Buffy could feel her face harden at that familiar voice. Two years. Two years he had been gone, and he had the nerve to sound like it had been just days. Bastard. It was a fight to keep the anger out of her voice when she spoke, but she was older now and getting better at controlling herself. In fact, she took some pride in the fact that her voice sounded almost light as she responded. "There was something to miss, Spike?"
"Hey, give a vamp a break. Had to get my head on straight. " He still spoke with that same cocky confidence that marked everything he did. Head on straight, her ass. It was clear that nothing that really matter had changed.
Against her will, she could feel herself being drawn closer to him. He had always had that kind of an effect on her, had always been her magnet, no matter how much she hated or loved him. She ought to kill him. She should have dusted his sorry ass years ago. Asses to ashes, she thought to herself, and tried not to laugh aloud.
"What was to get straight?" she shot back at him. "You may be thinking that I have amnesia or some sort of horrible brain disease that makes me stupid, but I remember the last time you came back. I can remember it like it was yesterday. You came back, looking like death warmed over, mutter something about having a soul and collapse at my feet. You came back to me. And I , I, like an idiot, tend to you, comfort you in your need, and finally collapse from exhaustion from the sheer hell of taking care of such a whiney bastard, and when I wake up, where are you? What, I couldn't hear you? Let me remind you of where you were. Not in my bed! Not in my home and not, for that matter, in my town! Possibly not even in my country!"
The anger left her abruptly, gone so fast she felt deflated. She stopped where she stood, still taking in the new and improved Spike. "God damn it, you didn't even leave a note."
His jaw worked as he listened to her rant. In the old days, they would have been at each other's throats by this time. Hell, in some of the old days, they would have been on the ground by now, learning a whole different way to fight.
Bastard still looked good, too. That just made it worse. It was the hair that changed him the most, she thought. Gone was the trademark platinum shell, the hair she used to work so hard to mess up. It was longer now, the roots a pure and shining black; only the tips were still pale blond. The new look made his eyes bluer and his face, if anything, sharper. Or maybe he had just been refusing to eat- God knows he had started some strange hobbies and habits after the spell that gave him back his soul. The living death of starvation would have suited the old Spike just fine. He still wore black, though, and if anything, it was even more decadent. Leather pants hugged his hips and thighs, and a black velvet shirt lay mostly open on his chest, baring skin as pale as stars. She thought she could see the heavy black lines of some kind of tattoo just trailing down his shoulder, but shirt hid her view of it. A heavy silver chain was tight against his neck. Elegant punk, more goth than hard core.
He was staring at her now too, no doubt taking in her changes just as she studied his. She, on the other hand, already knew she looked like crap. The clothes she had thrown on turned out to be a pair of jeans that she had probably had since high school. The t-shirt was the same old crappy one she wore to bed, some awful thing the school had given Dawn for getting perfect attendance. Buffy had hung on it out of some strange sense of pride, and Dawn had been more than happy to give it up. What teenager in her right mind actually wanted to wear a shirt that said perfect attendance anywhere? It was like wearing a shirt that said "kick me, I'm a geek." To add to it, Buffy was suddenly feeling strangely naked without her hair. When she had first cut it down to the choppy two or three inches it was now, it felt like liberation. But with Spike's eyes on her so fixedly, all it felt like now was strange. Suddenly and without warning, she got a memory flash of the two of them standing by the sink, Spike reaching out to the touch her hair, saying how much he loved it. She had cut it short for the first time that very day.
Annoyed, Buffy shook herself back to the present. This was now. She wasn't the girl she was then, desperate to feel anything, drowning in the sheer flood of sensation that had swamped her whenever she had been alone with him in the old days. She was an adult now. Adults didn't do stupid things. She had responsibilities.
"Will you just go the hell away?" she asked sourly. She felt naked in front of him, stripped to her bare bones. It was always this way with him; since her last death, he seemed to have gained some power to see right through her. He knew too much. He was staring at her, drinking in the sight of her. The intensity in his eyes pulled at her, now just as much as before. It was like a drug to her, a deep addiction. The withdrawal she had gone through when he vanished not once but twice it had liked to kill her.
"Think you owe me a listen, seeing as how I sat quiet through all of that."
That was it. Like she owed him anything. She hauled off and hit him, the solid, familiar contact almost a relief. This she was used to, fighting with Spike. He would fight back, they would fight. Her life, at least some small part of it, would return to the good old days.
But he just took it. The punch knocked his head back, mussed that pretty new hair of his, and he just stood there. When his lip started bleeding, the slow, thick blood of the vampire, he just wiped it off. There was no anger, no lust, nothing. he was just blank, an empty slate. "I'll give you that. I owed you that. But I want you to listen now."
Buffy turned her back, knowing it was babyish, knowing she would have totally snapped on Dawn for pulling the same shit. She didn't care. He wouldn't fight, he never stayed, what good was he?
He stayed behind her. She heard the creak of the leather pants as he shifted his weight, but that was all the movement he made. After a pause long enough for her to regret staying outside, or even coming outside, he finally spoke. "I knew you'd hate me for leaving. I knew it, but I couldn't stay. It was too much. The soul was driving me crazy. I could feel it eating at me, all the things I had done. It... I'm not some bleeding martyr, sweets, and you know it. Regret ain't exactly my cup of tea. It was driving me crazy. Everything, it was just too much. I couldn't... I had to be alone. I wanted to be whole for you, Buff, not some broken thing you had to take care of. I needed it. And I wanted it for you."
Against her will, Buffy could feel his words run through her, a shiver up her spine, an ache in her gut. But she shoved it down, shoved it away; the time for feelings like that had come and gone two years ago. All that was left now was anger and betrayal. She kept her back to him. "Not enough, that string of empty excuses. Not nearly enough. You bastard. You left the day after I told you I love you. You think I gave a damn what sort of reasons you had?"