Chapter Four

It had been two weeks since Buffy fought Spike at Parent-Teacher night, and still no sign of him. Life in Sunnydale remained normal: vampires, demons, oh and even a mummy girl! Something Buffy still can't believe she had in her home, around her mother. Now, there were missing college girls that she and the Scoobies had been searching for. While life continued, Giles still hadn't figured out why Spike was in Sunnydale now. If Buffy had to guess, she would assume it had something to do with his girlfriend, Drusilla. Girlfriend, Buffy thought bitterly, and not only that, but she was also his sire and his companion for over a hundred years! It left a bitter taste in her mouth. How could he eventually love her when he'd been with the same woman his entire unlife? She quickly shook her head of the thought. No, what she saw after she'd died couldn't have been the future. She refused to believe so. It had to be some weird afterlife dream. She might as well push the thought out of her head of Spike and her ever being something more than enemies. When it came to her love life, it was an epic failure. The closest she'd been to a guy since coming to Sunnydale was Angel, who ignored her as much as possible.

"And that's why I say we petition to have Principal Snyder fired," Xander joked, bringing Buffy out of her thoughts and back to the conversation.

"And if we fail?" Willow replied. "We'd have detention for the rest of our lives."

"You might be right," Xander said. "Man, I just wish something demonic would eat that guy."

Buffy was about to respond when Cordelia suddenly came up to her and grabbed her hand.

"Come on, Richard and his fraternity brothers want to meet you."

Buffy frowned. "I don't want to meet any fraternity–"

"And if there was a God, don't you think he'd keep it that way?" Cordelia replied.

"Hey, I believe we were hanging here," Xander said, annoyed.

Buffy allowed Cordelia to drag her over to where the fraternity guys were standing by their car. If she didn't want to go, she could've stopped Cordy easily; however, Buffy had to admit she was curious about why they wanted to meet her. She immediately wished she didn't. The man who she assumed was Richard gave her a calm, confident look and flashed his perfect smile at her.

"Hi, sweet thing. I'm Richard," he introduced himself. "And you are?"

Buffy scoffed at his cockiness. "So not interested." She tried to walk away but was once again stopped by Cordy.

"She's such a little comedienne!"

"What, is she playing hard to get?" Richard asked, his ego wounded.

"No, Richard, I think you're playing easy to resist," the man behind Richard said and then turned to Buffy. "Feel free to ignore him. I do all the time."

Buffy hesitated. This guy didn't seem as bad as Richard. He was even kind of cute, but she didn't get the same warm feeling from him as she did from Spike or Angel.

"I'm Tom Janson. I'm a Senior at Crestwood College, and I feel like a complete dolt meeting you this way – so here I stand in all my doltishness…"

"I'm Buffy Summers," she replied.

"Nice to meet you. Are you a Senior?"

"Junior," she corrected, starting to feel a bit young, then felt foolish as she remembered that the two men she had the hots for since coming to Sunnydale were over a hundred years old.

"Me too, except I'm a Senior and in college," he replied nervously. "So, we have that in common. My friend asked your friend to this party we're having tomorrow night… he's not my friend – I only joined the fraternity because my father and grandpa were in it before me. It meant a lot to them. I know, I talk too much. Anyway, they're dull parties full of really dull people, so, uh, how would you like to come and save me from a dull fate?"

Buffy hesitated. "I wish I could, but… I'm sort of seeing someone," she said. It wasn't a total lie. She was almost positive she and Angel had something going on… She just wasn't sure what.

"Oh. Sure, of course, you are. Well, thanks for letting me ramble…" he replied, embarrassed.

"People underestimate the value of a good ramble," she joked, trying to lighten the mood.

"BUFFY!"

She turned around to see Giles near the entrance of the school, pointing to his watch.

"I got to go," she said, turning back to Tom. "It was nice meeting you."

She walked back up the steps and followed Giles inside the school.

After kicking Giles' butt in sparring earlier, he had sent her to patrol the woods to find any clues as to where the missing girl was found earlier in the week. She saw something rather quickly: a bracelet with letters on it.

"There's blood on it," someone said behind her. Buffy jumped to her feet and turned around to see the vampire whose voice belonged too.

"Oh… hi, nice to… blood?" She looked down at the bracelet and did see a speck of blood on it.

"I can smell it," he replied.

Buffy scrunched her nose. Ew. Vampires could be so gross sometimes. There was a long pause before she spoke up. "It's pretty thin, probably belonged to a girl."

Angel didn't respond, and she could feel the irritation of his silent act beginning to grow inside of her.

"I was just mulling; wouldn't it be funny to see each other sometimes when it wasn't a blood thing?"

Still silence from Angel, which only made her fume more. At least Spike–who was her mortal enemy–talked to her more than this! She quickly shook the thought away. No, she wouldn't compare Spike and Angel. As angry as Angel made her, he wasn't evil, at least not anymore.

Angel finally spoke after what felt like forever. "What are you saying? You want to have a date?"

Buffy's eyes widened. Okay, just because she was dropping hints of wanting a date didn't mean she was ready to openly admit it. "No!" she said quickly. "Who said date? I never said date."

"Right, you just want to have coffee or something," he replied.

"Coffee?" Buffy scoffed, pretending to find what he had said ridiculous.

Angel sighed. "I knew this would happen."

She shuffled her feet, starting to feel uncomfortable within his presence. "Really? And what do you think is happening?"

"You're sixteen years old; I'm two hundred and forty."

Ouch. Whatever she'd been expecting him to say, it hadn't been that.

"I've done the math." She failed to leave out the part that when she was doing the math, it was with a different vampire than the one standing before her.

"You don't know what you're doing," he said, "you don't know what you want."

Feeling embarrassed and hurt, she replied, "Oh, I do. I want out of this conversation."

Who was he to tell her she didn't know what she wanted? If she were old enough to fight demons and risk her life every night, then she was old enough to know what she wanted from a man, or ahem, vampire. Not only did she have to live with her mysterious stranger being real and evil, with a girlfriend that he had for over a hundred years, but she had to now deal with Angel rejecting her as well. She tried to run away when Angel stopped her by grabbing her hand, but she roughly pulled it out of his grasp and ran as fast as her legs would go.

She was going insane; she was sure of it because she couldn't believe she had agreed to go to the Delta Zelta party with Cordelia. In her defense, the last week had been her breaking point. The constant reminder of Spike being in Sunnydale to kill her and the conversation with Angel is what made her agree to go. And Tom seemed… nice. He was a nice, normal man that acted like he was interested in her, which is more than she can say for the other two vampires in her life. She knew that it was unfair to judge Spike since he didn't know her and had no idea that they had already met in the future, but Angel was a different story. As usual, a whole lot of nothing ever happened with Angel. He'd hardly say two words to her when he was around, and when he did speak to her, he treated her like a child.

She needed to feel like an adult, and that's why she was excited to go to the fraternity party. She just wished she didn't have to lie to Giles about her mother being sick to get out of patrolling tonight. It's not like she didn't want to find the monster that kidnapped that girl with the bracelet, but she didn't think skipping one night would do any harm. But she knew that if Giles ever found out, she'd be in for a lecture, something that she didn't think she could handle considering the failure that was already her life. Besides… sometimes lying was for the best. She had to lie to him to protect him from the information she knew he wouldn't be able to digest properly. Giles was the last person to understand what being a teenage girl is like. And on top of that, six days a week, she was busy saving the world. Once in a great while, she wanted to have some fun. And that's what she was going to have tonight… fun.

Buffy was surprised to find herself in a well-furnished, wealthy home. Drunk college students littered the room. There were even… waiters? At a frat party?

"You know what's so cool about college?" Cordelia said as they walked in. "The diversity. You've got rich people, and you've got… all the other people." She turned to see Richard approaching them. "Richard!"

Richard handed them each a glass. "Welcome, ladies."

"Thank you," Cordelia said.

"Toasts," he replied before taking a sip of his drink. Buffy watched as Cordelia mimicked him.

She looked down and sniffed it. "Is there alcohol in this?" she asked.

She was never much of a drinker, and the few times she had been drunk, it never ended well. Alcohol and Buffy were very unmixy things.

"Just a smidge," he replied.

"C'mon Buffy, it's just a smidge," Cordelia replied, giving her a warning look. A look that meant not to mess this up for her, or she'd make Buffy pay.

"I'll just…" she said as she sat the drink down, not being as easily influenced.

"I understand. When I was your age, I wasn't into grown-up things, either," he said.

Buffy frowned. Did everyone think she was a child? Richard and Cordelia wandered off somewhere, leaving her alone in the corner by herself. She tried looking around for a friendly face but didn't find one. She stood that way for what felt like forever before Tom came over and took her hand.

"Can I have this dance?"

Buffy nodded, grateful that someone was talking to her, and allowed Tom to walk her over to the dance floor.

"We're not all a bunch of drunken louts," he said, looking around at the drunk frat boys. "Some of us are sober louts. I'm happy you decided to come."

Buffy smiled but didn't respond.

"And you're not," he said.

"No. It's just… I shouldn't be here," she replied.

"Because you're seeing someone?" he asked.

"No," she shook her head. She wasn't supposed to be here because she should be out trying to catch a monster who was killing young girls. She was lying to her watcher and disregarding her duties as a Slayer, but she couldn't tell Tom that, so she played along instead.

"You're not seeing someone?" he asked, confused.

"Someone's not seeing me," she replied. It was the truth. Someone wasn't seeing her. Two someone's, but she knew that only one vampire is the real reason she'd been so upset lately.

"So why shouldn't you be here?"

"I have obligations, people I'm responsible to… or for… or with, it's complex."

"You're big on responsibility. I like that," he said. "But there's such a thing as too mature. You should relax and enjoy yourself occasionally."

She had always thought that, but it was nice to have someone say it aloud. Giles never did, or her mother, or Willow and Xander. Sometimes she felt that the more stress she put on herself, the more likely it would break her eventually.

When the dance ended, Tom handed her a drink and clinked his glass with hers.

"To maturity," he said.

Ahhh, what the hell, she thought and then downed the whole drink. Tom looked at her, surprised.

"I'm tired of being mature," she said. Tom smiled at her. That was the last thing she remembered before everything became foggy.

Buffy groaned as she slowly opened her eyes. Her head was pounding. She tried to move her hands to her head but was stopped… that's when she realized that her arms were overhead, chained. That got her fully awake and alert; she gazed around the basement, taking everything in. Looking to her right, she saw Cordelia in the same predicament.

"Buffy… where are we?" Cordelia asked worriedly.

"In the basement, far as I can tell," she replied. "They drugged us."

"I want to go home," Cordelia said, scared.

"No one's going home," a girl to Buffy's left said. "Ever."

Buffy frowned, not recognizing who the girl was but knowing she must've been drugged as well.

"Stay calm. We'll get out of this," Buffy replied.

"Why'd I ever let you talk me into coming here!" Cordelia whined.

Tom and others began chanting. Buffy tested her chains to see if she could break out of them, but they quickly held her.

They all began chanting: "Machida!"

And suddenly, Machida arose from the hole as a half-man, half-snake. He had a muscular body from the waist up and the enlarged and frightening head of a man with the fangs and horrible eyes of a snake. His skin had the diamond pattern of a snake. From the waist down, he was also all snake – his body trailed behind him into the depths of the pit. God knows how long that guy was. Cordelia screamed bloody murder as Machida advanced on them. Buffy used all her strength and ripped her chains and eye hooks right out of the wall. She whipped the chain and hit Machida with it. He reared back, screaming. Cordelia scampered back to relative safety as Buffy whipped her chain into two attacking brethren, knocking them down. Tom picked up the sword and charged Buffy, who ducked and backed away as he attacked, nearly taking her head off. In the distance, she could hear Willow and Xander yelling from the stairway.

"You bitch. I'll serve you to him in pieces!" Tom screamed and swung hard at her. Buffy ducked and wrapped her chains around his neck.

"Tom, you talk too much," she whispered in his ear then pushed him away. He stumbled onto the ground.

Buffy ran over to Machida and raised her sword. "Back off, wormy!" She brought the blade down hard and fast on Machida's snake body, cutting him in half. Machida began screaming and wiggling; just as he was about to fall back into the pit, he dragged a wailing Tom with him. Buffy didn't bother saving him and listened as she heard Tom's screams and a chomping noise before there was silence.

Ewww. Buffy wrinkled her nose. She didn't think she'd ever get used to gross things happening on the Hellmouth. Buffy looked over to Giles, a guilty look on her face.

"I told one lie, I had one drink…"

"And you nearly got devoured by a giant demon-snake. I think the words "let that be a lesson" are a tad redundant at this juncture," he replied.

"Sorry, Giles," she said sincerely.

"I am, too. I drive you too hard because I know what you must face… from now on, no more pushing, no more prodding… Just… an extraordinary amount of nudging," he replied teasingly.

Buffy smiled, glad that Giles had decided to skip the lecturing for once.

The next night at the Bronze, Buffy sat at a table with Willow and Xander as they talked about the Delta Zelta party's events when Angel had shown up unexpectedly.

"Buffy."

"Angel."

"I hear this place serves coffee," he said. "Thought maybe you and I should get some sometime. If you want."

Buffy considered him for a long moment. The past few days had taught her a lot about men, and the main thing she had learned is that she didn't need them. And she didn't want someone who thought of her as a child. If she were honest with herself, she was fine being alone until the right man came along.

"Yeah," she replied and then stood up and walked away. She was leaving the answer open-ended, feeling proud of herself for standing her ground.

As she walked through the Bronze to the exit, her Slayer sense picked up a pair of unfamiliar eyes watching her. She stopped and looked around the Bronze, trying to find where they were coming from, but not finding her answer… until she looked up to the second floor and saw blue eyes staring down at her. Spike. She froze in her spot and watched as a small group walked in front of him, but when they passed, he was gone. She quickly ran up the stairs but didn't see him anywhere. He was nowhere to be found, and the tingling feeling she got when he was around had disappeared as well, signaling that he must've left the building. Buffy shook her head, confused. He had been here watching her… right? There was no way she'd made that up in her mind. But honestly, she wasn't so sure.