He hadn’t tried to contact Buffy since she went on the lam from him. He didn't even attempt to see her from afar because facing another rejection right now would just be too painful. His heart was still too raw for her to stomp on it again. Earlier that day he’d seen on the television that she was in town for the premiere to her newest movie but he’d tried to ignore it. He didn’t want to look at her smiling face when the last thing he wanted to do was smile.
At first, after she ran away like a spooked mouse, he’d solely wanted to drown his sorrows at the bottom of a bottle, but it quickly became apparent that there wasn’t enough alcohol in the continental United States to wash her from his mind. He’d thought about turning to something even stronger, but as a veteran of the porn trade he knew the dangers of tumbling down that rocky path.
The next best thing, he decided, was isolation. Complete and total isolation from anything that reminded him of her. Unfortunately just about everything stirred up her image in his mind’s eye so the whole process seemed futile.
However, it had allowed him to realize one thing. Instead of drinking himself into an early grave, he needed to form a plan. He wasn’t sure exactly what that plan was going to be yet…but it needed to be gold standard. After all of the hurt that he’d inflicted on his girl in the past nothing less than perfection was going to win her heart for him.
Unfortunately, with half the contents of the USA’s alcohol stash flowing through his veins, it wasn’t the easiest time to concoct a worthy plan.
Spike lit a cigarette and savored the burn as the smoke curled into his lungs. It calmed him a little but he was still jittery with a mixture of hurt, hope and guilt.
Maybe he could purge the guilt at least. If he could do things right this time then it would surely serve to erase his past sins.
“Not that Buffy’ll see it like that, you prize ponce,” he said, angrily stubbing out the butt in his hand. “You always mess up anyway. Even if you fix it you’ll just fuck it up some other way, won’t you Spike ole boy?”
He sighed heavily as his memory settled on a painful recollection of just how easily he was able to fuck up everything when it came to the elusive Buffy Summers.
Buffy marched into the diner, where Spike was waiting for her.
She couldn’t believe he hadn’t even bothered to inform her that he was a porn star. Didn’t he care how that could ruin her reputation? If it hadn’t been for Faith and her weird interpretation of suitable conversation she would never have known.
The angry set of her lips was probably scaring off every sane person who crossed her path but she was clearly too mad to even care.
The whole journey over she’d been mulling the situation over and over in her head but she’d only come up with one conclusion.
Spike had purposely deceived her.
There was no other explanation for it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been given ample opportunity to confess his less than stellar career path but instead he’d chosen to conceal it.
She was so angry that she felt her brain might start leaking out of her ears.
Buffy located where he was sprawled in a booth looking every part the fallen angel that he actually was. Her whole body suffused with an involuntary and yet unquenchable heat as she gazed at him from across the diner. Despite his less than honorable personality her body didn’t seem to be able to stop reacting to him and as she sauntered over, looking as nonchalant as she could, she thought that her insides might explode from the butterflies that filled them.
Slipping into the booth, she evaded his attempt at a kiss. “Hello, Spike,” she greeted him coldly.
“Alright love?” he asked, studying her with concern. Her tense posture and furrowed brow were worrying him.
“I guess that depends on your interpretation,” she laughed humorlessly. “But you’re the expert at interpreting things just the way you want them. Aren’t you, Spike?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. As cool as he looked on the outside, inside he was suddenly churning with fear.
Buffy scoffed and scowled at him. “Why didn’t you tell me what you do?” she asked him accusingly, eyes suddenly flashing with fury. She didn’t need to explain what she meant. It was obvious from the guilty look on his face that he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“I planned on telling you eventually but I didn’t think it was that important, Princess,” he admitted.
“Not important?! Are you totally out of your tiny mind?”
“Bloody hell, Buffy! I had a feeling you wouldn’t exactly love what I do so…”
“So you decided to lie to me about it?” She shook her head, trying to clear the red haze that was trying to descend in front of her eyes.
“No! I thought if you didn’t know about my job then you might want to get to know me for me. But apparently a bloody golden girl like you wouldn’t slum it with a git like me.”
“Ugh!” Buffy stamped her foot. “See I can’t even understand what you just said. Why can’t you speak English?”
“Says the girl who massacres the English language.”
“You’re making with the no-importo again,” she said.
“Case in point.”
“Why do you do that, Spike? You avoid the issue!”
“Hello Pot, meet Kettle…”
“I can’t do this, Spike. I can’t even look at you right now. I thought I could trust you and you’ve proved you’re no different from any other guy.”
“I am different, love. If you gave me a go you’d see that.”
“No, I gotta go,” she told him, rising to her feet and whirling around toward the exit, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her back into the booth.
“If you want to go, I’ll let you go. But just look me in the bloody face and tell me you don’t want me as much as I want you.”
Buffy took a deep breath, before lifting regretful eyes to his face. “Sorry Spike, you’re hot. Actually you’re wicked hot. But I can’t date a porn star.”
His hopes dashed, he felt an unfamiliar twist in his chest cavity. The last time he’d felt that kind of pain was when his previous girlfriend had broken his heart. But he wasn’t about to give up on the girl. “How about a shag then?”
Her nose wrinkled as she tried to decipher what ‘shag’ even meant.
“Come on, love,” he cajoled her, hope springing up in his eyes. “You and me, one night in soddin’ paradise and what all.”
“No, Spike. As if! It’s never gonna happen. Just deal with it, okay. I’m sure you got a whole bunch of girls waiting for you, so leave me be.”
“I'm not denying that I could shag any bird I wanted to five ways to Sunday," Spike said, cringing at Buffy's look of disgust. "But I don’t want to leave you be, pet. I just want you. Instead of being such a judgmental, contrary little bint maybe you could try and understand that my job isn’t the person I am inside.”
“No, I know it’s not. But the person you are inside…well he’s a liar, and possibly a gross pervert, so I don’t like him very much.” Buffy closed her eyes and licked her lips. “Goodbye Spike,” she told him sadly before leaving the booth and striding away.
As she sauntered out of his life, Spike Pryce felt a pain inside of him that was worse than any he’d ever experienced. He felt as if he was cracking into two pieces, being dragged under by a viscous emotion that he wasn’t even sure how to identify.
It wasn’t over though. He wasn’t giving up the fight…not yet.
To his credit, Spike hadn’t given up on the fight. He’d spent six years trying to change from the man he used to be. He went straight and he was making a life for himself in the mainstream field now. Of course it still wasn’t good enough for her.
“Bloody selfish bitch!” he swore, pacing edgily. “Can’t even see how much I’m trying to be good…for her.”
He dropped to his knees and the bottle of beer that he was holding tightly slipped from his fingers. It bounced lightly on the tattered motel carpet before landing on its side. The rest of the contents spilled from the top in the same way that Spike’s pain was spilling from his heart. Except that the bottle would eventually be empty and Spike would never be free of the pain. Not unless by some miracle he was able to have Buffy.
“That’s not bloody likely any time soon is it?”
He thought back to his earlier musings about a grand plan to somehow make her love him. He didn’t think that would work but he wondered if it wasn’t worth a try. After all, no matter how much he wished he could forget about it, she was in Los Angeles right now in preparation for her movie showing. And she would no doubt be attending one of those glitzy after parties that the stars loved so much.
As the beginnings of a plan started to form in his mind, Spike’s mouth curved into the first smile that had touched his lips since he last saw Buffy.
With renewed vigor he hopped to his feet and began to plot.
This was going to work.
It had to.
On the other side of town, someone else was enduring an equally sleepless night. Buffy lay in her bed, the events of the past few weeks running ceaselessly through her weary mind.
After leaving her tryst with Spike behind, Buffy had taken a short trip to the East Coast to make some television appearances. Her time away from Spike allowed her to gain some much needed perspective on the whole situation. Although it was still a Buffy-perspective so it was a little skewed.
She realized that she was attracted to her blond sparring partner to some degree. That was why she’d turned to him in her drunken state for her some sexual comfort. However, she denied that she trusted him. To Buffy he was just good for sex. Wasn’t that his business after all?
So why did her heart cringe at that assertion?
Nevertheless, in typical Buffy fashion, she pushed her heart’s desires aside and listened to the rationality of her head. Spike was bad news and staying away from him was a good idea. She was certain she was making the right choice. Anyway she had much more important things to concentrate on right now.
More important things like giving interviews to a whole bunch of probing talkshow hosts.
It was emotionally and physically draining but it took her mind of her newly perspective-d romantic crisis. It meant that she was too tired to stare into the dark as she lay in bed at night, churning the Spike-situation over and over in her head. It meant that she didn’t get the time to try and remember just how the curve of his neck smelled or how his lips tasted against hers.
Not that she had any desire to recall those things, of course. Or at least that’s what she kept on telling herself.
When she got done with the stress of repeatedly being asked the same questions about her lack of a sex life over and over again, Buffy returned to Los Angeles for the premiere of the movie that facilitated her initial meeting with Riley Finn several months earlier.
‘Beating Heart, Bloodied Soul’ was a movie that transformed Buffy into a kick-ass action heroine. After a lifetime of playing cutesy princesses or soppy romantic leads, that film had been a breath of fresh air for her. Despite the fact that she’d met Riley while making the movie, it didn’t mar the experience for her.
Okay, maybe it did just a little. But of course being in the same Zip code as Riley marred things.
She was looking forward to the premiere and dreading it in equal measure. When Riley’s macabre exposé had hit the shelves Buffy found herself caught in a maelstrom of press attention. However, that had since died down a little and Buffy was hoping to keep it that way. However, she couldn’t help but feel that the premiere would dredge all that controversy back up again.
On the other hand this was her chance to be seen as a true action heroine. The world would finally see how she was breaking out of the good-girl mold and growing up into an independent woman.
However, now it was the night before the big occasion and there was one teeny tiny problem. She was dateless for the both the premiere and the after party.
Now usually that wouldn’t bother her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t gone stag to these things before. After all, her dating history read like an obituary anyway so she wasn’t exactly all with the needing to beat the boys off with a stick. However, the idea of seeing Riley with some slut and having him gloat that she was all alone…well just the thought of it made her blood run cold.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. It wasn’t as if she had to actually talk to anyone at the premiere, except for the reporters and she could tell them she was rocking the whole ‘Independent Woman’ concept. That would work. In fact, she was pretty sure that legions of women would jump on her new bandwagon if she said that.
However, that still left the after party. Going to that all alone was way worse than they premiere and it would no doubt give her ex a good chance to stick in the knife and twist. She supposed she could just avoid it altogether but that would actually be even worse. Riley would know she was avoiding it because of him and he would feel like he’d won.
Well there was no way she was going to give that bastard the satisfaction. Buffy Summers didn’t just roll over and die. She stood up to the big bads, kicked their arrogant, oversized asses.
With her fists still clenched in determination. Buffy curled into bed and closed her eyes, letting the Sandman gently carry her into the land of dreams. If she’d known it would be a sleep filled with horrible memories, maybe she would have popped a couple of Adderall instead.
Memories and dreams melded into one restless night.