How To Kill Your Boyfriend In One Hard Lesson Chapter 7, an angel fanfic

Disclaimer: Don't own, etc., etc. Joss Whedon rules supreme and retains pretty much everything. Only written for personal enjoyment and because this plot bunny just wouldn't die, even after some serious staking…

Summary: Occurs after Brother, Unfortunately Mine. Rating 18 for sexual references. The sibling theme is not entirely played out …

HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON

Chapter 7 – The Fear Philosophy

"No problem. Give me a photograph and I'll go eviscerate him." Spike shrugged.

"Wait!" Dawn yelped. "I mean – what about your soul?"

"Allowed to kill evil things, love. I reckon 'psychotic demon boyfriend from hell' qualifies." Spike pointed out.

Dawn beamed at him. "I've been so scared." She admitted

"So you skipped on your sister the Slayer and came all the way south to LA to find…Spike?" Gunn looked at the peroxide blond vampire sceptically.

Dawn straightened her spine, taking exception to the black guy's disbelieving tone. "Spike protected me when nobody else could. He was almost killed protecting me from Glory. He was the only one out of all of them who talked to me like I wasn't a little kid or a retard, or who got all squirrelly and embarrassed and stuttering when it came to me drinking –"

"Spike let you drink?" Fred blurted.

"No, he didn't just let me drink." Dawn glared at them all, her distress and fear dissolving into a protective anger. "Spike let me see that a regular hangover is nothing to boast about, he also taught me all those lines guys come up with to get girls like me into the sack." She looked pointedly at Angel, Wesley and Gunn, who shared embarrassed she's-got-us-there glances and wisely kept silent as Harmony and Fred's faces also took on unfriendly, we-know-what-she-means-buster expressions.

Dawn heaved a sigh and her head drooped again. "That's how it began to…well, dawn on me, no pun intended…that Stefan wasn't all sweetness and light. At first he was cool when I wanted to wait and wouldn't…you know…straight away, but then one night he kept insisting on buying me mixers and Jack Daniels instead of beer. I got around that – tipped it all into a plant pot. After that, when that didn't work he started making these comments about, didn't I love him? How I was just stringing him along, and didn't I like him? What was wrong with him? He got really nasty when he said he'd been seeing me on my own with just Xander, or Andrew, or Principal Wood, or even Giles. I mean, Giles is like, my dad."

"So you dumped him and he went Norman Bates." Harmony finished for her, nodding wisely and then scowling as she became the cynosure of all eyes. "What are you people looking at? I went to Sunnydale High too, remember, Angel? I lost being able to ever look in a mirror again at my high school graduation, courtesy of the mayor who wanted to be a giant demon snake and eat the class of '99! Believe me, kid, you're lucky you realised what was happening so soon. That possessive machismo bullshit is great for about two days, then it becomes seriously terrorizing."

Dawn nodded. "I know! That's why I came. I mean, he's been making threatening calls, emails, sending me dead flowers with the heads cut off…he's gone totally off the deep end…"

"Don't you think he'll give up and move on if Dawn isn't around Sunnydale for a while?" Fred asked Harmony, without much hope; obsessive psycho-stalker guy situations rarely ended well. Look at what Knox had done to her in the name of claiming to 'love' her.

The blond vampiress shook her head slowly, "Sorry, Dawn, but from what you've said, this sounds like one of the bad ones." Harmony looked at Spike and Angel, her face serious, "I think you'll end up having to kill this one, it's probably the only way you'll be able to stop him."

"No problem, pet." Spike's voice was casually unconcerned, but his eyes were cold and flat and dead.

"The thing is…I don't understand." Dawn shook her head. "Why is he like this? Why do guys get like this? Where does all this -" Dawn deepened her voice into a sort of cartoonish Homer Simpson grunt, "I'm-superior-'cause-I've-balls-instead-of-boobs- and-I-own-you," reverting to her normal tone she finished, "- shit actually come from? He was the one in the wrong!"

There was an uncomfortable silence as the male contingent found themselves being regarded with unanimous chilly yeah-we'd-like-to-know looks from the female side. Showing courage, if possibly not much sense, Angel finally attempted weakly, "Well…"

"Fear."

Everyone looked at Wesley as the Englishman spoke with quiet authority.

"Fear?" Dawn looked down at herself. "What is there to be scared of here, exactly?"

"Not you personally." Wesley explained. "All men fear women for one very simple reason. Women don't really need men, and men have always lived in terror of you all realising that."

"Well, sure, we can a get bit rambunctious but we're pretty essential to the whole continuation-of- the-species thing, Wes." Gunn pointed out.

"Not really." The Englishman shrugged. "It would need less than twenty men to provide sufficient genetic diversity to support a healthy population of several billion people. Keep about a dozen of the best specimens – the great minds like Nelson Mandela, Dr Stephen Hawking et al, plus a few beefcakes – and kill the rest."

"You're not serious?" Angel asked in amazement.

"As a heart attack. If tomorrow morning all men bar those few were executed, all wars on this planet would instantly cease. You would also get rid of over ninety percent of the world's murderers, rapists, paedophiles and all-other-criminals in one fell swoop. All the billions that male-dominated military organisations poured into making nastier and bigger weapons would instead be used for things like medical care, education, housing, ecological conservation, space exploration and so on. Every hundred years or so they could let a few male babies mature enough to harvest fresh DNA to maintain human biodiversity before they killed them."

"So we're only needed for our sperm and the heavy lifting?" Gunn challenged before realising he had uttered the s-word in front of Dawn, who merely looked fascinated at Wesley's theory.

"We're not needed for either. Microwaves, washing machines, lawnmowers you can ride and the motorcar – just for a start - mean a woman doesn't really need a lot of muscle anymore. Sperm banks and IVF have removed the need for a either parent to be actually present for procreative sex and as for recreational sex, Hanson's Double Ridged Big Boy vibrator is all you really need for multiple orgasms without mess, fuss and other drawbacks, such as the constant need to fake orgasms that could win an Oscar™ and believably tell ego-massaging lies."

"Hanson's what?" Dawn blurted.

"Okay!" What little blood in Angel's body there was dashed to his face so he could flush in deep embarrassment, "We really don't need a sociological debate, here. This Stefan is a Big Bad, that's all we need to know. Dawn, you can stay –"

"No." Dawn cut him off. "No offence to anyone, I mean, I'm sure you're all very nice, but I intend to be Spike's shadow…Unless you and Harmony..?"

"Uh, no. Great timing of yours though, Little Bit. Up until a few days ago I was having to crash on Dr Strangelove here's couch and he's only got one bedroom. Fortunately for you, I now – "

"Squat uninvited and non-paying in the hotel that I own." Angel interjected.

"Can't believe how I forgot about your fun dog-in-the-manger 'tude." Spike shot back. "It's got five floors, sixty-two inhabitable bedrooms, plus Olympic sized swimming pool with sauna, spa pool, and health suite. Just ignore my grumpy granddad -"

"Stop calling me that."

Wesley hastily cut in, "If you could give us a photograph or drawing of your…er…ex…so we know who to look for and I'll see what I can dig up on his species, stat."

"Thanks." Dawn beamed at them all gratefully.

"Er…not to rain on this parade or anything, children," Lorne inserted at this juncture, "but aren't we forgetting the Slayer?"

"I don't want Buffy to know about this!" Dawn exclaimed almost jumping off Spike's lap in alarm. "I feel enough like a naïve idiot as it is. I want to deal with this on my own. I've got to learn to – I can't go whining to Buffy every time I do something stupid."

"That's admirably adult of you, cinnamon bun, but I've been around the block enough times to know - it ain't gonna happen." Lorne contradicted. "These things have a way of taking on a life of their own and going public at – usually – the worst possible moment for certain parties to become aware of what went down. I'm sure I don't need to recite some of our more spectacular low points?"

There was a charged silence as Lorne looked very pointedly in turn at Angel, Gunn and Wesley. None of the three men could look at the other two as each one recalled less than shining hours, as the empath demon intended. When Wesley's informant the demon Merl had been murdered, Gunn's loyalties being torn between his old crew and Angel Investigations had nearly gotten all of Team Angel killed at Caritas – he had lied to Wesley and stolen evidence from the crime scene; Angel had flat out lied about having sex with Darla and had reaped a whirlwind of repercussions; instead of turning to his friends, Wesley had tried to avert the father will kill the son prophecy on his own, leading to his own personal road trip down the famous highway of good intentions straight to hell.

Satisfied that he had made his point, Lorne continued, "Take it from me, chocolate muffin, your big sis and her company are going to find out at some point what is going on, and not only is Buffy going to be very angry and deeply hurt that you didn't go to her or the Scooby Gang for help, but I'm guessing she's not going to be enthralled that your first alternative choice was to scoot for LA and hook up with her two ex-squeezes for help."

Continued in Chapter 8…