Who You're Not
She didn't break out of jail.
Not exactly.
Breaking is a little bit of a stretch.
Breaking involves violence.
She merely utilized persuasion.
If her form of persuasion involved bending a metal pole in half with her bare hands, so be it.
She'd been loosening it for weeks, not to mention working out.
Prisons have good facilities.
They helped.
The idea of getting back to Sunnydale helped, too.
She was on the side of the good guys.
She wasn't doing any atoning in a prison cell.
Atoning would have to begin at home.
He stubbed his cigarette out against the hard brick wall. He held it there, lightly smoldering, until it left a mark.
Got to leave your mark on the world somehow.
Violence was out; mayhem was out. Sodding chip somehow managed to take care of the fun stuff. A good, old-fashioned massacre was out of the question.
And her. He wouldn't do it because of her.
Love? Love didn't leave a mark on the world.
Love was something that caused your insides to cave in, that caused you to vomit until your drunken joviality was drowned out by the stench of rotted beef and blinding rage before you'd even made your way into hangover territory.
Love was what got you rejected.
Cigarettes were pretty much his only pleasure in life.
He lit another cigarette.
It was barely nine o'clock.
It was already a long night.
She figured that with the police on her ass already, one more little violation wouldn't really matter.
So robbing the store didn't bother her too much.
She didn't kick open the window or the door.
She kicked at the alarm. It sparked, disconnected, fell.
Good job, Faith.
Now she yanked hard at the door, opening it.
You don't know your own strength.
Oh, but she did.
She stripped the mannequin from the window before realizing that she would never fit the clothing.
She grabbed new clothing- leather pants, leather jacket, white wife beater- and left her prison uniform folded in a neat pile next to a stack of spiked bracelets.
She left the mannequin lying on the floor like a corpse, staring with pupilless eyes at the ceiling without blinking, smiling without lips, nippleless breasts perking straight up, blonde wig still perfectly coiffed.
She bit her lip before doing what was possibly the stupid thing she'd ever done.
She redressed the mannequin and took it with her.
He wasn't happy with the word crypt.
It just wasn't the vibe he was trying to pull off anymore.
No one thought he was evil. He kept insisting, but no one bought it anymore, frankly.
The other day, at Willy's, he had actually been told he'd reached his limit.
He didn't have a limit. He was William the fucking Bloody!
"What are you going to do?" Willy had asked. "Bite me?"
He hadn't had an answer.
"You're drunk enough. Go home."
To his crypt?
Only scary things had crypts.
He couldn't even scare Anya.
He needed a new name for his crypt.
That, or a new reputation.
Figuring that she couldn't get much more jail time than for multiple murders and robbing an expensive leather store, she opted for some grand theft auto.
It wasn't a new car. It wasn't an old car, really, but it was at least a few years old.
It was an expensive car.
People who could own a car like this wouldn't have too many problems buying a new one.
The car itself wouldn't have sentimental value.
She left the mix CDs on the curb in a neat pile, in case they did.
She strapped the mannequin into her passenger seat and checked the glove compartment for odds and ends.
No license that she could use, but there was registration, not to mention two pairs of sunglasses.
Perfect.
She put one pair on the mannequin, and put the other on herself. She stared at the ignition for a moment.
She'd learned to hotwire cars before.
Got it.
And go.
He tore open the bag and began sipping the blood.
Symbolic castration was not all it was cracked up to be.
He slipped into game face without much focus, sharp ridges blossoming over smooth natural features, eyebrows retreating under masses of skin.
When he was a child- way back when, before the term childe had even had a meaning for him, before sodding Anne Rice claimed him and his whole species as her due- he had heard fairy tales from his family. He had tried to carry those into a hobby as a poet, but a stunning lack of talent prevented him from truly gaining notoriety. Still, he remembered the stories of Beauty and the Beast- how, with enough love, the beautiful princess could transform the hideous creature into something she could enjoy.
As a vampire, he'd gotten cynical; could happily say that he'd spent much of the past hundred years thinking about how the only reason the beast was transformed was that interspecies sex was not what they wanted the young children of Paris contemplating.
The young children of Paris could instead contemplate his fangs as they slid effortlessly into young necks.
But that was then, this was now.
The bag empty, he threw it into a corner. It hit the wall and slid to the ground.
She was blasting music.
This, she'd actually paid for; she found a wad of cash- over $500- in the glove compartment. "For emergencies," obviously.
Well, she needed some music. That was an emergency.
She was singing along, although "singing" would imply musical talent, which she happily admitted she lacked. She had other skills.
She was the fucking Slayer, man.
Choir members need not apply.
The music rattled the car, made her head hurt if she stopped and thought about it. It covered any thoughts she might have had. About anything.
No guilt when you can't think.
At the stop for music, she'd made a few changes. Working quickly and methodically, she'd switched the license plates of half a dozen cars, including her own. She'd siphoned half a tank of gas from a nearby Chevy.
She'd put on some lipstick, and then put some on the mannequin.
Harlot.
They were ready to hit Sunnydale in high style.
He swept up the area where the mannequin had sat.
The floor was covered with scraps now, with bits and pieces of all sorts of things- underwear, books, lipstick tubes, stale chocolate, and his personal favorite: a Wonder Woman comic.
The mannequin had been the center of his Buffy collection. She had been gorgeous.
Occasionally headless, but gorgeous.
He didn't see what the big deal was, really.
He was just showing affection.
What did she know, anyway? Drusilla would've been thrilled if he'd put something like this together for her. He could've artfully arranged the bones of the newborns she'd killed with velvet dresses and the occasional china doll...
He knew love, dammit.
Why didn't she?
It only took a few hours to get to the 'Dale.
If she'd been thinking straight, she would've crashed at Angel's overnight, but that would have involved talking, and explanations, and she wasn't in the mood for either one.
She didn't get her old room at the motel, but she got a similar one, and for something that looked not at all homelike, it felt like home.
She set the mannequin up in a chair, where it could watch her.
She peeled off her clothing. She could sleep naked- preferred to, in fact.
Pajamas were for people who couldn't bench-press their own weight.
Tomorrow she could Bronze it.
She wrapped the leather jacket around the mannequin securely.
Tonight, she would catch up on her freedom and her rest.
But first, she would make sure the door was double-locked.
He stripped off his clothing.
You can't really sleep well in a duster.
He could, actually, but there was a certain freedom to nothing between your bits and the world but a flimsy sheet.
Maybe a succubus would come by for a bit; he could get behind that action.
She might even pretend to be Buffy, if he asked nicely.
Sure, she'd probably kill him afterwards, but hell, what else was he... well, not living for?
He remembered being evil.
That had been fun. He should work on that.
Torture was the romance of the future.
He wondered if Buffy would agree with that.
This love shit was tougher than he'd thought.
He rolled over.
Lord Fucking Byron never had to deal with this crap.
When she woke up, it took a while to realize that there were no bars on her windows, that she was in a bed rather than a cot, that no one was going to try to make her their bitch before she introduced them to Mr. Left Fist, Miss Super Strength, and their bastard child, How Many Cigarettes Are You Worth.
She took a cold shower and began to get dressed before she went to check the window and saw that it was nearly sunset.
She hadn't realized how late she'd slept. She wasn't used to not getting woken up at the crack of dawn to comments like "oh my god, Tess just shoved a knife she'd made from the spring under her cot into her gut!"
And then it would all come back to her, and she couldn't get back to sleep.
She'd missed everything. She didn't regret it, but she missed it anyway.
They didn't miss her.
She'd thought they might, but when she showed up, fresh out of her coma, she was nothing but a problem to them.
No "Hey, how are you, sorry about that whole nearly-killing-you thing". No "Well, now that Angel's gone, we're okay, right?"
Not even a visit in the hospital. Nothing since before graduation.
She could still feel her warm lips on her forehead.
Not that it mattered.
She was just another problem, another thing they'd have to kill.
She didn't need them anymore, she decided as she pulled on her leather jacket, the last item she needed to wear. She had the clothes on her back, the mannequin, and the knowledge of how to kill someone with the underwire to her bra.
Prison life was filled with important life skills.
He woke up at the crack of dusk.
He had a busy day planned. No moping and feeling sorry for himself, not today.
He had places to go. People to bite.
Buffy to follow.
Well, follow or avoid. One or the other.
He remembered the cattle prod.
He remembered the sheer volume of sharp wooden things in Sunnydale.
"Avoid it is, then," he muttered as he finished getting dressed.
Big day planned.
The Bronze had plenty of people to eat.
Well, not for him. But there was plenty of beer, and not as many annoyingly self-righteous demons as at Willy's.
Good enough.
She scanned the Bronze carefully. This was where they went; she knew that. This was where they practically lived, any time she'd seen them. She met them all here. She hung out with them all here.
She came out of a coma, she got into Buffy's body, and where did they go?
The Bronze.
They spent all of their free time there.
So where were they?
Where was Xander and his obnoxious girlfriend, Willow and the stuttering lesbian wonder?
Where was Buffy?
Where the fuck was everyone?
She didn't recognize a single face.
Well- wait. There was one. By the door.
Pale. Shorter than average height. Swagger he couldn't quite pull off. Bleached blond hair.
Spike.
He was going to play pool, but he'd seen Buffy by the tables one too many times.
He went to the bar instead, and ordered a beer.
"New policy," the bartender drawled. "I.D.?"
Spike patted down his pockets.
No, he didn't have I.D.
Because he had been dead for a very long time.
He slid into game face again.
"I said, can I have a beer?"
The bartender stared at him in for a minute.
"New policy. I.D."
"What the bloody hell is wrong with you people?" He regained his human guise, frustrated.
"It's different in England, then?" the bartender asked. "I've always wanted to go to England. My older sister did a year abroad there, never came back. She said-"
Shaking his head, he spun around abruptly, black coat billowing behind him.
Fucking wanker.
"Hey."
He turned.
"What now?" he demanded.
"You're Spike." She pushed a few strands of dark hair out of her face. "William the Bloody, am I right?"
"Very astute, Princess." He smirked. "Who are you?"
"Don't you know me?" She grinded against him, ignoring the music that worked against the mood. "I'm your dream."
"I don't dream," he said, willing the images of Buffy out of his head.
"You will."
She couldn't believe this town.
No matter how many things were thrown at it, they stayed nonchalant. Not that it wasn't often a blessing- it made everything from slaying to dark dealings a hell of a lot easier.
But this was just kind of sad.
He was so fucking obvious, and they were all oblivious.
Not the vampire thing- that was a given in Sunnydale. Half the town was dead.
But he was walking around with his heart on his sleeve.
What better time to stake him?
She walked up and flirted, all calm, all smiling, just enough to set him off-kilter.
It was almost too easy.
He walked with her. She let him believe he was leading, but there wasn't even a question in her mind about the truth.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked, a slight smile dancing across her lips.
He pulled a cigarette out of his coat; grabbed another from a man he walked past; lit his new one from the old; tossed the reject at the man he stole it from.
She saw the cigarette butt burning a hole in the Bronze floor.
She smiled.
"Frankly," he said, "I have no idea who you are, nor do I particularly care."
He saw her falter slightly and laughed.
You can't just go out to pick someone up and think you knew everything.
He wondered if the headache would be worth it. This type of girl would probably be perfectly happy with the pain, if he approached it the right way. Would the chip react if she wanted him to hurt her?
Too bad the chip didn't come with a manual.
"You have to know who I am," she said, trying to play it off.
"Do I." He smirked.
"You're friends with Buffy or whatever, aren't you?" He hesitated, and she pounced. "I can't believe it, you are. What is it, the undead are good enough for her but her friends aren't?"
"You know, I didn't get the script here, so maybe you'd like to fill me in rather than spit at me?" He pointedly stepped a few paces away from her.
"Well, you like her, don't you?"
"How'd you find that out?"
She laughed. "It couldn't possibly be more obvious. Not if you chained her up and started professing personalized love poetry."
If possible, he went even paler than before. "Who told you about that?"
There was no way he didn't know her.
No way. The way just didn't exist.
She wasn't just anyone. She wasn't Scott Hope, wasn't Larry, wasn't Jonathan.
She was Faith.
She was important.
Wasn't she?
She ignored his obviously high lame-quotient to continue her questioning.
"So are you friends with her?"
He looked at her suspiciously for a moment before nodding. "We get on okay."
"She must have told you about me, then."
"Nothing springs to mind."
"You're close to her, and yet she never bothers mentioning that some crazy chick with super strength wanted to cut her into little tiny pieces and feed her to her boy toy?"
"She doesn't have a boy toy," he growled.
Ooh, soft spot. "Well, she did then. Dark hair, kinda not happy with the dark. think he answers to the name of Sire?"
"Fucking bitch..." he muttered.
"What, she didn't tell you? Not a word when you were alone in Sunnydale, all chipped up and no place to go? Not even when she was coming onto you right about... oh, say here?" She knocked on the wall behind her for emphasis.
"How'd you know about that?" he demanded.
"Funny you'd ask that." She smirked. She could hear his footsteps echo behind hers as she slipped out the exit.
He remembered now, albeit vaguely.
He remembered an alley, a conversation, blowing off the Watcher and the teenager without so much as a gasp.
Someone else trying to kill Buffy?
You don't fucking say.
He figured she'd be a decent person to hang out with in this hellhole.
He never thought she'd be such a bitch.
"Where do you get off like this?" he demanded.
"Typically in my room, but if you're really good, I'll let you go ahead right here," she said without pausing.
He was really beginning to hate her.
"So you're a Slayer," he said casually.
"The Chosen," she agreed, unable to keep the pride out of her voice.
"No, Buffy's the Chosen. You're a mistake."
"And you're impotent," she reminded him.
"I've eaten two of your kind. I had more power than you've even dreamed of." He smiled, perversely proud of himself.
Not perversely. This was how he was supposed to be.
Go, evil. Grr.
"But you've never had her. So what does it really matter, anyway?" She flounced off, disappearing into the mean streets of Sunnydale.
Despite himself, he hurried to catch up.
They had walked almost two blocks before she spoke. She knew he'd been behind her the entire time, so she hadn't bothered to turn and check on him or measure his progress. He would follow her.
They always did.
They were somehow in the middle of a graveyard, which in any other town might have been ironic, a vampire in a graveyard and all, but here was merely playing the odds. "Where do you live?" she demanded.
"Why, so you can come and stake me tomorrow morning? Thanks, but I'll pass."
She turned towards him, frustrated. "Where else are we going to go?"
"Why are we going anywhere?"
"Why not? You followed me this far."
"You think I'm that bloody easy to manipulate?"
"No, I know you're that easy to manipulate. Every time I even say Buffy's name, those cheap pants get just a little bit tighter."
"They aren't cheap. They're real sodding Levi originals."
"Bullshit. They're cheap imitation jeans that you can only wear because you hide them under that fucking coat. Who'd you steal that from?"
"Another of your kind. Maybe you'll be next."
She laughed hollowly. "I don't have anything of value to steal, and anything that I do have looks better on me."
"I somehow doubt that."
"Anything you have would probably look better on me too."
"It's too bad I don't have a gag, then. Maybe you'd shut up for a minute."
She examined him for a minute and then leaned back against a headstone. "No, I think that would look better on you."
If this had been even two years earlier, the whole Buffy obsession would be over.
This girl had everything Buffy had and then some.
More than that, she was willing to share some of that with him.
He wasn't quite sure how they'd gone from fighting in the graveyard to her wearing nothing but a black bra and leather pants while standing over him in a mausoleum somewhere between his place and the Bronze, most of his clothing tossed haphazardly over a coffin behind them, his hands tied to coat hooks on the wall with the remainder.
But he wasn't complaining.
It was a lot like dating Dru, except that this girl wasn't quite as insane.
Or, more accurately, she was, but in a way that he understood.
Dru would have liked this Slayer.
She would have kept her as a pet.
Watching the girl now, though, feeling her breath as it trailed down from the side of his face to his neck to his upper chest, he was wondering if she or Dru would have been in charge of that relationship.
Her lips brushed across his nipples, and he arched away from the stone wall.
"Fuck," he breathed.
She wasn't the Slayer he wanted.
But she'd do for now.
She had expected him to be cold.
She had expected his body to feel like ice, like he was a popsicle and she was about to commit some horribly perverse act like the one she'd simulated with a Creamsicle that had made Buffy double-take and squeal.
She expected her tongue to freeze to his chest like the child in the Christmas movie.
If she'd thought about it, she would have realized he would feel the same way they felt when she fought them.
But sex and fighting, while damn similar, played on different parts of her intellect, and every time her tongue ran across skin she thought of plastic rather than lampposts.
Her tongue trailed down to his waist, and then she pulled back.
"Having fun yet?" she breathed.
He moaned, but didn't answer.
"Okay," she smirked. "We can leave you like this. You already got more from me than you ever will from Buffy."
He sputtered. "That's a bloody lie, and you know it!"
"She doesn't like you. She never has. And if you don't play nice, I have no problem leaving you here for her to find and stake."
"You're bluffing. You want this just as much as I do."
"So you're admitting you want this?"
He shrugged. "Passes the time."
"You're going to have to do better than that." She smiled and moved away. Her hand stretched forward, just barely brushing across first his shoulders, then his arms, and finally a hair away from his crotch. Then she moved farther back.
His reaction didn't take long. He moaned "Slayer." And then, a moment later, "More."
Close enough.
She moved forward again, allowing her chest to press into his, and kissed him roughly.
"And they say blondes have more fun," she whispered. "What's your opinion on the matter?"
He was answering physically more than he would have liked. But at least he was getting some, and it was from someone who, for all intents and purposes, was a hell of a lot like Buffy.
Until she said that, he didn't even remember that she wasn't.
"She would never do this to you," she whispered. "She would never stand here, watching you stand there you buck naked, waiting for the big finish to peel off her pants and slide you into her."
"Why do you think she wouldn't go for me? How do you know she doesn't now?"
"She wouldn't even let you into her house."
"I've been invited into her house for a hell of a lot more than you have."
"You might have been invited, but are you still allowed in?"
He glowered, and chose to tactfully avoid the question. "I'll have you know, she invited me to Thanksgiving Dinner."
"I celebrated Christmas with her, so I guess we're even."
Then she dropped to her knees and otherwise occupied her mouth.
He tried to extend his body to thrust towards her, but he could barely move.
She had clearly had practice.
She was deep-throating him, slow and steady and desperate and fast all at once, and holy god this was better than it ever had been with Harmony.
He kept his eyes focused across the room at the wall of the crypt.
If he didn't look down, it was almost like Buffy.
She sucked harder, harder. She could let her mind wander just enough, could let herself forget the temperature and the name and just focus on another fucking night with another fucking cock that might as well have been disentangled from a male.
Come to think of it, he was an awful lot like a quality sex toy: plastic-feeling, longer and thicker than normal, and the added bonus of fairly normal reactions and sensations.
Even the taste was normal.
She'd expected him to taste like decay.
He was just like a normal guy.
That was bad enough.
At least he lasted longer than most guys.
Unlike most girls, she had no problem giving head. It was something to do, something that was reciprocated as often as not, something that she had developed a skill at.
Her watcher had taught her to practice anything at which she excelled to become better at it.
So she did.
She ran her tongue up and down his shaft, squeezing and relaxing different muscles for him.
He'd never even dreamed of a blow job this good, she was certain.
Of course he hadn't. He'd never had Faith.
He tensed, and she increased her speed.
He came, and she swallowed.
Buffy would never have swallowed.
Would she?
She eased away from him, and he finally forced himself to look at her.
She was pretty. Conventional, slut-bomb pretty.
His lips quirked up into some semblance of a smile, and he gestured helpfully towards her.
"What?" she asked, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.
"You planning on staying dressed, or you going to take some of that off?"
"I'm not fucking in a cemetery."
"It's a mausoleum."
"Where do you live?"
"In a mausoleum."
"Fine. We're going to my place. You still chipped?"
"What?"
"Are you," she explained with a smirk, "still, neutered?"
He quivered with fury. "I'll have you know that I-"
"Oh, relax. I know you've still got your balls. I got up close and personal with them already." She rolled her eyes. "You're coming to my place."
"What?"
"You can't bite. You can't fight back. You got yours, now I'll get mine. You can come to the motel."
"A motel? Did I miss the part where I'm a sodding English professor and you're an eager, innocent student coming in for extra help?"
"I think I missed that part too," she said. "I don't role-play. But I don't fuck on stone either."
"You just give head there."
"Exactly." She laughed. "I can leave you here, if you'd prefer, but I'm going home."
He sighed, and gestured for her to untie him.
Bloody bitch. Just like all women, really.
All women but Buffy.
He wasn't sure whether he wanted her to be more like Buffy, or Buffy to be more like her.
At least she was untying him, though. Better than Buffy and her friends finding him there.
His hands fell down from their prisons, sore and limp. She tossed him his pants and waited by the entrance. She held the shirt in her arms.
It had been one hell of a night.
-
She was on top.
She informed him that this was her house, and as such, she got to choose her position. He didn't argue.
It was too easy.
She rode him slowly and steadily, drawing out each sensation by rocking back and forth.
He stared up at her, squinting under the harsh fluorescent light. She would have encouraged him to participate as more than a human dildo, but she wasn't in the mood for serious conversation. He was over 100 years old; if he didn't know what he should be licking, sucking, or fondling, he wasn't going to learn anytime soon.
"Did Angel ever do this to you?" she asked, almost conversationally.
"What?" He stopped thrusting up to meet her, and reached out to grab her waist and hold her still. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Did he ever fuck you?" she asked, drawing out the words. "You ever lie down on a bed and just wait for your sire to come and take you like a little girl?"
"Have you considered seeing a psychiatrist about your fascination with ass rape?" he drawled.
She squirmed to get friction where she could, but his hands held her tightly. She glared openly at him. "I'm not talking about ass rape, dipshit. What, you never got a little play in your little vampire crypt thing? I thought all vampires are bisexual."
"Someone should possibly be reading the Watcher Diaries a little more, and Interview with a Vampire a little less," he mocked.
Annoyed, she reached down and very calmly pulled his arms off of her waist, before transferring one to her right hand and holding his arms together above his head. "Fuck you. I was just asking."
"He was my sire. That's all. I wanted to fight with him- wanted to fight him. I didn't want to do him. That's like me asking you if you're trying to get into Buffy's pants."
The look on her face only lasted for a second. But it was enough.
He smiled. For a second it all made sense.
She must have known he saw. He could see it in her eyes: wild panic, followed quickly by a mask of wild abandon. She slammed his arms backwards and they hit the bed board. She didn't even blink at the cracking sound accompanying it.
If he didn't know that it would heal fairly quickly, he would have been pissed off.
She rode quicker now, and her own finger found her way to the juncture between them. She rubbed at her clit, and occasionally her nail traced along his cock, just enough that he could feel it.
She could have been a prostitute.
Well, could have if she were as interested in dick as she proclaimed.
"I can't believe I bought it," he said, the smile on his face refusing to die. "All your talk about how much you enjoy giving head, and it turns out you like to do your eating out."
"You little fuck." She reached out towards the dresser. He could tell what she was stretching for, and slammed his injured arm out, knocking the stake to the ground. "You stupid little fuck!"
"What's the problem? You can't deal with the fact that I'm not Buffy?"
He smiled.
At least he wasn't the only one.
- She was getting frantic.
Her thrusts became quick and uneven, the payoff virtually nonexistent for either of them. Her brain ran faster than her body, her legs squeezing his sides so hard that despite his lack of need for air, he gasped.
She didn't care.
This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.
Not that there was a "supposed to" in sex; that was kind of the whole point. The only supposed to was orgasms, preferably multiple, preferably at once.
But in her rules of sex, there was one law written in invisible ink that was bigger and more powerful than any of the others: she was in control.
They didn't know her name, her age, who she really was. No one did. And that was what had to happen.
Sex could be about nudity.
Sex wasn't about being naked.
There was something carnal about the sex.
Sure, all sex was carnal, animal lust, all that. He knew that. He knew from the primal side of sex; Dru didn't purr and growl just because she liked the sounds her throat could make.
But this went beyond that.
Neither of them was submissive, nor were they fighting for power; they rolled, over and over, across the bed, trading the dominant role fluidly. The sex was wordless, violent, peaceful. It was an escape from everything he'd needed to escape.
He wasn't thinking about Buffy anymore.
He wasn't thinking about anything.
His body didn't fit perfectly with hers. Their sizes weren't equal, their weight uncentered. Rather than a detriment, it worked as impetus; each thrust aimed them deeper into the perfect ratio, and although they found themselves still just as incompatible as before, he heard her moan and occasionally even heard himself growl low.
It wasn't the best sex he'd ever had. That had gone on for days, somewhere in the middle of Europe in a city he could no longer name. That had had every type of kink he could identify, and a few more that only Dru could have come up with.
Miss Edith had watched.
But it was powerful- more so than his masturbatory fantasies about Buffy or his mindless romps with Harmony- and he was enjoying himself, despite the lack of blood play that had previously been his raison d'etre.
She moved suddenly, rising back on top, raising her body a few inches and then plunging down. He came with a gasp, feeling her on him and around him and generally there.
He sagged slightly, a normal response that unfortunately knocked Faith off her position on him.
She slammed against the chair next to her bed.
When he looked, she was lying below a pretty blonde.
It took him a moment to realize she was made of plastic.
She looked up, bruised from the fall. They'd fade soon, but right now that didn't matter. What mattered was that that jackass had knocked her off the bed.
She geared herself, readying the invectives she fully planned to hurl at him, when he spoke.
"I had one, too."
"One what?" she asked. Her train of thought had been thrown.
He gestured towards the mannequin. She shrugged. "So... you rob clothing stores a lot, or just for special occasions?"
He laughed. His voice was low and deep and rich, and so condescending that the euphony grated on her last nerve. "You aren't going to try to tell me you didn't try to make it look like Buffy?"
"Fuck you, I didn't. She was just there."
"I don't see why you think you're fooling anyone."
"I don't see why you're still here." Still under the mannequin, she stretched around to find the stake, to find the way to end the Father Superior act before she went insane.
He was out of bed now, was standing on the stake. He leaned over to pick it up, and his hand brushed against hers. He looked straight into her eyes. She glared fiercely, but he was just smiling.
"It happens to all of us, pet," he said calmly. "We're all lust's bitches, whether we choose to accept it or not."
-
He pulled the mannequin off her, and although he offered an arm, she stumbled to her feet without his help. Her pride was already bruised, and clearly, gallant gestures were useless when dealing with that.
Instead he stared at the mannequin. She was similar to the one he had had, but his hadn't seen nearly this much action. Her blonde hair was styled differently than the one in the crypt had been; it was set the way Buffy's had been about a year ago. Her lips were a dark purple-red, her eyes lined with a thin coat of black mascara.
She wore a leather jacket, which he pulled off of her and handed to Faith. She accepted it without looking at him and shrugged it on. After a moment's hesitation, she reached for her pants and pulled those on too.
"Going commando, eh?" he asked. He'd picked up the term from one of the kids constantly in Giles's house, and it amused him on a variety of levels, not the least of which being that he could stare at her naked thigh without recourse as he said it.
"Please leave." Her voice shook.
"I didn't do anything that wrong," he said calmly. "I can't go now."
"Why not?"
"Look out the window." He pointed. The hints of dawn were just starting to approach.
"I don't care. Please."
"I get enough crap at night. Day is for sleeping."
"This is my room. I'm asking nicely. Please. I- I have to get back."
"You have nowhere to go back to," he pointed out.
"I'll go back. To the jail. I don't care. I can't deal with this. I just... I can't."
"There's nothing for you to deal with. Just let me spend the day. And pull down the bloody shade.
"She reached for the shade and lowered it, but refused to make eye contact with him.
He released a sigh he hadn't realized he'd been unnecessarily holding.
He'd made it another night.