Yeah, okay, she deserved that. It's not her fault the rift whammied her, but she probably could have been nicer about it. Her fingers curl a little, but she keeps her hands where they are.

"I'm sorry," she says, and it's quiet and uneven but at least it's genuine. "I, um. I remember you, now." She remembers more than she wants to - gods, the desperate riot of wards on her door had seemed downright innocuous when she'd assumed it was a standard precaution - and she feels stupid and small and so tired of this.

She hates talking about her feelings. But sometimes not talking is worse.

Sunshine sighs down at the carpet, then drags her gaze back up to Spike, deliberately meeting his eyes. "May I come in? Please?"

Well, at least he didn't shut the door in her face. Look at all this progress they're making. Sunshine steps inside a bit cautiously, as if she expects to feel physical resistance as she passes over the threshold, but of course there's nothing. Her kind doesn't require an invitation.

She looks at him bemusedly when he speaks, her confusion deepening when she registers that he's making her tea. Maybe it shouldn't be as baffling as the first cup he made her, but things between them have been so unpleasant for so long that she's not quite sure what to make of the gesture. "Um." She blinks a few times, then shakes her head once. "I wasn't. I mean, that's not--I didn't come here to check up on you."

Not that it's off the table. She knows he isn't fine, and she knows she could do something about it if he was in bad enough shape.

But that would involve touching him, and she's not entirely sure she trusts herself. She hadn't killed him last time, but then again, those weird cat-things had all but contracted her. Maybe she was whammied then, too. Not that she'd felt whammied, but she'd been too kali panicked to accurately assess much of anything, so who frigging knows?

The question isn't a surprise - she set it right up for him - but she isn't sure how to answer it. 'Because I feel fucking awful about everything' might be an accurate start, but it has to go somewhere, and she doesn't--she doesn't know how to do this. She's been in plenty of awkward situations with vampires before, but in her previous relationship with a Darkest Other, they got all the 'whoops I nearly murdered you, my bad' crap out of the way in the early stages. The nightmare wasn't real, but it had been near kali goddamn enough, and she hadn't known how to deal with it, and he just... what, walked it off?

She doesn't really know what she's doing, here. But she really doesn't know why he just let her in, why he's making her tea, like she didn't reach her hand into his chest and tear his heart out. Literally, if not metaphorically.

Her shoulders droop, and she sighs. "I just wanted to talk." As if there's anything 'just' about that.

Sunshine winces. At the time, all the poetry had just been unnerving. It's one thing to begrudgingly take an angel's word for it that you have a damn ex-boyfriend you don't even remember. But her trust in Aziraphale hadn't transmuted into a graceful acceptance of Spike's, uh... artistic endeavors. She still hadn't remembered him, and it had been really goddamn weird. In retrospect, she figures anything before sunset should just be counted a wash. Obviously his rift-given affliction has worn off, too, and it was all just embarrassing, not--not traumatic. Gods, does he really think she's freaking out over that?

There's a mug of tea in her hands, and maybe it should take her back to the first cup of mid-shelf chamomile he brewed for her. Instead, it makes her think of sitting across from Pat and Jesse and Theo, locked into an awkward post-disaster interrogation, fielding questions about things she didn't remember and things she Didn't Remember. Except this time, she remembers everything, and Spike isn't going to help her out by asking the right questions.

She shuffles over to the couch and sinks down onto the cushion farthest from him. The comment about the poetry is discarded; she doesn't have the energy to address what they don't need to discuss. She watches the teabag circle around the mug like a living thing, and wonders where to begin.

"You know," she finally says, not taking her eyes off her mug, "after the--the nightmare. When I asked you why you'd come up, I wasn't asking you to leave."

"I tore your heart out," she fires back, turning to look at him in mingled torment and incredulity. How is that not a problem? She had every goddamn right to be terrified; he's the one who somehow missed the memo. "And I wasn't in some weird fucking fugue state, I wasn't soulless, I was me." There's no excuse.

And yeah, there's no excuse for the way he brutalized her, either, and fuck him if he honestly expected her to be perfectly comfortable in his arms right afterwards. But he's the only one who can say he wasn't really himself, that he'd never really do something like that in the waking world, because he's all be-souled and different, now. She's not different. She's still a naked knot of exposed nerves and post-traumatic-whatsit wrapped around a desperate prey-animal will to survive, and that is all she will ever be, and if she can't trust herself she has no idea how he can.

"Why the hell aren't you scared?" She looks back at the mug of tea. She doesn't even want it, but her hands have seized around it and she can't put it down. "You should be," she mutters wretchedly, hating herself for sounding so goddamn overwrought.

It's one thing to know what she's capable of and another to--to feel her doing it. Gods, she's always known what he was capable of, for that matter. She'd tried not to think about it, and garnered plenty of reassurance from her presumption that he required more of an invitation than he apparently does (so much for that) and her awareness that he can't compel her the way a vampire back home could (or could try, anyway). But he's still a vampire. Knowing that didn't make it any easier to bear it when he sunk his fucking fangs into her neck.

She reels back a little when he says he wishes she'd killed him sooner. In retrospect, yeah, that probably would have been best, but still. Her gut twists as she remembers how reassuring Mel's presence had been when she'd thought she was a bad cross - how efficiently she presumed he could dispatch her if she lost it and went on a rampage - gods, she'd never told him that. And now, what, is that--is that what she is to him? A significant-other-slash-fail-safe? She can't be that to him. She can't be that to anyone. The only reason it worked with Mel was because he was the one who had his goddamn shit together, always, as a rule.

"Does it even matter what I want?" she asks, watching him pace, feeling glued to the couch. "Gods, Spike, I wake up from nightmares, barely knowing where I am, all the time. I might--" yeah, speaking of breathing difficulties. She curls forward, struggling to keep herself together. "I might just, just d-do something to you and not, not even--"

He's missing the point. It's not about him respecting her implicit wishes, it's about her waking up with Bo's colorless eyes too fresh in her mind and plunging her hands into the nearest body. Hell, it wouldn't even have to be Bo - her brain hasn't needed any help from the rift in giving her horrifying reruns of what Spike did to her.

She remembers waking up with the smell of singed bedsheets in the air, and shivers.

Then she looks up at him, almost offended by his unwillingness to 'buy it,' like she needs his fucking approval to be terrified of her own godsbloodyawful capabilities. How dare he try to tell her that she shouldn't be scared of losing him to her own treacherous hands?

Wait, what is he doing? Sunshine freezes as he kneels before her and pries the mug out of her hands, setting it on the coffee table. Then he takes her hands, oh no, what is he doing?

She gives a full-body start when he places her hands over his chest, over his heart, the here like a shout that rings in her ears. Her fingers twitch, and she's distantly aware that she's breathing too quickly. But they don't... reach... they just sit there as if his shirt is an impenetrable barrier, and it's not, not to her. There is nothing to stop her, nothing but her, and that might not be enough. Doesn't he get that? Doesn't he care?

Of course he cares. Just not about his own safety, not when she's in the room to provide competition. Because he loves her. She could read it in his shadows if she hadn't already read it elsewhere.

He's so close, and she's already curled in on herself. It doesn't take much for her to lean forward until her forehead comes to rest against his shoulder. She doesn't know what to say to him, but there's her neck, close and exposed; maybe that says something.

One deep breath, then another. Then, tiny and strained, "I... I don't want to avoid you."

Sunshine keeps still and counts the seconds until they turn into minutes, minutes during which Spike fails to frighten her and her hands behave themselves. It would be an exaggeration to say she feels perfectly safe. But imperfect safety is still better than klaxon-blaring panic. At least she can touch him without the world coming to pieces.

Still, it's a relief when he releases her hands and she can move them away from that steady here pinging against her palms (it is reassuring, not a target, not a taunt). Can't hurt him is better than won't. But she doesn't pull away, opting instead to wrap her arms around him and slump against him in weary relief. She's missed this, more than she wants to examine, and especially in the wake of his whole meal-related issue. He's still in one piece. And he still wants her, however foolish that might be.

More than wants her. She pulls in a breath, wondering if this is a mistake - fairly certain it is, in fact, because what happy ending could there be to this story, anyway? And they both lived in carthaginian exile happily ever after? - and then pushes the question away with a sigh that sounds like wind through leaves. She doesn't care about that. Not with him in the room. "Okay."

She turns her face into his neck, feeling like she ought to say something demonstrative and not yet ready to, um... match him. This is hard enough already; she can't add that to the heap. After a moment's consideration, she settles on, "I really missed you." That's something she can admit with relative comfort. Hell, it's practically code, for them.

Okay. They are... both okay. As exhausting as it was to just unload everything, there's no arguing that it wasn't worth the effort.

'Good talk' elicits an incredulous hiccup of laughter, and she buries her face in his shirt, somewhere between pleased and embarrassed. Gods. That's one way to put it. "Me, too," she says quietly. So, points for actually talking about her feelings, and due credit to blind panic for the assist.

She stays like that for a few moments, breathing him in, noting with tentative pleasure that the scent of him is a comfort, not a trigger. Then, she straightens, lifting a hand to run her fingertips through his hair. It's a more careful gesture than usual, as if she's reminding herself how it goes, how things are when they're not terrible.

"I'm surprised a book didn't fall on you," she says with a wry smile. If almost kissing her warranted a really nice copy of Beauty and the Beast, she would've expected this whole mess to at least net them an embarrassing poetry anthology or something.

"Oh," she says softly, brow furrowing. That doesn't sound good. She keeps playing with his hair, the motions growing less deliberate and more idle as her focus shifts to his absentee rift power. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing he could have just lost during that rain-related mess. As far as she can recall, there were no other rumors or reports of people losing their rift powers in the aftermath, and it's not like his sunlight-immunity has taken a vacation (however bad things were between them, she's certain she would have heard about that).

"Are you, um... feeling okay, otherwise? Aziraphale's helping?" He certainly looks a hell of a lot better than he did when she'd found him on the kitchen floor, and her affinity isn't raising a fuss now that she's touching him properly.

That's only somewhat reassuring. As healthy as an angel can make him is probably pretty frigging healthy, but there are still some, uh... quality of life concerns, if Aziraphale's efforts aren't enough to get him back to one hundred percent. She wonders, more than a little uneasily, if there's something either one of them could do to the blood that might make it palatable. Transmutation might be as good as purification. But she's never transmuted a significant amount of liquid before, and there'd be no chance of changing it back for obvious reasons. Would wanting it to work be enough guidance for her affinity to fix whatever property it was that was troubling him? Should anyone ingest anything she's changed? Hell, without her active guidance, her raw affinity might just as likely kill him from the inside as anything else.

Plus, selfish as it is, she just doesn't want to experiment with bad blood. There is not enough yuck in the world to cover her gut feelings on the matter, and her nightmares don't need the fuel.

His hand on hers is nice, though. Tentative, and part of her hates how cautious and uncertain they're both acting, but the larger part is horribly grateful he's taking it slow. She probably couldn't handle fast. She probably couldn't handle anything more strenuous than a metaphorical mosey. But she can handle this much, and she looks down at their hands for a minute before lacing her fingers through his.

Further discussion of his health issues can wait, she decides. Not that she intends to drop it, and she's pretty sure neither Spike nor Aziraphale want their current arrangement to be the new status quo. For now, though, it's enough that he's healthy, and here, and that they're stumbling back towards a semblance of normalcy.

To that end, and with no small amount of self-conscious sheepishness, she asks, "Do you want to watch something dumb on TV?" Gods, it's like a bad homage to the first time she sat on this couch. It would be nice, though, to just... sit with him, without having to fend off awkward silences, and... reacclimatize.