Disclaimer: The characters belong to Joss Whedon.
Timeline: less than two years post NFA (Angel), about three years post Chosen (BtVS)
Set about seven years before the events of my Wes/Faith story, "Needed".
Background:
Spike is the only known survivor of the big battle in NFA. A few months after that battle, Spike meets Faith. Faith was several months pregnant – the child's father, complete mystery for everyone so far. Spike and Faith stick together in a completely non sexual way. They work as treasure hunters and demon fighters, rogue demon fighters :)
Faith and Spike are invited at Dawn's wedding, in Cleveland.
Pairing: Spike/Dawn
Rating: T for now. Definitely M next chapter.
Not beta'd. Please excuse the errors. This story popped out when I was working on chapter 15 of "Dawn's Fine". This is my first Spike/Dawn story. It will not be long. 2-3 chapters at most.
Please review!
Dawn's Wedding
Chapter 1
Spike took the baby chair out of the car. The boy was sleeping peacefully and he had mercifully done so for the past few hours of the journey. It wasn't that he didn't like the little tyke, but there was nothing like a crying child to make driving across the country unbearable. Alex Lehane remained angelically quiet. The vampire reached for the diaper bag with his free hand, and pushed the car door close with his backside. He was the Big Bad, for crying out loud! Why did he know what to do about a one-year-old with a tummy ache?
He looked over to Faith. She was getting stuff out of the trunk. She slung the clothes bag over her shoulder, took the dry-cleaned dress that had been hanging from one of the backseat windows and draped her dress carefully over her arm. Spike knew her well enough by now to be able to read the tension in her body. They hadn't seen the Summers' and the rest of the Scoobies in a while. Faith had met them in L.A. when they were looking for the survivors of the anti Wolfram and Hart crusade, but the last Spike had seen of them was the hours before he burnt to a crisp in the Hellmouth.
They stopped in front of the door, hesitating only briefly before ringing the bell. They had been invited, so presumably the reception was not going to be too unpleasant.
Dawn's wedding... Spike was still having a hard time believing that the little Nibblet was getting married. It felt as if only the other day she was sneaking into his crypt to listen to horror tales from his past. But it hadn't been the other day. That had last happened more than six years earlier.
The vampire could hear the commotion behind the front door. The last wedding he'd crashed was Anya's and the whelp's. He hoped that this one was going to be spared any last minute dramatic exits. If some guy broke Dawnie's heart, he had it in him to hunt the son of a bitch down and kill him. Slowly. He had been too wrapped up in his own troubles with the Slayer to give a good walloping to young Harris about doing that to Anya.
Thinking of Alexander Harris gave him the creeps. He was still a little upset that Faith had chosen him as her child's godfather. He understood her reasoning in part. Although they had begun their partnership less than two years ago, Spike could tell that it was going to last, and if they ever got into trouble, Alex needed to have someone else to count on.
The door finally opened, and they saw the head of a girl, probably a young Slayer, peering at them over a basket of roses.
"Hi there! I'm Faith, this is Spike. Can we come in?" Faith said seeing the lack of recognition in the girl's face.
"Umm," the girl hesitated.
"Screw this," Faith said and turned around to leave.
Spike caught her arm and held her back.
"We've been invited, Pet," he said, taking the rumpled invitations from the pocket of his duster.
"Oh, come on in," the girl said stepping aside to allow them to enter.
Spike walked in, pulling a still reluctant Faith after him. So she was ready to turn tail and run. Nothing was ever so easy. Sooner or later, they both had to deal with this part of their past. He dreaded seeing Buffy again, knew that none of them was going to believe that his relationship with Faith was not sexual, but he wanted this dealt with.
They were still in the hallway when he saw Buffy hurry down the stairs with a piece of chiffon in her hand. She stopped dead when she saw them. Spike looked at her, trying to measure how much she was still affecting him. She was so beautiful... Her hair was slightly longer and lighter than he remembered, but for some reason it looked more tangled than had ever gotten when she was fighting. He had smelled her nervousness before she had even seen him, so he was not harboring any illusions that her state of disarray had anything to do with him. She was anxious about the wedding. She had acted for years as Dawn's mother, father, sister and friend, there was no reason to think that the preparation for little sis's wedding could leave her calm.
"Slayer," he said in greeting.
He saw her eyes flicker from his face to his body, then travel to the child in his arms, then at Faith. He felt her grow colder and it hurt. They had spoken on the phone, and he had explained her the situation, but there was no denying that he, Faith and Alex looked like a family. His heart sunk a little more. The spark was still in his chest, and although it had ceased being an all-consuming fire, it pained him to see how little his words mattered against her prejudiced eyes.
"Welcome, guys," Buffy said. "Come on, let me show you to your rooms."
She climbed back up the stairs and motioned them to follow.
"I left my stuff in the car," Spike said, and handed Faith the baby.
Faith reached to take the chair, but Buffy got it first. Her hand touched Spike's and the vampire felt a tingle go up his arm. Buffy turned around and continued her way upstairs.
"Thanks," Faith said, and followed Buffy.
Spike lit up a cigarette as soon as he was out the door. One of the discomforts of sharing his life with Faith was the no smoking policy. At first, she was pregnant, and then he couldn't smoke for the boy's sake.
"Some things never change," a woman's voice came from the darkness.
Sounded a little like Dawn, but there was too much of change for it to be her. He tried to guess from the smell, but the woman's smell was mixed up with so many others, that he could not identify it, though logic told him that it was probably the bride to be. She had probably been kissed and hugged by dozens of people every day.
He startled when the shape grew into focus. It was Dawn, and yet it was not. He had tried to talk himself into expecting to see a woman and not the little girl he knew, but neither his mind, not his heart had listened. The shock however, came from the color of her hair. Not only it was was not as long as he remembered, but it was black. When she came all the way into the light, he saw that her eyes were black, too. He thought of Drusilla, and his heart ached with longing as it hadn't in years.
He wondered if she realized how much she reminded him of his dark goddess. No. She probably did not remember Drusilla. Even in her fabricated memories, she would've been too young when they had first arrived in Sunnydale.
"'lo, Pet. How've you been?"
"Fine," she said.
She reached toward his cigarette. He relinquished it, too surprised to refuse.
"Nerves," she explained, drawing in a deep breath.
"Worried about tomorrow?"
"Weddings are hell. I begged Willow to use magick to smooth things over, but she's holding tight to her 'no magick unless absolutely necessary' policy. Sucks!" she said and returned him the cigarette. "I missed you so much, Spike!" she added, in a tone he hadn't heard from her in years.
"Not mad at me anymore then?"
"Stopping the end of the world kinda made it difficult."
She was trying to sound like her teenage self, but everything about her was telling Spike she was a grown woman. Her poise alone destroyed any illusions he might have had to see something of his old Dawn. The resemblance to Dru was there, he realized. It hadn't been just the shock of her changed color scheme.
He wondered if he should hug her. He had missed her. Her friendship, her crushy, teenagy adoration, her vulnerability. When he stretched his arm to offer her the cigarette again, he sensed it. The smell of a man on her skin. Not on her clothes, not in her hair, but on her skin, mixed with her most intimate scent. He looked at her lips again, and realized that they did not look poutier from any cosmetic products. They were swollen from kisses.
He took another cautious sniff and the distinct scent of arousal hit him from underneath all the others. She had just come back from having sex with, presumably, her fiancé. The smell jolted his dormant libido. Hanging around with Faith and her kid had ruined his sex life. He grew embarrassingly hard, and he felt ashamed that little Dawnie had been able to cause this even without trying.
Spike threw the cigarette to the ground, stepped on it and got his gear out of the car.
"C'mon, Bit. Gotta get my kit inside."
to be continued...