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Author's Chapter Notes:
Two updates this weekend! Hope you guys are enjoying the fic although truth be told, you'll probably be pretty pissed at Spike in this chapter (you'll know what I'm talking about) but I should point at that this fic isn't that fluffy, at least at this point. Spike and Buffy are in an adult relationship that has adult complications and Nick Hornby really captured that well in "High Fidelity". Anyway, enough ranting, enjoy!
The next morning, I’m sitting at the Espresso Pump trying to forget the events of last evening. Still, images of sexy Veruca slithering sexily onstage and Buffy smashing her hot little mouth to mine come unbidden into my pained, groggy head. I struggle to lose myself in a latte, or at least my version of a latte. I splash a very small cup of coffee with a large amount of whisky from the flask I’ve brought and drain it down blindly, oblivious to all the looks of disgust the other customers are sending my way. I glare back at them as if to say, yes, I am aware that it is only 10 o’clock in the morning. And I don’t bloody give a fuck.

I’m so immersed in my intense crankiness that I don’t notice Willow approach me with a scowl to rival mine. She has to clear her throat sternly a couple times before I’m drawn out of my black little cloud, and it is only then when I scramble up to draw out the chair for her. That’s right. I’m one of those kinds. A dying breed, we are. The true "Sir Walter Raleigh" blighters who’ll open doors for you, walk on the street side, offer you their coat the moment you give a sign of the slightest shiver. See? I’m not such a horrible person after all.

But immediately after she sits down, Willow wants to set that record straight. She looks me fiercely in the eye and says flatly, "You’re a real asshole, Spike."

I straighten and sputter my latte all over her peasant top. And it’s not because I think what she’s saying is outrageous. I’m not going to argue her assessment of my moral character. I’m just surprised because this is not the Willow Rosenberg I know. The Willow Rosenberg I know uses so many smirks, quirks, stammers and hand motions that a five-minute narrative becomes a two-hour chase for meaning. She must be a real woman with a mission to cut through the bullshit like this.

I play it cool and cock an eyebrow, still sipping my coffee. "It took you long enough to figure it, Red."

"Don’t do that. Don’t do that flippant, dry, British-y wit thing you do to get out of serious situations. I’m talking for real here."

"My mistake. I could have sworn you were saying I was merely posing as an asshole."

"See?! That! Stop doing that! Stop being all sardonic and --" She pauses and squints at me, hard. She notices my blood–shot eyes and tipsy state, frowning with dismay. "Wait—are you drunk?"

I laugh in an attempt to cast her accusation off, but a sudden hiccup ruins my cover. Still, I straighten and declare self-righteously, "I have no idea what you’re talking about." Then the bloody flask falls out of my pocket onto the floor and Willow swipes it, eyeing me like disapproving mother. Shame-faced, I mumble, "Just a bit knackered, I suppose."

"Goddess, Spike. It’s 10:17 in the morning."

"It’s purely medicinal," I insist, followed by another hiccup.

"And to think, I talked to Buffy last night about this whole thing," she says, like she’s bloody Mother Theresa speaking on behalf of me, a dirty piece of shite. She pauses and suddenly bores her eyes into me meaningfully.

"What? So you talked to her. That’s what you womenfolk do, I hear. You yammer each others’ ears off."

"Aren’t you curious to know what was said?"

"I’m pretty sure I know what was said. Stuff ‘bout me and her, I expect."

"That’s right," she replies harshly. "Stuff about you and her. At first it was stuff about how I thought you guys were so great as a couple and should get back together, then it kind of segued into stuff about how much of an asshole you are."

My head is on the table and it’s spinning. Veruca, Buffy, alcohol very early in the day, now Willow screaming at me. I’m very, very tired of this. I pick my head up and glare at her. "And what kind of stuff makes me such an asshole, exactly?" I say, with true self-righteousness now. What does Willow think she’s doing? What position is she in to judge me?

Willow crosses her arms. "Oh, I don’t know . . . let’s see . . . how about . . . sleeping with someone else, maybe?!" she shrieks.

Oh. Right. That.





Okay, before you all start with the looks of condemnation, give me a chance to explain. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I am not a bad human being. A shitty, useless prat, a rebellious, ungrateful son, an inattentive, crappy boyfriend perhaps, but not a bad human being. I never had the intention of cheating on Buffy. I’m sure most boyfriends don’t. Any boyfriend who knowingly goes out to cheat on his girl is a real tool, ladies, and deserves to be scorned with all the fire you can muster. Out of all the people on earth, I know for a fact that boyfriends like these will meet their future in hell, rotting away with Hitler and Stalin and Martha Stewart. I am not one of these people.

It was just a stupid, drunken encounter one night a million years ago. Okay, more like eight months ago. Still . . . eight fucking months ago. That’s a long time. Buffy and I had gotten over it. We talked it through like adults and moved on. I could try and explain this to Willow, but she'll still want to know why I did it. I suppose you do, too.

I could say it was just a drunken stupid mistake, but that would be simplifying matters. It was one of those moments that seemed very simple, but was actually the result of extended complications.

Buffy and I were going through a rough spot at the time. I don’t know if we really acknowledged how rough it was, but we were both aware that we weren’t in a good place. We were growing apart, already straying in opposite directions.

Buffy was helping her mother with her art gallery and in the process, making a name for herself in the art world as girl with a good eye for the business. She put on a few shows by herself in her mother’s gallery with a few local artists, and they were all smashin’ successes. Eventually, she launched into the grandiose project of opening a new wing for the gallery, entirely her own, and there was great hype surrounding the whole thing. Therefore, she was busy, too busy for me, and I was less than pleased.

As you can probably guess, I was on the other end of the spectrum. The store was doing less-than-satisfactorily (which is to say it was doing as it always does), and I was broke. So broke, in fact, I had to go crawling back to old Rupes. With a shake of the head and a bloody "I told you so, William," he lent me five thousand dollars to get me on my feet. It crushed that manly sense of self-determination in me and in consequence, I fell into a long fit of moodiness that excelled my normal moodiness. With things like that, I expected Buffy’s support. But no. It was always "I have to work on plans for the gallery, Spike" or "I’m just too busy, Spike" or "Shut the hell up and stop whining, Spike."

Even the sex dried up alarmingly. The one constant in our life suddenly became a burden to our (her) overwhelming schedules. She wearily came home from the gallery every night and say, "Not tonight, Spike. I promise, when things at work clear up, we’ll have a night to ourselves," then promptly fall dead asleep.

But things at work didn’t clear up. They remained just as busy, just as hectic, and just as incongruous with our sex life as ever, and it stayed that way for two months. Two months without shagging. It was too much, I tell you. I felt as celibate as an eighty-year-old priest, and twice as miserable. Something had to be done; something had to be the catalyst for change.

I’m not saying that I thought sleeping with another girl would rejuvenate the relationship. But I do know that I was desperate and horny and drunk off my arse one night at the Bronze when a saucy trollop named Faith walked up to me and started whispering dirty things into my ear. I’d been sold even if she were Agnes, the dog-faced girl; I was that piss-drunk.

So we stumbled back to her motel room, located in the seedier parts of Sunnydale, and proceeded to do things I barely remember, though I was told “I was quite the stallion”. This filled me with both guilt and pride; I was the stallion with someone who wasn’t my girlfriend, but at least underperformance wasn’t a problem.

In the morning, I was reasonably horrified with myself. Mulling over my guilt for about a day or so, I finally decided to do the adult thing and tell Buffy (which, in my mind, takes a lot of balls to do. As far as I’m concerned, the valor shown by telling your girlfriend you have cheated on her should purge you from the sin of the crime). Turns out, the trick worked. Oh, there was lots of screaming and crying and rowing and near-packing of bags, but in the end, we calmed down and agreed that one drunken encounter was not worth getting broken up over. So we didn’t tell anyone about it. And it was actually a blessing in disguise, because after everything, we could admit to things out in the open. Buffy could admit to be work-obsessed and negligent and I could admit to be a good-for-nothing cad. I thought, in some strange way, we were stronger because of it.

But I guess not. Because if Buffy is going around, digging up old mistakes and using them to justify to her friends the true nature of my assholishness, then I guess it really didn’t solidify our relationship the way I thought.

I try and explain this all to Willow. I try and show her my point-of-view, and though she is merely appraising it as "the asshole who cheats on his girlfriend" point-of-view, her face softens a little bit when I describe my plight. She’s especially impressed by my immediate admission of guilt, but I can see her feigning anger and indifference to everything I’ve said. She shakes her head and shrugs, her façade of wrath sinking down in ambivalence, and says, "Well, I don’t really care what you have to say about it. All I know is that you hurt Buffy, ergo, you equals scum."

I give her a puppy-dog pout. "Oh, come on, Red. You and me been pals for a while now, haven’t we? Does this angelic face look like the face of scum?"

She’s struggling not to giggle, and her little curling smile creases back into a frown. "Save your games, Spike. There’s no way to redeem yourself."

"Not even if I give you a cookie?" I ask, coyly waving a sugar cookie in her face. She laughs, then looks ashamed for finally caving in.

"Not even if you give me a cookie."

"So what? We can’t be friends anymore now that me and Buffy are broken up?"

She looks taken aback, then considers this. "I didn’t say that. I just want you to properly stew in guilt the way you should be doing."

"I see."

"And it’s not like I’m saying Buffy was totally in the right. I mean, I don’t really approve of the way she’s handling this Riley guy, but --"

I freeze, and Willow blushes when she realizes she’s let the cat out of the bag. Gripping the edges of the table tightly, I squint at her hard. Two words, and she’s opened a messy can of worms I’m not prepared to deal with. "What Riley guy?" I ask her through clenched teeth.

She rushes to get up and flee before I can interrogate her further. "I better go, I have to pick some things up at the Magic Box up the street --"

I grab her arm. "Hold it, Glinda. Not before you tell me this: What fucking Riley guy?" She chews on her lip and looks at me worriedly.

"I s-shouldn’t have said anything," she stammers before slipping out of my grasp. She escapes up the street, leaving me alone in the Espresso Pump, my world shaken.

I stare at Willow’s half-empty cup of coffee and the sugar cookie on the ground, the only evidence of our encounter. They are the same as they were a minute ago, but I feel quite different. A minute ago, I was just surly, smug, complacent Spike. Now Willow stupidly says one thing, and I’m filled with doubt, paranoia and unbelievable rage. I can’t take it. I kick the chair and table over, sending the cups and silverware flying as I roar, "WHAT FUCKING RILEY GUY?!" to no one in particular. I then proceed to kick in the wall, creating a very large hole. The other customers look scared and regard me as a schizo lunatic. The manager comes out with a malevolent look on his face.

Needless to say, I am henceforth banned from the Espresso Pump.





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