The sight before him caused him to lift an eyebrow in curiosity. A small girl with her black jacket clutched tightly around her, mascara streaked down her bronzed cheeks and a paisley scarf wrapped around her head, all of her hair tucked carefully beneath it.

"Buffy," he greeted her carefully.

He almost didn't hear her, her voice was so small. "Help?"

Immediate concern hit him and he moved to her side, touching her shoulder carefully. "What's wrong? Are you okay?" he asked, looking deep into her eyes for traces of what was bothering her.

"No," she shook her head. "Very not okay. And you're the only one that can help me." Oz nodded affably and wrapped an arm around her to usher her into the apartment that he and Devon had been sharing since he got back.

Once they were in the living room, Oz motioned for her to take a seat on the couch and sat carefully next to her after she had. "So, what's so horrible?" he asked.

"Promise me you won't laugh," she said, then laughed herself, the breath coming out of her harshly. "Of course, look who I'm asking not to laugh. The king of..... apatheticy. Just....um....don't raise an eyebrow at me or anything." Then with a deep sigh of resignation, she reached up and pulled the scarf off of her head, letting her long hair spill out around her shoulders. However, there was now large, green streaks through it. A really dark, sickly looking green that Oz forced himself not to cringe at.

Lifting a strand of her hair, Oz examined the color closely, feeling rather melancholy. Her hair was so pretty since she decided to let it grow out. With hair this long it was pretty difficult to put into an unflattering hairstyle, which she'd had the tendency to do when it was shorter. Oz had never had the heart to tell her. "So, is it hopeless?" Buffy asked in a scared voice. "Am I doomed to be a lettuce head for the rest of my life?"

"Well, you're definitely not doomed to a *life* of green locks, even if there weren't anything that I could do about it. It would grow out eventually. Fortunately, I think a good hairstrip should fix it," he explained.

He nearly fell back against the couch when Buffy launched herself against him, wrapping her arms around him tightly. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Oz," she babbled.

Oz's eyes widened at her action. He'd only been in a room with her twice since his return to Sunnydale and both times he'd sensed a bit of animosity coming from her. Of course, why wouldn't that change, now that she needed his help for something. Oz shrugged out of her embrace uncomfortably and stood from the couch, moving over to pick up his jacket. "We'll have to get to the drugstore soon though. It's going to close in twenty minutes."

Buffy nodded and gave him a thankful smile before she went to work on tying the scarf around hair again.

"So, what happened to your hair anyway?" Oz asked as they sat in his van, on the way to the drugstore. It was really just something he had said to fill the uncomfortable silence that had fallen between them since they'd left his house. Or, more appropriately, since she had hugged him.

"Graverobber demons. They had green blood and it splattered all in my hair. When I washed it, this nasty color would not come out."

Oz nodded. Buffy shifted in her seat, throwing a side ways glance in Oz's direction. "Speaking of hair, you changed yours. Again."

"Black raspberry," he explained. "It's shorter since I.....left."

Buffy's eyes darkened and she turned away from him again, looking out the window. "Where did you go to?" she asked in a small voice, not noticing Oz wince a bit at her question.

"If it's all the same, Buffy, I'd rather not talk about it. I don't want to talk about Willow either." Buffy whipped her head around to face him again at the mention of her friend's name. Willow, who had been so hopeful ever since Oz had come back. And yet, he still wouldn't see her and had only spoken to her on the phone once. The only people who had seen him since he'd been back to town was her and Giles. Giles once again had taken up the duty of watching Oz during the full moon. Buffy had not so accidentally shown up on two of the days, just before his change.

"Hey, I didn't come to you about that, okay? Whatever's going on between you and Willow is exactly that, between you two. You think my hair disaster is just some sick ploy to get you talking to Willow again?" she asked him angrily.

"No, I just know that the subject would have been broached if I didn't get it out of the way to begin with. Now that you know I don't want to talk about Willow, you won't ask me anything that I don't feel the inclination to answer."

Buffy continued to stare at the side of his face for a while. He didn't turn from the road to meet her gaze, so she turned and looked out of the windshield. "Well.....good. I'm glad we got that out of the way.

Oz held the front door open with one arm and allowed Buffy to enter before him. Once he was in, he shut and locked the front door and dropped the plastic bag on the coffee table. "I'll get you a crappy shirt to wear," he told her and left her standing in the middle of his living room.

Neither of them had said anything since they'd left the drugstore. While they were actually *in* the drugstore the few words that they had exchanged were a debate on which brand of hairstripper was better for cheaper and wouldn't fry Buffy's hair out too bad. Buffy looked around the living room with an uncomfortable sigh. The relationship problems between Oz and Willow had made her feel like she was being pulled in two different directions. On one side was Willow, her best friend in the whole world, not to mention her room mate. On the other side was Oz, a person that Buffy felt a certain kinship with. She felt like he had kind of gotten the short end of the stick, but she couldn't very well voice her opinion honestly about it, because Willow would take that as her taking his side.

"Here you go," Oz said and offered her an old looking shirt. She accepted it from him and opened it up to look at the picture on the front. It was a white t-shirt with a Dread Zeppelin emblem on it. She noticed a dark pink stain on the collar.

"Is this lipstick?" she questioned him with a small smile quirking at the corner of her lips.

"Yeah, it's Devon's. He doesn't wear it any more because pink does *nothing* for his complexion," Oz said flatly, only letting a small smile creep onto his face when Buffy broke out into a little fit of giggles.

Finally, Buffy straightened and smiled widely at Oz, glad that he had broken the tension a little. "Oz," she and threw her hands out a little flamboyantly. "I don't want things to be all weird between us. I know we've never been the bestest of buds, but I've always felt really comfortable around you and I hate this.... invisible tension thingie. Let's promise each other something right now." Oz quirked his eyebrow questioningly. "We'll make a pact right now that neither of us will let our relationships with Willow get between our friendship."

Oz stared at her for a minute, his intense gaze piercing right through her. Finally, he nodded agreeably and Buffy held her hand out for him to shake. "Good, now that that's been said and done, let's fix my hair."

"This stuff smells horrible," Buffy said, crinkling her nose as she perched on the toilet. Oz was at her side, squirting lines of the noxious liquid over her hair. "I'm starting to think that demon blood green is a really good color for me."

"It's a small price we pay for good hair," Oz deadpanned in her ear.

"You should know, shouldn't you?" Buffy said.

"There. You're done. We just need to let it sit for twenty minutes. I think I should warn you though, you're hair is going to be a lot blonder than it normally is."

Buffy looked up at him nervously as he covered her head with a plastic Safeway bag. "How much blonder?" she questioned fearfully.

"Well, if it turns out the way I'm hoping, it shouldn't be too much blonder."

"So," Buffy said, standing up and stretching her stiff muscles. Her arms were raised crookedly above her head and her back arched like that of a lazy cat. Oz found it incredibly difficult not to stare as her breasts poked out, her nipples erect under the thin and worn material of Devon's shirt, which looked awesome on her. Oz had always had a thing for girl's in oversized men shirts. Not the kind of girls that always dressed in guy clothes, but the small feminine girl's who were usually so fashionable. It was a nice change. "What's a good twenty minute time killer?"

"Huh? Oh, um, you hungry? I could make something for us to eat," he offered.

"Sure, what have you got?"

"Lucky Charms."

A small smile curved on her lips and she quirked an eyebrow. "Hey, don't joke. I pour mean bowl of cereal," he told her.

Buffy hooked her arm through his, reminding him of a time that she'd done this once before. It was a couple of months before they graduated from high school and Willow, Buffy and he had been sharing a lazy lunchtime together. She had hooked her arm through his casually as they strolled across the campus as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but Oz had never forgotten the gesture. It was what made him realize that Buffy had accepted him as one of her friends and not just Willow's boyfriend. "Lead the way," she said sweetly.

Oz stood leaning against the frame of the bathroom door, watching intently as Buffy towel dried her hair. She was leaned over babbling about something that Oz wasn't paying much attention to. He scrunched his eyebrows together in annoyance as he realized he'd just been staring intently at the curve of her thigh, encased in black jean just below the white of the grungy shirt he'd given her to wear. "I hope this worked," he heard her say and turned his attention back to her head as she flipped her damp her back.

Oz blanched, his eyes rounding out as he stared at the orange mass of hair on Buffy's head. He started moving his mouth, trying to form words, but nothing came out. Buffy saw the expression on his face and immediately panicked. "What? Oh God." She rushed over to the mirror and stared at herself in horror. "You are *so* dead," she said, turning an angry look on him.

Oz raised his hands to ward her off as she started towards him. "Now, Buffy. Let's keep our heads."

"I'd rather chop mine off!" she cried hysterically. "My head looks like a freakin' Easter egg! And it's all your fault! At least the demon blood green brought out the color in my eyes!"

Oz started to panic when he noticed that she had backed him up against the hallway wall, her hands clenching the material of his shirt collar. Quickly, he brought his hands up and wrapped his fingers around her wrists. "If you kill me now, you'll have to go to class with a White Sox hat on tomorrow. Let me live and I promise I'll fix this."

She was shaking with pent up anger, but she took a deep breath and released her hold on his shirt, snatching her hands away from him. "And what the hell do you propose we do about it? The drugstore is closed," she reminded him.

"Buffy, think of who you're talking to here," he said, moving passed her, back into the bathroom. She watched him carefully as he opened the medicine cabinet and produced a little teal box, holding it up for her to see. "I know it's.....different, but it's better than orange, don't you think?"

Buffy stepped into the light of the bathroom and examined the box that he was holding out for her. There was a pretty girl smiling back at her, her hair a pretty dark auburn color. "But.....I'm blond," she mumbled taking the box from it to turn it over and check out the color chart.

"All the talk about blondes having more fun is a total myth. Believe me, I should know," Oz said, nodding.

"You don't think it's too drastic?" Buffy asked and looked up at him.

"Of course, it's drastic. That's the fun part of it. One little box can contain a completely new you," he explained. Sure, he was grasping, but he liked being alive and he really had no idea how to handle the Slayer when she was angry. He bit his lower lip, hoping that she'd go for the idea.

"All right. We might as well give it a try. But if it looks horrible, I'm holding you personally responsible."

"Of course, it'll work," Oz said, taking the box from her before she could change her mind. He opened it and began preparing the mixture for application. "What could go wrong?"

"All of my hair could fall out."

Oz paced nervously in the hallway, throwing nervous glances at his closed bedroom door. Buffy was in there, blow-drying her hair. She had decided that she'd dry it first, then look at it. She told him to wait outside, that way if it looked horrible, he'd have at least a ten second headstart. Oz held his breath expectantly when he heard the dryer go off.

The loud screech from behind the other side of the door made him jump. Then he hurriedly pushed the door open and stared in at Buffy, standing in front of the mirror on his dresser.

"It's awful," she cried as she clutched at her dark hair. "I don't know what made me think that I could pull it off. I don't have the complexion for it. And the most horrible thing is that it would look perfectly fine on anybody else. I look like a total Cordelia wannabe. I look-"

"Beautiful."

Buffy stopped her panicky tangent and turned to look at Oz when she heard him speak the one quiet word. He was standing just inside the door, staring dumbly at her. Her hair was surrounding her in long, dark waves. The color glistened boldly against the dingy white of the ugly shirt and Oz found himself wishing that she was still wearing the pretty little white peasant top she'd been wearing when she first showed up on his doorstep with her hair crisis. The dark contrast of the hair color made the little green flecks in her hazel eyes stand out just a bit more than usual and made her lips seem even more redder and fuller.

"What was that?" she asked him in a small voice.

"Beautiful. I said that you look beautiful, Buffy," he reminded her.

Buffy took a couple of small steps closer to him, looking down as she twisted her foot against the deep shag of his carpet. "Really? Beautiful?"

Oz licked his lips and turned away from her guiltily. "Yeah," he said in a strained voice. "Amazing, really."

"I...well," Buffy started, but stopped and frowned when Oz turned his back to her and left the room. "Oz?" she asked quietly as she entered the living room to find him sitting on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. "What's wrong?"

Oz wiped his hand roughly down his face. The scratch of stubble against his palm alerted him to the fact that he hadn't shaved in a couple of days. "Nothing's wrong. I just feel tired suddenly," he lied and looked up. He was surprised to find her standing only a couple of inches away from him, directly in front of him, looking down on him with concern. He spoke again, his voice coming out harsher. "It's been a long day," he said lamely as his eyes fixed themselves on the gentle slope of her neck, shadowed by the dark, flowing hair that fell around her face in ripples.

He shook his head tiredly, trying to clear away the swimmy feeling in his head. His vision was swaying like it always did when he was drunk or just seconds away from the change and he let out a groan. Buffy heard the low sound and dropped down to her knees before him, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure you're okay? You look like your getting dizzy."

Oz's stare traveled it's way up her neck and over her smooth jawbone, finally settling on her pouty pinkish red lips. He became painfully aware of how close their faces were. He'd barely have to move to press his lips against her. With a shock he realized that he had done just that. Kissing her wasn't a conscious decision that he made. Only a physical inclination that his body decided to adhere to. She'd jumped when their mouths came in contact, her hand squeezing his shoulder a bit tighter. There was only a short moment of shocked stillness from her, but then her mouth seemed to melt against his.

When Buffy's lips parted under his, he leaned forward and tangled his fingers in her dark tresses as he deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into her mouth. He explored her mouth slowly and thoroughly, his tongue swiping smoothly against hers. Both of her hands gripped his shoulders tightly now as she moaned into his mouth. She fell limp in his arms when he sucked her tongue into his mouth, worrying his own tongue around it.

Oz pulled back when he felt her tense up suddenly, her hands pushing against his shoulders. "No, Oz. Stop," she said to him in a voice barely above a whisper. As Oz laid back against the cushions of the couch, she fell down on her heels, bringing her hand up to brush her fingertips against her lips. Oz could only look at her for a second before he had to turn away shamefully. The awed expression on her face as she touched her kiss-bruised lips had caused him harden even more than he'd already been. Pressing the balls of his palms into his eyes, Oz shook his head with self-reproach. What was he thinking? This was Willow's best friend. Slayer of all things evil, charge to Giles, lover to Angel.

"I'm-I'm going to go," she said. He heard the rustle of her clothes as she stood. There was a few seconds when Oz realized that she was in the other room. He could still hear the rustle of her clothes, knowing that she was changing back into her shirt. In his room. He growled when he found that the thought of her half naked in his bedroom had caused him to grow even harder. He became faintly aware that she was in the room, but when she didn't leave immediately he dropped his hands away from his eyes and looked up her.

She had, indeed, changed back into her shirt. And he had been right. The dark sheen of her hair gleamed wonderfully against the crisp whiteness of her own shirt. It created an innocently seductive look for her. "I know..."she began, stopping to search for the right words, "that we promised one another that we wouldn't think about Willow when we're around each other, but I just can't bring myself to hurt her worse than she's already been hurt. And I know she'd hate me if she knew just how much I enjoyed that kiss. So, I'm going to go now. I guess I was wrong when I thought that we could be friends."

Oz turned away, cursing himself for his thoughtlessness. He didn't want to lose her as a friend. In fact, she was the only link that he had to his old life. "I don't think that I should be around you. Anymore. At all," she added, her words hitting him like a blow to the stomach, pushing the air out of his lungs. "Good-bye, Oz," she said.

He listened to her walk away from him and heard the front door click open and then shut. After she was gone, he sat there mutely, trying to contain his rage. It didn't work. Turning he swiped a glass bong off of the end table next to the couch and hucked it at the wall opposite, the word "Fuck!" coming out of his mouth in an angry shout as the glass cracked and shattered.

The End

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