Chapter Twenty - There is No Cause for Alarm

Faith woke up with someone on top of her… and freaked the hell out.

“Who the fuck…? Get off me!” Faith mumbles half awake, pushing at the unconscious girl that’s on her. She feels like she’s suffocating. “You already got your rocks off now get the hell out!” she exclaims, still pushing at the unconscious figure who’s sleepily protesting as she becomes aware of the waking world. Who the fuck has the nerve to think they can… cuddle with her?! Do she look like a fuckin’ stuffed animal?!

“…What?” comes the annoyed, half-awake reply. A hand connects with Faith’s skin as she slaps her, trying to make her stop attempting to shove her away. “Quit pushing me!” yells… Buffy?

“B?!” Faith asks, surprised, sitting up and pushing herself back so fast she misjudges the distance to the edge of the bed and ends up falling backwards out of it, sheets getting tangled around her as she lands unceremoniously on the floor. “Ow! Fuck!” Jesus, this is so not a way to wake up. Faith groans in pain as Buffy yawns and looks down at her on the floor, squinting a bit from her sleepiness.

“Are you okay?” she asks, pushing some blonde hair out of her face to witness Faith in a tangled heap on the floor. She looks at the younger girl’s disheveled appearance and purses her lips together to try not to laugh at her.

“Peachy,” Faith says dryly, and then winces at the pain in her back. She’s going to need to see a chiropractor soon with all the beatings her body has been taking lately. She remembers Buffy staying over now that her mind has been cleared by that little jolt back into reality, but shit she’s just not used to crap like this! Sleeping in the same bed with someone should be eased into, and this was… not. Obviously. Buffy was lying on top of her for shit’s sake! She is not a human pillow, damnit.

“Do you… need help?” Buffy asks carefully, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She’s smirking though, trying not to giggle at Faith’s predicament.

“S’fine. I got it,” Faith mumbles as she picks herself off the floor, untangling the sheets from her body. Fuck the morning. She looks at the clock and groans again; fuck, she’s still got at least another hour till she has to wake up for school. She climbs back in her bed and throws the covers over her, still making little sounds of annoyances.

Yeah, she’s grumpy now. Can ya blame her?

Buffy moves back over to give her space; looking at her like she actually expects a coherent thought from Faith this early in the morning. She doesn’t look at her or say anything though so Buffy eventually settles back into bed, hugging one of Faith’s pillows close to her chest. Faith closes her eyes, trying to block out Buffy being there. It’s weird though; having someone so close to her when she’s vulnerable, because that’s what she is when she’s sleeping: vulnerable. It’s a weakness and not one that she usually shows people. But she’s dealing… she’s gotta. She’s apparently been a complete ass to Buffy the last couple days and she really needs to try to control that. But it’s hard because she’s just…

No, she’s not even going to admit the ‘S’ word in her head right now, that’s too messed up. It’s also way too early for deep thoughts.

“Faith?” Buffy asks softly, pulling the covers up to her chin and looking at the younger girl.

Faith debates on not saying anything for a moment, but it’s not like Buffy doesn’t know that she’s already awake. She sighs a little before she replies, “…Yeah?”

Buffy shifts a bit on the bed, getting closer to her. Faith freezes; not daring to move an inch. This girl has no concept of personal space. “Can I ask you something?” she whispers.

That’s playing in dangerous territory but Faith turns around to look at her, seeing the outline of Buffy’s face in the darkness of the room. “Can’t guarantee an answer, but… yeah,” Faith whispers back, her voice husky from the morning.

Buffy takes a breath and Faith can feel the blonde’s hand brush lightly across her arm. It seems accidental, so Faith doesn’t say anything about it. “Have you ever… been with a man?”

Faith’s jaw locks up and she doesn’t say anything for a long time. She’s not answering that, but she’s trying not to scream and beat the crap out of her too. Buffy seems to sense that though because she goes on quickly, “You don’t… have to tell me, I guess it’s not important I just… I wanted to know if you ever… well I guess I just wanted to know if it’s normal… how I felt… after I did it…” Buffy whispers softly, pausing every so often like she’s not sure if she should be talking. She looks down at the sheets.

“What are ya talkin’ about?” Faith asks quietly. Isn’t Buffy a virgin, or did she just assume that? She coulda swore she is though. Maybe she should pay attention more.

Buffy looks down and her hand brushes over Faith’s arm again, eliciting goosebumps on the brunette. Okay, the touching doesn’t seem like much of an accident anymore. “When I was… with Scott…” she starts slowly, watching her fingertips dance along Faith’s skin, “I mean, I guess I wasn’t expecting for it to be fantastic because it was both of our first times but I… I don’t know, I guess I was hoping I would… like it. But I didn’t. It was… awkward and he was…” she blushes a little, “hard and hairy and it was… gross. I don’t know. And I just… I mean, I guess that might be the whole lesbian thing but… I can’t help but wonder if maybe I just… don’t like sex or something; like it’s some kind of weird mental deficiency or…”

“Ya ain’t got a mental issue, B,” Faith tells her softly. She shifts a little on the bed, trying to move her arm a little further away from Buffy’s touch. “Fuckin’ promise ya that. Feelin’ that way’s… normal,” she finishes. At least it had happened to her. After that… incident, she didn’t think she’d ever want to be intimate with anyone. So she gets it… but she ain’t doin’ share and care time right now; least not when it comes to herself.

“But what if it’s true?” Buffy asks, looking like she feels like she’s a freak or something.

Okay, looks like Faith isn’t gonna be going back to sleep before school. She sighs and rolls over on her side completely, propping her head up on her hand, looking at the girl next to her. “Alright, well lemme ask ya somethin’.”

“Okay…”

“When ya diddle yourself at night, ya like it, right?” Faith asks bluntly.

“FAITH!” Buffy exclaims, horrified as she scoots away from her and clutches the covers to her chest like her virtue has been compromised by that one sentence. Faith smirks.

“I’m serious, B. I mean, if ya like that, if ya can get yourself off, then I’m pretty sure you’re gonna like it when some chick fucks the hell outta ya.”

Buffy’s face has turned from pink to magenta to bright tomato red all in the span of about thirty seconds. “I… well… I mean I…. what if I don’t… do that?”

Faith laughs; that’s fuckin’ funny. “Please girlfriend, everyone does the nasty to themselves every once in awhile.” It’s human nature to need a release.

“Well no one talks about it!” Buffy protests, then groans and pulls the covers over her head to hide from Faith, who’s still smirking at her behavior.

Faith licks her bottom lip as she smiles, looking at the embarrassed girl in her bed. She knows she shouldn’t press the issue, but she can’t help it. “So do ya?” she asks.

“What?” Buffy mumbles under the covers.

“Like it.”

Buffy throws the covers off of her, looking annoyed. “Oh shut up!” she exclaims before she starts slapping Faith like a twelve year old; both hands, hardly connecting, but with force to actually make it irritating.

“Hey!” Faith exclaims, startled as she tries to fend her off. She’s not hitting hard, but that’s really not the point. She’s getting attacked in her own bed now! “Stop wackin’ me! Shit!” She starts slapping her back, feeling like a damn kid, but hey, Buffy started it!

“You’re such a perv!” Buffy says, but she’s giggling a little now as she has Faith backed up to the edge of the bed during their little slap fight. Faith yells another, “Quit!” and grabs one of Buffy’s wrists, but Buffy wiggles out of it before grabbing both of Faith’s and pinning her down, hovering over her.

“Pervert,” she says with a grin.

“Masturbator,” Faith shoots back with a smirk.

“Oh you should talk.”

“Hey, never said I was innocent, Princess,” Faith replies with a grin, but then suddenly is very aware of their position. Buffy’s half on top of her, pressing her body parts on areas that Faith really needs her to stay away from if she’s supposed to stop sending mixed signals and pissin’ people off. “Uh… B? Ya wanna get off me?”

“Oh… yeah, sorry,” Buffy says, blushing a little as she rolls off of her. Not all the way though – she’s practically still on top of Faith, and she lays her head on the younger girl’s shoulder. Buffy settles into her; her breath on her neck, her hair tickling her shoulder and yeah, okay, space is needed… now.

Faith gets up quickly, making Buffy tumble off of her. She runs a hand through her hair as she sits on the edge of the bed, taking a breath. She doesn’t know how to deal with all of this. She feels Buffy shift on the bed behind her as she sits up. “Are you okay?” she asks. Faith doesn’t say anything for a moment so Buffy puts her hand on her shoulder, “Faith?”

“Fine. I just…” Faith starts, then sighs, shaking Buffy’s hand off her. Okay, she needs to be clear. Willow will have her head if she’s not. Hell, there will be way more drama if she’s not, and they really don’t need any more drama. “Buffy we’re… friends. That’s it… okay?” She looks at the far wall as she says it, not wanting to see the look on the blonde’s face.

“I know, I was just—”

“Gettin’ cuddly,” Faith finishes, still without looking at her. Buffy swallows and looks at her for a moment. Faith finds herself holding her breath as the silence passes between them. Finally she feels Buffy crawling over and sitting next to her, dangling her feet off the edge of the bed.

“Look, I wasn’t—” Buffy starts, her voice a little shaky; she’s nervous.

“You were,” Faith says softly. She turns to look at her and Buffy look’s a little upset; her eyebrows are furrowed together and she looks torn between wanting to come closer to Faith or just stay away. “B, it’s not that I don’t like you, I do. Okay?” Faith tells her honestly. “But I ain’t that girl; I ain’t gonna be your first lesbian relationship, I just don’t work that way. I mean I… what I’m good at? Fuckin’, that’s it. And I could do that but I know it’ll just hurt ya and… I try not to hurt my friends. Okay?”

Buffy chews a little on her bottom lip a little, looking down before she nods. “Okay… that’s… it’s fine,” she says softly. She doesn’t sound very fine. But she looks up and puts on a fake smile and a nonchalant shrug as she goes on, “I didn’t really think that you… well…” her smile falters and she looks upset again. She bites on her lip hard before she sighs, standing up. “I’m going to take a shower,” she finishes before walking into the bathroom and shutting the door behind her without allowing Faith to say anything.

Fuck. Well that went… decent, maybe. Faith runs her fingers through her hair again and sighs, looking out the window. She hates that she’s the one that makes Buffy look like that; the one that makes her run away. This is better though; this is… good. She does… care about her, fuckin’ obviously, friend and all that so… she can’t hurt her intentionally. That’d just be fucked up. And if she fucks her, no matter how much fun it would be… she’d just end up breaking her heart and she…

She can’t do that. She won’t be the person to hurt Buffy. Maybe yeah, a couple months ago Faith would have been; just hurt her because she was part of the group of popular kids. Hell, she did it with Harmony. But she’s gotten to know Buffy now; she’s sweet and she has a good heart but she’s aiming it in the completely wrong direction. Faith doesn’t love, she doesn’t care and coddle… she hurts; uses and abuses then tosses people away like trash. Buffy isn’t trash so she can’t… she just can’t be involved with her.

Buffy deserves a chick who’s gonna take her on dates and buy her flowers and junk like that, and Faith doesn’t know the first thing about all that. Faith is a physical person and Buffy is an emotional one.

So this is better. This is good... hopefully.

It’s been three days and Buffy has barely even looked at Faith. Oh, she’ll talk to her though, she’ll be all smiles and happiness at school and down to business when they’re in the library doing Slayer stuff but she can’t make eye contact. It’s starting to bother Faith but she knows she just needs to give Buffy time to get used to the arrangement. Shouldn’t take too long though, seeing as they never got naked and sweaty together so it’s not like Buffy’s gonna be mourning the loss of all the amazing sex or anything. She’s getting a little better though, slowly. Today she looked at her in the eye for a whole thirty seconds; progress.

Not by much though.

It’s Friday night though and she really needs to get away from all the drama so she ends up finding herself at The Bronze. There should really be more places to hang out in this town, but it’s small and lame… unless you count the Hellmouth it’s sitting on that some old ass vampire is trying to fuck with.

Buffy and Giles have been freaking out about the Master and the Harvest but they haven’t been able to figure out when exactly it’s going to happen and time is running out. It’s been six days since they heard it was happening in about a week and the only other information they came up with, was that the Harvest happens once every century (thought the book, of course conveniently left out the date) and that the Vessle will be sportin’ something that kinda reminds Faith of the Star Trek symbol. Either way, they basically got nothing.

Willow has been helping them out with the research thing, doing her internet deal, but Faith and Xander didn’t seem very needed. They had already combed through all the books and Giles was starting to get frustrated. He sent Buffy to get Angel, have them all ‘convene’, but Faith didn’t want to be around for that, or more specifically didn’t want to be around him.

Not cause of jealousy. It’s not even about that anymore. Faith’s pretty damn sure that she’s the one Buffy wants, especially now since she came out of the closet (at least to her, anyway), but she’s been such a complete dick about the guy that she’s kind of formed a comfort with it. She still doesn’t trust him, she doesn’t know him, and she’s really not looking to make anymore friends.

So she took off with Xander, told Giles to call The Bronze if he needs them, and they left. Giles seemed happy to get rid of them, but probably because their nervous sarcastic comments weren’t helping any. But fuck, what else was she supposed to do? She barely knows how to turn on a computer, much less use one, so helping Willow was out. Buffy was training, seriously training, and Faith can’t keep up with her when she gets into complete Slayer mode. So fuck it, if the world ends, they’re just gonna have to call her to give her a heads up.

Faith dragged Xander to the dance floor once they got there, just needing to burn off some energy. Xander isn’t really the best dancing partner, mainly because the way Faith dances tends to get him distracted and fumbly and nervous, but it’s still amusing to watch. He tried to keep up though, and she has to give him props for being able to control his forthcoming erection the way she ground on him… at least for a little while. Eventually he did back off from her though, mumble something about needing some water and ran off.

Faith smirks as she watches him go, knowing that was going to happen. She runs her fingers through her hair and saunters over to the bar, sliding into one of the stools. Trish looks up and gives her a sexy smirk, but Faith only half returns it. She’s not going to be fucking her tonight; that’s for sure. She orders herself a beer though sips it slowly as she waits for Xander to come back and mumble some bullshit excuse about why he left in such a hurry.

Faith sees him come out of the restroom, but is jolted forward when some clumsy idiot hits the back of her seat. “Ya wanna fuckin’ watch it, twinkle toes?!” Faith yells, turning around to look at who just slammed into her. Cordelia returns her look with wide eyes, her snappy retort held back.

The popular girl turns and snaps at one of her minions instead, “Watch where you’re going, queen size! These are four hundred dollar shoes and I don’t need your fat ass stomping all over them!”

The girl who apparently accidently pushed Cordelia into Faith bursts out in tears from being called fat (which she wasn’t, not even in the slightest) and she runs off, probably to develop an eating disorder. Cordelia tries like hell not to notice that Faith’s staring at her with her eyebrow raised.

“Sup Queen C?” She knows she’s fucking with the boundaries, but this could be fun. Apparently Buffy scared her so badly that she doesn’t wanna even look at her. Cordelia ignores her, trying to walk away but there’s too many people crowded around the bar and she can’t get far. “Hey! Pretty sure I was talkin’ to you!”

Cordelia takes a breath and turns around, scowling at her. “What?”

“Can’t say hi now?” Faith asks with a little taunting smile before she brings the beer up to her lips and takes a nice, long sip.

“Drop the bitchy intimidation act, Faith. I do it so much better than you,” Cordelia snaps. She looks around, “Where’s your psycho of a girlfriend? You give her a STD yet?”

“I’d watch the way ya talk to me, C. Wouldn’t want my ‘psycho girlfriend’ to do another demonstration act on ya, would you?” Faith smirks as she see’s Cordelia’s face noticeably pale a little.

“Sorry, I was just—” Xander starts as he pushes his way through the crowd to get to Faith. Then he notices Cordelia. “Is there a fight going on? Because I thought we were supposed to be relaxing.” He’s looking between the two girls nervously.

“No fight,” Faith replies, taking another sip of her beer before she leans in to Cordelia. “So what’d she say to freak ya out like that, luv?”

“She didn’t freak me out! But the girl isa complete mental case, I can’t believe I was ever friends with that…” she pauses, and Faith knew she was about to say something derogatory but apparently thinks better of it and finishes, “girl.” Faith chuckles a little and the crowd starts to disperse around them a little so Cordelia starts to back up to leave.

“Ya don’t wanna stay and hang?” Faith taunts, but Cordelia just turns around and flips her the finger over her shoulder before walking away, leaving Faith there laughing. She turns to Xander, “Man, that was fun.”

“You find some sick kind of pleasure in stuff like that, don’t you?” Xander asks, studying her. Faith just grins at him and he shakes his head. “You scare me sometimes,” but he’s smirking a little bit.

“Scare myself sometimes, but I still have my fun,” Faith replies with a wink as she downs the rest of her beer. She places the empty bottle on the bar and is about to yell to Trish for another one before the whole club is consumed by darkness. “What the fuck?” Faith yells, along with the rest of the crowd who’s voicing their disapproval.

“Maybe they didn’t pay their electric bill,” Xander jokes.

But then one, singular light shines on stage, outlining the figure of a man. Faith stands up, the feeling in the pit of her stomach that something bad is about to happen arising quickly. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice boomed through the club. “There is no cause for alarm.” Something about that statement didn’t make her feel anymore at ease. “Actually,” he states, with an amused tone. “There is cause for alarm…” he steps forward, the light now fully illuminating him, “it just won’t do any good.”

“Xander,” Faith says softly as she looks at the vampire on stage. People started screaming, backing up away from him as far as they could get. “Get to a phone and call Buffy… now!