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doyleIt's gone midnight here so I'm posting my Dawnficathon entry. Both my Yuletide fics are done and uploaded, just need to finish my Secret Slasha and start the Secret Santa...
Title: The Whole of the Moon
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Dawn/Faith
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Christmas in England, and Dawn's growing up.
Notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jacklemmon. Merry Christmas!
To begin with she'd kind of pretended to herself that she was only thinking about the gay thing to help Andrew. Like, if she could say that a girl was hot, then he'd be okay saying the same thing about a guy. Once he was comfortable with his sexuality, he could drop the feeble pretence that he'd rather get down with T'Pol than Trip, and she could say "ha! Fooled you, I was straight all the time" and they could - whatever. Hang out and talk about guys and stuff, since everybody else was too busy with the new Slayers.
A week after they arrived in England, Andrew saw Robbie Williams on TV and renounced heterosexuality forever. Score one for Dawn, except that she was still looking at girls on the street and in magazines and thinking: hot. Not hot. Not in a million years. Hell, yeah.
When you started categorising girls into those you wouldn't look twice at, and those you'd maybe dance with, and those you'd like to kiss, and those who gave you weird squirmy feelings inside, then it was a pretty sure sign you were headed squarely into the Kingdom of the Bi. Dawn wished she'd been more with-it when she was thirteen and Willow was falling for Tara, because seeing someone else go through it would really have helped. She blamed the monks - what, they could give her the memory of watching Titanic fourteen times but couldn't throw in a childhood love of Heather Has Two Mommies?
She wanted to talk to someone, but Buffy was in Italy and Andrew was squicked by girl-stuff and asking Willow would be too weird. She tossed out a few broad "so, a friend of mine was wondering" questions to Kennedy, and put up with the knowing smirk and the sly innuendos because when Ken stopped being all cool, older, experienced girl she started giving useful answers. And she promised not to tell anyone.
Besides, Kennedy was in the 'like to kiss' category, maybe borderline with 'squirmy feelings'. Girls she liked tended to be gorgeous, strong brunettes, and it took months for Dawn to realise where she'd started to like that particular type. The lightbulb over her head finally blazed to life when Principal Wood broke up with Faith and flew back to the States.
"He's gonna go help Xand and the guys," Faith said, shrugging it off like no big deal. Not even a little deal. Just total absence of deal, and even though Dawn had liked Robin, she simultaneously wanted to throw a party and fly to Cleveland for some principal ass-kicking.
Once she'd calmed down enough to think about it, it made a weird kind of sense. She'd had that stupid crush on Spike a zillion years ago - she could think about Spike now without feeling mad at him, but she didn't think the terrible sadness inside would ever go away - and Faith was kind of Spike-y. They had the mutual bad guy/girl thing going on, besides the love of nicknames and that sense about them that they were always just outside the group.
Terrific. Turned out her type was snarky, leather-wearing rebels. That wasn't going to cause her future heart-trauma.
It took some time for her to progress from "oh my God, I like Faith" to "okay, I like Faith, how do we deal with this?" and finally to just "mmm. Faith." By the time she reached stage three (which she mentally named "I think I'm a lesbian, gimme my toaster oven already") it was December, and Christmas shopping kept her busy enough that she could push it out of her mind.
For the time being.
**
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…
Maybe a Key was, though, Dawn thought sleepily, and curled deeper into the armchair. It was nice like this. Everyone else asleep; just her and the lights on the tree and the music channels playing nothing but Christmas songs. Even if the room wasn't as decorated as she'd like. Giles didn't have many decorations, which was strange for someone whose shop had always looked like Whoville from December first. "But there's no tinsel," Dawn had complained, not caring if she sounded seven and not seventeen. "It's not really Christmas without tinsel." Giles had given her the look that made her want to stick out her tongue, and then he'd distracted her with a new copy of the Halloran lexicon.
She liked living with Giles, though, way more than she'd thought she would. It meant being treated more like a grown-up, and no way was that not of the good. Weird how fluency in Sumerian could make Giles look at you like you were a real person and not a kid. Nobody enforced bedtimes or dumb kid-stuff like that. If she wanted to stay up on a non-school night watching Sky TV, that was okay.
And if she had ulterior motives for being up so late, well, that was between her and her God. Goddess. She hadn't decided yet. One major identity crisis at a time.
It was close to three when she heard the scrape of a key in the lock. She willed herself to calm down. She was pretty sure that even super-duper-Slayer hearing couldn't pick up a human heartbeat, but it was best not to take these chances.
She listened as hard as she could, and imagined what was going on outside. That scuffling was Faith trying to close the door without waking anyone. The rustle of material was her hanging up her coat. The turning sound was…
The door-handle of the living room.
Dawn tried to look very, very interested in the schoolchildren singing War Is Over. She glanced up with affected nonchalance when Faith entered the room, then turned her attention back to the TV.
"Hey."
"Hey," she said back. "How was patrol?"
"Quiet." Faith flopped onto the couch beside her. "Guess the vamps are filled with the holiday spirit. Anything good on?"
"Nah. Carols."
"'kay."
They sat through five songs and several hundred commercials for accident insurance. Not so festive, Dawn thought.
"I'm gonna go to bed," she said, with what she hoped wasn't too obviously fake a yawn.
"Night."
Now or never.
"Merry Christmas!" she chirped, and in the microsecond before she could lose her nerve she leaned forward and kissed Faith.
The kiss was exactly timed; brief enough that she could pass it off as friendly affection - shyeah, she thought - but with enough lip-on-lip action to let her evaluate whether kissing a girl was different to kissing a boy. Or kissing a boy-vamp, at least, because there hadn't been any boys since Justin and Andrew had made an eww face the one time she asked him if he could help her practise.
Crap, she realized, have to end kissage now. She could feel herself blush as she pulled back. Just what she needed. She probably looked like Rudolph's nose.
Oops, hand still on Faith's thigh - how'd that get there? She yanked it back.
Faith was looking at her. Really looking at her. It was less 'what the hell?' than she'd expected, and so far she hadn't been yelled at or dragged upstairs to be tattled on, so it was all good. In theory.
She licked her lips, and wondered whether sleeping on the streets would be worse at Christmas. Maybe church people came round with soup and sang carols; did they do that in England?
Finally, Faith laughed, sitting back. "Damn. You gotta get an eye exam, L'il D. Mistletoe's out in the hallway."
She shrugged, suddenly brave. "Yeah, I know."
Faith nodded, cocking her head just a bit to the side. "Guess you do."
The clock gently ticked away a minute. Dawn counted the seconds, because it distracted her from bad thoughts about kissing Faith again. No way could twice in five minutes be passed off as innocent Dawnie, being nice to surrogate big sis.
"Thought you were turning in?" Faith said. "You better. S'late."
But she didn't make any move to leave herself, Dawn noted, and ventured a tiny whoo-hoo for that.
"I'm not sleepy," she said, feeling bold. Then Faith raised her eyebrows and her bravado evaporated and she lamely added, "I think I'm gonna watch some more TV." She grabbed the remote, flipping randomly through the channels. Commercials. Commercials. Black and white movie. More commercials.
"Go back," Faith said.
She was surprised, but did so. Onscreen, Jimmy Stewart was handing out money to the people of Bedford Falls. That was the part where her mom always seemed to get something in her eye, she remembered.
"You like this movie?" she asked, astonished. Spike's Moulin Rouge love had been a big enough surprise without finding out Faith was a Capra nut. Then she remembered another Christmas, years ago. Mom had been horrified to learn that Faith had never seen It's a Wonderful Life. She'd made a jumbo bowl of popcorn and mugs of hot chocolate, and let them melt marshmallows in the microwave, and the three of them had snuggled up on the couch to watch schmoopy videos.
I was twelve, Dawn thought, for once not adding 'except I wasn't real'. Just: I thought Faith was so pretty. I was twelve, and that was the year it snowed.
Faith was watching her. "Good times," she said, as if Dawn had spoken. She smiled, pulling her legs up beneath her on the couch.
Dawn wished there was some way she could learn to copy that casual poise and effortless sexiness, because it was going to be crappy falling for another girl if she always made her feel like the Queen of Dorktown.
"Giles's holding out on us," Faith said, out of nowhere. "I was lookin' around in the attic last night. Guy's got a ton of Christmas decorations up there."
"No way."
"Serious. Tinsel, fake snow, the works." She tipped her head and grinned. "Wanna redecorate?"
"After the movie," Dawn decided, leaning back against the other girl's shoulder and clamping her mouth shut against the cheer when Faith draped an arm around her.
She'd make hot chocolate during the commercials. Then they'd sneak up to the attic and drag down enough pretty stuff to cover the room, and the front hall too. She figured Andrew wouldn't be able to wait for his new Gamecube, so the others would be up early for presents. She could sit across from Faith at dinner and watch the Queen's speech with her and casually walk under the mistletoe four or five thousand times.
Happiness swelled up inside her, chocolaty and warm.
Maybe later it'd snow.
END
Title: The Whole of the Moon
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Dawn/Faith
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Christmas in England, and Dawn's growing up.
Notes: For
jacklemmon. Merry Christmas!To begin with she'd kind of pretended to herself that she was only thinking about the gay thing to help Andrew. Like, if she could say that a girl was hot, then he'd be okay saying the same thing about a guy. Once he was comfortable with his sexuality, he could drop the feeble pretence that he'd rather get down with T'Pol than Trip, and she could say "ha! Fooled you, I was straight all the time" and they could - whatever. Hang out and talk about guys and stuff, since everybody else was too busy with the new Slayers.
A week after they arrived in England, Andrew saw Robbie Williams on TV and renounced heterosexuality forever. Score one for Dawn, except that she was still looking at girls on the street and in magazines and thinking: hot. Not hot. Not in a million years. Hell, yeah.
When you started categorising girls into those you wouldn't look twice at, and those you'd maybe dance with, and those you'd like to kiss, and those who gave you weird squirmy feelings inside, then it was a pretty sure sign you were headed squarely into the Kingdom of the Bi. Dawn wished she'd been more with-it when she was thirteen and Willow was falling for Tara, because seeing someone else go through it would really have helped. She blamed the monks - what, they could give her the memory of watching Titanic fourteen times but couldn't throw in a childhood love of Heather Has Two Mommies?
She wanted to talk to someone, but Buffy was in Italy and Andrew was squicked by girl-stuff and asking Willow would be too weird. She tossed out a few broad "so, a friend of mine was wondering" questions to Kennedy, and put up with the knowing smirk and the sly innuendos because when Ken stopped being all cool, older, experienced girl she started giving useful answers. And she promised not to tell anyone.
Besides, Kennedy was in the 'like to kiss' category, maybe borderline with 'squirmy feelings'. Girls she liked tended to be gorgeous, strong brunettes, and it took months for Dawn to realise where she'd started to like that particular type. The lightbulb over her head finally blazed to life when Principal Wood broke up with Faith and flew back to the States.
"He's gonna go help Xand and the guys," Faith said, shrugging it off like no big deal. Not even a little deal. Just total absence of deal, and even though Dawn had liked Robin, she simultaneously wanted to throw a party and fly to Cleveland for some principal ass-kicking.
Once she'd calmed down enough to think about it, it made a weird kind of sense. She'd had that stupid crush on Spike a zillion years ago - she could think about Spike now without feeling mad at him, but she didn't think the terrible sadness inside would ever go away - and Faith was kind of Spike-y. They had the mutual bad guy/girl thing going on, besides the love of nicknames and that sense about them that they were always just outside the group.
Terrific. Turned out her type was snarky, leather-wearing rebels. That wasn't going to cause her future heart-trauma.
It took some time for her to progress from "oh my God, I like Faith" to "okay, I like Faith, how do we deal with this?" and finally to just "mmm. Faith." By the time she reached stage three (which she mentally named "I think I'm a lesbian, gimme my toaster oven already") it was December, and Christmas shopping kept her busy enough that she could push it out of her mind.
For the time being.
**
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…
Maybe a Key was, though, Dawn thought sleepily, and curled deeper into the armchair. It was nice like this. Everyone else asleep; just her and the lights on the tree and the music channels playing nothing but Christmas songs. Even if the room wasn't as decorated as she'd like. Giles didn't have many decorations, which was strange for someone whose shop had always looked like Whoville from December first. "But there's no tinsel," Dawn had complained, not caring if she sounded seven and not seventeen. "It's not really Christmas without tinsel." Giles had given her the look that made her want to stick out her tongue, and then he'd distracted her with a new copy of the Halloran lexicon.
She liked living with Giles, though, way more than she'd thought she would. It meant being treated more like a grown-up, and no way was that not of the good. Weird how fluency in Sumerian could make Giles look at you like you were a real person and not a kid. Nobody enforced bedtimes or dumb kid-stuff like that. If she wanted to stay up on a non-school night watching Sky TV, that was okay.
And if she had ulterior motives for being up so late, well, that was between her and her God. Goddess. She hadn't decided yet. One major identity crisis at a time.
It was close to three when she heard the scrape of a key in the lock. She willed herself to calm down. She was pretty sure that even super-duper-Slayer hearing couldn't pick up a human heartbeat, but it was best not to take these chances.
She listened as hard as she could, and imagined what was going on outside. That scuffling was Faith trying to close the door without waking anyone. The rustle of material was her hanging up her coat. The turning sound was…
The door-handle of the living room.
Dawn tried to look very, very interested in the schoolchildren singing War Is Over. She glanced up with affected nonchalance when Faith entered the room, then turned her attention back to the TV.
"Hey."
"Hey," she said back. "How was patrol?"
"Quiet." Faith flopped onto the couch beside her. "Guess the vamps are filled with the holiday spirit. Anything good on?"
"Nah. Carols."
"'kay."
They sat through five songs and several hundred commercials for accident insurance. Not so festive, Dawn thought.
"I'm gonna go to bed," she said, with what she hoped wasn't too obviously fake a yawn.
"Night."
Now or never.
"Merry Christmas!" she chirped, and in the microsecond before she could lose her nerve she leaned forward and kissed Faith.
The kiss was exactly timed; brief enough that she could pass it off as friendly affection - shyeah, she thought - but with enough lip-on-lip action to let her evaluate whether kissing a girl was different to kissing a boy. Or kissing a boy-vamp, at least, because there hadn't been any boys since Justin and Andrew had made an eww face the one time she asked him if he could help her practise.
Crap, she realized, have to end kissage now. She could feel herself blush as she pulled back. Just what she needed. She probably looked like Rudolph's nose.
Oops, hand still on Faith's thigh - how'd that get there? She yanked it back.
Faith was looking at her. Really looking at her. It was less 'what the hell?' than she'd expected, and so far she hadn't been yelled at or dragged upstairs to be tattled on, so it was all good. In theory.
She licked her lips, and wondered whether sleeping on the streets would be worse at Christmas. Maybe church people came round with soup and sang carols; did they do that in England?
Finally, Faith laughed, sitting back. "Damn. You gotta get an eye exam, L'il D. Mistletoe's out in the hallway."
She shrugged, suddenly brave. "Yeah, I know."
Faith nodded, cocking her head just a bit to the side. "Guess you do."
The clock gently ticked away a minute. Dawn counted the seconds, because it distracted her from bad thoughts about kissing Faith again. No way could twice in five minutes be passed off as innocent Dawnie, being nice to surrogate big sis.
"Thought you were turning in?" Faith said. "You better. S'late."
But she didn't make any move to leave herself, Dawn noted, and ventured a tiny whoo-hoo for that.
"I'm not sleepy," she said, feeling bold. Then Faith raised her eyebrows and her bravado evaporated and she lamely added, "I think I'm gonna watch some more TV." She grabbed the remote, flipping randomly through the channels. Commercials. Commercials. Black and white movie. More commercials.
"Go back," Faith said.
She was surprised, but did so. Onscreen, Jimmy Stewart was handing out money to the people of Bedford Falls. That was the part where her mom always seemed to get something in her eye, she remembered.
"You like this movie?" she asked, astonished. Spike's Moulin Rouge love had been a big enough surprise without finding out Faith was a Capra nut. Then she remembered another Christmas, years ago. Mom had been horrified to learn that Faith had never seen It's a Wonderful Life. She'd made a jumbo bowl of popcorn and mugs of hot chocolate, and let them melt marshmallows in the microwave, and the three of them had snuggled up on the couch to watch schmoopy videos.
I was twelve, Dawn thought, for once not adding 'except I wasn't real'. Just: I thought Faith was so pretty. I was twelve, and that was the year it snowed.
Faith was watching her. "Good times," she said, as if Dawn had spoken. She smiled, pulling her legs up beneath her on the couch.
Dawn wished there was some way she could learn to copy that casual poise and effortless sexiness, because it was going to be crappy falling for another girl if she always made her feel like the Queen of Dorktown.
"Giles's holding out on us," Faith said, out of nowhere. "I was lookin' around in the attic last night. Guy's got a ton of Christmas decorations up there."
"No way."
"Serious. Tinsel, fake snow, the works." She tipped her head and grinned. "Wanna redecorate?"
"After the movie," Dawn decided, leaning back against the other girl's shoulder and clamping her mouth shut against the cheer when Faith draped an arm around her.
She'd make hot chocolate during the commercials. Then they'd sneak up to the attic and drag down enough pretty stuff to cover the room, and the front hall too. She figured Andrew wouldn't be able to wait for his new Gamecube, so the others would be up early for presents. She could sit across from Faith at dinner and watch the Queen's speech with her and casually walk under the mistletoe four or five thousand times.
Happiness swelled up inside her, chocolaty and warm.
Maybe later it'd snow.
END
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on 2003-12-19 06:03 pm (UTC)I don't think I've written Dawn before... lemme check. Oh, Square Root of Minus One (http://www.livejournal.com/users/doyle_sb4/89101.html), but that's very Fred-centric. Definitely want to write more Dawn, though, because I loved this challenge.