A/N: I had to come up with some title, but I couldn't think of anything profound and earth-shaking, so I came up with this. It's... a title. Well, it doesn't matter, the story does. Originally I tried to build a proper, longer story around this scene but the story started to live its own life and wanted to be set free. So, I decided that this here is better on its own. So, please, read.
Rating: PG-13 for ONE swear word
Disc.: What? I do not own these? I'm shocked.... :)

Playing in the Dark


"Intimidate me."
He glanced at her, arching an eyebrow in a silent question. Her face was full of challenge as her lips met the mouth of the beer bottle.
"Intimidate me," she repeated with her voice husky, almost whispering through the dusk in the room. Her long legs were perched up on the edge of his desk. She wore a light beige trouser suit, which covered their slim shape carefully, almost temptingly. Her eyes stared straight at him, piercing through his very gore to his soul, until he had to turn his head away.
"What are you talking about?" From the side of his eye, he could see her waving her hand, and the beer bottle with it, about in the air before her as if drawing a picture into the dimness that stood around them. "They're all always on their toes around me. I don't understand what it is."
"Your height?"
She rolled her eyes. "Don't ridicule me, Toby." Her tone wasn't offended, though.
He stroked his thumb across the sweating surface of his own beer bottle for awhile as he waited for her to continue. When she didn't, only started to drum her knee with her fingers absent-mindedly, he rose the beer bottle and took a mouthful.
"For once, I'd just want to get fucked by a man who isn't scared of me."
A long spray of light brown liquid burst out of his mouth as he almost choked on it.
Coughing, his face red with either embarrassment or the effort of getting his breathing to settle down - which, he did not know -, he darted his eyes at her. A small, one-sided grin was plastered on her face.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" he managed through the violent coughing.
Her voice was thick with not so subtle satisfaction. "Oh, yeah." The grin slowly spread into its full brightness.
Once recovered, he chuckled under his breath, shaking his head. She didn't.
"Do I?" she asked. Her voice was steady and calm, but the look on her face reminded him of a child, innocent and uncertain. Worried, the smile long gone.
"What?"
"Intimidate you."
He met her eyes steadily, not flinching away. Her face was blank, unreadable. The clock on the wall ticked as another minute had become full, filling the sudden silence with a little click of the hands. Finally he formed the words, letting them flow from his lips softly. Quietly. "Only when you're crying."
Her eyes cast on the opposite wall, scouting what seemed every inch of it as if hoping that every answer could be found from the pale shades of the painted surface before she brought the bottle up to her lips once more. Her lips twisted a bit with the bitter taste of the liquid. "Okay." The sigh tried hard to be strong, confident, yet the little girl deep inside of her glowed through every letter, and he no longer knew who she was trying to challenge, him or herself. Maybe later on she'd drown her past regrets in a packet of cigarettes, but as to that moment, neither of them said another word, and the dusk soon changed to darkness as they sat there, the clock ticking the minutes away.