Author: ghostyouknow27
Rating: R, mostly for swearing and violence
Summary: Begins at the start of Season 7, but immediately goes AU. Buffy gets pregnant with Spike’s baby, and it fixes everything that’s wrong in their relationship. Don’t try to figure out any timelines, because they won’t fit.
Disclaimer: Characters and settings belong to Joss Whedon. The prose and plot are my own.
Word Count: Around the 37,450 mark
WARNING(S): There’s not much violence in this fic, but what’s there involves a baby. That’s right, a baby. Also, don’t expect too much happy mushiness. This is Pregnancy-With-Minimal-Plot and does involve consensual non-sex, naughty words and the author’s rather sick sense of humor. Uh, enjoy? Oh, and none of this is beta’d. So reedz at you’re own wrist.
“Bloody hell!” Spike rolled off the couch, jarring his broken fingers when he used his hands to stop his fall.
Another series of bangs and crashes clanged loudly from the kitchen. Spike lurched to his feet, still feeling weaker than he’d like. Still, he could tell that Buffy had done a first-rate patch-up job. A little blood, and he’d be as good as new…
…if someone would stop that bloody racket.
“Tortured vampire trying to sleep, here!” Spike bellowed. He sat back down, willing the room to stop its tilt-a-whirl.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Dawn, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “Did I wake you up?” She smiled an odd little half-smile, deliberately banging a wooden spoon against the metal mixing bowl that she held under one arm. “Do you have a headache?”
“He’s not the only one,” called Buffy from upstairs.
“I’m making muffins for the Scooby meeting!” Dawn yelled. “Blueberry!”
Spike groaned. He’d finally allowed himself to pass out after he’d downed a few pints of blood, courtesy of Dawn, who had stormed upstairs soon after seeing him. He knew Buffy had been talking on the phone at some point, but he hadn’t caught the conversation. Scooby meeting? Maybe he could still find a blanket and bolt for it.
“Dawn?” Willow rushed into the kitchen, still frantically trying to stuff a few last notebooks into her messenger bag. “We don’t have any blueberries.” Spike closed his eyes, the sound of pouring cereal grating on his already-throbbing nerves.
The teenager seemed undeterred. “I used blueberry pancake syrup,” she explained. “And maybe I’ll add some chopped-up blueberry Pop Tart. We have frosted!”
Spike could practically smell Willow’s panic. “Uh, Dawnie, we do have chocolate chips?”
“Yummy!” said Dawn. “Of course I’ll have to throw all this batter out and start over…” Spike stifled a groan, knowing that Dawn wouldn’t hesitate to aggravate him a bit more. He was only glad he’d never had the chance to tutor her in proper torture.
“No muffins,” yelled Buffy, as she thudded downstairs. “School!” She ignored Spike as she walked through the living room into the kitchen. “Besides, I’ve already got Xander on donut duty.”
“But we always have donuts,” complained Dawn.
“Those who whine can do their homework upstairs while the rest of us research vampire cults.” Buffy frowned. “Not that either option sounds fun, exactly.”
“Whatever.” A horn honked outside, and then Dawn flew out the door, a bagel and a pink plastic backpack in hand. She slammed the door on the way out, making Spike grate his molars. So much for staying unconscious while his bones knitted.
The vampire got slowly to his feet, walked hesitantly into the kitchen.
“I have an early study group,” Willow was saying to Buffy as she rinsed batter from Dawn’s mixing bowl. “Will you be okay?”
Spike understood what Willow was really asking — did Buffy think he’d try to attack her again? “State I’m in, Buffy could break me with her little pinkie.” His voice sounded broken even to his own ears, and he turned away in embarrassment, batting at the fridge door with his gauze-wrapped paws.
“Let me,” Buffy grabbed a bag of blood from the fridge. “I’ll be fine, Will.” Spike couldn’t help notice Buffy’s determined avoidance. The Slayer looked around him, but her eyes never settled on the space he occupied. She must have gotten too close last night, assumed he’d read more into her decency than she’d intended. He hadn’t. He knew what high bridges he’d burned.
The witch seemed to notice, too. To Spike’s surprise, she met his gaze, conveying more worry and concern than threat. He swallowed hard and gave her the smallest of nods, all the while hating the way his chest cavity filled with a sort of gratified astonishment. Fuck, but give the soul a benign glance, and he rolled right over.
Buffy plopped a straw into a mug of steaming blood, straight from the microwave. “I’m only going to be here until elevenish, anyway. World’s stupidest shift — I’m only there for the lunch rush, and my shift’s not long enough for a half.”
“That sucks.” Willow smiled in sympathy. She picked up her messenger bag and grabbed a pack of Pop Tarts from the kitchen island. The blueberry frosted. “Okay, well I’ll see you tonight.”
“See ya,” said Buffy, as she picked up, examined and put down all the cereal boxes on the table in turn.
Spike sat on one of the island’s stools, cupping his mug between his hands and leaning down to suck through his straw. He paused when Buffy set down the last box — and wasn’t she too old for technicolor corn balls? — with a little noise of frustration. “Nothing appeal, love?”
She gave him a dumb look of mute panic, and he flinched, almost splashing blood over his hands.
“Right.” He stood up. “Unwrap my hands, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
Buffy fumbled. “No — no, Spike. You can’t leave. I know your hands need more time, plus you know I don’t like you staying at the high school. And there’s those vamps, still, and the Scooby meeting tonight. It will just be easier if you stay. Here. For now.”
Easier? Bitch thought she was making things easy!? “Nothing ‘bout this is easy, Slayer.”
Her gaze softened for a moment. “You’re telling me.” She looked into the box of Pop Tarts and wrinkled her nose, as if deeply offended by the foil packets contained within. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. This whole thing has me freaked, y’know?”
Spike looked at Buffy’s belly. “I know.” He sighed. “The burns should be mostly healed up, anyway.” There was that fear again in Buffy’s eyes. Spike frowned. Was Buffy that spooked to touch him? She’d not seemed so bothered about it last night, not that he could notice any subtleties in her expression with his eyes swollen shut. “Buffy?”
“I’m fine!” Buffy shook herself. “You’re right. I can probably cut some of the bandages off now.” But she just stood frozen, a curious, unreadable look in her eyes. Then she let out a soft ‘oomph,’ hands spreading over her swollen stomach. “As soon as the spawn stops kicking. Something set it off last night and —” Buffy shuddered and fell silent.
Spike felt a growing sense of alarm. “Was me, wasn’t it? That set it off?”
Buffy licked her lower lip, drawing Spike’s attention to her mouth. “It wasn’t you,” she said softly. “I’ll take the bandages off in a minute. Just — don’t leave, Spike.”
Spike nodded. “I won’t.”
***
Afterwards, Buffy took the bloodied bandages upstairs. She locked herself in the bathroom and stuffed a piece of stained gauze in her mouth. She closed her eyes and struggled not to cry as she sucked at the old, dead blood. Deep inside, the spawn fluttered and turned, and to Buffy’s horror and fear —
— it grew.
***
Spike woke up at the whine of the door swinging inward. “Buffy?”
There was no mistaking that anxious scent, disguised as it was beneath layers of old grease and perspiration. “Yeah, it’s me.”
Spike stood up, his legs feeling stronger than they had that morning. Met her before she walked too far in, like some pup heeling for its master. She looked beautiful, of course, but unwell. Eyes sunk. Hair and skin glazed with an oily sheen.
Something was wrong, but Spike wasn’t sure he could question her. They weren’t that close. Any former confidences had been shared, not out of trust, but because he wasn’t real, didn’t matter. Did he matter now, with the soul? “The others coming?”
Buffy shook her head. “Not for a few.” She stood there, in a sort of exhausted fugue, belly protruding beneath her Doublemeat muumuu. Bloody hideous, that uniform, the humiliation she must suffer while wearing it. But her stomach — was there something different there?
“I talked to Xander,” said Buffy. “He says you can stay with him.”
Oh, so she was trying to fob him off, then. Figured. But it wasn’t like he had much right to resentment. Against Buffy, at least. Xander seemed like more than fair game. “Out of what, the fondness of his heart?”
“As a favor to me,” Buffy supplied.
“No,” said Spike. “I’ll get my own place if it’s that bloody important. Got honest income, now. Don’t I?”
“Which is why I expect rent,” said Xander, as he walked through the doorway. “And I’m charging extra for keeping blood in the fridge.”
“Bugger that,” said Spike. “Saving up for my own place. Hence my current rent-free status.”
“And staying at the school — which is, as you know, completely unprotected — with a bunch of quasi-religious baby-crazy vamps on the loose? Sorry if I don’t feel up to another round of Spike flambé,” snapped Buffy.
Spike heard the baby’s heart speed up, saw that unfamiliar yearning in Buffy’s eyes. She licked her lips, swayed hard, knees buckling as her eyes rolled back to white.
Her shoulders felt bony under his hands. Limbs and fragile and birdlike, so different from the thick rotundity of her lower body. Spike thought of a dead insect at the center of a spider’s web, threads stringing outward.
And then, just as Xander was saying something about “no touching,” Spike felt the back of his skull impact and bounce against the wall. He looked up, dazed, Buffy’s form obliterated by dark spots. How did she get so far away? What had he done?
“Whoa, Buffy,” said Xander. “Not that I don’t appreciate you beating Spike up, but I said I’d give Spike a room, not that I’d push around his wheelchair.”
Ah, he’d been too close. Still gave Buffy a fright, to have him near. “Don’t short circuit your brain cell, Harris,” said Spike, as he used the wall to prop himself up. “I’m sorry, Buffy. Wasn’t thinking.” But the guilt and self-loathing were giving way, just a bit, to frustration. Would she rather she’d cracked her own skull? Would it always be this hard?
“I just — reacted,” said Buffy, helplessly, though apparently over her Victorian swooning. “I know you were only trying to help.”
“I liked the pummeling better,” muttered Xander, but not so softly that anyone could miss it. “Say, who wants pizza?”
Buffy groaned, evidently glad of the distraction. “Can you order one without cheese? Or sauce?”
“And breadsticks it is,” said Xander, barely missing a beat. “And I’ll get something with a vegetable, so we can all laugh as we force Dawn to eat it.”
“Just make sure it’s a green one,” said Buffy. “I’m gonna change out of the grease-wear. Try not to kill each other while I’m upstairs, okay?”
***
By the time Buffy came downstairs, Xander was on the phone. She walked into the kitchen and began warming up a mug of blood almost by rote, plucking it out of the microwave as the timer dinged. She smiled weakly at Xander as she carried the blood into the living room. Oddly enough, she didn’t feel the least bit tempted by pig’s blood. Or maybe not so oddly — Spike had always said it was gross.
Not that Spike’s blood wasn’t gross! It was super gross! All tepid and dead and infused with demon. But God, the way her parasite called for it — if she hadn’t fainted, Buffy knew that she’d have bitten him. Felt things in his neck pop and crunch, sucked at blood spurting too quickly for her to swallow, so it’d run down her chin and his chest in the prettiest little rivulets.
Maybe Spike would be less inclined to raise this thing, if he knew how badly it wanted to commit cannibalistic patricide.
Spike’s met her eyes briefly as she handed him the mug. “Thanks, love. Would have got it myself.”
“I know.” Buffy sat down next to him on the living room sofa, but kept her distance. She could still hear Xander on the phone. Good. She needed to make an apology built for two. “Spike — I am sorry. I know you’ve changed. I can see it, I really can. This parasite —” she couldn’t disguise her loathing — “it just has me extra jumpy.”
“That what that was?” asked Spike, and Buffy didn’t like the calculating look in his eyes. Spike was such a bonehead, it was easy to confuse him for stupid — but he wasn’t, and she could tell that she didn’t have him fooled. If it wasn’t for his guilt over the rape, Spike probably would have started questioning her reaction to him earlier.
“Yes,” she told him, more calmly than she felt.
“Explain, then, why the sprog’s heartbeat sped up when I —” Spike shook his head, then bought himself some time with a slow sip of pig-in-a-mug. “Explain why it’s grown so much in one night. A night, I might add, that I spent on your couch.”
Buffy’s hand gripped his knee, the knuckles turning white. “Please don’t say anything,” she whispered hoarsely, fear and embarrassment making her forget not to touch him. “I can’t say what happened — not in front of everyone.”
Spike stiffened under the feel of her hand. “Fine,” he growled. “But you tell Rupert afterwards, or I will.”
The door slammed as Dawn stomped inside. She threw her backpack to the side and started to kick off her shoes, when she noticed Spike and Buffy on the couch. “Is everyone here, yet?”
“Just me,” called Xander from the kitchen.
“Are there donuts?”
“Even better,” said Buffy. “Xander’s springing for pizza.”
“Did you ask him for the Thai spicy peanut one?” asked Dawn. Without waiting for an answer, she rushed into the kitchen, no doubt to cajole Xander into ordering something inedible.
“Huh,” said Spike. “Didn’t even glare too hard that time.”
“Teenager,” explained Buffy. “Food comes first.”
“Sorry I’m late,” said Willow, as she walked in. “But look, I brought Giles! And Giles brought books!” She held open the door for the ex-librarian, ex-shopkeeper, who was carrying a cardboard box overflowing with books both thick and dusty. He set them down on the much-abused coffee table.
Buffy slumped around her middle. This was good, this was normal. She was totally normal non-bloodlusty Buffy — who, now that she came to think of it, really hated thick, dusty books. Or any books, really, that didn’t have pictures. “Yay?”
“Yes, well, I thought we best be prepared in case Willow’s computer failed to recover the information we need.” Giles smiled. “And looking through books brings back old memories, now doesn’t it?”
“We did it last week, too,” Buffy pointed out. “‘Cause of the purple thing. With the eyeballs.”
“Buffy’s just grumpy because of the evil baby,” said Dawn, walking back into the living room. “Also, the spinach pesto pizza? All your fault.”
“Whatever,” said Buffy, resentfully. Evil baby didn’t begin to cover it. “I’m not eating it anyway.” She shuddered as an image of Spike-dipped breadsticks popped into her mind. She glanced around the room, saw that the Scoobies had all filtered in and were staring at her curiously. She smiled brightly. Her jaw kinda hurt with the effort. “Okay, Spike, you got the floor.”
The vampire drew in a deep breath. “Not much to say. Was patrolling when I was jumped. Dragged into a crypt. Tortured. They wanted to know about the spawn. When’d it appear? Buffy taking her prenatals? That sorta thing.”
“Tell them about the pursuing, part.”
“Yeah, called themselves The Pursuers.”
Giles pinched the bridge of his nose, “I can’t say it immediately rings a bell. Willow?”
The redhead looked up from her chair, her laptop resting neatly on top of her thighs. “There’s a 1961 movie … and ooh! some sort of Christian youth club.”
“Sounds like it’s time to be Bookman,” said Xander. “Like Batman, but with the power of reading.” The doorbell rang — “On second thought, we all know the ladies prefer Pizzaman.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and went to the door.
Spike reached for a thick book with a gilded title: “Cults of the Vampyres and Their Iconogryphy.” He started leafing through the pages. “One thing. Their robes were red and had this black symbol on the front —”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Are black and red the official colors of Team Vampyre or something?”
“— A triangle with this hand in the middle, and the hand was holding a black curl.”
“What kind of curl?” asked Willow.
“A shadow. Or a flame. Wasn’t like they labeled the thing.” Spike pushed the book away. “Is Ms. Got-Her-Groove-Back still a part of you lot? Seems to me she hasn’t missed a party in a thousand years — maybe she’s run into these vamps.”
“She’s helped us before,” said Buffy, after a strained silence, in which all eyes avoided Xander. “But I think we’re better off with books.” She smiled a bit too widely, looking more like the Bot than her usual grim self. “Pass the breadsticks?”
She was in battle with the parasite — blood versus breadsticks. With the scoreboard clearly favoring the spawn, Buffy wasn’t about to lose ground. Or pass on warm, crusty carbohydrates.
Giles gave her a withering look, unappreciative of her attempt to redirect the conversation. “While the name of the cult is unfamiliar, their iconography seems to be a mix of symbols. A triangle, of course, could represent a trinity.”
“Or fire,” supplied Willow.
“Or ‘yield,’” said Xander, through a mouthful of cheese. Yucky, yucky cheese. Boy, did Buffy miss it.
“Alchemists used a triangle to symbolize fire, though the fire itself was also a metaphor for, for a catalyst. For transformation.” Giles nodded to Spike. “And you said that there was a hand within the triangle?”
“With a squiggle,” Buffy reminded him.
“I’m guessing the hand’s holding a flame,” said Xander. “It just makes sense, if the triangle means fire, not traffic control.”
“A hand holding a flame sounds familiar,” said Willow. “I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere.” Willow’s eyes lit up. “I think I got it!” Her fingers moved over her keyboard, “There’s a rare hieroglyph — maybe a logograph? — of a hand holding a torch.” She moved her left hand in demonstration, forming an upward-facing ‘C’ with her fingers. “It’s only seen in a fire ritual sequence from a Mayan mural at Bonampak. It was in my pre-Columbian class …” Willow frowned, considering. “Fire rituals don’t sound too good.”
“The parasite does make me feel too warm all of the time,” said Buffy.
“That’s normal, though.” Dawn had mutilated two slices of pizza, moving the cheese from one onto the peanut sauce of the other. Even Xander eyed the combination dubiously. “It’s not like they call it a bun in the fridge.”
“So that’s our huge revelation?” said Spike. “That religious types like rituals?” He held up his hands, which still bore a few discolored patches. “Could have figured that out by, I dunno, the ritual fire-torture?”
“It gives us someplace to start, anyway,” said Dawn, defensively. “You just said ‘curls.’”
The vampire sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Sorry.” He stood up abruptly. “Need a smoke,” he said, and headed for the porch.
Buffy bit her lip. She almost wanted to follow Spike, but with the spawn moving restlessly, hungrily, inside her, she knew that would only lead to badness. “I’m going to the doctor again tomorrow,” she volunteered.
“Need a lift?” asked Xander.
“No,” Buffy said. “It’s a morning appointment, so no worries about the ooky vamps.” She shrugged, “I guess I’ll let you know if the ultrasound shows that the spawn’s on fire?”
“I would hope that you would,” said Giles, in that soft, hard way that meant he knew Buffy was hiding something. God, did everyone really have to know her so well?
Buffy’s eyes narrowed at a sudden, unwelcome thought — what had Spike told Giles?
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/386171.html
