Fatal Splinters.
A/N: This originally appeared as a flashback in a longer story, but had to be cut for continuity purposes. However, a couple of reviewers seemed to like this little meeting between Spike and Dawn in Season Four, and I have a little soft spot for it myself, so I decided to post it as a drabble.
The original story will be reposted soon (I have a week off work, which I'm spending in deepest Yorkshire – what else am I going to do except sit in bed and write fanfiction?) as I haven't quite worked out how to edit stories that have already been posted, mainly because I am deeply stupid.
As introductions went, it wasn't the most promising.
"Ooo, scary vampires – they die from a splinter," Dawn taunted the vampire who sat chained in Giles's bathtub. She'd snuck through the door while the Scoobies were having a meeting, seemingly on a mission to annoy him into spontaneous combustion.
Spike growled and lunged forward as far as the manacles would allow, desperate to wring her scrawny little neck. He got the impression that she'd been waiting to use that particular quip for a while. Probably had a draft of it in the diary she always carried, like Harriet the bleedin' Spy. "Take more than a splinter to protect you when I get out of these sodding chains!"
To his horror she seemed to find this threat amusing, which she demonstrated by perching on the rim of the bath tube to flash him a zillion-watt smile. "You kiss my sister with that mouth?"
So she'd heard about Willow's spell, and the shortest lived engagement in history. Bugger. Picking up the tattered remnants of his dignity, Spike slumped back and stared fixedly at the shower curtain.
"Besides, even if you were unchained you couldn't bite me," she yattered on. "They don't think I know about the Initiative but I'm not stupid – there's a lot you can learn by pressing glasses to doors around here. Like your chip, for instance. That is so cool. And it raises lots of like, deep philosophical questions. I mean if they don't stake you."
"How do you figure?" Spike asked, intrigued in spite of himself.
"Well, for instance, it would be interesting to see how you adapt to, like, the whole non-evil thing..."
"Hey! Still evil, here."
"Do me a favour and keep your knickers untwisty? You're aready doing way better than Angel – all he did when he got his soul back was mooch around and brood. I suppose no-one with hair that weird could be redeemable. I mean, have you seen it? It's like it has it's own centre of gravity or something. Can you imagine what that does to his brain ... assuming he has one, that is."
She tilted her head to one side like a curious squirrel, giving his peroxide-do a appraising glance, then started scribbling in her notebook at an alarming rate.
Spike watched her suspiciously. Little Bit might be tossing around dangerous terms like 'non-evil' and 'redeemable', but somewhere in that sentance she'd earned a smidgen of his respect.
"So," he ventured, his lips curling into a sly grin. "What else does Captain Forehead do to—"
"Dawn! What the hell are you doing?!"
It was Buffy, standing in the doorway with her stake hand twitching dangerously. Spike fixed her with his most obnoxious smirk – not the most intelligent thing for a restrained vampire to do in the presense of an irate slayer, but this one seemed more intent on lecturing the sullen teen in front of her than in ramming said 'splinter' through his chest. She grabbed the Bit's shoulders and shook them. Hard. "Don't you listen to a word I say? Don't talk to the vampire. Don't start conversations with the vampire. Don't so much as blink in the vampires direction – comprende?"
"He started it!"
"Did not!" yelled Spike, outraged.
Buffy shot him a warning glare, but her attention soon snapped back to Dawn. "I don't care if it talks. I don't care if it launches into a full scale performance of Hakuna Matata complete with backing singers – you never talk back. It's evil, and soulless, and stupid, and..."
Personally, Spike thought the lady did protest too much – an opinion the Bit seemed to share. Shrugging her shoulders she concluded, with supreme nonchalance, "He's okay."
Spike opened his mouth to protest then shut it again. Okay, was he? Well. That was sort of ... neat.