Chapter 4 – Ease Himself In

Breaking into Professor Walsh’s office took longer than he expected, what with lurking around half the night for the students to leave so he could break in without being disturbed, then snooping on Soldier Boy. It was dawn by the time Spike arrived at Buffy’s dorm and picked the outer door lock to let himself into the building.

Spike rapped on her door softly, but she didn’t answer. She must be sleeping, which suited him fine, because he liked to wake her up for sex. She was always hot and ready when he did that, like she was dreaming about sex and he could ease himself into her dream.

“Not going to do you a bit of good, sleeping all cozy and warm and sexy and trying to distract me. You and me are going to have a confrontation once and for all about this Soldier Git you’ve been running about with.”

He picked the lock and peeked in the door. Red’s twin bed was empty. She must be out carousing with her lezzer friend. Buffy was sleeping on top of her bed in her fish pajamas and her swollen eyes told him she’d been crying. He forgot all about the soldier.

“What’s this, then?” He let himself in and tossed his coat and the box of condoms on Red’s bed. He noticed a faint, out of place scent – chemicals and Buffy-pee?

Buffy’s study desk was littered with white and pink cardboard boxes containing complicated pages of instructions. Spike picked up one of the boxes.

Home Pregnancy Test.

Five flat, white sticks were lined up in a neat row on the edge of Buffy’s desk. In the faint light seeping in around the curtains, he could see each of the sticks had a pink tip. He’d watched the telly enough to know what the pink tips on the sticks meant, although he didn’t understand why Buffy took the test five different times.

He adjusted the control box to override his chip, in case Buffy should be in a cooperative mood to let him have a tasty bite and pulled off his clothes and boots. He got into bed next to Buffy and turned her around so she was nestled in his arms.

“Spike?” Buffy yawned and snuggled closer.

She opened her eyes and he could see them green and glinting with tears in the half light.

“I’ve got you, pet. Why’ve you been crying?” As if he didn’t know. She was crying because she was cooking up a baby. His baby, although how in flaming hell they’d managed it, he’d be damned if he knew.

“I’m pregnant,” she said. Her lower lip trembled as she waited for his reaction.

“I know,” he said. He brushed his mouth across hers. What he didn’t know was how he felt about impending fatherhood.

Did he want to be a dad? He’d avoided it for over a hundred years. William would have pleased as hell to assume the patriarchal cloak with that blazing bitch Cecily, but he wasn’t William. He hadn’t been for a long time.

And, what about Buffy? Did his girl want to have his baby? The baby of a vampire?

She propped herself up on her elbows and studied him. “You aren’t mad?”

No, he wasn’t all that upset. In fact, he wasn’t upset at all. Buffy was warm and sweet to him, when he wasn’t ruffling her feathers. She’d treated him nicely considering he’d tried to murder her on several occasions. Drusilla left a long time ago, and he’d been lonely without a woman until Buffy stormed into his unlife. If she wanted to have a baby, that was all right with him.

“I’m not mad. Having babies, that’s what girls do.”

Buffy relaxed in his arms. Yes, making babies was what normal girls did. Making babies made normal girls happy. Of course, normal girls didn’t have vampires as the fathers of their babies. It was way too late to worry about that.

Buffy’s next thought was even less pleasant. Spike might be okay with a baby and she was okay with a baby, now that she knew Spike was okay, but others, starting with her mother, were going to be un-okay. Practically everyone she knew was going to be un-okay.

“My mom’s head is going to explode.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll talk her around. She can’t resist me.”

Buffy giggled. If anyone could talk around her mother, Spike could. “She likes you.”

The rest of them could pound sand in the Hellmouth for all she cared. Giles, Xander and maybe even Willow would squawk, but that’s all they ever did.

Spike smoothed her rumpled hair and tucked a golden lock behind her ear. “What about you? Do you like me?”

Here was a scary topic. Did she like Spike, besides the awesome sex? Yes, she did. He broke into her dorm room and stole her underwear and left her rosebuds and slightly mashed up chocolates wrapped in silver and gold foil. He could be sweet and romantic and he could make her feel better when she was sad, like tonight, and he didn’t keep a list of all the important things she wasn’t doing that she ought to be doing.

“I like you, too, Spike.”

He unbuttoned her pajama top so she could show him.

***

That evening …

The lights inside the house at Revello Drive glowed into the purple-blue twilight, welcoming visitors with their cheery warmth.

Buffy didn’t feel cheery. She stood outside her mother’s house, shuffling from one foot to another and whispering to Spike.

“Mom’s going to be furious. Let’s tell her some other time.”

Spike took advantage of Buffy’s stall tactics to sneak in a few kisses on her neck and lick the place where he’d bit her last night. He was getting hard remembering how she wriggled with pleasure when he slipped his fangs into her neck.

“Joyce will blow her stack a bit, but we might as well get it over with. Do you want me to tell her?”

“Would you?”

Spike had no idea of how mad her mother was going to be. Joyce might not act as mad around Spike, but madness was going to happen, along with crying, yelling and Joyce blaming herself for being a bad mother. Buffy didn’t think Joyce would be violent, but she did hit Spike in the head with a fire ax once.

“I’ll have her eating out of the palm of my hand,” Spike said. He rang the doorbell.

Buffy walked into the house, without waiting for her mother to answer the door and saw that telling her mother she’d gotten pregnant with a vampire was not her only worry.

Giles was sitting on the living room sofa having a cozy chat with Buffy’s mom.

Buffy did not want Giles associating with her mother when Buffy wasn’t around to chaperone. Not after the Contaminated Candy Event when Giles and her mother … ick. Buffy couldn’t think about what those two did. Giles better not be starting up with Buffy’s mother again.

Joyce was flustered, but acted pleased to see them, or at least, she put on a semi-convincing act.

“Buffy, what a nice surprise. And, you’ve brought Spike. Come in and join us. I was about to make tea. Why are you wearing those dreadful overalls, honey? I thought you got rid of those. You’re always wearing them when something happens.”

“M-o-o-o-o-m,” Buffy said. She was wearing her fashion-free overalls for a very good reason. Her other pants were too tight. They were too tight before Spike’s swimmer hit the target, and now, she couldn’t get them zipped up. Buffy was in no hurry to share with her mother the news she needed a new wardrobe.

Giles frowned. “Joyce, I wasn’t aware you were acquainted with Spike.”

“I met Spike the night Buffy ran away from home. No, that’s not right. I hit him in the head with an ax before that, some school night thing we were all attending. Since Spike and Buffy started dating, I see him quite a bit.”

Joyce sounded pleased that Buffy was dating Spike and she hadn’t dwelled too long on the Running Away From Home Incident. That’s of the good.

What wasn’t good was the look on Giles’ face. His eyes bulged out and he looked mad enough to spin his head around in a Linda Blair Free-Style Event. He looked like he might hurl some green vomit for fifteen or twenty feet, too.

“Dating?” Giles gave Spike a stern look before grilling Buffy on how the dating activity came about. “Buffy, the last time I saw you with Spike, you told me you were performing a positive reinforcement experiment on him for your psychology class.”

Buffy skirted the edge of the room, dragging Spike with her, so she could sit in a chair as far as possible from her Watcher. She jerked her tee shirt higher on her neck so Giles wouldn’t see Spike’s latest bite mark. Spike must have a hell of a headache today after that bite.

“Yeah, the experiment.”

Giles peered at Buffy over the frames of his glasses. “Is that a bite mark on your neck, Buffy?”

The tea kettle whistled and Joyce headed for the kitchen. “I’ll get the tea, Rupert, while you and Buffy catch up.”

Spike followed Buffy’s mother. “Let me give you a hand, Joyce.” He winked at Buffy as he left the room.

Buffy signaled Spike to keep his mouth shut. This was the worst possible time for Spike to inform her mother that Buffy was about to become an unwed teenage mother of a vampire’s baby, with Giles loitering in the living room.

Spike ignored her.

She slumped in her chair. She was about to hear intense crankiness from her Watcher and yelling from her mother. Her red underpants with the black lace were scratchy and her Wonderbra was too tight. She couldn’t believe having a baby would make you get fat so fast.

Giles removed his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief and looked at her expectantly. “The experiment?”

Buffy talked fast. “There-was-a-problem-with-the-experiment-and-the-control-box-thingie-didn’t-exactly-work-as-advertised-and-it-sort-of-made-Spike-and-me-have-sex-sometimes-so-Willow-hacked-into-the-government-computer-and-found-out-they-had-this-Vampire-Baby-Having-Experiment-to-make-little-half-human-half-vampires-and-Spike-and-I-were-kinda-like-the-experimentees.”

Giles continued to polish his glasses while he digested Buffy’s explanation. He made her repeat the story of the control box and the government and Spike and the experiment two more times before he was satisfied.

“When were you planning to inform me of all this?”

Buffy escaped answering by the sound of a crash in the kitchen – the sound of a large ceramic dish hitting the floor. Or somebody’s head. Then, there was the sound of flesh hitting flesh and Buffy heard Spike groan. So much for parenting tapes and Palm-Hand Ingestion Techniques.

“Buffy?” Giles didn’t permit the sound of disaster from the kitchen prevent him from questioning his Slayer. Spike being in the kitchen was sufficient explanation for any untoward noises, such as Joyce tossing dishes about. He’d often desired to heave a large dish or two at Spike’s head.

“You were busy with the Council that week and …”

“You brought the control box to my house and unchained Spike in October. I haven’t been busy with Council business every minute for the past four months.”

Joyce returned to the living room, followed by Spike. Spike was carrying a tray with a tea pot, cups and cookies and sporting a swollen eye that was blooming purple and black.

“Please set the tray on the table, Spike,” Joyce said. “I apologize for using this old teapot, Rupert. There was an accident in the kitchen.”

Joyce looked pointedly at Spike, then Buffy.

“I’d better get Spike some ice,” Buffy said. Mom shouldn’t be hitting Spike. Buffy should be the one hitting Spike, if any hitting needed to be done. She was Spike’s official girlfriend, after all. When a guy knocked you up, that made girlfriendliness official, didn’t it?

“Spike can wait,” Joyce said. “Giles, Spike and Buffy have some news. Buffy is pregnant.”

Giles didn’t say anything for several minutes. He held his glasses in his hand without polishing them.

“Joyce, the tea looks lovely, but I don’t suppose you have any Scotch?”

Joyce fetched a large bottle of Glenfiddich that Buffy never saw before and poured two large glasses, one for Giles and one for herself.