Rhubarb Pie
Author: enigmaticblue
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Joss & Co., which is too bad, because I would be a lot nicer.
Summary: Dawn tries her hand at domesticity.
A/N: Written for my 2009 holiday ficathon for syderia, who wanted Dawn, Spike, Boxing Day, and rhubarb. Set during S6.


Dawn put the finishing touches on her pie crust and stuck the pie in the oven with a satisfied smile. Home Economics hadn’t been a total waste in the previous semester; she had at least managed to learn how to make a decent pie crust.

Not that anyone was around to enjoy it. Willow was still hiding in her room, and Buffy had disappeared again; she was doing that a lot lately.

Dawn looked around the messy kitchen with a sigh and began to clean up. She might have left the dishes in the sink, but Buffy had been alternately snappish and withdrawn, and Dawn was trying not to irritate her too much.

Buffy had been in heaven; she didn’t need a kid sister to remind her that being alive wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The quiet creak of the back door had Dawn whirling to face the intruder, but she immediately relaxed when she saw Spike. “Hey.”

“Hey.” He looked awkward in their kitchen in a way he never had the previous summer. “Buffy around?”

Dawn shook her head. “No. I don’t know where she is.”

Spike sniffed the air. “You baking something?”

“Yeah. Rhubarb pie.” Dawn sat down at the kitchen table, somehow gratified when Spike joined her. He hadn’t been around much lately, not since he’d taken Dawn to the emergency room for her broken arm, and she’d missed him.

“Rhubarb, huh?”

Dawn shrugged. “My teacher made it in Home Ec, and I really liked it. And now that my cast is finally off, I can make a pie.”

“Is it any good?” he asked, a challenging gleam in his eyes.

She smiled and tilted her chin up. “Stick around and find out.”

Spike shrugged. “Don’t mind if I do. Just—” He was oddly hesitant. “Don’t tell your sister.”

“Why?” Dawn asked. “You were here all the time last summer.”

Spike shook his head. “It’s different now, Bit. It’s better if she doesn’t know I was here.”

“So, what?” Dawn challenged, suddenly angry. “You’re just gonna take off if Buffy comes home? You took care of me all summer. What’s the big deal now?”

Spike sighed. “Please, Dawn. Don’t make a big deal of this.”

Dawn always knew Spike meant business when he used her name; he never did that unless he was upset about something.

In this case, Dawn suspected that something was her sister.

“Okay. So, if I’m not supposed to tell Buffy you were here, what did you want?”

Spike patted the pockets of his duster, almost like he was looking for his pack of cigarettes, but he instead he pulled out a clumsily wrapped package. “Here.”

Dawn smiled, amused. “You’re a day late,” she pointed out.

“It’s Boxing Day, innit?” Spike asked defensively. “It’s a Boxing Day present.”

Dawn hesitated before she unwrapped the gift, shaking her head when she realized it was a CD. “The Ramones’ Greatest Hits, huh?”

“You need to get your musical education sometime,” Spike replied with a smirk. “Looks like I’m the only one who’s going to attend to it.”

Dawn looked down at the CD, feeling a warmth spread through her as she realized that Spike had remembered her, and he’d remembered the debates on music and bands they’d had over the summer. In spite of his absence over the last couple of months, he hadn’t totally forgotten that she existed.

It was something that Dawn often wondered about.

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure, Bit,” Spike said with the soft smile Dawn suspected that he saved only for her.

“Do you want to stay?” she blurted out. “For pie?”

“Sure.”

He might have said more; Dawn thought he would have stayed, if the front door hadn’t opened and Buffy’s voice hadn’t echoed through the house. “Dawn?”

By the time Dawn turned to look at Spike, to beg him to stay anyway, he was gone, the back door closing softly behind him.

Dawn didn’t bother trying to explain her bad attitude to Buffy; she didn’t think that Buffy even noticed anyway.

And later, when she ate her rhubarb pie by herself, and listened to the Ramones, Dawn thought of Spike’s soft smile and wished that Buffy’s return had fixed everything, instead of the other way around.