Swings and Roundabouts
Chapter Fifteen
A light breeze carried the wisps of Spike’s cigarette smoke into the early evening sky. There was a peaceful silence about the place, a sense of anticipation filling the air.
The park-goers, walking their dogs and playing with their children, had long gone as the afternoon lengthened, and only Buffy and Spike remained, seated underneath the tree, backs to the trunk while they talked.
Now they sat in contemplative, but not uncomfortable, silence. The initial shock hadn’t worn off. Upon seeing the photographs, Spike had immediately known what Buffy had wanted to tell him, and his heart had leapt into his mouth, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.
He had gone to the park looking for Buffy and had instead found a daughter.
Buffy had haltingly explained what had happened in those first few months after she’d discovered her pregnancy: how she’d tried to find him, even going so far as to try and find Drusilla’s grave for a clue to his last name.
She’d talked of how a few months ago Grace had fallen quite seriously ill and she had redoubled her efforts to locate him, to tell him he had a daughter. Spike’s stomach had swooped at the thought of his unknown child falling ill without his having any knowledge of it at all.
Hesitantly, Buffy had asked how he was feeling and he hadn’t known what to say. What could he tell her when he didn’t know for sure how he felt himself? Shocked, for one. In awe. Afraid. Sad, that he’d missed the first few years of his daughter’s life. There was even a strange, irrational anger towards Buffy, despite knowing that she had done all she could to find him, and a disappointment that she seemingly had no romantic interest in him. But, overall, a terrible yearning, a tugging of his heart, to see Grace, his daughter.
Now, as evening fell and his thoughts had a little more coherency, he opened his mouth to speak. “I want to see her.” His voice was loud in the relative silence of the park, and he winced, not having meant to sound so abrupt.
“I’d like that too,” Buffy replied, a small smile on her face. “I need a little time, to explain things to her, you know? She’s still young… But she’s not ignorant, so maybe… in a couple of days or so?”
“I’ll need to talk to Claire,” he said, almost to himself, “but yeah, a couple of days sounds good. Give me some time to get my head on straight.”
Buffy nodded, but a frown appeared on her face, creasing her forehead when she focused on the first thing he’d said. “Claire?”
“My daughter,” Spike reminded her. “I mentioned her when we first met, didn’t I? Tried to show you a photo, if I recall.”
“Oh.” Buffy bit her lip, mentally kicking herself for having forgotten. “So Grace has a sister.”
“Yeah.”
“D’you think she’ll be okay with this?” she asked, wondering if things had all of a sudden become far more complicated than she’d originally thought.
“I really don’t know.” Spike shrugged, a worried look on his face. “She’s getting to that stroppy teenage phase, so anything’s possible.”
Buffy said nothing, just nodded her head with a sigh before glancing at her watch. “I’d better get going. I feel bad leaving Grace with my mom so often; she’s already done so much for me. So, shall we say… Tuesday? Are you free about four-ish?”
“Should be,” Spike replied. “And if I’m not, I’ll cancel. This is far more important.”
***
In the end, Spike decided not to tell Claire about Buffy and Grace. Claire had an important test coming up and he didn’t want to distract her from it. Perhaps that was the wrong path to take, and it could prove disastrous in the long-run, but truth be told, he was more than a little worried about how she would react.
If it had been such a shock to his system, he imagined it’d be ten times worse for someone still so young.
He sighed. He’d see Grace on Tuesday, let Claire do her test on Wednesday and then tell her. Keeping secrets was always worse than coming clean from the off, so he knew he couldn’t leave it too long.
He tried not to let what had happened at the park affect his everyday life, but even a blind man could tell that something had changed.
He was distracted at work, which earned him a reprimand from Snyder, and Claire kept giving him funny looks over dinner on Monday night, particularly when he didn’t eat his naan bread, usually a favourite of his.
“You okay, Dad?” his daughter asked through a mouthful of tandoori chicken. “You’re weird tonight.”
“I’m fine,” he replied, cursing his daughter’s perceptiveness but at the same time wanting nothing more than to get everything out in the open.
Claire frowned but returned to eating her curry and flicking through the pages of her maths book.
***
Tuesday afternoon found Buffy a bundle of nerves as she tried to get Grace ready.
“Your daddy’s coming to see you today, sweetie,” she said, brushing her daughter’s springy curls.
“My daddy who lived in England,” Grace declared proudly.
“That’s right.” Buffy had explained things to the little girl to the best of her abilities, and Grace had been in a state of perpetual excitement ever since. Grace had never really noticed her lack of a father before, being a little too young for it to have become an issue, and Buffy thought that she still didn’t really understand, but perhaps it was better that way.
“This one?” Buffy asked, pulling a yellow dress from the cupboard. “Or the purple one?”
“Purple!”
“Purple it is.”
Dressed and ready some time later, Grace perched on her hip, Buffy left the room and went downstairs. Joyce sat in the living room, coat on and purse in hand, her expression worried.
“You’re still here, Mom?” Buffy asked, setting the little girl down on the floor. “It took me longer than I thought to get this little monster ready. Your hair appointment’s at three, right?”
“Yes.” Joyce nodded. “But I wanted to double check… are you sure you don’t want me here? I can stay. Andrea won’t mind if I reschedule.”
“I’ll be okay.” When Joyce didn’t move and gave her that mom look, Buffy sighed. “It’ll be even more awkward with you here. Go. Please?”
“All right.” Joyce pursed her lips but stood up and made her way to the front door. “But if you need me, I’ve got my cell.”
“It’ll be fine,” Buffy said again. She all but shooed her mom out of the house, sinking against the door with a sigh when it closed. Truthfully, she felt far from fine: a horde of butterflies had taken residence in her stomach and they fluttered madly every time she thought about Spike coming here, to her home, to meet their daughter.
“Mommy?” Buffy felt a tug on her pant leg and looked down. Grace had a pad of paper in one hand and a packet of crayons in the other. “Help me draw a picture of daddy.” She chewed on her lip, brow furrowed. “I don’t know what he looks like.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She led her daughter back into the lounge and settled her at the coffee table. More than anything—things that had been said by Spike, by her mom, her friends—it was that one tiny sentence from Grace made her feel irrationally guilty.
She helped Grace draw the outline of a man, filling in the facial features with shadows underneath the hollows of his cheekbones and a bright blue for his eyes.
The afternoon wore on, the minutes ticking away, and Grace became ever more excited. She’d abandoned the crayons for her stuffed animals and was in the process of making the duck dance with the dog when the doorbell rang. Buffy stood, pressed one hand to her racing heart and guided Grace towards the front door with the other.
The sight of him nervously pacing the front path when she opened the door calmed her nerves slightly, and she gave him a little wave.
She had the sudden urge to laugh when Grace copied her, waggling her little fingers at Spike. “Hello. You’re my daddy.”
Spike’s face softened, and he crouched down in front of Grace, his eyes intense as he took in every inch of her. He swallowed. “I am.”
“Do you want to come in?” Grace asked, reaching her hand out towards him. “I drew you a picture.”
He looked to Buffy, for reassurance perhaps, and she nodded, smiling. She almost didn’t need to be there; it seemed as though Grace had everything under control, the way she led Spike into the living room, chattering non-stop about her drawings and Daisy the Dog.
-TBC-
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Author's Chapter Notes:
*gasp* What is this? An update? I am SO sorry for how long it's taken me to get this posted, especially because the chapter is kinda... short. But I lost my way a little with this fic... I've been working on something new (12,000 words in, so it's not like I've been lazy or anything!) This fic won two awards at the Sunnydale Memorial Fanfiction awards. Thank you to anyone who voted! Onto the chapter... *bites lip nervously*
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading!