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Notes: This is probably the shortest fic I have ever written. It's... tiny. It was really just a blurb I got stuck in my head while working on other things. The View From Below is going to be happy...ish, and I needed some angst to compensate, if this qualifies. (Speaking of which — no, I haven't abandoned my other fic. I'm working on it.)
Also: Taste the MEELLLOOOODRAAAAAMAAA!
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"There is a way of running which resembles pursuit."
— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
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Lying Together
When she's in his arms, time wears many faces.
It speeds up, or it slows, or sometimes stops entirely -- there is no clock, but she can sense it, the way it moves and rolls across itself, across them. The same way she can sense when dawn is approaching, and she must pull away, creep home and crawl back into her own empty bed, where the sheets remain unrumpled and the faintest hint of garlic still stings the air.
For now, the world is still -- motionless and dark. He's turned on his side, away from her -- sleeping, presumably -- and he is the one resting in her embrace, within a tangle of legs and sheets. Bare skin is cool beneath her fingers, but they're sharing her warmth. It is a mystery to her how he can both bestower of heat and a thief of the same -- like he's a conductor, almost, and it passes through him as easily as through metal.
It isn't all quiet, and it isn't all noise. They fight, but they also laugh -- lofty giggles, or deep wells of amusement that build in her belly and break from her throat. There are moments when she forgets to be ashamed, forgets resentment and her own hard anger. She forgets to find hurtful words.
Buffy isn't certain how long it's been.
Days, months, she might have been there forever. She doesn't think. She lives between the walls of reason, neither one place or the other, existing in a limbo as vague and gray as the distances between them. Thought gives substance, meaning, to action. Makes it real. And this can't end if it hasn't ever happened.
When she's in his arms, she can breathe. Or lie breathless and burning.
Awake now and restless, she traces a finger down the line of his jaw. He stirs, sensitive to each motion -- easy to rouse when he wants to be woken. Turning, he raises one eyebrow, regarding her as though he's still dreaming.
"I don't love you," she tells him, to catch the reaction in his eyes, to see how deeply it touches her -- testing her own heart, not his. But his gaze is steady upon her, unmoving, watching.
He rolls her over. "You don't have to," he says, and time suspends again.
But already the days are becoming longer.
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