Title: Our Own Collision Course
Author: finkpishnets
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/High School Musical
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Dawn/Ryan
Spoilers: Season 5 of Buffy, High School Musical in general.
Dawn calls Buffy from the phone down the hall sixty minutes after arriving, even though she saw her, like, four hours ago and nothing exciting has happened except some guy dropping his TV down a flight of stairs and her dorm mate showing up for all of two minutes before heading out to some 'totally rad' party. It doesn't matter though; Buffy's glad to hear from her and they chat for over half an hour before some girl starts ranting about needing to call her therapist. It's nice to know she's not the only one with anxieties about the whole college experience.
She's unpacked and bored by eight thirty, wishing that Giles had given in to her requests to borrow some of his more interesting books and not taken to repeatedly calling her both 'too young' and 'too careless'. She resents both, though he was probably right about the second one – Xander's eyebrows still hadn't grown back properly since that whole firebird fiasco. With nothing better to do she heads off towards the canteen, preparing to risk the possibly toxic food that she's been warned about on more than one occasion if only to give her something to talk about tomorrow when she makes the roundabout of calls to her extended family, all of whom have demanded she check in at least twice a week. She'd get mad except its sort of nice in a mildly annoying kind of way.
As she picks up her tray featuring something vaguely resembling lasagna and turns to look for a table, she finds herself colliding with someone else. A tall, blond, male someone else with designer jeans and a shirt that probably cost more than a month's rent, with a blue golf cap sitting crookedly on his head. Cuuute, she thinks before reminding herself that she's not a fourteen year old girl.
"Sorry," she says eventually.
"It was my fault," he replies, "I wasn't looking where I was going. Are you alright?"
"Oh, nothing damaged but my dignity, and that was pretty much written off years ago."
He chuckles; the light, friendly sort that's tinged with real amusement and Dawn finds herself smiling.
"I'm Dawn Summers," she says boldly, and then realizes that she probably sounds like a complete dork introducing herself by her full name and with absolutely no prompting. She wonders maybe if she's keeping him from friends or plans or something, but he doesn't look in any rush to escape and she's certainly not looking to be left alone.
"Nice to meet you, Dawn Summers," he says and, though his grin definitely holds the curling edges of mockery, it's honest enough. "I'm Ryan Evans."
"Cool," she says and then wonders if it's actually possible to sound any more lame.
There's a chirruping noise and the opening notes of a song Dawn doesn't recognize, and Ryan pulls an expensive cell phone out of his pocket.
"I've got to take this," he says, almost apologetically.
"Mom?" Dawn asks and then curses her upbringing for making her so nosy.
"Sister," he says with a shrug and then nods his head once. "See you around."
"Yeah, see you," she replies, but he's already gone.
She makes it through the first couple of weeks with little more than an extensive reading list and a bruise on her upper arm from the one party she attended where she discovered that tequila and banister sliding were not a good combination. She's met a girl in her history class that seems nice enough, and there are a couple of people in her dorm block that have taken to knocking on her door at one in the morning inviting her out bar crawling. At least it's not disturbing her dorm mate who she's not seen again since the first night, though
occasionally she'll come back from afternoon classes to loud snoring and a lump in the other bed. At least, she assumes it's her dorm mate and not just some other random, drunken student. Not that it particularly matters either way.
Two weeks in and she's decided that it might be good idea to join the gym, because, whilst she's not exactly running for her life right now (a welcome change), the chances are that there'll be an apocalypse at Thanksgiving and then she definitely cannot afford to have gotten slack. Also, she doesn't have Buffy's Slayer metabolism and she so doesn't want to be known as the flabby sister.
The stupid membership fee sets her back quite a bit, but she figures it'll be worth it in the long run (you know, when she doesn't die because she can't outrun the latest big bad) and there are half a dozen other newbie's taking the tour at the same time so she doesn't feel too out of place. They're passing a set of practice rooms – the type with polished wooden flooring and lots of mirrors that just makes you feel like an idiot when you fall – when she does a double take.
Ryan, the blond guy from her first night, is busy spinning around in some ridiculously complicated routine that makes Dawn's head spin. Nevertheless, he looks great, and when he stops and notices her Dawn can't help but give him a small smile. He grins back and then hops over to the CD player, turning off whatever music Dawn can't actually hear, before walking towards her.
"Hey," he says, opening the door.
"Hi," she replies. "That looked really good." She's incredibly thankful that, for once, her mouth didn't betray her and let slip the 'You looked really good' that was clouding her brain.
"Thanks," he replies without modesty, and Dawn's pleasantly surprised by his confidence. It's something she's always wished she had more of. "Joining the gym?"
"Yeah," she says, before realizing that she's alone in the hallway and everyone else has gone on without her. She just hopes she can find her way out again.
"You hungry?" Ryan asks and she ignores the butterflies in favor of a blinding grin.
"Always," she tells him.
He laughs and leads the way.
"Family?" she asks, chewing on a particularly long French fry and scrunching up her nose at the salad Ryan was slowly eating.
"Mom, dad, twin sister, Sharpay. You?"
"Big sister, Buffy."
He frowns slightly but not enough to crease his forehead too much. "Just the two of you?"
Dawn shrugs and notices that the tug on her heartstrings, whilst still there, is a lot less than it used to be. "Sort of; I mean, there's Giles who's like a father figure, Willow who's another big sister, and Xander who's a cross between a brother and the older guy you always had a crush on growing up. There have been loads of others too, but they're not around anymore."
"Oh," he replies, but doesn't question her further which she's really thankful for. "Hobbies?"
"Reading," she says immediately, "I love reading absolutely anything. Mostly old stuff. You?"
"Performing," he shrugs, "as you saw."
"Just dance?" she asks.
"Nope, acting and singing too. I'm an all-rounder."
"Cool."
A crash and scream from outside cut their Q and A session short, and Dawn springs up on automatic, mentally calculating what weapons she has on her and what she can use to improvise if needs be. The cafe is almost entirely empty besides them and no one else follows her into the alley out back except Ryan who looks adorably confused.
"Shit," Dawn mutters as she sees the guy in full out vamp mode taking a bite of some poor waitress's neck.
"What the hell?" Ryan asks a little too loudly, and suddenly they're the center of attention.
"Suggestion," Dawn tells him, "find something sharp and pointy to use."
"Use as what?" he asks incredulously.
"As a weapon," she replies, pulling the 'just-in-case' stake from her waistband and wondering how it is that some people can go through life with nothing out of the ordinary occurring whereas she seems to be perpetually stalked by everything that goes bump in the night. She blames it entirely on Buffy.
"Right," Ryan says, backing away into the kitchen. Dawn wonders if he's going to make a dash for it.
"What do we have here?" Vamp Boy asks, not noticing the wooden stick behind her back. He drops the waitress to the concrete where she scurries back against the wall, and turns his attention of Dawn, moving towards her like she's prey. Dawn would be scared if she hadn't seen it, like, a thousand times already. She's resists rolling her eyes.
For a second she thinks that she may actually be able to finish this quickly and easily, but he pounces sooner than she anticipates. She's able to deliver a couple of powerful right hooks and a spin kick that even her sister would be proud of before the stake is sent rolling too far out of her grip and she suddenly becomes very aware of how possibly (probably) screwed she is.
And then there's nothing but dusts and Ryan standing in front of her holding a broken broom handle and looking like he kind of wants to be a little sick.
Dawn stares at him in amazement.
"Nice aim," she says after a second, catching her breath.
Ryan shrugs, the color returning to his cheeks. "My sister was in Dracula. It was all I heard about for a month."
Dawn laughs. "I bet she'd be freaked to meet the real Dracula. And probably totally disappointed."
Ryan raises an eyebrow and looks like he wants to asks but at the same time really, really doesn't.
"You do this a lot then?" he finally asks and she bites her lips.
"Yeah," she answers honestly. "Pretty much all the time."
"Your life is very weird," he tells her with a laugh that's possibly part sob. "And I thought jocks' suddenly bursting into song was strange."
She giggles and then stops, looking at him seriously. "Like, literally bursting into song? Because that can lead to a whole world of trouble and underworld bridal marriages. Trust me."
"Your life is very strange," he repeats, staring at her blankly.
"My sister wants to meet you," Dawn tells him one lunch time two months after the whole vampire incident. Ryan's taken it all surprisingly well – something he puts down to his theatrical nature – and the two of them have been all but joined at the hip ever since, a fact that Dawn is all too happy about even if there's nothing but flirtation and maybe, possibly sexual tension. Whatever it is, it's nice.
"Ditto," Ryan says and Dawn cringes. "Maybe we should lock them in a room together and study the outcome. I mean, two feisty blondes with a leaning towards the sarcastic and the over dramatic? They'll either kill each other or become the best of friends."
Dawn laughs and drops a couple more fries on Ryan's plate; he rolls his eyes but eats them good naturedly.
"If I have to spend my Christmas break fighting vampires and demons and whatnot, then you have to spend New Year's watching Sharpay's latest musical. Every night."
"You're a cruel man," Dawn tells him, glaring playfully as he smirks in that way that makes her heart catapult into her throat.
"Damn straight," he replies with a wink and Dawn all but melts. "Oh," he continues as he gets up to leave, already late for his afternoon class, "my family sort of think you're my girlfriend."
Dawn's left sitting shell shocked in her chair with nothing but 'Huh?' running through her mind, and wondering why, if that's the case, there aren't more smooches occurring.
She waits for him outside the campus theater, fully prepared to cross her arms over her chest and offer him the glare until he explains. Except he's one of the last ones out and he's all disheveled from two hours of prancing around (although he'd kill her if she called it that to his face) and Dawn has to blink several times before her brain even manages to focus on anything more than 'Guh!'.
"Hey," he says when he sees her, ignoring the pretty redhead fawning all over him and moving to Dawn's side. The redhead glares, but Dawn's barely paying attention to anything more than Ryan's tighter than usual t-shirt and the way his hat is perched carelessly (although she has a feeling even that's intentional) over slightly damp hair.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she's aware that there's a talk that's supposed to be taking place. "What do you mean they think I'm your girlfriend?" she blurts out, and Ryan blinks at the sudden shift back to their earlier conversation.
"Well, I speak about you in, like, every conversation I have with them. We spend all our time together outside of class, and, well, we're pretty much following every definition of 'dating' there is." He says it so matter-of-factly that Dawn's momentarily stunned into silence.
"But there are no smooches," Dawn pouts before realizing that, once again, her mouth is in no way connected to her brain. She can feel her cheeks beginning to burn and she wonders desperately whether the ground will open up and swallow her whole. It's not a wholly unlikely scenario, after all.
"Oh," Ryan says, frowning and catching his bottom lip between his teeth. "You're right."
And then his lips are on hers and it's soft and new and a little clumsy. Dawn can feel her heart beating stupidly fast and, turning her head to try and make it more comfortable, she accidentally bashes their noses together, and when Ryan tugs on her lip he bites a little too hard, but other than that it's perfect.
"So," Ryan says when they eventually pull away, looking remarkably calm and collected considering the circumstances, especially when Dawn's almost certain she looks a disheveled mess, "Christmas with your family and New Year's with mine?"
He wraps his arm around her waist and leads her outside, and she's pleased to find that it's still light out.
"Sure," Dawn smiles, feeling incredibly giddy. "Though, I should warn you, Buffy's ex might show and that's a whole load of drama everyone'll want to avoid."
"Oh, I don't know," he says, pressing a kiss to her hair, "drama's what I do best."