Summary: This is a sequel to my story A Creature I Don't Know which can be found here: s/8467907/1/A-Creature-I-Dont-Know
A/N: I strongly recommend a good understanding of season 5 to follow this: Into the Woods especially for this update.
Disclaimer:Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th Century Fox, UPN and WB Television Networks own the television shows, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel". Dark Horse and IDW own the Comics. No copyright infringement is intended, no money is being earned by myself. The title of each chapter, and the story as a whole, come from K's Choice songs/Album titles. (Given that I had soundtrack for the first I thought I should have one for the second).
Thank you all for your kind words and support for my last story. I hope you enjoy my continuation of it. I would love to hear your thoughts on my thoughts. Many thanks.
7. Me Happy
"Is it weird that we are celebrating your mom's good health by having sex?" Faith asked Buffy as she held her close to her while they lay on the living room floor.
"Look," Buffy leant up on her elbow and stared down at the younger girl, "Dawn is staying the night at Xander's, my mom is safe and well at the hospital and while this is a Yay My Mom Survived Having Lots of Her Brain Removed Night I would really rather we didn't talk about her all that much!"
"Got it." Faith nodded pulling Buffy back down for a kiss and rolling on top of her.
"Bedroom. Now." Buffy managed to get out.
"Carpet burns-"
"-Are nobody's friend!" She told Faith as she pulled her to her feet and led her upstairs.
Faith watched her sleep besides her. She slowly managed to pull back her arm from under Buffy's head and eased her way out of bed. She looked around the room for her shirt before pulling it on. She didn't like her stomach being exposed. Not that Buffy ever noticed.
She wondered what it would take for Buffy to look at her. She wondered what it would take to get Buffy to remember. She wondered if it ever crossed her mind. She wondered if she simply skipped over it to make them both feel better.
Yet every time there was that elephant in the room.
The first few times Faith refused to remove her shirt, Buffy had laughed – even called her cute for being so self conscious – but hadn't pushed her any further. One night, for one fleeting moment Faith forgot.
So caught up in the moment, in her feelings for the girl she was kissing, for the girl she was about to have sex with, that she forgot. She pulled off her shirt and flung it across the room.
So amazed was Buffy at the breasts laid bare before her, at the sight of another woman's chest, at the notion that she was going to touch another woman's nipple for the first time that she never noticed the scar across Faith's abdomen. She never noticed the wound that had nearly killed the girl before her.
By the time Faith remembered it was too late, the damage had been done she could never hide her stomach from Buffy again.
Yet Buffy never noticed.
Faith made excuses for her. She had the weight of the world on her shoulders, Dawn, her mother's cancer. Yet Faith, as she looked back at the sleeping girl, wondered when excuses would run out.
She found the rest of her clothes and made her silent escape from the house. She intended to do a couple of brief sweeps of the town before heading back to Giles. She expected to be alone all night. She didn't expect to find him standing there.
"What you doing here, Spike? And keep it brief!"
"Out for a walk, bitch!" He smiled at her smugly.
"You came up with that very quickly, been rehearsing that, Billy Buddy?"
"Swearing at you is one of the few things I can do without setting of this infernal chip. So yeah, maybe!"
"You're pathetic." She told him as she walked away.
"You know she'll never love you!" He called after her.
This caused her to stop. She turned round and found him lighting another cigarette, his last adding to the pile of butts surrounding him.
She walked back to him and considered the position she found herself in before replying:
"At least she'd rather spend the nights with my warm body than pressed against your cold one."
With that she turned back and walked away.
She returned home to find Giles speaking on the phone. She saw his glasses resting on an open book, his right hand rubbing the bridge of his nose and an open bottle of scotch. She guessed the phone call was not going well.
She grabbed another glass from the sideboard, poured herself a drink and hopped up onto the desk waiting for his phone call to end. Giles rearranged his books and papers so she wasn't sitting on any of them while he tried to remain civil to whomever he was speaking to.
"I thought you'd be staying at Buffy's tonight." He said once he'd hung up.
"And I thought you'd be in bed by now." She replied as she poured them each another drink.
"I was calling London."
"All of it? That's a big phone bill heading your way."
He took a sip of his drink. "It was the Council I was specifically trying to get hold of." Faith simply raised her eyebrows. "I reached a dead end with my research, I can't find anything on this woman or what she would want with a key. Dawn." He rephrased.
"And the Council?"
"I'm going to fly out and look at their resources."
She stood up and finished her drink.
"I'm going to bed." She told him. "When I wake up and going to ask you if I can have some time off school and come too."
"When you wake up I'm going to ask you why you want to head into the belly of the beast."
"I'll probably just shrug my shoulders."
"I'll look forward to that conversation." He let her climb a couple of the stairs before calling out to her. "Is everything okay with you and Buffy?"
"Yeah," she called back to him continuing on her path to bed, "why wouldn't it be?"
Buffy held up the mirror while her mother rearranged the wig. She was finding it hard to keep both a straight face and the small hand held still.
"You don't think it's too obvious?" Her mother asked her, "I think I look like I have a cat on my head."
"But a very well groomed cat."
"Well that's a comfort." Joyce sighed back at her smiling daughter.
"I think it's fun." Buffy told her, putting the mirror down and sitting besides her. "We can get you a whole bunch of different wigs. You can be like - Action Mom, Sixties Mom, French Maid Mom... Maybe get a big green Grinchy-looking one for Christmas..."
"I must be getting better." She smiled at her, "You're making fun of me again."
"Well, yeah. I have a lot of lost time to make up."
"I think you have more important things to make up. I know you've been missing a lot of school..."
"I'm fine." Buffy reassured her mother, "Willow's been bringing me my work. I may have to take a few incompletes, but I'll get through the semester."
"Well what about slaying - and your friends? I want you to get back to your life."
"Faith's on the slaying gig right now, I mean she left-" she cut herself off when she realised what she was saying. "I will. I promise. But right now I'm more into being here - and styling your beautiful new plastic dream hair."
"Fair enough. But you don't have to keep me company all night. Go have fun. Get Faith to take you to a movie or something."
"I am having fun. Besides, I gave Faith the day off."
"I don't think she thinks of you as a chore, Buffy."
"Mom - I told Faith to make her own plans tonight because I wanted to have you all to myself. Okay? I can see her anytime." She made to rearrange her mother's new hair but thought better of it. "Besides, I'm sure she'll come around later looking for some- Bible study."
"Well - good." Joyce looked at her daughter a little uneasily. "As long as you two are getting come quality time with... the Lord."
"We are. Absolutely."
She stormed the crypt and had the vampire by the throat against the wall in an instance. As she pushed the wood through his chest the arm chair he'd been sitting in came to its final resting place on its side.
He roared in pain while she simply laughed. She'd let go of him. The force of her anger through his chest had the creature pinned to the stone wall by the wooden stake alone. He continued to roar as she picked up the chair, turned it to face him and sat down.
"Missed the heart." Faith smiled at him. "Must be losing my touch."
"And yet I'm still in pain." He complained as he pulled the stake from his chest and dropped to the floor. He cast the stake aside and crawled to his bottle of whiskey. He poured a little on the wound before downing the rest.
Faith watched as he gingerly got to his feet, walked to another bottle on the side and started to drink from the fresh source.
"I must admit I was expecting you earlier."
"I had some actual big bads to tackle last night. You could wait."
"Weren't afraid I'd slip in and snuggle with your sweetie?"
"She'd stake you. She wouldn't miss."
"Then why did you?" He asked her simply, surprising her by passing her the bottle. She was back on her feet and at him again.
"Don't be fooled; while I'm not in the business of killing innocent creature any more, I won't think twice about dusting you."
"Oh… man… you're really under it, aren't you?" He laughed at her. "Even if I am hot for your honey, that's not your problem. Even if I wasn't in the picture, you're never going to be able to hold onto her..."
Her left hand was suddenly at his throat and her right forced a new stake through his fresh wound.
"Ahhhh! Bloody hell-"
"Maybe I rethink my policy."
"Come on." Spike managed to breath out. "You're not the long haul and you know it-"
"Shut up-"
"You know it, or you wouldn't be here with me in the middle of the day." Her grip around his neck loosened, just a little. "Girl needs some man in her monster, and it's not in your…" He paused while he took her figure in. "No matter how low you try to go."
She dropped him once more and returned to the arm chair, snatching up the whiskey bottle as she went. "Do you actually think you've got a shot with her?"
"No, I don't. Fellow's gotta do what he can, though. Got to try."
"You touch her, you know I'd kill you, for real."
"I had this chip out, I'd a killed you long ago." Spike paused as he took in the girl in his arm chair drinking from his bottle. "Ain't love grand." Faith threw him the bottle. "Sometimes I envy you so much it chokes me. And then sometimes I think I've got the better deal. To be that close to her and not have her... To be all alone even when you're holding her, feeling her, feeling her beneath you, surrounding you, the scent of - no, you've got the better deal."
He passed the bottle back to her and watched as she took another drink from it. She sat it down on the arm while she adjusted her school uniform as she stood. Drink back in her hand she through it at the wall behind him. Missing his head by millimetres alone.
"Touch her. You die." And she returned to school.
Buffy knocked on the girl's bedroom door and was confused to see her packing an overnight bag.
"I thought you were going to come by after school?" She questioned her, taking a seat besides a couple of things waiting to be folded on Faith's bed.
"Something came up."
"Something involving packing?" Buffy asked her, taking a shirt from the girl and refolding it for you. "Not that I'm not used to seeing you pack, you seem to do it a lot."
"I'm a real badass when it comes to packing." Faith smiled weakly at her.
"Where are you going?"
"England with Giles."
"Belly of the beast, huh?"
"That's what he said." She nodded taking the shirt from her. "I'm not actually planning on going into the building, might give them too much opportunity to arrest me again." Buffy passed her another folded shirt. "Thinking I might take in a couple of sites. Buckingham Palace, Big Ben," she shrugged, "didn't really get the chance to last time."
"Last time?"
"You know when G and I went last year."
"Oh yeah…" Buffy nodded before frowning, "for the… the, uh…"
"His dad's funeral. You were too caught up with GI Joe to notice."
"When you phrase things like that you make me sound all Cordelia-y."
Faith moved the bag and the last couple of unpacked items and sat besides her.
"I need to get away for a bit."
"School getting too hard?"
Faith simply shook her head. "This is."
Thank you all for your continued support; would love to know what you think, Circus.