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A Very Good Liar

By Nessie

Theme #28: Wada Calcium CD3

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Vicious doesn't ask too many questions, but when he does, it is usually so he can try to make it seem as though he actually cares about her. She doesn't know what the last time he really saw her was, only he's been pretending to notice her for a long time now. Even in bed, there is never any real sense of acknowledgement.

"You look healthy," he comments idly, stroking a finger over the back of her bare neck as he leafs through a newspaper reporting on a syndicate scheme. "What's your secret?"

Lying on her side with her back facing her, Julia allows herself the most imperceptible of smiles. The flame inside of her, the one that had been ignited before she met him, before Vicious had snuffed it out and was now back due to her recent secret relationship, urged her to tell him it was because she was having a healthy affair. But he still frightened her in ways nothing else could, and she instead clenched the sheets, fingernails digging into her palms through the soft linen.

"Annie gave me some vitamins," she tells him, tiredness adding a coat of nonchalance to her tone. "Calcium… You should try it." If nothing else, her time with Spike had made Julia a very good liar.

"Hm. But I've got all the nutrition I need." His one finger is joined by the rest of his hand, and she hears a rustle as the paper is cast aside. He turns her on her back, and her eyes shine in the gleam of his bedside lamp. "Don't I, Julia?"

He kisses her with lips that may as well be dead for how cold they are. Julia is currently addicted to warmth, to tenderness. Neither of these things is something that Vicious possesses, let alone give her.

But it's alright. Because although he doesn't know it, Julia too has been getting all of her nutrition.