FIC: To Come Home To
Nov. 25th, 2010 01:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupTitle: To Come Home To
Spoilers / Words: post-NFA / 1200 words
Characters: Buffy, Spike
Rating: R for sexiness and a wee bit of Language.
Warnings: mpreg
A/N: Besides the Initiative, I've only ever been able to sell myself on one other Spike mpreg scenario, and this is it. Now with bonus implied post-apocalyptic backstory! There may eventually be other bits, both before and after this one.
Title provisional; suggestions heartily welcomed!
ETA: There is more of this fic, it seems. All installments may be found here.
~~~~~
It’d been four weeks at least since Buffy had cautiously resigned herself to the idea of having a baby. She’d dismissed the thought of kids long ago, the first time Angel had shot it down, and Riley’s half-stated expectations on the matter had never shaken her. Besides, pregnant Slayer? The world might not survive her maternity leave.
But okay. Spike wanted a kid, there was one already in the making, and they had a few months prep time – more than she got for most apocalypses.
Why else would she be doing a little more-or-less friendly ‘interfacing’ with some warty, green, hornless demons, if not to secure the crew’s – and therefore a baby’s – place in this brave new scheme of things? More negotiation. Bleah. She hadn’t realized how often she killed demons just to shut them up until now when she couldn’t anymore. She wondered less now why Angel’d needed an entire law firm to deal with them.
Anyway, talks over for now, peace between hers and theirs momentarily secured. The sun shone over her shoulder as she pushed in the safe house’s front door.
And found Spike, back to the kitchen counter and mouth to a walkie-talkie, hand absent-mindedly starfished over his stomach. She froze. He glanced up and saw something in her that made him drop his hand and turn away.
Buffy strode past him and climbed the stairs to the training room. Empty. Buffy took a deep breath, thought about Giles’ centering exercises, and dismissed them. With quick, unsteady movements she taped each hand and squared off with the punching bag.
Twenty minutes later the door squeaked open. Spike. She kept eyes and fists at the bag, and after a few minutes he went away again without ever speaking, which made her feel worse.
Her. Spike. Baby.
Round kick to the bag.
Scary. Maybe doable.
Jab, upper cut.
What he wanted.
Double punch. Kick to the knee.
Her: not pregnant. Huge plus.
Punch. Left jab. Punch.
Spike: pregnant.
She slammed her foot in at waist height, then jumped aside as the bag swung, chains rattling.
Sure, he’d been putting on weight – finally. Before this, he’d looked almost skeletal. Starvation levels, Giles had been talking. Still adjusting to the whole living-and-breathing thing. Now he was filling out some, and not just around the middle. He looked less like a grinning skull when he laughed, and his ribs less like a double xylophone. And if some of that weight was settling around his stomach, well, that was what happened to human guys with deep-fried fixations.
But she’d seen it in his posture, in the fall of his hand on his belly, just like every stereotypical pregnant woman ever. She hadn’t really believed it until then.
Spike was having their baby. Spike was.
She watched the bag continue to swing – hmm, might want to think about reinforcing the ceiling beam – and tried to think what to do about that.
~*~*~
She went downstairs, past the kitchen where Xander and Dawn were arguing rations, down the second flight to the basement. At the bottom she slid the door quietly open. Dimly she saw Spike stretched out on their bed, shirtless and snoring.
She crept to the bed and settled carefully at the edge. For a while she just looked, watching his chest rise and fall – not a new habit, but somehow mesmerizing now in its necessity. And below his ribs rose the smooth outward curve of his belly, not unmistakeable yet but close to it. A baby. Spike’s baby. She tried to hold onto that idea, to heft it and feel its weight, but it kept slipping away from her.
Instead she reached cautiously out and laid her palm against him, just below his navel. Warm; she hadn’t gotten used to that, either. Maybe she was just getting crotchety, now that she was approaching her mid-twenties. She couldn’t handle change anymore. Anyway, he didn’t feel pregnant, whatever that meant. Just like a guy with a taste for the Brewskis.
Suddenly she realized the quality of Spike’s breathing had changed. She snatched her hand into her lap and looked over to find him looking back. “Hey,” she said.
He glanced down to her hand and back up. “According to the telly, now’s when you tell me how carrying your kid just makes me that much sexier.”
She couldn’t read his tone; it might have been drily amused, or maybe tipped over into bitter. As she watched his eyes, her words sticking in her throat, his expression fell to one she knew on sight: hurt.
She swallowed. “Is it okay if I touch you?”
He huffed a laugh. “Can’t recall ever minding that, so long as it’s not my nose.”
Ignoring all his ever-changing expressions, she laid her hand on him again and swept a slow circle around his bellybutton. Still Spike. Her hand wandered lower, beneath the sheet, and confirmed: still her man. Oh, yeah. Her very interested man.
She glanced up, innuendo on her lips, and was startled to silence by the conflicted desire in his expression. “Is it okay?” she fumbled. “I mean, for...”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I just... I thought I might have to go the next five months without.”
“Without?” Again: startled. “But we’ve... I mean, the other night when I got off patrol - okay, no, but then last week...” She trailed off, trying to think. That couldn’t be right. She’d have noticed. She’d have missed it. Wouldn’t she? “Have we not had sex in four weeks?”
“Four and a half,” he said, hauling himself upright. “The night before... Well. Before the joyous news.”
“And you didn’t say something?” she said.
He lifted an eyebrow. "Figured you not saying anything was message enough."
Her face burned hot with shame. She probably glowed in the dark with it. “Oh, God, Spike. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said, but to the sheet rather than to her. He favored her with a pained half-smile. “A bit of a blow to a man’s masculinity, getting knocked up.”
She tried to think of all the nights fucking each other alive, all the lazy mornings usually filled with lazy morning sex, and instead remembered getting up before him, coming downstairs after him, always thinking: Let him sleep. Curling herself into his arms and carefully not noticing the subtle shifts in his personal geography. Not thinking about it.
That was it: her and her award-winning talent for Not Thinking About It.
And there was Spike, sitting next to her and trying hard to look disinterested.
A half-formed thought crystallized. “You want this baby that bad? To not... for another five months?”
“Six, counting this last one,” he said. He shrugged, but she saw right through that faux-indifference, mister.
Any doubts she might have had about how serious he was? Smithereens.
Still, he needed this. He needed her to get over her squickies and do this.
She scooted in close and ran her hand up his neck, her ridiculous contrary whole-hearted ex-vampire. She craned to follow his gaze until it met hers. Then she closed in and caught his mouth – warm, and if she wasn’t used to that bit of weirdness yet it didn’t mean it wasn’t good – and started kissing him, long and slow and thorough. She had some catching up to do.
Afterward, as they lay sweaty and tangled together with the sheet wound around their legs, he said, “That my last hurrah, then? ‘Cause I’m not getting any less pregnant from here. Not for a long while, anyway.”
She rolled over, straining to think of some reassurance if what they’d just done wasn’t enough, but he was grinning, the rejected look all wiped away for the moment. “There could be more,” she said, snuggling in tighter against him. “Later. Right now Buffy go sleep.”
Drifting off, she thought: Her guy, pregnant with her baby? Not entirely unsexy.
Finis
Spoilers / Words: post-NFA / 1200 words
Characters: Buffy, Spike
Rating: R for sexiness and a wee bit of Language.
Warnings: mpreg
A/N: Besides the Initiative, I've only ever been able to sell myself on one other Spike mpreg scenario, and this is it. Now with bonus implied post-apocalyptic backstory! There may eventually be other bits, both before and after this one.
Title provisional; suggestions heartily welcomed!
ETA: There is more of this fic, it seems. All installments may be found here.
~~~~~
It’d been four weeks at least since Buffy had cautiously resigned herself to the idea of having a baby. She’d dismissed the thought of kids long ago, the first time Angel had shot it down, and Riley’s half-stated expectations on the matter had never shaken her. Besides, pregnant Slayer? The world might not survive her maternity leave.
But okay. Spike wanted a kid, there was one already in the making, and they had a few months prep time – more than she got for most apocalypses.
Why else would she be doing a little more-or-less friendly ‘interfacing’ with some warty, green, hornless demons, if not to secure the crew’s – and therefore a baby’s – place in this brave new scheme of things? More negotiation. Bleah. She hadn’t realized how often she killed demons just to shut them up until now when she couldn’t anymore. She wondered less now why Angel’d needed an entire law firm to deal with them.
Anyway, talks over for now, peace between hers and theirs momentarily secured. The sun shone over her shoulder as she pushed in the safe house’s front door.
And found Spike, back to the kitchen counter and mouth to a walkie-talkie, hand absent-mindedly starfished over his stomach. She froze. He glanced up and saw something in her that made him drop his hand and turn away.
Buffy strode past him and climbed the stairs to the training room. Empty. Buffy took a deep breath, thought about Giles’ centering exercises, and dismissed them. With quick, unsteady movements she taped each hand and squared off with the punching bag.
Twenty minutes later the door squeaked open. Spike. She kept eyes and fists at the bag, and after a few minutes he went away again without ever speaking, which made her feel worse.
Her. Spike. Baby.
Round kick to the bag.
Scary. Maybe doable.
Jab, upper cut.
What he wanted.
Double punch. Kick to the knee.
Her: not pregnant. Huge plus.
Punch. Left jab. Punch.
Spike: pregnant.
She slammed her foot in at waist height, then jumped aside as the bag swung, chains rattling.
Sure, he’d been putting on weight – finally. Before this, he’d looked almost skeletal. Starvation levels, Giles had been talking. Still adjusting to the whole living-and-breathing thing. Now he was filling out some, and not just around the middle. He looked less like a grinning skull when he laughed, and his ribs less like a double xylophone. And if some of that weight was settling around his stomach, well, that was what happened to human guys with deep-fried fixations.
But she’d seen it in his posture, in the fall of his hand on his belly, just like every stereotypical pregnant woman ever. She hadn’t really believed it until then.
Spike was having their baby. Spike was.
She watched the bag continue to swing – hmm, might want to think about reinforcing the ceiling beam – and tried to think what to do about that.
She went downstairs, past the kitchen where Xander and Dawn were arguing rations, down the second flight to the basement. At the bottom she slid the door quietly open. Dimly she saw Spike stretched out on their bed, shirtless and snoring.
She crept to the bed and settled carefully at the edge. For a while she just looked, watching his chest rise and fall – not a new habit, but somehow mesmerizing now in its necessity. And below his ribs rose the smooth outward curve of his belly, not unmistakeable yet but close to it. A baby. Spike’s baby. She tried to hold onto that idea, to heft it and feel its weight, but it kept slipping away from her.
Instead she reached cautiously out and laid her palm against him, just below his navel. Warm; she hadn’t gotten used to that, either. Maybe she was just getting crotchety, now that she was approaching her mid-twenties. She couldn’t handle change anymore. Anyway, he didn’t feel pregnant, whatever that meant. Just like a guy with a taste for the Brewskis.
Suddenly she realized the quality of Spike’s breathing had changed. She snatched her hand into her lap and looked over to find him looking back. “Hey,” she said.
He glanced down to her hand and back up. “According to the telly, now’s when you tell me how carrying your kid just makes me that much sexier.”
She couldn’t read his tone; it might have been drily amused, or maybe tipped over into bitter. As she watched his eyes, her words sticking in her throat, his expression fell to one she knew on sight: hurt.
She swallowed. “Is it okay if I touch you?”
He huffed a laugh. “Can’t recall ever minding that, so long as it’s not my nose.”
Ignoring all his ever-changing expressions, she laid her hand on him again and swept a slow circle around his bellybutton. Still Spike. Her hand wandered lower, beneath the sheet, and confirmed: still her man. Oh, yeah. Her very interested man.
She glanced up, innuendo on her lips, and was startled to silence by the conflicted desire in his expression. “Is it okay?” she fumbled. “I mean, for...”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I just... I thought I might have to go the next five months without.”
“Without?” Again: startled. “But we’ve... I mean, the other night when I got off patrol - okay, no, but then last week...” She trailed off, trying to think. That couldn’t be right. She’d have noticed. She’d have missed it. Wouldn’t she? “Have we not had sex in four weeks?”
“Four and a half,” he said, hauling himself upright. “The night before... Well. Before the joyous news.”
“And you didn’t say something?” she said.
He lifted an eyebrow. "Figured you not saying anything was message enough."
Her face burned hot with shame. She probably glowed in the dark with it. “Oh, God, Spike. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said, but to the sheet rather than to her. He favored her with a pained half-smile. “A bit of a blow to a man’s masculinity, getting knocked up.”
She tried to think of all the nights fucking each other alive, all the lazy mornings usually filled with lazy morning sex, and instead remembered getting up before him, coming downstairs after him, always thinking: Let him sleep. Curling herself into his arms and carefully not noticing the subtle shifts in his personal geography. Not thinking about it.
That was it: her and her award-winning talent for Not Thinking About It.
And there was Spike, sitting next to her and trying hard to look disinterested.
A half-formed thought crystallized. “You want this baby that bad? To not... for another five months?”
“Six, counting this last one,” he said. He shrugged, but she saw right through that faux-indifference, mister.
Any doubts she might have had about how serious he was? Smithereens.
Still, he needed this. He needed her to get over her squickies and do this.
She scooted in close and ran her hand up his neck, her ridiculous contrary whole-hearted ex-vampire. She craned to follow his gaze until it met hers. Then she closed in and caught his mouth – warm, and if she wasn’t used to that bit of weirdness yet it didn’t mean it wasn’t good – and started kissing him, long and slow and thorough. She had some catching up to do.
Afterward, as they lay sweaty and tangled together with the sheet wound around their legs, he said, “That my last hurrah, then? ‘Cause I’m not getting any less pregnant from here. Not for a long while, anyway.”
She rolled over, straining to think of some reassurance if what they’d just done wasn’t enough, but he was grinning, the rejected look all wiped away for the moment. “There could be more,” she said, snuggling in tighter against him. “Later. Right now Buffy go sleep.”
Drifting off, she thought: Her guy, pregnant with her baby? Not entirely unsexy.
Finis
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 10:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 01:35 pm (UTC)Great little fic! It reminds me of why I love Buffy. Particularly when she tries so hard to be soft and sweet.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:09 pm (UTC)Buffy is so very adorable sometimes, isn't she? *loves*
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:11 pm (UTC)And I'm glad you liked the ending. I was in the mood for something sweet. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 04:52 pm (UTC)Like seriously.
AWWWW
and now I have to go make gravy
but this is gravy FOR MY HEART!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 04:54 pm (UTC)This was perfect. Buffy's feelings, her discovery of Spike's emotions, their interactions--flawless. I am totally in love with it.
Woman, quit making me love mpreg!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:17 pm (UTC)You do not dissuade me. The campaign to convince Lauren of the excellence of mpreg continues apace!
(And: Thank you. I'm glad you liked it. *g*)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 05:24 pm (UTC)Honestly, I don't think any other character could have made me get over my initial squick, but when it's Spike--and especially when it's Spike and Buffy--it works.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 09:39 pm (UTC)I am ever so proud. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-25 10:30 pm (UTC)I have to tell you, though, that this one has no grand plan; it's just me writing things I like (Spuffy + mpreg + post-apocalypse).
no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-26 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 02:12 am (UTC)I approve :)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 03:47 am (UTC)Also: Hi. I don't know if you know me, but
no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 04:11 am (UTC)Hello to you! I've seen you around, most recently at Gabs' blog. Oh, and now I remember noticing that you beta for DT. Nice to meet you!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 06:08 am (UTC):D *waves*
no subject
Date: 2010-11-29 05:56 am (UTC)It would be neat for you to do a longer story exploring how Buffy would deal emotionally with such a drastic gender roles. I like Spike so much more as a vampire - Spike Vamp carrying their magic induced child, maybe let Buffy finish the actual Birth - since Spike would have to have a cesarean to have a child.
Off to read your recommend. I love Buffy & Spike with children.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 04:00 am (UTC)I suspect that Buffy would be less disappointed about not carrying her own child than a lot of the characters would. In my mind, she's a wee bit relieved to not have to do the pregnancy thing herself.
I have an idea I might explore this scenario a lot more at some point. Spike would still be human, though; although I prefer him as a vampire, too, it seems to me that the mystical handwaving to explain a male vampire being pregnant would several orders of magnitude more complicated than explaining an ordinary guy being pregnant. However, someone has already written a story that matches your description almost exactly: Check Mate, by Xela. It's pretty cracky and fluffy, though; not a whole lot of serious exploration.
Thanks for the lovely comment. :)
Long time fan
Date: 2010-12-05 01:56 am (UTC)Just wanted to let you know I really liked this story. I read Seraph too, and really really enjoyed it. I hope you write more soon. Thanks for this.
Re: Long time fan
Date: 2010-12-05 02:01 am (UTC)Ok, that is all for now.
Re: Long time fan
Date: 2010-12-05 04:12 pm (UTC)Thank you every much for the lovely comment!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-29 10:52 pm (UTC)Buffy tries to show her love - her way! Tries to understand Spike's emotions. Tries to make him see hers.
A lovely adapting Buffy.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 03:40 am (UTC)