new fic, Strength in Numbers
May. 27th, 2006 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatotherpervAnd now, for something different. More or less my first posted fic that’s not human AU. But it’s still underage sex. Man I’m a sicko. Oh well.
I have anxiety that no one who normally reads Spike/Dawn is going to be interested in this because of Angel’s involvement, and no one who normally reads Spangel will want to read this because of Dawn’s. As a result, I am nervous. Ha. Leave me some love if you like it.
BUT, if you only read Spike/Dawn, you can proceed, and I’ll warn you when it’s going to turn toward the Angelly elements, because that's not until later on.
Title: Strength in Numbers
Author: Mel (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
btvslover82)
Pairings: Spike/Dawn for the first few installments and pretty much throughout; later, also Spike/Angel, Angel/Dawn, and eventually S/A/D. References to A/B and S/B.
Rating: eventual NC-17 (this installment, PG-13-ish)
Summary: The nerds were successful in assassinating Buffy in late season 6. This is the story of what happened after. See A/N under the cut for where it goes AU.
Warnings: sex with a minor (16yo at the youngest point), eventual slash, eventual threesome, character death (Buffy, that is…Dawn will not be turned)…errr….I dunno, they’re vampires. I don’t have any particular bloodplay planned, but I’m not ruling it out.
Disclaimer: Joss would blush. I am, alas, still poor. don’t sue me.
Feedback: please!
unbeta’d, though if you’re interested in beta’ing this piece in the future, let me know!
A/N: This piece goes AU from cannon in a couple of ways. For BtVS, it goes AU in late season 6, during “Seeing Red.” Buffy was in fact killed by the geeks (and so was Tara). But also, Spike didn’t rape or nearly rape Buffy. For the purposes of this story, I felt there was no coming back from that between Spike and Dawn, and it was just more insurmountable obstacle than I was willing to take on. There are enough issues here already to sink our teeth in. For AtS, it goes AU earlier than that. Darla never got pregnant, so Connor was never born, so basically, everything from seasons 3 and 4 never happened. Except, of course, for the things that were not dependent on those events, such as the Gunn/Fred/Wes thing, etc.
~*~*~*~
None of them had expected it to happen.
It was like a cruel joke, really, for them to get Buffy back, and after so much pain, for her to be yanked away again easy as you please. Who could have imagined that the geek squad could bring the slayer low? A hell goddess, sure, them’s the breaks, but Star Wars freaks with homemade toys? It was a joke. It was the least funny joke Spike had ever heard.
Harris had been positively soaked through with slayer’s blood when he had turned up at Spike’s crypt. Smelled him before he saw him. The boy was disturbingly serious and grief-stricken, again. It was like a recurring nightmare that Spike couldn’t break out of. Someone needed to watch Dawn, because Red was on some sort of war path. A stray bullet had apparently caught Glenda as well. Shitty luck. Shitty luck all around.
Spike arrived at the Summers’ residence to find that Dawn was cracked. There were no sweet silent tears like the last time, no asking Spike in a shaky voice to just hold her for a little while. Spike found her curled on the bathroom floor next to a toilet full of vomit, completely absent. Catatonic. Her eyes remained unfocused as he cleaned her and tidied the bathroom, as he carried her downstairs, as he made tea that she left sitting untouched on the kitchen table. She was like a Gumby doll that he could bend and mold and move. Apathetic or maybe just not there, and Spike wasn’t sure which degree of consciousness would be more concerning.
~*~*~*~
As the days went by, it became apparent that Red had flipped her sodding lid. Spike shouldn’t care, but that was the problem with getting involved with mortals. They were breakable, and he did care.
He and Xander sat on the back porch, smoking cigarettes. The tentative camaraderie of the previous summer had thickened, woven tighter by recurring death and by the fact that they seemed to be the only two capable of holding it together. Any anger over the Anya incident had been put aside, at least temporarily, for purposes of triage. Soldiers in the trenches rarely came to blows over women, and maybe the shock of two dead friends had changed things, or maybe Harris recognized...well, Spike didn’t know what was going on in that head of his, but he was grateful for the reprieve. And Harris had been a surprise these last days, steady as a rock, though he looked weary and resigned around the eyes and had taken up a three-pack-a-day habit out of thin air.
“I have to go,” Spike announced quietly to the backyard crickets, “Have to take care of the Nibblet. Don’t know if she’ll ever come back to herself, but it’s not safe here and I promised…”
“Yeah,” Harris replied, eyes unfocused. “You promised Her. Go. Take Dawnie somewhere safe. We’ll call you if…”
If any of them survived what Red had become. Well, if Xander survived anyway. Anya being a vengeance demon again, he’d be the only mere mortal left. Strength in numbers, there was not. Not anymore.
“You could come with us, you know.”
There was a pregnant pause as Xander took a long, deep drag off his cigarette. “No, I can’t.”
Spike stared at the boy next to him. Man now, really. “Don’t be a fucking martyr, Harris.”
Xander met his eyes. “I’m not being a martyr, Spike. I’m the only thing Willow has left. She…when she comes out of this, she’s going to need me. Just like Dawn needs you. Go, please.”
Xander stubbed out the rest of his cigarette and went inside. Spike sat on the porch thinking, until the creep of dawn on the horizon sent him in.
~*~*~*~
They didn’t go far. Not like it was easy to travel with a human vegetable, an underaged one at that, without getting noticed. They holed up in a shitty beachside motel somewhere down the coast from Los Angeles.
There was no change in Dawn. He was beginning to feel genuine fear for her, that she would never come back to herself. That she was permanently broken and they didn’t make enough crazy glue in the world to fix her.
Harris contacted him, sometime in May. He had finally talked Red down off the homicidal ledge, and he sounded like total shite. Worn out and wrung out. Spike could relate. Xander didn’t ask about Dawn, was too distracted with his own situation or maybe figured Spike would speak up if there was anything to tell. Spike didn’t have the heart to tell him that her condition was static.
The whelp told him that Anya would be minding the Magic Box, that he and Willow were making the trip to England, get the girl some help. Said there was no point in Spike coming back, if he didn’t want. He didn’t want. The apparition of Buffy was everywhere he turned in Sunnydale, and Dawn was too out of it to draw either comfort or sorrow from the place. He and Xander rang off with promises to keep in touch.
Spike went out and robbed a few visitors to the local ATM. Paid up through the end of the month. Looked as though they weren’t going anywhere.
~*~*~*~
Spike took to talking to Dawn, frequently, all the time. He didn’t know if catatonia was like a coma, but if Passions could be believed, she was in there listening to every word with perfect clarity.
He talked to her about the old days. About Angelus and Dru and Darla, spoke longingly of times when he didn’t have to worry about sickness and death other than inventive ways to inflict it. He talked to her about the weather and about news clippings and the people he saw at the local market and how the butcher had shorted him this week, the bastard. Did she want chicken noodle or cream of celery poured down her throat today? He talked to her about her future, about how she needed to snap out of it and start living her life again because she was something special and he missed her.
He talked to her about Buffy. About the ways that he missed the Slayer and loved her and hated her, and about how it was right somehow that she was at rest again, because she wasn’t happy, those last months. Her secret pain.
Sometimes when he talked about Buffy, he cried. He’d been certain there were no more tears in him for the girl, but he’d been wrong. And it didn’t matter, did it, if he wept for lost love, because no one was listening. Not really. It was just a ghost story he told himself in the night. To keep the beasties away. To make himself feel less like a man saddled alone with an invalid who would never recover, not really.
Her sixteenth birthday came and went in the dog days of summer. Sweet 16, in a dark and musty hotel room without a shred of consciousness or acknowledgement of her own existence. Last year, they’d made a big to-do while trying desperately to pretend that it wasn’t strange that Buffy wasn’t there. Would never be there again, except she had been, for a time.
Her birthday present was his signature on the lease of a decent apartment. No idea how he’d pay for it, but he’d find a way. Not like he had a soul, after all. Wasn’t opposed to a little crookery. His Bit deserved a decent place to lay her head, even if she was out of it permanently.
~*~*~*~
Spike had forgotten how sweet the sound of her voice was. He’d imagined it often enough, answering back to his inconsequential ramblings with gentle teasing, but along the way, her voice had been mixed up with other women from other times. Morphed and faded until he had forgotten that sweet timbre.
“I’d like chicken noodle.”
Every muscle in Spike’s body locked up at the sound. He wondered, madly, if this was what it felt like to contract tetanus, or rigor mortis. He was frozen solid except for the hot-as-coals lump of hope lodged in his chest. He turned slowly and looked at her, mug of blood still perched in its aborted journey to his mouth.
She stood in the doorway to the kitchen blinking calmly at him, wobbly on her feet, hands clutched in front of her lap. She looked at him so seriously, but mundanely, as if it were another day and she were just another ordinary girl, asking after a bowl of soup.
“What?” He felt dumb, in both sense of the word.
“Soup. I’d like chicken noodle. Who eats cream of celery, anyway?”
“…Okay. Sure thing, Nibblet.” But his body had developed a stutter. He twitched back and forth to the counter three times before he was successful in putting down the mug. Dawn wanted to play alls-well, but Spike was floored. It was like Lazarus, rising from the grave, after two and a half months of nothing. Except they all knew that rising from the grave was a more complicated affair, wasn’t it?
He would play along, for the moment. Just until he could regain his sense.
Dawn got her soup. And she ate it primly, eyes downcast. She didn’t slurp. He was fascinated with the way her hand carried the spoon to her mouth again and again. Mesmerized. She was a real girl.
“You can stop staring at me now.” The sweetness. The sweetness of it, but rusty with misuse.
“Can’t help it, Bit. You were gone for a long time, you know. Buffy—“
“I know,” she cut him off, a little too loudly. “And I know how long it’s been. I just needed…”
Spike waited for her to finish, even though it was unnecessary. Dawn was looking at him now, with eyes as clear and blue as his own but softer, without the flinty edge. She looked older. He wondered if it was just the seriousness with which she was conducting herself. The overexaggerated demeanor of her adolescence had faded, and left in its place someone as solemn as Buffy had been, after she’d come back…it gave him chills. But there was no anger here, no visible pain. Just eerie calm.
“Look, it’s better that she’s gone, right?” Dawn was matter-of-fact as ever, and the tone almost made him miss the words.
Spike shook his head, sure he’d heard wrong. “Beg pardon?”
“It was unnatural, bringing her back.”
Spike studied her, young and earnest, for a heartbeat or two. “Was a bit, yeah.”
“Not a bit, a lot. She didn’t want to be here. You said so. It…it hurt her. So it’s better that she’s gone. This is how it was supposed to be. Buffyless world. World without Buffy.”
So she had been listening, at least part of the time. She sounded so…okay with it. She couldn’t possibly be. But Dawn’s logic was irrefutable, and wise beyond her years. He merely nodded.
“Ok then. Let’s not…let’s not do the pity party thing then. We’re fine.” Spike narrowed his eyes in disbelief at that, but she only looked back at him steadily and then got up to wash her bowl, effectively ending the conversation.
~*~*~*~
And they were fine, for a bit. Sort of. They filled the time with books and board games and jokes that fell flat but which they kept telling anyway. When the school year began and Dawn still had nothing structured to occupy her days, Spike realized vaguely that at some point, they would need to see to her education. But he had no idea how to register her for school without a legal guardian. So Spike jerry-rigged them some illicit cable service instead. It filled the time, and hey, at least she was able to watch the History channel and Discovery and all that bollocks. He was working with what they had.
At night, Spike went out and stole things for them, but Dawn rarely ever left the apartment. And he was never out for long, because she wouldn’t sleep without him. He had come home several times in the first days at sunrise to find her gaunt and exhausted, teeth chattering on the couch. They shared the bed and he had to be there to sooth the nightmares away. And truth told, he slept better with her there as well. Especially on her worst nights, the ones where she curled her warm body around him and clung to him in her sleep. Those were sweetest of all.
As the weeks went on, Spike tried to get Dawn to talk to him, a few times, about her grief. She staunchly denied that there was anything to grieve over: the Buffy who had died had only been a ghost of herself. Not that Spike would argue with that, but it seemed as though she shouldn’t be capable of such detachment.
But never let it be said that Summers women were nothing if not stubborn.
~*~*~*~
“Oi! Give that back, you little deviant!” Spike chased Dawn around the side of the couch in false anger, enjoying the sound of her tinkling laughter. More time had passed, and somewhere along the way, it had become easier for both of them, to be light-hearted.
“I’m the deviant?? You’re the one with the pervy skin mags!” She paused in front of the entry to the hallway. “Dear Penthouse,” she pretended to read, “I’m a single unemployed vampire, and…” Dawn squealed and darted away when he made a grab for her.
Spike chased her down into the bedroom, until he had her cornered. “Give that back. It’s not for little girls’ eyes, I’ll have you know.”
Dawn laughed and continued to play keep-away by stretching that long coltish arm back behind her. Spike was reaching forward, grasping for the magazine, but she had gained on him in height and he couldn’t quite reach.
He realized abruptly, looking into her wide, blue-grey eyes, how close to her he was. Too close. When her eyes fluttered down to his mouth, he felt none other than a jolt of fear, icy-slick down his spine. Because he saw it coming, in the immediate sense, just before she dropped her taunting arm and leaned in to press her lips to his. But he’d seen it coming for weeks.
Spike was still looking at her when her eyes drifted closed. Her mouth was soft and sweet and gentle against his. He knew it wasn’t her first kiss—there had been that teen vamp piker—but it retained that innocent, untrained quality, and Spike ached with it. He should push her away but…again, no soul here, and she was the sweetest thing he had ever held in his arms.
Dawn dropped the magazine and fisted both hands in his shirt needily, pulling him closer. She began to repeatedly, insistently mouth at his bottom lip. He exhaled air he didn’t know he’d been holding and kissed back, and she whimpered like a puppy. Spike closed his eyes then, not thinking as he slid his hand to cradle the base of her skull, the other petting her silky soft hair and coming to rest in the small of her back.
When he slipped his tongue in her mouth, Dawn panted at him and clumsily tried to get closer, twining her arms around his neck. The skin inside her mouth was velvety soft, and it made him think of other soft places that would make her hot and eager. He groaned at the image of her legs wrapped around him.
And jumped back three feet, stumbling and falling on his arse when her hand rubbed over his hard-on.
Spike gaped at her. “Bloody hell, Bit, where’d you get an idea to go and do a thing like that?!” Spike was startled, irate, though he wasn’t quite sure why. He wanted her, didn’t he?
Uncertainty hovered on her features and she turned hurt eyes away from him to study the rest of the room. Her eyes fell on the magazine at her feet, and then flickered up to his, and this time she wore an impish, pointed expression, eyebrow cocked. She crossed her arms smugly and made a show of another long glance to the Penthouse and back.
“Well that’s just…a man has needs, yeah?” He’d had a few women since she had come back to herself, something she surely knew, but he never liked leaving Dawn for long, alone in the apartment. The magazines tided him over.
Dawn looked pleased with herself. “Exactly. You have needs.”
Spike sputtered. “Excuse me, but there’s a bit of a difference between having a wank behind a locked door and rutting on the girl entrusted to me by her big sister!”
She was confused, hurt and insecure. Bugger. Spike rolled to his feet.
“Nibblet, I’m sorry, don’t look so hurt. I just…it’s on me, alright? You’re perfect, pet.” Spike stroked her cheek, and she looked at him hopefully. It was like a dead weight on his chest. “I just…need some air, alright?” He kissed Dawn’s forehead. “Be a good girl and try to go to sleep, I’ll be out late.”
Her face was stony. He turned away and got his coat. “You’re going to go find somebody else,” she observed, unhappily.
Spike paused in the doorway, unable to turn and look at her, because they both knew she was right. It was useless to argue. He continued out the door, and locked up behind him.
part 2 is here
I have anxiety that no one who normally reads Spike/Dawn is going to be interested in this because of Angel’s involvement, and no one who normally reads Spangel will want to read this because of Dawn’s. As a result, I am nervous. Ha. Leave me some love if you like it.
BUT, if you only read Spike/Dawn, you can proceed, and I’ll warn you when it’s going to turn toward the Angelly elements, because that's not until later on.
Title: Strength in Numbers
Author: Mel (
btvslover82)Pairings: Spike/Dawn for the first few installments and pretty much throughout; later, also Spike/Angel, Angel/Dawn, and eventually S/A/D. References to A/B and S/B.
Rating: eventual NC-17 (this installment, PG-13-ish)
Summary: The nerds were successful in assassinating Buffy in late season 6. This is the story of what happened after. See A/N under the cut for where it goes AU.
Warnings: sex with a minor (16yo at the youngest point), eventual slash, eventual threesome, character death (Buffy, that is…Dawn will not be turned)…errr….I dunno, they’re vampires. I don’t have any particular bloodplay planned, but I’m not ruling it out.
Disclaimer: Joss would blush. I am, alas, still poor. don’t sue me.
Feedback: please!
unbeta’d, though if you’re interested in beta’ing this piece in the future, let me know!
A/N: This piece goes AU from cannon in a couple of ways. For BtVS, it goes AU in late season 6, during “Seeing Red.” Buffy was in fact killed by the geeks (and so was Tara). But also, Spike didn’t rape or nearly rape Buffy. For the purposes of this story, I felt there was no coming back from that between Spike and Dawn, and it was just more insurmountable obstacle than I was willing to take on. There are enough issues here already to sink our teeth in. For AtS, it goes AU earlier than that. Darla never got pregnant, so Connor was never born, so basically, everything from seasons 3 and 4 never happened. Except, of course, for the things that were not dependent on those events, such as the Gunn/Fred/Wes thing, etc.
~*~*~*~
None of them had expected it to happen.
It was like a cruel joke, really, for them to get Buffy back, and after so much pain, for her to be yanked away again easy as you please. Who could have imagined that the geek squad could bring the slayer low? A hell goddess, sure, them’s the breaks, but Star Wars freaks with homemade toys? It was a joke. It was the least funny joke Spike had ever heard.
Harris had been positively soaked through with slayer’s blood when he had turned up at Spike’s crypt. Smelled him before he saw him. The boy was disturbingly serious and grief-stricken, again. It was like a recurring nightmare that Spike couldn’t break out of. Someone needed to watch Dawn, because Red was on some sort of war path. A stray bullet had apparently caught Glenda as well. Shitty luck. Shitty luck all around.
Spike arrived at the Summers’ residence to find that Dawn was cracked. There were no sweet silent tears like the last time, no asking Spike in a shaky voice to just hold her for a little while. Spike found her curled on the bathroom floor next to a toilet full of vomit, completely absent. Catatonic. Her eyes remained unfocused as he cleaned her and tidied the bathroom, as he carried her downstairs, as he made tea that she left sitting untouched on the kitchen table. She was like a Gumby doll that he could bend and mold and move. Apathetic or maybe just not there, and Spike wasn’t sure which degree of consciousness would be more concerning.
~*~*~*~
As the days went by, it became apparent that Red had flipped her sodding lid. Spike shouldn’t care, but that was the problem with getting involved with mortals. They were breakable, and he did care.
He and Xander sat on the back porch, smoking cigarettes. The tentative camaraderie of the previous summer had thickened, woven tighter by recurring death and by the fact that they seemed to be the only two capable of holding it together. Any anger over the Anya incident had been put aside, at least temporarily, for purposes of triage. Soldiers in the trenches rarely came to blows over women, and maybe the shock of two dead friends had changed things, or maybe Harris recognized...well, Spike didn’t know what was going on in that head of his, but he was grateful for the reprieve. And Harris had been a surprise these last days, steady as a rock, though he looked weary and resigned around the eyes and had taken up a three-pack-a-day habit out of thin air.
“I have to go,” Spike announced quietly to the backyard crickets, “Have to take care of the Nibblet. Don’t know if she’ll ever come back to herself, but it’s not safe here and I promised…”
“Yeah,” Harris replied, eyes unfocused. “You promised Her. Go. Take Dawnie somewhere safe. We’ll call you if…”
If any of them survived what Red had become. Well, if Xander survived anyway. Anya being a vengeance demon again, he’d be the only mere mortal left. Strength in numbers, there was not. Not anymore.
“You could come with us, you know.”
There was a pregnant pause as Xander took a long, deep drag off his cigarette. “No, I can’t.”
Spike stared at the boy next to him. Man now, really. “Don’t be a fucking martyr, Harris.”
Xander met his eyes. “I’m not being a martyr, Spike. I’m the only thing Willow has left. She…when she comes out of this, she’s going to need me. Just like Dawn needs you. Go, please.”
Xander stubbed out the rest of his cigarette and went inside. Spike sat on the porch thinking, until the creep of dawn on the horizon sent him in.
~*~*~*~
They didn’t go far. Not like it was easy to travel with a human vegetable, an underaged one at that, without getting noticed. They holed up in a shitty beachside motel somewhere down the coast from Los Angeles.
There was no change in Dawn. He was beginning to feel genuine fear for her, that she would never come back to herself. That she was permanently broken and they didn’t make enough crazy glue in the world to fix her.
Harris contacted him, sometime in May. He had finally talked Red down off the homicidal ledge, and he sounded like total shite. Worn out and wrung out. Spike could relate. Xander didn’t ask about Dawn, was too distracted with his own situation or maybe figured Spike would speak up if there was anything to tell. Spike didn’t have the heart to tell him that her condition was static.
The whelp told him that Anya would be minding the Magic Box, that he and Willow were making the trip to England, get the girl some help. Said there was no point in Spike coming back, if he didn’t want. He didn’t want. The apparition of Buffy was everywhere he turned in Sunnydale, and Dawn was too out of it to draw either comfort or sorrow from the place. He and Xander rang off with promises to keep in touch.
Spike went out and robbed a few visitors to the local ATM. Paid up through the end of the month. Looked as though they weren’t going anywhere.
~*~*~*~
Spike took to talking to Dawn, frequently, all the time. He didn’t know if catatonia was like a coma, but if Passions could be believed, she was in there listening to every word with perfect clarity.
He talked to her about the old days. About Angelus and Dru and Darla, spoke longingly of times when he didn’t have to worry about sickness and death other than inventive ways to inflict it. He talked to her about the weather and about news clippings and the people he saw at the local market and how the butcher had shorted him this week, the bastard. Did she want chicken noodle or cream of celery poured down her throat today? He talked to her about her future, about how she needed to snap out of it and start living her life again because she was something special and he missed her.
He talked to her about Buffy. About the ways that he missed the Slayer and loved her and hated her, and about how it was right somehow that she was at rest again, because she wasn’t happy, those last months. Her secret pain.
Sometimes when he talked about Buffy, he cried. He’d been certain there were no more tears in him for the girl, but he’d been wrong. And it didn’t matter, did it, if he wept for lost love, because no one was listening. Not really. It was just a ghost story he told himself in the night. To keep the beasties away. To make himself feel less like a man saddled alone with an invalid who would never recover, not really.
Her sixteenth birthday came and went in the dog days of summer. Sweet 16, in a dark and musty hotel room without a shred of consciousness or acknowledgement of her own existence. Last year, they’d made a big to-do while trying desperately to pretend that it wasn’t strange that Buffy wasn’t there. Would never be there again, except she had been, for a time.
Her birthday present was his signature on the lease of a decent apartment. No idea how he’d pay for it, but he’d find a way. Not like he had a soul, after all. Wasn’t opposed to a little crookery. His Bit deserved a decent place to lay her head, even if she was out of it permanently.
~*~*~*~
Spike had forgotten how sweet the sound of her voice was. He’d imagined it often enough, answering back to his inconsequential ramblings with gentle teasing, but along the way, her voice had been mixed up with other women from other times. Morphed and faded until he had forgotten that sweet timbre.
“I’d like chicken noodle.”
Every muscle in Spike’s body locked up at the sound. He wondered, madly, if this was what it felt like to contract tetanus, or rigor mortis. He was frozen solid except for the hot-as-coals lump of hope lodged in his chest. He turned slowly and looked at her, mug of blood still perched in its aborted journey to his mouth.
She stood in the doorway to the kitchen blinking calmly at him, wobbly on her feet, hands clutched in front of her lap. She looked at him so seriously, but mundanely, as if it were another day and she were just another ordinary girl, asking after a bowl of soup.
“What?” He felt dumb, in both sense of the word.
“Soup. I’d like chicken noodle. Who eats cream of celery, anyway?”
“…Okay. Sure thing, Nibblet.” But his body had developed a stutter. He twitched back and forth to the counter three times before he was successful in putting down the mug. Dawn wanted to play alls-well, but Spike was floored. It was like Lazarus, rising from the grave, after two and a half months of nothing. Except they all knew that rising from the grave was a more complicated affair, wasn’t it?
He would play along, for the moment. Just until he could regain his sense.
Dawn got her soup. And she ate it primly, eyes downcast. She didn’t slurp. He was fascinated with the way her hand carried the spoon to her mouth again and again. Mesmerized. She was a real girl.
“You can stop staring at me now.” The sweetness. The sweetness of it, but rusty with misuse.
“Can’t help it, Bit. You were gone for a long time, you know. Buffy—“
“I know,” she cut him off, a little too loudly. “And I know how long it’s been. I just needed…”
Spike waited for her to finish, even though it was unnecessary. Dawn was looking at him now, with eyes as clear and blue as his own but softer, without the flinty edge. She looked older. He wondered if it was just the seriousness with which she was conducting herself. The overexaggerated demeanor of her adolescence had faded, and left in its place someone as solemn as Buffy had been, after she’d come back…it gave him chills. But there was no anger here, no visible pain. Just eerie calm.
“Look, it’s better that she’s gone, right?” Dawn was matter-of-fact as ever, and the tone almost made him miss the words.
Spike shook his head, sure he’d heard wrong. “Beg pardon?”
“It was unnatural, bringing her back.”
Spike studied her, young and earnest, for a heartbeat or two. “Was a bit, yeah.”
“Not a bit, a lot. She didn’t want to be here. You said so. It…it hurt her. So it’s better that she’s gone. This is how it was supposed to be. Buffyless world. World without Buffy.”
So she had been listening, at least part of the time. She sounded so…okay with it. She couldn’t possibly be. But Dawn’s logic was irrefutable, and wise beyond her years. He merely nodded.
“Ok then. Let’s not…let’s not do the pity party thing then. We’re fine.” Spike narrowed his eyes in disbelief at that, but she only looked back at him steadily and then got up to wash her bowl, effectively ending the conversation.
~*~*~*~
And they were fine, for a bit. Sort of. They filled the time with books and board games and jokes that fell flat but which they kept telling anyway. When the school year began and Dawn still had nothing structured to occupy her days, Spike realized vaguely that at some point, they would need to see to her education. But he had no idea how to register her for school without a legal guardian. So Spike jerry-rigged them some illicit cable service instead. It filled the time, and hey, at least she was able to watch the History channel and Discovery and all that bollocks. He was working with what they had.
At night, Spike went out and stole things for them, but Dawn rarely ever left the apartment. And he was never out for long, because she wouldn’t sleep without him. He had come home several times in the first days at sunrise to find her gaunt and exhausted, teeth chattering on the couch. They shared the bed and he had to be there to sooth the nightmares away. And truth told, he slept better with her there as well. Especially on her worst nights, the ones where she curled her warm body around him and clung to him in her sleep. Those were sweetest of all.
As the weeks went on, Spike tried to get Dawn to talk to him, a few times, about her grief. She staunchly denied that there was anything to grieve over: the Buffy who had died had only been a ghost of herself. Not that Spike would argue with that, but it seemed as though she shouldn’t be capable of such detachment.
But never let it be said that Summers women were nothing if not stubborn.
~*~*~*~
“Oi! Give that back, you little deviant!” Spike chased Dawn around the side of the couch in false anger, enjoying the sound of her tinkling laughter. More time had passed, and somewhere along the way, it had become easier for both of them, to be light-hearted.
“I’m the deviant?? You’re the one with the pervy skin mags!” She paused in front of the entry to the hallway. “Dear Penthouse,” she pretended to read, “I’m a single unemployed vampire, and…” Dawn squealed and darted away when he made a grab for her.
Spike chased her down into the bedroom, until he had her cornered. “Give that back. It’s not for little girls’ eyes, I’ll have you know.”
Dawn laughed and continued to play keep-away by stretching that long coltish arm back behind her. Spike was reaching forward, grasping for the magazine, but she had gained on him in height and he couldn’t quite reach.
He realized abruptly, looking into her wide, blue-grey eyes, how close to her he was. Too close. When her eyes fluttered down to his mouth, he felt none other than a jolt of fear, icy-slick down his spine. Because he saw it coming, in the immediate sense, just before she dropped her taunting arm and leaned in to press her lips to his. But he’d seen it coming for weeks.
Spike was still looking at her when her eyes drifted closed. Her mouth was soft and sweet and gentle against his. He knew it wasn’t her first kiss—there had been that teen vamp piker—but it retained that innocent, untrained quality, and Spike ached with it. He should push her away but…again, no soul here, and she was the sweetest thing he had ever held in his arms.
Dawn dropped the magazine and fisted both hands in his shirt needily, pulling him closer. She began to repeatedly, insistently mouth at his bottom lip. He exhaled air he didn’t know he’d been holding and kissed back, and she whimpered like a puppy. Spike closed his eyes then, not thinking as he slid his hand to cradle the base of her skull, the other petting her silky soft hair and coming to rest in the small of her back.
When he slipped his tongue in her mouth, Dawn panted at him and clumsily tried to get closer, twining her arms around his neck. The skin inside her mouth was velvety soft, and it made him think of other soft places that would make her hot and eager. He groaned at the image of her legs wrapped around him.
And jumped back three feet, stumbling and falling on his arse when her hand rubbed over his hard-on.
Spike gaped at her. “Bloody hell, Bit, where’d you get an idea to go and do a thing like that?!” Spike was startled, irate, though he wasn’t quite sure why. He wanted her, didn’t he?
Uncertainty hovered on her features and she turned hurt eyes away from him to study the rest of the room. Her eyes fell on the magazine at her feet, and then flickered up to his, and this time she wore an impish, pointed expression, eyebrow cocked. She crossed her arms smugly and made a show of another long glance to the Penthouse and back.
“Well that’s just…a man has needs, yeah?” He’d had a few women since she had come back to herself, something she surely knew, but he never liked leaving Dawn for long, alone in the apartment. The magazines tided him over.
Dawn looked pleased with herself. “Exactly. You have needs.”
Spike sputtered. “Excuse me, but there’s a bit of a difference between having a wank behind a locked door and rutting on the girl entrusted to me by her big sister!”
She was confused, hurt and insecure. Bugger. Spike rolled to his feet.
“Nibblet, I’m sorry, don’t look so hurt. I just…it’s on me, alright? You’re perfect, pet.” Spike stroked her cheek, and she looked at him hopefully. It was like a dead weight on his chest. “I just…need some air, alright?” He kissed Dawn’s forehead. “Be a good girl and try to go to sleep, I’ll be out late.”
Her face was stony. He turned away and got his coat. “You’re going to go find somebody else,” she observed, unhappily.
Spike paused in the doorway, unable to turn and look at her, because they both knew she was right. It was useless to argue. He continued out the door, and locked up behind him.
part 2 is here
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 01:54 am (UTC)glad I've got at least a few takers :) I was writing it mostly because I thought the idea was hot, and I'd never seen Dawn paired in a spangel threesome. actually, you don't see many Dawn threesomes as a general rule.
anyway, thanks for reading and commenting!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 12:02 pm (UTC)*g* I know, that was so good!
I also once saw a threesome that was dawn-spike-faith, though it wasn't explicit.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 01:12 am (UTC)Love this pairing!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 01:57 am (UTC)I put it in spikedawn already, but I hadn't thought of DS. thanks for the tip!
Re: Hmm..
Date: 2006-05-28 12:04 pm (UTC)thanks for reading!
Re: Hmm..
Date: 2006-05-28 09:00 pm (UTC)One of my favorite stories is that of Gigi (a girl in her mid teens (16?) who was being groomed to be a courtesan to follow in the footsteps of the other women in her family) set in the 1800's. Gigi loved and married Gaston, a man in his thirties, whom her family had known for a long while and had watched Gigi grow up. It was a beautiful story written by Colette (a brillant turn of the century writer). Even a Hollywood musical was based on it! I say all this to say well established literature bears this type of relationship out. Vive la Spawn.
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Date: 2006-05-28 08:22 pm (UTC)Phreak
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Date: 2006-05-28 08:32 pm (UTC)haha, I love your icon, even if it is giving me epilepsy, lol.
I know what you mean about Dawn/Angel. and all the ones that I have seen have been pretty dark and fucked up. my goal for this fic is that the angst that is going to be there for various reasons is never actually intrinsic to the pairings. it's external angst. the dynamics between all 3 of the pairings have actually been coming out very light and functional. (I've been skipping around in the chronology, and writing bits here and there as they come to me. not the way I usually work, but it is for this fic.)
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 08:44 pm (UTC)Thankee! Sorry it's messing with you though lol.
I try to write Dawn/Angel with just enough angst. I try to look at their relationship as a celebration of life as opposed to a betrayal of Buffy's memory. And also, I can't do much angsty Angel, it makes me want to kick him in the balls and really give him something to cry about... Anyway, awesome that you're writing, I do look forward to seeing where you go with this.
Phreak
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Date: 2006-05-28 08:49 pm (UTC)HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHA. nice.
try to look at their relationship as a celebration of life as opposed to a betrayal of Buffy's memory
that's how it is here too, so hopefully you'll enjoy. thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2006-10-24 02:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-24 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 02:52 pm (UTC)You're an exceptional writer, expert at providing imagery that draws the reader in, not long-winded (as I tend to be *smirk*) but perfectly descriptive of the scene. The Spike you've drawn for us is so spot-on, its as though he's walked straight off the script and into this story. He's fantastic!! And Dawn, good god, another brilliant characterization. You've got me drawn to her, too. During Season 6 I lost any sort of viewer/character bond with her, and this now, how you've written her in this, the first chapter, really blows me away.
I've only just finished chapter 1 and I am completely caught, hook, line and sinker. I can't WAIT to get to the next chapter. What a brilliant start, girl, you have me grinning like a fiend!!
All the best,
~Shannon (Limerickgirl)
no subject
Date: 2006-10-28 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-29 08:00 pm (UTC)And what's swayed me is your characterization. Dawn is a fully-formed person, as opposed to a plot device.
your Dawn is better than canon's.I actually like your Dawn!This is perfectly in character and believable: “I’m the deviant?? You’re the one with the pervy skin mags!” She paused in front of the entry to the hallway. “Dear Penthouse,” she pretended to read, “I’m a single unemployed vampire, and…”
Nicely snarky and plot-hingey. And the beginning was so eloquently sad. Love your non-AU, unsouled Spike. like here:
"spoke longingly of times when he didn’t have to worry about sickness and death other than inventive ways to inflict it."
and here:
"About the ways that he missed the Slayer and loved her and hated her, and about how it was right somehow that she was at rest again, because she wasn’t happy, those last months. Her secret pain."
He's so well rendered- grieving for love lost, and an amazing hero fallen. So good.
you have a knack for writing so clearly, that the style fades away, leaving just the tale. I can just fall into it, and it carries me along. It feels real. I like the pacing of this, and the glimpses into Spike's inner turmoil. He's spot on, with the soulessness, in his desire for Dawn, yet still holding back, because he's Spike.
Am loving this! I hope to devour the rest tonight.
thanks for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2006-10-29 09:06 pm (UTC)Dawn is a fully-formed person, as opposed to a plot device.
your Dawn is better than canon's.I actually like your Dawn!heehee, I got a kick out of that.
and I'm glad you like Spike here too. He's such a contradiction.
thank you so much for all your kind words. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the rest :) I actually plotted this fic out last night through chapter 20, and things are gonna get interesting ;)
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Date: 2006-10-29 11:09 pm (UTC)And I agree, Dawn had real hints of maturity and understanding in season 7. it's too bad that she never got a chance to develop on the show. but good for us, because you get to make her grow up here. :)
I'm really enjoying this.
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Date: 2006-10-29 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-29 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-29 11:58 pm (UTC)am so totally going to swamp you in critical praise with extended footnotes *g*, however, it may be anti-climactic, as i am the slowest reader in the whole entire world. you'll be all, what is she talking about? oh right, that fic i wrote 100 years ago. ;)
am loving this and also really glad to hear that a) will be at least 30 chapters and b) feel-good-with-angst-ness. now i just need to put my fluffy socks on, make a cup of tea, and settle in. I get to snuggle in with all of my favorite things. perfect. :)
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Date: 2006-12-19 03:16 am (UTC)I love spander bonding too! the funny thing is, I wrote that before I remembered that Xander like tried to kill Spike when he slept with Anya, and that happened before I departed from canon. and then I had to go back and fix that. but yeah, I can see it going like that and it was one of my favorite things so I'm glad you liked it!
Spike can be such a softie. and he was such a good citizen here, trying to resist Dawn and taking care of her, and I struggled with whether that was in-character for souled spike but I think it's not a stretch, with his grief for Buffy all over again.
Silly vampire, willing nubile girl right there for the taking.
silly, indeed.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-21 07:42 am (UTC)*makes incoherant sounds*
gawd damn haha
made me ache for them in the begining, though the crazy glue and her coming out of it made me snicker
then gah... how much do i love her teasing him with a porn magazine and him chasing her? omg haha
and then the kisssss
*breathless*
guh yeah.. *runs to next part*
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Date: 2007-01-21 02:48 pm (UTC)heehee glad you liked that kiss. and the porn mag thing was my personal favorite. it's so childish and *them*