Work Text:
Faith didn’t really know what to expect from Buffy.
She’d expected it to be hard, and harsh. Tough, rough, tumbling… like their patrols together when they’d both been the Slayers, the Chosen Two, before everything went sour.
Before Faith ruined things.
In the beginning, that’s exactly what it is. It’s not out of some burning, repressed hatred. They’re past that now. But because it’s what they like. That’s how they do things.
Buffy kisses like the world is ending. Slammed against the wall, or door, or floor, one hand twisting into Faith’s hair, pulling just a little, the other pressing her arm down. Their mouths clamped together, sucking, moaning, draining every last ounce of heat and passion out of each other. Hot, wild, like everything is on fire around them and this is their last chance.
And…bumpy. Their teeth clack, noses jab, even with kiss after kiss. It’s not the right fit. Has it ever been the right fit? It’s not how it’s supposed to be, after all: two Slayers at the same time. The words are “one girl in all the world.” It makes sense that they’d always be so explosive, unstable together: an abomination, two things that are never meant to mix, never meant to exist alongside one another, to be in the same place at the same time.
They slot in anyway, forcing the lock, bursting through and jamming as they close it behind them. Clack, bump, jab, shove, push… hitting up against each other. It hurts but so good, because anything that lets her get closer to this girl, anything that lets her be the center of Buffy’s universe for even just minutes, is enough for Faith. Anything that lets her take her apart, understand her, study her, learn what makes her tick. Faith has never been the studious type, but she wants to learn Buffy and ace the exam and graduate top of the class, an insatiable curiosity she’s never felt with any other subject.
Even slaying.
Those first few times are rehearsals, and each time, they get better. Fewer clashes, fewer bumps. They learn how to fit together, piece by piece…and they learn what makes the other one moan, groan, whine, scream.
Faith learns that Buffy loves pulling things—not just with her fingers but her teeth, as she latches on to the skin of Faith’s earlobe and tugs. She learns that Buffy loves the feeling of Faith’s tongue on her nipples; or around her areola, circling like a ravenous bird of prey; between her mounds, sealed by a kiss. She learns how much she loves Buffy’s fingers on her face and in her hair, that Buffy loves the feeling of Faith’s teeth against her neck. (She thinks about Buffy’s previous lover and oh, there’s definitely something to unpack there…)
She learns that she loves Buffy both ways: topping or bottoming, with her tongue and her mouth between Faith’s legs or with Faith’s fingers between her own, and vice versa and every other possible way. Buffy has never been with a girl before Faith, but she seems to know what she wants, and while their kisses were rough and tumble at first, she slides into this role so naturally, almost instinctively. It is like a part of Buffy just knows what will drive Faith insane.
Buffy’s fingers crook inside her and Faith feels…like something has exploded within her. A bomb, a volcano. A star, even…what was the term Willow mentioned? The word the astronomers use, for when a star explodes? Right. Supernova. Buffy makes her into a supernova.
It’s all Faith can do not to let her head fall back too hard against the wall behind her. It’s all she can do not to fall to her knees—in supplication, in prayer? The kind of devotion that, despite her name, has always been foreign to her, and yet she feels her body calling to her to bow in it.
Yet at the same time that Buffy lights these sparks, sends her pieces careening in all directions, she also kisses Faith’s belly: one, two, three times, ending on the belly-button, where her lips linger. It’s so sweet, so kind, so tender.
The roughness, Faith expected from Buffy. What took her surprise, and left her undone, was just that: The tenderness.
In the hospital, Faith dreams.
Buffy appears to her in a golden haze, like a halo that circles out in rays from her hair. She looks like one of those prayer candles that Faith used to see in her mother’s room. Always a bit ironic, given that the only idols her mother really seemed to worship were the narrow ones made of glass and, of course, the round ones made of porcelain. But there was just enough Catholic in her to make a display of it, with saint cards and crucifixes and prayer candles.
But there Buffy is, like something out of a stained-glass window. Adding to the effect is a kind of white fog surrounding her…surrounding them. She comes to Faith this way, in her dreams, and tells her things. Soft, sweet things. She reassures her, like some kind of heavenly therapist, shaped like the girl that Faith has yearned for since she first set foot in this (literally) godforsaken town.
Faith is the Slayer, the other Slayer, so she knows her dreams aren’t always just dreams. They’re “visions,” “prophecies,” they mean more than just what her brain cooked up that night. It may actually be Buffy mentally reaching out to her. It may be some other entity appearing as Buffy. Or it could, indeed, just be the intensity of her desire taking shape, the way that clouds form shapes. Sometimes, what looks like a dog to one person might be a horse to another, or maybe something entirely different—a train, a puddle, the outline of some country Faith has never heard of, or even a meaningless splotch. Desire is like that. It takes different forms for everyone, and for her, it will always be Buffy above anyone else.
Yes, through it all. Through everything. Even though Buffy’s never shown her any indication that she feels the same way—has shown the opposite, in fact, time and time again. Faith dreams, and Faith wants, hope against desperate hope.
When they first met, it was hard for her to believe that Buffy was a fellow Slayer. Slaying had been darkness, destruction, an empty bottle discarded on top of the grimiest bar of a gutter. She’d seen a lot of those, following vampires and demons into dark alleys, and so far, despite its name, Sunnydale was no different from Boston there. Vamps are the same, everywhere. And yet here comes this girl, looking like sunshine. Looking like the pretty blonde cheerleaders she’d known in her previous school, with their perfect, charmed lives and clean-scrubbed athlete boyfriends, who’d never give Faith the time of day. It was solace, at least, when she learned she had abilities that they didn’t. That she was destined to save the world in a way they never would be.
And then Buffy ruined that. She half-expected her to be a cheerlader, too, and it wasn’t a surprise when she learned she used to be. But slaying took priority, of course; it didn’t leave time for any other extracurricular activities.
It should have felt like a betrayal. Maybe, at first, it was. But it quickly turned into a revelation. That girls who look like that, with their shiny hair and rosy cheeks and perfect life and perfect friends, could be dragged down into Faith’s gutter too. That she could have—no, could have been—a girl like that.
Do I want to be her or do I want to be around her? Faith wondered as she looked on, eyes green with envy, at Buffy’s close circle of people who cared about her, willing to help her however they could in her crusade against the forces of darkness. And yet…Faith couldn’t look away. Moth to flame, she kept returning to her light no matter how it scorched her. Because she knew that it wouldn’t take long to dirty it up. To make Buffy more like her.
Because ultimately, while her friends could help, they weren’t like the two of them. They weren’t Slayers. They didn’t have superpowers. Ultimately, Buffy headed out alone at night on her patrols. But she didn’t have to be alone anymore…not with Faith by her side.
It was exhilarating, being with Buffy. Even as she insisted on doing things her way, her good, honorable way, Faith still took pride in guiding Buffy along her darker path. Taking Buffy’s hand sent a thrill up her arm, to her spine and tingling upwards and downwards, to her head and hair and also, in the opposite direction, somewhere else… When they danced together at the Bronze, Faith let the boys rub against her but for a split moment, she pretended it was Buffy instead, replaced their firm chests in her mind with tender mounds, their hardness below with softness, and oh, it hit her then, oh, that’s what that is…
Only for Buffy to find her vampire boyfriend and remind Faith that she wasn’t the first to show her the darker side of slaying. She could never be her first. She could never be her anything, really, not what she wanted to be.
Of course she rebelled. It was Faith’s natural instinct her whole life. When someone denies you what you want, run merrily in the opposite direction, middle finger held high, defiantly reminding them that you never wanted them anyway, no matter how the truth curls you up inside.
But that emptiness never went away. She filled it for a time with the nice things the Mayor gave her, her apartment, her fancy clothes, her shiny new weapons that she didn’t have to steal this time, but those boosts depleted quickly. Faith knew what she wanted, and even if it was more satisfying to push her further away rather than beg on her knees and be rejected anyway, the end result was the same. The want remained, and threatened to crawl out of her, clogging up her throat, drowning her and eating her alive at the same time with its corrosive juices.
In her dreams they’re in the library again, with Giles and Wesley looking on, but strangely silent. They’re like statues; they may as well not even be there. It’s all about Buffy, glorious, beautiful Buffy with her golden, glowing halo like all those candle saints.
In a moment, it no longer matters that Buffy was the one who put her in this coma in the first place, that she was going to sacrifice her for her vampire lover.
What matters is that Buffy is reaching out a hand to Faith. What matter is what she says.
“Faith, you were called to fight the darkness. That potential is still within you. The light can win out. You can glow, too.
“Come with me. Walk with me. Follow my path.
“Stay .”
Faith should lash out, should make her bleed, make her pay for what she’s done to Faith, and likely to the Mayor as well now. She should make Buffy and all her stupid friends suffer for choosing a vampire over her fellow Slayer.
But those eyes bore into her, and Faith decides she’s had enough yearning. She knows what she wants.
“Okay,” she says, as she takes Buffy’s hand.
Far away, in a hospital bed, she opens her eyes.
She doesn’t have the grades for UC Sunnydale, so Faith tries to earn her keep in other ways. She may be staying with Buffy, but she knows she needs more in her life than slaying, and needs to meet more people beyond the Scooby Gang—who, other than Buffy, still won’t quite look her in the eye. Faith isn’t sure she can blame them. It’s a strange reversal of when they first met, when she got on so quickly with everyone. When Buffy was the one resenting her for her easy charm, her fun-loving ways, the way she livened up all her stodgy friends. Now, well, it turns out there’s something to be said for stodginess, and something not so great to be said for aligning with evil just because he was someone who finally felt like family.
It’s a poignant reminder that Faith bet on a bad hand. She could have had this family, a nice, warm, human family. and instead she shoved it away for a literally inhuman father figure. Sure, he gave her nice things, but shouldn’t she have figured out that it would always be temporary? That it would only ever last until his Ascension?
Shouldn’t she have figured out the first time it happened that even if it feels good in the moment, killing people ruins you? It’s a come-down like no other she’s ever experienced. It’s one thing to have your stomach churn the morning after a bad drinking bender; it’s another when the churning is in your soul, when you do something that rots it from the inside. And even if she’d told Buffy she was over it, she didn’t care, she’ll never not forget the look that Allan gave her as she watched him bleed out.
She should give up, but she doesn’t. She keeps going, no matter how hard the thoughts telling her otherwise scream, no matter how impossible it is to block them out sometimes and how it physically pains her to even try. But she made a promise. Even if she deserves this, even if she’d rather die most days, Buffy told her to keep going and she owes it to her to try. Which means she needs a distraction from her self-loathing.
She needs to put her mind on something else, and she needs to find a vocation to keep her afloat once Buffy inevitably kicks her out. Because Faith knows she’s living on borrowed time, no matter what Buffy says. She knows she can’t stay with her forever, at the very least because so much time spent in proximity to her without being able to reach out and touch her is going to drive Faith insane. She feels like she might burst into flames, or alternately, melt into the floorboards, every time she spots Buffy in a bathrobe, her hair pulled up in a towel, exposing the nape of her neck.
All it takes is her neck! Her fucking neck! Faith needs something else to focus on, anything to get her mind off of Buffy…
The Magic Box is the place she starts. It requires little effort on her part; Buffy sets her up with it, just like that. After all, Giles basically runs it now, so she doesn’t need to submit a resume or do an interview. It’s a way for her to both make some cash of her own and also brush up on her Slayer training, with all the magical items and tomes it holds. Working at the Magic Box is working with the stuff she does well: magic, fighting, killing monsters. It’s like slipping into a cozy hot tub after a swim in a cold pool.
But it also means constantly being around people who know who she is. And it means customer service. Faith isn’t really cut out for customer service. She can’t just grin and bear it when someone treats her badly. She has to put up her fists. She has to fight. She has to, at least, talk back, get some strong words in there.
But she can’t do that here. So she clocks in, does what she can, enjoys the time with all the magical trinkets and listening to Giles talk about her training, but she starts looking elsewhere.
She finds a new job in the most unlikely of spots: Xander.
Xander is impossible to be around, more than any of Buffy’s other friends. She nearly violated him in the most intimate of ways, and just being near him conjures the memory that makes her want to shrivel up into a ball, roll into the nearest hole in the wall, and lay there to die. And she can’t chalk it up to simple “insecurity” or “self-loathing.” It really is something that is unforgivable, something she’d hate anyone else for forever if they attempted it on her.
(She doesn’t even understand why they keep him around, anyway. It’s not like he has any special powers. Why is he part of the group?)
But Xander is the one who offers her another job. He, too, didn’t get into college, and he’s been working at a construction company. Faith, with her Slayer strength, would be really good at hauling equipment, he says. Why doesn’t she give it a shot?
At first, they don’t work with each other much. But—maybe it’s because her reputation precedes it, or maybe she’s just that prickly to other people; she should probably work on that—Faith increasingly finds herself assigned to projects that put her in contact with Buffy’s friend. And Xander…. tries. He talks to her, gets to know her, wisecracks, and Faith gradually comes to understand why Buffy and Willow like him so much. He might not have powers, but he’s good at reaching out to people. He’s good at making them feel special. He’s good at being a friend.
And Faith finds she likes talking to him. She likes his jokes. They’re similar in a way, the two people in the gang who don’t go to school, who have “real” jobs and are trying to make a different kind of way through the world.
They’re similar in another way, too.
“You look at her an awful lot,” Xander says one day when Buffy comes to the site to pick her up.
“Well, she’s there,” Faith responds.
“Yeah, but… you linger, you know. Your eyes just stick there…like a bumper sticker. The kind that won’t come off a car no matter how many times it goes through the wash. And you don’t really look anywhere else.”
“She’s pretty,” is all Faith can say.
“Listen,” Xander continues. “I’m saying this because I know what it’s like. That…. you… it used to be me, looking at her like that.”
Faith looks back at him. She’d never really thought about it, but…. it does make sense. He’d met Buffy when she first moved to Sunnydale after being called as a Slayer; they hadn’t been forever, childhood friends. At one point, he probably had the same reaction to her golden tresses and big eyes and full lips that any red-blooded heterosexual American man would have.
“All I can say is…” He looks at her with a wry smile. “I don’t know if she swings that way or not. But still. You have better luck than I did.”
It’s strange, hunting with Faith again. Buffy feels like a new person, having survived and halted the Mayor’s ascension, killed him herself; and especially now that she’s in college. Even if she’d never been that dependent on her mother, she really lives on her own now. She has privacy, and true independence. She can just not go to class and no one cares. She could drop out of college, forge her own path, and not be seen as some delinquent failure. In short, there’s so much less dividing them now—or at least, there shouldn’t be.
In the broad strokes, there isn’t, but it’s the details—the devil is in the details, as they say—that are what matter. Faith killed a human and didn’t care. Faith aligned herself with the evil Mayor, a man willing to murder high school students and their parents, who had built up a whole town around him whose residents he saw as completely disposable, in order to become a snake demon. Faith attacked her friends, tried to murder Angel with a poison that made Buffy force him to feed from her. She’s done so much that really should not be forgiven.
Maybe Buffy is in a forgiving kind of mood.
That doesn’t make it easy, to be around her again. There’s a tension in the air as they prowl the graveyards of Sunnydale at night. There’s none of the quick banter, none of Faith’s smile as she regales Buffy with another of her slightly-immoral, more-than-slightly-illegal schemes and presses her about how she has to get a rush from slaying.
The thing is, though, that Faith was always right. There’s always a jolt of satisfaction as she watches a vamp crumble to dust under her stake, no matter how many times she does it. It never gets old. When slaying some tricky demon, it’s more than just a spark: it’s a full thunderclap, surging throughout her body. In such a moment, she looks up at Faith, sending Buffy that wry smile of hers.
That smirk sends another kind of heat through Buffy. Faith is looking at her with pride, with understanding, and why is that so satisfying, coming from her? She knows what Faith is. She knows what darkness lingers within her. She’s seen it firsthand, right in front of her, wrestled with it—literally, in fact. Faith’s pride should repel her, shouldn’t it? She should feel appalled, disgusted, since it clearly means she’s doing something wrong.
Buffy could say that it wouldn’t be the first time that she desired the approval of someone she didn’t like. Brains are just fucked like that. Yet, “didn’t like” doesn’t really describe how she feels about Faith. She enjoyed slaying with her before…. everything, and would love to get some of that back again. She is coming to like walking with her now, even if they don’t chatter away like they did the first time around.
And there’s a difference between all that old high school stuff, and what she feels now. It’s much more intense, warming her from her head to her toes, like a cozy mug of hot chocolate in the winter, like going back into a heated room after a day out in the snow. (Buffy may live in sunny southern California, but she’s gone on ski trips. She’s visited relatives in the Midwest. She knows what winter is like in the places that get it.) It just feels so good, and also so new…and yet, not. She’s felt something like this somewhere else before, once.
She doesn’t want to think of it like that.
What she wants to think about is how to apply her own warmth. The ice is melting between her and Faith, and she wants to help it melt faster. Her friends can do what they can, and Willow especially is growing into a powerful witch. But it’s still different, to have another Slayer around.
For all the things that still divide them, when it comes right down to it, Faith gets it. She’s the only person who does.
Maybe that’s why Buffy is so drawn to her side, and to her knowing, warming smiles. The Chosen Two, indeed. They’re twin stars; they can’t help but orbit each other.
Buffy's revelation comes from, of all places, Willow.
So far, she’s just let herself feel. She and Faith have drawn closer, gotten more used to each other, and they've traded not talking while slaying for not talking while kissing, biting, scraping and, yes, fucking… Buffy hasn’t let her think about what this all means. What it means for her and Faith. What it means for herself, for who she is.
It’s not important. What’s important is the physical release. What’s important is the thrill of seeing Faith pinned under her, of watching her head roll back in ecstasy. What’s important is the exhilaration as Buffy gets sound after sound out of her, sounds so similar sometimes to the grunts she used to make when they fought, or when Faith excitedly jabbered on about slaying in those early days. What’s important is how Faith makes Buffy feel: so good it’s overwhelming, a little bit too much, like collapsing under a mountain of sensation as Faith trails her tongue along Buffy’s walls, her finger flicking her clitoris, or as Faith runs her fingers along Buffy’s hardened nipples while her other hand rubs along the edge of her slit, and presses small, bitey kisses against her neck.
What’s important is trying to find excuses to wear turtlenecks and scarves when it’s still 75 degrees outside, and the slight twinge of satisfaction she gets as other people look at her all sideways.
But Willow isn’t someone who’s ever stuck to feeling. Willow likes logic, likes explanation. It’s why she loves to read, and why she loves the Internet: she likes information. When Willow doesn’t understand something, she doesn’t try to grasp it by feeling it out. She looks it up. She researches. It's made her an indispensable part of their group…and it's made her someone who can easily find and call Buffy’s bluff. Even without trying.
So when Willow finds herself in a relationship that defies her previous understanding of herself, she reassesses. She uses her words. She declares that Tara is her “girlfriend”—a word Buffy has used casually so many times to talk about her friends, but which Willow imbues with the kind of meaning that weighs on her words, anchoring them in a way instantly obvious to her friends listening—as well as other words like “coming out” and “lesbian.” They’re all words that terrify Buffy to her core to even think about possibly sticking to this… thing that’s developed between her and Faith.
After all, to label it in such a way would be to admit that it’s going on in the first place. And it would be to admit that perhaps, there is more than just sensation and relief and good times that bind the two of them together, that keep them coming back.
Will she ever be ready for that? She’s not sure. She kind of hopes it fizzles before she has to decide. But watching Willow’s eyes dart around, her exasperated looks, downturned eyes and drooping smile as she takes in Buffy’s and Xander’s and everyone else’s silly questions, and the sweet, questing way she looks up at Tara, then back at the others, as she reaches her hand toward her girlfriend’s…it makes Buffy want to be ready, someday. She wants to be as brave as her best friend.
As Willow deftly fields their questions with fully-thought-through, practiced answers, she can see the way her eyes want to roll, her mouth wants to chuckle and smirk. But Willow doesn’t. She lets them be ignorant. And after, she corrects them. She shows them forgiveness.
A battle with the Initiative goes sour, and Faith finds herself, once again, clinging to life in a bed.
At least, this time, it’s not a hospital bed—or, at least, it wasn’t for very long. During that time, she was barely conscious, and thankfully, barely able to feel the chafing of those paper gowns or the stiffness of the foam mattress. By the time she is lucid enough to appreciate it, she is laying on a wide, cushioned queen-size in one of the Summers family’s guest rooms. These sheets might not be made of silk, but for Faith, accustomed to motel rooms and crashing on couches, they may as well be: she feels like the Princess and the Pea, piled upon soft cloud after soft cloud of mattress, and with that plus the tufted quilt tucked tightly around her, she wants to just sink into this perfect universe of warmth.
When Buffy appears to her this time, she wonders if she’s dreaming again. It’s dawn, with the salmon pinks and burnt oranges fading into the white daytime light, and all those colors cast a haze around Buffy’s form not too different from the halo of Faith’s dream-vision all those months ago. Yet there’s a sharpness to everything that Faith has never seen in any dream, prophetic or otherwise. This is real.
But like in the vision, she reaches out a hand. The hand keeps reaching, and soon she’s stroking Faith’s hair off her face, raking through and then smoothing it, and then…Faith remembers this before, but she had just imagined it, surely? But now it’s real, it’s real …the soft press of two wet points on her forehead, and then her cheek and nose.
Buffy’s lips. She knows them now, has pressed against them herself enough times.
“Faith…” There’s a desperation in Buffy’s voice now, the way there never was in her dreams. “I know the doctor said you would be okay, but it’s been two days and you’re still out like a light. Please wake up. Please.” A pause. “They couldn’t have gotten you that bad, could they? I just… This can’t be like before. This can’t be like the coma. Please wake up.”
There’s worry straining every word, tightening each syllable that escapes Buffy’s lips. If Faith had been conscious, had open eyes to see when she fell on the battlefield, she would’ve seen how wild Buffy’s eyes were then. Wild, and wide, nearly popping out of her face, and her mouth dropping open in a gasp.
She would’ve noticed the similarities to before…when Buffy discovered Angel was poisoned, when she tried to attack Faith and make her a sacrifice. It was how Buffy reacted to Angel that she was reacting to Faith getting hurt now.
But Faith didn’t have that foresight. And she didn’t want to open her eyes just yet. The pillow and the mattress were calling her, and her muscles hung in sluggish piles, aches ringing out of every point of her body. She wasn’t ready yet.
But Buffy wasn’t done talking.
“It’s been so long, and… I just, I can’t lose you. You’ve become too important to me. Special. I really like what we have together. I don’t know if it can be like Willow with Tara, but… I want to do this. I want to be yours and I want you to be mine. Please wake up. Please, not like the coma. Please…”
Buffy’s words seeped into Faith’s joints like hot water into a cup, like balm smoothing over skin, like warm butter on toast…like every good, soothing thing. And she wasn’t whispering an incantation, but her words may well have been magic. As the word-balm replaced it the pain started to drip out of Faith’s bones, the exhaustion away from her soul…not all of it, she was still tired, still hurt, but enough that Faith decided, finally, it was time.
To open her eyes, and say, “You mean the coma I woke up from?”
Buffy’s eyes are wild and wide again now, but in delight, tears dampening them as a relieved smile brightens her face. Not for long, though, because she closes her eyes just as quickly and presses that smile against Faith’s own.
Faith summons more strength as she presses back, leaning up just slightly to pull her arms around Buffy’s shoulders as she plunges into the kiss. There is no clacking of teeth now; they know the rhythm, can sing and dance this song like they’ve done it their whole lives.
Buffy quickly rolls up from where she’s kneeling on the floor, on to the bed, and lets Faith pull her body down to those pillows, down on to her own, as their kisses deepen, as Faith gasps desperately into Buffy’s mouth, their tongues tangling.
They break apart for deep, steadying breaths, just staring at each other, smiling. “I was so worried about you,” Buffy finally manages to say, before swooping back in, dropping kisses on Faith’s temple, her hair, and her forehead again. “I thought we’d never get to…”
“Do this again?” Faith runs a hand through Buffy’s golden tresses in turn. She pulls them, the way Buffy likes it, but just slightly. This isn’t the rough-and-tumble thing they’d had in those early days. This is the tenderness. The roughness gets her coming to Buffy, but the tenderness is why she stays, why she keeps coming back.
And it seems to be all tender, this time.
Buffy laughs a little bit. “You sound like the Faith I know. The Faith I…” Buffy busses her again on the lips, but closed-mouth, the work of a moment, and she’s pulling away just as quickly. “I guess I should just say it. I have no idea how this happened. But I think I’m in love with you.”
Faith can’t help it, can she, at the smile that seems to crack her face open? She feels like an egg cracking, like the newborn baby chick that will be born from this is what she’s always wanted to be.
“I’m not sure I believe you,” she says back, eyes trained on Buffy, who still looks a bit shaken, “but I want to. I love you too, B,” she says as she plants a kiss on Buffy’s jaw.
Buffy takes over then, her hands clamping around Faith’s arms as she pins her to the mattress, and copies Faith’s kiss, in the same spot on her own face before trailing kisses down, two-by-two, on her neck, to her clavicle and then she starts to tug on Faith’s shirt.
Faith releases a chuckle as she asks, “Don’t you think this is a bit fast?”
“No, no,” Buffy pants, her voice all high-pitched and girlish, desperate and whiny. Faith loves it. “I need this.” Then she pauses, like a thought just occurred to her, and she raises her head back up to look at Faith. “Unless…are you okay?”
Faith smirks and tips Buffy’s head back down. “I’m always okay…” and she reaches her hand to grab Buffy’s breast, earning a moan from the beautiful blonde on top of her, “with this.”
As they lay panting next to each other, naked, coming down from the miracle spells they’ve cast on each other’s skin, Faith turns to Buffy, their heads resting beside each other on the pillow, gazing into each other’s eyes. Buffy’s eyes are so…kind. Caring. Loving.
It’s the kind of moment Faith never thought she’d ever have from anyone, but especially from this gorgeous, golden girl, the good version of everything bad about her. The heaven-sent rather than hell-bound soul. But maybe… maybe having Buffy close by is what she needs to heal. Maybe some of that magic balm can seep into her soul, mend the broken parts of it.
Maybe it already has.
Faith turns to Buffy and asks, with her usual bravado masking the trembling behind her voice, “So, you wanna tell your friends about us?”
Buffy smiles bigger, and then her smile starts to shake. She giggles against the pillows as she confesses, “I’ve told Willow and Xander already.”
A gust of something like relief blows across Faith’s body and mind. Relief, with a little bit of trepidation tumbling on the wind.
“And what did they say?”
Buffy laughs again. “At this point? ‘Not surprised.’”