue-tinted water of the toilet and amazed himself at peeing right into it, turning the water green.  Daniel likes to talk like him as well.  He says bloody, not in relation to something that is full of blood, and he says hell, since hell always seems to follow Spike's "bloody's".  Daniel thinks that his father hung the moon.  This frightens Spike sometimes.  Daniel is a human boy, that much he and Buffy know.  He has a beating heart, his blood is warm, and he bathes in the sun, albeit with heavy applications of sunblock lotion.  But sometimes the strength Spike feels in the grip of his son's hand worries him.  It seems much stronger than that of a boy not born to a vampire and a Slayer.  He wonders how much of himself is in his son and if the undesirable parts of himself have found their way into his little boy.  Will he one day be too much like me? Spike wonders.

            For now, Spike's immediate concern is keeping his son in his pajamas. 

             "You're sick, Daniel.  You need to keep warm," Spike says, persistent in his quest to keep Daniel a mini-Spider-man.    

"How do you keep warm?" Daniel asks.

            "I've got your Mummy," Spike answers, smiling over at his tired wife.  He is reveling in the memory of a recent blood-letting in which Buffy allowed him to nurse from her breast and he took just a little.  She does this once in a blue moon, letting him pierce the delicate skin of her nipple and sip at her warm blood.  But she makes him warm in so many other ways.  Sometimes, when she's making herself up in the morning, she looks so hot to him in her distressed pink robe he could take her right at her vanity.  And then sometimes she comes home at the end of a hard day and simply slumps into his arms and says, "I missed you today."  And then sometimes she just smiles back at him lazily in the dark, and he blazes like a roman candle.

            "Is Mommy making you warm now?" Daniel asks.

            Spike just grins more and finds Buffy's hand in the darkness.  "Your Mummy makes me warm all the time.  All I have to do is think about her."

            Late one afternoon, the phone rings as Spike is picking up Daniel's toys. 

            "Hey," comes Buffy's enthusiastic voice from the other end.

            "Hey yourself," Spike says, cradling the phone between his chin and his shoulder. 

            "How's the half-English patient?"

            "He's all tuckered out right now.  He was playing fine for a while and then he said, 'Daddy, I think I need to lie down,' and he fell asleep on the couch.  He's been out cold for about an hour now."

            "Poor baby," Buffy remarks.  "Any fever still?"

            "Are you kidding?  He's so full of Motrin right now, a fever doesn't stand a chance."

            "So what are you doing?"

            "Straightening up.  For a sick kid, he can sure make a lot of mess."

            "Have you had a chance to read the paper yet?"

            "Sorry.  Since you left it's been nothing but, 'Daddy, read to me.  Daddy, play Wizard with me.  Daddy, let's watch about eleven hours of Spongebob Squarepants.'"

            "I was just wondering if there were any new houses on the market that might be in our price range."

            For some reason, Spike thought Buffy has forgotten all about finding a new house.  He hasn't heard her speak about it for at least a week.

            "There's a new position opening here at the Y.  Director of Activities.  I think I might apply for it.  More responsibilities, many more hours, but the money is good.  36k a year.  Thing is, a college education is preferred, but I think I've been here long enough to be considered a half shoo-in.  What do you think?"

            "I think you should go for it, love.  Does it seem like something you could do?"

            "Honey, I've averted about a dozen Apocalypses since I was fifteen.  I should be able to handle the daily operations of a Y, don't you think?"

            "Yeah, but what happens when you're in an interview and you say, 'Oh, and six years ago, I prevented a god from unleashing hell on earth.  And then when my husband and I got married, same thing!  No hell on earth!'"

            "That would definitely highlight my managerial skills, attention to detail, and ability to get along with others, don't you think?"

            "You know, I've tried my hand at creating a resume too," Spike says, eyeing the nearly blank piece of paper on the kitchen table with just his name (William S. Hogan, Esquire), his address and telephone number.   "But I'm finding that 'Scourge of Europe' doesn't look as good on paper as I thought it would."

            "Sounds like you could use a little help to juice things up."

            "Yes, please," he sighs. 

            "Well, we'll work on it tonight."

            Spike wonders what there is to work on when he says, "All right."

            By the following Monday, Daniel's pox are nice and crusty and his fever is gone and he is too relieved to be dressed for school and not for another day in bed.

            "Ooh, look at that!" Daniel says, flaking off a scab from a pock on his chest as Buffy tries to dress him.

            "Sweetie, don't do that!  That's disgusting!"

            "But it's so fun!" Daniel says, finding another pock that's ripe for picking,

            "Don't do it!  Please!  Mommy doesn't want to receive a note from the principal saying you've been suspended from school for grossing out other students."

            "That won't happen. Jesse picked his scabs for a while and passed them around.  And they were bloody bloody."

            "Don't pick.  That's it," Buffy warns for a final time. 

Daniel is dressed.  His lunch is packed.  It's as though he is going to school for the first time.  And no one feels this more than Spike.

He is by the door, biting his thumb, pacing back and forth.  "His fever?" he asks his wife.

"Gone," Buffy says, slipping a warm woolen cap over her son's head as an added defense against the increasingly cooler weather outside. 

"And the welts?"

"All crusty."

"Really, I thought I saw one that was---

"Honey, he's ready to go back.  I know you hate to lose your best buddy, but he's got to go back to school.  Otherwise, he'll be a moron, like Xander."  Buffy finishes off that statement with a knowing smile.

Spike joins Buffy in her smile and takes her by the hand, kissing her palm.  He then turns to his sweet little boy, all scabbed over and sweaty in his woolen coat, needful in the will-it-be-cold or –won't-it-be-cold weather of October.

"I love you, Daniel.  You know that," Spike tells his son.

Daniel responds with a hug and a grin before dashing out of the apartment for adventures with friends at school he has been missing.

"Wait, Daniel!"  Buffy shouts out into the hall.  After she has successfully halted her son from dashing down the stairs, she turns to Spike.

She takes just a minute to cup his cheek with her hand and kiss him.  She strokes a thumb along his prominent jaw and draws his face to hers again, kissing him more deeply this time.  These are the kinds of kisses reserved for late night embraces under the covers when they think Daniel is fast asleep.  Spike never would expect such a kiss in broad daylight, with their son hellicoptering up and down the hall, anxious to go to school.

In about the time it takes a teacher to let a class out for recess, Buffy finally breaks the kiss and fingers the white scar on her husband's brow. 

"Every day, I have no idea how I would make it without you.  I love you more than anything in the world," she says to him.

For all the times he has spoken extemporaneously from his dead heart and has exposed the poet's soul that was taken away from him so many years ago, Spike finds himself unable to speak.  He can only nod, tears thick in the back of his throat.  So often he still thinks of himself as the creature crouched under her window smoking cigarettes in the darkness.  When she pulls him to her and lets him know that he is truly hers, he feels as though his alleyway encounter with a vampire years ago was just a dream and he is a man, a man in full. 

Spike sits in the lonely space of the apartment.   The only noises are coming from the hum of the fridge and the Spanish radio station blaring in the apartment below.  He stares at the TV, almost willing it to come on, but it doesn't.  He goes over to the resume that he and his wife have worked on.  He looks at the last job listed. 

Initiative Project.  Classified. 

Spike looks at that line and feels dizzy, snared by memories of helplessness and experimentation.  For so long he has put off the pain that the chip has directed him to feel when he hurts a human being.

But he can't put off the pain of loneliness as his son's presence drains from the apartment and he is left alone.  And he cries when he finally switches on the TV and watches a pasty-faced man on TV pass a shoe into his hand, saying, "One, two!"