This was my first fic, and it shows. No plot (though sadly, no smut to make up for that fact.) Just angst and more angst. Written around a phrase I liked and wanted to use somewhere.

Insert standard disclaimer here.





She dreams about him more nights than not. Sometimes he's there in the inexplicable way of dreams, as a figure not himself, but representing him in ways easier for her brain to accept. Sometimes he appears in full color, all blood and bleach with a tang of bluish vulnerability behind his eyes and she could drown in him, she could. There are times she dreams she loves him. She thinks it would be easier if she did.

Four a.m. She's been in bed for two hours now. Didn't ask for his help tonight, though she could have used it. When she got home, she made a cursory check to see Dawn asleep, then sank onto her own bed, not bothering to shower away the dust. He was outside. Had been before she hit the covers. His presence was unsettling and comforting at the same time. She doesn't understand the feeling, but that's nothing new.

"I love you."

Buffy sits up. He's not going away, and sleep just isn't coming. She goes to the window, and looks down at him. His head is turned, and though she knows he can feel her there, she wants to run away again before he sees her. Wants to pretend she isn't going to do what she's about to do. That it was all his idea. She doesn't, though. And then he turns.

He's crying. That shouldn't matter to her, but it does. Spike has this talent, this way of looking at her and saying more with the movement of his eyes than he ever could with his bravado and excuses. She tries to do the same thing. To say to him, with her eyes, that she's sorry about what's happened. About the way they've trod too heavily on each other's hearts, played fast and loose with lust and danger. They've smashed the thread of hope that had spun between them. And it was her fault.

When his eyes meet hers, she says in silence, "Come in." He blinks, and gestures toward the door stupidly. Buffy nods, and closes her eyes, knowing that when she opens them again, Spike will be beside her.

"Buffy." Her name is an oath, a song, a poem on his lips. His hands hover above her shoulders, moving towards her neck, tracing her clavicle in the air.

"I don't want to talk. I'm tired, and I don't want to figure this out. I just want…" She doesn't know how to finish the sentence. She wants to be held, to be safe, to for once be the one being protected, and not the one doing the protecting. She wants to kiss him and taste the salt and blood and love. Kiss him and pour all her confusion and longing into him, so he can figure it out.

He rests his hands finally on her shoulders. His rough hands rasp the smooth skin unhidden by her shirt. He turns her gently and pulls her toward his chest, enveloping her in leather and smoke and the mystery that is Spike. How can he be so gentle like this if he's evil? How can he eat kittens and play with the lives of innocents if he is not?

I love him like a silence, she thinks. In the spaces where there is nothing, where I feel nothing, I love him. In the absence of other feelings, there is love.