“Are you ever gonna learn to live a little?” Faith grumbles. “You know what your problem is, B?”
“I don’t have a death wish?” Buffy retorts sarcastically. All she’d done was veto gate-crashing a large nest without backup or further investigation. As far as she’s concerned that’s not a problem, that’s having a sense of self-preservation.
“You’re too damn tightly wound,” Faith declares. “You need to get laid.”
Buffy rolls her eyes. By this point she’s become inured to Faith’s constant innuendos, but this is blunter than she’d expected even from her. “I’m pretty sure that’s not the answer. You have met me, right? Buffy Summers, she whose relationships are cursed? You’ve heard the saga of my undead ex. Hell, you were here for the whole Scott Hope debacle. I’m done tempting fate on that count; I’m swearing off men.”
Faith only laughs, raising an eyebrow at her. “You might wanna get your ears checked, cuz I never said anything about relationships, and I’m damn sure I didn’t say anything about men.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Faith throws an arm over Buffy’s shoulder and draws her into her personal space in that casually presumptuous way she has. “I’m saying I could help you scratch that itch. You and me, girlfriend; don’t tell me you don’t feel the energy.”
I don’t. The denial is on the tip of Buffy’s tongue, but Faith’s smirk does something funny to the pit of her stomach and she can’t make the words come out.
Because the truth is, she does feel that energy, the connection that sizzles between them. She’s never been into girls before, not like that, but it must be some kind of Slayer thing. In the months since Faith came to Sunnydale, she’s come to look forward to their nightly patrols more than she likes to admit. Sometimes she thinks her sister Slayer is a sex-obsessed danger junkie and she’ll never understand her, but other days she’s certain that Faith knows her better than she knows herself and she’s never felt so alive as when they fight together.
The other truth is, it’s been like a year since she’s been touched any kind of intimately and some days she misses it so much it aches. Maybe she’s just lonely and horny. Maybe it’s something about the way Slaying gets her blood up. Maybe she has too much of a weakness for wicked dark eyes.
Whatever the reason, she can’t find the strength for denial tonight. Instead, she finds herself meeting Faith’s expectant eyes with a shrug and a smile. “What the hell, why not?” Buffy says, and leans in to kiss her.
It doesn’t have to mean anything, right?
***
The thing is, Faith had never expected Buffy to actually take her up on it.
Which is not to say she didn’t mean every word she said, but she’s gotten so used to B’s ice maiden routine, she’s become convinced that her sister Slayer is either straight as an arrow or too damn attached to her good girl image to allow herself any kind of pleasure, if not both. She keeps flirting more for the pleasure of watching her squirm than any real hope of having her interest reciprocated.
And then Buffy kisses her, sweet and earnest. She tastes like strawberry lip gloss and impossible dreams. Faith isn’t prepared.
Want, take, have, that’s always been Faith’s motto. Get some, get gone. But when she has the blonde whimpering and writhing beneath her and it’s supposed to be everything she’s craved since she came to this godforsaken town, she finds it barely scratches the surface of her want. And when Buffy curls into the curve of her body afterward, all soft and vulnerable like she’s never let Faith see her before, something twists unfamiliarly in her chest. Faith categorically doesn’t do cuddles or attachments, but in that moment she is lost.
This wasn’t supposed to mean anything. But can she bear it if it doesn’t?