“So um..” I started to say and immediately felt stupid because what was I going to say?
“Nice chicken feet, huh?” I said seriously. Oh God. There are times when I should just shut my mouth and that was one of them.
“Yeah, real interesting,” Spike said equally seriously avoiding all eye contact and picked up a foot and began to examine it.
I nodded a little, for want of nothing better to do. He tapped the chicken foot against the table repeatedly.
“I have food!” Xander called out.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Food is good. Food means I don’t have to be all awkward with Spike.
I put the chicken foot down and with more enthusiasm than I’ve had about food in about a hundred years walked over to get some cinnamon doughnuts.
“Did you get jelly?” The old Watcher called out from behind the till.
“Jelly, cinnamon, sugar, you name it, I have it,” Xander declared proudly.
“It’s starting to show,” Anya whispered to Tara gesturing towards Xander’s stomach and shaking her head. Tara smiled a little.
“I’m serious!" The ex demon continued. “He should diet. Think what this could do to our sex life!” She added matter of factly.
*Bloody hell*
Don’t want to know. Ick. Bad sex talk.
Xander munched on a doughnut and appeared to be totally oblivious to the discussion of his weight.
Giles gave Anya a strange look and she gave him a “What?!” shrug. He rolled his eyes – which on Giles is really interesting - and took the jelly doughnut out of Anya’s hands. She rolled her eyes right back and took a vanilla cream one.
Without thinking, I reached for a doughnut across the counter, my fingers locating a cinnamon one. Spike grabbed the doughnut at the exact same time, his fingers brushing against mine.
I stared at Dawn. Again. This is becoming too much of a habit. I must be losing it. Completely and utterly.
“Give it to Dawn,” Anya instructed.
I blinked a little, for a minute forgetting where I was and what I was doing as Anya spoke suddenly.
"It’s not like you even eat,” She told me sternly. I glanced down wondering what she was talking about. Oh. Doughnut. Right.
I pulled my hand away from Dawn’s, her fingers still warm against mine, and let her take the doughnut.
I bit my lip a little because this is all too weird. I started to eat the doughnut so I had something to do and frowned remembering what Spike had said before. Does blood really taste like this? *Ewww*. I suddenly lost my appetite. We sat and ate in mostly silence for a while longer. Willow glanced at her watch as eleven o’clock dawned and suggested that Giles go home and she would lock up after doing some ‘research’. *So* planning something. I just wish I knew what. Giles didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about her behaviour but he hasn’t really been noticing much recently. I um borrowed an old pendant thing from the Magic Box a while ago but he didn’t find out. After that Giles went and then Willow came out with some lame thing about me going home and having a break from this all. Break? I’d spent all day doing nothing, why would I need a break? She instructed Spike to walk me home, which got me panicking.
“I can walk home by myself,” I offered. “ I don’t mind.”
“Dawn it’s not safe” Willow told me firmly, “Spike will take you, won’t you?” She asked, turning to Spike.
He looked confused like he hadn’t been paying attention to anything in the past few minutes and just nodded to her, “Yeah.”
We walked in silence for most of the way and then in what seemed to be no time at all we arrived at my house and the exact same spot he’d been lurking a few nights ago. Spike suddenly halted in front of me.
“Dawn…” He started to say.
I waited for the rest.
“Look, the other night…I’m sorry about what happened. I was just drunk and I wasn’t thinking and I shouldn’t have,” He babbled.
I’ve never heard Spike babble before and wondered what it meant. I wanted to smile because it was kind of funny but I didn’t. Instead I nodded.
“Uh huh. It’s okay” I contributed and nodded some more.
He nodded again. “Okay.”
Spike looked at me, with actual eye contact then. I looked back at him and then he looked away, quickly opening the house door for me.
“Thanks,” I muttered, going in.
"See you, Nibblet,” He told me and smiled briefly before disappearing.
Back to Nibblet. Not Dawn.
This was kind of funny and kind of heart breakingly awful too. I closed the door, trying not to think about the heart breakingly awful part of it. It was good that we’d had this conversation. Good because now things wouldn’t be so weird and we could just be friends like nothing had ever happened. Just some blind wacky moment of crazyness and drunkenness had caused him to kiss me and that was good too. Really.
This sucks.
continued
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