Baseball (Dawn Does All the Bases)

Part 2: First Base The doorbell rang at eight the next night. Dawn had been upstairs with Willow for over an hour. Buffy had privately suggested to Willow that she ‘volunteer’ to help Dawn get ready. She didn’t want a repetition of the outfit Dawn had worn for the guy with the jacket. Buffy let Kevin in. “Dawn will be down in a couple of minutes. Why don’t you have a seat in the living room.” She directed him through the French doors. Xander was waiting for him, and Buffy made introductions. “So, Kevin, where are you guys going tonight?” asked Xander. “Um, the Coliseum, over on Highway 61.” said Kevin. “The movie starts at nine.” “And you’ll have Dawn home by midnight?” “Uh, yes sir.” said Kevin. He had been hoping that he wouldn’t have to put up with this sort of questioning, since he knew that Dawn was in the custody of her sister. “How are you getting there?” asked Xander. “I have my dad’s car.” said Kevin. “Uh, he wants it home by midnight too.” He suddenly remembered what Dawn had told him about Xander last night, and thought he saw a way out of this. “Geez, I didn’t expect a sort of Spanish Inquisition.” “*No one* expects the Spanish Inquisition!” said Xander. --- Kevin and Xander were half way through the Dead Parrot sketch when Dawn and Willow came down the stairs. Kevin stopped dead when he saw her. Buffy looked at what had arrested Kevin’s attention, and for a moment she wasn’t too pleased with what Willow had wrought on her sister, but there was nothing for her to object to. Dawn was wearing blue jeans, not low cut, not too tight, but tight enough to show her legs to good effect. The effect was enhanced by her black boots with two inch heals. She was also wearing a red turtle neck sweater that hugged her figure, but it once again was perfectly demure. Dawn’s makeup was understated. The sort that looked like it wasn’t there to the uninitiated. It merely highlighted her natural beauty. Her hair was done simply, no fancy curls, nor the braids that Dawn often wore. The combined effect could only be called stunning. If Buffy didn’t know better she might have suspected that Willow had added a glamour spell over top to enhance it all. Kevin was certainly stunned. It took him a little while to find his voice again. “Uh, hi Dawn…you look…great!” Dawn smiled. “Thank you! You look pretty good too.” Kevin could see that Xander was frowning again. He decided that it was time to escape. “So, Dawn, shall we go?” He offered her his arm. Dawn took it in her hand. “Why, yes. Thank you.” They started toward the door together. “Remember.” said Buffy. “Home by midnight.” “Yes Mother.” said Dawn. Xander watched Kevin and Dawn go down the walk to the car parked on the street. A two door Toyota. Kevin opened the door for Dawn, and held her hand while she got in. There was a definite skip in his step as he went around to the driver’s side. “So what was the movie they were going to?” “/Catch Me If You Can/.” said Willow. “Gee, I haven’t seen that one yet. Want to go?” Buffy whacked his shoulder. “Xander! We are not going to go spy on Dawn and her date. We have to trust her.” “Oh, I trust Dawn.” said Xander. “It’s that Kevin guy. What do we know about him?” “Dawn’s been going to school with him for a couple of years, and I’ve seen him around once or twice.” said Buffy. “I, uh, snuck a peek at his file at the school today. He’s never been in any significant trouble, and he has good grades. He seems like a nice guy. And we have to trust Dawn to be able to take care of herself, even if Kevin does turn out to be untrustworthy. I’ve been teaching her how to fight vamps. A sixteen year old boy should be no problem for her, if he gets out of line.” --- It was 11:45 when Kevin pulled to a stop in front of Dawn’s house again. He turned off the ignition, and the lights. “So, here we are.” “Here we are.” said Dawn. “I had a good time.” “Me too.” They both sat awkwardly for a moment, and then they both started to lean toward each other, only to be stopped by their seat belts. They both pulled back, and looked embarrassed. Dawn undid her seat belt, and started to lean toward Kevin again. He fumbled for a moment before he managed to get loose. Their lips met briefly over the center console. “Um, I should be getting in.” said Dawn. “You’ve still got a few minutes. Want to come in for a sec?” Kevin licked his lips. They tasted of theatre popcorn, and apples. He assumed that the second must be Dawn’s lipstick. “Yeah, that would be nice.” He got out of the car, and started around to open Dawn’s door for her. She already had it open by the time he got there, but he took her hand, and helped her out of the car. They continued to hold hands as they went up to the front porch. Dawn stopped by the door. “Before we go in…” She kissed him again. Kevin’s hands slipped around her back as they kissed. Dawn parted her lips, and felt Kevin respond in kind. His right hand went down to her hip. Dawn tentatively moved her tongue forward, and it met with his. Her arms went around his back, and pulled him closer. His hand moved a little farther down, and around behind, while their tongues slowly explored each other. After a moment that seemed to last forever, and was over way too soon, Dawn pulled her mouth away from Kevin’s. “Wow!” she squeaked. “That was… Wow!” Kevin’s hand was still lingering on her backside. “Yeah!” He smiled at her. “Want to try it again?” He leaned toward her. The second kiss lacked the tentative start of the first, and was also over much too soon. “That was…incredible.” said Kevin. “Um…yeah.” said Dawn. “Uh, we were going inside, weren’t we?” She pulled away from him slowly and reached for the doorknob, hoping to find it locked. That would mean that Buffy and Willow were out. The door opened. “Damn!” she whispered. “Something wrong?” asked Kevin. “Oh, no.” Dawn blushed. “It’s nothing.” Willow was coming down the stairs when they stepped into the foyer. “Hi Dawn. Kevin.” She held out her hand to him. “I’m Willow. We didn’t get introduced earlier when Xander was giving you the third degree.” Kevin shook her hand. “Hi.” “So, are you Chris’s brother?” asked Willow. “Oh, you know Chris?” “Just a little.” said Willow. “I tutored his friend Percy in History during our senior year. Chris didn’t need tutoring. How’s he doing?” “Finishing up his senior year in Electrical Engineering at Cal Tech.” said Kevin. “Good for him!” said Willow. The three of them moved into the living room. Buffy was sitting on the sofa, reading a book. She looked up at them and smiled at Kevin. “You got her home on time.” She looked at her watch. “And you still have three minutes befyou&you’re late getting your dad’s car home.” Kevin looked at his watch. “Oh sh—” He cut himself off. “What happened to that fifteen minutes?” Buffy just smiled. She knew what happened to that fifteen minutes. “Um. I gotta go, Dawn. It was great! If I get back late, it’ll be a month before Dad lets me have the car again.” He started toward the door, with Dawn right behind him. “Oh, Dawn, I’ll call you!” Dawn didn’t let him get out the door without giving him another quick kiss. “Bye Kevin!” she called as he ran down the walk. Kevin barely paused to wave as he got into the car. “Bye Dawn!” He got in, and sped away down the street. He was half a block away before he remembered to turn on the headlights. Dawn closed the door, and returned to the living room. “Well, he appears to be a good kisser.” said Buffy. Dawn blushed, and then she started to get angry. “You were spying on us!” “No.” said Buffy. “I was sitting here reading my book, and about fifteen minutes ago I heard some car doors cloand and you invite him in, and then about five minutes later I heard some ‘Wow!’s and after another five minutes I hear some ‘incredible’ and then you come in with a big happy grin on your face. Simple deduction. Elementary my dear Dawnie. Judging by the way he lost track of the time, I think it’s safe to say that he thinks you’re a good kisser too.” The phone rang. Buffy glanced at her watch again. “And I betcha that’s him. Looks like he made it home on time.” Dawn answered the phone. “Hello. … Hi Kevin. … I’m sorry you had to run out so fast too.” She looked over at Buffy and Willow, who were watching with interest. “Um, just a sec while I find some place more private.” She left the living room, and went up to her room. --- Dawn hung up the phone. Her hand had been in her pants through half her conversation with Kevin. She had resisted the urge to really play with herself though, she was afraid that he’d know what she was doing. Now that she was off the phone, she started to strip off her pants to properly take care of herself. “Dawn!” called Buffy from downstairs. “Don’t forget to bring back the phone before you go to bed!” “Damn!” Dawn pulled her pants back up. Dawn brought the phone back downstairs. Buffy and Willow were still in the living room, watching some late movie on the TV. She put the phone on the desk. “So, did you have a good time?” asked Buffy. “Yeah. It was a good movie.” said Dawn. “Kevin liked it too.” She pretended to yawn. “Oh, I’m so sleepy. I’ll see you guys in the morning.” “’Night Dawnie.” said Willow. “Sweet dreams.” “’Night!” Dawn was off up the stairs. Dawn stripped out of her clothes quickly. She almost jumped straight into bed that way, but felt a different call of nature demanding her attention, that she knew she’d have to take care of sooner, rather than later. She pulled on an oversized t-shirt that she used as a nightshirt, and went to the bathroom to pee. Dawn flushed the toilet, and went to wash up at the sink. She cleaned off her makeup, and looked at herself in the mirror. She thought she looked less mature now, and wondered if Kevin would want to kiss this face as much as he had wanted to kiss her earlier that evening. She had to find out. They were going to visit the zoo together tomorrow. She knew that there were several places there where they could get a little privacy. Dawn decided to go with a minimum of makeup. No more than what she normally wore to school. Thinking of making out with Kevin at the zoo had Dawn’s hand creeping down between her legs again. She pulled it away, and returned quickly to her room. Dawn closed her door and stripped off her night shirt. She climbed in between the sheets of her bed, and slipped her finger into her pussy. --- The zoo trip was a resounding success. Dawn didn’t have to go looking for a private spot. She and Kevin just naturally seemed to be drawn to a quiet alcove at the back of the darkened aquarium display soon after they arrived. They spent fifteen minutes there exploring each other’s faces with their lips and tongues, while their hands roamed over each other’s backs, ribs and buttocks. Kevin discovered that he could get a squeal of laughter from Dawn by nibbling on her earlobes. Dawn found that his ribs were especially ticklish. The noise they were making started to draw attention away from the fishes. They moved on to other displays, always on the lookout for some new place to sneak in a little making out. There was one problem when K tri tried to pull Dawn into a corner of the /Weirick Memorial Hyena Exhibit/. Dawn just didn’t feel comfortable in the place, but she couldn’t explain what she knew about how Dr. Weirick *really* died to Kevin. She didn’t want to make out in a place where Buffy had killed a man, even if he was evil, and trying to kill her at the time, and it was mostly an accident. She didn’t *mean* to throw him in with his hyenas. Dawn knew that even though she never talked about it, Buffy still had nightmares sometimes about Weirick’s death. Kevin was disappointed, but he didn’t push it. Dawn dragged him behind a small stand of trees almost as soon as they were out to make it up to him. --- It was nearly a week later that Dawn and Kevin were alone together in her living room. He had been coming over a lot. They’d do their homework together, sometimes here, and sometimes at Kevin’s, and then if they were done early enough, go to the Bronze. Buffy had looked in on them frequently at first, “just passing through,” but that had died down once she had assured herself that they didn’t start making out until after the homework was done, (or maybe a little when they needed a break) and that they really were doing their own work, one of them wasn’t just cribbing off the other. Dawn was feeling really good about the way Buffy was trusting her. Tonight though, Buffy was *out*, and so was Willow. Willow had a late class, and wouldn’t be home until eleven. Buffy was out hunting a demon, and might be gone all night. Dawn closed her math textbook. “Done at *last!*” She looked at the clock. It was nearly nine. A bit late to bother going to the Bronze. Theyuo;duo;d have to turn around and come back home almost as soon as they got there if they were going to make their school night curfew. Buffy was being so easy going about Kevin that Dawn didn’t want to push her luck. She got up and walked over to Kevin by the bookshelves at the back of the room. Kevin had finished about ten minutes earlier, and had gone over too look at the books. Dawn saw that he had one of Buffy’s demonology compendiums in his hands, and was looking at the pictures. (The actual text was in ancient Greek.) He looked up at Dawn. “You guys have a weird book collection.” “Buffy’s really into mythology and stuff, and a friend left her his library when he moved back to England.” Dawn took the book, and put it back on the shelf. “She really doesn’t like people messing with them. Some of these books are really valuable.” She took Kevin’s hand and pulled him back toward the sofa. “I’d rather you were messing with me.” Kevin didn’t put up any resistance. Soon they were together on the sofa, kissing each other deeply. Kevin’s right hand started out on Dawn’s hip, and slowly moved up, past her waist, along the side of her ribs. It started to move forward, toward her breast. Dawn’s mouth on his told him that she wanted him to continue. He slowly cupped her breast in his hand. He started to squeeze. Dawn pulled her mouth off his. “No.” she whispered. Kevin quickly pulled his hand from her breast. “Sorry.” Dawn grabbed his hand, and pulled it back to her breast. “This is good, just don’t squeeze so hard.” she whispered. She started to kiss him again, as he gently caressed first one, then the other breast. She liked the feel of his hand through the fabric of her t-shirt and bra. After a few minutes she pulled her mouth away from his again. “You can squeeze a little.” she whispered. Kevin slowly started to tighten his hand. “Hmm…yeah…a little more…there…no harder than that.” She started kissing him again. Kevin’s left hand moved up to cup her right breast, while his right cupped her left. He kept both hands in motion, sometimes caressing, sometimes squeezing. He quickly learned to read what Dawn liked from the way she moaned into his mouth. Kevin brought his right hand back down to Dawn’s waist. She was wearing a high waisted t-shirt that left a couple of inches of exposed skin above the belt of her jeans. He slowly ran his fingers along her skin, just above her waist band. He had discovered how much she liked that during their zoo trip. He started bringing his hand back up toward her breast, this time sliding it under the fabric of her shirt. He moved it slowly, watching for any sign that she didn’t want him to do this. She wasn’t giving him any. Dawn and Kevin heard the front door open. “I’m home!” called Buffy. “Crap!” whispered Dawn as she and Kevin pulled themselves apart. “Her timing sucks!” Buffy came into the living room while Dawn was still adjusting her shirt. Dawn saw a thoughtful expression cross her face, but Buffy didn’t make any comment about it. She just glanced at the clock. “You’re still here Kevin? Shouldn’t you be on your way home by now?” Dawn and Kevin looked at the clock. It was five after ten. Kevin started gathering up his books. “Oh, yeah. I guess we just lost track of the time.” He got up from the sofa. Dawn followed him to the door, and kissed him goodnight. “See you in the morning.” She watched Kevin until he was out of sight, and then closed the door. Buffy had moved on into the kitchen, and was looking in the fridge. “So I guess the hunt didn’t take as long as you thought?” asked Dawn. “Nope.” Buffy pulled an apple out of the fridge. “This was a dumb one. It kept going back to the same place to hunt, and its slime trail made it easy to follow. I managed to kill it before it added anyone new to its diet.” Buffy bit into the apple, and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to take a shower.” She gave Dawn another thoughtful look before she went off up the stairs. Dawn went up to her room, and changed into her nightshirt. She kept thinking about the way Buffy had been looking at her. She didn’t see disapproval, but Buffy was thinking something. Dawn was pretty sure that Buffy had a very good idea of what she had interrupted. That thought got Dawn’s mind off onto a whole other track. She got into bed while she could still hear Buffy bustling around in her room, getting ready for her shower. Dawn started to run her hand up along the path Kevin’s had been following toward her breast. She closed her eyes, and imagined that Buffy hadn’t interrupted them. What would he do next? Would she have stopped him if his hands had started down into her pants? She didn’t stop her imaginary Kevin. She let his hand roam freely down through her pubic hair, pausing briefly to tease it, and then down to her sex, while his other hand started to play with her nipple. She imagined what it would be like to have his mouth kissing her breasts, while he fingered her pussy. Dawn soon brought herself to orgasm. Shortly later she heard the shower stop, and Buffy move back into her bedroom. Dawn went to take her turn in the bathroom before she went to sleep. --- Dawn climbed back into bed, but the way she was feeling, she didn’t think that she would be sleeping soon. Her hand slid down between her legs again. --- Buffy was getting into her pajamas when she heard Dawn return to her bedroom from the bathroom. ‘No use putting this off.’ she thought as she finished buttoning her top. She went to the door that connected her room to Dawn’s, and raised her hand to knock. She stopped when she heard a soft moan. ‘*Again?*’ she thought. She had heard Dawn start to masturbate before she’d gone in for her shower. ‘Oh, to be sixteen again.’ Buffy remembered something that her mother had said about that, shortly after they’d moved to Sunnydale, and considering everything that had happened since, she decided that her mother had been right. She didn’t want to do that again. Buffy considered waiting for Dawn to finish, but that wasn’t likely to be soon. Better to interrupt early. She knocked on the door. “Dawn? Can I come in?” “Just a sec!” Buffy heard a quick scrambling of movement. “Um, yeah, come on in.” Buffy opened the door. “Sorry to interrupt.” She turned on the light. Dawn was sitting up in her bed with the blankets pulled up to her waist. Her face was flushed. Buffy could see her wipe her fingers under the sheets. “You didn’t interrupt anything.” “Yes I did, and that’s one of the things I want to talk to you about.” said Buffy. “I think it’s time that we had one of those terribly awkward and embarrassing ‘Mom Sex Talks.’ Fortunately for you it is going to be accompanied by the much more fun ‘Big Sister Sex Talk.’” Buffy pointed to the end of Dawn’s bed. “Can I sit down?” Dawn seemed to be blushing even deeper. “Um, yeah.” Buffy sat on the end of the bed and crossed her legs. “It looks to me like you and Kevin are getting pretty serious. In fact, unless I’m very much mistaken, he made second base tonight.” Dawn was scarlet. “No.” Buffy patted Dawn’s knee. “It’s okay. Second base is a good place to be when you’re sixteen, with the right guy. I’d been there with a couple of guys by the time I was your age.” “We weren’t to second.” Dawn grinned. “Might have been if you’d gotten home thirty seconds later.” “Oh, sorry about that.” said Buffy. Dawn could see that she meant it. “You’re not mad?” “Why should I be mad?” asked Buffy. “Like I said, second base is a good place to be, with the right guy, and Kevin seems to be a right guy for you. He didn’t force you or anything did he?” Dawn heard a tinge of coldness creep into Buffy’s voice. “Oh no! It was totally a cooperative effort!” “Good.” said Buffy. “It’s important that you don’t let him push you into anything you’re not ready to do, and you shouldn’t push him either. You take your time, step by step. That’s the way it works best. Don’t try to rush things.” “Had you gone any farther than second, when you were sixteen?” asked Dawn. “Not really.” said Buffy. “I had one guy who tried to steal third, and I threw him out…literally. It was while I was still back at Hemery, not too long after I became the Slayer, still not fully in control of my strength. He bounced twice. It put the final nail in my social life. Guys were afraid to date me after word of that got around.” “Things got better when we moved to Sunnydale.” said Dawn. “Yes they did.” Buffy smiled. “Among other things I’d learned that one bounce was sufficient to discourage unwanted advances.” Buffy stopped and thought for a bit. “I was serious about taking your time, and not rushing things though. Rushing leads to badness. This I know.” “What sort of badness?” “Okay, I guess if I’m going to embarrass you with this talk, I might as well embarrass myself too. Good and bad examples from the life of Buffy Summers. I’ve had sex with four different guys. Two of those were good experiences, and two were bad.” “Okay, I know about Angel, Riley and Spike.” said Dawn. “And I’m guessing that Angel and Spike are going to be the bad examples. Who’s the good one I don’t know?” “Actually, I’m counting Angel as one of the good ones.” said Buffy. “What happened after wasn’t something that we could have predicted. How many guys lose their souls if they have a moment of perfect happiness? “Angel and I took it slow. We’d known each othlmoslmost a year, and we’d been seriously dating for four or five months. I love Angel, and he loves me, and the night we made love is the closest thing I have that I can compare to being in Heaven. It was perfect. For me and for him. I wish it had been less perfect for him, I regret what happened because of it, but I can’t fault myself, or him, for how it happened. I know I spent a lot of time afterwards blaming myself, but I stopped doing that long ago. “The second guy…Parker Abrams.” Buffy paused. “Okay, we need to define some terms. For the purposes of this talk, there are three sorts of sex: ‘making love,’ ‘having sex’ and ‘fucking.’” “Fucking?” asked Dawn. “Yes.” said Buffy. “Only for the purposes of this discussion. It is not a word I want to hear you say outside of this discussion, understand me?” “Okay.” said Dawn. “In this discussion, what does ‘fucking’ mean?” “Let’s start at the other end.” said Buffy. “‘Making love’ is when two people who love each other have sex. It is the best sort of sex there is. You and your partner are completely in tune with each other, your pleasure feeds theirs, and their pleasure feeds yours. It is like being in Heaven, and I’m speaking from experience here. I made love with Angel. “‘Having sex’ is the second kind. It’s good too. You and your partner care for each other, maybe deeply. You respect each other. You enjoy getting pleasure from them, and you enjoy giving them pleasure. Riley and I had a lot of sex. “‘Fucking’ is when you’re only interested in having your own orgasm. You care for your partner about as much as you’d care for a sex toy. I was fucking Spike last year…I’m not exactly sure what he was doing.” “And you fucked this Parker guy?” asked Dawn. “I was having sex.” said Buffy. “He was fucking me. Relationships aren’t always symmetrical. One partner can be having sex, while the other is making love. That was one of the problems Riley and I had. He was making love to me some of the times that I was having sex. “It was at the beginning of my first term at UCSunnydale. I was away from home, thinking I was oh so grown up, and I met this guy. He seemed to be interested in me, we spent a lot of time together for about a week, and then one night after a party we went back to his place, and he fucked me. I was having sex, and that night was good, but the next morning he dumped me. He’d gotten what he wanted, and he threw me away. I was miserable for a month after that, thinking that there was something wrong with me. It wasn’t until I saw him treating other girls the same way that I realized it was him, not me. About a month after he did that to me, he even had the gall to make a pass at Willow.” “Did she turn him into a toad?” “Nope. That was before she was getting very powerful, magic-wise.” Buffy grinned. “I hit him on the head with a tree branch once…twice though. But that is part of a whole other talk on the evils of beer.” “I’ve only been going out with Kevin for a week.” said Dawn. “Are you saying you think he might be using me?” “No!” said Buffy. “Not at all. You’ve kinda known him for a couple of years, right?” Dawn nodded. “And I’m sure that you’ve talked about him with your friends, and some of them have known him just as long, maybe longer?” Dawn nodded again. “So if he was anything like the sort of jerk that Parker was, you’d have known about it long ago, and wouldn’t have started dating him, right?” “I guess.” said Daw&ldq“If I’d been paying attention I would have seen the signs in Parker right away too. The day he met me, he also tried to pick up my first roommate, but I blamed her for that. Since she turned out to be a soul sucking demon, it was easy to assume that it was her fault. I should have just let her have him. “All I’m saying is that I want you to take your time. Be sure that what you’re doing is what *you* want to do, okay?” “Okay.” said Dawn. “So is that the talk?” “Just part one.” said Buffy. “Ready for part two?” “I guess.” “Contraception. I’m going to make an appointment for you with Dr. Simpson next week, and get you a prescription for the pill.” “But I’m not—! We’re not—!” “I know.” said Buffy. “But if we wait until you are, it may be too late. I’m not ready to be ‘Aunt Buffy.’ This isn’t permission for you to run out and start having sex either. Remember part one. Take your time, but when you are ready, I want you to be completely ready, which brings us to part two-B: condoms.” “But if I’m on the pill—” “Babies aren’t the only thing you can catch from having sex.” said Buffy. “And the pill isn’t 100% effective. I’m really not ready to be ‘Aunt Buffy.’” “Did you use them?” “When I was with Parker and Riley, you bet. Angel and Spike…well let’s just say that vampires are sterile, in every sense of the word. The demon that animates them is totally inimical to all sorts of living organisms, right down to viruses…virri…whatever.” “Doesn’t putting the condom on kinda spoil the mood?” asked Dawn. Buffy smiled. “Not if you do it right. It can be part of the foreplay. I think we can save that for another talk too. I’ll show you some tricks when you think you’re ready.” “What if he doesn’t want to?” asked Dawn. “Then he doesn’t care enough about you for you to be having sex with him.” said Buffy. “I want you to promise me this: You will not have sex with a boy who isn’t wearing a condom.” “I promise.” “Okay…If he doesn’t have any of his own…Riley left an almost full box when he left. I’ll put it in one of the bathroom drawers. You might want to keep a few in your purse.” “A few?” “You always want to have more than one. Especially until you’ve had some practice putting them on. It’s easy to mess up. If you have a problem getting one on, always throw it away, and start over with a new one. “Now comes the *really* embarrassing part of this talk.” said Buffy. “You ready for it?” “I guess.” “It’s what I interrupted when I knocked on your door.” “But you didn’t— I wasn’t doing anything! Really!” Dawn was blushing scarlet again. “Then you are the only girl in this house who isn’t ‘doing anything.’” said Buffy. “We all masturbate Dawn. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” “You do it?” “Oh yeah! What do I always do when I come back from a patrol, Dawn?” “You get something to eat, and then you go take a shower.” “Faith was right about one thing: Slaying makes me hungry and horny. I’m not just washing off the slime. I do most of my masturbating in the shower. It helps cover the noise.” “But if it’s nothing to be ashamed of, why should you care about covering the noise?” “Because it’s damn distracting to anyone who happens to be able to overhear you.” said Buffy. “Okay, a secret: don’t tell this to anyone on pain of being Slain. Promise?” “Promise.” said Dawn. “When we were sharing the dorm room, Willow and I used to masturbate together.” Buffy saw Dawn’s eyes widen. “Not *together* together you understand, just at the same time. She’d be lying in her bed, and I’d be lying in mine, and one of us would start, and the other would hear, and then she’d start doing it. It was a blast. I’d be thinking about Riley, or Angel, and I assumed that she was thinking about Oz…We didn’t do it as much after I learned about Tara. I was less comfortable doing it while thinking that she was thinking about a girl.” “You were afraid she might be thinking about you?” “No…yes…it’s complicated. I wasn’t *afraid* that she was thinking about me that way, but I found the idea that she might be… uncomfortable. “So, yes. Willow and I both masturbate. Even when we were in relationships where we were getting regular sex, but now we usually do it in the shower.” “To cover the noise.” “That and…the massage head has uses not listed in the official user’s manual. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should…but I suggest you do it while taking a bath the first couple of times. Wouldn’t want you falling and bumping your head.” “So you want me to masturbate.” “Yes. Just try to keep the noise down. Masturbation is great. It feels good, it’s a great stress reliever, helps you get to sleep, and it can make the taking your time before going farther in a relationship easier. “It has a couple of other benefits. First of all everyone enjoys doing things a little differently. Different things give pleasure to different people. I like doing things that you probably wouldn’t, you’ll like things that I won’t. The only way to learn is to try. Once you learn what you like to do for yourself, you can teach your lover to do it for you. Most teenage boys know squat about what girls like. Most of what they think they know came from /Penthouse/. It’s your job to teach him.” Dawn smiled, remembering the lesson she’d given Kevin earlier that evening. “I get that.” “You can also use it to stretch your hymen slowly, so the first time that you do have sex with a boy, you won’t have to worry about him breaking it.” “Aren’t I supposed to save myself?” “Some girls choose to, but having your cherry popped by an over eager boy is vastly overrated.” said Buffy. “The first time is usually such a fumble, with neither of you knowing what you’re doing, anything you can do to smooth it out is a plus.” “Was that what it was like with Angel?” asked Dawn. “Partly.” said Buffy. “I didn’t know what I was doing, and neither did he, really. He hadn’t had sex for a hundred years, and before that—before his soul—he never worried about being gentle about it. But he was incredibly gentle, and patient, and it was a wonderful experience… until he wasn’t there when I woke up the next morning.” Buffy looked at the clock on Dawn’s bedside table. “Well, I think we’ve covered enough for tonight. You still have school in the morning. I just want to say one more thing: no matter what happens, I love you, and I want you to feel that you can come to me with any problems. No matter how dumb you may think something you’ve done is, I’ve probably done something dumber.” Buffy leaned forward and gave Dawn a kiss on the forehead. “Goodnight.” She turned out the light on the way back to her own room. --- Willow came down to breakfast the next morning and found Buffy in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, and buttering toast. “Dawn’s been in the shower forever! She’s going to be late for school if she doesn’t hurry up.” Buffy glanced up at the ceiling, and smiled. “I’m afraid that’s partly my fault. We had a Talk last night, and I told her why you had us get that shower massage.” Buffy saw that Willow blushed even better than Dawn did. “Don’t worry, that wasn’t the way I phrased it. I just pointed out that it has uses that aren’t in the manual, and I didn’t tell her it was your idea. I figure we’ll give her five more minutes, and if she isn’t finished, we’ll just have to turn on all the hot water taps in the house.”