"Why don't you sparkle?"
Chicken wing half hanging out of his mouth, Spike looked up from the sports section of the newspaper that was spread across the kitchen island and gaped at Dawn.
She stood in the doorway to the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest, determined look on her face.
"Huh?" he managed around the chicken, then pulled out the bone and tossed it on the plate before chewing and swallowing, in that order, thankfully.
"Why don't you sparkle? I mean, really, you'd look so good in the sunlight all glittery."
"I'd be a pillar of flame in the sunlight and ashes don't glitter."
She rolled her eyes at him. "It just seems randomly stupid that you can't go out in the sun."
He resisted rolling his eyes back at her and turned the page. "One of those little idiocincracies about being a vampire, 'bit."
"But wouldn't you like to sparkle? Bet Buffy would like it. And we could let your hair grow out and get all Byrony."
Horrified, he looked up again, wincing at the near-obsessive look in her eye. "Byrony?"
"Yeah, you like poetry, right? All that romantic stuff. We let your hair grow and give you bangs that swoop and..."
"My hair does not swoop and romance is for suckers," he growled.
Dawn stuck her tongue out at him and he was tempted, well almost tempted, to bite it off just to shut her up. "Okay, fine, we'll leave the hair alone, though you know you've done so much damage to it with the peroxide it's bound to fall out someday soon."
Spike's hand automatically went to his hair, then he glared at her again. "What's with all this sparkling crap?"
Grinning gleefully, she dug a book out of her backpack that sat on the other stool and waved it in his face while bouncing a little bit. "This book is about heroic, handsome vampires and they can go outside and they sparkle in the sun and that would just be so cool if you could do that and I bet Buffy would fall in love with you all glittery and able to stroll with her in the sun and you'd be a sparklepire and..."
"You're demented." He grabbed the book and added with a glower, "And I don't stroll." Turning the book over he read the title. "Oh, that's original for a vampire novel."
"The heroine is kind of like me, not that I'd want to fall in love with a vampire or even make out with one. Been there, done that. But it's just so romantic."
Spike winced at the rising sap level in Dawn's voice, then read the description of the book and groaned, "This is worse than Anne Rice."
"At least these vampires get to have sex, though it's all off camera, so to speak, which is kind of sad. I've been wondering, how can you have sex anyway, since you don't have any blood pumping..."
"BUFFY!"
*****
"Why don't we sparkle?"
Angel looked up from some very important paperwork he was avoiding reading and frowned at Harmony who stood in the doorway pouting and holding a black book. "Huh?"
"I want to sparkle. That would be so cool and it would so go with my coloring!"
"...Huh?"
End