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Here is part two of the fic, co-written with Bit. Thanks for all the feedback yesterday and for all of you who, although bothered by Giles and Buffy are trusting us! I'm not going to promise happy endings because that's not how it works but I firmly believe that people like them, who've gone through hell, have breaking points and weaknesses as much as anyone.
And what they've gone through is enough to break anyone. We never saw the smiles slip off their faces after the post-Chosen euphoria died down and the grief for what was lost kicked in. We never saw how fragile the reconciliation between Buffy and Giles was, nor how Buffy reacted to the deaths of the two men she loved.
If we had, it might not've been like this... but I think it's not unlikely and consistent with canon.
Previous parts are here
Hollow Heart
by Jane Davitt and Bit
Chapter Two
Her eyes are clear but wary as they skitter past him, then over his shoulder into the shadowy confines of the flat that she's never been invited into before. His guts twist when he realises that she still doesn't trust him – not that he's ever given her a reason to – and that she's half expecting a dozen suited Watchers to rush out of his bathroom and tazer her into submission.
They stare at each other for a few seconds and he feels like she's a frightened woodland animal who might get startled if he makes any sudden movements. And that would be a frightened woodland animal with a vicious right hook but he slowly gestures with his beer bottle towards the empty room behind him.
"Would you like to come in, Faith?"
She sidles past him, steps over the threshold, and looks around uncertainly. "Well, you got a spare bed for a wanted fugitive?"
"I --" Whatever he's about to say with the image of Faith in his bed -- spare, or otherwise -- is mercifully lost because right then, with suspicious synchronicity, the phone rings and her eyes widen.
"Shit."
"Stay." His order is backed up by a pleading look that anchors her in place more surely than the hand he clamps around her wrist. "Please, Faith."
He walks with her attached to him over to the phone and picks it up.
"Wyndam-Pryce."
His voice is toneless and unemotional, but he's still staring at Faith with a world of urgency in his eyes, feeling her strain against a grip she could break without trying, all her effort channeled toward holding still, even though she's practically vibrating with panic.
"Wesley."
It's Giles. Of course it's Giles.
"Giles, I take it this isn't a social call."
Faith twitches at the sound of Giles' name and he can feel the tension in her bones as he tightens his hold around her silly, delicate wrist.
"Of course it's not," Giles snaps, irritation emanating down the line. "Faith's escaped as I'm sure you know."
She's biting her lip now, though her gaze is fixed on him, defiant, not wavering, not even blinking.
"And of course she'd come straight to the first place that you'd look for her," Wesley drawls, stroking the divot where wrist meets palm. "Don't be bloody ridiculous, Giles."
Her sudden smile knocks him into the middle of next week, so he can't remember his own name or listen to Giles' increasingly fractious questions. ""I'll make some calls. She can't have gone far. She was rather close with what's her name? Little Asian girl… Parminder, was it?"
There's a muffled thud and he hears Giles talking to someone. "Parminder's on leave. She's with her family in Birmingham."
Faith's rolling her eyes at him now, hand over her mouth to mask the relieved giggles.
"You sound remarkably calm, Wesley, for a man whose Slayer has knocked out two Watchers and disappeared."
"Do I sound calm, Giles? I rather thought that I was hanging on to my temper by the thinnest of threads at the thought that my Slayer, my drugged, beaten and half-incapacitated Slayer, is missing and you're not doing anything to actually ensure that she's safe."
"Wesley…"
"I'm going out to look for her. I'll speak to you presently, Giles," he finishes with an angry little sigh then hangs up in time to get eight and half stone of Slayer hurling herself at him.
"You rock," she says, attacking him with kisses and squirming against him in a way guaranteed to make his body forget that incident in the shower ever happened. "Say it again."
"What?" he asks, knowing damn well, his arms around her even though she stiffens slightly in his embrace.
At least she's also in the ideal position to stamp down rather hard on his bare foot.
"My Slayer," he says through his teeth. "My bloody annoying, unpredictably violent, untruthful, mistrustful Slayer. Do that again and I'll put my Slayer over my knee and let her arse meet my hand, understand me?"
God, she has dimples when she smiles. How can he never have noticed them?
He gets them over to the couch, trying not to limp and then changing his mind and exaggerating it just to get a gurgle of laughter from her. She's giddy and excited and he hates to do it but he has to know --
"Faith? Why did you do that? It's going to make it so much harder to persuade Giles to release you when you're --"
"Already out?" A little of the light seeps out of her face and he sees the tiredness there. "He wasn't going to, Wes. Ever. Couldn't -- couldn't hack that. Not again. Not prison after being out all this time, getting used to being part of it all again."
He lets her prise the bottle of beer out of his hand and curl up in the corner of the sofa. "I don't think Giles would have let things escalate that far."
Faith takes a long swig. "Yeah, well that goes to show how out of the loop you are, Wes. Got nothing to do with Giles. B wants it, B gets it and she wanted me back in the Big House in an orange boiler suit, yo."
Wesley stretches out his legs so he can touch her, because she's not behind bars, not locked away from him, just drinking his beer and that sad look is back in her eyes.
"Couldn't do it, Wes. Not gonna be locked up again. Fuck redemption, y'know…" She turns her head and he wonders if she's going to cry but when she turns back to him, she's dry-eyed and determined. "I took it, Wes, like the bad little Slayer I was but it was hell. Every night, my blood would itch because I was in there and I…" She grimaces with self-loathing. "I needed to kill."
"You needed to slay," he corrects her mildly, snagging the bottle before she can drink it all. "And I think everybody but Buffy can see your transformation."
"Buffy, Buffy, Buffy… I feel like Jan in The Brady Bunch – don't worry, Wes, it's a pop culture ref, don't expect you to get it," she smirks and he smirks back because she's ragging him so things can't be that bad. "Had her in my face all day. She thinks that me doing a Martha will prove Giles' devotion or, like, she can have all the Angel grief to herself. I'm a little foggy on the fine print."
Somewhat belatedly he realises that they shouldn't be doing this. "Faith -- this isn't a solution. Coming here, I mean; the escape's a fait accompli, no matter how ill-advised --"
This time she pinches him, choosing a rather tender patch of skin on his belly. "Talk English!"
"I was!"
She looks unbearably smug and impossibly endearing. "Wasn't. 'Fait accompli': that's French, right? French for 'done deal'."
He licks his finger and chalks her up a point on an imaginary board. "Fair enough, but it doesn't change the fact that sooner rather than later, Giles is going to come here. He doesn't trust me." He thinks about that and amends it slightly. "He knows me."
Faith shrugs and sits up straight, locking her hands behind her neck and stretching. He'd suspect her of doing it to showcase breasts that are eye-catchingly rounded were it not for the pop of realigning vertebrae.
Hours in cuffs, hands behind you, can have consequences other than the scuff of skin at the wrist.
"I'll go. Wouldn't want Giles to have to scold you for being his terribly naughty little boy."
Her mimicry is so over-the-top as to be laughable but the dig is sharp enough to make his lips tighten instead. She sees him like that, does she? Giles' protégé?
"We'll go," he corrects her. "And soon."
"How soon?" she demands. And before he's even got time to think about schedules and exit strategies, she's in his arms again, mouth pressed against his as her tongue paints a white hot line across his lips.
He's not a saint. He's just a man, just a sucker with a hard-on, which she's rubbing her belly against as she tries to kiss him properly.
He turns his head. "Faith, no…"
"You don't want me?"
He never thought that Faith could look like a puppy with a month to live but she's doing a bloody good impersonation of one. "I want you," he breathes and for one fleeting second he pulls her hand down to his aching cock, before entwining his fingers with hers. "But I'm going to wine and dine you first, that was the deal."
"Could do the wining and dining after the fact," she offers, trying to yank her hand free and now it's his turn to pinch the soft skin above her hip, so she yelps for effect.
"Wining and dining first," Wesley says firmly. "But first you're going to have a shower while I pack and then we're going to get the hell out of Dodge."
She snorts at his ersatz American accent, and then jumps off the couch. "You going to scrub my back for me then?"
He nudges her with his foot. "Stop being a tease, Faith and try not to wreak havoc in my bathroom this time, please."
She leaves the bathroom door open, but mercifully has enough consideration for the floor to close the shower door tightly. When he goes into the bathroom to retrieve the wash bag he keeps packed and ready to go, he catches a glimpse of her behind the glass door, pale body indistinct in the steam.
He's seen her close to naked before when he's dressed her wounds, but that was business and she was bleeding; it's a very different situation when she's soap-slicked and humming something that he couldn't identify if both their lives depended on it.
He could strip and slide in behind her and get an appreciative murmur and Faith's best impression of a mermaid. His hand curves as if it's already cupping the weight of a breast or supporting her neck as he kisses her upturned face, eyes closed against the spray.
Knowing he could, knowing he will, someday, sometime, soon, is all that gives him the willpower to exit silently, although he knows damn well that she knows that he's there.
By the time she emerges, pink-cheeked, damp towel scrubbing at her hair, there's a case packed of clothes, books and sundries -- which translates as 'weapons' mostly -- and his coat is on.
He throws her a baseball cap and smiles as she studies it incredulously. "Just until we get to the car," he says.
"We going to some swanky restaurant, Wes?" She glances down at her T-shirt and black jeans, a battered leather jacket not doing much to dress them up.
"No, but I'm glad that you reminded me."
He heads for the kitchen and emerges with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew, handing them to her. "Here. If we run into a problem, do exhaust all other possibilities before hitting someone over the head with it; it's older than you."
"And that's good?" she asks, studying the label as if she's looking for a sell-by date.
"Yes," he says briefly.
"You haven't said where we're going."
He pauses, with his hand on the doorknob. "Does it matter?"
She twirls the corkscrew and gives him a jaunty grin. "Not really."
He turns away too slowly to miss the way the smile vanishes when she thinks that he's not looking at her.
*****
The street is abandoned when he ushers her out of the house. No Council goons in unmarked cars, just a disinterested cat who pauses briefly from washing its paws to stare at them as Wesley unlocks the passenger door.
The sky is darkening; tinges of dark blue mix with streaks of vivid pink. "Looks like it's going to be another beautiful day tomorrow," he says nonsensically as he climbs in next to Faith who looks suitably unimpressed.
"Don't talk about the weather, Wes, too much of a cliché, y'know?" she says, adjusting her baseball cap in the mirror as he starts the engine. "Gonna tell me where we're going?"
Wesley shakes his head. "No, it's a surprise," he says teasingly, pulling away from the kerb, but his smile is wiped clean when she slumps down in the seat.
"Don't like surprises. They always suck."
"Always?"
"Always," she repeats emphatically, then sighs. "Think my post-freedom high's wearing off." He's inclined to agree. The tension is coming off her in rolling waves, like she's trapped in her own skin and can't claw free.
Wesley slows to take a corner. "I have chocolate in the black holdall," he offers lamely. "And when we clear the city, I'll let you smoke if you promise to keep the window open."
She doesn't even wait for them to get down the road before she's tearing the cellophane off the cigarettes and snaking one out of the packet. "Don't even," she snaps as he's about to tell her to at least open the bloody window and they settle into an uncomfortable silence as they head down the Great North Way.
The road north is fairly clear, although there are the usual roadworks around Birmingham. Faith's asleep by then, and when Wesley's cell begins to ring she mutters and twitches and snuggles her face against the seat. He lets it ring and when it stops he tugs it out of his pocket and turns it off.
He knows it was Giles.
When the need to pee, stretch his legs, and fill up the car with petrol coincide with a service station he pulls over and shakes her awake.
"Faith."
She wakes with a struggle and a snarl, her eyes wild until she sees his face.
"Shit." Taking a deep breath she glances around at the forecourt, deserted apart from a caravanette that's seen better days, and visibly relaxes. "Thought we were in trouble."
"No," he tells her. "I'm fairly certain the worst we'll have to deal with is some truly execrable coffee and you can avoid that if you want to go back to sleep."
She gets out and he follows her, both of them breathing in air that, for all the petrol fumes, is a good deal fresher than London air.
"Smells weird," Faith decides. She frowns, staring across the slip road that leads back to the M6. "Are they cows?"
He shrugs, ignoring the insistent message from his bladder, and starts to refuel the car, caution dictating that they be ready to leave in a hurry if needs be. "Do they have four legs and go 'moo'? If so, then, yes, there's a good chance that they are."
She stick her tongue out at him, her face an odd shade of orange under the forecourt lights. "I'm going to pee."
"Thank you for sharing."
"And when I get back, you can tell me where the hell we're going, Wes," floats back to him as she walks away.
*****
Their knees bump together under the table as he watches her devour a plate of sausage, chips and beans, which if his cheese roll is anything to go by, tastes of cardboard.
Wesley likes a girl with a healthy appetite but the way Faith eats, one arm curled protectively around her plate as if she expects it to be snatched away from her, other hand constantly in motion as she shovels forkload after forkload into her mouth, barely pausing to chew and swallow, is more anthropological than erotic. There's absolutely nothing to be gained from pointing out that she wouldn't be so hungry all the time if she actually bothered to taste her food; instead he just pushes the bowl of apple crumble to her as soon as she raises her head.
"Custard is weird," she remarks sagely, spoon poised like a heat-seeking missile. "So, Wes, gonna tell me where we're headed?"
He takes a sip of weak, lukewarm tea – he hadn't been able to face the coffee. "North. About as far north as we can go without falling off the edge."
"Don't go all cryptic on me, Wes."
"Don't talk with your mouth full, Faith." She looks at her spoon and then at him like she's contemplating flicking his smirking face with custard. "I wouldn't if I were you. My wrath would be quite considerable."
"Promises, promises," she mumbles under her breath then reaches under the table to pat his knee in a curiously clumsy gesture. "Thanks, Wes."
"For what?" He has a pretty shrewd idea of what, but she just vaguely waves her spoon around again.
"Y'know, this. Might not have noticed but I'm lousy at speeches, leave that to B and the others. But I wanted to say thanks. You're pretty fucking cool, Wes, unless you're planning on going way north just so you can drop me off the edge."
"Tempting, but I'll pass," he says, striving to keep his voice even because it's been a long time since anyone approved of him and he's oddly shaken by it when it comes from Faith. "We're going to a small cottage, in a glen --"
"In a fucking what?"
"That belongs to my great aunt," he says, ploughing over her interruption, "who is currently in a nursing home in Edinburgh and unlikely to be well enough to either give or withhold her consent to us using it."
"You're going to break and enter a little old lady's house?" Faith asks, not bothering to lower her voice. "A sick little old lady?"
"I know where the key is, I'm her favourite nephew because she loathes my father as much as -- It's not breaking in."
"And then what?"
"Good question," Wesley admits. "I don't know. I just think that distance is required and they'll be watching the airports and such so I didn't want to risk leaving the country."
"Thought you said we were going to Scotland" she says with a frown puckering her forehead as she scrapes up the last of the gelatinous, bright-yellow custard and licks the spoon clean. "Won't they get us at the border or something?"
"Please tell me that you're joking?"
"Huh?"
"There's no -- oh, never mind."
She stands up and bumps her hip against his teasingly as they head for the door. "Gotcha."
"I knew that you were joking."
"Did not."
He stops himself before making the obvious retort and she crows with laughter that only stops when he point-blank refuses to let her drive for a while.
Faith's a surprisingly good travel companion. They have a slight altercation over the radio but finally come to an agreement on Radio Four because they're doing a reading Of Under Milkwood and she finds the lilting Welsh accents pant-wettingly funny, or so she claims.
And when the lights on the motorway all seem to blend together in a never-ending stream of phosphorescence that makes him want to close his eyes, she starts talking. He concentrates on her husky drawl telling him about the final game in the Stockton Correctional Institution's Baseball Tournament and manages to keep the car going without ploughing into the hard shoulder.
"Could let me drive," she suggests when dawn starts creeping in over the horizon and he's cold and clammy with tiredness.
"Why don't I just steer into the central reservation and have done with it?" he replies. "Do you even have a license?"
"Well, no but I've got mad skillz…"
"Which are likely to have us pulled over by the first police car we pass as you're breezing down the slow lane at a cool 100 miles per mile," he finishes succinctly and she huffs in outrage.
"You look like you're about to pass out, Wes and I need to pee again. And food would be good. Bacon, eggs and really strong coffee."
"Look, we're about to cross over into Scotland and then we'll stop," he promises. "At the first service station we come to. Now, what happened after Big Sue got sent off for throwing the bat at Barbara's head?"
"This a gas, food, lodging kinda service station?" she asks and he takes his eyes off the road long enough to give her a quizzical look because sometimes he doesn't understand a word she says? "Beds, Wes, this place does it have beds? 'Cause you're looking beat and I don't want to be the first Slayer who gets it in a five car pile up."
"They -- some do. For the lorry drivers," he says reluctantly. "We really should keep going though."
With a sense of timing that's cosmic in its aptness, they drive past a roadside hoarding telling them that tiredness kills and he sighs into the meaningful silence and ten minutes later pulls into the Glenside Motel.
When he's dealt with getting them one of the small rooms -- he isn't prepared to let Faith out of his sight for long no matter what her motives for wanting them to share a room -- he nods over at the restaurant nearby. "It's open around the clock, if you want to get something to eat."
She gives him a speculative look and then shakes her head. "You need to sleep, Wesley."
It's not so much a need as a necessity. He's blinking and having problems opening his eyes again when he does it and her voice sounds far away as if she's a mile down the road and shouting. For someone who used to work with a vampire and manage on fairly little sleep he's not doing very well as staying alert these days. Worry, on top of jet lag, combined with the journey -- he's dead on his feet.
"You could be right," he agrees. He holds out the key. "Open up and I'll get the cases."
The room's hideous and he doesn't care. He heads for the bathroom, takes care of the basics, which doesn't include anything as frivolous as brushing his teeth and walks past Faith to the bed. He manages to kick off his shoes, but there's something very complicated about his belt which defeats his fumbling fingers.
Faith appears in front of him, pushes him back onto the bed and strips him with a brisk efficiency, stopping at his shorts.
"Thank you," he manages to mumble and then he's relaxing, with the bed unsteady beneath him like a bumpy road, and the distant hum of the motorway singing him to sleep.
Wesley is woken up after five hours of deep, dreamless sleep by Faith's elbow digging him hard in the ribs. He comes to with a curse, which he bites back when he realises that she's still asleep, huddled into a fidgeting, muttering ball next to him. Of course, she still has those bloody drugs coursing through her system.
He's never seen anyone slumber so restlessly. She's constantly in motion, shifting from her left side to her right and then sprawling on her back, hands curled into fists, and he can see the sorrow in the shifting features of her face. Then there are the words, mumbled into the pillow, muttered into the still of the room. Snatches of conversation, only fragments audible: "Don't care… bad…sorry… sorry… sorry."
It's horrible and fascinating in equal measure and he can't bear to watch it any longer. He really doesn't fancy suffering grievous bodily harm if he attempts to wake her up so he inches off the bed and disappears into the bathroom where the lukewarm dribble of a shower gets him mostly clean.
Faith has liberated his side of the bed but doesn't stir when he gets dressed. It's only when he returns half an hour later with a cup of surprisingly good coffee and the requested bacon and eggs in a Styrofoam container that she opens one eye.
"Go 'way…" she hisses, rolling over so he has to talk to one sleek shoulder. Usually she's relentlessly perky in the morning, or afternoon to be more accurate.
"Faith," he says softly, hand hovering an inch above her arm. "You need to get up now."
In reply, she yanks hold of the pillow and pulls it over her head.
His hand is still hovering, which is tiring. It falls a crucial inch or two and because she gives a huffy, grumpy, snuggle-deeper right then, it lands on her bare back.
Discovering that he's been sleeping next to a naked Faith -- there's a pair of what he's very sure Faith doesn't call knickers on the floor, red, skimpy and inside-out -- has a salutary effect on him, clearing away the residue of fatigue and leaving him breathing shallowly as his body reacts predictably to what it sees as a missed opportunity.
Her skin's soft enough that he can't help stroking it and she squirms again, sending the sheet sliding down to pool at her waist, and mutters something he doesn't pay attention to because it doesn't sound like 'stop' or 'go away'.
Her hair is a tangled mess across her shoulders, pinned in place by the pillow, and he slides his hand under it, gathering it into his hand and scooping it to the side so that he can see the nape of her neck. Even in the dim light of the curtained room, he can see that the skin's paler there, and he can't resist brushing his fingers over it to see if it's any softer.
A little, perhaps. He presses his mouth against it and he can smell her warm skin, the fragrance of his own soap still clinging to it, so that she smells familiar, smells like his.
His tongue tastes her and she sighs and holds very still. It's all the permission he needs and it's so unlike her to be quiescent that he can pretend she's asleep without needing to try very hard. If she was awake, she'd have rolled over by now, wrapped her arms around him, dragged him down into her heat and hunger.
She's asleep. Has to be. And he has to wake her --
He's hard but that doesn't matter. This isn't lovemaking, this isn't sex. This is him waking his Slayer, gently, kindly, considerately, dragging the pads of his fingers down the inward curve of her spine and watching her shoulder blades shift as she arches an inch off the bed.
The sheet halts his downward progress and he runs a single finger along the edge of it, his nail leaving a faint line on her skin that fades as he makes it, like a ripple on water.
He moves his hand down, to where the sheet dips between her spread thighs, and picks up a pinch of fabric.
One tug, slow and strong, and the sheet slithers down to her knees.
Goosebumps ghost across her skin as it's exposed to the air but she doesn't move, even when he kisses the crease where the sheet meets skin, his lips traveling up the back of her thighs, tongue gliding over muscle and skin. He presses a messy, wet kiss to the L-shaped scar halfway up her right leg, then gives in to the urge to bite down hard on it.
Her face is still buried in the pillow but he can see the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders as she takes deep breaths. His mouth can't reach any higher, can't taste her, which is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, but it can wait. Instead he shifts on the bed so he's sitting next to her again and places a resolute hand on the heart-breakingly soft skin of her inner thigh: plump and full of promise.
Faith's the kind of girl who calls a spade a spade. Or used to. But her boundaries are less defined after months of having the goalposts shifted by the Council until they're no longer even on the playing field. So he has to be sure. Has to be certain. Has to know that she wants this. Wants him.
"Gorgeous," he breathes, reaching down to run his fingers gently over the high water curve of her arse, even as he strokes his aching cock with his other hand. "I know you're asleep but could you possibly spread your legs a little bit more, Faith?"
And there's the faintest sound that might be a giggle or might be a snore but she shifts that pretty rump of hers higher in the air and slowly parts her thighs.
Part Three
And what they've gone through is enough to break anyone. We never saw the smiles slip off their faces after the post-Chosen euphoria died down and the grief for what was lost kicked in. We never saw how fragile the reconciliation between Buffy and Giles was, nor how Buffy reacted to the deaths of the two men she loved.
If we had, it might not've been like this... but I think it's not unlikely and consistent with canon.
Previous parts are here
Hollow Heart
by Jane Davitt and Bit
Chapter Two
Her eyes are clear but wary as they skitter past him, then over his shoulder into the shadowy confines of the flat that she's never been invited into before. His guts twist when he realises that she still doesn't trust him – not that he's ever given her a reason to – and that she's half expecting a dozen suited Watchers to rush out of his bathroom and tazer her into submission.
They stare at each other for a few seconds and he feels like she's a frightened woodland animal who might get startled if he makes any sudden movements. And that would be a frightened woodland animal with a vicious right hook but he slowly gestures with his beer bottle towards the empty room behind him.
"Would you like to come in, Faith?"
She sidles past him, steps over the threshold, and looks around uncertainly. "Well, you got a spare bed for a wanted fugitive?"
"I --" Whatever he's about to say with the image of Faith in his bed -- spare, or otherwise -- is mercifully lost because right then, with suspicious synchronicity, the phone rings and her eyes widen.
"Shit."
"Stay." His order is backed up by a pleading look that anchors her in place more surely than the hand he clamps around her wrist. "Please, Faith."
He walks with her attached to him over to the phone and picks it up.
"Wyndam-Pryce."
His voice is toneless and unemotional, but he's still staring at Faith with a world of urgency in his eyes, feeling her strain against a grip she could break without trying, all her effort channeled toward holding still, even though she's practically vibrating with panic.
"Wesley."
It's Giles. Of course it's Giles.
"Giles, I take it this isn't a social call."
Faith twitches at the sound of Giles' name and he can feel the tension in her bones as he tightens his hold around her silly, delicate wrist.
"Of course it's not," Giles snaps, irritation emanating down the line. "Faith's escaped as I'm sure you know."
She's biting her lip now, though her gaze is fixed on him, defiant, not wavering, not even blinking.
"And of course she'd come straight to the first place that you'd look for her," Wesley drawls, stroking the divot where wrist meets palm. "Don't be bloody ridiculous, Giles."
Her sudden smile knocks him into the middle of next week, so he can't remember his own name or listen to Giles' increasingly fractious questions. ""I'll make some calls. She can't have gone far. She was rather close with what's her name? Little Asian girl… Parminder, was it?"
There's a muffled thud and he hears Giles talking to someone. "Parminder's on leave. She's with her family in Birmingham."
Faith's rolling her eyes at him now, hand over her mouth to mask the relieved giggles.
"You sound remarkably calm, Wesley, for a man whose Slayer has knocked out two Watchers and disappeared."
"Do I sound calm, Giles? I rather thought that I was hanging on to my temper by the thinnest of threads at the thought that my Slayer, my drugged, beaten and half-incapacitated Slayer, is missing and you're not doing anything to actually ensure that she's safe."
"Wesley…"
"I'm going out to look for her. I'll speak to you presently, Giles," he finishes with an angry little sigh then hangs up in time to get eight and half stone of Slayer hurling herself at him.
"You rock," she says, attacking him with kisses and squirming against him in a way guaranteed to make his body forget that incident in the shower ever happened. "Say it again."
"What?" he asks, knowing damn well, his arms around her even though she stiffens slightly in his embrace.
At least she's also in the ideal position to stamp down rather hard on his bare foot.
"My Slayer," he says through his teeth. "My bloody annoying, unpredictably violent, untruthful, mistrustful Slayer. Do that again and I'll put my Slayer over my knee and let her arse meet my hand, understand me?"
God, she has dimples when she smiles. How can he never have noticed them?
He gets them over to the couch, trying not to limp and then changing his mind and exaggerating it just to get a gurgle of laughter from her. She's giddy and excited and he hates to do it but he has to know --
"Faith? Why did you do that? It's going to make it so much harder to persuade Giles to release you when you're --"
"Already out?" A little of the light seeps out of her face and he sees the tiredness there. "He wasn't going to, Wes. Ever. Couldn't -- couldn't hack that. Not again. Not prison after being out all this time, getting used to being part of it all again."
He lets her prise the bottle of beer out of his hand and curl up in the corner of the sofa. "I don't think Giles would have let things escalate that far."
Faith takes a long swig. "Yeah, well that goes to show how out of the loop you are, Wes. Got nothing to do with Giles. B wants it, B gets it and she wanted me back in the Big House in an orange boiler suit, yo."
Wesley stretches out his legs so he can touch her, because she's not behind bars, not locked away from him, just drinking his beer and that sad look is back in her eyes.
"Couldn't do it, Wes. Not gonna be locked up again. Fuck redemption, y'know…" She turns her head and he wonders if she's going to cry but when she turns back to him, she's dry-eyed and determined. "I took it, Wes, like the bad little Slayer I was but it was hell. Every night, my blood would itch because I was in there and I…" She grimaces with self-loathing. "I needed to kill."
"You needed to slay," he corrects her mildly, snagging the bottle before she can drink it all. "And I think everybody but Buffy can see your transformation."
"Buffy, Buffy, Buffy… I feel like Jan in The Brady Bunch – don't worry, Wes, it's a pop culture ref, don't expect you to get it," she smirks and he smirks back because she's ragging him so things can't be that bad. "Had her in my face all day. She thinks that me doing a Martha will prove Giles' devotion or, like, she can have all the Angel grief to herself. I'm a little foggy on the fine print."
Somewhat belatedly he realises that they shouldn't be doing this. "Faith -- this isn't a solution. Coming here, I mean; the escape's a fait accompli, no matter how ill-advised --"
This time she pinches him, choosing a rather tender patch of skin on his belly. "Talk English!"
"I was!"
She looks unbearably smug and impossibly endearing. "Wasn't. 'Fait accompli': that's French, right? French for 'done deal'."
He licks his finger and chalks her up a point on an imaginary board. "Fair enough, but it doesn't change the fact that sooner rather than later, Giles is going to come here. He doesn't trust me." He thinks about that and amends it slightly. "He knows me."
Faith shrugs and sits up straight, locking her hands behind her neck and stretching. He'd suspect her of doing it to showcase breasts that are eye-catchingly rounded were it not for the pop of realigning vertebrae.
Hours in cuffs, hands behind you, can have consequences other than the scuff of skin at the wrist.
"I'll go. Wouldn't want Giles to have to scold you for being his terribly naughty little boy."
Her mimicry is so over-the-top as to be laughable but the dig is sharp enough to make his lips tighten instead. She sees him like that, does she? Giles' protégé?
"We'll go," he corrects her. "And soon."
"How soon?" she demands. And before he's even got time to think about schedules and exit strategies, she's in his arms again, mouth pressed against his as her tongue paints a white hot line across his lips.
He's not a saint. He's just a man, just a sucker with a hard-on, which she's rubbing her belly against as she tries to kiss him properly.
He turns his head. "Faith, no…"
"You don't want me?"
He never thought that Faith could look like a puppy with a month to live but she's doing a bloody good impersonation of one. "I want you," he breathes and for one fleeting second he pulls her hand down to his aching cock, before entwining his fingers with hers. "But I'm going to wine and dine you first, that was the deal."
"Could do the wining and dining after the fact," she offers, trying to yank her hand free and now it's his turn to pinch the soft skin above her hip, so she yelps for effect.
"Wining and dining first," Wesley says firmly. "But first you're going to have a shower while I pack and then we're going to get the hell out of Dodge."
She snorts at his ersatz American accent, and then jumps off the couch. "You going to scrub my back for me then?"
He nudges her with his foot. "Stop being a tease, Faith and try not to wreak havoc in my bathroom this time, please."
She leaves the bathroom door open, but mercifully has enough consideration for the floor to close the shower door tightly. When he goes into the bathroom to retrieve the wash bag he keeps packed and ready to go, he catches a glimpse of her behind the glass door, pale body indistinct in the steam.
He's seen her close to naked before when he's dressed her wounds, but that was business and she was bleeding; it's a very different situation when she's soap-slicked and humming something that he couldn't identify if both their lives depended on it.
He could strip and slide in behind her and get an appreciative murmur and Faith's best impression of a mermaid. His hand curves as if it's already cupping the weight of a breast or supporting her neck as he kisses her upturned face, eyes closed against the spray.
Knowing he could, knowing he will, someday, sometime, soon, is all that gives him the willpower to exit silently, although he knows damn well that she knows that he's there.
By the time she emerges, pink-cheeked, damp towel scrubbing at her hair, there's a case packed of clothes, books and sundries -- which translates as 'weapons' mostly -- and his coat is on.
He throws her a baseball cap and smiles as she studies it incredulously. "Just until we get to the car," he says.
"We going to some swanky restaurant, Wes?" She glances down at her T-shirt and black jeans, a battered leather jacket not doing much to dress them up.
"No, but I'm glad that you reminded me."
He heads for the kitchen and emerges with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew, handing them to her. "Here. If we run into a problem, do exhaust all other possibilities before hitting someone over the head with it; it's older than you."
"And that's good?" she asks, studying the label as if she's looking for a sell-by date.
"Yes," he says briefly.
"You haven't said where we're going."
He pauses, with his hand on the doorknob. "Does it matter?"
She twirls the corkscrew and gives him a jaunty grin. "Not really."
He turns away too slowly to miss the way the smile vanishes when she thinks that he's not looking at her.
The street is abandoned when he ushers her out of the house. No Council goons in unmarked cars, just a disinterested cat who pauses briefly from washing its paws to stare at them as Wesley unlocks the passenger door.
The sky is darkening; tinges of dark blue mix with streaks of vivid pink. "Looks like it's going to be another beautiful day tomorrow," he says nonsensically as he climbs in next to Faith who looks suitably unimpressed.
"Don't talk about the weather, Wes, too much of a cliché, y'know?" she says, adjusting her baseball cap in the mirror as he starts the engine. "Gonna tell me where we're going?"
Wesley shakes his head. "No, it's a surprise," he says teasingly, pulling away from the kerb, but his smile is wiped clean when she slumps down in the seat.
"Don't like surprises. They always suck."
"Always?"
"Always," she repeats emphatically, then sighs. "Think my post-freedom high's wearing off." He's inclined to agree. The tension is coming off her in rolling waves, like she's trapped in her own skin and can't claw free.
Wesley slows to take a corner. "I have chocolate in the black holdall," he offers lamely. "And when we clear the city, I'll let you smoke if you promise to keep the window open."
She doesn't even wait for them to get down the road before she's tearing the cellophane off the cigarettes and snaking one out of the packet. "Don't even," she snaps as he's about to tell her to at least open the bloody window and they settle into an uncomfortable silence as they head down the Great North Way.
The road north is fairly clear, although there are the usual roadworks around Birmingham. Faith's asleep by then, and when Wesley's cell begins to ring she mutters and twitches and snuggles her face against the seat. He lets it ring and when it stops he tugs it out of his pocket and turns it off.
He knows it was Giles.
When the need to pee, stretch his legs, and fill up the car with petrol coincide with a service station he pulls over and shakes her awake.
"Faith."
She wakes with a struggle and a snarl, her eyes wild until she sees his face.
"Shit." Taking a deep breath she glances around at the forecourt, deserted apart from a caravanette that's seen better days, and visibly relaxes. "Thought we were in trouble."
"No," he tells her. "I'm fairly certain the worst we'll have to deal with is some truly execrable coffee and you can avoid that if you want to go back to sleep."
She gets out and he follows her, both of them breathing in air that, for all the petrol fumes, is a good deal fresher than London air.
"Smells weird," Faith decides. She frowns, staring across the slip road that leads back to the M6. "Are they cows?"
He shrugs, ignoring the insistent message from his bladder, and starts to refuel the car, caution dictating that they be ready to leave in a hurry if needs be. "Do they have four legs and go 'moo'? If so, then, yes, there's a good chance that they are."
She stick her tongue out at him, her face an odd shade of orange under the forecourt lights. "I'm going to pee."
"Thank you for sharing."
"And when I get back, you can tell me where the hell we're going, Wes," floats back to him as she walks away.
Their knees bump together under the table as he watches her devour a plate of sausage, chips and beans, which if his cheese roll is anything to go by, tastes of cardboard.
Wesley likes a girl with a healthy appetite but the way Faith eats, one arm curled protectively around her plate as if she expects it to be snatched away from her, other hand constantly in motion as she shovels forkload after forkload into her mouth, barely pausing to chew and swallow, is more anthropological than erotic. There's absolutely nothing to be gained from pointing out that she wouldn't be so hungry all the time if she actually bothered to taste her food; instead he just pushes the bowl of apple crumble to her as soon as she raises her head.
"Custard is weird," she remarks sagely, spoon poised like a heat-seeking missile. "So, Wes, gonna tell me where we're headed?"
He takes a sip of weak, lukewarm tea – he hadn't been able to face the coffee. "North. About as far north as we can go without falling off the edge."
"Don't go all cryptic on me, Wes."
"Don't talk with your mouth full, Faith." She looks at her spoon and then at him like she's contemplating flicking his smirking face with custard. "I wouldn't if I were you. My wrath would be quite considerable."
"Promises, promises," she mumbles under her breath then reaches under the table to pat his knee in a curiously clumsy gesture. "Thanks, Wes."
"For what?" He has a pretty shrewd idea of what, but she just vaguely waves her spoon around again.
"Y'know, this. Might not have noticed but I'm lousy at speeches, leave that to B and the others. But I wanted to say thanks. You're pretty fucking cool, Wes, unless you're planning on going way north just so you can drop me off the edge."
"Tempting, but I'll pass," he says, striving to keep his voice even because it's been a long time since anyone approved of him and he's oddly shaken by it when it comes from Faith. "We're going to a small cottage, in a glen --"
"In a fucking what?"
"That belongs to my great aunt," he says, ploughing over her interruption, "who is currently in a nursing home in Edinburgh and unlikely to be well enough to either give or withhold her consent to us using it."
"You're going to break and enter a little old lady's house?" Faith asks, not bothering to lower her voice. "A sick little old lady?"
"I know where the key is, I'm her favourite nephew because she loathes my father as much as -- It's not breaking in."
"And then what?"
"Good question," Wesley admits. "I don't know. I just think that distance is required and they'll be watching the airports and such so I didn't want to risk leaving the country."
"Thought you said we were going to Scotland" she says with a frown puckering her forehead as she scrapes up the last of the gelatinous, bright-yellow custard and licks the spoon clean. "Won't they get us at the border or something?"
"Please tell me that you're joking?"
"Huh?"
"There's no -- oh, never mind."
She stands up and bumps her hip against his teasingly as they head for the door. "Gotcha."
"I knew that you were joking."
"Did not."
He stops himself before making the obvious retort and she crows with laughter that only stops when he point-blank refuses to let her drive for a while.
Faith's a surprisingly good travel companion. They have a slight altercation over the radio but finally come to an agreement on Radio Four because they're doing a reading Of Under Milkwood and she finds the lilting Welsh accents pant-wettingly funny, or so she claims.
And when the lights on the motorway all seem to blend together in a never-ending stream of phosphorescence that makes him want to close his eyes, she starts talking. He concentrates on her husky drawl telling him about the final game in the Stockton Correctional Institution's Baseball Tournament and manages to keep the car going without ploughing into the hard shoulder.
"Could let me drive," she suggests when dawn starts creeping in over the horizon and he's cold and clammy with tiredness.
"Why don't I just steer into the central reservation and have done with it?" he replies. "Do you even have a license?"
"Well, no but I've got mad skillz…"
"Which are likely to have us pulled over by the first police car we pass as you're breezing down the slow lane at a cool 100 miles per mile," he finishes succinctly and she huffs in outrage.
"You look like you're about to pass out, Wes and I need to pee again. And food would be good. Bacon, eggs and really strong coffee."
"Look, we're about to cross over into Scotland and then we'll stop," he promises. "At the first service station we come to. Now, what happened after Big Sue got sent off for throwing the bat at Barbara's head?"
"This a gas, food, lodging kinda service station?" she asks and he takes his eyes off the road long enough to give her a quizzical look because sometimes he doesn't understand a word she says? "Beds, Wes, this place does it have beds? 'Cause you're looking beat and I don't want to be the first Slayer who gets it in a five car pile up."
"They -- some do. For the lorry drivers," he says reluctantly. "We really should keep going though."
With a sense of timing that's cosmic in its aptness, they drive past a roadside hoarding telling them that tiredness kills and he sighs into the meaningful silence and ten minutes later pulls into the Glenside Motel.
When he's dealt with getting them one of the small rooms -- he isn't prepared to let Faith out of his sight for long no matter what her motives for wanting them to share a room -- he nods over at the restaurant nearby. "It's open around the clock, if you want to get something to eat."
She gives him a speculative look and then shakes her head. "You need to sleep, Wesley."
It's not so much a need as a necessity. He's blinking and having problems opening his eyes again when he does it and her voice sounds far away as if she's a mile down the road and shouting. For someone who used to work with a vampire and manage on fairly little sleep he's not doing very well as staying alert these days. Worry, on top of jet lag, combined with the journey -- he's dead on his feet.
"You could be right," he agrees. He holds out the key. "Open up and I'll get the cases."
The room's hideous and he doesn't care. He heads for the bathroom, takes care of the basics, which doesn't include anything as frivolous as brushing his teeth and walks past Faith to the bed. He manages to kick off his shoes, but there's something very complicated about his belt which defeats his fumbling fingers.
Faith appears in front of him, pushes him back onto the bed and strips him with a brisk efficiency, stopping at his shorts.
"Thank you," he manages to mumble and then he's relaxing, with the bed unsteady beneath him like a bumpy road, and the distant hum of the motorway singing him to sleep.
Wesley is woken up after five hours of deep, dreamless sleep by Faith's elbow digging him hard in the ribs. He comes to with a curse, which he bites back when he realises that she's still asleep, huddled into a fidgeting, muttering ball next to him. Of course, she still has those bloody drugs coursing through her system.
He's never seen anyone slumber so restlessly. She's constantly in motion, shifting from her left side to her right and then sprawling on her back, hands curled into fists, and he can see the sorrow in the shifting features of her face. Then there are the words, mumbled into the pillow, muttered into the still of the room. Snatches of conversation, only fragments audible: "Don't care… bad…sorry… sorry… sorry."
It's horrible and fascinating in equal measure and he can't bear to watch it any longer. He really doesn't fancy suffering grievous bodily harm if he attempts to wake her up so he inches off the bed and disappears into the bathroom where the lukewarm dribble of a shower gets him mostly clean.
Faith has liberated his side of the bed but doesn't stir when he gets dressed. It's only when he returns half an hour later with a cup of surprisingly good coffee and the requested bacon and eggs in a Styrofoam container that she opens one eye.
"Go 'way…" she hisses, rolling over so he has to talk to one sleek shoulder. Usually she's relentlessly perky in the morning, or afternoon to be more accurate.
"Faith," he says softly, hand hovering an inch above her arm. "You need to get up now."
In reply, she yanks hold of the pillow and pulls it over her head.
His hand is still hovering, which is tiring. It falls a crucial inch or two and because she gives a huffy, grumpy, snuggle-deeper right then, it lands on her bare back.
Discovering that he's been sleeping next to a naked Faith -- there's a pair of what he's very sure Faith doesn't call knickers on the floor, red, skimpy and inside-out -- has a salutary effect on him, clearing away the residue of fatigue and leaving him breathing shallowly as his body reacts predictably to what it sees as a missed opportunity.
Her skin's soft enough that he can't help stroking it and she squirms again, sending the sheet sliding down to pool at her waist, and mutters something he doesn't pay attention to because it doesn't sound like 'stop' or 'go away'.
Her hair is a tangled mess across her shoulders, pinned in place by the pillow, and he slides his hand under it, gathering it into his hand and scooping it to the side so that he can see the nape of her neck. Even in the dim light of the curtained room, he can see that the skin's paler there, and he can't resist brushing his fingers over it to see if it's any softer.
A little, perhaps. He presses his mouth against it and he can smell her warm skin, the fragrance of his own soap still clinging to it, so that she smells familiar, smells like his.
His tongue tastes her and she sighs and holds very still. It's all the permission he needs and it's so unlike her to be quiescent that he can pretend she's asleep without needing to try very hard. If she was awake, she'd have rolled over by now, wrapped her arms around him, dragged him down into her heat and hunger.
She's asleep. Has to be. And he has to wake her --
He's hard but that doesn't matter. This isn't lovemaking, this isn't sex. This is him waking his Slayer, gently, kindly, considerately, dragging the pads of his fingers down the inward curve of her spine and watching her shoulder blades shift as she arches an inch off the bed.
The sheet halts his downward progress and he runs a single finger along the edge of it, his nail leaving a faint line on her skin that fades as he makes it, like a ripple on water.
He moves his hand down, to where the sheet dips between her spread thighs, and picks up a pinch of fabric.
One tug, slow and strong, and the sheet slithers down to her knees.
Goosebumps ghost across her skin as it's exposed to the air but she doesn't move, even when he kisses the crease where the sheet meets skin, his lips traveling up the back of her thighs, tongue gliding over muscle and skin. He presses a messy, wet kiss to the L-shaped scar halfway up her right leg, then gives in to the urge to bite down hard on it.
Her face is still buried in the pillow but he can see the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders as she takes deep breaths. His mouth can't reach any higher, can't taste her, which is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, but it can wait. Instead he shifts on the bed so he's sitting next to her again and places a resolute hand on the heart-breakingly soft skin of her inner thigh: plump and full of promise.
Faith's the kind of girl who calls a spade a spade. Or used to. But her boundaries are less defined after months of having the goalposts shifted by the Council until they're no longer even on the playing field. So he has to be sure. Has to be certain. Has to know that she wants this. Wants him.
"Gorgeous," he breathes, reaching down to run his fingers gently over the high water curve of her arse, even as he strokes his aching cock with his other hand. "I know you're asleep but could you possibly spread your legs a little bit more, Faith?"
And there's the faintest sound that might be a giggle or might be a snore but she shifts that pretty rump of hers higher in the air and slowly parts her thighs.
Part Three
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