Title: A Vampire’s Night In
Author: Am-Chau Yarkona
Rating: fairly harmless
Pairing: Spike/Buffy
Category: Absolute sap
Disclaimer: The characters belong to Joss Whedon and ME and other folks, except for
Josie and Bam, who are mine. However, please feel free to borrow them. (Or torture or kill them- I mean, why not?)
Summary: It is 2005. Buffy and Spike have a daughter, Josie, age four, and a son, William known as Bam, a few months old. Spike is taking care of them for the night.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right with both of them, Spike?” Buffy asked again, as they stood by the front door.
“I’m sure,” her lover replied. “Look, are you going to this party or are you going to stand here and worry all night?”
“I’m waiting for Willow to be ready,” she answered, stubbornly. “Bam’s already in bed, but you’d better check on him, especially if
Josie gets noisy.”
“I’ll check.” He turned towards the stairs, and called up, “Red!”
“Don’t shout! I’m coming!” Willow bounded down, only narrowly avoiding shoving Spike out the front door.
“We’ll be off, then. Goodnight, Josie. Be good,” the Slayer called to her daughter, who replied in a flat, bored tone.
“Night, mummy. Night, aunty Willow.” The three adults could hear Lego clicking on the living room floor.
“Night, Spike. Don’t wait up, we’ll be very late,” Buffy told the vampire, and shut the door behind her and her best friend. Spike sighed-- he’d been hoping for a goodnight kiss, if not more-- then walked through to the main room.
“How you doing, Josie? Nearly ready for bed?” He tried not to step on any of the Lego, and found he could only achieve it by stopping in the doorway, some four meters from his daughter. “I think we should get this put away before bedtime,” he added, and winced when he realised he sounded like Giles.
They’d had Giles to stay for a couple of weeks the last summer, and it had been fun in it’s way, though Spike would never admit that aloud. He’d learned some stuff from watching the Watcher—he smiled at the irony of that—about how to deal with his daughter.
And his—what is Buffy to me? he wondered suddenly. We’ve never discussed it. Not wife, though it feels that way sometimes; not girlfriend, no friendships there; maybe lover, perhaps what the demon girl used to say. Orgasm friend.
A sharp clack made him look back at Josie. The tower of bricks she’d built, not exactly tall but hardly short anymore, had fallen over. She was crying.
Gingerly, he stepped over the piles of bricks, unable to avoid treading on a few and trusting to the fact that vampires are fairly light-footed to prevent them breaking. He picked up the weeping girl, and tried to quiet her, hoping that Bam would not be woken.
“There, time for bed, Josie. You’re a tired girl, aren’t you?” She shook her head violently, but then she yawned and ruined the effect. “Come on, little one. Bedtime.”
“Daddy tell me story,” she said, and the stubborn tone reminded him just how like her mother she was.
“Okay- but just a short one, right?”
“Long one.”
“Oh, bloody hell,” he groaned, before remembering that Buffy would really stake him if she heard
Josie saying that. “Daddy didn’t say that. You can have a medium-length story.”
“Long.”
“No, medium. Daddy has to tidy up your Lego once you’re asleep.”
“Why doesn’t daddy play with it instead?”
God, but the child was persistent. “Daddy doesn’t like playing with Lego,” he said, starting the perilous journey across the seas of brick.
She giggled. “Daddy does! He build big graveyard last week.” It was true, so he concentrated on not falling over.
By the time they’d made it to the door, she was no longer upset, but still very resistant to going upstairs.
“Stop wriggling,” Spike growled. She just giggled some more, and tried to kick him. “I’ll bit you,” he threatened. It didn’t do any good.
“Silly daddy. Mummy would stake you.” He knew there was a reason he’d argued against telling
Josie all about mummy and daddy and vampires and slayers. Buffy had insisted, despite the fact that it seemed to lead naturally into home schooling both the children. Sometimes he wondered if that was a ‘because’ rather than a ‘despite’.
“I could just take a little nip. Just enough to keep you quiet for a while.” He wouldn’t, they both knew that, but he was suddenly aware that due to the non-human statuses of both him and Buffy,
Josie was probably in the ‘demon’ group that his chip would let him bite. “But I won’t, so long as you go to bed quietly.”
“What if I don’t?”
“No story.” An infinitely better threat, and one that worked.
“Put me down,” Josie whined. “I’ll get ready for story time.” He set her down carefully at the top of the stairs, and watched her rush into the bathroom, pulling clothes off along the way. Not wanting to fight with her, he picked up the discarded items as he made his way towards Bam’s room—and stopped there, wondering when he’d become so domesticated. ‘Not wanting to fight’? That wasn’t Spike.
Slightly disgusted with himself but still actually disinclined to argue, he threw the clothes in the direction of the laundry basket and peered round the door at his son. The boy was asleep, lying on his back in the cot, left thumb in his mouth. Spike was obscurely proud that his son was left-handed, same as him.
Connor wasn’t a bit like his father, after all.
The floorboard outside complained, and Spike looked out to see his daughter there. “Story!” she hissed, aware that she really would be punished if she woke her younger brother.
“Yes, pet,” Spike said, closing the door softly behind him. “What do you want to hear tonight? Peter Rabbit? Winnie the Pooh?” Buffy read her modern books, American books, but she liked to hear him read the old favourites, perhaps because she detected that he liked the British ones better. Or maybe it was just because Giles had brought them.
“No! Special Daddy story!”
He wasn’t sure whether he welcomed or dreaded those moments. From Dawn, he used to love it: the demands for tales from his past, a chance to brag. And who would refuse to do something he loved? On the other hand, turning down the violence and gore and trying not to mention Drusilla was a strain.
Josie slid into bed, and he tucked the sheets up to her chin. She closed her eyes, and he took a moment to look down at her, soft hair all over the pillow and gently smiling lips.
“Once,” he started. Then he realised that the girl was fast asleep—no point telling the tale now. He grinned briefly, and trudged back downstairs to tidy up the Lego. He did, however, spend a little time rebuilding
Josie’s tower so she wouldn’t be upset again in the morning.
Well, Buffy, Spike thought, you really have made me a house-trained vampire, haven’t you.
The End.