Spike stood at the doorframe a moment, his blue eyes looking past it at the ceiling, at the stairway, at the hall. One foot walked out of the door, then the other. It was not the first time that he headed out that room, headed down the stairs, but close enough: Spike had only gotten as far as the landing at the bottom of the stairs those nights ago, in order to fight with Xander. That had been aggression back then; right at that moment, it was entirely another matter, because the vampire had been invited.

  Carefully, he made his way through the house, following the sound, and scent, and pull to Buffy, taking his time and looking at the house as if for the first time. He had no memory of it, so the man paid mind to everything as his blue eyes took it all in, hand trailing the wall outside the kitchen before Spike finally reached her.

  Spike lingered just inside the kitchen doorway, letting the warmth and light wash over him, contrasting sharply with the cold, dead stillness of the room upstairs. He watched Buffy work, the soft hum of the refrigerator and the clinking of the container against the countertop filling the silence as he took in the warm sight of the woman, Buffy moving with calm pouring the blood into the cup he knew was waiting for him.

  "Thought you said you didn't need to serve me." He dawdled, stepping into the kitchen slowly, trying to look sure of himself, perhaps successfully judging by the way Buffy gave him a displeased expression - but Spike thought she might have been trying to cover amusement under those big eyes of hers.

  "You’re staring." Buffy’s voice came forth, as she put the mug in a small kitchen appliance, Spike having a hard time focusing on that while Buffy had chastised him mildly, low but teasing. She didn’t glance at him; she just stated it as fact.

  "Am I?... Does it offend you?" He stepped forward, careful not to crowd her, though the pull between them seemed to thrum through the room, something he didn’t understand and didn’t question. Let it be.

  "Yeah, buster. You are." She repeated, this time flicking her eyes away from him, closing the door to the machine and pressing a button to start, the little machine beeping before his cup began to spin inside of it.

  "And, when did you start talking like that anyway?" She added, leaning against the counter. Spike mirrored her, blonde, bright reflection that Buffy was, for the man who did not have one in a mirror.

  "You're asking me questions I can't answer. Talking like that - like what?" He asked, his hips lent on the counter across from her, his arms crossed, weight rested there for a moment - not putting up a front.

  "Like- that. Like all," She made a face that was showed her utter lack at vocabulary, making the Victorian man smile at the expression, finding it adorable. It apparently made Buffy angry, because she changed subject entirely:

  "You are doing it again, Spike." Buffy warned him with a snarl that was feisty. Definitely what he was expecting. He put his hands up in mock-surrender.

  "Alright woman, alright. I won't talk 'like that' anymore." He said in a wry attempt to quiet her irritation, though Spike hadn't had any idea what she had meant by his speech, nor how he ought keep from offending her with it again, he felt his smile undaunted by her accusatory tone - which was somehow making things even worse? This woman was going to drive him mad she was so confusing.

  "No, not that, that!" Buffy clarified not at all, pointing at Spike's face. She had leant off of the counter completely then, but... Spike didn't feel like he was in danger, he got no flair of survival instinct, he did not feel like the woman was trying to fight him. He thought, she was just puffed up and trying to make herself bigger, which was odd, - maybe a little amusing - because he hadn't known what he'd done. Why was he enjoying her infuriation, he wondered, Shouldn't I feel more mortified?

  "That, thing! That you do with your lips. That is the problem! I already told you, not a good look. So... smug! Like, like you know something everyone else doesn’t. Again." Buffy complained, and the little appliance that she'd put the mug of blood in gave a 'ding', the light going off inside of it. So that was what she was so upset about? His smile?

  "Trust me, pet, I haven't got a clue what's going on with the lot of you." He assured.

  "Especially not you." He added a second later, voice gruff, lower, honest in a way that Spike did not remember having any reason to hide from her. But Buffy, apparently at a loss for words, just huffed and turned for the appliance and had opened it, retrieving the mug of blood. Spike watched her, as the flustered blonde put the mug on the counter with too much force and turned to Spike yet again.

  "There's your blood!" She said with a tone that was overly-sweet, over-the-top, clearly annoyed and not the least bit thrilled with the conversation.

  "Buffy, I have no idea what I've done to upset you." Spike said and took the mug by the top, but did not lift it up. The vampire took the blood, slid it out of the way. He didn't want it between them, not when he spoke with her.

  "Well - since you know everything why don't you figure it out!" She huffed and turned, leaving, he swallowed. She took one quick step, he searched for the right words, didn't find any. The next step made him look at his hands again, like he expected a revelation in them. Same ritual, same empty palms.

  "Buffy." She stopped. Spike had said her name, just that, that one word spoken in something akin to desperation. She didn't turn, not yet, and he had to swallow again to speak, but he straightened. His hands closed, at his sides, he tried again.

  "Stay." Spike watched as she turned, slow, uncertainty painted on her sun-kissed features.

  "Just, for a minute..." He said, tone not begging, not demanding. Buffy seemed to be weighing that - how raw his words were. And he felt exposed, but she didn't bite down on it; Buffy actually questioned it:

  "What's wrong." She demanded of him, and Spike had felt the muscles in his jaw tick before he managed to give her an honest answer:

  "All that stuff, I'm still sorting it." He said, barely a whisper, and he looked at his hands. Buffy stepped up in front of him and caught him with his hands half-raised. He looked at her, Buffy's eyes searching his, Buffy studied him, before she nodded.

  "You look like crap." She said, like she hadn't looked at him yet, so preoccupied with Dawn, Buffy apparently hadn't noticed how his hands had barely been holding it all together.

  "Flattering." Spike said, tried to keep his voice light. It came out rougher than he had meant. He was surprised at how callously Buffy would respond to a man in pain.

  "Weren't you the one who asked Dawn to tell you?" Buffy retorted, not coddling, not kind, Buffy still sounded angry, or, annoyed, or... or he wasn't sure what. Spike huffed. Pushed himself up until he was standing straight again, and moved around her to the counter. Took the blood mug. Drank. The taste was flat. Safe. Nothing like hers.

  "She told me everything." After a moment he had spoken, set the mug down again. Held it there, quiet.

  "The spikes. The Slayers. The torture. The way I… enjoyed it." He was almost afraid to look at her, he looked all the same, and saw what he was afraid of: Buffy didn't flinch. She just nodded. He was ashamed. She wasn't surprised by any of what he revealed and somehow - that feeling, the knowledge that she had known of all the horrible, deplorable things that Spike had done - it was worse than if Buffy had been shocked.

  "Figures Dawn would have told you." Buffy said and he huffed in surprise.

  "It's no wonder you all have been staring at me like some monster. I told her those stories? And the little Bit didn't hold back mind. She just told me the whole sodding history. 'Here's how you tried to outdo the devil, let me tell you it as a bedtime story'." He indicated, one hand out to mime moving the strings of a marionette, the other wrapped around to the side of his ribs, so that Spike was hugging himself with one arm without even realising it.

  "That’s Dawn." Buffy replied with a tired sigh and a roll of her eyes.

  "She’s always been the one who sees the whole picture. Even when it hurts." Buffy said and looked away, one hand rubbing her other arm, suddenly feeling the sting of some memory that he didn't share. And they stood there, two powerful beings in a small kitchen, feeling awkward; Him with his arms hugging his torso without realising it, her with one hand rubbing her own arm as if trying to soothe it. He wondered then, at whatever it was that Dawn had told Buffy, what whole picture, he wondered, had Dawn seen that had been some revelation to Buffy, even when it hurts? He bit his lip, sharp incisors feeling the skin as he remembered to try and not be mad at himself.

  "Alright, I did ask." He agreed at last, Buffy and Spike each lent against the kitchen counter, neither of them looking at the other. He felt stupid, like he'd been moping - when he'd been the one to ask Dawn - when he'd told the Nibblet he'd try and take the good with the bad and not get angry, not with himself.

  "Sorry." He apologised. Spike saw, once more, how Buffy hadn't expected that. It was, he surmised, strange for her; hearing Spike apologise. He wanted to fill the silence, keep her talking to him, maybe get the thoughts out, it was better than feeling trapped and lost.

  "I keep waiting for it to feel like me," The man Spoke again and stood a little straighter, his arms lowered. He gripped the counter in favour of gripping his own ribs.

  "For something to click. For the hunger to feel right. For the violence to feel mine. Anything." He met her eyes as Buffy looked up at him, his words set her on edge, he didn't stop.

  "It doesn't." He simply said.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "It just feels sick." Spike said. The word caught in his throat, harsh, almost a growl - that sound, didn't feel like him, all of what Dawn had said, it all felt like some terrible ghost that had died. Not somebody that he knew. Not something he could have done. None of it felt like the Spike that Dawn looked at with utter confidence in those doll-like blue eyes of hers.

  "That's good." Buffy sighed.

  "Is it?" Spike, he wondered. He raised a hand to press his fingers into his brow, feeling that scar he got but didn't remember, the one he'd been told he earned in return for his troubles, murdering a heroic Slayer. But Buffy didn't shove the nearest wooden spoon into his chest, she actually turned, and shifted a little closer.

  "Yeah, kinda does. Because it means it wasn't something outside your power holding you back... It means you changed, something in you... Even before the fall, before the amnesia." Buffy said in a sweet tone, one that this time had been devoid of annoyance, or anger.

  "Buffy, don't- Don't make me out to be some hero." He said, not feeling the hero she'd claimed him to be those first nights, before Spike found out what he really is.

  "I'm not that, not there yet." He said, reviled at himself, jaw clenched, breathing in deep through his nose, not knowing why he did it - when he was meant to be this horrid monster of a dead thing!

  "But you’re not the monster in the stories either." Buffy said, Spike swallowed. He closed his eyes a moment, willing himself to let his muscles relax. When he opened them again, he found that the look that the woman was giving him was an open, earnest, honest one.

  "Not tonight." Buffy promised. Spike tilted his head, just a fraction, his eyes - that she'd described as fierce, expressive eyes, like the ocean in winter - had searched her face, looking for the truth of what he was in reflections of her:

  "You really believe that?" Spike asked, voice barely more than a low whisper, a voice that betrayed how something strong was just below the surface of that cold, winter skin...

  "I do." She said.

  "Before, I thought, you were just- held back! Like a murderer in prison or something. Now?" She did that thing- He saw it! That thing, the one she does, her green eyes break away and her mouth opens and she's about to say something with snark and girlish spite, to cover up how terrifying it was to actually say something that Buffy really felt. No, no sodding chance!

  "Now?" Spike moved, standing in front of Buffy, an arm on either side of her on the counter, forcing her to look at him. He didn't touch her, some old manners creeping in through the seams of the blank sheet that Spike then was, the thread of old sensibilities straining at the edges, even as he crowded her, even as he urged her to speak her mind, to be honest with the monster who had had nothing else to hold onto. Spike had pounced on the chance to hear what Buffy might really think, not letting the pretty blond squirm out of this one, not even when she rolled her eyes at him and tried to keep herself free and safe from feeling her true emotions.

  "I used to think, the only reason you were doing anything nice was because, you had to. What good is it, doing good - when you can't chose to be evil? Well, if there's nothing holding you back now, then the only thing stopping you from going back to that is- is, you!" Buffy said, and he nodded. Spike didn't even realise it, how he was reading into all her little cues, her tells, his body moving until he had her caged in against the counter. He had almost expected to be struck - not sure why, he just got that feeling - but when Buffy had been cornered, when his actions had captured her gaze and pulled the truth from them like from her very soul, he found that he had been sorry he'd acted so brashly. Spike pulled an inch back, giving her room to breathe, not having actually touched her, Thank the Heavens.

  "I guess, I'm... Seeing you in a new light. Okay?" She squirmed as the words were all but yanked out, Buffy looking like she'd just admitted to something truly shocking or horrifying, when all Spike thought she'd really said was, she was giving him half a chance after waking up.

  "Like pulling teeth you are. Getting the truth out yourself like that..." He scolded her, but there was no bite to it - pun intended. He was glad, having heard how Buffy thought, what she appeared to realise; about him. About how, he could roam free and wreak havoc, yet there he was, being nice, please and thank you, not murdering people even a little!

  "Well, do you really think I was lying?! Just, kidding around? Because if I was… if I thought the only thing between the you now and the evil, murdery, evil you, was a piece of Initiative tech that’s probably fried anyway…Then I don’t know what I’m doing here!" She huffed. Spike considered her words before he spoke, but finally, jaw tight, he felt the ease of telling her his honest, unadulterated thoughts.

  "I don’t want to be that monster." Spike had spoken with conviction. Low, and fierce.

  "The one in those stories - the one who laughed while people screamed - I don’t want to be that." He shook his head.

  "I don't even want it in me." He said, and Buffy - ever the one to not show pity, dependable in that - she had shot back with the honest truth of the matter.

  "But it is." She said, not sugarcoating it or coddling the monster. He tried not to smile; Buffy and Dawn really were similar in that.

  "That's who you were. That's why I understand when all my friends are scared you're going to get your memories back." She said. Spike shook his head.

  "I get that. And there's no use pretending, that's not what I'm saying." He said and he stepped closer to Buffy again before he caught himself - but she didn't back away. Spike was glad.

  "I'm saying, I know what's behind me; and I'm not daft enough to go marching right back into it." Spike clarified to her, and Buffy's breath hitched, the vampire heard it - what on earth was that for?! Spike put his hand through his hair, he turned and paced the kitchen, turning slowly after a few steps.

  "I'm not about to start pretending I'm something I'm not. But I'm not willing to go back to it, either. I don't expect you, and your lot, to just believe me mind... I'll have to prove it, keep being who I am: Who I am now. Since waking up. Since losing my bleeding mind. Every night - until there's no question, until the monster's just a scary story someone used to tell." He confessed, speaking with renewed confidence; not of what he was, but of what he was becoming. And he looked at her, Buffy. She stood there, heartbeat strong, a little quicker - the vampire heard it - but she didn't look like she wanted to run, or fight, she looked...

  "When, when I say your name," She cleared her throat, interrupting Spike's thoughts, Spike realising that he'd been trying to read her again.

  "When I say "Spike"... Do you feel anything?" Buffy asked, quiet as a confession. He was intrigued, pulled from out his contemplations, he tried his best to answer that question.

  "Not sure where you're going with this, love, but, do I feel something when you say my name?" He breathed in the question, giving it thought. Spike hopped up and sat on the counter, looking at the ceiling, eyes drowning the light that fell into those depths of blue. So he closed his eyes, Searching the dark behind his lids. Spike was quiet for a beat too long. Not the showy quiet he used to wear like a jacket, the real kind - the kind that stings, as it settles in your chest, and leaves room for nothing any more...

  "Feels... Like it's a verse I used to know the words to, but forgot. Feels like it's wrong, somehow, like someone else is reading the lines, and they got the meaning all wrong, and I can't get the pentameter to match up with anything I've ever really known and understood." He opened his eyes and looked at her, and when he did his gaze had been softened, earnest and unguarded, much as he had been ere since waking up.

  "I don’t remember you. How I thought of you, or who I was to you, how do you feel ab-" The man said carefully, Spike began to ask how Buffy had felt about Spike, when he caught Buffy's fallen green gaze.

  "What's wrong?" Spike frowned, seeing her expression. Buffy had seemed, disappointed. Then, oddly, as she'd tried to answer, Buffy instead just shook her head, and Spike thought that it looked like she might cry.

  "Not what you wanted to hear?" He was concerned, and Spike felt alarmed, he approached her - hopping off the counter and walking over to her, not wanting to see her unhappy, he felt that protective surge he'd felt for Dawn many times but... It was different. With Buffy, as Spike offered his hand, wanting to console her, there was this raw instinct that the man hadn't felt for anyone or anything since he remembered waking up. But Buffy, she didn't take his hand, she put her arms up and backed a step. Spike pursed his lips, pressing his tongue behind his teeth. He thought, Wrong again.

  He'd thought he was getting better. Spike felt he'd not acted correctly. Again. He kept doing that, behaving inappropriately, doing the 'wrong thing' as the amnesiac saw it in his own mind. He'd been trying so hard to learn how to behave around everyone, but he let his arm drop. He'd thought he'd been getting better! It was so frustrating, not knowing, he thought, then corrected himself: No, it's not the lack of knowing that's the problem. It's the not remembering.

  "I used to hate hearing it." Buffy whispered, while Spike had been waiting for some cue on what had gone so catastrophically, Buffy had instead answered a question that Spike hadn't had the chance to ask yet.

  "Your name, Spike. It used to make me angry, made me want to hit something." She said, and her voice began to steady - Spike didn't want her to feel choked up again.

  "And now?" So when her desire to hit something landed with some small element of making sense, Spike tried to encourage her to keep speaking; to pull her away from whatever had made Buffy wear those eyes of hers, that were normally so fierce, as wounded and glassy.

  "Now, it makes me sigh. In a good way: Like, like maybe, tired? O-or, like coming home, after a long day of patrol." Buffy tried to explain, and while hadn't had the most poetic way of expressing herself, she had tried to make what he made her feel make sense. It didn't. Spike was confused, and didn't know what he might have done to make her look the way she did, but perhaps it was writ all across his face, because Buffy sighed and went on speaking: she did say his eyes were very expressive, he must have betrayed himself with those blue eyes. Buffy crossed the small space that had remained between them. Stopped close enough that he had to tilt his head to meet her gaze.

  "I'm not going to pretend the past doesn't exist." Buffy said. He stared at her, she stared right back.

  "Or, that it won’t come crashing back someday. But right now?" Spike was relieved to see that when she'd said that, there was the smallest of smiles cresting on her pink lips yet again. It gave him courage that, perhaps, what had pained her could have been remedied?

  "Right now, you’re just "Spike". The one who saved my sister. The one who’s still here even when everything else is gone." She said, and for a moment, he only focused on the sound of Buffy's calm breathing, the soft rush of her strong heartbeat; like if the monster listened hard enough, he could find a way to keep the mortal heart from aching. As if she could hear the silence, when Buffy next spoke it was barely a whisper.

  "If you start to remember, will you tell me?" She asked, and Spike, he nodded. Once. Polite, like he was accepting the heartfelt request of a lady.

  "I'll tell you. The truth, all of it," His mouth did that thing then, half-boyish, half-monster.

  "Even the parts that make you want to stake me." Spike said in an attempt at jest. He wondered if what he'd said was wrong though, because Buffy swallowed at the sight of him, nodded once, Spike thought her neck might have been strained because she looked away from his mouth then and Buffy opted to just stare at Spike's chest.

  "Okay." Buffy backed a step and Spike stayed where he was, watching her. She seemed to be weighing something, and Spike - ever incapable of keeping his big mouth shut - just went ahead and asked what it was she was thinking of.

  "Is it me?" Spike wondered, and Buffy's eyes jumped at that, back to his, back on him, and he breathed.

  "Huh?" Buffy asked in reply as her eloquent response, but Spike did not her any gaff about it, he was just then beginning to get used to the manner in which Buffy spoke.

  "Is it me? What is bothering you...? I can just go back up to the room if you-" He began, Spike indicating the way back upstairs with a backwards point of a thumb. He was half turned toward the door when Buffy again had cut in - her voice sharp and alarmed.

  "No!" Buffy said loudly, and Spike stared at her.

  "I- I mean, don't worry about it. Look, I stayed here while you had your meal it's only fair if you stay here for mine! And, I'm starving." Buffy said, and turned so fast that her blonde hair fanned out about her, headed for the fridge as the scent of rain and the night hit Spike when she let it fall from her hair so carelessly. He breathed in the scent deeply just on instinct while she busied herself getting food out of the fridge and he thought, not for the first time, that he had no idea what what was going on in Buffy's head. He shook his head at her, but sat down anyway when she began to make herself something to eat. He didn't want to leave yet, so he stayed, Spike intelligent enough to be able to understand that Buffy had asked him to stay, there, with her, too.