A/N: I don't really have much to say, except that I really hope anyone reading this enjoys it. Which is something pretty evident because anyone would generally assume that I hope my writing is enjoyed without me having to say it. Well, that and I also have to say that this is gonna be slightly more risqué than the mobile game, but what other way can you fully address or point and laugh at stuff that's only subtly hinted at otherwise? I would blame it on the characters "having minds of their own" but I honestly hate it when authors say that because a less-cryptic rephrasing would be "this stuff just comes to me naturally because I'm so freaking gifted. Ha!" And I'm jealous of that. Grr…Oh, the disclaimer! My, my, sometimes I swear that if I didn't have my head screwed on it would fall off! I mean, uh, I would lose it. You know. But either way makes sense.

Disclaimer: I don't own the SHS characters. If I did, there would be a storyline where Kim and Tom get together, but they decided to stick Kim with Phil instead because Kim wanted Spike but Spike's with Mallika and Mallika was with Phil before that, and sticking the rejects together is the easiest way to tie up the plot. Okay, that was overly harsh, but at least now if you're not familiar with SHS you'll still understand what's going on.

So, yeah. Enjoy the first chapter, o' course. :D

His eyes cast about everywhere but at Kim's expectant face and he keeps the snickerdoodle close to his mouth, like that'll hide the fact that his jaw seems reluctant to unhinge itself.

"Um, Spike?" Mallika's amused by how unwilling Spike is to say he doesn't like the cookie but even more amused that he's so stuck in his own little world while trying to work out how he's ever, ever going to swallow what is to him a brick of acidly sour cinnamon.

Kim gives Spike an insistent look but finally caves. "Hey, it's okay if you don't like them. Not everybody does."

Relief washes over Spike's face almost immediately. "I'm sorry, snickerdoodles just aren't my thing, I guess. I'm sure they're great," he says with half-chewed snickerdoodle glop still trying its best to melt in his mouth as he talks.

"Do you need a napkin?" Kim says and laughs openly, pointing to the modest plastic napkin holder next to the cash register. (Ms. Rose always said, "I won't let anybody out of this bakery without a napkin or two, Kim; if you'd worked here as long as I have, you'd know that even the cleanest person leaves crumbs if you don't give 'em a napkin. But does it matter where they get the napkin from? No, those metal things they have at diners are horsefeathers.")

"Uh, that would be nice. And do you have any water?"

Kim's look of fake offense is haltingly kind. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure that'll get the taste of my nasty cooking right out of your system."

"Look, I'm sorry," Spike covers his hand with his mouth this time.

Kim reaffirms the fact that she's teasing, then goes around to the back room to get a bottled water from the fridge, her reflection trailing against the shiny glass counter with its infinite rows of goodies, or maybe not-so-goodies, as she moves. Kim holds the cold bottle against her palm and stands in the part of the bakery nobody ever sees for a minute, and the room temperature is significantly higher, dank against the fridge air, and she can remember that Ms. Rose never approved charging people for bottled water or else "she would have done it, it wouldn't have hurt [her] pocketbook any."

The sun illuminates one of the tables and its pair of cutesy metal chairs, painted white and slowly chipping but not rusting, where Mallika and Spike are now already seated. She's dabbing his face with another napkin and they're both laughing uncontrollably by now. Kim looks on in part disdain, part jealousy – what else would you expect from somebody who still likes Spike, just a little? And since when did not being able to eat something properly have such great novelty value, anyway?

The bell over the door frame jingles just as Kim sets the water down and smoothes her apron out of habit.

It's Tom Prince.

"Hello," he says with a nod to everyone in the room, awkward in the fact that he fits all three nods in the space of that one word.

He's still not used to being nice to people, that's for sure. Kim imagines the great disgust it must have cost him, besotted with his high status as he is. Miserable little guttersnipes! Eugh, he must now be thinking somewhere under that coiffed head of hair, she knows it.

"Hey, Tom! What's up?" Kim replies slickly and flashes a wide grin.

Yes, she's going to rub it in. There's something inherently delightful about watching Tom's pretty boy expression grapple with self-struggle as he tries to hide the fact that he hates contact with anyone he considers beneath himself, working his eyes over the counter and looking positively aggrieved.

"Er, well. Nothing that hasn't been up before, I suppose. You know as much about my recent past as I do." He grants a couple moments of silence and adds, "I'll take a dozen snickerdoodles."

Since there's no way Kim's going to let him off that easily, what she says next is of the typical-but-it-works nature: "Oh, I'm fine, Tom. Thanks for asking."

"…I'm sorry, I'm just a bit…rushed. You know, lots of things to do."

"Really? Like what?"

He is taken aback, practically astounded by a public servant talking to him this much, and with an attitude this cheeky. "I – I have to wonder why you're so intent on making my private life your business."

"Well, fine. I don't care."

"Oh, okay," Tom says, rolling his eyes while sarcasm drips from his voice, which has that posh-accent affectation to it that all rich people seem to have from a young age.

Kim crosses her arms instinctively and steps back from the counter, because she thinks she knows the answer to what she asks next: "What's that supposed to mean?"

She's right, unfortunately. "Well, since you don't seem to take issue with frankness, I'll just say it. Based on, well, particularly vast empirical experience, when a girl asks Tom Prince a question about his…fascinating, glitzy, and fast-paced life, it's because she wants to become a part of it."

Kim just stands numbly, unable to think, although the burning fact that she'll be thinking about it later is a neon light somewhere in her subconscious. She doesn't say anything; she just can't help but stare with a militantly angry fixed expression, and because the moment is so preposterous yet so real, she doesn't realize how long she's staring, and it obviously makes things 100 times worse. Spike and Mallika look on with a tenseness in their eyes that says they're waiting for regular Kim to come back, regular Kim who could snap this guy's arm off arm-wrestling and make perfectly hilarious wisecracks, rhyming or no, while doing it and who doesn't just freaking stare at the audacity of this guy until it doesn't seem like she's staring at his audacity anymore. Maybe more like she wants to stare at the second syllable.

The Kim comeback finally happens, but it happens in a way that's like comparing now-dethroned Ryan, on a bad day (a Nicole-broke-up-with-him-and-stole-20-bucks-from-him-day) to Gangstabot: "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Oh, how the tables have turned - now Tom's the one about to rub cinnamon in the snickerdoodle. Maybe he's enjoying a situation caused by a completely unwarranted comment way too much, but hey, these people are nothing to him.

"I do apologize; I only wanted to prevent this before it started. Many a middle-class girl has had her heart broken by pining –" he wants to be even worse and use the word "lusting", but a split-second decision proves it would be a bit too cruel, "after Tom Quincy Prince, but…it would be best for them, and of course for me as well, if they came to the painful but absolutely correct realization that he's way out of their league. I mean, I'm sorry to put this in such terms that require bragging, but I'm an icon, and I'm way out of the league of anyone who -" he slows down here because there are countless anecdotes – anecdotes because he tells them all the time at gala dinners and such – about girls who mustered up the courage to ask him out and he struggles to remember them all, "works at the local grocer, or the daycare center, or is a waitress at Crab King and moonlights in a rock band, or sells hair extensions at a mall kiosk, or just wanders the street like some mendicant hobo, or –" he casts a pointed look at Mallika – "was recommended to me based on relation to the King of Canada. When there is no King of Canada. Point is, none of them worked out because I obviously said no on the spot," he finishes, eyes gleaming in petty victory as he readjusts his collar.

"Or maybe it's because Tom Quincy Prince doesn't like girls."

Cut to the background audience again, where Spike nearly does a spit take with his bottled water and a giant, smiling jaw-drop slowly morphs its way onto Mallika's face.

"That's…specious logic…" Tom fumbles, at least not falling prey to the 20-second twittering aghast-ness Kim did.

He does kind of visibly break a little before adding, "But you're hilarious, of course," and rounding out the discussion with a, "Just get me my snickerdoodles."

Spike, aptly still snickering behind him, is met with a positively murderous look by Tom and puts his palms up innocuously, but starts laughing even harder.

"Okay, okay," Kim says, and somehow she likes Tom a bit more now than when he first walked into this bakery.

She collects the cookies one by one and packages them into a to-go box, and it feels like the slowest process ever what with Tom seething petulantly right in front of her and Spike's continued half-muffled guffaws. She dusts her gloved palms against her apron again and hands the sweet confections over the counter. The two quickly make the transaction with the register as middle man and Spike is inexplicably still laughing at this point; it's getting a bit old even for Kim.

A swift blonde cyclone grabs the box and hurls it down on Spike and Mallika's unassuming metal table in a moment's span, with enough force to shake the table (and, of course, dent the box and probably squash all the snickerdoodles contained within). He blocks the light filtering in and drags Spike up by the collar, overwrought expression showing he's about ready to tear this guy's eyeballs out of his head and serve them with caviar.

"If you don't stop that moronic laughter right now, I promise I will stuff a snickerdoodle up your ass until your colon cries out for mercy."

Spike blanches for half a second because Tom practically has steam from his ears roiling out into the air. He's seriously scared even though there's a better-than-good chance he could take this guy. Then realization lights his face, especially because Tom's reddening face is inches away from his.

Gasping for air and practically crying, kind of like if Tom had actually beaten him already, Spike manages, "I – I'm not…really into snickerdoodles…I'm more for the chocolate…chocolate chip cookies…like most guys…Thanks for the offer, but you should keep your snickerdoodle in its package, or your package –"

Tom's articulate interrupting rebuttal is a guttural growl as he snatches the snickerdoodles back up and storms to the threshold of the bakery. The bell tinkles lightly over his head in gentle mockery as he informs the motley group that he will "never again return to this wretched establishment, not ever."

Kim is ready to curl herself over the beveled edge of the counter and begin expressing her own amusement when Mallika, between a "tee-hee" and "hah-hah", notes that while Kim "totally put that jerk in his place", she could have just as easily mentioned Phil, considering he's already Kim's boyfriend.

Kim nods and laughs in response, peering out the window through which Tom, quick-footed and confusing passerby with how pissed he looks, heart on his sleeve as always, is now disappearing around a corner, until she realizes that she had completely forgotten about Phil.

Oh, and she hadn't given Tom any napkins.

A/N: Wondering how this is ever going to turn into Kim/Tom? Yeah, same here. :\