Summary: The goings on at the frat party.

Author’s note: Some dialogue taken from ‘Reptile Boy’ Once again thanks to the fabulous Bloodytearsoflife without whom this chapter would be confusing and full of errors. Happy birthday BTL!

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god.

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Chapter 14: Dawn saves the day

A glamour in place, Dawn Summers strode towards the frat house at which there was this party that Buffy was determined to attend tonight. Yes, she had felt that she needed a glamour, to age herself back up to nineteen. Somehow she didn’t think that her barely there chest was going to get her into the party. And she thanked the PTB for Cosmo to reacquaint her with today’s style.

Flirting her way into the party was easy, keeping sober while she waited for Buffy to show up, was not. Dawn knew that she was a cheap drunk, it was a Summers curse. Hell, she proved it not too long ago with a bottle of kaluah.

When she did spy Buffy come through the door with Cordelia, Dawn left the hapless jock that was trying to feel her up and walked towards her sister.

“Oh, i-is there alcohol in this?” Buffy asked.

“Just a smidge,” replied a frat boy they were standing next to.

“C'mon, Buffy, it's just a smidge,” Cordelia observed.

Dawn looked on with pride as she witnessed her sister put the drink down.

“I understand. When I was your age I wasn't into grownup things either. Have you seen our multi-media room?”

Okay, thought Dawn, that guy deserves the wrath of Dawn. No one, but no one was going to make Buffy feel inferior because she decided not to drink.

As Cordelia and the poophead frat boy she was with left Buffy to fend for herself in the middle of the room, Dawn noticed that there was another party crasher. Xander had just fallen through an open window. She swallowed a laugh as he tried to make sure that no one had seen his entrance. Curiously neither Buffy or Xander had noticed each other and Dawn wondered if it was a good idea to let either of them know she was there too.

The idea that Xander was crashing a party that he didn’t know she was at just confirmed her belief that Buffy was still more important to him. It was his way. She was perfectly willing to let Xander flounder and get caught. It was something he talked about later in life and she didn’t want to take that status from him.

A new song started and Dawn felt herself get caught up in the crowd that had formed around her as she’d been watching both Xander and Buffy. She remembered being in university; it was a fun and happy time in her life. Her sister was alive, and she was living in London. Of course that was until that unfortunate episode as a giant. That’s when her promiscuity took a turn for the interesting.

Grabby hands surrounded her waist and Dawn shuttered when she realised that some drunk guy was trying to feel her up. And he was so not attractive. Dawn pushed him away and gave him her best impression of Cher in Clueless, ‘as if’ on the tip of her tongue. Beyond gross. If she wanted to get laid by a fumbling drunk jock, she had her pick of the guys here. That one was certainly not going to make the cut.

There was something familiar about the guys here, not the random jocks who populated the house, but the distinct leaders of the group. Like the one that Dawn was currently dancing with, someone that reminded her of her governor husband from oh so long ago. These guys had power, charisma, and a superior air. In fact, as Dawn melded herself to her new dance partner, entertaining the idea of taking him home with her, she noticed that Buffy was dancing with a strikingly similar man. Oh yeah, the Summers girls can pick ‘em.

Dylan, the boy Dawn was dancing with started nibbling on her neck, earning him a giggle from the immortal key. She’d always liked when her partners did that. She blamed it on her obsession with vampires. That was another thing that the Summers girls had in common. Vampires got them hot.

As Buffy left her dance partner to get some air on the patio, Dawn pushed her own dance partner away from her neck and suggested to him that she wanted a drink. Eagerly, he left her, pinching her ass as he walked away.

Dawn just rolled her eyes. So juvenile. Behind her somewhere she could hear the beginnings of Xander’s humiliation. An exit was needed and some fresh air didn’t seem so bad.

“Having a good time?” Dawn asked her sister as she came to stand beside the Slayer out on the patio.

Buffy looked a little more than startled at Dawn’s voice. The Slayer looked the Key up and down for a moment before returning her gaze to whatever she had been looking at before Dawn interrupted her reverie.

“You can age at will?” Buffy commented. “If you can, why did it take you a frat party to do it, there have been rumours about Xander dating a seventh grader for weeks.”

“It’s a glamour,” Dawn admitted in a whisper. “You think that I’d be able to get in here looking like a fourteen year old. Incidentally I’ve already gotten five phone numbers and been propositioned three times. I think I’m doing pretty good for someone who hasn’t been to a frat party since….eons ago.”

“Propositioned?” Buffy questioned. “People have offered to have sex with you?”

“Yep,” Dawn answered. “So very tempting too. If Xander ever wakes up from his teenage lust, I might actually call one of them up. You didn’t answer my question though, having a good time?”

Buffy shrugged.

“Seriously, you need to get into the spirit. Do you think that Cordelia is being all mopey?”

“Hey!” came a man’s voice, and Dawn turned to see the guy that Buffy had been dancing with standing behind them. “I thought you didn’t know anyone here? Well, except for Cordelia…”

“Tom, this is…” Buffy started.

“Dawn!” Dylan called out onto the patio. Dawn turned to see her former dance partner headed towards her with a drink. “I thought you ran off.”

“No, never Dylan. I just saw my little sister here, and I thought I’d see why she’s here, instead of at home,” Dawn responded, in a sickly sweet way, taking the drink Dylan offered her.

Dylan had a leer on his face that Dawn knew exactly how to place. There were times when Dawn thought she always attracted the perverted ones.

“Sister?” Tom asked.

“Sadly, it is true,” Buffy answered. “Though sometimes I have this feeling like I’m an only child. Hence the maturity bit.”

Another guy joined their group and handed Buffy and Tom drinks. He’d been with Cordelia earlier.

“To my Argentinean junk bonds that just matured into double digits!” toasted the newcomer.

“Uh, to maturity,” noted Tom.

Dawn noticed the sideways glance Tom was giving Buffy, even as she had to fight off the groping Dylan on her left.

“What the hell. I'm tired of being mature,” Buffy commented.

“Be mature with this,” said Dawn, exchanging the glass Buffy had in her hand for the beer Dawn had in hers. The action earned a panicked look from Tom and the other one. Dawn knew she’d done the right thing. “What? I don’t want to hold her hair when she’s barfing all morning…” she said, playing innocent, as Buffy downed the beer.

“Maybe she wanted that drink?” angrily barked the guy who had been with Cordy.

“Richard, cool it,” noted Tom. “Clearly, Dawn here is looking out for her little sister.”

“You get to drink Buffy’s drink then,” noted Richard, eyeing the drink Dawn had in her hand.

Dawn sniffed it. “What is it?” she asked, continuing the façade that she was fairly innocent. Dawn could tell that it was a rye and coke, and there was probably some sort of date rape drug in it.

“Rye and Coke,” Richard answered.

Dawn wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t like rye.”

“I don’t think I like beer either,’ Buffy noted, after finishing her drink.

“It’s an acquired taste. You like it better as you get older,” Dawn observed. A new song started up on the stereo. “Let’s dance,” the Key said as she linked arms with both Buffy and Dylan and walking back into the house.

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The party was winding down before Buffy grew concerned with the fact that she hadn’t seen Cordelia all night. Dawn was less concerned, but had to concede that her sister did have a sense about these things. Even if that sense was now clouded by the five beers that Buffy had downed in the course of the night.

“I’m not leaving without her. If what you said was true about that drink, Cordy could be date raped right now!”

Dawn sighed and grabbed Buffy’s hand leading her upstairs. “If she’s being violated, they’ll be doing it on a bed. The bed’s are upstairs.”

Reaching the top of the stairs, Dawn planted her slightly inebriated sister in front of the first door.

“Go ahead, knock,” Dawn ordered.

Buffy looked back at her with an annoyed look.

“Look if you want to find Cordy, and you are the only one who really does, then you, not me, are going to have to open every door until you find her,” Dawn explained.

The Slayer nodded and kicked in the door, startling two people making out on the bed.

“Sorry!”

Buffy moved on to the next door, and kicking it in, she found it quiet.

“Cordy?”

Moving into the room, Dawn switched on the lights, and immediately found Cordelia Chase lying on the floor.

“Great, I’m so not carting her home.”

“Get her keys, you can drive her car home.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s smart. Driving drunk, with two drunk underage teenagers in the car. That doesn’t scream pull me over.”

“How else are we going to get home?” Buffy asked, swaying slightly. “I am not calling Giles or Angel or my Mom.”

“Does Angel even have a car? Wait, he must…how else did he get to LA? Time to call Spike,” Dawn noted, digging her cell phone out of her purse.

“You’re calling Spike?” Buffy balked. “He has a phone?”

“No, but he has a pay phone in the factory. Shh, it’s ringing. Hey, minion, I want Spike. Put Spike on the phone. No, you fucking moron, put your Master on the damned phone!”

Dawn could tell that her sister was a little more than shocked at the language issuing from her mouth.

“Minions, brains like mush,” Dawn explained. “Threatening to eat me over the phone is both lame and impossible.”

“Minions, brains like mush,” Buffy echoed, feeling for the bed, and looking just a little more than green.

“Spike? Dawn. I need you and your car at…yes the frat party. Bring a barf bag for the Slayer who can’t hold her drink. Yes I know it runs in the family, I’ve had more experience with alcohol than she has. See you in five.”

Dawn ended the call and poked Buffy in the arm. “You are so not falling asleep on me, nor are you going to start puking your guts up. You are going to carry Cordelia down the stairs.”

Buffy shook her head.

“Yes, yes you are.”

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Ten minutes later Dawn, Spike, and two unconscious teenagers were safely loaded into the black Desoto. Dawn had to enlist the help of Dylan, who was still very drunk, but completely willing to do it after Dawn felt him up and promised follow through the next time they met.

“Where to platelet?” Spike asked pulling out from the curb.

“My house, I don’t know what these two delinquents told their parents and I certainly don’t want to be a party to more badness.”

“No?”

“Yeah, it seems I’m less trusted because of the whole setting the school on fire thing.”

“Shame, that was right fun,” he scoffed. “Though I don’t think I’ll ever get the formaldehyde smell out of my coat.”

“Poor vamp.”

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“It was really cool!” Xander noted the next day in the library, his arms around Dawn as they shared a chair. “We saved the day, no slayer, just me, Willow, Giles, and well Angel helped a bit I guess.”

“Buffy wouldn’t have been able to help even if she was there. She passed out. Girl can’t handle her liquor,” Dawn commented.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see you there!” Xander continued. “I would’ve wanted to see you there.”

“It sounds like you had an interesting time, while I was making sure my sister didn’t get eaten by a giant snake,” Dawn retorted. “You’ll have to tell me about this experience again some time.”

“Sure thing.”

The pair turned their attention to Buffy who was talking to Giles. The watcher was not happy with his Slayer.

“I told one lie, I had a couple of drinks,” Buffy admitted.

“Yes, and you could have been devoured by a giant demon snake, in fact there were innocent people who were very nearly devoured by a giant demon snake, due to your lack of responsibility. The words 'let that be a lesson' are a tad redundant at this juncture,” Giles noted.

“I'm sorry,” Buffy pouted.

“So am I. I... I drive you too hard because I-I know what you have to face. From now on no, no more pushing, no more prodding. Just, uh, an inordinate amount of nudging,” Giles answered. “You are extremely lucky that Dawn was able to see through their intentions and get you away from the situation before you were fed to the giant snake. I hope that you express your thanks.”

“Are you kidding? Buffy answered giving an over the shoulder look to Dawn. “Have you seen her house? I thought Cordelia was rich… I have a new sister and I’m milking it for all it’s worth! I don’t care if she got Spike to drive us home.”

Across the room, Dawn snuggled into Xander’s arm. It had been nice to be a co-ed again, but she liked high school better.

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Tbc…