Chapter Text
Dawn is in Spike’s crypt, and Spike’s slouched in his armchair cycling through excuses in his head as to why.
Just keeping an eye on her for you, slayer. What with Glory out there and all.
Well, I wasn’t gonna just throw her out onto the streets, was I? S’a little thing called hospitality.
Between you and me, girl’s got some daddy issues. Reckon she’s craving a male role model.
Spike groans. What’s even the point?
Doesn’t matter what he says — he knows Buffy will throw a wobbly anyway. There’s just no winning with that woman.
He rubs his forehead hard with a flattened palm.
“You shouldn’t be hanging out here, you know,” he tells Dawn.
She’s doing her homework on top of a sarcophagus. Half her face glows amber in the candlelight and she’s squinting hard at the page below her.
She doesn’t bother looking up. “Why not?”
“Uh, ‘cos I’m a bad influence?” Spike says. “Bein’ evil and all.”
Dawn snorts. “I’m literally doing homework.”
“Still. Don’t think big sis’ll be happy about it.”
Dawn lifts her head a little and gives Spike judge-y teenager eyes. “So? You scared of her or something?”
Spike makes a sound like pfft.
Then he clears his throat and says, “Well. Actually, yeah— a bit.”
“Oh my god,” Dawn mutters, shaking her head and looking back down at her homework. “You’re so embarrassing.”
“What’s that now?” Spike snaps.
“You’re totally whipped,” says Dawn. “Which is extra pathetic, because you’re not even going out.”
Spike sighs deeply, fumbling in his pocket for his smokes. He lights one up.
“You’ll understand one day, bit,” he mumbles out the side of his mouth. “The things people’ll do for love.”
“Hey. Don’t talk to me like I’m some dumb kid,” Dawn retorts, scowling at him. “Plus, I already know way more about this stuff than you.”
Spike scoffs. “I’ve been alive over a century. Reckon that gives me a slight edge.”
“Oh, that’s why it’s going so well with Buffy, then?”
Spike pauses. Well. She’s got him there.
“It’s sad,” Dawn continues matter of factly. “I know you only let me hang out here so she’ll remember you exist for like, thirty seconds. And punch you, if you’re lucky.”
Spike blinks at her.
“Well, yeah, alright,” he concedes. “Fine. But this– well, this ain’t your standard, run-of-the-mill woman we’re dealing with. That sister of yours, she’s—” he groans fiercely. “She’s— bloody stubborn, to say the least. I’ve already gone above and beyond, but there’s only so much a fella can do.”
Spike inhales smoke desperately, all the way to the pit of his stomach.
“S’exhausting,” he laments, shaking his head and suddenly feeling very sorry for himself. "Frankly, I'm at the end of my tether.”
Dawn looks up at him again, and this time her face is full of pity, but not the kind you have for somebody you actually respect. More the kind you have for a balding, ratty old pigeon with half its toes missing.
“Wow,” she says, sounding almost awed. “You really need help, huh?”
—
The next day, Spike and Dawn execute step one of the plan.
On the way to the Summers’ house, Dawn gives Spike list a of dos and don’ts, which she’s scrawled on the back of a French vocabulary test.
“Don’t be too evil but also don’t be boring,” Spike reads aloud as they walk. “Don’t insult her.” He wrinkles his nose. “Don’t insult her?! Come on.”
Dawn shoots him a look like he’s an idiot.
“You’re too young,” Spike says coolly. “You don’t understand ‘bout sexual tension and that.”
“Read the room, Spike,” Dawn says, exasperated. “She already thinks you’re a gross evil vampire and, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s not really doing it for her.”
Spike grumbles.
When they get inside, they set up round the dining room table. They flip open a bunch of Dawn’s schoolbooks, but mostly end up dossing about. Dawn doodles with a biro, drawing little devil horns on a picture of Julius Caesar.
Spike’s eyes cast about the room, catching on framed family photos and Joyce’s art. He imagines what it’d be like to sit in here and eat dinner with the family — maybe sip wine, like a normal man.
He never got to do anything like that. Probably it’d be mind-numbing, with all the small talk and petty social graces. Probably he wouldn’t like it one bit.
Soon as they hear Buffy rattling the key in the lock, both Spike and Dawn scramble into position.
Spike coughs and sits up arrow-straight. “…and then they hath slain the bastard, good and proper. And that was the end of Caesar, which was very good, because he was a very, very bad man.”
“Uh huh,” Dawn says loudly. Girl’s hamming it up a bit — needs to tone down the theatrics. “And, um, what about after that? With Marc Antony and stuff?”
“Uh, well, think he was shagging Cleopatra.”
“Spike?” comes Buffy’s voice from the hallway.
Spike turns to her and pushes his glasses up his nose. “That’s Mr. Spike to you.”
Buffy watches him for a long moment, blinking. She seems confused, and—
Well, he wouldn’t’ve thunk it, but he suspects the glasses might actually be doing something for her. Which doesn’t hurt to know.
“What the hell is going on?” she demands.
Dawn pipes up, “Spike’s helping me study. You know how I’ve been having trouble with, um, history? And I thought, hey, who better to teach me this stuff than, like, a really really old guy?”
“Yeah,” Buffy drawls. “I’m sure a hundred-year-old vampire knows lots about Ancient Rome.”
Spike bristles. “I’m sorry, but we were sort of in the middle of something,” he says irritably, turning back to Dawn. “So Cleopatra, yeah? Real firecracker. Did in her own brothers, just so she could— ow!”
Buffy’s grabbing Spike by the collar and dragging him into the hallway.
“Bloody hell, slayer,” he complains, fixing his glasses when she lets him go. “Got no respect for the pedagogical profession.”
Buffy’s glare could cut through bank vaults. “You’re disgusting.”
Spike huffs incredulously. “What now?!”
“You’re fake-tutoring my kid sister,” she says, over-enunciating every word. “That’s a whole new level of stalker. For god’s sake, Spike. She’s fourteen.”
Spike groans. God, there really is no pleasing some people.
“It’s not what you think,” he says weakly.
Buffy blinks at him expectantly.
“Well— because it was her idea,” Spike blurts.
“Hey!” Dawn protests from the other room.
Overall, it’s a bad showing for Spike: Buffy kicks him out, and he’s lost favour with his only ally.
He slinks home dejectedly.
—
“I can’t believe you ratted me out,” Dawn complains.
“Crumbled under the pressure, alright?” Spike says, puffing on a smoke. “Won’t happen again.”
“It better not,” Dawn says, eyeballing him threateningly. “Because after the other day, you really can’t afford any more hiccups.”
It’s true. Spike knows it.
They’ve resorted to meeting behind some bins on Dawn’s school route, because she’s been banned from the crypt and is no longer allowed to have friends, tutors, or other acquaintances who are vampires over to the house.
“Look, Spike,” Dawn says gently. “I’m not gonna lie to you. The situation… doesn’t look good.”
“Bloody hell. Don’t tell me there’s someone else?”
“Someone else?” Dawn laughs and shakes her head incredulously. “I wish. Then we’d have something to work against. No. She’s just not into you.”
Spike chokes on an inhale.
“Like, not even a bit,” Dawn adds.
“Christ,” Spike wheezes. “S’if morale wasn’t low enough.”
Dawn sighs. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think there was hope, okay?”
“Fine,” Spike mutters, stubbing out his cigarette. “So what next, d’you reckon?”
“Well, I’ve been reading up about some methods.”
“What, like giving her electric shocks or something?”
“Well, no, but it uses like, the same idea, I guess,” Dawn says, and her eyes light up with excitement as she explains, “There’s this thing called subliminal messaging. Basically, we just gotta get Buffy to start associating you with like, good stuff. Instead of bad stuff like, y’know, murder, embarrassment, being freaky and lame, being—”
“Yeah, we get it,” Spike snaps. “Where’d you read about this, then? Psychology Today?” he asks dryly.
“Cosmogirl. So— I was thinking, we could take some photos of you, and then I’ll hide them in places she likes. Like— inside her favourite cereal box or her Alanis Morissette CD.”
Spike pulls his mouth to the side sceptically. “Uh— not sure that’s gonna work, to be honest.”
Dawn fixes his gaze with grim resignation. “I’m afraid it’s the best we’ve got.”