Fic: The games they play

Jul 03, 2012 16:00

Title: The games they play
Rating: R
Setting: after Older and Far Away.
Word count: 1000 (exactly)
Prompt: truth or dare, in the very literal sense.


They play games sometimes. Not the game they're always playing- catch and release, catch and release, make it home stinking of Spike and Doublemeat- but actual games, like poker (strip, of course, and they rarely make it all the way through the game) and Never Have I Ever and Hide and Seek (though that isn't a game, is it?). It's easier to laugh with Spike when they're just children playing at being carefree, no pressure or recriminations for her dalliance with the devil.

Sometimes they play Truth or Dare, but Buffy's acutely aware that it isn't a game either, not when Spike's eyes challenge her every time to give him something more of herself, to share beyond a dare and offer the truth he craves. She denies him that when she denies so little else.

He picks truth every time. She asks him questions he can’t possibly make uncomfortable, but he manages every time. What's your favorite food? And he begins remembering a night together last year at the Bronze. Do you really like spending time with Dawn or are you just trying to get in my pants? He stares at her with soulful (not soulful, never soulful) eyes and she looks away, ashamed.

Now she asks him questions about his past instead. It’s easier to cope with the tightness in her chest every time he gets moony over Drusilla than to let him touch her like that. And he complies, though they both know that he knows exactly why she’s doing it.

“Truth or Dare?” he murmurs somewhere near her ear. Skillful hands are kneading her naked back as he slinks up and down her body, deliberately breathing so the cool air makes her shiver.

She lays her head down, staring out at the stone walls of the crypt. “I don’t think so.” Today’s different, though he doesn’t know yet. She’s said it a hundred times, but today she’s finally certain.

She isn’t coming back again.

It’s been building up for a while, and she’d had ample time to consider it at her birthday party, each time she’d seen his face. The face she’d bruised, the face he’d let her bruise. It’s sick and perverse, and I may not be a monster but I’m becoming one with him. It needs to end. For her sake, for Dawn’s, for his. She’d decided that this was going to be the end, and as soon as she gets dressed, she’s going to have to tell him. Maybe he’ll even believe her.

And it must have been that thought that has her whispering, “Truth.”

His hands still at her thighs. “Truth?”

She closes her eyes. “Sure. Whatever.” Obviously false nonchalance. She’s done anything- everything- that he’s dared over the past couple of months, no matter how demeaning it had been. She fields every dare because there’s been a frantic voice at the back of her head reminding her that if she can’t pull this off, she’s going to have to be honest, and she’s terrified of the questions he’ll ask. I don’t know the answers. I don’t want to know.

But tonight is the night of Nothing To Lose, and the truths she has won’t matter anymore in the healing light of morning. She can’t allow them to matter.

He isn’t saying anything, and she pokes her head up to see his face. “Spike?”

She doesn’t know what she expects. A question about her feelings for him, probably. Something about how long-term this arrangement is. If he’s in a mood, a question to firm his ego when it comes to sexual prowess. So when he blurts out, “Are you happy?” she’s nonplussed.

“Huh?”

“Here. With me. When we’re together.” The tips of his fingers are grazing her thighs now, cautious but steady. “Do I make you even a little happy?”

She pulls her legs out from under him, sitting up and turning to face him. “Why…why is that what you care about?” She’s suddenly angry at him for reasons she can’t explain, livid at the question that she’d invited. “You have all the questions in the world, and you settle on that? This isn’t about happiness with us! Am I happy? Do I look happy? Do I…” He regards her silently. Expectantly. “No!” she snaps out, and almost instantly hears the lie in her voice. “Or- yes. Sometimes. I don’t know!” And it’s easier to kiss him then, to remind herself that she isn’t coming back and this is her last chance to punish both of them with her mouth, furiously jamming her lips against his and biting hard on them and forcing her tongue to war with his.

He presses back with equal force, flipping her over so she’s lying beneath him and he’s suddenly plunging into her with all his vampiric strength, knocking the breath out of her before she can recover and push back. When they’re both spent, it’s been long enough that she’s momentarily dazed when he says, “So was it true?”

She grabs her clothes and rolls off the bed, her head hurting more now that she’s contemplating the question again. “I don’t know,” she whispers.

He grins boyishly, and the quiet bubble of contentment that forms within her at his smile just confuses her even more. “Then I get another question, yeah?”

She manages a smile. It’s easier than it should be, and that thought is enough to wipe it away again. “Fine. What?”

“Are you coming back?” The smile doesn’t fade, and she hurts for a moment thinking about what her response might do to it. And he knows, doesn’t he? He still understands her, knows what she’s planning, and that terrifies her. “No,” she says at last, pulling on her jacket and watching his face.

He’s still smiling, even when she kisses him on the cheek and starts up the ladder. “You still owe me a truth!” he shouts after her as she flees.

Liar, she thinks, but she can’t say for certain to whom.

creator: coalitiongirl, medium: fic, setting: b6

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