Spike closed his eyes when she hugged him. Any pain that happened was so unimportant that it didn't even register. Buffy. Her skin, fuck, her smell, and she was glad he was here? He took a second to not wonder about it, to just be grateful, cupping the back of her head in one hand.
And then she started to explain.
Spike had been around for a long time, and as said before, he'd seen and heard a lot of weird and uncanny shit. This had not only taken the biscuit tin, it'd taken the cookie factory.
Vortexes, people from other worlds all gathered together, people from different times...
Giles from before, Buffy...impossibly, miraculously, from later, from some time and place where'd managed to find some scrap of redemption, enough to let her see him as an ally. As a friend.
As...something. A kind of man. That'd been the goal, hadn't it? But he hadn't earned it yet. Or had he?
Spike shook his head slowly, not in denial, just in acknowledgement of everything she was saying, and waited for her to finish.