A/N: Sorry if I miss any major Spike-isms here, I'm just flicking through a 'quotes' site to find the ones I like. Also, in my personal universe, Spike didn't come into Angel at all.
Disclaimer: Do you think Spike would be dead if I owned it?
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Buffy had realized very shortly after entering her 'retirement' that unless you were ready for dentures, retirement was one of the most boring things in the world. But slaying hadn't appealed as much anymore, so she'd gone to the newly rebuilt Council of Watchers, and asked to become a Watcher. There hadn't been anything to do during the long days in Rome, Dawn hadn't liked it much either. So, she'd been assigned to a Slayer named Dina in London, England.
She had been apprehensive about coming here- anything that reminded her of Spike was too much to bear. Even Dawn was telling her it was stupid, not wearing leather or listening to punk music was one thing- crying when she saw the plastic bag of milk at the back of the fridge was another. Dawn just worried about her, and tried not to bring him up in conversation, Xander fretted over her, but told her that she needed to get over him; he wasn't coming back, Giles, when they spoke, which was getting more and more rare, told her that he was never good for her. Andrew started reciting poetry, which made her cry. Willow, who lived with them, didn't say anything, she understood, after what had happened to Tara, that it just wouldn't help. Nothing could help, except time.
But even Willow seemed to be realizing that that wasn't working. Buffy was like the Buffy-bot most days. She woke up, made breakfast, brushed her teeth and sent Dawn of to school without uttering more than a few sentences. Until noon she trained on her own or read. Until three or four, she sat with Willow and talked, or watched TV, except they never hit any meaningful topics because those would inevitably lead to love, which would lead to Spike, which was not allowed. At four Dina arrived, and they trained until sundown, Buffy made supper for Dawn and then disappeared to her room, the sounds of a CD could be heard throughout the house, and everyone knew it was to muffle the tears she held in all day.
The sounds of Buffy moving around in her room could be heard until almost four in the morning most nights, later sometimes, never earlier. Willow, Dawn and Dina, who spends most nights with them because of an absentee father and drunken mother, had gotten used to it, Dawn, who slept in the room closest to hers, even found Buffy's rhythmic pacing soothing. Dawn missed him too, they had been close- nothing like what he and Buffy had, obviously, but still close. Spike had been both the father and brother that Dawn had never had, taking care of her throughout the summer Buffy was dead and just generally being around when most other people were ignoring her. And now her sister had finally admitted that she was in love with him, and he had not only refused to believe her, he had gone and gotten dusted. Dawn knew that when her sister fell, she fell hard, and that, for some unknown reason, she was refusing to heal.
Three days after he'd arrived, an older man, maybe in his sixties, also British, had come looking for him, they'd spoken in a secluded booth for an hour or two, before the bleached-blonde man had left, long leather coat whipping as he turned to corner towards the stairs. He hadn't had visitors since. He never used the payphone in the bar, like all the other permanent residents, and had not even once been to the Internet café that the hostel had a deal with. He didn't drink much, but chain-smoked as he sat at the bar nursing whiskey mixed with something in a flask that he kept at his hip.
He was handsome, if depressing to be around, and often found himself the subject of come-ons from the various females at the bar, he was amazingly good at shrugging them off- including the more attractive ones, he was apparently not someone who went in for rebound relationships. Ramona thought that was great- she hated men who fucked to forget the woman they loved and ended up hurting someone else as much as they hurt themselves, Lord knew she'd seen enough of it in her time. Not that she herself fancied him at all, firmly homo, thank-you-very-much, as she liked to tell her male customers. And of course, straight-as-an-arrow, to the ladies, Ramona didn't have much interest, sexually, in anybody. But she was extremely interested in learning the Billy-Idol-look-alike's story.
But, she knows better than to ask unless he's drunk, and apparently that's not happening. He was actually polite, when he does speak- to ask for whiskey, give a tip, or shrug off the latest of his admirers (or, one embarrassing day, query a price). Full of that British nobility that alternately made her what to throttle and hug her customers, depending on her mood. Whenever Buffy closed her eyes, his face flashed across the lids- sneering, smiling, sometimes even in game-face. Quick snippets of things he'd said to her over the years flashed past in her dreams, or whenever there was a silent moment in the house (dinner).
"I just like them, make me feel all manly."
"We just like to talk big, vampires do. I'm going to destroy the world. It's just tough guy talk. Strut round with your friends over a pint of blood... the truth is, I like this world."
"'Cause God knows you need some satisfaction in life besides shagging Captain Cardboard and... and, I never really liked you anyway, and, and you have stupid hair."
"Oh, right. Stuck in a dark corner with a creature you loathe, digging up past uglies, 'cause you're fine." "Maybe if you had been more honest with her in the first place, you wouldn't be trying to make yourself feel better with a round of Kick the Spike."
"You can't tell me that there isn't anything there between you and me. I know you feel something." "But I want you to know I did save you. Not when it counted, of course, but after that. Ever night after that. I'd see it all again, and do something different."
"The day you suss out what you do want, there'll probably be a parade. Seventy-six bloody trombones."
"Lucky for the bed."
"I love you, you know I do."
"I always want you."
"It's nice to watch you be happy- for them even- I don't see it a lot. You glow."
"William is a bad man. I hurt the girl. I hurt you, Buffy, and I will pay, I am paying."
"I gave him a pass... let him live... on account of the fact that I killed his mother, but that's all he gets. He even so much as looks at me funny again, I'll kill him."
"No! I'm nothing like Angel."
"I've been alive longer than you and dead longer than that. I've seen thing you couldn't imagine. I've done things I preferred you didn't. I've never had a reputation for being a thinker. I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes, a lot of bloody calls, A hundred plus years and there's only on thing I've ever been sure of... you. I'm not asking you for anything when I say I love you. It's not because I want you, or can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you and I understand with perfect clarity what you are. You're a hell of a woman. You're the one, Buffy."
"No you don't, pet, but thanks for saying it."
And all his cruel words, and his confessions of love, only made her cry now, realizing that she loved him, and had missed her only chance. For Spike, it was only one conversation, over and over again, almost never stopping.
"I love you."
"No you don't, pet, but thanks for saying it."
It was true, he hadn't believed her and still didn't. Not after what Giles told him