I'll give you countless amounts of outright acceptance if you want it
I will give you encouragement to choose the path that you want if you need it
You can speak of anger and doubts your fears and freak outs and I'll hold it
You can share your so-called shame filled accounts of times in your life and I won't judge it and there are no strings attached to it ~ You Owe Me Nothing in Return, Alanis Morrisette
Spike felt that things might actually be looking up after he got out of his meeting with Lindsey and Liam – or, Angel. No screw that, he was not calling a grown man “Angel”.
He rather felt as though he was on a roller coaster ride since…well, since he’d met Buffy. Thinking back on all that had transpired since he met her, he likened his meeting her as going up the first hill, that slow ‘click, click, click’ sound that lulls you in a false sense of security even though you’re filled with apprehension about going down the first hill. And then of course the first hill down was Buffy finding out about Cecily and then well, from there, it was just going down one tremendously long hill with no going back up.
Until of course Buffy came back into his life. Until she waltzed into his office on that incredibly hot summer day, glowing like a fucking Christmas tree and told him she was having his baby. Since then, he’d been up and down hills, veering here and there and everywhere. No wonder he felt as though he had whiplash. The dips seemed much more frequent than the hills going up. Though, that’s what a real roller coaster was like. You never cared too much about the hills going up; you only focused on that next big plummet down.
And now, while he was looking up, he had to do something to protect Buffy and his son to keep them from plummeting with him on that next big hill.
Buffy was only half-listening to Willow prattle on about Oz and while she knew this was a major event in her friend’s life; she was playing the selfish card this afternoon and losing herself in her own thoughts.
“Buffy.”
“Yeah?” Buffy looked up at Willow.
“I just told you that frogs were falling from the sky and you said ‘That’s so great Wills’. What’s going on?”
Pushing Brandon in his stroller through a department store, hunting for some new clothes, Buffy replied nonchalantly, “Nothing.”
“Liar. What is it? Is it about your date with Doyle?”
“Kind of yes, kind of no.”
“Okay…” Willow said slowly. “Where do you want to start?”
“Spike called me this morning to tell me had an appointment with an attorney.”
“For his divorce?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s…good? Bad?”
“Good…I guess,” Buffy said, frowning.
“Good how?”
“Well, the obvious reasons: She’s a bitch, he’s a cheater, and they hate each other. No one should have to live in that kind of hostile environment.”
“And bad how?”
“I can’t say,” Buffy muttered and headed toward a clearance rack of clothes, struggling to get Brandon’s stroller through the tight spaces between the racks.
“You can say--”
“No, I can’t!” Buffy said, spinning to face her friend. “If I say then it’s like…it’s like…”
“It’s like cheating on Doyle?”
Buffy stared at her. “I’m not exactly with Doyle to cheat on him, Wills. We had one date.” She held up her pointer finger, “One.”
“You said you would go out with him again, in fact you said you were going to.”
“Yeah, I know what I said, but…I just…I just…and yeah, I do feel like I am in a way cheating on Doyle which is ridiculous and yet so me, but …Spike getting a divorce means that he’s single.”
“I knew it,” Willow said, snapping her fingers.
“What?”
“I knew you had feelings for him!”
“You did?”
“Oh, come on Buffy, it’s so obvious! The way you perk up when he calls or when he’s mentioned. The whole hemming and hawing about dating Doyle--”
“In all fairness, I would have ‘hemmed and hawed’ about Doyle no matter if Spike was in the picture or not. I mean…Doyle’s my best friend and I’d never thought of him that way.”
“Is Spike ‘in the picture’ with you or just with Brandon? I mean, do you know how he feels?”
Heaving a deep sigh, Buffy shook her head and once again pushed Brandon toward the racks she wanted to look at. “No, I don’t.”
“You don’t get a feeling from him?”
“What do you mean?”
Willow rolled her eyes. “I mean, you don’t get a vibe from him that perhaps he feels the same way?”
“Well…” Buffy chewed her bottom lip. “Sometimes. But I don’t want to be presumptuous about it and think that just because of what we had, though we really didn’t have anything, did we? – and just because I feel it, doesn’t mean he does too.”
“A woman knows these things, Buffy,” Willow said wisely.
Now Buffy rolled her eyes. “Not always. I’m legitimately clueless. I didn’t even know about Doyle!”
“Really?”
“Really. If it’s not blatant --- as in them waving their dick in my face--”
“Buffy!”
“—Then I have no flipping clue.”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” Willow said, mortified. She was turning as red as her hair.
Buffy laughed, “Well, it’s true! Physical feelings I can figure out, that sort of thing is glaringly obvious isn’t it? But emotions…not so much. I always feel as though I’m second – guessing everything and just kind of muddling through…kind of like going against the tide.”
Willow laughed then. “Buffy, you’ve just described most relationships.”
Buffy was stunned. “Even the real ones?”
Willow laughed again and nodded, “Even the real ones.”
Shoulders sagging, Buffy sighed, “I’m horrible aren’t I? What’s wrong with me? I mean…this is Spike. The dude that cheated on his wife with me and lied and . . . I feel like trash. Like I should have enough self-respect to not have feelings for him.”
“It has nothing to do with self-respect, Buffy. It has to do with your heart and what it wants.”
“Well, my heart is stupid,” Buffy pouted. “I should feel those things for Doyle.”
“But like you said, it was only one date.”
“What’s that about? I thought you were all on the ‘Date Doyle’ brigade. Faith would have a canary if she knew you were on the opposing side.”
Willow grinned and pulled out a pink shirt, “I’m not for the opposing side. I’m not on Doyle’s and I’m not on Spike’s.”
Buffy narrowed her eyes. “Then whose side are you on?”
“I’m on the side of what will make you happy, Buffy. You’ve been my best friend for years. You’re a spectacular person even if you don’t see it, and I think that Faith has a tendency to cram it down your throat what she thinks you should do. But what you want to do is not always in agreement with what she wants you to do.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Buffy muttered, cramming a pair of jeans back on the rack.
“I also think that since this whole thing went down with Spike, you’ve let others tell you what to do. You haven’t done what you want.”
“Because I don’t know what I want!” Buffy exclaimed, causing others around them to stop and stare.
Willow smiled, “But you know who don’t you?”
Buffy shook her head and stared at the clothes before her, but not really seeing any of them. “It looks like Rainbow Brite threw up on this rack,” she commented dryly.
Willow giggled, “See, you do know. That’s why you’re avoiding.”
Buffy looked up at her friend. “I just want to do what’s right.”
“And I have complete faith in you that you will figure that out,” Willow said and walked away to the next rack.
“That’s it?” Buffy asked, “That’s all you’re going to say?”
Looking up, Willow nodded, “Yep.”
Spike asked Buffy to meet him the next afternoon in the park again. He’d sounded a little out of sorts when he rang and so Buffy didn’t pressure him too much as to what had transpired with the attorney’s he met with. She was seriously hoping that things went well. Her panicked mind had come up with the idea that perhaps he’d decided to go back to Cecily after all and work things out.
In fact, Buffy had so much convinced herself of that, that when she saw Spike waiting for her, that was the first thing she asked him before he even had the chance to say hello.
“What?” he asked clearly confused. The question clearly threw him off.
“Are you going back to her?” Buffy asked again.
“No, I—Buffy, why would you think that?”
“The way you sounded on the phone. The way you asked me to meet you. You sounded funny.”
The corner of his mouth turned up into a grin. “Funny how?”
“Tense.”
Spike sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I guess in a way I kind of am.”
“In a way? Did the meeting not go well? I thought they were going to take you on.”
“They are.”
“Then…?”
“Can we sit, please?”
Buffy shook her head, “No, I kind of don’t want to.”
“I’d prefer you did.”
“Too bad I guess.”
Spike had to grin at that. She didn’t give herself enough credit as being one tough cookie when push came to shove.
“Buffy, I spoke with Cecily the other night before I saw my attorney’s.”
“And?” she said cautiously.
“She knows of my affairs.”
Buffy paled and gripped the stroller. “Does she know--?”
“No, she doesn’t. Not that I’m aware of anyway and I reckon she would have said something if she did know.”
“So, then…what are you tense about?”
“I don’t want her to know for your sake and for his.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “What do you want me to do?”
“If you could, just for now…pass Brandon off as Doyle’s.”