Chapter 1:

It was a widely acknowledged fact at Sunnydale High School that Buffy Summers and Spike Walsh hated each other.

No one was really sure why. Maybe there wasn’t a reason. But one thing was for certain: if the two of them bumped in the hallway, or had differing opinions in English IV or Calculus, then sparks were sure to fly. And not the good kind of sparks, either. No, these were sparks of major badness.

So what happened in the lunchroom one Tuesday a few weeks before Halloween was really no big deal.

To the people around them, anyway. To Buffy and Spike, it was, once again, an epic battle.

It began when Buffy, carrying her tray and waving to another person, forgot to look where she was going and bumped into Spike. It worsened when her mashed potatoes went all over his leather duster.

“Bloody hell, you stupid bint, watch where you’re going!” Spike snapped, glaring at the girl.

Buffy blinked at him. She hadn’t even realized that anyone had been standing there. She’d been waving to—what was his name, again? Oh yes, Tyler, that was it. Tyler was maybe going to take her to the annual Halloween dance, if he groveled enough of course. She was going to wear this way cute pink dress and—

Oh. Spike was still glaring at her. “Yeah, well—“ she stuttered. “If you didn’t wear that stupid coat to school every day, then you wouldn’t be all paranoid about it.” There. She’d managed to insult that coat of his again. Not that she really had anything against it. Actually, it would have made him look really hot, if he wasn’t a total outcast, of course.

Spike blinked at the girl in front of him. Sodding—she was one of the cutest things he’d ever seen, but she didn’t have the sense of a sparrow. “Least the leather’s real,” he shot back, arching an eyebrow at her. “Unlike some things I could name.” He glanced down, very obviously, at her slightly overexposed breasts.

Her mouth fell open in complete shock. “You—you—“ she screeched, stuttering, completely incapable of forming a complete sentence.

“Me?” he prompted, grinning.

She was about to respond with a stream of curse words when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Reached up and tapped her on the shoulder, which told her who it was: Jonathan, the shortest guy in school, and a way big nerd. “What?” she snapped, unaware that the whole cafeteria was watching her.

“Mr. Giles wanted me to tell you two that if you’re not engaged in any terribly exciting activity then he’d like to discuss coming assignations regarding you, Spike, and the coming nine weeks in English IV.” Jonathan had a smirk on his face, and by the end of his little speech, Spike did, too. He knew that Short Stuff hated Buffy. All those big words were probably confusin’ her.

“Need me to translate, luv?”

Buffy’s eyes flew to him, and they instantly narrowed. “No. I so totally got that.” She smiled at Jonathan. Which was weird, since she never smiled at nerds, but if Spike was going to be all condescending, then she didn’t really have a choice, now did she? “Just lead the way!”

Jonathan stared at her, completely expressionless. Spike nudged him. “Hey, Johnny,” he said. “Blondie can’t find her way to Giles’ room. She needs help.”

Jonathan stared at him instead.

It suddenly occurred to Spike that Buffy being nice might’ve been a shock to the poor boy, so he just said, “Right then. ‘ll take her myself.” He shrugged off his jacket and handed it to Jonathan, saying, “Get this back to m’ mates, would you?” When Jonathan nodded, he strode past Buffy without even glancing at her, making a beeline for the nearest cafeteria exit.

It only occurred to him after he left the cafeteria that he’d just willingly gone to close himself in a room with a stuffy British man (the fact that he, too, was British didn’t really register at the time) and the snobbiest bitch California had to offer for what could possibly be an extended period of time.

Damn, he thought with a wince as he turned the corner, mark me as the dumbest wanker the mother country’s ever produced.

He marched into Giles’s room and leaned against the wall, not bothering to announce himself or wait for the man to invite him it. Pulling out his lighter and starting to fiddle with it, he announced, “Okay. Let’s just get this over with, yeah?”

Before Giles had a chance to answer, Buffy came in, gasping for breath. She must’ve run—truly an impressive feat, seein’ as how she was wearing little stiletto heels. Her chest was heaving up and down as she gasped for breath, and Spike took the opportunity, as he had a few minutes ago with that crack ‘bout fake things, to sneak a peek at her breasts. Right nice they were, if a bit small. Too bad the chances of him ever getting to touch him were next to nothin’.

“I’m here!” she gasped, plopping herself down at the desk. “Sorry it took me so long, I totally fell on the stairs.”

“As opposed to only fallin’ a little,” Spike drawled.

Buffy wrinkled her nose at him. “Huh?”

He sighed, staring up at the ceiling. “Never mind.”

She decided to dismiss that last comment as another stupid Spike-ism and turned to Giles with her mega-watt smile on her face. “Anyway, sorry, Mr. Giles. You wanted to talk with us about something?” To add to the whole innocent thing, she pulled out a lollipop and started sucking on it.

“Ah, yes, of course.” Mr. Giles took off his glasses and started cleaning them, a move that made Buffy wonder uneasily just exactly what he was going to say. Mr. Giles never cleaned his glasses unless there was something majorly wrong.

“Now, I don’t know if you two know this, but our next unit will be a rather extensive one. We will be reading The Grapes of Wrath primarily, but our focus will extend to a study of familial relationships and sociology in general.”

Both of them nodded, Buffy with an inner eyeroll. Who didn’t know about the huge soci-whatever unit in Mr. Giles’s class was a better question.

“Good!” Wow. The poor old guy actually thought that stuff getting all notorious was a good thing...

Buffy blinked when she realized that both the Brits were staring at her. Oops, she’d drifted off again. “Um—sorry, what?” She scowled at Spike when he snorted derisively. “Hey, stop!”

“I asked if you knew about the nine weeks’ project I assign as a corollary to the general unit to students I believe will benefit from it?”

Buffy’s eyes began to widen. Oh, no. This could not be happening.

There were horror stories about that project. People said that every semester Mr. Giles picked out two kids he thought should get to know each other better. He’d give them this huge family study project thing, one that required big-time cooperation and stuff.. The teachers said it was this huge success, but the kids all hated it. And now he was going to give it to them.

Eeeew! Buffy thought, half going into major panic mode. He’s gonna make me work with Spike!

“Um, Mr. Giles—“ she began, fully prepared to tell him that he could kill her if he wanted but please don’t make her work with that jerk—but Spike beat her to it.

“There is no bloody way.”

Mr. Giles stared at the student in front of him, clearly perplexed. “Mr. Walsh, I’m terribly sorry you don’t like my proposition, but I’m afraid I didn’t give you a choice.”

“’m not working with Lil’ Miss Bitch Queen!”

“Hey! That is so totally unfair. Mr. Giles, make him stop!” The other teen sitting in front of him twirled a piece of clearly dyed hair in between her fingers, pouting around the lollipop she was currently sucking.

Giles sighed and looked at the ceiling. These two could go at it for hours, with him as the referee, and still hate one another. They had done just that many a time in his English IV class.

“Ms. Summers, Mr. Walsh, I’ve made my decision. You will work on this semester’s project together, or you will fail.”

Spike’s next remark pretty much summarized what both he and Buffy were thinking: “Bloody fuckin’ hell.”

~*~

As soon as Giles released them, after handing them both a sheet that detailed the project requirements, Spike rounded on Buffy and, scowling, informed her, “Just to let you know, ‘m not gonna work with you. You do your half, I’ll do mine, an’ that’s how it’s gonna be.”

She stared up at him. “Yeah right,” she snapped. “I mean, puh-leeze. You think I actually want to work with a dumb punk like you?”

Spike smirked at her, knowing that his next words were going to shock her. He wasn’t even supposed to know, but bein’ a military kid, well...you learned things. “’m not the one who’d failin’ English here, luv.”

She stared at him, mouth wide open. For a second Spike was worried that she was going to haul off and slap him—that was what she looked like.

But instead she just blinked a few times and said, “Don’t call me love.”

“What the bloody—“ Spike stared at her. Not a single run-on sentence, or like totally. No tears or feel-sorry-for-me looks. No, the bloody chit just popped that lolli back in her mouth and raised her nose.

“It’s, like, common knowledge that my grades suck. So get over it. Oh, and if you think for one second that I’m going to come anywhere near your stupid house, or talk to you, or even look at you during school hours, you are so living in another world.”

Spike sneered at her. “Like I wanna be seen talkin’ to you, Blondie. M’ reputation’d tank.”

“Puh-leeze.” Buffy rolled her eyes and picked up the sheet, scanning it quickly. That crack about her grades had hurt a little—well, actually, it had hurt a lot—but there was no way she was going to let Spike know. He already had enough stuff to use against her, especially since he fought her like every time they talked to each other. Speaking of which...

“Omigod!” Buffy squealed, her brain finally absorbing what she could read on the sheet. “I am so not doing this!”

The sheet said that they’d be doing a project on studying families. They both had to study the other’s family for two months, filling out this huge questionnaire that included questions about The Grapes of Wrath, questions about their own families, and—this was the major ick for her—interview questions. She was going to have to interview Spike Walsh.

Not to mention spend a bunch of time at his house. That was kinda gross, too. But she could talk to his family without actually talking to him, right? It was gonna be a little hard to interview him without talking to him. Maybe she could pay Cordy to do it. Cordy thought Spike was ‘a hunk of salty goodness’. Cordy wouldn’t mind.

Or, actually, she would, and Buffy knew it. She slumped against the wall, groaning dramatically. “We’re screwed,” she whimpered.

Spike lifted his eyes from the paper. “Well, not yet, but hey, ‘f you’re offerin’...” He leered at her.

“Not in a million years.”

“Well, luv, not sure how long I can go for, but we could try for a million years...”

“What the—okay, ew!” Buffy snapped when she realized what he was saying. “If you honestly think I’d do that with you, you so need professional help.”

“So now I have to pay you? Didn’t figure you for the hooker type, Summers.” And—uh-huh, along with that stupid remark came one of those incredibly annoying smirks.


She fought not to roll her eyes, lost the fight, and rolled her eyes incredibly obnoxiously, all under ten seconds. Then she did a bit of quick thinking. So, if she refused to come anywhere near stupid Spike, then Mr. Giles would fail her. And yeah, she was doing the whole Golden Years thing, but she really kinda wanted to graduate this year.

She was doomed.

Spike, meanwhile, was leaning against the wall, once again fiddling with his lighter and eyeing her speculatively. “Made up your mind, pet?”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. He arched an eyebrow but didn’t respond, a move she took to mean that he’d given in. Okay. If he was going to be this obedient, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

“And yes, I’ve decided. I’ll do the stupid project.”

“Good,” he said, which just sent her right into a fury again.

It wasn’t the word he’d said. Good was a nice word. Usually, as far as words went, she liked it. But it wasn’t the word she wanted to hear just then.

Because he said it like Daddy said it when she’d agreed to take stupid Dawn shopping. It was the parent-type good, the, ‘I knew you’d see it my way before I had to whack some sense into you’ kind of good.

And it really, really made her mad.

“Good? Good? I agree to hang out with you for this stupid school project and you say good?”

“Well, yeah,” Spike said, as though it should be obvious.

“Auuugh!” she fairly screamed, throwing her hands up and getting quite a few funny looks from kids who’d elected to skip lunch hour. “Okay, that is so it,” she said, pointing a finger at his chest. “I’m done with this.”

“That so?” He smirked at her. “’Cuz y’know, outta the two ‘f us, ‘m not the one who can’t afford to fail, luv.”

She narrowed her eyes. Any other time, she would have completely killed him for calling her ‘luv’; it was almost as bad as ‘pet’, only less, you know, derogatory. Too bad for her, though, he was right. Horribly, incredibly right.

Oh, poop.

“Fine,” she snapped. “I guess we’ve got to, like, hang out and stuff?”

“’s what it says,” Spike told her, scanning the paper. “Less cheer-shit, but yeah.”

She didn’t even bother answering that one. A dumb punk couldn’t possibly understand the athletic demands that came with as competitive a sport as cheerleading. Hello, she had to carry like five pounds of makeup to every game!

“Whatever,” she said. “So, meet me at my house after school.”

“Right,” he said, crumpling up the paper and shoving it in the pocket of his super-tight jeans. “Where d’you live?”

“Ask anybody, they’ll tell you,” she replied. Like she was going to give the bleached idiot her address.

“You don’ listen, do you? ‘m not talkin’ to a bimbo cheerleader or a nancy-boy jock!”

She fisted her hands. She was so going to slap him all the way back to stupid England if he didn’t shut his big mouth about her friends. “1630 Revello Drive,” she ground out, before flouncing away, hair and, she knew, boobs bouncing.

As soon as she got out of sight, though, her footsteps slowed, and the bounce turned into a dragging walk.

As of now, her life totally sucked. And in Buffy’s mind, it was all Spike Walsh’s fault.

Uh-huh, she decided as she pasted a smile back on her face in preparation to enter the cafeteria again. She definitely hated Sunnydale’s resident British Uberfreak.

So now the only question was, how were they going to go for so long around each other—and each other’s families—without going all Jack the Ripper and killing each other?

Buffy sat down at the popular table, a pout forming, one thought foremost in her mind:

Wah.

~*~

 

Chapter 2:

He liked pissin’ her off. Was that normal?

Spike rather thought not.

Still, watchin’ her flounce away like that was quality entertainment. She was so high-and-mighty, so damn sure of herself—but just one little name that was really an endearment, when you thought about it properly, and bam—just like that, Little Miss Bitch Queen had a snit fit.

Damn funny stuff.

Still, he wasn’t exactly singin’ Brit Boy’s praises for giving them this idiot project. He didn’t want to get close to Blondie or what was bound to be her supremely demented family. Not to mention what’d happen to his rep ‘f she started blabbin’ about what his house was like—and, knowing her, it was bound to happen.

Ah, fuck it.

She’d been damn right when she’d said they were screwed. How the hell was he supposed to keep up the tough-guy stuff with the bimbo peekin’ into his private life?

“Spikey!”

He winced. Speakin’ of bimbos…

Harmony was one of the few popular chits who really wanted to jump his bones. Problem was, ‘f he’d thought it would prevent her from tryin’, he’d’ve paid a sodding Satanic cult to do voodoo on her.

She wasn’t just blonde and bouncy and annoyin’ like Summers was. No, Harmony was also damn stupid, and she didn’t get all cute and mad when he insulted her. She was too stupid to realize she was bein’ put down.

And now she was here. Somebody up there was really hatin’ him right now.

He exhaled. Loudly. “Hey, Harmony.”

“So, like, what are you doing out here all alone and stuff?” Harmony asked.

“’Bout to have a smoke,” he said shortly. Funny how they sounded almost exactly the same, but he couldn’t stand Harmony, and Buffy was actually okay…well, not really, but he didn’t want to kill her like he did with Harmony.

“You wanna do something more interesting?” Harmony asked slyly.

He glanced at her. Curves, lush yet somehow overabundant. Vapid eyes, slack mouth with beaverish front teeth…”No. Thanks.”

“Oh, okay. Maybe, like, later, then.” Harmony propped herself against the wall next to him, apparently with no intention of leaving. He restrained a frustrated groan. The bloody chit simply didn’t know when to quit.

“That was a dismissal, Harm.”

“But, Spikey…” Harmony whined, “I’m cutting. I’m being all bad and stuff. Can’t we…you know…hang?”

“Bloody hell. No.” Spike couldn’t believe he was havin’ this conversation. ‘F Dru could see him now, she’d cackle her bloody head off.

“I can’t believe this!” Harmony screeched in a tone he’d have sworn was damn near as piercing as a dog whistle. “I’m totally nice to you, even though everybody else thinks you’re like this demented Goth guy, and then you go and blow me off. Me! You are like the worst boyfriend ever!”

He refrained from pointing out that he was under no circumstances her sodding boyfriend. “Look, Harm,” he sighed, “’m really not in the mood. Later, a’right?” Of course, there would never be a later, but she didn’t need to know that.

Harmony rolled her eyes. “Like, whatever,” she said finally, and stalked off.

Spike rolled his eyes and lit a fag. Bloody American women with their dense skulls and short skirts...was enough to drive a man utterly insane.

“Damn, stud, you sure have a way with the girls.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Lemme guess—you saw the whole thing?”

Faith emerged from the girl’s bathroom. “Damn right. I’m surprised you didn’t gut her, or something.” She grinned. “But I guess you can’t gut your girlfriend...”

He grunted and took a deep pull on the cigarette between his lips. “Faith, ‘f you wanna get in a spot o’ violence, ‘m all for it. Otherwise, bugger off.”

Faith wasn’t in the least bit impressed, which to tell the truth didn’t surprise him. He an’ Faith’d been friends for longer than he could remember. Cut from the same cloth they were, which was nice, ‘cept he couldn’t intimidate her to save his life.

“Fuck that,” Faith said predictably. “So, what’re you doin’ out here, anyway?”

“You din’ hear?” Maybe his rep’d be worth somethin’ after all...

“Nah. For once, I actually had to piss.” Faith’s way of saying that usually the bathrooms were host to rather different extracurriculars. “So what’s up?”

“Sodding teacher wants me to work with...” Spike hesitated. Bleeding hell. Faith wasn’t a blabbermouth, not the way the blonde bimbos were, but ‘f he told her, it was like admitting it was actually true.

Ah, screw it. “Teach wants me to work with Buffy Summers.” He spat the name out.

Faith stared at him for a moment, face completely incredulous. Actually, she looked like what he’d felt when Giles’d dropped his big, evil bomb. “You’re tripppin’.”

“Wish I was,” Spike shot back. “’S for Giles’s semester project. Bloke thinks we oughta be best friends, or somethin’.”

Faith continued to stare at him; he glared back. ‘F he wasn’t mistaken, he could see something in her eyes that looked a bit like—

“Oh my God!” Faith leaned against the wall and burst out laughing.

Spike’s scowl deepened as he finished his thought: amusement.

“This is fuckin’ hilarious! Faith gasped, clutching her belly, wheezing from laughter. “You—and—and B—working toge—e—e—ther!” Her voice caught on the last word and she convulsed in loud, obnoxious laughter, clutching at the wall for support.

“Yeah, yeah, barrel full ‘f laughs ‘f you’re not me,” Spike snapped. “You done yet?”

“Gimme a sec.” She leaned up against the wall, gasping, chuckling every few minutes. When she was reasonably calm she said, “So Giles is makin’ you work with a bouncy cheerleader, huh?” At Spike curt nod, she grinned. “Damn. Sucks ass to be you.”

“Yeah.”

“What d’you have to do?”

“Get to know her family an’ friends an’ interview her, an’ then write a paper on the whole sodding thing,” Spike grumbled.

“And lemme guess—she’s gotta do the same for you?”

“Yeah,” Spike affirmed again.

“Huh.” She stared into space for a moment, a grin on her face. He watched her suspiciously; Faith never grinned unless someone else was gonna catch it.

“One of the school’s biggest airheads is gonna be hanging out with us? That blows.”

“Tell me ’bout it,” Spike groaned. “’m gonna have to get to know the bint.”

“Might not be that bad...” Faith mused, staring into space.

He shot her a sarcastic look. “Right. Tell me another one.”

“Hey, anything’s possible.”

He didn’t even favor that with an answer. Anything might be possible, but spendin’ time with Buffy Summers and not hating it was ‘bout as likely as Britain gettin’ annexed by France. Meaning, not very.

He was gonna answer, but the bell rang. He exhaled loudly—his next class was Computer, one that was required for graduating but about as interesting as the sodding Discovery Channel.

Or listenin’ to Buffy Summers blabber ‘bout her life...

“Listen, gotta go,” he told Faith. Faith nodded but made no move to leave, which made sense. She had Chemistry next block, Spike knew. The chances of her attending were next to zero.

“Oh, yeah,” he added as he went to walk away, “Where’d you put m’ coat?”

Okay, the grin on Faith’s face was definitely mischievous. “Well, Jonathan doesn’t really know any of your friends, so he just gave it to someone he knew you knew...” she trailed off, leaving him to stew.

“Faith.” A growl. He could growl pretty well, when he wanted to.

“Relax, stud. He gave it to Xander, who’s keepin’ it real safe...walking around in it and all.”

He was cursing all the way to Computer.

~*~

The afternoon came way too bloody soon. He almost never dreaded after school. The only thing worse than Sunnydale High was that military camp his Da had sent him to for elementary school...which jus’ barely topped the science school Mum made him go to for middle school. It’d been in England; that was where he’d picked up the accent that he kept just to annoy his parents.

Yeah, school was pretty damn bad. But although he hated school, it didn’t have anything on how much he hated Buffy Summers. So when the last bell rang, he gathered his stuff with a groan.

“Sodding hell. Can’t school last a little longer?” Never thought he’d be saying that...

“Spike! Hey, Spike, over here!”

He whipped his head around. Anya was bouncing up and down, waving her arms. Beside her, the whelp was cringing, looking everywhere but at his friend.

Cringing and, Spike noticed, holding his leather duster against a wall. Wonderful. Idiot boy was gonna scratch it!

He stalked over and snatched the duster out of Xander’s hands. The boy just stared at him. “Yeah, you’re welcome for carrying your potato-covered coat around all day long!”

“You were ruinin’ it,” Spike informed him, before turning to Anya.

“Spike!” she beamed. “I’m so glad you’re here! I heard about the project, and I can’t believe it. I mean, out of all the people Giles could choose—“

“Yeah, I know, people’ve been sayin’ that,” he said impatiently. “Now listen, ‘ve gotta get to her house. We set up a meeting."

Anya blinked at him. “Are you going to have many orgasms with her?”

“What?! No!” Spike practically yelled. Bloody hell, just the thought made him cringe. Not that she wasn’t attractive, mind, but there wasn’t exactly a lot upstairs. “’ve just gotta go to her house for the interview crap, is all.”

”Uh-huh.” Xander grinned at him. “’Cuz we all know Spike’s an innocent widdle boy who’d never try to seduce the Teen Queen.”

Augh. There it was again, that picture.... and it wasn’t exactly pleasant. “Hardly,” he scoffed. "‘ve got standards, y’know.” Sure, he had fun gettin’ her goat, but aside from that, spending time ‘round her was kinda like gettin’ a cavity filled. Not fun.

“Right, because Drusilla really raised the bar.”

“’ey!” That was all he could get out, because at the mention of Dru’s name, his throat closed up. Even now, two years later, she could still do that to him.

“I gotta go,” he said tersely, choosing to ignore the whelp’s comment altogether.

Anya rolled her eyes, but even she knew not to push him on that particular subject. “Fine. Try to make it quick. We’re all meeting at the Bronze later, right?”

“’F I survive,” Spike said grimly. Ignoring his friends’ laughter, he stalked off to his car.
 

Chapter 3:

Buffy came home early, since she didn’t know how fast Spike would haul his butt over there. It turned out that she had to endure twenty minutes of Dawn’s whining and her mom’s nagging before she saw his car pull in.

It was so ugly. Why couldn’t he just buy a Honda, or something, like a normal person? Big black cars were so not cool. Especially when driven by obnoxious punks.

She was about to walk out to the driveway and insult him somehow—she didn’t know how but that was okay, she would’ve been able to figure it out—when she heard her mother yell her name.

“Bu-ffy!”

Buffy gulped. Uh-oh. Mom sounded mad. What had happened this time that—

Her mother walked into the family room, angrily waving a trophy around. Oh, yeah. That.

“I told you to put this away weeks ago!”

She winced. She’d gotten the trophy at Regionals. When she’d gotten home she’d completely forgotten about the whole nothing-goes-on-the-desk-excpet-Dawn’s-writing-stuff rule. To her defense, it had been two AM, but Mom didn’t really care.

“Mom, it was just last weekend,” she pointed out in what she thought was a raional voice—but apparently not.

“Don’t you give me that tone!” Joyce exclaimed, waving the trophy around, her voice gaining volume as she got into stride. Buffy restrained a sigh. This was gonna take awhile.

“You know that desk is reserved for Dawn! Unlike some people in this household, Dawn pulls her own weight. Her teacher this year thinks she’s a brilliant writer, and if we play our cards right, those wonderful journals of hers may have some chance of getting published! How dare you think you can jeopardize that?”

“Um...I don’t?” Buffy offered. She was starting to worry. Shouldn’t Spike be at the door by now? And oh God, if he walked in and saw her and her mom fighting, he would so never let her hear the end of it! And then the whole school would find out, and her life would be totally over!

“Uh, Mom?” Buffy cut in. “I’ve got a—um—friend—coming over. Can we, like, do this later?”

“Do this later? Do this later?” Joyce screeched. “We are not going to do this later, we’re going to do this now!”

She winced, burying her head in a couch pillow. There was no way Spike was gonna walk up to their house and not hear all the yelling.

Joyce was halfway through a lecture on responsibility and Dawn’s writing and how important it was to the family when a knock sounded at the door. Buffy groaned, knowing that her mom would tell Dawn to get it and keep going with the stupid lecture.

Sure enough, Joyce paused long enough to hear Dawn yelling, “Got it!” before continuing: “And if you think for one second that bouncing around with pom-poms will do anything for you in the real world, missy, you’ve got another think coming! I spend hundreds of dollars on your silly activities. You need to learn to—oh, hello!” Joyce voice changed instantly. Buffy yanked her head up and restrained a groan.

Spike Walsh was standing in her living room.

Was that totally creepy, or what? And now he was graciously apologizing for interrupting their talk—and that was what he called it, a talk! Was he insane?—and Mom was being all nice and stuff. It was completely gag-worthy.

When he was done charming her mom he turned to her. “Right, then,” he said briskly, “Let’s get this over with.”

Mom shot her a look. “We’re not done here, young lady. I’ll be talking to you later!”

“So can’t wait,” Buffy muttered at her mom’s retreating back. As soon as she heard Joyce start banging around in the kitchen, she turned to Spike. “Can we just, like, get this over with?” she asked, automatically reverting back to cheer-leader speak.

Spike was staring at her, brow slightly wrinkled. She waited for him to respond for a few seconds before snapping, “What?”

“You mum always like that?” Spike asked, jerking his head toward the kitchen, where Dawn and Joyce were talking animatedly.

“It’s none of your business,” Buffy snapped, standing up. “Come on. We can work in my room.”

“Actually, ‘s very much my business,” he pointed out, “Seein’ ‘s how we’re doin’ the whole getting-to-know you bit.”

“Yeah, well, it’s still none of your business, so stop being Nosy-Guy,” she ordered, and opened the door to her room. Holding her head high, she walked inside and plopped herself down at her desk. Let him find his own place to sit.

Unfortunately for her, he chose her bed. Eeew. I’m gonna have to like disinfect it or something, she thought, wrinkling her nose.

He arched an eyebrow at her. God, that was a way annoying habit. It made him look totally arrogant. “So, Summers, we gonna start or what?”

“My name’s not Summers,” she snapped—and then the second it was out of her mouth she realized how dumb it sounded. Not just, like, Valley-Girl dumb—Harmony dumb.

And he wasn’t about to let her get away with it. “Really? What’s your last name, then? Bimbo? Moron?” He looked her up and down and then grinned. “Needagym?”

“Hey! I am so not fat!”

“Yeah, pet, you go on believin’ that,” he said, grinning still. She narrowed her eyes at him. God, guys like him were so annoying...

“Fine. Let’s just get this over with,” she snapped. “Did you, like, take notes on my family?”

“’m gonna come over some other time for that,” Spike told her. “Today’s interview day.”

She scowled. He was actually planning on taking more than a day to come over to her house? God, she was gonna have to like pay someone to paint his car, or something. If word got out that Spike Walsh was coming over to her house...she shuddered. Total ruination.

“Hey! Blondie! Know there’s not much up there, but answer me already!”

“Huh?” Buffy blinked, then realized she’d been drifting off. “Oh! Sorry! What was the question?”

“What’s your relationship with your family like?”

“Um...” Buffy frowned. Everyone thought that her parents were great because they were always out of town so she could throw parties and stuff. The truth was that Buffy hated them, but she couldn’t exactly tell Spike that. If she did, everyone else would find out about it the next day. She pasted a smile on her face. “They’re awesome!” she chirped. “I love them soooo much!”

He gave her a look. An, I-know-you’re-lying, please-how-dumb-do-you-think-I-am look. “Right. Was really feelin’ the love in the room few minutes ago.”

“That was—I mean, she almost never—“ Buffy stuttered, but from the look on Spike’s face, her lies weren’t exactly convincing him. “Okay, fine. We fight a lot,” she snapped. “But if you ever tell anyone I’m so gonna kill you...”

He snorted as he jotted something down. “Please. ‘ve got better things to do then talk ‘bout you.”

“Like what?” she asked acidly. “Getting high?”

He apparently thought that didn’t even deserve an answer, since he just rolled his eyes and continues scribbling.

“Okay, next question,” she said impatiently, really, really wanting to get this over with.

“Right. Um...” he scanned the sheet. “What’re your fights ‘bout?”

“You’re making that up!” she accused. “Butthead!”

“’Least ‘m not as immature as a third-grader,” he shot back. “An’ that’s what it says. Lookit your sheet ‘f you don’t believe me.”

She looked down obediently. Sure enough, if the answer to the first question mentioned fighting, then you had to go to a whole new set of questions. Dammit. Stupid, stupid Buffy.

She sighed, not even bothering to respond to the whole third-grader thing. It looked like the only way she could get Spike out of her house really fast would be to answer the questions as quickly as possible.

“Usually it’s about Dawn. I left something on Dawn’s desk, or I, like, stepped in her precious room, or whatever. It’s bullshit, usually.”

“Really.”

How could he make one word sound so surprised? She was kinda shocked too, to tell the truth—where had all the uber-meanness come from? She sounded like Lizzie Borden or something. “I mean, it’s just a little, you know, annoying,” she finished.

“So, lemme get this straight—your mum’s a complete bitch ‘bout anything involvin’ your sister?”

Wow, he’d totally just summed up everything in her head—which, for some reason, really pissed Buffy off.

So she glared at him. “No. We have little fights. That’s, like, all.”

“Right.”

“It is!” she cried, not really sure why she was being so defensive, since what he was saying was the truth. She just—didn’t want to tell him, was all.”

“’m writin’ down what I heard,” he told her, scribbling on the sheet he held again.

She scowled. Knowing Spike, he was so going to write down that whole bitch thing. “Whatever.”

“’K...do you think your parents have a good marriage?”

“Well, duh,” she said, staring up at her ceiling. There was a crack in the plaster right next to her Jessica Simpson poster...God, she was bored.

“Well, duh, what?” he prodded.

Buffy frowned, thinking. Just yesterday, her parents had had this huge fight about which publisher stupid Dawn should send her stupid diaries to. “Well, duh, yes!” she snapped. Screw getting a good grade. This was turning into a super-freaky, shrink-style getting-to-know-you thing. She was not gonna go along with it.

Spike cocked his head. Downstairs, her mother was just audible, yelling to someone on the phone.

“Hank, Goddammit, I told you no! Our daughters are not going to—“

“You’re lyin’,” he told her, smirking.

It was the smirk more than the (completely true) statement that really pissed her off.
She leapt out of her desk. “Out!” she screeched, grabbing a pillow and hurling it at him.

“’ey! Watch it!” Spike yelled, batting the pillow out of the way and leaping to his feet.

“Out! Out!” Buffy screamed, hurling pillows with absolutely no regard for their pretty prints getting on his icky body. “Out!”

“’m still—“ he ducked—“tryin’”—dodged—“to interview you!”

“Well, I don’t want to be interviewed!” She took an aggressive step forward, jutting her chin out stubbornly. Good Girl Buffy didn’t get in fights...but Good Girl Buffy was currently out cold, and Pissed Off Buffy had taken her place.

“So you’re gonna what—fail an’ give your mum more things to yell at you ‘bout?” He moved forward, an angry glint in his eye, his hands fisted. He looked just as ready to fight as she was.

Buffy gasped slightly. That had hurt. Fortunately for her, she was used to getting into hurtful fights with Spike. She just raised her chin a little more and said, “Well, at least people at school still like me. You’re like a total outcast...”

“’ve got friend who know ‘bout m’ family an’ don’t give a damn,” he told her. “How many friends ‘ve you got that know ‘bout your mum?”

She was used to comments that hurt. What she wasn’t used to was him standing just a few inches from her face, staring down at her with a strangely intent look on his face, kinda like he was trying to read her soul through her eyes. His own, she suddenly realized, were very, very blue...

And then she realized what she’d said, and to her horror, tears came into her eyes. “You—you can’t—“ she stuttered, before finally saying, “Get the hell out of my house, you bastard!”

“Wait,” he said, not moving, even though Buffy was really, really close to smacking him, “We need to set up a time—“

“No. No times. You didn’t hear me, did you? It’s finished. Tell Mr. Giles that he can find someone else for his stupid project, because I’m—not—doing—it!” She screamed the last part furiously. You could totally have heard her in China, but Spike, weirdo that he was, didn’t move.

“Tomorrow. After school. M’ address is 1465 Starview Lane.” He wrote it down on a strip of paper, which he reached out and dropped on her desk. He was still staring into her eyes. It was seriously wigging her out.

“No.” One word. It was way weird for her to say just one word, but right now, she was argued-out.

He ignored her. Grabbing a notebook from where it had been laying on the bed, he glanced at her one last time. “See you.”

“Like, never,” Buffy retorted—but by the time she’d summoned enough calm to speak, he’d already closed the door and left.

She sat down on her bed, staring around the room. Pretty pink paper, chosen by her mother. Pile of trophies no one else in the family cared about. Pictures of dancers and singers. Messy papers covered in doodles.

The image blurred as she buried her head in her hands and tears once more appeared in her eyes.

I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him— she thought fiercely, trying to block out the other phrase running through her head.

I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her...

And the really whacked-out part? She wasn’t even sure who her was.

Tomorrow. Wonderful, she thought. Can’t freakin’ wait.

~*~

 

Chapter 4:

The next day at lunch, Buffy’s mind was not on her food, or on the kinda boring conversation. Instead, she was thinking about what the most annoying person in her life had said to her the day before.

How many friends have you got that know about your mom?

The answer, she was disturbed to know, was a big, fat zero.

And for some reason, that was bugging her big-time.

She looked around her table at the people she called her friends: Cordy, Harmony, Angel, Parker, and Veruca. Somehow, she didn’t think a single one of them would understand the thing with her mom.

“—And I can’t believe she, like, actually thought I was serious!” Harmony said. “Like, who in the world actually wears those things?”

“Humongo geeks like Willow Rosenberg?” Cordelia suggested, earning a laugh from everyone at the table.

Everyone except Buffy, that is. She was frowning. She’d never really thought about it before, but people sounded really dumb when they said “like” all the time. And she said it almost as often as Harmony.

Willow...that name sounded familiar. Wait—Buffy glanced over at the table Spike and his friends occupied. It was a mix of punks, geeks, nerds, and just all-around outcasts. Usually she and everyone she sat with looked down upon that table. Today, though, she studied it, looking for the redhead she knew she’d vaguely recognize.

There she was, sitting next to a short guy Buffy vaguely recognized as belonging to a band called Dalmatians Ate My Boyfriend, or something. Cordy had dated their lead singer for awhile...

As she watched, Willow laughed at something a slutty-looking brunette said. From across the table, Spike scowled at them.

Buffy felt a smile of her own come to her face. They all looked so normal. So friendly. Her friends never teased each other, because they were all so obsessive about the whole social status thing...

Wait—what the hell was she doing? Staring at Spike’s friends and wishing they were hers? Staring at Spike and wishing she knew what it was like to have friends who cared about you, not your reputation?

Well, okay, that did sound kinda nice. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that Buffy was at the tippy-top of the social ladder and had every intention of staying that way. So she couldn’t envy Spike. Not even the littlest bit.

“So, Buffy, are we gonna like go Bronzing this afternoon? Because I so totally know this guy who might be willing to, you know, slip us a few beers...” Harmony trailed off under Buffy’s intent gaze.

The smaller blonde was staring at Harmony, head cocked, thinking, You know, it never occurred to me before, but I really, really don’t like her. She was so vapid, so shallow, so...

like me. Ew!

“Hello? Earth to Buffy!” Harmony said, annoyed, waving her hand in front of Buffy’s face.

“Oh! Sorry. Um...I can’t go.” She dug into her low-cal, low-carb, low-fat salad. “I have an, um, thing?” The last part came out sounding like a question; everyone at the table was suddenly staring at her.

“You don’t have time for us?” Veruca asked, her skanky voice more venomous than usual. And yes, a voice could be skanky. Everything about Veruca was skanky.

“Well, see, it’s just the whole project thing I told you about, I’m supposed to interview Spike today...” She had of course told all them about the project, even about the “interview” yesterday...she just hadn’t told them about the super-blue eyes or the argument.

“We’re getting the brush-off for Captain Peroxide?” Wonderful, now Angel was picking at her. She so needed that...

Not.

“You’re not getting the brush-off,” she said, forcing herself to smile. “I just wanna pass English, okay?”

“Aw, you’re smart, Buffy. You should be able to pass anyway,” Parker told her with his best sweet-boy smile.

Smart compared to a block of wood like you, maybe, Buffy wanted to say, but instead she just smiled. “Thanks, but I really have to do this. I mean, I don’t want to, because I’m gonna like have to touch his stuff and everything, but...” Buffy trailed off.

“Are you okay, Buffy? You sound all smart and stuff,” Cordelia said earnestly. Buffy forced herself to smile at the brunette.

“I’m fine. Just feeling a little...off,” she said.

“I so totally get that!” Harmony gushed. “I mean, with Spike coming in and sitting on your bed and stuff—ew!” Harmony wrinkled her nose. “You probably had to disinfect the sheets afterward!”

Everyone else at the table burst into laughter, but Buffy winced. Omigod, I think like Harmony. How tot—how traumatic can you get? She wasn’t going to say stuff like totally in her thoughts. She had to stop this whole Harmony-clone thing, and her thoughts seemed like a good place to start.

But looking around the table, she realized something—pretty much everyone there was like Harmony. Even the guys were sort of all the same. It was kinda creepy, actually.

“Buffy!” This time it was Cordy who snapped her fingers in Buffy’s face. “God, what is wrong with you? You’re so spacey, it’s like Invasion of the Pod People or something...except that’s a geek movie,” she added when everyone raised their eyebrows.

Except that it’s a geek movie. God, could these people get any more picky? Geeks, nerds, punks, they were all below Buffy’s little group. And all of a sudden, she was really tired of the whole thing.

“Um, guys? You’re right, I’m not feeling too well,” Buffy lied quickly.

She regretted it when Parker jumped up and said, “I’ll help you to the nurse’s office if you like, Buffy. I know that when girls don’t feel good their stomachs can trouble them, and I just want what’s best for you.”

She waved him away. “For God’s sake, I’ll be fine,” she snapped—and then realized that everyone at the table was staring at her. Again. She belatedly remembered that just last week she’d told Cordy she though Parker was “like a major honey”.

“I mean,” she said, smiling through gritted teeth, “That I wouldn’t want to pull you away from your lunch. Okay?”

He looked disappointed, but said, “Of course, Buffy. Whatever you want,” and sat down again.

She practically ran out of the lunchroom. Well, okay, she didn’t run. She knew better than to do that. But she did walk as fast as you could in a short skirt. I gotta get out of here before I lose it and rip Harmony’s cheap-dye-job hair out.

*

He saw her leave, of course. Sodding hell, his eyes had been fixed on her from the second she’d walked into the cafeteria, surrounded by friends.

His conscience had really been bugging him ‘bout the day before, for several different reasons. First off, he was plagued with guilt about almost makin’ her cry. He hadn’t meant to yell at her, he’d just been frustrated. She looked so innocent, so pure—it infuriated him to see her lyin’ her brains out about her mum.

The other thing was the fact that her eyes looked so gorgeous when she cried. Bloody—he’d made her cry, for Christ’s sake, and all he could do was think about how beautiful she was when she did. Her eyes seemed to get greener, and this little flush went across her cheeks, and there was such feeling in her face—the only time he’d ever seen her like that before was when she was pissed off at him, and then, he hadn’t wanted to cuddle her.

When she’d gotten tears in her eyes, all he’d wanted to do was hold her, kiss her, and make them go away.

And that was what was really buggin’ him. Not the crying, or the yelling—the sudden, almost irresistible urge to plant a kiss on those sweet little lips.

‘Course, he’d always known she was a hot little thing. Every wanker with two eyes and a dick could see that. But the thought of actually snogging with her had always been rather unappetizing, on account of how dumb she was. Might as well try to get it on with a cow, if there’d been any cows in Sunnydale.

But yesterday had been different. For the first time he’d seen an emotion in her eyes that went deeper than simple anger or delight that CVS had started selling Cover Girl lipstick for low, low prices. The fact that the emotion had been sadness just made him want to comfort her.

And now he was philosophizin’ more than Plato himself. “Bugger,” he muttered under his breath before turning to Willow.

“Hey, Red, do me a favor, would you? Go check up on Summers, make sure she’s a’right.”

“But I thought you hated her, what with all the ‘grr, I hate Buffy’ and stuff,” Willow said, a puzzled frown on her face.

Good point. “I just, uh, wanna make sure she’s not sick. Interview and all today,” he lied quickly.

Willow raised her eyebrows, but was for once silent. She stood up and walked out of the cafeteria after Buffy.

Spike’s satisfied smile melted under the pressure of Xander’s gaze. “Got a problem, mate?”

“He’s just wondering when you’re going to admit that you want to be orgasm partners with Buffy, not just enemies,” Anya said in her usual blunt style.

He never knew how he managed it, but somehow, Spike kept his cool. “Don’t wanna be orgasm-buddies. Just wanna make sure I get an A.”

“How ‘bout a P, as in, piece of ass?” Faith asked. “Come on, how long are you gonna keep this up? You and B wanna get it on.”

“’ey! Do not!”

“Uh-huh. I think Spike Jr. has a little something to say about that.”

When Spike looked down at his crotch in horror, Faith reached over and stole one of the wings he’d bought from the cafeteria. He looked up to see her munching on it, grinning.

“You little—“

“Yeah, yeah, you know you love me,” Faith said cheerfully. Spike groaned and put his head in his hands.

He looked up when someone nudged him. He smiled when he saw it was Tara. She was a nice bird, she wouldn’t take the others’ side—

“You can go b-buy more wings,” Tara suggested. “And while you’re at it, you might want to pick up some ice.”

“’m not—“ he began, but renewed laughter drowned him out.

Oz just shrugged when Spike looked at him imploringly. “On your own,” he said in his usual expressionless manner—except that he wore a faint smile.

“Bloody hell,” Spike growled, digging into his food. Not only was he very much not hard, but now he was out a spicy buffalo wing, too. Stupid bint. Why the hell do I keep talkin’ to her? He wasn’t sure if he meant Faith or Buffy.

Twitch. He looked down and groaned.

Every time he thought about her name, he got that much closer to proving Anya right. And this afternoon she was gonna be with him, in his house, in his room.

Fuck, he realized. ’M a dead man walkin’.
 

Chapter 5:

Buffy was leaning against the wall near the bathrooms where she’d left Spike the day before. She was frowning and staring into space, two things she almost never did.

She knew that she was going to have serious problems with the whole social status thing. Running out of the bathroom was so incredibly not good.

It was kinda funny how she didn’t really care.

And that was really freaking her out. Two days ago she would have been totally neurotic if she thought she was even the least littlest bit less popular. Now she just wanted to figure out why it was that Spike Walsh, who was way less popular and a total freak, was happier than she, Miss Popular herself, was. It made absolutely no sense.

Or...maybe it did. Buffy stuck her lip out, pouting. That was the problem—she wasn’t even sure if stuff made sense or not. The whole stupid thing was senseless!

“Um, Buffy?”

Buffy’s head whipped around. The girl she’d identified earlier as Willow was standing a few feet away, looking nervous.

“Yeah? Hi! What?” As soon as the reply came out of her mouth she cringed. Could she get any more Dumb Valley Girl?

“I was just wondering, well actually we were all just wondering—well okay, Spike sent me out here,” the nervous girl admitted. “He wanted to make sure—ummm...that you were OK. Because you, you ran out, and everything. And I’m sorry now I’m bothering you, and of course you wouldn’t want me to talk to you since you’re a cheerleader and I’m this horrible geek, so I’ll just—go now,” Willow said, turning around and starting to walk back to the lunchroom.

“No!” The order flew out of Buffy’s mouth almost involuntarily. When Willow turned back around she blushed and said, “Sorry. I’m just feeling kinda...weird.” She winced inwardly; she’d barely stopped herself from saying like totally wigged out or something equally as mortifying.

“Weird how?” Willow leaned up against the wall next to Buffy, studying the blonde’s face intently.

Suddenly Buffy felt a rush of gratitude towards Spike. He was still a big stupid jerk, yeah, but he was at least a big stupid jerk who had the niceness to send someone out to check on her who was willing to listen to her dumb problems.

“Weird as in I feel like...I dunno.” She bit her tongue. Weird as in I feel like the only person in the world I can trust is Spike, which since he’s like my greatest enemy is way insane!

“Like the whole world’s all topsy-turvy?” Willow offered. Buffy grimaced and nodded.

“You too, huh?”

“I think maybe it’s a senior year thing,” Willow mused. “I mean, what with my boyfriend, and Spike becoming completely unbearable because of the whole project thing, and—“

“Wait—what?” Buffy cut in. “Spike’s unbearable...how?”

Willow furrowed her brow, and Buffy realized that the redhead was starting to think that maybe she shouldn’t have said that. “Too late, Willow. Spill.”

“Okay, okay.” Willow caved. “I mean, first he was all with the ‘grr. I don’t want to work with stupid Buffy Summers’—I mean, no offense or anything, but—“

A day ago she would have called geeky Willow Rosenberg all kinds of mean things for calling her stupid, even if she was just quoting Spike. Now, though, she just smiled. Funny how she talks like Spike has feelings...it’s an interesting idea. “It’s okay. I get it. Keep going.”

“And then he was whining because he had that interview thing, and now it’s the day after the interview thing and he’s all broody even though he says nothing happened.” Willow frowned. “It’s all very strange.”

“Wait—he didn’t tell you about the interview?”

“He said there was nothing to tell,” Willow said with a shrug.

Nothing to tell. Did that mean that he was all uncaring about the interview? She had yelled at him...which led her to wonder why he was being all nice and stuff. He was, like—arrg! No! He was being kinda schizo with all the fighting/checking up on her.

Oh. Wait. Buffy suddenly realized that she’d been spacing big-time—Willow was staring at her questioningly.

“Buffy? You okay?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Buffy smiled at the redhead. “Sorry, I’m just—has he said anything about me?” she asked quickly.

“Has who said anything about you?”

“Sp—Spike,” she stuttered, gripping her purse tightly. God. First she pulled a Nancy Drew with the questioning about the interview, and now she was doing the ‘has he said anything about me?’ routine. If I’m not careful, they’re going to start to think I like him. Ew. We so do not mesh...he’s all arrogant and annoying and really hot in that jacket and OH MY GOD I’M INSANE!!! Buffy gritted her teeth and smiled at Willow, waiting for the girl’s answer.

I really, really need a psychiatrist.

“Just the usual day to day stuff,” Willow was saying. “You know, I hate Buffy, Buffy should die, stupid cheerleading chit...whatever a chit is. Just, you know, normal stuff.”

And her heart sank at that...why? God. She really needed to work on remembering that Spike was a stupid insulting jerk. “Right. Normal. ‘Cause he’s always way nice to me...” She trailed off when she noticed that Willow was frowning at her, clearly confused. “That was sarcasm,” she added.

“Oh! Right. I got that,” Willow said. “It’s just that cheerleaders and sarcasm don’t usually—“

“Buffy! Oh my God, why are you talking to a geek?”

“Go together,” Willow finished with a ‘just-kill-me-now’ look on her face.

“Cordy, chill out,” Buffy snapped, automatically making her voice way whinier than it had been a minute ago. “We were talking.”

“Uh-huh. I saw that,” she said snidely. “What I want to know is why. Did you, like, need science homework or something? Because I so could have given it to you.”

“No, Cordelia, I didn’t need homework,” Buffy said impatiently.

“Well then, why are you talking to her? And what’s up with you, anyway? You sound all...serious.” She said the last word like most people would say “Ebola virus”.

“Um, yeah. This is serious.” Buffy rolled her eyes. Cordy was nice and everything, but she’d met balloons that were less air-headed.

“Whatever. Can I talk to you? Like, in private?”

Buffy rolled her eyes but allowed Cordy to propel her a few feet to the left. This was sooo stupid. Willow could totally still hear what they were saying... Hey, Buffy, cut it out! Cordelia’s your friend!

Yeah, a friend who’s completely insulting and totally stupid sometimes, that oh-so-snarky inner voice shot back.

Well, okay. That was true.

So, accordingly, she scowled at Cordy. “What do you want?”

“I’m worried about you,” she said earnestly. “You’ve been completely weird all day long. Angel and Parker are saying that—“

“Omigod, Cordy, please.” Buffy rolled her eyes. “Do you honestly think I give a damn about what Angel and Parker say? They’re, like, total idiots.”

“Total idiots who totally control the whole high school!” Cordelia was whispering frantically. “Buffy, they’re talking about kicking you out!”

She blinked. “Kicking me out of where?”

“Out of—you know,” Cordelia hissed. When Buffy continued to just stare at her, she said, “The group!”

The desperation in Cordy’s voice was just enough to actually be comical. Buffy couldn’t stop a grin from coming to her face. “Oh, the horror,” she said in a dry, very un-Buffy-like voice. “However will I survive being kicked out of the group?”

“Buffy...” Cordelia said in a warning voice. “You’re my friend, and I completely understand what you’re going through, but—“

“No, you don’t! How could you possibly understand?” Ugh. Bad teen movie much?

“Oh, please. Have you ever seen Xander Harris? Totally hot and totally off limits,” Cordy pointed out. “He’s a nerd, Buffy, just like Willow’s a geek.”

“And Spike?” As soon as the words popped out of her mouth she wanted to stuff them back in. No one, especially not one of the school’s biggest gossips, needed to know about her changing feelings towards Spike.

“Punk rock weirdo,” Cordelia said instantly. Her tone was dismissive, superior, even, and it took her less than a second to come up with a label for Spike. Buffy realized that Cordy could label anyone in the school at the drop of a hat. Could and would.

And for some reason that she didn’t really feel like figuring out, that made her mad. Really, really mad.

So what came out of her mouth wasn’t agreement with what Cordy just said, which would have been smart, since she was about to be kicked out of the in crowd by people she called her friends. No, instead she just said, “You’re really quick to label people, Cordelia.”

And the creepy part was, it didn’t sound like her. Not even a tiny bit. It sounded like—someone serious, someone grown-up. Someone who was not Buffy Summers.

“Your point being?” Cordelia arched an eyebrow. She sounded perfectly serious and perfectly bitchy—total Cordelia. In their little group, Cordy had always been the bitchy one. Buffy was just the cute blonde.

And now, even though part of her was screaming what the hell are you doing??!!! at her, she just wanted it to be over.

I’m tired of it, she realized suddenly. I’m tired of pretending everything’s okay when it’s not, I’m tired of acting like I don’t have any brains...

And I’m tired of pretending those people are my friends.

So she raised her chin and looked Cordy in the eye, even though her own were beginning to sparkle with tears. She knew that in this world, the world of high school, what she was about to do could alienate her from her “friends” forever. People in high school didn’t forgive and they never forgot. It was a hellish place where every little thing you said was heard and repeated and twisted until whatever truth that had originally been contained in it was, as often as not, lost.

And what she was about to say would be repeated for quite some time. That much, at least, she was sure of.

“My point being that I’m tired of this,” she snapped. “I’m tired of watching everything I say and do, and I’m just—just—“

Cordy held up a hand. “Don’t worry,” she said sweetly. “I get it.”

“Y—you do?” Buffy said nervously. Well, that makes one of us, at least. I so don’t understand anything I’m saying.

“Of course I do,” the other girl assured her.

“Oh, thank God,” Buffy said, relieved. “Now, if you can just tell Angel and everybody that—“

“I’ll tell them what I heard.” Cordy’s voice and face all of a sudden turned malicious. “Little Miss Buffy Summers is out.” And with that, she turned on her heel and walked back into the cafeteria.

Buffy stared after her, slack-jawed, her entire world reeling on its axis.

Part of her—the grown-up part, the part that had been doing most of the talking for the past twenty minutes or so—was snickering and thinking, well, that went well. Stupid little high school clichés intact and everything. But most of her was just thinking about her former friend and the look that had been on her face when she said those hurtful, if hopelessly immature, words.

It was a look she’d seen dozens of times before—every time Cordelia put a nerd or a geek or a punk or anybody, really, in their place. She’d never realized before how much that look of utter and complete contempt could really hurt.

They’d been going over to each others’ houses for sleepovers and late-night talks since the seventh grade. That was, like, six whole years of girly bonding. Buffy couldn’t even count the number of secrets she’d told Cordy over the years. And now the girl was completely repudiating her because she’d had the nerve to act like a person, not some walking, talking trained poodle.

Buffy inhaled sharply and realized that she was very, very close to crying.

And then the tears started running.

Well, it wasn’t her fault. Twenty-four hours ago things had been just fine. Well, okay, she’d been flunking English and hated Spike and her parents had been big jerks. But—she’d at least held most of the school in thrall. Even if she hadn’t been able to control her own life, she’d had that. She’d had her popularity.

Or...she’d thought she had.

And now? What did she have now? She was still failing English, she still hated Spike—or at least, she was pretty sure she did. If she didn’t then she’d just go kill herself, because not hating Spike would be like someone telling her the sky was purple and the grass was orange.

And her parents were still big buttholes. That much she was sure of.

So would someone like to tell me why I just went all Wonder Woman, Justice For the People on Cordy?

Willow, who’d been watching Buffy cry and frantically trying to think of what to do, took a hesitant step forward. “Um...Buffy? A-Are you okay?”

Oh, yeah. That’s why. Someone had actually been nice to her. It had been a good feeling...usually, her and niceness were like oil and water. Very un-mixy.

“I—I dunno.” She wiped her cheeks and tried for a feeble smile. “I’m Raccoon-Girl now, aren’t I?”

“No, of course not. You look nice.” Willow offered the girl a smile, but to Buffy it looked kinda false.

Or maybe just disbelieving? She briefly tried to put herself in the other girl’s shoes. Until like two minutes ago, Buffy had been a typical Teen Queen. People like her didn’t give people like Willow so much as the time of day. There was no reason they didn’t, that was just the way it was. It was stupid...but Buffy was starting to think that all of high school was stupid.

“Thanks,” she sniffled. “Ummmm...look, this is horrible, especially since I still totally hate Spike, and I barely know you, but...can I...” She looked down at her hands. “Can I sit with you at lunch?”

Most other people in the school would have completely spurned her request. Actually, most people would have done so with glee. Buffy couldn’t count the number of people she’d been cruel to just in the past year. Though she didn’t remember any particular events involving Willow, there probably had been at least one.

But Willow just smiled and helped Buffy to her feet, saying, “Sure. We’d be glad to have you. Well, except Spike, he’ll probably throw a fit...but that’s okay. Faith can deal with grumpy Spike.”

Buffy frowned. Faith as in the freaky Goth slut everybody she knew utterly despised?

Oh, wait. Everybody despised her now, too.

“Okay,” she whispered. Willow smiled encouragingly and started to walk back towards the cafeteria. Buffy felt a profound gratitude towards the redhead, gratitude that she knew would probably turn into friendship. Willow was just so...nice. It was a dumb word, but she was. She was nice and forgiving and suddenly Buffy realized that she’d much rather be friends with Willow than with Cordelia.

Somehow, she knew Willow wouldn’t reject her if Buffy’s whole attitude suddenly changed like it had with Cordy a little while ago. Granted, Willow might tie her down and demand to know what was going on, but she wouldn’t go all Ice Queen and just tell her that she was out.

And because Willow was so much nicer than Cordelia, Buffy was going to go eat at the reject table. With Spike.

She gulped.

Here we go, she thought nervously, and she followed Willow into the cafeteria.

~*~

 

Chapter 6:

~*~

As soon as they neared the table, Spike looked up. Buffy watched his eyes go dark with anger.

“Bloody hell, Red,” he snapped at Willow. “I asked you to check up on her, not play the sodding mother hen.”

“Spike...” Willow warned, sitting down, but Buffy wasn’t listening.

She was staring across the cafeteria at the table nearest the huge windows. Sunlight streamed in, and it was always pleasantly warm—so that was the table Sunnydale’s upper crust sat at. That was where she had sat ever since she started going out with Angel in the tenth grade.

Angel had broken up with her to go with Cordelia, accusing Buffy of being a “frigid bitch”...but since Buffy and Cordy were like best friends, Buffy had continued to sit with them. Of course, it helped that she was a cheerleader and stuff. But mostly, it was because she was tight with Cordy.

Now, though, they were staring at her. Veruca and Harmony were whispering, and as she watched, Harmony threw back her head and laughed.

At her.

Buffy winced. It was almost too much, seeing her former friends there snickering at her. Of course, the whole cafeteria was looking at her, since it wasn’t every day a varsity cheerleader and former girlfriend of the school’s most popular guys sat down at the reject table...but Buffy had never cared about those other people. She cared about her friends—people who, apparently, didn’t exactly return the feeling.

Wonderful. Abso-freaking-lutely terrific.

Pouting angrily, she sat down next to Willow.

As soon as she looked up, she had to restrain herself from sighing and rolling her eyes. Great. Everyone at this table was staring at her, too. It was a freaking Stare-a-thon.

“So, um...did you try the meat special today? I heard it was very...meaty.” Willow tried to smile at Buffy. Tried and failed, since Buffy looked miserable and everyone else at the table looked stunned.

Well, everyone except Spike. He just looked mad.

She put her head down, staring at her hands. It was a new pose for her, but at least when she was looking at her lap she didn’t have to deal with all the people staring at her. If she’d thought it would help, she’d run up to the table in the sunshine and beg Cordy and the others to take her back...but she knew that they’d just laugh at her.

The cafeteria’s noise level was almost back up to normal, but the reject table was still silent. Buffy winced. The reject table, which as of today included her. Things were really shaping up nicely, weren’t they?

Someone at the table cleared their throat. Buffy looked up in time to see Anya nod at Buffy’s pink purse.

“Nice purse. Prada?”

Buffy smiled gratefully and was about to answer—Prada was one thing she could definitely talk about—but someone interrupted her.

“Oh, come on. Blondie couldn’t tell Prada from Playboy.” Spike smirked at her, seemingly ignoring the squeak that came from a now red-faced Willow.

Buffy’s self-pitying misery was replaced by utter outrage. She was about to splutter something about stupid blonde idiots—when she got a much, much better idea. One that involved fighting back.

She smiled slowly. “At least I’m a girl,” she said archly. “I’m not supposed to be interesting in Playboy. You, on the other hand, aren’t interested because you—what do they call it? Oh, yeah—play for the other team.” She smiled sweetly at him, practically jumping up and down internally as she watched him turn bright red with rage.

“You—I—where the hell do you get off—“

“Nowhere. But then, neither do you...unless it’s watching Mr. America competitions.”

That was it. Everyone at the table let their grins turn into titters as they watched.

Now Spike’s face was just a little darker than just plain red. Actually, it was this cool maroon color. It didn’t do much for his hair, Buffy decided.

Oh, well.

“What’s the matter, Spikey?” she asked, grinning from ear-to-ear. This was actually kinda fun. “I know girls don’t turn you on, but can’t you fight one?”

“You—sodding—arrrrg!” Spike stood up, threw his tray on the ground, and stalked off.

Buffy watched him go with wide eyes. Oops. She hadn’t actually meant to make him that mad. Piss him off a little, sure, but his blue eyes had actually looked a little hurt. In fact, she would have been really worried except that everyone at the table was still laughing. Even Willow was grinning at seeing the aloof Brit storm off in a huff like a little two-year-old.

“Way to go, B,” Faith said, clapping her on the shoulder. “You’re sure as hell in now.”

“I—I am?” Buffy asked nervously, glancing around. To her surprise, she saw approval on everyone’s faces.

“It’s an unwritten rule that you have to either orgasm with Spike or insult him to get into the group,” Anya said bluntly. “Or both—isn’t that right, sweetie?” she asked the boy sitting next to her, nuzzling his ear.

“Ew!” Buffy squealed in spite of herself. As soon as the noise came out of her mouth she covered it up and said, “Oops! Sorry, I just—“

“Hey, I’m right there with you,” Willow said. “Big, big ew.”

“I don’t see why,” Anya said. “I mean, it’s not like everyone at this table didn’t hear me trying to talk Spike and Xander into that threesome a little while ago. There’s nothing wrong with wanting orgasms with two guys instead of one.”

Buffy couldn’t do anything but stare. Anya was blunter than Cordy and talked racier than Parker. “Is she, um, always like this?” she asked, not taking her eyes off Anya.

“Yeah,” a new guy spoke up. He nodded at her. “Oz. Willow’s boyfriend.”

“And a man of many words, obviously.” A nice-looking girl with brown hair smiled at her. “I’m Fred, resident science nerd.”

“Hey, I thought that was me,” Willow said.

“Nah, Wills, you’re the bookworm,” Xander supplied. He grinned at Buffy. “So, Buff, I hear you’re a cheerleader. Will we get to see you practice?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Um. No.”

“And Little Miss Tightly Wound is back. Why the hell are you over here, anyway?” Faith asked, taking a swig from her—oh my god, was that beer?

“Huh? Oh. Just, um, you know.” She didn’t really want to say my friends just totally kicked me out of their group and I have nowhere else to go so I had to take a bookworm up on her suggestion. Instead she said, “The project—yeah, that’s right. With the—getting to know Spike’s friends, and stuff.”

She caught Willow’s eyes. The redhead looked confused, and Buffy opened her eyes a little wider, silently begging Willow not to tell everyone the truth. She didn’t think she could handle them knowing just then.

“Uh, yeah, that’s right,” Willow lied quickly. “Just for, um, school, and stuff.”

“But I thought she was sitting with us because she refused to be servile to the head cheerleader and her cronies,” Anya said, looking confused. Buffy stared at her incredulously. Was it possible for someone to be so tactless without even realizing it?

Apparently so, since the next words out of Anya’s mouth were, “What are you all looking at?”

“So, you’ve broken up with Cordy, huh?” Xander said in a clumsy attempt to alleviate the tense silence that followed Anya’s pronouncement.

“Geez, you make it sound like they were goin’ out or something,” Faith said. She took a huge bite of a candy bar. “Pretty sure there wasn’t any lesbo action with the pom-pom sisters,” she added around the chocolate.

“A world of no,” Buffy was quick to say. “But...um...yeah, we kinda went separate ways.”

“Wow, that must be awful.” Fred smiled at her sympathetically. “Haven’t you guys been friends for awhile?”

Buffy nodded. “Since before I lived here, actually.” She caught a glimpse of Cordy out of the corner of her eye. The girl was laughing and patting Angel’s arm, looking perfectly content even with her best friend relegated to the reject table. “Our parents were friends...she used to come to the apartment in LA and we’d talk. When I moved here we were both so thrilled.” She sighed. Suddenly, it seemed to all be a very long time ago.

“And now she’s pulled the bitch switch?” Faith shook her head. “Damn. Sucks ass to be you.”

Uh-huh, Buffy thought as the conversation turned to more mundane things. Sucks major ass to be me.

It was ten minutes later and about five minutes before the lunch bell when a shadow fell across their table.

“Oh. My. God. Is is Buffy Summers.”

“Lorne!” Fred exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “I didn’t know you were back!” She ran around the table and hugged him. “How was Venice?”

“Simply di-vine,” he told her, beaming. “But I had to get back to see everyone here. And then I walk into the lunchroom and lo and behold, we’ve got a newcomer. How did such a delightful bit of school royalty come to our humble abode?”

Buffy just blinked.

Well, it wasn’t like she could help it. This Lorne guy had green hair. And not just home-bleach-job-gone-wrong green. No, she was pretty sure that this green had been deliberate. It was so fluorescent they could have used him as a warning sign on the highway. Plus also she was thinking he was just a little bit gay.

“B’s gonna hang with us for awhile,” Faith said cheerfully.

“Oh, dear.” Lorne clucked sympathetically. “Fallout with Queen C?”

Why did everyone immediately jump to that conclusion? “Um, yeah,” she said, looking away.

“Terrible. Simply terrible.” Lorne sighed, looked around, and added, “And where is our wonderful representative from the mother country?”

“You mean Spike? He stormed off because Buffy actually won a fight with him. Also, I think she made him a little horny,” Anya said cheerfully.

“Oh, don’t talk like that, dear, I really can’t handle such scrumptious imagery so early in the morning,” Lorne told Anya with a grin.

“Yeah, me neither,” Willow said. When everyone looked at her askance she added quickly, “The, uh, imagery, not the scrumptious—not that he’s ugly, but—oh, look, french fries.” She dug into the plate that had been sitting in front of her for the past twenty minutes.

Buffy joined everyone in their mischievous grins. Lorne sat down next to her and started questioning her about her shoes, pronouncing them to be “utterly stunning.” When Buffy left the lunchroom with Anya on one side and Lorne on the other, she was laughing.
 

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