Out of Habit

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Summary: "She wears your destruction in the hollow of her body as it wastes away.”

AUTHOR: Aurora
EMAIL: girl292@hotmail.com
RATING: R for dark themes, language, non-explicit sex
RATING: Buffy/Spike
SPOILERS: Season 6 up to 'As You Were'
DISCLAIMER: They belong to Mr. Whedon, really
IMPROV#45: cinnamon - - leather - - dust - - sway
DISTRIBUTION: It's yours if you already have permission, if not ask and it shall be given to you.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: What if Buffy’s “I’m using you. . . and it’s killing me.” statement was more literal than Spike realized. Assume that nothing after that last scene in ‘As You Were’ happened, Buffy doesn’t recover from her death/resurrection and, instead, is drawn back into a destructive relationship with Spike that has been going on for a good while since she tried to end it. Also, the fic is told from Spike’s second person POV. It’s not my usual preference for him, but the content of the fic demanded it be so.
DEDICATION: As always, to my lovely Behrbemine, for the rapid beta, the babblefests, the support, and the summary. Thanks sweetie!!
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//turn off the sun, pull the stars from the sky

the more i give to you, the more i die// -- ‘The Perfect Drug’ by Nine Inch Nails

*

“I’m tired,” she says, and you don’t look up from the book in your lap until you feel the jolt of the mattress rebounding, temporarily depressed beneath the down-sway of gravity that pulled her face-first onto “her” side of the bed. It bounces back, slowly, since it’s a piece of shit without a proper frame and next to no elasticity left in its ancient springs. Her rail thin body isn’t enough weight to hold down a newspaper underneath the slow assault from the creaky box fan whirring away asthmatically in the corner, much less inches of tired foam, thin cotton and God only knows how many years of other people’s dust.

You watch, with mild interest, because no matter what has happened before and will invariably happen again between you, she has always been your fascination, in one incarnation or another, since she sliced a path right through your skin and set up permanent camp in your being. All without asking fucking permission, and always with your tacit consent despite both the wounds to your pride, and that voice that you can no longer hear that used to scream at you that it would all end badly. Even as the novelty of her body has faded, along with any remaining spark of life in her eyes, you can’t help but hold onto the one constant left in your existence, so you look. And you see the way it takes just a little too long for her to regain her bearings. Watching, while pretending not to, as she hauls her head up off the worn and faded sheets (Where did you find these? Salvation Army Rejects ‘R Us?) and smiles, a little too forced, her eyes betraying her by not mirroring the false sentiment as she encroaches shakily on your territory (This is *MY* half of the bed, Slayer).

Time was you would have been one step ahead of her, hands reaching out, fingers itching to brush the hair back from her face, battling desire for tenuous control that would snap the moment your skin met hers. Now, you don’t even let go of the book in your lap as she crawls over to you and straddles your body. Your traitorous body that still wants (craves) her. Even like this.

You close your eyes as her fingers, too cold to belong to a living human, (though she still is both, living *and* human, even if only out of habit these days), brush lightly down the slant of your jaw line. You shut your eyes tight against that thought and all the others and try and tell yourself it’s only to allow you to stay in the moment, when in reality, it’s so you don’t have to see the evidence of what your love has done to her. If you keep your eyes closed, you can still see her the way you remember. Each plane of her body indelibly etched behind the surface of your eyelids.

The graceful arch of her fine neck that slopes down into the perfect curve of a shoulder. So delicate, yet able to both withstand and deliver fatal force to your kind. You hold onto faded memories of tanned skin and taut muscle because it’s the only way to keep yourself from forcefully pushing her away as your body disobeys your mind and responds as she expects (and really, what did *you* expect?). Your fingers willfully ignoring the evidence underneath their habitual graze and, instead of the jut of sharp shoulder bone stretched under dry, translucent skin, they remember sweat-slicked supple flesh brimming with need, lust, warmth. With life. You play pretend in your mind to avoid handling the truth that’s kissing her way across your face to your mouth, and God help you, you still kiss her back.

The faint trace of cinnamon invades your mouth, and you know she’s been smoking those godawful clove cigarettes again but you don’t protest. Instead you concentrate on her lips, inhaling the sugar and hanging onto the taste because without the distraction all you’d be left with is ashes. She tastes like ashes now. And you can’t escape the irony inherent in that fact, nor can you quite recall when the change came. You just remember that things used to be different, and somewhere along the line just having her, any way you could have her, stopped being enough.

Your hands still move without your leave and you up your interest in her mouth and her still clever tongue to keep yourself from cringing when your fingers scrape against her hollow ribs, so prominent and angry beneath her weary skin. You pull her closer and slip your hands quickly down the line of her back, invading the ever-increasing gap in the leather pants you bought her what seems like life times ago but really hasn’t even been a year. The same pants that were once skin tight and now hang grotesquely loose from her hipbones when she walks, so much so, that you’ve stopped checking out her ass when she wears them.

Her clothes quickly become an obstacle of the past (you’ve long since learned to stop wearing any for these visits), much like the sharp banter between you and (regrettably) foreplay. And you stop resisting her pull, losing yourself (self-control, self-worth, did you ever have any of either?) in her body and the familiar rhythms of need. You make love out of habit (lovedeathpaindeathlove, is there a difference anymore? was there ever?), but even with your eyes closed and your head swimming in denial, she still manages to spin your senses and set that something deep inside you to aching again, and you know you’ll never be free of her. Ever. She’s stitched herself somewhere secret in your cells, ruined you for now and for an eternity, and will haunt you for longer.

But you’ve ruined her as well. And it’s not nearly as subtle nor as painfully elegant as the way she’s marked you. She wears your destruction in the hollow of her body as it wastes away, and the tilt of her chin, still defiant but resigned to her chosen course. Wearing herself slowly into nothing against the eager altar of your flesh.

On the good days, you think that there are worse ways for her to die. On the bad days, you want to sink your teeth into her thin veins and drain away that last bit of life that stubbornly keeps her in motion just to end the torment of her body moving against (across, over, through) your skin, watching helpless as she destroys herself against you, her chosen instrument of death. Your body an all too willing participant in her slow demise.

She’s your obsession and you’re her addiction. And every night she comes to your bed, and every night you give in, knowing that one day it will be enough, one day she will have given the very last of what’s left inside her to surrender and then she’ll fade away. And you know that’s why she keeps coming back. Hunting for that One. Last. Time. And you know that’s why you let her, still futilely hoping to find some way to reach her through the meeting of mouths, and hands, and flesh that lies, pretending you both aren’t spiraling headlong towards the destruction that has always been the inevitable consequence of your union.

No, you deny the truth even as you hold it in your hands, still as caught up as ever in her body, her being. . . *her*. Still as unable (unwilling) to say no.

You’re not stupid, you figured her out long ago. Her eyes gave her away months before the weight loss, and the dark circles, and the mood swings became pronounced enough to speak where she remained silent. Hell, if you could stand to be honest with anyone you’d admit that she told you the end from the beginning. She’s always told you the truth, even though you’ll never stoop so low as to acknowledge it.

(I'm using you. . .)

And you still believe that it’s okay, that it’s mutual, that consent (need) can mend the cracks you see in her eyes when she allows herself to look at you.

(. . .and it's killing me.)

And you wonder if she knows that it’s not just her. That lately you’ve allowed yourself the leeway to wonder if maybe you should have just let her go that afternoon. If maybe you would have been better served leaving her to the sunshine and focusing instead on rebuilding the ashes of your life (or lack thereof) that remained in the wake of SoldierBoy’s intrusion into something she could have willingly returned to in time, rather than refusing her decision and slowly pushing her, over and over and over, until she broke and gave in and gave. . . up.

The thoughts never last long because you love her, and that love demands a sacrifice (. . .and it’s killing me), not fairytale what-ifs. She’s always known it, you just refuse to accept it even as she crumbles to pieces in your hands.

You still your movements as her muscles pull tight and she arches above you, free in the midst of the pain, and you know, as your body slides closer to meeting her in the release you both crave, that she was only half right in the truth that she threw at you that fateful afternoon amongst the ruins of your crypt. She’s not the only one who’s selfish and weak in this game. Because you still count the minutes until she arrives, even though you refuse to look in her direction when she does. And you still welcome her body, if even reluctantly, as she rides her path of self-destruction. And you know that if this time isn’t the end, if she lasts one more day to return to your side, you’ll still cling to her as she impales herself on you and you’ll do as she wishes, her willing slave to the end, until you’ve become the very thing that she seeks night after night in your bed, in your body. . .

Her suicide.

*

end

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Aurora - girl292@hotmail.com