FIC: Second Fiddles (The I'd Love to Lay You Down Remix) (Dawn/Faith, NC-17)
TITLE: Second Fiddles (The I’d Love to Lay You Down Remix)
RATING: NC-17
FANDOMS: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
PAIRING: Dawn/Faith
SUMMARY: I kind of get playing second fiddle, is what I’m saying. And maybe it’s nice to know someone else who knows how that feels.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Set post-series. Both series. Written for femslash_minis Remix Round from brutti_ma_buoni’s Complexity (Dawn/Faith, R).
Leather pants, hair long and straight. It’s getting darker, every year. Buffy’s is, too-don’t tell-but she just dyes it lighter and lighter. I keep mine natural-maybe the only thing. Black eyeliner. Just a hint of lipstick-the brownish red of dried blood.
Sometimes people mistake me for Faith’s sister, not Buffy’s. But then I never fit with Buffy’s life: not when she was little miss perfect popular, not when she went off the deep end-we thought-before the whole family got it about the vampires, not when she was the Slayer, the commander, the Slaymaster General of all those ex-potential girls, of which I was never one.
I kind of get playing second fiddle, is what I’m saying. And maybe it’s nice to know someone else who knows how that feels.
She finds me on the street, which is the usual way. She’s a hunter, and she knows how to track, and it’s not like I’m in her fave five on her cell phone. The only thing she has on speed dial is Chinese takeout and Angel, and maybe their new office, Dark Angel Investigations. I guess “Faith-Angel Investigations” sounds like an after-church activity. It’s kind of funny, the two of them having such sweet names when they’re two of the hardest people I know.
But my sister’s name is Buffy, and I’ve seen her literally rip the beating heart out of a demon’s chest, so what do I know?
Anyway, I’m walking along and suddenly there’s Faith. She bumps shoulders with me and quirks an eyebrow, the corner of her crimson mouth turning up ever so slightly. And I know my day is about to get a lot more interesting.
***
I do the magic bit, and Faith handles aftercare. I let her lead me back to her apartment, and she undresses me in the doorway to the bedroom. My body feels empty, like the magic filled me and now that it’s been unleashed, there’s nothing left. I feel my birdbone chest racked with heavy breaths, and I feel like the force might break me apart.
We get under the shower, the water near-scalding, not like actually scalding would hurt either one of us. I feel the stream of water burn patterns into my skin, like tattoo needles. I wonder what I would look like if I came out from the showerhead with ink memories of the time I spent there. Like some aboriginal, the type where they tattoo by hammering the needles into your flesh. That’s how I feel; every touch magnified a thousand times.
Faith turns off the water and she towels me off. Our makeup has washed off and we just stand for a moment, completely bare and washed, and regard each other with our freckles and sunspots and imperfections, our hair dripping curls. And then Faith picks me up, literally scoops me up in her arms like Prince Charming rescuing a damsel, and carries me to her bed.
Faith’s sheets are always clean-I think it’s Angel’s doing-and they smell like water lilies. The soft fabric slides against my fragile skin as Faith lays me out beneath her.
“I got you,” she says. “I got you.”
Droplets of water fall from Faith’s hair onto my bare, drying flesh. It’s cold, and my skin prickles up, like a science project, like a stress test. Faith kisses me softly, not parting my lips but just pressing hers gently against mine. I can smell her, wild and sweet; she takes up all my senses, crowding everything else out. I need this.
Faith kisses down my body-my neck, my breasts, my stomach and hips. She parts my legs and her tongue flicks over my clitoris, and my body wakes up, moving without me in a snake charmer’s dance, one long arch and an ohhhhh torn from my throat. It’s like an exorcism; she charms things from me. Faith’s tongue runs along the insides of my lips, dipping into the center of me, and my hips rise and fall of their own accord, “Yes, please, yes, just there, please, just there.” She doesn’t need my instruction, but I can’t stop the words from dropping from my lips, murmured like confession, like a prayer.
Faith plays me, she exorcises all the bad things the magic leaves behind, and I come back to myself. Faith’s fingers weave through my hair, and she says, whisper soft, “You back?”
I sit up, and arch an eyebrow. “Not quite. We might have to do that again.”
She laughs, and drags me back to the mattress.