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Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.~ Oscar Wilde

She hadn’t gotten much sleep. She alternated being angry with him, and then feeling as if her heart had been ripped out.

Was she being unfair? Was she being unreasonable? It wasn’t as if he had to answer to her, it wasn’t as if they were together – she was just his friend. His visiting friend from the east coast. Did she really have a right to be so damn upset with him?

He had promised though. She’d told him she hadn’t wanted to come out here to be privy to his sexual exploits; hadn’t wanted to be the third wheel and ‘intrude’ on his lifestyle. It was for those reasons that he’d promised to not subject her to that. And yet, there he’d been, about to fuck another one of his groupies.

Though, she had been in bed . . .

But, God, that was worse! It would have been one thing if he’d told her ‘Look, Buffy, I met someone and I want to take them out, can we work something out?’ But no, instead he’d practically pushed her up to bed under the pretense of ‘resting up’ for Alicia and then he’d brought her in all covert op.

And then, then when the girl had actually been dumb enough to say she would sing him ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’. Just a testament to the lack of judgment and taste Spike had in women. Girls like that were the reason blond jokes were invented. Girls like that were the reason some men – and apparently Spike included – had no respect for women and saw them as trophies, no better than a blow up doll.

Hmm. There was a thought. Maybe if she got him a blow up doll that would pacify him for at least a little while.

Growling in frustration, Buffy flung her pillow across the room.

“Buffy?” came Spike’s hesitant voice.

She froze. “What?”

“Can I come in?”

“It’s your house.” Sitting up in bed, she folded her arms across her chest and watched as he shuffled in, forlorn.

Raising a brow, she waited for him to start the act. The ‘I’m so sorry’ act. The ‘I know you love me, pet’ routine. All that acting to get what he wanted.

“Pet, I know you’re upset with me—“

“Oh, am I? What gave you that idea?”

He took a deep breath, “Buffy, please hear me out. I was up all night after what I did, thinking about what I did –“

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I disturb your sleep? Just think, if I hadn’t gotten up, I wouldn’t have disturbed your rest. My bad.”

“Buffy, shut up and listen to me.”

She climbed out of bed. “Now this is what I want. Some realism here. Don’t give me the candy-coated crap you dole out to everyone else, give it to me straight.”

“God, you know, you don’t make things easy, you know that?” his voice rose in exasperation.

“Good, I’m glad. You have it far too easy with all of them. There should be at least one female in your life that doesn’t make it easy for you.”

“You do remember Samantha, right? My ex-wife? She hasn’t made it easy for me at all. “

“You know, I’ll get on board with the fact that she did give you a hard time when it came to Alicia, but Spike. . . you cheated on the woman! How did you expect her to react?”

“Much like you are now, I reckon,” he drawled. “You’re acting like a woman scorned, there pet—“

“Not your pet,” she said automatically.

“So, then what is really going on here, pet? This really about how I went back on my word or the fact that I was getting my rocks off with someone that wasn’t you?”

She glared at him, balling her hands into fists and digging her nails in her palm to keep from slapping the smirk off his face. “You’ve never gotten your rocks off with me, Spike. And, you never will. Who knows? Maybe this is what it’s really about. Maybe your man whoring is all due to the fact that I was the unattainable one; the one that resisted your advances and charm. I set the bar and now you’re looking to just make me jealous because you know you can’t have me.” She was duly impressed with the ease in which that response was made. She knew it was all a bunch of bunk, but it was far better to pretend, to act as if she believed rather than let him think she wanted him.

He laughed, a chilling, derisive laugh that had her bracing for his next verbal attack.
This, arguing the way they were, had never happened before. Sure they’d had little spats, but this went beyond a ‘little spat’.

It killed her that she was a woman scorned and that Willow was right. There was something there for him, always had been on some level, and she sucked at trying to repress it. That was the thing about repressing, the more you shoved the thing down, the more it sought to emerge with a vengeance.

Wasn’t that just spit-in-your-face, kick-you-in-the-crotch, fantastic?

She never should have come; she should have followed her gut and stayed the hell home. There at least she could dodge phone calls, put off reading emails and block him from IMing her. This though, this was in-your-face. This was months – maybe even the year and half they’d been friends – of crap coming out: Her annoyance at his lack of responsibility as a father and as a man; his obvious lack of self control and self-respect for himself. She didn’t buy into the fact that it was a sign of his virility and that it was ‘okay’ because he was a man. Fuck that. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay when a woman did it, why should it be okay for him?

She stood there, bracing herself for some his verbal attack, and yet, it did not come. Instead, the derisive smile fell from his face and he straightened, meeting her eyes. “Buffy, I don’t want to argue with you. Whether you believe me or not, you are my best friend. I trust you more than anyone – even in spite of what you did last night. I know that you’re upset with me and you have every right to be. I lied to you and I went back on my word. I realize that I might have made you feel as though you’re not important to me and that’s just not true. You, aside from Alicia, mean everything to me. I never realized how you felt about the things I’ve shared with you; how . . . disgusted you were with me. It hurts to know that, Buffy, it really does. But, I can’t do anything about that now. I just. . . I want to get past this and I want get back to being friends. Please, Buffy, don’t leave today. Give me a chance to make it up to you,” he shook his head, “I can’t lose you. You’re the only constant I have, I need you.”

His plea and apology was so heartfelt, Buffy knew he wasn’t bullshitting her, wasn’t putting on an act. She knew him well enough to know he meant what he said. Before she could stop herself, she flew into his arms, hugging him tight. In the distant recesses of her mind she realized that she had been acting more like a jilted lover rather than a friend. There was a line somewhere she crossed – possibly only in her own mind -- when expressing her abhorrence for his behavior and she suddenly felt, well, kind of silly.

That didn’t mean, however, she was about to let him off the hook so easily though. She’d stay, she would, but she was going to find a way, a constructive way, to express to him what he was doing to himself by his behavior, and what he was doing to his daughter. What he did with it after was his decision, and she knew she would find it difficult to walk away from him – she did so thoroughly love him, for when he wasn’t ‘on the prowl’ he was wonderful to be around and she confided in him like no other. But her heart . . . her heart hurt.

She really needed to have a chat with Willow, and soon.





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