“You want me to what?” Buffy said, feeling dazed.
“I want you to pass Brandon off as Doyle’s for the time being. Just until this all blows over—”
“No!” Buffy exclaimed, feeling a burst of anger. “No, I won’t, I—why would you think I’d do something like that?”
“To protect him, Buffy,” Spike entreated her to understand.
“You can’t just…shove us about like that, Spike.”
“I’m not trying to shove you about--”
“That’s how it feels! You like me but you’re married, you want to be his father and then you’re not his father—God! What do you want from me? Blood?”
“Buffy, will you calm down, please?”
“No, I will not calm down. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t get to tell me anything!”
Brandon’s cry pierced the air and quickly, Buffy came round the stroller to lift him out, tears prickling her eyes as she did so. Just when she thought . . . yeah, she didn’t know what she thought anymore. All she knew was that she felt let down and tossed aside. Again.
“What’s wrong with him?” Spike asked, cutting into her personal space to get to Brandon.
“I upset him cause I yelled,” she explained, or rather retorted. “It’s your fault.”
“Mostly everything is, isn’t it?” Spike muttered.
“If you’re really asking, then yes, if you’re not really asking, then I’m going to answer you anyway: Yes.” Carrying him to a nearby bench, Buffy sat down with Brandon, cuddling him to her and wanting very much to cry right along with him. But she wouldn’t give into it. No, she would not give into tears. She’d shed enough over this man.
“Buffy,” Spike began, sitting down next to her as she rocked Brandon in her arms. “I am not asking you to do this to hurt you or make you feel as if you and Brandon aren’t important to me. I’m asking because you are that important to me and I want to do all that I can to protect the both of you. If Cecily found out about you – if her father found about you and Brandon-- he’d splash it all over Boston. Brandon’s picture would be everywhere and he’d be called a ‘bastard’. Your bastard. Our bastard, illegitimate child. You’d be named a whore and what of your job at that point? Do you think BU would want to keep you on after it came out that you had an illegitimate child with me while I was still married? Buffy, think about this rationally for a minute. I’m not trying to hurt you here; I’m trying to keep you from being hurt.”
Her mind processed what he was saying while she tried to calm Brandon down. She didn’t want to think about Brandon being exposed like that. God, what if he went to school some day and some kid said “Hey, Summers, aren’t you a bastard?” Kids could be cruel, she knew that.
“Can I take him?” Spike inquired, holding out his arms.
Swallowing hard, Buffy nodded and handed Brandon over to his father. Immediately, Brandon stopped crying and started gurgling to his father. Spike grinned down at him, their blue eyes meeting and Brandon tossed him a smile that made Buffy’s heart melt and a smile bloom in place of her scowl.
“I’m not going to say he’s Doyle’s,” Buffy murmured, handing Spike their son’s plastic toy key ring. “I won’t say anything unless I’m asked. And if I am asked, I might just say ‘I don’t know’. I don’t want to say its Doyle just because he’s the only other man in my life and we’re…something or other.”
“Who did you put down on the birth certificate, luv? In case anyone goes snooping.”
“No one. I didn’t put anyone down because at that point…I just didn’t know.”
“I get that,” Spike whispered, gazing down at his son. “How are things with Doyle anyway?”
“Fine,” she said sullenly.
Spike looked up at her, “Just fine?”
“Yeah, why—you want to make sure the fake daddy to your baby is getting along with the mother?”
“Buffy--”
“Just forget it. This is a real mess you’ve gotten into isn’t it Spike?”
“It is,” Spike agreed on a heavy sigh.
“Was any of it worth it at all? At any point? I mean, there had to be something about it all that was worth all of this.”
He shook his head, wrinkling his nose. “Nope, not one bit of my marriage to her was worth the agony it’s become now.”
“What about the affairs? I mean… were any of those worth it?”
“Just you. Meeting you was worth it.” Spike murmured.
Buffy snorted, “Well of course you were going to say that. I’m sitting right next to you and you’re holding our son. But come on. There had to be some hot number that really blew you hair back and left you panting for more.” Why, oh why was she going down this road? Suddenly she was struck with the need to know. The need to know something about them, about her place among them and if she had some place in his life beyond her having his son. Just…something to clue her in that she was special to someone aside from the usual.
Either that or it was her sick and twisted desire to find out she wasn’t all that special except for the precious cargo he held in his arms at that moment, and aside from all of that, she was nothing, absolutely nothing. In that way, she could stay angry with him and hate him and somehow find a way to banish all those lingering feelings that were driving her round the bend.
Looking up, Spike met her eyes and she nearly gasped at the unabashed honesty in them. “No, Buffy, no one but you was worth it.”
“Spike--”
“You don’t get it do you?” he demanded. “That all this? This is for you. For him. You make me want to be a better man, Buffy. You have from the first. You said I made you believe in love at first sight once upon a time, well you did the same for me.”
“Spike--” Now that she was getting what she thought she wanted, she didn’t so much want it anymore. It was too much all of a sudden and she felt as though she couldn’t breathe.
“Let me finish, please.”
She nodded, gulping, and taking a shuddering breath.
“When I got home from being with you that weekend, I felt something shift inside of me that I hadn’t felt in a real long time. Before ‘Spike’ there was William. And William was a good man that was never sure of himself and didn’t have a lot of life experience. So when Cecily came along, William took up with her, thinking it had taken him this long to even get a girlfriend and it would probably be the only girl he’d ever have in his lonely existence. So William held onto her and sold his soul away. He quickly became aware that he’d done a bad thing, but couldn’t get out of it. It was too late and the damage was done.”
“Do you really think that?”
“Yes because of what her family is, and no because now I see that fear is really all that ruled me and I became comfortable in it. It was better then, you told me once, climbing out of hell and making a change. William never went for change.”
“And Spike does?”
“Spike wanted to after he met you, Buffy. You took William and Spike and somehow made them coalesce into the man I was meant to be. The man I could have been and should have been.”
“The man you can be?” Buffy murmured.
“Yes, the man I can be. Spike was a persona created to rebel against the Adams’ in a way that was safe for me to do so without stirring the pot too much. He was my way of getting back at her and her family.”
“And then who is the man in between them?”
“Spilliam,” Spike joked and Buffy laughed.
Grinning, Spike rattled the toy keys in front of Brandon and continued. “He’s…William. He’s got to be. He’s the one I like the most. William was a good man; a man worthy of having a son and someone like …” breaking off he took a deep breath, shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and continued, “Spike is just a means to an end. I need to get out and Spike’s a hard ass. One day though, I just want the two to converge and become one.”
“And you say I help with that?”
“Yes, Buffy. You made me want to change that weekend. You made me want to give it all up, leave Cecily and start my life anew. When I lost you – and rightfully so—I lost my will for it all. I sunk even lower in my self-loathing and just stopped caring.”
“What changed?” As if she didn’t know. He was holding what changed.
“The day you walked in my office and told me I was going to be a father. You came back to me and you brought a gift that I never thought I’d have.”
“I never knew I had the capacity to change someone. Maybe I missed my calling in life,” Buffy joked, trying to ease the sudden tension surrounding them that was increasingly growing more and more palpable by the minute, with every word he spoke, and soon it would be thick enough to touch…kiss.
“I know you don’t see yourself as someone pure and innocent, and I know you don’t see yourself as someone deserving of love and all the good things in the world that you want, but feel you can’t have. But, Buffy, you are more deserving than anyone I’ve ever met. You have given me more than a son that I worship. You gave me the impetus to change, you pushed me to a new life and you showed me that a person can change if the will is there and while it’s not easy, you can’t give up no matter what.”
His impassioned speech had Buffy welling up again. She did that for him? How was that even possible? She looked away from him, trying to gather herself and her thoughts.
“Buffy, look at me, luv.”
She held up her finger, signaling him to wait a minute and she took a few deep breaths before turning back to him.
He gazed at her, full of such absolute honesty, full of…dare she even think it –love, that Buffy’s breath hitched and her heart felt as though it were going to stop.
When he spoke, his own voice was clogged with the emotion he held in his eyes and in his expression, “You’re the One, Buffy.”