Wednesday, January 22
Dear Diary,
My sister thinks I'm blind.
Dawn paused, twirling her pen between two fingers.
And deaf too. She thinks I don't know what's going on. That I'm completely oblivious to all the mega-watt-pining completely-in-love-and-sick-about-it looks she's been giving Spike.
Seriously, how has no one figured it out yet!? Like, hello, open your eyes, people! They're not even being subtle, just right there, in broad almost daylight! (No, I did not eat that burger! Not after I saw what they did on top of it! Shocking revelation, Buffy: the kitchen has windows! Who knew!?).
I really can't take it anymore.
And so, I think it's time to play a little game I like to call:
How Far Will My Sister Go To Prove She's Not In Love With Spike?
Or, for short:
Torture Buffy Until She Cracks. And I mean torture.
Stay tuned ;)
Oh my God, this is torture.
Buffy stood at the sink, scrubbing a pan until it felt like her elbow was going to come off at the hinge. Slayer strength and stamina couldn't hold a candle to whatever Dawn had baked into permanence over the pan's non-stick coating.
Non-stick my ass…
She wiped a wrist across her forehead and realized she was still wearing her cow-slash-chicken hat. She dragged it off her head and dumped it on the kitchen island before rallying for round two. It was a fight to the death now.
Ten minutes of vicious scrubbing finally removed the caked-on charcoal/grease monstrosity, and Buffy flexed her fingers for the next fight.
It was going to be an all-nighter.
Wrists deep in soapy water, she let her mind drift. Floating down into the gutter where all the dark thoughts she was striving to keep at bay lingered along with every memory of all the other all-nighters she'd been partaking in lately.
Her gaze drifted willfully to the tree outside in the yard, pulling her thoughts there too; to the memory of Spike's tongue in her mouth as his fingers had worked their way under her sweater, slowly excavating bare skin with relentless determination. The tree bark had tangled her hair as he'd savaged her throat with his mouth, teeth sharp enough to raise the hairs on the nape of her neck. A near-silent pop and the button of her jeans had been deftly opened. His chest had pressed her hard into the tree, crushing her breasts against his chest, no safe distance to retreat to as his hand had slid down her stomach and between her thighs—
"Are you in love with Spike?"
Buffy fumbled the cup she was holding, dropping it back into the sudsy water as she turned to gape over her shoulder at Dawn, leaning with aggressive teenage nonchalance in the kitchen doorway.
"What?!"
Dawn shrugged. "It's a simple question."
"It's an insane question," Buffy bit back, trying to tame her heart out of its bolt back into a saner tempo.
"I'm just asking cus I saw you making major eye contact during, you know, the birthday party that wouldn't end," Dawn continued, unperturbed, sliding onto a stool at the kitchen island.
Buffy let a very careful breath through her nose and with it, a silent prayer that the only evidence Dawn had was some harmless staring.
Like there's anything harmless when it comes to Spike, she silently berated herself.
"Yeah, well, when you're trapped inside a house for twenty-seven hours there's a finite amount of things to look at, should be your take away there," she replied tightly, rinsing off the last mug and pulling the plug from the sink.
"So, you're not in love with him?"
"No, Dawn," Buffy snapped, trying to find something to dry her pruned hands-on and settling for the shirt she was wearing. It was dirty anyway.
"Prove it then."
Buffy looked up at that, her brows furrowed.
"Huh?"
Dawn slid a piece of paper across the island, the edges slightly curled where it had been held in her hand. Written in Xander's wide loopy capitals was RICHARD 555-6716
"Prove it," Dawn repeated.
Buffy scoffed.
"I don't need to go out with Richard to prove I'm not in love with Spike. The not being in love with him will accomplish that all by itself," she said, striding to the fridge. There was no food in it (which she'd expected, considering she was the one not buying the groceries) but it was at least somewhere to look that wasn't Dawn's accusing, slightly smug stare.
"There's no food in that fridge," Dawn said, and Buffy rolled her eyes. "But d'you know where there is food? Dinner with Richard."
"Fascinating."
"Probably super interesting conversation too. All the flirting to be had? A whirlwind romance sort of thing."
"Sounds like a super not-to-be-missed thing," Buffy grumbled sarcastically.
"Great!" Dawn squeaked, clearly ignoring the sarcasm. "Because actually, the phone number was a bluff, I already told him you'd meet him Friday."
Buffy spun.
"Dawn!"
"I mean you're not working right?" Dawn continued, talking in a rush as though trying to cram as much persuasion as possible into the handful of seconds before Buffy detonated. "And anyway, if you had a nice, normal boyfriend, you know, of the human variety, maybe Spike would get the message. You do want him to get the message, don't you?"
Buffy glared at her, but it did nothing to stop the way Dawn's mouth kicked up at the side into a facsimile of an innocent smile.
"What message are we talking about?"
Dawn fiddled absentmindedly with the card containing Richard's phone number.
"That it's just sex between you guys?"
Buffy's stomach dropped, mouth partially and damningly open, too shocked for the protests she should have been shrieking.
She knows.
She knows, Oh God, she knows everything. Please tell me she doesn't know everything!? How does she know?!
Panic turned icy like drying sweat on her skin. Her upper hand had suddenly become a no-hand. She was losing this stand-off and she could feel it.
The only question now was by how much.
"I'm not having sex with Spike," she lied, her voice thin and unconvincing, a blush already creeping up from her neck to her cheeks, ready to testify against her.
Dawn smiled that sickeningly pleasant smile again.
"Oh," she said, nodding. "Okay."
"I'm not!"
"Sure. Okay."
"Stop saying 'okay', I'm n—"
"Hey, guys. What're we yelling about?" Willow asked, slumping into the kitchen, already dressed for bed. Buffy's gaze flicked to the wall clock above Dawn's head and realized it was well past midnight.
"Nothing, uh—" Buffy attempted and shot a glare at Dawn (who should've been asleep instead of heading for a full throttling).
"Buffy's going on a date with Richard," Dawn interrupted with a happy bounce in her seat.
Willow's brows raised slightly as she poured an only-recently-cleaned glass of water. "With Birthday Stab Guy?"
"No—?!" Buffy sputtered.
"He prefers Richard," Dawn said over her.
"That's great." Willow finished her glass of water and stood the empty glass back on the dirty side of the sink. "You've been working way too hard, Buff, you know; vampire slaying, burger flipping—"
"Tree hugging," Dawn added to the list and the blood fully drained from Buffy's face.
Oh my God…
Willow nodded, obliviously. "Yeah, you should make with the fun, you know? When is it?"
"When's what?" Buffy stuttered around the look she was trying to liquify Dawn with.
"Your date?" Willow prompted. "When-age?"
Dawn raised a checkmate eyebrow and Buffy swallowed, her cheeks cherry red as she tried desperately to strategize; it was dinner with Richard, or she could protest further and risk Dawn spilling the beans. So many beans. Beans everywhere…
Her heart skipped several beats in panic.
She couldn't. She just… she couldn't.
So that was it. She was KO'd.
Dinner with Richard, she internally pouted. Ugh, Dinner with Can't-Turn-Myself-Away Richard.
To reiterate: ugh.
She let out a breath and fixed her face with as much casual indifference as possible.
"Friday," she answered, forcing a tight smile.
Thursday, January 23
Dear Diary,
Phase one complete.
Time for phase two…
Spike pushed his way through the sewer grate into the bottom level of the crypt, slicing through the cellophane on a fresh pack of cigarettes with his canine. The sun was still a ways off setting and he hadn't been able to wait. He was burning through smokes and booze at what would've been a terminally carcinogenic rate if he'd been human.
Things were getting unbearable.
He'd once thought—what felt like millennia ago—that if he could just sink his cock into the Slayer he could fuck her out of his system. That had been back when dressing Harmony up in her clothes had still been enough to tide him over.
Back before Buffy had properly wormed her way into his heart.
Back before he'd lost her, and before she'd come back.
And now it was all so… intolerable. It had been intolerable for a while, and it was just getting worse and worse. A little bit of flirting (or maybe more like snide banter for her, but the heat still counted), and a little (no, actually, bollocks to that he wasn't going to sell himself short, it was a lot) of eye contact surrounded by her friends had been just as intoxicating as the times he'd been buried in her. Just as promising. As hopeful.
But suddenly it was back to radio silence, and Christ that hurt. It really bloody well hurt! It was like two steps forward, one step back–losing his footing–and crash-landing at the bottom all over again.
Bloody hell, it's torture…
The first drag of the cigarette brought him out of his internal self-pity enough to notice the sound of his TV playing a Dawson's Creek rerun.
"What the—?" He climbed the ladder and pushed his way through the floor tile.
He huffed out a cloud of smoke as he caught sight of Dawn comfortably cross-legged in his armchair, a textbook and legal pad balanced on her knees.
"Does Buffy know you're here?" he asked, taking a deep inhale of the cigarette and stubbing out what was left of it under his boot.
"No, she's all wrist-deep in grease," Dawn answered, not looking up, just holding the sheet out to him and expecting him to take it. "Can you mark this practice test? I need to get eighty percent or make up the grade in class work and I am so done with the Industrial Revolution."
Spike rolled his eyes and snatched it out of her hand along with the pen she offered with it, hopping up onto the lid of a sarcophagus to hunch over it.
"Thought the Slayer was taking over the homework privilege," he muttered.
"Well, obviously Doublemeat is more important than my grades," Dawn replied and handed him a second sheet. "And tomorrow she's got a date, so." She finished with a shrug as though the end of the sentence was self-explanatory.
Spike's head jerked up.
"…What?"
"Tomorrow. She'll be making with the heart eyes at Richard," Dawn repeated. "You know the blind date guy Xander brought to her birthday party?"
"I'm familiar," Spike said, carefully unfurling his fist lest he snap the pen in his hand in half.
"Well, she's even more familiar," Dawn muttered, eyes still glued to her homework. "She was all yay about dating a guy who won't know these quiz questions from actually being there at the time."
He could feel his jaw twitching as his back teeth bit down on nothing.
"Whatever gets her motor running," he managed, suppressing the note of bitterness as much as he could, trying desperately to focus on the page in front of him even as that tiny little bit of ground he'd thought he'd won off her was swept out to sea.
"I wouldn't go that far," Dawn scoffed. "She just wants, like, one normal evening, you know? Things are weird enough without her love life being all… well, you know."
Spike's fingers itched for another cigarette. And the bottle of whiskey he'd swiped. And some alone time so he could howl, and scream, and tear something to pieces, and—fuck it fine—maybe cry because he'd thought he'd hit rock bottom but apparently there was no end to how deep into this miserable quagmire he could sink.
At least I don't know where she's going, he thought to himself, briefly closing his eyes. Wouldn't be able to—
... I just can't help myself around her…
"Anyway, they're going to the Olive Basket," Dawn piped up as though reading his thoughts. She met his gaze and smiled a judgemental little curl to her lip he was sure he'd taught her. "Eight pm, home by ten," she added pointedly (though he still had yet to figure out the point). There was an unnerving sparkle in her eyes, a self-satisfied glint that he couldn't help but be intrigued by—despite the inner turmoil he was undoubtedly doing a shit job of hiding. Dawn let out a derisive snort and the hook went deeper. "So you know it's going to be wild," she said.
AN:
Aaaand I'm back again with another WIP. What is wrong with me!? Rest assured though this will be short.
This fic is by request, a challenge response from CD85/Claire and as soon as I saw the prompt I couldn't hold back, fresh google doc opened immediately.
Heartfelt thanks as always to my wonderful beta RavenLove12 who's yet to tell me to stop!
