All Summer Long (5/6)
129 Days
He was sitting in his ratty green chair. The crypt was dark; well, as dark as it got when the sun was high in the sky. Still, he didn't have any candles lit; the television was off. He took a long swig from the extremely nice bottle of scotch he'd swiped last time he had been to the Watcher's flat. He almost felt bad for chugging it as he was - this was booze that deserved to be sipped. But he found that he really couldn't care too much, not when it was creating such a pleasant warmth in his belly and limbs.
He took another drink of scotch and set the bottle carefully on the floor next to his chair. Then he brought the blue sweater he held in his left hand up to his nose and took a small sniff. It barely smelled like Buffy anymore, he realized sadly. He rested his cheek against the soft material and let his eyes slip shut. He narrowed his senses down, focusing only on the feel and the smell of the sweater. There it was; if he strained hard enough, he could make it out. A hint of her own unique smell hiding beneath the organic scent of the fibers, the barest touch of the Slayer, the woman, he loved.
So intent was he, he never heard the crypt door creaking open or the footsteps approaching his chair. "Uh, Spike?"
He jumped and belatedly shoved the sweater into the cushions of his chair. "Bloody hell, Dawn, aren't you s'posed to be off learning stuff instead of creeping around the cemetery?"
Dawn eyed him suspiciously and darted around his still-flailing hand to pull the garment out of the chair. "Is that Buffy's cashmere sweater?" she asked. "She accused me of stealing it, you know."
He shrugged and reached for the bottle of scotch to cover his embarrassment.
"Do I want to know what you were doing?"
"What? Nothing! I mean, y'know, it just... reminds me of her," he said defensively. He pointed a finger at Dawn before she could say anything. "D'you think I haven't seen you curled up with that grotty little pig of hers?"
"All right. But... were you sniffing it?"
He was eternally grateful that vampires couldn't blush. "Well, yeah. Vampire, remember?" He looked at her 'ew, gross' face and cut her off. "What brings you around at this time of day? Cutting class?"
Dawn rolled her eyes. "No. Summer school ended last week. I actually get to have summer vacation for, like, ten minutes before the real thing starts up. God, this has been the worst summer ever." She paused for a moment, a strange look crossing her face. "But then, this is the only summer I've ever lived through, isn't it?" Her whole body trembled at that thought, then she shook it off and pulled a CVS pharmacy bag out of her back pack. "I brought you something," she said, dangling it in front of him.
He eyed it warily. Last time she'd sprung a 'gift' on him it had been a hefty supply of nicotine gum; she was determined to get him to quit smoking. "Hope it's not any more of that bloody gum," he grumbled. He secretly hoped it was. He wasn't going to tell her, but he quite enjoyed having a smoke while chewing the stuff - the nicotine rush he got was incomparable. After sixty-odd years of smoking, that was saying something.
"No, it's not," Dawn said. She dropped the bag in his lap. "Wanna have a salon day with me?"
He opened it to reveal a bleaching kit and a tub of Manic Panic hair dye in Ultra Violet. "Appreciate the bleach, pet, but no sodding way am I dying my hair purple."
Dawn laughed. "No, you idiot, the purple's for me. I'll bleach your hair if you help me dye mine. Deal?"
He regarded her for a moment. "Why do I feel like I'm supposed to say, 'over my dead body, young lady'?"
"Because you watch too much TV?" Dawn suggested. "Life's not a sitcom, you know."
"Huh. This is what comes of not having an authority figure in your life. Next thing I know, you'll be getting a tattoo or piercing various bits of your anatomy."
Dawn plopped down on the floor at his feet and put on her best puppy-dog eyes. He hated it when she did that. Was worse than tears, really, because at least when she was crying he knew there was usually a good reason for it. The big, sappy eyes, though - those just meant she knew exactly how to manipulate him into giving her whatever it was she wanted.
"Please, Spike?" she pleaded. "It'll be fun. And I want to do something before school starts." Her lower lip jutted out. She was pulling out all the stops, it seemed. "Everyone thinks I'm some crazy freak and if they're going to be talking about me, I'd rather it be because I have wicked cool hair instead of spreading rumors that I tried to kill myself."
He sighed. "All right, Niblet. But I better not get an earful from the witches about this." He was sure that spoiling a teenager, even one who used to be - and possibly still was - a mystical key, was not the way to go about things. But then, it wasn't like there was a parenting manual for vampires who were sort of helping raise the kid sisters of their former mortal enemies. So if he screwed things up, he could just claim ignorance and inherent evilness, and the Scoobies would probably let him off the hook.
Dawn squealed with excitement. "Oh, thank you! This is going to be awesome!" She jumped up from the floor and into his lap, throwing her arms around his neck. "We should do this at my house, though, don't you think? Hot water and all that."
He nodded resignedly. "Yeah, sure, pet." He cocked his head at the windows, where the sunlight was attempting to break through the layers of grime. He pushed her off his lap and reached for his bottle. "Gonna take a bit of a nap first," he said, taking a long swallow. "I'll be there by sundown, yeah?"
Dawn nodded and gathered up her bag. "Okay, see you later, Spike," she said with a big grin.
He smiled as she let herself out. Maybe he shouldn't be giving in to her every whim, but he couldn't help but be happy to see her happy.
***
His scalp burned. "More Sweet 'n Low next time, Bit," he said through gritted teeth.
Dawn didn't give him any sympathy at all. "You can get the crap kicked out of you by a hellgod, but you can't take a little pain from bleaching your hair? You are the weirdest vampire I know."
He growled. "Just how many vampires have you gotten to know?" he asked.
"Oh, well, just you and Angel." She giggled. "And you're definitely weirder than Angel. He's, um, he's kind of boring, you know?"
He smiled. She may have never met the Poof in reality, other than his appearance at Buffy's funeral, but she had him pegged.
"I think you're ready to rinse," she said. He moved to the sink and bent down so Dawn could run the hose over his head. He closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the feel of the warm water sluicing away the sting of the bleach. Dawn dumped a handful of cold shampoo into his hair and rubbed it in with strong fingers before rinsing his hair a second time. She was smiling smugly at him when she finally pronounced him done and handed him a towel.
"What?"
"You were purring," she said.
"Bloody hell! I don't purr," he said. "Growl real quiet-like, maybe, but I do not purr."
"Whatever." She shrugged and turned her attention to the tub of hair dye. "Okay, my turn."
"Uh, yeah. How about just some highlights?" He was having second thoughts about this, mostly stemming from not being sure how Red and Glinda would take it if he helped Dawn transform herself into a walking grape. "To see how it looks before going whole-hog," he added when Dawn scowled at him, clearly seeing him as a traitor to the cause.
Dawn sighed. "Yeah, I suppose." She leaned over the sink, and he helped her wash her hair. It made him think of the many times he'd done the same thing for Dru. He felt a sudden stab of longing and nostalgia for his ripe, wicked plum.
He looked down at the girl in his arms; she was limp and warm against his chest, her head thrown back and her neck elongated, just waiting for him.
He'd felt like his old self not ten seconds ago, stalking through the Bronze with Drusilla at his side, eyeing up the pulsers surrounding them. When Dru'd spotted the couple on the balcony, a thrill had gone through him. This was what he was meant to be doing; he was a hunter, a predator, even if he'd spent the better part of the last two years pretending he was anything but.
But now... now, with the girl's body cooling in his grasp, he wasn't sure what he really was, wasn't sure how much of the act he'd adopted for his own sanity actually was an act anymore. He looked up and caught the expression in Dru's eyes - the challenge and expectation. He steeled himself and morphed in to game face. After one last moment of hesitation, he dipped his head and bit into the tender flesh.
The feeling passed.
He rinsed Dawn's hair, squeezed the excess water out of it, and started applying the dye.
***
Dawn held a section of hair between two fingers and squinted, a little cross-eyed, at it. "It's not as purple as I wanted it to be,” she said grumpily. She slumped down on the back porch steps, upwind of his cigarette smoke.
He turned a critical eye on her new look. “'S not bad, Niblet,” he said. And likely not to get him turned into a toad next time he saw the witches. He flicked his cigarette butt away, ignored Dawn's exasperated sigh at his littering, and leaned back on his elbows. “So what now? We're all beautified and before you ask, no, you may not do my nails again.”
Dawn snickered. “Um, wanna help me make dinner? Tara and Willow should be home in an hour or so, I thought it'd be nice to have something ready when they get here.”
Having been subjected to more than a few of Dawn's kitchen experiments over the past few months, he wasn't positive the witches would agree with her. Even for someone with dampened taste buds and a palate that appreciated a warm mug of O neg, her creations were fairly horrific. “Dunno how much help I'd be,” he said. “Never had much call to do any cooking. Wasn't really something a gentleman bothered with.”
“You were a gentleman?” Dawn laughed. “Buffy said you were some sort of hooligan.”
The Slayer huffed at his repeated request for wings and beer. “Were you born this big a pain in the ass?”
He cocked his head to the side. “What can I tell you, baby?” he drawled. “I've always been bad.” With equal parts imagination and braggadocio, he cooked up a tale of misspent youth and dark dealings, anything to keep her from guessing what a git he'd been as a human.
“Uh, cooking was woman's work, I mean to say.”
“No, no, go back to the gentleman thing.” She smirked and nudged his elbow. “Why won't you ever tell me about who you were before you got vamped? Were you, like, an earl or something? Ooh, were you famous, and when you mysteriously disappeared it was the talk of the town?”
He shrugged and looked at her animated face. The stories he'd told Buffy had been to protect his reputation, or what was left of it. Besides, would the Slayer have believed him if he'd told her of his upper-class upbringing, how he'd been a proper young man up to the day he met his salvation in a dark alley? The Niblet, now... well, he never had been able to scare her, not from the first time he'd clapped eyes on her. She didn't care a whit about his reputation as the Big Bad.
“All right,” he relented. “But I swear on all that's unholy, Dawn, you breathe a word of what I'm about to tell you to a single soul and I'll, I'll...” He wracked his brain for a suitably impressive threat. "I'll tell every one of those little bints you go to school with what you wrote in your journal about that boy you like so much. What's his name? Kevin?" Hah. That was inspired.
Dawn looked properly chastened. And a little bit horrified. "You... are you twelve?" she squeaked. "And, and whatever! You did NOT read my journal!"
He smirked at her discomfiture. "Privacy's a two-way street, Little Bit. Maybe think about that next time you feel like rummaging through my things." No need to tell her she was right; with what he was prepared to spill, he needed a little leverage. “Now, do I have your promise? Not a word to anyone.”
She mimed locking her lips shut and throwing away the key. Her eyes gleamed with anticipation. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and tugged her closer to him. And if he was at all embarrassed to be telling his pathetic life story, the smile on her face more than made up for it.
Concluded in Chapter 6