A/N:: TONIGHT. PLL IS BACK :))))

A few things about this fic:
-the concept is from one of my favorite episodes of Dawson's Creek. I take no credit for what they did, but I added my own twist for sure.
-I didn't use the obvious Spoby game (Scrabble) because I'm more familiar with Bananagrams, but they're both word games so I felt it was a safe choice.
-This was supposed to be 100% fluff, but then I decided to incorporate it *slightly* into the S5 universe.
-Sadly I don't own PLL, and I hope you love it!

A buzz of nervous energy consumed the total network of her sensory system, first churning internally and then ravaging its way to the very tips of her fingers. Scientifically, she could explain it without having to think twice. Adrenaline was a simple biological response to any sort of prompting that the body perceived to be high-stress scenario. It was a good thing, an automatic alarm that readied you for whatever came next.

But rational enlightenments weren't doing her any favors. She couldn't shake the jitters and she was internally cursing this physical weakness known as the human psyche. If she could charge valiantly into graveyard showdowns and shadowy greenhouse confrontations, then this should be no problem. She was Spencer Jill Hastings. Her entire upbringing had been a continuous seminar on the finer points of intimidation and supremacy. Those were the founding pillars of the family credo. What had become of her 'ice in the veins' mentality?

With one panicky glimpse at her smug companion, she had her answer. He had an uncanny ability to disarm every one of her hyper-perfectionist tendencies. It was as if his very presence could stir a balmy beach breeze across the landscape of her confined world, breathing a dreamlike calm into her most restless moments. She usually relished that fact. Being with him was like coming home, taking your shoes off, and curling up with a familiar book.

The effect backfired, however, when the stakes were this high.

"Peel."

Her hand darted in a speedy raid, claiming the first tile that she could reach. It required every scrap of self control to withhold her grunt of disapproval. She'd chosen a freaking Q. Of all the letters she could have drawn this late in the game, it was a godforsaken Q. Son of a—

"Peel."

His voice was so indecently leveled off, as if to prove to her that she should just quit since he so obviously had this in the bag. It only made her fingers swoop in and out with an increased degree of hysteria. Defeat was not an opt—

"Peel."

She literally growled this time. The Q had been followed by a T, which was more than acceptable. But with another stroke of rotten luck, the T was chased by an X. Her eyes scanned over her jumbled arrangement of words with a hectic impatience. There had to be something that she could transpose for a—

"Bananas."

Her arm extended in search of another condemned tile, but her palm slapped emptily against the tabletop.

"If you need me to get the directions out, I think you'll see that a player's use of the word 'bananas' signifies the end of the round, Spence. That means there are no more letters to draw."

His satirical admonition was so ridiculously unnecessary. Not only had she been the one to teach him this game, but this was the eighteenth or nineteenth round that they'd played since she'd shown up on his doorstep a few hours ago. Top that off with the trifling detail that she had been on a huge winning streak for the majority of the evening, and it was abundantly clear that he'd only said it to get a rise out of her.

She wasn't giving him the satisfaction. "Huh. Okay then."

"May I also point out," he continued on with a false hook of innocence, "that this victory marks best of five. Not that we needed to actually go five rounds…it only took three."

Her gaze petulantly flipped upward, meeting his eyes with a fuming regard. "Thanks for the recap. Believe it or not, I was keeping pretty good track of that on my own."

Toby's mouth jerked sideways. He was smothering a smile and that only served as an additional dose of fuel on her already blazing cauldron of irritation.

"Well aren't you going to check my puzzle?"

Metaphorical smoke poured from her ears. He wouldn't have asked that question if he hadn't already given it a successful self-inspection. With an unmasked hostility that was something akin to a caged tiger, Spencer stood abruptly and stalked around to his side of the table.

"Hmm. Must have been hard to spell the word 'wrench' correctly. Almost as difficult as spelling goofball, right?"

Her deadpanned review spurred a deep chuckle that ruptured over his seated form. "Fancy words don't win the game, Spencer. It's about speed, not extravagance."

Ignoring him completely, she snatched the yellow bag from beside him and began tearing into her own puzzle. He remained silent as she stuffed the clinking tiles into the pouch, but she could still feel his delighted conceit boring into her skin. Tossing the bag across the maple finish, Spencer kept her eyes down as she crept past him. Maybe she could pretend to be too sleepy or complain that she had too much homework. Anything to avoid the disaster that awaited her…

"Not so fast, beautiful," he chided as he latched onto her wrist and halted her steps. "You know what they say. A bet's a bet."

"You're insane. Pick something else, something that doesn't have the potential to ruin both of our lives and possibly end this relationship." She was wriggling her arm with as much as tenacity as she could, but he didn't relent.

Toby laughed again, this one even bigger and more cavernous than the last. "I don't think it's quite as dire as all of that. I trust you to do it, so what's the big deal? You're good at everything under the sun."

"Yeah, everything but Bananagrams," she muttered huffily.

"Hey, that's not true. You were on a roll earlier. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was you who wanted to 'make this a little more interesting.' Those were your exact words, actually."

She grimaced at the reminder. It seemed to further his amusement. Toby stood, his hold on her wrist still firm as he began to steer her into the kitchen. "I think the lighting is best in here."

"But, Toby—"

"You aren't getting out of this, Spencer." His free hand snagged the back of his vacated chair, dragging it leisurely behind them. "Not only were you the one to suggest a wager, but you were also the one who decided to go down this road."

Well he had her there. This had been her brilliant idea. She'd been bugging him about it for weeks now, and this had seemed like the perfect leverage for him to actually get it done. Problem was, she hadn't expected him to piggyback off of her challenge with a similar bet of his own.

The second that his grip relaxed, she snaked out of his reach and backed herself into a corner between the sink and the stove. "Let's go best of seven. Winner takes all."

He abandoned the chair in the middle of the planked floor, sauntering toward her with a rakish look of conviction, not speaking until he was immediately before her. With an arm anchored to either side of the countertop, Toby lowered his head until they were eye-to-eye. "If our roles were reversed, I'd be marching my way into the barbershop first thing tomorrow morning. Those were the conditions. We shook on it."

Spencer watched with a cunning intuition as his concentration dipped in the direction of her mouth. Palming his chest with one hand and tousling his untamed hair with the other, she arched subtly forward and bit down on her bottom lip for a split second. "What if I decide that I like your hair the way it is, all sexy and long and…"

Her lips teased his in a phantom-like caress and he took the bait fully, pinning her body more securely against the cabinets and capturing her in a lavish kiss that stole the breath right from her lungs. She readily opened her mouth and upped the ante, circling his neck in her arms and hitching one long leg up around his waist. He perceived her unspoken cue without hesitation and gave her the necessary boost, his forearm scooping beneath her rear to better synchronize their lower halves.

And then they were on the move. Spencer wrapped herself more definitively around his broad torso, not wanting to loose traction as he transported them to the bedroom. Their journey ended much more sharply than she'd expected, though.

With a jerky suddenness, Toby plunked both of them down into the wooden chair that sat in the center of the kitchen. She made a small noise of bewilderment as she struggled to retain her balance. His chuckle reverberated through her as his mouth continued its assault over hers, the everlasting foundation of his muscled build doing more than its fair share to assist her as she fastened onto him in an urgent attempt to restore her equilibrium.

Spencer couldn't help but wonder why he'd chosen to station them in what had to be the least comfortable piece of furniture that he owned, but she pushed the thought to the back of her mind, opting instead to eliminate the barrier of his V-neck. He cooperated easily, his hands momentarily straying from her hips and curving upward to quicken the process. She shivered as she discarded the shirt, the illicit pattern of his lips marking her earlobe and delivering a myriad of goose bumps all up and down her spine. A whimper bounded out of her when he bit down gently on her tender skin. He was so good at that.

"So do you think I should go with a one-length kind of cut, or shorter in the back and only spikey in the front?"

With the way his words throbbed seductively against her neck, it took ten whole seconds for their meaning to sink in. It was then that she thumped her balled fists against his pectorals, leaning back to rebuke him with a sullen scowl. "Damn it, Toby! You were supposed to be too distracted by me to even consider anything else!"

"Trust me, that would have most definitely done the trick," he answered with a suggestive grin, "if I hadn't been expecting such a deceitful maneuver. Nice work, though, I must say."

Spencer tried to twist out of his lap, her face contorting with a childish pout. "Don't compliment me right now. I'm too mad to appreciate it."

"Fine. I'll remind you of your talents again later." He restrained both of her hands with his, the sparkling mischief in his features being too adorable for her to actually resent. "But for now, I think we're missing one key component before the fun can begin."

"A bottle of vodka? Some Dean Martin playing softly in the background? Oh, flan. I bet flan is what we're missing! I can whip some right up, no worries. I wasn't kidding when I told you I could make it."

He kissed her soundly. She was pretty sure it was more for the purpose of shushing her than it was for anything else. "Not flan. Scissors. We need the scissors."

She groaned as he lifted her out of the chair and propped her up into a standing position against the pantry. "Let me get this straight. There have been offers of both dessert and foreplay, yet neither of these has sidetracked you in the slightest. Are you sure you're even a member of the male species?"

His back was to her as he rummaged through a cluttered drawer. "I refuse to dignify that with a response, especially since you're more than aware of the evidence that refutes your question."

The lively note in his voice almost made her laugh in spite of herself. "Okay, I can't argue with that, but—"

"You can't argue with any of it, Spence. I won the game and you lost the bet. Now I don't want to hear another word out of you, unless it's 'do you want more off of the top?'" Toby parked himself in the chair, his chest still bare and his eyes gleaming. A pair of shears stretched toward her with antagonistic finality. "Are you really telling me that you're gonna forfeit this, Hastings?"

She knew what he was doing. It was about as blatant as her lures of flan or sex, if not more so. Even the way he'd tagged her last name on at the end, using her own dauntless reputation against her…it was all a very clear appeal to her notorious sense of pride.

And despite what her intuition told her, his nauseating reasoning worked anyway.

"I never forfeit." Before he could volley back a retort, she was trudging off to the hall closet. She returned in a flash with an old beach towel in her possession. "If I have to do this, I'm going to do it right. You'll never be able to sit still like this, and then I'll have to deal with the fact that you're itchy and squirming on top of everything else."

An irreverent smirk lit his suave countenance as Spencer tucked the towel around his shoulders. "See, you're already a natural at this."

"Hardly," she scoffed sardonically. "What do they use on the back of your head? Clippers, right? Do you have electric clippers here?"

He looked equal parts entertained and incredulous. "No, I do not own electric clippers…can't say that I'd ever considered them to be an essential household item."

Spencer exhaled noisily, her lower lip jutting out in aggravation. "This is bound to be an appalling hack job. People will think that Freddy Krueger did this to you."

"What people? I can guarantee that no one other than you will be scrutinizing my hair. I'm not exactly a public kind of guy, Spence. You're putting way too much thought into this."

She swallowed heavily, trying with some difficulty to squash down the pang of distress that always flared up when he made offhand remarks like that. For his sake, she had to let it go. He seemed rather content with his under-the-radar routine, and it wasn't her place to impose any of her more extraverted tendencies on him. When she really took the time to ponder it, she had to chalk it up—at least in part—to his horrendous past experiences with the filthier side of humanity. With all of the crimes that Rosewood had committed against him, he surely felt better off in seclusion.

Her thoughts were startlingly derailed as his foot bumped impishly against hers. "Spencer? Whatever new scheme you're cooking up in your head, you might as well just forget it. We've gotten this far and—"

"Hey, no scheming, I promise," she countered with a small smile, "just strategizing the best method for cracking into this mop of yours."

A smile of his own molded lazily across his mouth. "Crack away, honey."

She rolled her eyes and stepped closer, her fingers running through the soft strands that bordered his ear. "Here goes nothing."

The first snip was the hardest. She was steeling herself for the worst, irrationally expecting that just one clip of the shears would somehow disfigure his entire appearance. Her heart nearly stopped as she brought the handles together and sliced through a precious lock of his sun-bronzed hair.

"Are your eyes closed?!"

"No, I'm just squinting," she fibbed hastily.

"Spencer!"

She peeked cautiously at the handsome man before her. "Huh. Doesn't look so bad."

Toby's azure irises were glimmering with mirth. "You only cut one piece. It's probably sticking straight up in the air by itself, with the rest of it falling halfway to my shoulders. That doesn't look bad?"

Her hand smacked lightly against bicep. "It was your decision to put me in charge of this task, so you can stifle your criticisms until I'm finished."

He mumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like 'control freak,' but she wasn't really listening. Her brain was zipping with the next possible move. With another strand of hair between her fingers, she felt its familiar texture work some kind of magic over her. She could do this.

With each snip, she began to perform with more confidence, her nerves soothed as downy bits of light brown drifted to the floor in wistful tufts. As was the case with any project that earned her full focus, Spencer gradually lost herself in the details of what she was doing and tuned out all other disruptions. Her first concern was thinning out the bulk of its length, but as she closed in on what should have been the end, she realized that none of her original efforts looked quite right. She thrust one hip out and inspected him from the side, then cocked her head in the opposite direction.

"I know I'm supposed to be keeping my mouth shut, but the way you're hovering right now is really making me anxious."

"The sides aren't right." She scrunched her nose as she reconsidered. "Or the top. Something is off."

"Did you blend it?"

Spencer vaulted a lone eyebrow as she came around to examine his face. "What do you mean, did I blend it?"

"I don't know," he spoke carefully as if he anticipated a combative reply. "I think it means that you cut it on a diagonal until the top meets the side."

"Oh, fantastic." She bent over him again and collected a small clump from the section that he'd been referring to. "Cross your fingers, Tobes. There's a ninety-eight percent chance that you'll regret this."

It took her three tries to get it. Luckily, she went very conservatively and only took about half a millimeter off each time until it finally looked right. Then she was unstoppable, orbiting around him as she fussed over each layer of his scalp. She couldn't help it. Once she got going, her obsessive drive kicked in and every inch of it had to be uniformly precise.

Finally, she was front and center again. It was the only section she'd left somewhat long.

"All done?" came his baritone voice, the easy imprint of his hands on her waist warming her from the inside out.

"Almost." She reclaimed her spot from earlier in the evening, depositing one leg on either side of him as she established herself in his lap. "Don't move."

Spencer sat up on her knees and combed her nails through the fluffy shock of hair that still remained. "I really like it when it's a little messy up here. Kinda spiked, with a little gel…"

She sloped the scissors in at an angle, trying to feather the ends with a bit of invented technique. Toby's breath was whispering faintly over her neck as the fond pressure of his long fingers sizzled from around her middle. The heat of his body at such a close proximity was certainly zapping a fierce attraction from the pit of her stomach, but with the finish line in sight, she couldn't afford to be preoccupied with his magnetism just yet.

And in a few quick clips, it was just as she remembered it. Her eyes browsed his face appreciatively, instantly noticing the way his sculpted cheekbones were irresistibly set off with the transformation. The overhead light flickered more vividly in his sapphire orbs, showcasing the gem-like glow that she had adored from the very moment he sat down next to her on his parent's front porch. "Wow."

"What? Is it as horrible as predicted?" The question sprang out of him casually, but she perceived a shred of reluctance buried in there as well.

Her lips dusted over his forehead, down over one cheek, and then landed directly on his mouth for a lingering kiss. Several drawn-out seconds passed before she released him, transferring her weight onto his thighs as she reclined a little to survey her work. "You're back."

His brow wrinkled at her statement. "What are you talking about? I've been right here for weeks."

"I don't mean in the literal sense," she clarified delicately. "It's just…when you came back from London, everything was already so confusing. With Ali back, another murder investigation cropping up, and me being a twitchy recuperating mess—"

"Spence—"

"No, seriously, Toby." She busied herself with clearing the towel off of his shoulders, then replaced the ratty fabric with the reassuring touch of her hands. "It may sound weird, but seeing your hair like that reminded me a little too much of a time when we weren't even friends, let alone in a relationship. And maybe I'm reading too much into it, but back then…it seemed like you were hiding yourself behind a shaggy barrier that was meant to shut out the rest of the world."

He nodded slowly, his arms twining around her and his fingers massaging her lower back. "You're right. Back then, it was a shield, a way to make myself disappear. It's no coincidence that it kept getting shorter with all the time I was spending around you."

The poignant sincerity in his words made her want to cry. Doubt still gripped her insides, though, unremitting in its brutal chokehold. "Sometimes I worry about us…about us now, with her in our lives again. And I couldn't say this out loud to anyone else, but Toby…the ugliest part of me isn't thrilled about welcoming Ali home. The 'what ifs' pile is too high—what if she turns my friends against me, or gets between you and I, or…I don't know. I'm not sure what it will do to us, to you..."

His sigh was burdened with inexpressible remorse. "Why didn't you say something sooner? I would have shaved myself bald if that was what you wanted, Spencer. I'd do anything, anything, to bring you happiness or solace or whatever. I just wish I could find a way to get through to you on this, because it shouldn't take a silly board game dare to get the truth out of you."

"I know that," she murmured shamefully, "but it makes me feel so petty, you know? To admit that my friend being alive feels more like a threat than a relief, or to ask you to do something as trivial as cut your hair because I have some weird complex about it…that's pathetic, selfish even. There's no correlation between you growing your hair out and Alison returning to Rosewood. I'm just being crazy and I know it. I hate that she's putting me on edge like this, making me think that everything will go back to how it used to be."

"Do you think you're the only one that's scared?" He appeared to be waiting on her, so she shrugged a limp shoulder as her only obtainable reply. His mouth tightened before he went on. "I'm petrified, Spence. Not of Alison exactly, but of what it means for her to be walking freely around this town. She's been the catalyst for so many of our darkest nightmares...and I don't know what she has up her sleeve at this point, or what her reappearance will bring as far as -A is concerned, but I'm under no illusion that this situation spells out brighter days for us."

He paused, his Adam's apple fluctuating as he framed her chin in his hands. "In all of that, please don't make the mistake of pushing me away, baby. I don't care how trivial or crazy it sounds—if I could do something to lessen the weight of everything else, then the answer will always be a surefire yes. I don't care what it is. I'd cut off all my hair, eat sushi every day, sit through a Lord of the Rings marathon, road trip across the country, switch to decaf, go into the witness protection program, take up spelunking, anything."

Spencer was giggling by the time he ran out of breath, and he looked rather pleased with himself for accomplishing such a feat. "Thanks, Toby. And that's very generous of you, but I think you can permanently scratch that decaf thing off the list. There are some guarantees in this life, and caffeine is one of mine."

"Yeah, that was one of the least realistic possibilities, wasn't it?" he bantered as his fingers wove into her mass of curls. "And if I get any say in the matter, I could go without the spelunking. Something about crawling around in a murky cave really does not sit well with me."

"Consider it officially off the table," she inched forward and slid her nose against his, "because even though I usually do an abysmal job of proving it, I swear to you that I love you so so much, Toby. I'm not willing to lose you, even if that means severing ties with Ali. You come first. If at any moment that doesn't seem to be true anymore, for the love of God please call me on it. I don't know what I'd do without you and I don't ever want to find out."

She couldn't discern if it was his mouth that found hers first, or the other way around. It was a blur of hungry passion that was not solely his nor hers. It was theirs.

They'd been overtaken with desire when they'd previously kissed on this same chair, before his head—and her heart—had become much lighter. The need was just as strong this time, but also irrefutably grounded in something that went far beyond the lust of a fleeting second. It was a declaration, a vigorous acknowledgment that preserved them against every force of nature that existed beyond those four walls. With every push and pull of his lips against hers, he was answering her more emphatically than he ever could with mere words— you'll never have to find out, you'll never be without me.

For the second time in the span of an otherwise uneventful Friday night, Toby spontaneously gathered her in his arms and began to trek across the loft. Spencer broke the kiss, her ability to articulate a single syllable quite obviously impaired by the weakened state of lacking air flow. "The shower...we should go...to the shower."

He quirked a brow out of curiosity, but made no objections. She filled in the gap as he peppered kisses against her collarbone, the sensation of it giving her an insatiable fever. "You're not getting me into bed with all those prickly hairs all over you. And I—" she quivered as he teased a strip of her skin between his teeth—"I need to neaten up the back of your hairline with a razor."

They stumbled rowdily into the bathroom. Toby's muffled laughter ricocheted against her skin while Spencer futilely attempted to brace herself against the countertop for as long as it took to yank off his jeans.

"That wasn't supposed to be funny," she whined good-naturedly from beneath the shell of his ear.

He whipped her top off before laying an indulgent kiss above her breast. "Maybe not, but it was. What was it you said before? Something like…you're supposed to be too distracted to even think about anything else? But there you go, wanting to 'neaten up' my hairline."

It was her turn to snicker now, her hands drawn back in to ruffle his newly trimmed locks. "Guess you'll have to do a better job of diverting my attention, sweetheart."

His eyes darkened as he whirled her around and imprisoned her against the shower door. "Challenge accepted. Winner takes all."

Needless to say, they both won that game.