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Title: Inside
Author: Benaresq 
Pairing: A/X
Rating: R
Setting: BtVS

 

You see, how vampires see.

People.

Smooth like glass and your gaze keeps sliding off them.

And that is how we make them generic and interchangeable and victims.
There's one born every minute. And this one was born for me.

And only then, when your fangs pierce their skin, that is when they become
individually real, true, perfect. When you start to *know* them. You have to
pierce the skin.

And its so long since I have known a human, since I have really rejoiced in
the existence of any living being.

And I see waxy paper dolls and I hear blood thump in monotonous rhythm and
really, they're all the fucking same. But I do remember its bad when one
hurts or dies, and almost equally bad when two die, and when a hundred die
it doesn't matter much at all. And that is my knowledge, and the moral
compass I use to navigate *humanity*, humanbeing-ness and beinghuman-ness,
and it just isn't enough. And I am lost, entirely. Utterly alone in a world
where nothing at all is true and everything beyond my self is blurring into
fog. Where even the girl I loved seems unreal, a wish taken on dreamflesh.

And I just need to know, again. Something inside me, someone inside me, not
just white slick walls of skin between myself and (other?) people. Because
it feels like that, like a wall I keep running into, hurting myself. Like I
lost some senses in my fledging and now I'm one of those dumb sparrows
flying forever into glass. And what can't I see? What do humans see that
makes them real to each other, that makes them love and laugh and *stick*
when they meet like velcro, so that years later they have shared memories
and shared lives so that they're inside each other's heads, and part of
*her* is the same as part of *him*? And they have communion, a mingling of
souls.

And I have to look at him now, naked before me and trembling; he's mixed up
with my Buffy, and how many others are pooling in his blood? Can I know them
all by drinking him? So many people in one handy, resealable container.

And of course, it would have to be him. He gives himself away so easily,
this one. The only one who would even consider giving me what I need. And,
because I have scorn for him, the only one I would consider taking it from.

For now, because I am not quite desperate. Yet. And he can stave off
desperation efficiently and that is why I'm doing this. And he wants it.

He wants it, because he can't stand the wall between us any more than I can.
He'll connect to me any way I know how. And I know my scorn for him is also
envy, the prim girl's feeling for a shameless slut. Because how *can* he?
But he does, just lets people *know* him, and everyone leaves traces behind.
Marks on him.

So his blood will not be rare and precious: it will taste of crowds, and
commonalties, and all the simplicities I can't ever have. But I've got
*him*, and really, bondage is not a substitute for bonding but its as close
as I can seem to come. And he understands that on some level, and there is a
sudden rush of gratitude  to him that I am unable to express.

"Come here, Xander."

He takes a step closer, and I pull him the rest of the way, right into an
embrace. Rest my head on his shoulder and kiss just above his collarbone for
a bit before letting the mask slip off, and my hands are on his back
pressing him hard into me.

So good, slip the fangs inside him. His little whimper of pain so I know he
feels it. And then suck, drink the life away, and here there are evenings in
the Bronze, and there is a pretty girl who smiled at him on his way to
school, and here is a furious, sobbing argument with his father, and Willow
giggling as he clumsily plaits her hair, and also, here is Angel, calling
his name in orgasm, and...

I pull away and he moans a small protest. Images and emotions evaporate
quickly, like forgetting a dream, leaving only the feeling of *life* behind,
of Xander inside me, fueling me.

But I remember the surprise, the sensation of finding myself already in him.
Knowing I had left marks on the *inside* of his skin.

Don't know why I didn't expect that, foolish really. Just thought I was as
invisible to everyone else as they are to me. Because I'm so *good* at
disappearing without trace, its what I do.

But then, I also thought noone could leave marks on a vampire, trapped in
time as we are. And maybe I was wrong twice over: not just his blood now,
held under my skin.

-END

a/n: This takes place in the same universe as "For Giving", several weeks
later, but its not exactly a sequel because the rhythm's different or
something, it just doesn't feel sequelish.

 

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