Title: Crush
By: sarapallas
Rating: PG-13/R
Challenge: #9 Buffy titles
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: Bruckheimer CBS etc.
Word Count: 400.
A/N: Muse gone crazy. Somebody stop her.
Summary: You thought you'd purged yourself of her.

***

(Because it started out like this. Another party for another holiday; Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, they all merge into one. You, pretending that you weren't sober. Her, with an uneasy smile and a gaze that unnerves you.)


i. 'til the seas run dry.

You can feel it growing inside you, something akin to a crush (there's no other word for it), a malignant tumor; something pierced you while you let down your guard and now it's buried in your gut, spreading quietly along your bloodstream. You tell it to get out. Get out. You thought you'd purged yourself of her, through sweat and tears and alcohol, through too many mornings of staring blindly at the television, unable to sleep when the sun beat at your eyes through the blinds of your apartment window.


ii. "..whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect or scion."

And once. Once she mumbled I love you into your clavicle. She was drunk, and you were once told it was impossible to lie while intoxicated. Neither of you knew quite what she meant. You saw this all as sex by attrition, because no-one on the night shift seemed to have the time for personal lives, anymore (and you were perfectly happy with that).


iii. i burn like a good bonfire, in whatever i do.

Someone looking in from the outside (Warrick, Nick, whoever your confidant happened to be in your moments of weakness) might think that one of them, one of them should be able to open their goddamn eyes and see what beautiful destruction this causes to the both of you (and here you were, thinking that you were keeping it secret. Haven't you spoken to Ecklie lately?).


iv. tell me something more.

She's left me, you'll think, and feel vaguely pathetic. This is strange, because she never seemed to be there to start with. She was a blue-eyed phantom, and you were never entirely sure, while her hands were in your hair and or skimming across your shoulders, if you were dreaming or awake.


(because it'll end like this. You, tying her to the bed with promises and apologies. Her, holding you down with deceit and thinly-veiled regret. Your cracked lips will bleed while she pushes you against the living room wall. You'll avoid her eyes, not because you're uncomfortable, but because you don't want to see your reflection.)

***