(Near) Death Experience : F/X
Title: (Near) Death Experience
Series: Birthday fics, jgracio
Pairing: Faith/Xander, kinda sorta
Rating: PG-13 for violence and sexuality
Setting: Season 3, during Consequences
Word Count: 1,636 words
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. All characters, places, and events are the property of the aforementioned and Twentieth Century Fox.
Summary: She wants to kill him. He doesn't know why, because they have a connection. Even if it's only skin.
It’s like that time someone broke his arm. Or maybe it’s like that time someone smashed his face in. Or maybe it’s like that time he saw a hyena and then his head got all fuzzy for a few days, like he wasn’t alive, like he wasn’t breathing, like he wasn’t seeing.
Hearing, yes. Feeling, yes. He hasn’t forgotten the way the pig tasted when he bit into it, and he hasn’t forgotten that, at the time, it had not been an unappealing sensation.
It’s like the time he almost did the nasty with a giant bug, which would have only inevitably led to decapitation-although on reflection, it was the copulation he feared, not the beheading. Losing his head couldn’t be all that slow. Just “oh, teeth,” and then gone.
She slides against him, and it reminds him of the last time she was sliding against him, which had been the first time someone had been sliding against him, unless you count that time that Buffy had been sliding against him to make Angel jealous, or that time Buffy had been sliding against him because magic had done the whammy on her brain, or that time Willow had been sliding against him for similar reasons, or those times Willow had been sliding against him for different reasons.
Cordelia had never been one for the sliding. The hand-holding, yeah, and the closet groping, yeah-huh. But it had always been a position of power for her, hadn’t it? She could, of course, stay in charge of her faculties much better than he could of his own, until it was her faculties that were doing the work, and getting into it was the only way to do it.
She’s heavier than she has any right to be, considering the fact that she’s not heavy at all. It shouldn’t be hard to pick her up and throw her off of him, especially considering that this isn’t what he came here to do. He came to talk, to use words from his mouth, but the words she’s making him say are the right ones.
Connection. Right, they have a connection, don’t they? But, you know, that’s just a precursor. He’s here because he wants to help her, no matter what Buffy says about the boys that Faith’s with, or the look Willow gave him as soon as he revealed that there was a connection.
He says it. “Connection.” Faith’s eyes get more dangerous, and he wonders what’s so scary about that word to make her hate him for saying it.
Well, does she hate him? He and Cordelia kind of hated each other once upon a time. They shouted at each other and insulted each other, and even though she had eventually gotten this weird combination of affection, respect, and utter disregard, he never would have seen that relationship coming.
Domineering. That’s something they shared, Faith and Cordelia. Only he can’t picture Cordelia straddling him and kissing him so hard it hurts. Well, he has imagined that, but only when she’s not there and he’s absolutely sure she has no way of reading his mind as he thinks about it.
Her face is cherubic-softer than Buffy’s. Buffy used to have hips and cheeks, but she’s lost weight over the past three years, with no real signs of it slowing down. Didn’t that bother her once? That she wasn’t quite as slim as she could be?
Faith might be a little heavier, with pronounced curves that Buffy never had, and he wonders whether it makes him a scumbag to be thinking about her curves while she’s straddling him and holy crap, this is not what he came here for.
He tries to deny it. Tries to remind her that this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing right now, because she killed someone, and she needs to accept responsibility for it. She killed someone and tried to make Buffy take the fall for it, and it’s not like that’s the kind of thing he can just forget, even if it’s not his place to forgive or forget or whatever.
But they have a connection. She tells him that they don’t, that it’s just skin, that he used her every bit as readily as she used him. That’s how she likes it, isn’t it? Want, take, have? And to be wanted, be taken, be-
They have a connection. He tells her as much.
It only makes her angrier, makes her more afraid, and he can’t help but wonder that it’s not him that she’s afraid of. He couldn’t scare anyone, to be honest, except Halloween pirates that have the gall to try to have their ways with his friends when they’re under the influence of nobility.
It makes her angry. And when she gets angry, she gets deadly. And when she gets deadly, people have a habit of getting dead.
Is that what’s going to happen here? He’s not sure when the line crosses from sexual to deadly, but her fingers are around his throat, and even though he’s trying to breathe, it’s just not happening.
He wants to tell her he’s sorry, but he’s not sure why that thought manages to break through the wall of Holy crap, I’m about to die. Maybe he’s already dead, and his appreciably slow brain is still catching up on that.
It’s weird. Maybe he really is already dead, and he’s just been deluding himself all this time. There were five stages of grief, or so Willow told him. Maybe he’s just been caught on the denial stage since then. Well, if losers like Angel were allowed to keep walking and thinking for two hundred years after they’d died, then at least Xander could manage a year or two.
He thinks about Ms. French. She wanted to sex him and kill him at the same time, and had very nearly done so, albeit in a much less awesome way than the dream Faith that’s snarling and laughing and smiling and crying all at the same time.
He doesn’t know how she’s crying, because there are no tears, and there’s nothing in her expression to readily point out that she’s unhappy. She looks excited, even, even more so than the last time she was over him and moving and snarling and laughing and smiling and crying.
He wishes that he’d just said no. That would’ve been a better idea, because then their connection wouldn’t have been just skin. Or would there have never been a connection to begin with?
He probably shouldn’t think that word, either, because now she’s really trying to kill him. She hasn’t stopped moving-hasn’t stopped enjoying it, but she’s not smiling anymore, and there’s a whole lot more snarling.
She wants him dead. She hadn’t necessarily wanted that other guy dead, because she’d just assumed he was a vampire, and he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a hundred other things. Right now, though, he knows that she wants him dead.
She’s over him, and then she’s in front of him. She’ll guide him around the curves, she tells him, and at some point he realizes his shirt’s gone, and she’s shoving herself so deeply into his chest that he has to curve his back to make room for her. Kissing’s fine-he’s a good kisser. Cordelia told him so. Willow told him so. Faith doesn’t tell him so, but she makes little noises that, while not quite vulnerable, are very rewarding.
Then she throws him on the bed.
She threw him on the bed just a moment ago, didn’t she? Yeah, she did, and now she’s not naked, and she’s not holding her hair back or making small circles with her hips or doing anything to put him in a good place.
No. Now, she’s just killing him. Or she’s already killed him and he’s not quite there, yet-he can’t be sure.
He feels sorry for her. That’s the whole reason he came here, isn’t it? Because she doesn’t have parents worth mentioning, and he has parents that aren’t worth mentioning, so maybe they’re a little similar. He’s not as rough and tumble as she is-sometimes he feels about as substantial as the Twinkies he loves so much. And he’s definitely never wrestled an alligator or crocodile or lion while naked.
He shouldn’t be allowed to do anything naked, really, because it only leads to getting straddled by a hot girl and then choked by a hot girl.
She’s killing him, which kind of puts her in the bad guy column. He hates bad guys-even the bad guys that are good guys most of the time. So shouldn’t he hate her?
He doesn’t, though. More than anything, he wishes she could have what Buffy has. Friends that’ll stand behind her when she screws up as bad as she did, because Buffy’s made her share of mistakes, as well. Faith doesn’t have a Willow to talk about boy problems with. She doesn’t have a Giles to sternly act as a good example and she doesn’t have a Joyce to be all motherly for her.
And the only Xander she has keeps in his head the wrong definition of a connection.
It was just skin. He can feel the skin of her hands against the skin of his neck.
Just skin.
He’s about to die, because she’s about to kill him, but the only thing he can think of is how much he wishes that it had been more than just skin for her.
Then Angel whacks her in the face with a baseball bat, and Xander figures it might be a good time to take a nap.
He wonders if sleeping is very much like being dead.
Maybe he’ll ask Angel later.
There you have it. I think this marks Faith/Xander as my most-visited pairing.
Happy birthday, jgracio.
Really, really hope you liked it.
All the best.
When women go wrong, men go right after them.
-Mae West
Series: Birthday fics, jgracio
Pairing: Faith/Xander, kinda sorta
Rating: PG-13 for violence and sexuality
Setting: Season 3, during Consequences
Word Count: 1,636 words
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. All characters, places, and events are the property of the aforementioned and Twentieth Century Fox.
Summary: She wants to kill him. He doesn't know why, because they have a connection. Even if it's only skin.
It’s like that time someone broke his arm. Or maybe it’s like that time someone smashed his face in. Or maybe it’s like that time he saw a hyena and then his head got all fuzzy for a few days, like he wasn’t alive, like he wasn’t breathing, like he wasn’t seeing.
Hearing, yes. Feeling, yes. He hasn’t forgotten the way the pig tasted when he bit into it, and he hasn’t forgotten that, at the time, it had not been an unappealing sensation.
It’s like the time he almost did the nasty with a giant bug, which would have only inevitably led to decapitation-although on reflection, it was the copulation he feared, not the beheading. Losing his head couldn’t be all that slow. Just “oh, teeth,” and then gone.
She slides against him, and it reminds him of the last time she was sliding against him, which had been the first time someone had been sliding against him, unless you count that time that Buffy had been sliding against him to make Angel jealous, or that time Buffy had been sliding against him because magic had done the whammy on her brain, or that time Willow had been sliding against him for similar reasons, or those times Willow had been sliding against him for different reasons.
Cordelia had never been one for the sliding. The hand-holding, yeah, and the closet groping, yeah-huh. But it had always been a position of power for her, hadn’t it? She could, of course, stay in charge of her faculties much better than he could of his own, until it was her faculties that were doing the work, and getting into it was the only way to do it.
She’s heavier than she has any right to be, considering the fact that she’s not heavy at all. It shouldn’t be hard to pick her up and throw her off of him, especially considering that this isn’t what he came here to do. He came to talk, to use words from his mouth, but the words she’s making him say are the right ones.
Connection. Right, they have a connection, don’t they? But, you know, that’s just a precursor. He’s here because he wants to help her, no matter what Buffy says about the boys that Faith’s with, or the look Willow gave him as soon as he revealed that there was a connection.
He says it. “Connection.” Faith’s eyes get more dangerous, and he wonders what’s so scary about that word to make her hate him for saying it.
Well, does she hate him? He and Cordelia kind of hated each other once upon a time. They shouted at each other and insulted each other, and even though she had eventually gotten this weird combination of affection, respect, and utter disregard, he never would have seen that relationship coming.
Domineering. That’s something they shared, Faith and Cordelia. Only he can’t picture Cordelia straddling him and kissing him so hard it hurts. Well, he has imagined that, but only when she’s not there and he’s absolutely sure she has no way of reading his mind as he thinks about it.
Her face is cherubic-softer than Buffy’s. Buffy used to have hips and cheeks, but she’s lost weight over the past three years, with no real signs of it slowing down. Didn’t that bother her once? That she wasn’t quite as slim as she could be?
Faith might be a little heavier, with pronounced curves that Buffy never had, and he wonders whether it makes him a scumbag to be thinking about her curves while she’s straddling him and holy crap, this is not what he came here for.
He tries to deny it. Tries to remind her that this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing right now, because she killed someone, and she needs to accept responsibility for it. She killed someone and tried to make Buffy take the fall for it, and it’s not like that’s the kind of thing he can just forget, even if it’s not his place to forgive or forget or whatever.
But they have a connection. She tells him that they don’t, that it’s just skin, that he used her every bit as readily as she used him. That’s how she likes it, isn’t it? Want, take, have? And to be wanted, be taken, be-
They have a connection. He tells her as much.
It only makes her angrier, makes her more afraid, and he can’t help but wonder that it’s not him that she’s afraid of. He couldn’t scare anyone, to be honest, except Halloween pirates that have the gall to try to have their ways with his friends when they’re under the influence of nobility.
It makes her angry. And when she gets angry, she gets deadly. And when she gets deadly, people have a habit of getting dead.
Is that what’s going to happen here? He’s not sure when the line crosses from sexual to deadly, but her fingers are around his throat, and even though he’s trying to breathe, it’s just not happening.
He wants to tell her he’s sorry, but he’s not sure why that thought manages to break through the wall of Holy crap, I’m about to die. Maybe he’s already dead, and his appreciably slow brain is still catching up on that.
It’s weird. Maybe he really is already dead, and he’s just been deluding himself all this time. There were five stages of grief, or so Willow told him. Maybe he’s just been caught on the denial stage since then. Well, if losers like Angel were allowed to keep walking and thinking for two hundred years after they’d died, then at least Xander could manage a year or two.
He thinks about Ms. French. She wanted to sex him and kill him at the same time, and had very nearly done so, albeit in a much less awesome way than the dream Faith that’s snarling and laughing and smiling and crying all at the same time.
He doesn’t know how she’s crying, because there are no tears, and there’s nothing in her expression to readily point out that she’s unhappy. She looks excited, even, even more so than the last time she was over him and moving and snarling and laughing and smiling and crying.
He wishes that he’d just said no. That would’ve been a better idea, because then their connection wouldn’t have been just skin. Or would there have never been a connection to begin with?
He probably shouldn’t think that word, either, because now she’s really trying to kill him. She hasn’t stopped moving-hasn’t stopped enjoying it, but she’s not smiling anymore, and there’s a whole lot more snarling.
She wants him dead. She hadn’t necessarily wanted that other guy dead, because she’d just assumed he was a vampire, and he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a hundred other things. Right now, though, he knows that she wants him dead.
She’s over him, and then she’s in front of him. She’ll guide him around the curves, she tells him, and at some point he realizes his shirt’s gone, and she’s shoving herself so deeply into his chest that he has to curve his back to make room for her. Kissing’s fine-he’s a good kisser. Cordelia told him so. Willow told him so. Faith doesn’t tell him so, but she makes little noises that, while not quite vulnerable, are very rewarding.
Then she throws him on the bed.
She threw him on the bed just a moment ago, didn’t she? Yeah, she did, and now she’s not naked, and she’s not holding her hair back or making small circles with her hips or doing anything to put him in a good place.
No. Now, she’s just killing him. Or she’s already killed him and he’s not quite there, yet-he can’t be sure.
He feels sorry for her. That’s the whole reason he came here, isn’t it? Because she doesn’t have parents worth mentioning, and he has parents that aren’t worth mentioning, so maybe they’re a little similar. He’s not as rough and tumble as she is-sometimes he feels about as substantial as the Twinkies he loves so much. And he’s definitely never wrestled an alligator or crocodile or lion while naked.
He shouldn’t be allowed to do anything naked, really, because it only leads to getting straddled by a hot girl and then choked by a hot girl.
She’s killing him, which kind of puts her in the bad guy column. He hates bad guys-even the bad guys that are good guys most of the time. So shouldn’t he hate her?
He doesn’t, though. More than anything, he wishes she could have what Buffy has. Friends that’ll stand behind her when she screws up as bad as she did, because Buffy’s made her share of mistakes, as well. Faith doesn’t have a Willow to talk about boy problems with. She doesn’t have a Giles to sternly act as a good example and she doesn’t have a Joyce to be all motherly for her.
And the only Xander she has keeps in his head the wrong definition of a connection.
It was just skin. He can feel the skin of her hands against the skin of his neck.
Just skin.
He’s about to die, because she’s about to kill him, but the only thing he can think of is how much he wishes that it had been more than just skin for her.
Then Angel whacks her in the face with a baseball bat, and Xander figures it might be a good time to take a nap.
He wonders if sleeping is very much like being dead.
Maybe he’ll ask Angel later.
There you have it. I think this marks Faith/Xander as my most-visited pairing.
Happy birthday, jgracio.
Really, really hope you liked it.
All the best.
When women go wrong, men go right after them.
-Mae West