cold comfort

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Disclaimer: I don't own any 'Buffy' characters, totally the other way round.

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. Set after 'Entropy' (Buffy Season 6)

Feedback: Please! Any feedback! negative, positive, violently abusive, transparently insincere, totally irrelevant etc. - I'm easy and desperate...

His mind kept going back to what had happened between him and Anya in the shop.

How she had touched him, his hand.

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

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

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

His mind kept going back to Buffy, as well. Walking away. Looking knives and stakes and disgust at him for two beats - her usual measure for a dirty look -and turning on her heel.

Then he'd known that he'd lost her, thrown away the last stake he'd had in her: all his power had been in her guilty compromise in keeping him there, closeted - her secret addiction, filthy treasure - and in her jealousy.

Had he thought he'd won something at the wedding, making her jealous of his attention, of his body? She had been jealous - and she had been caught by surprise, knocked for points by the bitter ambush.

Yes. He had thought so - so why was he compelled to prove himself wrong, to give up those precious footholds?

Knowing that he - at least for an hour - had wanted Anya more than anything in the world, seen nothing but her, held her as though she were precious, magnetic - hadn't drawn Buffy back to him. It had shocked and hurt and freed her. It had shown her that what she thought she held captive in him (someone to love her insanely, exclusively, and forever; someone for whose pain she could not be held to account; someone invisible in the economics of love - something for nothing, in fact) - didn't exist. That Spike was, if not 100% human, at least alive enough for another human to do just what she'd done: take refuge, help herself to what was there. He wasn't her own delicious narcotic, her private nightmare and dream. He was real.

Had she seen his hand trace Anya's cheek as he had traced hers, the exact same softness melting the lines of his hard face? She hadn't - the camera signal for the shop had not been picked up by Willow's computer until later. But he didn't know that.

He was realizing how much Buffy liked being loved - realizing how much it had meant to her to have so much urgent and enduring, greedy and selfless love poured out before her. Not used, but saved, banked, to be drawn in emergencies.

She had asked him to die for her, the night of the nearly-apocalypse. To save Dawn's life, but for her, because he loved her.

In these hard times - back from the dead, but not entirely, sense of self running low - she'd been forced to make withdrawals, damaging inroads on her hoard of banked up love. Her rainy day had come, and she'd put her frozen self in real danger - he had to believe this -of being dragged into loving him in exchange.

Tonight that was all over. What he'd held, stored up in Buffy, what she'd held stored up in him - he'd blown it all. She was free to hate him now.

Bet it feels sweet, he thought.

He knew - he felt free to hate her too, a bit. The only times he'd felt respite this crushingly painful and stupid year had been a few randomly scattered moments when she'd thoughtfully behaved like such an abusive cow that rage had flooded back.

Just convenient. He'd been angry enough, for a second, to drink her blood so fast he'd give himself hiccups.

Never lasted long. 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 thought of Anya. Thank you, she'd said. He thought of her gentleness and her gratefulness as a present. Something he'd never been given. Something he could take away with him.

**************************************

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

It had happened before.

No-one came, though. After a while there was no more scotch, and memories of the last few days began to seep through the mist. He didn't fancy that, really didn't. He'd 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 felt better though, after a meal. Still back-to-the-wall suicidal, still abased and powerless and bereaved, but less shaky. Didn't care to be seen around the Hellmouth trembling like a blossom in the breeze, sniffling like a girl because the Slayer didn't want a little bit of pet fang any more... he frowned and kicked a squashed pepsi max can. Big Bad.

He knew he was getting near the Magic Box, but he carried on anyway. As he got closer, he could see lights in the window. It was late - he hadn't really expected anyone to be there, thought this was just another piece of pointless pilgrimage to a Buffy place. Could it be Anya in there, he wondered? She was the most likely, it was 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.

Would she still have soft glances for him, now?

No, he thought, casting around for the facts, weighing them up. Not a chance. He wanted to see her, though. See if she's all right, he thought. Kind of owed her, seeing as...

He lit a cigarette, leaned against the door frame of the shop. Watch me, Buffy, he thought, I'm moving on. Stalking a totally different girl -uses me for a different kind of sex to blot out the totally different ways she's screwed up her life.

There's a noise from inside the shop; a female voice, plaintive:'damn!'

The voice decides him - it reminds him that she used it, days ago, to confide in him, thank him, to say drunk, sugary, strangely-skewed things softly in his ear. He's already done clinging to the fringes of a girl's life - repeatedly, he's taken it to the limits. He'd still do it if Buffy gave him one more fraction of a chance, one more crumb. Give him an inch and he'll camp out in it. But he's not going to start another round. If Anya's got no time, fair enough, he thinks. I'll get gone. Stubs out his cigarette. Knocks and enters.

**************************************

She's sitting at the table, with books and charms stacked around her -but she's leaning on one arm, too depressed to be stock-taking. He clears his throat, not knowing what to expect, and she looks up. He moves closer, not sure what to say. She stares at him like he's the Russian Revolution and slaps her book shut.

'You idiot' she says, clipped and accusing.

Her hardness doesn't crush him. He sits down, for a moment almost happy, feeling like he's found himself another unpredictable heroine.

'Hi,' he says. Instead of 'huh?' But for some reason she's furious.

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

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

'You actually thought she was going to fall in love with you?' she asks scathingly, 'I wasted all that sympathy on you! You gave me all that 'this girl' crap, and I thought you were having a real relationship with someone, and then it turns out it's just you, being too stubborn and too dumb to know when you can't win.'

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, unarmed. No backhanders ready.

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

Anya leans forward, holding his eyes. Hers are bright and seem further apart than usual.

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