Buffy liked the way his hair curled when it was wet.
The gel loosened its tight hold, and rebellious blonde ringlets would form at the base of his skull, above his ears, around his forehead. There was one right above his scarred eyebrow that always curled the same way, to the left, and it was the perfect size for her to slip her pointer finger inside. If she ever got the chance.
She liked the way he made fun of people. Not meanly, not cruelly, not like all the other guys at school, unless someone really pissed him off, then he had a huge temper. His teasing came with affection, his sense of humor was such that even the victim couldn’t help but laugh. She wanted to be teased by him more than anything.
She liked the way he was friends with absolutely everyone. Well, mostly everyone. He wasn’t a jock, but he partied with the football team and the cheerleaders, all the rich kids she couldn’t touch. He wasn’t a brain but he sometimes sat with Willow and Jonathan and all those guys at lunch. Mostly he hung out with the slacker types, but he was like, their god or something. Everybody wanted to be his friend. Not just her.
She liked how he was really smart when people weren’t paying attention. He never raised his hand in class but when a teacher called on him he always had the right answer, even if he’d been sleeping in the back corner. And sometimes at lunch he’d sit by himself, scribbling in that beat up black leather journal he always had tucked in his back pocket, and she just knew whatever he was writing was brilliant.
She liked the way he was stingy with his smiles. Not everyone deserved one, you know, and most people just got a smirk. She could read every emotion in those little expressions—she was sure other people missed the meaning behind them, but she could tell if he was annoyed or indulgent or teasing. Some people got these quick little grins that made her knees weak. But his full, bright, pure and happy smiles were saved for special occasions, and every time Buffy saw one it was like a burst of adrenaline. She’d feel giddy for days.
She liked the feel of his leather jacket on her bare skin. This was a brand new addition to the list of likes. It was something she discovered just last night, when she went to the movies with Xander. He was in line in front of them. She’d been hypnotized by the sound of his voice as he laughed with his friends, and didn’t even notice when one of the other guys reached out and pushed him, making some sort of joke she didn’t understand. He staggered back and his coat brushed her arm, made her shiver, then his weight shifted and he knocked her sideways.
He’d turned, and said with a real smile that she knew she’d live off of for weeks, “Sorry ‘bout that.”
Those were the seventh, eighth, and ninth words he ever said to her.
The first three were in eighth grade. It was her first day of school in her new town, and she had gotten to Mr. Bledsoe’s first period math class five minutes early, even though she’d changed her outfit five times before leaving the house, and her mom’s car had threatened to die in the parking lot of their apartment building.
“This seat taken?” he’d asked, voice smooth and soft, eyes a brighter blue than she’d ever thought possible.
She’d tried to respond, really she did, but her mouth instantly dried up and her brain shut down. She had never in her life seen a more beautiful boy and right then she fell hard, taking only a few seconds to realize this was her perfect man. Finally she managed to shake her head, but by then he’d spotted one of his friends across the room, and had walked away. She stared at his back, struck dumb.
That whole year she’d watched him and wished she could go back in time, smile up at him and say, “No, have a seat. I’m Buffy, I’m new!” That desk stayed empty all year.
The fourth and fifth words were sophomore year, when the boys and girls gym classes had combined for dance lessons, which seemed to her just to be cruel and unusual punishment. Who really needed to learn to dance anyway?
They lined up on either side of the wall of the gym, boys outside, girls inside, and paired off so there wouldn’t be any childish arguing. God must have been listening for once in her life, because when she stepped up to the teacher, he was on her left.
Spike.
“Betty, right?” he’d asked, smiling that perfect smile, that smile that make her knees weak and made her heartbeat speed up and made her palms sweat.
She opened her mouth to correct him, when Harmony forced her way between them and demanded, “Switch partners with me,” face twisted in a superior smirk, skirt short enough to get herself detention.
What could she say? It’s not like she could turn down a girl who wanted to be partnered with her boyfriend. It was just very bad form, especially when the girl was Harmony, who would do anything and everything to make your life a living hell if you got in her way. So she reluctantly switched, and got stuck with Jonathan, who was even shorter than her, smelled vaguely of chicken soup and had two left feet.
The sixth word was just, “Nope.”
She’s seen a pen fall from his back pocket last month, as he sauntered down the hall, unlit cigarette dangling from his fingertips. She hated cigarettes, really she did, she was well-informed about the evils of tobacco from her grandfather’s hacking cough, but on him it was sexy. He made everything sexy.
It was the first day of her last semester of high school, and she promised herself she would talk to him. Made a plan. So she’d hurried to pick up the pen, nearly got kicked by a passing football player in the process, and ran after him down the hall.
“Did you drop this?” she asked, voice miraculously not shaking as he fixed those blue eyes on her face. Those were the first words she ever said to him.
He barely glanced at it. “Nope,” he shrugged, and disappeared into his class room, leaving her alone in the hall.
But he had, she knew he had! She’d seen it tumble to the ground and knew it was his, knew his fingers had touched it, knew his teeth had mutilated the cap until it was bumpy and jagged. So she placed it carefully in her purse and took it home, set it on the shelf above her desk, and occasionally used it to sign her name.
Mrs. Buffy Kent. Mrs. Spike Kent. Mr. and Mrs. Spike Kent.
Buffy knew it was just silly. Most seventeen-year-old girls had moved far beyond the stages of obsessive, unrequited crushes, had long since stopped signing fake names in their notebooks. But she just couldn’t help it.
~*~*~
His face across the bonfire danced in and out of the shadows.
She was a slave to the wind: waiting for it to push the flames high enough so that the light reached the curve of his cheekbones, the white of his hair.
Five minutes, and she would get up and go talk to him. That was enough time to figure out an opening line.
Well, opening word was bad enough. “Hi.” “Hey.” They both conveyed different things. “Hello”was totally out of the question, way too formal. ”Yo.” Did people even say that any more?
“Hi.” Definitely that. And then she could introduce herself—no, no, that would be assuming he didn’t know her name. He knew her name, right? He had to, five years of school together and a total of six shared classes, fifty-two minutes five times a week. He had to know.
So she could just ask if he was having fun. That could work.
“Hi, are you having fun?”
Oh, God, no. No, that sounded like she was his mother or something!
“Hi, what’s up?” That was casual, easily interpreted a few different ways. The literal, and the…not?
Maybe she needed more than five minutes.
She just still couldn’t believe she was here. When Cordelia had been paired as her lab partner in Bio, she really had thought it would be the end of the world. Queen C was friends with Harmony, who was just a total bitch overall, and she wasn’t exactly known for being the best student. Buffy was sure she’d end up having to do all the work.
But Cordelia was actually kind of…nice. Well, not nice, but not intentionally cruel either, at least not to her. They’d ended up getting an A- on their midterm project. And she’d invited her here, hadn’t she? To a spring break bonfire on a private beach. With Spike.
Who was just across the fire, maybe seven feet from her, beer lifted to his lips as his eyes danced with laughter.
She had never been to a party like this before. She wasn’t a loser, she just wasn’t…cool. No one made fun of her, which was nice, but it was almost worse that no one seemed to even know who she was. She had to tell her name to people tonight that she’d known for years. It was getting a little frustrating. But, she was here, and that was all that mattered.
Buffy saw Spike stand, and her breath caught suddenly in her throat. Heavy smoke from the fire filled her lungs and she found herself coughing harshly. Her eyes started to water and she squeezed them shut, rubbed her throat and wondered why these kinds of things always happened to her.
A hand landed on her back softly. Shocked, Buffy shifted away from the touch and opened her eyes to see Spike sitting next to her on the log, eyes narrowed with concern.
It was like something out of a dream. He had never, ever looked at her like this, touched her like this.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, voice like silk sliding over her skin. Oh, that accent made all the girls swoon, and she could feel his breath on her skin when he spoke. “Here, drink some of this.”
He held up a fresh beer. She hadn’t had any beer yet, she really didn’t like the taste, but her red cup of water was empty and she really needed something to sooth the aching in her chest.
Plus, he gave it to her. Wasn’t that reason enough?
“Thanks,” she croaked out, taking the cup from his hands. Their fingers brushed. She could not believe this was happening, and as she lifted the cup to her lips she watched him out of the corner of her eye.
The taste was as disgusting as she remembered from her cousin’s sweet sixteen last year, and she barely suppressed the urge to squeeze up her face in revulsion. But the cold liquid did help and soon she was breathing normally again, or as normally as she could with Spike Kent’s hand rubbing circles on her back, with him looking at her with an amused smirk.
Through the layers of her sweatshirt and her t-shirt underneath, his touch burned her skin.
“Drink a lot of beer, do you?” Spike asked, smirk growing.
“Was it that obvious?” replied Buffy, trying to sound casual though she could feel her cheeks reddening with embarrassment.
“Nah, I was just watching closely,” he shrugged. And she believed him. Someone called his name from down by the water, and he glanced over her shoulder, then his eyes returned to her face. “Take it slow, Buffy. Don’t have to drink as much as the rest of us idiots.”
“Spike, get the hell down here!” The voice called again.
He yelled back, “I’m coming, you bloody fucktards!” His voice was loud and made her ears ring, but she didn’t care.
He rose, and walked past her, jeans brushing against her bare knees. “Have a good night,” he said as he passed, and then he walked away.
Buffy watched him head down to the water, out of the sphere of the firelight, and the cloud covered moon barely illuminated his bright hair. Still, she stared, and when the clouds blew away he was suddenly fully visible as he stripped off his shirt, pulled down his jeans and ran after his friends into the water, letting out a whoop of excitement.
She caught a brief glimpse of his bare back, the swell of his naked ass, just for a moment before a new cloud destroyed her view, and she heard the splash of him diving under a wave. In that moment everything changed.
She no longer liked Spike Kent.
She loved him.
~*~*~
“I just don’t get it,” Xander whined, arms loaded down with dresses in a wide range of colors and an exaggerated, decidedly non-manly pout on his lips. “I thought we were doing the whole anti-prom thing. Watch horror movies where the queen gets bludgeoned, gorge ourselves on high calorie treats you’ll regret later and blame me for letting you eat. You know, have fun. Instead you’re making me spend fifty hard earned pizza delivery dollars on a tux!”
“Come on, Xand,” Buffy sighed, pulling a short white cocktail dress off the rack for perusal. “Don’t you want to have at least one memorable high-school moment? Do you really want to be the guy in five years who didn’t go to the senior prom?”
“Considering in five years I’m gonna be the guy in the cow hat at the Doublemeat Palace if I don’t pass Pre-Calc, prom will be the least of my worries.”
“Wasn’t Willow going to tutor you?”
“Yeah, she said she would. But that would cut into my lying around time, and we can’t have that.”
“What do you think of this?” Buffy held up a deep red, satin, floor-length gown, with a dangerously low back. Spike’s favorite color was red. She’d overheard him say that once in the parking lot. The price tag was half of the rent her mom paid every month, but she’d been saving for two years for something special. She hadn’t been sure what, but now she knew. She’d figured it out, late at night when she couldn’t sleep and images of pink lips and blue eyes danced in her head. He was all she thought about now, every waking moment, and she finally knew exactly what she was going to do.
She was going to go to the prom and she was going to dance with Spike.
That was it. All her grandest plans, all her wildest schemes, she knew they were all ridiculous. He would never love her back, not in a million years, but…he would dance with her. She knew he would! He knew her name, and he’d say yes.
Xander stared at the dress she held up, wide-eyed. “It’s…I mean, I prefer my women in spandex, usually, but that dress is…well…you could probably pull it off,” he finished lamely. His hands were shoved in his pockets and his eyes were glued to the floor.
“Cool.” She tossed it on the pile in his arms, suppressing a giggle at his discomfort. “To the dressing room, my eager little helper.”
“I feel so emasculated,” he muttered as he followed.
She saved that dress for last.
Buffy gauged the hotness factor of each gown by Xander’s reaction: the black knee-length one made him stutter on one word, but the sea foam green glittery halter made him catatonic. The white lace wasn’t nearly as jaw-dropping as the emerald green mini-dress.
She knew it was bad of her. Xander’s crush on her was sort of the unspoken elephant in their friendship. He knew she knew, she pretended she didn’t know, and they could continue as is: just friends. He wouldn’t dare make the move to change anything, so she could avoid the moment where she’d have to tell him it would never happen.
Things were comfortable that way. They got what they wanted from each other, and no body got hurt. Not really.
She had it down to two options before she gathered up the courage to try on the red. It was so expensive, and so out of her comfort zone, and so, so sexy…but as the silk slid over her skin, tickled at the fine hair on her thighs and caressed the sensitive skin behind her knees, she knew that this was it. This was the dress. This was the transformation she needed to get up the courage to walk up to Spike freakin’ Kent and say, “Do you want to dance with me?”
It wasn’t too low cut in the front, which was fine since it wasn’t like she had much to show off there anyway. But the back was scandalously bare, with no fabric from the nape of her neck to her lower back except for one thin satin braid that tickled her spine as she moved. It was a movie star dress.
She didn’t even need Xander’s approval, but the way his eyes bulged out of his head was merely the final confirmation. This was definitely the dress.
Shopping bags in hand, Buffy let Xander drag her to the other side of the mall, where the video game store was having some sort of special nerd-convention that he wanted to go to. Five feet away she stopped short, and Xander didn’t even notice as he ran up to the entrance and disappeared in the crowd of people.
The crowd of people that included Spike.
He was in the store, visible through the glass display cases, laughing with some guy she vaguely recognized from school. He wasn’t wearing his coat, for once, and she could see the thin muscles of his arm flexing as he gestured, as he reached up and grabbed something off a shelf. Oh, his hair was wet from the rain outside, curling just the way she liked, and she was shaking she was so nervous. Sunnydale wasn’t huge, but just her luck, she hardly ever saw him outside of school.
She could not go in there. Her throat had closed up and her palms were sweaty, the handles of her bag were slipping out of her hand, but Xander had noticed she was gone and called her name.
Spike turned. He saw her through the window. He waved. He waved.
Yeah, she really could not go in there. She wasn’t prepared! She hadn’t planned! She didn’t know her opening line and just her luck she’d end up saying something like, “Hello, are you enjoying this fine spring weather?”
God, she was a dork.
She just waved back, a jerky spastic little movement she would berate herself for later, and turned to talk to Xander, who was hovering at the entrance, clutching a brightly colored box and frowning at her.
“What’re you doing out here?” he asked.
“I…claustrophobic,” she blurted out. “Too many people in there. I’m gonna go hang at the food court, okay? Meet me when you’re done?”
He didn’t have time to protest, and she took off quickly, sparing one glance over her shoulder.
Spike had turned away.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I got it into my head a few months ago to write my first (and likely only) high school fic after a John Hughes marathon. Because, really, life should totally be exactly like a teen movie. I apologize in advance if the sugary sweetness makes your teeth hurt. Muchos gracias to dampersandspoons for beta-ing. Oh, and I should probably say in advance: this is part one of three. It will not be a long fic, nor will there be a sequel.