They never shower together. Not anymore.

Not since that night in the bathroom in Sunnydale.

They used to, before that. In the crude shower in Spike’s crypt, whenever he managed to talk her into it, so he could worship her body with soap and cloth the way he wanted to with his hands. He had bought (or stolen) all of her favorite soaps and smell-good body washes and she would close her eyes at the feeling of his talented fingers massaging her scalp, leaning back against his firm chest--warm from the heat of the water--and pretend, for a moment, that she wasn’t there with a soulless demon.

She was ashamed, when she thought about that now.

They had tried it again, once. When he came to Rome with the news of the battle in LA and his--oh, yeah--not being dead. After the screaming and the fighting and the fists and the bruises and, finally, the tears, they’d spent many long hours (days?) in bed and when they finally managed to rip themselves away from the sheets they tumbled into the bathroom, kissing and groping and laughing like they never had before. They were clumsy in their passion for one another, knocking into the sink and scattering the small bottles of soap and makeup all over the floor, blindly reaching for the faucet in the shower. It was silly and fun and everything they’d never had before, everything she’d never let them have.

Until she tripped, landing hard on her back and pulling Spike and the shower curtain down with her.

It all changed then. There was cold tile beneath her and the pain in her back, Spike on top of her and suddenly it was too much, too much the same and she couldn’t help her frightened gasp or the way she tensed, her body readying itself to fight and fling him off of her. There was fear in her eyes and guilt and pain in his and she realized, as much as she liked to think they moved past everything, they really never faced this at all.

They spent the rest of the night facing it, sitting on the cool tile of the bathroom floor, surrounded by the fallen makeup products and soap and toothpaste tubes. There was no more laughter that night, and no more joint showers since.

A few years ago, she would have thought this was some sort of metaphor for their relationship: always dirty, never clean or something like that.

She didn’t think like that anymore.

Instead she thought of how they fought over who got to use the shower first (he always let her win and then pretended to pout about it, she always pretended not to notice), how he gave a rather unmanly shriek followed by an angry bellow every time she deliberately left the single knob of the faucet on cold before he got in, the way he sang loudly in the shower (she complained that the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were not what she wanted to hear first thing in the morning) and how he would come up behind her while she was brushing her teeth and spin her around, kissing her quickly despite the toothpaste simply because he knew it annoyed her.

It was funny, how it all seemed so normal, so domestic. It wasn’t anything she’d experienced before, and it wasn’t something she ever thought to. But here they were, sharing a bathroom before spending the day training the new Slayers and part of the night fighting evil--the Slayer and her demon lover.

She could smile at that now, and she couldn’t help but think that, god, they’ve come a long way. And they’d go further. Who knows, maybe they’d even shower together again, someday. And it wouldn’t be some metaphor about their relationship, or some big symbol about forgiveness or starting over or washing away the past or anything like that. It would just be something insignificant in a line of insignificant things that were really the most important things in the world.

And maybe a lot of fun, too.