No one really knew just how dependent Spike was on touch.

They didn't know; thankfully never had, and hopefully never would, because it gave them so much more power over him.

Even Angelus's preferred brand of torture –

(hot burning everywhere, and so much blood; he'd massacred a bar full of rowdy sailors, and it was their blood, filtered through his own veins, that covered his flesh now, just as it had done theirs when he had broken them in half, bit them in two… Now he was the victim – fangs piercing him, and swords, and chains holding him in place, and there was Angelus in front of him, laughter and mocking grin and sharp teeth and wielding his tools with the precision of a surgeon and it burned…)

– even that was nothing to him compared to the emptiness that filled him, in the space where a soul had once belonged, when he was all alone and untouched; unnoticed.

And so when Angelus wouldn't notice him, when he ignored Spike like he really was nothing, when Darla didn't bother to glance in his direction, when a stranger in the street's eyes passed right over him… Spike made them notice.

He tried different ways, certainly, but with so many, anger seemed to work; if he infuriated Angelus, then the vampire would beat him, even torture him, and maybe that wasn't good, exactly, but –

(he preferred to burn than to freeze)

– it was better than the alternative. Darla, too, he could sometimes gain the attentions of – but she was harder to gain approval or even anger from; all he got was distaste and disgust, and when he had both the physical attentions of Drusilla in his bed and Angelus in the torture chamber, Spike wasn't desperate enough to need that.

And even when Angelus eventually left them, Spike could be happy with Drusilla, because he truly did love her; it wasn't just sex that he wanted or needed from her, or attention, although he always welcomed both.

The need did fade over time; or Spike thought it had, in Germany when he was captured by the Nazis and destroyed their compound, ripping limbs from sockets and personally slaughtering each and every man; or in New York, when he faced down his second Slayer on an empty subway train, took her down alone with just the rattling of the subway and the crack of her neck beneath his hands accompanying him.

He did love Drusilla, he had good reason to be with her; he loved her with every fibre of his being, –

(and with the soul that had long ago been lost and no longer was any part of him; that had loved her too and still did, wherever it was, he somehow simply knew)

– that was never up for debate. So naturally they had sex, and he danced with her, and slept in the same bed, and even when they didn't –

(Germany and once in France but even then neither of their beds were lonely; they tortured and drank and seduced and consumed their prey and the only reason it didn't matter was because the other was out there waiting and the bedmates always, always died. When she was there sometimes they lived, but when she was gone he drank them down afterwards, if only to prove that they didn't matter, and he never forgot her)

– he always knew she was there somewhere, waiting for him.

Spike fought with his hands, and fought often. He felt that there was something intimate in the feel of fists meeting flesh and fangs tearing through it to the blood underneath, almost as intimate as it was when it was lips meeting lips and sliding into flesh in an entirely different –

(but not so different and sometimes he knew it and needed both at the same time because they were both the same connection, embedding himself into another being and temporarily knowing them, being them)

– way. And he had sex with his prey and occasionally with people who weren't prey, but Drusilla was always there throughout it all and he was more than happy without one night (or day, as the case may be) stands or threesomes or orgies or whatever you could call some of what he'd done because when it came down to it, they were like the fine wine and dresses and hotels that Darla and Dru loved so much.

(he would have been perfectly happy without them, and sometimes even resented them, but he couldn't refuse his Queen anything and it wasn't as if it hurt him anyway and why not just enjoy them?)

So Spike had thought he was over it – no, he'd thought he'd forgotten it completely, and it wasn't until Prague, until Sunnydale (that damn town!) that he'd once again felt that cold chill filling that comfortably empty space in his chest, making his normally dead heart feel dead and frozen and making something just

(ache.)

Because Drusilla was no longer there, not really, and for the first time he realized just how much she had been there for the past century; he'd never doubted that she was with him, somehow, and now he did and he was alone.

So when he saw Angelus, even though he knew the bugger had a soul and wasn't his Sire anymore (and he'd never even liked him anyway), he welcomed him with a hug over the adolescent that stank of fear and betrayal, just soaking in the contact.

(and he called him Yoda just to confuse him; Angelus had never been one for pop culture)

And when it came time to part, Spike had and he'd fought, and yes, he was still as alone as ever because it wasn't Angelus, it was Angel, but the chill became just a little more bearable.

And when things spiraled out of control, Spike had suffered through the torture of not being able to feel his legs and of having Drusilla abandon him for Angelus.

(still not his Sire but getting at least closer than before, and that would be a consolation if he wasn't just taking more away from Spike and leaving him cold)

And he'd even joined up with the Slayer, he'd grown so desperate to ease the furious –

(but not because furious was hot and this was colder than dry ice)

– chill that infused his veins, leaving him with what felt like a permanent brain-freeze and a case of frostbite inside his chest. The battle had helped, and leaving with Drusilla had worked, just as he'd hoped; and he'd hoped that things could just go back to normal, back to the way they were before Prague and Angel(-us) and that damn Sunnyhell, when he'd forgotten all about this cold and he'd loved Dru and she'd loved him back and understood.

But no matter what he hoped, some small part of Spike knew that it wouldn't be. He drove south –

(it was bloody warm down there and maybe that would help; even if he knew it wouldn't it couldn't hurt to try just like with Dru)

– until he was past the border and had the two of them holed up in a nice house, with all Dru's dollies set up the way she liked them and the big bed inviting and the previous owners tied up and gagged in the bathroom, just out of sight but easily reachable, before she woke up.

The first thing Dru did was to keen loudly to the sky, her hands scratching piteously at her chest, and for a moment Spike felt a pang of horrific empathy; he leapt forward and caught her wrists and cradled her against his chest as the tears poured down her cheeks, rocking her in his arms until the sun rose.

(wincing and trying to ignore the way her fingernails dug deeper and deeper into his sides in what he knew wasn't desperation or love or need, but a small act of revenge, all she could manage at the moment but far from what was to come; by the time she slept again he was bleeding freely, crimson rivers down his sides and teeth marks in his chest but he still held onto her)

The next few months were a slow torture for Spike; he may not be a Seer like Dru, but just because the stars wouldn't talk to him didn't mean he didn't know it was over. One hundred-plus years and it was over, just like that.

(it took months of her cheating on him and fighting in the night and every day he held her, while she clutched tightly to his sides blood running down to the sheets beneath them)

And so Spike was truly alone once more, the cold building furiously inside him, though he tried to hold it off with alcohol, which burned as it went down and made him feel unnaturally warm inside, and he went back to Sunnydale to get the witch to cast a love spell on Dru because he needed her, he was wasting away.

And, during his short visit in Sunnyhell, discovering that his Grandsire was still undusty, although he could have sworn he'd felt him go, and was back trying to be happy with Slutty infuriated Spike. So he called them on it, told them they would never be friends, and took fierce pleasure in the pain in their eyes.

And Joyce and her hot chocolate…

(with mini marshmallows)

Joyce was truly a gem. She reminded him a bit of his own mother, before –

(fangs didn't suit her face and her mind was gone to the demon and William was horrified, but she wouldn't stop talking and the cold building in his heart told him she was gone, this was never his mother. He stabbed forward and she exploded, coating him with the essence of what was once the only person he loved – but he'd killed her)

– before.

And when Dru still didn't come back to him, Spike was horrified and yet he expected it, had really, ever since he first saw that new Angelus, twisted and strange. He'd known then that he'd lost her, and it had been delusions and hopes that kept him alive until finally it was over and done with, official.

So what could he do but something evil –

(that was what he was, after all, and evil things didn't need anyone else, they didn't need warmth or comfort and if he just tried hard enough he could be like Angelus and not even want it, he knew he could)

- like, for instance, finding the Gem of Amara. The mythical Gem, which something told him might not be so mythical after all. And, even if he didn't say it –

(didn't admit it even to himself but deep down knew it was true)

- it gave Spike an excuse to gather minions about himself, to fill a room with chatter and (un-)life. And also the Gem would allow him to walk in sunlight, and what could possibly fill up the cold void of nothingness in him but sunlight?

Spike failed, and he failed with Angel yet again, and nothing seemed to be working for him, nothing at all, it was all just spinning out of control.

(and the cold was getting deeper than ever before, freezing him layer by layer, enough so that he started a relationship with some dimwit named Harmony, for Chrissakes, just to try and stave it off until he could find something more permanent)

Then, God, the Initiative – had Spike ever been suicidal, that would have been it. But he wasn't and he goddamn never would be –

(because that was for cowards and it was William who was the coward, Spike was a legend and a terror, and a Big Bad and Big Bads are not scared)

– and instead, for once something seemed to work. Something woke up inside him, something other than his insistent hunt for the Slayer.

(because killing her would make him him again, the fearless Slayer of Slayers that was never lonely or cold, and besides she and her town had been the ones who ruined him in the first place)

Revenge. Revenge filled his blood and re-awakened his heart, thawing frost and melting ice, and Spike knew deep within himself that the Initiative, that treated him as a worthless thing, an animal –

(he'd never been, he hadn't, he swore it)

– was going to meet a bloody, painful death, no matter what it took.

It was almost ironic that the one thing that truly stripped away his Big Bad license – stole his bite – made him vulnerable – was the one thing that brought back the will he needed to power all of those. When he felt so frosted and lonely, Spike was still strong as ever, but he didn't feel it, and though he tried to be bad, it was forced and nowhere half as evil as when he wasn't even trying.

(they were crying and Spike didn't care, he liked it, he was crushing them and taunting them, gulping their blood before shoving them to the floor, his game-face on and fierce, his blood – their blood – pumping, punk screeching in the background, he was driving and destroying, from mailboxes to theater-houses, everything going up in flames and all for his sake, he was laughing)

And yes, that meant that he would team up with the stupid bloody Scoobies again, which somehow seemed to never end, until he found that his revenge had been sated and he still wanted in, he wanted to hang around and not leave, and even though he no longer dreamt of blood and uniforms every night, he still didn't feel cold.

Despite being more of a pansy than he'd ever been since William.

Spike wanted to find out why, because he'd always been curious, and he'd only once been killed for it –

(Dru, god love her if no one else did, and just thinking of that moment hurt, in a sweet-and-sour nostalgia that made no sense but was anyway)

– but when he did – well, it was simply pathetic and sad, even if it did make a strange sort of sense.

(after all, what was closer to the sun he'd never feel but the Slayer?)

And Spike didn't like to think about any of the moments following the one of realization, because he was pretty sure he'd gone just a bit loco, even if he could still feel the love deep in his throat, locked up with that for Dru.

Suffice to say that he went mad from despair and unrequitedness, and went out and got his soul back.

(that was where it started – a flash of heat, of something inside his breast, not shoving the cold or the love out as he'd hoped, but somehow melting into it, just adding millions of screaming, aching voices into his head without taking anything away and it drove him literally insane)

And it really hadn't helped him at all, in fact had made things worse, until eventually everything that had been building up for almost six years now, ever since he'd first seen the damn town and slammed into the sign, it all came to a head one day in the school where he'd first fought Buffy.

Underneath it, staring at his ancestors, wearing some stupid piece of jewelry that Spike couldn't really believe would do anything but make him look stupid – he felt it.

(a warm tingling, a contentedness filling his heart and spreading outwards, something that looked at all of the hell around him and laughed, like he once had, and it filled him with something great)

And if the price to pay for that was to die, then Spike could make that sacrifice –

(and it was a sacrifice, because he'd never really wanted to die, not even when William the coward returned)

– could and did. To save the world.

Only to end up in hell. To be tortured and confused and lost and he hated it, wanted out and couldn't

(understand why, he'd saved the world, he'd gone good as deep as he could, why couldn't they reward him with something better than agony?)

But coming back? Coming back, as a ghost, in the midst of Angel's team, with all of them staring at him and hating him, not one caring.

(except for Fred, but she was different, always had been)

That was the worst of all, worse even than the time after Dru had left him, or the Initiative, or right after he'd gotten his soul back. Worse than William. Because, for once, he lacked it all.

(no love, no torture, no sex, no music, no friendship, no home, no fights, no booze, no touch no touch no touch notouchnotouchnotouchnotouch nothing)

And – shit, shit – that, combined with even the lack of real conversation or caring? That, combined with the utter uselessness he felt? That, combined with frequent trips to hell?

(need help can't escape god god god help me someone I can't stand it can't show them they'll use it against me who cares if they do it'll be something right someone get me out someone touch me I need contact please)

The first thing Spike did once he had a body again, was to have sex with Harmony. The second, to get drunk. Virtually the third, to fight Angel. He fed on some of the Poof's rich otter blood, relishing the taste, and took a four-hour long shower. He painted his nails in the first time in forever, and borrowed Mr. Boss-Man's credit card to go buy some Sex Pistols CDs.

Then he hijacked the keys to the Viper, stole Fred, and went for a drive.

Because now, he'd been through the worst. The most desperation a being can stand without going insane – again. The worst place on earth, where one just wants to die, but doesn't, because he keeps getting sent there over and over and it's horrible, who would want that? He's been surrounded by everything he needs and just – can't –

(touch)

– reach it, quite, and he's escaped that. He's gotten free, how he doesn't understand or even care, because that's not the point.

The point is that whatever his destiny is now, if he's even got one left, Spike's ready now. He's died and been reborn as something new (twice), he's lost a soul and gained it, he's killed and saved, he's been in and out of love, he's gone crazy and recovered, he's been through a rainbow of hair colors, he's been all around the world, and by this point, he figures that it can all boil down to one thing.

(one thing that William and Spike can agree on, and finally meld into one being in the face of this, no conflict at all, WilliamSpike SpikeWilliam it's all the same)

He needs it. He can't function without it. And, even in the worst of times, even when his friends die and the world's about to end, and he knows that he's going down to a flaming, freezing pit of hell very, very soon, he's doing okay, and that dry ice inside his ribcage has finally fizzed out for good.

(nothing's missing or overflowing because he's got all he needs to get along and if love would make him happy, right now he's content, and alive, and that's all he needs or really wants)

Staring at the advancing horde of demons, rain pouring down on him, mixing with blood and wet leather, Spike glanced to his side.

A tiny smile quirked his lips, and he reached out a hand to meet Angel's.

(touch)