He doesn’t ever bite her—not with his fangs (though her skin is littered with the ghosts of other kinds of bites, and she wears turtlenecks and arranges her hair to hide them). He doesn’t even try or ask or hint or do that stupid eyebrow-arch thing that, paired with a dirty leer, makes molten lava shoot through her veins. He doesn’t do or say anything to imply that he’s even thought about it, and that makes her hate him even more than she (tells herself she) usually does.
Because that means she can’t blame it on him (though she’s sure she’ll find a way to do so eventually). She doesn’t have an excuse to punch him in the nose and storm out, “virtue fluttering,” as he says (though that doesn’t stop her from doing just that). She doesn’t have another reason tell him he’s filthy, a disgusting thing (though she does anyway). She can’t tell herself that she’s only thinking about it because he brought it up (though it wouldn’t be the only lie she tells herself to get through the day).
Because she is thinking about it. Often. When she’s dreaming, when she’s scrubbing the fake-cheese-caked Doublemeat Palace grill, when she’s pretending to be all right so that her friends don’t feel guilty, when she’s gasping and moaning in his arms.
Just further proof that she came back wrong.
She remembers how it was with Angel: she felt like she was dying; she felt like she was coming back to life; she felt like she had left simplistic categories like “dead” and “alive” far, far behind. She thinks it would be different with Spike—different, but no less intense.
She thinks maybe it would feel like heaven or maybe like hell, but at least it wouldn’t feel like this purgatory she’s trapped in. Maybe that’s why she can’t stop herself from running to him, from giving in, from surrendering again and again and again. Maybe she thinks he could set her free, once and for all—a freedom that won’t be stolen away from her by the people who claim to love her most.
But it’s become clear he won’t do it, not unless she asks.
And she’ll never ask.
No matter how far she’s fallen, she’ll never sink that low.
(She hopes.)