Dance with Me

The subject of this article is non-canonical.
While created as part of licensed material, it has not been confirmed as part of the "real" Buffyverse continuity.

"Dance with Me" is a short story of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Classic comic book series. Written by Christopher Golden and illustrated by Hector Gomez, it was originally published on November 17, 1998, by Dark Horse Comics.

Synopsis

There's a dance at Sunnydale High tonight. Any other girl would be there laughing, gossiping, dancing. But much as she'd like to be… much as it pains her… Buffy Summers isn't like other girls. She's the Chosen One. She's the Vampire Slayer.^[1]

Summary

Buffy is at the cemetery during a patrol, although there's a school dance that night she'd rather be in. She founds an unconscious woman and discovers she's still alive, and Buffy concludes she had just interrupted someone's "snack." The vampire in questions appears, and he tells Buffy he'd been leaving a trail of bodies expecting to bring her into him, and asks the Slayer if now she'd dance with him.

Buffy recognizes him as Gary, who also attended Sunnydale High and had been repeatedly asking her to the upcoming dance, despite her multiple refusals. He then strikes her, glad she remembers him, and angrily tells her she was sweet in her easy rejections to such a loser like him, but he got sick of being a geek. Gary then says the pity on Buffy's eyes was worse than the cruelty, but, now that he had changed and become a vampire, she'd have to dance with him.

Buffy tells Gary she won't have pity then, and she calls him to dance, but as a fight, and stakes him in the heart. With his dust still falling, Xander and Willow arrive to invite Buffy to the dance, and they ask her about her apparent distress. Buffy answers she isn't okay, but she will be after she dances with her friends.

Continuity

The story takes place sometime before the last dance at Sunnydale High ("The Prom") and presumably after the first dance of the Scoobies' senior year ("Homecoming").