Buffy falls asleep with her face pressed against a lumpy pillow, and wakes up with it pressed against soft skin. She should, she knows, roll away before Faith wakes up, but they've left the window open, the room is chilly, and she's too comfortable to move. Besides, Faith's arm is tightening around Buffy's waist, and there's no way to move without disturbing her.

When Faith's fingers begin to stroke the small of Buffy's back, she starts to suspect Faith's awake. She doesn't say anything, because if she does, she thinks Faith might stop. She doesn't want Faith to stop. She doesn't want to think about the why involved with that. Instead, she keeps her eyes shut tight and breathes in the scent of Faith's skin. It's cigarette smoke and sea air again, and it's a different sort of comforting. Faith's fingers stray a little lower, and little to the right, and Buffy's soft intake of breath betrays her.

"Buffy?" Faith's hands pause on the question.

Her mind still muzzy with sleep and sensation, Buffy responds without words, moving a hand up to tangle in Faith's hair as she seeks Faith's mouth with her own. Kissing another girl is different somehow, softer, or maybe it's just that she remembers when that mouth was briefly hers.

She remembers when that body was hers, too. Buffy slides a thumb across the underside of Faith's right breast, seeking the mole she knows is there. A sharp moan from Faith, and suddenly kissing's no longer softer, it's hard and bruising and right. Faith slides a hand between their bodies, down Buffy's stomach and between her legs. Buffy stiffens uncertainly at Faith's touch, whimpering as she hears Faith's fingers parting wet, hot flesh.

Faith makes soothing noises against her mouth, and Buffy relaxes, parting her thighs to allow Faith better access. It doesn't seem fair that Faith's getting to do all the touching, so Buffy moves her hand down Faith's body until they're arranged like mirror images, dark and light, yin and yang.

They're both covered in sweat, and the room doesn't feel cold at all anymore. Movements grow faster in tandem, their breath harsh and rapid. Buffy feels Faith tighten around her fingers, and feels herself tighten in return. She starts to shudder, fracturing and melting all at once, moaning and mewling against Faith's mouth until she's boneless, senseless.

When she's able to form words, Buffy pulls back, looking at Faith, hoping to see some sort of clue about what to do next. "I should go," she says, not wanting to.

Faith gives a sated yawn. "Why?"

"Well, for starters, you're sort of seeing someone. I don't think this is something he's going to be happy about, exactly." She can hear the note of uncertainty creeping into her voice, and hates it.

With a sigh, Faith sits up. "Only thing he's going to be pissed about is not having an invite to watch." Her face looks as uncertain as Buffy feels. "You I'm not so sure about. You okay?"

Buffy smiles and reaches up to cup Faith's cheek. "Yeah," she says. "I'm okay." She pauses for a second, bites her lip. "If you are."

Faith's relief fills the room, warming it. "Yeah, I'm cool."

They settle in, cautiously curling next to each other. It's nice, like so much this night, right. Buffy buries her face in the crook of Faith's neck. She smiles again, unable to help herself. "Willow's going to claim we owe her a toaster," she says, pulling the covers around them before they fall asleep.

Yeah, well, I christened the thread with something like 40 pages worth of B/W when we first came up.

It's a thing.

I'm wondering if I should put up "Touch."

Nice, Plei. Both of 'em.

Nice nice.

Boy, I love LJs for posting fic. More V!Giles. This no-internet at work is certainly helping my writing production

[link]

Very nice Plei, and Connie since I didn't get to read it before.

Nice, Plei. I like.

Good stuff, connie. MORE!

And... because it's late, and I have to do something to keep myself awake, a couple things. First, Flash Fic #2.

Heads or Tails
Buffy/Xander, NC-17 (or strong R).

"Heads or tails?" Xander held up a battered quarter that looked like it had been at ground zero when Sunnydale imploded.

Dawn, Buffy noticed, didn't bother to open her eyes or lift her head from the sticky vinyl of the bus seat. "Which one means what again?"

"Heads, you sleep in the motel room; tails, you sleep on the bus."

"I should have let Child Services take me," Dawn groused.

Buffy kicked the bottom of Dawn's foot, staring at her sister with an exaggerated frown. "Just for that, I'm taking the room."

"Hey!" Dawn sat bolt-upright, her eyes growing as big as saucers. "You can't do that."

A triumphant smile and a palm opened to expose the room key caused Dawn's eyes to narrow, going from saucers to slits in half a heartbeat. "Already did. Besides, I'm the one with the almost-mortal wound to recover from. See you in the morning."

Dawn's muttered grumbles faded to blissful silence as Xander and Buffy exited the bus, each carrying bags of dirty clothing. Maybe if she'd explained to Dawn that staying in the room also meant washing everyone's blood and dirt stained garments, by hand, with whatever soap the motel room provided, they wouldn't have had to go through the coin-toss farce. She let herself in, taking in the ragged carpet and nicotine ivory of the walls, not allowing herself the luxury of remembering when something like this wouldn't have seemed palatial.

"Ah. Room sweet room." Xander's voice was overly hearty, the cheerful notes thick with the strain of maintaining them. She tried to remember when the chipper tones were real and whole. Maybe before she came back, or before her mom died, or before Riley left.

"Are we flipping for the bed, too?" Xander wasn't the only one who could force cheer, though granted, hers was a little closer, okay, a lot closer, to being real. "Cause, if we are, I'm going to have to go with heads."

A ghost of a grin crossed his face along side the shade of a leer. "Heads, you get the bed, tails, we both do?"

"We can share, or take turns. Your call. And there's free HBO, so we can stay up way past our bedtime watching movies our parents don't want us to see." It was almost easy to say the words, to slip back in time to when she and Xander and Willow would stay up until it was time to get up, watching movies and being kids. Back when the grin would have had two eyes to meet. Her own smile wavered a little. "Xander--"

"Buffy, don't," he looked at her, the cheerful mask frozen on his face. "I'm not up to being serious right now."

She bit her lip and started hauling the bags into the bathroom. The water pouring from the faucet was hard and yellowed with things she didn't want to think about, turning the bathtub into a murky swamp of fabric and slimy half-formed soap bubbles that grew murkier and muddier as she scrubbed at the various shirts, pants and socks. She glanced at her own shirt, still covered in blood and ash, hesitated, then stripped down to her underwear.

A choked sound from the doorway startled her. Xander stood there, one last load of laundry in hand, trying to look anywhere but at her. "I'll just leave these... here," he said, hastily backing away.

"Xander." He paused, keeping his head twisted patch-side out. "You should hand me your shirt and pants, too. They're kind of filthy, and there's no sense in us stinking up the bus."

"You know, in all my years of dreaming about taking off my clothes with you, this is so not how I pictured it." But he followed her orders, blushing the whole time.

"Xander, I've seen you in swim trunks." Swim-trunk Xander had been kind of cute in the moments before she realized who was filling those Speedos. This Xander was a little more bulky, a little more ragged around the edges, but still kind of cute. She tossed a bar of soap at him. "Stop blushing and start scrubbing."

Two people didn't make the job go twice as fast. In fact, two people scrubbing clothes somehow devolved into two people splashing each other and fighting over the tiny bottle of shampoo when the midget soap bars finally gave up. Xander lunged for it, missed it completely, and toppled into her.

Under the dirt and dust, Xander smelled good. She'd forgotten Xander smelled good. Buffy looked up at him, startled, wondering why she wasn't making an effort to push him off. She'd grabbed hold of him to break their fall, and her hand was still on his waist. She should be moving that. Probably not in the way that she was moving it.

She definitely shouldn't be kissing Xander, but it just seemed like the thing to do. Or helping his hand unclasp her bra and then shoving off his boxers, but clean clothing wouldn't be any good without clean underwear, right? Buffy stopped trying to justify her actions as his hands slid up her thighs to grab hold of her underwear and pull them off.

This was probably a huge mistake, but she couldn't force herself to care. He closed a hand half-awkwardly over one breast, calloused palm brushing back and forth across her nipple until she was squirming and whimpering. She arched her back, thrusting her hips and rubbing herself against his cock, hardly noticing when it slid inside almost by accident. Buffy thrust harder, tightening around him and pressing into him, letting the feel of his movements and the weight of his body build sensations until they shut out reality.

He withdrew, thrusting against her, leaving her stomach a hot, wet, sticky mess. As reality came back, she gave thanks that he'd been slightly less stupid than she was.

"We should clean up," she suggested uncomfortably.

"Because that worked so well the first time." Xander sounded a little shell-shocked; she couldn't blame him.

"Well, it wasn't bad, exactly. Just... weird. I've always thought of you as a brother." Okay, she sounded even more shell-shocked than he did. Regret was starting to filter through, and it didn't exactly feel good.

Xander laughed, and it sounded almost genuine. "It's a good thing you don't have any brothers, Buff."

She punched him half-heartedly before scrambling to her feet and wiping herself off with a washcloth, wishing she hadn't already thrown her clothing in the tub. Not sure what to do next, she stuck her hands in the lukewarm water and started scrubbing the clothes. The shampoo bottle had fallen in during their not-so-epic battle, which rendered the effort pretty moot.

Xander grabbed her hands, pulling them gently off the sweatpants (she thought they were Kennedy's, but they could have been Faith's) she was using to try and get the stains out of her own shirt. "Hey," he said. "It's all right. Post-thwarted-apocalypse relief sex is something that happens to the best of us."

"Well, the plus side is, we probably don't have to worry about what might happen if we shared the bed." She gave him a wan smile, and he ruffled her hair.

"So, free HBO. What do you say we go wild, leave this stuff here to soak, and watch whatever they're showing?" His expression was pure Xander, all goofy concern and honest caring. Suddenly, she didn't feel so bad after all.

"Sure." Buffy wanted to either giggle or cry with relief, so she settled for a sheepish grin. "Sounds like a plan."

And...

The start of something REALLY random.

So this was the Slayer. Well, to get technical about it, a Slayer, thanks to a spell that sent ripples all the way to Hell and Lilah's voice mail.

This was Angel's big pre-Cordelia obsession? Without changing a bit of her polished, professional expression (a talent she'd perfected when alive, and improved on since death), Lilah sized her up, amazed that there was a woman out there who managed to make Winifred Burkle look voluptuous and womanly.

"Buffy Summers? I'm Lilah Morgan. I'll be handling some of the legal details surrounding your request, as well as the investigation and plausible rationale for removing the girls from their homes for training. In most cases, you'll find the Jenkins Memorial Scholarship to the prestigious Giles-Pryce academy does the trick, but for a few, we may have to resort to allegations of parental misconduct."

Buffy Summers, Lilah noted, pursed her lips with all the noble distaste of the very worst of the do-good set. Which was funny, considering the information contained within her file. Lilah could picture the girl's eyes going wide with shock and denial at the oh-so-rosy picture Lilah could paint with that information. Arson, truancy, suspected homicide, assault, a few problems with the military, harboring not one, but three known murders, not even counting Angel, child neglect--and that was just the table of contents.

Idly, Lilah wondered if it would bug Wesley to know that his ex-charge had more dirty little secrets than he did. But then, he'd assigned her the case, which meant he'd already seen the file. She lifted her brows with studied politeness, and waited for Buffy to speak.

"We're not taking girls from their parents," she said flatly. Buffy could give Wes a run for his money in frigid righteousness.

"We're not just talking about any girls, Ms. Summers. We're talking about Slayers. Unchecked and untrained, who knows what they could do?" A flicker of uncertainty crossed Buffy's face, and Lilah moved in for the close. "Imagine the damage half a dozen Faiths could do without proper training. All that rage and frustration combined with Slayer strength? Almost makes me happy I'm safely dead."

Buffy flinched, just like Lilah knew she would. Faith may have been reformed, released, and granted clemency following the greasing of wheels with a liberal application of cold, hard cash, but even without the files, it was easy enough to guess she remained Buffy's weak spot. "Fine, but only as a last resort."

The blonde head bent down over the stack of papers Lilah had brought for her to sign, leaving Lilah to watch her at her leisure and point out which pages needed initialing and which ones needed a full signature. The outfit screamed youth and bad taste making an effort at looking mature and confident. Even with fashion turning to deeper matte shades, the lips remained stubbornly coated in some shimmering neutral gloss that probably tasted like melons or berries.

Buffy Summers' file had a separate folder devoted to her taste in lovers. Lilah studied her french manicure as she listened to the sound of turning pages. "Initial that one. Twice," she commented when seventeen more pages had been read. In the five page lull that followed, she wondered if any dead body would do, or if it was just vampires.

She smiled slightly to herself, "Signature there." and decided it might be amusing to pass the time finding out. After all, it wasn't like Wesley was exactly knocking on the doors of Hell to give her a spin.