… The Better to Ogle You, My Dear

Disclaimer: All hail ME, not me. I only own my dirty mind.

It was the deepest part of the night, and the house was quiet.

Waiting.

Then a shower hissed as it came to life, and the patter of water against tile filled the silence of the upstairs hall.

And those sounds compelled teenaged girls from rooms along the hall and from various other hiding places, and drew them – more swiftly than the Pied Piper’s flute – to the bathroom door. Light slivered out from the tiny crack between the door and the frame, and they clustered around it.

Immediately, the pushing, shoving and whispered arguments began.

“Dawn, stop hogging!”

“Yeah, we all want to see!”

Dawn rolled her eyes briefly, gave one girl crowding her a sharp elbow to the stomach and planted herself more firmly in front of the crack. “Please! It’s my house.”

“Yeah, so you’ve gotten to see this more often than we have!”

Dawn snorted in response to Vi’s whine. “Scheyeah! You think Buffy’s bad now? Last year she was the Mega-Bitch from Hell. No way would she have let him use the shower before.”

The other girls stopped squabbling for a moment, contemplating Dawn’s words, then there was a massive group shudder. Several hands patted Dawn on the back in sympathy for having endured the previous year.

Mollified, Dawn moved slightly to one side, allowing Vi a slightly better view, but she still kept her gaze glued to the translucent shower curtain and the outline of the figure behind it, crowned with a shock of white-blond hair.

It had become a nightly ritual; after Buffy and Spike returned from their late patrols, she’d let him use the shower… and the Potentials and Dawn would gather around to watch.

Dawn had been reluctant at first, but she’d had a crush on him years before any of the others, and it hadn’t been long before teenage hormones had asserted themselves again. She’d been the first one at the door the very first night, and every night since.

Of course, it helped that her room was closest to the bathroom.

“Cor… it’s already foggy in there,” Molly breathed, angling a little. “Mirror’s already covered.”

“Why are you looking at the mirror?” Amanda asked in surprise. “I mean, hello, vampire! No reflection!”

Molly definitely blushed; the light through the cracked door illuminated her pink cheeks nicely. “Jus’… ‘abit, is all!”

“So you’ve done this before?” Dawn couldn’t resist teasing.

“No, I ain’t!” Molly’s vehement protest was muffled as someone – several someones – slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Quiet!” Dawn glowered up at her. “You don’t want him to hear you, do you? The shower’s not that loud!”

“Ooh…” Amanda’s breathless noise pulled their attention away from the burgeoning argument and back to the ogling at hand.

“What? What?” Dawn demanded, jockeying for position against Vi as softly as she could.

“Oh, you missed it,” she said, and even in the tiny bit of light from the open door, her face looked dreamy. “The curtain flipped open for just a second…”

More than one disappointed sigh was heaved.

“I wonder if his skin turns pink.” Vi was so consumed by that particular thought that she stopped shoving Dawn.

“I don’t know.” For just an instant, it seemed Amanda was taking the question seriously. Then her face creased in a wicked grin. “You don’t like the marble perfection look?”

Once again, silence descended upon the girls as they contemplated Spike’s pale skin and firm muscles, which each of them had had the opportunity to feel during training sessions.

Despite knowing Spike longer than the others, Dawn kept her eyes on his form, and thus was the first one to notice…

“Oh. My. God.” She leaned into the door-frame hard enough to leave a ridged imprint in her forehead, striving for a better view. Her breath came a little faster and heavier.

“What?” Vi pushed against Dawn again, but Dawn wouldn’t budge.

Amanda had the next best line of sight, and she sucked in a breath.

Spike had turned in the shower, letting the water pound on his back. He had one forearm braced on the tiled wall at the far end of the shower – the way the shower curtain fluttered in the steamy air showed that unmistakably – while the other was washing…

No, that was definitely not washing…

“Oh,” Molly breathed in awe, “’e’s not…”

“Oh, yes, he is!”

A moment later, it became abundantly clear what Spike was doing. His low moan reverberated in the air, and he leaned forward, resting his brow on the arm he had on the shower wall. The shadowy movement of his other hand sped up ever so slightly.

The silence that fell over the girls was absolute. Transfixed, they could do nothing but stare, watching as he pleasured himself under the hot spray. In the gap of the curtain, they could see how his hair curled in the heat, that his skin was slightly less pale than usual. Through the curtain, they saw the line of his shoulders and back tense and relax, tense and relax with each stroke of his hand, with each thrust of his hips. They could hear his soft pants even over the splash of the water.

So entranced were they that none of them even heard the creak of the floorboards behind them.

“Whatcha doing?” The voice behind them was curious and mild.

It was one they all knew, too, but not quite enough to allow any of the girls to tear her eyes away from the vision of Spike. The most any of them did was frown briefly, before returning all of her attention to the vampire not-quite-hidden behind the shower curtain.

Without thinking, Vi replied, “Watching Spike.”

“Why?” This time, the voice was sharp, like a whip-crack over their ears, and suddenly much, much more familiar.

Dawn whimpered and closed her eyes in dread.

“Why?” Molly sounded incredulous. “‘Aven’t you seen…” She trailed off, blinking as she also recognized who it must be.

“We’re in big trouble, aren’t we?” Amanda muttered.

Dawn nodded emphatically, eyes still closed as if that would let her pretend that she hadn’t really been doing what she had been doing.

The other girls peered behind them, only to be greeted by Buffy’s fiercest glare. Her arms were crossed under her breasts, and she was tapping one bare foot. She was wearing a fluffy robe that swaddled her from neck to mid-shin, but it didn’t make her appear any softer.

“Well?”

There were various stuttered sounds that probably would have been words, had the girls been less frightened.

“Dawn?” The warning tone was unmistakable.

Dawn swallowed, but her voice still came out as a squeak. “Buffy?” God, her sister was scary.

“Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

Again, Dawn could only nod.

“Good. You might want to explain to the other girls about that. But before you do anything else, you are going back to your room and let Spike finish his shower… without an audience.” If anything, Buffy’s angry frown only deepened. “Is that clear?”

A chorus of ‘eeps’ and girls scattering in all directions was her reply.

When she was sure they were all where they were supposed to be – and too frightened to come back – Buffy pushed open the bathroom door and leaned against the jamb.

The hiss of the shower had stopped, and Spike peeked around the shower curtain, full of faux modesty. “Are they gone?” he asked, forcing a tremor into his voice.

Buffy couldn’t help but grin, even as she rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, Spike, the big, bad mini-Slayers are gone now.”

Just like that, his reticence disappeared, and the shower curtain clattered against the rod as he pushed it back. Buffy caught her breath, hoping…

But no, to her dismay, there was a towel slung around his lean hips, and she pouted, unable to contain her disappointment. Greedily, her eyes traced the paths of water droplets as they beaded on his skin and trickled down his chest, before disappearing into the towel.

“Don’t see why you took such a pet over this,” Spike said, running his hands through his hair and squeezing out some excess water. It cascaded down his chest. “They’re just girls. A bunch of teenage hormone bombs…”

Buffy licked her lips.

“They’re not doing anyone any harm by… Buffy?”

Her growl gave both of them pause.

Spike recovered first, and gave her his patented smirk. “No need to be jealous, love…”

Her pout intensified. “Not jealous,” she muttered.

He arched one eyebrow. “Really.”

Before he could say anything further, Buffy pounced. He reeled back against the wall, arms full of warm, fuzzy Slayer. Rather than her usual lick, nip and kiss, however, she just buried her face against his neck, locking her arms around him until he was glad he didn’t need to breathe. “Buffy?”

He just barely heard it when she murmured, “No one gets to ogle my vampire but me.”