A/N: Let's get something straight. I WILL NOT, after this, post any chapters until someone reviews. I only need ONE REVIEW, okay? If only one person wants to read this, I will write for that one person. But it isn't okay if you just subscribe to the story. It makes me so mad when people do that without reviewing. So you take the time to read the whole thing but then you can't take two seconds to tell me what I could do better. I know for a fact that my writing is not perfect, but how am I supposed to know what I'm doing wrong if you won't review? God, people, it isn't that freaking complicated! Everyone says this. JUST REVIEW THE FREAKING STORY, OKAY? Every fanfiction author will tell you to review. No one doesn't want you to review. SO JUST REVIEW.
Guardianship
Chapter Two
Dawn opened the backseat door and placed her box on the seat. She then opened the shotgun door and climbed in the front seat.
"Hey, Bit," Spike said.
"Hi."
They went the rest of the ride in silence, Dawn trying to anticipate what her new life with Spike would be like. Probably, if Dawn was to be honest with herself as she normally was, it would be better than life with Buffy. Spike would have time to spend with her, stories to tell, and food besides Doublemeat Medlies. (A/N: I don't think I spelled that right, but SpellCheck has no suggestions.). Besides, Spike was way cooler than Buffy.
"Well," Spike said, pulling into a car park about a block from his crypt, "we walk from here, Niblet. I'll get your box."
Dawn put her hands inside the pockets of her favorite hoodie. It was emerald green with blue swirls and a picture of a baby blue butterfly. In wispy curled letters it said, "sky flakes." Modeled after her favorite poem. Most people didn't get it, of course, but that didn't matter to Dawn.
Side by side, Spike and Dawn made their way to the cemetery.
"Wait," Dawn said. "What happens if they send another Social Services lady?"
"Red and Tara are getting an apartment. It's listed as my address."
Dawn nodded. Wow. They really did have this whole thing planned well. The only thing they hadn't told Dawn about was possibly the most important part.
"What do I tell my friends?"
"Big sis Buffy is broke, but she loves you so much that she simply couldn't make you go through the horror of living out your remaining adolescence as a maid at a bed-and-breakfast, so she sent you to live with her long-time boyfriend William Livston, nicknamed Spike after the bloke on Passions. Anyway, Spike has loved you like the little sister he never had since he and Buffy officially got together in the eighth grade. He writes regular poetry and short stories that are published in hard-to-find volumes, earning him a salary of $150,000 per year, as these volumes are often used as literary textbooks."
"Okay. Whoa."
Soon they were there. Spike opened the door with his foot and held it open for Dawn. She went in, holding her breath…
… for nothing. The crypt looked exactly the same as it always had.
"Downstairs," Spike said, gesturing toward the trapdoor. Dawn opened it and climbed down the ladder.
Spike moved ahead of her, opening the door and dropping the box inside the room. He gestured toward the door. "I'll let you be alone, Bit," he said.
Dawn walked slowly into her new room. She picked up the box and then…
Oh. My. God.
The paint was pastel purple and sky blue horizontal stripes, clearly Xander's work. Gotta love glorified bricklayers. The bed frame had four posters with a gauzy canopy over it. There was a light purple computer desk with a brand-new Mac laptop sitting on it, a note next to it reading, Expect no more gifts from Anya. Ever.
But best of all was the Corner, as Dawn immediately named it. Three beanbags sat there, surrounded by shelves of books.
Not just normal books, either. Magic books. Spell books, demon identifications, even a few books of prophecies. Not the more important ones, just a few minor books, most of which had already happened.
Dawn needed to unpack her stuff, though. The books were first. The eight Anne of Green Gables books finished off another rack. The Harry Potters used another.
Then clothes; those were simple. Closet. Socks, underwear, and pajamas in the drawers.
She pulled her journals out of the box and placed them in the leftover drawer.
There. She was done.
Dawn left the room and went back upstairs. When she saw the scene before her, she dissolved into a fit of giggles.
Spike was attempting to make a can of Chef Boyardee in a shiny new microwave. But the soup was still in the can, not a bowl, so it kept sparking and occasionally catching fire.
"Sodding appliances," Dawn heard him curse. But then he turned around and saw her watching him. "Right. It's not what it looks like."
"Do you need some help?"
"No. If I'm to be your guardian, I need to know how to use the bloody microwave."
Dawn rolled his eyes and went over to him. "Okay, first, you never put metal, aluminum, or plastic in a microwave. Plastic will melt - I learned that when I was five and wanted to melt some butter for my popcorn in a dinosaur cup - and aluminum and metal will catch on fire, like you just witnessed. Tupperware can go in and so can glass and ceramic."
"So you're saying it needs to go in a bowl."
"Yup. That's exactly what I'm saying."
Spike reached around her and pulled a Tupperware bowl out of a cabinet that Xander had apparently hung on the wall.
Dawn poured the ravioli into the bowl and stuck it back in the microwave for a minute.
"Wait, Bit. It said three minutes on the can," Spike argued.
"Yeah, but you have to stir it in the middle or else it gets all crusty around the edges," she told him.
Spike looked taken aback. "But doesn't stuff usually cook evenly?"
"Um, no. I don't think any modern appliances cook evenly. I mean, you could cook over an open fire, but even that doesn't cook evenly. So stirring it halfway through is what you always should do… "
The microwave beeped. Dawn pulled out the soup, stirred it, and stuck it back in for two minutes.
"God, how do you stand it?" Spike asked after a minute.
"Stand what?" Dawn asked.
"All this waiting!"
Dawn gave him a weird look. "Okay, so you've been a vampire for - what - one hundred and twenty years and you can't wait three minutes for the ravioli to be done? Plus, when you were a human, didn't it take forever to cook stuff?"
"Well, yeah, but there were maids that did it and while they were cooking, we were off doing other things."
"Like what? Writing poetry and dreaming about Cecily?" Dawn snorted. From what both Buffy and Spike had told her, that was about all he did as a human. That and take care of his mom, which was actually pretty cool. It reminded her of Buffy, just a little bit.
"That and other stuff. We did have lessons, you know. Arithmetic, languages, spelling. Dancing, occasionally, but not as much."
"Dancing? Really? As in waltzes? What about the salsa? Did that even exist then?" Dawn asked, half mocking, half legitimately curious.
"Waltz, yeah, but not salsa. We were only taught what we needed to know when it came to things like that. My mum always thought that the more academic fields were more important than the trivial."
"Trivial like stupid stuff right?"
Spike scoffed at her apparent ignorance. Hmm. That had never happened to Dawn before. "You bloody modern colonial teenagers. No, Dawn, that isn't what it means. Tri means three, doesn't it? Well, the trivium is… oh, never mind. It's not like you would get it. You people never use the words that matter anymore, do you? Oh, God, I sound like Giles. Someone put a stake in me."
Dawn laughed. Then - "Hey! I'm not stupid! I would totally get it if you bothered to explain it to me."
"Well, right, Bit. You're smarter than most of the kiddies your age, but this is one of those 'you'd-have-to-have-been-there' concepts that wouldn't make sense to someone your age. It would have to have been ingrained into your mind since you were a teensy-weensy little baby so that it's part of your subconscious mind. When I was little, I used to have dreams about the - " he laughed. "Never mind. Your food's ready. The microwave just beeped."
A/N: In case you're interested in learning about the trivium, look it up on Wikipedia. I just remembered that fanfiction won't let me post links in my stories for fear that I'm a zombie spammer. It's really quite fascinating. I learned about it in a class on writing trivia in nerd camp (yup. That place I was at for two weeks when I should have been beta reading. XD) and it was one of those things I figured I could incorporate using the ever-useful Spike.