"Ow!  I wish you had shocks in this thing!" Cordelia sucked in her breath with a wince.

"Sorry," Giles said.  "I'd forgotten about that pothole.  Are you all right?"

She pushed against the back of her seat and spread her legs slightly.  "If you hit one more bump, there's going to be a waterfall."

"I trust not," he said, a little amused.  "You're wearing *my* pants.  How many glasses of water did you drink?"

"Eight."

Giles blinked.  "Isn't that a little much?"

"That's what I was told to drink, and it wasn't easy," she muttered, gently rubbing her sore belly.  She'd complained during the past weekend in Los Angeles when she'd discovered that all the clothing she'd packed dug into her waist.  Then she'd griped during clothes shopping when she'd found she'd gained not one inch, but two.  The wail of "I'm huge!" reverberated over and over through the change room door until Giles ditched her to wait in the car.  The resulting argument lasted until Monday morning.  Today was Tuesday, and she still hadn't been able to reconcile those two inches.  Hence, no new clothing had actually been bought, and she was reduced to wearing a pair of his old sweatpants for the ultrasound appointment.

The combination of feeling both fat and unattractive in her garb had, ironically, nearly silenced her.  The drive had been quiet until that pothole.

"Do you think you might go a little faster, Rupert?"

"Not without feeling every bump on the road," he said.  "Why don't you do something to take your mind off it?  What about that book you purchased?  It's still in the back."

Cordelia tried not to twist too much as she reached for it.  He glimpsed a picture of a pregnant woman on the cover as it came out of the bag.

The book gave him three blocks of peace.  Then she asked, "What were we doing on June ninth?"

"Excuse me?"

"You still keep a journal, right?  I want to check it when we get home, to see what we were doing that day.  It was a Wednesday, so you would have been in the library."

"I was probably researching the upcoming Ascension that day," he said.

"Not for the entire twenty-four hours, Rupert.  My due date is March first, which makes June ninth the likely conception date."

Now he got it.  Smiling, he said, "Was that the day we shagged twice in my office?"

"No, because I remember I had gym class afterwards and what you left in there leaked out during aerobics.  Gym was on Mondays."

He wasn't sure if he should apologize for that or not.  "Uh, was it the day we nipped over to the cemetery during lunch?  That was early June.  Or perhaps it was the time we took a few moments in the washroom at the Sunnydale funeral home.  There was also that night behind the Seafood Bistro."  He stopped when she scowled.

"I'd hate to think we conceived our child around dead people or dumpsters."

"For our next one, we'll plan the location better."

Cordelia looked over and caught the tail end of a smile that made her insides feel pleasantly squelchy.  To hide it from him, she rubbed her fingertips over her belly and said, "I'd better warn you now.  Your daddy's depraved."  She returned to her book.  "August eighteenth was the end of the first trimester, so I guess I'm in the second one."  Checking the index, she flipped to the appropriate pages.  Almost immediately came a loud, "Oh no!"

"Cor?"

"The very first line says, 'During the second trimester, your abdomen will visibly enlarge.'"

"Honey, I rather think you should give in and buy some maternity clothes."

"But I don't fit them yet, Rupert."

"Cor, not all of your dresses are snug at the waist, and if you had a couple of seams let out….."  But the look she gave him made him wish he'd had the sense to shut up long ago.

"They wouldn't hang right, Rupert.  They don't now.  You can see my stomach, and I don't look pregnant.  I just look fat."

She did actually sound upset.  If he hadn't been so worried about her wetting the inside of his car, he would have pulled over to comfort her.  "Cor, you're carrying a baby and it's going to need a little room.  As to how you look, you are simply beautiful.  You will never be anything less."

Cordelia started to cry.  Alarmed, he did pull to the curb, then reached for her.  "Honey?"

"Hormones," she managed between sniffles.  He offered her his handkerchief, then bent to kiss her.  Just as his lips reached hers, however, she cried, "God, I *so* need to pee!"

Giles took the subtle hint.  As he pulled back out into the lane, he said, "We could stop at a gas station and you could, uh, perhaps…..a little."

She wiggled forward to the edge of the seat and picked up the book again.  "No.  Just hurry.  Geez, Rupert.  I never imagined having *this* sort of conversation with you."

They were at the hospital when she said, "Wait.  Here's something.  From the third or fourth month, you should start feeling your baby move.  At first, it will feel like flutters below your stomach."

An expression went across her face, the likes of which he'd never before seen.  No, he had, he suddenly remembered, in a Hatherel painting.  Arthur staring entranced as Excalibur was carried across the water to him.

"Cor," he whispered, though he hated to break the moment.  "We're here."

She gazed at him, a dark echo of awe still in her eyes.  "Won't that be something, Rupert?  To feel our baby move?"

"Certainly worth the two inches, don't you think?"

"If you value your safety, don't tease me."

A hormone-filled Cordelia was nothing to trifle with, Giles guessed.  He shut up and helped her out of the car.

---

"Miss Chase," the technician called.

"Thank God," Cordelia murmured.  She put down her magazine and, grabbing Giles' hand, edged slowly to a standing position.

His hand twitched in hers as he grunted.  "Cor, not so hard."

"If I have to be in pain with this, so do you."

At the door, the technician asked, "Are you coming in with her, sir?"

Cordelia didn't like being halted in mid-passage.  "He's the father."

"Your father, miss?  We've had mothers come in before."

"*The* father.  Of the baby!"

"Cor," Giles warned softly, but the technician was already moving out of the way.

As Cordelia went past, she somehow managed a non-aggressive tone.  "He's not old.  He just looks that way."

"Thanks, Cor," Giles sighed.

The technician was a young woman, but not so inexperienced that she couldn't give Giles a look of open sympathy.  "Will you be with her during labour?"

They were directed to the change room.  As Cordelia whined about the hospital gown, he tried to disengage his hand from her grip.  He would have been more impressed by the unexpected strength she possessed, if the bones in his hand weren't bending from the pressure.  When she finally got the gown on and looked up at him in utter pain and anguish, he forgot about his hand.  With his uncompressed one, Giles brushed a streak of sweat from her forehead.

"It won't be long now, baby," he murmured.

He could imagine how she felt.  He'd once had this test in a hospital while interns weighed the options between an ulcer or gallstones.   The diagnosis had finally been a kidney stone.  It and his overly full bladder had caused spasms of cold, intense pain from front to back, pain which lasted in ghost contractions for several days after the exit of the stone.

As if responding to his thoughts, she put a hand on her back.  "Let me," Giles said and lifted her up, carrying her across the hall to the table in the examination room.

If the technician was surprised by this, she gave no sign.  Or, perhaps, she'd already surmised it was wiser not to around Cordelia.  "Please open the front of your gown, Miss Chase.  I need to put some of this gel on your stomach for the scanner."

"How long will it take?" Cordelia asked, grimacing as the technician began rolling the scanner.

"Ten minutes at most.  Not long."

The monitor faced away from them.  Several clicks came from a machine underneath it, then the technician asked, "Do you wish to know the sex of your baby?"

"No," Cordelia said just as Giles said, "Yes."

"No," Cordelia insisted.

The technician smiled.  "No, it is.  It's the mother's choice.  Just let me get a few more pictures at this angle, then I'll change it and turn the screen around so that you can see."

"How is…..everything?" Cordelia asked, hushed and anxious.  Giles, startled by her tone, caressed her cheek.

"Everything is just fine.  The baby is about five inches long and I can see a strong heart.  Here, do you want to see?"  She turned the monitor to them.

After a few moments, Cordelia whispered, "Oh my God, Rupert, there's a baby!"

The gray image was fuzzy, like a picture taken at night with an over-bright flashbulb, but among the shadows and creases was a head with a fist just coming up to the mouth.  Cordelia watched as the two connected, then cried, "Eyes!  I see eyes and a nose."

She felt Giles' hand on her shoulder, frozen in the middle of a touch.  "And a foot," he said at last.

Cordelia looked up at him.  In the semi-dark room, the image played across his glasses.  Then he took them off to gaze down at her.  With an incandescent grin that shed his years away, and uncaring of the presence of the technician, he said, "Cordelia, I love you."

She took his hand happily, but with considerably less pressure this time.  Returning her eyes to the screen, she said, "Please, I want a picture, but not one that shows the gender."

"No problem."  The machine clicked again and the technician extracted a glossy paper.  "Just so you know," she said, as she gave it to Cordelia, "*that's* the umbilical cord."

Cordelia was still holding the picture when they returned to the car.

"Feel better?" Giles asked, for Cordelia had literally run to the bathroom between examination table and change room.

"My stomach's still achy," she griped, but vaguely, her attention still on her picture.  "I'm going to start a baby book."

"I thought you said you didn't want to."

She shook her head.  "I want to do all the sappy stuff, Rupert.  I want a baby book and a crib mobile and even a jolly jumper."

"So do I," he admitted.  He pulled her over to him, though carefully.  Then he kissed her in a way that was deep and passionate, but without the frantic beat of arousal.  Afterwards, he said, "I remember what we did June ninth.  There was a fire drill that day and we left after it.  We drove in this car to the beach, had a couple of those appalling hot dogs from the stand, and made love in the back seat."

Cordelia laughed.  "That's right!  I remember!"

"No dumpsters.  No dead people," Giles said and she giggled again.  He kissed her once more, then said firmly, "As dearly sexy as you look in my pants, I think you need to give in and get some proper clothes."

"Ok, but no taking off on me this time," Cordelia told him as she fastened her seat belt.

"I won't leave if you don't wail.  Deal?"

"One wail," she bargained.

"Outside the store."

"Outside doesn't count."

He made a little strangled cry.  She reached over to touch his thigh, then said, "Rupert, I love you too."

(end)