Chapter Nineteen
“Ohmygod. It was the best. The
best movie I’ve ever seen.”
“This week.” Spike mumbled to Buffy, and it was so true, she
had to smile. Dawn’s favorites were known to change almost nightly.
“I can’t wait ‘til the next
one. How can they expect us to wait an entire year?” she wailed dramatically.
“It’s evil. Do you think they’re demons, Buffy? Evil demons?
You could slay them.”
“Do you two plan these
things?” Buffy asked, looking from Dawn to Spike and back again. “There will be
no more of the asking me to slay musicians and movie type people when you’re
annoyed with them by suggesting they might be demons. Besides, if I slay
someone important, it would probably only delay the other two films even
longer.”
The movie had been a good
idea, she thought, even though she’d been overruled on which film to see. She’d
been pushing for Oceans Eleven, looking forward to the salty goodness of George
Clooney and Brad Pitt on the same screen at the same time. Not to mention the
side dishes of Matt Damon and Andy Garcia. Any film with that much eye candy
was bound to help lift her out of her
still-stewing-and-somewhat-steamed-and-increasingly-strung-out Slayer
bad-moodiness.
But Dawn had been talking
about The Lord of the Rings for weeks, and Spike had quite blatantly sided with
her. Buffy had never read Tolkien’s classic, but the story
had been engrossing; filled with humor, drama, and wicked fight scenes. She was
also thinking Rivendell looked like a great place to
take a long, lazy vacation, which she could so
use. Especially if it involved hours of uninterrupted – and dreamless – sleep.
“They’re all made,” Dawn
grumbled. “They just want us to wait in agony.”
“Tormenting
the masses.
My kind of people,” Spike contributed.
It was just a turn of
phrase; a sort of joke, Buffy told herself, probably designed to get a smile
out of me. I am in a halfway good mood for the first time in days, and way more
relaxed than I’ve been all week. I am not
going to start up with the analyzing every tiny thing Spike says and does
again. I’ve been doing enough of that this week, and I’m sick of it. I also
don’t want to think about
The movie had been good.
Dawn and Spike were both in good moods, and she had survived a first interview this
afternoon at the Wellness Center with the tawny haired and frighteningly
beautiful Lynn ‘Call me Lynx, everyone
does’ Alexandra; an interview during which she thought she’d actually
managed to come across as relatively intelligent and capable.
I am going to enjoy the rest
of the evening. Period.
“Who did you think was hot? Aragorn? Oh, yum. Those eyes, those
cheekbones. Like you, Spike. Or Boromir?
So brooding and dark?”
“Like
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
Huh? The under-the-breath
aside from Spike to Buffy confused her, but the conversation went on before she
could ask for an explanation.
“Or – oooh,
oooh, Legolas…” Dawn drew
the name out blissfully.
“Didn’t really go for any of
them,” Spike admitted, and tipped his head thoughtfully as though trying to
decide between the three men. “Gimli, though...”
Buffy eyed him and he shrugged.
“Don’t be jealous, love. I
think it was just the ax.”
Dawn snickered, and Buffy
smiled.
“Let’s go for ice cream,” she
blurted out. “Okay?”
Spike's face softened, and
he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Anything,
love.”
Her breath caught at the
warmth of his expression, and she jerked her eyes away.
“Dawn?” Her voice squeaked a
little.
“Yeah, how about you, bit?
Mountains of sugar topped with a cherry?”
“Oooh!
Yeah. And M&M’s, too, right?”
Dawn continued talking about
‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ while they walked to the ice cream parlor and
placed their orders.
“What was up with Galadriel
saying the dawn was terrible?” she grumbled, tapping her foot as they waited
for their ice cream.
“I think she said beautiful and terrible.”
“Still – terrible. What’s
terrible about dawn? I don’t like my name being taken in vain like that.”
“Well, the ‘dawn’s early
light’ can be a bit iffy for me if I get caught out in it.”
“Good thing you’re fast,
then.” Dawn grinned at him. “And know where all the entrances to the sewer
tunnels are. Oooh, and that whole mithril thingy?
It would totally stake-proof you!”
“Rather be staked than be caught
unliving and wearing that nancy-boy
thing.”
“Maybe it could be
redesigned,” Buffy suggested dryly. “Into a t-shirt.”
Dawn snorted in agreement.
“And spray painted black.” The sisters smiled at each other.
Conversation slowed as soon
as Dawn’s mouth was occupied with ice cream. Her blue eyes were flitting around
the room, and Buffy knew she was checking out the boys and the clothes the
other girls were wearing. Her own eyes kept returning to the vampire seated
next to her sister, who had passed on anything to eat. She watched him as he
watched her; watched as his eyes stared at her mouth as she licked at her ice
cream cone. His gaze grew more and more intense until she realized she was –
altering – the way she was eating the treat.
Oh. My. God.
Buffy felt herself flushing wildly, and she ignored his very satisfied smirk as she got
up and dropped half the cone into the trash. If he kept looking at her like
that while she was eating, she’d never put on the pounds he and Giles wanted
her to gain.
Which could
so be a good thing.
“Finished?” Spike drawled
out, brows rising. “Was it – good?”
Buffy's eyes darted to Dawn,
who was thankfully checking out a group of guys that had just come in.
Desperate to distract Spike, and herself, Buffy began talking about the movie
again. To her relief, he followed her lead, and the two of them started
breaking down and analyzing the different battles scenes, discussing the
weapons chosen by the various characters and their usefulness against the
enemies they’d encountered. Axe, bow, sword, Legolas’
magical, never-empty quiver.
Dawn’s attention wandered
back to them, and as she took in the turn the conversation had taken, she
stared at them, amazed. She shook her head, her mouth curved around her spoon.
“Ggg, unackkmmmuh.” The
girl frowned, removed the spoon from her mouth, and tried again. “God, one
track minds much? You see the fantasy movie of the decade and you’re talking
weapons? You two are the weirdest people I have ever met.”
~*~
“Oooh, homework,” Dawn muttered when they come in the door.
Buffy’s eyes
narrowed. “I thought you said it was done, young lady.”
“Relax, mom.”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “It is. I only have to read a couple of scenes from
Hamlet. Once I get my mind into Shakespearian English mode, it’ll be a piece of
cake. Perfect in-bed assignment.”
“Well, okay,”
Buffy relented. She accepted Dawn’s kiss on her check.
“I loved the
movie and the ice cream. Thanks. Night, guys!” She was almost radiating
happiness, andher contentment deepened Buffy's own.
“Night,
sweetie.”
“Night, bit.”
They watched her
go up the stairs.
“Do I act like a
mom?” Buffy asked, a little plaintively.
“Don’t look like
one, love,” he answered her real question.
He tossed his
duster over the back of the sofa, and followed Buffy into the kitchen.
She came to a
halt just into the room, grimacing at the overflowing sink. “Eeeww, more dirty dishes. Ever since the dishwasher
broke down, it’s like the magical never-empty sink or something. I’m the
Slayer. Shouldn’t I get some sort of Get-Out-of-Housework-Free-for-Life card or
something?”
Despite her
griping, she started stacking dishes and running water into the sink.
“It came in the
post the other day.” Spike didn’t miss a beat. “Didn’t I tell you? Once I’ve
had my chance to see you doing the hoovering in
nothing but the pearls and high heels, I’ll get it to you.” He smirked at
Buffy’s semi-glare. “Tara in bed, d’you think?” he
asked, hopping onto the counter and watching as she started swishing a sponge
over plates encrusted with the remains of Dawn’s surprisingly tasty tuna
casserole.
“No. She finished
finals yesterday and left this morning to stay with her friends, Annalore and Ginny, for Christmas.”
“Yeah, she
mentioned she was going out of town,” Spike said. Since Tara and Willow had so
many of the same friends, Doe Eyes had been worried that holiday parties might
get awkward if Red decided to come out of her room and attend some. Of course, the
plans had been set down before Harris learned that
Even though Dawn
was upset about
“Oh, she caught a
ride with that Karen Boles girl – you know, her ‘study buddy’ that was here cramming
with her the other night? – so she took it. I don’t
think
“I’m guessing she
caught that from you.”
Buffy tipped her
head. “You think? I’m hoping it will rub off on Dawn, too, so I never have to
get car insurance for a teenager. I hear it’s, like, a lot of money.”
Spike thought it
would be best not to mention that he’d already given Dawn a few private
lessons, and that his girl was wildly enthusiastic about getting her license. “When
you get that job,” he said instead, “You’ll be sittin’
pretty.”
“Ha. No, I won’t.
But it’ll help.” She screwed up her face in one of those adorable Buffy
expressions. “Do you think I have a chance? You know, to really get it?”
“Who could they
find that’d be better than you, love?” he assured her, and was rewarded with
the upward curve he noticed at the corners of her mouth.
As usual, her
smiles pleased him. She’d been moody and withdrawn for the last several days,
and not particularly communicative about why, and he was happy to see her more
relaxed tonight. She’d been wound so tight…
The Watcher had
noted it, too, and had asked Spike if he had any idea what was going on. He
didn’t. Nor did Dawn. She’d told him that she thought
Buffy and Xander had had some kind of argument the
other night, after the Chinese dinner at the Magic Box, but his girl didn’t
have any other details. He hadn’t seen Buffy and Harris in each other’s company
since then, and even the normally chatty Anya had
been close-mouthed.
He was trying to
ignore the fact that, as well as holding herself aloof from the Scoobies for most of the week, Buffy had been a bit detached
from him as well. Further, their ‘alone time’ had been severely curtailed. Dawn
had been fighting a cold earlier in the week that had kept her home from school
for two days, and Buffy had been home, too, doing the Florence Nightingale
routine. Today, the much dreaded job interview had kept her occupied.
There had been that ride on the motor bike,
though. “Can we just ride all night?”
she’d asked. “I need to feel the wind in
my hair.” Long, lovely hours with his Slayer’s body pressed up close to his
back had followed; her breath warm on his neck, and her hands touching him in
ways that made it a challenge to keep the bike upright.
Some Scooby spat
was at the bottom of her moodiness, he assured himself. There’d been a number
of them over the years, and like they had, this one was bound to blow over.
Always bloody did, didn’t they? The Watcher had been insistent that Buffy
needed her friends about, and even though Spike was willing to bow to the other
man’s insights into their Slayer, he still wasn’t convinced that the Scoobies weren’t more trouble than they were worth. The man
could be completely off his bird at times – I’ll
make a Watcher of you yet – where the
hell had that come from? – but generally, Spike
thought he was a relatively bright bloke.
He had come round about the job, though. If
all the dithering she’d done about what to wear to and what to say at the
interview was anything to go by, Buffy obviously wanted it, which was enough
for him. He frowned slightly, wondered if lack of dosh
was the reason for her interest. The prats on the Council
had better come through for his girls, he thought, visualizing a visit to
Council Headquarters in order to do some ‘persuading’. ‘Course the sodding chip made that impossible. Bloody thing was bound
to put a crimp in his style.
Spike leaned back
against the cupboards, pleasure filling his eyes as he watched his lady.
<< You’re
so bloody beautiful. >>
Buffy didn’t
respond, or even give him one of those ‘No,
I’m not, but please don’t ever stop telling me I am’ looks out of the
corner of her eye, which was her usual reaction.
<<
Slayer?
>>
Nothing.
Spike frowned.
~*~
She started to
get a little restless under his unwavering gaze. Why was he frowning like that?
“Stop staring.”
His expression lightened.
“Can’t help it, pet. I never get tired of looking at
you.”
“Spike...”
He slid off the
counter, and walked over to her, a slow stroll, his eyes locked on hers. “You
and me all alone down here, our girl all tucked up in
bed...” His tongue curled against his teeth in that annoyingly appealing way of
his, and Buffy could feel her insides starting to melt.
He wasn’t evil
anymore. She knew it.
She tore her eyes
away from him, and looked down into the sink as he came up behind her, and placed
a hand on the counter on either side of her body. I will not look at him.
Not, she told herself quite
firmly, until the dishes are done. Then I’m gonna
jump him. She was successful in not glancing his way, but it didn’t
matter. She could feel him. He wasn’t even touching her, and she could feel him
in every cell of her body.
His mouth moved,
not touching her, but hovering just over her ear, and it made little prickles
of awareness run up and down her body. God, she loved how he did that... She
felt the shiver, felt the goose bumps rising on her arms.
“Never stop
wanting you, either,” he whispered huskily, and her entire body jerked in
reaction. “Want you now. Wanna be deep inside you. Wanna feel you, all hot,” his mouth was directly over her
ear, “and tight,” the other ear now, “and wet around me.”
“Ow!” She’d been staring into the sink, but she hadn’t
really been seeing anything, what with her eyes glazing over with total lust
and all. They focused now, though, on the blood welling up from the cut on her
palm. Ow, knife! Stupid sharp, pointy thing...
Automatically,
she turned on the faucet, and raised her hand to the stream of water to clean
out the cut. But Spike’s hand locked around her wrist before she could complete
the action, and he turned the faucet off.
For a second they
were frozen in place, and then his low growl rumbled into the still air around
them.
“Buffy.”
She didn’t
protest, didn’t even make a sound, as with slow, deliberate movements, he
turned her in his arms, and brought her hand up to his mouth. Slow, so slow.
His eyes stayed locked on hers, and she could see the hunger in them, the
flames of desire flickering in their blue depths.
His tongue came
out and licked up her wrist where the blood from the cut had formed a slight
trickle.
He drew back,
that tongue carrying her blood into his mouth, and his eyes fell
shut as he groaned with pleasure.
“Buffy.”
His bent his head
to her again, and his mouth found the puncture wound, small, not serious, on
the mound of flesh at the base of her thumb. His eyes burned on her face as he
closed his mouth around it and began to suck.
Another sound of
pleasure escaped him, and his free hand slid around her waist and drew her
closer, drew her body tighter to his, and he began to rock his hips against her
as his mouth continued to draw blood.
Buffy couldn’t
seem to move, or speak, mesmerized by his actions.
The cut closed, and
as he turned her palm to his mouth to press a deep kiss into it, Buffy felt an
urgent need to tear the cut open again, make it deeper, invite him to sink his
fangs into her flesh, and drink from her until he was sated.
Oh, god…
He dropped her
healed hand, and brought the hand that had been holding it to her hip, moving
against her with blatant desire. He bent his knees just a little and positioned
the hard ridge of his flesh against her where she would feel it the most, and
he began to thrust in a slow, rocking rhythm. He was moving almost mindlessly.
His eyes closed, and his face was stamped with the intensity of his passion.
“So
good, so strong.
The taste of you. I’d almost forgotten. God, better,
even better.”
His hands had
closed tightly on each of her hips now, and he was rubbing against her harder, totally
lost in the sensation. He was going to rock against her like this until they
both climaxed.
And she was going
to let him.
She felt her own
eyes drifting shut. She wanted them closed so that she could concentrate on
pleasure only. She’d never imagined she’d find him tasting her blood so… so…
So good.
Why did it feel so good?
“Wasn’t
enough.
Never enough. But I can feel it, even that little
bit.” His voice was hoarse. “Your power. Your blood. Never thought I’d taste it again. Oh god, love,
I’ve missed it so much.”
So erotic. So…
Missed it? Missed it? Buffy froze. Her pleasure
vanished, and something else filled her. Shock – at the pleasure she’d been
feeling; the longing to give him more, more, more. The shock was replaced by
horror. What was she doing? And what
did he mean – missed it?
Spike didn’t seem
to notice. He just kept moving against her.
“What?”
The single word
got no reaction.
She pushed
against him; pushed him away, as anger, and a sick kind of dread began building
up in her.
And, oh god, what had she been doing?
“What did you
say?”
His eyes opened
at last, but he looked almost drugged, his blue eyes hazy.
“Hmmm?”
“You wanna tell me when you tasted my blood?”
~*~
“What?”
“When, Spike?” Buffy’s
demanding tone finally dragged Spike out of his Buffy and Buffy’s blood induced
rapture.
“What?” he
repeated, aware now.
“Did you drink
from me when you knocked me out and chained me up with Dru?”
Her stormy
expression and the accusation, issued in a snarling tone he hadn’t heard from
her in months started a flame of anger.
“You did, didn’t
you?” she pressed when he didn’t answer immediately.
“I did not drink
from you when you were unconscious!” The only chance you had with me was
when I was unconscious. Panic started to wind through him, joining the
anger.
“When,
then? Funny thing, Spike. I usually remember when a vampire bites
me!”
“Yeah? I’d have thought you’d’ve started losing track by now!”
“You –”
“Every vamp – every
male vamp, that is,” he sneered, “You’ve ever known
on a first name basis has had a taste.” This had long been a sore spot with
him. She was his, damn it. “Why should I be the only exception?”
He went down hard
under the fury of her fist, sending one of the kitchen chairs crashing into the
wall, but he quickly rolled back to his feet.
Even
though he could feel the tension that often led to an explosion of some kind
building in him, he tried to forcibly calm himself, and used a more reasonable
tone. “I did not drink from you when you were unconscious,” he repeated.
“When, then?” She was advancing on him, obviously preparing
to strike again. “When?”
“It
was when you were, after you...” he began. He still couldn’t talk about her
death. Could hardly think of it without wanting to die himself.
And how could he explain the bit’s part in giving him her blood? Their
relationship had been so much better since Buffy had come back, and he knew how
much that had meant to Dawn, to both of them. He wasn’t gonna
do a sodding thing to drive any type of wedge between
them.
She
stopped, and he could see how rigidly she was holding her body. “When I was dead?
You drank from my dead body?” She sounded horrified beyond words.
“No!”
he shouted, denying it furiously. God, was she always going to have the ability
to make him lose his temper so quickly? Make him say things wrong and fuck
everything up with his mouth?
But
she didn’t seem to believe him. “How could you do that? How?”
She tore her eyes away from his, and her head went back. She seemed to be
looking to heaven for help. “Why wouldn’t you? You’re a vampire. It’s what you
do, isn’t it?” Her harsh tone attacked him. “Poor Spike. Can’t drink from the
living anymore, so he’s sucking away on the newly deceased.”
His
mind raced to the night of her death, replaying the sight of her body slamming
into the ground so close to his own, remembering his devastating pain, the
wrenching, mindless agony, like all the fists of heaven and hell beating him
into the ground. He couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t...
His
face twisted up in anguish. “You can’t know what it was like. If you…”
But
Buffy didn’t seem to even be listening to him. She had gasped suddenly, and the
sound effectively cut off his words. The horror on her face intensified so much
that it almost seemed she’d been smiling a moment before.
“Oh.
My. God. Were you trying to turn me?”
He
couldn’t quite grasp what she had just said, and he was temporarily stunned
into silence. How could she…? That she would think for one moment that he would
ever turn her warm flesh cold; that he would… He felt a livid fury building
within him, and unable to control it, he let out a roar of rage.
Involuntarily,
Buffy took a step back, and he jumped at her.
“You. Bloody. Bitch.” His voice was
grating, furious, and his fist lashed out, connecting with her mouth, hard.
He
drew his fist back to strike again when the shocking revelation hit him, wiping
out the strange mixture of horror and pleasure he was feeling from hitting her.
The
chip hadn’t fired.
The fucking
chip hadn’t fired.
Buffy righted
herself, and pressed the back of her hand to her bloodied lip. His fist dropped
to his side, and they stared at each other with almost identical expressions of
shock, as the realization of what had just happened, and the accompanying
implications came to both of them. But then Buffy’s face started to dissolve
into horror, and Spike’s into something else.
Relief.
Joy.
Time froze. Buffy's
mouth opened, but no sound emerged.
“What is going on?”
Dawn’s tone was
firm, even demanding, but her eyes were huge, and her arms were wrapped
protectively around her stomach in the pose she often took when she was scared
to death. When she was expecting to hear news she didn’t want to hear. News she
was afraid to hear.
Spike took in her
defensive posture as she hovered in the doorway. He could feel her fear, could,
as always, almost taste it in the air. And as it always did, it drove deeply
into him, touching something inside that made him want to take on or do
whatever was necessary to ease it, to make that fear go away.
Instinctively, he
stepped toward her to reassure her; to give comfort as he had so often in the
last several months.
“Dawn, no!” Buffy
threw her body in front of her sister’s, and whirled toward Spike, blocking his
approach. “Stay away. Don’t you ever touch her again, or I will
kill you. Do you understand me?”
Spike went still.
He stared at
Buffy, at his Slayer, standing between
him and his girl. Her chest was heaving, her body poised to attack, and her
eyes were fixed on his face, dark with feral warning.
She didn’t – she
couldn’t – she couldn’t think…
No.
He couldn’t move.
He didn’t think he could – he couldn’t – oh god, no...
This was even
worse than her thinking he might have tried to turn her. That she could think
for one minute that she needed to protect his girl from him; that he would ever touch a hair on Dawn’s head…
He felt it starting.
The pain began to
bloom first in his chest, in his unbeating heart,
deep and black and crushing. He could feel it spreading, starting to twist into
his guts, wrenching and tearing at them. Merciless,
excruciating pain. He’d felt it a thousand times since her death. More.
The devastation of loss.
The fists were
back, beating on him again. Pummeling him. Beating him down, down. Beating him back down where he
belonged.
“…you’ll
always be scum to her, and she’ll always push you back into the dirt…”
Dru’s taunts, and those of
Angelus and Darla, heard so often in his dreams for weeks now pounded through
his head, repeating endlessly. His mouth opened a little, and the only sound
that could be heard in the room was the sound of the gasping little breaths he
was taking, as pain squeezed his body. She would never trust him. He could see
it in her eyes, in the lines of her body. Nausea began to spasm in his stomach.
Always known it, hadn’t he?
“You can never change what you are, my darling boy. You can try, but you’ll
always be scum to her, and she’ll always push you back into the dirt. A worthless, soulless demon. Just how I
like you. How I made you. You’re a bad, bad, boy. You’re beneath her, my
Spike. You’ll always be beneath her.”
The moment seemed
to stretch into hours.
He would
always be beneath her. Always.
Spike took a step
back, away from her, and his face changed as his shoulders straightened. His
eyes, which had been burning with betrayal and agony, cleared and cooled. The
gasping breaths ceased, and he stopped breathing altogether. Then the harsh
planes of his face seemed to almost smooth over, as his expression evened out.
Bland.
Blank.
Empty.
Blue eyes left
Buffy, and went beyond her to Dawn. She was staring at him in horror, and her
eyes were begging him for reassurance.
“Get out.”
Buffy’s command was hissed.
He didn’t look at
her – the Slayer – again. His eyes, cold and remote, held Dawn’s. He tipped his
head to the side just a bit, taking her in.
Memorizing.
Then he turned
and moved, smooth and silent, to the door leading onto the back porch. Without
another word or glance, he left, closing the door quietly behind him.
~*~
The Summers sisters remained frozen in place.
Dawn spoke first,
and her voice was shaking. “What have you done?” She began to take heaving,
sobbing breaths. “What have you done?”
Buffy didn’t
reply, didn’t even look at the younger girl. Instead she strode determinedly into
the living room and began searching the bookshelf.
Dawn followed
her, tears spilling down her cheeks. “What have you done?” she demanded again.
Buffy tried to
ignore the question. “Help me find the book with the de-invite spell.”
“What?!”
Buffy took a deep
breath and turned to her sister. “I—I tried to pretend for awhile, that’s all.
I made myself ignore the fact that Spike is a demon, that he doesn’t have a
soul, and that it could be a huge mistake for me to trust him.”
Something seemed
to snap inside Dawn, and she launched herself at her sister, her hands curled
into claws.
“You bitch!”
In an instinctive
move to protect herself from Dawn’s fingernails, Buffy tossed up an arm, which
resulted in her knocking Dawn back several feet. The girl slammed into the
wall, hitting her head hard on the wood of the doorjamb. She cried out at the
pain.
“God, Dawn!” Buffy
was horrified. “Are you okay?”
Crying, Dawn
slapped Buffy’s helping hands away. Though drenched with tears, her eyes went cold
and hard as she straightened up, and Buffy knew she’d never forget the
expression in those blue eyes.
“I hate you!”
Dawn gritted out, her voice thick with emotion. “I friggin’
hate you!”
Buffy watched her
sister fly up the stairs, and her body jerked as the slamming of her bedroom
door literally shook the house. She pushed her hands into her hair, and for
long minutes she clutched her head and tried desperately not to cry. Then,
grimly, she forced herself to return to the bookshelf, and resumed her search
for the book that held the spell she needed.
Her eyes burned.
Her lungs burned.
She couldn’t focus.
Couldn’t
think.
Couldn’t
breathe.
Had to breathe.
Because
she couldn’t take any chances with her sister’s life.
Not any kind of chance.
So she would do
what she needed to do. What she had
to do.
Her
damned duty.
She always did.
~*~
“Spike?”
“Down
here, bit.”
With
the ease of long practice, Dawn jumped down the last two rungs of the ladder.
“Hey,”
she said quietly. She knew it must have been a really bad fight for Buffy to
threaten to have him de-invited again. She didn’t know what had happened. She’d
only heard some yelling, and a crash. Enough to make her leave her room to
check things out. On her way down the stairs, she’d heard one of those kind of growly-roar noises Spike made sometimes when he was angry
or fighting, which had made her hurry toward the kitchen faster. But she still
didn’t know what had happened, and she certainly didn’t understand why Buffy
had jumped between them and threatened Spike.
They’d
looked so upset, so stunned. Dawn
wondered how bad it really was. She told herself that they’d had plenty of
fights before. Geesh, they’d tried to kill each
other. She’d spent most of the night, between bouts of crying and coming up
with ideas of how to kill Buffy, trying to reassure herself that it would blow
over, that everything would be back to normal in a day or two. Maybe a week,
she revised mentally, thinking again of the expressions that had been playing
over Spike’s face, and Buffy’s cold voice afterward.
“I tried to pretend for awhile, that’s all.
I made myself ignore the fact that Spike is a demon, that he doesn’t have a
soul, and that it could be a huge mistake for me to trust him.”
Dawn
had never hated anyone the way she hated Buffy right now. Just the thought of
having to actually lay eyes on her sister, or of being
forced to speak to her, made her feel sick. She’d been sick – twice – during the night. She hated hurling, and the
fact that she had just increased her anger with her sister. Plus, she still had
a headache from slamming her skull into the wall.
Buffy again.
It
seemed she was back to being the Bitch Queen. She should have known that the
new improved sister – the one who’d actually seemed to care about her – was too good to be true.
Getting
out of the house with Spike’s coat so that she could use it as an excuse to
stop in and check up on him had been quite a feat. But she was afraid he was
hurting a lot, and she didn’t think she could concentrate at school without
seeing him.
“Hey,
pet.” His voice sounded calm, but he barely glanced at her.
“You,
um, left your coat at our house. I thought I’d drop it off on my way to
school.” She smiled, deciding to try to tease him a little. That usually
worked. “Geesh, Spike, I didn’t think you could walk
down the street without that coat. How’d you manage to forget it?”
She
lay the duster down on the edge of the bed.
“You
know how it can be, luv. Trouble
with your sis. She yells, I yell. I leave.” His voice stayed
uncharacteristically flat. “You’ve seen it all before.”
“Oh
yeah,” Dawn rolled her eyes, before flopping down on the bed companionably.
Except, Dawn thought, not lately. She really didn’t think she’d seen the two of
them fighting and bitching at each other since Buffy had come back from heaven.
There had been some arguing, but it hadn’t been nasty and cruel, like it had
been before Buffy died.
Just act normal, she told herself.
“Whatcha doin’ anyway?” she
watched him take a couple of shirts from his dresser and toss them on the bed
next to a pair of jeans that already rested there alongside a slim leather
portfolio with papers sticking out of it. Her eyes went from the small pile of
possessions to Spike, then back again.
Fear coiled in her stomach. “Spike? Spike –
what are you doing?”
“Nothin’ for you to worry about,
bit. Just have a little somethin’ to attend to – be
gone for awhile.”
“Gone?
But… How long?”
“A week or two, maybe a month. ’m not sure.”
“A month! But you never go anywhere. Where – where do you, I
mean, where are you going?”
“Headin’
to L.A. Got business there.”
“Business?” The word
conjured up pictures of a board room with a long polished table and men in
suits. Trying to picture Spike in this setting was like playing ‘What’s Wrong with this Picture?’ “What kind of business?”
His eyes met hers, cool, steady. Worse, detached. “Personal business.”
“But Christmas is only a few days away. You’ll
be gone for Christmas.”
His eyes didn’t waver. “I’m a vampire, Dawn. Evil. I don’t celebrate Christmas.”
Dawn
clambered off the bed, gangly teenage limbs combining with emotional pain to
make her awkward.
Oh
god, oh god. He was lying.
She
knew it. He didn’t have business in
No,
no, no.
~*~
Spike
stopped her as she backed toward the ladder, his voice pinning her to the spot.
“You
know, I’ve been thinkin’. Coat’s not really mine. I
stole it. From a Slayer. By rights I guess it would
belong to B—your sis now.” He picked up the bundle of worn black leather,
stroking his hand over the fabric once. His eyes lifted from the coat and met
Dawn’s. “Why don’t you give it to the Slayer?” Acknowledgment
of his defeat, a leather sword of surrender. “If she doesn’t want it,
you can hold on to it, keep it ‘til I need it again.”
“Your coat?”
Her
voice squeaked, the way it did sometimes when she was upset. He knew how much
she hated that, how she usually tried to control it. It made her feel awkward
and young, and she was tired of appearing that way. She wanted to seem more
grown up. It was one of her big ‘things’ right now.
“You
want me to keep your coat for you?” she went on. “B-but you love that coat.”
The
comfortable friendliness with which she always spoke to him was gone. Fear had
entered – her voice, the room. He could feel it permeating the air. Smell it.
Dawn’s fear. Again.
He
knew he couldn’t change it, couldn’t make it go away.
Not
this time.
“Not
the point, is it, pet? Lovin’ somethin’?
Doesn’t make it yours.” He crossed the room to her,
and pushed the duster into her hands.
Dawn’s
tight grip on the coat telegraphed her fears. “Maybe you did – steal it, I
mean. But it was a long time ago – right? I mean, I don’t know when it
happened, but – But it’s yours now – it’s – like it’s
part of you.”
“Yeah,”
he acknowledged, staring at the black leather clutched in her hands. “It’s a
part of me.”
Spike
looked up into her face, and his eyes softened for a moment, his lips twisting
into something that he hoped might bear some resemblance to a smile. Best
effort. Should count for something. Should, but
wouldn’t. His hand reached out and touched a strand of her hair, letting it
slide through his fingers, before withdrawing.
His girl.
She’d
been his girl.
“You
have such beautiful hair,” he murmured, letting his eyes run over it.
“Prettiest I’ve ever seen.” His smile changed, gentled, became
genuine. “Take care of yourself, bit.”
He
turned away. Walking back to the bed, he scooped a small duffle bag up off the
floor and shoved the few personal possessions he’d laid out into it. His hands
smoothed the comforter on the bed, erasing the wrinkles Dawn had created. They
only lingered for a moment. There, that was better. He looked around the room,
making sure everything was in order. Neat and tidy.
His mum had run a tight ship in their house. Sometimes her edicts
lingered.
Spike
heard the door upstairs bang against the wall and knew Dawn had gone. Blue
eyes, touched with regret, went to the opening that led upstairs, but skittered
to a halt when they caught sight of the pile of black leather the girl had
dropped at the foot of the ladder. For a long moment, Spike stared at the coat.
Then he shouldered the duffle bag and left the crypt through the passage
leading into the tunnels.
Spike’s
duster lay where Dawn had let it fall.
~*~
Where there is much
light,
the shadow is deep.
—Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
~*~