Cold Comfort

Set after 'Entropy' (Buffy Season 6)

Chapter Two

Spike spends the night stalking Buffy.

He can't help it; it's a compulsive response to pressure.

After he shuts the door on Anya he's not angry any more, and he needs something to concentrate on. So he lets his steps fall into their favourite path.

At first he thinks of Anya, not sure why he'd been so pissed off. No skin off his nose if she's rejoined the hordes of hell, or so he tells himself. Really, he knows what it is, why he minds: she's his excuse.

Two creatures from Hell; leave one soulless and make the other human. The first is pre-destined to screw everything up the backside; the second has a good chance of conducting a functional life and keeping her fella.

Her reversion to type brings him up against it: animal, vegetable or mineral, he wouldn't know when to stop. Wouldn't be able to if he did know.

He gets flashbacks. That morning after the house had fallen in, unnoticed. Surely he'd known he'd get a kick in the head for that indelicate comment about the only thing better than killing a slayer? If he'd kept it shut then; if he hadn't kicked her out when she was invisible, hadn't pushed her to the limits, times without number, like he was being paid for it by the hour - raked out her secrets, the ones that made her flinch, and shoved them under her pretty nose -

Then what? He'd be undead Riley, clumsily skirting round the certain knowledge that she wasn't his.

He creeps up to her back porch, looking into the kitchen window. Willow and Tara are in there, cutting sandwiches. The window's slightly open, but he can't hear much of what they're saying. Doesn't want to anyway. They look kind of gooey.

Buffy comes in, banging the door.

She's tying up her hair, and asks Willow something. He thinks it's 'Ooh - how come we're all sandwichey tonight?' Something like that - he can tell by her inflexions, by the determined perkiness in her face and posture.

Last time he saw her she hadn't been up to mutilating nouns.

He watches her eat sandwiches. He can hear the rise and fall of her voice, imagines her flirtily skewering her words, crumbling grammar and conventional usage, scrambling for sense in the wreck. ('What's up? You're all bad-moody?' he hears in his head). Cute, helpless Buffy. No power here. No daddy, no way could I crush you to rubble without even trying. Wiggins much?

He's seen her do this so many times. He'd be making her gasp, or she'd be making him bleed - and at the first hint of an interruption she'd grow a Scooby face, cover herself in cheap, cheerleader glamour. Prettiest girl in school.

But it's been a long time since he's seen her slip into character this completely. Not in this life, he thinks. There are shadows in her face that give her extra years, but she looks more relaxed, more heart-whole in this Buffy-the-Prom-Queen skin than she has for months.

Then suddenly he knows why. It's because of him.

For the first time since she's been back he's seeing her when she knows for sure she won't be coming to him in the night. Won't be treading that well-patrolled stretch around his crypt, dangling herself until he snatches. Forcing his hand, cuing him to batter her with spiky, Spikey words, persuade her with roughly coaxing, eloquent hands, into submission. Victorious, breathy, dominant submission.

She's wiping her chin with a napkin: eyelids cast down, mouth curling up - embarrassed to be jam-covered in front of her friends. Tara, who's all but seen her clamber from the grave. Willow, who's had blood on her own hands before.

What would he do with her, if she was his?

His most secret dreams of Buffy are dark and exotic, coloured by the macabre chic of his life with Angelus, the hectic extravagance of life with Dru. And, without his knowing it, by the lurid fairy tales of his human childhood - the Arabian Nights, and stories of pirates.

He'd keep her in a castle, in a tower, away from everyone. He'd bring her the hearts of virgins on a golden plate.

Spike leans back against his tree and sighs. He knows she wouldn't be interested in virgin's hearts. Wouldn't want stolen goblets brimming with the rich blood of ice-cream-fed schoolgirls. Or the bronze knife of the Czech princess, with its blunted blade and its handle carved with serpents. Wouldn't want any of the precious, hard-won things he's brought Dru. He'd blunted the blade for her himself, to make the pain last longer.

Willow's reaching out, takes the napkin from Buffy's hand, gets the last of the jam.

Buffy smiles, rolling her eyes, and making some cute, inaudible crack. Tara, watching, grins at her, says something and makes a vampire face, at which Willow raises one eyebrow. He can hear Buffy's grossed out noise through the window.

This is what he's wanted to take her away from, to take away from her. He thinks of her fingernails in his neck, her voice gasping in his ear. 'Bite me. No. Properly. Bite me hard.' Throatily, 'Spike, please.'

He'd been furious the first time she'd done that - what if he'd lost control? - and then almost touched. Was she showing him how, after all, she does trust him?

It wasn't, he realizes now, anything to do with trust. It was to do with power. He was a legend, he was in the books; he made the monsters scream. He'd bitten two slayers to death. And she could do anything with him. This was just another display, pushing him to the edge, showing off what she'd made of him. She lay in his arms, begging him to bleed her, all restraint gone; knowing that he could, knowing absolutely that he wouldn't.

And when she'd got her boost she'd go, no hanging about. Useless to think about what he'd bring her - she wasn't interested in anything he wanted to give her, only in things she could take from him. Rapacious. A robber bride.

He covers his face with his hands. What is he doing? He'll steal a car, black out the windows, hit the road. Catch up with Dru, with Harmony, with some human who's not picky about morals or daylight. Plenty of those around. He'll get work in the demon world - he's done jobs for Willy before, Willy'll help him out with contacts. Or he can steal stuff - blood, money, jewellery. Concrete, dispensable things. He's not going to hang around any longer, stealing from Buffy in substanceless, vital ways he can't control.

He doesn't know how long he sits there, but when he looks up at the window, it's dark and empty. They've gone to bed. He rises to leave, but as he does, he hears the door bang. Hears a few steps, then a sniff.