I think... it would be nice if one could be confident that Spike and Buffy were working out a non-verbal and yet perfectly in accord detante on the subject. But there's so much evidence that they spend the season misunderstanding one another on other subjects they don't or can't talk about (culminating in "I love you/No you don't") that I have a hard time seeing why on this one subject their accord should be taken on faith.

So yeah, I do think that talking would have been good at some point. And yeah, it's a very, very difficult subject to talk about without getting all After-School Specially. Buffy did talk about some of this stuff, with Holden, whom she killed immediately afterwards. I think... and I've never thought about this before, but... Buffy in canon either couldn't talk about this stuff to Spike, or wouldn't, and either way, it says that for some things, things really close to her heart, she either didn't trust him, or feared his disapproval. (Which is why, I think, she'd never talk to Dawn or Willow about them.) And after S6, I can't imagine why she would have feared his disapproval; he already knew her worst. But she still couldn't/wouldn't allow herself to be vulnerable to him in any way (until, perhaps, that moment in the Hellmouth, when she had a very reasonable assurance that he, like, Holden, was about to die, and so it didn't matter that she'd bared her soul.)

This is totally un-useful, isn't it?