CHAPTER EIGHT

"The sun's down now! The sun's down now!" Daniel exclaims from the window in the kitchen where he is daring to take a peek at the world under the heavy blind. He has learned that a little sunshine is fine, as long as the blind doesn't fly up. But he is so ecstatic tonight that his little hand loses its grip of the blind and it flips around the roller at the top like the threat of a serpent's tongue.

He turns to his parents, with the ready, "I didn't do it," expression on his face. They don't have to admonish him tonight. The sun has set far enough on the horizon that it's no longer a threat to his Daddy.

"It's OK, Daniel. It's almost winter now. Days are getting shorter," Buffy tells her son as she puts the last of the sandwiches into the picnic basket.

Spike is ferrying four beers over from the fridge in hopes that there might still be space for them, but Buffy's look explains that the capacity of the basket has been exceeded and there's no room for extras. Then a bottle of Merlot is produced and suddenly there is lots and lots of room.

"We'll have one glass each, but that's it," she whispers to her husband as she displaces the coleslaw and buries the wine under it. "We will have to drive our child home afterward."

Daniel has been promised a picnic in the park for weeks and he has been assured that he and his parents would have dinner together near the carousel as soon as the sun and the weather permitted and tonight is the night. Southern California weather is in compliance with its balmy reputation and after 6:00 on a Friday it's still 70 degrees. Everything has come together.

"We're all packed," Buffy says, securing the lid of the picnic basket. "I think we're ready."

That's all Daniel has to hear. He's out the door before either of his parents can say whoa.

Buffy runs to the door and yells, "Daniel, you go one step further and this whole thing is off!"

But she can already hear his feet pounding down the stairs to the parking lot. "I'd better catch him," she resolves. "Honey, will you grab a blanket from the linen closet?"

Spike goes to the linen closet and opens the louvered doors. He brings down a blanket from the top of the stack and a shower of sand falls at his feet. This was the blanket they used this past summer, July 4th weekend, when they went to the shore at night for the brilliant fireworks display on the pier. It was hot, even at nine o'clock at night and he and Buffy constantly had to keep Daniel from going into the water. They sat on this blanket watching the pyrotechnical display overhead and drank warm beer and later strolled the shoreline, cooling their feet in the encroaching surf as Daniel looked for seashells and hoped to find a jellyfish because they looked so cool in the brightly colored picture books that he thumbed through at the library. It was a perfect night and they came home too exhausted to put the blanket in the wash and elected to just fluff it out and put it away. Spike smiles down at the sparkling bits of sand on the floor. And then something happens.

Before him, it's as though his sight is being defragmented. Suddenly he is seeing the folded blankets sheets and towels as Rubik's Cubes. A silver sliver resembling the spiral blind of a notebook shimmers in front of him and even when he closes his eyes, he can still see it. And then it's as though lightning has struck the very core of his brain and he is knocked down to his knees from its force.

"Ow!" he cries out, wondering if he really has been thunder struck. He shakes his head and braces his hands against the floor to rise again. But just as he gets to his feet, he is interrupted again, this time by a pain so searing he has to howl. And then he can't see a thing except a wall of white, then complete blackness.

When his senses clear, after moments of lying on the floor in uncertainty and fear, he hears a voice saying, "Daddy?"

This can't look good to a little boy, seeing his father moaning on the floor after being knocked down by an invisible force. Spike is about to respond to his son as he feels the core of his brain being ripped apart again by storms. And he can't help screaming in front of his horrified son.

"Daddy, what's wrong?" he hears Daniel ask.

As he lies on the floor, the pain now so great he cannot even think about how his son might be perceiving this spectacle, he moistens his mouth and requests in a strangulated voice, "Daniel, go get your mother."

Buffy is drumming her fingers against the steering wheel of the mini-van. What is taking Spike so long? She has her answer when she sees her son fleeing the outside staircase as though a bomb has gone off inside.

She is on the pavement the second she sees Daniel and through his sobs she can discern, there's something wrong with Daddy.

Her heart races to her throat, almost beating the time that it takes her to the fly up the stairs to the apartment where the door is open wide and Spike is crawling on the floor.

She has to will herself not to cry out when she sees her husband stricken and somehow paler than she has ever seen him.

"Spike, what is it?" she begs as she leans close to him, taking the stricture of his limbs and the whiteness of his eyes to be some kind of possession. She's not even sure if he's heard her. "Honey, what's wrong?"

"My head," she says through strained lips as he rides out the tail end of another brilliant pain. "My head!"

"What? Your head?" She whispers sharply, "Is it the chip?"

He nods as he groans, another pain building. "Oh God…here it comes again…"

"But the chip hasn't worked in years…wha…how…oh, honey…" It's as though someone is twisting her insides around with a slow and sadistic fork, to see him press his palms against his head as he screams and tries to fight it, but he's left defenseless and she grabs at her own head. "What did you do? Did you do anything to set it off?"

"Nothing!" he strains to say. "I was getting a blanket for us."

She is trying to think, but everything occurring in her head rates a distant second to the thought that her husband is in pain and she can't do anything but watch him.

He lies panting now, trying to catch breath he is storied not to have. For a moment it seems the panic is over and he rises to his elbows. His eyes search hers and he can't find a thing that makes him feel like everything is going to be all right. He sees only fear. Even when he fought her when they were younger, he never saw such terror in her gold-flecked green eyes.

When the world is threatened she is all business. When her world is threatened, she is all too human.

"I'm OK," Spike tells her. "It was just a spell. Probably won't happen again." Her eyes won't accept this as she turns a worried glance his way. "Darling, I'm all right now."

"I'm sorry, Daddy…I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" Daniel is standing by them sobbing, his small face a torrent of tears and guilt.

As Buffy hears her son, she is ashamed that for a few minutes she didn't even know he was there. "Oh, honey," she says, scooting over to him and taking him in her arms. "What makes you think this is your fault?"

He sniffs loudly. "I opened the blind and that made Daddy 'lergic."

"Oh, no, sweetie," Buffy soothes him. "You didn't do anything wrong. This is something else. And look. He's better now. He just had a bad headache. You get headaches too. This was just a really bad one for Daddy."

"Yeah, Daniel. I'm OK. See? No more pain. Now let's get to the car and…" Like a dream he swears in sleep he's had before, the pain returns again. "Oh…OH…OH!" It's somehow worse than before. Searing, piercing, like a hot poker driven deep into his skull. As he allows himself to whimper from the after effects he can't even feel humiliation or feel for his son's disappointment that the three of them aren't going anywhere tonight.

Later in the evening, after they have eaten their sandwiches at the kitchen table and Spike has endured nearly three hours of the worst pain known to man or demon, he lies with an ice pack on his forehead on their bed. Buffy shuts the door to Daniel's room, effectively closing out the cries behind it, but she can still hear them through the thin wood. While she was putting him to bed, Spike had several bad episodes and Daniel shivered and his eyes got dinner plate wide and filled with tears and she assured him what was going on as not his fault, but she doesn't think he believes her. He won't sleep tonight. He closed his eyes as she was leaving but he kept crying and saying he was sorry and he'd never do it again, he swore.

"How's the boy?" Spike asks in a raspy voice.

Buffy shrugs. "I don't know. I read to him. He kept asking questions. You know the drill." She crawls onto the bed and opens her arms for her husband.

When he relaxes in her embrace he can see her features marred by too much concern and little comfort. She is holding him, but she is distant, somewhere else, almost as dead as he feels.

"I have to call someone. There's a number I can call," she says. "I could call that."

"What, 911? Yeah, that would work. They'd pronounce me DOA, luv. Because I am."

"No, there's another number. Something. The Southern California Pizza Kitchen." Buffy reaches for the phone on the bedside table.

"You're ordering pizza now?"

"It was one of their numbers."

The Initiative, he suspects when she says she is dialing one of their numbers. He hopes it is anyway.

"Yes, hello, extra cheese, no sauce." Buffy says anxiously into the phone.

"Is that how you used to ask for Riley?" Spike asks.

"Shhh. It's a code word," Buffy says. "Yes. Extra cheese and no sauce. No, I don't want it delivered. Well, maybe I do, or I don't…I don't know…I'm trying to reach Riley Finn…he used to work there. Maybe not for the Southern California Pizza Kitchen but…OK, so he's not there. He never worked there. You don't know what the hell I'm talking about. OK, I'll try another number." She hangs up. "I have other numbers to call," she tells her husband.

He has no doubt. She would dial all night for him, to anyplace, anywhere for him.

And she does.

By two o'clock in the morning, Buffy has called every take-out place in California that may be a front for a long-defunct government agency. With the last call she apologizes into the phone, "And again, I'm sorry, Mr. Kim, for waking you and your wife. I hope your daughter has a healthy baby."

She puts the phone down and crosses her arms against her chest. Her husband has been quiet for the last thirty minutes, lying there on the bed with the ice pack still frosting his forehead.

"I'm not asleep yet," he lets her know. He removes the icepack from his head and says, "Buffy, you've done enough tonight."

"No," she says. "There's someone else I could call. And he's probably awake now." She sighs and drops to the bed, letting her exhaustion spill her onto the mattress until she is curled up in a fetal position next to her husband. "I just don't know how you would feel about it."

He knows. Angel. Someone who has the power to find anyone anywhere at anytime, powered by the law firm of Wolfram and Hart. Surfing the web one night Buffy found out that Angel had been made the head of the law firm and she and Spike sent congratulatory e-mails to him, tongue-in-cheek, wine-in-belly. Angel fired back with an e-mail that congratulated them on their first year of matrimony and made them both feel like heels. He included his personal cell number. Buffy thumb tacked it to the bulletin board in the kitchen in case of emergency.

There hasn't been the threat of an apocalypse since their marriage and sometimes they think that their wedded bliss has sealed the Hellmouth, but they can't be too certain. They both agreed at some point that Angel would be a solid ally, provided he hasn't experienced ultimate happiness. Spike told Buffy he would fight at Angel's side as long as he knew that Buffy was at his.

"I could call him," Buffy says. "I know he could find him."

"Using one ex to find another ex. It's so us, isn't it? We just do crazy things all the time," Spike laughs.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"Oh…OH! OW! OW!" He rises from the pillow, clutching his head again as the pain rampages through his brain. It lasts for only seconds and when it ends he's left wondering how bad it's going to be the next time and if he really wants to be around for the next time because the pain is so bad this time he wants to die. He lies against the pillow, his face galled by the latest eruption inside his head. "Call the poof. I don't care."

In the kitchen now with the lights down and the refrigerator steadily humming, Buffy migrates towards the bulletin board where, behind a doctor's calling card with her yearly scheduled gynecologist visit, two years overdue, she finds the number. She has always known it was there and the temptation to call it has been great at times, no greater than when she was up late feeding Daniel, coming back from Patrol, or just putting burgers on the George Foreman Grill. She got over wanting to call the number after two years of marriage, but she always knew it was there, just in case. She sometimes believed that by calling it she would be in high school again, Angel would be new and exciting to her and this time things would be different. She knows that things will always be the same with Angel. They'll always be in a cemetery imagining a future that will never be.

Tonight, with the faucet dripping and the refrigerator humming, she is trembling as she dials the number written on the lip of an envelope. She hopes there will be at least four of five rings so that she can prepare herself to say his name. But there is only one. And she doesn't say his name at all. She can't say anything after she hears him say hello.

Too much is coming through the phone. History condensed into one two-syllable word. Suddenly she is sixteen, wearing boots, a bit chubbier than she is now, and wearing a lot of eye make-up. She is self-conscious just thinking of how she looked when she first heard the name Angel. She was doomed to love him the minute she felt his shadow and when the shadow had a name, a face and a kiss things were no longer black or white. There were bad guys who really were bad and bad guys who really were good. It is an ambiguity she is still fighting in her slimmed down, toned present self. She is married to it, actually.

But when she hears his voice, there is no marriage, there is no child, there are no broken appliances around her. There is only the past and a kiss by a tombstone.

"Hey," she finally says, absorbing his roaming minutes, she is sure. She can't imagine Angel with a cellphone. He couldn't even program a VCR when she knew him.

"Buffy?" he asks.

There is a whisper of silk over skin and she realizes she has called him in bed while she is in her kitchen. Plates are unwashed in the sink. Daniel's macaroni from an afternoon snack. Spike's mug. Her discarded sleeve from a Hot Pocket which should have gone into the trash but didn't quite make its mark.

"It's me," she says as she drizzles dishwashing liquid into the sink and turns on the faucet.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

There have been times when she wanted to call him just to chat and there's a part of her that thinks it's rude just to impose on his sleep and make requests. But this is important. And she has to clear her mind and remind herself why she's calling him. When Spike cries out in pain, calling for God, she quickly remembers her mission.

She swishes the sudsy water around and though it's hot, she keeps her hand steady in the maelstrom she's creating. "Spike is sick."

"Spike?" comes the reply.

She can imagine Angel thinking of Spike as his one time protégé whom he delighted in dominating and belittling and then as an enemy, whom he still enjoyed dominating and belittling. He is wondering why he should care about this, why the hell this should matter. And if Buffy were as high school as she felt when she heard Angel's voice for the first time in years, she'd be applauding Spike's pain, but she knows now Spike is more love than hate, less demon and more father. She hopes Angel knows that Spike has gotten beyond her husband's fangy days. What was it Angel wrote to them in his e-mail? She recalls something along the lines of, "Glad you are happy. Send me pics of the baby."

"It's the chip. It's malfunctioning," Buffy tells her ex-lover, wondering still about the hate Angel has for the man groaning in earshot of where she stands in the kitchen as she washes the day's dirty dishes.

"What, it's making him kill now?" Angel asks.

She knows now Angel hasn't gotten beyond anything. To him Spike still equals killer. "Angel, he hasn't killed in years."

"Sorry. Sarcasm kicking in," he says. "Are you OK?"

"No!" she says, as she swishes the brush around the plate of congealed macaroni and cheese her son asked for after school and couldn't finish. She told him that they would all be going out for a picnic as soon as the sun set and he ate sparingly. He was so excited he couldn't finish. "He's in pain." She remembers the bright brass music that played on the radio as her mother battled brain cancer and an alien overhead and she scrubbed and cried in the kitchen. She is washing dishes again while someone she loves is battling something deep in the brain. Now she is not crying. She is too incredulous to cry because, even after all the things she has faced, it seems unfair that there is another person she loves who is suffering while she washes dishes.

"What can I do?" he asks.

And that's just what she wanted to hear. "I need you to find Riley Finn."

"Riley."

"Yes. He's the only one who can really help us."

"What makes you think he'll want to help you?"

"Because it's the right thing to do, Angel. Spike is a father now. He has a family. He's different from how he was 120 years ago or even six years ago."

"I don't know, Buffy," he says, yawning. "You're thinking about asking a guy for help who sees the world in black and white."

"There is no black and white, Angel. You should know that more than anyone."

"Yeah, but does Riley know that."

"I don't know. I don't know. I'm too tired to think right now. Just find him for us. For me, Angel."

There is a pause on the other end of the phone and she hears the silk being shifted again.

After many minutes of silence in which Buffy thinks Angel has either nodded off or they have been disconnected, Buffy says, "Angel, please. I know you and Spike haven't been friends for the last century, but if you can't think about Spike, just think about Daniel. He found Spike tonight screaming in pain. We were going to a picnic and I just had to send Daniel in to find out what was taking his daddy so long. I really didn't think he'd stop crying tonight. He loves his Daddy so much. And Spike is such a good father. You wouldn't believe how gentle and sweet he is with Daniel. They're best friends, I swear."

More silence ensues from the other end and Buffy thinks she's speaking to just a ghost and there is no one there.

"I love him, Angel." She is surprised how freely she divulges this avowal to Angel, asleep or not there, whatever state he may be in. She wants him to know. "I love him. He's good to me. We love each other. I understand how you might not be able to forgive me for loving a demon and someone you hate, but he's the father of my child. He's changed. He really has."

There is still no reply. Buffy wonders if her phone has been cut off for non-payment. But she paid the bill, she's sure. It was $59.73. Or was that the cable bill? As she's about to dash into the living room to turn on the TV and see if it's still on, Angel mumbles into the phone, "OK."

"OK, what?"

"We'll find him for you. Riley."

"Do you think you can?"

"Wolfram and Hart found Jimmy Hoffa twenty years ago."

"Really? Alive?"

"Well, not when they found him, but he is now. But that's another story for another two a.m. Now, the last time you saw him he was headed for---

"South America. He was going to South America. It was covert ops."

"Doesn't matter. Covert or not, we should be able to find him."

Suddenly she can feel her shoulders relax. There are tears in her eyes. And she's remembering why she loved him so much at one time. He was always ready with the answers. Sometimes they were not the answers she wanted to hear, but in this case, this is an answered prayer.

"I'll call you as soon as I know anything, all right?" Angel tells her.

"Yes. You have my number?"

She hears the sheets gliding over his skin again. "I've had your number for a long time, Buffy."

She blushes as though he has just said in a suggestive growl, "What are you wearing?" It seems entirely inappropriate and she's reading too much into his sleepy tone. From her bedroom her husband is muttering curses, gasping, then calling for her.

"I've got to go. Spike…"

"He needs you. I can hear him. Go to him."

She nods even though she knows he can't see her, says good-bye and puts the phone back on the cradle.

She walks away from the kitchen, switching off the lights as she goes. She is in the dark until she returns to their bedroom and all the lights are on there. Her husband is lying flat on his back, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His head moves slowly back and forth across his pillow as he moans.

She turns off the lights until the room is pitch black. She unfolds the covers from her side of the bed, kicks off her shoes, and gets in. She is not going to bother with the formalities of face washing, teeth brushing or gown donning tonight. She is just going to try to sleep with Spike at her side.

"Buffy," Spike says as he reaches for her.

"Sh, I'm here," she says, taking his hand and touching it to her face.

"I got knocked out there for a bit but I know you were going to talk to Angel," he says hoarsely.

"I did."

His hand stills on her face and she hears him exhale deeply. But after the breath, his hand remains on her face and he strokes her cheek.

"When you talked to him…was it…" he struggles to ask.

"It was all business, honey. Strictly business," she calms his fears.

"But still it must have been---

"I asked him to find Riley. That's it."

"Oh God…" he shudders as he drives his head against her shoulder.

"Is it going off again?" she asks, ready to brace against the pain with him.

"No," he says. "You just said the name Riley in our bed. I may never have an erection here again."

"That's all right," she smiles, lighting a kiss on his forehead. "We still have the bathroom floor and the kitchen floor, the kitchen table, the sofa, the basement the…" As her purrs meet his ears she feels him growing rigid beside her, but not in the way she is used to when she whispers huskily to him in the night.

"Here it comes again," he announces.

She holds him, feeling every tremor, hearing every insane word coming from his lips. When it's over this time he is quiet, limp, completely motionless. If he weren't dust, she'd swear he was dead.

Spike sleeps against her for three uneventful hours until the phone rings at 6:00.

It is Angel.

"We worked all night. Our scissors here are blunt from cutting through all the government red tape. But we've gotten through. Riley Finn has been in Iraq setting up the provisional government for five years."

"Did you talk to him?" Buffy asks.

"We got the message though."

"What did you say?"

"We only said that you needed him."

"You didn't say anything about Hostile 17?"

"No, we only said you needed him for something very important."

Angel seems as covert as the ops that Riley has been executing in this war that Buffy protested but cannot fight. She is needed too much elsewhere. A convenient excuse, but in this case, one that has merit since she straddles the Hellmouth at home and keeps the spewing demons in check.

"Well thank you," Buffy says, not knowing exactly what to say.

"You're welcome," Angel says slowly as though he were having trouble finding the right words as well. And then he does find them. "Buffy, if there's ever a time that you ever don't need me, just call me."

Buffy nods as she tries to imagine such a time. And there they are in the cemetery again. "Right," she says. And she hangs up the phone.