Chapter 6

For the third time that day, Buffy found herself waking somewhere she hadn't remembered falling asleep. She slowly recognised the familiar features of her room, a view of Spike snoozing like the dead and looking down, Buffy saw that Roxanne was also still resting.

It was the early hours of the morning and Buffy woke to a damp sensation spreading across her chest. Rising from her bed with a groan, she flicked on a small table lamp and a low light spread into the room. A large wet patch had somehow formed on her chest. Was I actually drooling in my sleep?

As Buffy rose to find a different shirt to change into she went to strip off her current one and as she raised her arms above her head, became all too aware of how tender her breasts were. It occurred to her that…well, they had been leaking.

"Holy shit." Buffy laughed as she realised what had happened, her boobs, doubled in size, were now painfully filled with milk. Embracing the bizarre comes with the job of being the Slayer and Buffy, surprised that she wasn't more surprised, went to retrieve an old loose button-up to cover her nakedness in the meantime and that was the dream he woke to…

The low light and the quiet shuffling in the room had tickled his supernatural senses and Spike blinked his eyes open to catch Buffy pulling a shirt over her head. She was facing the window and out into the night, the delicate slope of her bronzed back was soon hidden from his appreciative gaze by a ratty piece of oversized plaid. He just had time to admire the sweet dimples that kissed her lower back before they were covered and she spun around again.

"You're awake?"

"Just." He answered, voice rough. Spike stretched away the sleep and rolled onto his stomach. His arms folded up beneath the pillow, causing his black t-shirt to rise slightly and a band of pale skin revelled itself to the startled Buffy. "Why you awake, luv?" And Buffy laughed gently at that.

"Only on the Hellmouth…" She began to herself, raising a hand to her tired temple and Spike's lips quirked up in amusement, he found himself awash with pleasantries as of late, whenever he saw her face.

"What's the bastard Sunnyhell done this time?" He mumbled through a smile with one ear flat to the pillow, facing towards Buffy.

"My milk came in." She sighed and accepted the fact.

"Come again, Slayer?" His scarred eyebrow rose up, as did his torso; he elevated himself to rest on his elbows. The depression Spike made in the mattress caused the child to immerge from her slumber with a high-pitched hiccough that burgeoned into a prolonged shriek. "Shit, sorry, Rox."

Buffy immediately went to sooth her daughter, undoing the front of her shirt by several buttons.

"Umm, Buffy? What…" Spike startled and drew in a fast breath as more of Buffy's swollen cleavage was revealed to him in the gentle illumination of the room. The Slayer's shirt fell away from her as she leant down to pick up her fussing child; the vamp was at the perfect height to catch a glimpse of her belly button through the channel of loose material before she rose back up to her full height.

"Sshh…" Rocking and soothing the child, Buffy turned away from Spike, his jaw hung low, and guided Roxanne's open mouth to her nipple as she moved the fabric of her shirt aside. The girl latched on without much ado and Buffy sunk down onto the bed as she was overcome with the most wonderfully bizarre sensation in the world. "Think they were about to burst," She whispered as a tear escaped her eye. "You woke up just in time, baby."

Spike slowly crept over to position himself beside Buffy, knees bent at the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder, thigh pressed against thigh, mindful of startling them and the intimacy of the moment.

"You're…how in the hell?" With a minute shake of his head, Spike marvelled at the little face pressed up to the swell of her breast.

"It's why I woke up, I…they just started…I don't know." She smiled.

"Wow." He exhaled, slightly wonderstruck and tilted his head with avid contemplation. "In all my years, I've never seen…"

"Never? But you're, like, old." Spike laughed at her naivety.

"Victorian, luv. It's what wet nurses were for. Wasn't proper, especially for men to see…and after that, well, din't spend much time 'round…this sort o' thing. Tele don't count." He explained almost regretfully. "Those soddin' monks did a right number on you, didn't they?" They shared a smile before both gazes were compelled back down.

"I can't describe how incredible this feels."

"Think I've got some idea, luv."

Spike offered this piece of information up like his inner thoughts just tumbled past his lips without his permission. He couldn't take his eyes away from the way the little one was feeding at her breast; all that ripe, slayer goodness just bleeding from Buffy's nipple and pouring down the throat of the ravenous child.

Buffy didn't understand what Spike meant at first but when she looked up at him, the sight of his face, the yellow sheen to his eye, she had an inkling…what do vamps do best?

"It's the exact opposite, Spike."

"I know, luv." He assured her. "You're giving her life, not taking it away." He sighed sadly before forcing his eyes upon Buffy's. "She's a lucky bugger." He swallowed. His voice had definitely dropped a couple octaves. The tone it bore, dripping with hunger…not for blood but for the Slayer. She could see it in his eyes, the want.

What was happening? How is this happening? Why?

If what he said only alluded to the feelings Spike was currently being overwhelmed by, then the look alone spoke for itself…

"Buffy, I…" How does one put this into words? "It's like you're shining a light on me, Slayer. The chip maybe kickstarted it but you…" He sighed out his frustrations. "Then her…" Spike looked back down at the baby smacking her lips against Buffy's warm skin. By god, did it make him want to thoroughly ravage the woman that sat before him because she was…a woman. No longer the teenage girl that he'd encountered when he first ventured into this dive of a town, Buffy Summers had blossomed, becoming so much more. The girl could be pessimistic, short-tempered but funny and even forgiving. Now, apparently, she was also a mother. Spike had a particular soft spot for the breed, the good ones anyway. If that wasn't a clear sign of how peculiar a vampire he truly was, well, then the universe could just bite it.

Spike tilted his head in the same way Buffy had seen him do so many times before. He lifted a steady hand up towards Buffy's chest but held still when he heard her sharp intake of breath and his pupils whipped up to looks at her. At first, he thought it was outrage but when he bore his penetrating gaze into hers, all he saw was excitement…perhaps even smell it a little too, mixed in with a wash of milk. The mad fluttering in her chest echoed the stammer he knew he would feel in his own, if only his heart could beat. His long, handsome fingers continued forward to first brush tenderly over the cheek of the suckling child but then the tips of his fingers grazed, ever so slightly, along the edge of her breast where the child had latched on. He exhaled steadily. All that hard exterior and she was actually as soft as anything, he mused.

Buffy's heart continued to play a staccato rhythm against her ribs. That slightest touch was divine. His forefinger trailed a path up her sternum, his fingers danced along her clavicle and hooked themselves under the collar of her shirt before pulling it gently down. The vamp's head nodded forward to lay an open-mouthed kiss against her bare shoulder, his tongue darted between his parted lips and tasted the saltiness of her skin.

"Spike." Buffy let out his name on a breathy whisper, she turned her head toward him.

His eyes were black in the absorptive darkness, lustful, curious, maybe a little hesitant. Even so, he was helpless but to lean towards her, stopping just short of making a very important decision.

Buffy made it for him as she pressed her lips against his.

At first, the stillness of their kiss was maddening. As if an unknown presence had cast the smallest stone into an ever-peaceful lake; their calm surface was fractured by a single ripple. It started at the mouth and that pulse was to grow and grow. Their bodies were statuesque, the rise and fall of their chests barely there, he didn't breathe and she wouldn't dare. Buffy's lips just grazed his before his tongue reached out to press against her own, slow, hardly passing as an embrace. Pressing against each other like a finger to a flame or hot breath against a cool sheet of glass; it was swift, passing, a fraction of a kiss but most importantly, it left a patina of taste against the other that was immediately addictive.

They didn't know if the kiss was as hesitant as it was because Buffy still held the feeding child against her breast or because of the magnitude of what it meant. Slayer and vampire, again. Kissing Angel paled in comparison and Buffy had barely grazed Spike's lips.

There was a physicality to the swarm of emotions that tugged at Buffy's chest, literally, the Slayer swore she could feel something in her centre trying to grapple its way toward Spike and his demon, it wanted so desperately to crow in jubilation. Buffy began to pull back to gauge his reaction but before she could worry, Spike brought a hand up to the back of her neck and pulled her towards him for another embrace. This next kiss made them both dizzy.

Spike's tongue dipped into her mouth and the Slayer answered in kind. It felt like coming home. He tasted like a smoky wine and she quenched his thirst like an oasis in the desert. Buffy curled up her tongue and ran it lazily along the back of his teeth. When she found where his fangs were hiding, she spent time stroking them with her curious flesh, coaxing them to descend and sharpen. She pricked herself against a canine and pressed her bleeding tongue against Spike's own, first he stilled at the overwhelming ambrosia but soon brought his other hand up to the side of her face to draw her closer. Spike sucked at her tongue and moaned around it, not wasting a drop. Buffy thought his reaction was wonderful and her belly quivered as he tasted more of her. Her body hummed, content to be giving life to both her child and her…her Spike; in that moment they were all truly connected, no matter what the PTB had to say.

"Buffy." Spike gasped her name like a prayer as they broke apart. As foreheads rested, one against the other, he breathed in time with her; even though he didn't need the air, he was still left struggling to fill his lungs. They both were.

A delicate 'pop' interrupted their heavy breaths and penetrated the rest of the silence in the room, signalling the child had finally had her fill. Buffy rose to burp her, Roxanne's cherub face stared at Spike over the slender shoulder of his Slayer, her eyes were as blue as his own and Buffy's shirt was still hanging off her and her tawny skin was calling to him.

"I should go." He gave her an out.

"No."

"No?" She turned around.

"Stay…if you want."

"Yeah?" And Buffy nodded, he struggled not to let an all-consuming grin take over his face. "Here." Spike offered up his nursing services to the Slayer and reached out his arms for her to pass over Roxanne, Buffy didn't even hesitate.

"I'll be back in a minute." And Buffy left him alone in her room with her child.

Spike lay a tea towel over his shoulder, waiting for that all-important infant upchuck and kept himself busy as it sounded like Buffy was pottering about the kitchen, yes, she was, Spike could now hear the steady rumble of a boiling kettle.

"Your mum's pretty decent, know that? More than decent actually." He whispered to the child as her patted her on the back, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Much more that decent." He confided in the child who had no idea as to what he was saying but Spike had this habit of speaking aloud, whether it was to himself, the universe or the God he despised but continued to have faith in. "Love the soddin' woman." He grumbled to no one in particular.

AN:/ Thank you to those of you who dropped me a review, it spurred on this chapter. Xx