Spike was about a half hour late for school the next day. He was up awake most of the night restlessly thinking about Buffy. He hadn’t a clue as to what her horrible life meant for their relationship. What soddin’ relationship is that, Will? A big part of Spike still wanted to kill Buffy. But somewhere deep inside of Spike, passed all the hate and anger and rage, lay a part of him that wanted to save her.
To save Buffy. The girl that I’ve wanted to desolate since the dawn of time. Everything was the level beyond confusing for Spike. Can’t imagine what this is like on her, either. Not only were his feelings paradoxical, but Buffy herself was also one big humungous contradiction. She was smart and yet acted like a valley girl. Her home life was a disaster but she pretended she had a perfect life. But she doesn’t... not even close.
Spike gulped inwardly as he stalked to first period. And she doesn’t want my sympathy. She made that quite clear yesterday. But Buffy didn’t know that Spike knew her deepest darkest secret, that she started the fire that killed her family. If he ever told her that he knew, it would probably be the end of things. End of... what? That amazing kiss?
He didn’t know why he allowed Buffy to kiss him. Sure, it was probably the greatest moment of his life, but it further complicated the situation. Now he also had to worry about Buffy getting lusty and taking him to dreamland. And as much as he wanted his dreams to come true, he knew that everything was already fucked up and would only get more fucked up if they shagged.
But he also knew that if Buffy came onto him again, he wouldn’t be able to resist as valiantly as last time.
Spike was blasting Killing In The Name on his iPod. He had a nice, shiny black eighty gigabyte iPod he bought off of Amazon.com with his Dad’s credit card. The rather explicit ending was beginning when he walked into the classroom. The attention of the students immediately turned to him, even though Mr. Davis was in the middle of a lecture.
The first thing Spike noticed was, of course, Buffy. She was wearing her cheerleading outfit. And goddamn, did she look hot. It was green and white – the school colors – and rather form fitting, particularly around the torso area. The skirt was a tad bit short, probably from years of using the same uniform, and left little to the imagination. In Spike’s case, the quadruply overworked imagination.
Since it was rally day, all the sports slaves were wearing their jerseys, signifying their obvious superiority and supremacy to the other students. Riley was dressed in his green jersey; he was the football captain, so of course he would wear his badge of stupidity. What made Spike chuckle was that Parker and Scott were also donning jerseys. Oh boy, would I fucking love to meet them both on the football field.
He quickly glanced over to his seat at the back of the class. It wasn’t occupied. Hell, Spike’s name was still on his desk. No one was even seated at any adjacent desks to his desk. Supremacy, yeah. Populars got supremacy. Sure...
“And so Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken is about nonconformity,” Mr. Davis finished dully.
Spike’s iPod might have been blaring, but you could be deaf and still hear those misinformed and unenlightened words.
Spike snorted as he took off his headphones. The music on his headphones was so loud that everyone could clearly hear the “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” repeated furiously by Zack de la Rocha at the end of the song. Somehow the words seemed very fitting to Spike’s new persona, and everyone – even the populars with IQs not reaching double digits – understood this perfectly.
Mr. Davis’ eyes narrowed. Already Spike had pissed him off by being late for class, blasting explicit lyrics, and laughing at him.
“Decided to join us, Spike?” Mr. Davis asked rather indignantly.
Spike wasn’t paying attention. He was looking down at his iPod, turning it off. It looked like he hadn’t even heard the teacher. Or was just completely ignoring him. He waited a handful of heartbeats before he said anything.
“Yeah, D.” He glanced up at the clock. “Little late, though, I guess.”
“Do you have a note?” Mr. Davis finally had a cut-and-dry reason to kick Spike out of the class.
Spike thought about that for a second before annoyingly replying with a question. “Do you have my book?”
Mr. Davis irritably pointed to a copy of the book on his desk. Spike immediately went over to it, tore a page out, and started to write a note.
Spike’s continuation of defacing the book just added to Mr. Davis’ fuming malice towards his favorite bleached student. Spike handed him the note with a sly grin.
Mr. Davis read the note out loud to the class. He learned in college that teachers did this as punishment – read what a student wrote to the whole class, because usually students didn’t make coherent thought, and when they did, it usually didn’t reach paper. In fact, Mr. Davis went as far as believing that students should be locked up in a school for their childhood and learn the crap the government wanted them to learn. Students were ignorant.
Spike wasn’t.
“William Giles is late on this first Tuesday of the new school year, the year of the dragon, because he had an ailment and was therefore inclined to arrive at a malapropos time.” Mr. Davis couldn’t pronounce “malapropos” for the life of him, and since he was just reading it to the class and not reading over it himself first, he let the last sentence slip.
“Please allow him to further turn his mind into mush.”
The class erupted in laughter. Spike grinned sardonically.
“It has to be written by a legal guardian,” Mr. Davis seethed as he dropped the note on his desk like a bottle of lava. “You can’t just—”
“Well you can call my ma’ in the Bahamas,” Spike interrupted. “Or my da’ in England.”
Mr. Davis hadn’t an shred of insight as to Spike’s parents. Sure, he had searched every nook and cranny of Spike’s permanent record and transcript yesterday. Both were, abashed to him, impeccable. Spike had aced every class, even the arduous AP courses, and was president of the chess, science, and robot clubs. He was even a National Merit Scholar and probably the forerunner in the area for actually attending an ivy league university. Or attending college at all. But even with all of this useful information, Mr. Davis didn’t know anything personal and recent about Spike.
Mr. Davis quickly realized why Spike had changed so dramatically over the summer. He stroked his chin with his index finger and thumb. “Oh...”
“And don’t go psychoanalyzing me or anything, Doc,” Spike quickly read Mr. Davis. “I can for you, ‘cause you’re a teacher just out of grad school teaching us the bullshit you learned. But you can’t do the same for me.”
Mr. Davis’ anger – which had dissipated at the mention of Spike’s lack of family – became reinvigorated by Spike’s disrespectful comments towards him. But he was too curious as to the latter part of Spike’s argument to send Spike away on the former part. “Why not?”
“Because...” Spike took a shy glance at the board and saw Mr. Davis’ explanation of the poem. “Because The Road Not Taken isn’t about nonconformity. You want that, try listening to Rage Against The Machine or something.”
“Then what is the poem exactly about, Mr. Giles?” Mr. Davis proposed to Spike in his most formal tone as he sat on his chair with the poem in hand. He would get back at Spike by putting him on the spot and forcing Spike to tell the class his comments on the poem. Students always had funky opinions on everything, dementing the world to a Romeo and Juliet tragedy.
Spike reveled in the challenge, ready to spill his opinion on a poem he read a few years ago. “Nonconformity’s a terrific lesson, especially for some of the more immature students in the class...” Spike paused and took a long glance at the populars in the class, reddening them to a deep purple.
He continued. “But it’s not about that. It’s just about making a choice.” He was gazing directly at Buffy now, the ice blue and wise green lost in each other. “About coming to a fork in the road and taking one path, but always regretting that you couldn’t take the other. That you couldn’t experience both and decide which suited you more, or just the experience altogether.”
Buffy finally looked down, trying to hide her obvious connection to Spike.
“The poem’s called The Road Not Taken, not The Road Less Traveled, for soddin’ sakes,” Spike finished with some bitterness from the widespread misinterpretation of the poem.
Mr. Davis was unimpressed. “How do you know the poem means this? A poem can mean a lot of things...”
Spike sighed. “A poem doesn’t mean, Deeds. It just is. But this poem... this poem that’s soddin’ preached at graduations like some call to nonconformity and correct decision-making...” he mockingly shook his hands in the air, “this poem that’s memorized without really being read... this cursed poem... well, just read the first fifteen lines of it. The speaker clearly states that both paths were the same.”
Spike snatched the sheet of paper with the poem on it from the teacher. A true badass might have lit it on fire and left the class, but Spike was enjoying teaching the class and, more importantly, the teacher. He was showing Mr. Davis that he knew his shit, he really did. He wasn’t just rebellious for the hell of it, he was rebellious because he was dissatisfied by the public school system and the people in it.
“Buffy,” he called to her. “Read the poem.”
Buffy gulped and turned a bright red. Everyone in the class was looking at her now. She knew that if she read the poem the way it was meant to be read, in a rhythmic and intelligent manner, people would start thinking she was actually smart. And that would be the worst thing in the world to her. So she read the poem really fast in one breath, like any other student would.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
“Though as for that the passing there,” Spike echoed to the class. He was spiting Mr. Davis because Spike wasn’t just proving he was right, he was also leading into his rightness. “Had worn them really about the same.”
Buffy glanced slantedly at the page. “Oo! And both that morning equally lay.”
Spike nodded, surprised by her unrestrained shimmer of intelligence. “That’s right. The poem was written because Frost would go on walks in a forest and his friend would always regret what would have been when they came to a fork and took a path.”
Mr. Davis softened. Spike was informed, well-educated, backed up his beliefs with evidence from the text, and knew the history of the poem. The history that Mr. Davis didn’t even know. “You know, that’s an altern—”
“So the poem’s about choice,” Spike cut the teacher off as he skillfully moseyed over to the board. He erased the rubbish that was written on it and wrote something else:
“I don’t take life very seriously. It’s hard to get into this world and hard to get out of it. And what’s in between doesn’t make much sense. If that sounds pessimistic, let it stand.”
Spike put the marker down and faced the class. “Now who do you think said that?”
Cordelia chuckled. “Probably you.”
Spike lowered his head and touched his cheek, feeling the blow. “Our charismatic and influential leader, otherwise known as the prom queen with an expiration date at graduation, says me. Anyone else?”
“Dawson?” Parker asked.
Spike openly laughed as he sat on Mr. Davis’ desk, still facing the class. “No, sorry; was never really into Dawson’s Creek, anyway. Too much angst.”
“Frost?” Buffy offered.
“Yep, good ol’ Robert Frost, who saw all of his children and his wife either die or become insane, said that.” He glanced back at the board again with a small smile.
“Kind of makes you wonder about the inspirations or at least impetuses behind his poetry.”
He looked back at the class to see that everyone was staring blankly at him besides Buffy.
Spike looked down. “Bloody hell, teaching all of you is like teaching a blowfish how to figure skate...”
He glanced at Buffy again. “Just remember, nonconformity is great and all. Hell, I’m soddin’ proof of that. But experience life the way you wanna experience it. Don’t let other people change you unless you wanna be changed. Peer pressure is Satan’s bitch.”
And with that, he went to his seat in the back of the class and sat down.
Mr. Davis got up from his chair. “Well, that was an enlightening lecture by Mr. Giles, but it’s just about time for the assembly, so let’s get going so we can get a good seat.”
Everyone happily rose from the oppressive confines of the classroom and started herding to the gym, where all pep rallies and popular events were located. Spike was bringing up the rear and smoking, as usual. Mr. Davis didn’t seem to take offense, still hurting from Spike showing him up earlier in class.
“Buffy?”
Buffy was a few paces ahead of him. She wasn’t with her friends, oddly. Usually she’d be “oh my gosh”-ing with Cordelia, but not now. Now she was walking alone. She glanced back and slowed her pace so they were walking together. “Yeah, Spike?”
“Here,” he handed her a piece of paper, which made them both stop. He stomped his cigarette on the ground and explained. “Admission ticket.”
“Spike, you didn’t have to—”
“Hey, it was no big deal,” he interrupted. But it is. It is a very big deal, me showing the slightest compassion for you. “Try the road less traveled. It’s an exciting one.”
She smiled kindly at him. “Thanks.”
Spike nodded. “Yeah.”
The twosome looked ahead of them, but didn’t see the class.
“Ah well, guess we soddin’ lost the class,” Spike started, scratching his head.
“Might miss the assembly...” Buffy trailed with a suggestive undertone in her voice. She gave Spike her best seductive look as she put her hand on his broad chest. His stomach fluttered.
Spike swiped Buffy’s hand away. He took her seductive look and raised her a blank look. “Buffy... I don’t think we can... not here... and...” She’s making me stutter. She’s turning me back into William.
Buffy just grinned and pointed to a door in the hallway.
It was a closet.
It was fate.
And before either of them knew it, they were both in the closet madly making out.
“Buffy...” Spike managed between kisses. He started working on her neck. Her neck’s even more delicious than I dreamed... pure bliss.
“Spike...” Buffy gasped.
A ton of bricks fell on Spike. Not literally, of course. Bloody hell! With her! What the sod am I thinking!? He immediately pulled away. Buffy whimpered at the loss of suckage.
“What the fuck is this, Buffy?” Spike glared at her. “I hate you.” And the only reason why I succumbed to this heaven in the first place is because you have a horrible life and I feel sorry for you. Or else I would be laughing at the more colorful you right now.
Buffy was cut by his words, but didn’t miss a beat. She wanted this, whatever it was, and whatever it meant she had to do.
“I hate you too, Spike,” Buffy replied with a grin. She was bordering sarcasm and possibly some really suggestive and loose connotation of the word “hate.” She took Spike’s hand, which was still on her lower back, and lowered it a bit further...
Spike whipped his hand away. “This is just lust, Buffy,” he concluded, knowing that Buffy was lying when she said that she hated him. But am I lying, too? “Nothin’ more. I don’t love you. I don’t even bleedin’ like you. You’re just... you’re just an infatuation.”
Buffy nodded, hurt deeply by the words but knowing that acquiescing was the only way she’d get any from Spike.
Before they could say anything else, they were snogging like horny teenagers at the movies again.
“...who... cares... what this is.... right now...” Buffy cooed as she started planting kisses on Spike’s neck. This quickly turned into full-on sucking, which brought Spike dangerously close to the edge. Her lips... so soft and yet so aggressive... her tongue... divine. This was the heaven Spike had dreamt about for years. Fuck it. She knows I hate her. I want this... I need this...
“...yeah... who cares.”
*gulps* They might miss the assembly! And that would absolutely... suck. Yes, suck. Lots o’ suckage here. Spuffy is completely lust, of course, with the door swung open because of Spike’s sympathy for her life. I hope I didn’t have to tell you that. Possibly the assembly next chapter. Yes, they'll even have enough time to make it to the assembly. And start a heavy metal band too!