Pop Quiz:

You are a young, reasonably attractive, fairly well-liked Teaching Assistant in the history department at the University of Oklahoma. You are paired with the brand new Religious History of Europe Professor, William Edison. You find yourself in a bit of a pickle: you seem to have developed feelings for the young Professor. What do you do?

A) Keep your eyes, and hands, to yourself! While he's considered young by academic standards, he's at least 10 years your senior—AND A PROFESSOR! There are rules for a reason.

B) Never tell him how you feel, and start to stalk him, praying that he never discovers how truly twisted you are.

C) Ask him out for coffee. What harm can a cup of coffee do?

Buffy Summers sighed and stared at the napkin on which she had scribbled hastily the contents of her ever-busy mind. Option B was already in full swing, and it disturbed her just how easily she could blend into her surroundings without anyone noticing.

'Have I always been so invisible?' she frowned to herself. 'Is that why I have such terrible luck with men? They forget I exist!'

Quickly, she shook herself out of her burgeoning depression. After all, who cares if no one could see her? All the better to watch the Professor…

Watching the Professor turned out to be far more interesting than she originally thought possible. She figured, after a day or two of observation, he would reveal himself to be so boring/obnoxious/womanizing that her little crush would wither and die under the harsh rays of his true self.

That plan backfired like Chinese New Year. The more she saw of him, the way he mussed his hair when he was frustrated, or always set aside the shortest papers for her to grade, or pounded his head on his desk after yelling at his stapler—wait.

She thought the stapler thing was cute? All of her friends told her the stapler thing was weird. Even Willow, who tried so hard to defend everyone, was found saying, "He actually has conversations with his stapler? That's…do you think he might be schizophrenic?"

Buffy cupped her chin in her hand and contemplated her choices. Stalking him was doing no good. Every time she saw him, her ardor heated up a few more degrees, and she found herself staring at the crispness of his shirts, wondering if she'd ever get to see one crumpled on her bedroom floor.

That was not a healthy way to think in a work environment!

Ultimately, she decided it was time to buck up, be a man, and ask him out for coffee. Simple. Harmless. If he said no, she could always laugh it off and say she had some time to kill and would read a book instead. If he said yes, on the other hand…

'Faculty + Student – Hot sex?' she jotted under choice C, the quickly crossed it out, fearing someone would peer over her shoulder and think she was a pervert.

She chuckled to herself at the depth of her paranoia. Wasn't she just complaining that she was invisible? Who cares what invisible girls write on napkins?

Still, she crumpled the napkin in her hand and shoved it into her half-full cup of coffee, watching the ink blur into unintelligible blobs as it soaked with moisture. Dead men tell no tales, right?

She left Cate and went to see what the Professor was up to, something that she thought of constantly, and for a moment she was disgusted with herself.

'What kind of woman does this to herself?' she thought, angrily. 'I'll tell you who—a woman with no self-respect!'

Bitterly damning her lack of self control, she found herself standing outside his office door, and listened to him moan, "Someone please kill me!"

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Spike's head spun with a thousand questions, but his brain couldn't settle on just one, and sounds poured from his mouth in a somewhat idiotic fashion.

"I…wha…how…you…huh?" he babbled, kicking himself for his own stupidity. 'Of course she knows you're crazy,' he raged internally, 'the whole bloody world knows! And laughs!'

He shot a quick look at the stapler, making sure that it wasn't doing a Tango across his desk with the hole punch that only he could see. It just sat there, nestled between the hole punch and the paper clip holder, looking smug.

"Bastard," he whispered at it.

Buffy watched the emotions flit across his face: shock, embarrassment, rage, shock again, and finally, contempt. It was fascinating, for he normally kept himself so…smooth. Cold. His face rarely revealed more than the slightest amount of amusement or a flicker of irritation when a student obviously hadn't studied. Shock, embarrassment, rage—especially since it seemed to be directed at the stapler—all of these were new.

She abruptly stopped laughing as a new emotion filled her: Love. Deep, earnest, stalwart affection for this complicated, sexy, intelligent, slightly odd man. The intensity of it rocked her entire being and left her staring at him in silence.

'That is the man I want to marry," she realized, and felt slightly weak in the knees. 'I want to marry him and have 10 thousand of his fat, healthy babies.'

Spike looked up and found Buffy boring holes into him with her gaze.

'Great,' he though wearily, 'now she has proof I'm insane. She's looking at me like I make her want to vomit.'

'Holy crap,' Buffy was stricken with a flash of panic. 'I'm going to puke all over my shoes!'

Spike rose from his desk and approached Buffy slowly, not wanting her to think he was crazy AND violent. He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and inquired, "Buffy, luv, are you okay? You're looking a bit peaked and—"

He felt the warm moisture on his shirt a scant second before the smell hit him, causing bile to rise in the back of his throat.

'She…puked on my shirt!' he shot a bewildered glance down at the puddle forming on his feet. 'And my shoes.'

"Oh my God, I am so sorry." Buffy sobbed and pulled back from Spike. "I have no idea why that happened, I never get sick, omigod…"

And with that, she ran from the room, in search of a shower, and her dignity.

Spike watched her go, tempted to follow until a voice called out, "Mate, you smell like death. Maybe you should shower before having a go at being 'Willy in Shining Armor'?"

"Shut up!" he spun and picked up the stapler, shaking it with a fierceness that surprised him. "Shut up! Shut up!"

He slammed the stapler down with all his might, and then stormed out of his office. Halfway down the hall he stopped, quickly turned heel and went back in.

"And the name is SPIKE!" he roared, turned heel again and slammed the door shut.

The coffee pot nudged a packet of sugar and whispered, "Willy's been pretty high-strung lately. You think I should stop working for a while?"

"Only if you want to get thrown across the room," the sugar replied. "And look what happened to poor Cletus! All he was trying to do was help!"

Cletus perked up at the sound of his name being tossed around the office. He winced, and then snuggled closer to the hole punch.

"Baby, we got some time now…wanna check out my war wounds?"

You see, staplers consider every difficulty in life to just be an opportunity to get booty in disguise…

TBC