Welcome Home
by Rin
Welcome Home
[reviews]
A/N: Here's our girls, and the start of something brewing...
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Walking in the door seemed easier than getting out of the car. With bundles of balloons, flowers, and baby gifts (not to mention a baby), Buffy and Willow finally managed with the help of Dawn and Andrew. It was awkward for Willow that she now had two people in her crowd that were members of two of her biggest bands. Dawn seemed happy, though, and that's all that mattered. For about two weeks, the brunette brooded past the point of Angel. At one minute, she looked like she would panic, and the next, she looked like a depressed, lonely woman. Buffy couldn't get the problem out of her but apparently the problem was fixed when Andrew started hanging around again. Both women made a silent, mental agreement to question Dawnie as soon as possible. Right now, though...Elita was their main concern.
For one thing, the nursery wasn't finished yet. With Xander missing those few months, and Willow always at work, Buffy couldn't move all the furniture by herself, and she wanted to include her wife in the decorating but she was never around to help. All they had was a bed, dresser, and diaper station. The girls did manage to paint the room early in the pregnancy, with Willow pushing Buffy from the room, so that she didn't inhale the fumes, no matter how much protest came from her stubborn wife. That was in a better time in their life. Now, things were about to go up for them. Not just with the sudden, unplanned arrival of Elita but also with Willow no longer needed every hour of the day at the office. The redhead took two weeks vacation to recuperate, and now the girls were given a chance to build their relationship back to the stronghold it once was, and include their new little girl in it.
"I think that's the last one." Dawn hoisted an oversized bundle of flowers onto the dining room table, wiping her brow from all the hard work. The couple just had too many friends. Even some famous actors, musicians from other labels, Watchers Records musicians, and other authors sent the most random things. A few children's book authors that Buffy was in close contact with (and some she knew in just passing) sent autographed copies of their complete library of books. Willow was nothing but excitement at that fact. There were even comic book authors that wrote special comic books on Buffy's slayer chronicles that sent autographed copies, and one even wrote a comic on Buffy and Willow welcoming Elita home (even though it was just speculation). Xander was excited about that, as was Faith; they both sat in the waiting area at the hospital, since only four were allowed in the room at a time when Elita was in there, and they read through the collection of comics sent to the couple.
"Aww...are you tired, Dawnie? Do you need a nap?" Buffy pouted, as she held Elita against her shoulder, cradling her head against her securely.
"A nap is just the beginning. I've never seen this many things in my life." Dawn leaned back in the chair, as Andrew started to massage her shoulders for her, earning a delightful moan from his girlfriend.
"So tell me, Dawnie..." Willow entered the room with a tall glass of ice water, drinking it in gulps. She agreed with her sister-in-law about the vast amount of things. "How goes it? I feel like I haven't seen you in years."
"Well...if you didn't desert my sister, then..."
"Dawn..." Buffy's warning tone stopped the brunette completely.
"Sorry." She just sighed, and relaxed in her boyfriend's embrace. Actually, that's a good point to discuss. "Buffy, I know with all the excitement with Elita, everything is great right now but there's something serious we need to discuss...if you don't mind."
"What is it, Dawnie?" Willow sat down across from her, and looked at the brunette with concern plastered on her face. Sitting down the drained glass, the redhead pushed it away to prevent herself from playing with the ice.
"Sure; just let me put Elita to bed first. It's been a long day." Buffy walked carefully up the stairs; she didn't want to trip, and do something completely off kilter on their first day home. After eight months of carrying a baby in her belly, she felt a little off balance without the added weight. Willow followed behind her, and helped her wife put their baby to bed for the first time. The redhead wrapped her arms around Buffy, as the blonde tucked their little girl in to sleep, careful not to put too much covers to where she would suffocate if she rolled around in her crib. "The monitors are still in the pack."
"I'll get them; you stay put." Willow moved around the room, digging through packages until she found the baby monitors, and finally managed to get the batteries in their proper place before testing to make sure they worked.
"Shh...don't wake her." Buffy looked at her wide-eyed wife, and chuckled lowly. She missed Willow. "C'mere." The redhead had no problems complying with those terms, as they kissed gently, wrapping their arms loosely around each other, both holding one monitor. "I've missed you, Willow."
"Me, too. Missed you, that is. I've missed you." She sighed, and laid her head down on Buffy's shoulder, willing herself not to cry. "I know it seems like I wasn't there for you but you're all I ever thought about. At work, when I couldn't sleep at night, when I was too tired to make love...all I could think about was how I wanted to get everything done faster, so that I could come home to you, and not immediately pass out. I love you so much, and now we have Elita, and everything is going to perfect again, and I..."
"Shh...you're going to wake the baby." Buffy placed her fingertips against Willow's babbling lips, as she leaned in to kiss said lips tenderly. "I love you, Willow. It's just...my hormones were doing something to me, making me somebody I didn't like, and you're right...everything is going to be okay. We can do this. We can be parents. We can be lovers again; not that we weren't before...just...we haven't made love in over two months, and it's been torture."
"Me, too. It's been torture to me, too." Willow pulled her wife fully into an embrace, and whispered so that the baby would stay in a peaceful slumber. "I can't believe we're finally here. I want you so bad, Buffy, and it kills me knowing that I have to wait."
"Why wait?" The sexual undertones in the blonde's voice sent shivers down Willow's body but her mind was still in control...for the moment.
"Dawn's still downstairs, and she wanted to talk...remember?"
"Oh, yeah. I forgot; oops." Buffy grinned sheepishly, as she pulled from the embrace, putting the monitor in her hand on the dresser beside the crib. Making their way downstairs, they found Dawn and Andrew in the living room, seated on the couch, a bowl of pretzels and two refreshed glasses of water waiting for them. "Thanks, you two." Buffy gulped hers down with gusto. The labor had taken a lot out of her, and she still hadn't dealt with the fact that she was dead for a minute. She had been too busy with Elita, and everybody surrounding them. Now that things were calming down, the death was going to hit her hard; she already knew that much.
"No problem." Andrew cleared his throat from his squeaky response. "No problem."
"Thanks." Willow took another sip of hers, enjoying the condensation falling over her warm fingers. She suppressed a chuckle at her musician, and had to hide it behind several sips of ice-cold water.
"So...what's up?" Buffy sat down in the recliner, and Willow sat beside Dawn on the couch. The younger couple looked at each other, and took a deep breath before speaking.
"See...the thing is...we've been talking about stuff...lots of stuff." Dawn waved her hands to deflect the negative thoughts running through her sister's speculative mind. "But not bad thoughts."
"No, not bad thoughts." Andrew narrowed his eyes in thought. "At least, I don't think they're bad thoughts."
"Anyways, we've been talking a lot, and there's something big that we need to talk to you guys about." Dawn looked from girl to girl, trying to gauge a response but both just arched eyebrows, indicating that she should continue before they said anything. "We want to get married."
"Oh...I don't..." Buffy was about to go into all the reasons Dawn shouldn't get married. She was too young; she was still the little sister that she helped raise. She hadn't had a chance to travel, live her life, have adventures. Willow squeezed her knee before she had a chance to get any of that out, as the redhead showed her 'Buffy, let's not say anything we'll regret later' face. The blonde missed seeing that face.
"Well, Dawnie...that's certainly...um...new?" Willow wasn't sure what to say, either. Neither was aware that the relationship was that serious.
"It is, I know but we've been dating for over nine months, and we both think it's the best thing for both of us. It's not just something we're doing because all the cool kids are doing it; we both want this. We want to spend the rest of our lives together." Dawn lowered her head, still sad over the news that her fiancé could die anytime. "No matter how short that could be."
"Are we missing something?" Buffy always could read her sister. Now was no different, and right now, Dawn was hiding something from them.
"Now, don't get mad, Buffy...it's not really his fault but..."
"Actually, it is. It's all my fault, and I'm living with it the best I can."
"And we're safe. All the way." Dawn nodded her head, following Andrew's argument, even though there wasn't really an argument to be made yet.
"Plus, I happen to be madly in love with her, and I want to...spend the rest of my life with her. Just like in the movies, where the guy falls for the girl but there's some big disease lingering over them. What was that movie called?" Andrew furrows his brow in deep thought, as Dawn looks at him in adored amusement.
"You don't remember?" She crosses her arms, and smirks with delight.
"Hey, it's not that I don't remember. I just happen to have a brief memory lapse due to the tense situation. Can't I have a cool, refreshing Zima?" He looks at her with pleading eyes, and she sends him an apologetic one in response.
"No Zima." Willow is beyond worried. Andrew mentioned something about a disease, and that's news to her. That's not just important for her family life (since Dawn apparently is marrying him now) but also for her professional life, since he is part of the label.
"Shut your face about the Zima. Just talk." Buffy had a stone face on, having heard the same thing Willow did, taking the worst scenarios to heart. This was her baby sister. She couldn't help but feel like a surrogate mother to her, as well. Plus, she just brought home her newborn, so the blonde was feeling extra tense around anybody hurting her loved ones.
"I-I don't know. Stuff just happened..." Andrew was beyond nervous; Dawn placed a loving arm on his thigh to calm the twitching.
"So remember." Buffy was harsh, and Willow placed a comforting 'just hear him out first' expression on her face to calm her. It worked; it always did.
"I'm HIV positive." It was better to just breathe it out in the open than beat around the bush. The faces on his future in-laws' were blank, expressionless. That worried him more than anything. "It happened one night with a trick I picked up backstage after a concert in London a few years back. I was just too drunk to notice that we weren't careful. When he called me, I thought he was joking but Jonathon convinced me to get tested anyways, and he was right."
"Huh..." Buffy jutted her jaw forward, completely unprepared for that statement. Willow's eyes turned wide, fear for Dawn, Elita, and the media. It wasn't the fact that he was positive; it was the fact that he hadn't said anything before, and now there were new factors in play, the main one being that he would be around their new baby. A colleague of Giles, Wesley Windham-Pryce had died of AIDS while she was in high school, and even though nobody was fond of the man, the redhead still respected him for his knowledge. He was a professor of mythology at UCSD, and his lover had died only two years previous, being the one that infected the British man in the first place. Daniel Osbourne was only a year older than Willow, and didn't even graduate high school, dropping out because of his big party habits, unable to make gigs because he was too high and drunk to even know where he was half the time. Wesley found him, and the two became lovers before Oz even was aware of his status. It didn't take long for either of them to pass away from the horrible disease. Willow only knew them in passing, and wasn't fond of either of them at all but she was still sympathetic for their suffering. With Andrew, it was different because...now, people she did like were the ones suffering.
"I don't want you to think that I'm marrying him because of the suddenness. Even if it weren't an issue, I would still want to be with him, no matter how long we have together." Dawn waited for a response from Buffy or Willow but they were still mute. "I love him, and I see what you two have, or had rather...will get back, I have no doubt...but I see you two together, and I can't help but want that every moment possible. With Andrew, I have that...I feel like that. He makes me happy, just like Willow makes you happy, Buffy. I know the risks, I know the dangers but we are safe, and I would do nothing to cause any danger to anybody."
"I understand this is a big deal; hell, I could hardly stand it until Dawn came along. Willow knows about my playboy ways, about the tricks, the drugs, the booze. She knows that I fell into the seedy underbelly of being a rock star, following in the footsteps of many a great musician." Andrew was willing to fight for Dawn. He truly, madly, deeply loved her, and it wasn't until he saw her face that day he arrived back in Sunnydale after the talk-show lineup that he fully understood the reason he backed off from intimacy. He didn't want to hurt her; he didn't want to risk breaking a condom, or cutting himself around her, or falling into old patterns that would hurt her. He loved her so much that he was willing to give up the only person he ever loved just to save her from his tainted life. When he told her, she reacted just about like Buffy and Willow are right now but after two weeks, she went back to him, stating that she didn't care, that they could work something out, no matter the risks, no matter the consequences. They were in love, and right before Buffy turned eight months' pregnant, he proposed to her at the place they first met: the arcade.
"Andrew...listen..." Willow wanted to speak before Buffy flew off the handle. Her wife was tired, ready to snap any minute, and overly worried about her family. One slipup, and one of them could be infected. It wasn't something either of them had in mind for the future of their family.
"I'm sorry I never said anything, Willow. It's just..."
"No, I...I understand. I just...wow. This is big news, and kinda takes some getting used to." She blinked a few times to calm herself. "I...I get why you didn't say anything...to me, that is but...I would've listened, I would've understood...I've been there, I've known people...it wouldn't have effected the way I see you. Well, okay to be honest, it would have...I mean, it does but not in a bad way. More like a...scary way. I mean, we just brought Elita home, and then there's Dawnie, who's like my sister, and I have to worry. It's in the manual. I mean...being safe doesn't always mean that nothing could happen."
"I know. I get that, too. I tried to stay away, tried to protect Dawn from my unclean ways but I've never felt like this before, and it's more amazing than the time Jonathon, Warren, and I stayed up for two straight days watching all of the DVDs of 'Dr. Who.' Not 'Red Dwarf,' though because it's not out on DVD." He noticed the looks that indicated he'd gone into nerd mode again, and sighed. "I know that with Elita here, and Dawn that you think this is a bad thing, and I get that. I really do but I'm safe. We're safe. I get that safe isn't always the way of things but I don't want anything to happen to anybody, especially Dawn and Elita. I would never do that. I couldn't do that. It's bad enough waking up every morning, feeling like I want to just go ahead and die, get it over with, so that I won't be a risk to anybody anymore. I'm tired of knowing that I can't go to a public pool with my friends like in high school, that I can't have children, that I have to take so many pills every day that I put drug addicts to shame. I hate it all, and I wish things were different but they're not, and I can't change anything now. The only thing I can do is try to finish what's left of my life, and I want to spend it loving Dawn because that's something I do right. The only thing I think I've ever done right." Everybody was quiet; all shed silent tears, as Andrew's pained sobs were hushed by Dawn, soothing him in her embrace. Finally, Buffy stood, took a deep breath, closed her eyes tightly, wiped her tears, took another deep breath, and sniffled to clear her throat so that she could be heard clearly.
"Just give me time." With that, she walked up the stairs, leaving her wife with the young couple. She needed to digest all of this before she said something she regretted. Willow was right. There was no need for her to be irrational. She'd never known anybody that was positive before, so this was all new to her. All the horror stories she learned growing up kept floating through her head: don't drink after them, you can't kiss them, touching them could be fatal, if they bleed, run like the dickens. With Elita and Dawn in the picture, and even Willow...especially Willow, since her wife had been around him this whole time, and nobody was aware of the fact. Something could've happened, and Willow could've been exposed, caught it, and when they made love, she could've caught it, and during birth, Elita could have caught it. Everything suddenly became that much more difficult, as she prepared herself for bed in a numb fashion.
Willow let the couple out, wishing them a good night, and just give it time. The two more than grateful to not be privy to Buffy's anger, as they left with their arms wrapped around the other, needing to feel the comfort. The redhead walked slowly up the stairs, hearing Buffy in the bathroom. She walked into the nursery, and watched Elita sleep peacefully. Oh, to be that innocent again. Things just became more difficult, right when she thought things were going to get back to normal. She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't hear Buffy come in the room.
"You're scared, too, huh?" Her voice was soft, indicating that she was more than scared. She was downright panicked.
"Of course; who wouldn't be? All this time..."
"I know." Buffy moved forward, and reversed their position from earlier, wrapping her arms around her wife's waist, and allowing the redhead to relax in her arms, as they watched over their sleeping newborn. "Maybe we should all get tested."
"I don't think that's necessary, Buff."
"Why not?" Buffy was confused and a little angry. Surely, Willow wouldn't think it unnecessary to be completely cautious.
"I'm just saying...the doctors and nurses took our blood how many times over the past eight months? Plus, they checked Elita backwards and forwards. If any of us were...if any of us were positive, then somebody would have said something. Dr. Olivia wouldn't have even given us the chance." Willow turned around, and cupped Buffy's frightened face in her hands. "I understand this is frightening. It was the first time for me, too but Dawn honestly loves him, and he's made her a better person, I think. He's actually a better person himself, and I think she's why. For some odd reason, they fit together, and if they can get past the fact, then surely we can."
"I don't know, Will. I mean...with Elita here, and you being around him all these years without knowing..." Buffy avoided eye contact, not wanting to listen to logic but knowing that her wife was sincere. The doctors would have said something, so they weren't tainted, too but she still worried.
"Look, if it makes you feel better, we'll call the hospital tomorrow, and ask. If they can't tell us, then we'll get blood tests to be sure. Okay?" Willow finally managed to capture her wife's glossy gaze, and she pulled her into a tight embrace, a little more than worried herself about the same things. This way, they could be absolutely sure, and then they could move on, and start to accept Andrew as he is, so that Dawn could be happy. The girl deserved to be happy.
"Thanks, Will." Buffy wiped her tears again, and moved to check on Elita one more time, bending down to kiss her sleeping forehead before watching Willow do the same, and the two of them retreating to their room, keeping the door open completely. It was their first night home, and they wanted to make sure nothing went wrong.
"Give me just a minute, and I'll be there." Willow watched Buffy crawl under the covers, and turned off the lamp as she walked into the bathroom to prepare herself for bed. It took her three minutes, and she shut the bathroom door, and settled in beside her wife. Snuggling for the first time in what felt like years, the two finally relaxed slightly. "You know...I planned on seducing you tonight."
"Oh, really?" Buffy was about to fall asleep. Her body was still tired, and she was still getting used to the changes.
"Yeah, really." Willow kissed the top of her wife's head, as Buffy drifted further to sleep.
"That's nice." Buffy was almost completely gone, and felt the soft lips she'd longed to feel for weeks brush against her cheeks before she finally accepted Morpheus's call for dreams.
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A/N: Does that answer your questions about Wes and Oz? I actually thought both characters were horrible but that's personal opinion, and in no way should reflect the story. Hope you guys and gals didn't mind. I just can't write them.