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.
~*~
A/N: So... do you still hate Buffy? I hope not. I kinda tried to get the point by that her family, um, sucks. And she’ll get less annoying—promise =)
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