Spike watched her through the windshield of his car as the slim blonde slid off her coat and did an adorable wiggle-shimmie thing on the bar stool. He twisted his wedding ring and wondered if he should leave it on or take it off, uncertain which one would make her more comfortable.
Spike realized his hands were shaking when he lifted them off the steering wheel. He slid the gold band off to give his hands something to do other than quake like a bloody teenager. He took his wallet out of his back pocket, and tucked the ring in next to the picture of his wife, Dru. He returned his wallet to its proper place, took a deep breath and stepped out of the car.

**
"You're Dawn's favorite teacher," she'd said as she crossed her legs and leaned forward, showing him a glimpse of black lace flashing behind the v-neck of her red blouse.

It was awkward to cram one's self into the children's desks and Spike tried to remind himself that she was probably just trying to get comfortable, not flirting.

"Well, I wish all my students were as interested in Literature as Dawn," Spike said, his tongue darting out to lick his lower lip. Fuck, he was sweating, she was making him sweat.

"She's been keeping a diary almost as long as she's been able to read," Mrs. Finn said, crossing her legs again, the other way.

"That's really something," he said.

Spike loosened his tie slightly and sat back in his desk chair.

She leaned forward again as he moved back, showing him the swell of her breasts, rolling her pen in between the flats of her palms.

"What's your first name?" she asked abruptly, her eyes meeting his.

"Spike," he said.

"Really? That's not a nickname or anything?"

"Nope, parents were punks," he said with a shy smile.

"Must be an English thing, like Apple Martin," she said.

"Don't know that bird," he said.

"Bird? You're so cute," she said.

"So you think I'm cute, do you?" he smiled, curling his tongue behind his teeth.

"Little bit," she said with a blush.

"Do you want to get a drink with me?" he asked, hardly believing his own boldness. It was a move he would've made when he was younger, but not now. Not the married, thirty-seven-year-old, ninth grade English teacher who had a mortgage and an emasculating little, white Bichon Frise named Sunshine.

A look of fear flashed across her wide, green eyes.

"Yeah, I'd like that," she said.

He reminded himself to close his mouth.

"Do you know the Holiday Inn out by the highway, there's a bar in the lower level. We could go there, Sunday night, around four?" she asked.

"Yeah, s'great," he said.

She eased herself out of the desk and stood up, still tiny despite her high heels.

"My mother-in-law has Dawn until seven," she said, apologetically.

She gave him a brave smile and then walked out of the classroom. She'd come up with that place so quickly he wondered if she'd gone there before with another man, or if she'd been fantasizing about him the way he'd been about her.

The first time Spike had met her, he'd actually asked if she was Dawn's sister. It came off as a line, maybe subconsciously it was, but she sure as hell didn't look old enough to be the mother of a fourteen-year-old. He’d felt humiliated for saying something so pat until she'd given him a sparkling grin and laughed. That smile was worth sounding like an utter ponce.

After that he'd make up little excuses to see her and he'd actually started looking forward to parent teacher night for the first time in years. He'd only been hoping to talk to her one on one, maybe make her laugh again. He had no idea the evening would play out like a guilty day dream.

**
Spike came up behind Buffy and touched her shoulders. She was wearing a brief, coral-colored tank top, a tight beige skirt that showed off her legs and matching heels. The feel of his fingers on her bare skin made Buffy jump.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you," Spike said.

"You didn't, I mean, maybe a little," she said, giving him another of those toothpaste box smiles.

He moved past her, careful not to jostle her crossed legs and hopped up on the stool beside her.

The bar was dim despite its track lighting, done up in neutral colors with Ansel Adams prints on the walls. The only other people there were the bartender and an exhausted looking business traveler in a rumpled suit who didn't seem to register the presence of anything but the beer in his hand.

It was the perfect place to meet with a woman who didn't want her neighborhood community group to know she was about to break the seventh commandment, with her daughter's teacher no less.

The bartender was watching an American football game. Spike caught his eye and ordered a whiskey neat.

"What no umbrella or pineapple chunks?"

"Never drink with a grown-up before, kitten?" he asked.

"You just sounded all professional when you ordered that, like you're a serious drinker," she said, stabbing the cherry floating in her pink, fizzy drink with a little plastic sword.

"Just a dedicated amateur," he said.

That pretty much summed up his whole life, he thought.

"It's weird seeing you in civvies," she said.

After a few moments' deliberation he’d put on a pair of tight, faded blue jeans and a black t-shirt to meet her. He hated his jacket and tie, so that had been right out. But seeing her outfit, he wished that he'd dressed up for her. Spike just hadn't been able to put on something nicer; would've been that much more crushing if she didn't show.

"Not in my skivvies, yet, but if you play your cards right," he said, arching an eyebrow at her. God that was lame, he thought, but she was blushing. Her hand flew to the locket on her neck and she started toying with it.

"Civvies, civilian clothes. I've only ever seen you all tweeded up," she said, the words coming close together.
The bartender plunked Spike's drink in front of him. Spike took out his wallet and saw the gold band winking in the low light as he pulled out a few bills. He refolded the leather quickly and jammed it back in his pocket. The bartender whisked the money away with a nod. Spike took a sip and rolled the liquor over his tongue.

"We don't have to do this if you've second thoughts, Buffy," he said. It was strange saying aloud a name he'd only read before on a crumpled permission slip.

"But we kind of already are, having a drink, I mean," she said.

"It's a little late to be coy, love. I won't tell anyone if you want to finish that glass of estrogen and tropical fruit then walk out of here without touching my hand. I also won't breathe a word if you want to get a room and let me fuck you senseless, but let's be honest, yeah? One or the other is going to happen, which do you want?"

"You make it sound so easy," she said, biting at her glossy lower lip.

"It is."

"I love my husband," she whispered.

"I love my wife," Spike said. He threw back his head and emptied his glass, hoping she didn't notice the way he couldn't meet her eyes at the mention of Dru.

"Then why are you here?" she asked, her concentration trained on staking her garnish.

He wanted to tell Buffy that his wife had left him four months ago to go find herself, but instead found several strange men's cocks inside her. He thought better of sharing, though. The knowledge might drive Buffy away, and she was already skittish. The fact that he was alone instantly made him seem more invested in this tryst, whatever it might be, even though that wasn't necessarily true.

She had no intention of leaving her husband and he wanted her to think he had no interest in leaving his wife, that he was ‘safe.’

"I want you more than anybody I've ever met," he said, truthfully.

She gave him a half smile and tilted her head.

"What makes me so special?" she asked.

"Don't know but I want to find out," he said.

Buffy positioned her drink on the exact center of the coaster.

"I already got a room, 202. Should we go up separately or together?"

"Separately, more exciting, isn't it?" he asked.

She slid off the stool, her knee touching his and walked toward the elevators.

Spike ordered another drink to steady his nerves and wished he had a cigarette.

Buffy waited for the knock. She sat on the bed with her bare feet flat on the red carpeting, staring straight ahead.

It had been easy when he was sitting there and she could see the way he pursed his lips, look into his too-blue eyes. His gaze made her feel equally exposed and protected, as though he'd already seen her without any of her clothes and wouldn't tell a soul about the flaws he'd found.

He had those nice, long fingers, too. She'd always been big on hands and his stroked her imagination in all kinds of pleasant, naughty ways. Buffy had been mesmerized since the first handshake and now she was going to find out if they would feel as good as she'd hoped.

Buffy tried to concentrate on the way his forearms looked when he’d roll up his dress shirt and the fluttery sensation she felt in her chest when their eyes met so that the rest of her life didn't have a chance to nudge its nose into her thoughts. She deserved this after everything she'd been through Buffy rationalized. It didn't have to mean that she loved Riley any less.

Oh God.
Riley.

The knock on the door shook her back to the moment.
Buffy answered it, careful not to open the door more than a crack. Mr. Pratt, Spike, was on the other side, smiling nervously at her. He angled his way in through the narrow space she held for him. She closed the door by leaning flat against it.

Spike had to catch his breath. Buffy was completely naked. Not a stitch on, not even wearing her gold necklace, just perfect skin, perfect everything. She had fine, blonde hair between her legs and a few stray wisps sparkling up to her belly button. He'd never been with a natural blonde, Spike thought, or any other kind of blonde. What a stupid thing to think when she was this naked and walking toward him.

Spike tugged his t-shirt off.

"It's alright, yeah?" he asked. Fucking stupid, stupid.

"Sure, I mean, it would make sex a little easier," she said with a laugh.

He undid his belt and then slid his pants down his legs, regretting instantly that he didn't think to untie his boots first. Spike hopped over to the bed and sat down on the navy spread. He peeled his jeans back and then unlaced the boots.

"You don't wear underwear?" she asked.

She Geisha-walked over to the bed and sat about two feet away from him.

"Only when I have a kilt on," he said.

"Was that a joke or do you really own a kilt, because that's kind of hot," she said.

Spike plucked his right boot from his foot, tugged his white sock off then set to work on the other leg.

"No, I do own a kilt, bought it for a friend's wedding. Haven't worn it since," he said.

Mercifully, the other boot came off.

"I thought you were English," Buffy said.

"I am, but I've Scottish friends," he said.

They sat awkwardly, naked on a papery coverlet that smelled of disinfectant. Buffy pressed the flat of her hands into the bed and clenched her knees together. Spike rested his elbows on his parted thighs and studied his empty hands. Not how he wanted this evening to begin. He wondered if she liked the way he looked or if she was disappointed. She was probably wondering the same thing. He sat up straight and faced her.

"You're gorgeous, love," he said, daring the initial touch. He grazed her cheek with his knuckles.

She smiled genuinely and Buffy inched closer.

"So are you," she said.

Spike moved toward her.

As first kisses went, it wasn't bad. They didn't knock noses or miss each others' lips, but Buffy's eyes did fly open and she started back when he slid his tongue in her mouth. It only lasted a second, though, before she relaxed and let him explore. He ran his hands lightly over her arms, as though he were trying to warm them, unfreeze them. His touch gave her goosebumps.

"Cold? We could get under the covers," he said.

"O.K."

Buffy scrambled underneath the covers. Spike joined her.
They resumed kissing and beneath the protection of the sheets she began to unfurl against him. Her legs fell open, and he pressed his body against hers. The flaxen curls between her legs were damp against his stomach. Despite her hesitation she did want this, he thought, and knowing that made him even more eager. He kissed from her mouth down her throat to her breasts.

After months of solitary speculation, he finally knew what her breasts looked like. The nipples were darker than in his imagination. He'd pictured a Maxfield Parrish nymph with rose petal tips. The reality was more the color of a coffee stain. It didn't matter, they were still unbearably sweet, and his ideal was amended.

She arched into him as he sucked on her nipples. Buffy hugged Spike's head and started to grind against his waist, making breathy sounds that she seemed intent on stifling. He moved up to kiss her lips again.

Buffy's hand stroked his chest. Then she broke their kiss and her mouth followed the path her hands had taken, she was lapping at his nipples and then licking up his sternum, biting into his neck. She touched his cock, encircling it with her fingers lightly as though she were trying to feel her way through the dark. It drove him crazy and he let out a growl. Buffy giggled.

"Do you, should we do it now?"

"Can I taste you first, love? Buffy?" Spike asked.

Confusion tightened her eyes.

"What?"

He put his hand between her legs.

"Can I taste you here?"

Understanding made her green eyes widen. She nodded yes.
Spike stole under the covers, leaving wet pecks across her tight, flat stomach. He buried his face between her legs, sucking her clit into his mouth. Buffy couldn't keep the soft "Oh" from escaping her lips. He slid a finger inside her rhythmically, making her buck against his hand.

Inexplicably at that moment he thought of Emily Dickinson--yes, he'd had one or two stress-induced sex dreams about Emily Dickinson, but that was in college when he was working on his thesis and it probably had nothing to do with anything. One of them followed a long night of imbibing absinthe, so it meant even less.

No, what he thought about was a theory that the repeated image of a crumb in her poetry was a reference to the clitoris.

He was feasting on the crumb, this was all he would ever have with Buffy. This perfect second was made of fragile stuff, it would shatter at the close of the hotel room door. It didn't matter, this was all he wanted, Spike told himself, to make her scream while he fucked her with his mouth and his fingers.

He found the spot inside her that short-circuited Buffy's brain. She was chanting his name along with other strings of intelligible vowel-like sounds. Buffy kicked off the blanket, her limbs jerking and then clutching him so tightly, the muscles inside her body clinging, wringing pleasure from him. Spike sucked her slowly, riding out the pulses that surged through her, savoring the taste. Then he withdrew, and prowled up her body to meet her face. Spike wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Did you cum, kitten?" he asked.

"You're like Jesus and ice-cream combining to make happiness," she said.

"So yeah?"

"Yeah."

He picked up the coverlet from the floor and cast it over them like a fishing net. He held her against him, craving her warmth.

"Don't you want to finish?" she asked.

"Yeah, but I'm giving you a minute, don't want to kill you," he said.

"Cocky."

"You've no idea. But you will," he said with a wicked grin.

"Would it be O.K. if I just tasted you, too, instead of the whole sex thing?" she asked.

"Did you just ask if it was alright to blow me?"

She laughed and wrinkled her nose.

"I guess so," she said.

"It's always alright, love," he said.

Buffy grinned at him and then dove under the blankets.
Her fingers breezed over his stomach and he tensed at her touch. Then she was kissing his hips and massaging his legs. She seemed to take special pleasure in the hard curve of his calves from the soft sounds she was making.
When she finally licked his cock, she did it guilessly, like she was having at a popsicle. He almost let out a chuckle, until she grabbed the base with a firm hand and took him inside her mouth. The way she was moving took his breath away, and he pulled the covers aside to watch her.
Buffy's hair was in a shiny tangle, it looked like it would crackle with static under his fingers. She was crouched between his thighs, her body bobbing up and down like a teeter totter. He smoothed the hair from her face to look at her wet, pink mouth engulfing him, her green eyes closed in concentration.

"I'm gonna...Oh my God," he whispered.

She started to moan like she was enjoying something delicious and he lost control. He finished in shimmery, white waves. He thought she'd leave to spit out his aftermath in peace, but she didn't. Buffy swallowed his cum.

She'd wanted him completely, he thought with awe as she snuggled against his chest, tucking the blanket around them.

"Was that good?" she asked.

"Perfect," he said.

He kissed her, relishing his taste in her mouth.

"I'm completely smitten with you, Buffy," Spike said, rubbing his nose against hers.

She suddenly stiffened and pulled away.

"You shouldn't," she said.

Buffy rolled out of his arms and went into the bathroom. Spike sighed and stood up, collecting his clothes. He heard the toilet flush and then heard the sink running. By the time she ducked out to grab her purse and her neatly folded clothes, Spike was fully dressed and lacing up his boots.

Their eyes met and she stilled.

"Please go before I come out. It'll be easier," she said.
He forced a smile.

"No problem, pet. It was fun," he said, his voice sounding a little higher than usual, as though it weren't really his.

"Fun?" she asked. The hurt look on her face calcified, becoming indignant. "Good, I'm glad. I had fun, too."

"Could do it again, once you recover," Spike said.

"Next week, same time?" Buffy said.

Spike nodded, a goofy smile spreading across his face as Buffy went back into the bathroom. He stood up and attempted to make his exit when she poked her head out of the door again.

"Spike, what's your middle name?"

"William. Why'd you want to know, love?"

"You were just getting frisky with my lady location. It seems like something I should know."

He smiled at her and then started to walk away, not wanting to make a big thing with goodbyes.

"Don't you want to know my middle name?" she asked. She was going for pouty, but instead sounded cautious and a little bit disappointed.

"Already do, it's Anne, like my mother. You always sign your full name when you write notes for Dawn," he said.
At the mention of Dawn's name, she ducked back into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Buffy walked up the incline to her front door, grateful to be the first one home. Every time she entered the house she reminded herself to bake a pie for the guys at the V.F.W. for putting in the ramp for Riley and widening the entrance so his wheelchair would fit. Her conscience reminded her that if she hadn't been fornicating with her daughter's English teacher, she'd have had the time to bake many pies.

Buffy closed the door and took off her heels before stepping onto the hardwood floor. She noticed that Dawn had tidied up before she and Riley had gone off to visit his mother. Since her stepfather had come home, Dawn had become much more helpful around the house. Her daughter still complained about doing her chores incessantly, but not around Riley. Dawn saved all the angst for dear old mom.

Buffy walked silently to the bedroom in bare feet, shedding her clothes as she moved. She hung her skirt up in the closet, folded her top and placed it neatly inside a drawer before allowing herself to collapse into bed.
She had a midnight shift at the hospital and wanted to catnap before it was time to don her scrubs, but Buffy's mind wouldn't let her rest.

In the bar she'd felt like a fraud, and had almost walked out when the bartender glanced at her, convinced he'd known her sinister purpose. That changed though. Once she'd been in bed with Spike, she hadn't thought about Riley, hadn't imagined it was his hand touching her as she thought she would. It was almost like she'd been moving in the charmed enclosure of a dream, a sleepy space free of self-recrimination.

Now that she was back home, Buffy felt the weight of what she'd done, the guilt, but also a curiosity about her new friend. She wondered if Spike had gone home to his wife and kissed her the way he'd been kissing Buffy. Did the poor woman know, and just put up with his infidelity? He might have kids, how ickey was that? Could he and his mysterious, beloved wife be in an open marriage? People still did that, right? It wasn't just a myth perpetrated by that sex columnist in the free paper, was it?

Buffy wondered if she was one in a string of mothers he'd seduced. He'd been so calm when he asked her out for that drink, and then he'd gotten all commanding in the bar. Plus Spike seemed to know stuff about her body, stuff that he could have figured out by doing lots of field research. And that thing about tasting her was so goofy, who even says that, and why was it so hot?

Why was she acting like a jealous girlfriend and getting angry at him? She was just as bad, probably worse. Boat. Same. Kettle. Black. House? Definitely glass.

Riley was going through a period of adjustment, pain and loss. Riley had told her he couldn't make love to her "in the foreseeable future," it just reminded him of what he'd never have again. After he'd come back from the V.A. Hospital, they'd given them an instructional video on how to have sex after a spinal cord injury. Riley had shut it off halfway through and asked her to leave the room. She heard him crying through the door.

Before he'd left for Afghanistan, Riley would've let her see his tears, but not now. Not yet.
Buffy held out hope things were going to get better, they were already closer than when he first got back.
But then she went ahead and let Spike put his hands...and then his sharp, sharp tongue.

She'd never thought of herself as a sexual person, that seemed like an irrelevant distinction. Everyone was sexual, that's just a normal human thing...well, except Morrissey. Buffy had gone through dry stretches, after Dawn was born and when Riley was away fighting. She didn't have one night stands with guys who’d offered, she’d held out for a relationship. When Riley was gone, she hadn’t strayed, hadn’t even considered cheating. Her abstinence had an expiration date, so she just waited.

When suddenly faced with the possibility that she wouldn't have sex for years, though, if ever, the whole landscape changed. It was melodramatic, like something Dawn would scribble in the margins of her notebook, but she'd actually felt like part of her was dying. She had her husband back but only partially and he was telling her he might never be with her fully again.

Spike had been so solicitous with her and so good to Dawn. Plus Buffy could see him get flustered every time she'd lean forward or brush his arm. It was nice feeling him want her. Knowing that someone like him wanted her had been enough at first. Someone like him, what did that even mean, she wondered. Somebody attractive, somebody clever, somebody who made her laugh? Those things were true, but that wasn't what made his attention so flattering.

No, it was the way he looked at her, that's what made Buffy want him. Spike looked at her like she was an alabaster-skinned saint frozen beatific on a pastel prayer card; reverent, holy but at the same time his eyes told her he wanted to make her step down from the firmament so he could lift up her voluminous gown and bend her over the altar.

God, that Catholic girls' school really messed her up.

So at first she’d only flirted, just to watch his pupils dilate and to see that sweat pop up on his brow. Then she let their relationship change. She was the one who’d taken it off the safe path and plunged them both headlong into the wilderness.

Buffy covered her head with the quilt Riley's mom had made them for a wedding present to try and block out the noise. Of course it didn't work. All the static was coming from the inside.

Spike thought the second time had gone smoother than the first; no awkward pauses, no discussion of kilts. Buffy hadn't let him inside, but he'd made her scream and she'd made him moan. Afterward she'd asked Spike another question, his birthday.

The third time things had gotten a little sticky again, but for different reasons. Instead of acting too much like strangers, they’d started acting too much like friends.
They’d brought each other off in the usual way and Spike hadn't wanted to seem ungrateful for her, but he was aching to fuck her. He didn’t say that to her, not wanting to jinx the tenuous spell that had brought Buffy into his orbit. Instead, he tried to work subtly with massage oil. Spike was rubbing her back in hopes that she'd relax enough to let him go further. She had, but not in the direction he'd been wanting.

"How old were you when you lost your virginity?" Buffy asked, her cheek pillowed on the crook of her arm.
Spike knelt with her beneath him, trying not to poke her with his erection. He rolled his thumbs on her slick shoulders.
"You sure you want to know, pet?" he asked
"Definitely," she muttered.
"I was fifteen. What about you?"
"Seventeen, on my birthday, actually," Buffy said.
"What did you think of your present?" Spike asked with a smirk.
"The sex was kinda o.k., and then nine months later I had Dawn, so it was like Clinique bonus time, except instead of a free lipstick I got to go into labor on the night of my senior prom," Buffy said.
He fanned his hands out over the globes of her ass, following the curve to the scoop of her waist. Buffy sighed.
“Were you at the prom?”
“God no,” she said with a laugh. “ I wasn’t one of those in-denial girls. By that time I’d already gotten my G.E.D. and I had in all my applications to nursing school. My mom and I came up with a plan when I decided to keep the baby. It’s weird thinking about it now, knowing her, that there was ever a moment where I thought about not having Dawn, but I was young,” she said. She sounded embarrassed, like he’d think she was somehow a bad mother.
“Naturally, love. So what happened to the bloke?” Spike asked, pressing his fingertips into a stubborn knot in her shoulder.
“He left me when I found out I was pregnant, tried to say it couldn’t possibly be his because he couldn’t have children. He made me get a paternity test. Then he went to college, got a football scholarship at Penn State where he tore out his knee freshman year. He owns a used car lot in Philadelphia, sends me a check every month. Once in awhile he makes a big noise about being a part of Dawn’s life, but it never goes beyond noise,” Buffy said
The knot tightened under his fingers, and Spike realized he was only going to hurt her if he kept pushing on it.
“Onto your back, love,” he said.
She looked across her shoulder at him, sloe-eyed.
“What no more massage-y?”
“I was just going to do the front,” Spike said, smiling sweetly at her.
“Do I look like I’m carrying a lot of tension in my boobs or something?”
“Trust me, you’ll love it,” he said. She gave him a half smile and turned over, her way of showing she did trust him. He suddenly felt guilty about his transparent seduction plot. He coasted his fingers along the flare of her rib cage, applying just enough pressure so it wouldn't feel ticklish. She inhaled deeply, making her breasts bounce in a lovely way. Buffy stared up at him until he looked away from her body and met her eyes.
"What about you? Your first?" she asked.
He put his palms on her hips, running his thumbs along the bones jutting out on either side. He pressed into the small of her back, tipping her pelvis forward. Spike could hear her back crack and she let out an “oh.”
“Stop distracting me with your magic fingers routine,” she said.
He let go of Buffy and lied down beside her.
"She was older, maybe thirty-five. Her name was Cecily. It's weird, I work with children who are the age I was then, they look like pink little infants to me, but she saw something else, I 'spose," he said, wishing that expression of concern hadn't washed over Buffy's face.
"So she took advantage of you?"
Buffy looked like an angry parent, which meant she was seeing him as a confused, 15-year-old boy. It galled him.
"Maybe, but it didn't feel like it at the time. The thing about me and Cecily, I was sort of an odd kid growing up and I was glad for her. My mother was a punk, and we were always living in a squat, getting kicked out of places. I didn’t hang out with people my own age. She’d let me stay at her flat. The whole of it was wrong, Cecily was wrong to do it, but I still care for her. She was a friend when I needed it, and I wanted her, wanted to do everything she showed me," Spike said.
Buffy touched his cheek.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said.
“I’m not, and I’m not sorry that wanker was too much of coward to take care of you and Dawn. I’m too selfish to be sorry for anything that brought you to me,” he said.
Buffy pressed her mouth to his, then she was on top of him, her tongue suddenly fierce and probing. She was straddling him and her breath was coming far too fast. Spike was gasping and desperate to be inside of her. He gripped her hips and tried to lead her, but she pulled away and fell onto the floor, tangling the sheets around her legs.
Spike looked over the edge of the bed.
“You alright, love?” he asked. She was sprawled on the carpet, the white sheets covering nothing but her knees. Spike smiled at her and extended his hand. Buffy ignored both his expression and his proffered help.
“Don’t be here when I come out of the bathroom,” she said, looking at the fabric suspended between her legs.
“What and make all this a little too real for you? Never dream of it,” he said.
He’d stood up and gathered his clothes quickly without casting another glance toward her as she untangled herself from the bedding. He didn’t even turn to her when he heard the bathroom door slam.
That had been a week ago. Now he was sitting in the hotel bar, having nursed his whiskey for a good half hour. She probably wasn’t coming, he’s scared her away, he thought. God, he wished he had a cigarette. Spike was about to leave when he saw Buffy standing by the front desk in a pair of stretchy, black pants, trainers and a blue, zip-up hoodie. He bolted toward her, then realizing what he was doing, slowed his pace. He kept himself from shouting her name.
She turned and smiled when she saw him, one of those blinding smiles that made his palms tingle. Spike caught Buffy's elbow.
"I already got a room," he said into her ear.
"I can't stay long, they think I'm at the gym Pilating," she said, shame dampening that sunny grin.
"We'll have to start in the lift," he said.
Buffy giggled until the doors slid shut and then Spike picked her up, leaning her against the wall of the elevator. Buffy was kissing him and tearing at his shirt. Unfortunately, the room was only on the second floor.
When the doors parted, a middle-aged man in a neat suit jacket was chatting into a cell phone. They calmly disentangled, both panting wildly. The business traveler raised a single eyebrow, but otherwise continued with his conversation unchecked, stepping in as they walked out.
They found the room and resumed kissing, shedding clothes with impatient fingers. She'd managed to get his shirt off and had his pants down. After that first time, he'd worn shoes he could slip out of easily. Her sneakers, jacket and top were history.
She pulled away to tug off her pants, when he noticed the lacy bra she was wearing. It was white with a fragile scallop of baby blue on the edge. Instead of making the facade complete by strapping on a sports bra, Buffy had worn fancy lingerie for him. It even matched her pretty, little knickers.
The sight of her carefully chosen underwear slowed everything down. When she returned for more kisses, they'd become unhurried and tender. Buffy twisted her arm around to unhook the bra, but he stayed her hand.
"Leave it," he said.
She cocked her head and smiled.
"I was thinking of you when I bought it," she said, the confession causing her color to rise.
Spike picked her up and set her on the bed. He knelt in front of Buffy between her dangling legs. He rasped his tongue over her nipples through the bumpy fabric of the bra. He licked the top of her breasts plumped up by the underwire, while his hands teased the edge of her panties. Spike slipped two fingers inside her and watched the pleasure expand on her face. He pumped in and out, just gazing at her.
"Can I have your mouth, too?" she asked.
He kissed her lips and then dipped down, nestling against her cunt, freeing her with his mouth and his fingers until Buffy was a quaking puddle.
Spike waited until her body stopped pulsing and then joined her on the bed. She curled up in his lap like a contented cat and then wrapped one, small hand around his cock. She gave the smooth head a gentle lick.
“You know, I think about exactly this all day long,” she said.
“Exactly what?”
“This,” she said, and then took the length of him into her mouth, until her lips touched her balled fist.
“You are a naughty girl,” he sighed.
She moved up and down, her tongue doing secret, perfect things along his shaft, before she stopped.
“I think since I’m so naughty, I deserve a spanking,” she said, shyly.
A grin broke out on Spike’s face.
“Really?”
She nodded, as though too embarrassed to ask twice. Buffy arched her back, tilting her ass in the air as invitation. Spike gave her a tentative slap, and she moaned. She swooped down on his cock and he landed sharp stings on her bottom. After awhile, her skin bore his handprints, but she didn’t tell him to stop. He spilled into her mouth and she drank him again. While the aftershocks were bouncing through his body, he looked down at her huddled in his lap. He stroked her flossy hair.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
“No more than I wanted,” she said.
She retreated from him and got up. Instead of going straight to the bathroom to get dressed, she picked up his jeans, took his cell phone out of his pocket and started playing with the buttons. Then she lobbed it on the bed.
"My number is in your phone now under B. Now if I'm late or something, you can reach me," she said.
"What about you, love, you want my number?"
"I'll have it when you call me," she said.
Spike wondered if she was putting him up to a test and if he'd pass. Buffy snatched her scattered clothes and stole into the bathroom. Spike dressed leisurely. As he turned the handle of the hotel room door, she stuck her head out of the bathroom.
"Spike, how many women have you been with?" she asked. Her hair was already up in a ponytail.
"Three."
"Who was the third one?" she asked.
"You."
"Do you really think it counts, I mean we haven't done the rest," she asked.
"It counts to me," he said, then pushed the door open.
"Spike."
He halted, half in, half out.
"Three, including you," Buffy said, then withdrew to finish composing herself.

Buffy couldn't stop thinking about Spike as she drove home, his hands, his lips, his long legs. She felt like a teenager with a crush. The closer she got to the house, the tighter the guilt clutching her stomach became and she forced herself to stop flipping through the Tiger Beat in her brain.
Dawn was setting the dining room table when Buffy walked in; the house was redolent with the rich scent of spaghetti sauce.
Riley and Buffy had inherited their home from her mother, Joyce, after Joyce's death five years before. The house had two stories, so after Riley's injuries they’d had to put in a chair lift allowing him access to the master bedroom and bath. Riley’s best friend Xander was a carpenter who’d done the work for free. The lift represented another thank-you pie Buffy had yet to bake.
Joyce had populated the house with arts and crafts style furniture, Navaho rugs and stained glass. The walls were a neutral shade of beige, except in the dining room which was decorated with brown, leaf-patterned wallpaper. Buffy had hated the paper when her mother was alive, but after her death it became so intimately connected to her memories of Joyce that she couldn't take it down.
"Hey everybody," Buffy said.
Buffy walked through the living room to her daughter and gave Dawn a hug.
"Ick, you're sweaty," Dawn said, shrugging away from her mother’s embrace. Buffy had given herself a sponge bath in the sink, but she wondered if she smelled like Spike.
"I can shower," she said, defensively
Riley called from the kitchen.
"Can it wait, I just drained the pasta," Riley said.
"Sure. Is there anything you guys need me to do?" Buffy asked.
"Nope, just sit down," Dawn said.
Buffy took a seat and Riley glided into the room with a mound of long noodles in a bright, blue serving dish. Buffy recognized it as one her mom had made during her pottery phase. Dawn jockeyed past him into the kitchen. Riley placed the dish on the table and started doling out its contents onto their plates.
"How was Pilates?" he asked.
"Intense," she said with a smile. I am enormous, fucking whore, she thought.
Riley smiled at her and she felt her heart twist. Dawn walked in with her hands full.
"Look, I repurposed the gravy boat, pretty clever, huh?" Dawn asked as she set a gravy boat full of sauce on the table.
"You're like the MacGuyver of dinner," Riley said.
"Who's that?" Dawn asked.
"Old person reference," Riley said.
Dawn nearly sat down, then bounced back up onto her feet.
"Oooh, I forgot, Daddy made bread when we were at Gram's house," Dawn said. She skittered into the kitchen and came back with a basket piled high with sliced, homemade bread.
"I'm sorry I missed it, you know how I love to watch that sweet Finn forearm action," Buffy said, seductively. It was true, too, her husband had some delectable arms.
"At least some parts still do work," Riley said with a forced smile.
"Like your mouth," Buffy said, thinking of what Spike’s wonderful tongue had done to her; knowing what Riley could do if he'd only want to again.
Riley caught her meaning and blushed. Buffy couldn't believe she'd said that in front of Dawn. Luckily, the comment went over Dawn's head. Unfortunately, when things went over Dawn's head she often went to her default mode of self-righteous anger.
"You're so mean, dad doesn't talk too much, if anything you're the one who never stops talking," Dawn said.
"She's just teasing, Dawnie, give your mom a break," Riley said, unable to meet his wife's eyes. Riley shook out the fern-colored napkin Dawn had placed under his silverware and set it on his lap.
Buffy covered his hand with hers.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," she said.
She hadn't meant to let any of it happen, but it had, it was, and she didn't know if she could stop.
“Wow, I got mom to apologize. Mark your calendars folks!” Dawn said, triumphantly.
***
Spike unlocked the door to his bungalow and Sunshine jumped up on him as he walked through. He scratched the dog's head affectionately.
"Hey Sunshine, down you bloody poofter," he said.
He went into his brown and cream tiled kitchen, put the kettle on for tea. He took out a tin of dog food for Sunshine and a tin of soup for himself.
"The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights her stove, and lays out food in tins."
First Emily Dickinson and now T. S. Eliot. Buffy was calling to mind all the poetry sixteen years of teaching had made him forget. Spike knew what that meant, he'd done the same thing with Dru when they first met.
"When lovely woman stoops to folly and paces about her room again, alone, she smoothes her hair with automatic hand and puts a record on the gramophone."
He peeled the lid off Sunshine's dinner and pulled it out of the container with a fork, the food making a suctioning noise as he dished out the brown lumps. Spike placed Sunshine's rubber-bottomed green bowl on the ground and watched the hungry dog snuffle up his food.
He wasn't the young man carbuncular, was he? She'd enjoyed it, Spike knew it, he'd felt it. He hoped she didn't feel the way he did now, like an empty dog food can.
He put the soup back and rubbed his face with his hands, hands that still smelled of her.
Spike was angry at himself for wondering how she was feeling, how she was coping, what she would say to her enormous, war hero husband when she got home.
He'd learned that tidbit about G.I. Joe from one of Dawn's essays. It made him sick to remember how giddy he'd felt after reading the girl's simple, painful story. That's when he'd seen a glimmer of hope, a slim shot at Buffy to exploit and he'd monstrously, relentlessly pursued it, never believing he'd have her.
Spike had once fancied himself a novelist, but everything he'd written was shite, all the prose purple, all the main characters perfected versions of himself. Dawn was a more moving writer, and she was fourteen. If Dawn were writing this story, hell if he were writing this story, Spike knew he wouldn't be the hero. The hero was clear and Spike was in fact the villain of the piece.

Ah, but fuck all.

It was time to admit he was in love with Mrs. Buffy Anne Finn, irrevocably, unfortunately in love with her. He couldn't stop, moreover, he didn't want to stop.
There was no way this could end well, he thought.

Spike caught Dawn's eye just as the bell rang and the other students began packing up their bags to move onto the next class.
"Can I see you for a moment, Dawn?" he asked.
She smiled and slung her backpack over one shoulder before she approached his desk. He couldn't help feeling strange around the girl now, especially the way her mannerisms echoed her mother's. He felt overwhelming affection and equally intense guilt. Spike smiled at her and tried not to think of how he might be screwing up her childhood because he couldn't keep it in his pants around Buffy.
"I showed your last essay to Ms. Rosenberg. She agreed with me that it was stellar work. We'd like to enter it into competition, but the rub is that you'd be the youngest student from this school, and if you won you'd be traveling with twelfth graders to Washington D.C.," Spike said.
Dawn's large blue eyes were shining. She hitched her hip to one side and smoothed her hair behind her ear, a move that one of his students hadn't pulled on him since he'd hit thirty.
"You really think I'm that good?" she asked, blushing in exactly the same way her mother had right before he'd...right. This was very, very bad. She obviously had a crush on him; another layer to this cake of human misery, bloody lovely.
"Ms. Rosenberg does as well," he said, giving her a sad half-smile.
"That's so, so amazing!" she said.
There was an unbridled quality about her grin, displaying a type of happiness he was pretty sure only kids could still feel. Dawn had a sense of certainty about a moment like this, a sense that it was all building toward the future she'd imagined for herself.
For kids all hash marks on the wall go up; they get taller, bigger, more adept. Dawn's foot had yet to slip, the first trip-ups of adulthood hadn't knocked her on her ass and made her wonder which direction was forward, which was back.
She was probably going to write about this in her diary, Spike thought, coloring it in golden words, describe the way the deepening afternoon light cast an effulgence about the room. Spike wanted to protect her from that first big disappointment, the first huge course correction, but to do that would be to stunt her growth. Still, looking at Dawn he felt almost like a parent.
Holy hell.
"You need your mother's permission before we go on with it, yeah?"
"Would you be going on the trip with us, Mr. Pratt?" Dawn asked, cautiously as she fidgeted with a strand of brown hair.
"No, but maybe your mother or your step-father would. Have your mum come see me," he said.
"O.K., she's picking me up tonight, I'll tell her," Dawn said.
Spike already knew that Buffy would be there to pick up Dawn at 3:15 in that gray four-door Ford with the burnt-out, right, break light. He'd wait by the window and watch them drive away every day. Each time he saw the car he would feel a sensation like cold, sick fingers stroking his spine then cupping his stomach.
"When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, then how should I begin?"
Dawn beamed at him and turned, her satchel swinging merrily. Spike watched her go and then sat at his desk, looking past the papers he was grading toward the time when he would see Buffy again.
**
She was wearing a pair of shapeless, pink scrubs with a teddy bear pattern lolling across it, her blonde hair tied up in an efficient braid. Spike wanted to take the clothes off of her, shake out her hair and straddle her on top of his desk, but Dawn was fluttering around outside the closed classroom door, waiting for them to finish discussing her trip.
Spike leaned against his desk. Buffy stood a few feet from him, close enough for him to touch but far enough to discourage the notion.
"So, what do you think?" he asked.
Buffy crossed her arms over her chest.
"This isn't because of you and me, is it?"
"I wouldn't set her up to fail. I think she has a real chance. It would be a good opportunity, and you could go with her, cramp her style a bit," Spike said with a smile.
"All right," she said with a sigh. She looked so tired, Spike wanted to hold her, ease some of the tension from her thin shoulders.
"You look tired," she said. Buffy took a step closer; he could smell her shampoo and the light citrus scent she always wore.
"I'm nocturnal, never got used to the day shift, so I'm up at all hours," he said.
"Doesn't it bother your wife?"
"Do you really want to talk about Dru?" he asked.
Buffy looked at her plastic shoes.
"Do you have any children, Spike?" Buffy asked.
"No. What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I'm interested in your life, that's normal, right? I'm not sure about the proper adultery etiquette, I've never done it before," she said.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"High and mighty today, pet? Don't recall those scruples when I had my head cradled between your thighs," he said.
Her green eyes became vivid with anger.
"I don't want to do this anymore," Buffy said.
Spike felt like he was standing on a ledge, the breeze teasing his fingertips, his bare toes curling over the edge.
"Right then. Before you go, I got you something," Spike said.
"I can't accept a present," Buffy said, shaking her head.
Spike walked around his desk and opened the bottom drawer. He took out two small boxes about the size of each of his hands.
"I've got no use for them, besides they're nothing," he said as he came back to her.
Spike held up his gift, two light bulbs.
"Didn't know if you'd noticed, your break light's out," he said.
"I did, I just keep forgetting to take it in," Buffy said. The hard look on her face softened.
"Well, you're the capable sort, you can change it yourself, just pop the casing off. You might as well do the other one, too, they normally go one after the other," Spike said. Buffy took the bulbs. She stared at them a moment before she raised her eyes to look at him again.
"I finish my shift at two. If you're still having trouble sleeping, maybe you could meet me for coffee. Decaf coffee," she said.
"Of course," he said.

They met in the parking lot of the McDonald's across the street from the Children's Hospital where Buffy worked. She didn't want to venture inside the restaurant, in case any of her co-workers had a late night yen for chicken nuggets, so she went to his car.

Buffy crouched in front of the driver's side window and saw him dozing against the steering wheel. She knocked on the glass, jerking him awake. Spike smiled at her before he reached across the passenger seat and unlocked her door. It was worth the humiliation of this whole situation for that smile, Buffy thought.

She walked around the car, a dilapidated black Bonneville that was five years older than Dawn. The bumper seemed to be held on with stickers for some bands she recognized and some she didn’t. She opened the door, plopped into the plush seat and slammed the door shut.

"Fancy. Did you car-jack a scrap dealer?"

"This is the type of luxury transport a man who pulls down teaching money can buy, pet," he said, moving his hands across the dash to elucidate its finer qualities like a spokes model on the Price is Right.

"I was expecting something little, red and penis-shaped. Figured it would go along with the whole mid-life crises vibe you're putting out," she said.

"Do you think that's what you are, my bit of stuff to make me feel young?" he asked through the smile that hadn’t left his lips since the first moment he saw her.

"Bit of what?"

"Stuff," he said, brushing a stray tendril of blonde hair away from her eye. They sat in silence for a tic before Spike leaned over the center console and kissed her.
The night air was cold, but his mouth felt so warm. She let her tongue answer his; she let herself enjoy his warmth.

The seat carried the scent of his hair where he'd pressed up against it a thousand times and the smell of long crushed out cigarettes. When their lips finally separated it sounded like water pooling after a rainstorm. She was so tired. She wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in Spike's arms. God help her, she did not want Riley, did not want to be understanding or accepting or patient anymore. Buffy wanted a secret place to hide that was hers alone, even if it was wrong.

Spike was looking at her through the dark tangle of his eyelashes, the low light from the neon restaurant sign tracing his severe cheekbones and the sharp line of his jaw.

"Come home with me, I want you in my bed tonight," he said.

Spike thought she would ask about Dru again and he was ready to tell her everything, but she didn't. Instead Buffy just leaned toward him and kissed her assent.

"I'll follow you," she said, and got out of his car.

**

Spike’s house was only a few miles away and given that the streets were empty at that time of night, they arrived in less than ten minutes. During the drive she could see his dark profile. His shadow self was putting something in his mouth, then the flare of a lighter and the red cherry of his cigarette burning.

When she met him at the door he was chewing on a peppermint Altoid. It made Buffy smile to think he didn't want her to know he smoked. They went inside and were greeted by a fluffy, white dog.

“Down, Sunshine,” Spike said.

Buffy knelt and gave Sunshine love and pets while Spike turned on the floor lamp by the door. It had a dragonfly Tiffany-style shade made up of jewel-like glass. Buffy wondered if it was real. The room smelled of the books and polished wood. It was painted yellow with black drapes that had a slight sheen and filled with an overstuffed sepia-colored sofa upholstered with a tapestry print.
There were multi-colored oriental rugs on the hardwood floors and wooden bookshelves flanking an ancient television set.

Over the T.V. hung a poster for a band she didn’t know that had played at a venue called The Bronze. The poster showed an image of a naked, dark-haired woman draped over a white tombstone, her throat pierced by two round holes oozing with red blood. The band’s name, Slow Bleed, was printed in jagged red letters at the top.
Spike noticed she was staring.

“You like that?” he asked.

“It doesn’t really fit,” Buffy said.

“’Spose not. That’s Dru, she was singing with them when we met,” he said pointing to the girl on the poster.

“She’s pretty,” Buffy said.

“Yeah, well I glossed over a few things when I drew it,” he said with a wicked grin.

Buffy unbuttoned her baby blue coat and slid it from her shoulders. It was strange finally knowing what Spike's wife looked like, to be standing in her home. Buffy wanted to ask where Dru was, but at the same time didn't want to know. This was stolen time with a borrowed lover and it was rapidly going away.

Spike was easing out of his boots. When he stood up, Buffy grabbed the halves of his leather coat and pulled him into a kiss. She took his jacket off and it hit the ground with a heavy plop, like an overripe piece of fruit.
Spike stopped her when she was about to kick off her bright, pink clogs.

“Wait, baby, leave the Crocs on,” he said, his voice a low rumble.

She laughed.

“You are kidding, right, you don’t have a nurse thing, do you?”

“Course I'm kidding, not really turned on by needles or catheters, more into naughty librarians,” he said, as he gently tugged off the elastic holding her braid in place. Spike unwove her hair with cautious fingers, releasing a tension Buffy didn’t even notice had been there. When he finished, her blonde hair hung in soft, shiny waves. As he gazed at her, his narrow, blue eyes took on a soft, round aspect and his lips parted.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said.

They shed the rest of their clothes until they were as bare as winter trees. Sunshine was still pestering them for attention, so Spike grabbed the dog by his black collar to lock him up in a cage that was tucked away in a corner of the dining room. Buffy followed, because seeing him wrangle that dog completely nude was sort of hilarious.

Sunshine was yipping and Spike was trying to quiet him and all the while Buffy couldn't stop giggling. The dining room was the same color as the living room, the formal table covered in a white cloth with an empty, tulip-shaped vase positioned in the middle.

Her eyes traveled from Spike to the wall, alighting on a wedding photo. In the picture Spike was grinning in his black tuxedo, his brown hair was slicked back and he had a pair of wire rim glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose. There was a black smear across the head of the woman at his side, as though someone had stubbed out his cigarette over her face.

Buffy’s laughter stopped and Spike glanced at her as he locked the dog's cage. His eyes followed hers. Spike wasn’t sure what to say, he hadn’t wanted Buffy to see that piece of ugliness.

The day before Dru had sent him a postcard from San Paulo. On one side was a russet-colored moon hanging over a black, sparkling ocean. On the other side was her manic scrawl asking for a divorce. She’d sent him a bloody postcard. That was very much Dru’s style as of late; insanely fucking evil.

So he’d started smoking again, and in a drunken snit blotted out Dru’s candy apple-colored smile. Even as Spike had done it he’d known full well it would only warp the glass but the picture underneath would remain the same.

Stupid.

In his haste to tidy up the rest of the house, he'd forgotten to clean off the picture and now Buffy was looking at him with so much sadness.
Buffy reached for him, held him close. They had maybe an hour, just an hour before she would be missed, needed and gone. He wrapped his hands around her waist and led her to his bedroom. He’d put the dirty clothes in the beige, wicker hamper, swept up the tumbleweeds of fluffy, white dog hair and put clean, red sheets on the bed to match the red comforter.

Buffy liked the room with its honey-colored, wooden furniture, the cream walls and the dark, red curtains. It smelled like him, it felt like him. She wished she could spend the whole night; she wished she didn’t want to stay. Buffy turned down the covers and got into bed.

Spike went to turn off the light switch on the wall.

“Leave it, please. I want to look at you,” she said.

Spike looked like she’d just offered to give him one of her kidneys. His eyes were glistening in a way that promised tears.

“Your abs are six flavors of yummy,” she said. It sounded kind of idiotic, but she had to say something to keep the moment from getting even more intense. He smirked at her, the mask back.

“Then have a taste,” he said silkily, and got into bed with her.

They kissed, she drank in his breath as he exhaled while her hands ran all over him with the abandon of water. She bit his lower lip, kissed his jaw. He kissed her shoulders until she crawled down his body, bathing his stomach with her tongue.

It must have tickled because he laughed, really laughed and his torso jumped under her. She loved the way his muscles rolled smoothly under his skin, she could just watch him move, watch him laugh. She wanted to remember what he looked like; she wanted to keep it for moments when she felt cold.

"Come up here, you silly girl," he said, dragging her along him until they were face to face.

"Can I have you inside me?" she asked.

Spike leaned over and opened the drawer of the bedside table, producing a condom. She took the package out of his hand.

"Let me do it," she said.

Buffy tore the wrapper with her teeth, pressed the sheath against his cock and unrolled it. He licked her neck, sending a shiver through her body. As she lowered herself onto him, his eyelids sank and he gasped. Seeing his face and feeling him inside was almost too much. Buffy couldn't move. Spike opened his eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She was in love with him.

Oh no, God no.

Buffy kissed him, sweeping her tongue against his and pulling him on top of her.

“Nothing, just fuck me,” she said.

He grunted and flipped them over, so he could be on top. Spike started pounding into her. She held onto his ass, guiding him, feeling the muscle tense against her hand.

Of course she had fallen in love with him. Bad childhood, thoughtful gesture, great sex, beautiful eyes. She was so easy, Buffy thought.

She wanted to see what he looked like from overhead and for a second she wished there was a mirror on the ceiling. Buffy could imagine all the coils of his back moving in concert, straining to a single point, to her.

Spike was touching her face and staring into her eyes with such affection.
I don't deserve this, Buffy thought.

She felt her orgasm building, then it was shooting through her. He could feel her tightening inside.

"Cum now," she said, so he did, letting out a buttery moan.

He collapsed on her and then slid out, mindful of the condom. Spike pitched the spent profilactic in the trash by his bed and then resumed his place on top of her, resting his head on her chest.

I love you, we should never see each other again, she thought.

"I need to go," Buffy said.

"Five more minutes," he said.

"I'll fall asleep," she said.

She felt him tense, then he turned onto his back, setting her free.

"Spike, I can't meet you Sunday," Buffy said as she stood up, the sheet trailing behind her.

"Thought not," he said, draping his arm over his eyes.

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing, love. I'll see you out," he said.

"Don't," she said.

He didn't move. She could hear him swallow hard, see his Adam's apple bob, but he didn't speak. Buffy walked out of the room, gathered up her clothes and left, praying Riley would be asleep when she got home.

Instead of going to his mother's house on Sunday, Riley had a date to go to the shooting range with Xander and his friend, Sam. Sam, short for Samantha, used to make Buffy feel uncomfortable, mainly because she looked at Buffy's husband like he was her knight in shining armor. That was natural, because he was.

The improvised explosive that took away the use of Riley's legs had also stolen Sam's left hand. Riley had used his body to shield Sam; if he hadn't, she would have died and he would've been able to walk. The two shared something unbearably intimate and when he'd first come home, Riley would spend hours on the phone with Sam. They still saw each other every day.

Buffy didn't want to deny him the companionship, but it had caused a few fights. Lately, though, she was grateful to Sam; her presence lessened Buffy's guilt.

Dawn had wanted to go with her step-dad, which led to an argument. They'd been sitting in the kitchen, finishing up breakfast.

"Guns are bad, honey," Buffy had said.

"What if I want to join the military? I'll need to learn how to shoot a gun then," Dawn said.

"You're not joining the military, you're going to grow up to be a writer and give that Harry Potter lady a run for her money," Buffy said.

"What's wrong with a career in the military?" Riley asked.

"I could write for 'Stars and Stripes,'" Dawn said.

"No and no. Just no, we're not having this discussion," Buffy said.

"Why not? She could pay for college," Riley said, his eyes intent on his wife's.

"She could also die," Buffy said.

"Or worse, right?" Riley said.

"Do you really think that, really?" Buffy asked, standing up and getting close to Riley's face. Dawn looked confused, her eyes traveling from one parent to the other.

"Mr. Pratt said a career in writing is rife with poverty and rejection," Dawn said.

At the mention of Spike's name, Buffy felt a stab in her chest. She had to catch her breath, and couldn't look at her husband as she straightened up.

"He said that to you?" Buffy asked, covering her feelings with a thick layer of anger.

"Well, yeah. He told me I'll probably have to prepare myself for another field and then just do the writing thing on the side," Dawn said.

Riley wheeled his chair out of the room.

"I have to get ready to go, maybe next time you can come
along, Dawnie," Riley said.

"Riley!" Buffy said as she followed him."We're not done here," Buffy said.

"Yeah, we kind of are, Buffy. I'll see you tonight," he said as he rolled into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him.

Buffy went back into the kitchen.

"Why did you say that to him? You know how much being a soldier means to him," Dawn said.

Dawn had already filled one side of the sink with bubbles and was washing their breakfast dishes.

"Because I don't want to lose you. Ask your Gram how hard she cried when Riley told her he was joining the Marines," Buffy said.

Buffy grabbed a towel that was hanging over the stove handle and began drying the plates Dawn had set in the drain board.

"You're not going to be able to stop me," Dawn said.

Buffy sighed. She could kill Dawn; that would keep someone else from hurting her. But instead, Buffy decided to try her hand at being thankful.

"Do you want to help me bake some pies?" Buffy asked.

***

Spike couldn't be there any more, his nervous energy kept him pacing about the house. He wondered if Buffy would ever call him again, then remembered she didn't have his number. Bugger that, he wasn't going to be the one to crawl back, not after the way she'd left him a few nights ago just when he'd opened up to her.

Instead of calling her or getting a solitary drink at the hotel bar in hopes she'd had a change of heart, Spike took Sunshine for a walk. They went through the park and played fetch until the little puff ball collapsed on the grass, tongue agog. He'd had to carry the great poof home and by then it was dark.

When he stepped inside the house he smelled her clove cigarette and heard the song, the one that had been playing in the bar the first time he'd laid eyes on Drusilla. Dru had been dancing alone and he'd scooted up to her. Without saying a word she'd kissed him, then they'd staggered off to the loo for a shag and he hadn't been able to shake her since. He did like it sordid, Spike thought.

"Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, the lady of situations."

She must have let the needle drop on the record the moment she heard the door, there was no such thing as a happy accident when it came to Drusilla.

She was walking toward him through a cloud of scented smoke, wearing nothing but his black, buttoned-down shirt.

"Got your postcard, Dru."

"That was a mistake; I should have never sent it. I want us to be a family again," Drusilla said.

A family. She still knew exactly what to say, which wound to press.

She put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him. It felt the same to be pressed against her, like he was drowning in cold, deep water, fish sliding over his skin and the euphoric feeling that accompanies suffocation.

"The two of us together again,
but it's just the same a stupid game
but i don't care if you don't
and i don't feel if you don't
and i don't want it if you don't
and i won't say it if you don't say it first.
Let's go to bed."

***
Dru and Spike sat beside one another on the bed. She was wrapped up in the red sheet, her hair a sleek, dark curtain. He was naked.

"Who's Buffy?"

"I honestly don't know. Girl I've been seeing, that's all," he said.

"But you love her?

"I do."

"We're really over, aren't we?" Dru asked, her face as impassive as the drawing that hung over his television set.

Spike nodded yes, he wasn’t able to say the words.

Drusilla stood up and began taking her clothes out of the closet, the hangers clicking against the metal rod, the soft sound of fabric landing on the ground. He couldn't watch her taking her things away. Spike got out of bed and took a long, hot shower until his skin looked chafed and pink. He put his clothes on and came out of the bathroom.

Dru had taken most of her possessions the first time she ran away from their marriage. The remainder of what she wanted to retain from their shared life was jammed in two suitcases by the living room door.

"Take the poster, something to remember me by, Dru," Spike said. He took the piece down from where it hung.

"She doesn't like it, does she?" Dru asked with a knowing smile.

They shared a last laugh and then she was gone. Spike stalked around his place, surveying the damage before the failure that seemed to cling to everything got to him. He went for a drive, ending up in front of Buffy's house.
He watched the light glowing through the living room windows for a while before he took out his phone and made the call.

"This is Buffy Finn's phone, Dawn speaking."

He scrambled to find the tiny button that would disconnect the conversation while hearing Dawn obnoxiously repeating

"Hello?"

A few minutes later his cell buzzed.

"What can I do for you?" Buffy asked.

"I'm in the alley across the street from your house, love. Find a way to get outside and meet me."

"No, that's not possible," Buffy said.

"I'll give you ten minutes to come up with an excuse," he said, and then hung up the phone.

He was certain he'd pushed her too far, that she wouldn't come until she was opening the passenger door and sitting beside him. Buffy was wearing a black skirt, a white tank top and a denim jacket. She was also holding a pie with a criss-cross lattice top.

"What's all this?" he asked, pointing at the dessert.

"My pretext for leaving the house. What do you want?"

Spike grabbed Buffy's face and pulled her into a kiss.
He wanted to tell her that when he'd touched his wife he'd felt like he was cheating on Buffy. He wanted to tell her he was in love with her, that he wanted her to stay with him forever.

Instead he pinched her nipples hard through her top and bit her lower lip. Buffy gasped.

"Get in the backseat," he said.

Buffy looked at him; her pupils were so big the green irises were a thumbnail's width. Spike didn't know if it was from darkness or lust. She seemed angry that he was ordering her around, but she went along with it anyway and got in the back.

Soon he was on top of her, his hand under her skirt, rubbing against the damp cotton of her knickers. Buffy unbuckled his belt, his button and took down his zipper in two, rough moves. Spike took a condom out of his coat pocket and gave it to her. Buffy smiled. She put it on him with shaky hands. He captured those hands with his own and kissed them after she'd finished wrapping him up. Then he slid inside, her bare legs flanking him.

"We're going to hell, Spike," Buffy said, her voice taking on a strange depth as it resonated against the curve of his chest.

"At least we won't be there alone," he said.

He anchored himself by grabbing her ass and then rocked in and out of her. Buffy was clinging to his shoulders, her fingernails biting into the leather of his jacket. Spike slammed his head against the door, but he didn't give a fuck because she was begging him to go deeper.

"Spike, please, Spike."

They went on like that, until condensation was sweating down the inside of the windows, until Spike's knees were bruised, until Buffy's lips were swollen and red from his constant kisses.

She came, her legs kicking out. The tapered heel of her shoe ripped a hole in the cloth covering the ceiling as she screamed his name. His orgasm exploded behind his eyes, another bright white light like the kind people who've died claim to see.

They quaked against each other.

"Tell me you needed that the way I did," Spike said.

"I did, you know I did," Buffy said, taking in deep breaths.

"I love you," he said, not caring about the consequences of what it could mean. He had to say it, just like he'd had to be inside her.

"I can't," she said.

"Just know that I do then," he said.

"I have to go," Buffy said, confusion edging out the bliss that had been apparent on her face.

Spike pulled out of her. He tugged the condom off, unrolled the window and then dumped it outside. Littering on top of everything else, quite the bad boy. Buffy sat up, smoothed her hair and set her clothes in order. She looked at him, a sidelong glance.

"My shift ends at one on Tuesday. I could stop by, after," Buffy said.

"S'good," Spike said.

She got out of the car, back to her warm little house that smelled of freshly baked pie.

Buffy stared at the diminutive infant in the clear, plastic bassinet. His impossibly small body was festooned with wires and medical tape that connected him to bleating machines. His mother had placed a little blue cap over his red, bald head, a personal touch that looked sadly out of place.

Buffy was supposed to be doing something for the sick baby because it was eight at night, but she couldn't remember for the life of her what it was. Then she recalled that she was to inject breast milk into the tube in his nose. Buffy prepared his meal, muscle memory taking over where her mind had faltered.

"I can't keep this up," she thought.

She'd been seeing Spike a lot. It had been three months since he'd been brave enough to tell her he loved her, more brave than she could be. Since then they'd added one more time, then another until she was seeing him nearly every night.

Buffy's superior, a blonde woman with a gentle face and large, light eyes padded by.

"Tara, I think I need to go home," Buffy said.
Tara looked at her with concern, then pressed a soft hand to her forehead.

"You've never taken a sick day before so you must be due, go ahead," Tara said.

It was Saturday night. Dawn would be at Janice's house sleeping over, Riley was with Xander and probably Sam or maybe he was home tonight, she wasn't sure. Riley didn't tell her his plans so much anymore, probably a reaction to her own secretive ways.

Buffy went straight to Spike's place and let herself in with the key he'd given her. She found him asleep at the dining room table, his head resting on a pile of papers, a red pen lax in his open hand. There was an empty pint glass that smelled like Guinness on the table beside a box of Wheetabix. Buffy wondered if that had been his dinner.
She touched his tousled hair and he snorted, then sat up in slow motion.

"I'm drownin' in footwear," he muttered.

"Hey, wake up so we can go to bed," Buffy said.

Spike turned his head up to her and smiled.

"What time is it?"

"About 8:30," Buffy said.

"So I've got you all night?"

"Until three or so, but there will be no making of the smoochies, way too tired. You're not mad, are you?" Buffy said.

Spike stood up. He looked like he wanted to speak, and then his eyes were wet.

"Not mad," he said.

They got undressed and fell asleep almost instantly. Buffy draped her arm over Spike's waist and trapped his legs between her own. At one in the morning she woke up with a jolt of panic, certain that she'd slept too long, certain she was going to be found out.

When she saw the red light of the digital alarm clock burning on the table beside the bed, she lied back down, tense but reassured. She could go now without waking Spike, God knows he must be just as exhausted as she'd become.

Buffy studied his face in the wan light, all the sharp angles less so because he was resting. She wanted to trace the lines of his cheekbones and kiss his forehead, follow the heart-shaped lips with a fingertip. He hated it though, and he would burrow under the covers away from her annoying explorations, which was painfully adorable and made her want to do it more.

Buffy crept out of bed and dressed silently. She used the bathroom, brushed her teeth with the brush he'd given her and then moved around his house with confidence until she found a slip of clean, unlined paper. Buffy scribbled a note with his red grading pen and then went back into his bedroom. As she set the note on his bedside table, Spike's hand shot out and latched onto her wrist.

"Call him, tell him you're working a double shift," Spike said.

"I can't," Buffy said.

"Then stay another hour," he said.

"You do this every time," Buffy said. She tried to withdraw, but he wasn't letting her go.

Spike yanked her, hard and suddenly she was on the mattress, flat on her back. He was on top of her with his left hand down her pants, fondling the space hidden between her legs. Her clit swelled under the pressure of his fingers and she pressed against his body. He'd learned just how to touch her so fast, it felt almost like he was part of her. Spike slid her top off over her head, folded the cups of her bra down and sucked her nipple into his mouth.

Then the pants came off and he was moving inside her all hard muscle covered in soft skin. She should have stopped him because she had to go, she should have stopped him because in his haste he'd forgotten the condom, but then she was floating and her toes were curling and every nerve ending pulsed with an emphatic yes. He moaned and speeded up his pace.

"I love you," he said. Even though he'd been asleep his breath was still sweet. She wondered how he did that. Spike's whole body jerked and then he was loose on top of her, holding her face with hands that had become as articulate as teddy bear paws.

"Buffy. Don't go," he said, his voice small.

Tears burned her eyes and then snaked down her face. She stroked his hair.

"I have to."

"Why?"

She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. His question was painfully sweet, the way a child would ask.

"I know you don't want to hurt anyone, but it's too late for that, love. You need to choose," Spike said.

"The right thing is to give you up," Buffy said.

"There is no right, here, pet." Spike said.

"I don't want to do this to Dawn," Buffy said.

"It's already done."

"Not if they never find out."

"They will. I'm sure Riley already senses it."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because I always knew with Dru. You just know," he said.

Maybe he had anticipated what she would say, the only thing she could say because he kissed her as though he were trying to still her words. His taste was so good, but she had to stop to breathe, and in that gasping moment, Buffy gathered her strength.

"You're right, I've got to choose, so I choose Dawn. She deserves more from me," Buffy said.

Spike pressed his forehead to Buffy's. He kissed her again and then he rolled off of her.

"Get out of here before I make you stay," he said.

"Spike--"

"Get the fuck out," he said, then added softly, "Please."

Buffy rose and then dressed again. She understood that he needed to be cold to keep himself together, just as she had when this whole thing started. She left the house, wondering for a moment if she should go back in and leave him her key. Buffy felt the weight of the metal piece in her palm. Then she tucked it back into her pocket.

Dawn had hugged Spike when he and Ms. Rosenberg delivered the news. He'd given the other teacher a panicked look that she returned with a shrug.

"Wow, so what do I get?" Dawn asked, bouncing on her heels.

"Well, the school will pay for your trip to D.C. and you'll get a $5,000 scholarship to the University of your choice. Plus it looks extra nifty on a college application. Oh, and I almost forgot, you'll be given an award here in front of the assembled student body. Your family is welcome to come to that, too," Ms. Rosenberg said.

Dawn clapped her hands.

"That's awesome because my mom can't come to D.C. with us because of work," Dawn said.

"You can have your grandparents there, too, if you want," Ms. Rosenberg said.

Spike had remained absolutely silent. He hadn't seen Buffy in a month. Scratch that, he'd watched her picking up Dawn after school, he'd seen her from a distance going into work and he'd seen the warm light of their living room window several times since she'd walked away from him, but he hadn't the nerve to talk to her. Maybe working with kids was making him act like one.

With Dawn's innocent slip a demon inside of him began to purr. He could fuck Buffy in her own bed, stay with her all week, eat every meal together and see her in the morning, in the sunlight. God, he was pathetic, especially because having someone to share dinner with instead of plowing through a solitary microwave entree while re-watching "Spaced" featured prominently in his fantasies.

Dawn practically danced out of the classroom. Ms. Rosenberg, Willow, lingered a moment as Spike gathered up his papers and filed them in his battered, brown leather briefcase. Willow was slight of build with bright, red hair and large, perceptive green eyes. Everything about Willow was the pinnacle of cute; you could almost hear cherubs flapping about whenever she moved.

"What's wrong, buddy?" Willow asked.

Spike sighed.

Willow was the only teacher on staff he considered a friend. They bonded when he'd been one of the three people to attend her New Year's Eve party. The other two were her sister and Dru. The sister left well before midnight and even Dru ended up ditching them to go to a better party across town. Spike couldn't leave the poor girl alone on New Year's Eve, especially given that she'd invited all of the other teachers at school and he was the only one who showed. So he'd stayed, even though it caused a row with his wife.

Spike and Willow had spent the rest of the night singing karaoke in her tiny apartment and getting drunk on domestic champagne. One couldn't get trashed with someone and sing "Tainted Love" without some sort of friendly feelings developing, or at least, he couldn't.

"Why do you ask, Red?"

"You've been weird around Dawn, and kind of weird in general lately," Willow said.

"Dru left me, for good this time," Spike said.

The sympathetic way she looked at him made his heart melt. Willow held her arms open wide.

"Hugs, now," she said.

Spike walked into her embrace. He opened his mouth to thank her and she took the opportunity to invade it. She was thrusting her tongue in and her hands were no less busy; she ruffled his shirt before both palms landed on his ass. Willow Rosenberg, she of the Hello Kitty erasers and the Oscar the Grouch cupcakes for his birthday was trying to dry hump him against his desk.

He was frozen in place, his briefcase dangling from one hand. She finally pulled away.

"Sorry, been wanting to do that for about four years," she said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. If you want to, you could come by later. We could bust out the 'Soft Cell' and make some margaritas without all that icky margarita mix," Willow said.

"So just tequila and salt?"

"We don't need no stinking salt," Willow said.

God, she was lovely, and why not something normal for once, something easy with someone dear?

Spike smiled at her and touched the fuzzy, pink sweater that covered her shoulder.

"Can we take a rain check, pet? There are a few things I need to get sorted first," he said.

The corners of her mouth turned up, but her eyes looked sad.

"I'm sorry, this isn't really like me to be so slutty, at least I hope not," Willow said.

"None of that," he said.

Spike walked her to her car and then went to his own. He dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed Buffy’s number. This time he didn’t hang up as soon as he heard her voice.

“We need to talk,” he said.

There was a pause, and then she took in a weary-sounding breath.

“Actually, I think we kinda do,” Buffy said.

She wouldn’t agree to meet him at his house after work, not an especially good sign, but she did allow for a sit down in the fast food parking lot. He got there an hour early and smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes before she arrived. She was dressed in her scrubs and the baby blue jacket she always wore, the one with the missing pearl button. Buffy looked extraordinarily tired, her whole body seemed to be bearing a weight and there was a shadow beneath her green eyes.

Spike handed her a cup.

“Got you a coffee,” he said.

“Thanks, but I don’t drink it anymore,” she said, gazing at the plastic lid.

“Giving up all your bad habits, yeah?” he asked.

“Spike, God, I don’t know how to do this,” Buffy said.

“Have out with it, love,” Spike said.

“I’m pregnant.”

Spike reached for her, pushing past the coat and placed his hand on her stomach.

“It’s mine?”

“You’re the only person I’ve had any kind of sex with in the past two years, so yeah, it’s yours,” Buffy said.

He leaned close and kissed her, never taking his hand away from her belly. Buffy was surprised, but she didn’t push him away.

“So how do you want to do this? We tell him together or you do it alone? We can turn my spare room into a nursery, maybe convert the basement for Dawn—“

“Spike, slow down, I haven’t decided what to do yet,” Buffy said, quailing at the pain on his face.

“You mean you want to get rid of it?”

“No, I don’t know. If I keep it I’m still not sure about you and me,” Buffy said.

“I grew up without a father. It’s not something I want to do to my child. We could live together for awhile, see how it works. If you don’t want to run off and get married, I understand,” Spike said.

“No you don’t understand. Riley said he would be the father if I decide to keep the baby, he knows everything and he still wants to be with me,” Buffy said.

“You told him before me?”

“I didn’t mean to, he found the test and thought it was Dawn’s. I had to tell him,” Buffy said.

“If I hadn’t called, would you have ever said a word?” he asked, numbly.

“Yes, I’ve just been trying to figure out how. Who the hell is so crazy fertile that she gets pregnant both times she doesn’t use a condom? I’m like an after school special,” Buffy said.

She hoped her joke would make him smile, but his face was an anguished mask.

“You wouldn’t tell my baby about me, would you? You’d just live the lie like you had been before you met me, the happy wife. But that’s my love made flesh inside you, that’s me bonded to you forever and ever. And you want to deny it ever happened? I know you didn’t love me, but at least have some pity for the way I feel about you. I’d rather you kill it—“

He was unable to finish. Spike contracted in on himself, leaving a empty spot over Buffy’s belly button where his hand had been. Spike sobbed. When Buffy tried to touch him to comfort him, he jerked and shoved her away, hard.
Seeing him crumbling was too much for her; Buffy began to cry too.

“I made an appointment at the clinic for next month during Dawn’s trip. I don’t know if I’m going to keep it, but, would you come with me if I do?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know if, that’s just a bit too much, isn’t it? Why would you even ask me something like that?”

“There’s no one else. Please Spike,” she said.

“You need to go, we can talk more later, but right now I can’t stand the sight of you,” Spike said.
Buffy got out of the car, still holding her cup of coffee. It was pointless to wipe at her face when the tears were not going to stop; she was half undone and her stomach was churning. She always got sick at night, not in the morning, but she knew it wasn't from the pregnancy. How could she do this to him? And why couldn't she just tell him she was in love with him?

Buffy knew she was afraid. When she was with Spike she was open, needy, ready to be hurt. He'd made her realize how unhappy she'd been, how she could do more than survive each day with consolations.

She touched the slight swell of her lower abdomen. Too real.

She thought of Riley. Buffy had fallen for him because she admired his goodness and the way he'd instantly cared about Dawn. He was strong and brave and sexy. And separate. He had always lived his own life. They'd lived together sharing meals, responsibilities, a love for Dawn and until he was injured they'd shared sex. Often.
But they'd never really connected outside of that. Buffy was in the home compartment and she wasn't allowed to see in the sections of Riley's world.

She thought about how he'd answered news of her infidelity with a joke.

"I don't think anyone's ever been so relieved to find out his wife was cheating on him," Riley had said.

He'd been holding the stupid pregnancy test in his hand, she thought she'd buried it in the trash but he'd somehow seen it. Buffy wanted him to scream at her, throw something at her. But then he'd told her she was only human, and if their roles were reversed he probably would have done the same thing.

Riley hadn't cried. He hadn't gotten visibly angry, but he had called Sam and left for the shooting range. Buffy knew him well enough to know he was aching and outraged, but he would never, ever say. She'd accepted that about him before, but after Spike, she wanted to know, connect. She wanted to feel.

Buffy heard footsteps rushing fast behind her and she turned around. Spike was running after her. She ran toward him. He was holding her, kissing her cheeks. Buffy grabbed his waist and held him, not caring that squeezing him hurt her swollen breasts.

"If I do this, you've got to do something for me. I want to plead my case, see you again," Spike said.

"But, Riley," she said.

"Just coffee then, or not coffee since caffeine is bad for the baby. We'll take tea together and talk. You've got to give me that," Spike said.

"Alright, but tea has caffeine in it, too, unless you meant the herbally kind," Buffy said.

"I meant the meal. English here, remember, like whatever Apple Martin is. You used to think it was cute," Spike said.

"I still do," Buffy said.

That finally got a weak smile from him.

They held each other for awhile and then parted. Buffy couldn't help herself--she looked back at him as she was walking away. It warmed her to see he was looking back, too.

Spike and Buffy began meeting on her lunch break, using the time to talk. It started with him trying to persuade her to keep the baby, but lately they'd been discussing other things, too.

He'd told her what it was like growing up without a stable place to live.

“So your mom would break into an empty house and you’d start living there?” Buffy asked.

“It was legal when I was growing up, but you had to have somebody there all the time or the cops could throw you out so we’d live with other families, take it in shifts,” Spike said.

“What about school?”

“I missed a lot, stayed with my Uncle Rupert and Aunt Jenny some when I was in primary school. Then he got a job in the States when I was about twelve. Things were very bad for a while. My mom got arrested for stealing. Uncle Rupes took pity on me and I came here for good when I turned sixteen,” Spike said.

“So whatever happened to your mother, do you still see her?” Buffy asked.

“Died. She was wandering around an empty house and the stairwell was a bit shaky. She fell through, busted her leg and froze to death. They found her a few months later. It was normal for her not to call for long stretches, didn’t think anything of it. I hadn’t seen her for six years, was just finishing up school. I paid a fee and they sent me a box with her ashes. Keep them in the closet,” Spike said.

He wasn’t emotional when he talked about his mother's death. It was the first time Buffy had ever seen his normally animated face become expressionless. Buffy was the one who ended up crying. They'd ended that conversation with Buffy wrapping her arms around Spike while he rested his head on hers. She didn't care that her co-workers were looking at her strangely.

The next night he'd asked about her mother. So she'd had to tell him about Joyce, how she'd fought back her cancer for years until she'd been too weak to care for herself. Buffy had to move in with Joyce to watch over her the last few months of her life. Riley had been away, that was his third tour, and so she'd eventually had to bury her mother without his help. Looking back on her marriage to Riley, most of it had been spent with Buffy on her own.

They talked about lighter stuff, too; books and music and movies. She'd made fun of him for liking Nicholas Sparks and he teased her about how all the musicians she listened to sounded like the lineup for Lilith Fair circa 1995.
It had been two weeks, and Buffy sat across from Spike in the hospital commissary, wondering what she was going to do without him. She watched with mild amusement as Spike tried to manipulate his chicken cutlet with the plastic knife and Spork.

"Spike, just pick it up, I promise you won't offend my delicate sensibilities," Buffy said.

"Fine, but I feel like a bloody savage," he said.

She smiled at him and they tucked into their bland meals. Buffy toyed with the white rice on her paper plate. Lately it was the only thing she could keep down at night.

"Dawn was so excited today when I dropped them off at the airport I thought she was going to start stopping passerby to tell them about how she won the big essay contest," Buffy said.

"Teenagers, they still think life's worth living, misguided little sods," Spike said.

"God, moody much? And what’s with you trying to crush Dawn’s dreams by telling her she could never be a professional writer?" Buffy asked.

“I did no such thing. Was being straight with the girl, is all," Spike said.

"Well she’s thinking about going into the Marines because of you," Buffy said.

“No, she’s thinking of going into the Marines to connect with soldier boy,” Spike said.

“You know, he’s not a boy, he’s only three years younger than you,” Buffy said with a smirk.

He looked at his plate.

"So, are you really going through with it, pet?"

He didn't have to explain what it was.

"Riley wants me to," Buffy said.

"Not so noble now that it's sinking in, is he?" Spike asked with a smug grin.

That was true. After Riley's initial calm reaction, they'd begun arguing over inconsequential things and he'd become more withdrawn. He'd confessed that he'd rather she not go through with the pregnancy after she'd told him she was still talking to the baby's father. She hadn't told Riley that her lover was Spike, not wanting to see the look on his face when he realized what she'd done to Dawn.

"Would you be?" she asked.

He paused for a moment.

"Suppose not," he said.

Buffy looked at him as Spike had another unwieldy bite. He chewed and swallowed, then took a sip of water; all the while the next words he planned on speaking were already plain. At this point in their relationship she could read his eyes.

"If you do it, I'm gone afterward. I won't hate you or resent you, but I'll be finished with this. I want a girl of my own for once. I want something that's mine. Do you understand that?" Spike asked.

Others can pick and choose, if you can't, he thought.

Willow had baked him some cookies as an apology for her clumsy pass. The redhead was sweet. He almost wished he'd never met Buffy so he wouldn't miss her when she was gone.

"I do," Buffy said.

"So what time is it going to be?"

"I'll be by your place at nine," Buffy said.

They finished eating in silence.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T. S. Eliot

***
Spike shouldn't have gotten drunk the night before, but at the time there really seemed no other course of action. Something had woken him but he wasn't sure what, just that a slice of pink light was bleeding through his curtains. The sun was setting in the usual way, which meant that he'd slept through the whole day.

Spike wondered if Buffy had stopped over and he'd just been too knackered to wake up. She might have decided to spare him or maybe she simply had not gone. The possibilities were a bit too much for him given the aching and fragile state of his head, which felt as thin as the shell of a robin's egg. Spike wondered which way Buffy had decided to wipe him out of her life.

He'd always been a constant reminder of a desperate moment to every woman he'd loved, starting with his mother.
Anne hadn't even given him a proper first name; hadn't extended him the protection of her last name. He'd been Spike Pratt after the American git who'd loved her and left her. Spike Pratt, who’s Christian name she never knew. Spike Pratt whom he'd never met despite years of searching only to find his father had died of a heroin overdose two years after he had been born.

Spike wondered if his mother wanted to forget he was part of her.

It seemed he was always with a woman who didn't love him back; he'd spent his youth fooling himself about Cecily and then Dru. Before he'd left for the states to live with Uncle Giles he'd asked Cecily to marry him when he turned eighteen. Cecily had smiled at him and said, "You're a sweet boy. One day you'll look back at this and laugh." That never happened.

Dru had only wed him to stay in the country. She'd told him as much when she asked to marry him. She'd known how crazy in love he'd been and he'd thought she would change. Despite years of married life, she'd never developed more than a need for him. It was the sort of affection you acquire for a hand-me-down chair that you see every day and always feels comfortable. You don't write poetry to the chair, you don't dream of it, you don't love an object.

He was doing it again, basting in self-pity. Poor Spike in love with his own pain. Hadn't he chosen Dru arrogantly because she was the one everybody wanted with her perfect ass and her angel's voice? There were other girls he could have had, who would have loved him easily, but he'd had to have Dru because he wanted to get her recalcitrant heart to beat for him.

And now Buffy. That relationship had been designed to pass in a season; they weren't meant to feel more than pleasure, but Spike was starting to think he might have been drawn to her the way kamikaze pilots longed to fly. The only way to soar was to accept that eventually you'd have to immolate. Each kiss, each look had been another stick lovingly placed on his funeral pyre.

Maybe he loved her because he couldn't have her and this was all a game he hadn't been realizing he was playing.

"Hurry Up It's Time."

Spike shambled out of bed and into his bathroom. He used the toilet, brushed his teeth and dragged a comb through his hair. At least he still had hair, even if it was becoming dashed with silver, he thought.

"Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker."

He'd tended to his body, too, and it looked alright for a guy who was almost forty. Everything worked, he wasn't plagued by aches, and he could still get hard without the help of the pharmaceutical industry. There was no reason to dwell upon the eternal footman, or how he'd been a fool, how this felt like a last chance that hadn't so much slipped away as beaten him back to escape.

Spike didn't know if he ought to call Buffy or if her absence made it clear that she wasn't going through with the abortion and she didn't need him for anything anymore.
He dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, let poor Sunshine out of his cage and took the dog for a walk. Spike would eat some beans and toast; he'd go to the gym and then maybe the bar down the street. He wouldn't call her. He wouldn't dive into his own chest to scoop out his heart for her.

Sunshine marked every house on the street twice before they headed home in the dark. As they approached his place, Spike saw someone standing on his porch. Buffy was standing on his porch. She was standing in the puddle of light; her blonde hair was pulled up into a sloppy ponytail, she was wearing baby blue plaid pajamas and flip flops. Buffy looked like she'd just escaped a burning house and she had a suitcase in her hand.

Sunshine barked and Buffy's head whipped around toward the sound. Her eyes were red, she'd been crying.

"Spike."

Buffy was bouncing down the three steps that led from his house to the sidewalk at a fast clip. She was throwing herself into his arms and crying; her wet tears collected in the hollow of his throat. Spike held her and Sunshine zigzagged around them, wrapping their legs with his leash.

"What if the baby has your eyes?" Buffy asked.

"Does that still matter?" he asked, stroking the flannel covering the small of her back with his free hand while trying to hold onto Sunshine with the other.

"I didn't keep the appointment," Buffy said.

He kissed her mouth and she seemed to melt against him. Spike felt like she was devouring him. Finally, she let go and Buffy looked up at him, her lower lip trembling. He could feel his eyebrows crunching together as he stared into her face.

"Let's go in," Spike said.

Spike kissed her forehead and then pressed his own to the spot where his lips had touched for just a moment. They untangled from Sunshine's leash and entered his house. Buffy took off her flip flops and used her pink tipped toes to set them by the door before she headed to his overstuffed couch. She collapsed on the cushions with a soft exhalation of breath, like the sound of a pillow being plumped.

Spike watched her and then went into his kitchen to prepare Sunshine's dish, wondering what she wanted. He tried not to get excited, but lightness was flooding into his chest.

He was scraping out the can and Sunshine was mooching around his legs. Spike tapped the tines of the fork on the edge of the green, plastic bowl. Spike set the dog's dinner on the ground and then went to his sink. Buffy was so quiet, it was beginning to worry him. Spike turned on the creaky faucet and a weak stream sputtered out. He squirted a shot of lemony, yellow dish soap into his hands and then rubbed them together under the water.

"Did you mean it when you said you wanted to raise the baby with me?" Buffy asked. She was coiled up on the couch, but her voice reached him.

Spike shut off the tap and then dried his hands with the blue, checkered dish towel hanging over the oven door. He walked into the living room and saw her huddled on her side. The sight of Buffy so fragile, so small made him ache. Spike had to go to her and gather her into his lap. She faced toward his blank television set and wrapped her arm possessively around his leg.

"I thought you were done with me, love," Spike said, quietly.

She writhed until she was face up in his lap, looking into his eyes.

"Spike, it felt like dying to leave you," she said.

"You don't have to say that, I'm with you no matter what," Spike said.

"But it's true. I'm in love with you. I love you. You're mine and I want to be yours," Buffy said.

Spike did not want to cry; in this moment he wanted to keep his composure, not fall apart like a bloody ponce. He crushed her mouth with a kiss. She met him with equal desperation. Spike started tugging at Buffy's shirt, but she stopped him.

"I need a shower," she said.

"I've got no problem seeing you wet," he said.

He could almost hear Buffy's eyes rolling as he kissed her again.

***

They had fumbled to the bathroom quickly. Buffy stood with her back to the spray. Even the stream of water from the shower hurt her breasts, so she was loathe to let Spike touch them, but he was persistent.

"If it doesn't feel good, I'll stop," he said, planting kisses on her neck as he spoke.

He lathered up his hands with a bar of white soap that carried a scent she'd come to associate with him. She felt enveloped by him completely as Spike coasted the white, lacy froth over her chest, not quite touching the skin. He wet a cloth and then squeezed it out over the soap, rinsing her gently. Then he knelt in front of her and washed the rest of her body worshipfully in the same way.
When he was done he regarded her breasts again.

"Your nipples are darker," Spike said, tracing his fingers in tentative circles around the areola.

"That happened when I had Dawn, too," Buffy said.

"Like red wine," he said, then he lapped at her left breast. The sensation was almost too intense, yet it felt amazing.

She watched him moving from one side to the other with the point of his tongue making delicate trails. His eyes were closed, his hair was curling from the moisture and he was moaning against her, hot under her hands. He kept at her like that until she could hardly stand.

Buffy felt the orgasm snap through her without any build up.

"Oh my God, Spike, I just came," Buffy said. She was gasping and letting Spike support her with his steady arms.

He looked up at her and grinned, his tongue teasing the back of his teeth.

"Well, isn't that neat," he said.

***

Buffy had gone from being a teenager to a mother without leaving her family home. By the time she'd become a wife, her daughter was six-years-old. She and Riley hadn't had anything like a real honeymoon. They had their wedding night at the Day's Inn and the next day Riley shipped out for his first tour in Afghanistan.

The week she spent with Spike was the first time she'd ever been on her own with a lover. It felt incredibly decadent to walk around naked and spend their free time in bed only pausing to work, eat or take Sunshine for a walk.

The week was ending and Buffy's family would be home tomorrow afternoon. It was after midnight when she let herself into Spike's house. He was asleep in bed, his bare chest white in the moonlight. She slipped out of her scrubs, crawled across his supine form and then got under the covers. Spike sniffed and then wrapped his arms around her.

"Sorry for the wakey," she said.

"No worries, love. How's the little Punkin'belly?" he asked, putting his hand on her stomach. Punkin'belly was Buffy's name for their zygote.

"Good. I do feel a little queasy, but I think that might be because of tomorrow," Buffy said.

It was comforting having his hand over her gnawing stomach. He kissed her shoulder and then nuzzled her ear.

"I can be there when you tell them, if you need me," he said.

"No, I think it would be better for them if it was only me, especially Dawn. She's kind of got a crush on you," Buffy said.

"I know. At least her puppy love will be replaced by seething hatred," Spike said.

"Yay," she said. Buffy was quiet, stroking his arm. "Can we really do this?" Buffy asked.

"Everyone does it, why not us, love?" Spike asked trying to contain his smile.

"Not the baby, I know we can take care of the baby, but how can I break Dawn's heart like this? Riley is going to be alright, but Dawn is never going to forgive me," Buffy said.

"Of course she'll forgive you, you're her mum," Spike said.

"Are you kidding? She's mad at me just because I'm her mother, I hate to see what she's going to do when she has a real reason. She'll be like Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo, but, you know, small," Buffy said.

"Well, there's that to be grateful for, I 'spose," Spike said.

Spike was tickling her cheek with the tip of his nose

"So this is our last night alone, is it?" he asked.

"I'm not feeling up to any late night snugglies," she said.

"What about fucking?" he asked with a smirk.

"Not so much," she said.

Spike pressed his lips to her cheek and then held her closer. Insecurity was overwhelming him, and he tried to tamp it down. Spike had a perverse desire to mark Buffy before she went back to see her husband; to pound into her until the only thing she could remember was his name. As she drifted off to sleep in his arms, Spike tried not to think that Buffy was going to disappear in the morning.

Dawn was ebullient; she'd looked that word up to make sure she was using it correctly, and there was no other word that could describe the way she was feeling. Even though mom and dad hadn’t been speaking much since she’d gotten back from D.C., it had so thoroughly been her day.

Everyone had applauded her; everyone in the whole school, even the people who made fun of her for being a freak had to give Dawn her due.

Corey Nelson, with his floppy, black hair and his piercing eyes who had never directly spoken to her before even though they'd been sitting next to each other in home room for the whole year had asked her to write song lyrics for his band.

The only smudge on her shining moment was that she hadn’t seen Mr. Pratt in the auditorium. Ms. Rosenberg was in the front row, clapping like a seal, but Mr. Pratt was nowhere to be seen. Dawn had had to wait until school was out before she could go talk to him, which was annoying, but it had still been an amazing day.

Her mom was going to be there in about ten minutes so Dawn hurried down the hallway to Mr. Pratt’s classroom, her heels clattering on the scuffed linoleum. Mom had let her borrow a pair of heels for the first time,another bonus. They were strappy and black and kind of hard to walk in. There wasn't anybody lingering by the rows of orange lockers that lined the white walls.

The sun was doing that glimmery thing where it catches the dust in the air; for some reason that time of afternoon always made Dawn feel heavy with sleepiness and another ten-cent word as dad liked to call them--melancholy. Not today though. She was floating.

Dawn shifted her book bag from one shoulder to the other and tugged at her denim skirt. When she and Janice were sizing up their best features one particularly boring night, her friend had said Dawn's legs were second only to her hair. The skirt was a no-brainer for her big day, especially after her dad suggested she change it for something not-so-short.

Weirdly, mom had actually defended her when they got into an argument about her clothes; mom who didn't want her dating until she was too old to be a sad, preggers teen like she'd been. Mom was acting so bizarre lately, she'd be super-happy one minute then quiet and depressed, strict then meek. Janice said it might be menopause, because that's when her mom started getting weird, but Janice's mom was almost sixty, so that didn't seem right.

Dawn stopped outside of the brown, lacquered door of Mr. Pratt's classroom to put on some cherry gloss that she kept in the front pocket of her book bag. As she was tracing the wand over her lower lip, she heard his voice.

"I'm sorry pet, just been so edgy lately. Quit more times than I can count, but you know how it is," Mr. Pratt said.

His name was printed neatly on a rectangle of blue construction paper and taped over the four-paned window, so Dawn couldn't see who he was talking to, but in a second, she knew.

"Sorry, I just see preemies all day long, and second-hand smoke is really bad for the baby," her mother said.

He was talking to her mother, about somebody pregnant. Dawn wondered why her mother was talking to Mr. Pratt, but she was more curious about who was going to have a baby. There was a rumor that Mr. Pratt and Ms. Rosenberg were getting it on in the library, but Dawn was pretty sure Ms. Rosenberg was totally gay, in an Ellen DeGeneres kind of way, not the hateful slur way. Maybe she wasn't. Still, Dawn couldn't picture Mr. Pratt with his sexy, Rupert Grint-like accent kissing Ms. Rosenberg. Dawn shifted on her feet in her not entirely comfortable borrowed heels hoping she was being quiet.

"It'll be easier to quit after they know, I think. Can't stand the thought of him, I mean I know that he hasn't, but still. It hurts to know I'm not the one you wake up next to," Mr. Pratt said.

Dawn felt like her chest was frozen. She could not breathe, she could not move.

"For me, too," her mother said.

“So when are you going to tell them?”

“Riley knows, I’m waiting until tomorrow to tell Dawn so I don’t ruin her big day,” her mother said.

"How'd he take it?" Mr. Pratt asked.

"He said if I were a man he would have punched me."

"Did he hurt you?"

"Of course not, but can you blame him for wanting to?" Dawn's mother asked. Dawn could hear tears in her mother's voice. She still couldn't really process what she'd just heard, but Dawn was glad her mother was crying. Dawn was fairly certain her mother deserved to be crying.

Dawn heard feet shuffling on the other side of the door.

"Don't, somebody could come in here," Dawn's mother said.

"I don't give a bloody damn."

"I do."

"Just for a minute, I need to," he said.

There was silence. Dawn peeked her head into the room. The two of them were standing behind the even rows of beige desks, the green chalkboard behind them like a frame. Mr. Pratt in his bright blue shirt and tweed pants was pressing an open palm on her mother's stomach. Both her mother's hands covered his. They looked like a family, a brand new family.

Dawn had heard the term seeing red before, but she'd never known it was a real thing. Her vision was flooded with red that seemed to vibrate in time with her heart. It was almost like a nightmare because she couldn't move or talk until Mr. Pratt raised his blue eyes and saw her standing in the doorway.

"Dawn," he said, slowly pulling away from her mother.

Her mother turned and saw her.

"You're pregnant?" Dawn asked. Her voice sounded like air escaping from a tire.

Her mom took a step towards her.

"Let's not do this here, Dawnie," her mom said.

Dawn stepped into the room and slammed the door.

"Oh, let's. I'm the last one to know, so who cares?"

"Yes, I'm pregnant," her mother said as she looked down at her folded hands.

"You're going to go live with Mr. Pratt now?"

"Well, I was thinking he’d probably live with us," her mother said.

Mr. Pratt was putting his hand on her mother's back, rubbing his hand up and down like he was trying to soothe her, like he'd done it a million times before. Like he was her boyfriend. Oh God.

"So you're kicking dad out because he's in a wheelchair," Dawn said.

"It's not that--"

"You're such a whore! I guess I should be grateful because without your whorishness I wouldn't be here but right now I kind of wish I'd never been born!"

"Hey, you shut your gob!" Mr. Pratt said.

He took a step toward Dawn with his fists balled up. Her mother grabbed his arm.

"Don't swear at my daughter in British," her mom said.

"I'm not your daughter anymore, so he can say whatever he wants!"

Dawn yanked open the classroom door and ran down the hall. Her mother caught up to her. Dawn whipped around with such force her hair fanned out and her book bag swung like a pendulum. She slapped her mother hard across the face. Her mom took a step back, her hand flying up to protect her burning cheek. Dawn covered her mouth in shock.

"I'm sorry," Dawn said.

Her mom gave Dawn a half smile.

"This better be your last Erica Kane moment or you will never not be grounded," her mother said.

They stood silently. Dawn could see Mr. Pratt leaning out of the door of his classroom, looking like he wanted to intervene. He didn't, though, and Dawn was glad.

"Let's go home, we can talk in the car," her mother said.

Her mother glanced back at Mr. Pratt and gave him a short wave. Dawn didn't look back. She didn’t think she was ever going to be able to look at Mr. Pratt again.

As soon as they were in the car with the doors safely shut, they picked up the fight.

"I don't want to live with you," Dawn said, clicking the metal fastener for her seatbelt in place. Dawn had her book bag in her lap; she needed something solid to hold.

"Tough," her mother said. Her mom buckled her seatbelt and concentrated on backing out of the parking lot instead of looking at Dawn. She watched her mother twisting at the waist to look behind her; her cream colored blouse bunching, her ankle-length, brown skirt slit up to the knee, her blonde hair falling out of her bun.

Her mother kissed Mr. Pratt. She had her tongue in Mr. Pratt's mouth. He probably brushed her mother's hair back behind her ear and called her love. They'd made a baby the way she'd first seen explained in health class and then more colorfully on the Internet.

Dawn shuddered. Life could not be more horrible than it was right now.

"Why should dad and I leave because you screwed up? The house is set up for dad, you can live anywhere," Dawn said.

"I grew up there."

"So did I," Dawn said.

Ha. Got you there.

"I don't want you to leave, you're my daughter so you're living with me," her mother said.

Her mom peered out the windshield with concentration, almost like she was avoiding looking at Dawn.

"I'm not abandoning dad just because you are. You have Mr. Pratt and your love child to keep you company, dad is alone. He needs me," Dawn said.

"I need you, too," her mother said.

"You should have thought of that before you slutted it up, then," Dawn said. She hugged her book bag. Her mother pursed her shiny lips; she'd put on gloss before she'd seen Mr. Pratt, too. I am nothing like her, Dawn thought.

"You don't understand."

"Because I'm a kid? I'm not a baby, mom and I understand sex. If you start talking about how you have certain needs I'm going to hurl all over your stupid, suede skirt," Dawn said. Her friend Renee's dad busted out that gem about "needs" when he cheated on Renee's mom with his secretary.

"I can't believe I'm about to say this to you, but it's not just about that. He's in my heart," her mother said.

"What about dad?"

"I love your dad, too," her mother said.

"But not enough to be faithful to him," Dawn said.

Her mother flexed her fingers on the gray, plastic steering wheel. Dawn noticed she wasn't wearing her wedding ring.

"I was wrong, and I'm sorry I hurt everybody, but I'm still your mom."

That was true. Mom was mom, but dad wasn't really her dad. No matter how much she wanted to stay with him instead of her mom and Mr. Pratt, her dad wasn't going to want her anymore.

"I don't care," Dawn said.

They pulled up to the house, Dawn's words still stinging the air. As soon as the car stopped she unbuckled her seatbelt and hopped out. She was able to get to the house without her mother catching up, so Dawn took the opportunity to slam the door in her mom's face. Dawn ran up the stairs to her bedroom and locked it. Part of her wanted to call Janice; part of her wanted to weep and never tell another living soul. Her perfect day. Right.

Dawn fwumped onto her unmade bed, burrowing under the white, down comforter. The bed was flush against the wall; she stared at the green and white striped wallpaper, wishing she could disappear. Dawn wondered how her mother could have done this to her; maybe she picked Mr. Pratt just because she knew Dawn liked him. He'd told her to shut her gob. So now that he as boning her mom, he was going to be mean, horrible step-dad cliche. Dawn couldn't count on much from the men in her life besides being disappointed by them.

Someone was knocking.

"Go away."

"Dawnie, it's me," her dad said.

Dawn slowly pulled herself up, crossed the expanse of floor covered by a pastel rag rug along with many dirty clothes and opened the door.

Her dad was sitting in the hall, a concerned look on his face.

"Can we talk?"

Dawn stood aside and let him pass. She sat on the edge of her bed and her dad rolled beside her.

"Is this the part where you tell me you'll always love me?"

"Yeah, I guess I was going to say that."

"And that it's not my fault this is happening."

"Do you want me to go so you can comfort yourself?"

"No."

Dawn tugged at the crumpled sheets under her hands. Her dad looked at her and smiled.

"So now that you shot down my speech, what do you want to talk about?"

"Maybe why mom is such a giant slut?"

"Hey, that's still your mom, you shouldn't talk about her disrespectfully."

"Why, like she was being respectful," Dawn said.

"There's a lot you don't know, I can't totally blame your mom for what happened," her dad said.

"So you cheated, too?"

"No, nothing like that, it's just more complicated than you think."

"It's just sex, why do adults think that it's so mysterious like you could never explain it to me and have my feeble mind comprehend?"

"It's not beyond your comprehension, Dawnie, I just don't want to go in depth about my love life with my daughter," he said.

"I'm not your daughter."

"Yeah, you are. You always will be no matter what choices your mom makes."

Dawn looked into his wide-spaced eyes. After she said what was on her mind all his shiny, happy feelings would evaporate.

"Then can I live with you?" she asked, folding her arms over her chest.

Her dad didn't hesitate.

"If that's what you want."

"Do you want it, though?"

"I like having a reason to wake up in the morning as much as the next guy."

Dawn hopped onto her father's lap, draping her legs over the metal arms of his chair. He made a little "oof" sound when she landed, then he hugged her.

"Can I switch schools, too?"

"Let's not get crazy," he said with a smile.

***

Buffy sat at the dining room table, huddled over a mug of prenatal tea. The mug had been a gift from Dawn for mother's day a few years back. Her daughter had made it in pottery class and it was surprisingly fine work for a twelve-year-old. Dawn had applied a pink glaze and then painted little, green stars around the edge. It was Buffy's favorite.

The tea had been a gift from her boss, Tara. Tara was the first person she'd told about Spike and the baby. After she'd come back from having dinner with Spike, Tara had found her sniffling over the sink in the ladies room at work. Tara's large eyes had been brimming with sympathy, and the truth had just spilled out.

"You know what you want here, Buffy, or you wouldn't have told him about the baby," Tara had said.

Those words had carried her to Spike's house. Those words had carried her to this moment.

Dawn and Riley had been upstairs talking for a very long time; Buffy was getting nervous. She stared at the brown leaves on the wallpaper until they started to writhe. She heard the sound of the lift lowering Riley's chair and Dawn's footsteps on the wooden stair. Dawn bounced into the dining room beside her dad. They tittered in front of Buffy like two chummy birds.

"We talked about it, and we think it would be best if you moved out," Riley said.

"I'm going to live here with dad," Dawn said.

Buffy held her mug tighter, the pads of her fingers turning white.

"Dawn, you're my daughter and you're going to live with me," Buffy said.

"Do you really want to go to court over this, Buffy? I won't contest the divorce if you just do what Dawn wants. You can maybe marry your boyfriend before your kid is in kindergarten, or you can put your daughter through hell for a couple years until she never wants to speak to you again, your choice," Riley said. His jaw ticked. Dawn stood with her arms folded, her chin stuck out defiantly.

Buffy looked from one to the other. She set her cup down and stood.

"Dawn, I know you're angry now, but you could change your mind," Buffy said.

"I won't," Dawn said.

Buffy moved to hug her daughter, but Dawn backed away.

Buffy dropped her arms.

"You can pick up your stuff tomorrow while Dawn's at school. I'll be at Sam's," Riley said.

Buffy took up her coat from the back of the chair and then took a step toward the door.

"I'll still pick you up from school tomorrow, Dawn."

"Fine," Dawn said.

"Riley, is that all right with you?" Buffy asked.

"Yeah," he said, sadly.

After Buffy left, Dawn went into the dining room and snatched the mug of cold tea. Riley watched her dump the contents of the mug into the sink and then smash it against the ceramic-tiled floor.

Spike swept all the floors in the house and then mopped them with Murphy’s Oil Soap for good measure. He vacuumed the Persian rugs and ran a cloth over his furniture, something he usually only did when the television screen was coated in a thick layer of white dust. Laundry had been collected and shoved in the machine. Dishes were thoroughly washed and dried. The rubbish was secured in the bin outside. Spike lit and then immediately blew out some sandalwood -scented candles, wondering why he had them in the first place.
The dog had been fed and walked.

Sunshine was pacing nervously about the house as his master went from room to room straightening, swabbing and carting away trash as needed. It was an abnormal occurrence and the dog was probably worried he would be the next thing to go.

Where was she?

Monday and Wednesday were usually her nights off, unless she'd switched a shift with someone else. Spike always remembered that because she couldn't visit him then. Those days were set aside for Riley and Dawn.

He worried that there'd been a scene like the one in his classroom. Spike knew he hadn't done anything to make things better, he'd only made it worse by losing control. He'd lashed out at a student, something he'd never done before and worse he'd snapped at Dawn; Dawn who he genuinely adored, who had earned her moment of spiteful melodrama. Still, when the kid slapped Buffy it took everything in him not to grab her by the throat. He was disgusted by his own impulse and so he'd let Buffy go without another word, just that short wave. And then there was the jilted husband. Spike couldn't think about Riley hurting his girl because he would shove a fist through the wall. What if she’d lost her nerve, took it all back, decided to stay? Worse what if something had happened, she’d been hurt. No one would call him, he wouldn’t know for days.

Spike tried to keep his mind on the task at hand but of course there was no way, everything was spilling out and over, the underside curve of Buffy’s breast, the slight swell of her belly, the way the light caught her hair in the hallway, the look of betrayal on Dawn’s face, peering at Buffy, Riley and Dawn while he stood in the back of the auditorium from the shadows, the way Buffy put her hand on Riley’s shoulder when Dawn got her award.

Spike was fairly certain he’d fucked it all up and now the only thing left to do was alphabetize his book collection. It made no kind of sense for Charles Bukowski to be next to Ursula Le Guin, anyway.

And then his front door was opening. Buffy was wavering over the threshold like a flame; Spike dropped “The Lathe of Heaven,” and caught her before Buffy collapsed on the floor. Spike hoisted Buffy up, letting her head loll against his chest.

“I’ll call the doctor,” he said.

“It’s alright, I just couldn’t eat today. I think my blood sugar is low or something,” Buffy said.

“Bollocks,” he said.

Spike eased her down onto the couch and then grabbed his phone.

“Dawn went Godzilla. She doesn’t want to live with us, she doesn’t even want me around anymore,” Buffy said. Buffy began crying and Spike had to go to her, had to hold her. Her slim frame shook and she was wailing, lost. She cried until she seemed to have no energy left.
Buffy wiped her face with the back of her hand.

“I have to get my stuff out tomorrow, there’s a bassinet in the attic that used to belong to Dawn, we can use it for the baby, I think,” she said.

She almost said that they could put the bassinet in his bedroom when she caught herself. It wasn’t going to be his anymore. It would be theirs. The thought that she’d never sleep in the house she shared with Riley hit her again. Buffy looked at Spike’s eyes and felt the weight of his arms around her. This was home now. That realization sent a flutter through her stomach; the secret place she’d carved out for herself, the fantasy of what life could be was happening. It was terrifying.

“Do you want some help?” he asked.

“You don’t have to,” Buffy said.

“It’s nothing, I’ll call in sick. I’m in a union love, no worries,” he said with a smile.

Buffy wrapped her arms around his shoulders and squeezed.

“Thank you,” Buffy said with relief. Buffy thought that if she had to take her things out alone she would just dissolve into a goopy pile of tears.

She agreed to let him call the doctor. Her OBGYN recommended that she eat and then if she didn’t feel better, to go to the emergency room. Spike made Buffy a can of tomato soup, which she was able to keep down and then they started in on a carton of chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream.

“So I was thinking Angel would be a good name for the baby,” Buffy said, as she licked her spoon. She sat on the couch against Spike’s chest, his legs on either side of her.

“That’s pretty. What if we have a boy?” Spike asked. He took the last of the pins out of her hair and set it with the others on the coffee table. Spike combed his fingers through her hair.

“I was thinking Angel for a boy,” she said. Buffy was luxuriating in the feel of his hands gently working through her hair and she leaned into him.

“Are you daft, woman, that’s a girl’s name,” Spike said, chuckling. Spike snatched the spoon from Buffy’s lax hand and dug out a bite of ice cream. Spike ate the morsel.

“Give that back,” Buffy said. Buffy turned to face him. Spike held the spoon up above his head, out of her reach. Buffy pulled her legs up under her and knelt, arching into him as she tried to grab it back.

“Quit it, you’re going to make me spill all the melty parts and ruin the couch, you should have just got your own,” she said, trying to keep from smiling at him as she struggled for dominance.

“I don’t really want any pet, just want to bother you,” he said, handing over the desired cutlery.

She laughed and then resettled onto the end of the couch. Buffy slung a protective arm over her dessert. Spike sat down again, sticking his left foot in her lap.

“What about Chance, that’s good for a boy or a girl,” Buffy said before she took another guarded bite.

“Love, I know the pain of not having a proper first name; kids are vicious, little monsters. You can’t saddle my offspring with a name you’d give the dog. What about Wesley?”

“Wesley?” Buffy asked, the word accompanied by an affected snort so he wouldn’t miss her sarcasm.

“Like kids are going to be more likely to pick on the kid named Spike instead of the kid named Wesley,” Buffy said.

“What about Rupert, like my uncle? It would be nice seeing as he’s passed,” Spike asked.

“That’s like me asking you to name the baby Joyce after my mom,” Buffy said, pointing at him with the end of her spoon.

“I like Joyce,” Spike said.

“That’s so not fair. What if we have Rupert for a middle name?” she asked, delving in for another taste.

“Fine. What about Cordelia?” he asked.

“O.K., you’re ragging on me for coming up with fake names and then you bust out Cordelia?”

“It’s from Shakespeare,” Spike said. Her rejection of his last suggestion caused Spike’s combativeness to flare up again. He invaded her side of the couch and tried to grab her entire pint of ice cream away.

“Well I guess not everything he wrote was genius,” Buffy said through a fit of giggles. She put the carton behind her back.

“Oh you’re gonna get it now, pet. Nobody knocks the bard,” Spike said. She jumped up from the couch to evade capture and then nearly tripped when one of her stylish, camel-colored boots got caught in the afghan that was twisted up on the floor. Buffy caught herself and then used the wall for support. Spike was by her side, his hand spanning her waist and all silliness evaporated.

“I’m sorry, love,” he said.

“It’s nothing, it’s just that stupid blanket,” Buffy said. He was past listening, though. Spike swept Buffy up into his arms and carried her to the door. He was trying to work the handle when she smacked his chest with the flats of her hands.

“Hey, hold it stop trying to Rhett Butler me, first off, I’m fine, second off, I’ve got peanut butter and chocolate dripping all over me and third you have no shoes on,” Buffy said.

“The doctor said if you weren’t feeling better, you had to go to the emergency room, don’t argue,” Spike said.

“I’m feeling better, let me down and I’ll show you, I’ll do a zippy cartwheel or something,” Buffy said.

“Do you want to lose the baby, is that what this is?”

“Alright now you really better put me down, or I’m going to hurt you,” Buffy said.

“Buffy, yow!”

Buffy grabbed his nipple through his shirt and twisted, startling him enough that she was able to slide out of his arms.

“You didn’t have to get violent,” he said, rubbing his sore chest.

“I gave up my whole life for you today. I hurt the people
I care about the most in the world. It would be nice if you’d give me an ounce of credit,” she said.

Buffy walked away from him toward the kitchen. She put the lid on the ice cream and shoved it back into the freezer. Spike followed her. Buffy could feel his warmth against her back before she felt him caressing her shoulders with tentative fingers.

“Not used to being wanted, pet,” Spike said in her ear.
Buffy closed the freezer door and sighed. She put her hands on her hips. He nuzzled her hair and she let her eyelids fall.

“I know it’s hard to trust me after how we met, but you’re more than wanted. You’re loved. You’re beloved,” Buffy said.

Spike turned Buffy around and pressed his mouth to hers. When the kiss broke he rested his forehead on hers.

“It’s not you, love. I have trouble trusting anything good, never lasts,” he said.

“If you think like that, it’s like you’re just waiting for us to be over,” Buffy said.

She pulled away and searched his eyes.

“I just need time, love,” Spike said.

Buffy smiled at that.

“Me too, I think,” she said.

Spike kissed her again and then picked her up.

“Hey, fine here, no need for medical attention.”

“I wasn’t taking you to the doctor. Was taking you to the bedroom, Rhett Butler you up good and proper,” Spike said.

“Could we take a rain check on the sexy, I’m exhausted,” Buffy said.

“Sure love,” Spike said, trying and failing to hide his disappointment. He carried her into the bedroom and set her on his neatly folded comforter. He kissed her; she expecting a quick peck and he not being able to resist parting her lips with his tongue and pursuing her until they were both breathless.

“Seriously tired here,” Buffy whispered, pushing him away.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I have to, you know, bathroom stuff,” Buffy said, softly. She got out of bed and staggered into the hall.

He didn't trust himself not to start groping her if he got in bed with Buffy; his own neediness of late was both exhilarating and humiliating. He was after her like a teenager which was embarrassing on the one hand. On the other, it was incredible to feel desire like that again.
Sex with Dru had become a numbing race down a spiral. Dru had always liked a touch of S&M and Spike had always appreciated the outfits. Toward the end of their marriage there was more than just a touch. Things had degraded between them to the point where Spike would let Dru hurt him more and more, just so he'd know she'd been there.
During one of their bouts Dru had broken his nose and a few little bones in his right hand. She wouldn’t untie him until he’d made her cum. It wasn’t exactly a letter to Penthouse, but Spike was proud that he’d been able to maintain an erection throughout the three-hour ordeal.

Buffy came back into the bedroom a few minutes later in nothing but a pair of miniscule, black panties and a white tank top. Spike caught her by the waist and pulled her into another kiss. She pushed him away after a few hot seconds.

“Good night,” she said, firmly.

“Night,” he said.

Spike shut off the bedroom light and went into the living room, dropping onto his overstuffed couch. He switched on the telly, flipped through the channels and finally settled on a black and white movie he knew he'd seen before though he couldn't recall the name. There was a slim, willowy blonde walking along a beach in a trailing white gown, and then it suddenly hit him.

"I Walked With A Zombie! Jane bloody Eyre with fucking voodoo," he said with a grin.

Spike watched the entire film, then "Cat People" after that. When the movie finished there was a rebroadcast of "I Walked With A Zombie." He couldn't sleep; his skin felt hot and oversensitive, everything was an irritation. Spike switched to BBC news, hoping the droning announcer would lull him into unconsciousness.

It didn't work. His left hand drifted up and down his stomach. There was one sure way to get relief; the fun kind of self-flagellation. Spike undid his fly and took his kit out. He started to absently stroke himself, closing his eyes to the Nightly Business Report. There were several reliable Buffy fantasies that usually did the trick at a time like this. His favorite had her dressed in a black, latex cat suit with a strategically placed zipper. She would demand he lower it with his teeth and soon after that his erection would trouble him no more.

"So, I take it pork futures get you hot?"

Spike opened his eyes with a start to see Buffy leaning against the wall, taking him in while a broad smile graced her face. She was still wearing her tank top, but her underwear was gone.

"Gah," he said or something like that, and immediately tried to hide his penis behind a gold, fringed throw pillow.

"Please don't stop," she said. Buffy's hands were clasped behind her back.

He smirked at her.

"How long were you watching?" he asked.

Spike stuck the pillow he'd been using as a shield behind his head.

"Long enough for them to go through the tech stocks," she said.

The ring of his fingers traveled up and down the length of his shaft as he looked at Buffy's face. Her lips were parted and her green eyes were trained on the motion of his hand.

"You're not gonna help a fella out, are you?"

"You seem to be doing a good job on your own," she said.

"Will you come closer, at least?" he asked.

"If you take your clothes off," she said.

Spike sat up and tugged his black t-shirt off with his right hand. He lowered his jeans and then kicked them off until they were balled up at the bottom of the couch. Spike leaned back again, spreading his legs until one foot was flat on the floor.

“Now you,” he said.

Buffy peeled her tank top off, spun it over her head like a lasso and then let it fly where it would. She took a wobbly step toward him and he nearly stopped the game they were playing to rush to her side. Buffy held out her hand as he sat up.

"I'm O.K., just a little dizzy from you," she said, an embarrassed, little smile replacing the broad grin.

"Be next to me, love, just in case," he said, holding out his right hand to her. Buffy gazed at Spike a moment before she approached and put her hand in his. She kissed him, all her earlier playfulness gone. Her long hair was dragging across his chest as her mouth moved against his. Buffy was delving into him and though it was only a shallow space, the feel of her tongue went through Spike's whole body. Buffy stopped her searching for a moment

"So you don’t watch porn?" she asked breathlessly against his ear.

“Sometimes, when I’m feeling ambitious; usually I just think of you,” he said.

“Right,” she said, meeting his eyes.

“S’true. You’re my fantasy, never thought I’d be here with you, sometimes I still can’t believe you’re real,” Spike said.

He grabbed the back of her head and lowered her mouth to his again. His long fingers held his cock again, lathing it as he kissed her. Buffy’s hands scrambled across his chest; her movements were frantic, as though she was slipping away and trying to grasp at something solid.
Sunshine started to whine and paw at the edges of his cage. Buffy giggled against his mouth.

“What does that dog have against you getting Buffy lovins’?”

His pride couldn’t take Buffy laughing while he touched himself, so Spike stopped.

“Dog never gets a portion himself, s’pose he’s jealous,” Spike said.

“A portion? God, you’re cute,” she said.

“Am not, I’m a rude, bad man,” he said, kissing the curve of her neck. Then he stood up and caught Buffy up into his arms. He carried her past Sunshine’s cage into the bedroom, then bounced her onto the bed. She was giggling until he resumed massaging his cock right at her eye level.

“You still like that kitten?” he asked.

She started to pant, then she was sliding him into her mouth. Buffy grabbed his hips and held him steady as she moved up and down. After a few minutes or maybe seconds he stopped her. She pulled his cock out her mouth with a loud pop.

“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t want to cum yet,” he said.

She let him go.

Spike held his cock and traced her lips with the tip; he could feel her breath slipping against the wet surface. He didn’t stop there, Spike drew a line down her throat, he circled her swollen breasts, the ridges of her rib cage, the inverted bowl of her stomach. He ran the head of his cock down her outer thigh, her knee, the top of her foot and then back again.

“Please, no more teasing,” she said. He watched the pulse in her throat jump as he lied down beside her.

Buffy opened her legs to him, and he pressed his hand against her. She was so wet her inner thighs were damp and Spike couldn’t wait any more. He got on top and plunged inside her, holding Buffy’s arms above her head, plowing into her until he finished. She looked confused and a little hurt that he hadn’t even tried to find her rhythm or tried to touch her. Spike kissed her swollen lips.

“Not done with you yet,” he said.

Spike slid down Buffy’s body, suckling gently at each breast, letting his tongue lick between them, then down her stomach until his head was between her legs. He took her clit into his mouth and sucked it like a hard candy. He’d planned to lick her clean, but she was shuddering, her legs snapping shut against his ears before he could even get started. When Buffy finally stopped seizing Spike took his place in her arms.

“Guess you weren’t so tired after all,” he said, with a smirk.

“Guess not.”

There were five boxes stacked neatly in the middle of the living room floor, the result of a morning’s work. It amazed Buffy how quickly she was able to sort it all out, fold it up; to condense her existence into easy-to-carry, carefully labeled, biodegradable containers.

Buffy and Spike were in the attic looking through the last of Buffy’s possessions. It was funny seeing him sitting cross-legged next to their Christmas tree, rummaging through her grandmother’s cedar chest. It was a bit like seeing her vibrator plopped in the middle of the Thanksgiving Day centerpiece or reading “The Story of O” aloud on the bus.

“What am I supposed to be looking for in here?” Spike asked.

Buffy closed the box of baby clothes she’d found and walked over to sit beside him, being careful not to catch her forehead on the sloping eaves that were draped in pink insulation.

“Photographs, mostly,” Buffy said.

She rested her head on his shoulder. Dismantling her life had taken a lot of energy and it felt good to lean on Spike. The scent of his soapy-clean skin cut through the dusty, dry-wood smell of the attic and the gray, flannel shirt he was wearing was soft against her cheek. He’d rolled the sleeves of his shirt up so she got a full view of his forearms and wrists. She loved watching his deft movements and she noticed her cheeks were getting flushed. She was kind of getting turned on. Buffy had no idea why glimpsing the expanse of bare flesh that spanned from a man’s wrist to his elbow had such an effect on her. It was so innocent it went all the way around and became perverse, like the Victorian shame regarding ankles.

“What are you thinking, my pensive girl?” Spike asked.

“I want to bite your wrists,” Buffy said, then covered her mouth, “Sorry, you know I have that thing with forearms.”

“Why do you think I folded back my cuffs?” he asked with a smirk as he continued to dig around the stacks of doilies in the cedar chest. When she was a single gal, Buffy’s grandmother had labored under the misapprehension that doilies were going to be a crucial part of married life. Subsequently, she had made way, way too many. Miraculously, Spike produced a black, leather-photo album from beneath the frilly pile of yellowed lace.

“So this is what, the seventeenth one of these we’ve found today?” Spike asked.

“Well, yeah, but this one’s special. It’s the only one I have from high school,” Buffy said.

She took it from his hands and flipped the book open to an image of a teenage Buffy in a cheerleading uniform.

“Cheerleader? I ate your lot for breakfast back then,” Spike said.

“You were mean to the pep squad? Why am I not surprised? Were we just too positive for you?”

“Something like that. None of them would sleep with a gutter punk like myself, so I put smelt in their lockers,” Spike said.

“That was sure to win their hearts. I know being abused with smelly fish always made me fall into a guy’s arms,” Buffy said.

“I was young and miserable and living in a foreign land, cut me some slack. I was also thoroughly misguided about what girls liked. Thought dying my hair and wearing a lot of safety pins in my face would attract them,” he said.

“What color?”

“Platinum blonde. Slathered on the eyeliner, too. Fancied I looked tough, but with that many cosmetics on at a time it probably came off a little fruity,” Spike said.

“Ooh, you wore eyeliner? I kind of want to put some on you now, I bet it made your eyes pop,” Buffy said.

“Forearms and makeup. Even your kinks are bloody adorable,” he said.

“They’re not kinks. Are they?”

“Oh they are, love. Bet there’s a bunch you don’t even know about, yet,” he said.

“I wish I knew you in high school. I think we could have been friends,” Buffy said.

“We definitely wouldn’t have been friends; would’ve been afraid to come near you. I probably would’ve written you worthless poetry that I was too gutless to give you or drawn your picture in class and then torn it up before anyone saw,” he said.

“Sure we would’ve. I hung out with everybody, even the Goth kids and the Chess Club set. It’s kind of funny, I had so many friends back then but the second I got pregnant they all went poof. It was like I never existed,” Buffy said.

“That’s when I would’ve swept in like the vulture I was, when the rest of them were gone. Then I never would’ve left you alone,” Spike said with a mirthless laugh.

“I would have fallen for you,” Buffy said.

“Not then, love, I was an angry, young man,” Spike said.

“As opposed to a grumpy, youngish man? I would have fallen for you hard, especially with the eye liner and the pointy stuff in your face,” Buffy said.

“I’m serious, Buffy. I’m not proud of who I was then,” Spike said.

“So am I. You would have been you, and you’re a good person. It would’ve been nice to be in love with you and not have any regrets about it,” Buffy said.

“You think I’m a good man?” he asked with surprise.

“I do,” she said, softly adding, “I know you are.”

Spike cupped Buffy’s face, pulling her in for a kiss. The kiss went on, and they were lying on the dirty, wooden floor, the photo album sliding shut as it fell. Spike was working on the button of her jeans when they heard someone downstairs. Buffy and Spike flew apart. She picked up the neglected photo album and set it on top of the box of baby clothes. He grabbed the bassinet. They made their way down the retractable, white, wooden ladder, Buffy going first.

Riley was sitting at the base of the stairs, looking up at them. Spike set the bassinet down and tugged Buffy into the hall, out of view.

“Back’s a little dusty, love,” he said with a smug grin. He swept her shirt with his hand. She turned and smiled at him, then brought her hand to his hair.

“Cobweb,” she said as she brushed it away.

They resumed their burdens and went down the steps to greet Riley. He gave them a tight smile. Spike wanted to say something smart, but Buffy thought he was a good man, and he knew a good man wouldn’t feel the need to take a dig at someone so thoroughly beaten. Instead Spike nodded as cordially as he could and waited for Buffy to tell him what he should do.

“I thought you might want help, but I see you’ve already got some,” Riley said.

“Spike, maybe you want to start loading the car,” Buffy said, pointedly. He smiled at her, ducked past the man in the wheelchair and went outside.

“We should be able to fit almost everything in the Bonneville, but I might have to pick up a few things when I drop off Dawn today,” Buffy said. She shifted uncomfortably with the box in her arms.

Riley looked past her eyes; he was resting his hands on the wheels of his chair then clasping them together, then touching the wheels again.

“Spike, that’s a name?”

“His upbringing was kind of unconventional,” Buffy said as she set the box down.

“So you’re pretty serious about all this, I take it,” Riley said.

“Yup, pretty serious,” Buffy said.

Spike came back into the house and caught her eye. Buffy looked at him and then forced herself to return Riley’s gaze.

“Riley, maybe we should go talk in the kitchen. Could you finish up on your own, Spike?” Buffy asked.

“’Course,” Spike said, looking nervously from Buffy to her husband.

Riley nodded and followed her into the other room. She could hear the sound of Spike’s boots on the hardwood and then the front door opening. Buffy leaned with her back against the counter and Riley faced her.

“You could still come back. You know that, right?” Riley asked.

“I can’t, Riley,” she said, folding her arms.

“Because I got hurt,” he said.

“Not because of that, come on. Things weren’t right before and you know it,” Buffy said.

“It’s different now,” Riley said.

“Yeah, it is. I’m in love with somebody else.”

“How can you really love him? You hardly know him.”

“I know him better than I do you. I never had all of you. You know something? I did the math and in the time we’ve been married, you’ve been away more than you’ve been with me. And when you were home you weren’t really here. You were always more of a hero to me than a husband and that’s the way you wanted it to be,” Buffy said.

“I tried, Buffy, but there’s some things…it hurts to talk about it and there’s no way you could understand,” Riley said.

“No, I guess not. I’m not Sam,” Buffy said.
Riley shifted and wove his fingers together.

“I’ll miss you,” Riley said.

Buffy didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to tell Riley that she’d been missing him for years, that leaving wouldn’t make much of a difference between them, at least not to her.

“You too,” she said.

She smiled at him. Riley backed his chair up without returning the gesture. There were two boxes on the living room floor. Spike came back into the house just as Buffy was picking up one of the containers. Spike went to her and tried to take it out of Buffy’s hand.

“I’ll get this, you get the other, then we can go,” Buffy said.

He nodded, keenly aware that Riley was glaring at them. Buffy went out the door as Spike stooped to pick up the last of her things. Riley was beside him in a second, speaking directly to him.

“If you ever hurt her, I’ll hurt you,” Riley said.

His fists were balled up, and Riley looked like a landmine waiting for some slight pressure to set him off. Spike wanted to tell him all the nasty things he’d been doing to Buffy the night before. He wanted to talk about how she was carrying his baby because Riley wasn’t enough of a man to please her. Spike wanted to tell him that he’d banged Buffy in the alley behind Riley’s own house when he was asleep in front of the television set and that she’d screamed Spike’s improbable name over and over until her voice was rough.

Instead, he just smiled.

“Right, mate,” Spike said as he adjusted the box in his arms. Spike didn’t expect the punch that re-broke his nose, and he dropped what he was holding. It landed with an ugly, shattering sound. Blood came out of his nostrils in a steady stream, something between a trickle and a pour.

“What the hell was that for?” Spike asked as he tilted his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“For fucking my wife,” Riley said.

Spike let out a dark chuckle that sounded like a mad engine refusing to turn over. Then he fixed Riley’s wide eyes with his own.

“I’ll let that one slide, not because of the chair, not gonna insult you that way, but because you’re right. I deserved a pop in the face for taking your wife. And I did, take her I mean, many, many times before she decided to come with me. But if you ever touch me again, or Buffy or Dawn, the day you got your wheels will be a relatively pleasant memory in comparison to what I will do to you,” Spike said.

The door opened and Buffy walked in to find Spike bleeding on the area rug while conducting a staring contest with her husband.

“Can we get out of here, or does one of you have to knock me down and pee on me first?” Buffy asked.

Both their faces swung in her direction. Spike hefted the box up swiftly and marched past Riley.

“We’re done, love,” Spike said as he left the house.

Buffy stood by the door looking at Riley.

“Good bye,” she said, hopefully.

He waved at her, a movement that looked like he was casting something away. She swallowed back her tears and left. It wasn't her home anymore.

As soon as the Bonneville door slammed shut, Buffy rounded on Spike.

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing, why are you taking his side when I’m the one whose bloody face is, well, bloody,” Spike said. He reached across Buffy’s knees and opened the glove box. Spike stirred through it and pulled out a packet of tissues. He yanked a few out and mopped at his injury.

“I’m not taking his side, just tell me what happened,” Buffy said, touching the darkening circle around his eye. Spike leaned into her hand; he was going to have twin bruises in the morning.

“He threatened me, he busted my nose. Happily, he doesn’t hit half so hard as Dru. Then I came back with a witty retort that made me sound all manly whilst I ruined his carpet with my precious bodily fluids,” Spike said.

“Spike—“

Buffy stroked Spike’s brown, wavy hair. Riley had said he would have hit her if she’d been a man, but she thought he’d simply spoken in anger. Buffy could see her husband peering at them through the living room sheers. Spike nuzzled her neck.

“S’alright love, I was asking for it,” Spike said. He’d managed to staunch the flow, but he had a handful of wadded up tissues soaked in red. Buffy found a plastic bag on the floor of the car and he shoved the soiled tissues in it.

“He shouldn’t have hit you, I’m going to talk to him,” Buffy said. She took the handle of the door and Spike put his hand on her arm.

“That would undermine the manly speech if my girlfriend went in there to defend my honor,” Spike said.

Buffy looked at his battered face and felt anger spread like fire through her chest. She did the only thing that would impress upon Riley exactly how she felt. Buffy grabbed Spike by the shoulders and captured his mouth. He let out a surprised gasp when their lips touched. She could taste his blood as her tongue slipped inside his mouth. When they finally pulled apart, Spike rubbed his thumb against the plump center of her lower lip, wiping it clean.

“If you ever doubt that I love you, remember that I just tasted your nose blood,” Buffy said.

She turned her face and kissed the palm of his hand. Spike chuckled.

“We should get you home so you can have a nap before work,” he said.

“Can’t, I have to pick up Dawn from school,” Buffy said.

***

Buffy sat in the parking lot of Sunnydale High watching students alternately galloping, sulking and walking out of school. Dawn came out the double doors and stood at the top of the steps, a book bag slung over her shoulder. Her daughter was wearing high-heeled boots that went up to the knee and a denim skirt that barely hit the middle of her upper thigh. New purchases, Buffy thought. Riley wouldn’t have bought those for her; Dawn must have picked them up when she was out with Janice. Dawn scanned the crowd of vehicles until she saw her mother’s car. Her gait changed when she saw the gray Ford; Dawn put a deliberate sway into her hips as she sauntered down the steps. The girl made her way across the expanse of grass. When she got to the car, Dawn opened the door, got in and shut the door.

“Good day today?” Buffy asked. She looked at her daughter, but Dawn kept her focus forward.

“Mr. Pratt wasn’t in English class today,” Dawn said, holding her bag to her chest.

“He was helping me move out,” Buffy said. She touched Dawn’s hair and smoothed it behind the her daughter’s ear. Buffy was surprised Dawn didn’t flinch away and she smiled.

Buffy started the car and backed out of her space. They traveled in a quiet that got heavier with each passing mile. Buffy tapped the steering wheel with a neatly painted, pink nail.

“Did you know he was practically engaged to another teacher until your womb got all fruited,” Dawn said, suddenly.

“What?” Buffy asked.

“Ms. Rosenberg. Janice told me they used to meet every day in the library for smoochies in between the stacks; then he dumped her because you were pregnant,” Dawn said.

“That’s not true,” Buffy said, softly.

“I heard it from Janice and I heard it again from Larry totally separately. This girl Rachel Spiegel who’s in my algebra class saw Ms. Rosenberg crying in the girl’s bathroom and then overheard her telling the whole story to another teacher,” Dawn said.

Buffy’s jaw clenched and she concentrated on the movement of traffic.

“A bunch of kids were making fun of me today. They said the only reason I got my award was because you put out for the English teacher,” Dawn said.

“You shouldn’t talk to me that way, I’m your mother,” Buffy said, sternly.

“I’m just telling you what they said,” Dawn said.

“Still,” Buffy said.

“Fine.”

They arrived at the house and pulled into the driveway. Buffy had barely stopped the car when Dawn was leaping out.

“I love you,” Buffy said to the abandoned seat.

***

Spike woke up to find Buffy staring at him. She was perched on the edge of the bed, her naked legs drawn up to her chest. Buffy’s blonde hair was cascading in soft waves, her face was tilted, questioning. The expression on her face made him start.

“Wh’ isit?”

“Who’s Ms. Rosenberg?”

“What?”

“That red-haired teacher. Who is she to you?” Buffy asked.
Spike shifted onto his side, propping his head up on the palm of his hand. His head was clearing sufficiently so that he could understand what she was asking and it was making him angry.

“My friend,” Spike said, bluntly.

“What kind of friend?”

“What does that mean?”

Buffy was still curled up, unwilling to touch him.

“Were you sleeping with her?”

“What the hell?” Spike asked.

Buffy hugged her legs tighter and her lower lip jutted out.

“Just answer me, please.”

“Wasn’t sleeping with her, she kissed me once after Dru and I broke up, that’s all. Now tell me what’s with the paranoia, waking me up like this,” Spike said.

“Dawn said—“

“And you believed her?”

“I don’t know. No. I’m sorry, let’s forget it, let’s go to sleep,” Buffy said.

Buffy stretched her legs out and started to settle onto the bed. She turned, putting her back to him. Buffy held herself in a rigid posture with the covers gathered to her chest. She felt him watching her and Buffy sighed, tears pressing against her eyes.

“I just can’t lose you, not after everything,” Buffy said.

Spike pivoted her by the shoulder and shoved her flat. He crawled on top of her, pinning Buffy beneath him. He looked into her face.

“You won’t,” he said.

“Promise me, please, promise me,” she said.

“You won’t lose me, I promise. There’s nobody else in the world that loves me but you, Buffy. They’re all gone. I know what that’s worth and I won’t ever risk it,” he said.

Buffy arched her neck, sought his mouth and found it. The kiss was frenetic with her hands pouring over his back. He’d gotten hard as soon as their bodies touched. Spike wasn’t gentle with her like he should have been, he was still angry that she’d paid Dawn’s regurgitated rumor any mind. If he’d known how long it would be before they were joined again, he would’ve been slower, he would’ve been better. In that moment they were rough and fast. But in that moment they could not have been anything else; a moment perfect in its way.

The bruises around Spike’s eyes had turned from muddy cobalt to faded green; almost the color of a pear. Somehow the healing made his face look worse; at least the dark marks had character. The fading blemishes just made his skin look dirty.

In that time Buffy had been getting progressively more exhausted. The doctor had diagnosed her with anemia and prescribed extra supplements to go with her vitamins. The pills made her nauseous; the only foods she could keep down were saltine crackers and peanut butter cup ice cream. Buffy’s weight was dropping and she was a thin woman to start. Spike hated that she worked the night shift. If he could be honest with himself, he hated that she had to work at all when she was so sick. Buffy was trying to get on days but there was a waiting list. More than once he’d woken up at two in the morning after instinctively groping for Buffy to find her side of the bed empty. He’d get up to discover her collapsed face-down on the living room couch in her scrubs, her utilitarian, plastic shoes on her feet. After the first few times he came upon her that way, Spike had taken to sleeping on the couch so he could care for Buffy when she tumbled through the door. Initially, she bristled at his attempts to molly coddle her but soon she met him with gratitude.

Spike felt thin, like whisky that had been watered down and salted to cover the dwindling taste. He was holding on until summer break when he could see to his girl properly without any diversions, like work. They hadn’t opened up the boxes or set aside time to decorate the baby’s room. They hadn’t had sex, either, and that shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did, but Spike wanted her more than he wanted a cigarette and he wanted a cigarette more than he’d ever wanted almost anything in his entire life.

And then there was Dawn.

Dawn hadn’t been to his class in a week and a half. When Buffy came to pick her up from school the girl was monosyllabic and surly, which bothered her mother to no end. Dawn was upsetting Buffy and Spike couldn’t have that; not now when her health was so delicate. Aside from his concern for Buffy, Dawn was angling to fail. Spike was responsible for that and it plagued him; his thoughts on the matter were burrs and thorns.

It was fifth period and he knew just where Dawn would be; outside of the gym with the rest of the kids nicking a smoke between classes. The little rebel had a burgeoning nicotine habit.

When Spike swung open the double doors, the other kids scattered like rice spilling from an open bag. Not Dawn, though. She was leaning against the brick wall in her too-short, plaid skirt and her white, dress shirt tied saucily at the waist with a look in her enormous, blue eyes that seemed to say, “What took you so long?”

Spike crossed his arms over his chest and she smirked at him, pinching her coffin nail inexpertly between red, glossy nails. Spike snatched the cigarette from her hand.

“These will kill ya, pet,” he said.

Then he took a drag. There was a delicious burn through his chest with an unfortunate aftertaste. Grape Lip Smackers. Yuck.

“Why do you care?”

He exhaled a white plume through his nose and smiled at her.

“You’ve been skipping your lessons, Dawn. Gone from my best student to my worst,” Spike said.

Dawn put her foot against the wall, parting her legs slightly, dangerously close to flashing her knickers. He wondered if she had any idea what she was doing. Spike kept his focus on her angry, blue eyes.

“Why.Do.You.Care?”

She was just short of stamping around like a toddler, it undermined whatever she was trying to accomplish with her big-girl clothes. Spike took another sip from the cigarette.

“You know I care about you, Dawn, not just ‘cause of your mum. Fell for her because I liked you so well,” Spike said.

The retort Dawn had at the ready got stuck in her throat.

“It’s true. You’ll still pass even if you don’t show for the rest of the semester, but you’re missing out on one of the best novels of the Twentieth Century. Also, without you in class Abby Triester’s getting a bit too big for her britches,” Spike said.

“You know she didn’t even read ‘Of Mice and Men,’ she just watched the movie?” Dawn asked with a silly, grapey grin.

“Yeah I know, had to read her essay on it, didn’t I?”

Dawn laughed and then seemed to remember she was talking to Spike. She flicked her long, shining hair behind her shoulder.

“My dad was the one who gave you those black eyes,” Dawn said.

“He was indeed,” Spike said, sucking out the last,
luxurious drag from the crumbling cigarette. He dropped
the butt and crushed it out with the heel of his scuffed, brown, dress shoe.

“Good,” she said.

“Don’t mind if you hate me, pet, I can take it, but you’re killing your mother. She hasn’t been eating, she’s barely slept,” Spike said.

“So this was all about her, then, of course,” Dawn said with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Not all but most. I’d have started dogging you last week about missing class if you’d been anybody else,” Spike said. He slid his hands in the pocket of his dark green, corduroy pants, wishing they were occupied with another smoke.

“You don’t care about me at all,” Dawn said.

He sighed.

“Why should I matter, pet?”

“Don’t know,” Dawn said.

Mercifully, Dawn put both of her feet flat on the ground and tugged her skirt flat. She pulled her face into a pout, aping a gesture he found irresistible when her mother did it. On Dawn it just pissed him off. Spike took a deep breath hoping to contain his temper.

“If I gave you something, something that would prove to you that you I care about you, would you drop this bad girl stuff? Don’t expect you to forgive me and your mum overnight, but I do need you to stop hurting yourself,” Spike said.

“You want to pay me off?” she asked with a sneer.

Spike laughed.

“You’ve seen my car, pet, you know I’m not exactly flush,” he said.

Dawn swallowed a smile.

“What then?”

Spike looked down at the asphalt and toed the curled filter of his discarded cigarette.

“Remember when I told you a writer’s life was one of poverty and rejection?”

She nodded yes.

“Was speaking from experience. When I was twenty-three I got my first book published; turned out to be my only published book. Wasn’t so good, sold about two-hundred copies and then died a death un-mourned. I’ll let you read it, let you tell me what you honestly think if you promise to ditch the ciggies, show up for class and smile at your mother at least once a week. The skirts are your business,” Spike said.

“Why would that prove anything?”

“Haven’t shown it to anyone in more than twenty years, that’s why. Your mother doesn’t even know I wrote a book,” Spike said.

Dawn’s eyes took on a look of awe and her goopy lower lip gaped.

“Why haven’t you told anyone? If I wrote a book I’d probably have it turned into an amulet so I could have a copy on me all the time,” she said.

“Told you, wasn’t very good. I’m embarrassed of it now,” Spike said.

“There’s lots of sex stuff in it, isn’t there?” Dawn asked with a measure of eagerness that made him uncomfortable.

“Teenagers, always got your minds in the gutter,” he said, rocking on his heels.

“But there is, isn’t there?” Dawn asked, bringing her hands together in a silent clap.

Spike tilted his head and teased the back of his teeth with the tip of his tongue.

“Of course. So, have we got a deal?” Spike asked.

“Deal,” Dawn said. She stuck out her hand; Spike laughed and shook it.

Spike opened his leather briefcase and produced a slim volume. The dust jacket was gray with a picture of a spiral staircase in black and white. He handed it to the girl and then zipped up his case. Dawn flipped the book over and read the title aloud.

“The Stairwell? What’s it mean?” she asked.

“Just read it,” he said.

“What if I don’t show up to class tomorrow?” Dawn asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Then I know what your word’s worth,” Spike said.

That got Dawn’s attention, like he knew it would.

“I’ll be there, I’m not a liar,” she said, stressing the last word.

“I know you will, pet,” Spike said.

He turned and went back inside, out of the afternoon sunlight. Spike smiled with satisfaction when he heard Dawn’s footsteps behind him.

***

Dawn had stolen up to her room with brief smiles toward Riley and Sam who were sitting at the kitchen table chopping vegetables for the dinner salad. Her dad was making meat loaf and the scent of roasting hamburger followed her upstairs as she cloistered herself in bed with Mr. Pratt’s book.

***

She was shaking, Buffy was shaking in his arms. The trembling woke them at the same time.
“Spike, Spike there’s blood,” Buffy said from lips that were turning blue.

***

And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

“The Wasteland,” by T.S. Eliot

The baby was gone. They’d spent the night trying to be seen at the emergency room and by the time Buffy was actually in front of a doctor it was already over. She was spiking a fever over one hundred and they had to put her on an antibiotic drip. That wouldn’t help the little one, it was already over. The baby was gone, but at least the bundle of tissue wouldn’t drag Buffy along with him. Spike couldn’t help but imagine that the baby that wasn’t would have been a boy; Something Rupert Pratt.

After the needles and tubes, they gave her something to quiet the pain in her abdomen. Spike held Buffy’s hand until she fell asleep. The doctor told him the fever had broken, so Spike took the opportunity to go home and throw the sheets out, put on fresh. No reason she should return to that, Spike thought. He went to the grocery store and picked up a few of Buffy’s favorite foods, a bottle of whiskey and two dozen roses from the little refrigerated trough at the back of the shop. They were perfect blooms, far better than their surroundings. Each petal held the pale, peach blush of a Titian nude.

When he got home, Spike unpacked the crinkling plastic bags and set the bouquet in the empty, tulip-shaped vase on the dining room table, careful to trim the stems and sprinkle the water with the square packet of preservative. He took a shower, scraped at the day’s worth of stubble with a dull razor and regarded his face in the mirror. Gaunt, that was the word to describe his visage. When Buffy ached, so did he, when she couldn’t eat, he couldn’t eat. God, he wished for a cigarette. Maybe it didn’t matter any more if he picked up a pack on the way to the hospital, it was already over. The baby was gone. Spike packed Buffy a bag. On his way out he glanced at the pile of boxes stacked in his spare room. Buffy hadn’t unpacked.

He wondered if he should stick the baby clothes and the bassinet in the basement to spare her the sight of them.
Instead, he shrugged into his jacket and went to collect his girlfriend. He wondered if she still wanted to be his girlfriend or if it was already over now that the baby was gone.

***

Buffy smiled and reached her hands out toward Spike as he came into the hospital room. He noticed there was a transparent tube inserted into the crook of her slender arm and her skin was as white as milk. He walked across the floor to her and crushed Buffy in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” she said into his neck. He wondered how she could still smell so good after all of this, like luscious fruit and dusky flowers. Spike traced her ear with a gentle fingertip.

“It wasn’t your fault, love. Doctor said it wasn’t meant to be,” Spike said.

“That’s not how it feels,” Buffy said.

“None of that now,” he said.

Spike kissed her.

“I love you, Buffy,” he whispered against her skin.

She looked at him with an expression of indescribable gratitude.

Of course he would be the one to say it first, she thought, he was the brave one, ready to bear his heart too soon. Her Spike, heedless into the storm, struggling against the deep water, welcoming her when all she’d wanted was to get away. Falling in love with him had been the most selfish decision of her life, the worst thing she’d ever done but Buffy could never regret it. He was hers, the only person who really ever was hers.

“I love you, too,” she said.

It was a Saturday, a small respite from the misery of that day because at least they were together. Tara told Buffy she could take all the time she needed. Before he discharged her, the doctor told Buffy she could expect bleeding along with some pain for the rest of the week. People handed her things, Spike helped her change into some clean clothes he brought, documents were signed. The sun hurt her eyes as they stepped outside and she needed his arm for support on the way to the car. Though she was weak when she got home, Buffy’s first priority was to unpack the boxes, to show Spike that their relationship had always been about more than the baby. She loved him and she wanted to stay and if threading her book collection in with his was the only way to prove that, Buffy knew she would do it.

To their mutual surprise, it only took a few hours to move Buffy into Spike’s house. The task had seemed so daunting before, but now it was finished and they were spent, lying side by side on the bed.

“Don’t know why we waited so long to do that,” Spike said.

“Right, I totally agree. I don’t know what I was so afraid of,” Buffy said.

“God, I really want a cigarette,” Spike said.

She smiled at him, about to say that secondhand smoke was really bad for the baby, when she remembered. Buffy started to cry.

“I’m sorry love, what is it?”

“The doctor said I’d be like this, hair trigger weepies for the next few weeks,” Buffy said.

“S’alright, love. I’ll start drinking more so I won’t notice,” Spike said. Spike smiled at her, hoping she’d take the bait. Buffy laughed though her cheeks were still wet with tears; at first she was only trying to make him feel better, then she couldn’t stop. Spike held Buffy to his chest as she made sobbing sounds that hovered between agony and mirth, until she fell asleep.

***


My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms

“The Wasteland,” by T.S. Eliot

Dawn finished the book Sunday night and had a host of questions for Mr. Pratt Monday afternoon. She wanted to tell him she got why he’d wanted her to read his autobiography. It was all about his mom, how he’d spent his whole childhood resenting her. At first Dawn had been offended at the obvious tactic, but soon the tale caught her up in its rhythm.

She couldn’t stop reading until the end, when his mother’s ashes were sitting on the kitchen table next to a package of Jaffa cakes and the day’s mail. Spike hadn’t realized how much he’d loved her of course, of course until she was dust and overdue postage. Dawn wasn’t made of stone; she’d cried. She’d cried so hard Riley knocked on her door and asked what was wrong. Dawn had told him mostly the truth, that she missed her mother.

So Monday afternoon, Dawn had waited patiently through class for her revelatory moment; except Mr. Pratt wasn’t in the mood to talk to that day. He was looking even worse than usual, and he’d been looking genuinely awful for weeks now. When she cornered him in the empty school room he’d given her a tight smile.

“I finished your book,” Dawn said.
Mr. Pratt scooped his papers into his battered brief case and looked at her over his hurried movements.

“What did you think?” he asked, absently.

“It was amazing, I can’t understand why it didn’t sell a bajillion copies like that glittery vampire book,” Dawn said.

He gave Dawn an authentic smile and slipped his silver pen into the front pocket of his pale, blue dress shirt.

“Maybe if I’d put a werewolf subplot in,” he said.

“So, was that true, that stuff about your mom?”

He set the case on his desk and zipped it closed.

“Every syllable,” he said.

“And the sex stuff with that Cecily lady?

“All poetic license,” he said, with a bounce of his eyebrows.


“That’s a huge relief,” Dawn said with a wide, silly grin.
Mr. Pratt started to walk away and Dawn caught the sleeve of his brown jacket by a frayed cuff.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He looked down at her hand and hesitated. Then Mr. Pratt patted her clutching fingers.

“Something happened with your mother, she’s going to be alright, but the baby didn’t, the baby isn’t,” he said.
Dawn looked at him, stunned.

“Buffy wanted to be the one to tell you. I have to go Dawn, we’ll catch up later,” he said. Then Mr. Pratt disappeared.

Dawn went through the rest of the day in a daze. This was what she’d hoped for when she was at her angriest but now that it was happening, Dawn felt ashamed to have ever entertained the thought. The baby was not going to be; no tiny toes or slobbery kisses, no pink-faced midget to spoil and tease. Even though her sibling had only been a concept before, Dawn realized she was going to miss him or her.

By the time her mother came to pick her up, Dawn was already waiting by the sidewalk. Dawn got in the car, uncertain of what to say.

“Hi mommy,” she said. Dawn only called her mother mommy anymore when she was really sick. Buffy looked at her with a sad smile.

“Hey Dawnie, I’ve got some bad news,” she said.

“Mr. Pratt, Spike, told me, about the baby. I’m so sorry,” Dawn said. She gave her mother a hug.

Then her mom was crying and Dawn got a little freaked out. She’d never seen Buffy cry before. The hug ended and Dawn looked down at her too-red fingernails.

“Is it my fault?” Dawn asked, daring to flick her eyes up to meet her mother’s.

“Of course not, why would you think—“

“The stress I’ve been putting on you, I know it wasn’t good for the baby,” Dawn said, thinking of what Mr. Pratt had said, ‘You’re killing your mother.’

“It wasn’t your fault, bad things just happen for no reason sometimes,” Buffy said.

The two women sat together.

“Are you moving back in with me and dad?” Dawn asked, carefully.

“No Dawn, I’m sorry. But I still want you to come live with me, at least a few days a week,” Buffy said.

Dawn didn’t speak for a breath. She hugged her mom’s thin shoulders and rested her head against her neck. Dawn thought about what it would be like to lose her mom, really lose her the way Spike had. To have her body disintegrate outside in the cold before Dawn even knew her mother was gone.

“I’ll get over it. Besides, I think Spike needs you more,” Dawn said.

Buffy started to turn over the collar of Dawn’s shirt.

“What are you doing?” Dawn asked.

“Looking for the seam. You’re probably going to pull off that Dawn mask Scooby-Doo style, because there’s no way my daughter just said that,” Buffy said, with a silly smile.

“Ha, ha,” Dawn said with a dramatic eye roll. Then she hugged Buffy just a little tighter.

Dawn had not stopped making fun of her mother for the past two weeks.

“I know it’s symbolic and everything, but that doesn’t mean the two of you aren’t colossal dorks,” Dawn had said at the dress shop. “Desiree’s Formalwear,” mostly trafficked in wedding gowns but in April they dragged out a rainbow-colored array of slippery dresses for prom season. The bright party clothes stood out garishly in the creamy interior of the shop.

“Hey, it’s your fault I never made it to my real prom. Just be glad you don’t have to go,” Buffy said, as she came out of the changing room in a fluffy, pink number with a sequined bodice. Some of the irony left Dawn’s face as she gazed at her mother and she unfolded her arms.

“You look gorgeous,” Dawn said, before she added, quickly, “but you’re still very, very lame.”

Buffy twirled in front of the triptych mirror and giggled.

“You think he’s going to like it?” she asked as she stopped and the voluminous, satin skirt draped against her knees.

“Of course he will. He’s as lame as you are and he’s so in love with you that it’s just a little bit gross,” Dawn said.

Buffy walked toward her daughter and caught her up in a hug.

“Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” Dawn said through a wide smile.

“You can borrow it when you go to junior prom next year,” Buffy said as she let Dawn go.

Dawn shuffled her feet a little.

“Nobody’s going to ask me, your darling daughter is kind of a freak,” Dawn said.

“Come on, I’m sure you’re going to meet someone who will love you with gag-inducing intensity, and you’ll be making me and Spike and your dad super-uncomfortable in no time,” Buffy said.

“That’s so sweet, mom,” Dawn said.

***

Buffy had suggested that Spike wear his kilt instead of renting a tux, but he thought it would be slightly less humiliating for Dawn if he was dressed more conventionally. The compromise was that he would bring the kilt to the hotel after the prom if she would pack her old cheer leading outfit.

“So in this role playing scenario, why am I Scottish if you’re a cheerleader?” Spike asked.

“Because you have great legs,” Buffy said.

Dawn usually spent the weekends with Buffy and Spike, but Riley agreed to switch days with them so they could have their special night. When she asked him for the favor while she was dropping Dawn off after school, Riley didn’t quite make fun of Buffy, but she could see from the wrinkles around his eyes that it was taking all of her ex’s energy not to.

“You’re so much girlier than I remember,” Riley said with a chuckle.

Buffy bit back several retorts starting with, ‘You always did forget I was a woman,’ to ‘I guess that’s why I could never compete with She-Ra, Princess of Depilatory,’ surprised at her own bitterness.

Instead she smiled and thanked him. There was no reason to start being mean when all he was trying to do was help her, Buffy thought.

Of course, Dawn thought Buffy and Spike were insane and told them so while they were having a late lunch around the dining room table. Dawn had made some sort of spicy, beige sauce to pour over noodles and they were all trying to puzzle it out while they talked about their prom night plans.

“Why would you rent a hotel room if you have a house?” Dawn asked.

“Historical accuracy. I wouldn’t have taken my date to my Uncle Rupe’s, and this used to be his house back when he was alive,” Spike said. He twirled the pasta on the tines of his fork and put it in his mouth. Spike began to chew as though he had bitten into a cake studded with thumb tacks.

“If you were being really accurate, wouldn’t mom be a few years too young for you?” Dawn asked, making Buffy spit water out of her nose.

“Traitor,” Spike said, though his voice was muffled by the most incomprehensibly bad meal he’d ever tried to eat.

“I think a hotel is a big waste of money,” Dawn said to her mother.

Spike wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and then glanced at Buffy.

“This is one of those things I’m not going to explain to you, because you only think you want to know. The truth could cause you to weep blood or at the very least cause permanent ugh face,” Buffy said.

Spike nodded yes in agreement and tried to subtly spit his bite into the napkin.

“I think you’re right, ugh face is already forming, but that could be because of how disgusting lunch is. I’m sorry. Should we order pizza?” Dawn asked.

***

“It’s not bad luck to see you in the dress before the thing, is it?” Spike asked.

Buffy had just finished piling up her hair into a crown of blonde ringlets and was pulling her gown up over her strapless bra when Spike walked into their bedroom. He was perfect in his rented clothes and for a moment she thought of the wedding photograph he’d taken with Drusilla that used to hang in the dining room.

Buffy put that out of her mind. Spike wanted to be with her; he was always game no matter how silly her plans got.

“Nope, it’s not like a wedding,” Buffy said.

“Might be bad luck for the frock, though. Fancy me tearing that thing off you, pet?”

“You’re not ripping this, I promised it to Dawn, now zip me,” Buffy said, offering her open dress to him and glancing over her bare shoulder.

Her calculated gesture got the desired response.

“Don’t talk about Dawn right now,” Spike said.

He kissed every inch of her back as he slowly pulled up the tab. Spike stroked the nape of her neck with light, shivery fingers, calling up goose bumps all over her skin. He tipped her head until their mouths met, kissing until they had to stop for breath.

“Should we maybe skip the dance and just go to the hotel?” Buffy asked. He brushed her lips with his smile.

“Better to make you wait,” he said.

“Evil,” she said.

Spike slipped his fingers under the silky skirt of her dress.

“On the other hand, I’ve never been one for waiting,” Spike said.

Spike kissed her ear and teased the elastic legs of her panties, when they were interrupted by the doorbell.

“Don’t answer it,” Spike said.

“It’s probably—“

Someone was walking into the house.

“Hey guys, are you decent?” Dawn asked.

Spike pulled his hands away and quickly rearranged Buffy’s dress. He gave her a kiss on the forehead and placed his hands on her waist. Dawn was standing in the doorway holding a camera and a plastic bag.

“Time to commemorate your dorkiness dorks! I brought corsages!” Dawn said, swinging the bag.

Spike smiled at Buffy so broadly his dimples showed and his eyes got crinkly. Buffy beamed back at him and Dawn snapped a photo. They pinned their flowers on each other amid the flash of Dawn’s camera. Dawn posed them in the living room and then the front yard like she was a new grandparent until it was time to go.

They had decided against getting a limo for two reasons. For one thing, in order to create an authentic high school experience they would have had to get six other prom attendees to go in with them. For another, Spike got car sick when he wasn’t driving.

Dawn watched them pull away, waving maniacally. She would never tell them, but Dawn actually thought what her mom and Spike were doing was wonderful in a weird sort of way.
Before she moved in with Spike, her mother had never been very fun. Buffy was always the one making sure Dawn got off to school on time with a nutritionally balanced lunch; she clipped coupons and scheduled dentist appointments and ironed shirts. Buffy had the precision of a Swiss-made watch, the gift her mom had asked for two Christmases ago after they’d seen a row of them in the jewelry store case at the mall. Dawn had lingered over the colored gemstones and swooned over the diamonds, but of course mom had gone for the practical, the attainable, the boring.

That was her mom. At least, she thought that was her mom. Apparently Buffy had been eyeing the shiny baubles on the sly. You think you know a person, you think they are confined to the tasks they repeat each day; then you find out they were only really living in the brief pauses of conversation, the silences you thought held no meaning. You find out your mom is just as goofy and self-indulgent and wicked as you wish you could be.

Dawn waited until the Bonneville rounded the corner to get on her bike. She was putting together a scrap book for their big prom night because she was sure her mom would be totally embarrassed when Dawn presented it to her. Also, they did look amazing standing next to each other in their finery; Dawn had never seen either of them smiling that big before. It was something she wanted to remember.