Spike sat, or more accurately, sprawled in the old red chair before the tv, watching 'Passions'-a late night rerun. A cigarette seemed to make its own way to his lips and breathe with a stream of smoke in the almost complete blackness of the crypt. The only light was the weak and flickering blue glow of the television, occasionally throwing Spike's lean and dangerous face into menacing relief.

He dragged again on the cigarette and held it in, imagining it snaking around his empty and cold insides with no soul to bump up against-only the demon, whom he embraced, and William, whom he ignored, except for occasional forays into the trademarked bloody awful poetry.

He wondered idly if the smoke found a home with either of them. He let it out on an exasperated breath he didn't need but was used to taking. Especially around the Slayer-who was good at making him feel exasperated. She was good at making him feel lots of things. Exasperated. Annoyed. Confused. Belligerent. Furious. Fighting mad. Aroused. Desperate. Hungry. Aching.Loving. Tender. Alive.

His mood sunk from reflective to brassed off. "Christ, man...knock it off, eh? You're all maudlin-Dru would be proud," he mutttered to himself, and forced himself to focus his attention on the characters on the screen.

It worked, more or less.

On the screen, a woman and a man faced each other, obviously having it out. She looked pissed as she yelled at him and He looked pissed and combative as he yelled at Her. Spike smirked, because it all looked familliar.

Suddenly, the man took the woman's hand and kissed the back of her knuckles, grazing them with his mouth as he looked at her, smiling. With the volume low, Spike could hear her intake of breath and watch the look in her eyes change from fury to shock to pleasure and playfulness. Spike's head cocked sideways, in thinking mode, and he wondered-what did it feel like, for Buffy, when he touched her? When he kissed her? He wanted to know. The vamp was silkily curious, the man touched and full of need. The thought both surprised and aroused, and he closed his eyes for a good think.

He thought of the expressions of her face when last he'd kissed her- the shock and anger, the sparks that flew in the depths of her eyes, the need that almost smoldered like tamped embers. He thought of his mouth against hers, the way she clung to him while small helpless noises made their way from her mouth to his and echoed inside him. He thought of her hips moving against his with that urgency and insistency that erased coherent thought from his mind and made one thing perfectly clear-he had to answer that need.

Wait.

Spike kept his eyes closed and his mind focused on that one thought, even as the ache below his belt made itself felt with dizzying intensity. His cigarette dropped from his hand to the stone floor and he stepped it out reflexively. She needed him?

He groaned softly, thinking of the touch of his mouth below her throat, tasting, testing. The almost soundless gasp that seemed torn from her as his tongue had licked, softly, her skin trembling beneath it with the ripple of that gasp.

The ache got worse, but he forced himself to think only of the Slayer and that shudder that slid along her whole body when his hands stroked her bare sides and rested at her hips. She shook under his hands. She was vulnerable to him, lost in her need and his own, swept along with him as he touched and teased and took and was knocked off his feet with the power of his desire and hunger.

He remembered her eyes, wide and defiant and full of longing, and a small and telling bit of fear. "Oh, Slayer...Buffy.." Spike moaned softly, shifting in the chair. This line of thinking was making him uncomfortably hard and decidedly uncomfortable.

Abruptly, he stood, pushing the chair away with too much force and pacing back and forth in front of the television, still on, and revealing now that the couple were locked in an embrace so intimate that it required very little clothing and an artfully draped sheet. A growl from Spike, and he took off his shirt and jeans and strode nude and angry to the bed, lying down with one arm over his head and the other resting on his abdomen, drumming in a frustrated rythym against his skin. He wasn't going to think about her.

He wasn't going to think about her flushed face or bright eyes or indrawn breath when his mouth touched her nipple and turned a bite into a soft caress that made him feel like a cat licking cream. And her...he wasn't going to think about the tears of pleasure that stood in her eyes at the feeling of his mouth tugging at her breast, nursing almost like a child..wasn't going to think about the arousal that sang through her system and caused his senses to scream when he smelled it coming from her in warm, heavy waves. "Bloody Hell"...he hissed it into the darkness as his hips moved of their own will and his left hand held the source of the sweet and endless ache that his Slayer caused-and she wasn't even there.

He wasn't going to think about the sharp cry that broke the air and shattered somewhere in his primal mind when he thrust high inside her. Couldn't think about the way she held him, savage and scratching and tiny, while she rode the waves of pleasure evident in her expression...it was like watching the First Slayer, the First Woman, so completely given over she was to the ancient waves of pleasure that he gave and took and drowned in while she moaned and sheltered who and what he was with every finished movement of her hips against his. She needed him. Dear bloody buggering Christ, she needed *him*!

He couldn't think about it. Wouldn't allow it. Couldn't bloody bear it, to know how she felt as well as how *he*felt. It was too much, too intimate, too much painful pleasure, even for him.

But Spike's inherent and brutal honesty prevailed.

And his hand moved.

He was lost...everything was hot and slippery and images of her and the thought of her feelings echoing his, even briefly...It was as if the world he knew and understood as Spike, he now experienced as she did, and the power of that knowing ripped a needful, desperate roar from a throat burned raw with all the things he couldn't say. The force of it and the climax it caused ripped him apart and put him back together again.

The knowledge of her was still there.

Spike lay still, gasping with breath unnecessary but desperately needed. His body shook, his legs were weak , and the heart that was not beating was aflame with understanding and a love he couldn't control and could no longer mask. Tears, unbidden, slipped from his eyes as his body shuddered in aftershock.

There was nowhere to hide anymore, and he didn't care. As soon as he could walk, and talk, and smoke, Spike dressed and left.

He had to let her know he understood. The door of the crypt banged closed on the flickering television , the crushed cigarette and the bed rumpled as if by a fight. He'd had it and lost and gladly, and now he had to tell her. Because she *wasn't* alone. Because she needed him. And he needed her too. And she had to know.

She heard it in her mind constantly. "You'll crave me, like I crave blood...I'm in your system now..." Buffy slammed her bedroom door shut and had the presence of mind to be glad that Dawn was out of the house, doing her homework with Willow-"Good clean educational fun," as Willow had once remarked, when Buffy had gotten a little wiggy after finding Dawn, Tara and Willow on the floor of the Magic Box, playing "Let's Make a Triangle."

The thought whispered to her again. You'll crave me. Like I crave blood. Buffy's instinctive reaction was disgust. And curiousity. She mentally slapped her own hand. Bad Buffy, no cookie. Cookies. She latched onto the ambiguous thought like a prisoner to a pardon.

Wheeling from the bedroom door she was leaning against, she flung it open (Bang! Crack! Damn, I broke plaster. Call Xander. Now about that cookie...) and almost raced down the stairs to the kitchen. Going to the cupboard, she hunted for the cookies and them remembered they were in the idiotic cookie jar. Shaped like a parody of a vampire.

She sighed and put it on the counter, sitting on a stool and opening taking off the lid-the vampire's head. She smiled wryly and shook her head. Anya had bought it, with the guiless remark, " Demon not included."

Buffy took a cookie and munched absently. She wasn't hungry and didn't really taste it. You'll crave me.

It crashed against the armour she'd beaten into shape for herself. Years of careful hammering at the obsessive and ridiculous need to have a normal life. The reason Angel gave for leaving. The reason for her relationship with Riley. The reason she needed to keep that armour polished to a sheen she could use to keep from seeing the truth. The refelction it gave her was of a woman who wanted the picket fence. She'd use every goddamn picket of that fence for stakes, and she knew it.

Normal was just a cycle on the washing machine.

Buffy closed her eyes and felt a momentary sliver of despair. It was like a bite. A quick, shallow piercing of the skin of her illusions. Bites. Dammit. Craving...Spike. Dammit, dammit, DAMN IT ALL TO HELL.

She took a deep breath and pushed off from the countr, leaving the stool to crash to the floor, ignored. She went back to the living room and fell like a pile of sentient laundry to the couch, a pillow hugged to her chest as she rested her chin on it, staring absently at the television Dawn had forgotten to turn off.

It was silent and dark in the living room, and all she heard was the wind slapping a tree branch against the side of the house. On the screen in front of her was a commercial for some car or other. It sped around a dangerous curve and off into the sunset, and at the bottom of the screen came the caption, "You know you need it."

Buffy snorted, halfway to a laugh. Yeah. Sure. Like a kick to the knees, like a jump from a tower, like a spike through the heart, I need it. Even she, Denial Girl, knew she didn't mean the car.

She closed her eyes and the thought came again, almost taunting, like a naughty and insolent child. You'll crave me. Like I crave blood. She swallowed hard and forced herself to divorce instinctive reaction from rational thought. What was it like, for him? What did Spike feel like when the craving was upon him? She'd never given it a moment's thought, except to dismiss it as revolting and predatory and a Vampire Thing. But she wanted to know, now, here in the sheltering darkness. Spike...vampire, man who once was William...were they both in there, fighting it out, tearing at each other? Was the soul Angel warred with and coveted and tossed aside, so important, after all? How did Spike feel when he touched her?

She thought about the way he'd kissed her at the Bronze-well, to be fair, she'd kissed him. He'd returned it. Tenfold. No. More. Deeper, more desperately, more...needfully than she'd ever let herself think about. She thought about the way he'd touched her, later that night. Against the wall. It was ... feral. Hot.

Buffy shivered at the memory of his hands, later, in the deep heavy darkness that had been as soft as his needless breath on her skin. She thought of the way his hands trembled as he trailed them over her sides, down to her hips, lighting there as softly as drifting silk. She thought of the expression that had crossed his face. It was reverent and wild at the same time, it was profound wonder and deepest need. It was ...hunger. Craving. It lived in his eyes and hands and the insolent, almost insulting grace of his walk. She ought to be pissed. She was breathless.

She thought of the heat that leapt like an animal from his eyes. She'd thought it was challenge, the heat of battle, their endless dance of compeition and verbal daggers. It was craving. Constant, tidal, unsated craving. It never left him and he was never free of the pull. Blood...it was all about the blood.

She groaned, softly, and all at once she was there, inside his skin, and there was noise and clamour and screams that sounded like the souls of ancient beings ripped from the centre of the earth. A pounding, ceaseless need made her breath catch and her skin feel too tight around her bones. She felt him as he tasted her, his tongue touching her where she was wet and trembling...and there was a cool silver run of peace inside her head, even as the fiery hunger made her whole being bow to its power.

Oh, God, the craving. More.

She felt the quicksilver jagged rush of joy as he moved inside her and heard the inner howl of surrender as everything that was Spike, the vampire and the man, gave itself up to love that was like diamonds shaped by the fire at the core of the earth...and it was her. Every touch, every caress, every sound, every wry laugh and stinging comment, every kiss placed with tenderness upon her body was marked and branded and molded by his hunger and desire to love her as a man and the craving for the blood that made her more than human and his greatest tempation. His deepest love, his most silent battle, his most private grief. Her. Buffy. His Slayer. "Spike...oh, god...I can't...oh, Spike.." It was a hiss, a hitch of breath with sound flowing into the dark living room. Buffy's eyes were closed and her hands were clenched and this was too much for her, too private and intimate and violently, passionately his soul -she was trespassing, it was terrible and terrifying and gorgeous. How much he loved her!

She shouted, once, as all the tension in her body left her with a shaking, shattering climax she didn't know was waiting. It tore a hole in her gut and filled it with knowledge.

Her eyes snapped open. She drew a deep, steadying breath, bit her lip and tasted tears. She was crying, silent, cleansing tears, and the aftermath of crying and the release of the moment had her completely at their mercy.

She knew, now, and there was nowhere to hide anymore. She'd asked the question, received an answer, and was not fool enough to ignore the power of the message. He loved her, and he needed her, and he was waiting. She loved him. She craved him, like he craved blood. She understood.

No more waiting. She stood, shakily, and looked around the house. It looked as if there'd been a fight . There were crumbs on the counter, a stool upended, and the pillow she had been holding was shredded, the stuffing all over the couch and the floor. There had been a fight, and she'd lost, and wasn't sorry. He wasn't alone. He needed to know. She needed to tell him.

The front door slammed and left the scene of her knowledge behind it.

A Spike through the heart.