Buffy stared at Faith, “Wh-what?” she said weakly.
“He’s married, Buffy, Oz told me last night after you both left,” Willow told her, calmer and more understanding this time.
“Th-there was no ring!” Buffy exclaimed.
“You know as well as I do that that means nothing,” Faith said sternly.
Buffy shook her head, “N-no…It can’t be, it can’t….it just can’t.”
“It is, honey, I’m sorry.”
“I can’t breathe,” Buffy murmured, “The rooms spinning, oh God, I’m gonna pass out…I’m gonna pass out. I think my throat is swelling, I can’t swallow, Oh God…” her tone was starting to rise in panic, and her hands were flailing about, fanning her face.
“Buffy, honey, calm down,” Faith said, grabbing an arm and trying to pull her to the couch.
Instead though, Buffy just sank to the floor and sat there, Indian style. Shrugging at each other, Willow and Faith followed suit.
Burying her face in her hands, Buffy let out a small scream. When she looked back up at her concerned friends, she started her questioning. “How? How and why? How did this happen? Huh? What did Oz tell you, Willow?”
“He told me that I should warn you. He hadn’t wanted to cause a scene and all, but he hated the way Spike could be.”
“Could be? That sounds very much like he does this sort of thing quite often.”
“He does,” Willow murmured, “According to Oz.”
“That fucking ass,” Faith muttered, shaking her head.
“He’s married to this woman named Cecily who, according to Oz is a real bitch. Basically, he said that Spike is a ‘kept man’, and he hates it. They don’t get along at all, according to Oz.”
“Wait,” Buffy said, holding up her hand. “Cecily. There’s only one Cecily I know and that’s Cecily Adams from high school. Please tell me that’s not her.”
“One and the same.”
Buffy wrinkled her nose, “That pampered Princess? Blech. You know what? He fucking deserves a life of fucking misery for marrying that uptight rich bitch. And that’s probably the only reason he married her in the first place! What male doesn’t want a piece of the Adams fortune, even if does mean having to be with Cecily?”
“Don’t tell me you feel sorry for him now!” Faith exclaimed, incredulously.
Buffy looked at her, “Are you kidding me? I just said he deserved a life of misery, and trust me, once I’m done with him; he’s going to be living in misery. I’m going to kick his fucking ass.” She shook her head, “God! I’m so …stupid! Of course a ring doesn’t mean anything, why would it?”
“According to Oz,” Willow continued calmly, “Cecily was out of town this weekend, visiting friends in Newport.”
“Rhode Island?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. Full of other rich snobs just like her!”
Willow cleared her throat, “He…he and the guys go out on some weekends and Spike takes his ring off and hooks up with random women. He never bothers to call them again, not all of them anyway, he just…”
“He just gets laid,” Buffy finished for her. To her dismay, she was starting to cry now. “I can’t believe this is happening to me…”
“Buffy, it’s happened to a lot of women, I’m sure. Don’t beat yourself up about it. If a man isn’t wearing a ring, it’s not like he’s going to admit to being married if you asked him. I’m sure cases like this happen more often than you realize.”
“Yeah, and you know what? Been there done that. Bet you didn’t know what a whore I was in California, did you? I was…I was hoping on the straight and narrow here and then I met him and he was so . . . perfect. But of course he was perfect, right? I mean, if you’re gonna make sure the girl is a sure thing, then you gotta make yourself some kind of fucking Prince Charming, right? Can’t show your true colors or…or the slut won’t go home with you. Or maybe she would anyway? They seem to love the pain, the degradation.”
“Buffy—“
Buffy stood. “Not all of us have found our Robin. I know it was just one night, but I was really hoping that he was…we got along so well, and it wasn’t just the sex, which, let me tell you, was pretty damn amazing. It was…it was everything. I could talk to him about stuff; we shared the same interests…how much of that was fake? All of it, apparently. I’m fucking done. I’m fucking done with men. I apparently can’t make the right decisions no matter how hard I try. And I’d been doing so well too. Well, you know what? I’m going to be an old maid. I’ve decided. I’m going to have fifty cats and live alone. I’ll happily be the cat lady if it means I don’t have to deal with this crap anymore.
You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to buy polyester and tweed, lots of it. I’m going to have ankle length pencil skirts…all in gray. And those blouses with the limp bows in the front and those gray jackets with shoulder pads that make me look like a linebacker. I’m going to get black flats, incredibly ugly black flats, maybe the kind that have those little fan looking things on them. And I’m gonna pull my hair back in a bun, in a bun so freaking tight; it’ll pull the skin back on my face. I’ll have an instant face lift! And no makeup. None. Fresh-faced to the world. That’s gonna be me.”
Willow and Faith looked up at her in awe, and it was Faith who snorted first. Willow started to giggle.
“I’m serious! Why are you laughing?” Buffy demanded.
The girls stood.
“Oh honey, I don’t think you have to go that far, though it’s good to see you still have that overactive imagination,” Faith said, running her fingers through Buffy’s hair in a motherly like fashion.
“Faith,” Buffy said, choking on a sob. “I’m such a fuck up.”
“No, honey, you’re not.”
“I am! You don’t know the things I’ve done.”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Willow suggested. “We’re your friends, Buffy, we’re not here to judge you, we’re here to support you.”
“You would think I was disgusting.”
“No, we won’t. God, Buffy, do you remember the crap I did?” Faith demanded. “Talk to us, Buffy, make us understand, please.”
“You got some wine? I could really use a drink for this one,” Buffy said dryly, heading for the couch this time to sit down.
Spike entered his three-story, country style home, with a reluctant sigh. He hadn’t seen Cecily’s car in the driveway, which meant she was not yet home from her cavorting in Newport with her snobby friends; and, as far as he knew, fucking some dolt on a yacht.
Not that he had any room to talk. Course, he also didn’t have proof she was fucking around on him, and really, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t as if that mattered. It wasn’t what made him fuck around. No, what made him fuck around was his deep and abiding loathing for his wife.
She wouldn’t be so bad, really, if she could just take the two by four out of her ass, and the silver spoon from her mouth. If she could also treat him like a human being, and not like one of her ‘pets’.
He flipped open his phone to once more look at Buffy’s text: “I miss you too.” He smiled, his heart warming. Buffy. Sweet, and incredibly smart and sexy Buffy. Everything he could possibly want and need wrapped up in one perfect petite package Buffy.
When he’d laid eyes on her, two things had registered in his brain: Buffy Summers and Perfect.
He’d remembered her from high school; in fact he’d had a crush on her to beat all other crushes, ever, in high school. Back then, as nerdy William Giles, she never looked his way and he admired her from afar. When she’d left, he’d been devastated.
Life though, continued on as it always did, no matter how heartbroken one was. He got over it, what else could he do, really? Pine away for her for the rest of his life? He was only seventeen!
It wasn’t until college that he met Cecily. She was bright-eyed and enjoying her newfound life in college, in her own prudish way. They’d struck up a friendship and then it slowly moved into a relationship. Looking back, Spike could now see it for what it was: Two sheltered kids experimenting for the first time. It being his first time for everything, Spike fancied himself in love with Cecily, looking the other way at all her snobby and bossy tendencies.
In him, she seemed to have found someone to mold. She dressed him up and showed him off; the proper English gentleman. Her father, one of the richest men in Boston – most of it from inheritance – took a shine to him, and before Spike knew what was happening, he was being promised the world if he married Cecily.
He didn’t care about the world then, he just cared about Cecily. What would happen to him if she wasn’t in his life? Who would take him? No one but Cecily had ever showed interest in him, if she was gone, he would be alone again and now that he’d had a taste for what it felt like to be what he thought at the time was love, he couldn’t give her up. He was a proper English gentleman. He was also a romantic to the core and chivalrous to boot. Cecily was his first, and he hers, and for this he would marry her. So, after a long engagement, in which Spike began to feel the pressure more and more, he married her.
The world, he soon discovered, came with a price.
He was given a job in a career (his current position, of which Cecily’s father was President of), he hadn’t gone to school for – he’d planned to be an English teacher for high school kids – given a house, a car, a bursting at the seems bank account, and Cecily. Cecily, who was demanding and bitchy, patronizing and rude.
It didn’t take long for Spike to realize, he didn’t want this life he was promised anymore, and it also didn’t take him much longer after that to realize that if he gave it all back, his life would end. The Adams’ were a prestigious family in town, if he left Cecily at all, for any reason; he was threatened – in the most polite way of course – that his life would be over. Not in the sense of being harmed physically, but in the sense of being shunned completely in a town that knew and respected the Adams’ and would do anything the Adams’ said.
He was a kept man, and to rebel, William left and Spike took up residence. He went for shocking – shearing off his floppy mop of hair and bleaching it an almost white –blond. He got rid of his glasses and got contacts, got rid of the Dockers and Tommy Hilfiger sweaters and shirts, and traded them in for black jeans and black t-shirts, and his now trademark leather duster. He started working out and beefed up his body so that he could get away with the new look that was tightly conforming to his body. His entire attitude changed too. He didn’t give a flying fuck anymore about his life, his wife, and any of the shit he was expected to do. He became the complete antithesis of William, and gave himself the name Spike after having had a one-night stand with a woman who screamed at him to “Spike” her while he was fucking her hard into the bed.
Course, he couldn’t get away with being Spike all the time, and so he was forced to play dress up at work, to please his father-in-law. He played nice when he absolutely had to, and then shunned them all when he could. The lot of them was hoping it was just a phase he was going through and would eventually get over. The thing of it was, Spike felt trapped in a life he did not want and when he even hinted at leaving, Cecily went into a rage, crying and begging and pleading, promising him all sorts of things if he’d just stay, and warning him, warning him what his life would be like if he ever left. He’d have nothing.
So yeah, he fucked around, got his jollies someplace else. Had his fun, drinking too much and fucking just as much, making no promises to any woman. Basically, he took his revenge on women everywhere for trapping men since the beginning of time, by fucking them and leaving them. Once in a while, if he particularly enjoyed one, he’d hang around for a bit, and then disappear, making them fall for him just enough so that it’d hurt when he left them. In this way too, he got his revenge on Cecily, on her family for trying to control him. No one can control me. I can’t even control myself. And it felt good, in a sick sadistic way for about a minute…and then he felt like shit about himself. He was no God, he was no stud. He was nothing.
And now Buffy had entered his life and the furthest thing from his mind was leaving her. All he wanted to do was be the man she needed. She was so smart and goal-oriented, determined and strong…he wanted to be worthy of her. He just didn’t know how he would ever feel that way; he hadn’t felt worthy of very much for a very long time.