Reunions / Part 34
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Spike sat on the floor next to the opened door leading out to a flat area that had been the parking lot for trucks and trailers that had belonged to the company that once owned the warehouse. He was sitting tailor fashion with his arms resting on his knees as he leaned forward. Sunlight was coming through the doorway lighting up the room. There was barely six inches of shadow between him and the bright scorching light. He had a burning cigarette between his lips and a half dozen squashed butts were littering the floor well out into the sunlight. The back and fingers of his right hand were burned and blistered to such a degree that on a human they would have been diagnosed as third degree burns. On a vampire they indicated that he had come very close to bursting into flame.
He felt her coming even before he heard the click of her boot heels on the floor of the adjoining room. When he heard the crash of splintering wood he turned his head toward the entrance leading to that room. Moments later he saw her standing there with a large splinter of wood with a long sharp point. She stood there looking at him intensely as her fingers gripped the splinter tightly. Taking the cigarette from between his lips he moved his hand out into the sunlight and slowly squashed out the butt. The back of his hand and fingers erupted into blisters as smoke started to rise from them. He didn’t flinch from the pain, or hurry, as he extinguished the cigarette. The whole time he was doing this he kept his eyes on her, watching for the hatred he expected to see.
When she started moving toward him he sat up straighter, but only to make it easier for her to stake him, not to stop her. When she was in front of him she dropped down to her knees so that she could look him directly in the eyes. “Move back asshole” Dawn said gruffly as she placed one hand on the floor for balance as she swung herself around so that she was sitting with her back against the door jam, which effectively blocked the sunlight and widened the distance between him and the burning sunlight that was coming through the doorway. Spike put his hands on the floor and scooted himself back about six or eight inches. He then placed his arms back on his knees with his hands in his lap and sat waiting. Dawn adjusted her position so that her hip and thigh were up against his folded legs. She didn’t look at him for a full minute as she stared down at the stake she was still holding in her hands. When she did turn her head and glance at him she could see that he wasn’t looking at her face, his eyes were focused on the stake in her hands.
“When they were handing out stupid, you got in line twice didn’t you?” Dawn asked with an edge of scorn to her voice.
“What’s that, Luv?” Spike asked in response, his voice low and distant, as if his mind and thoughts were so far away he was having difficulty focusing on what was happening in front of him. His eyes had never left the stake in her hands.
Realizing where Spikes thoughts were focused, Dawn lifted the stake from her lap. When his eyes followed the stake she raised it higher until it was next to her face. This forced Spikes eyes to follow the stake until he was looking into her eyes. When she flipped the stake over her shoulder and out through the doorway into the sunlight, she saw his eyes fill with pain. But it wasn’t only pain that filled his eyes, there was also a look that could only be described as hopelessness. As if he had been hoping she would use the stake on him and now that the stake was gone there was no hope left.
“You’re a dope, and a bonehead, and, and your probably being shirty, whatever that’s suppose to mean.” Dawn said quietly. The words seemed to register somewhere inside Spikes mind. He blinked his eyes several times as he looked at Dawns face, as if he were searching for something, but couldn’t find what he was looking for.
“Did you really think that I came looking for you to kill you?” Dawn asked, her voice was still quiet, but there was a tone of hurt, and real concern in her voice.
In a voice that was raspy with suppressed emotions, Spike answered. “Don’t know, Bit. Saw the stake, stopped thinking. Figured one of your lot would be after me soon enough. When I saw it was you, didn’t want to think no more.”
Hearing Spikes words brought a pain to the pit of Dawns stomach and a ache to her heart. The certainty of his thoughts, that one of her group of slayers and watchers would come after him to kill him, brought tears to her eyes. Like an epiphany it came to her, one of the reasons why he had never let them know that he was alive. He had always assumed, that as soon as any of them found out that he had lost his soul, they would want to kill him. In fact, she remembered Willow telling him that she had specifically come searching for him to find out if he was still alive and if he still had his soul. She’d told him that if he didn’t have a soul she had planned to kill him before Buffy found out, even if she had to die herself. But when Willow had found out that he was fighting for good, that he wasn’t evil, she had just assumed that he still had his soul.
When a tear broke lose and ran down her face, Dawn reached out and gripped one of Spikes hands in one of hers. When he flinched from her touch she looked down and saw that she was squeezing his right hand, the one that was all burned and blistered. Releasing his hand quickly she jerked her hand back. Without any conscious thought she reached back over her shoulder and grabbing a fist full of t-shirt she pulled it up and over her head. When her head was clear she finished pulling the t-shirt off. Reaching down to the top of her boot she pulled out a short razor sharp knife and using it she started cutting the bottom eight or nine inch’s of the t-shirt off. Then using the knife again she started cutting this smaller portion of the t-shirt into strips. Once she had the strips cut she reached out and took his right arm at the wrist and pulled it out toward her. When it was where she wanted it she said gruffly, “Hold it there.”
Spike looked at Dawn and at his burnt hand and started to pull his hand back to his lap. He started to say, “You don’t have to …”
“Shut up” Dawn snapped at him as another tear ran down her face, “just do what I asked you to do.” Dawn pulled his arm back where she wanted it and picking up the first strip of cloth she gently started wrapping it around his burnt fingers. The whole time she was wrapping his fingers and then his hand, she was mumbling to herself, “stupid vampire …. doesn’t have enough brains to stay out of the sun ….. no wonder he’s always getting into trouble …. head like a rock …. never thinks about anyone else …. doesn’t care that hurting himself hurts me too …. doesn’t care that I love him …. never cared about the soul anyway …. stupid vampire ….”
Whether she was aware of it or not, even though she was mumbling at a near whisper, Spike was able to hear every word Dawn was saying. When he heard her say that she still loved him, even without his soul, he couldn’t hold his emotions in any longer. When tears started to run down his face he bent his head so that Dawn couldn’t see them.
Dawn finished wrapping Spikes hand as best she could, then picked her knife up again and cut both of the sleeves off of the t-shirt. One sleeve she slipped over the wrappings on Spikes hand, the second she cut into strips to tie the first in place. When she finished she gently brushed her finger tips over the bandaged hand, as if to sooth the hurt and draw off the pain. Still looking down at his hand, with tears in her eyes and her throat clogged with emotion, Dawn asked plaintively “Why did you do this to yourself?”
Spike didn’t say anything for several moments, then clearing his throat first, he answered “It’s okay Pet, doesn’t really hurt.”
“Don’t lie to me Spike” Dawn said quietly, her voice still clogged with emotion. “I’ve seen burns like this before and I know that they hurt, a lot.”
Spike sat for long seconds before he spoke again. When he did speak the pain that filled his voice wasn’t because of his hand. “Can’t stand the way I feel, inside. Tried to block it out, move it outside.”
“Did it work?” Dawn asked as she finally raised her eyes from his hand to look at his face. But because of his bent head she couldn’t see his face clearly.
“A few seconds, maybe” Spike replied as he raised his head to look Dawn in the eyes. “Hurt worse seeing you standing there with that stake. Thinking you’re the one that’s going to do it, that hurt more than the hand.”
Dawns hands flew to her mouth as a gasp of pain escaped her throat. Fresh tears came to her eyes immediately. As one tear ran down her face, followed by another and another, a look of shocked horror spread over her face as she watched tears spill from Spikes pain filled eyes. “Oh God, Spike” Dawn gasped out, “I’m so sorry. I’d rather die than hurt you, don’t you know that?” Just thinking of the pain she must have caused him when he saw her standing in the doorway with a stake in her hand made Dawns stomach turn into a knot of pain.
Spike started to raise his right hand, the bandaged one, to wipe his tears away, but stopped and used the left one instead. Looking at her with his head bent forward a little and tilted a little to one side, Dawn could see the confusion in his eyes. “If you don’t want me dead Bit, then why the stake?”
“Because I’m stupid” Dawn said as she slammed her head back hard against the wall behind her. “Because I keep thinking like a little girl instead of a woman” and banged her head again. “Because I’m confused and my best friend thinks I hate him” and started to bang her head a third time. But before her head could connect with the wall again, Spikes right hand was between her head and the wall, stopping her from hurting herself. But saving Dawns head from slamming against the wall didn’t prevent Spikes hand from being slammed between her head and the wall instead. Seeing the flinch of pain cross Spikes face made Dawn feel even worse as she let her head fall forward. Spike kept his hand at the back of Dawns head to be sure she wouldn’t slam it back against the wall again.
“Niblet, just cause a stupid vampire hurts himself on purpose is no reason for you to do it too” Spike said soothingly as he brushed his hand down the back of Dawns head lightly, checking to be certain that she hadn’t injured herself.
Dawn sat for several moments looking down at her hands that now rested in her lap. Tears were still in her eyes, but had stopped flowing. Thoughts about Spike thinking she had come to kill him made her feel sick. Thoughts of him just sitting, waiting for someone to come kill him made her angry. Not at Spike, but at the whole stupid soul equals good, soulless equals evil situation. *After all the things he’s done, all the people he’s helped, all the people that love him, how could he possibly think that any of them would want to harm him.* Then it came to her who she was thinking about and all of their track records with Spike. *Not much in the old memories of any of them that would lead him to think differently, is there?*
Taking a deep breath, raising her head and turning it so she could look Spike in the eyes, Dawn started speaking to him in a calm and determined tone of voice. “Spike, I know what your thinking. Because, as soon as I understood that your soul was gone, I had the same kind of thoughts. Not that I wanted to hurt you, but that someone else was going to jump up and try to hurt you, before they had a chance to think about it. I had myself all ready, I was working it out in my mind, who I could take out first, who could take me out, whether I could hurt them enough to slow them down so they couldn’t go after you. But I was ready Spike, I was going to make sure they had to go through me before they could get to you. I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt you.” Dawn was watching Spike closely, trying to determine if he believed her. When she saw a slight movement of his lips, almost the beginning of a smile, a sense of relief washed through her. “But Faith, she kind of defused the whole thing. She said that if you hadn’t been killing people for eight years, there wasn’t much likelihood that you’d start up today, and that the last person we needed to worry about being killed by you was Buffy.”
Still watching Spike closely, Dawn continued. “Do you know why what Faith said stopped everyone from doing something stupid? It wasn’t because they knew you still loved Buffy, I’m the only one who knows how you still feel about her. The reason they didn’t all panic is because they knew you couldn’t kill Buffy. Spike, no one can kill Buffy, she’s immortal.”
At first a puzzled look of incomprehension appeared on Spikes face. Followed by shock and then by anger. Spikes whole body seemed to tighten up, his eyes started changing from blue to yellow as his demon pushed to the surface and took him over. His demon visage came forward as his vampire fangs extended into view. A growl came from deep in his chest, from the primal demon inside of him. “The bloody Immortal, he did something to her. I’m going to rip that bloody bastards head off” Spike snarled. Red started appearing in Spikes eyes as he worked himself up into a blood rage. He’d bitten through his own lip and blood was running down his chin.
Dawn reached out without fear or hesitation and placed her hand to the side of Spikes face. “The Immortal didn’t have anything to do with it Spike” Dawn told him calmly. “We think it happened at the Hellmouth, when Willow used the scythe to do the ‘Sharing’. We think that’s when she became immortal.”
Dawns touch had stopped Spike from going into a rage, her calm tone of voice had soothed him, her words let him gain control of himself again. He sat for long moments taking deep breaths of air into his lungs, breaths he didn’t need to take, except they were so much a part of him that they were a natural thing for him to do. The demon visage smoothed away from his face as his eyes again turned blue. His clenched fists relaxed and the rock hard tightness eased out of his shoulders. He reached up slowly and placed his hand over Dawns hand, which was still cupping the side of his face, and in an emotionally stressed voice asked, “Tell me?”
Dawn continued to cup Spikes face and used her thumb to caress his cheekbone slowly, again and again. She looked him directly in the eyes and nodded an agreement. “I know you’ve noticed that Buffy, Willow and all the slayers that were with you at the Hellmouth, they all, pretty much, still look like they did back then.”
“A glamour? Red said it was a glamour” Spike responded, his voice still stressed.
“It’s not a glamour. When Willow did the spell to share the powers of the Slayer with all the potential slayers, it worked. All of the potential slayers around the world were given the powers of ‘The Slayer’. But something else happened then too. All of the slayers that were with Buffy, down in the Hellmouth, were given eternal youth. Willow seems to have been affected by it too, maybe because she performed the spell, we don’t really know. It didn’t have any effect on the men, Giles, Xander, Robin and Andrew, all of them have continued to age. It also didn’t have any effect on me. That’s why they think it was apart of the slayer sharing thing with Buffy. But with Buffy, it also seems to have made her immortal too, because she can’t die. Not in a normal way anyway.”
A look of confusion, and fear, returned to Spikes eyes as he absorbed what Dawn had just said to him. When he spoke his voice was hoarse and raspy, “What’s that mean Luv, ‘a normal way’?”
Dawn took a deep breath and held it for long seconds before she started to speak again. She was still cupping the side of Spikes face with her hand, but had stopped caressing his cheek with her thumb. Her voice was still calm, but a note of apprehension could still be heard in her voice. “It means that, that Buffy has been trying to die for the past seven years.”
A look of shock, and then horror flashed across Spikes face as he threw himself back, away from Dawns touch. He scrambled to his feet and backed up until he was against the wall behind him and could go no farther. “No, no, that’s not right, not right.”
Seeing the horror, and disbelief, in Spikes eyes made Dawns stomach churn into a burning knot. But having decided that she was going to tell him the truth, to hell with all these stupid secretes, she was determined to continue. Pushing herself up from the floor, she rose to her feet and walked over to stand in front of Spike. She reached out to touch his face, but he turned away from her to avoid the touch. Instead she let her hand fall to his shoulder and gave it a gentile squeeze. When Dawn started to speak her voice was low, but she knew it was loud enough for him to hear what she was saying.
“We told you that Buffy came looking for you, after she found out, that you were back. That she searched for you for a whole month, before we gave up the search. But I don’t think you really understand what that meant. As ‘soon’ as Buffy found out that you were back, she caught the first plane she could get on. She didn’t have any money or cloths, or anything. She had a credit card and her passport, and that was it. When she got back here, to L.A., she started searching for you. But she didn’t know where to look. She went to Wolfram and Hart, but the building was a wreck, and she couldn’t find anyone to talk to about what had happened. That’s when she called Giles for help. We all got here within a day or two, and Willow broke into the police data files for information, which gave us someplace to start our search. We told you all that. But Spike, what you don’t understand is that Buffy, she went kind of crazy.”
Dawn still had her hand on Spikes shoulder and when she said that Buffy had gone ‘kind of crazy’ she could feel the impact these words had on Spike. His whole body seemed to start vibrating, as if every muscle in his body was receiving an electric shock. When his body went limp and he collapsed to the floor, like a puppet with it’s stings cut, Dawn thought that he had lost consciousness. She knelt down next to him and started brushing her fingers through his hair. When she heard him take a breath and knew he was awake, and not unconscious, she started to speak once more.
“By the time Giles and I got here, Buffy was sort of full blown manic. She hadn’t slept or eaten for days, she couldn’t sit still for even a minute, her mind was kind of racing all over the place, and she couldn’t stop crying. Once Willow got here and gave us our first lead, she got even worse. She’d been going about a week, without sleep and hardly any food, when she collapsed. She just passed out in an alley. Spike, even in her sleep she was still crying.” Dawn felt a shudder pass through Spikes body and looking down at him could see tears leaking from his closed eyes. “For weeks it was like that, pushing herself day and night until she would just collapse. Giles threatened to have her sedated and confined to a hospital if she didn’t eat or rest. But she couldn’t sleep, because whenever she tried she’d wake up screaming. Even in her sleep she was looking for you Spike, she kept trying to find you, to save you.”
Hearing those words, ‘to save you’, sent another shudder rippling through Spikes entire body. Memories of Buffy’s death on the tower, his dreams of saving her, waking up screaming with tears running down his face, flashed through his mind. Memories of wanting to walk out into the sun, to end the pain, to not have to face one more day without her. The only thing stopping him from a final death was his promise to Buffy, to protect Dawn.
When he opened his eyes, all he could see was the floor his face was resting on and Dawns knees as she knelt in front of him. All he could feel was the rough wood grain of the floor against the side of his face and the gentle brush of Dawns fingers through his hair. When he tried to push himself up from the floor into a sitting position, his arms shook as if it was taking every speck of energy in his body to do so. Even then, if it hadn’t been for Dawn helping, he might not have been able to do it. With his legs sticking out straight and slightly apart, his back against the wall, his arms hanging limply at his sides, his head back against the wall, but tilted a little to one side, Spike focused his eyes on Dawns mouth, waiting for her to continue speaking. He knew that she had more to say, and knew that whatever it was it would be even harder to listen to than what had already been said. But listen he would, because he knew that whatever Dawn told him would be the truth, without any effort to protect him from the pain the words would bring him. He knew that Dawn wasn’t trying to hurt him with her words, even though the words were hurtful. He knew that she was doing this for a reason and that it was important that he pay attention.
Once Spike was sitting up against the wall Dawn started searching through his jacket pockets until she found his cigarettes and lighter. Taking one of the cigarettes out of the pack she put it between her lips and using his lighter she lit it. Dawn choked a little as some of the smoke went down her lungs, but once the cigarette was lit she removed it from between her lips and placed it between Spikes lips. For several moments it hung there until Spikes lips firmed up around it and he took a long deep drag off of it, drawing the smoke deep down into his lungs. Spike drew his left leg up until the flat of his boot was firmly on the floor. He then brought his left hand to his mouth and removed the cigarette from between his lips. Resting his left arm on his knee he turned his head away from Dawn and let his breath out, sending a plume of smoke out into the air. When he turned his head back toward Dawn he could see that she was watching him, waiting. With a slight nod of his head he signaled that he was ready to hear more.
“After two weeks of searching everyone else had given up hope of finding you, everyone except Buffy. She wouldn’t stop searching for you and made everyone else keep searching too. It wasn’t until the full coven and Willow did a final search for you using magic that Giles was finally able to convince her that you were truly gone. She went all quiet after that, she wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even me. We took her back to London, to Giles home, she never went back to Rome. She wouldn’t talk to anyone, she barely ate, and she didn’t cry anymore. Except that whenever she tried to sleep, she’d wake up screaming, and crying. Every time she slept she dreamt about you. She dreamt that you were still alive, but you were injured, that you needed her, but she couldn’t find you. She dreamt about getting to the battle in time to save you.” Dawn paused for a moment to take a deep breath before continuing. “She dreamt about getting to the battle in time to die with you.”
Hearing these words had their effect on Spike. The hand that was holding his cigarette started shaking so bad that he dropped it on the floor. Dawn picked the cigarette up and put it back between his lips so that he could take another drag off of it. She waited for a full minute or more before she started speaking again. “We’d been in London for about a month when Buffy started going out for walks. She’d walk for miles and miles, sometimes she’d be gone all day.” Dawn paused again, took a deep breath to calm herself, then continued. “On one of her walks she went to see a doctor. Apparently she told the doctor about her not being able to sleep and he gave her a prescription for sleeping pills. She went to bed that night and took the whole bottle.” Dawn watched Spike’s eye grow big at that statement, but he didn’t do or say anything. “That’s sort of what gave it away. Normally, ever since we got to London, Buffy hadn’t been able to sleep for more that two or three hours without her dreams waking her up. When she didn’t wake up screaming or crying, subconsciously it must have rung a bell with me, because I woke up and went in to check on her. That’s when I found the empty pill bottle and the suicide note she left for me and Giles. We got her into a hospital and they pumped her stomach. When she woke up she tried to deny she’d tried to kill herself, but we had the note.”
“A month later she drank a bottle of poison. Giles is the one who found her that time. All the poison did was make her real sick and vomit a lot, but it would have killed a normal person. Two months later she cut both her wrist while sitting in the bathtub, I found her that time. She’d passed out from blood loss, but the cuts had sealed themselves off and had already started to heal. Giles put her into a private psychiatric hospital where they kept her sedated for a month. As soon as they cut back on the sedative enough that she could function again she broke out of the hospital and went home. Giles told Buffy that she either started going to see a psychiatrist or he would have her placed in a hospital where they would keep her sedated for years if necessary to keep her from harming herself. She went to see the psychiatrist, but it didn’t really seem to do much good, except that she stopped trying to kill herself. For awhile anyway.”
“We really thought she was doing a lot better” Dawn said when she continued talking. “She was talking to pretty much everyone by then, except that she wouldn’t talk about you. I don’t think she could talk about you Spike, it hurt her to much. She hadn’t tried to kill herself in six months and she was seeing the psychiatrist three times a week. She was helping out at the new Council building, little things, but she was keeping busy. I don’t really know how any of us forgot it, the anniversary of the battle with Wolfram and Hart, except that we were all so busy at the time that it just slipped our minds. But Buffy didn’t forget. She planned it from information the Council had received from Angel. At the time that was the closest she could estimate to when she thought you had died, she stabbed herself in the heart with a dagger.” Dawn was watching Spike closely when she said this, but all he did was blink several times. “That’s when we found out that she was immortal. She was at the Council building, in the library, and she took an antique dagger down from the wall and stabbed herself in the heart with it. One of the witches from the Coven saw her do it and let out a scream. Trying to help Buffy, she pulled the dagger out of Buffys heart just as Giles came rushing into the room. Giles was on his knees, holding her hand, crying, when Buffy coughed and started breathing again. They rushed her to the infirmary in the Council building, but by the time they got her there the wound had already stopped bleeding and was closed up. Within an hour Buffy was back on her feet.”
Dawn was watching Spike closely for his reaction, but all he did was blink rapidly at the announcement of Buffys suicide attempt. Feeling overwhelmed herself, just from telling the story, tears started running down her face. Needing to touch someone, Dawn reached out and took Spikes hand. Touching Spike seemed to break some kind of barrier inside of him and tears came flooding from his eyes. Drawing up his other leg, Spike bent forward and buried his face against his knees. For long minutes he cried, great sobs wracked his body as he tried to draw air into his lungs. Dawn continued to hold his hand as she bent forward and rested her head against his.
When Spike finally raised his head to look at Dawn again he had stopped crying, but his face was wet with tears. His eyes were filled with a pain that was clearly visible to anyone looking into them. Dawn squeezed his hand and using her other hand wiped the tears from her own face. When Spike tried to speak his voice was so choked with emotion he couldn’t get the words out at first. He coughed twice to clear his throat and tried again.
“I …. I didn’t know. …. I thought she’d forgotten about me …. wanted to forget me …. I thought she was happy …. moved on … living the life she wanted …. with the Immortal.” The sadness in Spikes voice was so painful that it brought fresh tears to Dawns eyes. “I stayed away from her …. that first year …. didn’t want to …. missed her so much …. hurt so much …. didn’t want to mess up her life again …. didn’t even know the soul was gone. …. After …. the fight …. the Hool priests did their magic on me …. fixed me up …. found out the soul was gone …. burned out of me …. at the Hellmouth. …. Knew I could never go back …. no chip …. no soul …. no nothing. …. empty.” Spike coughed to clear his throat again. “Hid for a time, wore a helmet to hide my face, helped Tyron to protect his friends, owed him that, for saving me. Still missed her Bit, missed you too. Heard about all the new slayers. When none of them showed up, figured the new Council had written the city off for some reason, didn’t know why. Figured old Rupert had something to do with it. Started helping more, doing what I could. That’s when Joy came to me, gave me something to live for again. Didn’t care about the soul, just loved me. Let me love her back.”
Spikes words broke loose a fresh wave of pain in Dawns heart. Tears ran from her eyes as she threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around his waist as she buried her face in his chest. Between sobs, Dawn gasped out “I love you Spike. …. I don’t care about the soul. …. I just care about you. …. Please don’t leave me. …. I love you so much.”
Spike had his arms wrapped around Dawn, holding her tightly. Hearing that she still loved him filled an empty place inside of him. Slowly he brushed one hand down the back of her head as he made soothing sounds to calm her. For long minutes they held on to each other. When Dawn stopped crying and just relaxed in his arms Spike continued to brush his hand through her hair and loosened his tight hold around her waist. Gently, and without any real thought behind it, Spike started stroking Dawns back to sooth her even more. He’d been stroking her back and side for a full minute or more when something occurred to him, Dawn didn’t have a bra on. With all the pain and emotional turmoil that the two of them had been going through he hadn’t even noticed that from the waist up she was naked. Spikes whole body reacted to this realization. His eyes slammed shut tightly and both of his hands and arms pulled away from her quickly so that he wasn’t touching her anywhere.
Dawn, not understanding what had just happened, sat up quickly and stared at Spike with distress clearly written on her face. “Spike? Spike, what’s wrong? What did I do?” Dawns distress and panic was clear in her tone of voice.
Spike brought his right hand, the one covered with the bandage that Dawn had made from her t-shirt, and covered his eyes. “Didn’t do nothing wrong Niblet” Spike replied quickly. “It’s just, your naked.”
Dawn sat up quickly and looking down she realized herself, for the first time, that she was naked from the waist up. It hadn’t even occurred to her before that and she blushed so hard that her face turned a bright red. But after a few moments she started laughing. As she looked at Spike covering his eyes with one hand as he held the other one out away from her so that he couldn’t touch her, she started laughing even harder.
Spike kept his hand over his eyes, but a smirky kind of grin spread over his lips, one that Dawn remembered from the past when Spike had been ‘her protector’ and she had been ‘his girl’.
“It’s not funny Bit” Spike said gruffly, but Dawn could hear the embarrassment in his voice.
Getting up quickly she hurried over and picked up the cut-off t-shirt that was laying on the floor. Standing in the full light of the sun coming through the open doorway she turned toward Spike and spoke to him in a voice full of laughter, “Last chance Spike. The ‘booby fairies’ were pretty nice to me. Wanna take a peek?”
Spike kept his hand firmly over his eyes and wasn’t even tempted to look. “Get on with it Bit. Your bits and pieces aren’t for the likes of me to be gawking at, and you know it.”
Dawn quickly slipped the t-shirt over her head and pulled it down into place. Looking down at herself she could see that what remained of the t-shirt was a bit like a sports bra, just a little looser. Pulling her hair out from the back of the t-shirt and pulling the front down to cover her fully she walked back over to Spike and knelt down in front of him.
“It’s safe now” Dawn said, her voice was still full of laughter. Spike dropped his hand away from his eyes and slowly opened one eye. Once he saw that Dawns breast were covered he open both eyes and looked at her with his embarrassment clearly written on his face. Dawn knew that if it was possible for a vampire to blush, Spikes face would be a bright red. Dawn gave Spike a wicked grin. “As long as I don’t do this” she said as she raised both arms over her head, which pulled up on the cut-off t-shirt and exposed the bottom curve of both her breasts, “you’ve got nothing to fear.”
Spike slapped his hand back over his eyes and made a growling noise in his throat. “I may not be the Big Bad anymore, but I bloody well know who is” he said gruffly.
Dawn pulled the t-shirt back down, then reached out and placed her hand on the hand covering Spikes eyes. Gently she pulled his hand away from his eyes and held it. She waited for him to open his eyes again and when he did, she said to him gently, her voice full of trust and love, “You’ll always be ‘my Big Bad’ Spike, always. Just like I’ll always be ‘your girl’.”
The love that Dawn could see in Spikes eyes as he looked back at her erased the last speck of worry from her mind. No one could have that much love inside their heart and be evil, no one.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Warning: High Angst Alert. For some that will mean tissues may be needed. :)