- Okay, I've been in an odd mood these past couple of days and I'm not sure whether it's of the good or not where my writing's concerned, so let me know.
- Thanks for the reviews :-)
**PART TWO**
CHAPTER FIVE
She liked these spring nights most. When the air carried only the slightest reminder of winter chills. It had enveloped her the moment she stepped outside, a soft yawn of awakening life and stirring growth marking the end of the winter hiatus. The one thing that disturbed her was the prospect of soon being unable to indulge her coat fetish. (Maybe thin denim jackets.)
A slight breeze barely disturbed her hair as they sat out on the back garden and she watched him smoke a cigarette. For some reason he hadn't seemed to like the idea of the perfectly amenable garden bench and had silently dropped out of her line of vision to sit cross-legged on the lawn.
She reasoned that perhaps he wanted to be closer to the ground. Needed to be earthed by the soft grass. She found herself wondered, as she settled down next to him, if in all of his generations of travel he had ever settled, ever had a home; or if, like cows in a field, once the munchies depleted, there always came a time to move on to pastures new. Despite her internal cringe as her mind tacked up a gallery of psychedelic snapshots of his bloody past, she found herself wondering if he could ever call this his home, whether he ever had. Sunnydale, this house, this plot of ground, her.
"So these men in white coats... were some kind of government scientists?"
She nodded. "Yep, big military-style operation. These fatigued-up soldiers would round up demons and take them to this straight-out-of-a-Bond-movie underground lair where they were prodded and poked about. If they were really lucky, their parts were amputated and used to make this super Frankenstein's monster... *thing* called Adam, who lived up to his name by rebelling against his creator and planning demon versus human Armageddon."
He was visibly disturbed. His eyebrows pushing together, his mouth gaping open as his head dipping further forward with every word. He took a deep breath and shook his head to set his features back to neutral. "Really glad *I* wasn't around then."
"No. You might have ended up with some nasty bit of silicon in your head."
The puzzlement was back, his brows pushed forward again, but this time his mouth twisted around his cigarette. "Silicon? In my head?" He spoke through exhaled plumes of blue smoke.
She grinned at his renewed consternation. "They were big into behaviour modification devices."
"Behav-? They're not still around, are they?"
"No," she whispered thinking of Riley leaving in a hail of chopper blades. (Couldn't get away fast enough.)
The corners of his mouth lifted a lifted, but the smile was in his eyes and she shrugged and looked away, her eyes sweeping over the expanse of lawn and back to him.
She liked him best on these nights, when the moon was full and low in sky, his pale skin luminescent as it absorbed and reflected the cool ethereal light. She studied the silvery highlights of his profile, a slight twist of curiosity turning in her every time he lifted the filter of his cigarette to his lips. After a few moments under the spotlight of her scrutiny, he looked at her, the question was in his eyes before he spoke.
"What?"
"I was kinda wondering... what's that like?" Her eyes motioned towards the cigarette and he followed her gaze, shrugged and handed it to her.
"Here."
She glanced at him apprehensively as she took it awkwardly between her fingers. Turning it over and examining it like an unusual nick-knack on a bric-a-brac stall.
"Just don't overdo it on the first drag."
Her lips curled a bit at that and she smiled at him as she fixed her gaze on the orange glare at the tip of the cigarette as she brought it to her own lips and drew on the filter.
She felt the smoke collect at the back of her throat and stain her tongue as she inhaled slowly, her brows knitting at the strange discomfort of it filling her lungs, and then -
"Oh God!" She coughed out, her free hand gripping at her head, as a sensation she could only suppose compared to a lick of liquid nitrogen stretched across the surface of her brain. It was almost painful, the nicotine stimulating her nerves with tingles and pinpricks of icy sensation. "I don't think I'll be having any more of those." She opened her eyes to see him smirking at her as she handed him the cigarette back, realising that her fingers were going numb. (No definitely don't want the numbness again.)
"Is it always like that?"
He shook his head, smirk wavering. "No, some things are better the first time." A hint of playful innuendo danced in his eyes as he smiled at her. "Other things get better with practise."
She returned the smile, arching her eyebrow at the inference to what was now inevitable between them again.
"I can't feel my lips." She said, pressing her fingers to them for emphasis. It has the desired effect for he leaned in and pressed his mouth against hers, bringing sensation back to her face with a warm blush.
"No loss. Smoking's evil. Din't anyone ever tell you that?"
She snorted, her tongue pushing against her teeth. "Oh yeah... *that*. All the evil people smoke, wear black," she eyed the uniform he had reverted to, "and go 'Grr'." She made a snarly face and he mirrored it with a clawed hand.
They shared a laugh and it felt good for a few all-too-short seconds but a bitter guilt impeded upon them and they both reeled off with a weary sigh, silence threatening to re-establish the distinction between them.
"My counsellor smoked. He wasn't evil."
"All counsellors are evil." He punctuated his dismissive statement by flicking away the butt of their shared cigarette.
She frowned, following his litter trail. (I really need to pick that up... tomorrow.) "Can we say 'negative categorisation'?"
"You should know all about that." He said with an accusatory quirk of his eyebrows. "It's all that 'tell me about your relationship with your father' crap. They're the biggest perverts of the lot of you."
There was that distinction. The 'lot of you' as opposed to his 'lot', the 'you' as opposed to him. The problem with distinction was that it meant distance. She felt a need to disagree with him. "Actually, mine was more: 'Tell me about your relationship with Angel', but in a real round-about way. All metaphor and generalisations, you know?"
"See what I mean? Evil." He didn't look at her and his countenance shifted and stiffened. It took a second for her to realise why. She couldn't help the one-sided smile tugged at her lips as it struck her. (Angel.)
She was about to make some kind of comment, tease him about it, but something stopped her. The sigh he heaved, so weighty he almost exhaled himself. He sagged forward, his knees drawing up as rests for his elbows as he cradled his head in his hands and stared at the grass, through the grass. (Drusilla.)
"You're missing her." She didn't need to question what was obvious but he still nodded, his head dipping so he could run his fingers through his hair. He emitted a short groan at the oblivious stalks of resilient evergreen that would recover almost instantly from the smothering pressure of his form.
Her eyes looked forward and she gazed down the length of the garden, trying to give herself a sense of perspective, but not distance. "It's okay," she began her voice no more than a breath. "Sometimes... sometimes it seems that all I do is miss people. That it's all I am."
She felt him turn to look at her, felt him understand her and closed her eyes just as she felt his fingers on her cheek. She leant into his touch, turning and completing the circuit by making eye contact as she cupped his cheek.
It was a shuffle for closeness then, until she was sat in between his legs, her feet at either side of his hips and his knees behind her shoulders. Until both of her hands were on his face, until their lips met.
She realised that she was shaking. Not with chill but with the fear that came with the realisation that this was it, that there was no going back, and that she wanted and needed it more than anything, more than anyone. The unsteady, quivering contact of lips steadied as passion warmed and quelled her somewhat. The shivers were now simply means of transmuting her body, readying her, and every tingly trail had the same pulsating destination.
She thought that maybe she tasted the same as him. That it was that drag of his cigarette and the ingrained remnant of tobacco on her tongue, but no. It was more than that. She recognised something of herself in his kiss and knew that the instinct was mutual. It was grief and loss and longing and desire all intermingled and delicious. A silent flint of something deep and inherent flickered through her mind only to dissipate into the melee of sensation clawing and swarming, invading and obliterating all thought.
The moan that escaped from her as he reached round her back and pressed her body against was eagerly swallowed up by his mouth and taken for the signal it was. The signal for their kiss to deepen, the assent for clothes to be peeled away, the wordless acknowledgement of their mutual need for more contact, for complete contact.
-
-
-
-
He stared at her, his eyes wide with something that almost resembled horror. No, that *was* horror. A familiar thought revisited her in the tail of a shooting star streaming and fading across her mind's eye. (This should not be happening.) She stared back, her eyes just as uncomprehending, just as unblinking.
His hand came up to her face, a finger softly traced the edge of cheek and the line of her jaw, coming to a stop at the centre of her chin and still the eye contact remained unbroken.
It remained unbroken even when his hand clasped at her mouth, expertly cutting off her air supply and solid in its attempt for suffocation. Shadows shifted in his eyes and she was mesmerised by the changes, by the hardening of his gaze. His jaw clenched with angry effort and still she held his stare, unwavering, unyielding.
Just as her body drowned with panic and the drive for self-preservation kicked in, kinetic potential for the fight surging through her limbs with the pulse of the convulsing of her chest; he released his hold. Allowing her a few deep gasps of recovery he suffocated her once again, this time with desperate, deep kisses that threatened to delve down into her and plunder her essence.
And she reciprocated, just as desperately, just as greedily. Their eyes clamped shut against the confusion and the unbidden, unwanted questions that had formed out of the ebb and flow of the afterglow, or even way before that. Now was not the time for words.
-
-
-
-
He chased her up the stairs, swatting at her bare ass and grinning when she turned her head to glare at him. Their feet were light and stealthy as they ran on the balls of their feet. Their ascent soundless as they repressed squeals and yelps, pausing at the top of the stairs, checking for the all-clear and bursting through the hall into her room.
Bundles of clothes were rejected into forlorn piles at the foot of her bed and she stopped before climbing into bed, turning to watch his slow stalk up to her. His eyes had the full diurnal spectrum of blues and were now staring at her with the same darkest midnight of the night sky beyond the blankets that covered the window.
As he neared her she caught his scent and her brow furrowed at the unexpected elements she met with. All his signature notes were there: the cigarettes, the evaporated fumes of the alcohol he had consumed at Willie's, and the faint sheen of musk that coated his body after sex. But he also smelled of grass, of coffee and of the popcorn Dawn had thrown at him to shut him up. He smelled like home.
"What?" He was in front of her now, his body inches from hers and the gentle rhythm of her breathing began to syncopate, her heartbeat becoming more audible and insistent as she reached out to him.
She shook her head, a wry smile playing at her lips.
(No. No words.)
TBC
- Thanks for the reviews :-)
**PART TWO**
CHAPTER FIVE
She liked these spring nights most. When the air carried only the slightest reminder of winter chills. It had enveloped her the moment she stepped outside, a soft yawn of awakening life and stirring growth marking the end of the winter hiatus. The one thing that disturbed her was the prospect of soon being unable to indulge her coat fetish. (Maybe thin denim jackets.)
A slight breeze barely disturbed her hair as they sat out on the back garden and she watched him smoke a cigarette. For some reason he hadn't seemed to like the idea of the perfectly amenable garden bench and had silently dropped out of her line of vision to sit cross-legged on the lawn.
She reasoned that perhaps he wanted to be closer to the ground. Needed to be earthed by the soft grass. She found herself wondered, as she settled down next to him, if in all of his generations of travel he had ever settled, ever had a home; or if, like cows in a field, once the munchies depleted, there always came a time to move on to pastures new. Despite her internal cringe as her mind tacked up a gallery of psychedelic snapshots of his bloody past, she found herself wondering if he could ever call this his home, whether he ever had. Sunnydale, this house, this plot of ground, her.
"So these men in white coats... were some kind of government scientists?"
She nodded. "Yep, big military-style operation. These fatigued-up soldiers would round up demons and take them to this straight-out-of-a-Bond-movie underground lair where they were prodded and poked about. If they were really lucky, their parts were amputated and used to make this super Frankenstein's monster... *thing* called Adam, who lived up to his name by rebelling against his creator and planning demon versus human Armageddon."
He was visibly disturbed. His eyebrows pushing together, his mouth gaping open as his head dipping further forward with every word. He took a deep breath and shook his head to set his features back to neutral. "Really glad *I* wasn't around then."
"No. You might have ended up with some nasty bit of silicon in your head."
The puzzlement was back, his brows pushed forward again, but this time his mouth twisted around his cigarette. "Silicon? In my head?" He spoke through exhaled plumes of blue smoke.
She grinned at his renewed consternation. "They were big into behaviour modification devices."
"Behav-? They're not still around, are they?"
"No," she whispered thinking of Riley leaving in a hail of chopper blades. (Couldn't get away fast enough.)
The corners of his mouth lifted a lifted, but the smile was in his eyes and she shrugged and looked away, her eyes sweeping over the expanse of lawn and back to him.
She liked him best on these nights, when the moon was full and low in sky, his pale skin luminescent as it absorbed and reflected the cool ethereal light. She studied the silvery highlights of his profile, a slight twist of curiosity turning in her every time he lifted the filter of his cigarette to his lips. After a few moments under the spotlight of her scrutiny, he looked at her, the question was in his eyes before he spoke.
"What?"
"I was kinda wondering... what's that like?" Her eyes motioned towards the cigarette and he followed her gaze, shrugged and handed it to her.
"Here."
She glanced at him apprehensively as she took it awkwardly between her fingers. Turning it over and examining it like an unusual nick-knack on a bric-a-brac stall.
"Just don't overdo it on the first drag."
Her lips curled a bit at that and she smiled at him as she fixed her gaze on the orange glare at the tip of the cigarette as she brought it to her own lips and drew on the filter.
She felt the smoke collect at the back of her throat and stain her tongue as she inhaled slowly, her brows knitting at the strange discomfort of it filling her lungs, and then -
"Oh God!" She coughed out, her free hand gripping at her head, as a sensation she could only suppose compared to a lick of liquid nitrogen stretched across the surface of her brain. It was almost painful, the nicotine stimulating her nerves with tingles and pinpricks of icy sensation. "I don't think I'll be having any more of those." She opened her eyes to see him smirking at her as she handed him the cigarette back, realising that her fingers were going numb. (No definitely don't want the numbness again.)
"Is it always like that?"
He shook his head, smirk wavering. "No, some things are better the first time." A hint of playful innuendo danced in his eyes as he smiled at her. "Other things get better with practise."
She returned the smile, arching her eyebrow at the inference to what was now inevitable between them again.
"I can't feel my lips." She said, pressing her fingers to them for emphasis. It has the desired effect for he leaned in and pressed his mouth against hers, bringing sensation back to her face with a warm blush.
"No loss. Smoking's evil. Din't anyone ever tell you that?"
She snorted, her tongue pushing against her teeth. "Oh yeah... *that*. All the evil people smoke, wear black," she eyed the uniform he had reverted to, "and go 'Grr'." She made a snarly face and he mirrored it with a clawed hand.
They shared a laugh and it felt good for a few all-too-short seconds but a bitter guilt impeded upon them and they both reeled off with a weary sigh, silence threatening to re-establish the distinction between them.
"My counsellor smoked. He wasn't evil."
"All counsellors are evil." He punctuated his dismissive statement by flicking away the butt of their shared cigarette.
She frowned, following his litter trail. (I really need to pick that up... tomorrow.) "Can we say 'negative categorisation'?"
"You should know all about that." He said with an accusatory quirk of his eyebrows. "It's all that 'tell me about your relationship with your father' crap. They're the biggest perverts of the lot of you."
There was that distinction. The 'lot of you' as opposed to his 'lot', the 'you' as opposed to him. The problem with distinction was that it meant distance. She felt a need to disagree with him. "Actually, mine was more: 'Tell me about your relationship with Angel', but in a real round-about way. All metaphor and generalisations, you know?"
"See what I mean? Evil." He didn't look at her and his countenance shifted and stiffened. It took a second for her to realise why. She couldn't help the one-sided smile tugged at her lips as it struck her. (Angel.)
She was about to make some kind of comment, tease him about it, but something stopped her. The sigh he heaved, so weighty he almost exhaled himself. He sagged forward, his knees drawing up as rests for his elbows as he cradled his head in his hands and stared at the grass, through the grass. (Drusilla.)
"You're missing her." She didn't need to question what was obvious but he still nodded, his head dipping so he could run his fingers through his hair. He emitted a short groan at the oblivious stalks of resilient evergreen that would recover almost instantly from the smothering pressure of his form.
Her eyes looked forward and she gazed down the length of the garden, trying to give herself a sense of perspective, but not distance. "It's okay," she began her voice no more than a breath. "Sometimes... sometimes it seems that all I do is miss people. That it's all I am."
She felt him turn to look at her, felt him understand her and closed her eyes just as she felt his fingers on her cheek. She leant into his touch, turning and completing the circuit by making eye contact as she cupped his cheek.
It was a shuffle for closeness then, until she was sat in between his legs, her feet at either side of his hips and his knees behind her shoulders. Until both of her hands were on his face, until their lips met.
She realised that she was shaking. Not with chill but with the fear that came with the realisation that this was it, that there was no going back, and that she wanted and needed it more than anything, more than anyone. The unsteady, quivering contact of lips steadied as passion warmed and quelled her somewhat. The shivers were now simply means of transmuting her body, readying her, and every tingly trail had the same pulsating destination.
She thought that maybe she tasted the same as him. That it was that drag of his cigarette and the ingrained remnant of tobacco on her tongue, but no. It was more than that. She recognised something of herself in his kiss and knew that the instinct was mutual. It was grief and loss and longing and desire all intermingled and delicious. A silent flint of something deep and inherent flickered through her mind only to dissipate into the melee of sensation clawing and swarming, invading and obliterating all thought.
The moan that escaped from her as he reached round her back and pressed her body against was eagerly swallowed up by his mouth and taken for the signal it was. The signal for their kiss to deepen, the assent for clothes to be peeled away, the wordless acknowledgement of their mutual need for more contact, for complete contact.
-
-
-
-
He stared at her, his eyes wide with something that almost resembled horror. No, that *was* horror. A familiar thought revisited her in the tail of a shooting star streaming and fading across her mind's eye. (This should not be happening.) She stared back, her eyes just as uncomprehending, just as unblinking.
His hand came up to her face, a finger softly traced the edge of cheek and the line of her jaw, coming to a stop at the centre of her chin and still the eye contact remained unbroken.
It remained unbroken even when his hand clasped at her mouth, expertly cutting off her air supply and solid in its attempt for suffocation. Shadows shifted in his eyes and she was mesmerised by the changes, by the hardening of his gaze. His jaw clenched with angry effort and still she held his stare, unwavering, unyielding.
Just as her body drowned with panic and the drive for self-preservation kicked in, kinetic potential for the fight surging through her limbs with the pulse of the convulsing of her chest; he released his hold. Allowing her a few deep gasps of recovery he suffocated her once again, this time with desperate, deep kisses that threatened to delve down into her and plunder her essence.
And she reciprocated, just as desperately, just as greedily. Their eyes clamped shut against the confusion and the unbidden, unwanted questions that had formed out of the ebb and flow of the afterglow, or even way before that. Now was not the time for words.
-
-
-
-
He chased her up the stairs, swatting at her bare ass and grinning when she turned her head to glare at him. Their feet were light and stealthy as they ran on the balls of their feet. Their ascent soundless as they repressed squeals and yelps, pausing at the top of the stairs, checking for the all-clear and bursting through the hall into her room.
Bundles of clothes were rejected into forlorn piles at the foot of her bed and she stopped before climbing into bed, turning to watch his slow stalk up to her. His eyes had the full diurnal spectrum of blues and were now staring at her with the same darkest midnight of the night sky beyond the blankets that covered the window.
As he neared her she caught his scent and her brow furrowed at the unexpected elements she met with. All his signature notes were there: the cigarettes, the evaporated fumes of the alcohol he had consumed at Willie's, and the faint sheen of musk that coated his body after sex. But he also smelled of grass, of coffee and of the popcorn Dawn had thrown at him to shut him up. He smelled like home.
"What?" He was in front of her now, his body inches from hers and the gentle rhythm of her breathing began to syncopate, her heartbeat becoming more audible and insistent as she reached out to him.
She shook her head, a wry smile playing at her lips.
(No. No words.)
TBC