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He found her on the roof, music spilling out of the house and toward the street. Dawn was laid out on her back, eyes shut as Billy Joel's The Stranger played. It was an album he'd given her, and she'd grumbled about its age in her typical teenage way, but the tape lived in her portable stereo more often than not. Spike had just never seen her listening to it before. He lingered for a time in the window (it had once been hers, had belonged to- everything here belonged to Dawn, now, though), long enough to make Dawn's eyes pop open, sitting up to look back at him with an uncomfortable mix of frustration and something like trust. Something like love twinged in Spike's chest, and he knew without ever being able to see that it was shining in his eyes.
"Vamps only need to be invited in, right? I don't have to invite you to come out?" The joke was flat, like a day old soda, or blood from a cooled corpse. It didn't really matter, Spike still climbed out to join the girl.
His duster came off automatically, laid down like a blanket on top of the shingles.
"You cannot be cold right now-"
"It's not for me, Bit."
Dawn didn't shift for several long moments, not until Spike gestured for her to move over, only settling himself down when she had.
Scenes From an Italian Restaurant started playing, and for a few minutes, the pair let Billy Joel sing about some other troubles, some other lives. Meet-ups with lost loves, and rumors of Brenda and Eddie seemed trite, but they had bigger problems, ones that needed trite distractions. The night was clear, the air was clean in a way only a true summer night could be, and the moon was bright.
It was the second full moon since- The tower. The fall. The bo- since the pair of them had started leaning on each other. Since Dawn had felt less like someone else's stray that Spike minded once in a while, and started feeling like she'd wormed her way into one of so many empty places in Spike's chest. He wasn't exactly sure how she did that, but supposed it didn't matter, in the end. They were here, now, on this roof, joined by grief in a way they never should've been.
"We tried to do this, a few times. Back in LA. Before-" Before Buffy was called. Before Dad left. Before mom. Before I was alone. Before I was anyone at all. It all went unsaid, but not unheard. Dawn sat up, just as Vienna started to rock her side to side. "You can't even see stars in LA, I never saw them until we moved. If I ever really saw them at all."
"Didn't grow up with stars, either."
It wasn't the first he'd really mentioned of life before. But he did it so rarely that it always piqued Dawn's interest. She paused, chewing on the inside of her cheek for a moment.
"I forgot you grew up."
Spike narrowed his eyes at her, looking entirely unimpressed.
"We can't all snap into existence fully- almost fully formed."
"I bet you actually did, though. Showed up one day all vamplike and grouchy and old-"
Dawn cut off with a snicker, and Spike let the whole comment slide just because it had made her laugh. Only the Good Die Young tried to play. Dawn slapped her hand desperately behind her, rewinding back to the relative safety of Vienna with practiced ease. She'd played this game before.
"Might be old, Bit, but you're the one listening to last century's music."
"Uh, yeah. Who gave it to me?" Dawn rolled her eyes, and Spike let a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. And then proceeded to feel that smile weighed down with guilt and heartache and the same sick longing he'd felt since. "Will I ever stop missing her?"
"No."
He hadn't even hesitated. But he also hadn't lied. Dawn was so sick of being lied to. It'll get easier. Time will make it hurt less. You won't always ache like this. All lies. She could feel it. Her sister- Dawn had been made by the monks to be her sister- was gone. It would never stop aching. At least, with Spike, she knew he would ache forever, too. Maybe literally. She took comfort in his pain, and then felt bad for it.
Spike was mimicking her earlier pose, staring up at the stars like maybe they held the answers. Or like maybe Buffy was among them, shining bright and beautiful and far, far away from everyone who needed her. Loved her. Ached for her.
"I don't want it to stop hurting."
Spike just turned his head and looked at her, staying uncharacteristically silent, an old hurt shining in his eyes. The same hurt Dawn saw when she looked in a mirror, older than she could imagine. Younger than she thought she'd ever been. She was never sure just how old she felt. She watched as Spike's eyebrows knitted together, fingers drumming over his stomach as he thought. He never could be still for long. She wondered if he would tell her what he was thinking. Before he spoke, he reached back and wound her tape back the necessary three and a half minutes, letting this moment drag on for just a bit longer.
"Hurts at least a century and a half. I'll let you know when I find the expire date, yeah?"
Spike wasn't looking at her anymore, blue eyes aimed straight up once more. By the light of the moon, they looked a little damp, but Dawn didn't say anything about it.
"Who-"
"Everyone. Only a handful of really important people, and I've lost all but one." He finally turned back to look at her, swallowing the rest of his words. Dawn hadn't even wrapped her mouth around the next question before she found it answered. Her. She was the only one he hadn't lost yet. "Promise me somethin'?"
Dawn could only nod, though she turned her gaze to the sky for a moment. She looked back when he spoke again, after several moments of quiet music.
"Outlive me." Let me go without breaking my promise. She couldn't know what he meant, but the furrow of her brow worried him for just a moment. Maybe mystical keys turned too-perceptive teen girls had psychic powers he didn't know about. Maybe she could just sense the promise he'd made to her sister, smell it like a bloodhound, sniffing out any last remains of Buffy hoarded where his soul should've been. Maybe it wasn't any of that. He couldn't know for sure.
"How the fu-" A soft growl cut her off before the word left her mouth. Spike looked as alarmed by it as she felt. "Did you just growl at me for language?"
"No." His response was just the wrong side of too fast. Little lies like this, the ones that seemed to fuel the facade he had built between himself and the world, they came too quickly, every time. Dawn half wondered if Buffy had seen them, too. Then she decided that at this moment it didn't quite matter. She could see them. It was enough to tease with, take the conversation back to safer ground.
"You totally did. Oh my god. You really are old."
"Right, I let you get away with that once-"
"You're not serious."
"I'm not that old."
"Are too."
"Bloody well am not."
"How come you get to use your stupid British swear words?"
"Suits my image." Spike shrugged a little as he spoke, ignoring Dawn's indignant look.
"So I can't swear because of- of-"
"Doesn't suit your image."
Dawn squawked at him, an offended little sound that only a teenager could truly pull off.
"See? That suited you, Niblet."
Spike smirked, Dawn shoved him. He barely rolled an inch, huffing a laugh at the move. This time, Dawn was the one growling, though it was still a playful sound.
"I can say whatever I want, you're not my dad, or whatever." She emphasized this with another shove, though Spike was having another of those pangs in his chest. An attack of something like love again, warmth blooming from what once had been his heart. It made his brain slow and his tongue loose, let him fancy he might have some remnant of a family left in this impossible child beside him.
"'M still the one here, ain't I? Someone's gotta show you the ropes in this world, and I've been in it a damn sight longer than most. Makes me extra qualified an' all that."
He hadn't meant for it to mean so much, to either of them. It was clear in the way he stopped meeting Dawn's gaze, but the weight of that offer settled between them anyway. Somewhere along the way, one of them had remembered to reset that same old track, Vienna still waiting for them as they felt out this new, broken little family of two they had. It gave the illusion of time slowing down, let them breathe in this space together a little longer.
Dawn's only response was a sharp nod that felt like being welcomed home, and then she was laying down once more, nestling into the leather of Spike's duster beneath her. She was suddenly grateful the vampire had laid it down for her. Finally, they let the song end, fading out and into something new. It didn't matter how much it made them think of Buffy, how much it brought that new-familiar ache to the surface, they both started singing along to Only the Good Die Young.
The rest of the album played, and they rode its highs and lows through to the glimmering dawn, only slinking inside when Spike's toes started to sizzle through his socks. They collected their few items from the roof, Spike saw Dawn off to bed. For the first time since Joyce had passed, Spike didn't feel like an invader when he settled in to his little corner in the basement.