Faith walked into headquarters, a place that appeared similar to a mix between the Council's old headquarters and a school. Her senses immediately drew her attention towards Buffy who was sitting in a chair pretending to not be stressed out. Her facial expression, body posture, and general aura all indicated that she didn't want anyone near her; Faith took that as her cue to go see her.
"What's up?" Faith asked, plopping herself down in the chair facing Buffy's then pulled her sunglasses off of her face and then put them on top of her head.
"Where have you been?" she asked, completely irritated, but her irritation had absolutely nothing to do with Faith's absence and Faith knew it.
"In what sense?" she asked with a devilish smirk.
"Do you think you could notify me of the day you plan on growing up?"
"You're stuffy enough for the both of us," she assured her as she propped her boot up on the arm of Buffy's chair. Buffy groaned in response to the combination of being called stuffy and then having a muddy boot placed directly next to her – or maybe it was the look Faith gave her, one that was both challenging and nonchalant. "So…" Faith pushed, bored with the silence.
"Faith, I'm busy," she snapped.
"Yeah," she agreed sardonically, leaning forward to see the papers Buffy was looking at on her lap. Buffy's knee-jerk reaction was to pull the pages up to her chest to shield them from view.
"I knew it," Faith said jokingly, "you're an in the closet comic book lover!"
"No I'm not!" she answered angrily.
"So it's porn?" Faith asked, feigning a serious question. "If that's the case, lemme see," she whined as she pulled childishly at the corner of the page.
"Faith, I'm busy!" she reprimanded, this time not leaving even a centimeter of room for Faith to try and lighten her up. Faith leaned back in her chair, biting her lower lip for a moment, showing a shred of insecurity, and then nodded,
"Alright, granny," she answered, this time the teasing only slightly present in her tone. She waited another moment hoping for Buffy's face to soften at least a little but it didn't. She stood from the chair and took her sunglasses off of her head and began to place them over her eyes and stopped,
"Hey, do you want me to do anything?"
"No," she answered, her voice still irritated.
"Alright, I'm out then," Faith answered, now her tone much closer to Buffy's then the light one she began with. She turned away from Buffy and headed back towards the door. Kennedy walked down the hallway and was excited to see Faith,
"Hey," she greeted happily. Faith readjusted her backpack on her shoulder and put her sunglasses on her face,
"Hey," she answered, pissed off, without even looking in Kennedy's direction as she left. Xander was standing in an adjacent room and was walking out just in time to hear their short interaction. He heard Faith's tone and saw her completely closed attitude; he approached Kennedy, who was devastated by Faith's attitude towards her, even though she wasn't shocked. She knew, like anyone who knew the Slayer, that her emotions were volatile and her attitude was sharper than any knife any of them had ever used.
"What's going on?" Xander asked, concerned that Kennedy had been lashed out on (even if it was only so slightly; coming from Faith even a little was intense).
"I don't know," she answered with a shrug. Xander glanced over at the door that was just closing behind Faith and then glanced the other way and saw Buffy sitting in the chair looking just as pissed off.
"Those two…"
"If I ever get like that, will you smack me?" Kennedy asked.
"I swear I will if you're restrained and there's no chance of you hitting me back," he promised with a grin.
"Okay," she smiled. Xander was the most powerful person out of everyone there – he could return all of a persons confidence in only a few words or glances. Maybe that was why Faith was so hooked on him, Kennedy thought. She didn't understand what kind of a thing they had going on, but she knew that there definitely was a thing, and always would be a thing, between Xander and Faith. Faith had that exciting, strong attitude coupled with a sexy woman who desperately needed someone that would take care of her; Xander was someone who always wanted to take care of someone who really needed him, but was still an amazingly strong, and most of the time, extremely dangerous person.
Faith pulled a sweatshirt out of her gym bag and pulled it on over her grey tank top, streaked with sweat, making lines of it a darker, charcoal grey. She sat on a bench and gulped down several large gulps of water. She'd been coming to the gym at least once a day since they'd settled into their headquarters about seven blocks away. While she was in prison, she focused more on her emotional state rather than her physical one and as she both grew out of her teenaged metabolism and her Slayer muscles decided they were on sabbatical… well, she wasn't happy with the way she was looking.
As she stood up and pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder she noticed a guy with a towel around his neck definitely liking the way she was looking these days. She flashed him a look and then took another sip from her water bottle. Less than an hour later, Faith and her steroid loving, iron pumping boy toy, were walking into her apartment.
As he, Sean as he was actually named, fiddled to close the door, the tricky lock occupied him for quite a while. Faith glanced behind her and made a mental note that she definitely had found herself a jock cock – good for one night only. She grabbed a bear out of the fridge and asked,
"Hey, you want?" He turned around, quickly forgetting the lock and wondering what exactly she was inquiring about. She held out a longneck bottle of Corona towards him, leaning against the kitchen counter with her own pulled up to her lips.
"Sure," he answered with a grin, taking the beer from her.
Faith leaned against the counter, feeling the cold countertop against her lower back, the edge both slightly uncomfortable and soothing at the same time. She looked at him from his large feet clad in sporty looking sneakers to his hair that was spiked with both gel and drying sweat. He was extremely good looking, and like Faith, he was very well aware of that fact.
"I love it when a chick doesn't drink light beers…"
"I don't like it light."
"So I've seen you around the gym a few times…" he mentioned, taking a long sip from the beer. She nodded and continued the small talk, but she barely heard herself speaking, and after a few moments she didn't hear him speaking either. She continued looking at him, and from his end, he saw her eyes sparkling at him with desire and intrigue, as well as a large helping of sexy.
To her, she looked at him and as the seconds ticked by she saw him less and less as the gorgeous personal trainer who she wanted some personal training with, and more and more as a gross thing in need of extinguishing. She moved her free hand behind her onto the counter and gripped the serrated knife resting there. She closed her fingers around it the way she would around someone's neck, starting off just firm and then increasing the grip until she could feel the plastic handle compressing slightly, molding to her fingers, and then she would loosen it slightly so it felt comfortable in her hand.
She looked at him as he finished off his beer in a long sip and then walk towards her. He stood in front of her and reached his hand around her to put the empty bottle on the counter behind her. He brought his hand back, but stopped it and brushed a small strand of hair away from her face. As he leaned in to kiss her, she pulled the knife around from behind her thigh and stabbed it into his side, feeling him tense from the pain and fall into her deeper. She pulled the knife out, feeling the serrated edges catch on his skin and the material of his shirt, before jamming it into his side again, a few inches higher, then lower again, and again, and again, and-
"You're beautiful," she whispered, putting the piece of hair behind her ear. He lowered his lips and kissed her, softly first and then immediately accelerating it into a passionate kiss where he opened his mouth as wide as he would have to eat a triple decker sandwich. Faith kissed him back, moaning encouragingly into his mouth as he continued to kiss her – or consume her, she couldn't tell – rubbing his chest with her hands. His hands were all over her, running from her cheeks to her neck down over her breasts, her stomach, and then gripping her ass in a way that someone must've at some point told this guy was sexy, because he acted as though he were doing her a favor.
Faith pushed him on, encouraging him constantly, feeling the drying saliva on her neck and smelling the strong mix of cologne and hair gel. His mouth was as wondering as his hands, moving from her lips to her neck and even down to her chest as he pulled her sweatshirt collar down with his hand. The back of the collar pulled uncomfortably on her neck but she ignored it, like so many other things running through her mind.
"Do you wanna?" he asked, finally breaking his lips from her skin, in a breathy tone. He was looking into her face as he asked expectantly. She felt her arm muscles tense and in a flash she saw a straight horizontal line across his neck, the blood beginning to fill the knife wound. He grabbed his throat as though it would save him – they all thought that if they held the wound it would somehow help them to hold onto their fragile, meaningless lives. Faith blinked and looked up at the optimistic guy, still smiling except that he'd raised his hands to her breasts as though that would help her answer the question.
"Yeah," she answered, as though there was never a question, which to her, there wasn't. She blinked and in an instant she felt his hands grip her thighs in a frenzy. She blinked again and she was lying in bed with him hovering over her, pulling off his shirt. She blinked again and he was inside of her and there were moans of encouragement escaping her mouth that felt foreign to her, as though she wasn't even the one making them. She decided she wanted to blink again, except this time not open them for a little while.
Xander parked his truck, pissed off at the fact that there weren't any parking spaces without three blocks of Faith's apartment. Granted, he ignored the rules and parked in the lot of a convenience store directly next to it, but never the less, he was pissed off. And like always, Xander decided to take his negative energy and put it towards being concerned for the people around him. He had seen how easily Faith had been set off by Buffy earlier that day, and he knew it had everything to do with their argument. He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he wanted to make things right. Her words had been ringing in his head since he had left the night before.
'What do you want from me?'
'I just want you.'
'I don't even have me.'
If she didn't have her, and she wouldn't let herself have him, did she have anyone? He wanted desperately to be that anyone, but she just wouldn't let him be. I have a strange fucking way of showing that I want to be long-term guy, he mocked himself as he walked through the front door to her apartment building. Fucking a chick – especially a chick called Faith – randomly and agreeing with her that they didn't have a thing together was a great way of getting the whole long-term vibe across.
He decided against the elevator, and since he had a couple weapons on him, he took the stairs. Faith's apartment was better than her motel room years ago, but only by a little. The place was shady, and if she didn't have the strength she had, no one would've ever allowed her to live there. She defended that she had better things to spend her money on then a chandelier in her hallway.
Three flights up the stairs, and barely out of breath, Xander walked over to the door to Faith's apartment. He raised his hand to knock but stopped abruptly as his throat tightened considerably at the sounds he heard from inside. If there was any doubt in his mind before, the feeling of his stomach sinking at a million miles per hour confirmed it. He felt betrayed, cheated, dirty, and worst of all, unwanted.
He took a step backwards and then turned to leave, but stopped and turned back. He repeated this at least a dozen times before he decided to endure his punishment for all of his mistakes with her. He stood outside of her door, despite the fact that he had a key in his pocket, and listened to the hyper-masculine grunts and groans from within, which overrode and practically muted out the moans from her. At least three times he gripped the key in his coat pocket, wanting to storm into the apartment and kill the piece of shit fucking her. But he made himself stop knowing that if he went inside he'd have to see that piece of shit, fucking her. He didn't want to see her like that… he never wanted to see her like that.
Instead, he stood there in silence, biting at the insides of his mouth in frustration and resentment, as his ears were filled with sounds that he would never be able to forget.
'What do you want from me?'
'I just want you.'
'I don't even have me.'
He forced himself to take a breath, trying to calm himself down. He felt angry, but even more than that, he felt choked up. He had to admit to himself how much she was hurting him, every time that asshole entered her and she moaned, begging for him, not Xander, to do it again.
'What do you want from me?'
'I just want you.'
'I don't even have me.'
Again, and again, and again, she wanted him, not Xander! Again and again! He heard the springs of the mattress creaking and he heard her inhale sharply with every thrust. Again and again… and again! He gripped the key in his pocket again,
'What do you want from me?'
'I just want you.'
'I don't even have me.'
He didn't want to see her like that. He let go of the key and raised his hand up to his eye, needing to wipe the tears away from it. He knew she hurt the people around her because that was how she felt all of the time. He cried because he could feel the pain that he knew she felt – the pain she felt when she couldn't even believe him when he said that he loved her.
'I'll scream!' Professor Worth warned as she approached him confidently, holding a knife in her hand. She could feel every fiber in her legs from her feet through her calves and up through the fronts of her thighs, each of them with adrenaline rushing through them.
'Who wouldn't' she answered, pulling the knife back and then stabbing it into him. She loved the way that felt; at first there was a resistance – the flesh demanding that there be no entrance of the foreign invader – and then once the blade was past that threshold, it seemed to slide in smoothly until the blade ended and the handle was right against the flesh, begging to taste the blood of the wound.
She opened her eyes, concluding the long blink, and heard moans of pleasure and conclusion escape her lips, projecting her biggest lie – that this was pleasurable to her – for him to hear and memorize for life. He unlatched his lips from her throat and looked proudly into her eyes, flexing his muscles hoping that she had noticed.
"You're amazing," he breathed, kissing her jaw. She answered by running her fingers through his twice sweaty hair, feeling the gel rubbing onto her fingers.
She blinked and she was in panties and a tank top walking him through the living room area, him holding her hand and following her obediently, to the door. She went to unlock the door and realized that it hadn't been locked in the first place. She noted how bad that would've been if Xander had come by. Then, concluding that she wouldn't have cared if he had, she said her heartfelt goodbye,
"Yeah, that was fun, bye," as she opened the door and gave Sean a nice push out of the door.
"Later, Babe," he said happily before he bumped into Xander. "Sorry, dude," he apologized, and then decided he should make a quick escape when he saw the way Faith and Xander locked eyes on one another.
Faith felt like she couldn't breathe when she saw him standing there. You don't care, you don't care, you don't care, she chanted in her head. But she did care, and the way the floor seemed to be falling out from underneath her as the ceiling fell down on top of her proved it.
"Mind if I come in… Babe," he said sarcastically as he walked into the apartment. She was still frozen where she had been when letting Sean out. He walked into the kitchen, ignoring her for the time being, more because he felt like he was going to have to wipe away his tears again if he looked at her right now. He didn't want to see her this way! With his arms crossed tightly across his chest, making it clear that he wanted his space, he paced an askew circle between the kitchen area and the television area.
Faith finally closed the door and walked back over to her beer on the counter. She leaned her back against the edge again, this time putting some added pressure wanting to distract herself from the pain with some different pain. She took several long sips from the beer, now warm from sitting out for so long. She took sips, rather than long chugs because she was trying to clear the dry spot in her throat so she could speak, but after each sip it felt just as dry. Finished with the beer, she decided she still needed to say something.
"So-" her voice caught from the dryness and she cleared it before continuing, "So, what do you want?" Xander stopped walking and turned to her, standing in the same place Sean had been. He still held his arms crossed as he looked at her, having to glance down at the floor every few moments.
"I… I wanted to see if you were okay." He waited a few moments and then added, "I, umm, got here a while ago, and…" he clenched his teeth tightly, trying to control the emotions inside of him, "I just wanted to make sure that you'd be okay." He glanced up at her and she put her eyes down at the ground. "Are you okay?" he asked, even though it was more obvious right now that she wasn't, then maybe it ever had been before.
She saw herself take a step forward towards him, hesitating slightly, before putting her hands gently on his cheeks. She pressed herself against his strong body, the only thing that she was able to find comfort in these days, as she kissed his lower lip so softly… His hands fell to her waist, holding her securely like she could only be his, as he kissed her.
'Hold me,' she begged, raising her lips to his ear. He embraced her body with one arm and brought the other up to embrace her face next to his own, holding her lovingly, without expecting anything.
'I love you,' he whispered, his words muffled because he held her so closely.
"Are you okay?" he asked again.
"I'm fine," she answered mechanically, as she realized she wasn't in his arms, she was still standing there with the counter's edge digging into her lower back.
"Well, I'm going to go," he added, the tears in his eyes evident in his throat. He cast his gaze down at the ground as he held his hand up as a type of nonchalant wave, "you look tired," he added, "you should get some sleep." He walked quickly away from her and towards the door, "I'll let myself out," he added, as soon as he heard her take a step to follow him, "I'll lock it." He was borderline babbling due to his lack of confidence and Faith couldn't seem to make herself say anything.
Xander made the mistake of glancing up at her as he closed the door. He saw her wiping her eyes, trying to rid them of the tears cascading down them. He slammed the door quickly, taking a long deep breath as though he hadn't been allowed to inside the apartment. He turned and walked as quickly as he could towards the stairwell. He opened the door leading to the stairwell and then slammed it behind him. He turned back towards it and began punching the door, venting all of the emotions that were flooded inside of him as he screamed,
"Fuck!" He bit back his tears and converted them into anger as he kicked the shit out of the door, still screaming.
Faith immediately felt sick to her stomach as the door slammed, making him disappear. She walked stiffly through the kitchen and living room and bedroom, getting to the bathroom, and immediately throwing up in the toilet. She hadn't eaten anything all day and the only thing inside of her was a bottle of water and a beer. She wasn't sick from the alcohol or the lack of food or the adrenaline… she was sick because of all of the thoughts of blood coursing through her mind and how much she wished she had stabbed the shit out of that,
"Stupid fuck!" She began sobbing uncontrollably, feeling as though his hands were still touching her all over, bombarding her with their heat. She felt the dried sweat and saliva on her skin again and she grabbed for the towel hanging on the wall. She missed it due to her suddenly blurry vision. Finally grabbing it, she began rubbing the rough cloth violently against her neck, trying to make his touch disappear. She continued to sob, the pain from the cuts being caused by the towel combined with the fact that she could still feel him all over her, driving her further and further into hysterics.
Xander stood quietly in the stairwell now, feeling his body shaking from the adrenaline pumping through it. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. The sounds he listened to, for what seemed like eternity, still echoed loudly in his mind, but the vision of her crying as he left indifferent to her feelings wouldn't leave his eyes. He took a few breaths to compose himself and then opened the door back up and walked towards her apartment.
He didn't hesitate as he opened the apartment door, but as soon as he was inside he could hear her crying hysterically. He locked the door quickly behind him and practically ran towards the sound. He entered the bedroom, expecting to find her there, but the hysterical sobs were coming from the bathroom. He went in to see her sitting on the floor against the wall, crying hysterically, her face covered in both sweat and tears, as she rubbed her skin raw with the towel.
"Faith, hey, stop it," he soothed, trying to grab her hands. She shook her head and continued to run the towel against her face. He tried to grab it away from her, seeing the raw skin with blood beginning to spot in the pours in some places. He wasn't able to get the towel away from her but he got her to stop rubbing her face with it. She rubbed her inner thighs with it, still hysterical. Xander tried to keep himself from panicking – he wasn't exactly in the most emotionally stable place before he came in and saw her like this – he wasn't sure whether to console her and then get her to stop hurting herself, or the other way around.
With one food on either side of her legs, he squatted over her as he grabbed her face in his hands.
"Faith… please… it's okay… it's okay, I promise," he soothed, kissing her forehead. She began to calm down and he put one hand over hers to try and stop her from rubbing her thighs. "Shhh…" he whispered, finally able to get the towel away from her.
"I feel so dirty," she sobbed, "get him off of me," she cried, beginning to rub her skin with the heel of her hand.
"Okay," he answered, trying to keep himself from losing it. He picked her up off of the floor and turned the shower on. Still holding her up so she could stand he maneuvered his way out of his jacket, leaving him in jeans and a t-shirt. He took her into the shower, ignoring that he was getting soaked, and only concentrating on her getting out of this fit. She rubbed her face and her neck roughly under the water; he decided to help her so maybe she would stop doing it such a hostile way.
The cold water felt like it was going to freeze him to death but it seemed to calm her down. She eventually stopped sobbing and realized that any trace of Sean had definitely been rinsed off of her.
"Okay?" he asked, seeing her composure practically regained. She nodded and he turned off the water. He walked her out of the shower, trying to help her not to slip, and grabbed a different towel off of the wall. He wrapped his around her shoulders and said, "I'll go get you a different shirt." He motioned to go but she grabbed his arm,
"Just…" her throat was soar and cracked from all of her crying. She motioned towards the toilet and they both realized she had thrown up. He flushed the toilet and closed the lid, sitting down like she had motioned him to. She followed him and sat on his lap, hiding her face in his soaked t-shirt, trying to catch her breath. He held her, wrapped in the towel, his chin resting on her wet hair. He realized then, that neither he, nor any of the other Scoobies had ever really seen Faith upset. It was a memory he would never be able to strike from his memory, and perhaps with all of his mistakes with her, he shouldn't be able to.
