FIC: Shots (BtVS/AtS, Buffy Summers/Nina Ash, PG-13)
TITLE: Shots
RATING: PG-13
FANDOMS: BtVS/AtS
PAIRING: Buffy Summers/Nina Ash
SUMMARY: "So," she says, "what goes good with the end of the world?"
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Set post-NFA. Written for the femslash_minis Nina Ash round for aaronlisa who requested a post-apocalypse setting, getting drunk, and kissing.
Buffy’s shoulder is dislocated, and it twists uncomfortably beneath her leather jacket. She presses the palm of her hand against Nina’s bare shoulder, uses the leverage of Nina’s lean body to pop the joint back into place. Buffy notices she’s left a cocoa-colored smudge on Nina’s spaghetti strap; she wipes her palms on her black jeans. No telling whose blood it is.
Buffy flexes her knuckles; her hands hurt. She tugs at a strand of her brassy, overdyed hair, frowns at her split ends.
“So,” she says, “what goes good with the end of the world?”
Nina grins, showing her canines. “Shots,” she says.
***
There’s a basement bar near Griffith Park that has survived the fire. The door is half-melted into its frame, and Buffy thinks, not for the first time, Fucking dragons. She pulls it off the hinges, and they descend into the dark, dingy place, boots scuffing over the sooty stairs. There is soot fucking everywhere. It chokes the skies, creating a vampire-friendly perpetual dusk; Buffy finds it in her hair, on her clothes, under her fingernails.
Nina hops over the bar, the well lights still on. She places her palms on the thickly lacquered bar top, leaning into it, the muscles in her arms visible beneath her skin, and her unbound breasts hanging attractively beneath the thin cotton of her tank top. Nina raises an eyebrow, puffing her lips into an attractive pout, her sharp eyes on Buffy like a hand around her neck.
“What’ll you have?” she asks.
Buffy presses her lips together, running her dry tongue against the backs of her front teeth. She tries not to stare at Nina’s nipples, at the curves of her breasts beneath the tight top. She takes a deep breath, drops her crossbow to the bar top with a thud. She flexes her fingers.
“I thought the lady recommended shots,” she says.
Nina smiles. “The lady did.”
Nina places a line of six shot glasses on the bar. With complete disregard for measurement or temperance, she fills the glasses until tequila overflows, running down the sides. Buffy can smell it, the tequila-a sharp, pure smell, like an element-and the glass is slippery beneath her fingers as she picks it up.
“You’re not going to do it properly?” Nina asks, “limes, salt, the whole shebang?”
Buffy cranes her neck to look behind the bar, frowns. “Are there limes?”
Nina’s mouth twists as she fumbles in the well. “Okay, maybe not.” She studies Buffy’s face for a moment. “Did you do a lot of partying as Teenage Buffy?”
“Non sequitur much?”
Nina grins her wolf grin again. “There’s totally a sequitur. What I mean is-so we don’t have limes. But we have salt, and we have-listen.” She licks the ticklish spot between her thumb and forefinger, sprinkles it with salt. “Salt,” she says, and licks the salt off her hand. Buffy follows the slow slide of Nina’s tongue with her eyes, her cheeks heating. “Tequila,” Nina says, and shoots the tequila, flinching as it burns her sinuses. “Kiss,” she says, and leans over the bar, standing on her tiptoes to press her lips to Buffy’s.
Buffy doesn’t like the way alcohol tastes, but she likes the way Nina tastes. Her tongue slides past Nina’s tequila-slick lips into her mouth, tasting her, a slow and expert kiss. Nina nips gently at the tip of Buffy’s tongue, and Buffy thinks about something Nina said to her: since hell came to LA, she feels the wolf all the time, barely beneath the surface. Buffy wonders how hungry for her Nina is, and then Nina’s hands are up under Buffy’s jacket, her nails scratching down her spine, and Buffy knows the answer: Nina starves for her the way she starves for Nina.
They taste copper, and Buffy closes her eyes. In her mind’s eye, she sees the shadowed world going on above them. She sees Nina throw back her head and howl.