Five Years Later
“You finish that bag, Mrs. Bradley?” Spike asked Buffy, pulling into the driveway of their two year old red colonial with black shutters.
She guiltily stopped chewing on the chip she’d just popped in her mouth. “No,” she said, her voice muffled around the chip.
Spike laughed, “You lie. Pet, why didn’t you eat before we left home?”
“I did!” Buffy exclaimed and started chewing again. “I couldn’t help it,” she said almost mournfully. “They looked so good and I was craving them.” She pouted. “You know what grocery shopping does to me.”
Spike laughed. “Yeah, I’m well aware from the apple you had in the produce section and the crackers you picked up and ate half of.”
“You think I’m disgusting, don’t you? You think I’m fat and disgusting and—“
Spike shushed her by kissing her. “No,” he told her huskily and placed his hand over her swollen belly. “I don’t think you’re disgusting. Do you remember what I did to you last night? How can you think I think you’re disgusting? I think it’s bloody adorable the way you eat and then try to hide it, and I think you’re sexy as hell pregnant with my baby.”
She pouted again, “This time you get to be around for it.”
“Ssshhh. None of that now,” and he pecked her nose. “Let’s get the food inside.”
She nodded, still pouting slightly. Despite how happy she was she could not deny that she still thought about the fact that being pregnant with Spike’s baby again, this time, he got to be around for it. The joy he had when she told him she was pregnant brought her to tears. He’d been over the moon and she had thought wistfully how it would have been the first time around if she’d told him in person instead of in a letter; and if she’d been able to tell him Lindsey was his.
Heaving her rotund body out of the car, Buffy waddled over to help Spike carry some bags inside. She could do less these days. She was due in a week, and counting.
“I’m so hot,” she told him as they started for the house. “I feel like I’m sweating buckets.”
“You’re glowing,” Spike corrected her.
“Which is a fancy way to say I’m sweating buckets. It’s times like this when you’re being an author works out well for me. Your b.s. helps me a great deal.”
Spike laughed and leaned over, kissing her forehead while she unlocked the door. Following behind her, Buffy started for the kitchen when something caught her eye in the living room.
A balloon.
Curious, and without a word, she steered herself in that direction. Lindsey was over Willow’s a few blocks over, playing with Oz Junior.
“Surprise!”
Buffy nearly jumped out of her skin when Doyle, his wife Cordelia Chase (consequently the girl he’d lamented to Buffy about one night so long ago), Lorne and his new flavor of the month, Tara and her new significant other, Willow, Oz, Oz Jr., and Lindsey came rushing out from different areas of the room.
Buffy started to laugh, and Spike came up behind her, taking her bags and putting them down. He hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. “Surprise, luv.”
A banner went across the long doorway that separated the dining room and living room and it said “It’s Baby Time!”
Balloons and streamers in pastels adorned the room.
“You planned this?” she asked him.
“Of course. I wanted my wife to have a shower.”
Buffy hugged him, “Oh thank you!” When she separated from him, she went to attend her guests, thanking them all in the same manner. She couldn’t believe it, but she was ever so delighted. She couldn’t think of a time when she felt so completely happy. She was surrounded by the people she loved, a husband she adored, and a daughter she doted on.
She remembered it had taken a long while for Spike to convince Buffy to marry him. She’d claimed that they didn’t have to get married. They were happy and in love the way they were, they didn’t need all that jazz. “Besides,” she’d told him, “Look at Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. They’ve been together for years. Longer than any Hollywood couple out there. And you know what their secret is? They never got married.”
He scoffed that it would be living in sin, and Buffy scoffed back that he was becoming uptight and stodgy, as he got older.
And then one night, after they’d made love and were basking in the afterglow, Buffy looked up at him and said simply. “Let’s do it. Let’s get married.”
A week later, they eloped. Lindsey was their witness. Then they’d come back home and Lorne had thrown them a reception. That had been three years ago. They hadn’t planned on extending their family right away, as Buffy was adamant that she wanted to finish Grad school and get herself a career. And a career she got herself. She finished out her Masters and then plowed through her doctorate. Currently, she taught Art History at the same college she’d graduated from and she loved her job. They’d even planned her pregnancy around summer vacation so she could continue to work. After years of being married to Angel and having to give up all of that, Buffy was clear that she wanted a family, yes, and they came first, yes, but she was a modern woman and she could juggle. She would juggle. In the midst of all that they finally sold the old house, and found a new one close by that they fell in love with at first sight.
She couldn’t have asked for a better husband or better friends. She thanked her lucky stars every day for how far she’d come. She no longer felt like that woman of old who hated the world and thought everyone owed her something. She’d let go of her anger and moved on from the past. She learned Lorne had been right about regrets, and once she’d learned to start believing in herself, and not being concerned about what others thought, she found she was a much happier, much saner person. Her and Spike had a wonderful marriage, and though she was nervous about the idea of being married again at first, she found that with the right person, it made all the difference in the world. They’d fallen into their life together as though they’d done it for years.
Lorne hugged her gently and she laughed at him for being such a Nervous Nellie around her now that she was pregnant.
“Well, you never know what sorts of things are going to happen to a pregnant lady. Something could leak.”
Buffy laughed.
“Lorne, stuff on you leaks,” Doyle pointed out, laughing.
A collected “Eeewwww” came from the crowd.
“I need a drink,” Buffy declared and made her way into the kitchen.
It was while Buffy was in the kitchen that she was heard calling, “Spike?” quite calmly, too.
“Yeah, kitten?”
“My water broke.”
“See!” Lorne exclaimed. “She leaked!”
The End
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you, thank you, thank you to those that stuck with this story. I know it was tough for a while, a little touch and go, but thank you so much for sticking with it and seeing it through to the end :)