Title: The Deliciousness of a Nervous Breakdown
Author: Faith Elizabeth
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing! Joss is my lord and master!
Pop Quiz:
You are a young, reasonably attractive, fairly well-liked history professor at the University of Oklahoma. You find yourself in the terrible predicament of being attracted to your TA. What do you do?
A) Straighten up and fly right. While she's technically not YOUR student, she is A student. Students and faculty are never supposed to mix in the genital regions.
B) Pine away for her in secret, slowly driving yourself mad, until one day in life you snap and find yourself talking to the stapler.
C) Be a man and ask her out. What harm can one date do?
William "Spike" Edison mulled over the consequences of choice C.
'What harm can one date do?' he pondered, staring at her handwriting on one of the plethora of term papers strewn across his desk. 'Aside from getting me heckled by staff and students alike, fired, and barred from teaching ever again.'
"Christ!" he shouted into his empty office. "It's not like she's a child! She's at least 20! I AM NOT A PEDOPHILE!"
He glanced down at the stapler. It seemed to be nodding sagely back at him, encouraging him to follow his baser animal instincts.
His head thudded against the desk. 'Bollocks,' he thought, 'I'm already talking to the stapler. I might as well just…do it.'
"Lord knows you could use a date," the stapler chimed in. "And, I need some alone time with the hole punch! Get out of here!"
Spike lifted his head wearily. "So this is what it's like to go insane? Horny talking staplers telling me to risk my career for a 20 year old co-ed named," he winced, the name bitter on his tongue, "BUFFY!"
He glanced once more at the stapler, waiting for a witty comeback. It sat innocently, as inanimate objects tend to do.
He rolled his eyes heavenward. "I'm cracking up. I really am losing it! I'm disappointed that the STAPLER won't give me romantic advice!" His head thudded against the desk once more.
"Will someone please kill me?" he beseeched pitifully into the sheaf of papers on his desk.
He was surprised to hear a reply. At least, a reply that came from something other than that snarky bastard of a stapler—a stapler that seemed suspiciously closer to the hole punch than where he remembered placing it. A voice rang out into the stillness, puzzled yet amused at the same time.
"Uh…I don't think they'll give me credit if I off you, Professor. Plus, what will the rest of the faculty say? I'll get a reputation!"
His head shot up from the desk at the speed of light. The blood that had pooled there during his brief foray into despair rushed into the rest of his body and left him light-headed and slightly nauseated. Or maybe that was the knowledge that someone other than the stapler had witnessed his patheticness. That someone being Buffy, herself, made it all the worse. He wondered if he could discretely retch into the trash can without alerting any further suspicion.
He eyed the petite blonde in his doorway coolly, years of staunch British upbringing allowing him to keep all physical manifestations of his tumultuous emotions in check.
"Buffy," he began, inwardly cringing at his choice of nervous-breakdown-causing-material. She really wasn't more than a slip of a girl, long blonde hair and green eyes, all limbs, really. Not much meat to her, unlike his last girlfriend, Faith.
Wait! LAST Girlfriend! That implied that Buffy constituted "New Girlfriend," and Buffy was most definitely NOT any sort of girlfriend material!
Buffy stared at him, her eyes shining with obvious amusement. "Buffy…? Buffy what, Professor? From the way you're acting, I'm afraid you're going to ask me to poison your tea. On purpose, this time," she smiled, sheepishly.
Her first day as TA she was so eager to make a good impression that, upon learning he was British, she made it her mission to learn to make the perfect cup of tea. Her technique was flawless, ingredients meticulously selected and set out, and she was confident that this cup of tea would seal her way into his good graces. Unfortunately, the coffee mug she selected happened to be from the faculty lounge cabinet with an ant problem, and thus was lined with boric acid. All cups from this cabinet were thoroughly rinsed before use, a truth so universal that it was unspoken.
Unknowingly, with an eagerness almost frightening to bear witness to, Buffy handed Spike a cup of lethal tea. Luckily, for both of them, he noticed the mysterious blue ring around the lip of the mug just in time. He cocked a questioning brow at her.
"Ms. Summers, while I might not have been your first choice to aid, did you really have to go to such extremes to be reassigned?"
Mortified, Buffy began to stammer out an explanation, stumbling over her words in an attempt to convince him that ending his life was the last thing she intended to do.
"I just wanted to make you a nice cup of tea and I don't know what happened and omigod I'm so sorry! Please don't fire me, this will nev—" her ramble was cut off by a sharp bark of laughter. Her tear-filled green eyes met his twinkling blue ones, and that was that. They fell in love.
Of course, neither could admit that to themselves, let alone one another, and thus we rejoin our story, already in progress.
"No Buffy, I won't require any 'special' tea today. It hasn't come to that. How long have you been here, luv?" he inwardly blanched at the endearment, praying that, for once, she would just leave it alone.
No such luck.
"Luv, huh! Why Professor Edison," she batted her eyelashes prettily, "if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to seduce me…" His eyes widened, until she finished, "…into grading the other half of the term papers! If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times—that British charm won't work on me! You told the class that all papers would be graded evenly between us, 50-50, so that all grading is fair, and that's that!"
Spike breathed a sigh of relief. She had no idea he had lost his mind, and was crazed with lust for her. His secret was safe for the time being.
"Besides, what would the stapler do without you here? Finally get busy with the hole punch?"
Her laughter rang throughout the deafening silence of the room, as Spike's jaw dropped to the floor.
Oh. Bloody. Hell.