Chapter Text
Faith
Faith didn't know how Buffy didn't just outright choke her out, bruise her esophagus like a bent straw so no more smog would come out. Why's she so patient? Asshole. Breaking hands that could shatter her any time they decided to softly rubbed her back together, they formed her out of the clay puddle she'd fallen into. Light hummed out the places where their skin touched, which was most places. Faith was only wearing panties and a shirt Faith was pretty certain Buffy had stolen from Giles at some point, if the "WORLD'S QUIETEST LIBRARIAN" on the front was anything to go by.
For the world's quietest librarian, that's some loud ass lettering.
Their eyes were glued to each other in the morning light, neither willing to give in. Faith resented her for it. Resented how easy it all was, the hoping, the helping. It was broken only when Buffy pulled her closer, bandaging blanks around her, caging Faith's body like a cast while she healed.
Coconut. Faith nuzzled into the smell, so different from how she usually smelled that it almost made her sneeze, but she held onto the scent. She was too greedy to expel it.
I only deserve touch when it bleeds. When it bruises. I don't deserve this.
"It's okay," the voice glowed in the heat between them as her mind and body reconstituted. Faith keened and drank the sound. It went through her body like a wave as she shuffled to get closer. To get safe. To get warm.
"B?"
"Mm?"
"Say it again… please," and Faith noticed that was human enough to feel embarrassed again. Her face was red even through the comfortable numbness.
"I'm better than you."
Faith gasped and writhed, her eyes welling up in catharsis, in relief. She was still better. Buffy hadn't lied (she never lied). She's not stained. God, thank you, thank you, thank you- sharp nails softly dragged letters across her back as she cuddled further into the sky, as she touched the untouchable. I couldn't poison her. She didn't lie.
"I will always be better than you," and the nails went to Faith's hair and played in it for a while to make her dance and moan against Buffy. The affirmations of superiority made goosebumps rise and fall throughout her body and something pulse.
"Thank you~" she said, voice dripping white relief, smoky and rasped. Buffy just held her tighter, and Faith felt sunlight lighting her up from the inside like an X-Ray.
The details weren't perfect, but the clay was shaped like a person. There were little indents from light blue scalpels colored like the sky, things like hair, things like a smirk. Buffy dried her in her sunlight. It was time to go out into the world. There was work to do.
"H-hey, B?", she stuttered, after all, the details weren't perfect.
"Yeah?" Buffy yawned.
They hadn't slept. Oh well. They were getting dressed, Buffy in a black skirt with a warm-gray short sleeved shirt that dizzied Faith with the whirls and curves of the blonde's body if she tried to follow them. Faith put on her denim jacket, a red tank top that Buffy lent her since her clothes were mostly dirty, and black leather pants. It was kind of chilly out so she could get away with it.
"You think that you could keep my wig out last night between us? I know I don't…" she gulped, the words thick in her throat, hurting, "deserve it, and maybe it's useful information to you guys, but-"
"Faith." The addressed turned like a dog called, mouth a little ajar, eyes wide awake.
"No one will hear about it unless you trust them enough to tell them." Her eyes were fiery enough that a thrill of fear pulsed through her, usually that look was reserved for when she'd been particularly bad. "No matter what, I'll make sure of that. I promise."
When B gets to promising, you bet your ass she means it. If she told me the sun was taking a day off, I'd put a hundred bucks down at the bar and say 'Sun's not coming up today, assholes, watch this.'
"Okay. Cool."
"I'm gonna go downstairs and check on Dawn."
"You say it like you're talking about a dog that needs potty training."
"At least those are usually nice." Why's she wiry on the edges?
"You should go easier on her," Faith said, pulling on the boots.
"Well, she's a sh…. sheister. Yeah. That."
Faith broke up in laughs, and Buffy puffed up the inside of her lips, crossing her arms and trying not to smile either. Go on, laugh for me. Laugh with me. Even laugh at me. I'll take anything.
"Mhm. Laugh it up just because I don't like corrupting the youth with bad words."
"All I'm saying is that being a little shit is a thankless job, B, and it's not as easy as I make it look."
Faith stood up and rolled her shoulders like she was remembering how to use them. Buffy rolled her eyes like she wished she was forgetting how to use them. Her laugh opened and showed a glimpse teeth like angel wings. Easy as pie.
"I'll take it into consideration."
"That's all I ask."
When she went down the stairs, her heart pulsed a little too hard, a little too fast, thrumming through her temples. She told them. How could she not? Why wouldn't she? I deserve it. And maybe that was all true, but Buffy wasn't telling them. Instead she was telling Dawn off about something, but cut the words off when she saw Faith darkening the doorway into the kitchen.
Joyce wasn't up, for once. She's sick. Deserves to sleep in. Deserves to wake up to something nice.
"Yo."
Dawn turned around and the sun rose up behind her eyes like the sun outside.
"Hey Faith! Buffy was just telling me that I was to "keep my paws off the food" she's making for breakfast."
"J-just until it's done!"
"Tsk tsk, B," Faith reprimanded with eyes like onyx tossed up into the sun, "it does look pretty far from done."
"It does, doesn't it?" Buffy's hair was a little frazzled, scattered light, green eyes overwhelmed by the ingredients. Faith walked up to the Better and scraped the edge of her smile against her while she walked past.
Something evil clicked into place in Dawn's head, she could smell the shit eating grin from there.
"Why don't you let me take over? I can cook for you guys."
"Probably a lot better than Buff."
"Hey!"
Faith snickered as she took the situation over. 'First thing to know about cooking', Daniel (the same Mom's-boyfriend that had given her a taste for Sailor Jerry, one of the better ones) had told her, 'is to keep organized. Everything has a proper place. You should never have to think about where things are, your hand should do the thinking for you, dig?'
Daniel would blow up into sparks and probably start shooting the counter if he saw the apocalypse left by Buffy's culinary rampage.
Buffy was, naturally, making it worse by haunting the area and crossing her arms and so on.
"Sorry, it's kind of a mess, I was trying to find the onions—"
"It's alright. We can take a picture and show it to whatever nasty we don't feel like fighting, tell em' the infamous Buff will make a mess of them just like this if they don't shove off."
"Here we go—"
Dawn did her best impression of the Green Goblin cackle in the background.
Faith smelled blood, and she didn't stop even as Buffy rolled her eyes and hunkered down. While she neatly organized everything into little categories through muscle memory alone, bringing order to chaos, she just kept on talking shit.
You could strangle her and she'd still talk shit, long after other words grew silent from lack of air. It was like it was built into her tonsils or something. Her Boston accent softly hooked at the end of each culinary threat to the hypothetical demon.
"See these onions? How each layer is somehow cut at a different spot? That'll be you, pal—"
"It's not that bad."
"And that chopped bell pepper? We spent hours cleanin' up the seeds. From the ceiling."
"They were NOT on the ceiling," she started, but the torment continued, but Buffy kept haunting the counter that Faith worked on. Somehow, neither minded the other enough to push the other away.
After a few minutes, Faith had made some really good omelets for the Summers clan. She started to put up the ingredients, but Buffy pushed the fridge shut and leaned against it like a bouncer. Didn't even need to say anything, the raised eyebrow told Faith what exactly she was in trouble for. 'You better make one for yourself,' the eyebrow signed, 'O R E L S E.'
So she did. Then she chopped up some fruit and tried not to think about the way Buffy's eyes trailed her hand like that was the fruit. Enough of that shit. Making my hand shake. "Why don't you set out the omelets while I finish up the fruits."
Buffy made an unsure noise, but Faith set down the knife and gave her a look a lot sharper than the paring knife on the cutting board. She obliged. And she calls her sister a brat, that shit runs in the family.
"And Dawn, don't touch anything until Mom gets here."
"Who died and made you Iron Chef?"
"Excuse me? I'm the one who cooked all this," Faith said to set that particular record straight.
"It's gonna get cold," Dawn whined.
"Better listen to your sister."
"Well you never listen to her."
"And it usually goes bad for me. Learn from my mistakes, kid."
She leaned against the counter, arms crossed and brandishing a smile. Buffy preened at Dawn like Faith was somehow the arbiter of justice for once, and had judged her the winner.
The clay dried. The features were clear. Every strand of hair realized in the sun-drying. There were some cracks, but all in all, it was prettier than it had been before it melted.
Joyce loved the food, like she always did. Faith was a good cook. She knew that about herself, but the praise from the Summers was a healthy ego boost. After the shit show, I kinda deserve that.
Her eyes lingered on Buffy putting a green grape between perfect lips. Fuck. The finger went still against Buffy's lips, and Faith's eyes suddenly met green ones dancing with sunny sadism. Fuck.
The Scooby gang was waiting for them at the magic box. Faith was fully formed now, clay more life-like with each shadow cast by leaves over head they walked through. Like they were leaving parts of their shadows on her face to give it more definition. Her smiles were deeper, her eyes were darker so that the whites of her eyes might be brighter, her hair somehow richer, her hair less pale.
It wasn't the same woman that had broken down, made of the same stuff, but Buffy had molded her into something subtly different in the cocoon of blankets last night. Something sturdier.
That was tested pretty quick. The bell over the door sang their arrival.
"Oh great, Faith crawled out of a ditch to make it to the meeting. And in an hour ending in A.M.!" Xander was a little redundant announcing Faith's arrival, the bell had done a better job of it, anyways.
"I'm a changed woman, Slander, I was in your dad's bed last night. Closer to the shop than my usual ditch."
"Slander?" He scowled, leaning his neck at a dangerous angle forwards like his head was just about to float off and circle the room, "first of all, that's not my name, and second of all… you're joking about my dad, right?"
It wasn't just Xander, of course. Giles was there, leaning against the counter. The words being thrown through the fragile atmosphere creasing him at his center. At a table, sitting and facing the door, was Tara and Willow. They looked like they'd been shopping. They look good. Happy. For lesbians, anyways.
Faith reckoned that thought was the best compromise between knowing that bumping uglies with another gal was weird and being happy for them. The two halves of her brain battled for a moment, but neither seemed to gain a foot hold. Neuropathic casualities, battallions of synapses wasted, it was a fruitless war and both were losing. A treaty had to be struck.
They met in the wet trench between pink terrain, set up a table, negotiated, and then signed an armistice. They agreed on a statement of good will between the internalized homophobia and the jealousy desire to see them continue to be happy. The statement was as follows:
They look good. Happy. For lesbians, anyways. Furthermore, they're pretty alright. For gays.
And that was good enough for Faith.
"Xander," said the Better One, sounding a lot like the strict ass teacher they had in Faith's class to rule over the hopeless masses with an iron fist. Xander rescinded his neck like a turtle and grumbled something with a glare at Faith, but she just popped her eyebrows and smiled Harlot Red at him, mouthing something that made Tara hide her face in her hands.
I win.
"I uh, like the place, G-Man. Old owner croaked right?"
"Croaked?" the term seemed just alien enough to rouse him from his annoyed headache, "oh, died. Yes. Rather definitively."
There was a moment where Faith nodded at nothing in particular, looking for something to compliment. She found something. Her finger jutted towards it, somewhat fuzzy from the distance and the ambient dust in the air.
"I like the uh…" Buffy's eyebrow was thoroughly unimpressed as she saw what Faith was pointing at, and turned to her.
"The boxes?"
"Yeah. The boxes. Up there."
"They're temporary."
"Bummer."
A few seconds later, they were saved by the bell. Buffy had kidnapped Dawn from Joyce and had her tail along, walking faster anytime Dawn got close to catching up. Jealous, B? Naturally, she was out of breath.
Dawn said something almost as awkward as what Faith had (praise be) and then got told off by Buffy for imaginary crimes and left to browse. It was time to get to brass tacks. Buffy walked over to the table where Tara, Willow, and Xander were all waiting. Faith watched her leave. Really watched her leave. Skirt looks good on you, B. Pissed off looks good on you, too. Her jaw rolled around with her thoughts.
Someone was watching her. She scanned the room with what she hoped was a casual turn of the head. There. On the mezzanine. Dawn looked down at her like a cruel Greek god, all smiles and latent carnage. Fuck. She saw me ogling her sister like a freak.
Dawn held up her hand rubbed her thumb and index finger together, wiggling her eyebrows in a universal word that drowned out the muttering from the scoobies by the table.
Moneyyyy…
The Summers were terrible. Nothing was off the table, including blackmail, apparently. It was for the best that they were confined to golden suburban cages; they were natural predators, an omni-invasive species. Unleashing them on the worst parts of Boston's urban decay would be like letting a tiger loose in a fucking petting zoo. Faith shivered and lost the staring contest, walking over to the table where the glowing orb had gathered the other scoobies. Her left hand twitched as she walked over Buffy leaned over the table, but harnessed it into pulling out a chair to sit in.
"I have a little Scooby-centric deal to deal with." She pulled the glowing sphere out of her purse and rolled it lightly into the approximate center of the table. Everyone leaned over and eyed it.
Not that impressive to me. Definitely a rave thing.
"You called a scooby meeting because of… an… orb?" said Willow.
"Well." Buffy said, clearly having not thought this far ahead, but finding her confidence quick, "yeah! I did. Tara had a vision, something about green and the sun, she said, and I found this in a puddle of something kind of green, and it looks like the sun to me."
"It's definitely a rave thing," Faith said, leaning back lightly on the back two legs of the chair with her hands crossed behind her shoulder. Green eyes lingered on the stud in her belly button under the red crop top. She met them. The blonde blushed and broke eye contact.
"Right. Forgot you're the expert on balls," Xander said, "My bad."
"Forgiven," she replied, pausing the chewing of gum.
"Not to mention ill advised parties where drugs are," the way Willow whispered 'drugs' you would have thought it was a Seance.
"Can't forget that," admitted Buffy. Faith nodded slowly and chewed her gum. They were all valid points of consideration in the current discussion.
"A-and slutty, glowy things," Willow added on, looking around for a moment for approval. ANYONE to save her from the weird shit she just said, and her savior was actually Faith of all people.
"Guilty as charged, Red," she said smoothly with the rocking of the chair, the arc shaped just like her smile. Giles finished doing some dusty task behind the counter and came over to see what the fuss was about.
"S-so, what is it?" Tara added, seemingly unable to take her eyes off of it. First time she's talked during the whole congregation.
"Well it appears to be paranormal in origin," said Giles.
Buffy glanced to Faith as if to see her reaction, then back at the Watcher. "How can you tell?"
"Well its so shiny," he said, as obvious as the sun rising.
Green eyes immediately pounced on her. The rocking stopped. Time stood still. A sick, sunny, sadistic half-smile from the Good Slayer. Like snow in summer. She raised her hand, rubbed her thumb against her index finger, and wriggled her brows.
Moneyyyyyy…..