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"If you get up out of that bed, I'm going to put you over my knee and give you a proper spanking," Spike tells Dawn, pointing a finger at her like he wants her to know he means it.
"Eww," Dawn says. "And anyway, Peter said I could get up today."
"I don't care if Peter told you you can... do something else ridiculous that you're not going to do," Spike says, all blustery. "It's barely been two weeks. You should be resting."
"I've been resting," Dawn says. She flops back down on the pillows with a dramatic sigh. "I'm sick of looking at this ceiling. Do you know how many different shapes I can see in that weird stain up there?"
"Fifteen," Spike says right away. "Which is one more than the number of days you've been in bed. You can get up tomorrow."
Stubbornly, she sits up again, throwing back the sheet and blanket and turning so that her feet touch the floor. She's wearing these silly pink fuzzy socks that Spike found somewhere, and they've barely touched the floor except for when she got up to pee, and she's not ever sure that counts. The toilet's like twelve steps from the bed.
"Look," she says, trying to sound reasonable. "I get that you're worried about me. But I'm okay. And I can't stay in bed forever. I'll get, like, muscle atrophy or something."
"Ten minutes," Spike says. "Quick walk down the hallway, then back to bed."
"Okay." Dawn only agrees because Spike doesn't have a watch and has a cruddy sense of time. She figures she can get half an hour out of him easy.
Part of the reason she's so eager to get up is because she still hasn't had a chance to even see the place. The first six days they were there are a blur -- vague memories of Spike talking to her, and maybe crying once, but she's not sure that really happened and she's so not going to ask -- and the next few after that she was still sleeping most of the time.
It's a school, but it's small. There's a heavy stone foundation with small windows -- too small for people to get through, but they're blocked off now anyway because you could still throw stuff through them. The basement level has two entrances, front and back, and Peter secured them a while ago.
Dawn's been in the one room the whole time, and since there's nothing like tv anymore, she's totally sick of it. Peter and Spike dragged in stuff from what used to be the nurse's office upstairs -- the cot, medical supplies, blankets.
Walking is harder than she thought it was going to be. It's like getting up for the first time after you've been sick in bed with the flu -- kind of shaky and lightheaded. Peter says she lost half her blood volume and that it probably won't all be replaced for weeks, so she shouldn't expect to feel normal again for a while. Still, anything's better than being in bed all day.
The walls are brick, painted over with what looks like about eighteen coats of ugly beige paint, and there are big old pipes overhead. "At least there's plumbing," Dawn says, not even wanting to think about how seriously gross this place would be without it.
"Yeah," Spike says. He's walking right next to her, watching her like she might fall over any second.
"I'm okay," Dawn says. "I'm not going to, like, pass out or anything."
"Glad to hear it." But Spike relaxes a little bit, and that's good.
He's wearing some clothes that Peter brought back from one of his supply runs -- blue jeans instead of black, but the right size, and a long-sleeved gray t-shirt. Dawn thinks the stuff he was wearing before probably got all covered with her blood, and even a vampire might not want to walk around like that. "Is it like spilling food on your shirt?" she asks, without realizes she's going to say anything.
"What are you on about?" Spike tilts his head to one side, looking confused. He's cute like that.
"Sorry," Dawn says. "I meant... is having blood on your clothes the same as spilling food. You know..."
Spike shrugs a little bit. "Guess so. Never really thought about it before." He points down the hallway. "Couple of classrooms down there -- using one for storage, Peter's got some of his stuff in the other one."
The room they stop in front of is set up kind of like living space -- a table and chairs, a refrigerator and a stove, a couch and some mats that look like they came from the gymnasium or something. There's a big glass bowl full of cigarette butts on the table -- Spike's smoking more than ever, especially since Peter knows where to get just about anything and doesn't seem to mind getting cigarettes even though he doesn't smoke himself.
"Wow," Dawn says, not as impressed as she should be, but trying to sound it anyway. "I get the whole tour."
"Two more floors up there." Spike gestures at the ceiling.
"But we can't go up there," Dawn says, kind of like a question.
Spike puts a hand on the small of her back and pushed her gently forward into the room, over to the couch. "We can go up there. It's just safer down here. There's a gate with a lock. Chains. "
Dawn sits down on the couch, because she's already kind of tired, and watches as Spike lights a cigarette and inhales deeply. "So..." she starts. "Are we going to stay here?"
"Don't know." Spike is slouched in a chair, doing that thing where he's watching her but pretends like he's not. "You want to?"
"Well, considering so far I've spent most of my time here in the bathroom, pretending like it was a bedroom?" Dawn sighs and pulls her slippered feet onto the couch, curling them underneath her. She's not thinking about all the blood, or the way it hurt, or how she was cold but sweating at the same time. She knows one of them -- either Spike or Peter -- washed her off, after, because when she woke up for real she didn't look like a victim in a horror movie anymore, but she doesn't know which one of them it was.
She doesn't think Spike would have let Peter do it, but she feels funny when she thinks about Spike touching her, seeing parts of her that he hasn't seen before. It makes her tummy hurt, in a weird way.
Spike's still watching her. "You okay? You want to go lie down?"
Dawn's so tired that the conversation is getting away from her. "No, I'm okay. What were we talking about?"
"About whether we should stay." He looks like he would have rather let the matter drop.
"Oh. Right." Dawn's fingertips are dry and cracked. She should do that thing Mom used to do, putting on a ton of moisturizer and then wearing gloves to bed. "It's safe here. Isn't it?"
Spike stubs out his cigarette on the edge of the bowl and drops the butt in with all the other ones. Something about the way he's sitting makes her think he's really, really tired.
"Safe enough," he says finally.
He'd thought she was dead. Well, knew she wasn't, but close enough that he didn't see how it was going to turn out otherwise. Thought maybe he could keep her alive out of sheer desperation, like force of will could stop someone's body from giving up the ghost.
So when Spike had driven past the school and seen the faint red image of a truck's taillights disappearing around the corner of it, there'd been nothing else to do but stop and hope. Wouldn't have said he'd prayed, because there isn't any question in his mind that there's no one up there listening to anyone, least of all him, but something close to 'Please, God,' might have flashed through his mind once or twice.
Peter should have killed him. Knew that at the time, and he knows it now. Figures the only thing that saved him is that he pulled Dawn across the front seat into his arms before getting out of the car -- wouldn't have been able to if she wasn't such a little thing. The way she was bleeding down all over him, warm wet seeping through his clothes, is what had convinced Peter that Spike must be human.
Spike waited almost a day before telling the bloke otherwise, and ended up pinned against the wall with a stake to his chest for his trouble.
"Don't you think I'd have hurt her by now if I was going to?" Spike had growled, not putting up more than a token struggle, and that because he'd be damned if he'd surrender completely.
It had taken fifteen minutes to convince Peter that he wasn't a threat, least not to people he had reason to care about or respect. Longest fifteen minutes of Spike's life, maybe, wondering what would happen to Dawn if he was nothing but a pile of dust. Who'd look out for her? This bloke? Not bloody likely.
Or maybe a little bit more likely than Spike wants to admit to himself even now. Something he needs to discuss with Peter, he thinks, since Dawn's up and about again.
When he finishes smoking his second fag, she's asleep on the couch, curled up small. Spike can't see any point to moving her, so he gets a blanket from the mat where Peter sleeps and drapes it over her carefully, not wanting to wake her up. She needs all the sleep she can get at this point.
It's mid-afternoon, about an hour later, when Spike hears the sound of Peter's truck pulling up. The engine cuts out and all's quiet again, so he assumes that means everything went okay. Guy seems to know where to find just about anything -- two days before he'd come back with about a year's supply of instant breakfast powder, which they've been coaxing into Dawn in an attempt to get her to gain back some of the weight she's lost.
He stops to run a hand over her hair gently, making sure that she's asleep, before he goes down and waits on the other side of the barrier Peter's created at the more accessible end of the hallway.
"I hit the jackpot," Peter says in greeting, handing a crumpled paper bag through the bars and into Spike's hands.
Spike gets the key off the hook and unlocks the heavy padlocks, then Peter unwinds the chains and goes back for three boxes of supplies, setting them just inside the shadows. Spike ferries them down into the supply room, taking a quick peek while he's at it. Not like he's beyond helping himself to something choice, though he imagines Peter would notice if anything good's gone missing.
All that's in the paper bag is a collection of vitamin bottles, so Spike takes them out one by one and lines them up on one of the shelves, curious as to what all the fuss is about. B-Complex, C, Iron... it's not until he comes across one called 'Women's Formula' that he realizes they're for Dawn.
Peter comes in with the last box and sets it down on the table. "She should be taking the iron," he says. "The other ones too, but the iron's probably the most important."
"Right," Spike says. The two of them move around each other carefully -- not exactly uncomfortable, but not really relaxed either. Still feeling each other out. Spike doesn't quite trust Peter, and he knows Peter doesn't trust him either.
One of the things that he's pretty sure convinced Peter to let him continue with his unlife is the fact that Dawn, half-conscious and murmuring, had said his name.
He couldn't have asked for better proof that he was on her side.
There's a mat in the corner where Spike's been sleeping -- not enough trust for them to be asleep in the same room, not that it would matter since they've slept different times of the day anyway. The first five nights Spike had slept on the floor, sitting up against the wall, with one hand resting on the cot where Dawn was.
On the sixth afternoon, Peter had come back with some cases of fags for him. Bloke came into the makeshift hospital room to check on Dawn after he'd finished unloading the truck, and told Spike that they were in the supply room for him. When he'd gone to check it out, there'd been a mat with some blankets and a ratty pillow in there too.
"We can move her out of the bathroom now," Peter says, piling packages of batteries and some flashlights on a low shelf. High ones are for food -- makes it harder for the mice, which are stealthy enough that it's tough to know how many of them there actually are, to get to it. "She might as well keep the cot."
"I want to sleep wherever Spike does," Dawn says, from the doorway.
Spike glances up at her, quick. He hadn't even heard her wake up. "Okay. We can move your cot in here." He looks around the room. "Guess we can move these shelves over there, clear up a little more space."
Peter empties out the last box and piles it with the others just inside the doorway. He doesn't comment on Dawn's choice of sleeping arrangements, but Spike thinks he can read something in the man's posture. Irritation, maybe.
But then Peter says, "Okay, Dawn, I need to tell you about these vitamins I want you to start taking," and he sounds regular, friendly and... normal. Spike thinks this bloke might be the most normal guy on the planet, and has no idea how he's managed to survive so long by himself.
He leans against the wall and has another smoke as he watches Peter explain to Dawn about the different pills, how many to take a day and which ones not to take together because they'll cancel each other out or some such. She's still pale with dark circles under her eyes, but she's listening to him like he knows what he's talking about -- and grudgingly, Spike has to admit that he seems to.
Peter's not a doctor, but he plays one on tv.
"Right," Dawn's saying, making sure she gets it. "The iron and the vitamin C together."
"Uh-huh." Peter reaches out and tucks her hair back behind her ear, and she smiles at him like Spike imagines she'd smile at a favorite teacher.
He has a little wander because he doesn't want to watch -- goes back and makes sure the locks are secure, checks each room in turn so he knows the windows are intact. Feels like he's turned into a sodding security guard.
Place is safe. No one getting in.
Something about that makes him anxious to get out.
Spike is hungry again.
Dawn would be able to tell by the way he snaps at her and Peter for no real reason, even if she couldn't see it in the way he has to belt his jeans to keep them up. That's the thing about guys -- no hips. Peter doesn't have any either, and always wears a belt, but she can still tell by the little folds of fabric at Spike's waist, under the belt, that he's getting skinnier again.
Peter goes on another supply run and brings back a goat. It's kind of cute, in a freaky, alien looking sort of way. Its jaw moves sideways when it chews, and its eyes are kind of... square.
"Gonna cook it up?" Spike asks, and Peter nods.
"Might as well," he says. "Otherwise it'll just go to waste, right?"
A look passes between them, some guy thing that they usually do over Dawn's head like she's not capable of understanding whatever it is they're talking about. It always annoys her.
But when Peter asks if she wants to play some cards -- he's teaching her cribbage, which is kind of fun and not as complicated as she'd thought -- Dawn gets it, no matter what they think.
"I'm not stupid," she tells them both, hands on her hips. "I knew that was why Peter brought her back here in the first place." Jeez. Men.
So Spike takes the goat off into the back of the hallway while Dawn and Peter play cards, and when he's done with the whole big sucking thing Peter guts and skins the goat and makes goat stew. No, seriously. It's totally disgusting and Dawn wants nothing to do with it.
It would be one thing if it was a cow or something. But a goat? Eww. She'd rather eat a can of tuna.
Anyway, she's not hungry. She keeps eating regular meals because she's supposed to, and because Spike and Peter both bug her if she doesn't, but mostly she just feels confused. She wants some feeling of knowing what comes next, and instead it feels like nothing does. Like there's just this big... nothing stretching out in front of them.
They can stay here, she thinks, the three of them. Peter's nice, and he knows how to take care of them. And it's not a bad place -- there's running water, and some kind of generator that runs on gas and gives them enough electricity for the little refrigerator and the stove. Not that there's fresh food to store, mostly, but they can save leftovers, and it's a place to keep blood for Spike, if there was any.
Peter has some books, and when no one's paying attention to her, Dawn looks through them. It takes six weeks for the human body to replace a pint of donated blood, more or less.
She brings up the subject one morning when she and Spike are falling asleep, and Peter is just getting up for the day. They're still on their sleep-while-the-sun's-out schedule, which means actually managing to go to sleep while Peter does whatever isn't always the easiest thing.
"Did you know," she says, trying to sound casual, "that it only takes six weeks for your body to replace a pint of blood?"
"Not my body," Spike says. He tilts his head to look up at her from where he's lying flat on his back on the mat he sleeps on.
Dawn rolls her eyes at him. "Well, regular people."
"Oh, all of a sudden I'm not regular?" Spike is doing that thing where he tries to sound offended, but she can see right through him. "Thanks a lot. And after all I've done for you..."
"Shut up," she says. The metal frame of the cot is cold against her fingers -- it feels nice. Kind of soothing. "Anyway, I -- "
"No," Spike says.
"But you don't even know what I'm -- "
"No. And it's not up for discussion." Spike closes his eyes.
Dawn wants to throw something at him, but she figures if she throws her pillow there's no way she's getting it back. "Fine," she says. "Whatever."
"Go to sleep."
She knows she's not going to, but for a long time she pretends anyway. She makes her breathing slow and measured, relaxes her whole body into the thin mattress of the cot even though it kind of digs into her hip where there's this metal bar thing underneath.
When Dawn is sure that Spike is asleep, she opens her eyes.
He always sleeps right next to her cot, like right next to her. That way, if someone came in, he'd be right there, between her and danger. She reaches out a tentative hand and touches his arm, but he doesn't move. He's cool, but his skin is soft. It feels nice underneath her fingertips.
She wonders what other parts of him feel like. Is the skin of his stomach that soft too? Or the backs of his knees? Sometimes Dawn dreams that they're, well, naked, and she can touch him wherever she wants to. Her brain thinks it knows the sounds he'd make, and what it would feel like to have him touching her back, in the places that tingle when she gets... excited.
Spike's t-shirt is riding up, and she can see this kind of line where his pubic hair starts, low down just above the waistband of his jeans. The little wisps of hair are dark brown, not blonde. Not that she thinks he's a natural blonde anyway, but still. There's something sweet about it, those few little hairs. Dawn can tell just by looking that the skin there is softer than anywhere else, and without really thinking about it, her fingers reach to find out.
He murmurs in his sleep when she touches him, and she snatches her hand back fast, but then he just keeps lying there, so she tries again. She was right -- the skin there is really soft, just like hers, or sort of like the insides of her thighs.
He makes a little sound, and this time Dawn doesn't pull her hand away. She just waits. He isn't moving or anything -- well okay, maybe part of him is, but she's pretty sure he's still asleep, so she just trails her fingertips over that soft, soft bit of skin, liking the way his hair feels, kind of crinkly. Like her own pubic hair, but finer, like it's some weird stuff designed to lure you in.
Dawn can see the outline of Spike's cock under his jeans. She can tell he's hard, and she wonders what it would feel like in her hand. Heavy, probably. Hesitantly, she moves her hand lower, letting her palm rub over it. It's big, and touching it gives her a funny feeling.
Then Peter walks into the storage room, and she pulls her hand away fast, feeling herself blush.
He looks over at her. She must have a weird expression on her face or something, because he asks, quietly, "You okay?"
Dawn nods. "Uh-huh."
She lies back down with her head on the pillow again and watches while Peter gets out some stuff, wondering what he's going to do today while they're sleeping. It's sort of like they're living two totally different lives, the way she and Spike are up at night when Peter's asleep.
With a flashlight in his hand, Peter comes over closer, standing over where Spike is sleeping. "You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
"Okay." Peter shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "You going to be able to sleep?"
She shrugs. "I don't know."
He hesitates, then suggests, "Want to come help me with something?"
It's not like she isn't totally awake anyway. She might as well do something useful, instead of lying here looking at Spike, not to mention practically molesting him in his sleep.
Dawn kicks back the blanket and gets up, stepping over Spike's feet carefully so she won't wake him up. "Okay. Sure."
Dawn doesn't hesitate until they get to the barricade where all the chains are and Peter starts to unlock the padlocks. "Um... we're going outside?"
"I think there's a leak somewhere in the plumbing," Peter says, stopping what he's doing and looking at her. "I can't get to it from in here -- we have to go upstairs."
"But isn't that, you know... dangerous?"
"It's the middle of the day," Peter points out, opening another lock. "We'll be able to hear if anything's coming. I'm armed." He lifts his shirt to show her the gun stuck into the front of his jeans, and Dawn sees his tanned flat stomach and dark hair too. She looks away. "Look, if you don't want to come, that's fine."
"No," she says stubbornly. "Anything's better than staring at the ceiling."
Peter gives her a look. "I'm not sure what that says about my company."
Dawn grins and shoves his arm. "Weirdo."
"Takes one to know one," Peter shoots back.
"What are you, secretly twelve?" she asks, shoving his arm again. "I haven't heard that since, like, seventh grade. Well, except for when Buffy..." She trails off, feeling weird talking about her.
"Sister?" Peter guesses.
"Yeah." Dawn says it flatly, hoping that Peter will figure out that she so doesn't want to talk about it.
Luckily, he seems to. He finishes unlocking everything and threading the chains through, then they step out onto the other side.
"What about Spike?" Dawn asks.
"What about him?"
"Well, he's gonna be, you know... unprotected." She's not too thrilled about the idea. "What if something happens? I mean, what if something gets in?"
Peter turns and starts for the stairs that lead to the outside instead of the ones that go up, leaving the tool box he's been carrying on the floor. "He's a vampire -- he'll be fine. Come here. I want to show you something."
It's the first time Dawn's been outside in the sunshine since they got here. Actually, since before they got here, what with the whole traveling at night thing. She has to hold her hand up to shield her eyes from it, it's so bright.
And it's so... quiet. It would be like being at the beach or something, way out in the country where there's no one else around, except there isn't the sound of waves, or birds. Or anything. It's just... totally quiet. No cars, no people, no nothing.
It's creepy.
"Let's go back in," Dawn says, turning back toward the door.
Peter grabs onto her wrist and stops her, and she tries to pull away, but he's strong. He moves behind her, one arm wrapped around her front just above her breasts, and she's scared. He turns her back out to face the courtyard, where their car and Peter's truck are. "Just look," he says.
Dawn doesn't know what she's supposed to be looking at, but that's when she notices that Peter is actually holding her pretty gently, and not trying to like touch her or anything. "L-look at what?"
"Listen."
"There's nothing to listen to." Her heart is beating kind of fast.
"That's my point." Peter lets her go, then steps around so she has to look at him. "There's nothing scary out here. Not anything worse than there was before, anyway."
She looks at him uncertainly.
"People can be monsters too." Peter's face is serious, like he's trying to make sure she understands what he's saying. "The world -- it's still about the same. Now it's just easier to tell who the monsters are."
Dawn doesn't think he's right, because lots of good people are gone too. People like Willow, and Tara, and Xander. She remembers how Willow and Tara made pancakes and how Tara was really good at the funny shapes -- she could make Jupiter and spell out people's names so that you could even read them. She remembers playing board games with Xander, stupid ones that she knew he really didn't like but was just humoring her with.
But she's not going to think about them. It's too hard, and it doesn't help. It doesn't change anything.
Folding her arms in front of her chest, still able to feel Peter's touch, she asks, "So where are these leaky pipes?"
Peter keeps looking at her. Then he nods. "Come on, I'll show you."
They go back inside, which is a pretty big relief, and up to the second -- or maybe it's the first -- floor of the school, up over where their bathroom is. There's another bathroom here, and Peter was right, one of the pipes is leaking. There's water all over the tile floor, in a big puddle, and Dawn is surprised that it hasn't leaked right through their ceiling into the basement.
"Thought so." Peter sets the tool box on one of the sinks and finds a wrench and the flashlight. He gives the flashlight to Dawn and crouches down on the floor in front of the next sink. "Can you shine that right here?"
She has to move closer, and she can feel the water starting to seep through her shoes as she bends down to shine the light onto the pipe.
"This is why we haven't been getting enough water pressure," Peter says, trying to tighten some part of the pipe with the wrench. There's a low-pitched squeal of metal grinding on metal, then a funny snapping noise, and water starts to spray everywhere like a blast from a hose gone berserk.
Dawn shrieks in surprise as the cool water hits her with a surprising force, soaking her clothes and her hair. She jerks sideways, and the front edge of the flashlight smacks Peter in the head, really hard, and he yells.
"Sorry!" She backs away as water keeps shooting out everywhere. Her t-shirt is clinging to her body and her leggings, which she usually wears to sleep in, are heavy with the weight of the water. Peter swears and does something under the sink with the wrench, even though he's getting soaked doing it, and then the water slows to a trickle.
Peter looks up at her, and she can see a thin line of watery blood running down the side of his face. "Ow. You're dangerous with that thing, aren't you."
"Are you okay?" Dawn asks, dropping the flashlight into the sink with a loud clattering sound of metal and plastic or whatever sinks are made out of, and sinking down onto her knees, mindless of the water since she's already drenched anyway. She turns Peter's head so she can see the place she hit him. There's a little curved cut just above his temple, but even though the blood is oozing out steadily, it doesn't look deep. "It's okay. It's not bad."
"Don't worry -- I've had worse." Peter's eyes are green, or maybe kind of hazel. His face is sandpaper rough against her palm. There's something about the way he's looking at her that's... confusing. Not bad, just weird.
Dawn looks down at herself and realizes that her pale pink t-shirt, now soaked with water, is clinging to her breasts, outlining them like she's in some kind of sorority girls MTV special. It almost looks like she's not wearing anything at all.
"What the bloody hell," Spike's voice says from behind her, making her jump, "is going on?"
The sound of Dawn's scream is what wakes him from a deep sleep, and even though Spike sits up quickly, at first he's convinced that he's dreaming. Because he just went to sleep with her beside him on her narrow little cot.
Takes more than a few seconds to figure out that it's real. Soon as he does, Spike moves, through the room and out into the hallway, listening, every muscle tensed and ready for battle. There's a scuffle from upstairs, no sounds from the basement itself, and he's down the hall and through the opened barricade in a flash.
If he'd been more aware he'd have realized that the barricade was carefully opened, which means from the inside, but he's not. He's focused on one thing -- Dawn.
Up the stairs to the floor above them, dodging shafts of sunlight where they come in through the windows. Into the bathroom there, where Dawn is kneeling in a widening puddle of water with her back to the door, one hand on Peter's face and the other one touching his hair. No signs of a struggle, or anything gone more wrong than a leaky pipe.
"What the bloody hell," he asks, with his hands clenched into fists, needing to hit something, "is going on?"
Dawn twitches and turns. Her wet clothes are plastered to her and her hair's damp too, hanging down in strands that are shedding drops down into the water already on the floor. "Fixing a pipe?" she says, like she's not sure. "And then the water kind of went everywhere, and -- "
"I can see that," Spike says, interrupting her attempt to explain. He's angry with her for more reasons than he can count, but the ones at the top of the list are for putting herself in danger and for doing it with bloody Peter, who should know better. "Seemed like a good idea to come up here without any protection, did it?"
She gets to her feet slowly -- Spike trying not to notice the relief he feels when she's not touching Peter anymore. He can tell by the look on her face that she sees how furious he is. "He brought a gun," she says, gesturing behind her at Peter.
"Yeah -- something like that'll do a lot of good against monsters," Spike says. There's a point that needs to be made here, and he doesn't care if Peter will forgive him for using him to make it.
Moving with vampire speed before either of them can react, he crosses the room, grabbing Peter along the way. When he stops, he's got Peter pushed up against the wall, one hand around the man's throat (but not squeezing tight like he could be, because he's just making a point.) The gun that was stuck in the waistband of Peter's jeans is in Spike's other hand, the muzzle barely grazing the skin just under Peter's jaw.
"Feel safe now, Bit?" Spike asks, enunciating carefully around his fangs because he's in game face. "Think a gun can protect you from all the evil beasties that go bump in the night?"
"Spike! What are you -- stop it!"
He eases off -- takes a few steps back, letting Peter go and slipping back into human face. The other man looks kind of stunned, maybe a flicker of anger burning there behind his eyes.
Maybe not.
Spike thinks it wouldn't be the first time he's done something stupid, made himself an enemy where he didn't mean to, so he tries to apologize. "Just trying to make a point," he says. Turns the gun around, slow, and offers Peter the butt of it. "No offense, mate."
Peter looks at him, then nods and takes the gun. "You're making me look bad," he says. "I just got finished convincing her that the world's not such a bad place, even now."
A snort of derision escapes him before he can stop it. "World's always been a bad place." He glances at Dawn, who's standing there looking uncertain, her soaked clothing molding itself to her curves. "People are just in it for themselves. Pain, death... it's all around. If you think this..." Spike sweeps his arm to indicate the world, "isn't so bad, you're fooling yourself."
Dawn's face lets him know he's gone wrong, said it so that she's feeling scared and small again, and the realization makes him angry. At her, at himself.
"Get back downstairs," he tells her. "And if I ever catch you up here on your own again, I'll rip you into little pieces with my bare hands. You hear me?"
She nods. Glances down, sees that she might as well be bloody naked, and wraps her arms around herself. But then she lifts her chin defiantly, and says, "I wasn't alone. I was with Peter."
Of course, that just irritates Spike more. He storms across the room and grabs her, dragging her out into the hallway as she struggles and squawks. "If you aren't with me, you're alone. Just got finished telling you he can't bloody well protect you."
On the landing, Dawn rips her damp sleeve from his grip and whirls to face him, anger sparking off her like a firecracker. "Neither can you!"
He grabs onto her upper arm this time, harder. "I'll do a damn sight better than some stupid human!" Christ, she's being infuriating. He wants to slam her up against the wall, shake some sense into her.
"He's not stupid!" Dawn tries to pull her arm away from him, but he ignores that and heads down the stairs with her beside him. "God, he's trying to help us! Spike, stop it."
The last words are grated out through what might be tears, and Spike stops just outside the barricade and turns her to face him again, one hand on each of her upper arms to keep her still, because he's going to make her listen. Going to make her hear this, one way or another. "You think he wants to help? He bloody wants you, Dawn. You think beautiful young girls are ten to the penny these days?"
"I'm not... that," Dawn says, her face closing in on itself.
"Not what... beautiful? Bit... Dawn... you're gorgeous." The thin fabric of her t-shirt's cool against Spike's palms, and he thinks she ought to get out of these wet clothes before she catches a chill. The thought of seeing her strip it off -- or of doing it for her -- makes him harder than he already is.
"Let go of me," she says, letting her hair fall down to hide her expression. "Spike, let go."
And he knows it's unbelievably stupid of him, that it's not the right place or time, but his lack of self-control comes galloping forward, and he pulls her closer and kisses her. Not too hard, but long enough so that she knows he means business, that he's serious. Her mouth tastes like grape jam, sweet and a little bit sticky, and Spike can't help himself, he slides his hand down to cup one small breast, rubs his thumb over the taut nipple.
Dawn sighs and lets him -- doesn't tense up or try to push him away, which is a hell of a surprise as far as Spike's concerned. She's inexperienced, sure, but not like he minds taking the lead. He gentles his hands, uses his lips and tongue to encourage her to open her mouth against his, then flickers the tip of his tongue between her lips, quick and dirty.
That word makes him realize what he's doing, and with who. He pulls back, lets go of her, holding both hands out to his sides to show that there's no threat here, leastwise, not from him.
But Spike doesn't know what to say.
Dawn looks up, her eyes meeting his for just a fleeting second, and then her gaze moves over his shoulder, looking at something there.
Spike tenses and glances behind him. Peter's standing on the landing, watching them.
Without another word, before anyone can say anything, Dawn whirls and disappears through the barricade, down the hallway into the storage room.
Peter clears his throat, shifts the tool box from one hand to the other. Opens his mouth like he's gonna say something, then shakes his head.
A sound of disgust mixed with disbelief escapes Spike, and he shakes his head too. "Brilliant."
All Dawn can think is: Spike kissed me. Oh my God, he kissed me!
She knows he's standing outside in the hallway -- she might not be a vampire, but she can still hear the click of his lighter. She can tell he's waiting for her to get changed, because he always does that, smokes just on the other side of the doorway.
It gives her time to think, struggling out of the wet t-shirt. Her breasts ache with the memory of how it felt to have him touching her, her nipples tingling and tight. She seriously needs a bra, she thinks, because she's not really small chested enough to get away with going around without one anymore, plus if Spike's right about Peter...
Dawn doesn't know if he is. Peter's a nice guy -- she likes him, not to mention the whole thing about him probably having saved her life. But he's not Spike, who she had a crush on way before she even realized that he was totally in love with Buffy. Spike's, like... special.
She puts on a thicker t-shirt that maybe hides her breasts better, then shimmies out of her leggings, which are totally soaked and gross, and pulls on another pair. It's a good thing Peter knows where to go for clothes, because a lot of the ones she had in the car when they got there ended up bloody -- well, the pants anyway.
"I'm done," Dawn says, knowing that Spike is waiting.
There's a pause, and then he appears in the doorway. "All comfy cozy?"
She reaches for a towel so that she can dry her hair, which is still hanging in wet strings around her face. She's been washing in the bathroom sink since they've been here, which is nowhere near as good as a shower. It always feels like there's shampoo still in her hair, no matter how many times she rinses it all bent over, thinking that she's going to end up with a hump like old Mrs. Burdock from middle school. "It's not like I knew that was going to happen," she says finally.
Spike takes a drag on his cigarette and watches her, all serious. "Which? The water?" He gestures at her head.
"No. Well, that too. But I meant the whole... going upstairs thing. I just said I'd help." Dawn glances around, but she doesn't see her hairbrush. She keeps putting it down places and then forgetting about it.
"So one minute you were down here where it's safe, and the next you blinked and you were upstairs, that it?" Spike takes another drag and lets it out fast, all at once. "And here I always thought teleportation was something reserved for witches."
Dawn swallows. She doesn't want to be reminded of Willow, because that makes her think about Tara and Xander and Giles and... "No, I just meant..." She sighs and turns around. "Never mind." It's not like he wants to hear what she's thinking anyway.
"No, go on. Tell me what you meant." Spike drops his cigarette onto the floor and crushes it out with his boot, which is seriously gross and definitely missing something without the duster. At one point Dawn thought she'd be glad to see the thing go -- it was all old and yucky, plus she didn't think it fit Spike right -- but she actually kind of misses it.
"I was trying to help," she says. There's something kind of desperate in her voice, because she just wants him to understand.
She doesn't want him to be all mad at her.
Spike sighs. "I get that, Bit." He rubs a hand over his face like he's tired. Which actually would make sense, since they're supposed to be sleeping. "I'm s'posed to make sure nothing happens to you." It's so quiet that Dawn isn't sure for a second what he said.
She can't just leave him standing there like that, looking all sad and tired, so she goes over and takes his hand, then starts to walk backwards toward where they sleep. "Stuff's going to happen to me," she tells him. "You can't -- you can't stop that."
The thing that usually looks like anger in his eyes seems different now. "Have to," he says. "I promised..."
For a minute, Dawn thinks he's going to cry, and that's so freaky that she pulls him down to sit next to her on the cot. "I know you told Buffy you'd take care of me." She also knows that he was totally in love with Buffy, and that probably means he can't be in love with her. She's just kind of... there, and they're both dealing with a lot of stuff. People do weird things when they're, like, grieving, or whatever. "Why don't you trust him?"
Spike shakes his head, like he doesn't know how to put it into words. "Just don't," he says quietly.
"So what was that..." God, she shouldn't ask, but she can't help herself. "Why did you... you know."
"Become a vampire?" Spike grins, and he's all cocky and annoying. Dawn can tell that he thinks he's being really funny, or that he hopes she'll think he thinks that. "Well, see, pet, when two grown up vampires love each other very very much -- "
Dawn shoves his arm. "Not that." Then she frowns, confused. "Wait, Buffy said vampires making vampires was this whole sucking thing."
Spike nods. "Yeah, it is. You didn't think I was serious, did you?"
"No." She really hadn't. God, why does everyone assume that she's stupid? At least Peter seems to think she's helpful and stuff. "Anyway, I meant... why did you kiss me?" As soon as she asks it, she's really, really sure she shouldn't have. She doesn't think she's going to like whatever the answer is.
To her surprise, Spike doesn't say anything right away. He reaches out and runs his hand down over her hair, which as a romantic gesture -- and it can't be, because he doesn't feel that way about her, right? -- falls kind of flat, since it's all wet and straggly. "Guess I wanted to," he says.
"Why?" Dawn knows then that she's never going to learn to keep her stupid mouth shut.
"Look, we should get some sleep," Spike says, and instead of feeling grateful that he's changing the subject, Dawn feels almost disappointed. "You don't get enough rest, you're gonna get sick."
She looks at him, and he's the one who looks tired. Dawn wonders if he's sleeping, if vampires get sick when they don't get enough sleep, and what she'd do without him. "You sleep here," she says impulsively, liking the thought of him sleeping there on her cot for once. Maybe it will end up smelling kind of like him -- that would be nice. She slides down onto his nest of blankets before he can say no. "Anyway, they say change is good, right?"
"Who does?" At least he's not having a big spaz about it.
"I don't know. People who know about stuff like that. Um... psychiatrists. Doctors?"
"People you pay to redecorate your house every other year," Spike grumbles, but he lies down on the cot anyway. "Fill up their sodding bank accounts with your hard-earned cash."
"Right. Because you've always worked really hard for your money." Dawn almost laughs at him, but she's kind of tired too.
"You think it's not hard work hitting up people when they step away from the ATM machine?" Spike shifts his weight onto his back, and he has to lift his butt up to do it. Dawn is instantly reminded of how he'd been sleeping before and how she'd touched him, and she feels a flush creeping up over her cheeks.
"Night, Spike," she says, turning away so that he can't see and pulling one of the blankets up over her.
She's asleep before she hears his reply, unless he's already asleep too.
Dawn's sleep schedule is getting more and more strange, or maybe more and more normal, depending how you look at it. It's like her body just wants her to sleep at night instead of in the daytime. Over the past few weeks, she's been feeling tired around the time Peter usually goes to sleep, but she mostly gets a kind of second wind and stays up until morning. But now that's getting harder to do, and she's falling asleep before the sun even comes up.
So anyway, that's why she's having an actual breakfast with Peter this morning instead of sleeping, when Spike crashed like two hours ago. It's kind of nice to eat with someone else who actually eats -- Spike doesn't anymore. When Dawn asked him why not, he said shortly that the food supply was going to be enough of a problem without him eating when he didn't technically need to. Since he doesn't get any nutrition from anything but blood, Dawn guesses that makes sense, but it's still been kind of lonely always eating on her own, or when Spike's sucking down some gross pint of blood that Peter got from somewhere she doesn't even want to think about.
There's something about instant oatmeal that makes her feel like she's about ten years old again. "This is good," she says, taking another bite. "You could be, like, a chef."
"Because I can mix up packets of oatmeal with water?" Peter smiles at her.
"I never said I couldn't be a chef too," Dawn tell him, then swallows what's in her mouth before sticking her tongue out at him.
Peter makes a face that kind of reminds her of Xander, when she was being a dork and he was looking at her in that 'silly little kid' way. Weirdly, it doesn't bother her coming from Peter, maybe because she knows she's not just a little kid anymore. "Tomorrow I'll have to make something more complicated, seeing how I get all kinds of compliments over oatmeal."
"Too bad there aren't any eggs. For pancakes," Dawn says. She misses pancakes, funny shapes or rounds. "Is there something that substitutes for eggs?"
Thinking about it, Peter eats the last bite of his oatmeal and pushes the little bottle of juice he got for Dawn over closer to her. "Drink that," he says. "I don't know. I'll look for a good cookbook or something -- there must be something we could use."
She opens the juice and drinks some -- it's some icky tropical fruit blend or something, but she knows that there aren't a lot of things she can do to keep herself healthy these days, so she might as well drink the stupid juice even if it's gross. "What about chickens?"
"Chickens?"
"They're these birds," Dawn explains mock-patiently, trying to hide a grin. "They live in farmyards, and they lay eggs."
Peter gets up and throws both of their oatmeal bowls into the trash bag in the corner of the room. "I know what chickens are," he says.
"Well, maybe we could get some?"
"I thought you said they live on farms."
"Well they could live down here instead," Dawn says. "We could, like, build a little fence for them or something, down at the end of the hallway?"
Peter shakes his head, but she doesn't think he's really saying no. "Do you have any idea how much chickens smell? The whole place would reek."
She hadn't thought of that. "Oh."
"Besides, I don't know if they'd even lay any eggs down here. Animals need certain things to reproduce."
"We could get a rooster too?"
Peter sits back down, playing with the cap from her bottle of juice. He spins it, watches it until it runs out of momentum and shivers its way down onto the tabletop to lie still. "That's not what I meant. I don't think they'd do any good without sunshine."
Dawn thinks about that for a minute, wondering if it applies to people too. Not that there are a lot of people left, probably, but there must be some, somewhere. "What about people?" she asks, not even knowing she's going to.
"People don't lay eggs," Peter says, with a little smile that lets her know that she can change her mind, back out of the conversation if she needs to.
She doesn't. "No, I mean... what about people reproducing?"
"What about them?" His voice is gentle.
"Do you think that's why...?" Dawn can't ask the end of the question, even though she wants -- needs -- to hear the answer.
"Women lose pregnancies all the time," Peter says. He's just rolling the bottle cap between his fingers now, not spinning it. "There are lots of reasons. Sometimes the woman's body is under too much stress to handle it. Sometimes there's something wrong with the fetus -- and again, there are lots of reasons for that. There's no way to know for sure."
"What if there were doctors and stuff. Would they have been, you know... able to tell?"
Peter shakes his head, just once. "I don't think so. It was still really early on. Lots of times women lose babies that they didn't even know they were carrying, when it happens so quick like that. They don't even know they're pregnant."
"You'd think the whole throwing up thing would help them figure it out," Dawn says. "So... you don't think it was because I didn't... want it?" It's stupid to feel guilty about it, she knows that, but she kind of can't help it.
He gets up and comes around the table, then crouches down, looking at her face to face. It makes her a little uncomfortable, but at the same time it's kind of nice. It makes her feel like he cares. "It's not your fault. And you shouldn't feel bad about having taken those pills, either. Wishing doesn't make things happen."
Dawn's not totally sure that's true, because isn't that -- sort of -- what magic is? But she doesn't want to think about that. "What about... do you think I'm okay?" She's been worrying about it, which again -- stupid, because it's not like it matters. It's not like she's going to find some guy and settle down and have a family. Right?
"I'm sure you are." Peter reaches out, but he doesn't touch her face, just rests his hand on her arm for a few seconds. "But we can talk about it any time. And if you have questions, I could get you some books. If that would help reassure you."
"Um... yeah. Thanks." She's kind of embarrassed now, but Peter's cool and gets back up, going over to the little table that's next to the stove and coming back with a pad of paper and a pen.
He pushed them across to her. "I can probably get anything you want. Maybe not right away though, so you might want to think ahead."
Dawn wonders if this is like a subtle way of asking if she wants tampons, which yeah, she's going to need sooner or later. She blushes harder as she remembers the big bulky pads she'd had to wear for the first week or so after the miscarriage, and the knowledge that someone -- probably Spike -- must have been changing them for her when she was unconscious. Unless they were just letting her lie there and bleed on a towel or something, which ew. Okay, not thinking about that anymore.
Quickly, she scribbles down a few essentials, then adds lip gloss and hand lotion to the list. It's weird how everything seems so dry here. "Oh!" she says, suddenly thinking of something. "There is one thing. But it's not for me."
Peter gets this weird hesitant look on his face, but only for a second. He sits back down and nods. "Okay. Tell me what you want, and I'll see what I can do."
It's pissing Spike off is what it's doing. The little glances back and forth between them, and the way Dawn giggles like she's doing something she shouldn't be. Not that he hasn't known for a long time that she's got as much potential as her sister ever had to break his heart, no matter how much he didn't want to admit it to himself. Ironic, that -- how he can tell other people the things they're keeping from themselves, but still manage to hide stuff from himself.
She's been sleeping different hours lately, and that rubs him the wrong way too. Oh, he knows it's better for her, being up when the sun's shining, but that doesn't mean it's any easier, her spending more time with Peter and less with him.
Spike still doesn't trust Peter, and he's starting to think he never will. That's a problem -- a real one that's gonna have to be dealt with, because it won't be good for any of them in the long run, the three of them together if they can't get to some kind of understanding.
He thinks Peter wants her. Knows it, deep down in his marrow, like he knows that the sun's gonna set in the next twenty minutes. Closer to instinct than anything else.
And it's not the age thing that bothers him, what with him wanting the Bit himself. He's a good hundred-plus years older than Peter, after all.
Spike tells himself that if Dawn wants Peter, he won't stand in the way.
He knows it's a lie, though.
Strolls into the room all casual-like, lights a fag and grins a quick greeting. It's a baring of teeth, something Peter probably doesn't recognize for what it really is. "Moved on from cribbage?"
Dawn's choking back giggles. "It's 'Trivial Pursuit,'" she explains. "It's all these questions, and then you get pie pieces."
Spike raises an eyebrow and looks at the table they're both sitting at. "Pie?"
"Not actual pie," Dawn says, then collapses onto the table, her hair covering her face as her shoulders shake helplessly with laughter.
Peter holds up a little circular disk. "Different categories get different colors," he explains. "When you get a question right, you get a little wedge of plastic that fits into here."
"What kind of questions?"
Still giggling, Dawn straightens up and reaches for a little blue-edged card. "Like this: What's the most frequently-broken bone in the body? That one's Science and Nature."
"Collarbone," Spike says automatically, gesturing at his own with a thumb. "Snaps just like a drumstick, you put enough pressure on it." Too late, he realizes that this isn't the kind of talk Peter likes to hear, and then the realization pisses him off more because he shouldn't have to care what Peter wants. Fuck Peter. He takes another long drag on his cigarette. "Well, go on then. Play."
Dawn's giggling trickles off into nothing finally as she and Peter take turns rolling the die and asking each other questions off the little cards. The game's hopelessly out of date, and Dawn only has one piece in her pie pan or whatever the hell it is to Peter's four.
"I think Spike should be on my team," Dawn says, after Peter gets another right answer.
"Two against one?" Peter raises an eyebrow, but it doesn't really seem like he's saying no.
"Well it's not like I was actually around when any of this stuff happened," Dawn complains. "I mean, I think this game came out before I was even born."
Spike finishes his fag and goes over to stub it out in the bowl he uses as an ashtray, which got moved over to one of the side tables to make room for the game. "I don't mind," he says, turning one of the two empty chairs around backward and straddling it. "Don't know that I'm going to be that much help, but..."
"You knew that broken bone one," Dawn says loyally, pushing a box of cards over toward him until it's in a place they can both reach it. "Here, you read the next one."
He takes a card out, glances at the board to see which color Peter's piece is resting on, then reads, "What Orson Welles radio play opened in the Meridian Room of the Hotel Park Plaza?"
Peter sits back in his chair, and there's a funny little smile on his face. "War of the Worlds," he says, smug and self-satisfied. "This isn't all that different, is it?"
"Pretty different, if you ask me. Then again, could be I'm on the side of the bad guys, if that's the way you want to look at it." Spike tosses the card down onto the table, and it slides smoothly over toward Dawn, who picks it up, turning it over in her fingers. She looks unsettled -- knows they're talking about more than what she understands, but doesn't quite get it. Spike's not sure that's a bad thing.
"What's War of the Worlds?" she asks.
"A radio show about aliens taking over the earth," Peter says, since Spike's just as happy to let him do the explaining. "People who were listening to it when it first aired thought it was real, that it was the news and not fiction."
"Oh." Dawn seems to mull that over for a few seconds, and Spike thinks he can see the moment she realizes what that has to do with their own situation. "That'd be nice," she says finally. "I mean, if we found out none of this was real?"
Spike waits for Peter to say something reassuring, what with him being the king of warm happy thoughts and all, but Peter just sits there. So Spike smacks his hand down on the tabletop, then gestures with an open hand at Peter. "Your turn to read a question, mate."
"We have to roll first," Dawn says, picking up the die and doing it, then moving their stupid fucking pie plate. Who the hell thought this game up anyway, a pastry chef? "Arts and Literature." She looks at Peter expectantly.
Peter picks up a card. "What was the name of Scarlett O'Hara's mansion?"
Oh, bloody hell, if that isn't just what Dawn doesn't need to hear.
"I don't know," she says, glancing at him.
"Tara," Spike says, because if he doesn't say it, Peter will, and it might as well come from him.
"What?" Dawn's voice is soft, stunned.
"The name of the mansion. Tara," Spike repeats, watching as her eyes get bright with tears.
She stands up. "Why do we always have to play these stupid games?" she asks, sounding about twelve years old. Without another word, she leaves the room.
"Okay," Peter says. He's still holding the card in his hand. "Am I missing something?"
"One of her friends," Spike says shortly. Not like he wants to get into a long explanation.
Peter takes this in, then says, "Shit." It's the first time Spike's heard him swear. He starts to pack up the game.
"Don't get rid of it," Spike says. "She's just a girl yet. You throw it out, she might turn around tomorrow and ask how you could have done something so cruel as to toss her favorite game in the whole world."
They exchange a smile over the fickle ways of teenaged girls.
"Aren't you going to..." Peter asks, after another minute.
"What?"
The other man looks at him in what might be exasperation. "Go and see if she's okay?"
"Thought she might want a few minutes on her own," Spike says, getting up. He doesn't need this bloke to tell him how to comfort her, that's for sure. "You going out tomorrow?"
"Yeah. You need more cigarettes?"
"Always."
He goes to find Dawn.
She's not in the storage room that's also sort of their bedroom -- and that's the first time Spike realizes how that's a bit odd, that that's where they sleep. Dawn shouldn't be sleeping in there with the boxes and cans and shelving -- she should have a real bedroom, somewhere with curtains on the windows and a big soft bed. Fresh flowers.
Cursing himself for a fool, Spike turns and keeps looking.
When he finds her, she's shut herself in the bathroom. He can go into the room itself, but she's locked in one stall.
"You all right, Bit?" he asks.
"Don't call me that," Dawn says, sniffling. He can hear her pulling off a wad of paper and scrubbing her face with it.
"Dawn," he says, gently. "You all right?"
"No," she says. "I mean, yes."
Spike's not sure which one she means. He's not sure she knows. "Come on out."
She sniffles again. "No. I like it in here."
All right, maybe this is going to take a while. He leans against one of the low sinks -- wondering, not for the first time, if this was a school for midgets, since everything seems too short -- and examines his knuckles. It's not for show, since he's pretty sure Dawn's not watching him. More to give himself something to do, something to look at. "Nice view, is that it?" Come to think of it, he's never actually been in there.
"Yeah." Another sniffle. Then, almost a minute later, "Someone wrote a poem."
"Really? What's it say?"
Hesitantly, Dawn reads, "My mom is mean, my dad is dumb, my little brother sucks his thumb."
Daft midgets, Spike thinks, revising his earlier theory. "Can't say it's a shame that one's probably long dead. Would have made a bloody awful poet."
"You think?"
"I know." Spike's fingernails have dirt underneath. He never understands how that happens -- not like he's been spending any time outside, the past few weeks. Where's the sodding dirt come from?
There's the slight sound of metal on metal, faint creak, and then Dawn comes out of the stall. Her face is blotchy, her eyes reddened with tears, and Spike can't take his eyes off her. It's like whatever power was in her, that came from being the Key or from what the monks had done to create her human form, is still there, still shining through. She's as beautiful as Buffy ever was, and he's struck by the urge to tell her so. But he doesn't. "You okay?" he asks instead.
She nods and wipes at her eyes. "Sorry. I didn't think some stupid game -- but..." Dawn shifts her weight, sticks her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, a pose Spike thinks is supposed to look casual but just emphasizes her curves to the point of distraction, gorgeous rounded breasts and tiny waist. "It's not the game's fault," she says. "I just... I miss her, you know?"
"Yeah. Me too." He's surprised that it's true. Not that he hated the witch or anything -- he liked her well enough. But he hadn't realized he'd gotten attached to so many of them.
"I dream about them sometimes," Dawn continues. "Just stupid stuff, like Willow and Tara making dinner with the radio on -- remember how they used to, like, do that thing where they bumped their hips together? And Xander and Giles arguing about whether pepperoni was an affront to nature?" She smiles at him, all tremulous lips and wide eyes, and Spike slides a hand around the back of her neck and pulls her in close against him.
She gives a little sigh and presses closer, the heat of her soaking through his clothes and into his own skin, warming him. Reassuring him. "We'll be okay," Spike tells her.
"I know." She doesn't sound convinced.
"Should think about getting some games that don't make you cry, though."
Dawn laughs. It's not a real laugh, not quite, but it's better than nothing. "Yeah. At least Peter's good at finding stuff."
Hearing Peter's name makes Spike hold her closer, but that just means that his body responds accordingly, getting ideas that it shouldn't be having, not about her. Bad enough that he kissed her a few days ago, not to mention the time when he woke up touching her. This, he shouldn't do.
Fuck it. He wants to.
He tilts Dawn's face up to meet his and kisses her, letting his hardening cock push against her warm thigh, feeling her mouth open against his eagerly. Her hands around the back of his waist clutch at him, small but sturdy, strong, not shoving him away but drawing him nearer.
"Tell me to stop," Spike murmurs, kissing her again.
"No." Her breath's warm too, moving over his lips.
"Bit..." He has to correct himself. "Dawn..." It's not as simple as a request. It might be a warning.
"I don't want you to stop." She presses herself against him more firmly to illustrate, and he has to stifle a groan. His left hand's tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck. Then her voice, small again, says, "Um, yeah. Actually, stopping would be good."
Spike pulls back at once, not letting go of her, but needing to see the look on her face. "I'm stopping," he says, reassuring. "You say the word, it's yours. You know that."
Dawn's smile is brilliant. "Good. I mean, I like it. But not in the gross icky bathroom."
She moves her body slightly again, and he feels his cock harden further. "You sure?"
"That I don't want to make out with you in the bathroom? Yes." Dawn grins and stretches up onto her toes to plant another quick kiss onto his lips.
"Look, maybe we should think about this some more. Talk about it." Thinking and talking are two of the last things Spike wants to do, but the very last is to pressure Dawn into something she's going to regret. Especially with what happened to her before, especially considering he's the one that didn't get there in time to stop it.
"What's there to talk about?" Uncertainly crawls in behind Dawn's eyes, something he doesn't like the look of. "I mean... do you... like kissing me?"
"Are you completely insane? 'Course I do."
"Then why the big conversation?" Her hand's still got hold of the back of his waistband, twisting there.
Spike uses his right thumb to trace her sweet bottom lip. "Because I don't want you doing anything you don't want. And sometimes, in the moment, it's hard to know what that is."
"Because of hormones?" Dawn raises one eyebrow -- when the bloody hell'd she learn to do that? -- and then rolls her eyes, a collection of teenaged weapons being drawn all at once. "Spike... I know what I'm doing."
Self-assured, that's his Bit. "Good. Then all that's left is for you to convince me of that."
She frowns. "How am I supposed to do that?"
"You're a smart girl," Spike tells her, letting go of her by sheer force of will he didn't even know he had and stepping back, putting some space between them. "You'll figure it out."
Turning and walking away is the hardest thing he's had to do since all this started.
So of course when Spike gets up the next night they're at it again. He can hear Dawn's giggle in the next room, even through the heavy stone walls, and he can tell she's whispering something excitedly. Can't hear the actual words, can't make them out, but it's enough to pull him up out of bed and drag him, still bleary eyed with sleep, out of the storage room and into the living area.
There's a scuffle, and as he reaches the doorway Dawn whirls back around with that trying-to-look-innocent expression on her face. She's hiding something behind her, or trying to. "Spike! Hi."
"Hi," he says slowly, his eyes going from her to Peter and back again. "Something going on?"
"No! I mean, no." Dawn glances at Peter, and a little giggle escapes her again.
Sod this. It's just after dark, and he's hungry. Last thing he needs to do is hang around here watching the two of them play their little games. "I'm going out," Spike says, and turns away, toward the front barricade.
"No, wait," Dawn says.
He doesn't want to wait. He's bloody sick of waiting. "No, I'm going out," he says, still heading for the gates.
She's coming after him, and any other time he'd be flattered, hell, he'd be thrilled. But not tonight. Tonight he just wants to get away from her for a bit, long enough to remember himself again, and when he feels her fingers touch his sleeve, he whirls around and knocks her hand away.
"What part of 'I'm going out' did you not understand?" Spike's voice is raised, and his arm's still up, not threatening, just... frustrated.
Dawn blinks, startled. "But..." Her face closes in, goes from open and eager to flat and disgusted like someone flicked a switch, and she crosses her arms in front of her. "Fine. Never mind."
It's that, the sullen tone behind her words, that makes him sigh. "Look, sometimes a bloke gets pissed off when he's hungry. It's nothing to do with you."
"I'm the one you're yelling at," she says, still flat. "How does that not have anything to do with me?"
Spike grimaces. He's no good at this. "Sorry," he says, and he wonders if he actually sounds sorry at all. He's not sure he feels it.
Then Peter's in the doorway to the living area behind her, clearing his throat, and Dawn turns to look at him. She goes over and takes the bag Peter's holding from him, then stalks forward and thrusts it into Spike's arms. "There," she says. "It's a new jacket. Wear or don't. I don't care."
That's clearly a lie, and Spike reaches for her hand, her sleeve, something. But she's already started back for the storage room, radiating the kind of dark sharp sulkiness that Dru never quite managed, what with being insane and all. Giving Peter a look of utter frustration, he follows her, bloody sick of the melodrama and just about ready to shake some sense into her one way or another.
She's standing in the far corner of the room, where a tiny sliver of sunshine lies across the floor during daylight hours. Now there's nothing, just the pale light of the low watt bulb that the generator provides.
Nothing but him and Dawn.
Spike bends down and sets the bag on the floor, still not having done more than glanced at the jacket, and goes over to her, his irritation in the moment allowing him to disregard anything he's told himself about treating her gently, about being a man. He grabs onto her shoulder and spins her around.
"Look," he says, doing his best not to leave bruises on her. "I know this is hell. Losing your friends, being..." He can't get the word out, has to go with another one, "violated the way you were, having to be here. But we're stuck with it. With each other. So it's time to grow up and stop with these bloody temper tantrums."
"You want me to grow up?" Dawn asks, still looking down at the floor.
"Well, pretend at least," Spike says, just about growling in his frustration.
"You could pretend to look at your jacket," she says, her eyes flashing as she gestures at it. "You know, pretend you're a grown up and you appreciate it."
He's not sure she's going to shut up about the bloody jacket until it looks at it, so he lets go of her and goes over, up-ends the paper bag over the cot, spilling the thing out onto the rumpled covers in a leathery slither like a big snake. He holds it up, the thickness of it heavy in his hands, familiar and yet different. It still has that new-leather smell to it -- something his old duster had lost most of long ago, something he only got faint whiffs of now and then when it'd get ripped and crushed.
This one's not black, more a rich brown, but that's the biggest difference. It's not quite as long as the duster was, narrower through the shoulders, like it might fit him better, especially with the weight he's lost over the past weeks.
"Put it on," Dawn says, and her voice sounds funny.
"Right." He shrugs into it, feels it settle down, almost comforting. He adjusts the collar, runs his hands down across his chest, feeling the smooth supple leather mold itself to him, then glances up at her. "How's it look?"
Dawn's eyes are soft, and there's a little smile on her lips. "Good," she says. And that's when she surprises him, moves in and grabs onto the front of the jacket with both hands, kisses him.
Could get used to surprises like this.
"It looks good," she says again when she pulls back to look at him. "It looks, you know... sexy." She's blushing, that faint crawl of dusty pink into her cheek that makes him hard in a different way than kissing.
Something hits Spike then, realization of how bloody stupid he can be sometimes. "This is why you've been whispering?" he asks, meaning the jacket. "You were making plans to get me this."
"Uh-huh." Dawn traces down the front of his shirt with one fingertip, delicate. "Actually that's the third one he brought back. I didn't like the other two."
Great, Spike thinks. Way to endear me to the bloke, keep sending him out into the danger zone to find me clothes. But it's not the sort of thing he'd say to her, and anyway, now her fingertip's moving lower, right down to the front of his jeans, and that's got his attention good and proper. "Dawn..."
"Shh," she says. "I want to look."
The door's open -- not that Spike cares if Peter sees him naked, but Dawn, that's a different story. 'Course, Peter saw more of her parts than she'd probably have liked when she was sick, but...
His thoughts get derailed when Dawn undoes the button on his jeans and slowly slides down the zipper. She glances up at him, eager and anxious in one. "Can I look?"
This sure as hell isn't a situation in which he could say 'no' to her. "Yeah." Then he sees that her hands are shaking, and he catches them in his own. "Bit... Dawn. You don't have to do this now. Maybe it's too soon."
"No, I want to," she says stubbornly, but she lets him kiss her again, slow this time, drawing it out until she's trembling with something other than fear, and then her hand slides inside his jeans, the soft tips of her fingers brushing against his swollen aching flesh, and he groans softly.
Dawn glances up at him like she's trying to reassure herself that this is okay. "Tell me if I do it wrong," she says. "I mean, I never..."
"Not much you can do wrong," Spike says, trying to keep his voice steady as her little hand wraps around his cock, all warm and gentle. He shoves his jeans down some, just enough so he won't get caught on the zipper, so that it's easier for her. She's not stroking, just sort of holding him, but even that feels so bloody good it's just about killing him. "Just do whatever you want, and nothing you don't."
She lets go, but his cock stays standing just about straight up, it's so hard at the idea of having the attention of someone's hand other than his own. Her palm slides up his shaft, cupping it softly, and then over the exposed head. She touches the little hole in the tip, makes a funny face as the end of her finger comes away slick, rubbing the clear fluid between her fingers. "Is this okay?" she asks, looking up at him again.
"S'fine," he says, trying to reassure her. "I won't do anything to hurt you. You know that?" He doesn't know how far she wants this to go, and he's determined not to do anything to scare her.
"I know." Dawn's voice is gentle too, just like the touch of her hands. She traces three fingers down to the base of his cock, then lower, testing the weight of his balls. His cock twitches, and she glances up with a little smile. "Is it okay?" she asks again. "I mean... does it feel good?"
Spike nods. "Yeah, it feels good. You okay?"
Dawn rolls her eyes at him. "Yes, I'm okay. I'm not going to freak out just because I'm looking at your guy parts."
He laughs softly. "Didn't think you would." Her hand wraps around him again, forcing another quiet groan from him. "God, Dawn..."
"Shh," she says, using one hand on his cock and the other on his new jacket to tow him over toward the cot. When they're standing next to it, she looks up at him, doe-eyed and sure of herself. Her hair's loose and shining in the dimly lit room, and she strokes his cock gently, just once, before she says, "Take off my clothes?"
Spike knows he should wait, give her more time to make sure this is what she wants, but he's so desperate for her that his hands don't care what his brain thinks. They're already at her waist, pushing up the little cotton shirt she's wearing, slow, marveling at how soft her skin feels. Warm. "You can change your mind any time," he says, even though he knows there might be a point where that stops being true.
"I'm not going to," Dawn tells him, even as she shivers as he slides his hands higher, brushing the base of his thumbs against the underside of her breasts.
"Want to take this off," Spike says, and does, pulling the shirt over her head and leaving her naked to the waist. One of her arms wraps around like she's trying to cover herself, and he bends to kiss her softly, one hand snaking around to the small of her back, hoping to soothe. "Can do this as slow as you want," he murmurs, nuzzling the delicate edge of her ear as he slides his other hand up her side, making her tremble and flush.
She's got the most perfect breasts he's ever seen -- not big, but big enough, and even despite the fact that she's lost some weight since everything else ended. He cups one in his hand, rubbing his thumb over the taut little pinkish nipple while he keeps kissing her. And she shivers and makes little sounds in the back of her throat that just about drive him mad, and her own hand's still feeling his cock. More like exploring than proper wanking, but that's just as well since otherwise he'd be off like a rocket by now.
Kisses her again, open-mouthed and with tongue this time. Then Spike drops down onto his knees, taking her wrists in his grip, but gentle, so she knows she can get away if she needs to. He kisses the tip of each breast, licks each nipple, then takes one between his lips and suckles at it.
Dawn trembles. He can hear her breath hitching like she's not sure what to do. "Spike," she says. "Spike..." And it might be the sweetest thing he's ever heard.
Dawn's shaking, but she thinks maybe it doesn't show. She hopes maybe it's like an internal kind of shaking, the kind that's the deep down and from a whole bunch of things at once, including excitement and nervousness and, okay, maybe some freakage in there too. Because this is new, this part where the guy is trying to make her feel good.
Spike's on his knees in front of her, and his hands are on her waist. And that's a good thing, because she's not sure she'd still be standing up otherwise.
His mouth is on her breast, licking and sucking, and it feels way better than anything her own hand has ever done. Wet, kind of an aching pull that goes down through her to somewhere low in her belly, and she can feel herself getting wet between her legs too, like somehow everything's connected.
She's trying to breathe, but it's getting harder not to gasp.
Spike pulls his mouth away for a second, looking up at her. His fingers come up and pinch gently at her nipple instead, rolling it, and that weak in the knees feeling is so not going away soon. A little sound escapes her and she feels herself blush. "It's supposed to feel good," Spike says, like he thinks maybe she'd forgotten that part. "And it's okay to make noise, if you want to."
Dawn isn't sure she wants to -- and she suddenly realizes that the door is open and that technically Peter could come in and see them, but then Spike's tongue is flicking over her other nipple and she moans a little bit.
"That's it," Spike says, encouragingly. "Let yourself feel it, love." And god, she wants to. She wants him to take away everything bad that happened and make things okay again.
Dawn closes her eyes when she feels Spike's hands undoing her jeans.
Then, "Look at me," he orders, and she does. "You get scared, or I do anything you don't like, you tell me, right?"
"You said that already. Like three different ways," she says.
"Yeah, well... just so you know." And then he's pulling down her pants. They go down easily because she's lost a little bit of weight now, but her panties are still a good smooth fit.
When he brushes his fingers over them, right where her clit is, Dawn gasps. No one's ever touched her there, not like that -- well, no one that wasn't her -- and it's so different. She didn't realize it would be so different.
She's cooperative when Spike helps her take her jeans off the rest of the way, and then she forgets to try to cover her almost-nakedness with her arms because she's too busy watching him shrug off his new duster and pull off his shirt and jeans. Then he eases her back down onto the mat where he sleeps. The blankets are kind of rumpled and there's a pillow under her head that smells, okay, just a little bit funky, but somehow that makes it okay. It makes it more real than if they were in some perfect bedroom with a huge bed and satin sheets or whatever. Because this isn't some porn movie. It's her. And Spike.
It's real.
Dawn doesn't protest when Spike goes back to kissing her and playing with her nipples -- it feels so good, plus she's kind of distracted by touching him too. His chest is smooth and pretty soft actually -- the skin at least. Underneath that he's all hard, muscles that are wiry. There are places she thinks she can feel the tendons and bones, too.
His cock is distracting. He's lying next to her, and it's pressed up against the outside of her thigh, like it's trying to tell her something. She's kind of surprised that she's not scared of it, but for whatever reason she's not. It's fine.
Spike's hand slides down over her stomach, then his fingertips slip under the edge of her cotton panties. "You're so beautiful," he says, right next to her mouth. "Never wanted anyone the way I want you."
His words make her even wetter, even though she thinks that they can't be true. After all, he was totally in love with Buffy. He must have thought about her like this. He even made the Buffybot so that he could, well, do things to her, to Buffy, or pretend that he was. But it's not hard to push those thoughts away, not while he's sliding his fingers down between her legs and touching her. Not while he's kissing her and licking the inside of her mouth and calling her 'love.'
She's been in love with him for a long time. For now, she wants to pretend like he could love her back.
His finger slips down lower and pushes into her, into her cunt, and Dawn trembles in surprise. It feels good -- the only other thing that's ever been in there has been tampons, and those guy's cocks, but she's not thinking about them right now. She's only thinking about Spike and how his finger is inside her, moving a little bit kind of back and forth.
"All right?" he asks, and she can only make a little sound that she hopes sounds like 'yes.'
Spike's cock is pushing harder against her thigh in small movements. He kisses her again, then moves his mouth down to her breast, licking her nipple with the flat of his tongue like a cat. And his finger is sliding in and out of her, and his thumb is right over her clit, little fluttering presses. She can feel that tightening, that she's going to come, but she doesn't know how to do that with someone else touching her. She whimpers a little bit.
"That's my girl," Spike says. "Come on, then." Then he sucks hard on her nipple, and she can feel her body shaking, and his hand doesn't stop moving until it's over.
It's so good.
Spike kisses her some more, on the mouth, long and slow, and it turns out she likes this whole tongue kissing thing. A lot. Then he takes off her panties and eases up over her, between her legs, and his cock is resting against the inside of her thigh now, still all hard and maybe kind of sticky. And Dawn realizes that she actually wants to know what it will feel like inside her.
"Not gonna hurt you," Spike says soothingly between kisses. "You tell me to stop any time."
But Dawn doesn't want him to stop, and maybe the one good thing that came from before is that she actually knows how this works, how to spread her legs so he can do it.
The tip of his cock rubs against her, right near where it's supposed to, and she's so wet that she can feel it get slippery. "It's okay," she says, and slides a tentative hand down his back to his ass. That seems to give him the message that it really is okay, and he pushes in a little bit.
It doesn't hurt at all -- actually, it feels totally good, and she moans and spreads her legs farther apart, wanting more. Wanting him to go deeper, or something. Something more. "Spike," she whimpers.
Spike pushes harder, then pulls back out and goes in again. It seems like her being, well, turned on is what makes the difference between it hurting or not -- she can't imagine, right now, how this could hurt, because it's just slipping skin on skin, wet and slick and pushing, pushing.
He kisses her again, doesn't stop even though he's moving too. "That's my girl," he says again, his thumb rubbing over her nipple, his words warm against her lips. "God, Dawn, you're so good. Such a good girl."
Dawn can tell this is how it's supposed to be -- and she closes her eyes and arches her body against Spike's, thinking that maybe she could come again just from this, from his cock rubbing on her most sensitive parts.
"God, yeah," Spike groans, thrusting faster. He moves back onto his knees, with both his hands strong on her hips, holding her up while he pushes into her. She moans as the new angle changes the way it feels, making her ache. "You okay?" he asks, but his voice sounds strained and funny.
"Good," she says, and her own voice sounds weird too. "I'm good." She's also really close to coming again, and maybe Spike can see that on her face or something, because he rubs both his thumbs over the bony part of her hips and moves faster, deeper. She can feel it starting there, where his cock is, and then traveling up to her clit and out, like watching ice forming from the condensation on a window, crawling and creeping, only warm. Dawn trembles. "Spike. I'm..."
This time her orgasm is both less intense and deeper, which doesn't make sense, but it's true. She can feel her body clenching around Spike's cock, holding onto him, and he lets out a low groan and comes, his hands tighter on her hips as he thrusts through it. It feels... familiar, only better.
Then he collapses down on top of her, and she's glad he's not a huge guy because this way it just feels nice, safe. She pets the back of his shoulder and kisses his ear, which is basically the only part of him she can kiss without really moving.
After a minute, he gets up, his softer cock sliding out of her, and Dawn sighs in contentment and regret that it's over. But Spike just lies down next to her and pulls her into his arms, pressing kisses to her cheek and mouth and neck, cuddling her close.
That might be the best part of all.
He'd just gotten up for the night, so Spike doesn't fall asleep when Dawn does. Instead he lies there with an arm around her, his fingers tracing little designs on the small of her back, liking the way it feels to have her breath moving warm over his skin.
Could get used to this.
He stays there for a long time, holding her while she sleeps, thinking. Stuff he doesn't want to think about, like what Buffy'd say -- doesn't have any illusions on that front, she'd be livid and probably try to stake him first change she got. Then there's... well, more stuff he doesn't want to think about -- how he's gonna keep Dawn safe, for one. Where the bloody hell he's going to find a steady blood supply, for another -- the hunger's a constant now, gnawing at him.
Spike barely notices when Peter comes into the storage room a little later, but he does notice when Peter stops moving. He looks up, and Peter's just standing there, staring at the two of them. Funny look on his face isn't much of a surprise, and Spike just meets his gaze steadily. There's no challenge in it, not now. Just acceptance, both of them knowing that the decision that needed to be made had been.
Bloke gets whatever he came for and leaves again, and Spike closes his eyes and, telling himself he's not tired, drifts off to sleep.
The dreams are on him in an instant, like they've been waiting.
Dawn doesn't know what time it is when she wakes up -- just that it's dark, and she's not wearing any clothes, and Spike's still holding her. She remembers what they did before she went to sleep, and then she hears Spike make a little sound like a whimper, and she realizes that's what woke her up.
She turns so she can look at him. He's so... okay, handsome doesn't seem like the right word for it, it's more like pretty, not that he'd want to know that probably. But right now his forehead's all creased with worry lines, and he's twitching like he's trying to get away from something.
Before she can do anything else, Spike sits up with a groan, one hand covering his face. He's shaking.
Dawn sits up too and touches his arm, and he pulls away from her. Feeling bad, she stays there, her hand still stretched out, and after another second Spike glances at her. "Sorry," he says.
"Are -- are you okay?" Dawn wants him to say 'yes.'
He clears his throat and wipes his face, but doing that just makes it obvious that he was crying. "M'fine."
But he doesn't look fine, and he doesn't sound fine either. Dawn wraps her arms around him and holds on, and after a minute he relaxes into her embrace, resting his head on her shoulder. "Shh," she says. "It's okay."
It might not be true, but it sounds good.
Spike turns a little bit more, lying both of them back down so that she's on her back and his ear is over her heart. "Like the way it sounds," he explains softly.
"Were you... were you dreaming?" Dawn asks.
"Yeah," he says.
"What about?"
Spike shakes his head a little bit, rolling it on her chest, and she runs her fingers through his hair. "Don't want to give you nightmares, too."
So they just stay there, quiet, for a long time.
Almost sunset.
Spike's been pacing the hallway for the past half hour, waiting. It's been two days since he's had any blood, and that was just a couple of recently dead small animals that Peter had managed to bring back. Newly dead animal blood's a sorry substitute for the real thing.
He lights another fag and paces the length of the hall again, clenching his empty fist and then letting it fall open repeatedly.
Dawn'd been trying to distract him, to keep him company, and while he appreciates the sentiment, he'd had to send her off into the living room. Being near her is too great a temptation. He wants to throw her down and fuck her and feed from her all at once, and he isn't going to do that. Won't.
Spike can smell her from here, even though most of a wall and probably a good twenty feet separate them.
Or maybe less, as she appears in the doorway to the living area, her eyes wide and worried. "Are you sure I can't do anything?"
"You can stay the bloody hell away from me," he snaps, and then glances up and sees her face, drawn, pale. He drops his cigarette to the floor and crushes it out with his boot. "Sorry. Sorry. Look, when I get back I'll be fine, so... just find something to do."
"Okay," she says softly, and goes back to whatever she was doing.
He wonders what Peter thinks of all this. Wonders if Peter would stake him, if it came right down to it.
Spike hopes he would, but will never tell him that, because he suspects if he did he might wake up one afternoon with a piece of splintered wood to his chest and Peter standing over him. Suspects Peter's the type of bloke that would look at one kind of permission and extend it just as far as he could run with it.
As the last rays are melting into the distance he's at the barricade, unlocking it with hands that tremble. Out.
"I'm off," he calls, knowing that Peter will come and lock up behind him, keeping Dawn safe. Or so Spike hopes, but there's no other option now.
He doesn't like that she's safer with Peter than with him when he's like this, but it's the truth. She's better off.
He's out.
The air smells good to him -- clean. Less pollution without all the cars and furnaces and factories, although he can catch a faint whiff of the gasoline Peter uses to power the generator even from here. New jacket's a bit stiff through the shoulders, but it'll loosen up, given a bit of time.
Spike prowls, follows his nose and instincts that go so deep he's not sure they don't reach down into the earth.
"Do you think he's okay?" Dawn asks again. It's maybe the third time. Okay, maybe the fourth.
"This isn't the first time he's gone out," Peter says, looking up from his book.
She's reading too, when she can manage to focus on the words. Spike hasn't gone out a lot, and every time it's been like this -- waiting, counting the minutes as they pass, needing to know that he's safe. She doesn't know what she'd do if Spike didn't come back. Peter's nice -- she likes him -- but she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with him, even if it's short. Plus... Peter goes out too. What if it was just her and Peter, and then Peter went out and he never came back? She'd be all alone.
Dawn takes a deep breath and lets it out quietly. Spike's going to come back. He has to.
Peter must be able to tell how freaked she is, because he tries to start a conversation. "What are you reading?"
She picks up the book and tilts it so he can see the cover. "This women's reproductive health thing you brought me."
He nods. "Any good?"
Considering the question, Dawn turns the book back around so she can look at it. "I guess? I mean, it sort of seems like... not very real."
"In what way?"
"Well, it's not like I'm probably ever going to have a gynecological exam, so... most of it's just... history." She almost blushes saying 'gynecological' even though it's a matter of fact kind of thing. "You know. Stuff that used to happen."
"Some of it," Peter agrees. "But not all."
She's quiet for a long time, running her fingers over a freaky color photograph of a fetus in the womb. "Do you think...?"
Peter waits. Then he says, "What?"
"Never mind."
"No, go ahead. What?"
Dawn's so afraid of sounding stupid. "I mean... it'd be crazy to bring a baby into a world like this. Right?" Her finger traces over one of the baby's tiny transparent hands.
"I'm sure there are people having babies," Peter says carefully. "Women who were pregnant when it happened. Women who are getting pregnant now."
"Yeah, but... not on purpose."
Peter sets his book down and just looks at her. "Wanting to have a baby -- for a lot of women, it's something they feel drawn to. It's not about what makes sense, or what might be the best idea... they need it. It's biological, and in women that means hormones. Your hormones don't care if the world isn't as good a place to raise children as it used to be... they just want you to make babies."
She looks down at the photo again, then back up at him. "So it's, like... normal?" It's not like she should really be all that worried about being normal -- it's not like the kids in school are going to give her a hard time, plus she's got that whole former-key thing going for her. But she also can't pretend she hasn't been thinking about it. Especially looking at this book, with the pictures of newborns and breastfeeding and everything. It makes her ache. It makes her sad for the baby that wasn't.
Sometimes Dawn wonders if that baby was big enough to look like anything. If it had, she wishes she could have seen it. These thoughts make her feel sick, morbid, but she can't shut them out.
"It's normal," Peter says. "Completely normal."
"Vampires can't have babies," she says. She sounds more detached than she actually is, saying it.
"That makes sense."
"Yeah, because, you know," Dawn tries to rally. "There's not, like, anything.... living. Like sperm."
Peter's looking at her like she suddenly grew another head or something, and it makes her feel really weird.
"So I guess if a lot of the people -- sort of people -- still walking around are vampires, and werewolves, and stuff -- " and it's not the first time, or probably the last, that Dawn's wondered if Oz is out there somewhere, still alive. "Then there aren't going to be a lot. Of babies."
"That's true." Peter gets up and comes over near her, sitting down in the empty chair. "Do you want to?"
It's not like she doesn't know what he's talking about. "Have a baby? Yeah, maybe. I mean, some day. Not right now." Actually, there's a part of her saying that right now would be good, but that's stupid. Spike can't make a baby, not with her, not with anyone. If she wanted to get pregnant... again... she'd have to find...
Dawn lifts her eyes from the table to meet Peter's.
"Oh," she says.
Peter isn't trying to touch her. He's just sitting there, really calm. "If you wanted to, you have the opportunity," he says. He doesn't spell it out in words, but then, it's not like he has to. "Look, I'm not going to bring it up again. I just wanted you to know. It's totally up to you, and if it's too weird, then just forget I said anything."
"Um... okay." She does feel weird, but there's so many layers to the weirdness that she doesn't even know how to start figuring it out. Instead of dealing with it, she fakes a yawn and stretches. "Wow, I'm really tired. I think I'm going to bed. Um... to lie down! To sleep."
Retreating to the store room, Dawn curls up in what she already thinks of as their bed, wrapping herself around the pillow that smells faintly of cigarette smoke. She knows she won't be able to sleep until Spike is back and safe, but pretending that he's here is, like, the next best thing.
She closes her eyes and tries not to think about anything at all.
Spike's out all night. It's the first time he's been gone so long, and there's a little niggling thought that Dawn's probably worried, but once he starts feeding, he doesn't want to stop. It's too powerful.
First he gets hold of another vamp about a mile from the school. Doesn't know how the bloke managed to survive so long, and so well-fed, but at that moment he couldn't care less. He drains him in what feel like the blink of an eye. It's never as good, feeding from another vamp, but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, and by the time he lets the unconscious body fall to the ground Spike feels reenergized.
He tracks another vamp and feeds from her too. He realizes that if these vamps are still around, they're either feeding off each other or, more likely, animals or humans. Which means there's more available blood than he'd been starting to think.
It's possible that Peter's been holding out on him, but Spike doesn't think that's the case. Last thing a crafty bloke like Peter'd want would be to be trapped inside a locked barricade with a hungry vampire, not if there's a way to avoid it.
Spike follows the scent of something warm and alive through one neighborhood and into another one. This one's nicer -- bigger houses, neater, even if quite a few of them are smashed up and the grass on the lawns looks more like weeds than anything else.
Place looks deserted. It's not though.
First thing he comes across is a dog with a litter of pups under the porch of a house. Spike knows that if he kills the mum he might as well take the puppies as well, since chances are good they won't survive without her anyway. They aren't newborn, but he thinks they're too young to manage on their own.
Before he can do anything with them, though, he catches another scent -- and this one's human.
He feels.... right, like he's slipped back into his own skin, as he stalks up onto the porch and breaks the door in with one shoulder. It takes almost no energy at all, flushed with the recent feeds as he is, and following the scent of living blood up the staircase is as easy as breathing used to be.
One bedroom door is closed at the end of the hall -- the rest are open, and even if it hadn't been for that he'd have been able to smell her on the other side of the door, all rich and hot and waiting for him. No lock on the door -- Spike just shoves it open -- and the woman hasn't even tried to hide, she's just cowering against the far wall, all huge brown eyes and trembling lower lip.
This is what he was made for.
Slips into game face and gets hold of her -- she doesn't try to get away, but once his hands are on her she struggles, oh yes, delicious waves of terror rolling off of her. Hot and sweet in his mouth, flesh and blood, and as Spike feeds he thinks for one split second that maybe he can feel his heart beating. Or maybe it's just hers. Doesn't matter -- he barely registers the faint thud and fading whimper as her breath runs dry, as she goes from warm and tense to limp and rapidly cooling in his arms.
He drops her to the floor and licks his lips.
He won't think about the rest. This moment is his, and no one else's.
Now that Spike's fed, he wants to fight. That or fuck, but he's not the sort to take his pleasure with a body already going cold on the floor, and at that moment he cares more about his freedom than about going back for Dawn.
There's a nest of vamps a quarter mile away, and Spike finds them with little trouble. Kills two of them, briefly considers fucking the third before staking her too -- because Dawn's cunt is hot and alive, not like this undead bitch's -- and feeds from the one boy they've got chained up in a corner. Kid's been there a while, no question -- four bite marks on his throat, like the vamps had been torturing him, or maybe just trying to ration their meal -- and doesn't put up any kind of a struggle. Just moans, soft and sweet, as Spike drains him.
He spends another couple of hours on the outside, relishing the night air and the fresh blood coursing through him, before he realizes that he's been gone a long time. Ought to be getting back.
It's not hard to retrace his steps, and he gets to the school a good twenty minutes before sunrise. Takes ten of those to smoke a couple of fags, then moves inside to the barrier.
Peter's standing on the other side with a funny expression on his face, one Spike doesn't like the look of.
"Thanks, mate," he says, as Peter reaches for the keys. "Good to have a night out."
The bloke just stands there with the keys in his hand, jiggling them slightly, watching Spike as he does it.
"Any day now," Spike tells him, narrowing his eyes.
Peter's own are saying all sorts of things -- that he's the one with the upper hand. That he could refuse to let Spike in. (Not that that would matter, of course, because sooner or later they'd need supplies again, and Peter would have to unlock the barrier and come outside.)
"Spike?" Dawn's voice, relieved and confused in one as she appears behind Peter. She glances at Peter, then takes the keys from his unprotesting hand and starts to unlock the barricade.
"Had a good night?" Spike asks as he slips inside and starts to lock up again.
"Yes. No. I was worried." He can tell by her tone of voice that it's the truth, but at this point he's more concerned about what the hell Peter thought he was up to.
He turns to face the other man. "There something we need to talk about?" he asks.
Peter looks at him for a long moment, then shakes his head.
Spike punches him in the face, hard enough to knock him to the floor. Bloody hell, it feels good. He reaches down and hauls Peter back to his feet, both hands on his shirt front. "Never make the mistake of thinking you're the one in charge here, mate," he says. He might regret this later, but right now it's exactly what he needs to do. "We might need you, but that doesn't mean you get to make the calls."
Pushing Spike away and stumbling backward, Peter wipes his hand across his mouth, where there's a tiny bit of blood caught in the corner. "Don't touch me again," he says, but it's a mild threat at best, and they both know it.
Spike's the one in control.
The knowledge -- the realization and remembrance of it, things that he's forgotten while trapped here in this cage -- makes him instantly hard, and he breathes in the scent of Dawn beside him, pale perfume like flowers and springtime. He needs her in lots of ways -- because of who she is, because he's in love with her -- but right now because his body wants her.
Reaching out to take her little hand in his, Spike turns away from Peter without another word and starts down the hallway.
It's very simple. He needs her, and he's going to have her.
Almost before they're in the storage room Spike's kissing her, hard, ravaging her mouth and delighting in the warmth of her pliant body. Both his hands are on her breasts, over her top, kneading them, pinching her nipples, and she moans softly. Sounds goes right to his cock, not that he wasn't already hard and aching for her.
"That's my girl," he says in a low voice, tangling one of his hands in her hair, holding her still so that he can kiss her again.
He pushes her down onto the bed, unzipping her jeans and sliding his hand down inside the front of her little cotton knickers so he can touch her. She arches up against him, gasping.
Spike thinks it'd be nice if he was convinced he'd stop if she wanted him to.
Too bad he's not.
He pulls Dawn's clothes off roughly while she watches him, unresisting. Takes off his own shirt, then reaches for her hand and holds it against the front of his jeans, letting her see how badly he wants her.
His mouth moves down over her body, stopping at each breast before going lower to press wet open kisses to her stomach. She giggles, but the sound turns into another gasp when he moves still further down and flicks his tongue over her sweet little clit. Part of him wants to spend a long time tasting her, but his erection is more insistent, so instead he unfastens the front of his jeans and shoves them down just far enough, covers her body with his and pushes into her.
Dawn makes a high-pitched sound -- not pain, he knows that sound well enough, this is more like relief and joy -- and trembles under him, all hot and tensed around his cock.
"Christ you feel good," Spike breathes, sliding a hand back to cup her ass and pushing deeper.
She just makes another sound and arches her body against his. "Spike..."
"Good girl," he encourages her, sliding back out and then shoving in again. "Tell me you want me." Not that it matters, not in that moment, but he wants to hear it.
Dawn whimpers on the next thrust, and Spike pulls her legs up over his shoulders
so he can get as deep as possible.
He reaches down and flicks a fingertip over her clit teasingly. "Tell me," he says.
"I... I want you," she says. Her cheeks flush beautifully, pale pink suffusing down across her throat and over her breasts like she's being colored by the sun. Makes him want to sink his teeth into her, but Spike thinks he's got just enough self-control left to keep him from doing that. She might not like it. Plus it's not important, because she's his either way.
He thrusts harder, grinding deep, and Dawn gasps and flexes her hips, welcoming him. Not gonna last long, not like this, with her hot and alive and wanting him, making no effort to stop him. "My girl," he says, more to himself than to her.
Wants to feel her come, but it's too late for him to touch her with any sort of control. He's moving faster now, fucking her harder, rutting like an animal, and it's glorious. The real world might be shattered, but right here, just the two of them, everything's perfect.
Spike comes with a roar, his hips snapping in with careless abandon, her little sounds like whimpers that don't do a thing to bring him back toward anything resembling control. In that moment, with his release spilling out of him, he doesn't care about feeding from her -- he just wants to hear more of those sounds. Doesn't matter if they're pain or pleasure, because they make his dick stay hard despite the fact that he just came, make him want to fuck her harder and longer just so he can hear them.
She's gasping for air underneath him, the noises escaping her with each hard thrust. One of her little hands is clutching onto a handful of blanket. "Spike," she whimpers.
He pulls back and shoves in again, reveling in the way she feels around him, so tight and sweet. He's holding onto her waist with both hands, and suddenly he realizes how small and frail she is -- in comparison to a vampire at least. Her heart's fluttering like a caught moth's wings, her pupils are wide and dark, her naked body enough to make anyone want her.
"God yeah," Spike growls, thrusting again. "My... good... girl."
And Dawn wails and arches her back, coming, her heel digging into the back of his shoulder as he feels her muscles contracting and pounds into her, driving toward his second release in an astoundingly short amount of time, although this one leaves him trembling and, finally, sated.
Spike shudders and then withdraws, gentleness coming easier now that he's no longer being driven by hunger of one sort or another. He kisses the inside of Dawn's soft thigh before lying down beside her and pulling her into his arms.
She's quiet for a long time, her breathing slowing gradually, the thundering of her heart becoming less intense. Her fingertips draw little designs on his chest, and she almost says something a few times before she actually manages it. "Spike?"
"Yeah?" He turns his head, breathes in the scent of her hair.
"Do you... do you love me?" It comes out in a rush, like that's the
only way she can get herself to ask. Before he can even answer, she rushes on.
"I mean, I know you loved Drusilla, and... and Buffy..." She doesn't
say the name easily, even now, which is fine by Spike because he doesn't particularly
like hearing it. "And... I know I'm
"You think I'd go to all this trouble to take care of someone I didn't love?" Spike asks. In his mind it's an answer to the question.
"No? I mean, I guess." Dawn's voice sounds small.
"Shh," Spike tells her, holding her closer and letting his eyes drift shut. Had a busy night, and now all he'd like is to get some sleep, preferably with her in his arms so he knows she's safe. "You all right?" he asks, realizing that he hasn't made sure of that yet.
"Uh-huh." She seems content and relaxed, warm and pliant in his embrace.
As he falls off into sleep, Spike's last thought is that of course he loves her.
He was made for this too.
Dawn doesn't fall asleep when Spike does.
It's not like she isn't tired -- she slept some when Spike was gone, but it was mostly like drowsing. She kept waking up and thinking that maybe he was back, but then he wasn't. Except then he was, and she can't even begin to get what went on between him and Peter. Everything was fine when Spike left to go out. Or she thought it was.
Maybe punching people is, like, a guy thing.
She turns slightly in Spike's embrace, and his arm tightens around her. She smiles. Even when he's asleep, he tries to take care of her, something that she's actually kind of torn about. It's not that she doesn't like feeling safe -- duh, no one's that stupid -- and it's not that she doesn't appreciate that he wants to. It's more like she doesn't want to need anyone to protect her. Buffy didn't. Buffy was strong, and even through the whole Angel thing, Dawn always knew that Buffy didn't really need him. She just wanted him.
Dawn feels smug that she's the one who has Spike now, even if Buffy never actually wanted Spike, and then she feels guilty for feeling smug.
Okay, guilt sucks. Moving on.
She wasn't scared when he started taking her clothes off, even though he'd just hit Peter and it was pretty obvious that he was all excited by his night out. She'd been able to taste the blood in his mouth when he first kissed her, and it hadn't been gross enough for her to want him to stop, even if the thought of it now is more that a little bit disgusting. Because yeah, he's a vampire, and the whole drinking blood thing is like par for the course. He's supposed to do that.
Dawn knows that he could hurt her, if he wanted to. Again, not stupid. She doesn't think he will though, and not just because he cares about her. She does think maybe having had the chip in him for so long gave him... well, sort of a practice kind of self control. Still, she's not going to take any chances.
If Buffy killed Angel to save the world, that means Dawn is capable of killing Spike to save herself.
If she has to.
Right?
After a little while longer, she eases out from under Spike's arm and pulls on her clothes. When she glances back at him, she smiles at the way he's lying there sprawled with his jeans half off, but then she thinks that he actually looks kind of vulnerable. She pulls one of the blankets up over him and smoothes back her hair before going to look for Peter.
It's early morning still, only about an hour past sunrise, and Peter is sitting in the living room on one of the chairs, staring at the wall. He looks up when she comes in though, and his expression quickly changes from a blank kind of seething to a smile.
"How's it look?" he asks, gesturing at his face.
Dawn goes closer and looks. "Um, like you got punched?" she suggests. It's not that bad really, kind of swollen but not really bruised, although maybe that will come later.
"Yeah. That's how it feels." Peter picks up an ice pack from the table and holds it against his face like he's been doing it off and on for a while, which he probably has.
"What happened?" Dawn asks, pulling out another chair and sitting down. It occurs to her that Peter must know she and Spike just had sex, and she feels her cheeks flush.
"I guess Spike thought maybe I'd look better with a fat lip." Peter's voice is muffled by the ice pack, and he takes it away from his face again and throws it toward the trash barrel over near the table. He misses and it lands on the floor with a squishy splat. "It was almost warm," he explains.
"But he wouldn't just hit you. I mean, for no reason?" Dawn's not sure, and she's also not sure she wants to think about it, but then she figures denial can only get you so far.
Peter shrugs. "It's a guy thing," he says.
Dawn frowns and crosses her arms in front of her chest. She's totally not prepared to settle for that as an explanation, not when it's the one she came up with on her own. "What does that mean?"
He makes a frustrated kind of noise. "It means... you know. Men act certain ways with other men."
She watches him more closely, like maybe she'll be able to see something that will help her understand. It's not like she's had a lot of men in her life, at least not lately, and usually not more than one at a time. "Like idiots?"
Peter laughs a little bit, but it doesn't sound real, and for just a second, Dawn thinks she can see something in his eyes. Something that makes her feel like Spike might actually be safer than Peter is, even despite the whole vampire thing.
Then it's gone, and he looks like himself again. "Yes," he says. "Sometimes we can be idiots. Women are definitely the fairer sex. Happy now?"
She grins, pushing back whatever nervousness had started to surface. "Well, it's not like I didn't know that already."
He opens his mouth like he's going to say something else, then stops.
"What...?" Dawn starts to ask, but he holds up his hand to tell her to be quiet, and she stops too, listening.
"There's a car outside," Peter says, standing up and almost tipping over his chair in his haste. "Big one, maybe a pick-up or an SUV."
Dawn's tempted to ask how the heck he can tell -- what, does he have some super hearing ability all of a sudden? -- but she's also unnerved by how tense Peter seems, and she gets up too. "Who could it be?" she almost whispers. "I mean, it can't be vampires. The sun's out."
"Unless they found some way to get around that," Peter says shortly. "Besides, there's plenty of demons and things that can move around in the daylight. Just because the sun means fewer demons, it doesn't mean no demons."
And she knew that, but being reminded makes her scared. And being scared makes her stubborn. She lifts her chin. "They can't get in anyway," she says, tossing her hair back with false bravado. "That's what the barricade is for."
"The barricade will slow them down," Peter admits. "Doesn't mean it's foolproof." He's moving toward the door now.
Dawn follows him, but stops at the edge of the doorway, not sure she really wants a good view if a bunch of demons are going to appear on the other side of the barricade. She starts to ask if she should go wake up Spike, but there's a voice outside calling loudly.
Calling her name.
Only a split second passes before she realizes who it is, and then she's flying out into the hallway past Peter, calling back, "I'm here!" as she snatches up the keys and starts fumbling with the locks.
"Dawn!" Again, and it's closer now.
There's a little voice in her head chanting please, oh please God, and she thinks she might be crying because it's hard to see the lock and her hands are shaking.
One lock snaps open, and Xander comes around the corner and down the stairs.
There's someone else behind him, but Dawn doesn't spare him a second glance. She's too busy trying to look at Xander and undo the locks at the same time, which so totally isn't working out. "Hang on," she says. "I just need to... oh my God, this is so amazing, I can't believe you're here. You are, right? I mean, I'm not, like, dreaming this or something?" Why won't her fingers work?
"Yeah, it's me," Xander says, at the bottom of the stairs now. "I'm here."
Then, before she can open the next lock, she hears a funny click behind her, and Xander freezes.
Dawn turns her head, disbelieving what her head's already told her, and sees Peter.
Holding a gun.
Pointed at her.
"I don't think that's a good idea," Peter says slowly.
Wanting to be misunderstanding, Dawn swallows. "No, it's okay. I mean, I know him."
"Who is this guy?" Xander asks.
"Peter," Dawn says, not taking her eyes off him even though it's Xander she's talking to. Or maybe it's not.
"You want to be turning around and going back the way you came," Peter says, and he's definitely talking to Xander. "I can shoot you just as easy as her." He swings the gun toward Xander.
Dawn looks in that direction. Xander takes a step back, both his hands held up. "Okay, just take it easy," he says. "Whatever it is you're not liking about this situation? We can take care of it. Just put down the gun."
She doesn't even have time to turn back to Peter before he grabs her shoulder and yanks her back against him. The barrel of the gun is hard and cool on her head, and she only struggles for a second before she gives up.
There's another click, and the man who was standing behind Xander takes a step to the side, and he's got a gun too, and where's Spike? Dawn wants to scream for him, but she's afraid that if she does Peter might shoot her, or Xander, or... that couldn't be Wesley.
"I think you'll want to do what Xander suggested," Wesley says, totally calm and cool, with the gun pointed at them. "I'm a very good shot, and chances are I can kill you before you can pull the trigger."
Right, because that's the kind of thing that works in real life just as well as it always does in the movies. "Please," Dawn says, squirming just enough in Peter's grip to get his attention. "Don't do this."
"If this is how you treat your friends, I'd hate to see how you treat your enemies," Xander adds.
"I don't want to shoot her," Peter says, raising his voice and tightening his arm across Dawn's chest. It makes it hard to breathe.
"Whereas I most assuredly wouldn't mind shooting you." Wesley still sounds freakishly calm, and Dawn can't help but wonder if it's because he maybe doesn't actually care if she dies or not. It's not like he wasn't going to let the Mayor have Willow.
"Why are you doing this?" she asks him. "I mean... I thought we were friends. I thought you liked me."
Peter laughs a little bit, a scary kind of laugh. "Oh, I do." And suddenly Dawn feels the evidence of how much he likes her, and how, pressing up against her from behind, and that's when she whimpers for the first time.
There's a noise behind them, and Peter spins them both a quarter turn, so that his back's against the wall and he can see Wesley and Xander and Spike, who's standing in the hallway just outside the storage room.
"You let go of her right now," Spike says, in a low voice, all British in a way that Wesley's isn't, "and maybe I won't kill you."
"I've been watching you for months," Peter says. "I know exactly how fast you can move. I know what you're capable of."
"So what are you going to do?" Spike takes a step closer, and Peter presses the end of the gun harder against Dawn's skull. She whimpers again, and Spike stops. "Just what is it you think's gonna happen here? You think we're going to just let you walk out with her, like she's some kind of prize for the taking?"
Dawn can feel Peter twitching, looking from Spike to Wesley and Xander and back again.
"I was willing to share her," Peter says, holding her even tighter. "You're just a vampire -- there are things she's going to want that you can't give her. She needed me."
She flashes back to their weird conversation about how, if she wanted to have a baby...
Then everything happens really fast, so fast that she can't keep track of it. Spike moves, and the gun next to Dawn's head goes off, so loudly that it blots out the sound of anything else. She thinks someone's shouting, but her ears are ringing so she can't tell for sure.
For a second she thinks Peter shot her, but then she realizes that she's not hurt at the same time Spike crashes into them, knocking the breath right out of her. There's another shot, not as loud this time -- or maybe her hearing is just messed up -- and Spike staggers back. Dawn would know just from the look on his face that he's been shot, even if the fast bloom of dark red blood on his pale skin, running down and soaking into the top of his unfastened jeans wasn't there to show her.
She screams, and that sounds weird too.
There's another gunshot, from a little bit further away, a different kind of noise, and Peter, who was standing right behind her and still holding onto her upper arm, yells and lets go of her. Dawn turns in time to see the gross big bloody chunk missing from the top of his shoulder -- or okay, to not see it -- and her opportunity, all at once.
It doesn't matter what anyone else is doing.
She continues the turn and knees Peter right in the balls with all her strength, and if it's possible for him to turn any whiter, he does. Dawn grabs the gun from his hand -- it's not even that hard to wrestle it out of his grip -- and she can hear Xander saying something, and see Spike struggling to his feet out of the corner of her eye.
She can see the fear on Peter's face.
She shoots him four times, right in the middle of the chest, where she figures his heart has to be, if he even has one. He collapses fast, one minute alive and the next minute dead.
Then Dawn throws the gun over against the wall, puts her arm up over her face, and sinks down to the floor, trembling so hard that there's no room left in the world to care what anyone else does.
Nothing like a gunshot wound to the gut to really wake you up, Spike thinks, staggering over to Dawn and collapsing grateful to the floor next to her. "Bit? Dawn? You hurt?" His hands leave blood on her, sleeves of her t-shirt and the side of her face.
She shakes her head a little. "N-no. I'm okay." But she's pale, and her hands are trembling. Probably hasn't even hit her yet. Her eyes, when they meet his, suddenly go lucid and then frantic. "Oh my God, Spike," and he thinks she's going to start going on about how she killed Peter. But she says, "You're hurt."
Which is a fucking enormous understatement, since Spike can feel the blood running out of him, from his stomach and his back, where there's a great gaping hole that Dawn hasn't even seen yet.
"Dawn," he hears Harris say. "Let us in."
She looks to the barricade and back to Spike again, and he nods. "Go on. Do it quick." Uses the time it takes her to get the keys into the locks to fall down onto the floor and press the heel of his hand into the wound -- won't do much good, but might slow the bleeding some. The pain of it makes him arch up and grit his teeth.
To his surprise, when Dawn gets the barricade open, Xander comes right over to his side, kneeling down and pulling a wad of fabric -- maybe an old t-shirt -- out of nowhere and bats Spike's hand out of the way, pushing the t-shirt down on the wound, hard. Spike groans and coughs up blood, but he puts his hand back over Xander's. "Thanks," he rasps, and looks up.
Harris looks about the same -- thinner, they all are, and more muscled. His hair's longer too. But the biggest difference is that he's got an eye patch over one eye.
"Did it come out the other side?" Xander asks him.
"Yeah, pretty sure."
"Wes?" Xander says, and the other man -- tall, thin but wiry, wearing glasses -- comes over and kneels down too. Dawn's there, but trying to keep out of the way. Spike can see her clutching her hands together like she's trying to calm herself down.
"I'm all right," Spike tells her, but the attempt at comfort falls short when Harris rolls him to one side so that the other bloke can press another makeshift bandage to the hole in his back and Spike yelps.
She moves around them and gets down on the floor near his head. "What can I do?" she asks, and it's clear she's talking to Xander.
"Is there any blood?" the other man asks, his British accent more cultured than Spike's by half, but familiar.
"No," Dawn says.
"All right. Don't worry, it's going to be fine." The guy -- Wes, Xander'd called him -- has gentle hands, warm on Spike's skin. "We'll wait a bit for these wounds to close up."
"What was the deal with that guy?" Xander asks, turning his head to look over at Peter's body.
"Bloody lunatic," Spike says shortly. "I should have done something about him before now. Knew he wasn't right in the head."
Dawn's voice is soft. "Me too. I mean... I didn't know he was going to do something like that, but I knew... he was weird sometimes."
He has to crane his neck to see her, but he does it. "It's all right. You did the right thing, yeah? Surprised the hell out of me, but I should have known better. Should have known you could handle it."
She looks troubled, but she nods. "I know." Her gaze goes to Xander, and she looks more upset. "What happened to your eye?"
Xander clears his throat and glances down at Spike's gut, shifting the pressure of his hand underneath Spike's. "It's kind of a long story. I'll tell you later, okay?"
"Okay." Dawn still doesn't sound right to Spike, but maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.
He turns his head to look at the man kneeling on the floor behind him. "Not to sound ungrateful, mate, but who the bloody hell are you?"
"Wesley Wyndam-Pryce," the man says. "And you're Spike, AKA William the Bloody."
Spike groans, and not just because Harris chooses that moment to press a little bit harder on the gaping hole in his gut. "Not another bloody Watcher."
"That adjective is more accurately yours than mine at the moment," Wesley says, holding a hand streaked with blood up where Spike can see it. "And, in point of fact, I no longer worked for the Watcher's Council for some time before the apocalypse hit."
"They fired him," Dawn says helpfully.
"Yes, thank you, Dawn," Wesley says, then looks at Xander. "What's the plan then? Do we stay here, or move on?"
Xander seems to think about it for a minute, then says, "Move on, I think."
Spike struggles to sit up, and Harris makes a sound of protest that he ignores. "What, you think we're tagging along just like that? We've been here for months, doing fine on our own. We don't need you."
"People who are doing fine generally don't have cavernous holes through their torsos," Wesley says mildly.
Spike grits his teeth. "And in a couple of hours, neither will I."
"I want to go with them," Dawn says.
He's more surprised to hear her say it like that -- like she might leave without him -- than he is that she wants to go. Or maybe not. It's seemed like she feels safe here, and he would have bet good money that she'd want to stay if given the choice. But when he glances at her she seems serious enough.
"You sure?" Spike's talking to her and her alone, like the other two aren't even there.
"Uh-huh. It's time. Don't you think?"
And it's not like he hasn't been chomping at the bit for weeks now, cooped up in this sanctuary that feels more like a prison. There's nothing he'd like better than to go. Anywhere.
Well maybe not just this second, what with the excruciating pain and everything.
Dawn stands up and goes over to where Peter's body is, just looking at him.
Harris glances at her. "Dawn, don't look at that."
She doesn't respond -- just stands there transfixed.
"Dawn," Spike says, projecting an edge into his voice, and Dawn hears him and turns. "You all right?"
"Yeah. I'm okay." She crosses her arms in front of her, the edges of her mouth turning down a bit in the universal teenaged girl pout. Makes her look even younger than she is. "He's got blood," she says.
"What are you on about?"
"You need blood," Dawn says, like he's woefully stupid, "and he's got some. It's just getting wasted all over the floor." She rolls her eyes a bit. "If you'd been faster, you could have killed him yourself and had all of it."
He's a bit stunned that she's so nonchalant about the whole thing, but then he remembers her sitting in his crypt, asking him to tell her stories of the terrible things he'd done back in the day. How her heart had raced, her breathing quickened. The way she'd stared at him the whole time he talked.
It shouldn't surprise him that she's got this in her.
Spike exchanges a look with Harris. "Yeah, okay. Why don't you go get some of our things together then. If you're sure you want to go."
Dawn nods, pauses, then she disappears back into the storage room where her clothes are.
Trying to ignore the stabbing pain -- and at least the bleeding's slowed a lot, that's something -- Spike drags himself to a sitting position with the help of Wesley as Xander pulls Peter's body over.
"Think I can take it from here, mate," Spike tells him, but he's grateful for the help, and he knows it shows in his eyes. Kindness isn't the kind of thing he can ignore.
Lots of other things, maybe, but not that.
Xander goes back to help Dawn, and Spike drains the rest of the blood from Peter's body, grateful for it. Wesley's right there behind him. Acts like he's seen it all and there's nothing left to bother him.
"Thanks," Spike says, when he leans against Wesley, weak with the effort of feeding. At least most of it seems to be staying in him.
"You're welcome." Bloke doesn't seem to have much to say, and that makes Spike curious. Makes him want to draw a conversation out of him.
"Where were you?" he asks. "When it happened?"
Wesley's answer is flat. "L.A."
"And you already knew Harris? How you'd hook back up?"
The shoulder behind his back stiffens slightly. "When I'd ascertained that none of my colleagues in L.A. had survived the initial cataclysm, I headed to Sunnydale to check on the people I knew there. Xander was the only one I was able to find. As far as we know, everyone else died."
Dawn and Xander come out of the storage room and into the hallway, and stop talking when they hear Wesley.
"You were in L.A. with Angel," Spike realizes.
"Technically yes," Wesley says. "But Angel went to Tibet shortly after Buffy died, and even if he's still... alive, there's no way to contact him there. We have to assume he's gone." He says the words like they're something he's told himself again and again, trying to make himself believe them.
"And where was Harris?" It's easier to pretend that he doesn't know Xander is standing there with Dawn -- easier to talk about him like he's not there.
Wesley checks the wound on Spike's back carefully, but it still makes him hiss with pain. "Under the rubble of his apartment building," Wesley says, turning his head and looking at Xander.
"We think Anya died right away," Xander says, and when Spike looks at him, Dawn's holding his hand. "Until Wes showed up, I thought it was an earthquake. Well, maybe I suspected something wasn't right before that because no one came to get us out. That's how... you know, with the eye." He gestures at the patch on his face.
Neither of them needs to say that it was a close call -- Spike figures he and Dawn can both tell. They both know that if Wesley hadn't gone to Sunnydale, Xander would be dead now.
It's pretty clear from the way Harris looks at Wesley that he knows it too.
Xander comes over and covers Peter's body up with a blanket, then clears his throat.
"We have more," Dawn offers, gesturing to show him that she's got several blankets tucked under her arm. "We can get you out to their car and go. You know, as soon as you're ready."
It's sunny out, hours and hours until night falls. But Spike thinks he's never been so ready to leave a place as he is this one, right now.
Still, he should be looking out for Dawn. "We got a plan?"
"Keep moving," Wesley says mildly.
That's good enough for Spike.
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