FIC: Seraph (22/26)
Sep. 29th, 2009 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupStory begins here. All parts may be found here.
This chapter beautified by my fabulous betas,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hello_spikey, phoenixofborg, and penny_lane_42. Thank you, ladies!
~~~~~
It seemed everyone but Spike had big plans for the evening. Joyce dropped him and the girls off at Stacey’s office and then disappeared to do, as Dawn put it, ‘Mom things,’ leaving them to walk home afterwards. Buffy had her unspecified agenda. Even Dawn seemed in a rush to be elsewhere; her only comment on the ooze-seeping Seebian-Hortasch symbiotic pair was that it’d better not be there to see Stacey, because Spike had gotten there first.
After Stacey had ushered them in, she weighed him and then did that thing with her hands all over his belly that looked no less like magic when she did it than when Tara did. Another listen to the heartbeat. Another ultrasound and some unworried hmm-hmming from her that he took for encouragement.
“I’m very pleased with her progress,” Stacey said finally. She settled on her swivel stool and gestured that he could pull his shirt back down. “You’ve still been feeding on human blood?”
“Yeah,” Spike said, giving Buffy one wary glance.
“It’s made a difference to both of you, I think. You’ve put on quite a bit of weight since last visit--”
“I’d noticed,” he said sourly.
She gave him the universal reproving maternal frown of Don’t-Interrupt. “Some of it’s from the... baby.” She flashed Dawn a glance and a lip-twitch that might have been a smile. “Which is very good to see. That’s what I was most worried about. A lot of the weight’s from the artificial support system -- uterus and so on -- expanding to accommodate the baby’s growth. And it appears that some of it is your own vampire physiology trying to compensate for your, hmm, increasing surface area.”
“Brilliant.”
“No, no, it really is a very good thing. Before this I couldn’t have even guessed how the semi-mystical biology would respond to this kind of intrusion. Structurally, the compensation I’m seeing is the best outcome I could hope for.
“So, overall, I’d say the human blood has been a significant improvement.”
Moment of truth. He looked to Buffy, expecting even now to see discomfort, a sort of constipated regret over feeding him the life fluids of that most privileged of species, homo sapiens sapiens.
Calmly, neutrally she met his eyes, and then she shrugged.
So that was that, then.
“Now, how are you feeling generally?” Stacey said, clipboard in hand once again.
“Pregnant,” he said. “Not that I’d know.” Funny how, even without the repeated references to his host/parasite situation, ten minutes of Stacey’s dispassionate analysis reminded him what an unnatural predicament he was in. Call it pregnancy if you like, but what he really had was a bloody foreign object crammed behind his much-abused abs.
Funny, too, how easily and often he forgot that.
“Not to mention he’s the Incredible Sleeping Vampire,” Buffy was saying.
“Hey!” he said. “Any wonder a bloke’d rather have a lie down than listen to you lot chattering on like a bunch of jaybirds?”
“Whatever,” Dawn said. “You fell asleep during Passions. Passions, Spike.”
“Show’s gone completely daft lately,” he muttered.
“I think,” said Stacey, “that I’d like to speak with Spike alone.”
He glared at them as they left, and Dawn rolled her eyes at him.
“So tell me just how much you’ve been sleeping lately,” Stacey said.
He shrugged. “S’not like I’ve got a lot else going on just now.”
“How much sleep?”
It took him a moment’s thought. “My hours are a bit off, living with humans. Up around noon, blood, watch telly or whatever with Dawn. Usually end up resting a bit around fourish -- Joyce gets home at six, and I like being around for dinner. Bed at midnight or thereabouts.”
“You’re a vampire and you’re going to bed at midnight?”
“Said my hours were off.”
“Spike, you’re sleeping fourteen hours a day.” She made a note on her chart and rested it on her knee. “Anything else bothering you?”
He hesitated, and an eyebrow lifted above Stacey’s sensible black frames. He sighed. “Sometimes I get the shakes. Like, coming out of a battle, or when I’ve been running about too much. Or,” he added, thinking of poker night, “sometimes when I’m just hungry. But all’s right once I get some blood down.”
She frowned as she noted this down. “What happens if you don’t?”
“Haven’t really tried finding out.”
“Don’t,” she said, tone sharp. “I can’t predict what would happen if you strayed outside the parameters for this...” Her expression soured. “This apparatus you’ve been fitted with. And tell me immediately if you notice anything else unusual.”
She asked Buffy and Dawn back in then, and proceeded to tell them the same thing -- anything odd should be reported, and never mind what Spike might think about it. The question of important and unimportant symptoms was not their judgment call, she said. Call me, she said. The girls nodded, serious, apparently prepared to tie him down and cart him in for his own good, if it came to that. Which ought to have irritated him to no end, and somehow didn’t.
~*~*~
Spike realized as he came in sight of the Summers porch swing that the girls had fallen behind. He turned to find them casting Significant Looks back and forth.
“Thought you had somewhere to be?” he said to Buffy as she caught up. “Parties to grace, a soldier to shag? Excuse me, ex-soldier.”
“We’re giving you a baby shower,” blurted Dawn.
He stopped cold to stare at her. “A what now?”
“A baby shower,” Buffy supplied. “As in, people shower baby stuff upon you.”
“For me,” he said, disbelieving.
“Duh, for you,” said Dawn. “You with the baby.”
He scowled. “What is it, wrap Spike up in pink bows night? Ta, but no.”
“No pink bows. Anyway, you don’t get a choice,” Buffy said, taking his elbow firmly in hand and drawing him forward. “Once Willow gets an idea -- especially a party idea…. And she’s got this thing for surprises, which I so wanted to kill her for this one time. Anyway, just be surprised, okay? Don’t tell her we ratted her out.”
“But…” By then they were up the porch steps and Dawn was turning the doorknob, and the interior was unnaturally quiet considering all the heartbeats crowded in it. Then they turned the corner and…
“Surprise!” Save Riley and Giles, the entire crew was gathered in the Summers living room: Joyce, the witches, Harris and the demon girl.
“Slayer…” Spike hissed.
Low enough that only he could hear, she said, “Don’t be a jerk, Spike,” and then she steered him in.
He dimly recalled a time, no more than a few months ago and unimaginably distant, when he could command any situation with a few well-timed words -- or equally well-timed punches, if the words failed. When he wanted the spotlight he grabbed it, and when he didn’t no one saw him but the shadows.
But that time was clearly long past, because a shadow seemed a very welcome place just now and yet he allowed Buffy and Dawn to guide him to the place of honor, the stuffed chair from the corner of the living room now set at the head of the coffee table. A huddle of packages wrapped in pastels sat to one side.
At least there weren’t any streamers.
Cupcakes were passed around. Dawn brought him blood -- surprise, surprise. It wasn’t that the demon ever tired of blood, but Spike thought his human palate might shrivel up and die -- again -- of the ecstasy of one decent buffalo wing.
“Willow’s idea, you said?” he asked Buffy in an undertone.
She took a swallow of her punch. “Well, at first it was just the -- well, one of the presents. Then it sort of morphed.” She grimaced. “Willow projects are hardly ever the same shape for long, you know? But there was definitely some joint plannage.”
“I’ll bite her,” he muttered. “I get this chip out, there’ll be a reckoning.”
Buffy snorted and nibbled off another bite of cupcake.
From the couch, Anya said, “So, does the small human have a name?”
Spike swallowed the last gulp of blood. “Haven’t decided yet.”
“Spi-i-ike,” said Dawn, mouth crumby with frosting. “You’ve had months to think about her name.”
He had thought about it, playing possibilities over in his head. But he couldn’t see her to match them to her face, and he wasn’t about to just slap some name on her to get himself over the hurdle of deciding.
“How about Christina?” said Dawn.
“No,” said Spike. “I’m not naming her after some bubble-gum pop princess.”
“Maybe Birch?” said Willow. “It’s got that back-to-nature cachet.”
“Plus,” Tara said, “tree names? Always in fashion.”
Willow grinned at her.
“Dusk,” said Dawn. “It’s like Dawn, only, you know, not.”
“Have you thought about naming her after a relative?” asked Joyce. “That was traditional when you were alive, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah...”
“Maybe after your mother?” she said.
He’d given that some thought. Would it honor her, or would it just keep him remembering his first truly spectacular screw-up as a vampire? Regardless, didn’t his girl need her own name?
“What was her name?” Joyce asked.
“Anne,” he said.
“Ooh, that’s Buffy’s middle name!” said Dawn.
Well. So much for that.
“There are certain ancient demons who bless children given their names,” said Anya. “I could give you a list.”
“Anya!” exclaimed Xander. “Spike’s not naming his kid after a demon.”
“Why not? He’s a demon.”
Xander’s flash of chagrin suggested that he’d forgotten.
“I’m not naming her anything,” Spike said.
“That’s quite unusual,” Anya said. “You know, nameless children generally grow up to have destinies. They become wandering heroes or impossibly beautiful maidens or wicked sorcerers. Are you sure you want that?”
No, he did not want that. “I mean, I’m not naming her yet. Not until I know for sure who she is.” Spike scowled inside his empty mug and then waved it at Dawn. “Refill?” She scurried off.
When she’d come back, Willow stood up with a glass of punch and dinged her fork against it. “Okay! Okay, so we have food, and no games, it turns out--”
“You’re welcome,” Buffy murmured to Spike.
“So I think it’s presents time.” Her grin was positively beatific as everyone turned to Spike.
“She’s not serious,” Spike muttered to Buffy.
“Who did you think all the boxes were for?”
Something broke. “What is this?” he hissed.
“What’s what?” Buffy leaned back and peered to inspect a toenail, unconcerned.
“Why are you lot being nice to me?” he asked, and then, seeing all the faces on him, realized his voice had risen. Now that he was looking back, the gazes turned down, away, while the fingers picked at hems and knapkins.
“Wow, way to bring the awkward silence,” Buffy said. “Nice job.”
“Well?” he pressed, ignoring the other glances. “What’s this all about? Prezzies? A party?”
Spell? Possession by some spirit with a peculiar sense of humor?
Brow knit, Buffy said, “Um, not sure what you’re getting at. You have noticed, right, that you’re living in my house?”
“It’s for you,” Dawn added, her puzzlement just bordering on hurt.
“That’s the part that’s got me twitchy,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Xander said from across the room. “I don’t get it either.”
“Haven’t we already had this conversation?” Buffy asked. “We don’t hate you anymore. Mostly. Except for the cigarette butts.”
“Well, yeah, but...” That hardly covered it.
“And it’s for the baby, too,” Willow said.
“Yeah,” Buffy said. “Most of the presents are really just baby supplies. Like you said before. Group project.”
While he was forming a response -- though what sort of response, he didn’t know yet -- Joyce walked in with a new tray of cupcakes. She eyed the clusters of averted faces. “Everything okay in here?”
“Spike’s just being hormonal,” Buffy said.
“I... You...” He huffed. “I don’t even have hormones.”
“Pretty good trick, then,” she said. “You must be a very talented vampire.”
Joyce considered them both a moment longer, and then said, “I think it’s time for presents.”
Buffy looked questioningly at Spike. “We done angsting?”
It was that imperturbable calm, as much as anything, that decided him. “Yeah, all right.”
Handed the first package and feeling all those eyes on him, he glared balefully at the offending curly ribbon until Buffy whispered at vamp-only volume, “You have to. It’s for the baby.” He turned the glare on her but it did nothing to dim her smirk, and finally he surrendered and tore the tissue paper off.
From Dawn and Buffy, a collection of impossibly tiny clothes and several packages of disposable diapers. From Dawn alone, a coupon for an indeterminate number of diaper changings, “After Mom shows me how.”
From Joyce, an entire box of items, ‘gently used,’ as she put it, the purposes of some of which completely escaped him.
From Anya, a card which promised, in script centuries older than his, babysitting ‘in extreme emergencies only.’ He raised a brow at her as he read this, but the brilliant smile of self-satisfaction she flashed him stilled his questions about the phrasing.
From Anya and Xander together -- though he knew which of them had funded it -- a gift certificate to a local baby store, which Joyce promised to help him navigate. He looked to Xander for a grimace or an eye-roll or something that’d serve as recognition of this unwonted expenditure of Harris greenbacks, but all he got was a shrug.
From the witches, a blank book for ‘Baby’s First Year,’ several more sleepers that the other girls exclaimed over, and a sort of open plastic box full of rags and bottles of the lotion variety, all wrapped up in cellophane. “Bath stuff” was Willow’s explanation. Spike eyed the conglomeration and decided he’d have to get Joyce aside about that, too.
Finally, Willow handed him two cardboard garment boxes. “This is where we got the baby shower idea from,” she said. “Only, they’re kind of more for you than the baby.”
“Dare I ask?” he said.
“You should probably just open them,” replied Willow. “They’re from the three of us.” She nodded to Tara and Dawn, both bright-eyed and crowding in to see. “Plus Buffy’s mom.” He glanced over her head to Joyce, who smiled demurely.
Cautiously he untied the ribbon of the first box and pulled the top off. “My trousers?” he said. Only they weren’t, he saw as he lifted them out -- at least, not as he’d seen them last, stashed under the futon for the hopeful far-off day when they fit again. The waistband and belt loops were gone now, cut cleanly away and replaced with a wide strip of something black and stretchy.
“We kind of stole them,” Dawn said, hesitant. “Mom did the alterations.”
“I should have thought of this a month ago,” Joyce said, coming to lean against the arm of his chair. “When I was pregnant with Buffy, maternity clothes were terrifying. Tents. They were tents with stripes. ” She made a reminiscent grimace. “So I altered all my pants, right up to the whale stage. Then everything was a tent.”
In a voice pitched only for her, he said, “Bet you were still gorgeous.”
Her reply was a roll of the eyes and a shake of the head, but she pinked pleasantly. “Anyway, we can still make adjustments -- I just guesstimated to start. Try them on later and tell me how they fit.”
God, how he hated sweatpants. He fingered the comfortably weathered black denim, mutilated for the cause, and then laid them aside with the suspicion that if he’d been alone he might have kissed them. “Thanks,” he said and she squeezed his shoulder before going to sit down on the sofa.
“Keep going,” Dawn said.
Lying atop a second similarly altered pair was a set of braces, also black.
“In case the elastic doesn’t keep the jeans up,” Willow said.
“You realize, I’ve only got six weeks to go,” he said.
She shrugged.
“Right, then.” Putting aside that box, he untied the second one and pulled out the first of a stack of t-shirts.
“W-we think we got the size right,” Tara said. “So you can wear them until she’s born.”
“And show off the baby belly a little,” said Willow. “‘Cause you know, no point hiding the miracle of life!”
He looked to Buffy for some assurance that the insane person in the room wasn’t him. She gave him a full-shouldered shrug, eyes glimmering amusement. Whispering, she said, “You should have seen some of the other stuff they looked at. You’re lucky it’s just t-shirts.”
“So hold them up,” Dawn said.
The first two were plain, solid, respectable black. But the third, also black, had a figure printed on it in teal. “All right...” he said, peering at it. “Indulging our marine biology fetish, are we?”
“Turn it around so we can see,” said Joyce.
When he did, it was Xander who started giggling. “And you gave me a hard time about the Discovery Channel.”
“It’s a seahorse,” Dawn said.
“Yeah, I got that... oh, bloody hell.”
“Nature’s male incubators,” said Willow proudly.
There was an unsteady moment while he balanced between simple fury and the acute self-consciousness that, by dint of much careful not-thinking, he’d managed to avoid all this time. Then he caught Dawn’s eye on him, bright with mischief and yet the least bit uncertain.
He mustered a deep mental breath and squashed both impulses. “Well. Right.” He lifted his glance, searching for some smidgen of sympathy, and found just a glimmer of it in Joyce’s eyes -- or maybe that was a twinkle. “Least I’ll still be gorgeous, yeah?” he said. The twinkle brightened.
“So you like it?” Dawn asked.
“S’fine,” he said, and then it was. He set the box aside, half-unpacked -- he’d spotted something pink near the bottom and, however long-suffering, he could only take so much. “Later, yeah?” Glimpsing Willow’s pouty face, he smirked to himself. The girl needed a bit of thwarting now and then.
After that, as though he’d walked the coals and been found acceptable, the conversation turned from him to other topics: slaying and school and whether there were any cupcakes left. Dawn brought him more blood, Joyce and Xander headed out to the kitchen for soda, and he thought he might get out all of this with his dignity intact.
Until Willow said, “So, Spike, Tara says the baby’s probably moving a lot.”
Spike snatched his hand away from where, empty and unoccupied, it had fallen. It was one thing to harass Xander with the evidence, and something else to actually talk about it. Her activities were none of their business, were they?
But everyone was looking at him now and, short of staging a medical emergency, he wasn’t getting out of this. “Yeah,” he said.
“Like, now?” Willow persisted.
Spike glanced sideways at nothing, anything, and then back to her face, avid as a terrier. It was the face of a Willow who would find out what she wanted to know. “Some,” he said.
“Can I feel her?”
“No,” Spike said quellingly.
“Please?” asked Willow. “I won’t hurt her.”
“Er.” He looked over at Buffy, half-wishing she’d lay down one of those incomprehensible Slayer directives. Her faint amusement did him no good at all. With an uncertain glance at Willow and another back at Buffy, he said, “All right.”
Willow came and sat in front of him and then cautiously laid her hand against the loose cotton of his t-shirt, ducking so that he was staring into a thick full head of red Willow-hair.
For a moment they sat like that, frozen, while his girl kicked at places that weren’t Willow’s hand. “Bit lower,” he said. “Round to the side?”
Intent, Willow followed his instructions. Two more heartbeats of silence, and then tiny unborn heel connected with palm and Willow squealed. Leaning closer, she crooned, “Hel-lo there, Spike-baby.”
One day in Giles’ apartment, months ago, she had looked up from her laptop, on which she was supposed to be decrypting his files, to whisper that some witches could make fire. Now she was glowing up at him with eyes just as wide and filled with almost as much delight. He found himself smiling cautiously back.
“I want to feel the tiny human,” Anya declared. She rounded the coffee table and then, in an unsuspected display of manners, waited for Spike’s nod before she knelt on his other side and laid both hands expectantly on his stomach.
She didn’t have long to wait. “I felt it.” She pulled back one hand to wrinkle her brow at it. “She was kicking?”
“If you want to call it that,” he said. He shifted to lay his own hand where Anya’s had been. “Think she’s practicing for that star goal-kicker position.”
“And she does this a lot?” Anya pressed.
He snorted. “Yeah. Hardly stops anymore.”
“Does it hurt?” Willow asked.
Somehow, this conversation had begun to feel natural. “Sometimes. When she connects with my spine or my ribs. Or sometimes she just likes pushing on things.”
“What about the other times?” Anya said. “Is it ever pleasant?”
He thought about startling suddenly awake and then realizing what had woken him. He thought about the flush of feeling each time she seemed to settle at his voice -- though, ponce that he was, that was quite possibly his imagination. He thought about all those moments when he roused from whatever he’d been thinking on to remember that the weight wriggling in his belly was his daughter.
What he said was, “S’nice always knowing where she is.”
Joyce and Xander walked in, balancing plastic cups. Anya turned to them and said, “Xander, when we have kids I think you should have them.”
Spike could’ve kissed Anya for the expression on Xander’s face -- not that that’d be a terribly onerous task. Well, he’d have kissed Xander, then.
Xander, now turned rather white, spun and walked right back out of the room.
Anya rose and followed him. “There are spells that enable male pregnancy--”
From the hall, “No!”
Still chuckling, Spike turned to Buffy, watching all from the sofa. “You want to cop a feel, now’s the time.” He grinned at her sudden alarm. “There’s a spot open.”
“Uh, no thanks,” she said, arms folding in a shield across her chest. “You guys go ahead.”
Dawn and Tara were already settling at his feet, side by side, hands out. Now there were three heads softly gleaming around him: red, ash-blond, chestnut. He considered the hands splayed over his stomach, the touches light, the palms warm and gentle against him as they waited. He took a long, slow breath, and he waited with them.
next part
This chapter beautified by my fabulous betas,
hello_spikey, phoenixofborg, and penny_lane_42. Thank you, ladies!~~~~~
It seemed everyone but Spike had big plans for the evening. Joyce dropped him and the girls off at Stacey’s office and then disappeared to do, as Dawn put it, ‘Mom things,’ leaving them to walk home afterwards. Buffy had her unspecified agenda. Even Dawn seemed in a rush to be elsewhere; her only comment on the ooze-seeping Seebian-Hortasch symbiotic pair was that it’d better not be there to see Stacey, because Spike had gotten there first.
After Stacey had ushered them in, she weighed him and then did that thing with her hands all over his belly that looked no less like magic when she did it than when Tara did. Another listen to the heartbeat. Another ultrasound and some unworried hmm-hmming from her that he took for encouragement.
“I’m very pleased with her progress,” Stacey said finally. She settled on her swivel stool and gestured that he could pull his shirt back down. “You’ve still been feeding on human blood?”
“Yeah,” Spike said, giving Buffy one wary glance.
“It’s made a difference to both of you, I think. You’ve put on quite a bit of weight since last visit--”
“I’d noticed,” he said sourly.
She gave him the universal reproving maternal frown of Don’t-Interrupt. “Some of it’s from the... baby.” She flashed Dawn a glance and a lip-twitch that might have been a smile. “Which is very good to see. That’s what I was most worried about. A lot of the weight’s from the artificial support system -- uterus and so on -- expanding to accommodate the baby’s growth. And it appears that some of it is your own vampire physiology trying to compensate for your, hmm, increasing surface area.”
“Brilliant.”
“No, no, it really is a very good thing. Before this I couldn’t have even guessed how the semi-mystical biology would respond to this kind of intrusion. Structurally, the compensation I’m seeing is the best outcome I could hope for.
“So, overall, I’d say the human blood has been a significant improvement.”
Moment of truth. He looked to Buffy, expecting even now to see discomfort, a sort of constipated regret over feeding him the life fluids of that most privileged of species, homo sapiens sapiens.
Calmly, neutrally she met his eyes, and then she shrugged.
So that was that, then.
“Now, how are you feeling generally?” Stacey said, clipboard in hand once again.
“Pregnant,” he said. “Not that I’d know.” Funny how, even without the repeated references to his host/parasite situation, ten minutes of Stacey’s dispassionate analysis reminded him what an unnatural predicament he was in. Call it pregnancy if you like, but what he really had was a bloody foreign object crammed behind his much-abused abs.
Funny, too, how easily and often he forgot that.
“Not to mention he’s the Incredible Sleeping Vampire,” Buffy was saying.
“Hey!” he said. “Any wonder a bloke’d rather have a lie down than listen to you lot chattering on like a bunch of jaybirds?”
“Whatever,” Dawn said. “You fell asleep during Passions. Passions, Spike.”
“Show’s gone completely daft lately,” he muttered.
“I think,” said Stacey, “that I’d like to speak with Spike alone.”
He glared at them as they left, and Dawn rolled her eyes at him.
“So tell me just how much you’ve been sleeping lately,” Stacey said.
He shrugged. “S’not like I’ve got a lot else going on just now.”
“How much sleep?”
It took him a moment’s thought. “My hours are a bit off, living with humans. Up around noon, blood, watch telly or whatever with Dawn. Usually end up resting a bit around fourish -- Joyce gets home at six, and I like being around for dinner. Bed at midnight or thereabouts.”
“You’re a vampire and you’re going to bed at midnight?”
“Said my hours were off.”
“Spike, you’re sleeping fourteen hours a day.” She made a note on her chart and rested it on her knee. “Anything else bothering you?”
He hesitated, and an eyebrow lifted above Stacey’s sensible black frames. He sighed. “Sometimes I get the shakes. Like, coming out of a battle, or when I’ve been running about too much. Or,” he added, thinking of poker night, “sometimes when I’m just hungry. But all’s right once I get some blood down.”
She frowned as she noted this down. “What happens if you don’t?”
“Haven’t really tried finding out.”
“Don’t,” she said, tone sharp. “I can’t predict what would happen if you strayed outside the parameters for this...” Her expression soured. “This apparatus you’ve been fitted with. And tell me immediately if you notice anything else unusual.”
She asked Buffy and Dawn back in then, and proceeded to tell them the same thing -- anything odd should be reported, and never mind what Spike might think about it. The question of important and unimportant symptoms was not their judgment call, she said. Call me, she said. The girls nodded, serious, apparently prepared to tie him down and cart him in for his own good, if it came to that. Which ought to have irritated him to no end, and somehow didn’t.
Spike realized as he came in sight of the Summers porch swing that the girls had fallen behind. He turned to find them casting Significant Looks back and forth.
“Thought you had somewhere to be?” he said to Buffy as she caught up. “Parties to grace, a soldier to shag? Excuse me, ex-soldier.”
“We’re giving you a baby shower,” blurted Dawn.
He stopped cold to stare at her. “A what now?”
“A baby shower,” Buffy supplied. “As in, people shower baby stuff upon you.”
“For me,” he said, disbelieving.
“Duh, for you,” said Dawn. “You with the baby.”
He scowled. “What is it, wrap Spike up in pink bows night? Ta, but no.”
“No pink bows. Anyway, you don’t get a choice,” Buffy said, taking his elbow firmly in hand and drawing him forward. “Once Willow gets an idea -- especially a party idea…. And she’s got this thing for surprises, which I so wanted to kill her for this one time. Anyway, just be surprised, okay? Don’t tell her we ratted her out.”
“But…” By then they were up the porch steps and Dawn was turning the doorknob, and the interior was unnaturally quiet considering all the heartbeats crowded in it. Then they turned the corner and…
“Surprise!” Save Riley and Giles, the entire crew was gathered in the Summers living room: Joyce, the witches, Harris and the demon girl.
“Slayer…” Spike hissed.
Low enough that only he could hear, she said, “Don’t be a jerk, Spike,” and then she steered him in.
He dimly recalled a time, no more than a few months ago and unimaginably distant, when he could command any situation with a few well-timed words -- or equally well-timed punches, if the words failed. When he wanted the spotlight he grabbed it, and when he didn’t no one saw him but the shadows.
But that time was clearly long past, because a shadow seemed a very welcome place just now and yet he allowed Buffy and Dawn to guide him to the place of honor, the stuffed chair from the corner of the living room now set at the head of the coffee table. A huddle of packages wrapped in pastels sat to one side.
At least there weren’t any streamers.
Cupcakes were passed around. Dawn brought him blood -- surprise, surprise. It wasn’t that the demon ever tired of blood, but Spike thought his human palate might shrivel up and die -- again -- of the ecstasy of one decent buffalo wing.
“Willow’s idea, you said?” he asked Buffy in an undertone.
She took a swallow of her punch. “Well, at first it was just the -- well, one of the presents. Then it sort of morphed.” She grimaced. “Willow projects are hardly ever the same shape for long, you know? But there was definitely some joint plannage.”
“I’ll bite her,” he muttered. “I get this chip out, there’ll be a reckoning.”
Buffy snorted and nibbled off another bite of cupcake.
From the couch, Anya said, “So, does the small human have a name?”
Spike swallowed the last gulp of blood. “Haven’t decided yet.”
“Spi-i-ike,” said Dawn, mouth crumby with frosting. “You’ve had months to think about her name.”
He had thought about it, playing possibilities over in his head. But he couldn’t see her to match them to her face, and he wasn’t about to just slap some name on her to get himself over the hurdle of deciding.
“How about Christina?” said Dawn.
“No,” said Spike. “I’m not naming her after some bubble-gum pop princess.”
“Maybe Birch?” said Willow. “It’s got that back-to-nature cachet.”
“Plus,” Tara said, “tree names? Always in fashion.”
Willow grinned at her.
“Dusk,” said Dawn. “It’s like Dawn, only, you know, not.”
“Have you thought about naming her after a relative?” asked Joyce. “That was traditional when you were alive, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah...”
“Maybe after your mother?” she said.
He’d given that some thought. Would it honor her, or would it just keep him remembering his first truly spectacular screw-up as a vampire? Regardless, didn’t his girl need her own name?
“What was her name?” Joyce asked.
“Anne,” he said.
“Ooh, that’s Buffy’s middle name!” said Dawn.
Well. So much for that.
“There are certain ancient demons who bless children given their names,” said Anya. “I could give you a list.”
“Anya!” exclaimed Xander. “Spike’s not naming his kid after a demon.”
“Why not? He’s a demon.”
Xander’s flash of chagrin suggested that he’d forgotten.
“I’m not naming her anything,” Spike said.
“That’s quite unusual,” Anya said. “You know, nameless children generally grow up to have destinies. They become wandering heroes or impossibly beautiful maidens or wicked sorcerers. Are you sure you want that?”
No, he did not want that. “I mean, I’m not naming her yet. Not until I know for sure who she is.” Spike scowled inside his empty mug and then waved it at Dawn. “Refill?” She scurried off.
When she’d come back, Willow stood up with a glass of punch and dinged her fork against it. “Okay! Okay, so we have food, and no games, it turns out--”
“You’re welcome,” Buffy murmured to Spike.
“So I think it’s presents time.” Her grin was positively beatific as everyone turned to Spike.
“She’s not serious,” Spike muttered to Buffy.
“Who did you think all the boxes were for?”
Something broke. “What is this?” he hissed.
“What’s what?” Buffy leaned back and peered to inspect a toenail, unconcerned.
“Why are you lot being nice to me?” he asked, and then, seeing all the faces on him, realized his voice had risen. Now that he was looking back, the gazes turned down, away, while the fingers picked at hems and knapkins.
“Wow, way to bring the awkward silence,” Buffy said. “Nice job.”
“Well?” he pressed, ignoring the other glances. “What’s this all about? Prezzies? A party?”
Spell? Possession by some spirit with a peculiar sense of humor?
Brow knit, Buffy said, “Um, not sure what you’re getting at. You have noticed, right, that you’re living in my house?”
“It’s for you,” Dawn added, her puzzlement just bordering on hurt.
“That’s the part that’s got me twitchy,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Xander said from across the room. “I don’t get it either.”
“Haven’t we already had this conversation?” Buffy asked. “We don’t hate you anymore. Mostly. Except for the cigarette butts.”
“Well, yeah, but...” That hardly covered it.
“And it’s for the baby, too,” Willow said.
“Yeah,” Buffy said. “Most of the presents are really just baby supplies. Like you said before. Group project.”
While he was forming a response -- though what sort of response, he didn’t know yet -- Joyce walked in with a new tray of cupcakes. She eyed the clusters of averted faces. “Everything okay in here?”
“Spike’s just being hormonal,” Buffy said.
“I... You...” He huffed. “I don’t even have hormones.”
“Pretty good trick, then,” she said. “You must be a very talented vampire.”
Joyce considered them both a moment longer, and then said, “I think it’s time for presents.”
Buffy looked questioningly at Spike. “We done angsting?”
It was that imperturbable calm, as much as anything, that decided him. “Yeah, all right.”
Handed the first package and feeling all those eyes on him, he glared balefully at the offending curly ribbon until Buffy whispered at vamp-only volume, “You have to. It’s for the baby.” He turned the glare on her but it did nothing to dim her smirk, and finally he surrendered and tore the tissue paper off.
From Dawn and Buffy, a collection of impossibly tiny clothes and several packages of disposable diapers. From Dawn alone, a coupon for an indeterminate number of diaper changings, “After Mom shows me how.”
From Joyce, an entire box of items, ‘gently used,’ as she put it, the purposes of some of which completely escaped him.
From Anya, a card which promised, in script centuries older than his, babysitting ‘in extreme emergencies only.’ He raised a brow at her as he read this, but the brilliant smile of self-satisfaction she flashed him stilled his questions about the phrasing.
From Anya and Xander together -- though he knew which of them had funded it -- a gift certificate to a local baby store, which Joyce promised to help him navigate. He looked to Xander for a grimace or an eye-roll or something that’d serve as recognition of this unwonted expenditure of Harris greenbacks, but all he got was a shrug.
From the witches, a blank book for ‘Baby’s First Year,’ several more sleepers that the other girls exclaimed over, and a sort of open plastic box full of rags and bottles of the lotion variety, all wrapped up in cellophane. “Bath stuff” was Willow’s explanation. Spike eyed the conglomeration and decided he’d have to get Joyce aside about that, too.
Finally, Willow handed him two cardboard garment boxes. “This is where we got the baby shower idea from,” she said. “Only, they’re kind of more for you than the baby.”
“Dare I ask?” he said.
“You should probably just open them,” replied Willow. “They’re from the three of us.” She nodded to Tara and Dawn, both bright-eyed and crowding in to see. “Plus Buffy’s mom.” He glanced over her head to Joyce, who smiled demurely.
Cautiously he untied the ribbon of the first box and pulled the top off. “My trousers?” he said. Only they weren’t, he saw as he lifted them out -- at least, not as he’d seen them last, stashed under the futon for the hopeful far-off day when they fit again. The waistband and belt loops were gone now, cut cleanly away and replaced with a wide strip of something black and stretchy.
“We kind of stole them,” Dawn said, hesitant. “Mom did the alterations.”
“I should have thought of this a month ago,” Joyce said, coming to lean against the arm of his chair. “When I was pregnant with Buffy, maternity clothes were terrifying. Tents. They were tents with stripes. ” She made a reminiscent grimace. “So I altered all my pants, right up to the whale stage. Then everything was a tent.”
In a voice pitched only for her, he said, “Bet you were still gorgeous.”
Her reply was a roll of the eyes and a shake of the head, but she pinked pleasantly. “Anyway, we can still make adjustments -- I just guesstimated to start. Try them on later and tell me how they fit.”
God, how he hated sweatpants. He fingered the comfortably weathered black denim, mutilated for the cause, and then laid them aside with the suspicion that if he’d been alone he might have kissed them. “Thanks,” he said and she squeezed his shoulder before going to sit down on the sofa.
“Keep going,” Dawn said.
Lying atop a second similarly altered pair was a set of braces, also black.
“In case the elastic doesn’t keep the jeans up,” Willow said.
“You realize, I’ve only got six weeks to go,” he said.
She shrugged.
“Right, then.” Putting aside that box, he untied the second one and pulled out the first of a stack of t-shirts.
“W-we think we got the size right,” Tara said. “So you can wear them until she’s born.”
“And show off the baby belly a little,” said Willow. “‘Cause you know, no point hiding the miracle of life!”
He looked to Buffy for some assurance that the insane person in the room wasn’t him. She gave him a full-shouldered shrug, eyes glimmering amusement. Whispering, she said, “You should have seen some of the other stuff they looked at. You’re lucky it’s just t-shirts.”
“So hold them up,” Dawn said.
The first two were plain, solid, respectable black. But the third, also black, had a figure printed on it in teal. “All right...” he said, peering at it. “Indulging our marine biology fetish, are we?”
“Turn it around so we can see,” said Joyce.
When he did, it was Xander who started giggling. “And you gave me a hard time about the Discovery Channel.”
“It’s a seahorse,” Dawn said.
“Yeah, I got that... oh, bloody hell.”
“Nature’s male incubators,” said Willow proudly.
There was an unsteady moment while he balanced between simple fury and the acute self-consciousness that, by dint of much careful not-thinking, he’d managed to avoid all this time. Then he caught Dawn’s eye on him, bright with mischief and yet the least bit uncertain.
He mustered a deep mental breath and squashed both impulses. “Well. Right.” He lifted his glance, searching for some smidgen of sympathy, and found just a glimmer of it in Joyce’s eyes -- or maybe that was a twinkle. “Least I’ll still be gorgeous, yeah?” he said. The twinkle brightened.
“So you like it?” Dawn asked.
“S’fine,” he said, and then it was. He set the box aside, half-unpacked -- he’d spotted something pink near the bottom and, however long-suffering, he could only take so much. “Later, yeah?” Glimpsing Willow’s pouty face, he smirked to himself. The girl needed a bit of thwarting now and then.
After that, as though he’d walked the coals and been found acceptable, the conversation turned from him to other topics: slaying and school and whether there were any cupcakes left. Dawn brought him more blood, Joyce and Xander headed out to the kitchen for soda, and he thought he might get out all of this with his dignity intact.
Until Willow said, “So, Spike, Tara says the baby’s probably moving a lot.”
Spike snatched his hand away from where, empty and unoccupied, it had fallen. It was one thing to harass Xander with the evidence, and something else to actually talk about it. Her activities were none of their business, were they?
But everyone was looking at him now and, short of staging a medical emergency, he wasn’t getting out of this. “Yeah,” he said.
“Like, now?” Willow persisted.
Spike glanced sideways at nothing, anything, and then back to her face, avid as a terrier. It was the face of a Willow who would find out what she wanted to know. “Some,” he said.
“Can I feel her?”
“No,” Spike said quellingly.
“Please?” asked Willow. “I won’t hurt her.”
“Er.” He looked over at Buffy, half-wishing she’d lay down one of those incomprehensible Slayer directives. Her faint amusement did him no good at all. With an uncertain glance at Willow and another back at Buffy, he said, “All right.”
Willow came and sat in front of him and then cautiously laid her hand against the loose cotton of his t-shirt, ducking so that he was staring into a thick full head of red Willow-hair.
For a moment they sat like that, frozen, while his girl kicked at places that weren’t Willow’s hand. “Bit lower,” he said. “Round to the side?”
Intent, Willow followed his instructions. Two more heartbeats of silence, and then tiny unborn heel connected with palm and Willow squealed. Leaning closer, she crooned, “Hel-lo there, Spike-baby.”
One day in Giles’ apartment, months ago, she had looked up from her laptop, on which she was supposed to be decrypting his files, to whisper that some witches could make fire. Now she was glowing up at him with eyes just as wide and filled with almost as much delight. He found himself smiling cautiously back.
“I want to feel the tiny human,” Anya declared. She rounded the coffee table and then, in an unsuspected display of manners, waited for Spike’s nod before she knelt on his other side and laid both hands expectantly on his stomach.
She didn’t have long to wait. “I felt it.” She pulled back one hand to wrinkle her brow at it. “She was kicking?”
“If you want to call it that,” he said. He shifted to lay his own hand where Anya’s had been. “Think she’s practicing for that star goal-kicker position.”
“And she does this a lot?” Anya pressed.
He snorted. “Yeah. Hardly stops anymore.”
“Does it hurt?” Willow asked.
Somehow, this conversation had begun to feel natural. “Sometimes. When she connects with my spine or my ribs. Or sometimes she just likes pushing on things.”
“What about the other times?” Anya said. “Is it ever pleasant?”
He thought about startling suddenly awake and then realizing what had woken him. He thought about the flush of feeling each time she seemed to settle at his voice -- though, ponce that he was, that was quite possibly his imagination. He thought about all those moments when he roused from whatever he’d been thinking on to remember that the weight wriggling in his belly was his daughter.
What he said was, “S’nice always knowing where she is.”
Joyce and Xander walked in, balancing plastic cups. Anya turned to them and said, “Xander, when we have kids I think you should have them.”
Spike could’ve kissed Anya for the expression on Xander’s face -- not that that’d be a terribly onerous task. Well, he’d have kissed Xander, then.
Xander, now turned rather white, spun and walked right back out of the room.
Anya rose and followed him. “There are spells that enable male pregnancy--”
From the hall, “No!”
Still chuckling, Spike turned to Buffy, watching all from the sofa. “You want to cop a feel, now’s the time.” He grinned at her sudden alarm. “There’s a spot open.”
“Uh, no thanks,” she said, arms folding in a shield across her chest. “You guys go ahead.”
Dawn and Tara were already settling at his feet, side by side, hands out. Now there were three heads softly gleaming around him: red, ash-blond, chestnut. He considered the hands splayed over his stomach, the touches light, the palms warm and gentle against him as they waited. He took a long, slow breath, and he waited with them.
next part
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Date: 2009-09-30 01:57 am (UTC)But...you CAN'T have only four more parts after this - you CAN'T - I want to see Spike raise this girl! I demand a sequel! :)
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Date: 2009-10-01 10:41 pm (UTC)Hush! I don't need another monster fic project yet; I'm still trying to finish this one. :) But there will be some sequel-ish stuff eventually, I hope.
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:36 am (UTC)And second the demand for a sequel.
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Date: 2009-10-01 10:44 pm (UTC)I have hopes for at least a little bit more in the Seraphverse eventually, although it might be more like epilogue material than an actual sequel.
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 11:02 pm (UTC)So, great guess! Here, have a cupcake. :)
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Date: 2009-09-30 02:54 am (UTC)Heh. The unkindest cut of all. Or insult to injury, although the whole thing is a bit of an insult to a sensitive vamp.
However, dignity be damned, it's worth it all for this:
three heads softly gleaming around him: red, ash-blond, chestnut
Plus: bitty Spikette, very soon.
P.S. I absolutely understand not naming a baby until you've met her. I had a short list, but it look being introduced to shake the right name free.
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Date: 2009-10-01 10:49 pm (UTC)Plus: bitty Spikette, very soon.
Yes!!!! I am ridiculously excited to get to that part, especially considering I'm the author and already know how it all goes.
P.S. I absolutely understand not naming a baby until you've met her.
Yay for real-life parallels! Honestly, part of the reason she doesn't have a name yet is because I'm still not entirely certain of her name.
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Date: 2009-09-30 04:03 am (UTC)i will say everything about the baby shower is golden.
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Date: 2009-10-01 03:57 am (UTC)Thanks for commenting! It's always nice to know who's reading. :)
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Date: 2009-09-30 04:21 am (UTC)I love how much thought you've given to how his body will and won't react to the pregnancy. Yay for thoughtfulness!
Calmly, neutrally she met his eyes, and then she shrugged. I know I've mentioned it before...but I really love your Buffy.
Call it pregnancy if you like, but what he really had was a bloody foreign object crammed behind his much-abused abs. Aw! Poor Spike's abs! *strokes them* Too much?
The girls nodded, serious, apparently prepared to tie him down and cart him in for his own good, if it came to that. Which ought to have irritated him to no end, and somehow didn’t. *dies of cuteness*
But he couldn’t see her to match them to her face, and he wasn’t about to just slap some name on her to get himself over the hurdle of deciding. *squeals* He is gonna be such a good daddy!
“Why are you lot being nice to me?” he asked, and then, seeing all the faces on him, realized his voice had risen. Now that he was looking back, the gazes turned down, away, while the fingers picked at hems and knapkins. Aha! So you didn't have him pull Buffy into the kitchen. I like that you kept it out in the open; makes it more awkward.
“Haven’t we already had this conversation?” Buffy asked. “We don’t hate you anymore. Mostly. Except for the cigarette butts.” Oh, fantastic!
“I... You...” He huffed. “I don’t even have hormones.”
“Pretty good trick, then,” she said. “You must be a very talented vampire.” Gah! I love what you've done with this scene!
Buffy looked questioningly at Spike. “We done angsting?”
It was that imperturbable calm, as much as anything, that decided him. “Yeah, all right.” No, really--I love what you've done with this scene.
He fingered the comfortably weathered black denim, mutilated for the cause, and then laid them aside with the suspicion that if he’d been alone he might have kissed them. Okay, I have to flail over this line again. *flails*
There was an unsteady moment while he balanced between simple fury and the acute self-consciousness that, by dint of much careful not-thinking, he’d managed to avoid all this time. Then he caught Dawn’s eye on him, bright with mischief and yet the least bit uncertain. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
He thought about startling suddenly awake and then realizing what had woken him. He thought about the flush of feeling each time she seemed to settle at his voice -- though, ponce that he was, that was quite possibly his imagination. He thought about all those moments when he roused from whatever he’d been thinking on to remember that the weight wriggling in his belly was his daughter.
What he said was, “S’nice always knowing where she is.” *dies again from love of this fic*
Anya is supremely awesome.
Still chuckling, Spike turned to Buffy, watching all from the sofa. “You want to cop a feel, now’s the time.” He grinned at her sudden alarm. “There’s a spot open.” And just that liiiitle bit of flirting... *big grin*
I love the ending now, too! Very lovely!
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Date: 2009-10-02 12:18 am (UTC)I love how much thought you've given to how his body will and won't react to the pregnancy. Yay for thoughtfulness!
Hee. As may be obvious, I find pregnancy of any kind absolutely fascinating, which was a large part of the original motivation for writing this fic. So, no virtuous thoughtfulness on my part, just obsessive geekery. :)
No, really--I love what you've done with this scene.
Hooray! That big adjustment is all due to one of the other betas, who thought the flight to kitchen broke up the scene too much and also came off as a little girly. I had to give up a few bits I loved - the bit with the stake, for example - but I think they'll mostly be recyclable. And on the whole, I think it's an improvement. Glad to hear you thought so, though - it's always a bit nervewracking to make a big change after the betas have okayed things. "What if I ruin it? *wail*"
Edit: Also, it cracks me up how much that last paragraph reminds me of stuff I was writing for the "fics never written" meme a couple of weeks ago.
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Date: 2009-09-30 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 04:49 am (UTC)I really like Buffy's calm benevolent presence here, with the "You're welcome," and He looked to Buffy for some assurance that the insane person in the room wasn’t him. I can entirely see Spike what-the-helling over the Scooby acceptance. Funny how it's when he's comfortable in his admired fecundity, she hits her too-weird point.
"Xander, when we have kids I think you should have them.”
Bwah! If I were Anya, I'd think so too.
P.S.
Date: 2009-09-30 04:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-09-30 05:14 am (UTC)Interesting bit with the doctor. I have to wonder if all the sleeping is Spike being depressed? OTOH he probably won't be getting much sleep once the baby comes...
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Date: 2009-10-01 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 05:43 am (UTC)It had never really occurred to me that Anya's handwriting would be old-fashioned - but it would, wouldn't it?
And I'm still really shipping Buffy/Spike here...
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Date: 2009-09-30 10:52 pm (UTC)Not that I know much about... wherever Anya was 1100 years ago, but I'd say it's pretty much guaranteed that she was illiterate. Which means sometime in her demony life, she learned how to read and write (and oh, what a fic that would make). And presumably it was English, since, as it happens, English seems to be a demon's human language of choice.
So quite possibly, when she's feeling nostalgic or just formal, she could end up with S's that look like F's, and such.
Although, given her occupation, one wonders how many other languages she knows. She has to talk to the scorned women, after all...
As to the other, I think I might have talked myself into shipping the Spuffy, too, although I hadn't really been planning to when I started the fic. But we'll see - the friendship is nice by itself, too.
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Date: 2009-09-30 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 07:40 pm (UTC)Well, now you've done it. Xanya mpreg sequel! And they can have a boy and he can grow up and marry Spikette, and then you can write Spike and Xander as in-laws! *claps hands*
(You are probably the ONLY person who could actually write a series like that where I'd actually read it.)
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Date: 2009-09-30 10:58 pm (UTC)Okay, no, that's a lie; I'd read it. I'd rather not admit to the atrocities I've read or attempted to read in the name of mpreg. But though I love Anya, I'm not that interested in Xanya, and anyway I can't see even Anya winning this particular argument.
(Besides, do I really want to be the Mpreg Girl of the fandom? Or is it already too late?)
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Date: 2009-10-01 12:36 am (UTC)What about the other times...is it ever pleasant?
A quintessential Anya line if there ever was one!
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Date: 2009-10-01 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 10:58 pm (UTC)Gosh, I'd love a sequel when this is over.
Hush, you! I'm still working on getting this monster fic project done; I don't need another one yet. *g*
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Date: 2009-10-01 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-02 12:32 am (UTC)And show off the baby belly a little,” said Willow. “‘Cause you know, no point hiding the miracle of life!”
He looked to Buffy for some assurance that the insane person in the room wasn’t him. -- As I read it I was thinking, Lordy she is just a little crazy! And then he confirmed it.
Like, now?” Willow persisted.
Spike glanced sideways at nothing, anything, and then back to her face, avid as a terrier. It was the face of a Willow who would find out what she wanted to know. “Some,” he said. -- I know that face, I can see it perfectly. *adores the entire exchange*
Anya turned to them and said, “Xander, when we have kids I think you should have them.” -- HA! And she could probably arrange that, so beware young Xander.
Great shower all around :-)
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Date: 2009-10-02 12:40 am (UTC)When it comes to Willow, I think a little enthusiasm is a dangerous thing... *g*
Great shower all around :-)
Yay! Glad you enjoyed. :)
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Date: 2009-10-22 05:00 pm (UTC)One of my favourite things is how he feels so alienated and defensive in the presence of Stacey. At the shower ordeal I wanted to hide in the basement on his behalf...but I had to smile a lot at the seahorse t-shirt!
I'm intrigued by how much he's let himself open to friendly feelings at the end, and all the touching.
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Date: 2009-10-22 10:54 pm (UTC)Yeah. There's no way they'd have roped him into it if they'd actually told him in advance. *g*
I had to smile a lot at the seahorse t-shirt!
Oh, good. I wondered if it wasn't too obvious a joke, but I just couldn't help myself. So, I'm glad you enjoyed. :)
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Date: 2009-11-30 06:25 pm (UTC)The baby shower was wonderfully awkward and heart warming. Spike's become the gang's pet project, though Xander still remains in denial. Spike's got a support system whether he likes it or not. I loved the thoughtful alterations to his uniform and the girls all lining up to feel the baby kick. Buffy's reaction to Spike's invitation was absolutely priceless.
Anya really shone in this chapter. Her waiting for permission to touch Spike's stomach and reaction to feeling the baby's movement were wonderful. I love how matter of fact she is about Xander carrying their future offspring. Of course she'd know how to make it happen. It's no wonder Xander is in turns in love with and terrified of his girlfriend!
As usual, your attention to detail and spot on character voices made for a vivid, emotionally satisfying chapter. Your vulnerable, prickly Spike is beautifully written and a real joy to read.
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Date: 2009-11-30 11:17 pm (UTC)Pretty much. Poor vampire, being smothered by all these people who, like, care about him or something. *g*
Anya really shone in this chapter...It's no wonder Xander is in turns in love with and terrified of his girlfriend!
Hee. I didn't mean to make this the Chapter of Anya; it just kind of happened. I love her a lot, and so I'm glad she got some time to be herself in this fic. And yes, Xander had darned better have some healthy respect for his millenium-old, magic-wise girlfriend. :)
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Date: 2009-12-13 03:51 pm (UTC)I love Anya, btw.
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Date: 2009-12-15 01:39 am (UTC)And I though I do dearly love Anya, I hadn't realized how much she shone in this chapter until people started commenting. This really was the Anya Chapter, if there was one.
FIC: Seraph (22/26)
Date: 2009-12-22 10:18 pm (UTC)Heh heh Willow projects are hardly ever the same shape for long, you know? But there was definitely some joint plannage. Gifts are nice :)
(especially for a vamp not having money).
And a big gift it seems: -> He fingered the comfortably weathered black denim, mutilated for the cause, and then laid them aside with the suspicion that if he'd been alone he might have kissed them.
Boo Xander didn't want to take Anya's offer to be the one to be pregnant. ;)
Re: FIC: Seraph (22/26)
Date: 2010-01-01 02:26 pm (UTC)(especially for a vamp not having money).
Well, yes. Finances are something I've tried not to think about too much for this story, but even if Spike had/has the money, the prospect of going baby shopping would have to pretty daunting.
Boo Xander didn't want to take Anya's offer to be the one to be pregnant. ;)
We-e-ell, can you really blame him? He's still fighting pretty hard not to be freaked out about Spike being pregnant. (Although it'd be awfully fun to have Xander and Spike comparing pregnancy notes...)
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Date: 2011-02-28 07:35 am (UTC)Translation: I died a little at the cuteness.
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Date: 2011-03-01 02:04 am (UTC)