Buffy hit the door less hard then she would have back during their first go around, and once there, didn't move.

"Okay, that's just weird. How do you know what Angel tastes like? Do I even want to know?"

Little mental pictures were dancing at the edges of her mind, and she couldn't decide if she liked them or found them disgusting. Terrific, she muttered to herself, the great loves of my life and it looks like there may be a lot neither of them have bothered to tell me.

Spike snarled, "You're avoiding the question, Slayer."

Slayer. He hadn't called her that in years, not since he admitted to himself and everyone else how he felt about her. "Isn't avoiding things your stock and trade, Spike? Or am I mistaken and two years haven't really passed?"

"Answer the bloody question, Buffy. You taste like him. Why?"

Angry now, she pushed off from the door and punched him in the stomach as hard as she could. It crossed her mind that beating on him was probably not the best idea; back in the day, that had been their idea of foreplay. He grunted with the force but stayed standing. Once again, Spike refused to fight back, and instead just watched her. Frustrated, she spun away, willing to do anything but look at him. Who did he think he was, coming back this way, disrupting everything? If a person, a demon leaves, he should just stay gone.

"Still waiting here, Buffy." Spike said, and his voice was calm, like he had never been upset. Something was wrong with the world, when punching Spike made him relax. What was wrong with the man- er, vamp? "With Angel-taste in my mouth, nonetheless."

"I taste like him, and again, ewwwwwww, because we've been back together for over a year now. We're a couple." Hard to say that to Spike, hard to admit, after last night's fit, that she had indeed moved on. Why couldn't he sound jealous, instead of just mildly curious?

Oh, wait, there went the calmness. Now Spike actually looked like he had been hit in the gut. He sat down on the back step hard, that same step he had sat with her that night when she first thought of him as something like a friend, when he had come to kill her and stayed to comfort her. "What about the curse?" He sounded perplexed, like something in his world had just stopped making sense. 'Bout time something affected that new calm of his.

Buffy sat down next to him, feeling almost lost in the deja vu quality of the night. "Still there." It felt like the past, to be sitting here with him, staring into the night, feeling lost. That first year after she came back from the dead, it seemed like that they had spent ages here, talking about everything and nothing, brought together by the fact that neither of them were like anything else in the whole world.

"That why you just threw yourself me?" Spike asked, sounded only vaguely interested. The lack of emotion in his voice was confusing; who was this and what had he done with the real Spike?

"Excuse me?" Buffy impressed herself by the amount of indignation she managed to bring into her voice. "Threw myself at you? There was no throwing."

"Bollocks. You threw so hard that if I were still in London, you would have hit me."

"That's where you've been?" Buffy seized on that bit of trivia, hoping to leave the whole throwing question alone. She was taken. That whole kissing thing, that had been a moment of weakness on her part, a hope to be something other than what she was. Which was stupid, because she was perfectly happy just the way she was.

He shrugged, the movement so negligible that she could only feel it against her body, instead of seeing it. Against her will, she remembered when there had been so much more.

"Been everywhere. That's where I was most recently."

"You're gonna be all with the cryptic, aren't you?" He could have taken lessons from the old Angel, she thought, until she remembered that he probably had.

"Vamp's prerogative, you know. You ought to know, being all live-in with Angel." There was a pause, and he looked at her sideways. "Leastways, I assume you're living with him."

"Since he showed up. Don't know why you're looking so surprised- weren't you the one who said we would always be in love?"

Spike looked away, his eyes fixed on something she could never hope to see. "Yeah, well, lots changed since then, hasn't it? I was a whole different vamp when I was spouting off like that."

"Doesn't make it any less true. You were right, we really always will be in love."

He turned to face her then, his appearance still that strange mixture of the familiar and the new, now heightened by the play of light and shadow on his skin. His eyes were direct and focused on her when he spoke again. "So, you were in love with him when you said you were in love me?"

"I was delusional then," she said sourly, wishing he hadn't come back that time, wishing she hadn't been so stupid as to have admitted anything to him. Too little sleep.

"Don't wreck it by lying, Slayer. Two years since you told me, and all I can remember is those words. Waited forever to hear you admit that this thing between us wasn't one-sided. I know you, I know when you're lying, and you were being nothing but bone deep honest. I could feel it. That was why I left, cause I knew right then that I couldn't be the man you deserved. Got the damn soul so I could be worthy of you and all that happens is I go insane. Didn't want to be a burden, wanted to be someone who could stand by you. Told you this. You think this is easy for me to admit? You think I'm the kinda vamp, goes around telling the Slayer how weak I am? This is as honest as I can be. Think you owe me the same. Maybe I did wrong be leaving- looking at you know, seeing how angry you are, I can see maybe I did, but I was only doing what I thought was right for you. I'm not asking for a lot from you, I just want you to admit that you meant it then."

Buffy's words were quiet when she spoke again, but she knew that Spike could hear her no matter how low her voice. "You want more than that."

"Yeah, yeah, I do. I want you to admit that you still love me. That's why you came out here, that's why you kissed me- you still love me." His voice rang with absolute surety. That much hadn't changed about him; he had always made overconfidence into an art form.

Buffy didn't say anything after he finished talking. He was asking too much, just like he always did. Spike, always hoping for more than his fair share of anything. What was she supposed to do now? She should have never come out. She should have staked him years ago. She should have done anything but fall in love with the cocky prick.

With a suddenness that caught her seriously off-guard, the back door opened out into the little porch. "Buff..." the voice trailed off in shock as the speaker saw who she was with.

Great. Angel was home.