Title: The Thinker

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Pairing: Faith/Robin

Spoilers: Touched and everything up to it

Summary: He's always been a thinker.

Notes: For the LiveJournal Writer's Choice "Don't think, just do it" challenge… again, not sure that it's what was intended. Also, after last weekend, this was probably inevitable.

***

He's always been a thinker, that's what he does. He supposes that it's the legacy of being raised by a Watcher, surrounded by books and learning and history, a habit even more deeply ingrained by his choice of career, education, teaching, being one of the youngest ever principals in the California School District.

He's been thinking, planning for a long time; sometimes it seems like it's all he's ever done.

He used to think about the vampire who killed his mother, about finding him, about what he'd do if he did. He used to dream about killing him, that monster who haunted his childhood dreams, spent months, years, searching for him, but he never found him, all his plans, his thoughts, coming to naught.

Later, he used to think about the upcoming Apocalypse, about the giant evil that was coming, and he thought about what role he might play. He manoeuvred himself to Sunnydale, manoeuvred the Slayer into a job where he could study her, learn her, know what her moves were before he revealed himself to her.

He didn't think he'd be attracted to her, but the bloom fell off that particular rose when he saw her with Spike, saw how closely she aligned herself with a vampire, and things only got worse when the First revealed itself to him, revealed that that niggling feeling he'd had since he'd first seen Spike wasn't just jealousy. He did know Spike, had seen him before, had seen him fight his mother.

He thought long and hard after that, about what he could do to Spike, how he could make him pay. He gripped a stake in his hand so hard that it drew blood, and as he picked the splinters out of his palm, he imagined driving each one deep into Spike's heart. He saw Spike striding through the halls of the high school, wearing his mother's coat, and he'd thought about stripping it from his body after beating him to a pulp.

He'd thought about that, and he'd done his best to carry out the plan, but things hadn't worked out the way he'd thought they would, and despite the fact that Buffy told him they were ok, he hadn't felt that way. He'd felt very much the outsider, very much out of his depth.

And then he'd met her.

He didn't think of her like that at first, when he found her smoking on the Summers' front porch, when he'd tried to read her and she'd read him right back. He'd been intrigued, but he hadn't thought of her like that, not until they'd stood in her bedroom, and she'd told him about the First, and how it had appeared to her. They'd traded stories, he'd helped calm her down, and in those few short moments, he'd looked at her and he'd known, without knowing how, that she was a kindred spirit, that whatever shit he'd been through, she'd been through it too, and then some.

She'd been freaked, and not just about the First, about being a leader, and he'd met her honesty with his own, sharing with her his deepest, most secret thought, the fact that he was completely out of his depth.

She'd told him that she'd heard different.

He'd thought the same about her.

They'd looked at one another, and he'd thought that he knew where things might go, and he didn't think that it was a good idea. The house was full of people, there was an Apocalypse coming, they were fighting an insurmountable foe and they hardly knew one another.

There were a hundred reasons he could think of why he should have walked away, and left to his own devices, he could have thought of a hundred more.

But then she took his hand in hers, raised it to her cheek, and her skin was so soft, so warm under his. She asked him if she was out of line, he told her that she was the leader, and he thought to himself that if this was what she wanted, then maybe it wasn't such a bad idea.

Then their lips met, arms sliding around bodies, hands reaching over and under clothes, and then they were on the bed, and even though he's a thinker, and he's always been a thinker, in those few moments, he stopped thinking, stopped thinking about everything but her.

He stopped thinking, and it had never felt so good, and when he thought again, he thought that he really should do that more often.