We broke up before we even began.

"Hey. Can I talk to you for a sec? … Butch?"

It's not until then he realizes that he hasn't been moving. That he's been sitting frozen, mid-conversation with the guys since he heard her voice behind him, waiting for the sword to fall or the shit to hit.

His tablemates snicker. Because he looks like a fucking idiot.

Butch turns around and gives her a sneering grin. "Sure thing, Buttercup." He manages to make it sound suggestive and asinine, even when his heart is like a freaking steel drum in a closet.

The snickering grows louder, now aimed at Buttercup. The green puff's hands clench on the straps of her backpack. But she doesn't hit him.

Butch stares at that one, little motion. He tries not to vomit.

She doesn't hit him.

She doesn't fucking hit him.

Fuck.

His chair scrapes obnoxiously on the cafeteria floor as he stands, leaving his hoodie and his bag stuffed under the seat. He doesn't really give a fuck what happens to either. "Where'd you have in mind?" He asks, leaning suggestively over her smaller frame, aware of the guys' eyes still watching them. "Janitor's closet? Empty classroom?" He has to bend down to crowd her – he's always had a whole head, shoulders and pecs over the top of her head – and as he does so he catches a whiff of her soap.

A chorus of adolescent 'Ooooh's chime from behind him. But Buttercup's face just stays stony and unchanging. She barely reacts.

"Let's go outside," she says, turning on her heel, knuckles still white on the straps of her backpack.

Butch smirks out of habit and follows her outside. They walk past the parking lot, onto the grass and past the playground, toward the soccer field. Buttercup walks in front, keeping her back to him – deliberately, he suspects – and he lets her. His act from the cafeteria slips just a little. Just for a moment.

He watches the way she walks in front of him, stiffly. Her normal slouchy posture is rigid as a slab of rock today, her shoulders stuck halfway to her ears.

If Butch had been able to look at his own face, he would have been startled to find the resentment so readily visible in his eyes. The somber anger. The dread.

When they reach the field, Buttercup stops at the speedometer and turns around abruptly. Had he been anything less than three paces behind her, they would have collided.

"Mitch got X-ray results yesterday, by the way." she said. "Fractured tailbone, if you care."

Butch shrugged, trying on a tired smirk. "Nah."

He watched the little flicker of anger fly behind her eyes, quicker than a flash of summer lightening.

"You rammed that ball up his ass on purpose."

Butch replies by executing the porno-riff. And Buttercup's eyes harden but, again, she doesn't hit him.

And Butch is getting desperate. "If you're so worried about Mitch, why don't you fly yourself on over to wherever the fuck he's licking himself."

"I didn't come to talk about Mitch."

"Really?" Butch drawls.

"It's not about fucking Mitch," Buttercup snaps. "I wanted to talk about you… and me."

Fuck. This was it. She was actually doing this.

The insides of Butch's stomach start slithering over each other. And it's not like how it feels before a fight, when he can barely contain himself from the tantalizing promise of leaping in and crunching skulls. This is different. And it sucks.

"Look," Buttercup lets go of a strap and fists her hand in her hair. "I'm… sorry about how I reacted the other day."

No, Butch thought viciously. Don't do that. Don't fucking apologize.

"I was really… stupid. It's just," Buttercup stares hard at the ground, as if she's about to tear a burning crater into the grass between their feet with her eye beams. "My last breakup really sucked."

Butch doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't say anything at all. For someone who claimed to not want to talk about Mitch, she certainly seemed to be bringing him up every fucking other sentence.

"It sucked because it was a breakup," Buttercup continues, looking red enough to die. "But it also sucked because Mitch was my friend before. Like, one of my best friends. And then dating and breaking up – that really fucked us up. You know like, it didn't just ruin our relationship. It ruined everything."

"You seem to get along just fine to me," Butch mutters.

"We don't," Buttercup looks up, blinking. Her sudden, matter-of-fact tone takes him aback. "It's fucking awkward as hell. And I'm trying really hard every day to keep us from hating each other, or just never speaking again. That could happen. Like, that could happen so fucking easily. And I hate it – I hate the idea of that. I'm not…" she pauses to take a breath, steeling herself. "I'm not like Bubbles. Or even like Blossom. Not everyone likes me. I only have a few people in the world who aren't scared of me, and even fewer who I actually like. And I hate losing them." Here she looks up to meet Butch's eyes. And as he stares back at her, it is all he can do to keep his expression flat. "So I guess, because of that, when I found out about that thing last week I sort of freaked out. Because I don't…" she fists her hand in her bob again, exhaling sharply. "I don't want us to get messed up too. I really… I just want us to keep being friends."

Maybe it was because he'd grown up with Boomer and Brick, but it takes Butch a whole minute to realize that the person across from him was asking him for something. Practically begging for it.

Buttercup was asking him to not be in love with her. She was pleading with him to take back everything from last week. To stop feeling the way he felt. To not-be in love with her. And part of Butch, a very small part, thought that maybe she was right. Because Buttercup was violent and impulsive and sharp as a knife, and he wouldn't know what to do if he actually got her.

But that was only a small voice, somewhere in the corners of his neglected heart. The other part of him, the biggest part that he knew so well and that took up most of his space, saw her looking at him with those tense, guarded eyes, that desperation as she asked him not to feel something that he did – that he couldn'tpossibly not. And it pissed him off.

Butch leant back and put his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, clenching his fists inside, letting the autumn breeze toy with his sleeves. "You seriously doing this?"

Buttercup blinks up at him. "Doing what?"

"Having a talk?" His tone was practically jeering now.

Buttercup scowls. "You got something wrong with that?"

"Yeah, there's something fucking wrong with that. It's fucking retarded, pansy shit. Hit me. Kick me. Fucking bite me. At least then I'll be able to respond."

"We talked last week," Buttercup points out, "before we started hitting each other." And Butch can already see her withdrawing from him. Whatever she'd been saying to him before, at least she'd been being open, honest – showing him into her heart. Now she was frantically locking doors and battening hatchets, before Hurricane Butch blew through and made her regret ever being honest with him.

"Yeah, and that turned out fucking great, didn't it?" Butch snarks, getting angry now. "Fuck,Buttercup."

"Don't 'fuck, Buttercup' me," Buttercup snaps. "If you didn't want to talk, then you shouldn't have told me you liked me in the first place."

"You confronted me!Need a reminder there, Princess?"

"Yeah because you drove a soccer ball up my friend's ass! What was I supposed to do, just pretend nothing happened?"

"Isn't that what you're asking me to do? To just pretend like I don't feel the way I do? Like nothing ever happened?"

"Yeah, you know what? I am. Because that's the only way we get to still be friends. Don't you get that?"

"Well, maybe I don't want to be your friend, Buttercup." Butch growls, venomous. "Maybe that just isn't in the fucking cards." And that tiny, corner-piece of his heart is screaming bloody murder at him. Because Buttercup is his best friend - the only friend he's ever had.

"Ugh! Why are you doing this? It was all fine until you had to go and ruin everything!"

"Maybe I did. I can't help it Buttercup. It's what I fucking do."

She nearly hit him then. He saw the flash of it and braced, his whole body practically thrumming for it. But at the last moment, she restrains herself. She backs down.

And this is how he knows he's losing her.

Buttercup isn't talks. Buttercup is punching and grinning and laughing and bleeding together, alive. And if they weren't communicating with their fists, then everything was all fucked up and wrong. They wouldn't getting anywhere like this. They couldn't. Butch knew that. He just couldn't figure out how to get her back to where they belonged. And as he stared at her, her big green eyes burning with anger and her hair as black as the bruises she'd left on his skin, he realizes its because it was already ruined. They, this – whatever the fuck they were – was already ruined. He'd broken it. They were done.

"What are you fucking smiling about?" Buttercup snaps. And Butch catches the slight wavering in her voice. Acting tough as nails even when she was about to cry. That was Buttercup.

"Fucking ridiculous."

"What?"

"I said: Fucking. Ridiculous." Butch repeats slowly and loudly, staring right into her face. Inside, he wants to rip this whole field up from the mud and incinerate it until there's no more heat left and his head aches with emptiness. "I hope you're happy. This is what happens when people like us talk."

Buttercup throws her backpack onto the ground. "Don't say 'us' like that, Butch! I'm trying to fix this."

"Bullshit!" Butch screams, and the sudden rage surprises them both. "What did you expect, Buttercup? You thought you'd take me out to the soccer field and let me down easy? We'd talk about our feelings and then I'd agree to pretend like I'm not what I am at the end of it? Because it's not about whether or not you feel the same way about me, I just want you to be happy?" Butch croons, mockingly. "You thought I was going to say some BS like that? Did you forget who I am? That's fucking Boomer, not me. I'm selfish and rotten and when I want something, I'd rather destroy it than let anyone else even look at it. But I can't do that with you, now can I? So fine – here's what we're going to do. After today, I never want to see you again. I don't want to hear your voice or your name. And I sure as fuck don't want to be your friend. I'm not going to follow you around like Mitch. It'll be like I never fucking knew you. Like I never saw you. And one day, when I'm out of this shit school and this shit town, I'll have just forgotten who you were. And then we can leave it like that. Then we'll be okay. You got that, Buttercup?"

She was staring at him like he was the most petulant thing in the world, and he hated it. But he also gained some sick satisfaction in shooting her down. In making her feel pain of rejection after she'd rejected him. Buttercup's eyes are cold and hard and green now – the fire behind her anger is gone. Her jaw is a tight line that looked about ready to snap. "You're such a fucking child," she says after a moment.

He crushes his mouth on hers. Instinctively, Buttercup steps back and raises her hands to put between them. Butch leans forward onto her and traps her wrists in his hands. Her mouth is cool and small beneath his. And their first kiss is cruel, and painful and final, and absolutely everything that shouldn't be in a goodbye to your best friend.

"See you, Buttercup," he says roughly. And then, in a blinding flash of viridian, he's gone. And Buttercup is standing alone in a field.