Had he been a lesser man he would be afraid of her by now.
The self-hatred in her eyes nearly has him undone and she keeps leaving bruises on his skin that heal way too fast for his liking, whenever she feels like it. Not like he doesn't return the favour. He does. A lot.
He could take it personal, but he's aware that he's just convenient.
She seems to revel in it – the pain, the hate, the destruction. He's not complaining. Never does. He knows what it's like to be pulled out of heaven and spit back out in hell. That glorious bitch nearly broke him in half.
Buffy told him of heaven, her words still ringing in his ears, about peace, harmony and how she felt whole when she was there. It used to be just a secret between them, two lonely people sharing a heartfelt moment. Now it's a mere excuse to hurt him, because she's too scared to seek comfort in a healthy way and he is the dirt under her shoes in which she keeps stepping in to.
Granted, he loves to watch her from down below.
Pain is different when it comes from her. He doesn't always feel the usual urge to repay her for what she does, and that's a first for him. Love or not, he bathes in her willingness to sell over her body for a short moment of bliss.
He's using her as much as she's using him. And she knows it.
Evil, disgusting thing.
He's not entirely sure whom she means as she snarls the words in his face while he lies broken and bruised (again) beneath her. Always beneath her, because he's fool enough to believe he deserves to be looked down upon.
Bloody awful poetry.
You are nothing to me.
A limp, sentimental fool.
All you ever wanted was to be back inside.
The last words still sting inside him. What he tells nobody – not even himself – is that most of the time he pities himself and just wants to curl up in a fetal position to feel some warmth, for once.
Since Drusilla breathed new life into his quivering bones (symbolically being a second mother to him), the cold is all he got left. Cold skin, cold heart and a freezing mind with far too many memories inside that feel like a distant, yet well-known relative with a blurry face.
He may be love's bitch, but she's the one who can't live with herself.
Still, there's this spark of love for her within him that burns and consumes and wants her to feel something for him. Just to feel anything. His wish is always granted, if not necessarily in the way his sodding excuse for a human heart wants it (dead or not).
They're both junkies, to some extent. Though he's not sure what he's more addicted to: The pain or the body who inflicts it.