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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you to Willow Trees for all your help. Thank you to everyone still reading and commenting!
Spike caught Dawn's eye just as the bell rang and the other students began packing up their bags to move onto the next class.
"Can I see you for a moment, Dawn?" he asked.
She smiled and slung her backpack over one shoulder before she approached his desk. He couldn't help feeling strange around the girl now, especially the way her mannerisms echoed her mother's. He felt overwhelming affection and equally intense guilt. Spike smiled at her and tried not to think of how he might be screwing up her childhood because he couldn't keep it in his pants around Buffy.
"I showed your last essay to Ms. Rosenberg. She agreed with me that it was stellar work. We'd like to enter it into competition, but the rub is that you'd be the youngest student from this school, and if you won you'd be traveling with twelfth graders to Washington D.C.," Spike said.
Dawn's large blue eyes were shining. She hitched her hip to one side and smoothed her hair behind her ear, a move that one of his students hadn't pulled on him since he'd hit thirty.
"You really think I'm that good?" she asked, blushing in exactly the same way her mother had right before he'd...right. This was very, very bad. She obviously had a crush on him; another layer to this cake of human misery, bloody lovely.
"Ms. Rosenberg does as well," he said, giving her a sad half-smile.
"That's so, so amazing!" she said.
There was an unbridled quality about her grin, displaying a type of happiness he was pretty sure only kids could still feel. Dawn had a sense of certainty about a moment like this, a sense that it was all building toward the future she'd imagined for herself.
For kids all hash marks on the wall go up; they get taller, bigger, more adept. Dawn's foot had yet to slip, the first trip-ups of adulthood hadn't knocked her on her ass and made her wonder which direction was forward, which was back.
She was probably going to write about this in her diary, Spike thought, coloring it in golden words, describe the way the deepening afternoon light cast an effulgence about the room. Spike wanted to protect her from that first big disappointment, the first huge course correction, but to do that would be to stunt her growth. Still, looking at Dawn he felt almost like a parent.
Holy hell.
"You need your mother's permission before we go on with it, yeah?"
"Would you be going on the trip with us, Mr. Pratt?" Dawn asked, cautiously as she fidgeted with a strand of brown hair.
"No, but maybe your mother or your step-father would. Have your mum come see me," he said.
"O.K., she's picking me up tonight, I'll tell her," Dawn said.
Spike already knew that Buffy would be there to pick up Dawn at 3:15 in that gray four-door Ford with the burnt-out, right, break light. He'd wait by the window and watch them drive away every day. Each time he saw the car he would feel a sensation like cold, sick fingers stroking his spine then cupping his stomach.
"When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, then how should I begin?"
Dawn beamed at him and turned, her satchel swinging merrily. Spike watched her go and then sat at his desk, looking past the papers he was grading toward the time when he would see Buffy again.
**
She was wearing a pair of shapeless, pink scrubs with a teddy bear pattern lolling across it, her blonde hair tied up in an efficient braid. Spike wanted to take the clothes off of her, shake out her hair and straddle her on top of his desk, but Dawn was fluttering around outside the closed classroom door, waiting for them to finish discussing her trip.
Spike leaned against his desk. Buffy stood a few feet from him, close enough for him to touch but far enough to discourage the notion.
"So, what do you think?" he asked.
Buffy crossed her arms over her chest.
"This isn't because of you and me, is it?"
"I wouldn't set her up to fail. I think she has a real chance. It would be a good opportunity, and you could go with her, cramp her style a bit," Spike said with a smile.
"All right," she said with a sigh. She looked so tired, Spike wanted to hold her, ease some of the tension from her thin shoulders.
"You look tired," she said. Buffy took a step closer; he could smell her shampoo and the light citrus scent she always wore.
"I'm nocturnal, never got used to the day shift, so I'm up at all hours," he said.
"Doesn't it bother your wife?"
"Do you really want to talk about Dru?" he asked.
Buffy looked at her plastic shoes.
"Do you have any children, Spike?" Buffy asked.
"No. What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I'm interested in your life, that's normal, right? I'm not sure about the proper adultery etiquette, I've never done it before," she said.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"High and mighty today, pet? Don't recall those scruples when I had my head cradled between your thighs," he said.
Her green eyes became vivid with anger.
"I don't want to do this anymore," Buffy said.
Spike felt like he was standing on a ledge, the breeze teasing his fingertips, his bare toes curling over the edge.
"Right then. Before you go, I got you something," Spike said.
"I can't accept a present," Buffy said, shaking her head.
Spike walked around his desk and opened the bottom drawer. He took out two small boxes about the size of each of his hands.
"I've got no use for them, besides they're nothing," he said as he came back to her.
Spike held up his gift, two light bulbs.
"Didn't know if you'd noticed, your break light's out," he said.
"I did, I just keep forgetting to take it in," Buffy said. The hard look on her face softened.
"Well, you're the capable sort, you can change it yourself, just pop the casing off. You might as well do the other one, too, they normally go one after the other," Spike said. Buffy took the bulbs. She stared at them a moment before she raised her eyes to look at him again.
"I finish my shift at two. If you're still having trouble sleeping, maybe you could meet me for coffee. Decaf coffee," she said.
"Of course," he said.


Chapter End Notes:
The title, pinned and wriggling is a line from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."



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