The Miseducation of Buffy Summers by Verity
Chapter One

Summary: Sunnydale, CA, 1997: Buffy Summers lives at 1630 Revello Drive with her family: a younger sister - Dawn, her mother - Joyce, an art historian, and her stepfather - Rupert, a professor at UC Sunnydale. Her life couldn't be more ordinary. Until her stepbrother William comes to spend the summer with them in the wake of his mother's death...

Written for taboo_spuffy on livejournal. Thanks to my loyal betas, automaticdoor, coyotegoth, and wickedwitch74!

Disclaimer: Everything that you recognize belongs to Joss. The rest belongs to me.

Joyce Summers' mouth was open, her lips moving, and words came out from between them. Of this, Buffy Summers was pretty sure. She just couldn't process any of them.

She shook her head, and blinked. Stay focused, Buffy. "Wait, what did you just say, Mom?"

Her mother sighed, and patted her hand. "I know it seems strange, sweetie, but our home is his home, too... we'll just have to make some adjustments. His mother just died, and Rupert wants him at home. Just for the summer."

"Just for the summer," Buffy repeated, her mind already drifting. Her eyes lit on the picture that hung over the mantel: her mother, Rupert, herself and Dawn. They were her family. No matter what her mother said.

It had been almost six years since she'd last seen her stepbrother - Dawn had been just six, at the very beginning of the lanky awkward phase she'd never quite grown out of. Buffy had been not-quite-eleven, and William - William had been seventeen. Like Dawn, he was too skinny for his height, and had spent most of Christmas moping about and listening to angry music on his Walkman. He and Rupert fought a lot about the Walkman, needless to say. But when Buffy overheard him talking to Joyce late one night, he sounded surprisingly shy and gentle.

Her mother's voice was soft, and Buffy heard the familiar clink of silver against china as she stirred her tea. "...means well, really. It's hard for him to be so far apart from you."

"I'm about to sit for my A-levels. I'm not a child anymore, even if Dad thinks I am." Her stepbrother's voice was quiet, but carried quite well to where Buffy sat in the study, her book open on her lap. It was strange to hear William call Rupert "Dad," even though she never did herself. Nevertheless, she felt jealous. Rupert was hers - he'd helped raise her since she was a little girl, younger than Dawnie. Buffy didn't want to share the man who'd read her to sleep every night, even when she was much too old for that, with some boy he hardly ever saw and could never care about, never, she told herself, as much as he cared about herself and Dawnie.

As these thoughts tumbled about in her head, her mother had continued speaking, and only the mention of her name roused Buffy from her brown study. "...sorry you feel that way, Will. I know that he loves you just as much as Dawn and Buffy, and if you were here... in the States, even..."

William cut her off. "If he cared about me, why'd he move across the bleedin' ocean, then? Why hasn't he come back?"

There was a long silence, and Buffy strained to hear her mother's reply, turning in her chair toward the kitchen. She started when a hand tapped her on the shoulder. But it was only Rupert, looking down at her with a sad but bemused smile. "It's past your bedtime, Buffy. Get yourself to bed."

Then he went into the kitchen, and Buffy ran the whole way up the stairs.

Now William was coming home again, and Buffy hardly knew what to expect. Rupert had visited him alone the past few years, and now William's mother had died she'd never known much about her, aside from what she'd gathered by some surreptitious eavesdropping over the years. She'd never wanted to ask Rupert - she'd never wanted to imagine him with any other woman that her mother, never wanted to imagine any other family of which he'd been a part.

The Hon. Drusilla Russell-Pratt. She was the daughter of a baron, and had inherited a large share of a prominent shipping company from her mother's father. But when Rupert had met her, she was just the little sister of one of his old school chums, Angelus Russell-Pratt. Angel, as he liked to be called, had set them up on a date.

Buffy barely knew anything about her. And now she was dead.

"Give me a hand with your trunk," Rupert's voice boomed comfortingly from downstairs. Buffy heard an answering shout from farther off, and shoved her magazine aside. All afternoon, she'd been trying to read the latest issue of Seventeen, but she'd hardly progressed beyond the index page. Buffy set it on the desk, and got up, smoothing the striped comforter on her bed. Then she shoved the magazine under her bed. Somehow, she just wanted to look grown-up.

Of course, that was silly. It wasn't like William would be looking in her bedroom. They'd made up the study for him, downstairs.

Before she went downstairs, Buffy checked herself in the mirror. She was just wearing a t-shirt and a jeans, nothing different than what she wore every day, but she tugged her shirt down self-consciously. She reached for a scrunchie, pulling her hair up with her other hand, then, just as abruptly, let it fall. Stop it with the overthinkage!

Dawn met her at the top of the stairs, her eyes dancing. "I haven't seen William in forever!" she whispered a bit too loudly in her excitement.

Buffy sighed. She'd forgotten that her sister had joined the dark side, too. "Forever's not long enough," she mumbled. Dawn opened her mouth, clearly in rebuttal, but a sharp "Oi!" drew their attention downstairs.

"Sorry!" Rupert was using the tone he usually took when apologizing to Buffy for the unfortunate necessity of her 10 p.m. curfew. "If you didn't insist on traveling with something so heavy..."

"I've got all my work for Finals on there. I'm not on a vacation, Dad." That sharp voice, with the thick working-class accent? That was her stepbrother? He spoke again, after a brief pause. "Sorry."

Buffy came down the stairs in time to see her stepfather clap a hand on William's back. "Truce?"

"All right." He'd filled out some since she'd last seen him, she thought; he was turned away from her, but she could make out his figure beneath the ridiculous black leather coat he was wearing, which fit him like a glove. How ridiculous, Buffy thought to herself. She was embarrassed on her stepfather's behalf.

And then William turned around. Sometime between seventeen and twenty-two, he'd grown into those sharp cheekbones, that harsh but - oh! - delectable face. Buffy barely suppressed a gasp.

Um, hot much?

Her cheeks flushed, and she turned to go back up stairs just as Dawn barreled into her. "Dawnie!" Buffy chided, but her sister just pushed past her.

"William!" Dawn exclaimed, then stood back shyly for a moment before her stepbrother gave her a hug.

"Last time I saw you, you were just a wee bit," he said, and smiled for the first time.

Buffy crept back upstairs.