A/N: A special thanks to WackyBroadwayNightmare for beta'ing this for me!
He left his crypt the very moment the sun slipped below the horizon. He didn't have a particular destination in mind, just somewhere less accessible when she came looking for him. He needed time to think. He had a lot of that to do, most likely more than he could do in one night, and it would surely be only one night. He knew he wouldn't find the determination to avoid her any longer than that. No, sunset tomorrow would find him pacing his crypt listening for the first hints of her approach.
What had his unlife come to? Running and trying to hide from the slayer - and she wasn't even trying to dust him. She just wanted to shag him senseless. But he was avoiding her, why? She didn't love him; she didn't even really care about him. She thought he was just an "evil soulless thing". Maybe she was right, after all, he'd spent the last few years declaring his evilness at every turn. He was Spike, The Big Bad, William the soddin' Bloody for christsakes. Yeah, and lately all he'd been was the slayer's lapdog, a nancy boy of Angel's proportions.
If he didn't have the bloody chip in his head, he could kill them all and be done with it. But that wasn't true and he knew it. He could have killed her, but he didn't even try. He could have easily packed up and left the rest of them while she was dead, but the thought hadn't even crossed his mind.
He had stayed and watched after the nibblet, just like he told her he would. He hadn't promised to help her friends, but he knew she would have wanted him to, so he had. The Big Bad reduced to a bloody babysitter. All that with no hope of having her, all that even after she was long buried, but it still hadn't been enough.
She was using him and he knew it. What the hell was he doing? He should be taking advantage of every second she was giving him. And he would- just not tonight. He told himself that it was to teach her a lesson. He was in charge, they would play by his rules. But even as those thoughts played across his mind, he knew them to be lies. The truth was that he was damned tired of her games.
He wanted to feel desired, wanted to feel worth something; he wanted to feel a passion not fueled by hate. He needed to be wanted. He wanted to hold and be held. He wanted to give and take. He wanted warmth, love and tenderness. He knew none of those things would ever come from her; she hadn't come back right. She wasn't the girl he had fallen in love with, so why couldn't he stop loving her?
He'd been aimlessly wandering for a while, lost in thought and a desire to avoid all things slayer related. He didn't notice that he was nearing the Magic Box and was taken by surprise when his arms were suddenly filled with a warm body.