Worn Me Down

She lay in the circle of Spike�s cool embrace, her head on his chest as he slept, sated after a few hours of unusually wild fucking.  Spike never made love to her, only fucked her, but today she had experienced a passion in him that she hadn�t known existed.  What made it so unbearable was that the only reason she finally saw that side of him at all was because of that stupid blue sweater.  For him, she had wrapped herself in the stench of the slayer, never even asking how he had acquired a piece of her clothing, and pretended to be her own arch nemesis. Just being herself never would have been good enough to inspire him to do all those things to her.

She arranged her luxurious blonde hair carefully under her cheek so that it would absorb the tears that fell and keep them from reaching the flesh beneath - the flesh of her oblivious lover - lost in dreams of a forbidden conquest.  It wouldn�t do to let Spike know how he had hurt her.  No, that only led to mocking and arguing.  Not that he�d hurt her physically, not more than she�d wanted him to anyway.  Just her feelings were hurt, the feelings he insisted she wasn�t supposed to have.

Spike always considered himself a unique sort of vampire.  He didn�t give other vampires credit for the emotions that he himself could feel.  He would rant and rave about the slayer and how she tormented him, kicking aside his bleeding heart and stomping on his love.  But if Harmony complained about the same treatment from him, usually he just started throwing her own unicorns at her until she shut up.  With her mind full of all the evil things she�d like to do if she ever managed to get Buffy tied up and at her mercy, she finally drifted off to sleep.

When she woke up, she could feel the night outside, full of potential and the promise of a fresh meal.  Stretching beneath the satin sheet, her arm swept over Spike�s side of the bed and discovered it was empty, leaving her to hunt alone yet again.  Not that he hunted any prey but the slayer these days. 

Harmony shuffled through the streets of Sunnydale, so lost in thoughts of love gone wrong that she forgot she was supposed to be looking for someone to eat.  Stopping for a moment to see where she was, she looked up and realized she stood right in front of Buffy�s house.  Annoyed that she had let her subconscious control her destination, she quickly glanced around, hoping she could get away without being seen and staked.  Plans for escape faded the moment she saw the glowing ember of a cigarette in the darkness beneath a small clump of trees alongside the house.  So this was why she had woken to an empty bed.  Of course, she had suspected as much, but it suspecting it and being confronted with irrefutable proof, were two very different things.

The cigarette tip glowed and darkened at regular intervals as Spike pulled the smoke into his dead lungs.  With her preternatural vision, she could see him, in profile, staring up at the slayer�s bedroom window.  He knew she was there.  She could tell by the way he deliberately wasn�t looking at her.  He had to have heard her, and if it had been anyone else, he either would have slipped away to avoid notice, or attacked.  Harmony wasn�t even worthy of a turn of his head.  Not when the slayer was putting on such a show, outfitting herself for the night�s patrol in front of the window.

Shaking her head in disgust, Harmony left him to his voyeurism.  On her way home, almost as an afterthought, she grabbed one of a pair of pubescent boys challenging each other to venture increasingly further into the dark, and closed, cemetery.  She barely tasted the fresh blood of innocence as it poured down her throat.  The only tiny satisfaction she felt was that Spike would have been unable to rip the boy�s throat out himself, thanks to the Initiative.

Sitting home all night wasn�t Harmony�s idea of a fun, evil time, but her options were lacking.  With Spike chasing the slayer�s skirt, she couldn�t even show her face in any of the demon bars.  Too many people had seen her bitten at graduation for her to pass for human at the Bronze.  So, while Spike played super-stalker, she served the forces of darkness by ordering new unicorn figurines and posters from a fantasy catalog using a stolen credit card. 

With any luck, the slayer would flash enough skin to force Spike to come home early to her to slake his lust.  Idly flipping through the pages in her catalog, she wondered when unlife had become so pathetic that she was counting on a slayer to make sure she got some action. 

Six hours later, Spike still wasn�t home.  Harmony had already maxed out the credit card, finally reduced to ordering things she didn�t even want just to pass the time.  She decided to display the atrocious pink and purple unicorns in easy reach where Spike could break them, and perhaps spare the ones she liked.  After all, who ever heard of a pink unicorn?  Everyone knew they were white, silver, or gold. 

Harmony sat on the bed, her arms folded, trying to pretend she wasn�t worried about Spike.  In another hour, the sun would be up, and if he wasn�t back, it meant she wouldn�t see him all day.  Or that Buffy finally gave up and dusted him.  She wondered what fascinating adventures the slayer must be having to keep Spike�s interest all night long.  Probably none, she thought.  She probably went to bed hours ago and he�s just standing there outside her house listening to her heartbeat, and making little piles of cigarette butts in her lawn.  Hell knows that would be more entertaining than being here with me!

She threw herself backwards on the bed, trying to stifle the temper tantrum she felt rising up inside.  Enraged, at both herself and Spike, she got undressed and pulled back the blankets, deciding she might as well just go to sleep.  There, crumpled up with the sheet, was Buffy�s sweater.  Some tiny part of her brain that managed to maintain a logical viewpoint knew that she was just looking at a piece of meaningless fabric.  The rest of her brain surrendered to the demon that ruled her mind and body and saw the enemy.  Harmony attacked.  The sweater didn�t stand a chance. 

When the blinding fury subsided, Harmony blinked and stared at a smattering of blue lint that seemed to cling to every surface.  Blue threads were stuck under her fingernails and between her teeth.  Slight embarrassment, along with a gratifying sense of victory replaced her anger as she set about cleaning up the mess she�d made. 

With the remains of the sweater safely discarded, Harmony found herself in an agreeable mood for the first time that night.  She arranged the pillows the way she liked them and then reached out to switch off the lamp, when the sound of the door opening froze her in mid-motion.

Spike staggered into the room looking petulant and not a little bit drunk, the nearly empty liquor bottle he held adding to the impression.  He barely glanced at her, lying there in the bed, before flopping down into a chair with his back to her.  He upended the remaining contents of the bottle into his mouth, and then threw it hard against the opposite wall, grunting in vague satisfaction when it smashed into a fine powder accented with small, deadly shards that tinkled as they fell to the floor. 

Her unbeating heart went out to him.  It always did.  She didn�t have a full grasp of irony, but she knew that the reason she understood his pain so well and could sympathize was that she had firsthand knowledge of exactly how he felt, thanks to him.  So instead of rolling over and going to sleep as she planned, or maybe making a snide remark about another obviously failed night of attempts to win Buffy�s love, she slid out of bed and went to him. 

She stood in front of him, naked, but his eyes didn�t bother to focus on her.  He continued staring blankly at the wall.  When she moved to sit in his lap, his arms went around her in an automatic motion, one hand cupping her ass as casually as it had rested on the arm of the chair.  She didn�t bother trying to kiss him on the lips, knowing without even thinking about it that she couldn�t bear to feel his unresponsiveness.  She leaned forward and nibbled lightly on his ear, kissed his neck, and ran her hands over her chest, anything that didn�t require a matching action from him. 

When he didn�t bother to throw her off his lap, she grew bolder and lightly pulled up his shirt until it slipped out from the waistband of his pants, allowing her to reach underneath and stroke his abdomen.  A small shudder ran through her, picturing the body she touched, still hidden in its clothes, but naked in her mind.  She had no trouble admitting that her relationship with Spike had begun on a purely physical basis.  One look at him and she didn�t have to be evil undead to take him up on his request for her sexual favors in exchange for giving her a place to stay.  Too bad she had to go and fuck things up by falling in love with him. 

While her tongue worked its magic on a particularly sensitive spot behind Spike�s ear, her hand slid out from beneath his shirt and moved lower, stroking him through his jeans, feeling his obvious need.  Whether she had caused it or not, she knew exactly what to do with it. 

She moved from his lap to kneel on the floor in front of him.  He spread his legs to accommodate her, and raised his hips when she unbuttoned his pants and slid them down his legs.  It was the only sign of encouragement she�d seen so far, but it was enough.  Sweeping her hair to one side to keep it out of the way, Harmony leaned forward and took the head of Spike�s cock between her lips.  She hesitated for a moment, but when this earned her no violence, she went on, wrapping her tongue around him, licking all the right places.  He slumped a little further in the chair, closer to her, letting her know without words that she was doing something right. She began to moan around his cock and slipped one hand between his legs to squeeze his balls just hard enough to make him twitch. 

When she felt his hands in her hair, guiding the motion of her head, her heart soared, feeling appreciated at last.   But then he held her still, and when she raised her eyes, she saw him looking at her thoughtfully.  �How �bout you fetch that sweater, pet?�  He asked. 

Even as she pulled away from him, her demon came forth, scraping a fang along sensitive skin, not entirely by accident, eliciting a shout from Spike that didn�t completely overpower her snarl.  Reason gone in a haze of red fury, Harmony leapt to her feet, seized the nearest unicorn figurine, and threw it at Spike�s face at close range.  Taken by surprise, he didn�t get his hands up in time to ward off the projectile and it exploded into fragments of white porcelain as it connected with his forehead, inflicting several shallow cuts. 

By the time he was out of the chair, struggling to fasten his pants, Harmony had located a stake and spun around to meet Spike as he rushed towards her.  He grabbed her wrist, twisting sharply.  The bone cracked and Harmony roared, dropping the stake involuntarily and struggling to free herself from Spike�s grip.  She clawed at his face with her free hand, but he twisted away, deflecting the blow before stepping in and punching her in the jaw.  Spike released her wrist as she staggered backwards, reeling from the pain, tears forming in her eyes, human face reemerging. 

Harmony�s anger dissipated, replaced by a familiar self-loathing and its accompanying hopelessness.  She slumped to the floor, sobbing, and watched as Spike walked away, picked up a bottle of scotch, brushed away a few pieces of broken porcelain, and threw himself back in his chair as if nothing had happened.  It wasn�t as if similar scenarios hadn�t played themselves out time and again over the past few months.  Not during sex, that was a first, but everything else was the same as it had been countless times before � a reference to the slayer at the wrong time sending them into frenzied violence that lasted just long enough for her to remember that Spike was much older and much stronger than her, and she didn�t have the slightest chance of ever really kicking his ass.  Each time, after her beating, she�d crawl into bed, cry herself to sleep, and by the time she woke up her body would be healed, Spike would be horny, and there would be makeup sex.  Not this time.

Picking herself up, Harmony dressed in comfortable clothes, wincing when the movements forced her to bend her wrist at all.  She looked around the crypt, trying to decide if there was anything she�d really miss.  A lump rose in her throat when her eyes moved past the vampire in the chair.  He doesn�t count, she told herself.  Finally, she decided it would be more satisfying to leave all the unicorns and other girlie things for Spike to deal with.  She could always get more for herself, and for now, she had to hurry.  She only had 15 minutes until sunrise, meaning she�d need to spend the day in a nearby sewer, but she�d rather be in a sewer than spend another day playing second fiddle to a slayer.  Or was it third.  She couldn�t forget that he�d take Drusilla back in a heartbeat and toss her out on her undead ass.  Not to mention the whole thing with Angel, he was family too, so he automatically came before her. 

At the door she turned to give her lover - ex-lover - she corrected herself, one final glare.  Whether she was second, third, fourth, or twenty seventh on his list, she was also out of there.  Spike looked up and held her gaze.  He didn�t beg her to stay, ask where she was going, or even snark that he�d be glad to be rid of her.  His face held no reproach or derision, only sorrow.  A faint incline of his head suggested understanding and acceptance.  Or maybe she was just looking for a reason not to hate him and seeing things that weren�t there so she could stay.  Tearing her eyes away, she yanked open the door and raced for the sewer entrance. 

She had no idea what the next night would bring, or the one after.  Leaving Sunnydale sounded particularly appealing.  Maybe she could get a job, try to live a normal life.  It didn�t matter.  Getting away mattered.  Being Harmony mattered, and she vowed to herself that she would never again let anyone make her think that being Harmony wasn�t good enough. 

~End~