He's the light in her fridge, (9/?) by dutchbuffy2305
Pairing: Faith/Spike
Rating: R
Author's note: Sequel to His voice is like a Mars-bar
Author's website:
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
Faith wakes up like always, warm and safe, nose against Spike's backbone. After a second of sleepy stretching memory kicks in and she freezes. She lies down again with slow soundless movements. Spike is still sleeping. There's lots of ways they could do this. Talk now, fuck later. Fuck first, talk after, what'll it be? Her instinctive decision from last night, to let him back in, doesn't feel wrong, but she wants to chew on it a bit more before she swallows. She can feel the sun outside demanding to be let in, and she can't let that happen, so she'd better get outside and meet the sun on its own turf. Even though the bedroom is on the north of the house, she closes the curtains extra securely. Sneaky sun might try to get in anyway. Faith leaves the nest with its familiar comforting sleep smell and the still warm drowsing vampire, silently gets her clothes and dresses in the kitchen.
She stuffs in a quick breakfast and walks outside chewing. The air outside shoves sharp needles of cold and brightness up her nose. With her head turned aside she walks into the yard until her eyes stop streaming and she can appreciate the sheer exhilarating sparkle of the morning. After months of grey skies and shadows, the sky and the snow seem to explode with pure new color, straight from the paint tube without any murkiness or doubt. The sky is bluer than Spike's eyes, the snow as white as his skin and the sun competes with the yellowness of his hair. Faith takes in a few deep chilly breaths through her nose, eager to savor the non-smell of a world this fresh and young. Even Cleveland is pretty now, all her blemishes covered with a flattering layer of cushiony white, like a wedding dress.
There sure is a whole lotta snow covering their almost lawn, hiding all the unpleasant reminders of neglected gardening, of not even knowing where to begin gardening. Clearly making a snowman's in order. Faith has only the haziest memories of making one before but it can't be too hard if a kid can do it. She huffs and she puffs, rolling the rapidly growing ball on a zigzag pattern across the lawn. The snow under her boots triggers more winter memories of youth, that popping crackling sound your footsteps made, so that you knew by your ears alone if the snow was good for making missiles and men.
Her exertions have made her hot and sweaty, while at the same time she feels the cold biting the skin of her cheeks. The tips of her fingers are bright red and throbbing with live-giving blood. She knows that if she goes on too long, Slayer energy or not, they will turn white and dead with the onset of frostbite. She stuffs them in her pockets.
Spike the snowman is still bald and sightless. Faith looks around for materials to use for his hair and eyes, and is attracted by a flash of yellow from the black anorexic trees at the back of their lot. She tramps towards it through the knee-high snowdrifts and enters the wood. Fifteen feet in, the whole atmosphere has changed and Faith stops walking to take in her new surroundings. She isn't in a suburban lot on the bad side of a big city any longer, but in the middle of wise and ancient nature, waiting patiently for spring. All sounds are muffled, and Faith can no longer identify their origin without thinking.
She puts one foot forward. The sound of her boot breaking through the snow is like a gun shot. A small white animal shoots up a tree and disappears. Faith tries to remain completely still, hoping to lure the little magic creature out of hiding again. At first her own breathing and the slight rustling of her clothes annoys her, as she can't seem to stop them, but then she finds the right mindset for this. She pretends the sunny wintry forest is a moonlit graveyard, and the little pointy-nosed thing a demon, and then she has no trouble staying Slayer-still. A tiny pink snout inches forward around the bole of the tree and Faith, mouth open so she can keep motionless and not even blink, sees it snuffle and run back down the tree to disappear again under the snow. Faith wishes she knew anything about animals, like its name for instance. Other things she can guess, like the fact that it's a predator, with its sharp little teeth and nervous speed.
She plods forward, looking for something yellow and something blue to make her Spike-man pretty. A tiny point of something thin and bright pokes through the snow. She kneels down to brush away the white powder and uncovers a five-pointed bright yellow star. It's beautiful, and next to it is an even brighter red one. She can't use that though, it's the wrong shape to use for a mouth or bloodied fangs and she doesn't want to tear up the beautiful thing.
While she's kneeling there, she sees tiny tracks in the snow. They seem oddly spaced. Two identical prints of furry feet close together, then two bigger feet a little forward from that, with more space in between. Approaching these tracks in a V from the right are different tracks, four identical feet spaced one by one; a four footed thing setting its feet down one on the left, one on the right. Faith tries to mimic how the first animal must have walked, and ends up putting her hands side by side in the snow, using them to jump off and ending up with her two feet a little in front and by the side of it. It has to be like a frog or a rabbit, she deduces. Somehow frogs seem unlikely in this setting, although she doesn't know why she thinks this. She follows the tracks. The other animal crosses the rabbtifrog tracks and there has clearly been a tussle, for the snow's disturbed in a circle. Faith sees a few drops of blood, and then a dragging spoor though the snow. Good guess the other animal's a predator, although she doesn't know what kind. It's won, anyway.
Thoughtfully Faith retraces her tracks. Rabbits and predators. A fox, or a wolf, maybe? She feels that she and the predators, little or small, are very much alike. They're fierce and fast, and she imagines cracking a little neck with her teeth and feeling the hot blood spout into her mouth. She's like them, a she-wolf.
She reenters the semi-civilized world of their suburban lot. No, she isn't a wolf. She isn't preying on a herd of sheep; she's defending them against predators. She's a sheep dog. This image is distinctly less cool and evokes bad hair days, but it still feels right. Yeah. Faith, defender of the pack. No, herd. Wolves run in packs. But dogs are descended from wolves, aren't they? Wolves turned to the light side of the Force. It feels Slayerish and right, attuned to life and the rhythms of the wild world, and somehow out of place in this spot, a tiny patch of nature surrounded on all sides by smelly heavy industry and shrieking trains.
And what is she doing with Spike exactly, associating with a wolf? Or could Spike be classified as an honorary sheepdog? A picture of Spike with bedhead surfaces in her mind and she smiles, her cheeks stiff in the frosty air. And Buffy, always pretending to be a sheep, and unhappy at the thought of being a dog, or resembling a wolf. Hm. How did Buffy's deal with the Scoobies, clearly all sheep related creatures, work? And why would she, Faith, need sheep around her? Well. Maybe to remind the shepherd dog that she wasn't a wolf, so she wouldn't run away into the wild and join the pack again, huh? For the second time in two months, she wishes she could talk to Giles right now. Not the embarrassed Giles who came in to bring Dawn, but the real one. He might have something to say on these matters. Or even Wesley. Wesley had kinda unsheepified the last time she'd seen him.
She puts the hair on her snowman Spike. The contrast between the bright yellow leaf and the dead white snow is a little too great. Real Spike has creamy skin and paler hair, and he has much more life in him than this cold white frozen water.
Faiht has successfully evaded thinking about yesterday so far. Now she can't keep it in any longer. Her stake is always in her pocket, and she gets it out and stakes the snowman. He's the kind of vampire that doesn't turn to dust right away, so she kicks him to little pieces and stamps the pieces to powder. She kicks and kicks until she's created her own little snowstorm, a whirling hot fury in the middle of a tiny white vortex. She takes a deep breath and looks around the yard. It just looks tussled and no one would know there was a snowman standing here a minute ago. She tosses the stake into the woods. Bad stake.
Spike is standing in the kitchen door bare chested, like a dollop of Kool Whip against the bluish snow, looking on with his face tight and closed. She walks up to him, shoulders roughly past him to get in. She peels off her outdoor clothes and tosses them away from her. There's coffee. Good. She drinks a cup silently, warming her frozen heart and hands. She sets the empty cup down with a click. It cracks.
"So," she says.
Spike swallows. "How mad are you?"
She smashes him up against the wall and rams her forearm against his throat.
"Pretty fucking mad!" she says, but pressed up against his body all she can think of is loving, not killing.
He's limp and penitent in her arms. He turns his head away and spreads his arms. "Okay," he says. "Do it. I'm sorry."
"Aw, fuck. I'm not Buffy," Faith says and lets him go. "Get your martyr kick somewhere else. Just tell me why."
She sits down at the kitchen table, gets up again to get two new mugs and pours coffee. Spike sits down across the table from her, not touching her.
"She just…she just smelled so much of Buffy. I know it was wrong, but…"
Faith holds up her hand. "You made me no promises. I just want to know…this was hard. I don't wanna go through it again. Will something like this happen again?"
"No, it won't."
This talking thing is tricky. What she really wants to know is, did you fuck her, how many times and in what positions? It's on the tip of her tongue, but she stops it from falling out. Because if she ask this, and he answers, other things might come out that she won't like. Does he love her at all?
They like to drink their coffee hot, dark and strong like themselves, but it's tepid by now because they have waited too long. Faith can't stand the way he looks at her anymore, the blue of his eyes so dark it's grey, that pretty mouth that should just kiss and swear all serious and tight. She gets up and clambers on his lap. It's awkward, like she doesn't even know him. She has to get away from his eyes and hides her face in his neck, where the skin is unblemished and pearly white. No hickeys or bites from former girlfriends, whatever they marked him with doesn't show on the outside. Faith licks the skin, but he is clean and almost tasteless. She nibbles the tendon under the ear, then gnaws at it in earnest. Spike shivers and leans his head away to give her better access. She can feel under the tips of her fingers that Spike's eyes are closed.
"You want to brand me, Faith? You don't have the teeth for it," he growls low in his throat.
That means he thinks it's sexy, Faith knows. So does she. She sits up straight again, keeping her hands in the soft curls of his neck, and looks at him again. He looks steadily back. He often looks at her like that, all open and willing, all 'take me I'm yours', but what does it mean, when he really hankers after another Slayer, or worse, her little sister? She doesn't know. It has to mean something that he's here with her and not with Dawn.
She bends over to him, he's almost warm under her hands now, his body eager to take on her heat, and kisses him with her eyes still open. There's a head rush from feelings, so many of these feelings crowding in her head, she can't name half of them and they make her hands tremble and her eyes burn. Aw shit, there's gonna be another of those dumb crying things. Spike holds her neck and the small of her back tenderly and kisses her ear. Fuck, all the tenderness is not gonna make the crying time any shorter, but is kind of a relief to do it on his shoulder for a change.
Spike is just lifting her up, and Faith is mostly okay with the idea of sex in a minute, when the kitchen door opens noisily and someone comes in. Not now, she could scream in frustration, but doesn't.
"Hey buddy, Faith," Clem burbles. "Howya doing? I brought beer and dip!"
Morgan told her something about Clem, but Faith can't remember what. Spike squeezes her hand, which she takes to mean that there will be sex later. No surprise there. Clem has come to watch some silly rerun on their TV, and Faith realizes the whole drama thing has passed him by.
"Where's Dawnie?" Clem asks, and Faith feels sorry for him when Spike throws him a very dark look.
"Back to LA," Spike says curtly, and thankfully Clem has sense enough not to pursue it.
They settle on the couch, and Faith wraps around Spike like spaghetti round a fork and plays with his fingers under the plaid. She's actually sort of fine with this, maybe just cuddling was a better idea than fucking like bunnies right now, when she's still kinda shaky on her own feelings and Spike's.
She feels nothing but Spike's lips, doesn't look, just imagines them pink and swollen and tasting sweeter than spun sugar. She's sinking into a happy kissing coma, drinking and licking from his mouth, when there's a disturbance outside. A car stops, girlish voices shriek with excitement as they approach.
Faith freezes and hides under the blanket. More people, and now? But you can't blow off the friends that were majorly kind to you, so she uncovers herself and tries to look friendly as they burst in. First in is a kind of Christmas sausage, that reveals itself on closer inspection to be Willy wrapped in glowing spell cords. Faith stares, too surprised to move, as a small black shape hurtles at Clem and socks him a big one on the jaw.
"Ha! Got them!" Morgan shouts and Kennedy makes a triumphant fist over the unconscious demon.
What the fuck? What are the girls thinking of, laying out and capturing these guys? Clem's a friend and Willy's a harmless acquaintance, and human.
"Ken, what the hell did you hit Clem for?" Faith asks.
"Faith, I told you yesterday, I'm sure I did!" Morgan protests but then she remembers yesterday, with Faith in less than receptive state, Faith can tell by her face. Her cheeks are bright red with cold and agitation, as red as the breast of her birds, who tweet and flutter like maniacs.
Kennedy finally registers the entwined Faith-Spike creature and several emotions flit over her face until she decides on one.
"Hi Spike," she says neutrally.
Only Faith feels the tremor in Spike's voice when he says, "Hi Ken."
Kennedy fiddles with her stake, and what she was doing with it Faith has no idea, because it sure won't work on Clem anywhere she sticks it. Morgan and Kennedy look at each other. Morgan pushes the living wurst on the uncomfortable chair and clears her throat.
"Spike, Faith," she begins formally, "we have discovered that Willy and Clem were about to embark on a horrible crime."
It's like CNN. Spike and Faith sit up straighter. Faith notices Clem's left ear twitch. He would like to know what he's done, too, she guesses.
"We have irrefutable evidence that these two have been buying land for their new business venture."
Yeah, and?
"We've found out what kind of business they were starting up. You see, Clem's family used to raise human beings for slaughter, back in the old days. Right, Spike?"
Spike shrugs and nods. "'S what he told me. Business folded before I knew him. Too many people came to California in the Goldrush, not enough isolation to make it work."
"Willy's family were like Kapos, they were overseers for the demons, and they got well paid and possibly some lifespan extension," Morgan continues.
Kapos musta been some kind of traitors. Faith always knew Willy was a weasel.
Morgan flourishes printed schemes with lots of lines and squares and little numbers on it. "We've even found the blueprints, with plans of stables and drinking troughs and hatcheries!"
"You may not be aware of this, pet," Spike says calmly, "but human beings don't procreate by means of eggs."
Morgan curls her lip at him. Their faces are at the same height, and the idea that Spike would ever fear this fluffy little ball of pluck makes Faith almost giggle. "Of course we do, Victorian ignoramus."
Prejudices are starting to show through and it ain't pretty. The leader must now intervene.
"There will be no slagging off of each other," Faith says sternly as she gets up. "We will hear the evidence of both parties, stated calmly, with no calling of names."
She's watched these court movies often enough to know how it's done.
Spike revives Clem with a splash of beer and helps him onto the couch.
"Gee, young lady, you wield a mean right hook," Clem mumbles, rearranging his disordered wattle carefully.
"Clem, Morgan and Ken here think you're starting up a human meat farm for demons. They've got pretty good evidence, whaddya say?" Faith says, in her role as judge.
"What?" Clem bleats and waves his ears and arms around, folds flapping like a middle-aged lady's flesh. "Are you insane? What have you done to Willy? You know we're good guys!"
"Better tell the girls what kind of cattle you were gonna raise, mate," Spike says patiently.
"Ostrich!" Clem says. "Ostrich, it's, like, the new beef! Why didn't you find my purchase of ostrich eggs on the web, huh, and the trouble I've had importing them and the bribes I had to city officials, human city officials, I might add. I'm an honest business man. I gave up eating human flesh a few lifetimes ago. Have you ever seem me eat human?"
He has a point. And he has as much right to do wrong and repent as anyone else, of course. But Ken wouldn't be Ken is she didn't find new bone to pick.
"So you ate my ancestors!" she says threateningly. "Assisting the white man in genocide, were you?"
"Please!" Morgan says. "Is eating Indians worse than eating Irish?"
"Some of them were Spanish…,"Clem starts, but sensibly doesn't finish the sentence. Spike's elbow in his ribs might have helped to bring that point home.
Faith does the summation. "So, guys, until we have further proof, we're assuming Clem and Willy are innocent, right?"
Morgan and Kennedy nod reluctantly. Morgan waves her hand and her biggest bird flies up and pecks at a strategic spot in Willy's bindings. They darken and fade away.
"What the fuck where you Powerpuff twats doing!" Willy says angrily. "Don't think I'm ever gonna serve you…"
He's cut off by Clem's rubbery paw on his lips. "Hey, buddy, don't go saying things you might be sorry for," Clem says, with remarkable composure for a guy who's been rudely hit and splashed with beer in the past ten minutes. "Mistakes were made, coulda happened to anyone, right?"
"Yeah," Faith says. "It was a good piece of research, very clever thing you did, Mor. And you knocked him out just right, Ken. Unconscious, no permanent damage."
Faith is kinda sorry for the girls. They spent a lot of time on this, and she should have noticed it before and put a stop to it, or asked Spike or something. Because she and Spike must have been pretty spectacularly unavailable for consultation on this. It's really her fault, too, so she gets up to make coffee to atone, apologizes to Willy and Clem, finds cookies and is real busy with it.
Spike is slouching on the sofa, not really joining in the relieved talk, and she plunks down next to him, to indicate once again that he is totally forgiven. At least as far as the gang needs to know.
Tara materializes with a ping in the middle of the room. That ping is so thoughtful of her, but that's just how she is. She looks tired and drawn, which must a conscious effort on her part, a message.
Spike vibrates under her arm, but it takes seconds before he starts to talk. First he checks out Faith's face, as if asking permission, then rubs his hands on his jeans. Faith may not be the smartest cookie in the basket, but by now she has gotten through loud and clear what the question is gonna be about.
"How's Dawn?" he asks quietly, but it happens to coincide with a lull in the conversations, so everyone hears it anyway.
Faith can see Morgan and Kennedy rev up, but she yanks out their ignition-cables with a look. Her business.
Tara rubs her forehead. "She's not fine, of course, but sort of okay. We talked, and she realizes she needs help. She's very confused, right now, and she's been through a lot." She looks sideways at Spike. "There had been something similar…some trouble with Mr. Giles, which is why she went to stay with you. So, you don't need to feel it's all your fault."
Spike cheek muscles clench visibly. He does think he's to blame, Faith supposes. Well, so does she, at least in part. Whatever Dawn tried on him, he was wide open to it. But if there's one thing she believes in, it's that people make mistakes and they have the right to try to do better. Because if not, she wouldn't have any right to exist.
Morgan tells Tara all about the Willy and Clem cock-up, but the mood is gone. The gang dissipates like smoke, leaving Faith and Spike to watch TV by themselves, which she doesn't mind at all. She puts her head on his shoulder and he presses a brief kiss on her hair. She doesn't want to look at him right now, the feeling of his hand in hers is enough.
TBC