Just Like Honey
Faith has been to a lot of places in her life -- and even more now that Sunnydale is a smoking crater in the ground without a Hellmouth -- but Tokyo is new and unlike anywhere she's been. It's light and noise and alienation crowded around her until her skin starts to crawl and she's looking around for any tourist-looking person she can see just because it's somehow less alien that way.
Some days, she feels like their daughter, and that's even more alien than the pachinko parlors and all the kids playing Dance Dance Revolution and all that other Bemani crap. At least, the Bemani crap, Andrew explained to her during a flight from London to Barcelona and she kind of gets it. It's kind of stupid, and the music is too fake for a girl like Faith, who likes her dance music with an actual edge. At the same time, they're dancing, they're winning, they're feeling their own beat...and she gets that on a deep, deep level that she can't express.
"There's too many colors all the time," she said to them in the car this morning, leaning her head against Lilah's shoulder. The chauffeur probably thought they were family. Not mom, dad, and daughter probably. More like kid sister visiting big sister and her proper British husband. "How can you live here?"
Lilah smiled at Faith, stroking her hair. "We lived in Los Angeles for all those years," she pointed out. "Can't be worse than that, babe."
Faith guesses not, but Tokyo is still overwhelming to Slayer senses. The constant buzz of a language she doesn't understand, the neon signs in motion, the sheer population density. The smells of the restaurants are occasionally gross...too much fish, prepared in ways that Faith doesn't think fish should be prepared. Ever. Iron Chef has taught Faith that the Japanese will eat anything; Tokyo seems to verify the fact. Fortunately, McDonald's and beer taste the same anywhere, and Wesley instinctively knows what Faith won't like.
Thoughts that leave Faith breathless: Wesley (Wesley!) and Lilah told Angel to fuck off and die and went to Tokyo to live their own very successful life away from him and his mindwipe spell. They're thinking of having children here, getting married, living as normally as one man and the girlfriend he almost permanently forgot before he rescued her from Hell can. Wesley already spoke Japanese; Lilah had a smattering of business Japanese under her belt, and she's a fast learner. Lilah can convert dollars to yen and vice versa with no more effort than taking off a jacket or telling Faith that it's going to rain, so bring an umbrella.
These are all beyond Faith in Japan, and it galls her, but she's glad Wes and Lilah are there to watch out for her.
They are better and worse than having an older brother and sister; better because Faith isn't sure anyone related to her by blood can be anything other than a drunk bastard abuser, and worse because if they were blood, she wouldn't want to be part of this strange and groovy love thing they have going on. But she does. Ever since it went sour with Robin, Faith's been looking for someone to belong to.
She doesn't think it'll ever be anyone normal, so why not go for high-class and sexy?
The hotel suite they reserved for the week is wicked posh. It's a suite at the Park Hyatt, and they're far enough up to see Mount Fuji. Wesley pointed it out the minute they opened the door; Faith smiled and tried to be impressed. It speaks very loudly to Wesley's desire to prove that he's just as successful as he can be. Faith suspects that he misses Angel; not enough to give Lilah up, but if Angel were to call, Wesley would pick up and talk to him.
Lilah chose the hotel because it was the hotel in some movie they both liked, some movie with Bill Murray they thought Faith would have seen. She hadn't, because that had been during the time Faith was touring Europe for the first time and didn't give a fuck about movies because she had Robin and a new world to see. But Wesley and Lilah are impressed with the joint, and Faith thinks that's cute and sweet and kind of sad, because they'll sometimes do bits from the movie in the hotel bar and Faith wants to make them stop before they embarrass themselves.
Faith is lost in Tokyo. Faith is lost everywhere, and she is most lost in a world where Wesley is in love with someone who's not Angel and not her and not death, where the evilest woman in the world is her friend and takes her shopping and brushes her hair and tells her cool places to go without them. This is not how it's supposed to be. People who hate Angel are supposed to be miserable, and they're not. Wesley is lonely for Angel, but he has Gunn in LA, clients who rely on him, a few expatriate friends, and someone who loves him enough to make up for Angel's loss.
Faith wants to be found like Wesley's been found. When she steps into the elevator after a relatively short night dancing in clubs with cool and funky music that has forced her to revise her opinion of Japanese pop and techno, she wishes there was someone waiting for her. Anywhere. In the hotel room, in Tokyo, in LA. But there's not, and she's just going to have to deal with it.
When she opens the door to the suite, she's their daughter again. It's almost like being thirteen and walking in on Mom and Dad. Lilah is wearing a white silk blouse over a pair of black lace panties and she's got her arms and lips wrapped around Wesley, and he's got one hand in those panties and the other in her hair. Neither of them notices Faith at first.
"Dude," she says, backing away a little. "Um...I'm sorry. I'll just, um...go to the bar. Sorry."
It isn't until about a minute later that Faith realizes she hasn't gone anywhere, and that she is, in fact, sitting on the couch and gawking at them. Awkwardness. So fucking awkward that she can't breathe, that she wants them, and that she wants what they have so badly. She wants to dive into their thing, to be it, to feel it.
Lilah sits down next to Faith on the couch about minute two. "Are you okay?" she asks, pulling that big sister act that Faith kinda hates. "You've been a little weird today."
"I'm fine," Faith lies, trying to make her eyes not notice the way Lilah's lips are swollen, the dilated pupils, the slight flush in her cheeks. She's gonna go to the bar and pick up anything that moves. Fuck this noise. Fuck it so hard that it screams. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You're okay?" Lilah asks, a smile ghosting across her lips. Her hand reaches out and rests on Faith's cheeks. "Did you know that you're blushing?"
"Fuck you!" Faith says, disbelieving. "I'm not fucking blushing."
"Faith," Wesley says in his way that's supposed to make her feel better. It's not helping. He looks ashamed, but also kind of amused. "Actually..."
So she's blushing. What the hell? It's embarrassing to get caught crushing on someone else's relationship like this. She might feel like a kid, but she's not. Never was. And this is wrong, so wrong, and at the same time, her body wants to melt into the sofa if she can just watch...
"Well," and Faith can't breathe, because Lilah's hand is cupping her face and it feels so good, the way they're both looking at her. "Well, shit. You know? Looking at you two and thinking, God, I want that...it's kind of...it's really..."
Lilah's hand slides down Faith's neck and it's warm and a little bit professional in its assessment of the situation. "It's completely understandable," she says, the tip of her tongue flicking out and wetting her upper lip. Faith shivers and swallows. Fucking A, that's sexy.
"So if I did this," and Faith leans forward, far enough to brush her mouth against Lilah's and discover that Lilah's lips taste like Wesley's aftershave and lipstick and sake and even a little still like death, to feel someone else's tongue tangle against hers for the first time in four months and moan as someone else's hand pinched her nipple, "You'd understand? I'm not trying to break up the one true love or anything."
The dazed and glazed look in Lilah's eyes tells Faith everything. "Oh, I'd understand," she manages to say. "As long as Wes over there doesn't say anything stupid like it's every man's fantasy come true, I think everything's okay."
Lilah and Faith look up at Wesley, who gulps very slowly and tries not to look deeply smug or overly pervy. He's not doing a great job, but he is trying.
"As long as you're all right with it," he says to Lilah, who smiles and winks at him. "I think I don't have any objections."
"That's shocking. Really," Lilah says dryly right before she pulls Faith onto her lap and tears her shirt in half. "Did you know I've always wanted to fuck you? There's always been something about you, Faith."
She punctuates 'something' by licking all the way up Faith's neck in one long, horny motion and Faith gasps and pulls at that white silk shirt. Behind them, Wesley takes a quick breath to cover his murmured, "bloody hell" and somehow, that just makes Faith hotter. They want her, probably for totally different reasons, but they're going to fuck her brains out together and this Faith wants very, very much.
Wesley's hand on her shoulder now, helping them up, and Faith has Wes on the right and Lilah on the left holding her up and it's fucking sweet. But before they head for the enormous king-sized bed in the suite and paradise above the Tokyo skyline, Wes pauses to look out at the city.
"Look at that," he says, mostly to Lilah. "It's..."
Lilah smiles at him fondly, and on another day, it would kill Faith to see that it's not about her at a time like this, but today she wants so much to be part of something like these two that she can deal. Today she can pretend just a little, because she won't be lonely. Also because it will be really, really fucking good sex.
"I know," she says, smiling at him while she rubs Faith's back. "Shall we?"
His eyes light up just for her. "We shall."
And Faith feels better just to be part of it. Really.