Extended Summary: When Buffy finds out that Spike's still getting chewed out for what he almost did by her friends and family a year after the events of Seeing Red, she decides it's time to set the record straight, once and for all.

(A/n: This fic is titled after the Damien Rice song.)

One Shot

The potentials had been talking, asking questions of the established Scoobys about how Spike and Buffy could be together after what they'd heard about him – what everyone said he'd done. Or almost done.

Buffy walked into her house just in time to hear Anya say she didn't really get it either, and watch as Xander stayed mute for once, his silence more condemning than his words could ever be.

The scene made her glad that Spike had decided to stay out for an extra long patrol and hadn't come home the same time as her to discover the conversation. She set her keys down on the hall table extra loudly, bringing an end to it and drawing all eyes to hers, even if some of them had to look away again, a moment later.

Crossing her arms, Buffy strode to the centre of the living room and turned 360 degrees, making sure to glance at everyone individually. More and more eyes left hers, focusing instead on the carpet, as she did so, and extra people filled the room when she said, "You wanna hear about me and Spike? Fine. It's time for a history lesson."

"Buffy, you don't have to–" said Xander, only to break off and turn his own gaze downward at a particularly pointed glare from the Slayer.

"There seems to be a lot of misinformation," she began, after silence settled in the spaces between the warm bodies on the carpet and couch.

"You guys have questions. You want to understand, or want some drama or gossip to take your minds off the peril. I get it. Really, I understand. But this is my home, where I live with Spike, and you will respect that. After tonight? It's done. The glances you think we don't see. The whispers, and pointing fingers; they stop."

She paused to see a few people swallow and glance quickly at each other, but no one tried to interrupt or fill the ever-growing quiet. Good, thought Buffy, before wetting her lips and bracing her shoulders. She'd wanted everyone's full attention, and she'd got it.

"Spike didn't rape me. Not last year, not ever," she stated, simply, before pausing again to take a long, steadying breath. "He did try, and I did fight him off."

Before the words could settle, she barrelled on, not sure she'd be able to build up momentum again if she lost hold of it. The words had been in her so long, they'd rusted solid along her bones, and she was resentful at having to scrape them off and present them for public scrutiny.

She'd promised herself, and Spike, over the summer that she'd stop paining herself for the benefit of others, and she meant it. This was an exception, and it was the last time.

"Spike has hurt me, a lot. The day before he tried what he did, he slept with a friend of mine, and he told my friends that we had been sleeping together – something I'd forbidden him from doing

"We'd been sleeping together for weeks, and I'd broken it off. He didn't take it well, and he wanted to hurt me. What he said to you, Xander… yeah, he wanted to hurt me."

Xander looked up, his mouth fixed in a straight line as he leaned ever so slightly away from Anya, who was blushing for what was, Buffy guessed, the very first time in her life.

Building even more steel into her tone, Buffy continued to say, "I beat Spike bloody and left him in an alley. He wanted to protect me in his own stupid way, and I hit him, and hit him, and hit him until his face was a bruise; his nose broken, and his ribs cracked. I never said sorry, and he never questioned me about it. That was while we were still screwing. While I was forcing him to shut down all the feelings he had for me and only concentrate on the lust, and the pain.

"Spike made a sex robot of me once, too. Did you know that? It was just before he was tortured by a hellgod to keep Dawn safe. Before he sliced his hands open on a sword to stop it coming at me.

"Spike came to me when my first boyfriend went evil and tried to end the world. We formed a pact, and he held up his end, taking his ex out of the equation and making it possible for me to win.

"Spike chained me up once, for that same ex; threatened to feed me to her if I didn't express some kind of feeling for him. And then he let me go, when she got loose and actually tired to attack me.

"Spike had my back when I fought the hellgod, and took care of Dawn when I died.

"The government experimented on him and made him suffer, and starve, and I and my friends mocked him for it.

"Spike was the only person I told the truth to, when I came back from the dead. When my friends dragged me out of heaven and were passive-aggressive when I didn't really seem grateful.

"Spike's the one I told everything to, ranted at, beat up, and used any time I wanted. I taunted him for years, lied to him, and about him, and told him he was a dirty secret, and that none of the bad things I did to him mattered, because he was this evil, disgusting thing."

Buffy's voice broke, and Xander said again that she didn't need to continue, but she closed her eyes and rallied her strength.

"I led Spike on and told him I didn't want him as I pushed him down and took what I wanted. I did that a lot of times. I would tell him no and would change my mind. I'd kiss him and deny it. I'd tell him there was nothing there – nothing between us at all – and then I'd kiss him again.

"Spike took it all. He pretended he didn't see when I cried, and he said nothing when I kicked him in the head and ran off.

"When a demon was making me spin around and around to my death, he caught me, and helped me to go on living. He's fought by my side more times than I can count.

"He was there for all of that, and more. I could tell you things about every single one of my friends that would make you never be able to look at any of them in the eye again, but I won't, because those things don't matter, and the people they are have changed. Spike has changed. More than anyone I've ever known.

"I know you don't know much about vampires, yet, but bloodlust is a serious thing. The demons within vamps are strong, and they don't let up. There is this thing inside all of them, all of the time, driving them to kill, and maim, and rape. And Spike fought that nature, for me. He went out and got a soul, for him, and for me. So he wouldn't be the kind of person who would ever come close to hurting me again. If you live as long as I do, you'll learn the gravity of what that means.

"Spike is a lot of things, and he has fucked up as much as the rest of us, but I share my bed with him and I trust him more than anyone. I have seen every dark thing in him, and he's seen it in me, and we love each other despite that. There are no illusions. I'm not kidding myself, and he is not a threat. He is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and your best chance of surviving the apocalypse outside of myself."

Buffy's small frame stooped as she ran out of steam, her speech coming to an end. After a minute, she realized there was a tingle at her neck, and she looked up to, towards the living room door.

"Spike," she said, nodding at him and forcing her shaking legs to close the distance.

He took hold of her, when she was close, and they went up to bed without another word or backward glance towards anyone.