Living In A Glass House

by Lise and River

"Shut the fuck up, all of you. I'm tired of it."

And she's filled with a terror, that drips off her brow and down between her breasts, and into the cracks between each part of her skin.  Just-- too many people, here.

"Get the *fuck* outta the way."

The voices, all around her, they buzz right into her head and *stay* there. That's not right. Voices are supposed to bring warmth and security and irritation and --

Oh. But he's gone.

He's always gone.  That's his call-sign. His modis-operandi.  His-- red shirt, needs washing, and  she strips it from her dirty body, forgetting that there are thousands of people crammed into these refuge shelters. There aren't any that *count*, anymore.

Where the hell is he?

She balls the shirt down, clutching at it as tough trying to break cloth. She'll keep it -- everything can be useful, here. Fuel for fire, payment for small services rendered, cover at night, something to cram into someone's mouth to make one voice, at least just *one* voice, shut the hell up.

The buzz of three hundred people stuck in one room, the echo of a room just barely big enough to take three hundred people, overtakes everything.

Smell is sound and taste is sound and sight is sound and thought is sound too, and -- when someone touches the back of her neck, just beneath recently-cut hair, that's sound, too.

When she whirls around, she almost expects -- "Oh. It's you."

He's smoking, as usual, and even that makes a sound, scratchy and like a broken grammaphone, needle bent and shimmering and too taut for its' own good.

"Yeah, it's me. Who the fuck else would it be?"

So-- crude, now.

She ignores him.

There are three hundred people here, little ants, all buzzing and sweating in tandem.  All inside, away from the ice storms that rage on in this -- desert -- town.  Deserted town.  Desserts, town.  Eat the town.  Yeah.

She managed to get a little piece of wall, because the previous owner slept a little too soundly.  The knife was dull enough that his slit throat didn't gurgle above the footfalls of three, hundred, bloody, ants; and why should it? Why, when the scratchings their unkempt toenails make against this tile, why would his gurgle make any sound?

Eat the town.

Yeah.

"Did you get anything to eat?"

"Dead bird for you," he says, presenting a bloody pigeon. He nods down, to the floor, to the pitiful pile upon it. "Something for the kid, too."

And how did it happen that she's standing here, dead body rotting away twenty feet from her because having a wall is *important* but having some way to get dead bodies out is more like nonexistant, letting another person sleep because she'll bite out the eyes of anyone who tries the same trick she did?

The pile shifts a little, moans.  Fever's back, and worse.  Worse, again, that is.

Someone opens the door to their little box, and in tandem, three hundred voices raise in muttered disapproval, as icy chills blast their way in amid the bodies.  Those nearest the door are the loudest, and it's taken Anya almost a week, but she's opposite that exit--that track, it's gone, but they don't shiver in their sleep anymore.

Of course, the blankets need washing again, and all of their clothes, and he's looking wan, too.  Paler.  Like ice.  "You have to have something to eat as well, you know."

He waves a hand, and smoke curls around it, illuminating little flies crawling around on the dead body, the guy's throat.  Someone has something to eat.  Eat the town.

Yeah--

"I'll deal with it tomorrow."

The unspoken, 'It's too cold out there now', and Anya sighs.  Bares her neck, and stares at the soot-covered walls in a blank deal with the devil. If she thought it would do any good.

Lips latch to her skin, teeth, pain. She shudders; he still hasn't learned how to do this properly.

She opens her mouth to say something, then thinks again and uses it to breath and lets him drink, and this is wrong in so many corners and places.

There's a sound againt her throat; barely audible. A stifled moan.

She knows he's embarassed at the slip, embarassed that she must have heard. As though she's some century-old frail who's never seen anything. Sometimes he's just so innocent.

And yet --

This, she can't remember ever seeing. Not quite this way.

Teeth that lack the magic needed to elongate into her flesh pull out, tearing skin a little on the way out the same way they did on the way in. And since she's the practical one, what she thinks now is, we've got to find some easier way to do this.

But she hasn't been herself, and so she looks down at curled form and thinks, as well, you just dare get your non-fangs anywhere near her.

Blanket stirs. Anya kneels down, lays a hand on what must be a too-thin shoulder, shakes a little. It's flying rats tonight, not quite well done.

While she's feeding slightly-rancid meat into the lips that are closed in protest, in hatred, in almost, not quite, barely, suicide... there's nothing else. Before there can *be* anything else, there has to be a submission from the mound of dirty rags.  She has to accept she's still human, and still needs to eat, and until then, Anya can say 'fuck', to the rest.

"Fuck," he says, and she looks up and up, but his eyes are not on her. Patting his pockets. "I'm out of smokes again."

She doesn't ask how he gets them, in this room, here where the doors to the outside world only open as few times a day as possible, where there's not enough real, before-times food for anyone because the houses are much too far under the snow. You get used to it -- here, in their small too-full world, a lot of things are possible when they shouldn't be. You just have to know the right price.

She never would have figured him for a merchant.

Then again, she had pegged Tara as a fighter, somewhere past the skin and the eyes and the bullshit and the right amount of herbs and the whispered words and the stages of the sun.  She can be wrong.

Third bite goes down, and she's already exhausted. Almost glad that there's so little. But it's not productive, in the long run, the face under her hand is much too thin already as she forces the jaw open again.

No, Tara's not much of a fighter at all.

The rat's gone, or, mostly.  She eats dead bird quickly enough, and her teeth don't stop chattering until she's picking feathers out of her gums. Can't ever get those damned things right.

People are settling in around her for the night, and someone kicks her in the back, hoping she'll squeal or better yet, give up her wall.  Not fucking likely.  She snarls, pulls the little girl closer, and points to her other side impatiently.  "Sit down, for god's sake, before they hurt her."

Her stomach clenches, trying to absorb meat that's been sitting outside in a deep freeze for almost two days... it's so cold, she hurts.

Riley sits down, and closes his eyes.  And so she copies him, feeling the fake, almost-Roman Empire wall behind her curl and decay, spin on an axis of almost tumbling down.

Besides her, she can feel Tara shift a little. She opens lashes that want to stick shut, looks at her, almost jumps at open eyes and gaze trained on the ceiling.

It's searching, sweeping, as though following the  outline of something. "What are you looking at?"

And maybe she should be surprised when Tara answers, because it's the first time the other girl has spoken in the last two weeks. "The clouds. They look like a limping duck."

She looks up, sees plaster, polluted and gray. "Really?"

Serious. "Yeah." Pause. "There's too much wind. Now it looks like a shepherd."

Just a young woman fooling around, having fun chasing her childhood in pictures in clouds. If only there wasn't ceiling in the way.

Anya closes her eyes again, leaving the blond staring up between cracks in the ceiling tiles to find the sky.  She's not really comfortable.  There's not much she can do about it.  Sweat soaks her thin tank top and is currently staining the wall.  And, the next office over, someone is screaming in their sleep.

Murmurs, quietly, "Will you just shut the *fuck* UP, for once..."

The buzzing sounds of three hundred people, talking in their sleep, curl around her as she clutches Tara's limp body against her.  On the other side, a fat, old man thrashes around, knees pressed against Anya's thigh, and head against her hip.  Buzzing fills the air, and the atmosphere, too.  The hundreds of voices that just won't shut UP.

Tara starts to shiver -- chills, again, which means the fever's getting worse, and worse.  Riley is already asleep, probably passed out from hunger by now.

The incessant clack, clack, clack of a broken window, ice storm ripping past it and wind creating even more noise, whooshes and the occasional thump, when something bigger hits the building, is almost the only thing she can hear.  Most of the people aren't talking, at least, which helps.  But in the corners, people are up, and whispering, buzzing, like bees and ants and crawling, little worms.  Scared, bees.

There are way too many fucking corners, on this threadbare puke-colored carpet, and greying walls, and haven of warmth in the icy world outside. Fucking Sunnydale's own sauna, complete with pressure. And a dearth of towels.

If she were someone else, someone -- if she were someone else, she would be wondering how she's going to get out of here. Tomorrow, next week, now. Five months in the same room, the same buzz, the same half-sleep, four weeks rooted to the spot, two not even taking detours. It can't go on like this, she would think, I'll go crazy.

Only she isn't, and so she doesn't, and so --

Tara's bones, flimsy sweat-soaked clothing under heavy blankets, are vulnerable and delicate under her fingertips. She wants to throw up.

If only Angelus were here, she thinks, if only, if only --

She never used to think like that. She wonders what happened.

Riley, arm around her waist protective and casual and trying to find room among the mass of people, whispers, "You want to start moving again tomorrow?"

She wants to say, move where? All we've got is wall. But she says, quiet, "This is the best spot."

His breath ruffles her hair, just a little, and that's sound too. She tries to take cover within it, this small sensation, to hide from the buzz.

He says, "You think she'll be alright?"

She hasn't thrown up yet, she thinks, she's maybe not screaming tonight. She talked to me. She hasn't talked in such a very long time.

She thinks, I don't know what I'll do, I don't know what I'll do if I don't have anyone to help survive here. I hardly recognize myself already.

She thinks, we want to live, we want to live enough. You -- I want to live.

Anya looks at her. Gaunt face is pale and shivering and beautiful and lacking. Kisses a damp forehead, gently.

Says, "If not, at least we won't be hungry for a few days."

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