I want to be big and let go
Of this grudge that's grown old
All this time I've not known
How to rest this bygone
I wanna be soft and resolved
Clean of slate and released
I wanna forgive for the both of us ~ This Grudge, Alanis Morrisette
Talk about feeling sucker punched. Spike sat there, his mouth agape, as he tried to make sense of what Buffy had just told him about her and Doyle.
“You were never dating before?”
“No,” Buffy shook her head, “Though, it seemed that way didn’t it? I mean, I guess I can see how it seemed that way. These days it seems impossible to have a man and a woman be ‘just friends’. Unless the guy is gay, everyone thinks that something has to happen. What was that movie…” she hummed thoughtfully, “Where Billy Crystal says that men and women can’t be just friends?”
“When Harry Met Sally,” Spike supplied, feeling his good humor in an instant.
“Right. Well, I guess that holds true in the minds of many. I never really bought into it though. I mean, a man and a woman can be just friends – can’t they? What do you think, William?”
Spike didn’t really give a shit about giving his thoughts on the old adage of men and women being friends. He was busy trying to wrap his mind around the fact that all this time he’d thought her and Doyle were together and he’d respectfully kept from pursuing a relationship with her because of the supposed relationship with Doyle. And now, now he learns that not only were they most definitely not together this entire time and he could have pursued her, but that now they were together. In a manner of speaking. Of course it was all a manner of speaking wasn’t it? Like Buffy was ever going to jump on the ‘let’s date Spike’ bandwagon in light of – Jesus Christ, everything! But he could have done…something. Could have at least let her know of his intent and that when his life was more together, he wanted to give them a shot. He could have told her that she hadn’t been far off at all in her assumption that there was something between them that fateful night and in fact she was dead on about it. But now . . . now… how could he compete with Doyle? How could he compete with the man that had been there all this time, through her pregnancy and heartache and . . . Fucking A, he really knew how to screw things up good and proper didn’t he?
Buffy was still talking. “I guess in retrospect I should have seen the signs. I mean, he was quite overprotective at times, especially when it came to you. He held this torch all this time and he never told me and how was I supposed to know? I’m clueless about it when it’s real ya know?”
“So, you never…” Spike shook his head, “You never had those feelings for him?”
“No, I never thought of it. He was just Doyle, ya know?”
“Do you have those feelings now?”
Buffy snapped her mouth shut and turned away. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
“Why not? We’re just talking.”
“Cause it’s not right.”
“What’s not right about it?” he pressed.
“You’re . . . not part of that part of my life.”
“I just want to know if you feel the same way about him that he feels about you, Buffy. I’m not asking for blood or your soul here--”
No, you’re not asking for my soul, Buffy thought, Cause you’ve already got that. The thought was frustrating at best. What had she expected really? That her saying ‘yes’ to Doyle would make all her incredibly confusing feelings for Spike just disappear? Well, maybe it wasn’t what she expected so much as hoped. When he’d called her and asked to see her and Brandon, she’d gotten a pit in her stomach. The fact that just hearing his voice on the other end of the phone filled her with the jitters of the teenage crush kind did not bode well for giving Doyle a chance. She didn’t want this. Didn’t want to have those feelings for Spike, she just wanted it to end.
“Well, do you?” he demanded.
Buffy would have thought with all her experience of getting into one bad situation after another she would be an expert liar. But, she wasn’t. The only person she was skillful at lying to was herself and that always had a way of catching up to her didn’t it?
“I’d be stupid not to,” she finally said and hoped that was answer enough for him.
“What the hell kind of answer is that?” he demanded.
“Why are you getting so angry with me for?” she demanded back, turning it all back round on him. It was the preferred game of mind-fuckers. Deflect off you as much as possible and put it on the other person as their fault. She should know, she’d been mind-fucked many times in the past, she considered herself to be an expert in seeing it and now being able to play it.
“That wasn’t an answer and you damn well know it,” he told her, standing up and starting to pace.
“It was an answer if you read between the lines and figure it out.” How was that for bullshit?
He stared at her. “So, what you’re saying is that you’d be stupid to not have feelings for him, ergo, you do have feelings for him?”
“Yes,” she said, with a slight squeak in her voice. If he knew her any better, he’d be able to pick up on that and know she was lying.
“Or do you think you should have feelings for him, but don’t, and are questioning why you don’t?”
Oh for crying out loud… “Take it as you want, William,” she said wearily.
“I’m going to take it as you don’t,” he declared and sat back down, appearing almost smug.
“Well, it’s true,” she argued. “I would be stupid not to. He’s . . . kind and considerate. He treats me like a Queen. He has done a lot for me. He’s a good man and I have a lot of respect for him.”
“Does he make you weak in the knees? Does he make your stomach clench when you hear his voice? You sound like you’re dating him because you think you should, not because you want to.”
“You’re one to talk. You don’t even date, you fuck.”
“And it sounds as if that’s what you do too.”
That did it. Bounding to her feet, Buffy started to push Brandon from the man that could single-handedly destroy her with a look, a touch, the sound of his voice, and a few choice words.
Grabbing onto her arm, Spike halted her from escaping. Angrily, she tried to release herself from his grasp. “Let me go,” she seethed, “Or I swear to God, I’ll scream rape.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’m so fucking sick of this shit, Spike.”
“William.”
“No, you know--changing your name doesn’t change who you are. You have to work at that.”
“A rose by any other name?”
“You’re not sweet, you’re an ass. I told you all of that stuff about me to somehow make you see.”
“Make me see what?”
“Make you see that you and I – we’re not so different.”
“Why did you want me to see that, Buffy?” he asked, sidling up to her.
“Because I see how you’re struggling now to make changes,” she said, taking a step back from him. “I see that you’re frustrated and that you’re still trying and I . . . respect that. I understand it. Making changes is never easy when you’re used to one way of doing things. It’s so much easier to stick in a pattern of self-destruction than it is to climb out of that hell and try something new. I didn’t tell you that so you could throw back in my face--”
“Isn’t that what you do to me when you get a chance? You throw it back in my face what I did.”
“Spike, you betrayed your wife. There’s a marked difference. You went against vows you made in front of God and family and friends – you went against an entire life! You didn’t just lie to me; you lied to a string of people!”
“I’m not allowed to have regrets? I’m not allowed to make changes and not have my past follow me everywhere I go? Jesus, Buffy. You’re such a little hypocrite! You go on about how you’re trying to make all these changes in your life, how you don’t want to be known as this ‘bad girl with a rep’ anymore, but I am not allowed to do the same – how is that fair? I’m trying too, you know. You hold it over me; make it the ruler by which you decide if I should even be part of Brandon’s life, of your life--”
“Stop,” Buffy commanded, holding up her hand. “Just stop.”
Spike was hit with the overwhelming need to draw her in his arms upon seeing the tears pooling in her mossy green eyes.
“I don’t want to fight with you anymore,” she told him, her voice cracking with emotion. “I don’t want everything to be dredged up anymore. Okay? I want to stop this…vicious cycle that we can’t seem to get out of. We do well, we get angry for whatever reason and then we insult each other. That forward momentum doesn’t seem to have any place with us and I, for one, am tired of it. I’m not going to keep Brandon from you, Spike. I know that you love him and honestly, I think you need him right now.”
Spike nodded, “I do,” he agreed softly.
“I just want to stop fighting.”
“So do I, pet.”
“Maybe we can say that from this moment on, we’ll put it behind us and just go forward. We have a little boy to think of here. I don’t want him growing up with his parents fighting all the time.”
“No, you’re right. We don’t need to be fucking him up.”
Buffy smiled softly. “Right. We don’t need him making ‘This Be the Verse’ his mantra.”
Holding out his hand, Spike said, “Truce?”
She took his hand, connecting her palm to his. “Truce.”
“Past behind us?”
“Past behind us,” she agreed and shook his hand definitively.
“I…I hope he makes you happy, Buffy.”
Buffy fought back the onslaught of fresh tears at that, and smiled in what she hoped appeared to be a real smile. “Thanks.”