Aching to Be
By Gloss
"So you're just...gonna smoosh it?" Dawn asks, leaning forward over her lotus-folded legs, squinting up at Nina. "Give up?"
Nina glances down at the half-thrown pot. The wheel's off, and the only thing keeping the pot from collapsing are her hands cradling it. The skin on her palms burns with the wet friction of spun clay and the rhythm of it still vibrates up her arms.
Every morning, Dawn comes and shucks off her shoes and sits and reads while Nina works. Don't you have school? Nina asked the second morning and Dawn shrugged, pushing her hair off her face and looking intently at a spot on the floor. It'll keep, she said eventually before sinking into her yoga-pose and opening a fat, spine-cracked copy of Anna Karenin to the middle.
Some mornings, it's Tolstoy; other mornings, equally fat history books - wars, famines, and saints, which Dawn calls her big three - or other impenetrable Russian novels.
Maybe Dawn got in the habit while wolfsitting. (Wolfsitting. It's a term that Buffy and Dawn and their old friends use; it makes Nina itch down the back of her neck and deep in her throat; it is at once accurate and demeaning.) Dawn sleeps on blankets on the floor, taser gun at hand, watching Nina pace the cage and howl at the invisible moon.
Those mornings, Dawn buys her breakfast on the Council's Amex and never says a thing about Nina's appetite.
Those mornings, Dawn smells like clay and sweat and *girl*.
Dawn smells like that every morning, if Nina's going to be honest.
"Always thought it was Karenin-*uh*," Nina says now, because Dawn's presence when she's working is lovely and calming, but when she's not, she feels like she should be a good hostess.
"Can be either. This translation says no *uh*."
"Would've thought you'd read it in the original."
Dawn smirks a little at her. "My Russian's not *that* good."
Nina pokes at the pile of clay and wraps her hands around it again. It's uneven, there are too many air-holes, and she still doesn't know what to do with it. Whether she can make anything.
Dawn sits up straighter and cracks her neck. "So, smoosh or resuscitate?"
"Smoosh, I think."
"Pity." Dawn's been holding her place with her finger; she reopens the book and settles back in.
Nina's never been much of a reader. She has her favorites, but Dawn's different. She sinks into what she reads, chewing the end of a lock of hair, her eyes moving swiftly, regularly, across the pages. Nina wonders if that's what she looks like when she's working.
Probably not; the studio at the academy in LA was walled with windows, and she'd catch glimpses of herself occasionally, and all she looked like was frustrated. Clay in her hair, swiped thoughtlessly across her cheek, her face scowling.
She doesn't expect much has changed. Everything *else* has changed - there's no more LA, no more rich almost-boyfriend who did that thing with his big, *cold* hands that made her keen long and low, no more Mandy and Jill. Instead, there's Rome and a tiny studio of her own, complete with a handy cage along one wall, and girls *everywhere*.
And there's Dawn.
Strange and gawky, hanging around the edges of rooms and looking at Nina sidewise like she knows something Nina doesn't. Like she wants to *tell* Nina something. She's not human; in a world of monsters, witches, and superheroes, Dawn is the strangest of them all, crafted-created-sculpted from traces of blood and lunar magics.
"*Fuck*," Dawn mutters and Nina blinks back into awareness, unsure just how long she's been staring at Dawn. Dawn's sucking on her index finger. "Paper cut."
"From that?" The book's so old, its paper has to be soft as flannel at this point.
Dawn waves her bookmark at Nina - heavy stock, a glossy black, lethal.
Everything's funereal these days.
Not Dawn, though, and not Nina, at least not most of the time. The Council shrinks say it's shock or PTSD, Buffy calls it coping, but Nina figures it's just the way things are.
"Let me see -" Wiping her hands on the hem of her shirt, Nina slides off the stool and crouches next to Dawn.
"Your shirt," Dawn says quietly, holding out her hand and touching the purple embroidery along the collar. The cut transects Dawn's index finger, knuckle to knuckle, and the flap of skin looks vaguely obscene, like a lip without a mouth.
"Should wear a smock anyway," Nina says.
She goes to touch the cut, but Dawn turns her wrist, hiding it, brushing her fingertips over Nina's breast. "Don't," Dawn says.
Dawn's hand closes over her breast, and she's built like Nina herself is, big hands on twiggy arms, and her touch is sure, far firmer than Nina's ever was at that age.
"Don't what?" Nina breathes deep, clay and sweat and girl and not-girl, as she tilts toward Dawn.
"Wear a smock -" Just as her words finish, Dawn's mouth meets Nina's neck and her fingers curl into Nina's breast. She can speak quickly, always say what she wants. She knows seven different languages, but wants to learn fifteen more. Three more than Willow, she told Nina the first time they met, before Nina knew anything beyond the name Willow. The only witch who could curse Angel, the smartest girl Dawn ever knew.
The kiss, the touching, all of it, is awkward at first. Clutching, shifting around on the linoleum, Dawn's hair in her mouth and hand sliding to Nina's waist, snagging on the wet smears of clay. Dawn's breathing heavily, scooting back until she leans against the wall, pulling Nina with her, and the late-morning light catches her under the chin. Hollows her out more than ever, girl-mask and deep shining eyes.
"I don't think -" Nina tries to say, even though she's moving forward, even though Dawn smells like everything new and novel, like her sister but not. "Dawn."
Taking hold of the hem of her shirt, Dawn lifts it above her head and tosses it aside. "Not a matter of thinking, see -"
She leans in, grasps Nina's wrist, and puts it on her sternum. She's skinny and soft and Nina's still following, flowing forward, hand working down one breast in its tiny pink bra-cup, thumb unerringly finding the nipple as it passes, and then Dawn straightens up and sighs.
"I see," Nina says, palm curving into the hollow beneath Dawn's ribs as she breathes, and she kisses Dawn again. Rolls with her, against the wall, toward the cage.
The bite made Nina, pushed her out of life into this shadow-world, where everything's the same but she is not. What made Dawn?
Not just monks, that's for sure. Nothing monastic in the scrape of Dawn's nails down Nina's neck, the jabbing rhythm of her knee between Nina's.
Nothing but girl and sweat and *new*. Nina pulls Dawn up over her own body, pushes her back onto her knees, and holds her face in her clay-hoared hands.
Red lip, gnawed by nervous teeth, and Dawn's saucer-big eyes, and the quick, chortling whistle of her breathing. No thinking, no monks, just a girl who's not (human, Buffy, monster) and Nina, and when they kiss again, Dawn crushes Nina against her chest with bough-strong arms and holds her there, mouth sliding sharp and wet against Nina's, and she doesn't let go.