Lingering

by She's a Star

Disclaimer: Oh, if only Buffy were mine. Jenny wouldn't die, Olivia wouldn't exist (or perhaps she'd get some sort of heavy object dropped on her - oh, the possibilities), Spuffy would've never happened, Giles wouldn't've put on the damn sombrero . . . I could go on and on, but, well, I think you get the picture. It's Joss's.

Author's Note: I've been quite writers block-y as of late, so Milla (drama-princess) and I did a little drabble challenge thingie.

Words: cold, dust, perfume.

*

She lingered.

He tried not to think of her; it hurt too badly, and sometimes he felt so macabre in this bed. He had washed the sheets once, after, and could still smell her perfume on them. Faintly. At night, he closed his eyes as tightly as he could - didn't stare at the bed as he changed, because a childish fear always overtook him, and even though it was illogical, ridiculous, something told him what he would see. A devilish, taunting little voice, whispering in his ear. He remembered age five, trying with all his might to contradict it, to be absolutely sure that there were no monsters under the bed.

The ceiling had creaked in the house he'd grown up in, and he'd always been sure it was monsters, because the voice told him so and he tried not to listen but oh, there were some things that simply couldn't be ignored. He had pulled his blankets to his chin, and never allowed his feet to hang over the side of the bed.

And now that voice, that same voice he'd been sure he had escaped as he'd outgrown children's books and a belief in Father Christmas, was back again. And he couldn't look, because he knew what he couldn't see, logically, but would.

Her eyes had always sparkled, until then. Then they'd been glassy, and cold, the kind of cold that penetrated your very soul and you couldn't shake it, you couldn't let it go.

It hadn't gone. Part of him was always cold.

He had to read before he fell asleep; it was a habit he'd fallen into somewhere in this empty life, and he couldn't very well break it. He hated broken things.

Tolstoy one night, Wilde the next - sometimes Virginia Woolf, though he never could quite understand her fully.

And Forster (first edition) sat on the very end of the bookshelf, gathering dust.

She lingered.