Title: The First Step
Author: Vesica
Fandom: BtVS/X-men (the movieverse mainly)
Character(s)/Pairing: Faith/Bobby Drake
Rating: T
Word Count: 500
Prompt: Endings – 500 words on Endings.
Disclaimer: Not mine - I just borrowed them for a bit.
Author's Note: Written for the Drabbleredux LJ's "Endings" challenge. Crossposted to the Buffyverse1000 LJ.
Summary: Knowing and acting on that knowing can be worlds apart.

"I understand what I am still too proud to mention to you" Fiona Apple, Never is a Promise

She was the inked souvenir from Padre Island you tried to hide from your parents.

She was smoking out behind the field house during fifth period.

She was sneaking out your bedroom window and over the back fence in the darkness.

At night, when it was just the two of them, she could forget. She had never been with someone so utterly focused on her. He knew her body almost better than she did, knew how to read every sigh, every gasp. Every move, every look, every lingering kiss was about her and only her.

The nights were heaven, but day came and brought an odd sort of blindness.

She didn't see the way he stood a little closer when his teammates walked by. Like clockwork, his arm would find its way around her waist or casually slung across her shoulders. She accepted the contact and carefully shut her mind to analysis. She didn't count off the seconds, about 45, once they were alone again and he let her go.

She didn't see the way he couldn't keep his hands off her in meetings. Xavier would drone on and it was just a matter of time before she felt him – tracing tiny circles on the inside of her wrist with the pad of his thumb, tickling the back of her calf with the toe of his shoe or his hand coming to rest on the bare skin at the base of her spine.

She told herself she didn't mind the looks when the two of them dashed off from every single meeting – to their room, to a closet, anywhere with a door. When he had her pinned up against a wall, expertly fanning the fire those endless meetings sparked, she didn't care. All she wanted was him – every inch, five minutes ago.

Every day she invented new ways not to see and every day she failed.

Now she lay awake each night, wondering how even the darkness had failed them in the end. Instead of losing herself in the intoxication of desire, she couldn't escape the truth she didn't want to see.

She was his act of teenage rebellion five years too late.

Sometimes she hated him so much her breath burned in her chest, hated what she let him turn her into. Damn it, she was a Slayer, not some whacked out coming of age ritual.

She was Faith and it made her stomach clench, on nights like this, when she could barely remember who Faith was, who she had been.

It was over.

She closed her eyes and could see the bag she'd packed weeks ago, hidden under her side of their bed.

He was still snoring as she threw back the sheet, as her bare feet hit the cold floor. He never moved, never sensed a thing as she stood and took the hardest step of her life – away.

END.