The bunk creaked as Faith’s new cellmate rolled over with the satisfied mutter of one in a womb-deep sleep. Faith cocked an envious eye up at the naked springs above her. She guessed it was about 3am; six hours after lights out, and she still felt wired and wide awake. Starring at four walls all day made her too bored to sleep. Slayer energy unchanneled made her belly churn all night. Her cellmate, Kath, was okay, but she slept like the dead, if the dead snored like chainsaws, and the injustice of it was starting to put Faith’s teeth on edge. One time, Kath had broken off her cacophony of snores –which had been starting to lull Faith off into sleep- just long enough to say,
“Quit your belly rumblings, would ya, sweet?” Faith had aimed a kick at the dip in the springs above her where Kathy’s ass was located, but the woman was snoring again before her foot even hit. Kath had only rolled over onto her belly, where her snores took on the desperate note of a walrus trapped on the shore. Faith had shoved her head under her pillow with a curse, but prison pillows seemed to be designed to be permeable to sound for just these occasions.
But, belly rumblings and walruses aside, Faith felt like she was coping. Now that she’d decided to deal, she could deal. Just making the decision to hand herself in had made her feel stronger.
She felt like she had finally found her centre, just like her old Watcher, Jenny, used to say. “Find your centre, find your balance. Everything flows from there.”
Faith knew she’d been listing like a boat on the breeze ever since Jen had died, being knocked about and buffered by the slightest shift of fate. She felt kind of stupid about it now, now she’d found her point of balance had been there all along. I can take it. I can weather whatever’s coming. But God, she did miss Jen. And it didn’t feel fair at times, that she was here, getting better, getting stronger, while her Watcher – who Faith had believed for the longest time *was* her centre – was in the ground. Cold. But balanced, Faith reminded herself wryly. Nothing knocks the dead off kilter. She’s as strong as she’ll ever be. She had conversations with Jenny in her head for long hours of the night, and she often caught herself smiling up at the springs as she did so. It made her feel warm and empty all at once.
Tonight, though, she didn’t feel up to it. It had been a long, boring day. She was so bored of long, boring days that it made her exhausted, and yet she was too bored to sleep, and she felt close to tears when she thought about Jen. Belly rumbles and tears, no matter how silent, were the only two things guaranteed to wake Kath up, short of the roof falling down. The woman had an instinct for tears; Faith figured she must miss her kids so much she’d developed radar. Not that she wouldn’t be nice, if she woke up, but Faith didn’t feel like nice. A kind look right now would make her crumble, and she didn’t feel strong enough yet to rebuild.
Could sure use on of her smokes, though. Faith thought, and wondered if tears wouldn’t actually be a fair trade for a nicotine hit. She’d taken up smoking inside to have something to do. It was that dull, scratching your ass was something to do. Kath would magick up one of her endless supply from the seam of her mattress, and cuddle her close, and coach Faith to hold it “like a lady.”
“You smoke like a guy.” She always said. “You sit like one, too.”
Jenny used to say the same thing. Half way through one of her long British lectures about Chaos Demons or mace technique, she’d suddenly break off with a frown. Faith would be sitting, outwardly attentive, but really only concentrating on the shape of Jen’s lips and the way they pushed words out like bubbles.
“Faith, really! Put your knees together. You may be wearing trousers, but you’re still a young lady.”
Really, Faith scowled to herself, and stretched out her bare legs against the rough, prison-issue cotton of the sheets. No cigarettes, she told herself. A Slayer might smoke, but they shouldn’t need to smoke. Okay, so they were a bit low on vamps in the big house, and she had kind of pissed in the face of her sacred calling, but she was still a Slayer. Kinda all she knew how to be. And Slayers needed balance. Physical and mental. What had Jen said? A Slayer is complete in themselves. Using Kath, or Kath’s cigarettes, as a crutch was tempting, but in the final analysis, a Slayer had to balance alone. Right, Jen? Faith thought to herself. “So you were listening! Good Lord.” Jen’s clipped voice returned. Good nothing. Faith scowled.
Feeling contrary, she spread her knees apart. Lying more like a slut than sitting like a man, but still. The air was damp, and the raise of her knees let it creep under the blankets. She lay like that for a while, enjoying the flex in her under-used muscles, and the air touching between her legs. Kath’s regular breathing got soothing after a while, but still every part of her was wired and alert. What I wouldn’t give for a big old vamp right about now. Faith slid her hand under the covers and let it linger comfortingly low on her stomach for a while, trying to sooth the belly rumbles. She closed her eyes, and tried to go to a comforting place. Jen’s drawing room. Eating dinner with B and her TV Mom…
Her trailing finger brushed against the knife scar on her belly. All her comfort places were tainted. Some nights she could ignore it, but on nights like these a little voice on the edge of her mind always whispered, Jen’ll never make you tea and scold you again, and you’ll never be welcome back at B’s. Fuck that. TV Mom, Christmas Special meals. Who needed that? Not Slayers. Buffy might still have one foot in the hearth, but the Slayer parts of her lived in the dark and the graveyards, and Faith damn well knew it. She’d tried to show her, too, but big sister B wouldn’t be told.
Fuck her. No, really. Faith’s hand paused on its way downwards, tickled by the dusting of curly hair between her hips. Thicker than Faith liked to keep it, but razorblades weren’t so easy to come by, even in a woman’s prison. Kath was connected enough to get just about anything a girl could want, from cigarettes to Rita Hayworth, but she still had legs like a chimpanzee. Or maybe it was a choice thing. Faith gave a mental shrug. In a sticky, slightly pungent way, it was kind of nice to have hair and to smell of herself for a change. Very un-Faith. But then, a lot of things that had been Faith were changing now. Centre. Balance. Fuzz.
Perfect blonde Buffy was dark underneath. Faith had always guessed that she would be, in both the physical and metaphorical sense, but she’d found the proof of it when she’d taken that bath in Buffy’s body, and the discovery made her crow and kick bubbles in glee. Dark, fuzzy curls, and a tidy, pink clit that had stiffened under Faith’s probing finger. So wet and so giving, and so good, with water sloshing onto the floor, and soapy bubbles up her nose.
Faith slipped the same finger down between her legs now, and burrowed for a second, finding wetness and warmth amongst the curls. Her brain ached from lack of sleep, but she felt warm and cozy below, like she had a secret nestled there. God, she wanted to screw her own brains out. Anything, anything, to clear her head and made her sleep like she needed to. She closed her eyes tight and tried to imagine her finger was a tongue, and her nails on her skin were someone else’s, and that sweet, clean-smelling hair was brushing against her thighs. She held still and rubbed until she was hissing between her teeth at the effort of not making the bed springs creek as her phantom lover moved.
She banished Buffy from her mind with a dramatic mental gesture. No favours or orgasms from B tonight, she couldn’t deal. Who was fucking who, anyway? She pictured Buffy on her back, and spread-eagled, but then shook her head free from the thought. Not ready to be fuck-buddies, even in her head, not even if B screamed for it. There must be others.
Like the redhead. Faith’s lips pursed. She hadn’t had time to give much thought to that revelation since the shit had gone down. Chances are, Will is down in Sunnydale getting licked out by her lady-lover as we speak. Prim little Willow had kitty-claws, it seemed. It wasn’t so surprising, really, Faith guessed, and she told herself she might have seen it before, if she’d given enough of a hoot to look twice in Willow’s direction. It was always the quiet ones that kept their sex all coiled up inside, like a pet or a dangerous animal. Willow hated her, Faith knew. She pictured her all spread out too, naked and spitting with lust and hate, and a-glow with that sick, pale light only redheads could muster. A moaner, she bet. And a swearer. Yeah. I bet she swears when she comes, but every other damn time, she spells it out, like a prim little Sunday School girl. B-I-T-C-H. F-U-C-K. Baby, yeah.
Though her new friend didn’t look so much like the sweary type. In fact, she’d looked as though a good cuss would raise a welt on her. What had her name been? Tara Something. Nice hair. Shy smile. Large, friendly breasts. A rough word, or a touch and she’d bruise like a peach, unless she was different in the sack. Some shy girls were, Faith recalled, with a wry little smirk. How did they fuck then, Tara and the Witch? Was there fucking, with fingernails and teasing teeth, or did they just cuddle and make love with tender nausea? Faith shoved the couple angrily aside in her mind. Not right, not good. She wanted claws and shaking, being shaken, anything to feel like she was alive again, still. Tender made her numb from the waist down. Compliant, but numb.
So, who else, who else? Faith flicked through her mental filofax, and hovered above a name. Oh, Kathy, my dear, She thought, and she had to smile. There’s rough, and there’s rough. I love you so, but you’d prize open my legs like an oyster, and those big blunt fists would just spoon me right out.
Cordelia, then. She had a helping of the B-I-T-C-H, Faith guessed, and much as Cordy sometimes looked like she couldn’t even spell B-I-T-C-H, there was something hot and cunning lurking behind those eyes. She wouldn’t say euw or no to much, when you had her. Sleek and conditioned from head to foot, but not soft. Like a champion racehorse; pampered and hard. I bet she’s a squealer, Faith thought, and she squirmed. I bet she’d kick you in the ear when you went down on her.
Why do all the girls I know stink of Buffy? A wider circle of friends was in order, if the centre was to be maintained when she got out of this safe, grey, dull little haven. Back to Boston, maybe. Or England, even, so long as the Watcher’s council were still too busy with their thumbs up their asses to bother her. Jen had family…
But “out” was such a long way off, it didn’t bear thinking about now. Faith bucked her hips a little in frustration, dragging her mind back from wandering down un-erotic alleys to the business in hand. Come, then sleep. Hardly romantic, but then damp sheets, a dark cell and her own right hand just wasn’t the stuff of wet dreams. And not Faith. Not Faith. The symphonies and hearts and flowers in this world belonged to Buffy. For Faith, a stake, a handful of guts and the graveyard shift. Ugly sister. In the name of fuck, B, can’t you stay out of my brain for five minutes? Privacy here!
But mind-Buffy remained, bright in the spot light of a street lamp, and all around her shadow, holding a stake like she knew damn well what to do with it.
Fuck you. Faith thought-snarled, and twisted under her fingers. She thought of Buffy on her back, Buffy splayed out. Buffy bound with belts and chains, her legs gaping. Buffy with her back arching, perfect So Cal accent pitched to moan, with sweat and dark roots at her temple, and…
Faith stilled her hand suddenly, opening her eyes to the grey, real world. Dark springs, white mattress, Kath snores. Her own breath, hot and short on her lip. She tensed her calf muscles and squeezed her hand down tight on her crotch until the throbbing there faded. It hurt just a bit, and her head rocked back, and then she felt too bored and too hot and too drained to carry on. She brought her hand up above the covers again, the scent of herself in her nostrils. For a moment, all was silent beneath the rhythm of her cellmate’s snores.
“Hey, Kath?” She called out, low. A grunt and a snort in response.
“Kathy?”
“What is it?”
“You got a smoke?”
“Yeah.” Silence.
“Can I get one?”
With a mutter, Kathy rolled over, and dropped a light, tight roll-up down onto Faith’s pillow. Her eyes, bright with sleep, squinted over the side of the bed.
“You better smoke it quiet, now.”
“I will. You’re a doll, Kath.”
“I know it.” Kath grunted, and rolled back to bed. Faith sat up, cold air on her bare, damp thighs, and fumbled for a lighter. Slayer or not, she needed a fucking crutch tonight. She couldn’t help thinking of B again, curled up under a flower-print duvet, or bouncing on her new boy, likely as not. Down the corridor, she heard someone cough, a wet cough that seemed to go on forever. Life sucks, she thought bitterly. It ain’t poetry, but it’s all there is to it.
“Hey, Faith?” Kath said low, as she took her first drag.
“What?”
“The smokes are under my pillow. You don’t have to ask, ‘kay? Just try not to wake me.”
“Oh. Sure. Thank you.” Faith felt bizarrely touched. Kath was like a Rottweiler over her smokes most days.
“And Faith?” With a playful rise to her voice.
“What?”
“It’ll make you go blind.”
Faith spluttered and inhaled, smoke bleeding down her throat. She coughed until her eyes watered.
“God, Kath, if I had a stake on me, I could really go for mistaking you for some big mama vamp.”
“Wassat?”
“Ah, nothing. How’s your eyesight doin’ then?”
“Twenty-twenty, thanks for asking.”
“Five by five,” Faith muttered low, feeling the weight of the irony.
“Wassat?” Kath asked again.
“Nothing.” A pause. Kath smacked her lips comfortably with sleep.
“You’re a good kid, Faith.” She said, in an offhand way. “A little crazy, but a good kid. Mind you don’t set your bed on fire.”
“I won’t.” Faith leaned back on her pillow, cigarette at an angle to keep ash from tipping on her face. Jen’s voice spoke up, unbidden in her mind, to echo Kathy’s. You’re a good girl, Faith. Wash your hands before you eat, won’t you?
Fuck that. Faith snorted, blowing smoke out of her nose. Life sucked. No doubt about it. But in a good way, sometimes. She could deal.
She stubbed her cigarette out on the bedstead, pitched the butt on the floor, and then rolled over to sleep.
~fin~
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