She wants it angry.
She wants it to be angry and harsh and painful. So painful that she can’t think about anything else, not Dawn, not her job, not slaying, not her friends, not heaven. Painful enough that she can’t even think about the pleasure it gives her to see his face twist in a grimace when she digs her nails into his shoulders and slams him against the wall, (pleasure pain pleasure… does he too get pleasure from the pain?) or the thrill of satisfaction she gets when she sees the marks she creates, bright, hot red slashes against the tender skin of his throat and chest, splitting open to spill droplets of stolen blood.
She thinks that she’s disappointed that she didn’t wear her cross tonight. She wants to see the outline of it burned into his skin, run her tongue around the rough edges of it and hear him gasp and hiss at the pain, feel the breath he doesn’t need escape his chest. For a moment she feels disgusted with herself, but then he grabs her waist and spins them around, slamming her back against the wall and kissing her with such ferocity that the back of her head hits the stone of the crypt with a crack and she thinks yes! This is what she wants, what she needs.
She braces herself against the wall and wraps her legs around him, gasping at the feel of him inside her, cold as the stone beneath her hands (no heat, no heat. The blood isn‘t hot, so how can it bleed?). The dirt and dust is gritty beneath her sweat-slicked palms and she tangles her fingers in his hair, smearing the blond strands with it. “Harder,” she gasps and when he complies her shoulders scrape against stone and the pain is so good that she doesn’t even think about how that is the first word she’s said to him tonight.
Her back arches and her bare breasts press against him and his cold blood smears across her skin. She knows he sees it when she feels his chest rumble in a growl and his head dips down to take one red stained nipple in his mouth. She clutches him to her and moans, arching further and tilting her head back so her hair falls away from her neck.
“Bite me,” she says and writhes against him when he suddenly stops moving, tightens her legs on his hips to pull him further inside her. Her fingernails claw into his skin again and she watches him grimace even as he stares at her in shock (pleasure pain pleasure… she knows its wrong to get pleasure from his pain). “Do it!” she snaps and gone are wide blue eyes, replaced by gold slits surrounded by pale, rough ridges and her eyes close as his fangs pierce her skin, and her whole body suddenly feels alive, shuddering as her Slayer senses go haywire at the invasion.
Gone are all thoughts. There is nothing but the heat and the pleasure and the pain, nothing but the rough stone against her back and the cool body first pressing, then collapsing against hers.
Later, he watches her. They’re lying on the ground, the worst of the cold blocked by the multitude of colored rugs below them, twisted and rumpled now. There is only an inch of space between them but he knows better than to touch her. He doesn’t curl his hand around her shoulder, or skim his fingertips along the line of her thigh, doesn’t bury his nose in her tangled hair. Any gentle touch from him would be immediately rebuffed, so he props his head up with one hand and watches her under heavy, sated eyelids.
The energy has left her now, the fierce, manic glint in her eyes is gone and she is motionless. Her eyes are fixed unblinkingly on the ceiling and the expression on her face is a blank one. Her skin is pale from blood loss and when she slides her hand from the wound on her neck to her stomach the movement is sluggish and awkward, as if she doesn’t know how to move her own body. He thinks he prefers her like before, angry and wild and violent, to this. Now, he thinks as he takes in again the expression on her face, which hasn’t shifted from the still, blank one she’s worn since he rolled off of her, she looks dead.
Or that she wishes she was.
He leans over her. Her eyes are hazy and for a moment she continues to stare past him but then she blinks and her eyes widen as they focus on him, as if she had forgotten he was even there.
“Does it help at all?” he asks quietly, “Coming here? Escaping from the house and your friends, trying to forget you are the Slayer? Does being here make it better at all?”
She turns her head away, staring at the bookshelves across the room. She doesn’t speak for a moment and the only sounds are her breaths, slow and even and uninterrupted by his. “It helps,” she finally whispers and then turns her head back towards the ceiling, eyes closed. “Some.”
He doesn’t move away, but keeps staring at her face. Her make up is ruined, the heavy eyeliner she has taken to wearing since she came back smeared below her eyes, making her look tired and worn. Her cheeks have hollowed out some and he wonders if she gets anything to eat besides the rubbish they offer at that grease trap she works at, because he knows she doesn’t eat it, taking instead the one free meal she is allowed back home to the Nibblet.
“It’s not something I can escape,” she says suddenly. Her voice is quiet, her eyes still closed. “This…feeling. I can’t leave it behind or forget about it.” He watches as the corner of her lips pull down in an unconscious frown and a little line appears between her eyebrows. “It always hurts.”
Taking a risk, he reaches out, tracing with his fingers the hollow of her throat, following her collarbone to her shoulder and then smoothing his palm down her arm in a light, comforting gesture. When she doesn’t flinch away from his touch he bends closer and whispers.
“Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?”
Her eyes open and finally, she looks at him, eyes flickering back and forth slightly under a furrowed brow. “What’s that from?”
“A play called Doctor Faustus.” His hands leave her arm to play with the tips of her hair. She’d cut it to spite him, he knows, but he loves the feel of the tips against his chest and stomach when she leans over him. “It’s about a man who sells his soul so he could have a demon servant called Mephistopheles for twenty-four years.”
“Hmm.” A small smile appears on her lips and her eyes slip from his to rest on his chest, tracing the scratches and dried blood there with her gaze. “Is that what you are?” She reaches up and touches his chest, fingers drawing patterns against the untouched skin in the center. They make a cross, but he doesn’t say anything. “A demon here to tempt me into selling my soul and living an eternal life in hell?”
He looks at the dried blood on her neck and imagines it gone, sees the long line of her throat as she arches back, chest heaving, sweat pooling in the dip above her thin collarbone. Bite me, she says. Do it!
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!--
Come, Helen, give me my soul again.
“Maybe I could ask the same thing about you.” He murmurs and she laughs, pulling her hand away and sitting up. The laugh is choked and bitter and she looks away from him again, avoiding his eyes.
“Maybe you could.” She says and starts looking for her clothes.
