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Faith skates right up to the boards with full speed like she’s gonna crash into them, grinning into her mouthguard. Stops short just a hair before her body slams into the plastic. But still short enough to make Buffy, who’s lacing up her skate boots on the other side, full body flinch.
“ Ugh ,” Buffy says, when she’s had time to realize who it is. “Getting a little old, don’t you think?”
Faith spits the mouthguard up out of the corner of her mouth, chewing on the end like she’s trying to see if her molars can cut it. “What, making you squirm? Never, B.”
Buffy rolls her eyes. Tries to ignore the way Faith’s still leaned up against the see-through part of the boards. Her neck guard’s pushed down a little to show the pale of her throat.
“Shouldn’t you be finishing up practice?” Buffy asks. “Kinda seems like you should be finishing up practice.”
Faith twists her gaze over her shoulder — a dark ponytail whips around from underneath her helmet as she does it, and Buffy watches it swish — where her coach, this smiling tall guy with thin pale hair and a zip-up dad kind of sweatshirt that looks like he fucking starched it, is barking instructions at the other girls while they do their swivel-y puck stuff, or whatever.
“Nah, Wilks is plenty busy kicking the fresh meat into line. He won’t notice me,” Faith says.
Buffy looks up at her. They keep doing this. These tiny little rendezvous in between the end of women’s hockey ice time and the start of women’s figure skating ice time. It’s crazy early in the day — or, okay, it’s 8am, but that’s basically the crack of dawn on this campus. Everyone’s dead to the world except the freaks who have to go strap knives to their shoes so they can run on ice. The women freaks, that is. The men get a nice, comfy ice time later in the day, during hours that are actually convenient to be awake at, because the athletic department actually gives a shit about them.
Buffy doesn’t really mind the early though. She likes having this secret little time that only belongs to her, getting in the zone, just the morning cold, her skate bag at her hip, her quiet corner of the rink while the rest of her team trickles in.
Or, it used to be quiet. Before Faith — who Buffy knew a little before, in the way that all the people who spend too much time at the rink are vaguely aware of each other — started this little ritual of theirs.
“Well, if practice makes perfect, what does it say about you’ve spent like, every morning the last week squandering your practice time just to bother me? You know what a premium ice time goes for at this school?”
“Christ all, you sound like Wilks,” Faith says. “Lighten up, blondie. And, if you ask me, what it says is that you’re just real fun to bother, and I’m just so good I don’t need practice.”
She’s still up against the boards, her bulked-up elbow pad arms raised above her head to lean on the plastic, with her head lolled to the side to talk to Buffy at the gap that lets you into the rink. It occurs to Buffy she could just, y’know, sit elsewhere, if she didn’t want Faith to talk to her? She’d probably have more peaceful mornings that way. More peaceful mornings mean cleaner skates. Cleaner skates mean better days, means she doesn’t have to deal with Giles making her drill her salchow again and again and again, means she doesn’t have that gnaw in her chest that makes her know she failed, that she’s not good enough, never will be, that skating is just a losing game against the entropy of your inevitable suckage, is clawing these brief moments of good from an ocean of mediocre, with the purple blotch of bruises over your thighs to prove it.
But, on the downside, if she didn’t sit where Faith could come talk to her then like, she wouldn’t be able to talk to Faith. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. Obviously. Faith is annoying and loves to push buttons Buffy didn’t know she had and talks too loud. But when she thinks about losing out on this morning thing they have going … she doesn’t know. It makes her insides all squirmy and itchy. Which, whatever? She doesn’t know what that is. Pushes it down, how she’s so good at, and says:
“Well nice as that must be for you, some of us actually value our prep time for the little ice time we get, so if you could clear out?”
Faith just bites down on her lip, the flesh of it bulging under the flash of her teeth, a low laugh choked in the back of her throat. Buffy chuckles a little back, though she’s not sure what’s funny. She finds herself doing that a lot, with Faith.
Behind them, though, the whistle blares.
“Excuse me, Faith, I hate to interrupt your kaffeeklatsch, but your scholarship is to play hockey, not to gab away with your little friend like this is a soda fountain! Unless, of course, you don’t respect me, or your team members! Because if that is the case, young lady—”
“I’m coming, jeez,” Faith says, a twinge in her face. She turns back to Buffy, salutes two lazy, thick gloves fingers off the edge of her forehead, and then does this stupid fun-looking spin, the hockey player kind where you’re so sure they’re gonna fall but instead somehow they’re just laughing into it, totally steady, and zooms back over to the other side of the ice. She punches one of her teammates on the arm as she gets there. Buffy feels a little pang in her gut as she watches that. Weird.
Whatever. She has things other to do. Like, stretch, and triple-check that her laces are tight, and respond to the 800 stupid memes in the Scoobies groupchat that she missed last night, when she was going to bed early so she could wake up and do this. The usual morning stuff.
Somehow though, she finds herself creeping her gaze upwards, watching the little scrimmage the hockey girls are doing to finish up their practice. She doesn’t usually see this much of it, but she guesses she got here earlier than usual today without meaning to or something.
And like, most hockey players are indistinguishable to her. She’s not afraid to say it — it’s like, objectively true. They’re just out there in their stupid bulky pads like they’re afraid of the fucking ice, when like, okay, if they had to take the falls Buffy’s taken in just a tiny little competition dress and tights they’d literally vomit! So like, grow up with your fucking shin guards and shit. And like! Figure skaters, you can tell people apart easily, if you know them even a little, you can say, right, I’m a jillion feet away, but I’d know Cordelia’s lines anywhere, trying to nail her lutz, with that weird back thing she does during takeoff. That’s obviously Kendra working on her spiral, and Buffy can tell, because spirals aren’t supposed to look so fucking wooden, but Kendra just can’t help it. Figure skating is personal. It’s distinctive. You get your whole self tangled up into it whether you mean to or not, you just can’t fucking help it, melding into the ice every time you step onto it. Hockey’s not like that. Hockey players — as far as Buffy’s been concerned since she first had the stupid luck to have to deal with them when Mom signed her and Dawn up for skate lessons when they were just teeny tiny — are just big, dumb, interchangeable blobs on the ice. Dumb, interchangeable blobs with their stupid weird skates that don’t even have toe picks, and they can’t even do anything cool, because again, they don’t even have toe picks, and they’re not even interesting to watch!
She’ll tell that to anyone who asks. Don’t think she won’t. She’s told it to Faith a bunch, actually. She likes how it makes Faith’s mouth go all snarly and mad, lips curling and everything.
But somehow, she can always tell which one’s Faith, among the blobs. She just moves … different. Like, hockey’s something else than it usually is, when Faith’s the one playing. She’s got this way of weaving her skates through the other players as easy as parting a crowd. It’s almost like dancing, if dancing was rough and violent and involved a lot of shoulder checking girls into the boards so hard the whole rink seems to shake for a second. She’s so quick, too — she can cover a rink in just a few strides, before you can even really blink. It’s not in the effortless way either. It’s more like she’s fucking attacking the ice. Like, she loves it so much she just has to dig her blades into it, try to crack it with every step, gouge a hole, like she’s begging it to let her make whatever mark she can manage. And she’s good with the whole puck part too, Buffy realized after a while. Not like Faith would let anyone not realize. Because whenever she scores a goal (which is all the fucking time, like more than any other girl on the team, Buffy’s pretty sure), she raises both arms and her stick above her head and shouts, low and guttural and a little lispy from the spit-out mouthguard: “ Are you not entertained?”
It’s not not fun to watch. Not that Buffy enjoys hockey, or anything. Fuck hockey. Buffy just respects good skating skills, is all. And she’s not too big to say Faith has them. Definitely has them.
Buffy’s pulled out of being lost in thought about Faith by the actual Faith, who got a goal or a point or something, evidently, because she’s whooping so loud, doing the goddamn griddy? Ugh. Annoying. Buffy’s not smiling about it. Definitely not.
***
“ No , Buffy, we’ve gone over this. You used to nail this with no problems. If you don’t snap your legs back before the second half of the combination you won’t be able to—
“To reload in time, yeah, I know. Not understanding the concept is not really my roadblock here, Giles, it’s the fact that the concept is hard to make my body do?”
“You know, if Torvill and Dean had had that sort of mindset, they never would have won Olympic gold.”
Buffy skates up to him into a dead stop just to glare. “Could you current your references just a little? Like, you are aware that many things have happened in the wide world of figure skating since 1984?”
“And when one of those things is as emotionally revolutionary as my watching Jayne Torvill and Chris Dean skate to “Bolero” sat in front of the telly in the sitting room, we can revisit this discussion. As it stands, nothing has yet eclipsed it, and, regardless, you have got to work on your—”
“My combination. I know.”
Giles scratches his head. “I was going to say your attitude.”
“Yeah, well, it kind of doesn’t matter, does it? It’s not like I’m making the Olympics ever, anyway. And it’s like, if I’m always doomed to be worse than Torvill and Dean forever, what’s the point of doing anything, you know? Check and mate, Giles.”
“Buffy,” Giles says, taking his glasses from his face. “What’s the matter?”
Buffy sighs. Thinks about the question for one full second before realizing that whatever the answer is, it’s not word-shaped, and if it is word shaped, the words are all bulbous thorny gross things that are getting stuck at the base of her throat like a pipe clog.
“Nothing! Let’s just get back to salchow-ing, okay? I won’t even curse the ghost of Ulrich Salchow this time, okay?”
“Right. Now, don’t forget to mind your free leg. I don’t want any sloppy lines, you hear me?”
“I hear you ,” Buffy grumbles, and skates off, setting up the sal with the three-turn she always uses, then checks her position, right leg and arm swept back. Swings it forward, how she’s done a thousand times before, and releases, flinging her body up, arms tight, everything good, the still rink air suddenly feeling like wind, how it always does, that brief spurt of feeling like you really are fucking floating that makes the rest of it worth it, legs stuck to each other, boots locked—
And then Buffy’s blade hits down at the wrong angle, and then she’s smacking into the ice ass first, stinging pain radiating up through her hips and down through her leg bones. And Buffy’s supposed to get up, but the cold ice under her feels like just what she deserves right now. It would be so good and nice to just stay here, she thinks, her leggings freezing to the ground. Everything could be still, maybe. Kendra and Anya and Cordy would skate around her, their blades making those good crunchy sounds on the ice, and Buffy could just curl her knees into her chest, let the world spin around her, and wait. Maybe if she stayed long enough, they’d let her ride the zamboni when it came around.
Instead, Cordy swerves by her, closer than she needs to, just to make a point. “Hello? Can you not have your little blue screen meltdown in the middle of my step sequence?”
“Er, perhaps Cordelia has a point, Buffy? I’m inclined to say if you’re not able to make the most of your ice time today, perhaps you might sit out for a bit, gather yourself?” Giles says.
Buffy pouts up at him, pats the ice next to her. “Okay, but check me out. What says ice time more than just literally sitting on the ice the whole time? If you can find sounder logic than that, I’ll buy you a chocolate milk.”
“A chocolate milk?” Giles puzzles.
“Yeah, like for a jinx? You know, jinx and you owe me a soda ? Except me and Dawn always did chocolate milk because she used to hate how soda bubbles feel on her tongue, and then chocolate milk basically just became the currency for like, most Summers household affairs for a solid six years. Freaking keep up, Giles!”
She waits, for the chuckle back, the fond little smile he indulges in even though he doesn’t mean to. She used to get those, when she was young and still good. But the Buffy who’s been popping jumps all week and whose body crashes into the ice like it was built for it, she doesn’t get that. She just gets his silent glare.
“Ugh, fine, whatever!” Buffy says. “I’ll take a beat.”
She pulls herself up to standing, knees first, then blades, and skates off to the boards before Giles can say anything else. In the corner of her eyes, she sees Kendra do a flawless triple toe-double toe. It makes her want to hurl.
“Rough day, huh princess?” comes a voice from behind her.
She turns to find Faith — in street clothes, a white tank top, her pale neck exposed instead of under its usual neck guard, a red sweat jacket tied around her waist over dark jeans. It all makes Buffy’s brain short circuit for a second from some good old fashioned athlete to athlete envy, because hello? Shoulder muscles? Jesus?— with her eyebrows quirked up, standing just outside the rink.
“Don’t call me that,” Buffy says. “And that wasn’t a ‘me continuing the fight as a bit’ thing like usual? I actually need you to not.”
Something like satisfaction crosses Faith’s face, and then it’s replaced with something like worry. “So I’m guessing yeah, rough day?”
“It’s like, fine,” Buffy says, because the whole thing is sitting on top of her chest like a fucking sleep paralysis demon, and she doesn’t wanna have to explain it to Faith, who everything comes so stupid easy to anyway, and who has probably never had to experience her skating skills just slowly atrophying away even though she’s never been trying harder! Or whatever!
“Looks like you took a pretty gnarly fall out there,” Faith says.
Buffy cocks her head involuntarily. “You been watching me or something?”
Faith shrugs. “I had a bit before I had to be anywhere. Figured I’d stick around, see what all the fuss was about you guys. Just didn’t figure I’d see you eat shit.”
Everything in Buffy burns, this gnarly mix of embarrassed anger. “Cool. Thanks. Good talk.”
She’s about to skate away. Faith reaches out and grabs her by the wrist. Buffy turns to her, furrows her nose. Stays put.
Faith slowly retracts her hand. “Uh. I just meant — shit, I’m not good at saying stuff that comes out right. You looked cool out there. That uh, flying spin thing?”
“A jump. You have to know it’s called a jump.
“Hey, I’ll respect your sport when you respect mine.”
“Oh, so never?”
“Whatever, B. My point was just — I don’t see what the big deal is. Aren’t you ballerina types trained to take a fall? Supposed to be like, nothing for you guys.”
Buffy shuts her eyes a second. Pushes a breath out. When she opens them, Faith’s gaze, the wet brown of her irises and the widening dark spots of pupils, is fixed on Buffy in this way Buffy can’t figure out.
“That’s the trick. You act like you can’t notice it. It’s nothing, it’s a scratch, you get up, every time. But it’s not actually a fake it till you make it thing. It just hurts like hell, all the time, forever. Hurts worse actually, older you get. So, fun gig we got out here!”
Faith’s nodding, slow, like she’s trying to eat down everything Buffy’s saying. “Yeah. I get that.”
“Sure you do,” Buffy says.
Faith stands up taller, tenses a little— and once again, Buffy’s forced to contend with hey? Woah? Shoulder muscles??? Sweaty post-workout shoulder muscles????— but her face looks like how it does when she’s playing, and another hockey girl body checks her, which means Faith gets to like, deck her, apparently, because hockey doesn’t have rules, Buffy’s pretty sure. Like, she looks a little giddy, Buffy guesses is what she means.
“You wanna bet?” Faith says, and her lips are doing that thing again.
“ Buffy,” Giles calls out from behind her. “That’s quite enough recovery time, don’t you think? Let’s see if we can’t make, er, the ghost of Ulrich Salchow proud while the morning is still young, shall we?”
Buffy sucks her own lips into her mouth, lets them loose with a pop. Her chest still feels tight though, with this weird unsaidness that’s sitting between her and Faith now. “Duty calls,” she tells the other girl.
Faith snorts a little laugh through her nostrils. “You figure skaters are fucking weird. It’s kinda cute. Uh, or whatever.”
Buffy can’t think of anything at all to say to that, so she just skates off. Backwards, at first, because she thinks it’d be funny, to stare Faith down. But Faith’s actually really good at staring Buffy down back — like, committed — and Buffy falters a little, has to skate forwards again so she doesn’t eat shit for the second time in fifteen minutes.
When she glances over, from the middle of the ice, Faith’s still there. Not even pretending she’s not watching.
“Let’s try for that salchow combination again,” Giles commands. He’s getting annoyed with her. Buffy can tell, because he’s not phrasing it like a question, even though they both know it’s never, ever actually a question.
Buffy sets herself up. Checks in the corner of her eye. Faith’s still watching.
Swings her right leg into position. Triple salchow. Double toe loop. Perfect.
In the corner of her eye, Faith’s wolf-whistling, hands coming together in what’s either a real clap or a pity clap, and a tug of pride and embarrassment and something else she can’t name starts tugging at the middle of her chest, getting her body the weird kind of warm.
***
The next morning, Buffy gets there early again. This time slightly intentionally. Like, it didn’t take a whole bunch of effort or anything, to get here early. It just means she took her breakfast to go instead of sitting at the dining hall with it, and really, like, the dining hall is gross and full of assholes at all times, and it’s actually way better to eat breakfast in the rink, so.
Getting there early also means she arrives just in time to see Faith slam this other hockey player fully against the boards, their bodies pressed together, Faith’s face inches from this other girl, licking her lips a little. Faith stays pressed up against her longer than she needs to, shoving the girl’s shoulders into the boards with this squeezing hold that’s literally gotta hurt. Buffy’s stomach twists up in a hard knot and stays there, as she pulls her notebook and part of her breakfast out of her bag and sets them up on her lap.
She’s close to the rink, and it’s cold, just sitting over here, not moving. She presses her thighs together, and tracks her gaze back to Faith.
“ Faith,” her coach calls out. “That is not how we play this game.”
“That’s literally exactly how we play this game, my guy.”
“Not on my team it’s not. Take five.”
Faith huffs, releases the girl from her hold, and skates off angry towards the other end of the rink from where the team’s cones and shit are set up. Buffy sees her fuming a little, silently, under her helmet, her face all scrunched and red, her fists balled in her stupid big gloves.
And then Buffy sees Faith spot her. Her whole body perk up and soften. She skates over to the corner where Buffy’s sitting. Leans over the edge.
Faith nods at Buffy’s midsection. “That a protein bar in your lap, or are you just happy to see me?”
Buffy raises her eyebrows. “It’s breakfast. Get your own.”
Faith groans a little. Buffy’s insides go warm and liquid a little. “Come on. One bite? I’m a growing girl out here.”
“We’re in our twenties.”
“Gains never stop, baby,” Faith says, flexing her biceps in this way that Buffy thinks she means as a joke, but comes off so earnest is almost hurts to look at. Something shiny and wet and mangled claws into Buffy’s stomach about it.
“Fine,” Buffy says, feeling this smile she can’t help working over her face. “One bite.”
She rips into the wrapper so a bite-sized bit of chocolate-covered bar is sticking out of the end of the packaging. She holds it out over the ice — meaning for Faith to, you know, break off a piece? Like a person?”
Instead, Faith leans forward, her braided ponytail brushing against Buffy’s wrist, her breath close enough to touch Buffy’s fingers, and chomps down on the bar, mouth-first, right out of Buffy’s palm. Like she’s a show horse, and Buffy just offered a carrot.
“The fuck?” Buffy says, a nervous chuckle she can’t control bursting up from her.
“What?” Faith says, swallowing the bite down, grinning, a chocolate stain smearing on the corner of her lips. “I got no hands.”
She holds up her bulky gloves to prove it.
“I thought you’d like, take them off?”
Faith smirks. “Gotta keep that body heat in, blondie. Not that you’d know. Those little dresses you guys skate in don’t cover much.”
“You haven’t even seen me in a competition dress,” Buffy says. “How would you know?”
“Alright,” Faith says. “When’s your next one?”
Buffy swallows. “Next Saturday.”
“Here?”
“Yuh uh.”
“Okay. Not that I’ll be there or anything. Just so I’ll know to steer clear of the place.”
“Right. Of course,” Buffy says, and her insides are doing that funny thing again, and Faith’s just staring at her in this way that makes her feel like an animal, squirming in a trap, and she thinks about Faith slamming that other girl up against the wall, and then she’s angry, for some reason, and she can’t even have all of her breakfast because Faith stole like half the bar with that huge bite, and—
“Glad you get it,” Faith says, grinning. “That bar was good, by the way. You gonna start showing up with breakfast for me every morning?”
Something bubbles up under Buffy’s skin. “I just came here early to study for this stupid art history test without being late for practice. It’s not like, about you.”
Faith’s jaw sets hard, her shoulders squaring back. She sucks in a little sliver of air. “Sure. Whatever.”
Buffy watches with a gnawing knot in her chest as Faith skates back to the other side of the rink to rejoin practice.
“I’m good to go, Coach, lemme at her,” Faith tells Wilkins, and before he can even say anything, she’s tearing back into the teammate she body-checked before, getting all up in her space, shoving her with her shoulder, knocking her hockey stick into the other girls’ to try to throw her off balance.
Buffy feels weirdly dizzy. She tries not to think about it. But like, clearly she’s not getting anything done in here.
She gets up, shoves her stuff back in her bag. Mounts the stairs to the top level of the arena, and just paces laps up there, until hockey practice clears out, trying not to feel stupid.
***
Buffy oversleeps the next morning. She was busy in the night with weird tangly dreams, the ice rink coming alive, opening up in the middle like a mouth to swallow her in, and a dark hair braid she kept trying to climb out of it with, but she couldn’t get a grip. Which means she stumbles into the rink late, still in her pajamas, and needs to duck into the locker room through the back entrance to quick change before practice. She ducks out through the other door, is trying to scurry past quick, her skate guards squeaking against the linoleum.
She turns the corner to the hallway that leads to the ice. Blocking the path is Faith, talking to her coach.
Well, getting screamed at by her coach, is more accurate.
Buffy’s always thought Wilkins seemed nice. This goofy dad type. Always got this big, dumb Sesame Street smile plastered on his face, and the vibe like he wishes he could just pat everyone on the back, hand out orange slices and Gatorades and handing out shiny plastic participation trophies. Not like Giles, who seems happy for them maybe once a week, but mostly just scowls and does his terse little nods and says stuff like, “Good. Well, solid. Well, not terrible. Now run it again.”
Wilkins doesn’t seem goofy now. His face is all red and bellow-y. And Faith — out of her padding now — just looks small. She’s leaned up against the wall like a kid in a fight with their dad trying to get as close to the car door as possible.
“I didn’t do anything,” Faith protests, her voice coming out more wheezing and squeaky than Buffy’s ever heard it, like a kid almost.
“Amy’s bloody nose would beg to differ about that, young lady. You have got to pull yourself together. You think you’re so tough, getting out there, using the ice as an excuse to beat down on your teammates?”
“It’s part of the game. It’s fucking hockey, man! What don’t you get about that?”
“You use language like that around me again and you will be sitting out the next three games, do you hear me?”
Faith grumbles a “yes,” back to him.
“Good. I’m glad you’re understanding me. Now, I know you don’t come from the same background as some of these other girls. But I would think that your scholarship to even be here would make you more respectful of the game. I would think you’d be grateful to even be here. This is a dream opportunity for you, Firecracker. But, gosh, your behavior this season has got me thinning maybe I was all wrong about you after all. So, was I? Wrong about you?”
Buffy can see how Faith’s holding everything in, trying not to lose it. It feels wrong. Like putting a dog in one of those shock collars.
She says, balling her fists, gnawing her front teeth into her bottom lip: “I’m just playing how I know how to play. That’s the reason you guys fu— the reason you guys recruited me in the first place. Only thing that’s changed is you got tired of the player you wanted in the first place. ”
Wilkins shakes his head. Says, his syllables all crisp, his voice too jolly, too shiny on the edges: “This isn’t the Faith Lehane show, missy. You think you’re so much better than everyone here? Let me tell you something, you are not. And that scholarship of yours? Let me remind you, that is dependent on you being a member of this team. So don’t make me make you not a member of this team. Are we understood?”
Faith looks up at him, the cold smile beaming at her, and her face looks like someone slapped her. “Understood,” she says, voice a low whisper.
Buffy really doesn’t wanna go through this. But she’s late to practice as it is.
She leaves her spot from behind where the hallway turns, tries to creep behind Wilkins without making it a whole thing.
She can’t help but lift her gaze up, to see if Faith sees her. And of course Faith does, face burning with the closest thing to shame Buffy’s ever seen on her.. Faith pushes her eyes away from Buffy. Buffy ducks her head down, hastens her walk, and does her best to pretend neither of them are in this hallway right now.
***
After Buffy’s practice — eight hundred popped axels in a row before she finally landed a solid double with a wobbly landing, her whole face covered in sweat, trying to ignore Cordelia doing the most perfect double axel Buffy’s actually ever seen in person — she walks into the locker room. Faith’s standing there, leaned against the corner locker, arms crossed.
“Uh. Hi?”
“Hey,” Faith says.
“You’re sorta standing in front of my locker.”
“I know.”
“Are you gonna move, or—?”
“Whatever you think you heard before, it wasn’t like that, okay?”
Buffy cocks her head to the side. “Hey, can I introduce you to my good friend the segue?”
“What?”
“Nothing, sorry. What were you saying?”
“He just cares about me, that’s all. Wants me to do well,” Faith says. She still looks all small, like before. Something so … vulnerable, Buffy guesses? In her little white tank top, no gear, pale oval of her face scrubbed of her usual dark, smeary makeup too. It makes Buffy feel unsteady to look at her.
“He seemed really hard on you.”
“No. It’s like I said. He just cares,” Faith says, voice harder, like Buffy’s dumb for not getting it.
“Look, Giles is hard on me too,” Buffy says. “I just think—”
Faith’s breath’s a little ragged. “What? What do you think, B?”
Buffy breathes in. Repats, slowly: “Giles is hard on me too. But he never … talks down to me. Like that.”
Faith snaps back at her: “Wilks doesn’t talk down to me. Dude’s done more for me that anybody. So why don’t you stay out of it?”
“You’re the one who brought me into it,” Buffy snaps back. “I just wanted to go to my fucking locker?”
Faith peels her body off the locker. Closes the gap up to Buffy, her face just inches away. “Fine. Go to your locker, then. Like I fucking care.”
“God, what is your problem? ” Buffy demands. “‘Cause I thought we had a nice thing going, and now you’re attacking me out of nowhere, when I’m literally just trying to be like, a friend to you?”
“A friend,” Faith says, like she’s turning the word over in her mouth, and doesn’t like the taste.
“Yeah, Faith,” Buffy says. “A friend. Ever heard of it?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve heard of,” Faith says, and now she’s so close to Buffy that Buffy’s whole body can’t not be aware of Faith’s body, her skin prickling at the nearness, her face heating up, her eyes catching the way Faith’s eyelashes are so dark and thick, like it must hurt your eyes to even move under them. “Some perfect little ice princess with her perfect little coach who doesn’t know a thing about me.”
The words smart over Buffy like a fall, like when it feels like the ice just wants to trip you and it’s not you dropping down to it, but it rising up just to knock you down. Buffy swallows. Lets out a breath. Faith blinks, like the puff of air hit her. Says:
“I thought you liked me. Guess I was wrong. I won’t make the mistake again.”
Saying the words feels like pulling the stringy guts from a pumpkin with your fist, the kind that makes you feel like it’s all horror movie entrails.
Faith’s throat trembles a little. She walks past Buffy — checks her shoulder a little as she goes, and the hit radiates through Buffy like a comic book punch, she can almost see the little pow that goes with it, the blue splat of ink staining her whole body — and leaves the room. Buffy hears the door push open and slam shut.
Everything in her is buzzing and bad and itchy and wrong. But lesson number one is you never let the fall know that it hurt you, you get right the fuck back up and keep skating. So she takes herself to the bench, unlaces her skates, and thinks about her program choreography as loud as she can until the whole fight’s as quiet in her head as it’s gonna get.
***
Buffy doesn’t talk to Faith all week. She gets into practice at a normal time — not early, because fuck that, and fuck trying to make time to see Faith when Faith clearly doesn’t wanna see her. But also not late. Like, if Faith wanted to linger, and see Buffy, she could. That’s there. But instead, Buffy gets there, and some of the hockey girls are still trickling out, but Faith is always long gone. So, whatever. She doesn’t care. She’s got her underrotated lutz to worry about.
If she did care about it, she’d say she can’t even tell what the fuck they’re so angry at each other about. She just knows they are, that the feeling feels so easy to reach for with Faith, for some reason, and so hard to claw out of.
Her friends seem to think she cares. Which is obnoxious. And not true. If she cared, would she be able to walk past the flyers for the women’s hockey game in two weeks and like, barely even flinch at all at them?
She tells the Scoobies this. But that, for some reason, just makes them think it more.
***
“Buffy, do you think you keep messing up your lutz landing because you miss flirting with that hockey player?” Anya says while they’re warming up one morning. “Because your form was also bad when you weren’t flirting with her, so I don’t think that’s it. So, just in case you were thinking that was the reason, it’s probably not it.”
“I do not miss Faith,” Buffy insists.
“But you are messing up your lutz,” Cordy adds, circling them with backwards crossovers. “So there must be a reason.”
Kendra, who’s doing edge drills behind the whole group, adds: “Is it not just that you’ve always had sloppy form on toe jumps? Your flip’s been a mess since I’ve known you.”
“ Giles,” Buffy calls across the rink. “Can we get some teammates who aren’t the bluntest people alive?”
“Probably not, but I’ll see what I can do!” Giles says, covering the receiver of his cell. He’s on the phone with Jenny, probably, based on how he’s grinning all stupid.
“And my toe jump form is fine,” Buffy tells the other skaters.
“Maybe it was last season,” Cordy says. “But you’ve been off since we came back.”
Anya, helpfully, supplies: “Oh! Did you mean that as a subtle dig that her skating was better back when you guys were hooking up, but now that she’s flirting with a different mean, dark-haired girl that you’re jealous and also she’s worse? Because if so, nice. Good burn!”
Kendra stops pretending she doesn’t care about this conversation long enough to tell Buffy “It does seem like your little friend is distracting you. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Anya says to Kendra: “Oh! See, I thought you were just generally making fun of Buffy, but then I just remembered that time Buffy broke up with hooking up with you so she could hook up with Cordelia instead. That’s the time you meant, right? Or did you mean the time she broke up with Cordelia again to sleep with you again? I could never keep all of that straight, honestly.”
Buffy has been spending the last five minutes pretending that she is not here and cannot perceive sensory input. “Can we talk about a new subject? Please? ”
“You should have thought about that before you developed a fetish for dark haired girls on ice skates who are mean to you,” Anya says. “But I suppose so, yes.”
“I’d like to second that, please,” Giles says, skating over. “And how about that new subject is we all stop faffing about and gossiping and start doing some figure skating? I hope that wouldn’t be too much to ask, at skating practice?”
“Couldn’t agree more, Coach Man!” Buffy says, and skates as fast as she can, as far as she can away from the others, to go drill her lutzes and try to forget about the world.
***
Buffy’s rushing into the ice complex with her gym bag slung over her shoulder, and it’s late afternoon, and she’s blowing off a class to be here and lying to Giles about that because she really does want this extra training sesh. The air’s humid in that way that’s making her hair sticky on the back of her neck, and there’s people walking all over, friend groups walking four abreast taking up the whole path so Buffy has to swerve onto the grass around them, and she’s thinking about how maybe it’s nice that Giles is doing this extra bonus coaching session just for her, and that he really wants her to do well, and also thinking about how, God, she never used to need extra coaching. She used to just be able to fling her body around the ice and have it work.
The point is, her head’s full of too much stuff. Which is how she doesn’t see that she’s about to crash into Faith until their bodies are already colliding.
Buffy stumbles from the impact. She doesn’t topple over, but her bag goes flying. And her shoulders are throbbing from where they smacked into Faith’s. Buffy thinks back to that first time she saw Faith in a tank top. She was right. Literally, hello shoulder muscles. This time, with 100% more pain!
Faith, meanwhile, would have been totally fine. If she hadn’t swerved out of the way to not make Buffy fall, which has her feet skidding over Buffy’s skate bag, and has her landing face down in the grass.
Buffy rushes over, extends a hand down to pull Faith up. Faith looks at the hand, lip curled, like she’s trying to make sense of what she’s seeing, and pulls herself to standing all on her own.
“I can take a fall too, you know,” Faith says.
“I know you can,” Buffy says. Everyone on the path is staring at them. She tries not to pay attention to it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Faith shoots back.
Buffy’s already tired. Her mouth aches, even though nothing hit into it. She should go inside. She’s already late. But Faith’s not rushing to get away from her, which Buffy figured she would be. Just with, like the weeklong radio silence and all? And she doesn’t wanna pass that up. So, instead, she exhales, and asks:
“What are you doing here anyway?”
“It’s a free rink,” Faith says. “Or, okay, it’s not, ‘cause you know, fucking expensive to get ice time. But — whatever. Point is, I don’t have to tell you why I’m here.”
Buffy bites her lip. “Okay.”
“I forgot my textbook,” Faith says. “This morning. Came back to get it.”
“Okay,” Buffy says again. “Why with the secrecy, then?”
Faith makes eye contact with her, and Buffy thinks God, have anyone’s eyes ever been more huge and brown? “I dunno. You fucking make me nervous, B. That a crime?”
Buffy rolls her shoulders back because she has to do something with her body in response to that, and she can’t figure out what she wants to do, but she probably couldn’t do any of it even if she knew. So. “Guess not.”
“Fuck’re you here for?” Faith asks. “While we’re doing third degree.”
“Extra practice,” Buffy says.
“Didn’t see any of your buds in there,” Faith says.
“Solo practice,” Buffy says. “Giles moved some stuff around in his schedule to squeeze one in before this weekend.”
Faith nods, looks at the ground.
Buffy has the sense — because she’s feeling it too — that Faith’s probably thinking, Jesus, the last time they talked about their coaches they somehow didn’t speak for a week, gotta tread this thing fucking carefully. But also, why do they have to? Why is it so … hard with Faith? Buffy still doesn’t full get their fight. She just knows she aches, looking at Faith, and she wants to not.
Faith pushes her hair behind her ear. It’s out of the pony, which Buffy doesn’t usually see, and falling in these dark shining waves, and curling shadows under the top layer that just go on and on. She says, with her teeth a little gritted: “Cool of him.”
“Mostly it’s ‘cause I really fucking suck right now. It’s a pity practice, trust me.”
Buffy missed Faith’s smile. She realizes that when she sees it come out with an exhale of a laugh, all goofy and like she’s trying to push it down.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Faith says. “I mean, I haven’t really seen you skate much or anything but — I just got a hard time believing you’re all that bad. A little bad, I could buy.”
“What, ‘cause you’re the king of skating and you know everything?” Buffy says, and for reasons she can’t place, she feels warm in her ears, her cheeks. Are her and Faith standing closer together than they were?”
“Yo, you said it, not me,” Faith says. “But yeah, obviously. I’m the best of the best. So I know good when I see it.”
Buffy’s chest squeezes in tight like a fist with what she’s about to say. “You … could see it. Me skating, I mean.”
“Could I?” Faith says, in this way that sounds like she’s saying something else under it. Buffy’s ears are hot again.
“Um. Well you talked about maybe coming to see my competition? Um. And it’s this weekend. My first event’s—”
“Saturday at eleven, yeah,” Faith says. Buffy gives her a confused eye, and Faith adds: “Saw the schedules up inside.”
“Wow, stalker much,” Buffy says.
Faith snorts. “You’re the one inviting me to see you. So, sounds like you want me to stalk you.”
Buffy’s about to say something really stupid and desperate back to that — God, are her friends right? Like, not saying they are, but just, fuck. This is definitely a Thing. A Thing Shaped, Thinglike … Thing — but she’s saved by the Giles:
“ Buffy?” he says, sticking his head out of the double doors. “I don’t know if I’ve ever somehow mistakenly given you the impression that I’m the sort of person who’s erm, calm and casual about punctuality, but if there ever were a time to test that theory, it would certainly not be two days before a very significant—”
“You can spare the rest of the lecture series, Giles!” Buffy calls out. “I’m coming!”
“Good, because I was only going to get more tedious from there.”
He ducks his head back inside, and Buffy turns to Faith, who says: “Guess I better let you get in there before he gets all British like that again.”
“Oh, yeah, it would not be pretty,” Buffy says, and moves to go inside.
She’s almost at the door when Faith, who’s apparently just been standing there, watching her, calls out: “Hey, you gonna wear one of those little outfits Saturday?”
Buffy turns around. Swallows the lump in her throat. Her ears are hot, again. “Yeah. Why?”
“No reason,” Faith says, with this grin that’s like … devilish? Is that the word?
Buffy’s brain is gonna do bad things if she keeps trying to think of the word, so she turns around, goes inside, lets the door slam shut behind her.
At the end of the hallway, Giles is waiting: “Do I want to know who that is?”
“Probably not,” Buffy says.
“Good,” Giles says. “Then I shan’t ask. Now, shall we run through your short program? I woke up with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” stuck in my head, so I dare say it’s, er, haunting me?”
“Oh my God, me too!” Buffy says, slapping his hand in a low-five that Giles definitely did not want. “Haunting buddies!”
***
Buffy fucks up most of her short program.
Which is like. Okay, once upon a time she was young. Once, back in this world she can almost really remember, she was this bright shiny little fifteen year old who could do crazy jumps and she did them with this smile plastered over her face like this was a dance recital, but it didn’t matter, because nobody asked anything of her then except to go out there and Do The Moves Right. And she Did Them Right. And she was gonna do it right forever, and probably go down in history for how good she was, and she never had to question that that would happen.
And now she’s like, an elderly person in her fucking twenties who probably won’t even make a dent at Nationals, if she even makes it, because that doesn’t even feel guaranteed anymore, and the judges keep saying they want more emotion and commitment but it’s hard to give that when she’s just so tired and she misses when things just worked.
All this to say, she pops her first jump and falls on her second. And, because she’s stupid, and because they designed this program thinking she was the Buffy whose body still worked, her last jump is at the very fucking end. And she’s gonna have tired legs. And she can’t do this shit. She fucking can’t.
She’s in the middle of her step sequence — and okay, yeah, her jumps are shit right now, her jumps may never be good again, but god damn if she doesn’t still have the deepest edges, the best goddamn twizzle, and the crowd loves her right now, because the crows always loves her during a step sequence — when she spots her. At the bottom of the stands, walking in late with a bucket of concessions popcorn, a goofy grin plastered on her face when she sees Buffy looking at her. Faith.
Faith raises her eyebrows at Buffy, tosses a kernel in her mouth, and she looks like she’s having so much fun, just standing there. Buffy thinks about how much fun Faith seems to have doing like, most things, ever. Thinks about how when Faith’s on the ice it looks like she’s just letting her body go, and knows everything else will follow if she just lets it.
Buffy’s thinking about that as she ends the program with the best fucking double axel she’s ever done. When she lands it, she hears Faith fucking shout . This guttural cheer that drowns out the music.
***
After the scores are all out— Buffy’s sixth in the short, but she’s neck in neck with fifth, like, a tenth of a point between them, and fourth is only like two points above that, and anything could happen when they get to the free — she finds Faith milling around the door to where all the skaters stretch and get ready and shit.
“Looking for me?” Buffy says.
Faith gives her an up-and-down. Buffy’s dress is this foresty green that, she thinks, makes her eyes extra eye-y. Not that that’s relevant to this.
“Nice look.”
“Yeah, it uh, it goes well with the short I think,” Buffy says.
“I mean it is,” Faith says. Another once-over, eyes lingering on Buffy’s exposed thighs. “Short.”
“I meant the short program. You know, the event we just had?”
“I know what you meant,” Faith says.
Around them, the hall is quickly getting flooded with boys punching their thighs and tightening their skates and humming along to their program music in their headphones, getting ready for the men’s short that’s about to get underway.
Buffy says: “Wow, with the crowded. Um, you wanna go like, take a walk or something?”
“You don’t have to go do more skating?”
“Free programs aren’t until tomorrow. Which makes me a free agent, actually.”
“Sick. Not the pun, uh, which was shit, but uh, the rest of it,” Faith says, and her mouth’s doing that thing again. “Uh, where do you wanna go?”
***
They’re in the back of the arena. It’s this little alcove Buffy likes — the outer walls curve in with an overhang of the building above you, this little covered spot that should lead into a door, but that door got boarded up inside the last time they were expanding the sports complex, so no one ever comes here.
“Cool spot. How’d you find it?”
The answer to that is that Kendra showed Buffy and then Buffy showed Cordy, back in their first year on the team when they were all collectively having their most intertangly only-sleeping-with-each-other era. Before that got blown up by the Cordy-Xander-Anya drama when Anya transferred here, and Kendra stopped talking to everyone for like six months because it all got too messy, and Buffy swore off hooking up with her teammates. And then promptly started that Whole Thing she had with Angel the history class TA, which, okay, maybe also not the best romantic decision making period of her life! But that’s all in the past now, and so is fucking her teammates, and this gonna be different. This is gonna be good.
Like, for one thing, Faith’s not her teammate. And they’re not hooking up. Like, not even a little. Faith barely even likes her. So, Buffy's safe.
Buffy lands on: “I mean, I’m at this rink most of my waking hours. I know the spots.”
Faith’s leaning against the wall, and Buffy processes that she’s wearing black leather pants? And another one of those ribbed tank tops she looks stupid good in. And these big leather boots that also make Buffy feel normal.
Faith says: “Seemed like you kinda crushed it back there.”
Buffy takes a spot on the wall opposite Faith, leaning back too, so their postures match. “I wouldn’t say crushed. Crushing it is like, you’re in the kiss-and-cry and you’re not even worried about if you’re gonna beat everyone else, you’re just worried if you’re gonna beat your own PB or whatever. And I was in the kiss-and-cry sweating with major terror, so.”
Faith makes a face like her brain’s short circuiting. “The kiss and what?”
“Cry,” Buffy supplies. “It’s that weird little seating area where you wait for your scores and everyone stares at you and judges how composed you seem when receiving the worst news of your life?”
“And then you make out with the judges?” Faith says. “Seems kinda dirty. But hey, if you’re into that.”
“No, it’s called that ‘cause it’s like, if you get a bad score then everyone’s crying and if you get a good score then everyone’s—”
“Making out with the judges, yeah,” Faith interrupts. “I get the concept.”
“Shut up!” Buffy laughs. “I’ve only made out with the judges like, three or four times, personally. Totally professional.”
“Lucky judges,” Faith mumbles. “Damn, but, honestly? More I learn about your fuck ass sport the more I know I was right in the first place. Wicked weird in here.”
Buffy pushes her back further into the wall, rolls her hands around the hem of her skate dress. Which, okay, she probably could have changed out of. But like, if Faith’s parading around in fucking leather pants, it’s only fair Buffy also look … you know. A way that might make Faith feel a way. Just as revenge.
“As opposed to your very normal sport where you just like bash each other in the face until you're like writhing on the ice spitting out bloody teeth?”
Faith’s voice goes all soft and dreamy. “Yeah. Fucking beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Not seeing the beautiful,” Buffy says. “But … maybe you could help me understand it?”
Faith bites in on her lower lip and then rolls it back out again. “Yeah, okay. It’s like this.”
She presses her body off the wall. Walks up to where she’s in touching distance of Buffy, but doesn’t touch her.
Faith says: “Hockey’s like, you’re out on the ice, you know, and, yeah, you wanna fucking score a goal and shit. ‘Cause who doesn’t love winning, you know? But the winning’s only part of it. You can kinda … get lost out there. In the good way. You’re moving, and you’re with your guys, and some fucker on the other team fucks up one of your guys, right? And you’re not gonna let that happen. So you let loose on her. And she knows you were gonna let loose on her. That’s why she was fucking talking shit in the first place, to see if somebody was gonna do something about it. And you’re the guy who gets to do something. And you’re not supposed to, or whatever, but everyone wants you to, that’s what the crowd’s fucking there for. To see you scrapping out there on the ice. And nothing’s real, in that moment, when you’re wailing on her, except your fucking body, you know? Your body and your team and the fucking ice. There’s no shit like that in the world, B. Everywhere else they want you stand up straight and take your fucking lumps. But out there? Out there you can hit as hard as you want just to see how much it hurts. Out there you can be a real fucking person for once.”
Buffy doesn’t realize that her breath’s gotten tight, that Faith’s so close to her, their faces separated by a few inches, until she finishes talking.
“Plus,” Faith says. “Knives on your fucking shoes. Wicked cool.”
“Okay, yeah,” Buffy whispers. “I could see how you could like something like that.”
“Could you?” Faith says back, her voice all low and raspy too. “‘Prim little ice princess like you. I thought you’d be one of those types who thinks she’s above it all. But you … you got some of what I got in you, too.”
“Do I?”
“Oh, yeah,” Faith says. She reaches down, and her hand brushes Buffy’s thigh, and for a second Buffy’s whole body jolts like getting a static shock from a doorknob. And then Faith’s hand’s on her skirt instead, feeling the material between two fingers, tugging the hem. “This thing’s a total misdirect. You got an animal in you, too.”
Buffy doesn’t know what to do with her voice or her face or her body right now. All she knows is she wants this conversation to keep going.
“Figure skating’s not all tightlaced like you think it is,” Buffy says, trying to grasp onto a subject she understands, to make her brain work again. “You know how fucking crazy it is to jump an axel? You’re just flinging your whole body headfirst in the air. Trusting that your muscles remember how to pull in for it. That your blades are gonna catch you. And if it doesn’t work, the fall’s gonna fuck you up so bad. And you know that. And you do it anyway.”
“Oh yeah?” Faith says, and pushes in closer, their noses are almost touching now, and Buffy can feel Faith’s breath on her mouth, and that whole trying to get a grip on the situation thing goes out the fucking window. “Maybe you could show me how sometime.”
“I don’t think you could handle it,” Buffy breathes, feeling dizzy. Faith smells so good. God, she smells so good? What the fuck?
“Think you’ll find I can handle a whole lot of things,” Faith says, and then the hand that’s on Buffy’s skirt moves up, so Faith’s gripping Buffy’s hip, fingers pressing into the swell of it, her other hand on the wall behind Buffy, so close that Buffy can’t move any direction without touching Faith, and every inch of her skin feels hot and squirmy, and she realizes she’s been pressing her legs together, thighs clamped, which is only making the whole thing worse, and her knees feel like they’re gonna fucking give, and for one second Buffy processes that she wants to touch Faith so bad she thinks it would kill her to do it.
And then Buffy’s thinking about how what the fuck is she doing, this is fucking crazy, a week ago this girl was screaming at her for no fucking reason, and she can’t be getting distracted like this, she has the second half of her competition tomorrow, and like, she was lying out of her ass before, figure skating is tightlaced, it’s hard work and clenching down and trying so fucking hard and drilling your body to just work no matter how hard your mind wants your body to not do what you’re asking it to do, it’s about driving yourself to the bone until everything just gives out. And some string snaps in her brain, and it’s screaming at her: if you give into this, it’s all fucked. You’re already losing it. If you give into this, you’re just gonna fuck it all up even more. And that doesn’t make sense, but fuck it, fuck sense, there’s no sense when Faith’s pressing her body into Buffy’s, and Buffy’s getting wet from just the touch of her, and she has to do a triple-triple tomorrow, and if she doesn’t—
“I—,” Buffy says. “I can’t right now, I just—”
She meant for it to come out in a way that was chill. In a way that says — well, Buffy doesn’t know what she wants to say, because she’s freaking the fuck out. But in a way that says something that would make this whole thing good and okay because it was. Just a minute ago it was the most okay thing that’s ever happened. And now that’s gone and Buffy has no idea how to get it back.
Faith’s whole face shifts on a dime. Realization pours over it, her features souring, her body pulling back from Buffy’s. Buffy’s thigh aches from the warmth of where Faith’s palm just was. She wants the feel of Faith’s hand back so bad it hurts.
And a minute ago, Faith looked so in control of everything, like this was all normal, she seduces figure skaters who’ve been obsessed with her since they met in the back alley of the ice rink all the time. And now —
Faith says, her eyes big and wild and kind of scared: “Whatever. Just forget it. I gotta go.”
She’s gone before Buffy can think of anything else to say. Before Buffy has enough control over her legs again to even think about running after her.
***
Buffy likes her free skate this season. And like, sure, “Black Swan”’s been fucking done to death. But that’s what figure skating is all about. Waiting for your turn to do it do death again. Making the death all your own.
She thinks about Faith the whole time. She’s not supposed to be. She’s supposed to be thinking arms tight, legs in, full extension, where’s your free leg, what’s your fucking free leg doing, next move, set up the lutz, don’t fuck up your goddamn lutz again I swear to God, okay, Biellman spin, if you don’t get at least level 3 on this spin you’re a failure, God, you used to get level 4’s so easy, no don’t think about that, just think about the spin, shit did you just cut your hand on the blade again? Don’t worry about that, don’t think about the blood, or how dizzy you are, because it’s the choreo sequence, spread eagle time, tilt your legs back, torso forward, okay, good, didn’t fuck that up, now your axel, set it up right, now —
Instead, she’s thinking about Faith on the hockey rink.
Faith, skating, smiling for no other reason than that she loves it, that she’s happy to be there, her body on the ice. Buffy thinks about what she told Faith yesterday. That figure skating can be like that too. Can be about just letting your body go. Trusting that your muscles know how to catch you.
Buffy skates clean. No downgrades. Positive GOE, every element.
In the kiss-and-cry, she’s leading the event, with four skaters to go.
When they’ve all finished, Buffy finds herself in third. Still just a tenth of a point above the girl who beat her yesterday. Ten points off from silver. Twenty off from gold. For once, she’s not worried about that. About all the better she should be doing.
She just likes the weight of the bronze around her neck.
***
After the medal ceremony, she’s getting all her stuff out of the stretching area, when someone behind her punches her on the shoulder.
She turns around and finds Faith, standing there.
“Oh, hi!” Buffy says. The nerves that have been gone since she landed her last jump clean come flooding back into her body all at once, like cats when the bedroom opens.
“Hey,” Faith says. “Nice dress.”
It is a nice dress, is the thing. It’s black and velvety, with this high neck but the back all low, and has these little ice blue eyelets around the bodice that don’t really have anything to do with the song. Buffy just looks really cute in blue.
But the issue is the last time Faith complimented Buffy’s skate dress, they ended up … you know. Or, actually, Buffy doesn’t know, and that’s kinda the main problem.
So instead she says: “Um. How are you even back here? It’s skaters only.”
Faith squeezes her eyes shut in this way that almost looks like a flinch. “There’s not a fucking security guard.”
“I know,” Buffy says quickly. “That’s not what I meant. I meant …”
Faith raises her eyebrows. “Meant what?”
“I don’t know! You just, you looked at me like I said something weird, but I didn’t mean to say something weird, so.”
“Wasn’t weird till you made it weird just now,” Faith said.
“So you agree,” Buffy says. “That it’s weird.”
Faith’s staring at her own shoes. “Well, I guess meant what I said the other day. You just fucking make me nervous.”
“Well,” Buffy says, a lump building in her throat. She thinks about yesterday. Faith and her up against the wall. The way it made her knees wobble. “You kinda make me nervous too.”
Faith intakes a breath, one Buffy’s sure she didn’t mean to. She looks at Buffy, like she’s trying to figure something out. “I do?”
Buffy nods. “I sorta thought that was obvious.”
Faith scoffs in a way that’s somehow like, unquantifiably hot. “Nothing about you’s obvious to me.”
Buffy doesn’t know what’s happening. She can’t even tell if there’s still other people in the room. Her whole awareness has narrowed to her and Faith. “So, did you … watch?”
“Yeah,” Faith says. “Stayed in the back. Didn’t wanna distract you.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have — or, okay, you probably would have distracted me. But, in a good way, I think.”
Faith tries to push down the smile that comes up from that, but Buffy still sees it. “Uh. So, I came to your game.”
“You mean competition,” Buffy corrects.
“Yeah, that’s what I said, your game,” Faith grins. “And I was thinking you could…”
“I could …?”
“Return the favor. See, we’re playing Crestwood College on —”
“Friday at seven. Yeah. Saw the flier.”
The corner of Faith’s mouth slopes up in a grin. “You stalking me now?”
“If I am — which I’m not — it would only be to get even with you,” Buffy says.
“Right, yeah,” Faith says. “Real even.”
Buffy asks: “So was that an invitation? To your game, I mean.”
Faith bites her lip. Looks in Buffy’s eyes in this way that makes Buffy almost lose her balance for a second. “It’s whatever you want it to be, B.”
Buffy’s trying to think of anything at all to say to that, because mostly she just wants to kiss Faith, sink her teeth into Faith’s lip, dig her nails into Faith’s back, gasp into Faiths’ open mouth. But like, she can’t do that. Because she doesn’t know if she can even move at all right now.
Faith saves her. “I gotta run, uh, I got some tutoring bullshit Wilks said I can’t miss, or he won’t let me play next week.”
“No worries,” Buffy says. “I’ll um, I’ll see you later.”
“Count on it,” Faith says. Turns to leave, but stops herself long enough to add: “Love the battle scar, by the way. Bloody look suits you.”
Buffy looks down to see what she means, and finds the bandaid fell off her hand, and now she’s dripping blood again, right where the skate blade sliced into her skin, staining her tights with it.
***
The rink always feels wrong when there’s this many people in it.
Like, this is her dead-to-the-world oasis. All the sounds too crisp, all the air too cold, all the space big and empty and Buffy can carve it up all how she likes. So sometimes she forgets it’s technically a public space that everyone’s allowed to go to, that sometimes even has events designed to make everyone go to them and like, shout and paint their fucking faces and do the wave, or whatever.
“Why are we here again?” Xander says as the lot of them squeeze into the stands.
Anya, next to him, supplies: “Oh, because Buffy has a crush on that girl Faith. The one that plays center forward? I personally thought we were all aware of that.”
“Are we?” Xander says. “No one tells me anything.”
“I do not have a crush,” Buffy says. Which, at this point she’s like, mostly aware that’s a lie, but whatever.
“Yes you do,” Anya says. “Cordelia saw you guys making out behind the rink last week.”
Buffy chokes on the ice crystals of her slushie. “She saw us what?”
Willow pouts. “You never told me you made out with her! I wanna be in-the-loop girl!”
“I didn’t! I — there was no making out. There was maybe some … body language that could have indicated we were possibly going in a makeout-esque direction. But that’s um. Well. We haven’t made out. So, I’m here as a friend. Doing supportive friend things.” Everyone’s still staring at her. She adds on in angry explanation: “She came to my competition last week! So this is only fair, and, and nice, and lots of people go to hockey games, and this is super normal, you guys are just the ones acting like it’s weird, so!”"
“Uh,” Tara says. “Okay, sweetie.”
Xander adds: “Also, friend? Last time we talked about her you said she was just really annoying. And then didn’t she silent treatment you for like a week?”
“Well, you’re annoying, but that doesn’t mean I don’t cherish you with all my heart!” Buffy says. “And the silent treatment was — I don’t know. But we’re over it now.”
Anya butts in: “To clarify, does that mean you also cherish Faith? Because that seemed to be the function of that analogy.”
“I don’t cherish anyone,” Buffy says. “Forget I ever said any words ever.”
“Wow, Buff,” Xander says, touching his chest in mock sadness. “Those sixty seconds when you cherished me were really beautiful. I’ll personally cherish them forever, but I understand you had to move onto bigger and better things.”
Tara adds, leaning forward so she can see Buffy past Willow’s head: “Um, and Buffy, not to add to the dogpile or anything, but don’t also you hate hockey?”
“I don’t!” Buffy says. “I’ve never once said that.”
Willow says: “You told me last year that hockey players are like vampires sucking all the life out of ice rinks.”
“Okay, well who doesn’t love a good vampire?” Buffy says. “Look, this will be fun! How about everyone says Thank you Buffy! Great idea about a fun, new way to spend our Friday night, Buffy.”
“I don’t want to say that,” Anya says. “So I won’t be. But thank you for the suggestion!”
Xander tacks on: “And there is literally board game night at the Espresso Pump. I personally thought we were collectively all in for board game night at the Espresso Pump. ”
Willow says: “No, this is definitely better than that. Ever since Tucker Wells’ little brother started coming along and thinking he could join our table, those pretty much suck?”
“And the Bronze is still being fumigated till next week,” Tara says. “So, I guess this could be fun. Um, you don’t think it’s going to get all violent though, do you? I don’t do well with the whole punchy thing.”
“Um,” Buffy says. “Well.”
“I’ll cover your eyes, baby,” Willow offers.
“Great! So, we’re all agreed, no one’s upset that we’re here, everyone is glad we came with me to this,” Buffy says. “I just — if I went alone it would be like—”
“Presenting how horny you are for her on a silver platter?” Willow says.
Buffy bites her lip. “It’s not like that. It’s just — this is new for me. Whatever the … thing with her, is. It feels … different.”
“I don’t see how that’s true,” Anya says. “You’re constantly developing weird ambiguous angry situationships with women in this ice rink. So this feels really true to form for you, actually.”
“Great observation, babe,” Xander tells her, with a pat on the knee.
“Thank you! Buffy’s inability to not hook up with our teammates has made practices very awkward for me, and it only feels fair to regularly share that in a public forum,” Anya says.
Buffy says: “Can everyone shut up? We don’t wanna miss the beginning. It’s the best part. It’s all beginning-y.”
Anya reaches over Xander to tap Buffy on the shoulder. “To be clear, if you started hooking up with this random lesbian hockey player instead, that would be significantly less awkward for me, so I fully support this! Rah rah go team! Et cetera.”
Buffy frowns at her. “Thanks, Ahn. I can tell that’s from the heart.”
And then the game starts for real, and Buffy’s stomach lurches.
The puck gets dropped in the middle, and then everyone’s grappling for it, and Buffy’s looking for Faith, but they’re high up, and she can’t spot her, it’s just this crush of bodies, and once again she thinks why does anyone like this?
And then she spots Faith — number 55. Her dark hair gathered in a pony and poking out from under her helmet. She’s in the middle of it all, the thick of it — which, of course. Buffy can’t imagine her doing anything else. And for a while everything still looks like a blur, but keeping her eyes on Faith makes it make more of the kind of sense that’s, you know, sense. Mostly, it seems like she’s patrolling that area. She’s getting really in the face of one girl on the other team, like she’s been assigned to her or something, and Buffy figures she’s doing a damn good job, because that girls’ barely gained any ground all game.
And there’s the way she moves out there — figure skaters are careful to stay out of each others’ way. Well, except ice dance and pairs, who the whole point is to get all entangly with someone, but Buffy’s always pretty much considered them weirdos, so. But, anyway, this is different. Faith just moves so quick. She’s weaving in and out of the crush. The stick moves like it’s part of her arm. When she gets the puck, it’s like yeah, of course she would, like it’s so fucking easy to do, like it’s not just this tiny slippery disk that you couldn’t pay Buffy to try to keep track of.
Even from up here — too high in the stands to see Faith’s face, to see the way she’s grinning, Buffy knows, gnawing on her mouthguard how she always does — Buffy can tell she’s loving it out there. You can just see it in her body.
It’s almost hypnotic to watch. Buffy finds herself leaning forward in her seat, eyes transfixed. Crestwood gets a goal, and her stomach sinks, she feels the crowd around her do the same. And then the periods about to end, and the clock’s running down, and the whole arena is breathing in the same breath, waiting to see.
But Faith’s got this. She ricochets a goal into the net like it’s fucking easy. The buzzer goes, blaring everywhere, and Faith ignores it, just keeps griddying across the ice, just how she does when Buffy watches her practice.
Xander nudges her on the elbow. “I think your new girlfriend might be a huge dork, actually?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Buffy says. “And actually griddying when you score a goal is like, part of it, actually. It’s called a celly or something. Like celebration?”
Xander scoffs. “And you jocks say I’m the nerd.”
The intermission goes fifteen minutes. Buffy’s friends are talking about — well, honestly she’s not listening? But they’re all laughing a bunch, so she assumes it’s a good time. She’s just trying to get eyes on Faith. It’s making her anxious — they sat up so high, and what if Faith doesn’t see her, or what if she goes down lower, but then that’s a whole thing, because that negates the friends buffer, and she hardly ever gets to see her friends anyway because she’s always skating, and she should be enjoying their company, but she can’t enjoy their company when she’s looking for Faith, and—
Buffy wonders for a second if it’s this loud and crowded in Faith’s head. Probably not. Probably it’s so nice in there. Probably Faith’s head is just an easy breezy paradise that says Care About Hockey on one side and Make Buffy Feel Crazy on the other.
Or like, maybe there’s also gnarly gross stuff in Faith’s head too. But Buffy has to imagine, whatever it is, it’s better in there.
Next to her, Willow’s telling some story about her and Tara running into Giles and Jenny on date night at the movies, and everyone’s laughing, and it sounds fucking great, and Buffy’s still missing it, because Faith catches her eye from the outside of the rink.
She’s got her glove off, and twiddles her fingers up at the stands. Buffy’s pretty sure she winks, too. Buffy breathes in, waves back, tries to feel normal.
And then the buzzer goes off again, and they’re back at it down there.
It only takes a few minutes for Faith to get into a fight. Honestly, Buffy’s shocked it hasn’t happened sooner.
Buffy doesn’t fully understand why it’s happening, but there seems to be a lot of yelling, and Faith’s elbowing this other girl hard , and screaming at the ref, and then the other girl coming back up to Faith in the middle of Faith’s fight with the ref, hitting her even harder. And then there’s a scrabble down on the ice, girls from both teams elbowing their way into the mass of bodies, and the ref is trying so hard to break it up, but it doesn’t do anything — the pile of bodies wants to kick eat other to shit, so they will.
Buffy’s sure she sees someone slam Faith’s whole body into the boards. She pangs for a second with worry, before she realizes Faith probably enjoyed that, at least a little.
And then the ref blows his whistle like a gajillion times, and when the fray clears away, Faith’s standing there with blood running from her nose, smearing her grinning mouth, her sticky chin, all wet and red.
It’s? Unfortunately? Really hot? Buffy doesn’t wanna call it hot, but that’s literally the only word coming to mind.
The game pauses for like, way less time than Buffy would think for the fact that they just drew literal blood down there — the ref sends the girl who clocked Faith off to sit in this little plastic box that Buffy guesses is like? Hockey jail?
And then they’re back at it.
Crestwood scores another goal, but UC Sunnydale gets two others on top of it (one of which is Faith’s, again, once they let her out of the box) and the crowd is going fucking nuts about it. Even the Scoobies have temporarily abandoned their usual outcast-nerds-who-don’t-know-how-to-function-in-general-society thing, and are just getting amped with it. Anya starts chest bumping random guys. Xander tries to too, and almost falls down the stands. Willow and Tara start a round of the wave.
When the next intermission hits, Buffy notices Faith meandering away from her team huddle to a quieter corner of the sidelines.
“Um,” she tells her friends. “I’m just gonna go down and get some, uh, popcorn?”
“Buff?” Willow says. “You know there’s concessions up here too, right?”
“Oh, yeah, but the one on this level totally skimps on salt. So. Bye!”
At the bottom of the stairs, Faith’s spotted her on the move, moseyed over to where Buffy’s about to emerge from the stands.
“You miss me already?” Faith says. Her helmet’s off, tucked under her arm. Chewing on her mouthpiece again, so all her words come out garbled in this way that makes Buffy need to stare at her mouth extra hard.
“Something like that,” Buffy says. “Uh, you got a little …”
She gestures to Faith’s cheeks, which are still smeared with bloodstain. Her lips, her chin, are smeared a faint mess of red, like she tried to clean it up with the side of her hand in a messy swipe.
“Yeah,” Faith says. “I’ll probably just get more bloodied up, so no point really washing it off now, you know?”
“I’m defending your honor up there, just so you know,” Buffy says. “The guys said your celly was dorky. It was fucked up of them.”
Faith grins. “Hey, I’m just impressed you know what it’s called.”
“I listen when you talk,” Buffy says.
“Bet you do,” Faith answers, smiling.
They’re standing close, now, again. Faith, in her hockey boots, towers a few good inches above Buffy in her street shoes. Add to that all the pads and shit, and it just gives the feeling like Faith could swallow Buffy down in one gulp like a snake eating a mouse. Buffy steps an inch closer.
“You’re pretty good out there,” Buffy says. “Hence all the celly-ing, I guess.”
“Well that means a lot, coming from the bronze medalist of the, uh—”
“Sunnydale Invitational Cup,” Buffy says.
““Sunnydale Invitational Cup. Creative,” Faith deadpans.
“Yeah, Giles thought of it.”
“So, uh, how’s the view up there?” Faith says, a crinkle in her face.
“It’s okay,” Buffy says. “A little hard to make you out, though.”
Faith’s biting on her lip. Her gloved hand twitches a little, like she means to touch Buffy with it — and she remembers, Faith’s hand on her hip, Faith’s hand squeezing like she wanted to … and Buffy’s legs wanted to let her— but then Faith moves her hand back to her side.
“If you wanted to sit a bit closer, then, you could,” Faith says. “Wouldn’t wanna deprive you of a nice view of me.”
Buffy tries to tamp down that voice in her brain that keeps saying hey, hi, is this happening? Is this a real conversation between two people?
Buffy says: “Oh yeah, picture me pressed up against the glass like your groupie?”
Faith gives her this up-and-down look like she’s very much picturing it. “Sure. You’d make a good little puck bunny.”
“I’m not a — I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like an insult?”
Faith grins, again. A swell of satisfaction spreads through Buffy — that she’s managing to make Faith smile so much these days.
She says: “Not the way I mean it, B.”
And then Wilkins’ voice comes springing all squeaky across the sidelines. “Firecracker? It’s team huddle time! I know you don’t wanna miss team huddle time!”
Faith raises her eyebrows at Buffy as a kind of goodbye. “Catch you later, princess.”
Buffy spends the next few minutes trying to compose herself and ignore the way that whole conversation kind of felt like Faith was about to throw Buffy down on the ground and fuck her in front of everyone, and Buffy kind of thinks she would have let her?
And then Buffy sits herself down on the bench in the front row, as the buzzer blares that the next period’s taking off.
It only takes five minutes for Faith to get in a fight this time. It’s just a flurry of bodies and limbs at the other side of the rink. The one bit Buffy does see, loud and clear, is Sunnydale’s goalie knocking her hockey stick horizontal into one of the opposing players, and that girl coming up swinging, trying to rip the goalie out of the net, and then Faith sweeping in, of course, and throwing that girl to the ground so hard that Buffy’s pretty sure she sees teeth on the ice?
Apparently enough to put Faith in hockey jail again.
And Buffy finds the whole game pretty boring without Faith in it, so she gets up, brings herself over to the penalty box or whatever it’s called, and leans against it while Faith’s inside, fuming, banging against the walls to try to get the ref’s attention just to keep shit-talking him.
“Having fun in there?” Buffy asks.
Faith’s voice comes out muffled from the other side of the plexiglass. “Honestly, yeah. This is my favorite fucking part.”
Buffy can tell she means it, too.
“So what exactly happened out there?”
“Well I couldn’t fucking let that bitch chirp on Amy like that. I mean, honestly, I could fucking take or leave Amy. But she’s still my fucking goalie.”
Buffy wrinkles her nose. “Sorry, chirp? The fuck?”
“It’s like shit talking. But more — there’s an art to it.”
Buffy nods. “And that’s bad?”
“When they do it, yeah,” Faith says.
“But not when you do it?”
“Well I’m just so good at it. Would be a fucking waste to deprive the world of my gifts.”
She turns her attention back to the game for a second, and yelps out at some opposing player passing by: “Oh, you’re looking good out there, baby! You getting tired? ‘Cause we’re gonna fucking win no matter what you do, but, wow, check you out anyway. Real champ, huh?”
Buffy knocks on the plexiglass to get Faith’s attention again. “Who was that?”
Faith shrugs, chuckles. “Fuck if I know.”
On the other side of the box, the ref opens the door with one hand, drives the fist of the other against the plexiglass like a gavel. “55, you’re back in.”
Faith’s whole face opens into a grin. She winks at Buffy. “Catch you on the other side, B!”
And then she’s off, zooming out there, like nothing’s ever felt better than carving up the ice like that.
***
After the game, Buffy finds Faith in the crush of fans, in the walkway around the rink. She’s got her hockey gear off again, just a sports bra, and her stomach’s sticky with sweat, her whole body is, coated in this sheen of it that makes all her muscles pop out like constellations.
“Good game,” Buffy says, because she guesses that’s what you say. Buffy’s leaned up against the boards, Faith with her boot kicked up on the stands behind her, blocking the flow of traffic just because she can.
Faith punches her in the arm, all grinning. “Guess you’re a good luck charm.”
“Ooh, that sounds prestigious,” Buffy says. “Do I get a sash or something?”
“Nah, but we’re serious about that superstition shit. You just might have to come to every game now.”
Buffy’s already batting her eyelashes before she can process that she’s What? Batting her fucking eyelashes? Faith’s got her like some lovestruck puppy melting in the palm of her hand? What the fuck is this? And coming out of her mouth along with it is: “You get me that sash and I just might. Would that make me your, uh — puck bunny?”
Faith exhales. Puts an arm on the plexiglass behind Buffy. It’s not like in the alley behind the rink. Buffy’s not trapped in by Faith’s body. A thread of disappointment works through her body about that.
Faith says: “Something like that.”
Buffy’s head feels floaty and tangled like cotton candy as she says: “Uh. So, maybe we could um. Do something, later this weekend, if you’re free?”
“Do something, huh?”
“Yeah, um,” Buffy says, the idea taking form in her head as she speaks. “Well, you’re pretty good out there, doing your thing. Was kinda wondering how you’d be out there, doing my thing. Could be … thinglike.”
“Sounds thinglike,” Faith says, a seriousness in her face that’s half joke, half really just plain serious. She’s looking at Buffy so close, with her big, brown eyes.
“Yeah. There’s this public skate session, Sunday mornings? Hardly anyone ever goes.”
Faith bites her lip, pulls in really close to Buffy, close enough to kiss her, if she wanted, and if she wanted, Buffy would let her. Instead, even worse, Faith says: “It’s a date.” And then some of her hockey buds come up behind her, pull on her shoulders to yank her away into the crowd of screaming, celebrating hockey girls, and Buffy’s just left there standing, body so full of potential energy it might just split open like an atom, and end the world.
Buffy’s pretty sure that’s not dramatic either. That’s like, exactly the level of dramatic for her having a date with Faith Lehane.
***
Buffy’s normal about what’s about to happen. Like, this is fine. This is regular.
This is her and Faith hanging out, without a game, without a practice. Without a pretense. Just them meeting up, because they want to. Because they enjoy each others’ company, she guesses. Like, if this is a date, they probably like each other. She’s probably allowed to say that. And Faith almost fingered her behind the ice rink that one time, so Buffy guesses a date would like, make sense to ensue???
At the very least, they’re meeting up at the ice rink, so that’s some familiar ground. It’s early Sunday morning, and the whole campus is still passed out from Saturdaying so hard yesterday. No sound but the birds and the lawnmowers. No one in the rink but Buffy, Faith, and Amanda, the awkward freshman who works the rental skate counter. The early risers.
When Buffy gets inside, Faith’s already there, jamming her foot into a pair of rental figure skates. Which — okay, Buffy does have a pair of her old skates in her locker, and she thinks they’re about the same size? And those have, you know, blades that have actually been sharpened like, ever, and half the reason people think figure skating is even hard is because rental blades are garbage. So she should stop her and tell her that there’s another option.
But then Buffy notices Faith has the laces done up all funny, the tongue sticking out for no good reason. She’s wearing a thin black tank top, a fading zip-up hoodie over it with the Dunkin Donuts logo plastered on the front in old, peeling letters, and these thin sweatpants that cling to her swollen thigh muscles that are like … that should be illegal, Buffy thinks, to look like that.
“Yo, B, check me out!” Faith says, kicking her foot out to show off the jagged toe pick. “I’m just like one of you now.”
And Buffy thinks: she’s so fucking cute. It’s gonna be so funny to watch her fall on her face in those piece of shit boots.
“Oh yeah, you’re a regular Yuna Kim.”
“Who?” Faith scrunches up her nose.
“Seriously? Okay, we have some serious figure skating history to cover. I’m gonna have to make a list actually, so we hit all the most important programs. We’ll start with Sochi, obviously. Which if anyone asks you, she won that, okay? They might tell you she didn’t, but they’d be liars.”
“Ma’am yes ma’am,” Faith says like it doesn’t make Buffy’s insides go funny, with a fake salute. “But then I get to fucking show you the Bruins winning the cup in 2011. Fucked up the Canucks real hard.”
Buffy says: “Well that just seems really mean to the Canucks, and I think you guys should apologize to them.”
Faith raises her eyebrows. “For you? I’ll think about it. But no promises, Blondie.”
Buffy’s the kind of giddy that rises up from your stomach all warm like bread puffing up in an oven. Which she cannot fucking be. She has to be normal right now. “Well, you have to get through this first anyway. And frankly, I’m not sure you can handle it.”
“You tell Frank I’m gonna be five by fucking five out there,” Faith snorts. “How goddamn hard could it be?”
***
Faith faceplants within a minute on the ice, tripping over her own toe pick.
She stares up at Buffy from the ground, her head at Buffy’s feet, arms folded behind her skull like a pillow, legs splayed. “I’ll just stay down here if that’s cool. Enjoying the view.”
Buffy bites her lip. “I shoulda known you wouldn’t have the blade skills to cut it.”
“ Hey,” Faith snaps, and scrabbles up to standing real quick. If she was a cartoon character, she’d have blood red cheeks, steam out of her ears. “I got mad blade skills. Don’t fucking say that shit.”
A throaty little laugh comes from the back of Buffy’s mouth. “You wouldn’t last a day out there doing what I do.”
Faith shakes her head, skates a hair closer to Buffy, runs her eyes up the length of her, like she’s trying to be intimidating, but it only makes Buffy wanna put her fist in Faith’s ponytail and let Faith try to swallow her whole. “Flitting around in my little skirt? Yeah, I’m sure I’d be wicked exhausted.”
“That’s like, the third time you’ve commented on my skating outfits. Got something you wanna share with the class?”
Faith scoffs. “Like you don’t know.”
Buffy’s chest is going warm and tight again, something liquid and wanting pulling down from the middle of her. “I — maybe I do know. Maybe I don’t. You’re gonna have to tell me.”
Faith gets this wicked glint in her eyes. They’re standing so close. Buffy wants her so bad that her legs ache. And then Faith breaks away, skates quick and fast to the other end of the rink.
“You gonna show me how to do one of those little jump things or not, princess? We don’t got all day here.”
Buffy bites down hard on her lower lip, and skates to the middle of the rink. “Okay. Let’s start with something really basic. Like a waltz jump.”
“Fuck basic,” Faith says. “Gimme the real shit. Like that uh — fuck. Axel? Gimme an axel.”
“You are not doing an axel. No one starts with an axel?” Buffy counters. “Single toe loop. Final offer.”
“Pssh. I could do at least a double.”
“You’ll try a single and you’ll like it,” Buffy says.
Faith pushes her tongue to the front of an open-mouthed grin. “Bossy today. I like it. Fine. Loop my toes, or whatever.”
“Okay, just watch me, alright?”
Buffy moves through it so slow and easy. “See, how you bend your right knee, nice and deep?”
“Sounds dirty, but okay.”
“ So you bend your knee,” Buffy repeats. “And then you push forward on your back outside edge, yeah? Arms out. And then your left leg goes back, see how I do it like this?”
She stretches her left leg out. Behind her, she feels Faith’s eyes following the lines her body is making across the ice.
Buffy continues: “And then you did the toepick in, give it some good force, and you like, launch up. Don’t try to make your body spin — that’s how you fuck up. The momentum from your legs will make that happen on its own. And then you land on that same edge of the blade, the back outside. Like this:”
She does an easy single, arms in tight, lands with an easy backwards glide, free leg extended, held perfectly.
“Get it?”
Faith’s scrunching her face up, like when you don’t understand what’s happening in class but you don’t wanna let it show. Buffy gets this urge she doesn’t fully understand, to rile her up about it.
“Yeah,” Faith says, voice all puffed up with bravado. “Fucking easy. You better bring out the real shit soon, or I’m gonna get bored.”
“Hmm, you seem very much with the talk-y, not so much with the skate-y.”
“Hey, anyone ever tell you you talk like a fucking freak?” Faith says. grinning like it’s a compliment, and yeah, it sure sounds like one, coming out of Faith’s mouth.
Buffy holds firm anyway. She says, making her voice slow and high on purpose: “You stalling? ‘Cause I’ll walk you through again if you want. Nothing to be scared of.”
“You trying to make me mad, B?”
Buffy smiles as innocently as she can muster. “Who, me?.”
“Fuck you,” Faith says, like it’s half a joke and half something she means. “I got this.”
“It’s nice and easy. You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Buffy says, pushing her tongue to the front of her teeth.
Faith doesn’t answer. She just throws her body into it. She gets the knees right — a good bend, natural at it. But then she ruins the whole form by driving the toe pick in with so much force. Buffy can see how she gouges it into the ice, makes a crackling hole under her weight. So her momentum’s all off when she really tries to go, and instead of springing herself in the air, Faith just launched herself across the ice, with one end of her skate boot still stuck in the toe pick hole, and the other leg flung awkwardly to the side at a painful stretch.
Buffy can’t help it, she laughs.
Faith, splayed out on the ice, scrabbles to try and find her feet. Stumbling trying to get her toe pick out of the ground though, she has to yank it out at full force with her body still splayed. Little chunks of ice go flying, and Faith hunches, shoulders tense in the spray. When she finally pulls her body upright again, Buffy’s still laughing.
“Okay, that thing,” Faith says, pointing the tip of her shoe out. “Is fucking unnatural. How the fuck do you expect people to live like this?”
Buffy nods with mock sympathy. “We’re a cruel and unusual community.”
“As long as you fucking know that,” Faith says, pulling upright. “I’m going again.”
“Okay! Just try to hit the toe pick a little more like—“
But Faith’s already going. The takeoff’s rushed now, no more graceful bend in the knee, she’s all off-axis from the start, and when the toe pick goes in she doesn’t even make it in the air, just wobbles out until her balance gives.
On the ice again, she looks up at Buffy with hair in her eyes, her expression burning, face running red.
Buffy lets herself laugh again. It’s the image of Faith like that, on the ice all wet and pathetic. Usually she’s hulking over Buffy, licking her lips, goading her with her teeth, her stupid pretty eyes. Now, down there at Buffy’s feet, it’s something else. Buffy gets this urge to pull her up by the soft of her hands and press their bodies into space together like clamshells.
Faith registers the look on Buffy’s face, and everything about her darkens.
“Fuck are you looking at me like that for?” Faith says. She’s pulling herself up, dusting off her thighs, the front of her still so cold and damp-stained from the ice, the thin fabric of her clothes made dark. The front pieces of her hair clumps onto her cheeks, wet and stringy.
“I’m not looking at you like anything,” Buffy promises. It’s an obvious lie. She hopes Faith catches the lie between her teeth and crashes into Buffy’s mouth with it.
Faith snarls: “You’re looking at me like I’m a fucking idiot.”
“I’m not,” Buffy insists. “Just … go again! You can get it this time. Just, go a little slower, a little more carefully, and—”
“Fuck careful, and fuck this,” Faith says. “I’m done.”
Buffy’s left standing in the middle of the rink, alone, pride smarting, while Faith skates off. She stands there for a moment, feeling stupid, wondering what the fuck? Just? Happened?
And then that melts into just anger. She skates full speed off the ice, following Faith. She doesn’t even stop to put her skate guards on, just stomps past the stands, past Amanda at the skate rental, past the benches, which is shitty for her blades, but whatever, she just needs to—
“ Hey,” Buffy shoves the door open into the locker room. “What is your problem? ”
Faith’s skates are already ripped off. She’s shed the hoodie and the tank top too. They’re strewn over the bench Faith’s sitting on. So she’s just in her sports bra now. It’s black — slightly too tight. Her tits swell up a bit over it, like one of those old corset movies. Buffy can see her abs too, the way they surge up, make sure you know they’re strong, the outline of each of them shadowed under the skin. Buffy notices there’s little down hairs gathered around Faith’s belly button. She notices how her stomach looks so soft, pressing slightly over the sides of her sweats. She notices how Faith’s arms, at her sides, are ropey and muscled and bigger than girls’ arms usually are, with the faintest hint of an old t-shirt tan line, new and old bruises mottling down them, shades of yellow and purple. She notices how Faith’s looking at her, brown eyes full of something. And then she notices, again, Faith’s tits. Has anyone on earth ever had tits like that before?
And then she notices her mouth’s been watering this whole time.
“I don’t got a fucking problem,” Faith says. “I was just done with that shit. Don’t see why we gotta do something I’m bad at just to hang out. You could’ve just asked me to do something that’s fucking normal.”
“You wouldn’t be bad at it if you hadn’t given up after literally two tries.”
Faith stands in frustration just to say, her nostrils flaring: “Well I’m not like you freaks. I don’t get off on seeing how many times I can eat shit on the ice just to spin in the air for a second.”
Buffy realizes then that she knows exactly where that urge comes from, to make Faith mad. Faith right now, eyes fiery, body so leaned into what she’s doing, like nothing else exists, but yelling at Buffy. It’s just how she looks when she’s playing, getting her knuckles bloody with what’s under another girl’s skin.
Buffy stares at Faith’s mouth and doesn’t try to hide it, then: “You’re exactly like us, actually. You get off on getting the shit kicked out of you too. You goading other people into doing it for you doesn’t make it different.”
“Fucking does,” Faith says, and then there’s a grin on her face, just this little one, this one that makes Buffy think maybe they mean it this time, the threat that’s always in the air around each other.
Buffy scoffs. Thinks about what she wants to say to Faith next. But it’s too —
So she walks to her locker, the corner one, enters the combination, and opens the door. So that she's got somewhere other than Faith to look as she asks: “So do you have any ideas then? Of what else I should’ve asked you to do?”
Behind her, she hears Faith stand. She turns around, to look at her, and Faith’s zigzagging around the room, licking her lips, eyes to the ceiling, like she’s trying to find the words. “You really wanna make me say it, B?”
“Maybe I wanna hear you say it,” Buffy says. “I’m not good at — at when I don’t hear people say it.”
Faith’s closing in on her, how cats do on their prey. “Oh, so you want me to make it clear for you, huh?”
“I—”
Faith’s eyes catch sight of something behind Buffy’s head. “Fuck are those?”
“What?”
Buffy swivels her head around. Sees her spare pair of ice skates hanging from the hook in her locker.
Buffy says: “Um.”
“You had those and you made me use those dull as shit rentals?” Faith says. “You little bitch.”
Their faces are still so close. Buffy can smell her again. The anger’s coming off her in waves. Buffy feels herself getting wet, again, like before, like in the alley, and something in her curls like shame around that: what does it mean, that her friends are right, that she does get like this, just from a pretty, dark haired girl in skates saying the meanest shit to her.
And then Faith breathes out, and the breath is warm against Buffy’s cheek, and Faith’s hand slams into the lockers with a clang that Buffy can feel vibrating through the row of metal at her back, and she doesn’t care if she should be ashamed anymore. She just wants Faith to touch her.
She lets herself look Faith in the eye. Still in her skate boots, she’s taller than Faith now, and there’s this ache in her cunt about it. And her body clenches around the words as she says:
“Well you’ve been literally so mean about all my skate costumes. You deserved some payback.”
Faith’s eyes flicker at the mention of Buffy’s skate outfit. “Mean’s not the word, babe. They just make me feel some type of way, man.”
“And what way’s that?” Buffy says. She wants to win this. She wants to make Faith have to be the one to do it. She wants not to have to say it out loud until she’s sure.
Faith’s eyes dip down, pupils dragging down the length of Buffy’s body. Her eyes pause at Buffy’s feet.
“You know you’re supposed to have fucking skate guards on those things. “
And Buffy doesn’t get to say anything else, because Faith’s kissing her.
Faith’s mouth is so soft and her kiss is so merciless. Other girls Buffy’s kissed started off gentle. Faith doesn’t waste time like that, she’s already going in on Buffy’s lower lip with her teeth.
Faith’s hand, the one that slammed into the lockers, melts into Buffy’s waist, and the other hikes under Buffy’s thigh, and then Buffy doesn't have to worry about fucking up her blades anymore, because Faith’s picking her up, like Buffy weighs nothing, and pinning her against the lockers.
Buffy feels like she’s fucking melting. Faith’s hand under her thigh is warm and strong and calloused and squeezing. Everything is warm, now. Faith’s mouth Faith’s breath in her ear is these shallow, desperate little gasps, not even kissing her anywhere for a second, just their bodies squeezing together, and Faith’s thigh in between both of Buffy’s, and the way she’s holding Buffy there making Buffy squirm against her. And Buffy feels like they skipped fifty steps, like the right thing is to be slow, to build to this. But her and Faith have been here, already, almost, so many times, a hundred more times than that in Buffy’s head, in Buffy’s dreams. So it doesn’t feel like rushing. If anything, it feels like they’re behind. Buffy wants more, and she wants soon, and she wants now.
Faith answers the want, and grinds her knee up between Buffy’s legs, plunges her head down into the crevice of Buffy’s neck.
She’s putting a hickey there, Buffy can tell immediately.
“You’re gonna leave a mark,” Buffy tries to say, but it comes out all breathy and weak, and that only makes Faith laugh so evilly into the crook of her neck. Only makes her suck harder.
“Good,” Faith exhales, pulling away. to speak: “Let them see what I fucking did to you.”
Buffy misses the pain of Faith’s mouth on her. She grips the back of her head and shoves it back down to where she was.
“Oh, you want it so bad, don’t you?” Faith says. Buffy’s hands are fisting in the back of her hair, pulling enough to hurt, because it’s only fair. “You want me to make you a fucking mess.”
Buffy answers that by kissing Faith again, and Faith groans into her, this guttural push from her chest, and shoves her harder into the locker. The metal slats sting painfully against Buffy’s back, and Faith’s hand is still holding her up, fingers and knuckles worrying into the underside of Buffy’s thigh, of Buffy’s ass now, to hold her better.
Buffy slips her tongue into Faith’s mouth because Faith’s being an asshole who hasn’t shoved her tongue into Buffy yet, and Buffy wants it. She feels the flick of Faith’s tongue against hers. Everything’s electric in her body, everything’s taking turns being static shock and being her just melting into Faith, turning into a puddle around her. She must look fucking desperate. She must look like — well Faith already said it. She must look like a mess. Faith’s mess.
Faith’s knee is still pressing into Buffy, and she can feel Faith laughing into her mouth at it, at how Buffy’s squirming into her, clamping her thighs around Faith. It should be humiliating, maybe. But it only makes the pleasure that’s been rolling through Buffy since they started hit harder, bear into her with everything it’s got.
Faith pulls away from their kiss. Gasping, she asks: “I wanna feel your fucking skin. Can I?”
Buffy whines involuntarily at Faith’s mouth being off of her again. Faith grins like a devil and kisses Buffy again, wet, hungry kisses down her mouth, her chin, her neck. Not in the same spot she left the hickey either, so Buffy’ll have just one thing to cover up, but marking her up all over, an endless tapestry of where Faith was on her.
“You kinda seem —” Buffy breaks off talking to moan as Faith’s teeth bite into her — “like you’re feeling it.”
“No,” Faith says, and all of the sudden she drops Buffy down, so she’s on the ground again, and she’s not gentle about it, Buffy feels the strike of it through the heel of her blades and up through her shins, and then her cunt just aches some more. Faith’s hands are trailing up Buffy’s skin — like, to touch her somewhere new, she can’t just lift her hand up through the air and take it there. She’s gotta do it like cursive. Touching every point between where she was and where she’s going. Her hands are hungry, squeezing, bruising up the length of Buffy’s thighs, a pause to sink her nails into Buffy’s hip, and then linger there, at the top of Buffy’s waistband, the tips of her fingers pressing just below it, only a hair, only enough to make Buffy stomach pucker into goosebumps. “ Here? Is that okay?”
“Please,” is all Buffy can say. “Please, please, please, just—”
Faith’s still smiling, like they were playing a game, and she won. She lets her fingers slide under Buffy’s sweatpants.
"That's better -- too much fucking fabric in the way," Faith says.
And, because of course she would, because this is Faith, she slips under Buffy’s underwear in the same motion, and Buffy can only cry out, close a hand around Faith’s neck, another around Faith’s back, and they’re so close now, now that Faith’s not holding her up, Faith’s whole body pressing into her, and Faith’s nipples are erect under her sports bra, and Buffy thinks about what it would be like, to slip the sports bra up over Faith’s neck, how hard her nipples would feel then.
And then that thought, and any others Buffy had left, are driven from her head as Faith’s fingers dip down again. Faith looks her right in the eye, at the exact moment Buffy processes that now they both know. They both know how wet Buffy is, right now. How wet Faith’s made her. How wet she always makes her. Two of Faith’s fingers slide inside her then, and Buffy gasps, kisses Faith again, missing the wet of her mouth, the softness of it.
But Faith’s vicious, so she pulls back again, watches gleefully, as Buffy leans forward into the air, to try to get Faith’s kiss back, just to tell her: “Look at you, the good little ice princess, taking me like this. I really did make a puck bunny of you, huh?”
The fingers are curling into her, and Buffy’s body shakes around Faith’s hand, and she thinks about how if Faith keeps talking like that, keeps touching her like that, she’s gonna come. She thinks about that, about the hockey player who’s always covered in blood, getting her off in the locker room, the one everyone uses, every day, thinks about Faith melting Buffy in her hands, and knowing she’s doing it. She wants to tell Faith, somehow, what that feels like, but she can’t, there aren’t words in her mouth for it, and the sound that comes out of her mouth is more of a growl than a moan.
Faith’s all focus now, her touch going rhythmic to match how Buffy bucks against her hand, and they’re both lost in it, covered in the haze they’re making of each other, when—
The locker room door swings open, and Amanda’s saying: “Hi! My shift’s about to end and you’re really not supposed to take the rental skates in here so— Oh. Wow. Okay, I, I didn’t, I — you’re — wow. Okay. What? Did I say wow already?”
If she was in control of her own body right now, this is where Buffy would break apart from Faith’s body and play the flimsiest game of plausible deniability in the world, probably with some obviously fake excuse about how Faith was like, helping Buffy fix the drawstring on her sweats, or something.
But Faith’s evil, and she’s still got Buffy pinned up against the wall, and also Buffy’s legs are pretty much jelly right now, and she thinks Faith knows that too. Faith doesn’t even take her hand fully out of Buffy’s sweatpants, but keeps her fingers territorially hooked inside of Buffy’s waistband.
“Um! Yeah, we’ll get them back to you in a few?” Buffy says, her voice coming out high and squeaky and wrong.
“Cool!” Amanda says, trying desperately to look anywhere that isn’t Faith’s hand in Buffy’s pants, but still really failing to look anywhere else than Faith’s hand down Buffy’s pants. “I’ll just let you guys get back to, uh—”
“She was helping me with my drawstring!” Buffy blurts out. “Um. It was. Stuck? Like, bunched up on one side.”
Amanda seems frozen in place. “Oh! Um. I — I hope you get it … unbunched? I hate when that happens, it’s so hard to—”
“ Kid,” Faith barks. “Can you clear out and let me get back to fucking my girl?”
Amanda nods like, fifty times, and clears out finally, the door swinging shut behind her. “Sure thing!” she calls, uncertain, when she’s already on the other side of it, and then her footsteps start to fade in the other direction.
“Oh, so I’m your girl, am I?” Buffy says.
Faith’s face goes soft and bashful for this one blink. “Uh. I mean, if you wanted. Could be cool.”
Buffy rolls her eyes. “I want.”
“Yeah?” Faith says. “Sick.”
Buffy’s about to say something — making fun of her, probably, that her response was literally “ sick. ” But Faith’s kissing her like she wants Buffy to forget how to speak again. Nothing’s ever felt as natural as the fact that Buffy’s about to let her.
***
Buffy stumbles into practice on Monday morning late, pulling her turtleneck up to try to cover the highest of Faith’s hickies, but they keep peeking out anyway, like a big neon sign that says Faith’s girl! Which, to be clear, is what Faith said they were, right before she gave Buffy the highest one.
Faith’s waiting for her, sitting on the bleacher closest to Buffy’s usual ice entrance. She’s still sweaty from her practice, and all her gear’s sitting next to her, which is how Buffy knows she didn’t even go to the locker room after she finished. Just sat herself immediately down next to the ice, to wait for Buffy to show, so she wouldn’t miss a minute.
Faith’s muscles are out in her tank top, and Buffy’s stomach still clenches like a fist about it. She wonders if that will ever stop. How seeing Faith’s body feels like’s falling off a cliff to the ocean. She doesn’t think it will.
In addition to her usual hockey bruises and cuts are the hickies Buffy laid on her in retaliation last night, when they were back in Faith’s room. Buffy’s pretty sure Faith actually picked her most revealing tank top, to better show them all off.
Buffy’s trying to think of what to say. Something that’s appropriate after you, you know, get fingerfucked in the locker room by a girl and then she drags you back to her room in broad daylight, kicks her roommate out to do it with a command to stay at her boyfriend’s apartment till tomorrow unless she wants to see some some stuff she can never unsee, and throws you on the bed. And then you spend the whole day just trying to swallow each other whole with brief breaks to pull out Faith’s laptop and rant about famous moments of your favorite ice sports. Buffy’s trying to figure out what to say to someone who — to get you to shut up from your twenty minute rant about how Adelina Sotnikova had no right even podiuming at Sochi, let alone going gold, and how rightfully, that was a Yuna-Carolina-Gracie podium, and in her mind those are literally the medals that were given out, like Gracie Gold does have an Olympic bronze if your eyes are fucking open — shoved her face in your pussy and sucked on your clit until you couldn’t breathe, let alone keep talking, and then when she’d made you come three times, made you finish the story, because she really did wanna hear where Yuna Kim went from there, because it sounded really important to you.
Because yesterday it was so easy, except for the part where it wasn’t, where Buffy was still thinking she might fuck it all up, get Faith the wrong kind of mad, and then Faith kissed her, and she forgot for a little, how to be worried.
But then they woke up tangled in each other, and Faith had to run across campus to practice, and left Buffy in bed with a quick kiss. And Buffy snooped in Faith’s stuff for a bit and let the scenes of the night wash over her in this dizzy spiral that made her knees weak again, and then realized if Faith had practice then she had practice, and had to scrounge her clothes onto her body and scramble out the door, sprint across campus to her dorm, throw on skate clothes, sprint back out the door, only to stumble into practice already late, scarfing down half a protein bar with the hand she’s not using to fix her turtleneck.
Like, just, just, just what do you say after that? What do you fucking say? How do you make sure it all hasn’t vanished in the space between whatever yesterday was, and whatever today’s gonna be?
Faith answers the question for her. She grabs at Buffy’s sweater, pulling the bunched fabric until Buffy sits on the bench with her, and then just kisses her, kisses her until Buffy’s melting again.
And then Faith breaks off, grinning, and lunges her head down to Buffy’s hand again, to bite off a chunk of the protein bar.
“For old time’s sake!” Faith says, with her mouth full. “Can’t let you think you’ve tamed me.”
“I think there’s no danger of that,” Buffy says.
“Yeah, figured,” Faith says. “Just love to make you say it.”
And then they’re kissing again. Buffy tastes the chocolate on Faith’s mouth.
“ Buffy!” Giles’ voice comes calling out across the rink, skating towards the edge to meet her. “If you’re not doing your warmups within the next sixty seconds i’m going to assume you simply don’t care about fixing your under-rotations, and in fact that you’re only interested in wasting my time.”
Buffy, reluctantly, breaks away from touching Fath. “Duty calls.”
“Fuck your duty,” Faith says. “I wanna make out. I’m like a starving man who they only just let start having food, you know? It’s cruel and unusual to take that away from me now.”
“You’re the one who left me hanging already this morning,” Buffy taunts, as she kicks off her sneakers and shoves her feet in her skate boots. “So consider it payback.”
“Nah, see, look at us,” Faith says, shaking her head, her mouth forming that little smile of hers. “Fighting each other and letting the real enemy get off scott fucking free.”
Buffy’s on the ice, skating towards Giles, who’s almost at them anyway. She turns around to ask Faith: “The real—?”
Faith’s shouting across the ice in response, at Giles: “Yo man, took you like sixty seconds to say all that, so seems like maybe you're the one who wants to waste time? Just saying!”
Giles makes one of those brain short circuiting faces. “What? I — Buffy, who is that girl?”
Faith, leaning as much of her body over the boards as she can, says: “Im no one, dude, don’t worry about it.” And then she grabs at Buffy’s arm and pulls her back towards her.
Buffy smiles at that. Skates up to kiss her girl, again. And then, still grinning, takes off towards the center of the ice on her skates, full speed.