Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters except for the ones that I created like Katy, Morgan, and Maria.
CHAPTER 37-BEGINNINGS OF AN ATTRACTION
"So what made you switch sides Faith," Buffy asked with a curious tone to her voice as she carefully pulled her cup of tea out of the microwave and then shut the door.
"Oddly enough B…the truth," Faith calmly replied with a half shrug of her shoulders as she held back a cocky smile while peeling a banana.
"The truth…really, and just whose truth would that be," Buffy asked with an unconvinced look on her face as she walked over and sat down at the table.
"The truth doesn't belong to anyone B, it's just there, open to everyone who wants to see it, it just took me a little longer that's all," Faith answered calmly with a relaxed look on her face before she stuffed half of the banana into her mouth.
"So then oh wise one, what's the truth," Buffy wondered back with a not amused look on her face before she blew the steam away from her tea.
"The truth is that Angel and the others tried to do what they thought was right, and when they asked for help you and Giles turned a deaf ear and played the to high and mighty card," Faith replied with a slightly accusatory tone to her voice after she swallowed hard and peeled back some more of the banana.
"Hey sister, Giles pulled the high and mighty…we didn't know that Angel was telling the truth, if we had then of course we would have been there to help him, we would have been there in a heartbeat," Buffy shot back with a defensive and slightly angry expression on her face as she set her cup of tea down onto the table, careful not to slosh any over the side and burn her hand.
"Keep telling yourself that long enough B…and ya just might start to believe it, you had everything that you wanted and didn't want to be bothered with Angel's problems," Faith softly said back with a sarcastic smirk on her face before she stood up and went to throw the banana peel away.
"Oh really…and what about you, you could just as easily have gone to LA to help Angel when he was in trouble, but you didn't, you stayed in Rome," Buffy declared with a proud of herself look on her face as she half turned in her chair to pointedly look across the room at Faith.
"You're right…I didn't help him, I stayed in Rome all safe and sound, but only because I didn't know about it…and because of that Wesley died, I'm just lucky that I got a second chance with him," Faith replied with an almost self-mocking chuckle as she made her way over to the refrigerator.
"Speaking of which…how'd that happen, you and Wesley, how'd the two of you hook up, you two don't look like a perfect couple at first glance," Buffy asked with a sly grin on her face as she turned back around to her cup of tea and took a small sip. Faith tried to stay calm and look impassive but couldn't help it and her mouth broke into a sly smirk before she answered.
"Once I fully figure that out B…I'll tell you, all that I can say for sure is that I like where I am in my life and no one had better even try and disrupt that," Faith replied softly with a very determined and serious look on her face as she pulled a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator and began to look around for a corkscrew.
"Don't you think that you've had enough of that lately Faith," Buffy said back with a delicately serious look on her face as she nodded her head towards the bottle of wine. Faith stopped her search and glanced down briefly at the bottle of wine before she looked up and replied.
"Thanks for trying to look out for me and all B but…actually since Wes and I hooked up I've drank less and have been able to keep from snapping at people as much, hell I'm not even as sarcastic as I used to be," Faith said with a restrained smile on her face as she pushed aside a still wet dish and found the corkscrew.
"Well…looks like Wesley's done something that no one else has ever come close to…domesticating the rogue slayer," Buffy shot back with a sly grin on her face and a raised eyebrow as she brought her cup of tea up to her lips.
"Stop right there, the day that I ever become domesticated I'll kill myself," Faith said with a very serious, determined, and proud look on her face even though Buffy could see from the look in her eyes that her determination to do just that was not as strong as it had been in the past.
"Is that a promise," Buffy joked with an impish grin on her face before she took a sip of her tea and tried to keep from laughing openly.
"You'd like that wouldn't you, get rid of a little competition," Faith said with a slightly angry edge to her voice as she walked towards the table.
"We're not in a competition here Faith, Wesley is yours…and fairly won, as for me I," Buffy said with an easy shrug of her shoulders as she looked up at Faith.
"Am trying to figure out whether or not you and Spike still have a chance to be together while not trying to appear jealous about Angel and Nina," Faith interjected with a sly grin on her face and an innuendo laden tone of voice as she passed Buffy by and went to the cupboard to get a couple of wine glasses.
"No…it's not like that," Buffy said back with a defensive and somewhat embarrassed tone to her voice as she covered her mouth with the rim of the mug.
"Oh really, you've always been wiggy when it comes to relationships B, as long as I've known you you've gone through guys almost as quickly as I have, and that's saying something," Faith said back with a cheesy grin on her face as she reached up into a cupboard and pulled out a couple of wine glasses.
"I have not, I've just been more than unlucky in love, and I'm not the only slayer with love problems here Faith, how many times have you been in love in your lifetime," Buffy came back sharply with a hurt look on her face before she calmed down and shot a pointed question straight at Faith, who almost dropped the two glasses in surprise at Buffy's question.
"Once…look B, I should get going," Faith replied softly with an eerily scared look on her face before she shuffled out of the kitchen, leaving Buffy to ponder in silence what had caused Faith's sudden change in attitude.
"Getting a little sun there Lorne," Spike said with a calm and relaxed smile on his face as he leaned up against the stone pillar in the shadowy portion of the backyard.
"I'm trying…though I'm not sure that it's doing any good," Lorne said back with a sad sigh as his shoulders slumped a bit and he carefully checked out a small cut on his chin in a handheld mirror.
"It's not that bad Lorne, you're still the handsomest demon that I know…of course you're also the only demon that I know but," Jamie said with a nervous smile on her face as she scooted down the bench just a bit, slightly further away from Spike than she had been at first. Even though she had learned a lot since waking up naked in the alley she was still a bit unnerved about having a vampire so close to her.
"Easy pet, I'm not going to bite you, if I had wanted to do that I would have done it while you were sleeping," Spike said with a comforting smile on his face as he shifted his weight a bit to avoid a stray stream of sunlight as after staring up at Spike for a bit she scooted back over to her original spot.
"Thanks for the support buttercup but this life has never been kind to me, why should now be any different," Lorne said with a somber and dejected tone to his voice as he shook his head and stared out over the lawn at two small birds that were fighting over a small twig.
"Perhaps because you're surrounded by friends," Jamie offered up with a fearfully hopeful look on her face as she pushed the strap of her tank top over a bit so that she could get a better tan as she leaned forward and away from Spike. She had only been at David's house for a day and so far she was the only one that had found it hard to find something that would fit correctly without making her look like she was trying to draw attention to her overly curvaceous body. At times like this she regretted having gotten breast implants three years earlier. She had very nearly gone bankrupt in getting them but afterwards she had found that work was much easier to find. She had always been physically fit and been admired for her body except that she had not been particularly blessed in one certain department. She and Holly had met a few days later and had been together ever since, at least until that day in the club. Now her most pressing problems were keeping Andrew and David's eyes in their heads when she walked by or bent over to pick something up.
"I was surrounded by friends back in LA sugarplum, and that didn't do any good, I'm afraid that this time I won't be so lucky, this just might be the end for me," Lorne said with an exasperated and saddened expression on his face as out of the corner of his eye he saw Willow standing beside one of the trees out in the yard, staring intently at Jamie. But then she caught Lorne's gaze and quickly blushed a deep red and turned away, hurrying off out of sight. "Did you," Lorne asked softly with a confused and curious edge to his voice as he turned back and looked up quickly at Spike and Jamie before turning back to where Willow had been.
"Been acting odd lately, pretty much ever since she found you two, first she didn't want anything to do with her…but now," Spike interjected with a curious expression on his face as he fished a stolen match out of his pocket and after pulling his only cigarette out of his pocket he lit it and inhaled deeply.
"This is all so confusing," Lorne said with a perplexed expression on his face as he shook his head and glanced back to where he had last seen Willow.
"You think that's confusing, earlier today when I was taking a shower I slipped and when I reached out for something to break my fall I grabbed the railing that they put in and I ripped it right out of the wall, got a nasty bruise on my ass to," Jamie added with a confused look on her face before Spike leaned down a bit and spoke up.
"It was probably not put in right pet, happens all of the time," Spike interjected with a small chuckle before he stood fully back up and inhaled another puff.
"Okay maybe, but then how do you explain the other things," Jamie questioned with a worried and frustrated look on her face as she spun back around and set her feet down on the other side of the bench.
"What other things," Lorne asked with a concerned look on his face as he leant down and picked a small yellow flower.
"Yesterday I accidentally cut my elbow on the edge of one of the flowerbeds, and today it's completely gone, like it never existed, and now I can faintly hear what Andrew and David are talking about in the kitchen, they have dirty minds," Jamie replied with a nervous and upset look on her face as she looked back and forth between Spike and Lorne, hoping that one would know what was going on.
"This is…disconcerting," Spike said with a very serious and thoughtful look in his eyes before he flung his cigarette to the ground, snuffed it out with the heel of his boots and then turned away and quickly went back inside.
"Can…can we talk," Buffy stammered out softly with an extremely nervous look on her face as she found Spike reclining at the end of the dock, staring up at the night sky.
"It's a free country, or at least last time I checked it was," Spike replied calmly with a laid back tone to his voice as he continued to stare up at the night sky.
"Nice night," Buffy said with a timid edge to her voice as she sat down beside Spike and slipped her sandals off, dangling her feet off of the dock and into the water.
"That it is luv, though that's not what you came here to talk about, is it," Spike said with a somewhat skeptical tone to his voice as he kept gazing up at the stars but still saw Buffy tense up a bit at his words.
"No, you're right…it's not, why didn't you tell me when you came back…you didn't have to show up in Rome or anything but," Buffy started to say with a nervous and slightly scared look on her face before she forced herself to turn away as she fought back a tear.
"Wasn't my place, I had to let you have a little peace and time to yourself, sure I wanted to see you, talk to you…when I went poof into Angel's office, but at that time I was a spook, couldn't touch anything and couldn't leave LA," Spike said in a low tone of voice as he glanced briefly at Buffy before returning his gaze to the sky.
"But you still could have had someone call me, we could have done something, we could have helped you," Buffy said back in earnest with a very sad and frustrated look on her face as she turned back to Spike.
"Last time I checked you and yours weren't exactly in the helping mood when it came to the LA gang," Spike calmly said back with a bored and somewhat uncomfortable look on his face as he shifted his weight and dislodged a pebble from underneath his shoulder and tossed it out into the pond.
"That was only Giles, he never told us that Angel called him for help, if he had called and told me that you were back I would have been on the first plane that I could find," Buffy snapped back with a very serious and almost angry tone to her voice as she scooted back away from the end of the dock and tried to look Spike in the eye.
"Really now, wouldn't the new boyfriend have had a small problem with that, you rushing off in the middle of the night to see an old friend," Spike asked with a sing song edge to his voice as he took a useless deep breath and closed his eyes.
"He would have understood that I had to go and see an old love, I know he would have," Buffy said with a pleading look in her eyes as she hesitantly reached out and gently touched Spike's hand, her confidence growing when he didn't immediately pull it away.
"Love…so then you were serious there, back in Sunnydale, when you said," Spike asked softly as he tried to not admit how much he was hoping for a positive answer.
"What, of course I was Spike, I did…do love you," Buffy replied with a look of great sincerity on her face that Spike had to dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands to keep himself from looking straight into her emerald eyes.
"Guess then I didn't get my hopes up for nothing," Spike joked back with a forced look of amusement on his face as he let out a soft chuckle.
"What," Buffy asked softly with a confused and surprised look on her face as she pulled her hand back away from Spike's.
"Back after that night when I found you in that abandoned house I thought that things were looking up for us, that had I made it through the battle in Sunnydale in one piece that maybe someday I wouldn't just be," Spike quickly answered with a calm tone of voice and a very serious look on his face as he glanced over at Buffy and held her gaze for some time before she looked down at the dock and made small circles in the soft wood with her fingernails.
"You're not wrong, if you had made it out of Sunnydale with the rest of us then I was going to talk to you…see if you still felt the same way about me that I felt…feel, about you," Buffy squeaked back at first with a nearly sick feeling in the pit of her stomach before she gained strength from somewhere inside of herself and looked back up at Spike.
"We can't go back Buffy, it's to painful, for the both of us," Spike said with a very sad and hurt look on his face as he sat up and shook his head, hunching his shoulders up a bit and lowering his head.
"I know, and I don't want to, what if we tried moving on…moving forward, see where that would take us," Buffy said with a very nervous look on her face as she turned back briefly to Spike but then turned away as a couple of tears fell.
"I could do that, just as long as everyone knew about it…us, I don't want you to be ashamed of us anymore," Spike said in a soft whisper as he realized that Buffy was about ready to lapse into one of her fits of crying and gently reached out and pulled her head back around until she was facing him with a hand on her chin.
"Deal," Buffy said with a soft sniffle before Spike started to smile and pull back but she took a chance and pushed aside her fears and leaned forward and began a gentle kiss on Spike's lips. For a second she was terrified that he was going to pull away and be put off by her sudden leap forward but her fears were allayed, at least most of them, when instead he kept her close and pulled her into a more passionate kiss. The two would be glad later on that it was a dark night. Buffy wouldn't realize it until much later but Spike's skin wasn't cold, like the last time they made love, but warm.
The sound interrupted her trip from her room to the bathroom. Michelle had done her best not to wake anyone in passing their open doors but Jamie hadn't been able to sleep and at the sound she had shot up out of bed and hurried to her door. Michelle blushed and looked away as she caught sight of what how little the newest resident of the mansion was wearing. From the quick glance that she got the bra was being stretched to its limits while covering only the smallest amount while her panties were almost nonexistent.
"Um…Jamie, maybe you should," Michelle started to say with a nervous look on her face before Jamie grabbed the thin bathrobe that she had been lent and slipped it on, though she left it open in the front as she was interrupted by hearing the sound again and others walking up.
"What's going on here," Willow asked with a sleepy look of anger on her face as it was clear that she wasn't happy about being awakened in the middle of the night.
"We don't know, we just heard a sound and were going to see what it was," Jamie replied with a nervous look on her face as she shut her door behind her.
"So did we, it sounded like it was coming from the basement," Maria said with a quickening of her breath as she walked out of the darkness and into the dimly lit hallway.
"But there's not really anything down there…right, it's not the right time of the month for Nina to change into a werewolf and everyone else is asleep," Katy added with a curious look on her face as she moved her wrist just a bit and Michelle noticed that she was holding a small knife.
"Where did you get that," Vi asked with a scared expression on her face as she walked up beside Michelle and saw the glint of light on the blade.
"Spike gave it to me, said that it might come in handy, though I don't think that he's behind this," Katy replied softly with a slight shrug of her shoulders as she shifted her weight to keep most of it off of her now only sore left hip.
"Well put it away, we probably won't even need it, the sound that we heard is probably nothing, this is an old house, it was probably just the foundation settling or something simple like that," Willow said back with a now calmer tone to her voice as she looked around at the small group of slayers assembled around her, hoping to keep them calm.
"We should split up and search the mansion," Rhona announced with a very determined scowl on her face as she walked down the hallway, looking like she had just been out on the grounds taking a walk and come in when she heard the noise.
"I think that we should stick together, and tell Mr. Giles," Vi said in a slightly squeaky voice as she fixed her gaze on Katy and Maria and not at the half naked Jamie.
"We don't need to tell Giles, we're not children," Katy said with a stern and impatient expression on her face as she was the only one on the landing to not constantly intentionally avert their gaze from Jamie.
"But he is in charge, we should tell him, he'll know what to do," Vi said with a scared and nervous look on her face as she took a step backwards and was about to turn around when Willow spoke up, just seconds before Katy.
"Not right now he isn't, and besides sometimes you have to do things for yourself, since it appears that none of you are going to go back to sleep until we figure out what that noise was Katy take Maria and Jamie and go downstairs and see if you can find anything in the basement, while I take Vi and Rhona with me and we'll check out up here," Willow interjected with a serious and nervous look in her eyes before everyone silently nodded their heads and split up, though Willow couldn't help but watch a certain member of that trio as she headed for the stairs, wishing that could keep from staring.
END OF CHAPTER 37