August 2000
Yeah like I need this right now!
I SO do not need this right now!
I’m doing fine, I’m dealing. Okay I love the Slayer and I’m beginning to think she feels something for me. Not the something, not what I feel. But I’m at least getting the hint that Army Boy doesn’t do it for her anymore and she thinks time alone with me in a non-slaying capacity is a good thing. But I don’t need this right now!!!
She’s in my motel room.
She’s in there taking a shower!!
My god, she’s all wet and naked and I’m wasting time writing it all down in fucking ink just so I don’t forget this moment actually happened!
Again with the not needing this to be happening right now.
My leathers are getting uncomfortable, man I hate it when that happens.
So the deal is we’re out on patrol. But not normal patrol cos nothing about tonight has been in the land of normal for me so far. Looks like it ain’t gonna change much either. I was round at her house this evening for dinner. Get me! Actually used a knife and fork for once and didn’t have to open a cardboard carton to eat. It was her idea. Well she came with the invite all casual, like "mom wondered if you’d like to come for dinner before patrol tonight" but when I get there this evening, scuffing my boots on the back of each leg and wondering if I should have hocked some flowers from next door to give to Mrs. S she was all with "Oh Faith, and Buffy didn’t think you’d come if she asked you"
Ha, psyche much!!!
It was nice too. I’m getting to enjoy family time at the Summers house way too much. Not like back in Boston, in my house. Not like when my mom with one of her loser boyfriends would order out for Chinese then get too stoned to pay the guy when it got delivered. Not like that at all. Dawnie was all with embarrassing B every chance she got. Like "and this one time we went to Disneyland with Dad and Buffy made us ride the teacups so much she barfed all over Pluto" Ha B’s face! Man I wish I had my camera with me. Okay I wished I owned a camera period, but you know, Kodak moment!
And B keeps sliding me these glances. Like she was making sure it was okay for me to be there, it wasn’t wigging me out. It was wigging me out but not in the way the Slayer was imagining. I didn’t mind having to act polite in front of Mrs S. Turns out I can do polite after all, maybe that came with slayer strength too? I didn’t even mind that Mrs S asked me all those awkward parent questions when she brought out dessert. You know "So what do you want to do when you leave college Faith?" Only not the college bit, and her questioning was severely hampered by B giving her the evil "You’re my mom so I love you but for god’s sake shut up" look.
I didn’t mind any of this. What was wigging me out is what always wigs me out when I’m with the Slayer. Her. Everything about her. The smell of her hair. The clothes she wears, the way those tops with the plunge neck like she was wearing tonight only leave just enough to my imagination, but the best part of just enough to my imagination you know? And I have to remind myself to breathe when she leans over in one of those tops, cos my body suddenly has other things on its mind.
"Want some more Ben and Jerry’s Faith?" WHAM! Eyeful of Buffy Cleavage. Breathe! Goddamnit Faith girl, breathe!
"I’m good thanks"
Red, flustered, very aware of the heat in my leathers and Dawnie looking at me weird cos I’m squirming slightly in my chair and she is sat right next to me, but I’m good thanks, yeah right!
Time out Summers chicks please! I can deal when I’m on my own with B. Okay deal is an exaggeration but I get by when its just the two of us. The whole goddamn family there as well, tuning in to my face all flushed??? I don’t think so. Time for patrol B, you ready?
Phew!
Busy night too. Not much chance to let her do the 100 metre dash with her mouth like usual, or for the silences to stretch out between us cos of what we both said in the Magic Shop the other day making it impossible for us to say anything else. We’ve got vamps a-rising and demons a-coming from every angle! Something’s up, a slayer knows these things. Well couldn’t think about the why’s and what’s earlier on, we just had to kill the fuckers then we could worry about what they were here for afterwards. I like that approach anyway, slay first ask questions later. Makes things simple you know? Least with all the action my mind had chance to re-group over the whole B inviting me to dinner thing. Yeah, all this big bad can only be a good thing I was thinking to myself.
How wrong was I?
We tracked this one really mean, slime trailing ugly mother to the docks. Seemed like such a good idea at the time. I even thought to myself that if we called it a night after this one I was close to home-sweet-dive and my mind wouldn’t get chance to go all tornado in my head again dropping B off at her place. Its getting harder and harder to just say goodbye to her at the end of patrol, you know? I wanna grab her and hold her and never let go each time she turns around in her doorway and says "night then Faith, sweet dreams"
If she only knew the kinda dreams I’ve been having lately! They ain’t so sweet but they’re sure full of honey, the kind that comes dripping down slayer thighs....jeez Faith!! This is SO not helping right now! She’s still in there in the shower for fuck sakes!...B is naked, she is in the next room to me naked in the shower, and you’re doing dear diary shit? Since when did you get all restrained????
Okay, focus girl. So we’ve got this demon cornered at the end of the docks. We both eyeball him, ugly fuck did I mention that? Don’t know what the fuck he is, just know he oozes puss very easily and it was either the stench from the sea or him that was making me gag every time the wind blew my way. Major league gross in other words. B can smell it too, I looked over at her and she was doing that wrinkle thing with her nose, and you know what? I still thought it looked cute and was blown away for like a second or a minute or something long enough for her to dive first for this demon, getting a full on body coating of that yuk as she did. She ain’t gonna appreciate that, and I couldn’t hide my smirk when I watched her wailing into this fucker, all the time looking completely grossed out to be even touching him and she’s like moaning at him whilst she’s pummelling away! "Hey this was by best slaying sweater!" Shit like that! I thought she was gonna demand he pay the cleaning bill after all this was over! And also, B has a favourite slaying sweater? That girl has way too many clothes man.
Anyways I could have just let her handle him, she was five-by-five, and like I wanted all that slimy shit on my clothes too? But then the bastard got a lucky swing at B and sent her sprawling to the floor.
Hey! That’s my B you’re hurting there! I thought it, didn’t say it though. Managed to stop on "HEY!" thank fuck, and I flying-kicked him in the face. Then I’m down on the floor too, cos in my anger, in my rage at anyone hurting B, I kicked without planning my next move and when dumb shit like that happens chances are you’re gonna end up on your ass. And if God were at all on my side he would have made me land somewhere B couldn’t see my lame ass attempt at an attack, instead I have to fall right next to her. She looked at me all puzzled, like she was thinking, why’s Faith on the floor? Or probably, that was the lamest move I ever saw Faith do. Way to keep your cool there Faith!! Dumbass. So I had to distract her or something so I wouldn’t feel like such a schmuck again, and I spotted the perfect thing, there were all these huge steel rod things laying about, perfect for slaying with if you catch my drift. I handed her one, picked one up myself and did that flip thing with my legs so I was standing upright again.
"We gonna kill this fucker or what?"
I was SO over with spending time with B this evening at this point. Slayer time, non-slayer time I just can’t win lately. I always manage to do something non-Faith like and things go all screwy between us for a little while.
"Sure, thought you’d never ask"
No, don’t do that sexy smile please!! Too late, of course she did it. She always does it when I ask her if she wants to kill something nasty, and as usual I’m struck dumb at the image. I have to start getting over that, its gonna get my ass killed one of these days if I don’t. She beat me to the demon again, and pounded him with the steel rod I gave her. He was quick to go too once he had the Slayer on his case, I didn’t get chance to even get a few good kicks in to his head cos B whacked him one and he went down then she speared that rod straight through what I wanna call his heart, but I’m guessing that’s a term that doesn’t apply to demons, so straight through the middle of him will have to do.
And that’s why she is back here at my motel, in my shower, using my minty shower gel and soaping herself all over with it.....FAITH STOP IT!!
Man, I’m even shouting at myself in here now.....
She’s back here cos when she killed that demon, all that puss and slime she’d already got a nice thick coating in over her clothes exploded out of him and all over the Slayer. Missed me cos I was still hanging back, the whole acting like a complete dork seeming like a good option now I see B covered in this green gooey crap. I managed to control the howls of laughter, okay I didn’t but I thought about not laughing at her, really. She just looked so un-Slayer like when she turned around, all grumpy and wigged out at the shit that was all over her. What was I supposed to do? Tell her she suited the colour? Sorry, hysterics ensued. At least they did until she went...
"Well I’ll just have to come back to yours Faith and get cleaned up. You’ve got a shower right?"
My rational aware-of-the-ways-of-the-world-and-how-that-world-works-in-terms-of-B-and-me mind was saying she only said that because anyone who’s just been drenched in demon shit would want to get it off asap, but there was the other part of my mind, the part that’s still thinking now about her in there all hot and wet, wet and hot, you know just a load of wet hot slayer in my shower, that part of me swears B asked to come back to mine so she could wipe that smug look off my face and see how I’d react to her being here.
Yeah I’m running with the thought now that maybe something is going on inside B’s head that doesn’t involve Army Boy, or any of the big bad we face. Doesn’t involve her friends, or little Dawnie or her mom. Its something that just involves us, me and her. And she’s back here taking a shower in my motel room cos maybe she is running with that thought too.
Five by five? I’ll let you know later!
August 2000
She’s just left. And I’m far from five-by-five. My skins on fire and my legs are shaking, my throats all tight and theres some weird shit going on with my eyes. They’re stinging. I SO know what that stinging is and it ain’t gonna happen man. Its not going to happen, do you hear me?
I’m up and down pacing the room, you know when she was in the bathroom. I couldn’t lay on my bed anymore all heated up in my leathers. Cos me on a bed with B only a few feet away clean and smelling all fresh from the shower would have just ripped every last shred of restraint from me you know? I couldn’t have just laid there and not done something or said something. I mean I have what I want naked in my shower and I managed to control the urge to burst in and do stuff with her, stuff that I’ve fantasised about since the summer. Stuff involving our lips crashing together, her breasts underneath my hands, my mouth going to her neck and starting a series of slow deep kisses on her collar bone….you know that kinda stuff. I managed to control that urge, fuck knows how. I didn’t think I’d control it any longer if I stayed on the bed, her wrapped in one of the motel towels, hair wet, body all hot from the shower….this is not helping much you know Faith?
So I paced. Kicked a few empty pizza cartons under my bed. Downed a few beer cans in the bin and tried to do something with the heap of clothes on my floor but in the end thought fuck it! Slayer has already seen I’m a pig when she first came in here, why try and impress her now? And I’m just on my 17th lap of walking around my room, my leathers only a fraction cooler, my pulse not anywhere near the normal rate, and my head tucked down so I’m not staring at the same fucking walls I always stare at driving me insane, when she comes out of the bathroom, wrapped in that towel I knew she’d be in and goes….
"Faith, you got some clo..oomph!" She didn’t get to finish cos I walked straight into her!!!
Not good Faith. SO not good!!! Don’t need to be pressed up against a damp towel that’s wrapped around a naked Slayer. Don’t need to be grabbing her arms to steady the both of us. Don’t need to be not letting those arms go either. Let them go Faith!! I’m screaming at myself. Let them go if you don’t want to follow through with what your heart is hammering in your chest….kiss her…kiss B….tell her…tell her everything.
NO FUCKING WAY!
Remember I said I didn’t want my heart to be ripped out!!
I jumped back from her like she was a live wire and just given me one mother of an electric shock. Come to think of it, that ain’t far from the truth. My skins still buzzing from Slayer contact now.
"Jeez B, you could have knocked or something?"
Okay dumb thing to say. You usually knock going into a bathroom, not the other way around.
She’s got this weird expression on her face. Half smile, half grrr, and half something I’m trying not to let my mind think was desire. I know that’s too many halfs but fuck, who’s counting?
"Sorry, I wasn’t aware pacing up and down your room was a private moment."
Pacing?? How’d she know? Another dumb thing I did tonight, my boots can be heard a mile off when I’m walking light. I was friggin stomping the tension out in my room tonight.
"I…well…I…you know I might have been naked or something?"
Wish I could tell you I didn’t really say that, and actually came out with some wicked funny line to wipe that look off her face and turn the tables so she was Stuttery Slayer, not me. But I did actually sound like T-T-Tara’s pissed off twin or something. Things can’t get any worse, right?
When I said what I did, and I did sound pissed off a little too much, but you know naked Slayer contact not a good thing when I’m a ball of fire already. Well when I said it B went all hurt pouty face on me, how she has so many expressions she looks cute using I don’t know?!? I’ve just got the standard five, I’m sure of it. Faith pissed off. Faith mad as hell. Faith gonna kick your ass. Faith woo-hoo happy. And the one no one sees but me if I look in the mirror, Faith loving the blonde girl called Buffy. And I’m goddamn certain I’m not using that one tonight. Still I didn’t want Faith pissed off showing up either, cos B looked pouty already. And suddenly that tension between me and her has dropped in the air again. Making it all thick and difficult to breathe in. Or maybe that was down to B still wrapped in that towel. Right, gotta get her out of that towel, and I’m sad to report it wasn’t in the way I wanted to get her out of the towel believe me. She’d started to shiver a little too, didn’t think it was that cold in my room, but it was enough for me to notice her shake and get my mind working again.
"Clothes right? You need some clothes" Like I was telling her something she didn’t know already!
"What?" Okay so maybe I did tell her something she didn’t already know.
"Huh?" I look at her again and the pouty face has gone and now....now there’s some other look there, some look I can’t quite read cos my mind is doing the tornado thing again and I really need to get B dressed before its too late and the whirlwind inside drops a big old house on the two of us in the shape of my body pressed real tight against hers.
It didn’t take me long to find her something. Its not like I have an extensive wardrobe or anything. And there really was only one colour to choose from. She gets a little too close as I’m looking through the closet, over my shoulder kinda deal and suddenly the B I know has returned, cos in her deadpan voice she goes.
"Jeez Faith, got anything in technicolour in there?"
I gave her my full on sarcastic smile and replied.
"Well I went by the store for a pastel sweater but they told me a Buffy Summers cleaned them right out before I got there"
That’s what Giles would call touché B!
Her eyebrows knitted together and I’m thinking B has lost her sense of humour all of a sudden. Then she smirks at me, her that-was-funny smirk, and her voice is all low and treacly when she speaks, it kinda wrapped around me and swallowed me whole.
"Well I guess I could do with a little black number, you got a little black dress in there Faith?"
WHAT??? Did B really just say that??? Yep she said it all right. I replayed it instantly in my mind and I’m still hearing the way her words dripped from her mouth now.
So this was where I came back with something sly and witty yeah? Some slutty remark to throw her off-beam again. Something that was flirty and double-entendre’d.
I went with....
"No, actually I don’t"
Can you believe that? I don’t have a little black dress in my closet, its about the one item in black I don’t have, but I could have lied!!! Hello, lame here??? Why the fuck didn’t I just lie to her? It wouldn’t have been a big lie anyway and she would have probably pulled me up on it straightaway, you know kinda daring herself to ask to wear it and I would have been all "oh its at the dry cleaners?" See I’m able to think of a lie now. God!!!
So there’s not much she can say to that. "Oh" falls from her lips, minus all the drippy treacle she spoke with before and she moves away from me whilst I dig out an old pair of Levi’s and t for her. Welcome to awkward tension again, thanks for that whichever fuckwit that made me say that in the first place, thanks a lot!!
She got changed in the bathroom. Without a word she took the clothes in there and ten minutes later I heard this tapping, and it was her knocking on the bathroom door. She can be such a cute spaz sometimes! Made me laugh at least, and helped digest the tension in the air a bit. She looked kinda odd in my clothes. Its always weird seeing someone else in your own clothes though. The t was a bit too baggy for her, she has a good rack for sure but not much can compete with yours truly in that arena, and the Levi’s hung off her hip slightly. She has like the tiniest waist!! Bet I could wrap my hands around it and get my fingers to touch behind her....okay stop running with that thought I told myself and shot up off the bed I hadn’t realised I’d collapsed on the minute she’d left the room.
"Black suits you B" Try and keep things together this time Faith girl.
She looked down at herself, as if she was checking my statement for herself, like she didn’t believe me you know?
"Really, you should wear it more often" Okay testing the water now, seeing how far I can take things with her again.
Again another self-appraisal, jeez is it so hard to compliment this girl?
Finally she speaks!
"Black is good, I mean I’ve got nothing against black, like some of my closest friends wear it and there are some occasions when its you know necessary as a fashion choice, funerals for example and er something else not quite so depressing like memorial services, no wait that would still be depressing, er job interviews I hear you should wear black for job interviews, unless that’s not wear black cos you don't want to them to think you’re all weird and into Goth music, not that wearing black is weird or means you’re into Goth music though, I didn’t mean that. Say what music do you listen to anyway Faith?"
Wow! I might have that written down wrong you know, its hard to catch all of a Buffy-Babble when she gets going, but man wow eh? Lucky that didn’t come with the Chosen One package deal, I’d hyperventilate if I spoke the way she does.
I didn’t answer her cos I figured she doesn’t really want to know, and she’s probably trying to figure out what got her started on that rant in the first place so she wouldn’t catch my reply anyway. Instead I go back to the bed, kinda sprawl myself out a bit and just watch her. The air is clear between us again and I like this time with her when we’re okay, five-by-five with each other and nothing either of us say can fuck it up. But just cos I don’t fuck it up with words, doesn’t mean I can’t fuck it up some other way. It was when she caught me watching her, she was running her hands through her hair tying it back in a ponytail and I was thinking how I wanted to run my hands through her golden hair and pull her in for a kiss. It was when she caught me off guard by looking back at me too quick and I was a second too slow to wipe that want from my eyes, that lust for her that’s growing every single day I see her. It was when I realised I was too late to hide that look from her and I decided to let it settle on my face completely that I fucked things up between us.
"Jeez, is that the time, would you look at that. Way past bedtime and all that stuff Faith. Mom will be worried and I promised I’d read Dawn a bedtime story before she went to sleep, and well big day tomorrow and everything, college, study, college again, more study, in fact lots of study for Buffy tomorrow, so best give my brain a chance to charge up for it and you know beauty sleep also a factor. Don’t get up though, and thanks for the clothes I’ll see myself out. See here’s the door already, I found it. Night then Faith, er sweet, well you know don’t have nightmares. Bye"
I get the point B. Couldn’t wait to leave me. Yeah, got that now.
Five-by....fuck it.