Chapter 6

Spike then walks back over to the clothes shop and knocks on the window letting Dawn know it was time to go. A few minutes later she exits the store with a large bag and they make their way back to the house. "Give me a minute bit and I'll fix us some lunch." Dawn nods and goes to her room to sort out the things she had bought at the store. Spike then walks off to his office and takes the things he bought out and puts them into the cabinets around the room. He takes one of the canvases and places it on the collapsible easel he bought yesterday.

Spike then heads towards the kitchen and fixes the both of them chicken ramen soup with a sandwich so they can dip it in the broth. When he sets the bowls down on the table he places a set of chopsticks in each bowl and then calls for Dawn while the soup is still hot. Spike then brings out a drink for both of them. He pops an orange soda for dawn and then heats up some blood for himself, sitting the drinks down just as Dawn comes into the dining room.

When they are both done with lunch Dawn helps Spike wash the dishes then she retreats to her room to write in the diary she just picked up about the past few days with Spike. Spike returns to his office where he promptly unwraps the paints and pencils he brought. He stands in front of the easel with a pencil and begins to draw a face, one new to his memory one he would not easily forget.

It took Spike an hour to get everything the way he wanted it to be, for a while it was frustrating trying to make everything perfect for when he would paint over it. He was mostly doing outlines anyway and leaving the finer things to the paints. When he was done with the drawing he picks up the palate and begins to apply the main colors for the piece. The most of them creams along with some non-metallic bronze's and gold's and a honey.

The strange pencil lines begin to make more sense as they become the shoulders and face of a woman with her head pointed slightly to the left side. When Spike is done with the shoulders, face, and hair of the woman he cleans his palate and applies a variety of metallic and non-metallic greens, and several reds/pinks, white, and black. With a fine brush he outlines the body and the eyes, nose, lips, ears, as well as some pieces of hair, mostly in black. He paints the eyes with several shades of green, white and black for the outline and adds on with a fine brush a bit of green metallic for eye shadow and also with a fine brush adds on the eye lashes. He layers on the reds and pinks for the lip color and for the cheeks.

When he is almost finished he leans back some to observe, it has taken several more hours for him to paint everything in. He washes the colors off his palate again and puts on a metallic gold so he can add a pair of simple earrings to the picture then he takes a kohl colored paint and adds it sparsely to the palate and he signs his name at the bottom in his best calligraphy.

Spike takes a step back away from the painting and nods, he walks to the sink again and washes the palate and then leaves it to dry in a drying rack. He then thoroughly washes his hands with soap made to take off paint. He moves to large looking device and turns it on so it would suck some of the moisture out of the room.

Spike walks out of the room leaving the painting to dry, he walks into the kitchen and frowns as he sees Dawn eating a sandwich with the chip container next to her. Spike walks into the room and raises an eyebrow. "Hungry are we?"

Dawn jumps at Spikes' voice and then relaxes when she sees him in the doorway. "What?" She says in an innocent voice. "I was hungry, a girls gotta eat!"

"You should of knocked on the door and told me so I could make us dinner."

Dawn shakes her head, "You were painting, besides I sort of didn't want to ruin your groove, you've been in there for like five and a half hours." She was also wondering what he was painting in there, to keep him occupied for so long. "Sit down," she says pointing to the chair across from her. Dawn stands up and goes to the fridge taking out and emptying a blood-bag into a mug and heating it up. She snacks on some chips while the blood heats up and then takes it out and sets it in front of Spike.

"I take it by the fact that you are loving on that cushioned seat that you haven't brought a tall stool to sit on for when your painting?"

"No, not yet I haven't seen a store yet in town that would sell that, besides we would have to take a cab back home."

"M'kay, so when can I see this work of art you have been working on for the past five and a half hours?"

Spike sighs and then downs the blood in his mug, reluctantly rises from the comfy chair and sits the mug in the sink and fills it with water. "This way."

Dawn grins and jumps up from her chair and follows Spike to his studio, before Spike opens the door he turns and looks at Dawn. "Promise me you won't laugh."

"I won't laugh Spike, now let me see." Dawn walks through the door and takes a look at the painting on the easel. "Oh…. wow!"

tbc…