Scenes From a Life Not Lived: Bargaining, Part 1
by Trekker

“It’s looking at me.”

“Yes, Spike, she’s an infant. Looking at people is what they do. Along with eating and excreting.”

Spike shot an annoyed sidelong look at the Watcher, but Giles didn’t seem to notice. He just reached into the old chest he was kneeling beside in front of the couch, and pulled out a sprig of some kind of dried plant, eyed it, sniffed it, made an interesting face, and tossed it into the duffle bag he was packing.

“I don’t like it,” Spike declared, stepping back away from the baby carrier that was sitting on the other couch, and out of the little human’s line of sight.

Giles held up a tall, black candle and frowned at it.

“I really couldn’t care less, Spike.”

The candle joined the growing collection of esoteric stuff in the duffle bag.

“Yeah, well, I’m the one has to sit with it for who knows how long. Don’t know if I want to if it’s gonna keep looking at me.”

Giles put down the amulet-like thing he’d just pulled from the trunk and whipped off his glasses, glaring at Spike as he began to clean them with his ever-present handkerchief.

“Believe you me, Spike, if there were *any* other way, I would jump at the chance.”

“Could have let the big pouf baby-sit. Me go with the witch.”

Giles snorted indelicately, and Spike felt a surge of new respect for the man.

“Let Angel stay here, alone, with my daughter? Not bloody likely.”

“Oh, yeah? That so?”

The glasses went back on, and Giles dove back into the old chest, rattling around things old and arcane and no doubt stupidly dangerous.

“Yes, that’s so,” he said, distracted again.

Spike stepped back over to the carrier, looked down over the edge. The little thing peered straight back up at him, dark-eyed and intense. With a grave sense of misgiving, he edged a bit closer, gripped the edge of the carrier with one hand.

Dru loved babies. She’d coo and pet them and... well, yeah, eat them, come on, she was evil. Spike, though, had always stayed more or less away from human young. They had such disturbing large eyes, and tiny noses, and... they stirred feelings in him he really wasn’t sure he wanted to define.

Something kind of distressingly...

... warm and fuzzy.

Experimentally, he vamped out, and snarled down at the thing. It stared at him for a moment, something clearly going on in that too-large head... and then, instead of crying, like they always did around Dru, it silently, toothlessly, opened its mouth.

It was snarling right back at him.

Now entirely nonplussed, Spike went human face again, and looked back towards Giles, who was on his feet, with the duffle bag gathered up in his hand. Jenny had appeared from upstairs, carrying a bag of her own, and Giles met her around the back of the couch. She looked over to Spike.

“Rupert showed you where everything is?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Spike said, still holding onto the edge of the crib. “Go do your mojo or whatever.”

She paused, seemed to sort of *lean* towards the living room and crib for a moment, indecision on her face.

“You know, if you need us for anything, we’ve got the cell...”

Spike smiled, softly, and shook his head, “Go on. I’ll take good care of the little mite.”

“You’d better,” Jenny said, suddenly so cold and deadly, Spike was, for a moment, honestly afraid. Then, with a cheerful smile, Jenny followed Giles out the door, leaving Spike alone... with the baby.

He looked back into the carrier.

“So, then. What d’you do for fun around here?”

***

They staggered back into the house in the small hours of the morning. He was hanging heavily on Jenny’s shoulders, completely drained from the night’s magics, and all he could think of was getting to bed. She gently shrugged him off and nudged him towards the stairs, and he headed off in that direction. Her soft exclamation brought him up short.

“Oh, that is the most precious thing I have ever seen. Rupert, c’mere.”

Everything protested as he stopped with one foot on the first stair. Damn. Oh well, get it over with. He turned and trudged back over to join Jenny where she was peering over the back of the sofa.

Oh. Damn, he had to admit... that was rather. Well. Precious.

Spike and Annie, fast asleep. He was on his back, and she was on her stomach on his chest, head turned to the side, thumb in her mouth.

Spike’s eyes flew open, but he kept himself perfectly still.

“What?” he said.

Giles hid a smile behind his hand.

“Just... making sure everything is in order.”

Spike quickly reached for the infant asleep on his chest, catching her gently in both hands and then carefully sitting up, supporting her head and keeping her cradled close.

“Yeah, well... finally got her to sleep, and all, didn’t want to wake her up again, y’know. You look like hell.”

Ah, Spike, tactful as ever.

“Yes, thank you. I’ll be off to bed now.”

He reached down, briefly touching his daughter’s silky hair, then headed for the stairs, leaving Jenny to negotiate payment.

He only caught snatches of the conversation below as he stripped down to his boxers and gratefully fell into bed, but he did clearly hear when Spike said, “Look here, it’s dawn already, I’m not goin’ anywhere. Might as well stay here and keep an eye on her while you two get some rest. Long as I get paid overtime, right?”

A minute or two later, the blankets lifted, the bed shifted, and Jenny cuddled up next to him. He shut his eyes and let sleep take him.

He woke, once, briefly, to the sound of Annie whimpering downstairs, and then Spike’s voice, startlingly deep by contrast, murmuring, “Hush, hush, now, mite. Your da’s wiped out, let him sleep. Come on, look, it’s your milk, you want it? There we go, that’s more like it. Yeah...”

When he woke the second time, it was around noon, and he knew he wouldn’t be getting back to sleep, so he slipped out of bed, dropped a light kiss on Jenny’s temple, pulled on his robe and headed downstairs.

He could hear the TV playing softly as he walked into the kitchen, so after he’d started the water boiling for tea, he picked up a banana and wandered into the living room. Spike was cross-legged on the floor next to the baby carrier, with one eye on the TV and the other on Annie and the stuffed toy he was bouncing about in front of her.

He was supplying running commentary to the baby on the events of the TV show, in a low, cheerful tone.

Giles stopped just inside the living room, and spoke as he began peeling the banana.

“Spike,” he said, mildly, “please tell me you’ve not already introduced my child to ‘Passions.’”

Spike looked up at him, then quickly set aside the toy.

“She’s a month old, chap. Can’t really watch TV yet. Says so in that book there,” he added, gesturing towards one of their parenting books, which was splayed open across the couch cushions. Giles winced and scooped it up, then tucked a bit of paper between the pages, closed it and set it on the side table. “Says it’s all about tone of voice. Shouldn’t matter what I’m saying.”

“You must have been terribly bored,” Giles said, then took a bite of the banana.

“Nah, not so much...” Spike frowned, then said, abruptly, “I mean, yeah. Torture, mate. Bad enough I can’t bite anything. Now I’m takin’ care of helpless little children? It’s damn insulting, is what it is.”

He stood up, looked Giles square in the eye.

“So, when do I get paid?”

Giles smiled and turned to the desk to write out a check.

“Is that satisfactory?” he asked as he handed it over.

Spike barely glanced at it.

“Yeah, that’ll do, I suppose.”

Casually, as he headed back to the kitchen to tend to the teapot, he called, “Jenny and I were hoping to maybe go out Friday night. If you’re free. Of course, we’d pay you again.”

“Uh, Friday? Well, you know, I’m a busy man. Lots of social engagements, of course. But, seeing as you’d pay me... yeah, guess I could be free.”

“Wonderful. Around seven, then?”

“If you say so, mate.”

Then, he heard Spike’s voice pick up again, murmuring low and lilting.

The End
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