Chapter 6: Candle Wax of Melted Dreams

“Thanks for picking me up,” Dawn said, sporting a black eye and a bruised jaw as she and Jacob walked side by side out of Fondren High, where all Sunnydale students had been forced to go until their new high school was completed.

“Your sister’s not going to be happy about this.”

Dawn looked at him over the hood of the car as he unlocked the doors. “That’s why we’re not going to tell her.”

Jacob made a jerking “get in” gesture, and she followed him into the car. “Dawn! You got into a fight at school. I have to tell her.”

“No, you don’t. That’s why I called you. See, Willow or Xander or somebody, they’d be all, ‘Oh, Dawnie, we have to tell,’” she said, doing a fairly decent Willow impression. “‘We feel responsible for you.’ Blah blah blah for-your-own-good-cakes.” She fixed him with a knowing stare. “But you want me to like you. You want to be on my good side, because it’ll make things easier with Buffy.”

“Dawn –”

“So, we’re not going to tell her,” she repeated firmly.

Jacob sighed, gripping the steering wheel as he guided the car out of the parking lot. She knew how to get at him, that was for sure. He felt just like one of his mom’s boyfriends, trying so hard to make the kid like him, willing to do almost anything to curry favor with those closest to the object of his affection. He’d always hated it when they were so obviously capitulating to him in order to get in his mom’s pants, but he’d never minded exploiting it when it suited him.

“Fine,” he said, after a long pause.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, until he started to make the turn-off to Revello Drive. “No,” Dawn said. “I want to go to Spike’s.”

“Dawn –”

“I want to go to Spike’s!”

“Don’t you think we should go home? Buffy will –”

“Buffy won’t care. I go to Spike’s all the time after school. Turn here.”

“Here?”

“Yeah. I’d’ve had Spike come pick me up in the first place, ’cept it’s too light out for him.” After a bit more direction, she said, “You can just pull over here.”

“But this is a cemetery.”

“Yeah. Spike lives in a crypt.”

“Of course he does,” Jacob muttered.

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Well, yeah. Vampire.”

He turned off the ignition and got out of the car. “I’m going with you.”

“You don’t have to. I go there all the time.”

Jacob slammed the door and followed without bothering to argue the point with her. While part of him felt a desire to protect Dawn for Buffy’s sake, there was a morbid curiosity leading him to investigate this vampire that seemed so intertwined in Buffy’s life, and yet who she was so unwilling to talk about.

The subject in question was sprawled on his comfy chair watching soap operas and drinking blood out of a novelty mug. He looked up as Dawn barged in, Jacob on her heels.

“Brought a friend today?” he asked, barely concealing his disdain at seeing Jacob. Then, he caught sight of Dawn’s face and jumped out of his chair. “Oi, Niblet! What happened to you?”

“Nothing.” She jerked her head away as he tried to hold her chin to get a better look.

“Doesn’t look like nothin’. Looks like somebody hit you. Socked you but good.”

“You should see the other guy,” she mumbled.

“What happened?”

“She started a fight,” said Jacob. “In the cafeteria at school.”

Spike’s grip on Dawn hardened. “That true, Pint-size?”

“I thought you weren’t going to tell,” Dawn said, glaring at Jacob.

“I said I wouldn’t tell Buffy. Never said I wouldn’t tell anyone else.”

“Come on, Platelet, we’re goin’ home.” Spike started towing her toward the door, and Jacob scurried out of their way to trail along behind.

“No, Spike! You can’t!” Dawn wailed, doing her best to resist him and stand her ground without actually causing the chip to fire. “You can’t tell Buffy. She’ll kill me!”

“Damn right, an’ you deserve it! Deserve a good throttling, and since I can’t do it myself…” He stopped and shook his head, as his affection for the girl overwhelmed his anger. “How exactly were you plannin’ to hide that shiner from your sis?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I figured you might have some ideas. Maybe a magic healing thing or something.” Her eyes lit up with an idea. “Or you could steal me some makeup.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen. Come on, Bit, gotta face the music.”

“Wait!” she said. “Daylight. You can’t go outside.” She smiled at him triumphantly.

Spike paused. “Okay, then. Two options. You go home now, and when I stop over later, I find out that you’ve told Buffy the whole thing like a good girl. Or, I can take you through the smelly, rat-infested sewers and I’ll be sure you tell Buffy the truth. Which’ll it be, pet?”

Dawn sighed. “I’ll tell her. No sewers.”

“Good.”

“I liked you better when you were evil,” she grumbled.

He stopped cold, hearing so much more in that innocent, offhand comment. The little girl had no idea how evil he’d been. How evil he still was. Had no idea how hard he had to try in order to be good. Had no idea of the conflict that roiled within him as he fought against his nature.

He shook his head and looked over at Jacob, as if he’d only just remembered the man was there. “You really were gonna let her get away with this?” he asked, genuine surprise in his voice.

Jacob ducked his head. What was he supposed to say? I let her manipulate me. I was sucking up. I wanted her to like me, the way she likes you. How was it that the vampire who, save for a tiny scrap of government metal, would have had Dawn as an appetizer – how was it that he could he win her respect and love when Jacob, who had done everything right, could not? Why, in this family whose eldest daughter was the savior of the world, the champion of good, why should evil triumph? And why, when he’d stooped to that level, could evil turn it back on him, as though he were the one with a hundred years of sins to atone for? He watched Spike put an arm around Dawn and again escort her toward the door, but this time in a gentler fashion, and Jacob followed, wondering how he’d managed to feel morally inferior to a soulless demon.

*****

Buffy was trying really hard to focus on what Jacob was saying. She was also trying really hard to reach down to where her purse was sitting on the floor at her feet without him noticing. Her fingers brushed against the strap and she leaned just a bit more and hooked it on her outstretched hand. Thank goodness she went for the Kate Spade with the stand-up straps tonight. She eased it very slowly onto her lap under the table and dug around until she found her cell. Pulling it out, she surreptitiously ducked her head and checked the digital readout.

8:42 p.m. No messages.

“Everything okay?” Jacob asked, pausing with a forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth to peer at her with curiosity.

“Fine.” Letting her purse drop back to the floor, she snapped her head up and gave him an unconvincing smile.

“That’s the third time I’ve caught you checking your phone.”

Buffy blushed and occupied herself with picking the crumbs one by one off the restaurant’s linen tablecloth and depositing them on her bread plate. “I’m sorry, it’s just…”

“Are you worried about Dawn?”

“Oh, no,” she assured him. “She’s pretty much grounded for life after that fight she got into. Tara’s on Dawn-duty tonight, making sure she doesn’t leave the house.”

“Then, why the obsessive phone-checking? Is – is there someplace else you wanna be?”

“No!” Buffy reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “No, it’s not that at all. It’s just… there’s a nest of Ghora demons and the gang went to take it out, and they haven’t checked in yet.”

She’d intended to be there herself, but she’d been so flustered when Spike stopped by to check up on Dawn, all she could think of was him and Susan together. In a panic, she’d blurted out the rumor about the Ghoras, and of course, he’d wanted to help. She didn’t think she could stand being around him without feeling like her chest might explode, and before she knew it, she was suggesting that he bring the Scoobies and take care of it while she and Jacob went on a date. Now, of course, she felt guilty for making her friends do her job for her, and she was worried that she hadn’t heard anything.

Jacob nodded. “And you want to be there with them.”

“I am kinda Fearless Leader Girl.” She looked wistful for a moment, then adopted her resolve face. “But it’s fine. They can handle it. I want to be here with you.”

“Buffy, if you need to go…” She shook her head firmly. “Why didn’t you just tell me? We could have gone out another night. La Piazza will still be here tomorrow.”

Buffy picked up her fork and began pushing the remains of her eggplant parmesan around on her plate. “I guess I just didn’t want to let you down.” It was only sort of a lie.

Jacob gazed at her with tenderness. “Buffy, I can’t wait until you let me down.”

“Huh?”

Now, he was the one who seemed nervous, keeping his eyes on the bread basket and flicking them only briefly toward her face. He turned her hand over and traced the lines of her palm with gentle fingers. “I haven’t been around that long, but… I get the feeling you don’t really let yourself do that much.”

“You don’t understand my world, Jacob. When I let people down, it usually means somebody dies… and potentially the end of the world.”

“Not with me.” He hesitated for a moment, letting that sink in. “I want to be that for you, Buffy, if I can. The one thing in your life that isn’t life or death, the one thing that’s completely hassle-free, that’s easy.” He suddenly turned pink. “Well, not like, easy…”

Buffy laughed. She was about to reply when her cell phone beeped. A text from Xander – All clear. Buffy leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, breathing a sigh of relief.

“That looked like good news.”

She opened her eyes and smiled. “It was.”

*****

Jacob’s arm snaked around her waist as they left the restaurant, walking amidst the lively Main Street crowd. She let her head brush against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his musky cologne. He glanced down at her with tenderness and pulled her out of the path of oncoming pedestrians, leaning against the shop window of a clothing store already closed for the evening. His arms wrapped tighter around her as he pulled her in for a kiss. She pressed harder against him, the length of her lithe form pinning him to the window at his back, her mouth and her body responding hungrily to his touch.

Finally, with the display of affection bordering on indecent, Jacob turned his head to nuzzle her cheek, drawing in much-needed breath. Buffy pulled away, one thumb tracing his hairline from his forehead to his ear as she held his gaze. “Did you mean what you said before?” she asked. “About wanting to be hassle-free guy?”

“Of course I did.”

A small, ironic smile crept across her face. “I’ve never actually had a relationship that wasn’t hard… and incredibly painful.” She pressed her lips briefly against his. “But I’d like to try.”

*****

Jacob placed his hands on her shoulders, sliding the straps of her sundress down her arms. The dress fluttered to his bedroom floor, and Buffy stood in the puddle of fabric, unbuttoning his shirt one button at a time. He shrugged it off, letting it fall beside her dress.

“You sure you’re ready to do this?” he asked her, his voice catching in his throat.

She nodded, eyes wide and focused on his face, even as her hands slid down to relieve him of his pants. He pulled her in for another kiss so deep she felt like she was swimming inside him as they tumbled together onto the bed.

When it was over, and he was spooning her, his arm draped over her hip with his fingertips running gently across her belly, Buffy tried to convince herself that it had been what she wanted. She wasn’t normally like this, falling into bed with a guy she’d only been dating for about a week – she’d learned that lesson with Parker, and her other relationships had taken things painfully slow – but in her mind, she insisted that it was Jacob’s sweet words, and not some sick sense of competition with Spike, that had brought her here. This was what she wanted – this guy, this life.

This was what she wanted.

Right?