DarkFics: 041 - Fixation
Challenge at 50_darkfics
Title: The Noose
Author: lilhobbit
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Prompt: #041: Fixation
Rating: R
Warnings language, some sexual content, angst
Word Count: 2716 words
Characters: Original Characters
Series: Turning Blue
Author's Notes: Post Chosen & Not Fade Away by at least a year.
Previous installments:
· Prologue [#100: Writer's Choice]
· Some day the dream will End [#010: Torture]
· The Gypsy King [#061: Feral]
Roxanne was startled awake by the loud sound of the ending credits as they began to roll. The TV screen lit her up faintly in the otherwise dark room and gave things at least a portion of their proper dimensions that were lost in the dark. Night had fallen it seemed and the purple sunrays no longer added to the dull, dirty red of her hair. She moved a bit, sensing something against her head and lifting her hand to meet with it. Antonio’s black braids tickled her fingers and his skin felt cooled when she touched his blissfully sleeping face. He’d fallen asleep during the movie, just as she had.
Rox had to turn around on the floor and place her weight on her knees to see the man sleeping on the bed clearer. She wanted to sit on the floor and he’d taken in her request, lying on the foot end to caress her neck and hair and whisper his comments in her ear. Being this openly intimate was new to her and unreal for all the other men in her life had come under extreme circumstances, leaving no chance for normality. She’d never thought she could have even a taste of a normal relationship.
With Raine it’d been the wrong time, the wrong guy and deepest denial. She’d known it could’ve been more, known he cared for her as well. Before even realizing this, their lives had been erased and a new kind of existence had begun. A lie, an illusion; he’d used harsh words on the tension that consumed everything around them. His greatest obsession had been her training after all…
Caleb, the preacher, was a sin she didn’t dare to even think aloud. He’d had a mental grip on her, made her feel naked and unworthy for the longest time. She’d learned of a side in her that she didn’t understand. The physical attraction and passion that battle overwhelmed her with were first awakened by him, his honeyed words and curses. She’d dreamed of him, fantasized during her sickly hours and had done anything to pour the images out of her mind.
It’d ended with Giles, his trust and friendship. He’d brought clarity into her madness and straightened the knots with a fierce grip. She hadn’t bended though, no, she’d fought him too, yelling insults and curses and gibberish. Why she’d come to him at night, she couldn’t tell, it had simply happened. Perhaps she needed to cling onto the brighter ones to clear her own head. It hadn’t been love, mere survival for both. Why he had allowed her to come went above her head though.
She hadn’t served and he hadn’t got the patience to bend her and thus their ways had parted. Caleb had returned, made her insides twirl with his sweet gestures and words implying he too had missed hurting her. She wasn’t a dreamer in the pool of her own blood, so she’d fought and ran and chosen to see the world outside after two years of isolation. Antonio had been Giles’ way to reach out to her. She’d ended up caring somehow and speaking and losing her bitterness.
She petted his face with her knuckles, yawned her own tiredness aloud. He tried hard to fix her, make her feel wanted and right. Maybe that was why he was her companion, the only one able to straighten her twisted view and force sense into her. He’d even gotten the DVD-player and movie, even if Terminator 2 wouldn’t have been her first choice in their current situation. She turned around again, reaching for the TV and player with her toes and turned the power off, relaxing after the task was done.
His hand moved, falling down from the bed’s edge and over her shoulder to touch her neck. She leaned back enough to see his face without turning. “You fell asleep,” she commented, smiling as his lips met with her forehead.
“Your presence is exhausting,” he complimented with his trademark grin lingering over his handsome face. She beamed at him, standing up and grabbing the nearest pillow so she might’ve thrown it at his face. He caught her wrist before she could do that, pulling her on the bed next to him and sinking his face in the revealing cleavage of her virgin white blouse.
“We should leave together, forget this fighting and just be,” she whispered, petting his head dreamily. He became still on her, his hands landed on her sides and once again she knew she’d said something he didn’t wish to hear. “I can’t dream,” he confessed and regressed into a stranger during that moment.
For some reason she knew he wasn’t good at escaping reality. Something pressed his mind when he gave it enough time to take effect. Perhaps his predatory indigo eyes had seen more of the world than she had during her few adult years. He’d hunted demons, ended pain for humans who’d been entangled in their webs and experienced things beyond her knowledge with the assistance of magic. She’d seen him use it with his paralyzing wires and among the children in the ghettos where he’d read from their hands, giving them predicament of sunshine with mature sorrow in his voice.
She’d asked him many times after that, but Antonio still refused reading from her hand, saying he didn’t want to know if he would lose her. He didn’t want to ruin the illusion, regret breaking their fantasy bubble of safety.
“Play with me for a moment, would you?” Her heartily voice suggested.
“No,” he refused; laying on top of her like a motionless corpse with no will left in him.
She was his temptation. He’d known it for a few months now, come to recognize the affection he felt for her. It’d begun as admiration, a wish of some day meeting this young woman he’d learned to know through pictures and reports. Then it’d burst into flames along with the first orgasm while her soft voice called him her gypsy king. It’d sounded as fitting as she’d been when interlocked with him. The honesty inside the lie in her had him spill his insides and secrets to her whilst he’d invited her to stay for good.
But he was a grim dreamer and knew their feelings differed from one another. Her caring for him was sane and full of naïve sunshine whereas he saw danger behind every corner and burned all of his oxygen while trying to drain all he could from her at once. And she became the noose around his neck, forcing him to run them both towards the sunset, trying to reach something they never could. Some days he feared the rope would break, on others he knew it’d be the whole fucking branch before he’d put to rest.
“Yeah, I kiss the ground underneath you for a fuck but I wouldn’t dream of some reality escape featuring you,” she snarled, pressing her teeth against his earlobe and sucking air between her teeth. He knew that she knew that he hated when she did that and couldn’t help but switch his stoic mask into a sullen expression.
“Always so tough, o’ little angel of my Revelation.” She felt his jaw move between her breasts as he spoke and enjoyed the tickle and irritation his stubble caused against her skin. His hands moved further up her back underneath her.
“I like that. It suits me,” she confessed, hugging him tighter and closing her eyes in pleasure before she opened them and bite his ear leaf mischievously. He rolled over her, lifting her over his chest that the dark sleeveless shirt still covered. There were scars and burns that she could recognize even through the fabric as he flinched a bit with each tender touch. Then she traced his chest with her index finger, reaching his nipple and closing her mouth around it slowly. Her warm saliva wet his shirt soon enough and made her touch reach his most sensitive spot.
His fingers closed around her hair violently all of the sudden as he yanked her head back, his whole body tense from excitement. He bent her upper body to an unnatural angle but she bended beautifully and merely looked far more interested. Antonio lay his finger on her lip. “You know we can’t be doing this right now.”
She tilted her head slightly, catching a look of the clock in the corner table. Fuck, they were going to be late!
“I fucking hate clocks,” the girl groaned, pushing herself up from him and over her knees, her body swaying dangerously before she leaned on her hands and crept down from the bed and the body.
Antonio could help but be amused; a seductress at one time, a cranky bitch the next. Gods, he could still feel the cold breath of wind that came from the air fan as a faint ache against his wet nipple. And if not enough proof already, he was already aroused again, ready to attack her lean body that crawled around the floor with her ass up whilst she searched for her things. He needed a cool shower, an hour to jerk off in the bathroom and eventually probably a conversion to a fucking eunuch. She made him boil so hard that he couldn’t even think straight.
Then her brown eyes peeked at her from the bed’s edge and she frowned at his distressed expression. “Bad orgasm?” she asked, getting nearly hit by a pillow, when he decided to shut her witty mouth for good. “Real bad!” he grunted, covering his eyes with his arm.
The worst part was that the little bitch knew exactly what she did to him and used it shamelessly to her own advantage. Oh well, at least his most recent master plan would make sure she’d be the one moaning for salvation this time around, for usually the little cunt managed to turn his tables around and fool him into doing something absolutely crazy.
Ever since Antonio had managed to sweet talk Roxanne into aiding the Veritas Council of Watchers and Slayers and their allies, who fought to preserve the world of humans as it was, he’d noticed no one dared to command him around anymore. He’d been told what they wanted him to do, but not how, when and where. So most of the time he’d had to improvise and having this particular Slayer as his companion in crime, those missions had turned out interesting.
Defining his interesting meant screwing everyone around and then having hot sex in the backseat of a gorgeous stolen car. Not everyone in Veritas approved some of their most drastic stunts, but Giles rarely complained when human victims were kept to a minimum. What could Antonio honestly say? He didn’t value the life of some sleazy double crossing humans, who were willing to become vampire pets for their lives. Rox usually settled for dislocating a few joints or breaking some bones, but even that seemed too easy for him.
In the end she was the defender of life whereas he’d been an outcast in that battle all his life, at least until the snob Council had been blown up and suddenly the help of shifty and secretive gypsies had been needed. It wasn’t Giles, whom he detested or blamed for the situation - Hell, the guy had had good terms with his kind before everything and some of his elders still remembered his name from Jenny Calendar, God rest her soul.
Antonio himself wasn’t a Kalderash per se, although he was familiar with their teachings and curses as well. In these times the walls between the clans of the Roma people had diminished as had their number and only the strong survived. Before the calamity that had brought demons into daylight Antonio had couldn’t tell a single non-Roma, who had known that there were organized structures within the Roma that fought evil and trained others to fight it. Now even their existence was slowly unveiling to the vampires, mostly because of Veritas and their recent alliance.
And then something heavy landed on his chest painfully and with speed, effectively freeing all the air packed in his lungs. He groaned as manly as he could and began fake wailing shortly afterwards. “Oohhh, Ohhhhh,” he wailed, getting hit against his stomach playfully by his bored redhead.
“We really don’t have time for dreaming, Aurora,” she noted, making him pull his arm from his eyes and look at her sourly. Then he laid his hands over her back trying his best to form a sincere eye contact and keep his face while talking to her. “Darling. Dear. My precious fuckstick…” he drew some air into his lungs and watched her react to his taunting before continuing, “You really aren’t helping my condition.”
She glanced at her crotch now, letting her gaze slide down from there to meet with the bulge in his the front of his jeans. “Well, we don’t have time to for that either,” she retorted, yet sat right over the root of his problem, causing a faint moan to escape his lips. He gave another glance at the clock on the night table and then at her.
He knew he could take her there late, push her over to the floor and give them a reason to start looking for some new wardrobe. He also knew she was in a position where she needed some new bruises and scars in all the beautiful places he could possibly put them in. Not that anyone would check, he was sure of it, but at least he had his excuse. Who was he kidding? She was his woman, he needed no excuses to drown her in kisses and forget that any of the vampire slaying and world saving was even needed to take place tomorrow. And he could tell from her eyes that she knew exactly what he was thinking. Antonio concentrated in looking at her again, laying his hands on her thighs and stroking them pleadingly.
Roxanne felt the dusty heart in her chest beat uncontrollably because of the mere idea that they might skip the very exciting and enjoyable plan of theirs and concentrate on another kind of enjoyment. Then again, she’d been savoring this plan for a long time, like a child waiting for Christmas to come and she knew she’d still have him anytime she wanted after they’d cut off a few heads. Tricky… All so very tricky.
She leaned closer, giving him her hand that he took eagerly and brought her wrist first to his lips and then against his cheek. Those indigo eyes shined dangerously again. “You know I love to,” she said and pulled her hand away then, throwing her leg over his chest and slipping off the bed then. He closed his eyes in disappointment, rejoicing on the fact that at least one of them was stronger than this however.
“C’mon lazy.” She cuddled him with her baby voice whilst pulling him up from his wrist, noticing that the gypsy warrior would not even budge despite her best efforts to make him move. “Give us a kiss,” he demanded with his raspy voice and yanked his wrist back, taking her elbow in his fist to bring her near. She smiled against his lips when he opened her mouth with his and slipped his tongue inside her mouth. She then pulled back and shot him a demanding look.
“Now we’re seriously going to be late,” she sighed after he stood up and threw her leather coat on her shoulders.
He knew better naturally. Veritas wouldn’t ever leave them alone, though they were given complete privacy for the duration of their missions and freedom in planning them. He too had been enthusiastic to play this card out from the start, but it was only lately that fear had lingered in the back of his mind and kept him up at night, looking at her and wondering whether he should see the signs that threatened his happiness. This time they weren’t attacking a misguided sect or a crowd of wild demons, no, this was big. They were organized, rich - popular even.
Rising against the Grey Triad could not end in joyride.