Temper, Temper
Present
“You’re a mother?”
Buffy bent down and covered Dawn’s ears before looking up and sarcastically saying “No shit Sherlock. You can tell by the whole child calling me a mom thing.”
“Buffy language!” Joyce exclaimed with a disapproving look on her face. The look on Spike’s face wasn’t any happier. The glare he was sending her chilled Buffy right down to the bone. She sheepishly looked down and muttered “Sorry”. She uncovered Dawn’s ears then gathered the little girl up in her arms before standing back up.
Since the adults all felt at a loss for words, awkward silence filled the air. Spike had so many questions floating in his head and he had absolutely no idea where to start. Buffy softly combed her fingers through Dawn’s hair as she tried to figure out what to say. She was absolutely frozen with trepidation at the conversation to come. She anxiously waited for Spike to start and hoped he would take the new in a calm and rational manner. However, he wasn’t exactly know for having an easy temper and she was positive a storm was about to break. Before Spike could gather his thoughts, it was Dawn who broke the silence, curiosity getting the best of her. “Momma, who’s he? He’s got funny hair” she said crinkling her little nose.
Before Buffy had a chance to answer, Spike answered “The name’s Spike poppet. You’re a pretty little girl, what’s your name?” The initial shock of learning about Dawn’s existence had worn away a bit and curiosity naturally took over. He couldn’t help but notice what a cute kid she was. She was miniature version of Buffy, except big blue eyes replaced green and Dawn had beautiful chestnut brown hair instead of Buffy’s luminescent bottled blond.
“I’m Dawn. Can I touch?” the little girl answered pointing to his spiky hair.
“Sure niblet, go ahead.”
Spike tentatively walked over to Buffy and bent his head while keeping his eyes fixed on her curious face. She carefully reached up and touched the blond spikes with a look of awe on her small face. Buffy struggled to keep her eyes dry and finally found the courage to speak again while watching the touching scene. “She’s three years and 8 months old and very talkative for her age. She’s usually pretty shy around new people, but you always were a charmer to the ladies.”
Dawn giggled as she touched the top of his head and looked at her mother. “Can I have that?”
“Definitely no, I am not bleaching your hair. You’ll have to wait until you’re 18. How about we have Nana take you to the kitchen for a snack then you can watch Winnie the Pooh.”
“Yay!” Dawn exclaimed and scrambled out of Buffy’s arms so fast it looked like she took a flying leap, then she was off to the kitchen in a flash. Joyce looked at Spike and said. “It was nice to see you William. Don’t forget to stop by again for some hot cocoa.” And with that she quickly walked back to the kitchen as well. Unfortunately this once again left the two in awkward silence. Buffy couldn’t look at Spike but could practically feel the anger and frustration radiating from him. The temporary calmness that Dawn had given him was totally gone. He couldn’t hide the burning fury in his gut from the knowledge that Buffy had kept such an important secret from him for so many years. Even though they hadn’t left on the best of terms, he thought he earned a little bit more consideration and respect than the average bystander to Buffy Summers’ life.
“Buffy, I think we definitely need to talk about this, and now.”
“Come on, let’s go sit on the porch swing. If you start yelling, I don’t want Dawn to hear it, plus this way I have witnesses.”
Buffy tried to stop her hands from shaking as she opened the front door. If she had a perfect scenario for what would happen when she told Spike about Dawn, this definitely would not be it.
As they both sat down, Spike was the first one to speak up. “So I take it you got preggers at the end senior year, ohhh about the time you disappeared. Why didn’t you tell me Buffy? I would have supported you.” He was staring intently at her face trying to discern the mysterious thoughts floating in her brain, he expected remorse, he didn’t however expect to see the anger come into her eyes.
“That’s a load of shit Spike! As soon as Drusilla wanted you back, it was like I didn’t even exist. You hardly even looked at me, let alone speak to me!” She hissed out Drusilla’s name like the poison that she was, and the last bits of fear disappeared as memories of what occurred so many years ago surfaced.
“I told you that it’d only be temporary,” he answered back defensively. “As soon as I was back on Dru’s good side I would’ve been able to see you again, but I couldn’t chance getting her upset. You told me you understood! I had to try to get her back. I was in love with her. A feeling you apparently don’t understand.”
Buffy felt like she had been slapped in the face. After all these years, he didn’t understand why his actions hurt her so much. She stood up quickly wanting to be as far away from him as possible.
“You heartless bastard! Don’t throw that at me. You know only about lust and obsession. That’s all Dru ever was, somebody you couldn’t have, not completely anyways. I was the one there for you through good and bad and you threw me away like I was nothing. I’ll never forget the words you said to me the last time I saw you.” She was barely holding back the angry tears that were threatening to roll down her cheeks. She wanted to appear strong and not the utter mess that was churning inside her. Spike got up with fury in eyes and prowled right up to her. He stood imposingly over her with his face was inches from hers. She tried not to shrink back and stood as tall as her 5’2” frame would allow her.
“Well, I’ll never forget that you lied to me about Angel. You never told me about your bloody relationship! Then you ran right back to that bastard. And what did he do? He left you alone and pregnant. I’m not the stupid one Buffy.”
“Angel’s not a bastard and he’s not the father of my baby you idiot!” She yelled back at him. Spike was so angry he barely knew what was coming out if his mouth by this point.
“Well who the fuck else did you open your dimpled knees for then!”
“You!!” She yelled back. The tears were now streaming down her face in force and desperately tried to wipe them away. She then said softly “You’re the only one you bastard. The only one.” Before running back into the house and slamming the door in his face.
Spike let out a frustrated roar before he realized that he was still on the porch for all her neighbors to see and hear. He sheepishly looked around to find Willow and Tara on the walkway with wide eyes and astonished expressions on their faces. He quickly found two new people to focus his anger on.
“You! Both of you! You bints knew all about this. How could you keep this from me?”
All Willow could utter was “Eeep!” Tara stuttered out “It w-wa-a-sn’t our fault.”
Willowed followed up with “Yeah, she’s right. We didn’t ‘keep’ it from you. Why don’t you tell him all about it while I talk to Buffy” then she promptly skittered past him up the stairs and was gone in a blink of an eye.
Tara muttered “I’m going to kill her later” then looked at Spike. “Come on let’s sit down.”
As they sat on the porch swing she grabbed his hand and leaned her head on his shoulder hoping death wouldn’t be in her near future. “Honey, I know we’re not entirely innocent, but you have to understand, it hasn’t been entirely easy telling you either. By the time Buffy told us, you’d disappeared to God knows where with Drusilla. You only came back a year ago and by that time, we decided it wasn’t our place to tell you. Besides you always shut us up whenever we mentioned her name.”
“Oye! I didn’t do that. Well not all the time. You could have tried a little bit harder.” Tara looked at him sympathetically and he could see the remorse written on her face. All at once every emotion seemed to hit him at once, and it was just too much to handle.
“God, what the fuck have I done? She’s never going to forgive me for what I just said. She just gets me so angry. At the same time, I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for keeping this from me. There’s a little girl in there with my DNA and she’s an absolute stranger to me. What do I do?” he babbled.
Spike leaned forward and put his head between his hands. The headache of the century was starting to form behind his eyes brought about by the turmoil creating havoc inside of him. He didn’t know if he was going to start crying, hitting something, or just laughing hysterically. His life had been so simple and so easy a moment ago. It was amazing how one little chit could change it all.
Tara rubbed his back and tried to comfort him as best she could. “You just need to talk to her, without the yelling of course. You need to discuss what happened all those years ago. I don’t know the particulars, but you’ve both ignored it long enough. Besides you have a beautiful little girl inside who I’m sure would love to get to know you.”
Panic rose inside of Spike. It was too much to handle, everything was happening too fast. He looked at the door in dread, there was no way he could go in there and face any of them. He also didn’t know whether he wanted to strangle Buffy or to hug her, so he just said, “Fuck that, I need a drink” before pounding off the porch, jumping into his car and driving off.
As she watched his Desoto turn the corner of the street, Tara sighed softly and said, “Well that went well”.
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Please give feedback on whether I should continue this story or whether it's not worth it.
Thanks to DaniD, vitalis, jenny, SarahandJamesFanatic and everyone still reading.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry for the delay in updates! My company ASA has a huge conference so it sucked up all my free time. It did give me the opportunity to really determine the direction I want to take this story, so hopefully future updates will be a lot faster. I hope I still have some readers out there. If you're still with me, please give me feedback, this was a difficult chapter to write.