A/N: I'd love to hear what you think about the turn of events in this chapter.
It was a long walk back to the bed, knowing she couldn't climb back in. She sat next to where Faith lay, sprawled out on her stomach, sexy as hell in the post-coital ruin of the sheets. Buffy ran her fingers along the other girl's spine, feeling that soft, warm skin, hearing the purring hum her touch elicited.
"You're making it really hard not to stay, you know that?" There was a muffled "mm-hmm" from the dark slayer. "Yeah, I thought so. But Willow's got something she wants to talk to us about. Gonna go get in the shower, okay?" Hearing only a grunt in reply, Buffy placed a kiss between the middle of the other slayer's shoulder blades and dragged herself off to the bathroom.
Once inside, she turned on the shower to a temperature calculated not to wake her up too fast and luxuriated under the spray. Willow hadn't said how fast she needed to be down there.
The issue of timing became even more in doubt when she saw the blurry shape of Faith on the other side of the glass, this time outside, looking in. She saw the dark slayer's finger tracing the shape of her body against the steam on the glass.
"Are you going to play Picasso all day or are you going to come join me?" The brunette's finger stopped, making an abrupt 90-degree turn to trail over to the door handle, slide it back, and step in.
And then stand there, shifting slightly from foot to foot, arms crossed over her chest.
"Now you're going to get shy on me?"
Faith furrowed her brow for a moment. "Nah, it's just...I've never..."
"You've never showered before...wow, we are soooo going to have to work on the personal hygiene thing." Faith leveled her a look for that.
"No, dumbass. Just never, you know, showered with anyone. Seems kinda intimate." She paused, then hurried on, picking up one of the bottles in the corner. "And I don't know what you do with all this shit. I mean...salt scrub? What the fuck do ya need that for—what am I, a piece a meat?"
Buffy wisely chose to let the first part of Faith's comment slide, filing it away. Instead, she took the little round tub from Faith's hand, unscrewed the lid, and dug her fingers in.
"Let me show you." The brunette looked skeptical, but could hardly resist the blonde's sexy grin. Except that she tried to, shrinking against the wall in mock horror as Buffy reached out with the stuff, until the older slayer circled with her other arm around Faith's waist and drew her in and then she really couldn't resist. Nope, no chance of that when Buffy's hand smoothed the scrub over the flat of her stomach, up around each breast in turn, bringing the scrub around Faith's back and down as her hands reached to cup Faith's ass.
The dark slayer raised an eyebrow. "I don't know whether to be turned on or grossed out. It's kinda gritty, B."
Buffy rolled her eyes, pushing the other girl around her, under the spray, standing behind to help her the water wash the salt off, leaving that sheen of oil that her hands slid around in as they moved up her abdomen to her breasts. Faith started purring again.
"Thank you for joining me. For staying. For all of it." With each sentence Buffy uttered, her hands crept lower so that the dark slayer could only gasp out a "no sweat" before Buffy was touching her and she had to put out her hands on the wall in front of her for support, leaning back into Buffy's body, a steady oh-god-oh-god-oh-god on her lips as her hips moved under the cadence of Buffy's fingers to finally convulse as she cried out, and the older slayer caught her to keep her from falling to her knees.
Buffy held her under the spray for a moment, then, making sure Faith could support herself, reluctantly pulled away and stepped out of the shower.
"Hey, I wasn't done with you!" Buffy almost stopped, hearing Faith's husky invitation, but forced herself to towel off.
"I'll hold you to that." She sighed, wringing out her hair. "It's just...I promised Will and she seems out of sorts, so...I guess we have to go down there and see what's up." She pressed her hand briefly against the shower door before going out to see about some clothes and then downstairs to find out what the latest apocalypse was.
Buffy found everyone in the living room already, clearly several hours in if the number of books on the floor were any indication. She was a little sheepish that she hadn't helped. Sort of. Okay, not really, considering how she'd been occupied. She almost groaned at the thought of the girl upstairs in the shower.
Must focus, must get coffee. "So what's the sitch, guys? Will said you might have found something." At her words, Giles took his glasses off and cleaned them. Well, that wasn't a good start.
"It's possible, Buffy."
"Okay...so are you going to make me guess, 'cause I'm no good at charades."
"No, no." Her former watcher looked over at Dawn and Xander, their serious faces. "Perhaps we should provide a little context first." Buffy settled back on the couch, feeling like this might take a while. Giles continued. "We were having very little luck researching this phenomenon of a vampire who is also a slayer. There simply isn't a precedent for it. Indeed, we still don't fully understand it, except by way of the fluctuations going on in the slayer line at the time of Kennedy's turning."
"I thought we'd gotten through this." Buffy's brows knitted, confused. "Didn't we decide that the slayer overload made Kennedy strong enough to keep the vamp at bay, at least a little? And that now the two aspects of her are all at war and everything."
"You're quite right. We don't know it, of course, because nothing like this has ever happened, but it seems to be a valid hypothesis. And it may be as well that, when turned, her slayer essence mixed with the demon essence of the vampire in such a way that her slayer abilities weren't reduced when Willow performed the spell to take her back to her potential status."
"So...still not seein' what I had to get out of bed for, here."
"Well, the troublesome question is what we should do about it. And, again, there is no precedent."
"Is there ever? I mean, can't there just once be precedent were we can say 'yeah, this is just like that other time...'"
Giles ignored Xander's snide remark. "So, in an endeavor to find something that might help us, Dawn and I have been reading old documents from the Watcher's Council and have found some rather disturbing practices."
"Well, that's shocking." Buffy rolled her eyes.
"What's shocking?" At Faith's voice, Buffy smiled, reaching her hand behind her to catch the other girl's as she went by to the kitchen for coffee.
"Council. Doing bad stuff."
"Screw that."
"Again, why didn't I have the foresight to say that so long ago?" She made room for the dark slayer on the couch as she settled in next to Buffy, who promptly put her legs over the other slayer's lap. Faith raised an eyebrow at her, her eyes skittering across to catch those of the others in the room. Buffy raised an eyebrow right back and left her legs where they were.
"Yes, well. Apparently starting in the 1600s, the Council began bleeding its slayers, at first just to study their blood. Then, as transfusions were coming into fashion, the Council was looking ahead to the idea being of provide blood for transfusions given the wounds the slayers would inevitably suffer in their line of work. But there was no refrigeration, of course, to keep the blood fresh until the need arose, so the transfusions they performed were largely on non-slayers, for experimental purposes. The interesting thing is that they documented changes in the recipients of successful transfers: some additional strength, agility, and whatnot. Not slayer standards, by any means, but enough to where the Council controlled the process closely, not wanting to create a whole horde of people with slayer strength whom it could not control."
"Yeah, 'cause, gosh, that might have been helpful in the battle against evil."
"Buffy, I am not saying I agree with their methods, just telling you what Dawn and I discovered." The blonde slayer made a theatrical gesture for him to "carry on." He cleared his throat. "It was in the early twentieth century that refrigeration made it possible to do what they had originally intended, banking slayer blood to use after particularly grim battles, sometimes to save a slayer's life."
"Mighty nice of 'em." The corner of Buffy's mouth tipped upwards at Faith's sarcastic remark. Funny, but not really in light of all the Council had put both of them through. As the dark slayer put her coffee cup down on the table, she brought her hand back to rest it on top of Buffy's knee. Neither looked at each other, but both felt it.
The Englishman looked over at the two girls in front of him. "Of course, since the Council found both of you to be rather...difficult, it had no occasion to use the practice on either of you."
"Yeah, I'd have liked to see them try." Faith snorted.
Giles went on, oblivious. "And once again, they noticed unexpected effects from those transfusions, a marked heightening of the slayer's natural abilities and instincts. And so, once again, they began to experiment. At times, I'm ashamed to admit, they saw to it that slayers were gravely wounded in battle so that they could discover how much the transfusions could compensate for, from what brink of death the slayer's blood could bring them. The results, regardless of their methods, were startling."
"Look, G-man, I get that they were being all mad scientist and everything, but it's not like that's a big news flash and I don't see what this has to do with Kennedy..." She looked over for confirmation to the blonde next to her, only to find Buffy's face drawn, looking over at Willow, who had yet to speak in all this.
The redhead stared back at her old friend. "Buffy..."
The blonde slayer's voice was quiet, even in the hush of that room. "You think slayer blood will do it." Faith's thumb stopped the unconscious circle it was rubbing on Buffy's leg.
"But we don't know, do we, Giles? I mean, we don't know if it would work." Dawn's voice was urgent as her eyes shifted between Giles and Buffy.
"No, Dawn, we don't. Nevertheless the evidence is very suggestive and, given the unusual nature of this situation, our chances of finding another option seem slim."
Buffy was still looking at Willow, eyes almost pleading. "How much?"
It was Giles who answered, his voice soft and apologetic. "We can't be sure. We've already seen that some blood will have an effect on Kennedy, that it can make her revert to her human slayer form. But that some has not been enough to help her slayer win out over the vampire within." He paused, glancing at Faith. "Nevertheless, we have seen something like this before...the use of a slayer's blood to heal, to overcome poison, anyway...well, I believe the language there was something like 'drain the slayer.'"
Dead silence. Faith's hand pulled back from Buffy's skin as if it was fire, and Buffy moved her legs away, coming to sit on the edge of the couch.
"Well, this is awkward." Xander's words sat heavy in the air. The dark slayer dared to look over at Buffy, finding the blonde's eyes staring straight ahead, a million miles--or rather several years--away, filled with the images of the arrow, Angel, the rooftop, Faith, the knife, the blood, the piercing pain at her neck and the jerk of Angel's feeding as she'd lay on the floor under him, dying.
Faith saw it all and decided to get up before Buffy did. In a blink, she was out the slider into the backyard, slamming the door of the training room after her.
Feeling her go, Buffy closed her eyes.
"Will, Angel had a soul...we knew he was on the good side and even with him..." She paused and her voice almost cracked. "How do we know Ken will stop in time?"
Giles, softly. "If you choose to go this route, Buffy, we would just have to hope Faith could make her stop."
Willow was finally able to speak. "Buffy, you don't...maybe there's another..."
The blonde slayer sighed, running her hands through her hair, holding her head. "Giles says it's the only way to get her back, Will, and we owe her that. I've got no choice."