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Little bit picked the film, like she did every night he was elected for babysitting duty.
Not that he minded bein’ with her, it was better him than that useless Xander boy who could barely save his own neck, let alone keep hers safe. Though, Spike knew by now to keep those comments to himself. Mostly.
He’d been rather quiet compared to his previous loquacious attitude ever since… Well, ever since he unofficially joined sides with the merry gang of demon nabbers and stabbers. Became one of the team, he did. Not by formal invitation and definitely not on their terms, but still Spike patrolled the Hellmouth with the witches, the old geezer, and that bloody bot most nights. Playing well with others hadn’t ever been his bag, but he tried to make it work best he could. Now that they were on their own, they never turned away his offer to tag along.
It meant the streets were safer for her after all.
Dawn tucked her hair to one side, hovering a moment to make sure it was all working, and straightened up from her low crouch. The whine of the VHS player screeched loudly as it sucked up the tape and started their movie night-in. Nibblet, looking pleased as punch with herself, glanced back at him offering a nod of support. With limbs stretched out over the sunken sofa, he tried to relax. The room was a bit drafty from all the smashed window repairs, and their couch smelled of rainy mildew, forgotten dust, and if he really inhaled, there was a faint scent-memory of…
“Which film is it this time, Bit?”
“I think you’ll like this one.”
He raised a brow with wary suspicion. Teenagers had the potential to be more savage than some hellspawn he’d met in passing. Of all human teenage girls, Dawn had the sharpest bite. Her non-answer was likely the predecessor to a harsh insult and twisted humor.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward. That's what made her his favorite; she was the most tolerable with her clever, gutsy jabs, like her late mother, compared to the rest of the so-called Scoobies.
The opening trailer spun onto the screen, dark and creeping with a cheeky narrator announcing the film is one of Hammer’s productions. Cheap-looking bats floated across the screen with young girls’ screams as the orchestral climax music. So, she had picked a proper thriller for them then.
“Horror?”
Dawn hummed in thought, standing off to the side, still mesmerized by the screen.“Sort-of.”
Spike quirked his neck to focus more closely on the beats of the ancient trailer. Lightning storm special effects backlit a haunting (though clearly a miniature model) grand stone castle atop a cliff side. A beautiful, buxom woman laid in bed, reeling over her troubles in life. Shadows on strings swirled around as the narrator proclaimed the story an instant classic.
Dawn was a gargoyle in front of him, stiff and stuck in place.
“You gonna sit or are you testing your endurance?”
“Uh, yeah. One sec. Have to get something first.” Dawn said, relinquishing the heavy hold on her feet. She drifted from the shaggy throw rug to grip the stained molding around the room's opening. She wiggled her brows at a distance. “Tell me if you like anything from the trailers. We can rent one for next time.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, and Spike felt her absence immediately. Little bit was the only person who kept him grounded in the present, tethered him to the here and now instead of the winding path of total mental obliteration. Whenever he was alone, really alone, that’s when his mind evaporated into a hellish abyss. Pain lingered like a niggling thorn in his gut everywhere he went day and night, but the abyss devoured any crumb of will to remain this side of the dirt and not bury himself alongside her.
The only thing he could see in that space were her eyes, glazed and empty, staring at him. The same hazy green eyes from the night she saved the world with one damn leap. They begged him to be anything but a useless monster, a defective waste of fangs and strength that couldn’t keep a simple promise: to keep the precious girl next to him safe.
For once he had made a sincere promise for–for her sake, the Slayer … Even thinking her name unraveled him into a twitching mess. He failed her when it mattered most and it eviscerated what little emotion lies behind his cold ribcage.
Dawn could never see him like that. She needed someone to treat her like she mattered, her opinion mattered. No one else seemed to notice the way her pain ebbed and flowed over the summer when they ignored her pleas to be included. He didn’t like to keep her in the dark about anything—-patrols, spells, demons, vampires. He knew what it was like to be shrouded by the night. It was lonely. It was all-consuming.
“Nibblet, get us some popcorn!”
Where was that bloody girl? It didn't take this long to grab snacks or a soda. She couldn’t get enough of diet Coke lately, but that was stocked in the fridge, despite it tasting like the poisoned sole of a hatter's shoe. He didn't want to be alone anymore.
Dawn shouted from the kitchen over the clinking of ceramics. “Say please, Spike!”
“You’re a brat, you know.” He rolled his eyes, waiting to hear her snarky reply. When none came, the angry fist in his gut strangled the dead bits at his center. Spike gave in to her cold shoulder, probably too quickly than was right, but for the sake of ending the sinking feeling in his stomach, he didn't care. “Fine— please, happy?”
The microwave beeped its high pitch alarm, but Spike didn’t smell any of the usual hot, buttery aroma that came along with the famous movie snack. Dawn's slippers shuffled along the laminate as she prepared whatever she had on the counter with a continued chaotic clanking.
“Coming!”
Instead of a bowl, she carried two mugs with streams of steam wisping toward the ceiling and wore a bloody big smirk on her face. Tags hung over the edge like legs over a pool rim, and a whiff of what she made for them wafted toward the couch. Black tea with cream and sugar apparently sloshed in her grasp.
Setting them down on the coffee table while she plopped onto the sofa next to him, he couldn’t stop staring at the nutty design on his mug that included two animated mice holding hearts labeled “hugs” and “kisses.” This was it. Little bit was off her rocker, ready for the madhouse.
“Bit, darling, popcorn usually comes in solid form. What is this?”
Dawn’s pupils shrank, lashes fluttering in excitement, and she hooked her hand through the handle of her own mug, pointing her pinky finger up in the air.
“Thought it’d be most proper for a nice spot a’tea,” she slung her worst impression of a dying Mary Poppins. “Might be missin’ your home o’ Britain, God save the queen.”
“So, you think you’re funny little girl? Makin’ fun of my heritage. It’s actually called a ‘cuppa’, y'know.”
“M’not little, I'm a lady, ” she countered, lightening the t’s in little like he would. Clearly, she’d practiced how to chaff him, a devious thing. It was a poor impression, but he had a stripe of pride for her minor league evil tendencies.
“No, guess you’re not so little.” Spike emphasized his accent and her inaccuracy. He needed to save face in front of this endearing demon-child. “You are a she-devil in the making. Has that ex-vengeance demon been feeding you all sorts of ideas to mock me so you can entertain yourself?”
Dawn shook her head, settling into the cushion back and taking a small sip of her milky tea. She peered over the lip of her mug, mock innocence in her eyes as he sat there tea-less, hands empty of his designated mug. He scoffed, only to quickly surrender when he saw the insult etched in the crinkles of her forehead, and picked up the mug to play along with her banter.
He couldn’t remember the last proper cup of tea he’d had. Not for half a century at least, since he felt no need for human food or drink until the chip made him satiate alternative kind of cravings. Spike drank occasionally to keep up appearances in his early vamp days for hunting in disguise with Angelus, but most of the time, it came in the form of a bottle or shot glass, not the kettle.
The last trailer wound down, and studio music comprised of big brass and horns swelled through the speakers. The hot tea warmed his insides at the first swallow; it didn’t taste like it used to before he was sired that much he knew. But its subtle sweetness with the wash of light bitter brew reminded him of the temperament of the girl laughing beside him.
“I had to, you know that, right?”
He chuckled at her delirium, taking a bigger gulp before bouncing on the sofa to make her spill a bit of the tea onto the carpet. Her shriek turned to an outrageous laugh of hysterics. Better to have a laugh than a fit of sobbing like last week.
Spike ruffled her locks and announced he’d be getting the snacks himself this time, since the word please apparently meant nothing to the youth of the new millennium.
Returning with two big bowls, Dawn waved him over with urgency, saying he’d already missed the movie title and all the strange character introductions. He chewed on a few kernels and strained to check out which movie she’d thought would be comical torture for him. There was no doubt it was old by the grainy quality and the monotonous speech of the narrator. A pretty girl and poor coachman with an over-exaggerated Cockney accent flew through the forest trail with the cracking whip on two black steeds. Bloody brilliant mockery of the dialect.
He was pretty sure he’d seen this one before a long time ago, released in the 60’s amidst a slew of monster movies. A vague memory fuzzed in the back of his mind. Theaters were a fun place to grab a snack and catch part of a flick. Lots of sweet, bottled-up ladies to feed on once he stole them from their dates. He shook the violence out of his head.
“Bit, do you have me watching a bloody Dracula flick?”
“I thought it would be like a comforting documentary for you. It’s the dark, brooding sequel, Brides of Dracula.”
If looks could kill, he might have to murder the girl after all, favorite or not.
“You’re twisted. Can’t be helped. Hopeless, you.”
“I know,” she said, sounding giddy.
“Your gang met the real Vlad the Impaler. Pompous dick, he is. Never liked the guy. His books and films are an insult to our kind. Thought he was Satan's gift to mankind. Utter bollocks”
“So we rag on him the whole time. Unless you’re worried about getting bored being stuck with me another night.”
He pat the messy knob of hair tied atop her head.“Don’t think it’s possible to be bored ’round you, little bit.”
The movie wasn’t half-bad, if he was being honest. The acting at times was a bit overdone, but the effects were interesting and the younger broads were sexy, with their milky-white complexions and fancy hairdos. Early on, it was clear Baroness Meinster’s secret was that her son was a vampire she'd locked away, which of course the nice young lady wanted to set him free out of the kindness of her daft heart. He invested in the film's melodrama, likening it to a paranormal take on Passions.
Suspense hooked the two of them when the slinking slip of a thing scaled the towering side of Meinster castle and reached her room’s balcony with the key to his manacles in her pocket. She tossed the bloody thing down to him on her lacy handkerchief with dreamy moon-eyes and full, dark red lips. Mademoiselle desired to be a hero, carrying the noble notion to save this murderous bloke on her sloping shoulders. Typical bird with a savior complex.
Dawn nudged his side, shoving a handful of popcorn in her mouth. “Are they always stupid like that? Girls with vamps?”
He narrowed his eyes at her question, unsure of where the conversation would lead. Curious cat and all that, nowadays he stuck to stayin’ vague. Innocent little bit shouldn’t hear the details of his personal autobiography, so he’d been told. “Most of the time, yeah.”
Her head tilted slightly while she watched the Baron on screen proclaim his thanks to the twit sealing her fate. His hair was coiffed very neatly for someone who was a chained prisoner in his own castle. Spike wondered why he was criticizing a sixties monster flick for its realism. He really was becoming a posh wanker after slumming it so long with this pretentious crew.
Dawn broke his train of thought with an observation of her own. “She is pretty. I kinda get the appeal. Master of the Night wants beautiful things to keep him company.”
Spike dismissed her with a grunt. He didn’t want to approve of her validating a vampire's intent to hypnotize, kill, and control. Not very becoming of him as her… delegated vampire guardian.
The Baron sewed his seeds of misinformation, telling his girl to run for safety from his mother, smug during his delivery. The well-bred vampires always had a chip on their shoulder about how best to thrall and sire their prey.
“He kinda looks like you.”
“What?” He asked incredulous, the comparison catching him off guard.
“The Baron. Dracula. His cheekbones look like yours, all sharp and pointy, and he’s got that gaze thing going on.”
“Pointy cheek–” He shook his head, stopping and restarting with a conveyor belt of vexation. “Gaze? What ‘gaze thing’ are you on about?”
“When you try to be all serious and convincing, your eyes are all razor-sharp and intense. You look like him. Though, I guess technically he looks like you since you're so old, and he was probably born way later in like 1910.”
A hundred and forty something years of undead life was hardly old compared to some vampires. Spike couldn't believe he was silently defending himself against a high schooler's barbs.
“Are you taking the mick outta me? I do not look like that posh prat.”
The Baron swayed his prey with a little bit of her native French and off she ran to the spiral stairs with nothing but her sleepwear on, babbling about the danger of the old bitty downstairs.
A dry laugh escaped her throat. “Whatever you say, Spike.”
The master of redirection, he pointed at the film she was meant to be gawking and prattling on about instead of picking on him.
“She’s only falling for his act because she’s from France. They never were too bright in Paris. I remember this one Parisian lass back in the early 20th century…” He trailed off, clearing his throat. Almost slipped up again. “She, uh, was a very nice girl.”
She chewed thoughtfully, mashing the kernels into bits while concentrating on the altercation between the old bitter mother and evil son unfolding on the television. “Which decade were the girls easiest to bite?”
“The 70s. All the free love and whatever. Lotsof drugs. But it was boring for me, because…” Spike let his sentence die. She was relentless, always asking questions that were fun to answer. Being good was hard without a soul, didn’t come natural. These stories, even if he thought she could handle it, weren’t allowed. They wouldn’t let him watch her again if they found out.
“Because…” Dawn pushed.
“I’ll spare you the gory details. Don’t think big sis would approve of me reliving the vampire glory days. Let's just let the film play out.”
She stirred next to him, pulling the quilt closer to her neck. Maybe he was giving her a fright imagining what details he wasn’t sharing. The bowl on her lap slid off to the arm of the sofa, catching the flashes from the screen in the round of the bright blue ceramic.
“Y’alright, little bit?”
“Oh, yeah, m’okay.” Her voice came out soft and breathy. She fixed the bowl on the table next to her empty mug and leaned into the arm of the sofa. “It’s just…. You rarely talk about her. Buffy, I mean.”
Her pale blue eyes searched his, and all he wanted was to retreat like a coward. Hearing her name was a stake through the heart. He was the first to bow out of a conversation this sore, because what he said counted to this girl, and being soulless and all didn’t exactly lend itself to a good and proper healing conversation about dead loved ones. She was alone with no blood left to rely on, and all of his was borrowed, stolen from others.
Dawn continued, “Except to tell me when she wouldn’t like something.”
“Well, bit, I think I knew best the things she didn’t like. Nature of our dynamic, innit? Vampire, slayer.” He clicked his tongue.
“Right,” she said, worrying her lip. Her brows knit together like pensive was her middle name. They locked eyes, and she didn’t look like she’d back down from whatever was on her mind. Her eyes crinkled with a hint of genuine concern. “But you—you liked her. My sister.”
Like. It was a funny word to describe the raging need he had for her, the corrosive acid that ate away at his insides with a vengeance. Could something plain as ‘like’ be the origin of the painfully empty shell of a demon that remained now?
He shrugged from his corner of the couch, looking back to the television to see Cushing’s Van Helsing interrogate the Baron’s servant. The Baron vampire had begun collecting his birds from all over town, hunting down his original French piece of ass that released him into the night as his ultimate prize. It would be his downfall. Obsession drove him house to house, tenement to tenement, as a bloody bat, mind you. A nasty stereotype, that one was. Little bit wasn’t wondering if the Baron liked the young mademoiselle. She knew he was devoid of any real human emotions. A monster.
Spike recoiled in his seat. He was not gonna relate to a soddin’ knockoff Dracula with Mozart-like curled hair and sharpened dentures.
“You’re being an idiot.”
Her crossed arms told him he’d been a wanker for shrugging. She was out for actual blood, not vague answers.
“It’s complicated.” That was the truth.
He felt a hole burning in the side of head—damn Summers’ death glares must derive from their potent female bloodline. Joyce had a wicked one. He missed her kind, but fiery, demeanor and her hot cocoa. A good mum. Her body had hardly been put to rest before little bit had to bid farewell to her sister, too. Poor girl was cursed by loss. He couldn’t blame her for taking the fire poker and stickin’ it to him for stories, answers, anything to remember her family by.
“I’m the one who told her you liked her, I’m not stupid, and I’m definitely not blind.” Dawn listed her very substantial evidence for being right. “Also, I didn’t want to bring up the proof of your…feelings for my sister, but there is a very weird clone-y substitute slayerbot living in our house that makes it painfully obvious that—.”
“Don’t—please, don’t.” He hated that thing the most. “I’d rather drown in battery acid than natter on with you about the bot.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, obliging him with rare teenage mercy. “Still. I know you cared about her. Real her. In your way.”
Spike told her he loved her more than once in the weeks before their last showdown. She didn’t believe he could love, and she was probably right. There’d also been months where he wanted nothing more than to kill her, snuff out the flame that torched him inside-out, quenching the wick of his pain. He had thought her death would free him of this eternal suffering. Never had the stones to really do it. He took one look at her despair on the porch, crying about her mother, and he was rendered defenseless.
Now that she was gone, he learned it made no difference. The insufferable burning need for her remained and picked him apart, meaning death was no escape for whatever ailed him. If anything, it made the pain necrotic.
Guess that was his way.
“I’m not the best one to talk about this with.” He sighed, hand circling mid-air. A smoke sounded good right about now. “But you should talk about her, if you want to.”
Dawn’s mouth slanted. “You’re still here.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because I—well, since…”
Right clever bird. The trap snapped and gobbled him up.
“Buffy would be happy.” Her shifty eyes avoided contact with him, fleeing between the screen and her nails. “I’m just saying. She’d be happy to know you made the effort to be… different. You’ve saved people. Help her friends. Keep me safe. I don’t know what vampires feel, but you didn’t run off and sire three brides.”
A stunning brunette rose from her locked coffin on-screen, taunting the French girl, still unbitten, with apologies and urges to all be together with their undead groom. Dracula wanted a harem of young, pretty things, and he was two-thirds there by the looks of it. Part of Spike got the appeal, wanted in on some of the action to bury his pain somewhere else and give in to the temptations of familiar pleasures. He’d done a lot worse in the past for lesser reasons.
But a larger part of him made him stay in Sunnydale. If he had answered little bit’s question, he’d have to admit to her, and himself, that something about Buffy made him not fully demon. He wasn’t a man. But deep hungers were no longer black and white as they should be, the distance between them shrunk and blurred the lines of desire.
He wanted to stay and be close to her. To her body rotting underground. To her memory in this house, the scent lingering in the sheets and the pillows and her hairbrush. To the people she held close to her, like Dawn. It was a sickness that had no cure, not even in death.
“Who said I’d stop at three?” He cocked a brow at her. “Careful what you say. Might make it onto the sire list.”
She pushed his shoulder. “Uh-huh, ew. Also, chip, remember? ”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t have friends on the other side to do my bidding for me. Like Dracula. He’s got servants of the dark.”
“You’re sick.”
“That’s right. Don’t forget it.”
The windmill was on fire, spinning in the glow of the moon and halting to cast a crucifix-shaped shadow to kill the Baron. The fire raged and raged, consuming the old mill in a great tide of orangey-red, behind the vampire hunter and the naive girl who fell in love with a monster. They towered over the Baron’s holy water-burned corpse.
She didn’t look as happy as he thought she would when her stalker collapsed, being dusted into ashes apparently wasn’t a part of this script. The girl needed to be comforted by Van Helsing for a moment before the film faded to black.
Spike might be different, but he was still impulsive. His mouth motored before his head could stop him.
“I loved her, I think. If that’s what this feeling is, love.” Ever the poet, William the Bloody. “I still love her. Think about her and dream of her. Too much, probably.”
Dawn inched closer to him, her breath coming in even pairs. She didn’t look sad like he thought she would, more apologetic by the softening of her features. A mercy he didn’t deserve, not by a long shot.
“Me too,” she said. “Sometimes I wake up from a dream and for a millisecond I forget that she’s not here. It’s like the best and worst feeling all wrapped in a two-for-one package. I miss her more than anything. You’re the only one I feel safe enough to bring her up.”
“What do you miss about Buffy, little bit?” Her name tasted like cherry tobacco, sweetened burnt ashes, on his tongue. The word singed him.
Sorrow was a wilted flower on a sunny day, Dru said once during one of her fits. It's how he would describe the way bit looked right now. Dawn’s lip quivered, her namesake far away from the hollow look in her eyes, twilight dwelling along the horizon in its place. The inky black surrounded both of them, and it wasn’t fair. She was just a girl.
“Her confidence. The way people listened to her, because she was good. It’s stupid, because I hated all the times she tried to make up with me after we fought, trying to strangle me with a hug to make me forget how annoyed I was with her. But now all I want is a hug from her, for her to remind me it’s bad now, but we’ll be okay, eventually. I hope she knew that I— I loved her even when it seemed like I wanted nothing to do with her.”
Tears rolled down her cheek, and she winced, trying to dam them behind her lids and wet eyelashes. Like her wilting was wrong, because the world didn’t end.
“She knows, pet. Everything she did that day was for you, because you love her. She loved you. That’s how it works, I think.”
“She told me I had to be brave, you know. Up on top of that janky tower.” She wiped the tears that had escaped with her sleeve, hiding them away. “That I had to live. It would be hard. But I’d have to live for her.”
The quilt from her lap fell onto the floor as she hugged herself on the sofa, leaning into his shoulder. “I’m tired, Spike. It’s too hard to live without her. I don’t think I’m as strong as she thought I was.”
A familiar ache throbbed in his chest, making every muscle contract and tense in pain. It was a thought he knew too well, too intimately over the past few months. He was so weak, everything seemed to hang on his neck with enormous weight. The patrolling, the hunting, and the talking. For once, he felt his age and the internal frailty that came along with it. But Dawn was young and full of potential for bigger things. Buffy wanted her sister to bloom with her future ahead of her. Only her absence brought on a worse abyss, one that he and, evidently, her little sister shared.
“Your strength is real, bit. Life is never easy, innit? Look around—despite all their brave faces, none of her friends are doing as well as they seem. You’re not alone.” Spike chinned down to look at the floor and think. This was more pep talk than he was used to giving. “’sides, I’m not going anywhere. I’m tired, too.”
“You’ll stay awhile?”
“Yeah, I’ll be here. Long as you need to torture me with shoddy vampire fiction.”
He pressed his palm over her shoulder to comfort her. It was nice the way she melted into his hand, trusting him at his word. Life after Buffy made even less sense than before. But at least he’d found a reason to keep living. Make right on his promise to protect her sister. Help her open up again. Watch life breathe back into her like divine resurrection.
Dawn sniffled and then sat straight up. The black screen caught her attention with the clunk of the VCR. Her expression gave away her malevolent intentions.
“You know, Mr. Lipinski, my English teacher, said vampires are literary symbols of self-importance, but also, like ancient STDs. They were created to ward off people from getting all diseased through sex and stuff. I guess you’re just a walking metaphor for syphilis.”
A smirk teased her lips, and he was glad she was feeling a little better. Dawn shone a little brighter with a bit of weight cast off her shoulders and onto his.
“Mr. Lipinski is a right git, and you’re just as bad, if you think I’m gonna let you get away with that.” He grit his teeth playfully. “Better watch it or I’ll start telling Mrs. and Mrs. Witch all about your liquor stash under your bed.”
She flew up, narrowing her eyes. “You so wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I so would.”