Sitting at a park bench in Boston Common down the street from his apartment, Spike sat waiting for Buffy with his leg bouncing up and down with nervous energy. He’d called and asked if she could swing by on her afternoon walk with Brandon and she’d agreed. She’d sounded funny when he rang, almost as if she hadn’t expected to hear from him. He supposed from her perspective, it was still new and up in the air. Things weren’t natural at that point for them. How could they be?
The talk they’d had a few nights before had been a breakthrough of sorts for him. Well, maybe not so much of a breakthrough, but more of a window into the mind of Buffy. How she felt, what she wanted, what her heart yearned for and how she was going to ‘play the game’, the dating game as it was, from now on. He wondered if Doyle was the knight in which she spoke of, and he found it odd that if he was, she never spoke of him. Not the way he thought a woman in love would.
However, it wasn’t as if she was bursting at the seams to tell him about her private life unless it included their son. They weren’t exactly friends; they were far from confidants-- they were nothing but strangers that happened to be the biological parents of a perfect baby boy by the name of Brandon.
“Hi, have you been waiting long?”
He looked up and to the side, squinting against the afternoon sun to see Buffy standing there, carriage in front of her. She wore tan capri’s, sneakers and a white t-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore sunglasses. She looked lovely and natural; she didn’t have the faux ‘I just dropped a thousand dollars on Newbury Street’ look about her. She looked like a young mom out with her son and enjoying the day. She was, in essence, a breath of fresh air. Instantly, he felt relaxed and the bobbing leg stopped.
“Hi,” he smiled and stood, coming over to her. “I haven’t been waiting long at all. Leaning over the stroller, he grinned down at his snoozing son. “How is he?”
“He’s good. I swear the fresh air just knocks him out. Course, he was a bugger about sleeping last night, so he’s been making it up today.”
“He sick?”
“No, at least, I don’t think he is. I think it’s just one of those things that babies do now and then. I called Faith in the middle of the night and she assured me it was normal for them to get out of their schedule once in a while. I just think that I have the perfect baby that would never do something like that and so it throws me for a loop when he does.”
“It’s a learning process,” Spike murmured, straightening and facing her. “Like most things I suppose, right?”
“Right,” she nodded resolutely, her ponytail bobbing behind her. “So, how are you?”
He heaved a sigh “I’m. . . I’m all right.”
“That sounded convincing,” Buffy said sitting down on the bench and pulling Brandon toward her, starting to move the carriage back and forth.
“I called my father a couple days ago and he’s working on getting an attorney for me.”
“Your father is getting you an attorney?” Buffy asked, confused.
“Yes, see, I called around and no one wanted to take me on.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the Adams’. No one wants to rock that boat.”
Buffy stared at him, mouth agape. “Are you serious?”
“Quite. I called my father in desperation. He was a lawyer here in the States and still practices now and then in London, even if he is for all intents and purposes, retired. I told him I had left Cecily and no one wanted me.”
“And he has connections?”
Spike nodded, “He does. He knew of some up and coming attorney’s just outside Boston, I think in Cambridge, and he was going to call in a favor.”
“That was very nice of him to do for you.”
“It was. I often wondered how I ended up so screwed up when I have truly great parents. I mean, they have their faults as any parent does, but they didn’t fuck me up or anything. No issues I blame them for.”
Buffy smiled, “That reminds me of a poem.”
“What poem?”
Buffy giggled, “It’s called, ‘This Be the Verse’.”
“How does it go?”
“Oh, you don’t want to hear it,” she waved her hand dismissively.
“No, I do. I happen to like it when you’re a nerd,” he grinned, chuckling when she gave him a mock glare over her glasses. “Come on, tell me.”
“Okay, it’s by this quite crass poet named Philip Larkin. I mean…quite crass.” She cleared her throat, “It goes like this: They fuck you up, your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do./ They fill you with the faults they had/ And add some extra, just for you./But they were fucked up in their turn/By fools in old-style hats and coats,/Who half the time were soppy-stern/And half at one another's throats./Man hands on misery to man./ It deepens like a coastal shelf./Get out as early as you can,/And don't have any kids yourself.”
Spike laughed, “Well, that’s something then.”
Buffy laughed, “Isn’t it though? I went through this period in my pregnancy where I was convinced I was going to be a terrible mother and I printed it out and taped it to my fridge. It was like a daily affirmation on how I didn’t want to be with Brandon.”
“Do you still have those doubts now?”
“Oh, everyday,” she laughed nervously. “I’m so afraid these days of making a wrong choice that I end up making no choice at all. And it extends beyond him, even though every choice I do make does concern him in some capacity.”
“Did your parents fuck you up, Buffy?”
“No, I think like you, I often wonder where I came from,” she laughed breezily. “I think my whole thing with my parents is that they expected so much from me, and I worked so hard to please them, that I found other ways to rebel. I mean, I wanted to succeed too, but I wanted to do it on my own terms and oftentimes I felt as though I was doing it on theirs. So, I retaliated in my own way and got into my own trouble. That I’m learning from and trying to amends for now.”
“I have such a hard time seeing you as something other than . . . well, pure. I mean you talk about being so with such passion, I have a hard time picturing you as a bad girl.”
“You do remember that I slept with you that first night, right?” she said dryly.
“Yeah, but I figured that everyone does that at least once,” Spike shrugged.
“Try many, many times.”
“No way,” Spike said, truly stunned.
“I told you I wasn’t a good girl,” she reminded him. “Were you not listening?”
“I just kind of thought that was. . . I mean, honestly, I thought that your definition of bad and my definition of bad were two entirely different things.”
“No, William, they’re not that far off. In fact, they’re in the same ballpark. I’m your every day, run of the mill, textbook slut.”
“Textbook slut?”
“You know--the ones that sleep around with random men thinking that if they just have sex with them, they’ll like them that much more. Even hopefully love them. The ones that think that a guy must really like them since they want to have sex with them. When really, the guy just wants to get his rocks off and doesn’t give a shit one way or another about you.”
“Wow,” Spike murmured, astonished.
“Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t always like that. There were times when I wanted to have sex just for the sake of getting my own rocks off and didn’t care if they liked me or not. And it’s not like I told myself that ‘this is why I’m having sex with this asshole. So he’ll like me.’ I didn’t want to be a cliché. Perish the thought!” She laughed nervously, shaking her head in a self-deprecating manner. “But deep down. . . I was hoping for something real. Which in itself is pretty cliché too. And by the time I figured out that sex with random men was truly not getting me anywhere and wanted something real, the old-fashioned way, it was too late.”
“How so?”
“I had a reputation.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, so. . . I’m not your good girl that’s just jaded by the bad experiences around her, but I’m the bad girl that’s had those bad experiences happen to me – I’ve done them. Lived them. And I’m not wanting to go back to them.”
“I didn’t make it easy on you, did I?” Spike asked softly. “Doing what I did.”
“Let’s not rehash it, okay?” Buffy said quietly, looking away from him and gazing down at Brandon’s slumbering form.
“So, is Doyle…I mean, is he the good guy you’ve been wanting?”
She looked at him, her eyebrows knitting together. “How did you know about that?”
He stared at her, trying to make sense of what she just asked. “What do you mean how did I know? It’s pretty obvious you guys are together--”
“We’re not… William, we never—William, he just asked me out the other day. We weren’t dating before. We were just friends.”