A Long Time Coming (Spike/Buffy), G
I'm back again! I finally have some free time and I know I owe many, many comment replies, so expect them to be coming in over the next couple of hours.
Have some fic! Vaguely comics-compliant, but not really comic fic at all. Takes place in a future in which Buffy has a baby and a whole lot of frustration with Spike. Oh, and said baby is staking teddy bears, which never bodes well for anyone.
It’s eight months after Joy’s birth that Buffy finally concedes that there might be a problem. “Look at that,” she instructs Spike when he comes wandering in one afternoon, swaggering casual, as though she hadn’t heard the thumps along the fire escape as he braved the sun to show up an hour early.
He squints at Joy, patting at his smoking hair discreetly. Hair gel is flammable, Buffy thinks of pointing out, but the situation is too dire for jibes. “I don’t see a problem.”
“Are you blind?” she demands, absentmindedly putting out Spike’s hair with the diaper cloth she has in hand. “Look at the way she’s…the way she’s…Joy!”
The baby doesn’t respond, immersed in her horrible, horrible game, chewing on the chopstick from last night’s dinner before she bangs it against her teddy bear again. Spike blinks. “Oh. That?” He crouches down in front of Joy, and Buffy can’t stop a sudden frisson of fierce gladness at the way Joy beams up at him with a one-toothed smile. “Oi, little tot, c’mere.”
Joy babbles excitedly at him, pulling herself up on his knees and falling into his arms. “Who’s Uncle Spike’s little vampire slayer? Yeah? Who’s gonna slay all the vampires with Mum and Uncle Spike?”
“Stop that!” She doesn’t know which part is more frustrating, the slaying or the “Uncle,” which sometimes has her crying into her pillow at night out of sheer exhaustion at the not-ness that is their relationship these days. And lately it’s been worse than ever, especially since That Night last week that they aren’t talking about. Nope. Never again. “Don’t you dare encourage her! I am not going to turn her into Robin Wood!”
“Damn right you aren’t,” Spike agrees, scowling at Joy. She giggles. “Joy, if you ever feel the urge to become a self-involved wanker with mommy issues, you come straight to your Uncle Spike and he’ll set you straight.”
Buffy smiles despite herself, dropping to the floor to sit beside them. “I don’t want her to know about vampires until she’s much older. Much! I can’t get rid of all the demons or vampires or zompires in the world, but I can make sure that Joy doesn’t lose her childhood over them.” The baby in question reaches out chubby arms to her mother, cuddling up with her at once. “I don’t want that for her,” Buffy murmurs.
Spike moves to lay a comforting hand on her arm. “She won’t have it. You think I’m ever going to let my girl wander around at night unprotected? No creatures of the dark are ever getting close enough for her to have that kind of awakening. Present company excepted, of course,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.
Buffy’s eyes narrow. “You haven’t been vamping out in front of her again, have you.”
She watches through slitted eyes as Spike squirms. “Uh…why would you think that?”
“Have you?”
“S’just when she cries…I hate seeing her so sad. The way her face gets all wobbly and she screams like no one in the universe loves her…”
“You have!” She jerks up, dislodging Joy’s mouth from where the baby had been happily chewing on her arm. “Spike, you promised you wouldn’t do that anymore!” As if on cue, Joy scrunches up her fsace and bats at Spike’s, babbling up a storm.
“Right.” He winces. “Shouldn’t we be checking in on those terrible babysitters who’ve taught the tot all about slaying?”
“Mm-hm.” There’s an unpleasantly familiar odor suddenly emanating from Joy, and she brightens. “I’ll call Dawn, and you can take care of the little bundle of Joy that she just left you.”
Spike’s eyes widen with horror. “But…but…” She watches his sputtering with a kind of dark amusement. “Overly sensitive nose!” he says finally, pointing. “S’much more painful for me than for you!”
“Think of that next time you decide that Joy needs to see your game face,” Buffy says primly, trying and failing to keep from smirking as Spike lifts Joy from her lap, holding the baby as far from him as humanly possible as he darts down the hall to the changing table.
Her revenge exacted, she grabs the phone, wiping off baby drool from the receiver and dialing Dawn’s number. Her sister picks up on the first ring. “Hey, Buffy. Doing anything I don’t want to know about with your vampire boyfriend? Finally?”
Buffy rolls her eyes. “Please stop answering the phone like that.” Dawn has been insufferable for months now, since that ill-fated romance with Robert Dowling that had ended after he pointed out that she’d spent more time talking about Spike to him than anyone else. “And he isn’t my boyfriend. Not for lack of trying,” she mumbles to herself, thinking back to That Night, the way he’d been so close, and she had nearly…
“Husband?” Dawn suggests pertly.
“I’m going to hang up,” Buffy threatens, darting a quick glance over to the hallway. Had Spike heard? The better question is, would Spike comment on it?
“You called me!”
She toys with the teddy bear Joy had been staking. “Oh. Right. Have you been watching True Blood around Joy?”
Dawn laughs. “When you expressly told me not to? That you had no problems with violence or nudity or language, but Joy is never allowed to see a vampire that Mommy isn’t dating? No, I have not.”
“Oh. Well…good.” She can’t think of anything else to say, though there’s a part of Dawn’s response that is nagging at her.
“Seeya, Buffy.”
She realizes, a moment too late. “And we aren’t dating!” she says, but Dawn has already hung up. Jerk, she thinks, but Dawn’s only voicing the same frustrations that Buffy shares. This non-relationship is getting worse and worse each day lately, now that Spike’s here more than ever and she doesn’t have a giant stomach or a squalling newborn to fret over. What is he waiting for, a parade?
“You are a cruel bitch,” Spike says, emerging from the hall with a clean Joy. “Both of you, taking pleasure in my pain. I nearly vomited up my lunch.”
“Pleasant,” Buffy says, eyeing the way his muscles contract against his shirt as he shifts Joy from arm to arm.
“Sod off,” he retorts, and she jumps up to smile prettily at him.
“No language around m- the baby.” She’d stopped herself from saying my baby. It was…not where she wanted to be with him. Our baby, our baby, come and stay with us and be Joy’s father and my- She tamps down on that train of thought before the frustration builds again.
“You told Dawn she could.” There’s a lilting whine to his voice, and The Pout is coming out in full force.
Buffy stands her ground. “So you heard my conversation with Dawn.”
And then he’s avoidy-guy, swinging Joy around in a circle and dangling her upside-down while she shrieks out her enjoyment, laughing and offering to feed Joy some applesauce while Buffy tries Willow, building a fort out of empty boxes while Joy chews on his wallet interestedly.
Willow and Xander both deny culpability, and Buffy’s out of options beyond leaning back on the couch and contemplating the vampire lying flat on the floor while her daughter crawls on top of him, chewing on the chopstick again. Now this is a story I know. She thinks back to That Night, to…
“Oh god.”
Spike pops his head up from behind Joy. “What did you do?”
She shakes her head. “Not what I did, what we did. We taught Joy about staking!” Spike had found a stake on the couch, and he’d been mock-offended, accusing her of secret plots to try to stake him. She’d done just that then, and since Joy had seemed so delighted by their laughter, had taken it a step too far…
And then there had been rolling around on the ground while they’d wrestled with the stake, and Buffy had jabbed it at Spike and he’d shoved it away, and then she’d been lying on top of him and very, very still, their faces so close that all she’d needed to do was lean in for their lips to touch-
She’d pulled away when he’d done nothing and they hadn’t spoken of it again, but here was Joy, mimicking what she’d seen her two favorite adults doing. She slumps back on the couch. “Oh, god.”
“You don’t think…that night…” Spike swallows.
“I’m a terrible mother,” Buffy moans. “I can’t even protect my daughter from herself.”
Spike starts to shake his head, his mouth opening to refute her. And Joy smiles proudly, jabs the chopstick at his chest, and says, “Ma-ma!”
Vampire and slayer both freeze. Joy bounces up and down on Spike, turning to face Buffy. “Ma-ma!” she repeats, leaving no doubt in Buffy’s mind that she knows what she’s saying.
Spike is grinning now, too, lifting Joy up and clambering over to join her on the couch. “Reckon the tot knows what she’s doing, yeah?” He brushes a kiss across the top of Joy’s head. “She doesn’t need to worry about vampires or demons, not when her mum can slay all the monsters.”
“I guess so,” Buffy says softly, stroking Joy’s cheek. Her fingers brush against Spike’s with each movement, and goosebumps break out along her arms. “And you’ll always be there for her too.” It isn’t a question or a request for reassurance, it’s a statement, and Spike’s eyes are glowing with a light she hasn’t seen in a long time.
“You still can’t show her your game face,” she murmurs, if only to dissipate the odd tension that’s filled the room. “I don’t want her to- mmph!” His lips are on hers, so unexpectedly that she forgets to kiss him back until he starts to pull away. She tugs him back, mindful of Joy on their laps, and then they’re sharing a kiss, slow and soft and a long, long time coming.
It stretches on for what feels like forever, enough for Buffy to memorize the shape of his lips again, enough for Spike to cup her cheek and for her to slide onto his lap when Joy loses interest and lowers herself back to the floor, enough for it to intensify until Buffy has to force herself to remember that there is a baby- and apparently a highly suggestible one- in the room. She pulls away regretfully, and flushes under Spike’s gaze.
He gives her a wicked smile. “What if I ask nicely?”
“Mm, okay.” She frowns. “What were we talking about?” Spike’s lips are still glistening distractingly, and now Joy is starting to fuss and tug at her jeans. Joy’s bedtime, she remembers vaguely, tearing her gaze away from Spike’s face. “Um. Can you put Joy to bed? I need to make a phone call.”
Dawn so owes her babysitting duty.
comments. Comment at Dreamwidth or right here.
Have some fic! Vaguely comics-compliant, but not really comic fic at all. Takes place in a future in which Buffy has a baby and a whole lot of frustration with Spike. Oh, and said baby is staking teddy bears, which never bodes well for anyone.
It’s eight months after Joy’s birth that Buffy finally concedes that there might be a problem. “Look at that,” she instructs Spike when he comes wandering in one afternoon, swaggering casual, as though she hadn’t heard the thumps along the fire escape as he braved the sun to show up an hour early.
He squints at Joy, patting at his smoking hair discreetly. Hair gel is flammable, Buffy thinks of pointing out, but the situation is too dire for jibes. “I don’t see a problem.”
“Are you blind?” she demands, absentmindedly putting out Spike’s hair with the diaper cloth she has in hand. “Look at the way she’s…the way she’s…Joy!”
The baby doesn’t respond, immersed in her horrible, horrible game, chewing on the chopstick from last night’s dinner before she bangs it against her teddy bear again. Spike blinks. “Oh. That?” He crouches down in front of Joy, and Buffy can’t stop a sudden frisson of fierce gladness at the way Joy beams up at him with a one-toothed smile. “Oi, little tot, c’mere.”
Joy babbles excitedly at him, pulling herself up on his knees and falling into his arms. “Who’s Uncle Spike’s little vampire slayer? Yeah? Who’s gonna slay all the vampires with Mum and Uncle Spike?”
“Stop that!” She doesn’t know which part is more frustrating, the slaying or the “Uncle,” which sometimes has her crying into her pillow at night out of sheer exhaustion at the not-ness that is their relationship these days. And lately it’s been worse than ever, especially since That Night last week that they aren’t talking about. Nope. Never again. “Don’t you dare encourage her! I am not going to turn her into Robin Wood!”
“Damn right you aren’t,” Spike agrees, scowling at Joy. She giggles. “Joy, if you ever feel the urge to become a self-involved wanker with mommy issues, you come straight to your Uncle Spike and he’ll set you straight.”
Buffy smiles despite herself, dropping to the floor to sit beside them. “I don’t want her to know about vampires until she’s much older. Much! I can’t get rid of all the demons or vampires or zompires in the world, but I can make sure that Joy doesn’t lose her childhood over them.” The baby in question reaches out chubby arms to her mother, cuddling up with her at once. “I don’t want that for her,” Buffy murmurs.
Spike moves to lay a comforting hand on her arm. “She won’t have it. You think I’m ever going to let my girl wander around at night unprotected? No creatures of the dark are ever getting close enough for her to have that kind of awakening. Present company excepted, of course,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.
Buffy’s eyes narrow. “You haven’t been vamping out in front of her again, have you.”
She watches through slitted eyes as Spike squirms. “Uh…why would you think that?”
“Have you?”
“S’just when she cries…I hate seeing her so sad. The way her face gets all wobbly and she screams like no one in the universe loves her…”
“You have!” She jerks up, dislodging Joy’s mouth from where the baby had been happily chewing on her arm. “Spike, you promised you wouldn’t do that anymore!” As if on cue, Joy scrunches up her fsace and bats at Spike’s, babbling up a storm.
“Right.” He winces. “Shouldn’t we be checking in on those terrible babysitters who’ve taught the tot all about slaying?”
“Mm-hm.” There’s an unpleasantly familiar odor suddenly emanating from Joy, and she brightens. “I’ll call Dawn, and you can take care of the little bundle of Joy that she just left you.”
Spike’s eyes widen with horror. “But…but…” She watches his sputtering with a kind of dark amusement. “Overly sensitive nose!” he says finally, pointing. “S’much more painful for me than for you!”
“Think of that next time you decide that Joy needs to see your game face,” Buffy says primly, trying and failing to keep from smirking as Spike lifts Joy from her lap, holding the baby as far from him as humanly possible as he darts down the hall to the changing table.
Her revenge exacted, she grabs the phone, wiping off baby drool from the receiver and dialing Dawn’s number. Her sister picks up on the first ring. “Hey, Buffy. Doing anything I don’t want to know about with your vampire boyfriend? Finally?”
Buffy rolls her eyes. “Please stop answering the phone like that.” Dawn has been insufferable for months now, since that ill-fated romance with Robert Dowling that had ended after he pointed out that she’d spent more time talking about Spike to him than anyone else. “And he isn’t my boyfriend. Not for lack of trying,” she mumbles to herself, thinking back to That Night, the way he’d been so close, and she had nearly…
“Husband?” Dawn suggests pertly.
“I’m going to hang up,” Buffy threatens, darting a quick glance over to the hallway. Had Spike heard? The better question is, would Spike comment on it?
“You called me!”
She toys with the teddy bear Joy had been staking. “Oh. Right. Have you been watching True Blood around Joy?”
Dawn laughs. “When you expressly told me not to? That you had no problems with violence or nudity or language, but Joy is never allowed to see a vampire that Mommy isn’t dating? No, I have not.”
“Oh. Well…good.” She can’t think of anything else to say, though there’s a part of Dawn’s response that is nagging at her.
“Seeya, Buffy.”
She realizes, a moment too late. “And we aren’t dating!” she says, but Dawn has already hung up. Jerk, she thinks, but Dawn’s only voicing the same frustrations that Buffy shares. This non-relationship is getting worse and worse each day lately, now that Spike’s here more than ever and she doesn’t have a giant stomach or a squalling newborn to fret over. What is he waiting for, a parade?
“You are a cruel bitch,” Spike says, emerging from the hall with a clean Joy. “Both of you, taking pleasure in my pain. I nearly vomited up my lunch.”
“Pleasant,” Buffy says, eyeing the way his muscles contract against his shirt as he shifts Joy from arm to arm.
“Sod off,” he retorts, and she jumps up to smile prettily at him.
“No language around m- the baby.” She’d stopped herself from saying my baby. It was…not where she wanted to be with him. Our baby, our baby, come and stay with us and be Joy’s father and my- She tamps down on that train of thought before the frustration builds again.
“You told Dawn she could.” There’s a lilting whine to his voice, and The Pout is coming out in full force.
Buffy stands her ground. “So you heard my conversation with Dawn.”
And then he’s avoidy-guy, swinging Joy around in a circle and dangling her upside-down while she shrieks out her enjoyment, laughing and offering to feed Joy some applesauce while Buffy tries Willow, building a fort out of empty boxes while Joy chews on his wallet interestedly.
Willow and Xander both deny culpability, and Buffy’s out of options beyond leaning back on the couch and contemplating the vampire lying flat on the floor while her daughter crawls on top of him, chewing on the chopstick again. Now this is a story I know. She thinks back to That Night, to…
“Oh god.”
Spike pops his head up from behind Joy. “What did you do?”
She shakes her head. “Not what I did, what we did. We taught Joy about staking!” Spike had found a stake on the couch, and he’d been mock-offended, accusing her of secret plots to try to stake him. She’d done just that then, and since Joy had seemed so delighted by their laughter, had taken it a step too far…
And then there had been rolling around on the ground while they’d wrestled with the stake, and Buffy had jabbed it at Spike and he’d shoved it away, and then she’d been lying on top of him and very, very still, their faces so close that all she’d needed to do was lean in for their lips to touch-
She’d pulled away when he’d done nothing and they hadn’t spoken of it again, but here was Joy, mimicking what she’d seen her two favorite adults doing. She slumps back on the couch. “Oh, god.”
“You don’t think…that night…” Spike swallows.
“I’m a terrible mother,” Buffy moans. “I can’t even protect my daughter from herself.”
Spike starts to shake his head, his mouth opening to refute her. And Joy smiles proudly, jabs the chopstick at his chest, and says, “Ma-ma!”
Vampire and slayer both freeze. Joy bounces up and down on Spike, turning to face Buffy. “Ma-ma!” she repeats, leaving no doubt in Buffy’s mind that she knows what she’s saying.
Spike is grinning now, too, lifting Joy up and clambering over to join her on the couch. “Reckon the tot knows what she’s doing, yeah?” He brushes a kiss across the top of Joy’s head. “She doesn’t need to worry about vampires or demons, not when her mum can slay all the monsters.”
“I guess so,” Buffy says softly, stroking Joy’s cheek. Her fingers brush against Spike’s with each movement, and goosebumps break out along her arms. “And you’ll always be there for her too.” It isn’t a question or a request for reassurance, it’s a statement, and Spike’s eyes are glowing with a light she hasn’t seen in a long time.
“You still can’t show her your game face,” she murmurs, if only to dissipate the odd tension that’s filled the room. “I don’t want her to- mmph!” His lips are on hers, so unexpectedly that she forgets to kiss him back until he starts to pull away. She tugs him back, mindful of Joy on their laps, and then they’re sharing a kiss, slow and soft and a long, long time coming.
It stretches on for what feels like forever, enough for Buffy to memorize the shape of his lips again, enough for Spike to cup her cheek and for her to slide onto his lap when Joy loses interest and lowers herself back to the floor, enough for it to intensify until Buffy has to force herself to remember that there is a baby- and apparently a highly suggestible one- in the room. She pulls away regretfully, and flushes under Spike’s gaze.
He gives her a wicked smile. “What if I ask nicely?”
“Mm, okay.” She frowns. “What were we talking about?” Spike’s lips are still glistening distractingly, and now Joy is starting to fuss and tug at her jeans. Joy’s bedtime, she remembers vaguely, tearing her gaze away from Spike’s face. “Um. Can you put Joy to bed? I need to make a phone call.”
Dawn so owes her babysitting duty.
comments. Comment at Dreamwidth or right here.