Author's Note: Timeline is Season 6 pre-As You Were.
DISCLAIMER: All characters herein are owned by Joss, ME, and whoever pays him for it. Not mine, not mine, not mine.
RATING: R – kinda naughty, but angsty too
FEEDBACK: Sure, ya, you betcha.
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Something lovely. He dreamt about giving her something lovely. Something with meaning, something with emotion, something unblemished and wholesome. He wanted to see her pupils contract, her breath catch, her skin tighten, because of something lovely—something he had done, been, given. But all he had was a long lonely fall off a steep forbidding cliff ending in darkness and violence. Sometimes he thought that was enough for her, enough for him. She came to him and they grappled, destroyed, and leapt off the cliff into the grim recesses below. The decent was thrilling, but as always the aftermath was crushing. She would inevitably look at him with accusation and abhorrence, leaving him to shoulder the boulder of their actions. Her soft feet would scurry to collect her garments, her hands fumble in the haste to replace them. Her eyes. Her eyes filled with pain and confusion afterwards, he hated them. The same eyes that were soft and liquid, fierce and fiery, the eyes that begged him and demanded him to fill her, to take her, to release her. Those were the eyes he longed for in his dreams, those were the eyes that twisted his senses. He had nothing lovely to give her. And he hated her for it.
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It was when he looked at her with depth, with placid passion, with pain that she felt it. She felt…something. It wasn't sweet and nice. It wasn't good and wholesome. It wasn't caring and emotional. It was fevered and frantic. It pushed against her chest, pounded against her skull and tore her belly. Her insides ran with it, her veins burned, and the air left in a smoldering rush. His fingers left flames on her skin, the cool pallor of his body singed when they pressed flesh. Her mind would flee and her body would succumb to the reverence he lavished on it. He invaded, probed, and possessed every inch of her. There was no prison for her crime. There would be no retribution for stealing from him to fill her empty coffer. But sometimes, in the still moments between breaths she would feel something else. Waves of remorse would lap at her soul. And when the pressure of ecstasy had been released the current would suck her in and she had to fight to escape. If it came to it, she thought that she would chew off her own flesh like a wolf in a trap. All she knew was to run. Run from the guilt, the shame, the wrong she'd done to him and herself. She'd make the vow. Say the prayer. Seal the promise. And she'd keep it….until he looked at her again. Then she'd forget the ocean's depth and jump in again. She hated herself for it.
