BtVS - Here We Go Again - R (Buffy/Faith)
Title: Here We Go Again
Author: dreamincolor
Fandom: BtVS
Pairing: Buffy/Faith
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: Hard R
Warnings/Spoilers: *f/f sex, dubcon*
Word Count: 3697
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Beta'd by: the fantastic deird1, title is also via her. Mistakes are still mine.
A/N: Written for Aaronlisa for Round 86 (tropes and cliques) of femslash_minis. She wanted the Groundhog Day trope, with Buffy trying to convince Faith not to join the Mayor but failing each time. I hope this fits the bill. Sorry it’s so late!
The boat docks were where Buffy sought out Faith, a cement world composed almost entirely of gray. How appropriate.
Black water lapped up against the side of ships and hanging hooks from cranes creaked. Dim, flickering lamplight and a moon hanging slender in the sky lit Buffy’s path as she searched out the only other great predator Sunnydale had to offer, the only other slayer in the world.
“You don’t give up, do you?”
The familiar voice rung out from a parked boat above - and even with a man’s murder on the line, Faith still had the audacity to smile. She was all dark makeup and darker eyes, and leather pants that fit her body like a glove.
Buffy frowned up at her. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re the one who found me, B.” Faith’s lips twitched, quirked, and she flipped over the boat’s edge and onto the dock, falling the length of a story like it were only a step. She landed on her feet like a cat. “Why don’t you explain what you’re doing here. Decide to take up sailing?”
“Leaving town won’t help,” Buffy said. “You can’t run from this.”
Boots clicked and leather pants caught the light as Faith moved, sauntering nearer.
“B, I don’t think you’re wrapping your head around this.” Faith leered, raised her hands emphatically and pressed in closer than she should, forcing her counterpart to take a step back. “I can do anything I want-“
Buffy cut her off by grabbing her hands.
“We’re your friends, Faith.” Buffy laced their fingers and squeezed, breathed out sincerity. “We can help you.”
Their eyes linked for a moment, locked on and held, and brown eyes looked down at her with something softening, something genuine, something real -
Then Faith ripped away her fingers and laughed.
“Gee,” she barked “best friends I ever had.”
Faith glowered down at Buffy, with a smile that absolutely did not meet her eyes. “You tried to rat me out, B, and Xander only wants to comfort me with his dick.” Faith shoved past her, shoulders bumping. “The rest of the scoobies couldn’t give two shits what happens to me. I’m not important Buff, I’m not you.”
There was more than a little sentiment behind that last part.
Buffy trotted after her. “You tried to pin a murder on me, Faith, but” Buffy lost some of the stability to her voice temporarily, stumbled, and then summoned it again, setting her jaw “I forgive-“
“Me?” Faith spun in place, stopping sharply and causing Buffy to bounce off of her. “You forgive me?”
Faith’s lips contorted in a sudden, disgusted sneer that Buffy was only inches away from, and the site caused her to move carefully back. “Remember that saying, a friend will help you hide,” Faith’s finger pressed into Buffy’s chest accusatorily, jabbing at her heart as Faith kept pace with her backwards motions “a good friend will help you hide the body?”
Buffy shook her head, “Faith-“
“Well, you failed on both counts, B.” Faith looked down at her with a rawness that made Buffy’s back stiffen and something crawl under her skin, and she was keenly aware of the other woman’s breath on her lips, a growl. “I should be forgiving you for being such a shit friend.”
Buffy looked down at her wrist, at her watch. It was leather-banded and crystal-faced, too nice really for Faith to have gotten legally, and far too nice for an occasion-less gift. Too nice, also, for slaying purposes - but she’d managed to keep it in tact every night just the same.
She loved that stupid thing.
It had a tiny compass in the upper corner and the time blinked out in a gentle blue light. Her wrist felt oddly exposed as she pulled it off, leaving inches of skin naked in the night air that hadn’t been bare in weeks.
Frowning, she pressed the watch firmly into Faith’s hands. Whether it was a sentimental don’t-forget-me or an angry take-it-back, she still didn’t know.
Faith’s brow twitched, expression faltered, and her heavy breathing caught.
Then Faith threw the watch straight into the ground.
Bits of glass glittered in the moonlight, then crunched under Faith’s foot as she stomped down. When steel-toed boots pulled back the broken watch was no longer blinking, the time frozen at 10:52.
Faith’s lip twitched. “Well fuck you, too.”
Buffy’s last helpless thought as she saw Faith walking away was: No. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Buffy had to help her, stop her, save her.
She just had to.
From somewhere deep inside herself, the universe caught, twisted, and pulled.
Buffy blinked, and suddenly stood again at the docks, facing in an entirely different direction, in a completely different place. Faith was nowhere to be seen, the boat she had been standing by was gone, and Buffy looked down to find her watch still intact and blinking.
…What?
Her watch read 10:22 - because, again, no longer broken - and looking around she was pretty sure she was about a mile and a half south of where she had been, in the area she’d been exploring approximately thirty minutes ago.
Let the chorus say… huh?
It was as if time had folded, rewound, or somehow bent itself back- because Buffy stood exactly where she had stood earlier, searching for Faith among empty ships and scattered cargo.
But what - how -
No, Buffy told herself, no.
She’d messed up reasoning with Faith last time, and for whatever reason she’d been given a second chance.
Who was she to argue with that?
She sprinted all the way to where Faith was - leather clad and shadow bathed, in the dark waiting - and found her glowering down at Buffy once again from port side, like she’d gotten the drop on her.
“You don’t give up, do you?”
It was a weird echo, like a question lost in time, and Buffy resisted the urge to tell her just how true that was.
Instead, she breathed. “Faith, you killed a man.”
Faith’s eye twitched.
“But I’m sorry.”
It didn’t matter whose hand the stake had been in. They were a pair, a team, a duo - they had been in this together.
“We killed a man, Faith, on accident, and we should have faced the music that way. Together.”
They would have, Buffy’s brain whispered. If only Faith would have faced the music at all.
Obnoxiously, Faith started to clap.
“What a good little speech,” Faith sneered. “Is this the kind of crap you use to rally the troops?”
“Faith, I mean that-“
“You sicced the watcher brigade on me,” Faith snarled. It was accusatory, angry, and accompanied by the falling of Faith’s footsteps as she moved down the gangplank. “You know they chained me up in a fucking rape van? No windows, no light - just me and Wes and the muscle, heading off to hop on over the pond.”
Buffy’s mouth fell open. “But I didn’t send them-”
“What do they even call an English lockup? Doesn’t matter, they probably have some special slayer jail, some high security shit for head cases like me; the kind of thing you can’t ever get out of, where you never see the light of day-”
“Faith, listen to me. It was an accident that they even knew-“
“Everything is an accident with you, B.” Faith’s eyes were wide and her voice was rasped, muscles twitchy and tense, like an animal up against a wall. “Maybe you should take responsibility for your actions, Buffy, and live up to being a rat.”
Faith turned on her heel.
“I’m a killer,” Faith said over her shoulder, hoarsely. “And I’m living up to that.”
Buffy looked down at her watch as Faith walked away.
At 10:52, time jumped.
The third time Buffy found herself standing outside at 10:22, a mile and a half south of where she had been, she laid down right where she stood, on the dirty old dock, and sighed.
The water moved down beneath her, visible through the cracks, and she watched it rippling in the dark.
She had heard of things like this happening before, on the Hellmouth - heck she’d even seen it. The invisible girl in Sunnydale High who had been ignored to the point of disappearance, the abused boy in a coma who brought his nightmare down on the whole town; emotional needs that were so strong they created mystical upwellings, magical manifestations of feelings and desires.
These mystical upwellings, she thought, channeling her inner Giles, seem to trap people in them until they put those feelings to rest. They can trap people anywhere, really, even at a point in time.
It made a lot of sense, in an annoying sort of way.
This emotional need was obvious. Buffy needed Faith to come with her - she had to help her, to stop her from doing something she would regret - and time would keep resetting until she figured out how to do just that.
She felt abruptly bolstered and empowered.
Buffy could do this, she absolutely could, especially if she got more than one try. Suddenly, time was on her side.
Buffy sat up, hugged her knees to her chest, and thought hard about what made Faith tick.
The fourth time Buffy found herself standing at 10:22 she ran, down the dock and up the gangplank and around the back of the ship, her heart in her throat the whole time.
If she was reading this right, she only had half an hour from when time jumped, and she was going to need every second.
She was only trying this once.
Buffy found Faith leaning over the edge of the ship, thinking, brows knit together and teeth worrying her bottom lip. She looked softer, somehow, without that fake smile plastered all over her face, and her hair fell in wild waves around her face. It was heartbreaking, in a way Buffy hadn’t expected - to see Faith standing there looking so lost.
Buffy’s voice left her in a quiet breath. “Hey.”
Faith snapped her head up and turned, jerked up her fists, and looked profoundly pissed at being caught off guard. Her lips parted and tightened, just starting to form into words-
Then Buffy kissed her.
Talking hadn’t worked, maybe this would.
There was a moment of frozen, spine tingling panic where Buffy was excessively glad that if this failed, if Faith slugged her for it or laughed in her face, then the moment would simply slip from existence and no one would ever be the wiser; because Faith had never actually mentioned being into women, or more importantly being into her, but Buffy just had this feeling that maybe sometimes she looked a little too long, or touched a little too much... That just maybe she…
Slowly, Faith started to move.
A hand slid up the curve of Buffy’s neck, into her hair, and little shoots of electricity raced over Buffy’s scalp. Faith’s lips parted with a stilted breath and their mouths melded together and opened, Buffy tasted her, and suddenly Faith’s tongue was in her mouth.
Bingo.
Buffy was in the middle of congratulating herself when a rough hand moved up and under her shirt, over her stomach and over her bra, and Faith’s other hand found purchase on her ass - lifting her off of her feet and spinning the smaller slayer back in one quick motion, pinning her against the side of the ship.
Buffy’s legs tightened instinctively on Faith’s waist as she pulled back in surprise, one hand pushing them apart, forcing her back.
“Faith,“ Buffy gasped, deciding to take advantage of the situation before it took advantage of her “please, I need you to come back with me, I need you to understand-“
Faith’s lips crushed down over hers, silencing her, and something rumbled low in Faith’s chest like a growl.
Deft fingers with chipped black polish unbuttoned, tugged and worked open her fly, and slid in one fell swoop into Buffy’s pants. Questing fingers moved down low beneath panties, over bare and shaven skin, and fingertips dipped in and slickened at her entrance, then circled up a few inches higher where it counted. Faith’s fingertips mapped over Buffy’s most sensitive inches with a speed and single-mindedness that characterized everything she did, and when Faith hit the mark Buffy tried not to buck, groaning.
She had totally not bargained for this.
“Wait-”
It was half shock and half supplication, and something in it woke Faith up. The darker slayer stopped and pulled back just far enough for their eyes to meet, for their noses to touch, and Buffy could see her own lipstick on Faith. It was smeared and uneven and beautiful like broken things are, marking a connection that had happened disastrously late.
“B…”
A shaky breath hit on Buffy’s lips as Faith abstractly asked for permission; also disastrously late.
“Can I…?”
There was a frailty in Faith’s face, an honesty in parted lips and unguarded eyes that pulled at Buffy’s heart strings and made something in her choke.
Slowly, she started to nod.
“Yeah.” It was a whisper, one Buffy barely felt herself give.
Buffy wrapped her fingers up in Faith’s denim jacket, holding on for dear life. Her voice came out a second time, stronger than she felt.
“Yeah, Faith. You can.”
Faith inhaled through her teeth, leaned in for a rough kiss, and then shifted fingertips around with a quick twitch. Buffy let out a strangled cry as Faith thrust into her cold, burying three fingers to the hilt.
It hurt, more than a little, and Buffy’s head hit hard back against the wall behind her with a choking gasp. Faith curled inside of her, slender fingers pressing in deep and stretching just so, and rocked her hips forward as she bit at Buffy’s neck.
Buffy writhed at the ache - and the sudden building of something familiar to her, something warm and tingling and intending to burst -- as Faith held her up with just one hand and thrust into her like her life depended on it.
And suddenly Buffy understood, just a little, what was so fantastic about sleeping with a slayer, even if there was something really narcissistic about that.
Every time Faith slammed into her she arched, the knowing curve of fingertips inside and the slide of Faith’s thumb up and around, circling in just the right place, and every time Faith pulled back she breathed out a little at the loss. They were outside in a public place, both mostly dressed; but those things seemed neither here nor there because Buffy was focused, Buffy was on a mission -
Buffy was really, really into what Faith was doing with her hand.
She pawed at a breast through Faith’s shirt (surprise surprise, no bra) and reveled in the scrapping of teeth at her neck, her jaw, her earlobe. Faith’s breath was a warm exhale over her cheek and those fingers gave one more good twist, one last long curl, and Buffy was toppling over the edge - trembling and gasping for air as familiar hands brought her off in the dark.
The collar of Faith’s jacket ripped in her straining fingertips as her thighs clamped down hard around the other slayers hips, crushing a long breath out of her.
Buffy’s vision went blurry, white hot, and then came back into focus with a moan. She collapsed a little, her fleeting orgasm over far too quick in a way that left her feeling somehow empty. She found her head on Faith’s shoulder, nose tickled by loose brown hair.
Faith breathed against her, slowly.
Faith held Buffy tightly, fingers still buried deep inside her long after the moment was past, and her face tucked up closely into Buffy’s hair like a mirror image. Buffy was hesitant to move, to break the spell, but finally the ache between her legs forced her up and off, disentangling herself from Faith’s fingers with a shiver and a hitching breath. Her legs found shaky purchase on the ground.
“B…”
Faith’s voice sounded sadly like surrender, like a million things she couldn’t do, and when Buffy leaned in for a kiss Faith turned away with her eyes tight shut, breathing out a ragged choke.
“I can’t…”
No.
Buffy felt the fire rally inside her and set her jaw.
No.
This wasn't over.
Buffy dropped to her knees and tugged at Faith’s pants frantically, fighting with the tie before jerking them down and around Faith’s feet, abandoning any dreams of foreplay in her frantic need to stop the clock from rewinding.
Faith groaned, cussed, and went a little shuddery as Buffy trailed kisses wetly down her hips, the other slayer's hands half-heartedly pushing her away.
At the apex of Faith’s thighs Buffy buried her face, nose meeting neat dark curls and lips meeting slickened flesh.
It was different, it was wet, and it was unexpectedly difficult for Buffy to find her way around familiar anatomy with Faith’s legs so tightly closed. She fumbled for a beat, nails holding stubbornly on to lightly protesting hips, and kissed blindly.
Sticky fingertips curled around her chin and tilted her head up, paused her attempt, and forced her meet Faith’s eyes. They shared a long, lingering look of adoration several weeks too late before Faith’s eyes got wet and Buffy was allowed to bury her tongue again, Faith’s head rolling back with her eyes shut.
“Fuck,” Faith ran a hand through her hair, hips rolling. “Fuck.”
Faith’s hand fell onto Buffy’s head and muscled thighs parted several helpful inches. Faith guided Buffy’s lips to just the right spot, and she offered up a moan when Buffy moved her tongue - swirling and flicking, trying to remember all the things Angel had done that she really liked.
It was new territory but Buffy was a fast learner, and it wasn’t long before she knew she was getting it right.
Don’t go, Buffy wanted to beg, to pull back and say - but the fingers in her hair wouldn’t let her, so Buffy mouthed the plea instead a dozen times into slippery wet flesh and traced it out with her tongue. She mapped out her good intentions again and again until Faith’s knees started to buckle and everything tightened and trembled; until Faith started to shake.
She lost herself in the sound of Faith’s Staccato breaths and the tug of fingers in her hair, feeling nails at her scalp and the quiver of thighs.
Faith barked out Buffy’s name, ground down just a little, and Buffy knew she was there.
The clock blinked 10:52.
When Buffy woke up standing, without the taste of Faith on her tongue, she immediately teared up.
Because if she had started this moment over then even though they...Faith had still...
It wasn’t enough.
God damn it.
Buffy collapsed on the docks, furious.
Thirty minutes of angry introspection later, time rewound.
The next time Buffy woke up standing she went and found Faith, waited silently until Faith leapt over the side of the ship and marched towards her, and then punched that stupid grin right off her face.
Because nothing was working.
And nothing mattered.
Faith’s jaw pop loudly as she stumbled back, recoiled and turned, and a psychotic, hungry smile twisted her face as it snapped up to meet her.
“That’s my girl,” Faith breathed.
Then Faith struck back, hard, and Buffy’s head slammed back against something - into a packing crate or a hanging hook or something sharp and cornered - and everything swam a little.
“C’mon, B” Faith baited her, as Buffy picked herself back up off the ground “is that really all you’ve got?”
Buffy pulled back into position, circled and rounded like a boxer, even while her vision swirled. She tasted salt and pennies and spat out a little blood, and what she really hoped wasn’t a tooth.
Not that it would matter, stuck in this infernal loop.
Faith was never going to come with her, never ever ever, and her clock blinked 10:52.
Then- suddenly-something very different happened.
Buffy shoved Faith out from under a falling packing crate - still trying to save her, as if that ship hadn’t sailed - four vampires appeared out of nowhere, and Buffy felt her internal organs starting to crush down on one another as the immense weight of the crate meant for Faith pressed down on her instead.
And wasn’t that just this situation all over.
When Buffy finally did managed to wriggle free there was Mr. Trick, waiting with a friendly uppercut, and wrapping Buffy’s neck in something like a noose.
He choked her; slammed her into a crate, and then the ground.
There were angry tears on her cheeks by the time he pulled her up, holding her by her throat and staring into her soul with those golden, demon eyes.
“I hear once you’ve tasted a slayer,” the vampire hissed, gripping tight and leaning in towards her, licking his lips “you never wanna go back.”
That phrase felt strangely ironic considering where Buffy’s tongue had just been.
His teeth moved, came nearer and scraped against her throat; and as death loomed over Buffy she wondered if it would stop the loop, her dying.
Probably not.
Then there was a burst of dust, an inhuman scream, and Faith stood alone in front of her with a stake and an uncertain expression as the ashy remnants of Mr. Trick cleared.
Dark eyes looked at her expectantly, raw and uncertain, and Buffy looked at her watch.
Suddenly, she understood.
God, she understood.
“I tried,” Buffy whispered, leaning forward and brushing their lips together.
Faith murmured something, stiffened, and blinked.
The clock struck 10:54, and realization burned through Buffy like a fire.
“I tried, Faith, but I can’t save you.” She could taste a hint of the other slayer on her lips, now, and it helped her force a smile. “That’s what I had to know.”
Brown eyes looked back in bewilderment as Buffy held back a sob.
“I have to let you go.”
This time Buffy walked away, and time kept moving forward.