Buffy and Spike stood dumbly looking at the lovely pile of cash sitting next to a credit card on the dining table. There had been barely enough time for words in between Giles’s announced trip to search out his daughter’s mother, and leaving to catch the plane. He’d offered up a grin as he laid out the finances on the table, giving them permission to spend freely for little Ophelia’s comfort, and then walked briskly to the door.
A rather loud and obvious throat clearing from Spike had Giles dead in his tracks, a guilty return trek to kiss Lia’s downy forehead, and then he was gone. Leaving Buffy and Spike completely speechless.
Five minutes elapsed in silent contemplation of the table’s contents.
“Huh!” was Buffy’s first attempt to offer anything in the face of Giles’s desertion, her eyes compelled to rest sympathetically on the quiet baby. A weak jab with her elbow to Spike’s ribs didn’t seem to dislodge his stare at the pile of notes on the table and she could practically see him salivating.
“Spike!” she shouted, and he mumbled some inarticulate response, his eyes making sure the cash didn’t move.
Getting impatient, she punched him in the gut and smiled as he keeled over. Cupping his chin she lifted his upper body back up and smiled sweetly at him.
“It’s for the baby, honey.”
Spike’s eyes flew open wide as he watched the playful nature of the Slayer at work.
“This is a load of bollocks. You do know that, don’t you, pet? Bloody Watcher buggers off to parts unknown, leaving a teenager with no experience of kids and a vampire with more of it in the food category than you lot should be comfortable with. He’s no better than the bleeding useless mother that dumped her ‘ere in the first place.”
Buffy frowned, wondering why he hadn’t attempted to bite her head off for the cutesy endearment. Then she frowned some more trying to work out why she wanted to even call him honey in the first place.
Okay, Giles had just completely screwed up her life. What with the making her grow up too fast, and completely unnecessarily with the responsibility of babies, and vamp sitting. She just knew this whole experience was going to scar her for life.
Before she could berate her Watcher much more, Lia began to wriggle and screw up her face. She started to turn red, and Buffy panicked.
“Spike,” she screeched as she grasped his arm. “Do something. She’s going red.”
Spike stood back, rocking on his heels and smirking as he watched Buffy stand shaking on the spot, indecisive and hating it.
“Don’t just stand there. There’ something wrong with her, you idiot.” The tone of voice was frantic as Buffy began to wring her hands, getting rougher and rougher the redder Lia became. Suddenly, the tiny girl opened her mouth and let rip.
“Bloody powerful set of lungs on this one, that’s for bleedin’ sure,” Spike crowed proudly, despite the necessity of covering his ears with his hands.
Buffy stared at him hard, her lip curling with irritation, but almost within seconds she was cringing in desperation, willing to do anything to stop the caterwaul from making her eardrums explode.
“Ah,” she cried with hands clamped tight over her ears. “Please, Spike,” she begged, and nearly collapsed in relief when Spike rolled his eyes but reached for the writhing bundle that was Ophelia.
“There you go, Kitten,” he cooed as he scooped the baby into his arms. Her yowls immediately softened to a whimper and Buffy watched transfixed, having no clue—and no real eagerness to get a clue—how he did it.
“Uncle Spike’ll take care of you.” He rocked her gently and started to sing as he waltzed around the room with the baby girl in his arms, stopping abruptly when his eyes caught hold of Buffy’s amused stare on one of his graceful pirouettes.
“Not a word, Missy. This gets out to the rest of your merry band of mates, an’ I know exactly whose entrails to collect the second this chip stops working.” He’d started out pinning her with a hard stare, but the mirth seemed to be catching and Buffy could only gasp at how the blue altered in warmth.
“So, luv. We’ve got ourselves a bit of a problem.”
Buffy couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes as her hands rested on her hips.
“Only one?” she had to emphasise with more than a touch of sarcasm.
Spike held up the baby as point of reference. “The bit’s hungry. Rupert didn’t explain any kind of feeding schedule?”
Buffy’s eyes hurt with the width they gained in her panic.
“Feeding schedule? You mean we’re expected to feed the baby?”
There was nothing left for him to do but snort his incredulity and laugh Buffy into a becoming blush.
“You’re not serious, are you?” He narrowed his eyes at her, sniffed the air and immediately lost the smile. “You bloody are. What? You think the mite will survive on air alone? I thought you birds would have a better grip on the practicalities than a vamp that hasn’t cared for a live baby for over a century.”
Buffy pouted and Spike couldn’t help the little shuffle and the drop of the baby rug, which quite conveniently curtained over his bulging crotch area. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the Slayer put out the lower lip for the express purpose of driving him bonkers through the existence of a permanently hard cock. The pressure of an unrelenting hard-on was surely known as a cause of insanity?
Other realities of their situation filtered through to his mind and he couldn’t stifle the smirk that flashed across his lips, completely at odds with the escalating volume of Ophelia’s displeasure. He tilted his head to the side and contemplated the girl who had caused him so much trouble in the past. He wondered what kind of parent she was going to turn out to be over what could be the week.
Buffy was watching him, the lip still poking out beyond the normal line of her mouth, and Spike found himself compelled a little toward her, eyes glazing over as she darted a pink tongue out to wet it and make it glisten invitingly. The boundaries of his pants just continued to get excruciatingly tight, its demanding presence only dimming as the baby’s cry reached deafening decibels.
The squawking broke through the burgeoning lust and both Buffy and Spike cringed simultaneously. It was successful like nothing else in deflating his aching member to a more reasonable tolerance.
“Little one’s hungry, pet.”
Buffy seemed to click to the urgency of the situation and allowed her eyes to dart frantically around her, searching for something that might provide a clue on what the baby needed to consume in order to make her quiet again.
“What do we give her, Spike?” Buffy’s eyes met his and where once he might have rejoiced in the edge of fear in her gaze, he now felt more sympathy than he thought reasonable.
With a sigh of frustration, motivated more for the preservation of his image than for irritation with the little blond, he did another eye lap around the room in search of something, anything that would tell them what to feed the little angel before his ears began to bleed.
“Did the Watcher tell you anything before he left?” he asked hopefully.
The almost hysterical shake of her head dashed his hopes in one, and he began to understand that the Slayer wasn’t all about the everyday practicalities. For a girl who had the world resting on her shoulders, she knew remarkably little about the smaller inhabitants.
“Right, then. Process of elimination. How old would you say this babe is?”
Again her shaking head and body told him he would be making all the judgement calls in this bizarre situation. The huff was real this time, frustration mounting with each denial of an answer the Slayer gave him.
“Okay, littleun. Let’s have a look at you. You’re small, not much fat on those bones yet.” He bravely stuck a finger into her mouth and felt the gums. “No teeth, then.”
“Oh, oh!” interjected Buffy suddenly enough for Spike to jump in surprise.
“Bloody hell, Slayer. Warn a bloke when you’re gonna shout out like that.”
“How could I warn you, Spike, when I would be yelling at you in the first place?”
Spike gritted his teeth and braced himself against the almost desperate howls of the baby, and turned his full attention to the other substitute parent.
“So, what bright little spark of information are you bringing to the party, pet?”
She grinned as if completely taken with her own brilliance.
“We could check for her size on the label on her clothes, Spike. Won’t that help?”
How could he be anything but annoyed with the self-satisfied look on her face, and the first example of rational problem-solving she had attempted since they had been landed in this mess.
“Right you are, pet. Right you are,” he squeezed out through clenched teeth and juggled Lia around until he could comfortably look at the label in the back of her… “What are these bloody things called again?”
The way her confused brow scrunched up her face made his body throb. With a quick jerk, he stopped his thoughts from broaching any other temptations and focused on squinting at the label.
“Ah,” she shocked him again when he was unprepared, and he felt the baby slip a little before he got her back in a secure hold.
“Can you stop with the bleeding loud and unnecessary exclamations. On top of this ones crying…” he stopped in thought. “You know, luv. This one still sounds like a newborn. The wail is enough to set my teeth to bloody powder.”
“I…I was just going to say, that thing she is wearing is called a romper.” Her eyes suddenly looked alarmed, like if she got it wrong she was going to lose the biggest test in the world. “I think?” she finished off in that little girl’s voice that melted the big bad in the Big Bad more than a little.
“It’s okay, pet. Romper it is. But this baby is less than 8 weeks old is my nearest guess. An’ there’s an echo in my head. We have to find a way to feed her, right bloody well now. This kind of torture sends people insane, you know.”
Desperate panic added to the search around the room, and finally Buffy’s gaze rested on a puffy navy blue bag, brimming with something as the sides bulged out.
Without thought, she dived on it, attacking the zip with a zest she usually only showed her pizza.
It seemed like a gift from Heaven when things that looked like feeding implements fell out of the bag, along with a piece of paper. A quick study of the writing had her eyes fixing back on the pile of cash on the table, and when she turned back to Spike, her face was pale.
“Spike? There’s a list. She left us a list. What kind of mother leaves a list? I don’t know what to do with a list…” Tears were brimming at her eyes as her heartbeat increased, thumping a rhythm of hysteria that Spike was quickly finding wasn’t his favourite music anymore.
Two strides and he had the note out of her hand and retrieved a tiny bottle and small container of a powdery substance. The bottom of the note held the short answer to their mystery, however. Without further thought, he shoved Ophelia in Buffy’s arms, took the small bottle and what he was taking on faith was formula and not some other more damaging substance, and followed the instructions to the letter. He returned with a lukewarm bottle of milk and shoved it at the Slayer.
Her eyes widened in alarm, already sensing impending disaster.
“No objections, Slayer. You feed; I’ll look in the phonebook. We’re going to need a few things and I need to find where to go shoppin’. So get that into the tyke to stop her frettin’ and lets get on with it.” He looked angry and Buffy gulped hard.
“Okay,” she squeaked, and went about sitting comfortably, trying to work out the best way to hold the baby while aiming the nipple to her mouth. Buffy sighed in relief as the small mouth puckered and then latched on.
“Mission accomplished.”
A/N...WOW!!! Major thanks go to: Allison,Bynee, pj, Tam, Franchesca (I could be emailing you ;), Crystal Pegasus, raemcn, Melissa, Alwyasyjbj, Bloodshedbaby, songgal (have another read of chapter four--I did actually say that Joyce was gone or Giles would have asked her to mind the baby.), seraiza, Shehrezade, Samica, Esther, redwulfe, madrog, Cordykitten, vampkiss and zanthine. You guys are unbelievably amazing. I hope you all like this chapter as much!
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