The kitchen was easy enough to find, at the back of the house. Spike even quickly spotted a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies on top of the refrigerator. He followed his routine of standing on a chair to retrieve them and also to get a glass. The milk was easier to grab, since he could reach the top shelf of the refrigerator without much trouble. Pouring the milk was the trickiest part of his job, but by clutching the carton with both hands, Spike was able to slowly fill his glass without spilling a drop.
It was surprising how much of an appetite he'd worked up. Enjoying every bite, Spike gorged himself on cookies, finished off three servings of milk, then rinsed out his glass, returned the remaining cookies to the top of the fridge, and prepared to explore the rest of the house. Dawn should be in school for hours, but he didn't know how long Buffy would be at work, or even what sort of work she was doing. He was going to do his best to find out now.
The living room seemed the most likely place to begin his hunt, so Spike trotted in that direction. He was still in the downstairs hallway, though, when he saw it--the front door, swinging open. Someone was entering the house. If it was Buffy and she didn't find him in her room where she had left him, the shit would hit the fan. He turned tail and ran as fast as his short legs would carry him, hitting the bottom of the staircase and scrambling up the steps on all fours like a rat, before he darted into Buffy's room, made a great leap onto the bed, and froze.
The front door closed, and footsteps started up the stairs. Spike waited, wondering who could be there. The steps came to the doorway of Buffy's bedroom and halted. Spike peeked out of the corner of his eye and mentally sighed with relief. It was Dawn.
She proceeded a few steps into the room and picked him up. "Buffy doesn't deserve to have you all to herself." It took Spike a moment to realize that she was talking about the puppet--him. Still holding Spike, Dawn jogged down the stairs and into the living room, where she set him on the couch and curled up next to him. "Who needs school anyway?" Dawn threw her backpack onto the floor and picked up the TV remote control.
Of all the days for Dawn to skip out, Spike grumbled to himself. Seeing that he didn't have much choice, though, he remained beside her as she turned on the TV and flicked past channel after channel, occasionally stopping here and there to watch an Italian game show or a news program.
Thoroughly bored, Spike was forced to stick it out for about two hours before Dawn got up and left the room. Naturally, he couldn't do the same no matter how badly he wanted to, but he did take the opportunity to stretch and shift position just a bit. A few minutes later, Dawn returned to the room, carrying a large bowl of vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate syrup. As she walked around the side of the couch, she stumbled over her backpack. The bowl flew out of her hands and landed right on Spike's head.
He jumped, Dawn jumped, and the bowl slid to the floor with a sickening splat. Fortunately, Dawn was too busy panicking to realize that Spike had moved on his own rather than as a result of her clumsiness. She was more disturbed by the fact that her sister's gift was a huge mess because of her. "Oh, no, Buffy's gonna kill me!"
'Not if I do it first,' Spike thought, somehow managing to hold still even as the cold ice cream and sticky syrup trickled down his head, across his face, and onto his duster.
He restrained himself from flashing his fangs while Dawn dashed into the kitchen with him, wet a dishcloth at the sink, and frantically scrubbed at the worst of the damage. "Come out, come out!" she urged aloud.
Spike could just feel it getting worse. The chocolate syrup was soaking into his face and Dawn's rough efforts were not improving his appearance. She must have noticed this problem too, because after several minutes she quit. Spike caught a glimpse of his distorted reflection on the side of the toaster and suppressed a growl of fury. Half of his face was brown. And then he saw that Dawn had suddenly brightened, like an idea had just occurred to her.
Spike really didn't like the look of the expression. A moment later, he found out why.
Dawn dropped the soiled washcloth and grabbed Spike again, toting him into a room set just off the kitchen. The laundry room. Realization hit Spike with the force of a tank as Dawn started the washing machine and her hand hovered over the array of products on the shelf.
'Not the bleach! Not the bleach!' Spike's inner voice screamed.
As if Dawn had heard him, she went for the detergent instead. Still, for a few seconds, Spike seriously considered making a run for it. After all, he sure as hell hadn't signed up for any of this crap. Then again, he'd already come so far and he didn't want to blow his cover. If he could just stick it out for another day, he'd be all right. He thought.
Before he could change his mind, Dawn hefted him and unceremoniously crammed him inside the washing machine. As the lid clanged shut, Spike found himself wrapped around the agitator with his arms pinned to his sides in the small, pitch-black space. Claustrophobia struck with a vengeance. He promptly forgot his resolution to stick it out and fought to escape, trying to twist around and shove open the lid. Too late. He couldn't find his way and the machine began to spin, whipping him around and hammering his head against the metal sides.
The torture felt like it lasted forever. At first Spike tried to battle back but the constant battering sapped his energy reserves and he eventually bowed to the inevitable, conserving the little strength he had left. When at long last the machine shuddered and ceased all movement, Spike lay, drained and exhausted.
Dawn hadn't forgotten about him. Within a few minutes, she flipped up the lid and pulled Spike out. He was soaked and miserable, and his nose and ears had come off during the spin cycle. Dawn didn't bother to reattach them, and Spike vaguely wondered why. But, he thought, at least his ordeal was over.
He was wrong. It turned out that Dawn hadn't replaced his nose and ears because she wasn't done with him yet. She turned to the dryer, adjusted the settings, and stuffed Spike and his loose parts into this new machine of horrors.
It didn't seem quite as bad as the washing machine. The dryer did have the advantage of being roomier, with a corresponding reduction in bouncing and pummeling. This advantage, however, turned out to be offset by the fact that it took a saturated puppet body quite a long time to dry. Twice Dawn checked on Spike's status, frowned, slammed the door, and started the cycle again. The third time, she hauled him out, held him at arm's length, and nodded in satisfaction. "Good as new!"
Spike wasn't so confident on that count. He felt as if he might have shrunk while in the dryer, and he spent the journey back to Buffy's room vowing revenge against Dawn and trying to figure out how best to exact it from his current position.
Thankfully, it seemed Dawn had decided to quit while she was behind. She restored Spike's nose and ears before she returned him to Buffy's room. The second she retreated, Spike settled back, determined to get some much-needed rest. He felt like he had bruises on top of his bruises.
He managed to fall into an uneasy nap that was interrupted by the closing of the front door and Buffy's voice calling, "Hey, Dawn, how was school today?"
"It was okay. Nothing much happened."
Spike repressed a snort. Oh, if only Buffy could know the truth.
He heard her moving around downstairs, from living room to kitchen and back, before she came upstairs. Spike was ready and playing dead as Buffy entered the room. She glanced at him, set her bag down, and crossed to the dresser to open the top drawer. With a thrill of horror, Spike remembered that he'd forgotten to replace her diary. He couldn't do anything now except helplessly watch as Buffy tried, and failed, to find the book. Her frustration was obvious; she even went so far as to pull out the drawer and dump the contents onto the floor so she could more easily sift through them.
Again not finding the diary, Buffy turned her head and looked directly at Spike. Her eyes narrowed. She continued to stare.
Spike discovered that he did not like this look at all. It was if Buffy had become suspicious of him.
She stood up. Spike lay so stiffly, he was sure he would develop a cramp.
Buffy strode over to the bed, lifted him, and studied him from head to foot. "Something isn't right."
Sure that she had caught on to the truth, Spike could only wait for the boom to fall.
So he was taken off guard when Buffy set him back down and strode out of the room. "Dawn!" she yelled. "Get your butt over here!"
The sisters met in the hallway. A very curious Spike had no problem hearing their entire conversation, and absolutely no desire not to.
Buffy started it, speaking in a quiet but firm voice. "You know, it's bad enough that you ate half of my favorite cookies, and threw your school junk around the living room, and did something to my Spike puppet that I haven't quite figured out yet, but you had to go and do that, too, didn't you?"
"Do what?" Dawn said defiantly.
"You-read-my-diary," Buffy said, emphasizing every word. "And you didn't even put the sense to put it back when you were done."
"I didn't touch it!" Dawn protested.
"Sure," Buffy replied in a tone that decidedly said she was anything *but* positive. "Tell me another one. You are in so much trouble right now."
Spike couldn't repress a sensation of intense satisfaction. Ordinarily he would have felt guilty about letting Dawn take the blame for his actions, but after what she'd done to him today, he thought she deserved whatever she got.