FIC: Seraph (8/?)
Mar. 9th, 2009 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupStory begins here. All parts may be found here.
~~~~~
It was supposed to be easy. Buffy’d promised that Spike would behave and said something about an advance, and then she’d sent him and Xander an hour out of town, where Spike would sniff out the abandoned vamp-nest with his supernatural nose (and how wrong was that?) and they’d find the magical doohickey Giles wanted. Except of course the nest wasn’t really abandoned, and what were the chances that Spike, even pregnant Spike (and Xander wasn’t even thinking about how wrong that was) would pass up a fight? Although, granted, the vamps pretty much had them surrounded before they realized what was happening.
Xander had managed to stake two--count ‘em, two--vampires all by himself, no Slayer in sight, and turned just in time to see the last vamp standing take a leaping kick towards Spike, feet aimed at his chest. Under that full-body attack, all Spike could do was fall.
His scream was pain and rage and vicious fear, and there was none of his usual grace in his return attack; no efficiency, just extravagant all-encompassing bloodlust. Xander couldn’t see if he had a stake and then it was moot because Spike had straddled the vamp and twisted its head off in one sharp motion. And then he was kneeling there in the weeds, curled around his stomach and pulling in breaths so sharp and quick a human would have passed out.
“Spike.” Vampire, Xander. Fangy vampire. “Spike!” Xander shook off the hesitation, crouched at the vampire’s side and grabbed his shoulder. “Are you--? Is it--?” He remembered something Dawn had chattered in passing. “Spike, you’re hyperventilating, stop breathing. You can’t feel it if you’re breathing.”
Spike gasped once and then stilled, his muscles cord-tight under Xander’s hand. One second. Two seconds. All at once he collapsed into the weeds and started drawing breaths again, slower this time.
“Spike?”
“Heart’s still beating,” he rasped, closing his eyes. “Bloody bug-fucking bastard.” He was trembling like a DT case.
After a moment, Xander said, “Look, I’m going to go see if I can find the mystical whozit.” Eyes still closed, Spike waved him away. Xander edged into the cave, nerves afire for sign of any more vamps, but it seemed they’d all come out to the party. Eventually he found the shiny amulet thing that matched Giles description, and took no time scooting back out of there.
He found Spike still lying on the matted tangle of vetch and California poppies. They had to get to the car and get home in the last hour and a half before sunrise, but Xander didn’t say anything, just settled onto the dew-wet ground to wait. He’d forgotten, a little, how terrifying it was to face down a vampire in a rage, but he remembered now. And never, ever did he want William the Bloody that mad at him, chipped or not.
After which thought Xander promptly found himself saying, “You really panicked for a minute there.” And then held his breath.
But Spike’s ridges had melted away, and all he did was open one eye far enough to glare. “Big Bad does not panic.”
“No?” A little heartened, Xander kept going. “You were hyperventilating, and you don’t even have to breathe. You were seriously worried about your... kid.”
Spike sighed, a much steadier sigh than Xander would have expected two minutes ago. “What’s your point?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Don’t bother.” Opening the other eye now, Spike gingerly pushed himself upright, and then started angling onto his feet. Xander stood and offered him a hand, and Spike barely hesitated before he took it--and then nearly tumbled onto the grass again before Xander got a firmer hold.
“M’not injured, let me go.”
“Well, I am, so give me something to lean on, will you?” Not that the gash in his arm was bleeding that badly and it wasn’t like he had to walk on it, but Spike quit trying to shake him off, which was mostly the point anyway. Together they stumbled the hundred feet to the car.
Once Spike downed a bag of blood to steady himself--good thing he’d insisted on bringing a snack, Xander doubted they’d find a butcher open this late even in vampire country--Xander gave the map a glance and turned the car back the way they’d come. After a few moments of silence, he said, “Seriously, I don’t get it.”
“Don’t expect you to, Harris.” Now Spike just sounded tired. “Let it go.”
“No, I want to know.” A tired vampire was much, much less threatening than a semi-panicked vampire. “You eat kids, right?”
Spike glanced over at him. “Have done, yeah.”
“And you don’t regret it.”
“Do you regret eating that mass of overprocessed animal fat you called a hamburger? Was a cow once.”
“I dunno, Spike. I think that might have been genuine beefy-flavored soy enriched with vegetable oil.”
It was enough to get a snort and a smirk, and then Spike fell quiet again.
“Okay, fine,” Xander said. “It was a cow. But there’s kind of some fundamental differences between cows and humans.”
“One’s tastier than the other.”
Xander gave his head a sharp shake. “And I so don’t want to know which you think is which.”
An unapologetic snort. “Vampire.”
“So you don’t regret eating kids, I don’t regret eating cows. Fine.” Not fine, Xander, what are you doing even having this conversation? “You are, are incubating a kid for nine months, and there is absolutely no way in a month of Hellmouthy Halloweens you’d see me that worried about a cow.” Another shake of the head. “And now my mind is going scary places.”
“Yeah, spare us the images, would you?” Spike shifted, sprawling his legs out. “I told you, I don’t expect you to get it.”
“Try me.”
A pause. Finally, “It’s not like it’s a person. Not yet. Even if it were, it’d make no difference to me whether or not there was one more human toddling around the planet.”
“Even though it’s yours?”
“Mine.”
“Yeah, you know, Son of Spike? Another twig on the family maple?”
Spike was giving him that you-moron look. “It’s not mine. Vampire here--my stuff doesn’t do quite everything yours does. Make new humans, for instance.”
“Oh. Okay. Um.” And somehow that was even weirder, which meant there was something that Spike pregnant with his own kid would have been less weird than. Sunnydale strikes again. “So...”
“S’just, this one’s got no one looking out for it, ‘cept me, and isn’t that a sodding sorry state of affairs?”
“Not that I’m disagreeing, but I thought predators liked going after the weak ones. Easier prey.”
“Get that off the Discovery Channel, did you?”
No way was Xander apologizing for having a connoisseur’s appreciation of cable TV. “Yeah, and...?”
A huffed sigh. “Well, it’s not like it’s worth eating now, is it, even if I could?”
“Um.” There was no non-evil answer to that question.
“What I’m saying is, what’s the bloody point of killing something isn’t even properly alive yet? Nothing to fight, no fun in the kill. Why bother?”
“Um.” There was that word again, the sign of patented Xander Harris articulation. “Spike, there’s still a difference between ‘not worth killing’ and ‘if you hurt it I’ll rip your head off’--in a completely literal sense, by the way.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, but his eyes had shifted away to what Xander knew to be a particularly boring patch of ceiling. “Not like I’m going to let anyone else have at it. I’ve got dibs.”
“So you’re saying once it’s born, and grown, then you’d want to eat it. Him. Her.” Xander couldn’t believe how calmly he was positing these possibilities, like it was all just abstract, no lives in the balance, no blood soaked evidence to weigh. The fact that he could even raise these questions told him enough, didn’t it?
He glanced over to see Spike’s head leaned back against the headrest, eyes closed. “Spike?” Figures he’d fall asleep right at the critical question. Or pretend to fall asleep--
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no, Harris. Wouldn’t eat this sprog if it was all the difference between me and dust.”
He couldn’t help asking the next question. “But if it was somebody else’s kid--”
Spike shifted abruptly towards the window, face in his arm. Muffled, he said, “Wake me when we get there.”
Huh. Was that the answer you wanted, Xander? Or the answer you didn’t want?
~*~*~
After Willow told him for the third time how much faster she coded decryption algorithms without him looking over her shoulder, Spike flung himself onto the couch with one of the Giles’ less stultifying old volumes. He was chortling over an account of the mysterious locked-room exsanguinations of certain ‘particularly distinguished’ (read: pompous and useless) London notables--stunts for which Drac the welsher still owed him eleven pounds, with interest--when the door squeaked open. It wasn’t a scent--rich, hinting of incense and the tang of magic--or a footstep he knew.
“Hey, sweetie.”
Spike slammed the book on the coffee table and hauled himself up to look over the back of the couch. There was she was, ash-blond and possessed of full, kissable lips. “I know you.”
The girl’s glance flitted to him, questioningly to Willow, and back. “Y-you do? I d-d-don’t think--”
He thrust himself to his feet. “I dreamed you.”
“Oh, that’s original. ‘I had a dream about you.’” Willow slid between them, grasped the girl’s hand, and lifted her chin. “Tara’s with me.”
“That’s lovely. I hope you’ll be very miserable together.” He leaned over to peer up under the girl’s hair, fallen across her face. “You were in my dream. I’ve never even seen you, and you showed up in my sodding dream. You talked to me.”
“Willow, I d-don’t think he’s h-hitting on me.” She pulled the hair back to look him in the eye. “W-what did I say?”
“You said--” He glanced at Willow. “Some privacy?”
Willow made an abortive gesture towards the door--from which daylight was still streaming in--and said, “Fine. I need a break anyway. Tara, if he starts being annoyo-vamp, just yell.” She went out and shut the door behind her.
“Y-you’re a vampire?” Curiosity was chasing the fear around her face.
“You mean Red’s never even mentioned me? Spike, slayer of Slayers, occasional bane of the Scooby existence?”
“Oh!” Her face lit. “You’re the one that’s p-p--”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Spike muttered. “Glad that tidbit’s made the rounds already.”
The hair slid down again. “I’m s-sorry, it’s not any of my business.”
He slumped onto the back of the couch. “Not like it won’t be bloody obvious before long, anyway.”
“S-so tell me about this dream.”
He described the end, the stark desert sand and the Slayer battle and her, primped up like a harem girl. “You were impartin’ gibberish to the Slayer--Buffy, I mean--and then they went rolling down and you turned to me and...”
As his pause drew out, she said, “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.”
“No. Want you to explain it to me.” He repeated what that other, more ethereal Tara had said. “S’gibberish, too, really. And you put your hand on me and I was warm again, like bein’ alive, and then you started my heart beating, only it didn’t beat like mine.” Another pause while she looked at him carefully, earnestly. “It was the little one’s heartbeat. Quick, light.”
“The... Oh.”
“So, what? The sprog’s life, yeah? Makes me live again. Makes me... not a vamp?” Not evil? Not Spike? Each alternative shifted the sands farther beneath his feet.
“D-dream interpretation isn’t s-something I’m very good at it. It’s a gift, you know? Not one of mine. B-but this doesn’t sound like a seer’s dream--I mean, I don’t think you should take it literally.”
“So the sprog’s turnin’ my whole existence upside down metaphorically.”
“I think the baby’s going to be a catalyst for you.”
“My bloody redemption, is that it?” Somehow, he had nothing but impatience for this notion that ought to have filled him with rage or self-righteous terror, or both.
“No.” He looked up, startled at her vehemence. “D-don’t you dare put that burden on a person. You can change for someone, sometimes, but if you expect them t-to fix you--or if you think you’re going to fix them--you’ll both end up broken.”
He blinked. “Right. Duly noted.”
She blushed and ducked her head. “S-sorry. Family thing. My mom had this, um, h-health problem, and she married my dad because he said he could h-heal her.”
“And he couldn’t, so he resented her for it and made her believe she’d tricked him into it. Or else him sayin’ it was a bunch of rot, and he got a woman he could cow into anything.”
“N-not quite like that.”
And he got a daughter he could cow thrown into the bargain, Spike decided. “So that’s it, then? ‘A change is coming into your life’? Could have gotten that from the bloody horoscope.”
“S-sorry. Maybe it’ll make more sense later?”
“Yeah.” So much for getting his fortune told.
“Um,” Tara said, and stopped.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“I, um, apprenticed with a midwife when I was younger. For a little bit. D-do you mind?” She motioned towards his stomach.
He regarded this soft-voiced girl hiding behind her curtain of hair, and decided her touch would gentle. He shrugged. “If you like.”
She knelt and, before he could protest, she’d unbuckled his belt and slipped the top buttons of this latest pair of jeans--already too snug, he’d have to give up on denim altogether and find something with more give. Then she slid her hands beneath his t-shirt and flattened them against his softening, rounding belly. She didn’t even seem to notice what her position would look like to anyone who walked in. That was professionalism, he supposed.
“How far along...?”
It didn’t take any calculation; the number was always at the back of his mind now. “Five months and three weeks.”
“You’re carrying sm-mall. And low.”
“Is that bad?” He tried to ask the question coolly, and suspected he’d failed.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t really m-mean anything. Everyone’s different. It d-depends on how the baby’s turned, the shape of your hips, whether this is your first. Women usually show m-more in their second pregnancy.” Like a blind woman reading Braille, her fingertips traced the curve of his belly by some arcane logic of midwifery or witchery or both.
“Anything else you can tell?” he asked.
“Well, there are lots of tricks for figuring out if it’s a boy or a girl by how you carry.”
He wondered if she’d ever noticed how little she stuttered when she wasn’t paying attention. Probably not. “Any of them work?”
“Magic, if you’re attuned. Not so much with the ‘carry low, it’s a boy’ theory. But w-whichever you guess, you’ve got a fifty percent chance.” Her lips quirked in a smile. “Besides, it’s p-probably different with you, anyway.”
He shifted away from her and started tucking his shirt back in. “Yeah, probably your first male patient, aren’t I?” Much more of that and he'd be her first to get a hard on during an examination.
“Yeah.” She rose and sat next to him on the back of the couch.
He rebuttoned his fly. “Any--” He flicked a glance to her face. “Any wisdom for the expectant vampire?”
“Don’t panic?”
“Wish that didn’t sound so much like a question.”
She set her chin and looked at him, mock-stern. “Don’t panic.”
“Right.” He eyed a speck of dust on Giles’ floor. If it were that simple...
He felt a touch, feather-light, and looked down to see her hand over his. She gave him another soft smile, mute, and he heaved a sigh. Don’t panic. Okay.
next part
~~~~~
It was supposed to be easy. Buffy’d promised that Spike would behave and said something about an advance, and then she’d sent him and Xander an hour out of town, where Spike would sniff out the abandoned vamp-nest with his supernatural nose (and how wrong was that?) and they’d find the magical doohickey Giles wanted. Except of course the nest wasn’t really abandoned, and what were the chances that Spike, even pregnant Spike (and Xander wasn’t even thinking about how wrong that was) would pass up a fight? Although, granted, the vamps pretty much had them surrounded before they realized what was happening.
Xander had managed to stake two--count ‘em, two--vampires all by himself, no Slayer in sight, and turned just in time to see the last vamp standing take a leaping kick towards Spike, feet aimed at his chest. Under that full-body attack, all Spike could do was fall.
His scream was pain and rage and vicious fear, and there was none of his usual grace in his return attack; no efficiency, just extravagant all-encompassing bloodlust. Xander couldn’t see if he had a stake and then it was moot because Spike had straddled the vamp and twisted its head off in one sharp motion. And then he was kneeling there in the weeds, curled around his stomach and pulling in breaths so sharp and quick a human would have passed out.
“Spike.” Vampire, Xander. Fangy vampire. “Spike!” Xander shook off the hesitation, crouched at the vampire’s side and grabbed his shoulder. “Are you--? Is it--?” He remembered something Dawn had chattered in passing. “Spike, you’re hyperventilating, stop breathing. You can’t feel it if you’re breathing.”
Spike gasped once and then stilled, his muscles cord-tight under Xander’s hand. One second. Two seconds. All at once he collapsed into the weeds and started drawing breaths again, slower this time.
“Spike?”
“Heart’s still beating,” he rasped, closing his eyes. “Bloody bug-fucking bastard.” He was trembling like a DT case.
After a moment, Xander said, “Look, I’m going to go see if I can find the mystical whozit.” Eyes still closed, Spike waved him away. Xander edged into the cave, nerves afire for sign of any more vamps, but it seemed they’d all come out to the party. Eventually he found the shiny amulet thing that matched Giles description, and took no time scooting back out of there.
He found Spike still lying on the matted tangle of vetch and California poppies. They had to get to the car and get home in the last hour and a half before sunrise, but Xander didn’t say anything, just settled onto the dew-wet ground to wait. He’d forgotten, a little, how terrifying it was to face down a vampire in a rage, but he remembered now. And never, ever did he want William the Bloody that mad at him, chipped or not.
After which thought Xander promptly found himself saying, “You really panicked for a minute there.” And then held his breath.
But Spike’s ridges had melted away, and all he did was open one eye far enough to glare. “Big Bad does not panic.”
“No?” A little heartened, Xander kept going. “You were hyperventilating, and you don’t even have to breathe. You were seriously worried about your... kid.”
Spike sighed, a much steadier sigh than Xander would have expected two minutes ago. “What’s your point?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Don’t bother.” Opening the other eye now, Spike gingerly pushed himself upright, and then started angling onto his feet. Xander stood and offered him a hand, and Spike barely hesitated before he took it--and then nearly tumbled onto the grass again before Xander got a firmer hold.
“M’not injured, let me go.”
“Well, I am, so give me something to lean on, will you?” Not that the gash in his arm was bleeding that badly and it wasn’t like he had to walk on it, but Spike quit trying to shake him off, which was mostly the point anyway. Together they stumbled the hundred feet to the car.
Once Spike downed a bag of blood to steady himself--good thing he’d insisted on bringing a snack, Xander doubted they’d find a butcher open this late even in vampire country--Xander gave the map a glance and turned the car back the way they’d come. After a few moments of silence, he said, “Seriously, I don’t get it.”
“Don’t expect you to, Harris.” Now Spike just sounded tired. “Let it go.”
“No, I want to know.” A tired vampire was much, much less threatening than a semi-panicked vampire. “You eat kids, right?”
Spike glanced over at him. “Have done, yeah.”
“And you don’t regret it.”
“Do you regret eating that mass of overprocessed animal fat you called a hamburger? Was a cow once.”
“I dunno, Spike. I think that might have been genuine beefy-flavored soy enriched with vegetable oil.”
It was enough to get a snort and a smirk, and then Spike fell quiet again.
“Okay, fine,” Xander said. “It was a cow. But there’s kind of some fundamental differences between cows and humans.”
“One’s tastier than the other.”
Xander gave his head a sharp shake. “And I so don’t want to know which you think is which.”
An unapologetic snort. “Vampire.”
“So you don’t regret eating kids, I don’t regret eating cows. Fine.” Not fine, Xander, what are you doing even having this conversation? “You are, are incubating a kid for nine months, and there is absolutely no way in a month of Hellmouthy Halloweens you’d see me that worried about a cow.” Another shake of the head. “And now my mind is going scary places.”
“Yeah, spare us the images, would you?” Spike shifted, sprawling his legs out. “I told you, I don’t expect you to get it.”
“Try me.”
A pause. Finally, “It’s not like it’s a person. Not yet. Even if it were, it’d make no difference to me whether or not there was one more human toddling around the planet.”
“Even though it’s yours?”
“Mine.”
“Yeah, you know, Son of Spike? Another twig on the family maple?”
Spike was giving him that you-moron look. “It’s not mine. Vampire here--my stuff doesn’t do quite everything yours does. Make new humans, for instance.”
“Oh. Okay. Um.” And somehow that was even weirder, which meant there was something that Spike pregnant with his own kid would have been less weird than. Sunnydale strikes again. “So...”
“S’just, this one’s got no one looking out for it, ‘cept me, and isn’t that a sodding sorry state of affairs?”
“Not that I’m disagreeing, but I thought predators liked going after the weak ones. Easier prey.”
“Get that off the Discovery Channel, did you?”
No way was Xander apologizing for having a connoisseur’s appreciation of cable TV. “Yeah, and...?”
A huffed sigh. “Well, it’s not like it’s worth eating now, is it, even if I could?”
“Um.” There was no non-evil answer to that question.
“What I’m saying is, what’s the bloody point of killing something isn’t even properly alive yet? Nothing to fight, no fun in the kill. Why bother?”
“Um.” There was that word again, the sign of patented Xander Harris articulation. “Spike, there’s still a difference between ‘not worth killing’ and ‘if you hurt it I’ll rip your head off’--in a completely literal sense, by the way.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, but his eyes had shifted away to what Xander knew to be a particularly boring patch of ceiling. “Not like I’m going to let anyone else have at it. I’ve got dibs.”
“So you’re saying once it’s born, and grown, then you’d want to eat it. Him. Her.” Xander couldn’t believe how calmly he was positing these possibilities, like it was all just abstract, no lives in the balance, no blood soaked evidence to weigh. The fact that he could even raise these questions told him enough, didn’t it?
He glanced over to see Spike’s head leaned back against the headrest, eyes closed. “Spike?” Figures he’d fall asleep right at the critical question. Or pretend to fall asleep--
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no, Harris. Wouldn’t eat this sprog if it was all the difference between me and dust.”
He couldn’t help asking the next question. “But if it was somebody else’s kid--”
Spike shifted abruptly towards the window, face in his arm. Muffled, he said, “Wake me when we get there.”
Huh. Was that the answer you wanted, Xander? Or the answer you didn’t want?
After Willow told him for the third time how much faster she coded decryption algorithms without him looking over her shoulder, Spike flung himself onto the couch with one of the Giles’ less stultifying old volumes. He was chortling over an account of the mysterious locked-room exsanguinations of certain ‘particularly distinguished’ (read: pompous and useless) London notables--stunts for which Drac the welsher still owed him eleven pounds, with interest--when the door squeaked open. It wasn’t a scent--rich, hinting of incense and the tang of magic--or a footstep he knew.
“Hey, sweetie.”
Spike slammed the book on the coffee table and hauled himself up to look over the back of the couch. There was she was, ash-blond and possessed of full, kissable lips. “I know you.”
The girl’s glance flitted to him, questioningly to Willow, and back. “Y-you do? I d-d-don’t think--”
He thrust himself to his feet. “I dreamed you.”
“Oh, that’s original. ‘I had a dream about you.’” Willow slid between them, grasped the girl’s hand, and lifted her chin. “Tara’s with me.”
“That’s lovely. I hope you’ll be very miserable together.” He leaned over to peer up under the girl’s hair, fallen across her face. “You were in my dream. I’ve never even seen you, and you showed up in my sodding dream. You talked to me.”
“Willow, I d-don’t think he’s h-hitting on me.” She pulled the hair back to look him in the eye. “W-what did I say?”
“You said--” He glanced at Willow. “Some privacy?”
Willow made an abortive gesture towards the door--from which daylight was still streaming in--and said, “Fine. I need a break anyway. Tara, if he starts being annoyo-vamp, just yell.” She went out and shut the door behind her.
“Y-you’re a vampire?” Curiosity was chasing the fear around her face.
“You mean Red’s never even mentioned me? Spike, slayer of Slayers, occasional bane of the Scooby existence?”
“Oh!” Her face lit. “You’re the one that’s p-p--”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Spike muttered. “Glad that tidbit’s made the rounds already.”
The hair slid down again. “I’m s-sorry, it’s not any of my business.”
He slumped onto the back of the couch. “Not like it won’t be bloody obvious before long, anyway.”
“S-so tell me about this dream.”
He described the end, the stark desert sand and the Slayer battle and her, primped up like a harem girl. “You were impartin’ gibberish to the Slayer--Buffy, I mean--and then they went rolling down and you turned to me and...”
As his pause drew out, she said, “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.”
“No. Want you to explain it to me.” He repeated what that other, more ethereal Tara had said. “S’gibberish, too, really. And you put your hand on me and I was warm again, like bein’ alive, and then you started my heart beating, only it didn’t beat like mine.” Another pause while she looked at him carefully, earnestly. “It was the little one’s heartbeat. Quick, light.”
“The... Oh.”
“So, what? The sprog’s life, yeah? Makes me live again. Makes me... not a vamp?” Not evil? Not Spike? Each alternative shifted the sands farther beneath his feet.
“D-dream interpretation isn’t s-something I’m very good at it. It’s a gift, you know? Not one of mine. B-but this doesn’t sound like a seer’s dream--I mean, I don’t think you should take it literally.”
“So the sprog’s turnin’ my whole existence upside down metaphorically.”
“I think the baby’s going to be a catalyst for you.”
“My bloody redemption, is that it?” Somehow, he had nothing but impatience for this notion that ought to have filled him with rage or self-righteous terror, or both.
“No.” He looked up, startled at her vehemence. “D-don’t you dare put that burden on a person. You can change for someone, sometimes, but if you expect them t-to fix you--or if you think you’re going to fix them--you’ll both end up broken.”
He blinked. “Right. Duly noted.”
She blushed and ducked her head. “S-sorry. Family thing. My mom had this, um, h-health problem, and she married my dad because he said he could h-heal her.”
“And he couldn’t, so he resented her for it and made her believe she’d tricked him into it. Or else him sayin’ it was a bunch of rot, and he got a woman he could cow into anything.”
“N-not quite like that.”
And he got a daughter he could cow thrown into the bargain, Spike decided. “So that’s it, then? ‘A change is coming into your life’? Could have gotten that from the bloody horoscope.”
“S-sorry. Maybe it’ll make more sense later?”
“Yeah.” So much for getting his fortune told.
“Um,” Tara said, and stopped.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“I, um, apprenticed with a midwife when I was younger. For a little bit. D-do you mind?” She motioned towards his stomach.
He regarded this soft-voiced girl hiding behind her curtain of hair, and decided her touch would gentle. He shrugged. “If you like.”
She knelt and, before he could protest, she’d unbuckled his belt and slipped the top buttons of this latest pair of jeans--already too snug, he’d have to give up on denim altogether and find something with more give. Then she slid her hands beneath his t-shirt and flattened them against his softening, rounding belly. She didn’t even seem to notice what her position would look like to anyone who walked in. That was professionalism, he supposed.
“How far along...?”
It didn’t take any calculation; the number was always at the back of his mind now. “Five months and three weeks.”
“You’re carrying sm-mall. And low.”
“Is that bad?” He tried to ask the question coolly, and suspected he’d failed.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t really m-mean anything. Everyone’s different. It d-depends on how the baby’s turned, the shape of your hips, whether this is your first. Women usually show m-more in their second pregnancy.” Like a blind woman reading Braille, her fingertips traced the curve of his belly by some arcane logic of midwifery or witchery or both.
“Anything else you can tell?” he asked.
“Well, there are lots of tricks for figuring out if it’s a boy or a girl by how you carry.”
He wondered if she’d ever noticed how little she stuttered when she wasn’t paying attention. Probably not. “Any of them work?”
“Magic, if you’re attuned. Not so much with the ‘carry low, it’s a boy’ theory. But w-whichever you guess, you’ve got a fifty percent chance.” Her lips quirked in a smile. “Besides, it’s p-probably different with you, anyway.”
He shifted away from her and started tucking his shirt back in. “Yeah, probably your first male patient, aren’t I?” Much more of that and he'd be her first to get a hard on during an examination.
“Yeah.” She rose and sat next to him on the back of the couch.
He rebuttoned his fly. “Any--” He flicked a glance to her face. “Any wisdom for the expectant vampire?”
“Don’t panic?”
“Wish that didn’t sound so much like a question.”
She set her chin and looked at him, mock-stern. “Don’t panic.”
“Right.” He eyed a speck of dust on Giles’ floor. If it were that simple...
He felt a touch, feather-light, and looked down to see her hand over his. She gave him another soft smile, mute, and he heaved a sigh. Don’t panic. Okay.
next part
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 07:19 pm (UTC)Great chapter. It's such a change from canon Spike, in that he's so wrapped up in this bizarre new reality, that he is really opening up and reaching out, rather than appearing to do so.
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Date: 2009-03-09 09:29 pm (UTC)I think it's really hard to write conversations with Tara any other way. *g* Interesting about the almost-flirting - I hadn't even thought about the scene that way, really. Funny, the things the author doesn't see.
Xander's curiosity is refreshing, too.
I think it'll end up being pretty obvious in this fic that I avoid interpersonal when at all possible, both in fiction and in RL. I am bored by it. It takes work for me to keep up an appropriate level of Spike-Scooby antagonism.
It's such a change from canon Spike, in that he's so wrapped up in this bizarre new reality, that he is really opening up and reaching out, rather than appearing to do so.
I'd love for you to expand on this. When you say that he appeared to open up in canon without actually doing so, what do you mean? What are you thinking of? I tend to think of him as being pretty closed and defensive all the way through S6, except for those rare moments when he's looking at Buffy with his heart in his eyes. Of course, with the soul we have a whole new ballgame. *is curious*
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From:no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 08:35 pm (UTC)Yay. :)
Spike hasn't gotten to the point of thinking about how the child will be born, has he?
I think he's been holding his breath, waiting to hear what's in those files. :)
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Date: 2009-03-09 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:43 pm (UTC)This gave me a grin: “So the sprog’s turnin’ my whole existence upside down metaphorically. I can just hear Spike's dry tone and see the raised eyebrow of mockery! I really can't see how a pregnant vampire is going to be able to keep from panicking, but it's delightful watching him try.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:04 pm (UTC)Yeah, poor Spike's been sadly lacking in reassurance lately...
I can just hear Spike's dry tone and see the raised eyebrow of mockery!
Hee! Yep, that's exactly what I was going for. :)
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Date: 2009-03-10 03:05 am (UTC)And may I say this got a full out-loud belly-laugh:
"But there’s kind of some fundamental differences between cows and humans.”
“One’s tastier than the other.”
Xander gave his head a sharp shake. “And I so don’t want to know which you think is which.”
*applauds*
And oh sweet Tara! *hugs* Full kissable lips and fall of blonde hair and all that earth-mother vibe.
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Date: 2009-03-10 05:27 am (UTC)*applauds*
Thank you, m'dear. :)
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Date: 2009-03-10 05:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 05:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-03-10 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 06:33 am (UTC)Love Spike being all vicious when the sprog was endangered. And Xander can be pretty smart at times.
looking forward to more.
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Date: 2009-03-10 06:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 11:27 am (UTC)*iz intrigued*
So far, I can't figure out what's in store for Spike. After humans-as-cows conversation I remembered Pylea and couldn't but ponder briefly about a possibility of AtS crossover, mythology-wise (i.e. the future birth of the Destroyer and Spike assuming Angel's role). But I think I'm vercomplicating.
I totally love Xander/Spike interaction. I suspect that Buffy sent them together on a mission striving for pedagogical results - and here they are: Xander sees a bit of Spike's caring side, Spike starts to realize that he has double morals thanks to Xander's not-so-subtle hints.
Highlights:
And never, ever did he want William the Bloody that mad at him, chip or no chip.
After which thought Xander promptly found himself saying, “You really panicked for a minute there.” And then held his breath.
So typically Xander - realizing that he shouldn't do it and doing it at the same time! :)
“M’not injured, let me go.”
“Well, I am, so give me something to lean on, will you?” Not that the gash in his arm was bleeding that badly and it wasn’t like he had to walk on it, but Spike quit trying to shake him off, which was mostly the point anyway.
Oh, yes, Xander knows a lot about a wounded pride. *pets poor boys*
But there’s kind of some fundamental differences between cows and humans.”
“One’s tastier than the other.”
Xander gave his head a sharp shake. “And I so don’t want to know which you think is which.”
Hee! Love it. The slasher vibe is very subtle - that's what makes it so titillating. :)
I also love your take on Tara and her family problems. It never occurred to me that her father could be so embittered because he couldn't "heal" her mother. Your insight adds a new layer to Tara's character.
Great chapter.
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Date: 2009-03-10 06:13 pm (UTC)But speculation is always fun, yes? For you, presumably, and definitely for me. :)
So typically Xander - realizing that he shouldn't do it and doing it at the same time!
Yup.
The slasher vibe is very subtle - that's what makes it so titillating.
Er. Um. Since I'm a dyed-in-the-wool non-slasher, any slashy vibe is purely in the eye of the beholder. Mutual platonic antagonism FTW!
Your insight adds a new layer to Tara's character.
Yay! I'm still a bit undecided about that tidbit of Maclay family history, but it seemed like a possibility.
Thanks for the comments!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-11 05:34 am (UTC)*hopes it's a girl*
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Date: 2009-03-11 05:45 am (UTC)*hopes it's a girl*
Any special reason? Just curious. :)
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Date: 2009-03-17 06:44 pm (UTC)I liked in the Tara conversation the way Spike tries to find easy answers or advice, at first, even as he knows there's no such a thing.
What I like most in the way you write Spike is that you have him ready to laugh--he may be troubled and conflicted, but doesn't lose a chance to play and sting with words and to generally be himself.
Plus, thickening plot, lots of humour, and a nice bow to the celebrated eleven pounds!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-17 11:35 pm (UTC)And this is the kind of feedback that makes a ficwriter's heart glow. Those moments of gleeful recognition are just about my very favorite part of reading fic, so it pleases me to no end to hear I'm providing some for someone else. :)
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Date: 2009-05-23 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-23 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-13 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-14 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-11 04:36 pm (UTC)Love the interaction between Spike and Xander as well; it's enjoyable to watch how each of the various Scoobies are struggling to reconcile what they know about Spike with his protective behavior in this strange situation.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-11 07:21 pm (UTC)womanperson...FIC: Seraph (8/?)
Date: 2009-12-19 09:28 pm (UTC)Mmmh sounds as if Spike developed a maternal instinct, wanting to protect the baby. He even confessed it.
Oh it was Tara in Spike's dream. I liked the Spike & Tara scene. She was helpful.
Re: FIC: Seraph (8/?)
Date: 2010-01-01 01:56 pm (UTC)Mmmh sounds as if Spike developed a maternal instinct, wanting to protect the baby. He even confessed it.
Yup. Softie. ;)
Re: FIC: Seraph (8/?)
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Date: 2011-02-28 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-28 06:00 am (UTC)