Title: Diary of Dawn Summers, Day 4382
Author: Delilah Draken
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Dawn Summers, Spike
Prompt(s): #324 - Maelstrom at tamingthemuse
Disclaimer: The stories are mine. All the rest - characters and locations you've heard of in TV shows, movies, books etc - belong to their respective owners. I am just borrowing them.
Summary: She writes her diary not to talk but to remember.
It was a dark and stormy night.
Really, it was! Thunder and lightning and so much rain that people were even starting to hord food for a coming flood.
Anyway.
For about three weeks after Buffy jumped off the tower it only rained at night. Which was a pretty good thing for us all because, as Spike so eloquently put it, 'not even vampires are so desperate for a kill that they'd swim through an ocean for a drink.'
Nevertheless he sort of made a nest to live in our basement during the storms. Said it was because his crypt was full of water, but I never really believed that story.
So, for three weeks we had a vampire living in our basement. Xander was against it, of course. He never liked Spike, you know? There are reasons, but... well. Willow and Tara didn't like it as well. They said that it wasn't right to have a grown man like Spike in the same house as an 'impressionable girl'. As if I hadn't already known what kinds of things he did for fun. Really, they should ask him about his dear friends Shelley and Byron and maybe - if you really want to see a show - Bram.
Spike gets snarky when he talks about Bram. It's all 'he never cared to get his facts right' and 'he gave that stupid ponce of a gypsy warlock more attention than he deserved'. Also there always, and I mean ALWAYS always, comes a moment when he starts to talk about the time he met Bram, back before that oh so dreadful book was written.
Apparently they were friends, you know. Squeeky clean and boring William, who was afraid of his own shadow and couldn't think himself out of a shoe box, and Bram. Bram the writer. Bram the cool guy with his beautiful wife and baby who worked for the Lyceum. There might even have been some kind of fanboy crush going on between them.
And I seem to have lost my red herring...
Anyway, it really was a dark and stormy night. Willow and Tara had something to do at the other end of the town and Xander was at work or maybe having sex with Anya as usual. Whatever.
So, it was only me and Spike in the empty house.
Perfect conditions for what I had planned. Absolutely perfect.
And so I did the obvious thing and stormed down the basement stairs with my hair wet from the shower and a comb in my hand.
"Spike," I said. There was just enough whiny little girl in my voice to get his attention. "Spike, I need your help."
I held out the comb and he took it. As he always does. Spike is such a sucker for a lady in need.
"Well, sit down and we'll got to work," he said. And I did. Of course, the travel cot down there was not the most comfortable place to do this. I once told him this, but he absolutely refused to do it upstairs. Something about him not wanting to break more rules than he already did.
"I don't know why you can't do this yourself, niblet," he said.
"Because Mom always helped me with the complicated stuff," I answered. And it was the truth. I couldn't even braid my own hair, which was the whole reason why I always wore it open.
"Then it's high time you learn it," he said. There was something in his voice, soft and dreamy, as if he was remembering a better past or something.
And he showed me how girls wore their hair in his time. He showed me everything, from the simple braids to keep your hair from tangling while asleep to the really elaborate updos women wore when going to a party.
I must have fallen asleep while he did my hair because I woke up in my room. There was a letter on my nightstand. 'It's stopped raining. I'll be back at my crypt should you need me.'
Weeks later, Buffy came back and everything went sort of strange with Spike.
And then he was gone and everybody said he had done terrible stuff to Buffy, that he hurt her. And all I could think of was those three weeks of rain when he was the only one I could ask to braid my hair.
This entry was originally posted at
http://delilahdraken.dreamwidth.org/606975.html.