Title: Mirror
By: coldbeer
Pairing: Cath/Sara
Rating: R
Summary: This is how things are.
Spoilers: None
Challenge: Vices
Word Count: 345

***

"You're beautiful," she says.

But around her, you still feel too much of everything; too tall, too angular, too high strung. She will tell you sometimes how much she loves simple things, and sometimes you think she enjoys your discomfort. You catch her grinning to herself sometimes when the contrast between you and her is at its most obvious. She revels in the differences between you and her; lets her tongue trace the thousands of pale freckles that dot the skin of your shoulders; draws her thumb over and in between your lips, smiling at the gap everyone told you you'd grow out of by the time you'd turn thirteen. You let her, because of what she does to you after or before.

You enjoy watching her; you always have. She moves with such ease, such grace. But next to her, towering over her, you feel all shoulders and boots and bones.

"Dance with me," she once whispered against your lips. You said no. Pulled her back down under the sheets.

The state of frustration she keeps you in has the power to melt your mind. She makes you squirm and thrash and beg before she lets you cry out in release, and sometimes she draws it out for so long that you begin to fear for your sanity. All your life you've been logic and common sense - Catherine manipulates your body until you're nothing more than raw, exposed need.

At the office Christmas cocktail party, you could see not only through the dress she was wearing. You noticed a different light in her eyes as she entered the room five minutes after you. You understood it then, or you think you did; what could be more gratifying than having everyone stare at you and wonder why they suddenly feel so ordinary and unattractive when you enter the room?

"You don't have to say that," you tell her, and she'll frown and kiss you with a desperate passion that leaves you breathless.

This is how things are.

You love her - but sometimes you wish you could get lost in her.

***