She's afraid I don't want her.

We stand slightly apart, motionless, not quite back-to-back. There's a thin wind blowing between us, carrying the scents of an early fall evening . Dying leaves, mulch, the smell of coming cold. Faint scent of the Slayer herself; I turn my head a little away. And something else.

"He's near, Slayer, I can smell him," I murmur sotto voce.

She holds up her hand. A slight motion in the trees to her left - my peripheral vision just catches it. Perhaps it's just the wind. We watch and the leaves sway again - AGAINST the wind. A quick nod of her head and we're off. A good team, no need of further signals, we prowl one on either side of the clump of trees and converge like shadows in the clearing beyond. She jerks her chin silently at the branches falling back into place in the tree break ahead of us and we break into a run.

She's the best lover I've ever had, bar none. No one else comes even close. None of the legion of ordinary mortals whose last nights I brightened, back when I was still playing with my food. Not the demon girl, though let's be fair, a drunken tryst on a shop table is hardly a fair test, and even there she showed signs of talent. But still, no. Not even Dru, my dark pearl, my treasure, for so long my heart's desire. None of them could hold a candle to the Slayer. She left me gasping, time after time. I've never been driven to such peaks of ecstasy, one piling on another, Pelion on Ossa. The advantages of a classical education. Trying to enter heaven on a bridge of orgasms, clutching the Slayer's slick, glowing, wildly writhing body. If I hadn't been dead she would have killed me, I swear. Picture a pile of dust in the shape of an astonished smile.

I watch her now as she catches up with the Ffritquorn. He's a big, ugly, scaly, multi-armed, Hell-spawned lizard-thing with a triple row of venomous fangs and a short fuse. And an eye- watering stench that would fell a water-buffalo, did I mention. But nothing phases the Slayer. I see her leap without breaking stride, swing from a branch above her, flip in mid-air and land astride his back, hair flying behind her, all without pausing to calculate angles, velocities, lines of approach. It's as natural to her as breathing. In fighting and in sex she's utterly unselfconscious, and graceful as a Djinn.

I haven't seen many Djinn but you don't forget. They're graceful like smoke, like wind. Like her.

It was an honour to fight with her, when we still fought. Of course I didn't think of it as an honour then. I thought of it as a bloody good time. The best adversary I ever had. The most fun I could have without actually killing something. Sometimes I wonder if I was holding back, if even then I knew I didn't want to kill this one.

In my dreams. She whipped my ass.

She reaches around the monster and stabs into his underbelly with her short sword. He screams in pain and begins vibrating in a high-pitched ululation. In his home dimension it would summon his nestmates. Damn. I forgot to warn her about that second set of vocal cords. The pitch is intensely painful to human ears. It catches her off-guard and she slackens her grip for an instant, shaking her head to clear it. The Ffritquorn seizes the opportunity and throws her off, knocking the sword out of her hand.

He rears over her, two stories high, pinning her with a rear claw and beginning to ooze the digestive juices they secrete from glands under the scales on their jaws. Fritquorn will eat their prey raw if they have to, but prefer to immobilize them and drip stomach acids on them for awhile first, get them nice and pulpy before they swallow them down. They're susceptible to digestive disorders and this helps. But I'm there now. He must be hungry, he hasn't even noticed me. I leap up and wrench back his lower arm, landing on a rock outcropping behind him and using all the leverage I can muster to flip him over hard on his back. I straddle his throat while he's still stunned, but he begins to thrash. "Sword!" I shout, holding out a hand without looking, and Buffy throws it hilt-first into my hand. She appears beside the monster's head and grabs onto an eyebrow ridge, trying to hold him steady while I thrust into his eye, the only reliably vulnerable spot on one of these behemoths. He thrashes and squeals some more, but she's ready for it this time and just grits her teeth and endures it. That's my Slayer.

My first thrust goes awry, into the dirt beside his head as he thrashes. With the next I get past all three rows of fangs and shoulder-deep into the back of the throat and through to the dirt underneath. The bastard bites down, well what did I expect him to do I wonder, and gashes my forearm in four separate places, ripping the skin as he tries to twist away. Allow me to say, HOLY FUCK this hurts. I don't. I say "Bugger!" Macho English stiff upper lip. And I don't want to distract the Slayer, who I want to be fully occupied with solving the problem of saving my ass. Because if she doesn't come up with something fast -

But she does of course. Oh ye of little faith. She rips my knife out of my belt - what the hell? I think, that won't - and plunges it without pausing straight into the Ffritquorn's catseye pupil, the center of the eye, up to her elbow in eyeball goo, and holds on unflinching as he thrashes and keens and finally falls silent. His jaws loosen in death, I am thankful to say. Some species tighten right up, and it'd be a hell of a chore, chopping the jaw apart to get my arm out. I withdraw it and the sword too, flexing a little to see if my bicep's been torn. There's no major damage, though it hurts like hell. But pain I can handle.

I wipe the sword on the grass and hand it back to the Slayer, hilt- first. "Thought only the daimon sword would do?" I ask. "That's what the twerp said."

She's barely breathing hard, glowing with the effort, the victory, the pleasure in combat. She looks like a goddess. One hand pushes her hair, shorter again I notice, up off her forehead, leaving a streak of demon goo. A goddess with demon goo. "Jonathon only said we had to stab it with the sword, not that the killing stroke had to be with the same blade," she says. "I took a chance. Figured a knife in the eye would slow it down, anyway."

"Good thinking." I look at the corpse at their feet. "Bury him?"

"Decomposes fast in sunlight. It'll be gone two minutes after dawn." Something Jonathon must have discovered for her. I never worried about how to dispose of the body of a dead Ffritquorn, just concentrated on staying the hell out of their way. These things are the size of a small house. I'm in awe that we defeated it, frankly.

"Wonder if he's a relative," I say offhand. Joe Cool. I loved that strip. Still watch the Great Pumpkin when I'm home for it. I begin rolling down the sleeves of my shirt. "Think that concludes the entertainment for the evening, so I'll be off - " I can't help the sudden hiss of pain when the shirt pulls against the abraded skin on my forearm. FUCK that hurts.

Buffy looks at me in quick concern. The captain, afraid for her troops. I'm sure that's what she tells herself. "The bite's poisonous. Let me see."

I turn away, shielding my arm. "It's nothing, I'll clean it when I get back."

"Come back to the house with me, it's quicker, we can clean it there," she says. She touches my arm to follow her and turns back towards the clearing. She doesn't see me flinch. "This way."

"Don't worry about it, Slayer. It's nothing major. I'll take care of it."=

I finish rolling down the sleeve and begin to button the cuff. Blood seeps through.

"It could be dangerous. Let me take a look." Buffy's moving towards me, head cocked to see better.

"Slayer, I said, don't worry." She reaches for my arm, unimpressed, and I pull back. "Slayer, it's just a scratch," I say, exasperated. "I've survived worse. You've done worse than this to me yourself. At least I can still walk."

She stops dead and looks up at me, stunned. I realise what I've just said.

"I didn't mean - " I begin.

"Yes, you did," she says.

I shrug, and can't help wincing when the sleeve rubs my raw skin. "Okay, I did. Don't make too much of it. I just meant, I survived that, I'll survive this."

Buffy looks away. She's obviously struggling with something. Trying not to break down I think. "I apologized. You said you'd forgiven me", she says. "I thought we were okay now."

This is a conversation I don't want to have. "I do forgive you," I say, and hope that will end it. But she's gone pale. She looks up at me, lost. I almost touch her shoulder to comfort her, but think better of it. "Of course I forgive you," I say. "We've been through this. You were having a rough year. Lots of things. We don't need to revisit this. It's done. We're square."

She looks at me for a long time. I'm hoping she'll say something about the beating. I can brush that off. I've survived worse than that too, I can reassure her as often as it takes. It's not a real problem. But when she opens her mouth she does what I've been afraid she'll do. She goes straight to the heart of the matter. "Then why won't you come back to the house with me?" she asks. "Or come for hot chocolate or - or anything."

Her eyes are wide, full on me, and I know she's fighting tears. I know how she feels. This has been coming for awhile. She's been making tentative invitations, casual, no big deal, why don't you come for hot chocolate after, maybe I could meet you somewhere before we patrol to talk about tactics, we could have coffee, Dawnie was wondering if maybe all three of us could - visit the Dalai Lama, hang-glide through a thunderstorm during a solar eclipse, do a finger-puppet performance of Othello. It hardly matters. I've been finding reasons to turn all the invitations down. I hoped she would just stop asking. But not my Slayer. Persistent doesn't even begin. If I don't feel the same way I did, she'll accept it, but she's going to want to know. And know why.

I wasn't expecting to have this conversation over the body of a Ffritquorn, but it was going to happen sometime. No point evading any longer, I figure. I opt for the full confrontation and am just opening my mouth when the demon's sphincters, all seven of them, relax in death. Ffritquorns have 4 different kinds of fecal discharge - I mentioned the digestive problems - as well as three effluent bile ducts. The stench is indescribable. Even the Slayer gags. I reach across the body and try to catch her as she staggers, but she's already turning, heading for the clearing, her hand over her mouth.

I catch up with her on the other side of the tree break. My eyes are watering. She's on the verge of vomiting; pale, swallowing, sweating, breathing quickly and as shallowly as she can manage. By unspoken consent we don't speak until we're a good deal upwind and she's looking a little better. She finally says, in a faint voice, "my God. Jonathan could have warned me about THAT."

"Don't be too hard on him, Slayer, he's still got his trainee badge."

She nods, wiping her forehead with her sleeve. An endearingly normal gesture for my darling, my Djinn. I wait beside her without speaking until she's got her breath back. She looks at me at last, a little uncertainly, and says "well, if you're sure you're okay, I'd better get back. It's my first day at the new job tomorrow."

"Oh, right." I'd forgotten. She hesitates and turns to go. She's letting me off the hook for now, it seems. It would be the easiest thing in the world to accept the gift, say "g'night, then, Slayer" and stroll off, wait until she works herself up to ask again. My Slayer is the bravest warrior in the world, but a little less courageous in her personal life. Who isn't. She's grown up a lot while I was gone though. It won't take her long.

But I know what she's feeling and I don't want her to suffer needlessly. She's falling in love with me. She was halfway there even before I left; I fooled myself that it was more, but there was something. I'm not fooling myself now though. I have a lot more empathy now, and I can see it in a thousand things she does, every time she's around me. It's not just the captain's concern for her troops. She really worries for me. Leaps to my defense if there's the slightest chance I might be in danger or even get my hair mussed. Would not beteem that the wind visit my cheek too roughly, that kind of thing. And there are the offhand invitations, all the casual excellent excuses for spending a little time together away from work. She never pushes but. And then there's the look in her eyes. I first saw it when she looked at Angel, years ago. She's falling in love, and she's afraid I don't want her anymore, and it hurts.

Maybe the kindest thing would be to put her off for good, but my soul didn't make me kind. It did make me not want to lie to her though, and I've promised myself I won't. So I don't. I take a breath and say what I was about to say before.

"Slayer." She turns to look at me. "You're wondering if I still love you." She tenses and swallows, and nods, her eyes still on me. I can tell she's afraid of what I'll say next, but is ready to hear whatever it is. My heart aches for her. That's my brave Slayer. But she doesn't need to worry. "I do."

I can see in her face as the words make their way past all those Slayer defenses. Past all those Buffy defenses actually. Past the scars those worthless gits left on her. She was so sure that wasn't what I'd say that first she controls a flinch, thinking she's heard something else. Then she replays the words. The relief breaking on her face does my heart good. For all my reassurances to myself at midday when I wake up, alone again, in that dank basement apartment I wish to God I hadn't rented when I had a perfectly good crypt waiting for me, that I must be right about how she feels, I was afraid I was wrong. She begins a trembling smile, and tears form in her eyes and start to slide down her cheeks.

"Spike, I - " she starts towards me, with that sunny smile I've so rarely seen through her tears, I'm not sure whether to give me a big hug or a gentle kiss on the cheek or rip my trousers off and shag me senseless in the middle of the woods, and not for the first time, memory informs me. Time was. I can't help myself and I step back hastily.

She stops. "But why - "

I look at her and try to think what to say. She's looking hurt and trying to hide it, withdrawing a little despite herself. Men have told her they loved her while they walked out the door before, I suddenly remember. She thinks she knows what I'm going to say next.

"You're leaving me for my own good," she says, confirming my suspicions. I shake my head and open my mouth but she rushes on. "Or because I never really let you in and you need more than that. I know, I was awful, I really do know. I can do better. Please. I'm so sorry. Please give me another chance if you can stand it. I know I don't deserve it."

Her eyes are naked, but she's hanging onto her dignity. She's trying hard not to cry. But she's doing me the honour of letting me know how she really feels. Giving me the chance to reject her if that's what I want to do, instead of pre-emptively running away. Takes courage. She's grown up a lot. She pauses for breath. She may even be giving me a chance to respond. I answer the most important part first.

"I'm not going anywhere, Buffy."

That stops whatever she was going to say next and she looks at me with her mouth half-open, the wind taken out of her sails. The relief on her face makes my eyes sting. My heart swells to four times its normal size. After a moment she steps forward, giving me time to evade her, but I steel myself and stand still for her. She is what I want and I don't want her to doubt it. She touches her lips carefully, gently, to my cheek, a soft, quiet brush against my skin, and she steps back. Last year I would have given the soul I didn't have for her to touch me this way just once.

This time the best I can do, even with warning, is to control my flinch. I try to cover by clutching my arm, which is actually starting to burn. Better wash out the venom soon before it eats away any more dead flesh. I start to make some stupid joke to cover. But she's seen, and her eyes go wide with shock.

"Spike?"

"It's my arm, it - " I remember my promise to myself never to lie to her, and discard that. "There's a lot I have to work out, Buffy. I need time."

She digests this. The smile fades. She looks up at me again. I can see her steeling herself. "Spike, just tell me straight, is that a "no"? Because I can deal with it, but I want to know." She swallows. I know the hollow in the pit of her stomach while she waits for my answer.

I shake my head. "I don't think so. I think I'm just þ still dealing. " True enough, I guess.

She nods and looks down. "Is it anything it would help to talk about?" she says in a small voice. "Or - can I help somehow? I mean, even if we don't - I'd like to help - " her voice trails off as I shake my head again.

My heart melts. But I can't talk to her about it. And I don't see how she could help anyway. Or anyone could. I'm as gentle as I can be. "I think it's something I have to work out on my own." At least, I hope I can.

She waits for me to continue and when I don't she looks back up at me. "Sure I can't see to your arm? At least?" she asks.

"It'll be fine," I say. It stings like a bitch and I'd better wash it soon, but there's a public washroom halfway across the park to my place and I'll stop in and sluice it off there. "You'd better be getting home. Big day tomorrow."

"I guess." She looks at me and hesitates, and doesn't try to kiss me again. I give her credit. She's leaving it to me to decide. Giving me time, just as I asked. Showing me all the respect a man could ask for. My eyes are wet for some reason. "Well, good night then," she says. "See you tomorrow?"

"Of course," I say, and she brightens up a bit. Another brief hesitation, she sketches a wave with one hand and turns and begins down the trail towards her house. I watch her graceful hindquarters in motion away from me. God she's beautiful. My Slayer. I've never loved anyone more. Her shoulders are a little slumped with unhappiness, though she's putting a brave face on it. She doesn't know what's wrong and it hurts. It's heartbreaking to see. Buffy, I'd do anything not to cause you this pain.

Tomorrow. I've bought myself a day to think of something to say. Other than the truth, I mean. Don't see how I could tell her that. I don't want to hurt her that much. Hell, I don't want to hurt her at all. And the problem will go away soon, I tell myself again. Though it's been months now, and no change, an unwelcome small voice reminds me. I ignore it. Soon. I'm sure. And I'll never need to say anything.

I head for home, pausing on the way to rinse off my arm. I toss the venom-soaked shirt in the trash in the washroom. No Slayer around to misinterpret my half-naked state. The cool air feels good on my skin.

At home I do what I always do after a long night slaying, in the constant presence of Buffy's speed and strength and grace and beauty, hair flashing behind her, gleaming in the moonlight. And killing still turns me on too, that hasn't changed. So I swig down a mug of pig's blood - I'm always starving by now þ while I strip off the rest of my clothes.

Then I jerk off in the shower. Thinking about anyone but Buffy.

I can think about anyone or anything else. Total strangers, Playboy pinups, demons, old girlfriends, whatever, I'm hard as a rock. I try my hardest not to; try like hell to think about my sweetheart, my girl, my Slayer. It's no use. Whenever my thoughts stray or are led that way it kills my hardon instantly. I go limp in my own hand.

It's enough to make me cry.

Tonight as I spurt into the falling water I see the demon-girl clenched and gasping under me, glowing with sweat and pleasure as she spends. That's what we used to call it. Spending. What good little capitalists we Victorians were. I'm sure Anya would have appreciated it.

But it's not her face I want to see, and I lean against the showerstall afterwards as the water beating down on me turns cool, my face wet, staring blankly as the remnants swirl down the drain, swallowing around a lump in my throat.

The one thing I used to be able to give Buffy, the thing I was proud of, the thing I relied on to bring her to me, and I haven't got it anymore.

I love her. She's gorgeous. She's everything I ever wanted in a woman. She's made, hah, a man of me.

And I'm cold as a stone.

I have to talk to her. I have no idea what to say.

She's afraid I don't want her.

I'm afraid she's right.