Just a little fic because I felt in the mood. I have no clue where it came from. Based if Buffy never came back and Spike and Dawn got into a destructive relationship afterwards. They broke it off when she was around twenty or so.
Enjoy
He was beautiful. All angular and strong. I imagined being in those arms so many times. And then I was in his arms, those leather-clad arms, many times, also. It was all for the wrong reason, though. I just try not to think about it. Especially now, when it counts more.
He always had a particular smell. Smoke. Earth. Timeliness. That sent could always comfort me in ways nothing else could.
I asked him once, when I was much younger, why he smelled like dirt. He told me that when you're six feet under for how many hours, waiting to become a vampire, the dirt settles into your skin and marks you, like the decaying has already begun. And when you arise, you just keep that smell with you forever. He told me how many hours he tried scrubbing it off of his skin. It made him feel dirty in the beginning. But it wasn't just in the beginning. I remember, seeing him in the shower, getting it as hot as it could get, just trying to scrub it away. Apparently, he was embarrassed of his forever scent. Incidentally that's what I remember about him most.
He had the brightest blue eyes and the blondest hair-always bleached-and his leather duster. Those were only a couple signature traits. The saddest thing of all, that tore my heart more than anything, was that his face was fading from my memory. Sometimes at night I would try to think of him, try to dream up a picture of him. And every time I do, something always goes missing.
But, it's not as if he remembers me in his oldest ages anyway. He's off to living out burnt out memories of something better. Better than a couple scars on the wrist and a closet full of only bras and mini-skirts. Always thought I was below him. Well, it's all I had after the slayer stopped coming back after the seventh death. And he either patronized me for it or hated me for it. Most the time he hated me for it, though. I was just convent.
His age would be catching up with him, by now. If he wasn't dead and dust, that is. I imagined him the same: blue eyes mixing with gold, bottle bleach hair, black tipped fingernails, sardonic grin, all wrapped up in a leather duster. But thirty years was a long time. And they could do a lot to a person. True, he was a vampire and time had no meaning. Twenty years was a blink through time. But, all I wanted was him to be what I always had.
Maybe the memories would be better this time. Maybe not .
And it all comes back at me when I'm sitting at the graveyard, my body laid against the ground. It smells like him. Tears come to my eyes before I even know it and I hush them off.
The doctor said I didn't have long- the cancer was eating away at my lungs and there was really nothing left.
I find it poetic justice that I never smoked a day in my life. He smoked everyday though. More when time went on, though. Of course, the doctors don't believe me. They find it impossible for me to have such bad lung cancer without ever smoking.
I think I always knew it was his intention to kill me slowly.
I hear my body slowly shutting down. The whole bottle of pain killers are kicking in. It was, really, the only way. I wouldn't let that cancer damn kill me. Nor let the chemotherapy eat me up a live.
I never heard him coming, though. His boots were walking with grace, dodging all the twigs. Maybe he thought if he didn't make any noise then this wasn't real. I wanted him so much to make noise. He bent over and stared at me, probably disgusted at my actions and my old skin. And he had to be listening to my heart beat dramatically slow.
But I don't think it hit him until now.
"Dawn," he whispers, wet paths down his checks. I look up to the sky to see if it was raining, but no, the sky was clear. He was crying for me. I really didn't understand. I mumbled a noise, trying to ask "what". I didn't really know what was going on. But everything looked dull now. Not as sharp. And it's beautiful. i Like him /i .
He takes a knee beside me, grabbing my hand and pulling it toward him.
"Spike," I croak my voice dusty and acidic. It seemed like I haven't talked in years. It seemed right. Averting my head to the side, I made sure he kept his distance. Because it almost seemed real.
"You killed me."
And he looks away, for the last time.
