A/N: OMG I updated! Prepare for armageddon, hell must have frozen over!

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"Well, I suppose you've got a point there," Emily began, but was prevented from saying anything more by the sound of a microphone being tapped a little too hard.

"Ladies and gentlemen," boomed a male voice from the front of the room. "My name's Walt and I'd like to welcome you all again to the party. It's only because so many of you turned out that this reunion is going so well!"

"Ugh," Annie's voice groaned from a few feet away from where Alex, Emily, and Bobby stood. They all turned to look at her curiously as she and her husband walked toward them. "Why do they have to do the fake enthusiasm thing over and over?"

"It's the chip they got implanted in their brains when they signed on for the job," said Oli as he approached from the other direction with Dan in tow. "Forces them to smile and squeal and not take a hint."

"Hey," Alex said with a grin, looking over her shoulder at him, "did you abandon the bar?"

"More or less," he said with a shrug. "Not my booze to protect, anyway, and I was getting bored."

"We hope you've enjoyed the dancing so far," Walt's voice continued, "but now we've got something special planned for the rest of the night . . ."

Groans filled the room."Why do I not like the sound of the word 'surprise'?" mumbled Annie, dropping her head against her husband's arm.

"Probably because it can't possibly mean anything good," Mike remarked matter-of-factly, raising a hand to brush her hair out of her face for her. "Hey, Susan, right?" he added as Susan and her husband made their way toward the group.

"Yep. And don't blame me for this," she replied, gesturing to the stage. "I argued against it!"

"Toward the end of our senior year, we all voted for class superlatives - things like 'most likely to succeed' and 'best dressed'," the amplified voice went on. "The results of the vote appeared in the yearbook, along with pictures of the winners for each, and -"

"Get on with it!" a voice from the dance floor heckled.

Walt blinked, then gave the shouter an awkward smile. "Ok, if you say so. We've got those photos loaded into the slide projector at the back of the room tonight, and we're going to do a retrospective. I'm going to call up the winners in each category to stand in front of their yearbook picture so we can all see how they've changed!"

There was complete silence, followed by a few catcalls and jeers.

"Oh, no," Annie and Oli moaned in unison.

Alex looked at them in surprise. "What's wrong with that? I think it sounds kind of interesting. It's exactly what Bobby was hoping for when he decided to come!"

All eyes turned to Goren, who looked at his feet and coughed self-consciously. "Uh, Alex, that wasn't exactly what I -"

"Oh, come on. You told me you wanted to see how the rest of the class turned out."

"I didn't exactly . . ."

"We'll start with the Class Couple," Walt went on. "Jimmy Willis and Janet Stapleton! Come on up here, guys!"

There was scattered applause and a minor commotion in the crowd as the two made their way toward the stage.

"Wow," Alex muttered, watching Jimmy Willis stagger up the stairs toward the podium, "he hasn't held up very well, has he?" The picture being projected on the screen behind the stage showed two smiling teenagers, both in significantly better shape than they were now; a svelte Janet stood in arms of a Jimmy with dark hair and no potbelly, laughing up into his face. "They looked . . . happy back then," Alex added in mild surprise.

"I always thought they made the perfect couple," Oli told her with a grin. "Jerky jock meets stuck-up cheerleader. She certainly fits better with him than she ever did with you, Bobby."

"You won't get any argument from me on that," Bobby told him distractedly as he pulled Alex a little closer.

She looked up at him and grinned. "He'd better not."

"Save the declarations of love for later," Oli said with a wave of his hand, watching Janet and Jimmy work their way back to the dance floor. "I think they're going to read out the next names."

"Next on the list is Best Dressed," Walt announced, "and that was Dan Hon and Casey Michaels." The picture on the screen switched to one of Dan and a girl Alex hadn't met, both impeccably dressed and groomed and grinning for the camera. The chess group hooted their approval.

"He looked slick," Alex remarked.

"He is slick," replied Annie with a grin. "For a chess nerd, let me tell you, he got a lot of girls."

"As I recall, you were one of them for a month or so," Oli told her with a smirk.

Mike made a choked noise that was amusing to everyone except himself and looked down at his wife. "You never told me that!"

Annie lashed out with one foot and caught Oli in the shin. Smiling angelically as he yelped in pain and hopped on his uninjured leg, she tilted her head up and kissed her husband's chin. "Believe me, he's not my type anymore."

"Better not be," he grumbled good-naturedly, slinging an arm over her shoulders before directing his attention to the stage, where Dan and Casey had just disappeared to the side.

"Moving on, next we have Most Theatrical, Annette Rialto and Sean Wheeler."

Annie accepted a squeeze from her husband before heading to the stage with a blush on her cheeks. Once there, she met up with Sean Wheeler, who had been a friend back then, and gave him a hug before they turned back to the room and stood in front of their projected picture self-consciously.

"You know," Dan said as he jogged back to the group and came to a stop next to Alex, "she doesn't look like she changed at all."

"No," Alex agreed, "she doesn't. And neither do you, really. What have you guys been using, and where can I get some?"

"If I knew, believe me, I'd be more than happy to make a buck selling it to you," he told her with a grin.

"Doomed to my old age," she sighed dramatically.

"Oh, come on," Bobby said, giving her shoulder a gentle shake, "don't tell me you think you're old. You still pass for a college student when you need to! Me, I get mistaken for high school kids' grandfather."

She giggled. "True, and I don't think Logan's ever going to let you forget that one."

"Hey," Annie called, slipping back under Mike's arm and eyeing the group warily, "what's so funny?"

"Bobby's old," Alex replied casually, then glanced up at him to observe his reaction.

He looked down at her with raised eyebrows. "And therefore you're here as the date of an old man."

"There was only one person elected Class Clown," Walt announced from the stage, interrupting Alex's answer, "because he was just that crazy. Oli Matthews, are you here tonight?"

Oli grinned, gave his friends a jaunty salute, and headed for the screen that was displaying a picture of him that made Alex appreciate just how hard it had been for Bobby to recognize him earlier. In his high school picture, Oli had hair down to his mid-back, tied into a messy ponytail, and a set of coke-bottle glasses that seemed to defy gravity by staying on his nose. He also sported, although Alex tried to be polite and not notice it, a face full of acne.

"Now he's changed," Dan exclaimed with a laugh. "Are we sure he's the real Oli and not just some imposter who snuck in tonight for the free food?"

"The eyes are the same," Alex replied without thinking. "If you look past the glasses, I mean. He has the same expression in them tonight that he did in the picture."

Why had she been paying such close attention to Oli's eyes? A pang of jealousy ran through him and Bobby tightened his arms around her in what he hoped was an imperceptible manner. "What kind of expression is that?"

"The look of a troublemaker." She settled back against his chest, making it clear without saying a word that she'd noticed his reaction. "My youngest brother used to have exactly the same look when he'd just done something he knew he was going to get into trouble for."

"Calm down, folks," Walt told the room, which was beginning to buzz with bored conversation. "I'm almost done - only two superlatives left. First, we have the winners of Quietest: Bobby Goren and Emily Andrews."

Alex practically had to pry his hands off of her to get him to let go and take a step away. She mouthed a silent thank you at Emily when the other women grabbed his arm and pulled. "Come on, Bobby. If I have to go up there, you do too."

"Go," Alex commanded, giving him a push. Turning back to the group when he finally heaved a sigh and followed Emily toward the stage, she grinned. "I guess some things never change."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Annie said with an equally large smile. "You ever seen any pictures of him as a kid?"

"No."

"Well, turn around and check it out," Annie ordered, twirling a finger to match the command.

Alex obeyed, not sure if she really wanted to look, and found herself staring at a picture of two people sitting on a low wall in front of a school. On the left, a tall, wiry boy sat with his legs dangling down far enough that his feet were flat on the ground. He had his hands over his ears as if to suggest "Hear no evil," and a shy not-quite-smile on his face that made it obvious that he was a good pick for the title "quietest."

Next to him sat a much shorter girl, her feet dangling six inches off the ground and her hands over her eyes to complement her companion's position. A pair of glasses dangled from one hand and her hair, like his, was a tad too lively, to put it charitably; both heads looked like they could use a once-over with a flatiron to prevent their hair from starting its own zip code. "Bobby and Emily?" Alex asked, stunned, even though she already knew the answer.

Susan, next to her, nodded. "Scary, isn't it? Looking at them now, you would think they couldn't ever have possibly been that . . . frowzy."

"Frowzy," Alex repeated. "That's a good description for them. I like that. And yes, you're right. I mean, I've seen Bobby when he desperately needs a haircut, but I've never seen his hair quite that . . . tall. And Emily . . . I can't even believe she's the same person. It's . . . oops, there they go," she broke off, watching as the two did their best to flee the stage without looking like they were running away.

"I'm taking comfort in the fact that we're going to see an equally embarrassing picture of Dom," Emily announced a few seconds later, noticing that no one seemed to want to say anything in front of them as she and Bobby rejoined the group.

"I'm taking comfort in the fact that I can get the hell out of here soon," Bobby muttered darkly, taking up his original position behind Alex with his arms around her waist.

"Aw," she teased, twisting around to look at him, "you were cute!"

Her movement shifted her shirt so that his fingertips were under it, and he daringly left them there as he gave her his best attempt at a jokingly dirty look. "I don't do 'cute,' Eames."

"Whatever you say," she told him with a smirk.

"Ok, guys!" Walt boomed into the microphone. "We're down to the last superlative, and then I'll let you get back to drinking yourselves into oblivion. So, without further ado, we have our two classmates who were Most Likely to Succeed: Dom Vincent and Susan Alexander!"

"Ah," Oli chortled, "we finally get to see the hermit!"

All eyes were on Susan as she kissed her husband and headed for the stage. Dom Vincent, an attractive, well-dressed man with graying hair, leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek when he met her on the stage, and then the two of them turned slightly so they could see their yearbook picture.

Along with everyone else in the room, Susan and Dom burst into laughter at what they saw: two teenagers, a boy and a girl, dressed in identical men's business suits, standing in front of a desk scattered with Monopoly money and displaying huge grins for the camera while they threw handfuls of the play money into the air.

"I always liked the way they did that," Annie laughed. "Wearing the same suit, I mean. It's very . . . equal-opportunity, but without being too political about it."

"She doesn't look bad in it," Dave Hunt remarked, looking thoughtfully at the picture of his wife. "Maybe I should try to get her to stop wearing so many skirts."

"Bite your tongue!" Oli gasped. "Don't knock the skirts, they're way too enjoyable - on any woman."

"Oh, Oli," Alex sighed dramatically, "I was wondering why you hadn't asked me to marry you yet, and now I know - it must be the pants!" She swept her arm down her body, highlighting the fact that she was, indeed, wearing pants, and grinning as Oli's eyes followed her hand before he could stop himself.

"Well, I . . . uh . . ."

"Good thing I've got someone who appreciates my outfit the way it is," she added with a smirk, looking up at Bobby, who was frowning at her. She stuck her tongue out at his unhappy expression. "Right, Bobby?"

"Uh, what?" he asked, belatedly realizing that she'd been talking to him.

"You appreciate my outfit," Alex repeated patiently. "Right?"

He blinked, then pushed her away a few inches so he could see her bare back. "Uh, yeah . . . you could definitely say I, uh, appreciate it."

She grinned widely. "Guess we're just not meant to be, Oli. Good thing I prefer this guy anyway," she added, going up on her toes to kiss Bobby's chin, which was as high as she could reach without him cooperating.

"Cut to the quick," Oli moaned. "Go on Bobby - claim your prize."

"My . . . what?" he asked, slightly dazed by the conversation of the past few minutes.

"That would be me, Goren," Alex said with a roll of her eyes. "You get the girl."

There were a few seconds of silence as the entire group looked at him expectantly before he glanced at Oli, nodded, and looked back at Alex. "Good thing," he said, leaning down to give her a kiss. "I'd hate to have to explain to people how I introduced you to him."