The walk from the station is brief, but by the time Spike's crypt comes into view thoughts of blood stains in stale upholstery have ebbed like a bad dream, leaving just a low humming need to see him in Buffy's gut.

Every moment- every tryst, and kiss, and fuck- satisfies only as long as he's in contact with her. Every time he pulls away it leaves a ferocious hunger behind, and she pounds the gravel toward his crypt, twirling the chunky silver ring against her knuckle.

I'm letting him distract me, she thinks nervously.

That's really not good. Distracted Slayers aren't generally… alive Slayers. And boy am I distracted right now…

…I don't care, says the other side of her internal rambling. The one spinning his ring on her finger. I just want to see him. I miss him.

Right. I'm allowed to miss him. I said I loved him, and I did mean it, and I'm allowed to mean it even if it is stupid and reckless and probably a bad idea.

She sighs, uncomfortable with how conflicting her inner thoughts still are. Instead of relief, the night before seems to have opened up endless conflict. It's all messy. Everything is dissolving into chaos.

Why is every chance I take a potentially bad idea?

Why is trust so stupidly hard!?

Seeing Riley doing what he was doing still has her in a choke hold, even as she focuses on walking away from it, trying to put distance between that memory the way Riley is putting literal miles between them.

It doesn't work.

Humans are far from perfect. Obviously. But the endless lectures about good and evil she'd been on the receiving end of are now forcing bitter acid to rise in her gullet. The bigoted reaction he'd had to Oz and his continued hostility towards anything even slightly other…

…and then to find him in the arms of a vampire, more than content to use one to satisfy some grotesque curiosity, only to walk out into the night and happily put a stake through its walking kin. The hypocrisy is rankling beyond belief. And some of it splashes back on her.

But I do it when it's a fight, she argues with herself. When it's a clear-cut good-versus-evil, gonna-be-eaten-if-I-don't-win fight.

He would've staked that vampire mid roll-around rather than let me find out. What's righteous about that?

She shouldn't be surprised. Bitterly, she thinks she shouldn't be surprised, considering Maggie Walsh's great scheme to build her own Frankenstein as a sentient weapon, and the way Riley idolized her. Her, and her frankly narrow-minded opinions. Why not use demons for pleasure only to slaughter them once that pleasure was served?

Sick.

He was supposed to be the good guy. The righteous guy. I should've seen it coming. I should've figured it out.

She spins the ring a couple more times, forcing herself to calm down. To step away from the bad taste Riley's betrayal is still leaving in her mouth. To try and stop spiraling into paranoid thoughts that she's just walking headlong into another disastrous decision.

Spike isn't Riley.

He was there with Mom in the hospital. And oddly I think he was just as shocked by the whole Riley thing as I was. Whatever he is, he is loyal. Seeing Riley fooling around behind my back obviously didn't sit well…

I love him for that. Not just that but it's the most unmessy thing right now. That can just be enough for now.

She pulls open the crypt door, stepping into the murky darkness beyond it without a second thought.

Her eyes adjust to the shadowy dark within, pupils dilating to reach for the scant amount of light available through the crypt's window, nothing much left of it but a dwindling grayness. The dim outline of Spike is leaning against the top of a large sarcophagus, arms crossed like he's patiently waiting for her. He sighs, long and slow and full of unreleased tension as she steps down into the crypt.

"Hello, Buffy."

His voice sounds subdued. Laced with agitation. A fidgety-looking worry that seems to be hemmed with anger. The sight of it fills Buffy's heart with apprehension.

Oh. She blinks, taking in his demeanor, her worst preconceptions seemingly manifesting themselves.

She'd had plenty of fights with Spike. Too many to count. Too many to list. And not once had she ever had this uncomfortably wriggling gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Messed up already.

Great.

She'd hoped that leaving him behind, excluding him all over again, would be forgotten by the time she got to the crypt. It seemed like it had been bothering him all day though, regardless of how hard he tried to act naturally around it, how successfully distracting he'd managed to be. The way he's looking at her now —like the mask of indifference has finally cracked completely— tightens her gut.

Yep. My fault. Can't go even 24 hours without messing something up. Typical unlovable Buffy.

And queue rejection.

"I know you're mad-" she starts, not realizing the argument she'd been preempting in her head hasn't even started yet. Regardless, she's unable to stop the cogs whirring. The words babbling. "A-and I'm really sorry I left you behind, and I get it, you know, I do get the whole not-skulking-about thing and I did mean it-"

"Buffy-"

"But it's just you know a lot to just sweep under the rug, the whole you and the-the me thing-"

"Buffy-"

"I mean you've got to give me a day, right? Just to figure this all out? You've got to… you've…" Buffy blinks, trailing off as she notices a dark smudge on his skin, unsure if it's just her eyes still adjusting to the poor light. But it's not. "You have blood on your face."

Spike curses under his breath, licking his thumb and massaging away the mark on his jaw. He knows exactly where it is. Can still feel Dru's cold fingers on him even as he held her at bay by the wrists.

"Is it-" Buffy starts. She doesn't lean away from him, not blatantly, but there's a reshuffle to her posture as if she's subtly reevaluating him all over again. "Is it human?"

His jaw pops as his teeth grit sourly, the look on her face making him feel like he's an addict caught with a needle in his arm. The smell of the blood —the heady perfume of copper and salt and iron and life— practically feels like an accusation all by itself. Worse even than the one Buffy's doing a poor job of fighting down.

"Solved your little mystery for you," he mumbles, kicking away from the sarcophagus towards the fridge for the pig's blood, turning his back to her for a minute.

"The train?" Buffy furrows her eyebrows. He went to the train? No that's impossible, we would've bumped into each other-

But Spike ducks his head in a nod, splitting a blood pack with his teeth, missing the wince of barely retained revulsion it causes on Buffy's face.

"It was Dru," he clips out, minimal in his explanation as if any further words would weigh too much under the pressure of the smell of human blood in the air.

"Dru?!" Buffy feels like her heart stutters painfully like a needle pulled off a record. Is almost sure Spike can hear it do so as his eyes flicker to hers immediately. "Your Dru?"

"No, not mine, Slayer. Just Dru," Spike answers in a warning growl, his voice taking on a mean edge. "Dropped in for old time's sake, I guess."

Buffy swallows, letting cool ice fill her veins until the hot-blooded jealousy ebbs back down.

"So she just stopped by, smeared you with blood, and then left?" she asks, keeping her tone carefully neutral.

Spike nods, looking worn thin as he thumbs the glass in his hand. "Said something about the Initiative caves and then flounced on out."

"The caves?" Buffy asks, narrowing her eyes.

"Might be more soldier types having a teddy bear's picnic in the woods," Spike grunts, wiping over his cheek with the palm of his hand as if he can still feel the bloody mark there. "Probably having a picnic of her own."

"Do not be glib about this," Buffy snarls as he throws back the blood in the glass. "Did you know? Did you know it was her all day?"

He finishes the blood before answering, wincing at the slightly rancid taste. The gamey overtones. The lack of fucking warmth. "Had a hunch."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He chuckles, but it's an angry spiteful sound. "Oh sure, alright, if we're going down this road, why didn't you take me with you?" he parries, resentment flooding his tone as he unscrews a bottle of vodka and pours a shot into the still bloody glass.

Buffy flinches, feeling like she'd already burbled her excuses. "I-" she starts, uncomfortable under the unblinking glower he's aiming at her. "I-"

"Don't trust me, do you," he says. It's not a question, just a bitter statement of fact as he takes a swig of vodka to chase the blood's lingering taste out of his mouth.

Buffy fights the guilt off her face, almost successfully, as her internal self-flagellation re-flares, feeling the cutting knife of regret slicing into her heart...

"That's not true," she says, but it misses the mark of sincerity by a mile.

"Terribly convincing," he smirks into his glass. "So much for truces."

Buffy bites back the questions she has on her tongue: Did he keep her in the dark as punishment? Or because he didn't trust her back? How did the blood get on his face if Dru just 'dropped by for old times sake'?

None of these seem like questions she wants answers to, and the longer she stays the further away Dru will get.

She opens her mouth, about to suggest that they go together and track her down. Bridge some of the gap that's opened between them from not involving him earlier.

Until a thousand and one memories of Dru —Dru the center of Spike's undying devotion, Dru the nucleus around which a century of worship had revolved— flash up intrusively into her mind.

The stake in her back pocket feels like a heavyweight. Heavier than it has any right to.

Nothing's ever fair.

"I have to go," she says around a throat tight with dread.

Spike blinks, clearly stunned. "Buffy—"

"I'm going," she cuts him off, heading for the crypt's door. "Don't follow me."