Cold Comfort

Set after 'Entropy', Season Six.

His mind keeps going back to what had happened between them in the shop.

How she'd touched him, his hand.

What came afterwards was hungry and passionate, but desperate, with a taste of cold comfort about it, so that its memory is warm and chilling at the same time.

But how she'd laid her hand on his as he held the glass to her lips, curled her fingers over his - when has he been touched like that?

With softness, with deliberation, with a look that was pleading and grateful and confiding. He has never felt so human, or so greedy.

His mind goes back to Buffy, as well. Walking away. Looking knives at him for two cold beats and turning on her heel.

Then he knew that he'd lost her, flung away the last stake he had in her. Had he thought he'd won something, bringing that preposterous punk chick to Xander's wedding? She'd been caught by surprise, ambushed. Raw, for a moment.

He could have left it at that, left them both with some rare dignity, held the luminous memory of her sadness amongst the museum-pieces of his mind for the next two hundred years.

Who's got that kind of patience, though? Not Spike, who gets frustrated by the time it takes to chew M&Ms.

Had it been in the back of his mind last night? Taking out other girls, that's a good one. Gets her all teary-eyed. Try shagging her mate.

Even afterwards, when he'd been buttoning up his jeans in the devastated silence of the Magic Box? He'd been dead wrong, if he'd thought so.

It hadn't drawn Buffy back to him. It had freed her.

Shown her that anyone could do what she'd done: take refuge, help herself to what was there. Spike wasn't her own delicious narcotic, her private nightmare and dream. Someone for whose pain she could not be held to account; someone invisible in the economics of love. Something for nothing.

Buffy likes to be loved; he's just realising how much, what it had meant to her to have so much urgent and enduring, greedy and selfless love poured out before her.

Tonight that's all over; he's blown it all. She's free to hate him now.

Bet it feels sweet, he thinks. He knows: hates her too, a bit. It's a relief, as always.

Just convenient, she'd said. He could have drained her blood then; quick enough to give himself hiccups.

Never lasted long, though, those flashes of viciousness. Even her arrogance was dazzling to him - pure and perfect and complete. He could never compete. He was hopeless, he was lost. Abusive was how he loved her.

Just before the house had come down she'd said, teeth clenched, 'You like me because you enjoy getting beat down.' He had forced it out of her, out of the huge store of undeniable things she refused to know that she knew. But he had hardly noticed its truth himself: it was too near the bone - loving and being beaten down weren't even separate ideas in his mind. He thinks of Anya. Thank you, she'd said. He thinks of her gentleness and her gratefulness as a present. Something he's never been given.

He lies in his crypt, the sober two-fifths of him half-expecting an outraged caveman to burst through the door, intent on giving him a belting.

It's happened before.

No-one comes, though. After a while there's no more scotch, and memories of the last few days begin to seep through the mist. He doesn't fancy that. He'll go get something from Willy's. Some bourbon to keep the edges off. Some overpriced juiced-up pig to remind him he's a has-been and a doormat and a misfit.

He feels better after a meal. Still back-to-the-wall suicidal, still abased and powerless and bereaved, but less shaky. Doesn't care to be seen around the Hellmouth trembling like a blossom in the breeze, sniffling like a girl because the Slayer doesn't want a little bit of pet fang any more.

He's getting near the Magic Box, but he carries on anyway. As he gets closer, he can see lights in the window. It's late - he hadn't really expected anyone to be there, had thought this was just another piece of pointless pilgrimage to a Buffy place. Could it be Anya in there, he wonders? She's the most likely, it's her place now. She'd be working late, naturally, taking her mind off the wreck, off the feeling of having no sensitive manly beefcake to go home to.

He'd like to see her. See if she's all right. Kind of owes her, considering.

He lights a cigarette, leans against the doorframe of the shop. There's a noise from inside; and a female voice, plaintive, says, 'damn!'

Anya.

The voice decides him - it reminds him that she used it, days ago, to confide in him, to say drunk, sugary, strangely-skewed things softly in his ear.

He stubs out his cigarette.

She looks up at the sound of the door opening. She's seated at the table, surrounded by books and whatnot. Her expression doesn't change. Spike finds himself wiping his hands on his jeans.

'Warm night,' he says.

'Sure,' says Anya. Her eyes have a glazed look. Spike straightens a pile of papers with one finger.

'Yep, looks like we're in for another warm spell.'

She turns back to her book without answering him.

'You - uh - got air conditioning here?'

'Sure.'

'That… er… whirring noise doesn't give you a headache? I remember -'

'Spike. I'm really busy right now.'

He half-smiles.

'If you'd like some help staring at that table, love, I'd be happy to oblige.'

'Maybe I've used the wrong phrase.' There's a hostile edge to her tone. 'I thought "I'm busy right now" was a way to politely suggest that the other person should get lost.'

Spike's shoulders droop infinitesimally.

'Fine,' he says. 'I can take a polite implication. Terribly sorry to have interrupted you doing bugger-all.'

His hand on the door-knob, Anya makes a noise like cat sneezing and slaps her book shut. He turns.

'What kind of stupid are you?' she demands.

'What's my choice?' he asks cautiously. Dru used to have these sudden mood swings.

'I wasted all that sympathy on you! And tears, and – and - righteous indignation. You gave me all that 'this girl' stuff, and then it turns out it's just you, being too stubborn and too - dumb to know when you can't win. As if she could ever love you.'

Her voice is cracking with bitterness and he doesn't know why. He looks down at his hands on the table. He was unprepared for this. No backhanders ready.

'She could,' he says in a low voice. 'She just won't.'

Anya leans forward. Her eyes are bright and seem further apart than usual.

'She. Can't.' He can feel her breath.

Words pour out of her, harsh but still deliberate, still precise.

'Who do you think you are, Spike? You're not human, you're nothing - you're a lame demon walking around in a stolen body.'

Her voice is rising.

'You think you're cool? You're embarrassing. All your little comments, they're not clever, they're inappropriate and rude. They're meant to show that you're too smart to care about stuff, but they don't. All they show is that you don't belong. You're trash. You're just a cute piece of demon ass, good enough to screw but not to -'

She stops. She's been yelling. Spike's looking at her, and she sees only concern in his face, his chagrin wiped away by alarm.

His shock brings her back to herself and she begins to cry, loudly and chokily, flinging her head and arms down onto her books. This relieves Spike, who knows what to do with crying girls. He slides off his chair, puts both arms round her, kisses her, wipes her face with his sleeve, calls her darling and pet until she stops.

He sits back down and she sniffs. There's a pause and then Anya props her head on her hand and gives him a weak smile. There's mascara on her cheeks. 'Aside from that,' she says, 'It's nice you stopped by.'

He smiles sideways up at her, awkward after the sudden explosion of tension. It's too like that other aftermath in this room, on this table, only all the merchandise is intact.

Anya takes a neatly folded Kleenex from her purse and wipes her nose. Spike's about to offer her his flask when they hear a voice:

'Hey, come on, the light's on – we'll get you some water.'

It's Xander. The door handle turns.

Anya freezes, still clutching her tissue. Spike stands up, glances towards the back room. She stops him.

'No time,' she whispers sharply, and pushes him behind the counter and under it.

Just a skeleton in another Scooby closet, he thinks. He'd been fooled by her fury, but she's craven at heart; she'll drop all the tough girl stuff for the smell of a chance to get back her man.

The pulse at Anya's throat is fluttering like a canary in distress while she watches the door open. Spike, under the counter like the contraband commodity he is, watches just as intently.

Xander comes in slowly, one arm around Dawn, who looks pale and boneless. When he sees Anya he looks down at his toes.

'Hey,' he says. Dawn doesn't look like she can speak. 'We - uh - we were just walking, and Dawn isn't feeling too good, so - I thought, maybe, some water...'

Nothing clever. Barely anything coherent.

Anya looks at Dawn, half-leaning on Xander's arm.

'Are you ok?' she asks. 'Are you going to vomit?'

'I don't think so,' says Dawn, sounding frail and unsure. Xander sits her down at the table and Anya passes her a bottle of water from her bag, unscrewing the lid for her first. It's disconcerting to have them show up together, shaken like this. Two smart talkers denuded of their armour.

Silence falls as Dawn sips. Spike, watching from the shadows, sees Anya twitching around the table, closing the books, shifting jars and candles and some things that look like pickled onions but probably aren't.

'I'm ok,' Dawn reassures her, still in a small voice. 'I'm not going to barf on your stuff.'

Anya jumps. 'Right. Great. So - how come you got sick? Where have you been? Did you have drugs?'

Xander's still staring at the floor. 'I was just picking her up from a party,' he says. 'No drugs.' He looks at Dawn suddenly. 'Right?'

'Yes!' says Dawn. 'No drugs, no alcohol, no magic, nothing bad. I forgot to have dinner, I guess. I'll have something when I get home.'

Anya looks at Xander. 'Should we call Buffy?' she asks.

He takes a long time to answer.

During the grilling pause that follows, Spike becomes aware of the peculiar implications of his lurking presence on the margins of this scene: invisible, silent, palpable. He can hear himself in Anya's tense, agonised tones, in Xander's silence. The things the three of them said the last time they were all within earshot of each other hang in the air. Xander, particularly, seems to be finding it hard to manoeuvre round them. In the end he says,

'She's at work. I haven't really seen her. I mean - she's been really tired.'

'How are you?' Anya asks.

'Fine. Great.' He looks uncomfortable, and keeps glancing at the door, but Dawn still looks too shivery to be moved.

'Yeah, you look great,' says Anya, sharply. His colour is dirty margarine; his face seems to have sagged and bagged away from the bone; his dark eyes are murky, and the straight lines of back and shoulders he's been growing into are broken. Gravity's winning, pulling him down.

Spike, looking at him, feels a shock of pain that is almost entirely physical. This rapid leaking of vitality jars him. Never mind that he'd rather have a beating than a conversation with Xander; only, last week he'd been vivid and powerful, in a casual, carpenterly way, and now he looks like scrap.

Anya, having reached deadlock with Xander's bleak and evasive gaze, turns to Dawn. 'You want some cookies?' she says kindly. 'They'll raise your energy levels.'

Dawn smiles, 'No thanks. Don't really feel up to all that chewing.'

'Well - I've got some milk in the back. Or you could have juice.' Dawn accepts juice, and Xander and Spike both wonder how much time Anya's been spending here.

'Feel ready to try heading yet, Dawnster?' Xander asks, aiming half-heartedly at his usual bantering style.

'Where's your car?' Anya asks.

'Uh - Willow's got it. Late night grocery shopping. She said she'd pick up some stuff for me too. And then Buffy called, said she had to work late, and Dawn and I got stuck riding Shank's pony.'

Once he's able to form the words, he keeps them coming. He's keeping them linked by a neutral buzz of unloaded sound.

But Spike knows by instinct what Anya hears: how quickly she's become dispensable, how effortlessly the Scoobies have closed ranks, filling the gap where she'd been. Her face hardens.

'That's neat,' she says, coldly. 'But who's stayed home to sit at the window with the boiling oil?'

Xander visibly sways.

'No – uh, hey,' he stutters. 'Ahn - I'm sorry.'

'Sorry for what? Sorry you settled? Sorry you wasted time making do, when you could've gotten in a few extra years of drooling over Buffy?'

Spike steals a look at Dawn. She's got a bit more colour now, but she's very still, leaning her cheek on her hand, staring down at the table. She shouldn't hear this, he thinks.

'Don't talk about Buffy,' Xander says, jaggedly.

Anya looks like she's been hit, like she's damn well going to hit back. Spike shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the counter. If she's going to take it out of Buffy, using coarse language and in front of Dawn, they'll just have to deal with the scarring later.

'Don't talk about her? In case I verbally transmit some vampire-screwing cooties she doesn't already have? I probably caught it from her, Xander! If anyone - '

'Don't! Stop it!' Dawn stands up, knocking a jar of marbles off the table. It smashes and they bounce. Three visible and one hidden pair of eyes watch them. Dawn, still weak from her giddy fit, begins to cry.

'Please. Don't yell anymore. He said he was sorry. He's not even talking to Buffy, not properly. I just wish everything would get back to normal. Can't you just make it up?' crying quietly, harder and harder, 'I wish you could just make it up.'

Xander looks ashamed. 'Hey, Dawn. Come on, we'll get you home. We're ok. We can finish this another time, right Anya?'

But Anya is turning away. How can she resist this? It's what she wishes too. Sighing, she lets the ropes and whorls of her other face push through her delicate, tearstained skin. The pendant, hidden, begins to glow through her sweater.

But although her face is shielded, Dawn, sitting at the table, sees the glow, and guesses what it means - she's been up close and personal with one before. Quick as a flash she's across the room, grasping Anya's arm, somehow ripping the chain and snatching the necklace. Anya screams and clutches at it, but Dawn holds it behind her and screams back.

Xander crosses the room in one step, shooting an arm out in front of Dawn, pushing her backwards. It's faster than he's moved in days. He stands with his arm around Dawn, staring.

The veins sink and fade. Anya turns her human face into her hand and sobs, half-turned away from him.

Without a word he turns towards the door, guiding Dawn, his haggard face blank. But as they reach the threshold he turns again, takes the jewel from where it lies in Dawn's hand, and hurls it violently and wordlessly across the room, where it smacks a carving and falls. Then the door swings and they're really gone.

Anya stands where he left her, racked with low, rapid sobs. She doesn't move when Spike stands up creakily from behind the counter, but when he crosses the room to pick up the pendant, she gasps and turns. She looks at him like she's forgotten where she is, like something's wrong but she can't remember what. Buffy looked at him like that once, after whisking him like white of egg to the soft peak stage. Drowned, guilty, lost eyes.

Murderer's eyes.

He steps towards her. 'Yeah,' he says in a dry voice, banging the pendant down on the table. 'I'm the idiot round here.'

Anya lies in bed, thinking of Spike. Thinking about him in much the same way as she'd slept with him - for his anaesthetic properties. Last night, after the scene in the Magic Box, he'd treated her kindly. That is, he'd called her a life-wrecking insane bloody cow (he'd also called D'Hoffryn an arse-faced creeping beardy-weirdy and a scavenging pimp); but he'd waited while she'd swept and closed up the shop, walked her home, and given her all of what was left in his flask before he'd left. And half-out the door he'd stopped, given her a stern look and said, 'Don't go taking everything in the medicine cabinet, now.'

The thoughts that are beating at the edge of her consciousness are of Xander. What she's trying not to hear is her own voice saying 'It's over. You screwed up.'

He's everything to her. All her reasons for being human.

He'd said, 'I plan to live a long and silly life, and I'm not interested in doing that without you around.'

Hadn't he meant it? Had he changed his mind?

She thinks of all the times he's reminded her, about taking things too literally. Maybe he never knew how literally she'd agreed with him, won't know how much more literally she agrees with him now. Life's never seemed so long, or so silly, or so wholly uninteresting as it does today.

So she thinks of Spike, floats Spike thoughts through her mind and concentrates on them, like you concentrate on the tune you hum with your fingers in your ears to drown out unpleasant stories or the sound of Harrison Ford trying to drown Michelle Pfeiffer. Or the frightening part of 'Bambi', the bit with Thumper.

It's late, she thinks drearily. If the shop doesn't open punctually, we may lose walk-in trade.

She gets up to dress, leaving symmetrical tear stains on her pillow.

Spoilers: up to 'Entropy' - it branches off after that.

Summary: The beginning of a Spike story that picks up after he and Anya you know what. Might turn out S/A. Spike's nearly been caught by Xander, getting cosy with Anya again, found out she's gone back to her veiny lifestyle, and is thinking things through, dead confused...

Cold Comfort

Set after 'Entropy' (Buffy Season 6)

Chapter Two

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