Cold Comfort

By joan the english chick

A Vague Disclaimer Is Nobody's Friend: The characters and locations of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are property of Mutant Enemy Productions (Grr, argh) and FOX Television, and are used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is property of the author, and may not be reproduced, retransmitted, or posted anywhere without my expressed permission.
Warnings/Ratings: This story is rated NC-17 for sexual situations and some four-letter words.
Timeline: Takes place the night after episode "As You Were."
Spoilers: "BTVS" 6th Season through "As You Were"
Summary: Spike visits Buffy the night after she dumped him. It's not pretty.

Blades of grass tinted black by night whisper against each other as Spike lets himself into the Summers house through the back door. The house is nearly as silent as his tomb, and he slips in like the ghost he almost is, thinking that being neutered is showing its advantage now; even if any of the home's three sleeping women sensed his presence, they wouldn't be alarmed. For two of them, that's as it should be.

He slides up the stairs like a mobile shadow, his feet easily avoiding the weak spots that creak or groan. Spares a glance at Dawn's room, but she has the door closed, the small measure of privacy that adolescence craves.

Buffy keeps her door ajar, though, lest anything go bump in the night. He slips through it and stands watching her sleep for a moment. Her cropped hair spreads across the pillow, dull in the dark, without even much moonlight to bring it alive. One arm is flung out to her side, the hand hanging over the edge of the bed; the other bent up so that the hand lies beside her head, palm up.

Her nostrils flare briefly and he suspects she might be sensing him, so he completes the form begun on the porch below. In a single move, vampire-swift, he's on top of the bed, on top of her, pinning her down. He has one hand covering her mouth and the other at her throat in the space between one of her heartbeats and the next. By the second heartbeat she's awake, gasping and struggling, staring up at him in alarm, her eyes wide above his hand.

"Hush. Hush, pet, wouldn't want to wake anyone," he rasps quietly into the night. If looks could stake, she'd be lying under a blanket of his ashes this instant. There are worse ways to go. She still looks ready to struggle, though, so he moves his other hand slightly, bringing the blade of the knife fully against her throat, sharp hard steel almost colder than his own flesh. Almost.

Feels her pulse speed up, her heart pounding against his belly. Watches her eyes widen. Loves that look in her face, fear and shock. Loved it even way back, before he knew how much it resembles her expression when she comes. Seeing it now is half the reason he contrived this bitter plan. "Forget about this, did you, luv?" he whispers, his jaw hard. "Not your little harmless puppy any more, me."

Feeling sure now that she won't cry out, won't risk alarming Dawn or Willow, he lifts his hand from her mouth. She blinks at him through narrowed eyes as she gulps for air, working to calm her breathing.

"You won't kill me," she states sotto voce, the words implying a confidence that her expression and tone don't corroborate. He smirks and presses the knife down harder, feeling the contours of her throat with it, feeling her whole body freeze and press down into the mattress, a futile escape attempt.

"Won't I? Why's that, pet? 'Cause I love you?" Tastes the quiet despair that is that word on his tongue. He can smell the blood beginning to well up in a paper-thin line around the blade. Lifts the knife away a bit; doesn't want to lose control. "I ever tell you what I did to Cecily?" There's a lie in the implication there, and there's symmetry in the lie -- but he *did* do a lot of damage, to a lot of women who looked a lot like Cecily. He forces himself to focus on Buffy, tries not to think about lovely flesh lifting away from bone. Nor about lovely flesh clutching at his cock.

Buffy stares at him, a small frown wrinkling her perfect forehead. He can read the thoughts chasing across her inner screen as clearly as if she were speaking them. She's thinking: this is not a Spike that I know. Wait, yes it is. It's just not one that I've seen for years. How did I handle him? How do I handle him now? And then, How much do I owe him? She shifts a little underneath him, cautiously, watching his face. Not preparing to attack, just changing her position, moving her legs a bit, and then he catches another scent and realizes. Bloody hell, she *is* a bit bolloxed up, isn't she?

"Do it then," she whispers bitingly, giving him her best haughty, which is also a lie since she's as wet as he is hard. "I would've thought this would be beneath you, but here you are, so just do it."

"Oh, you got me all wrong, luv," Spike shoots back, not bothering to hide from his face the fact that her words sting. He clenches his thighs tightly, resisting, resisting the urge to grind his groin against her. "That's not why I'm here. It's another hunger I want you to satisfy now."

Buffy can't believe it. He sees in her face that she comprehends his words, but like the numbers carved on her headstone they seem part of a different reality. Her eyes fasten on him like an accusation, seeming to say that this is a betrayal harsher than she had ever expected from him.

"Don't look at me like that. You make choices, you pay the price." Yes, he'll paint this as her penance, and she'll take it for such, he knows she will, because he knows her; saw it in her face when she apologized and called him by name. He could be wrong; he could be crouching here waiting to be insulted anew with offers of cash or sex -- but he thinks not.

And he's right. She locks her gaze into his, moving her spread arm where his own elbow pins it to the bed. Cautiously, he eases up and lets her get the arm free. And she holds it out to him, turned so that the softest whitest skin gleams softly at him. In the darkness it could be a skinless bone. A sacrificial offering on a funeral pyre. Would that make him a god, or simply a corpse?

Spike sits up. Lowers the knife to the bedspread, latches both hands onto Buffy's arm and brings the tender wrist to his lips.

Locks his gaze into hers again and makes her watch as he shifts into his true face. His sharp teeth descend and pierce the flesh, digging deep. Buffy jerks and shudders, a small cry escaping her throat. He reaches over and presses one hand over her mouth again, muffling her. Her eyes still impossibly wide above his thumb, she struggles briefly through the moment of panic where she is sure that he's going to hold her down and drain her. Do you trust me? he thinks at her, devoid of mockery.

He wants to close his eyes but he can't, can't stop looking at her as her life-blood flows into his mouth and down his throat. The stricken look on her face, the heady taste of her blood combine in a pain like losing love. Her blood is as sweet as her pussy but not at all in the same way. It sings and sizzles in his veins, making every nerve crackle, or maybe that's just the nearness of her.

Utterly still otherwise, Buffy grinds her teeth together, whether struggling to hold back a noise or just to endure the pain he can't say. But Spike sees her face turn a whiter white and he manages just barely to get himself under control again, lets his fangs slide out of her flesh. Smoothes his tongue over the two little wounds, washing away the blood. The tiny holes begin to heal immediately.

Spike takes his hand from her mouth again, his palm moist from her breathing and saliva, and dives down onto her suddenly. She hardens as if she thinks he's going for a kiss, but he presses her chin up with his fingers and licks at the line of drying blood where his knife nicked her. As he's cleaning that away his nostrils flare and he realizes she is still aroused. As he is, of course. He pulls back and looks into her face.

Her jaw is set, and she won't meet his eyes. He feels his lips curl up into that smirk, a much more effective expression with his yellow eyes and ridged forehead and fangs to back it up.

"Was it good for you too, luv?" he sends the words slinking out across her forehead. He sits up again, reaches for his knife -- watches her tense like a bowstring -- pushes it into its holster on his belt, and stands.

"I'll be back," he promises like Schwarzenegger. But not to terminate, he thinks; to culminate. She looks at him now, her eyes like slits of hell in the darkness, hating him.

"I won't do it. Not again."

Unexpectedly, he feels sad. Ashamed. The tables turn; it's he who can't look at her now. "Yes, pet. You will." And leaves before his treacherous mouth says something else to cancel the entire night.

Slides out of the house as silently as he entered. Heads back to his ruined crypt, taking his ruined heart along with. Uses his hand, still coated with Buffy's drying saliva, to bring himself relief. And sits alone in the dark, thinking about how to kill a Slayer.