Christmas drabbles
2 drabbles - a Spawn and a Spuffy. One for papervalentine, the other for confusedkayt. Happy Christmas, darlings.
SAFE
“I feel safe with you.”
Dawn said that to me a long time ago. But I don’t feel safe with her any more. For a long time I grieved for her sister, not seeing Dawn grow taller, darker… and into my reach. Now she looks too like the girls I used to kill. Long limbs, heavy hair, throat like a flower stem waiting to be snapped. When she’s with me I hear every beat of her heart. I don’t know whether I want to shag her or kill her. And so I draw away from her, never quite meeting her eyes. Dawn looks puzzled, hurt, but I know it’s for the best. She’s not safe when she’s with me.
I walk home, my skin still warm from feeding, and I open the door. Dawn is there, on my bed.
“Dawn -” I say, and then I notice. She has handcuffed herself to the wrought iron frame.
“I don’t want to be safe any more,” she whispers, and throws back her hair and waits.
“She will come for me.”
He says it in defiance of the First. She will come for me. He whispers it to himself during the torture, digging his nails feverishly into his palms, five words to cling to. But they are more important in the long hours between tortures, when the world seems to slip away and there is nothing but the pain in his ribs and jaw and eyes, and he can smell the clotted blood in his lungs. She will come for me, he thinks, and believes it, because she has told him that she believes in him. She thinks he can be good, and it’s her duty to save good things. She’ll save him because she thinks she owes him that.
And she beats the bad guy, of course, like he knew she would, and rescues him the way she has rescued hundreds of others, her firm hand pushing a knife through the rope that binds him. Then she meets his eyes, and he swallows instinctively, despite the pain in his throat, feeling the joints in his knees loosen and his stomach turn to water.
“Oh,” is all he manages to say, and she half-smiles at him, her eyes gleaming. Then she drapes his arm across her shoulders and they walk out, Buffy matching her steps to his.
SAFE
“I feel safe with you.”
Dawn said that to me a long time ago. But I don’t feel safe with her any more. For a long time I grieved for her sister, not seeing Dawn grow taller, darker… and into my reach. Now she looks too like the girls I used to kill. Long limbs, heavy hair, throat like a flower stem waiting to be snapped. When she’s with me I hear every beat of her heart. I don’t know whether I want to shag her or kill her. And so I draw away from her, never quite meeting her eyes. Dawn looks puzzled, hurt, but I know it’s for the best. She’s not safe when she’s with me.
I walk home, my skin still warm from feeding, and I open the door. Dawn is there, on my bed.
“Dawn -” I say, and then I notice. She has handcuffed herself to the wrought iron frame.
“I don’t want to be safe any more,” she whispers, and throws back her hair and waits.
“She will come for me.”
He says it in defiance of the First. She will come for me. He whispers it to himself during the torture, digging his nails feverishly into his palms, five words to cling to. But they are more important in the long hours between tortures, when the world seems to slip away and there is nothing but the pain in his ribs and jaw and eyes, and he can smell the clotted blood in his lungs. She will come for me, he thinks, and believes it, because she has told him that she believes in him. She thinks he can be good, and it’s her duty to save good things. She’ll save him because she thinks she owes him that.
And she beats the bad guy, of course, like he knew she would, and rescues him the way she has rescued hundreds of others, her firm hand pushing a knife through the rope that binds him. Then she meets his eyes, and he swallows instinctively, despite the pain in his throat, feeling the joints in his knees loosen and his stomach turn to water.
“Oh,” is all he manages to say, and she half-smiles at him, her eyes gleaming. Then she drapes his arm across her shoulders and they walk out, Buffy matching her steps to his.