A/N: Thanks to my fab beat DreamsofSpike and to all you who review.

Disclaimer: I don't own BtVS or AtS. I do own Eileen, Oscar, Maria, Eric, Timea and Mahira.
Chapter title is from "Hey there Delilah" by Plain White Tees. It doesn't belong to me!



”Take a seat,” Buffy said, standing up and smiling confidently at her friend and the two others at his side. She sat down after they had seated themselves and quickly grasped Spike’s hand.

Spike could easily tell that her confidence was partly a mask, and that beneath the surface she was nervous. Hell, he couldn’t fault her. Her last parting with the boy had been somewhat bad, for lack of a better word. Some words had been exchanged, and he really hoped that the kid had regretted his part of them afterwards. If he found out he hadn’t, Spike would make sure he found out what real pain was.

“Um...hi?” Xander said, eyes flickering back and forth between the two of them. He moved his hands restlessly around for a bit before taking his wife’s hand. She gave him a reassuring smile, and it gave him the boost of confidence he needed. “Good to see you two again,” he continued, his words making it clear to Spike that he had laid it all behind him, and that he was handing them an olive branch.

“I’ve got to say you look good, Buffy. You’ve taken good care of her, Spike,” Xander added, chuckling slightly.

Buffy scowled slightly at him, but it soon turned back into a smile.

“I want to introduce you to my wife, Maria, and our son, Eric,” he finished, grinning with pride. His wife beamed at him, while his son only stared at the strangers across the table.

“Congratulations, Xander!” Buffy exclaimed, smiling at her old friend.

“Maria, this is Buffy and Spike,” Xander said, looking at his wife with adoration in his eyes.

She nodded and smiled. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“So, you’re back?” Xander asked after the waiter had arrived and they had given him their orders. Both Buffy and Spike noted that he appeared calm and relaxed, yet both could tell he was a little tense.

“Just visiting,” Spike said, leaning back in his chair. His thumb started massaging Buffy’s hand, and she gave him a loving smile.

“Will you stay long?” Maria asked, and Xander gave a slight start, almost having forgotten her. He blushed slightly, hoping no one noticed. He was nervous for what Spike and Buffy might reveal.

“My stepsister is getting married, so we have to visit,” Buffy said, smiling at Maria and Eric, who was wriggling on his mother’s lap.

“Congratulations. When is it?” Maria replied, getting a better hold on her son. He settled down and immediately began sulking.

“In three days,” Buffy said, a proud smile on her face. She sipped her coffee before turning her attention to her mate.

‘Do you think she knows what we are?’ she mentally asked Spike, who shook his head slightly. She fidgeted slightly with her hands before folding them around her warm cup of coffee.

‘Do you think we should bring it up? I like her and I don’t wanna lie to her,’ she added, frowning when her mate didn’t answer immediately.

‘Nah, let the boy decide. It’s his call,’ Spike thought, making Buffy scowl slightly.

Xander looked between the two of them, somewhat nervous. His life was normal, and didn’t need the paranormal. Besides he was unsure of how Maria might react if faced with something ‘unnormal’.

“You two must be really in tune to be able to communicate without words,” Maria said, slightly confused by the nervous look on her husband’s face and the looks passing between her husband’s old friend and her boyfriend.

“Oh, yes, we practically complete each others sentences,” Buffy said, smiling dangerously at her mate. She just knew he had a pun ready.

“It’s the only time she shuts up, so I just go along with whatever I think she’s saying,” Spike said, grinning at Buffy. He yelped when she smacked his shoulder, scowling at him.

“I never knew a Slayer and a vampire could live like that, but you’re just living proof that pigs do fly,” Maria said calmly, looking up sharply when the other three people sitting around the table either choked on their coffee or spat it out.

“You...wha...You know?” Xander asked, his eyes round as saucers. He was shocked. And why had she never mentioned anything to him, if she knew about all this?

“Of course I know. I was born in Sunnydale, and I might appear normal, but I’m not blind. Just like I’ve heard about Buffy the Vampire Slayer who mated William the Bloody. You’re almost like a celebrity, especially among the half-demons and the humans who know about slayers and vampires,” Maria stated matter-of-factly.

Silence greeted her words.

Xander expected Maria to laugh and say she was kidding, but she just kept staring at the three of them, eyes serious.

“Oh…” Buffy said finally, breaking the silence that had settled between them.

“I thought… I’ve always…they said slayers were a secret,” she finally explained, barely preventing herself from openly gaping at Maria. She could tell that Spike was nearly as perplexed as she was, but he was hiding it better than her.

“How long have you known?” Spike said, taking the attention away from a shocked and confused Buffy.

Maria gave him a small grin and replied, “I’ve lived here all my life. I lost an uncle to a vampire, and my brother and I started to investigate. We found it curious that he had died from two small wounds in the neck, so we began checking out the police reports to see if there were similar cases.” She spoke steadily, her knee casually bobbing her son up and down to keep him occupied.

“We found that a lot of people die of neck trauma in Sunnydale, more than in other cities. We put two and two together and gradually learned more and more about vamps. Then we began noticing that many of the people we knew looked less human, so we asked them. They admitted to being half-demons or demons, and that was that,” she added, combing Eric’s hair with her fingers.

“I can’t believe I never guessed it. Looking back I can see you dropping so many hints. God, I’m such an idiot,” Xander said, leaning his forehead on one of his hands. His wife only chuckled, and he knew it was okay.

Spike glanced at Buffy and gave her a small smile, silently telling her that matters seemed to have never been in Xander’s hands to begin with, after all. She grinned in reply and reached for his hand. He took her hand and gave it a slight squeeze.

“So, what do you do now, Xander,” Buffy asked him, honest curiosity shining in her eyes. At that moment she felt like a normal woman having dinner with friends and partners, and the thought nearly made her laugh out loud.

She was as far from normal as a vampire was from an angel, but that didn’t bother her the least. She had grown comfortable with her life and she had never regretted becoming mated to Spike.

“I’m the owner of a construction company, which means I can have lunch with my wife and son without anybody complaining,” Xander said, laughing. He took Maria’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Except me,” she replied, grinning at her husband. “Sometimes he works later than even the loneliest men working for him, and comes home and falls asleep as soon as he comes through the door. Can’t say I like it,” Maria added, rolling her eyes and sharing a womanly look with Buffy.

“Don’t even get me started on Spike,” Buffy said, sighing loudly.

“Oi! I’m nice! I’m not late getting home unless you’re with me, I don’t look at other women and I let you get the demons you want,” Spike said, shooting her a dirty look. He mentally poked her and she gave him an offended look.

‘You started it,’ he said, scowling at her.

“You’re so childish sometimes,” Buffy said, breaking eye contact and giggling. He rolled his eyes and growled darkly.

--------------------------------------------------

Giles sat down with a cup of tea and a large sandwich, thanking God for lunch. He carefully sipped his tea and pulled a book towards himself, opening it where he last stopped reading. He began to read and quickly became engrossed in the text.

"The opener is a shell, hidden in plain sight.
The Malignant Enemy will appear, his ennui striking.
Time will take feet, and the world will burn,” he translated to himself, scrunching up his brow. He straightened up and frowned at the page, trying to make sense of the gibberish written there.

“Well, what can you expect from doped up monks from Finland?” he muttered to himself, taking off his glasses and cleaning them. When the door suddenly opened he nearly broke them in half. He clutched a hand to his chest and the other gripped his glasses nearly painfully.

“Monks from Finland? What’s that got to do with anything?” a chipper voice asked him. A dazzling grin and blue eyes filled his view and he cursed softly. The young slayer jumped inside, restlessly throwing a book she grabbed from the table from hand to hand.

The book throwing caused her watcher, Oscar, and Giles to nearly swallow their tongues, and they both spluttered and pointed, gesturing for her to put down the book.

Eileen sighed and put the book down, flipping a long, brown braid over her shoulder. She jumped up onto the table and sat down, feet swinging over the edge. Oscar followed her over to the table, but did not seat himself. He greeted Giles and poured himself a cup of tea, sipping it with a small smile directed at his charge.

“I was merely commenting on a text written by some Finnish monks, who happened to like getting high on some special herb. Their writing consists merely of gibberish, but I’ve found a reference to ‘the just infant’,” Giles said, opening the text to the sentence he was talking about.

“After I found out how to properly work a computer, I’ve started to input sentences into a writing program and try to find other meanings for them. I’ve found that ‘just’ is synonym for ‘fair’, which also means ‘golden’. And ‘infant’ is ‘child’,” he said, getting more excited with each word he was explaining.

“It mentions ‘the Golden Child’!” he exclaimed, before moving on. Both the Slayer and her watcher knew about this obsession of his, but he didn’t care that they seemed to think that he was a little crazy sometimes.

“The next sentence that made me pause was ‘The opener is a shell, hidden in plain sight. The Malignant Enemy will appear, his ennui striking. Time will take feet, and the world will burn.’ It doesn’t make any sense in the computer, that much I know. I’ve tried over and over, but I can’t get a meaning out of it. So, what do you think?” he asked his companions.

Oscar looked down into his teacup, seemingly absorbed, while Eileen was staring into the blue, clearly zoned out.

“What other words are there for an opener? Can-opener. Something to open with. Hand. Handle. Car keys,” Oscar suggested, glancing briefly up at Giles, not noticing his eyes widening.

“The Key!” He shouted, turning to rummage in some of his private books. He quickly came up with one, his finger following a sentence in the book.

“’The Key will open any dimension. Neither thing nor being will stop it,’” Giles read, smiling triumphantly.

“Okay, next. Hidden in plain sight, that’s quite easy,” Giles said, finding a notebook and quickly writing down what they figured out.

“The first line goes like this then: ‘The Key is a shell, hidden in plain sight.’ Any ideas about the next line?” He asked the two other people occupying his shop, but he didn’t get an answer.

“’The Malignant Enemy will appear,’ is clear. An enemy will rise, an enemy who is evil. Have you seen something to indicate that a new enemy is residing in Sunnydale?” Giles asked Oscar, who shook his head.

“’His ennui striking’ might mean ‘his lack of interest striking’, or some other word instead of striking. Remarkable? Outstanding? Both make sense,” he continued, jotting down every thought. He stared at the scribbled page for a while before speaking again.

“’The Evil Enemy will rise, his lack of interest remarkable,’” Giles read aloud, scratching his temple with his pen. He sighed before moving on to the next line.

“’Time will take feet, and the world will burn’ might mean that time will disappear, or stop and the world will end. Not a nice thought,” Giles said, excitement sinking. He had lost his high, and he hit bottom quite fast.

The last sentence seemed to be mocking him, and he mentally cursed. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, feeling bone tired.

“I’ve got a thought,” Eileen suddenly said, breaking the silence that had settled over the room. Both watchers seemed a little startled, but quickly nodded at her, silently telling her to continue. “What if the ‘Time will take feet’ sentence is meant literally?” she asked.