redamancy: mutually reciprocal love
{of the fucked up variety, in this case}
Occasionally, late at night, long after Cat has fallen asleep beside him, Spencer watches her sleep. Cliché, he knows, but he cannot help but watch the steady rise and fall of her chest, her heartbeat coursing in her neck, the blue and purple of her veins a masterpiece on her pallor – a masterpiece he so desperately wants to tarnish, splotching a tinge of red over the blue and purple with a simple, pressurising sleight of hand.
More often than not, he relishes the chance to watch Cat so audaciously, to memorise every last one of her intricacies, from the dark curve of her eyelashes against her cheeks, the almost imperceptible smattering of freckles across said cheeks, to the small, almost anticipatory smile on her lips. After all, there, in the sanctuary of their bed, is no one to stop him, nor condemn him.
Although, he does watch Cat with a clinical kind of curiosity and moral disregard that he acknowledges as societally contemptuous, and sociopathic in nature. He wonders – quite often – what it would be like to strangle her as she slept; how the surging pulsation of her blood would feel beneath his fingertips. He wonders, would she wake and convulse beneath him, and try to fend him off? Would she leave scratches on his gristly skin, oozing a pure scarlet? Would she look at him with rage and the fight in her hands – or smirk at him, haughty and fearless, even in the face of death?
Perhaps, she would look at him in understanding; she knew him as well as he knew himself– if not more so. He wouldn't be surprised if Cat sometimes sat and watched him sleep, thinking about aiming at an imaginary target seared onto his forehead with her .45 calibre and shattering his precious brain – his most cherished asset, a terrarium of books and academia and memories, fond and scorned – to pieces.
He's still sitting against the headboard when Cat shifts, notices he's not within reach, and opens her eyes. She doesn't ask what he's doing or why he's awake, she merely sits up, moves over to him, and rests her head on his shoulder and intertwines their fingers.
Spencer isn't sure how long they sit there, content in their silence, but all too soon, the twilight starts to abate, the sun peeks through the curtains, and faint birdsong can be heard. When his hunger begins to emerge, he reluctantly pulls away from Cat and climbs out of their bed. Before he can get further than that, Cat grabs his arm by his wrist, and tugs him down for one last kiss before absconding to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. If he happens to brush along the pulse on her neck, or she happens to drag her nails to leave minute red lines dripping slightly about his wrist, neither of them mention it before Spencer slips out the door.