Love Hurts
Buffy, Spike, and anyone else mentioned herein belong to the folks at Mutant Enemy.
He never says he loves her.
He wants to. It's all he can do not to say it with every non-existent breath he takes. Every look he gives her, every touch … it's all about the love that's inside his unbeating heart. If he had a soul, it would be hers.
But she doesn't want his love.
He would like to think that she comes to him out of lust, if nothing else. That when she lies in his arms she's doing so because she desires him, his touch. He would like to think she wants him.
But he's lived too long to be that big a fool.
She comes to him not for the sex, but for the forgetting. When she's with him, she can forget about the gnawing emptiness that comes from crawling out of your own grave. Sex is an escape for her—and sex with him is a way to prove just how much of a hell the world of the living is after being in heaven. Love—or even sex—with someone she could respect and care about would make this too much an affirmation of life instead of just a way to assuage her pain.
But with him? Sex with him wasn't for love—or even for fun. Sex with him was safe because he disgusted her. And what they did disgusted her. Sex with him was a way of expressing the contempt she feels for herself … a way of debasing the body she didn't want to come back to.
She degrades herself with every kiss that he gives her.
He knows that. He understands it. And he tells himself that he doesn't care.
But he does.
Because he loves her.
Even when he can't say the words.