~*~
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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Author's Chapter Notes:
A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews =) I know I say this in pretty much all my responses, but really...thanks. Hope you like this chap too, it’s basically just the rest of lunch. The interview’ll be in the next chapter. And also, one more thing: PLEASE VISIT BEYOND TWILIGHT!!!!! It's a pretty new archive that's having a REALLY slow start. The address is www.captivesouls.com/Beyond_Twilight. Enjoy =)