~*~
School. Worse, high school. Hell on earth didn’t even begin to describe the place…
And now it was time to go back.
Granted, she was a junior this year, so she was all with the upperclassmen power. But still—if she was looking forward to it any less, she might start to consider running away and getting a job in Los Angeles, or something equally dumb.
Despite his teasing her about it, Spike had offered to drive her the first day. She couldn’t refuse, even though walking would be just as easy. She’d begged him to drive her on her first day of high school two years ago, and somehow, it had become a tradition.
When he looked at her, his grey-blue eyes wide and hopeful, she didn’t think there was anything she could refuse him.
“Is it immature to admit that I’m scared?” Buffy asked, staring out of the Desoto at the all-too-familiar high school in front of her.
“Nah. You had a big summer.” Spike grinned at her slyly. “Hookin’ up with sexy older men and all that.”
“Careful, you’re venturing into poofter territory,” she joked, grinning at him when she used his phrase. “Sexy older men? What, do you have a crush on that Aragorn guy now?”
Spike arched an eyebrow at her. “Very funny. Be out here at three sharp, yeah?”
“Controlling.”
“Brat.”
Buffy smiled at him brilliantly. “Bye!” she said, and flounced off.
Spike watched her leave, torn between eyeing her ass and laughing at her antics. When she disappeared inside the building, he drove off.
~*~
Buffy was looking around intently for Willow and Faith. Since she’d tolerated Spike taking her to school, she was a good ten minutes early—plenty of time to talk about schedules and groan over the awfulness that was Sunnydale High School.
So she was very surprised when she didn’t find either of them. Usually they all met right at the entrance—it was a tradition they’d started in ninth grade and had kept every since, but this time, her friends were conspicuously absent.
“Crap,” she muttered. Ten minutes was not long enough to hunt through the school for the two girls.
“Damn, B, who died?”
Buffy whirled around, relief flooding her. “Oh, thank God.”
“Um…why are we thanking him?” Willow asked, looking confused.
“You guys weren’t here,” Buffy explained. I thought maybe something had happened, or…” She trailed off at the incredulous look both her friends gave her. “Sorry. I guess the whole Spike thing’s made me a little paranoid.”
Faith nodded. “Dating old guys can do that to ya,” she said with authority. “By the way, what the hell did you do to Robin? He’s been limp as a noodle since that day he saw you guys at the theater.”
“TMI, Faith!” Willow exclaimed, wrinkling her nose with distaste.
Buffy laughed. “Aren’t we just so mature? We’re juniors and we’re acting about as mature as a bunch of kindergarteners.”
“So? We’re upperclassmen, we can do shit like that.” Faith grinned. “Hey, I got an idea. Let’s go terrorize the freshman down in the caf.”
“Faith!”
But their friend was already heading towards the cafeteria where all the school’s freshmen traditionally congregated. Laughing, Buffy and Willow hurried to catch up.
~*~
“She’s just…fresh, y’know? Like springtime.”
Anya gave him a level look. “That is the sappiest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Spike grinned. He knew he probably looked like an utter ponce—hell, he definitely sounded like one—but he couldn’t help himself. “’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“It’s disgusting,” Anya said flatly. “How are you supposed to make me money when you’re completely lovesick?”
“Said the woman who spent all ‘f yesterday giving the whelp a good sending off,” Spike shot back.
“Xander’s going to Cancun, Spike. It’s my duty as his girlfriend to make him so lust-addled that he won’t want to have orgasms with anyone else.”
“That’s sodding disgusting, d’you know?”
“Shut up and work on the Nike ad,” Anya ordered, but she was smiling. “I have to go have phone sex with Xander.”
Spike winced as his friend-slash-boss-slash-Woman Who Lived To Bugger Him Up walked away. The bird had some definite issues as far as givin’ out too much information went. Hearing her talk, you’d think she was the slutty, minimum wage type, but the truth was that Anya’s Ads earned millions of dollars a year and employed what sometimes seemed like half of Sunnydale, himself included.
Although, he thought smugly, he was a bit more special than the other employees. Being a childhood friend had its perks.
He knew she was tired of his constant prattling about Buffy, but how could he help himself? She was his, and he could finally tell people. That alone was enough to make him addled. Add that to the fact that their dates were becoming increasingly amorous and, well…
Spike Jr. was enjoying this relationship, too, and he wanted to tell the world.
Right now, though, he had work. Slip up on the job and Anya’ll fire me straight off…money-hungry bint. He opened the Nike portfolio and started inspecting the ideas his team had laid out for him at their meeting yesterday.
One of them wanted to advertise the bathing suits in a rather unorthodox way. Instead of having the girl swimming, she’d be standing under a waterfall, her hair wet and droplets clinging to her skin from the mist.
He looked at the photo and thought of Buffy.
Grimacing, he wrote on the paper, “Every guy’s wet dream, but have you forgotten that Nike wanted something empowering?”
His morning wore on slowly as he decided on projects, delegated tasks, and shuffled the papers at his desk. He almost wished that he was still low enough on the totem pole to be able to do the actual advertisement…but then, the low men didn’t get paid half as much as he did.
If he was gonna pull off what he had planned for his girl’s eighteenth birthday, he was going to need some cash.
Granted, that was a year away. Spike briefly allowed himself to think that far ahead—to dream of the day when they’d finally be able to cement their relationship, to imagine that she wouldn’t have tired of him by then.
He loved her and she knew it, but was that enough to keep her?
Buffy loved freedom. God knows he’d heard enough ‘bout her rows with her mum to know that. How would she feel about being tied down to a man she couldn’t even hold hands with in public?
Fucking rules. If he was a woman—well, for one, Buffy would be a lesbian, and wasn’t that a pretty thought? But Anya was living proof that if their genders would be reversed, then everything would be right as bleeding rain. A seventeen-year-old boy dating a woman ten years older than he would just get called lucky, and no way in hell would the woman be called a pedophile…unlike Spike, who’d had that word written on a sheet of paper tucked into his windshield. He’d found it a few days ago when he was out with Buffy, but luckily he’d managed to tuck it away before she found it.
She was under the impression that no one but her family and that Cordelia bird knew about them. Who was he to shatter that idea?
“Spike!” Anya called from her office. “Putting your head in your hands isn’t going to make me any money! Well, unless you’re naked,” she added as an afterthought. “Then I guess I could take pictures and sell them. If the angle was right I could even make it look like you were sucking yours—“
“I get the point, Ayn!” Spike cut in quickly. “How ‘bout I go talk to Arty, yeah?”
He made his escape before Anya could decide he needed more money-making motivation. Woman’s a menace. A bug-shagging crazy menace.
But at least, he thought as he went to find something to get Anya off his case, she made things interesting. He liked that in a woman.
Damn, Buffy, I wish you were here.
~*~
Buffy scowled at the boy in front of her. Damn, Spike, I wish you were here. “If you ever touch my ass again, you’ll draw back a bloody stump. Are we clear?” she snapped waspishly.
“Jesus! I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know you were such a frigid bitch.”
Buffy heard gasps around her, and to her disgust, she actually heard someone say, “Oh no he did not!” Why did she bother to go to high school, again?
But the guy wasn’t done. “I guess I’d have to be a fucking old dude to get a piece of your ass,” he sneered, leering at her.
The world spun, then froze. Buffy found herself staring at Percy, completely at a loss for words. “How—how did you—“
A delicately manicured hand suddenly appeared on Percy’s shoulder. But hands don’t just appear, Buffy thought, her brain still numb with shock.
The hand lead to an arm, which led to a shoulder, then a neck, and then a face.
“Well, well, well,” Harmony Kendall said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “If it isn’t our resident hooker!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Buffy saw Faith approach. The brunette looked mad as hell.
An image of the Principal’s office suddenly flashed before Buffy’s eyes. Oh, shit, she had time to think—
And then Faith arrived and dealt Harmony a blow square to her nose.
~*~
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Those of you who read The Chosen Half have already gotten the apology, but: sorry I've been gone for so long! There's plenty of excuses, but basically, RL reared its ugly head...sorry for the delay =( Thanks so much for the reviews for the last chapter--over 500 is an absolutely amazing number, I'm about to fall over in shock! Thank you!