"I guess we could go somewhere and talk, but I'm not much of a talker. I'm more of a doer."
"I think you might have misunderstood my intentions."
"So you want it here? Now? You want to be pushed up against the wall? Hard? Gravel under your feet and me on top?"
Lilah held Faith's gaze coolly.
"Elegant. I expected no less of you. I'm Lilah Morgan. Of Wolfram and Hart."
Faith grunted and pulled Lilah back into the alley away from the street as a bevy of clubkids strutted by. Lilah met the chain length fence with a bounce, against which Faith pinned her fast. Faith ran her hands down Lilah's black suit jacket, fondling the buttons and chuckling at her prey, pretty and trapped; but Lilah caught Faith's gaze again with hard, dark eyes. Lilah reached up and gave Faith a slow kiss on the throat, before letting her lashes flutter to a close and her head roll back against the fence. Lilah bore her neck, and Faith ground up against her, unnerved by Lilah's teeth, gleaming in the lamplight through her smile and half-breathes. Her body arched, her suit creased, and Faith shivered at the sight of her steely, sexed poise. Faith licked her neck and the surface of her breasts below the knit silk of her blouse. Faith blew softly across the slick surface, following the chill with her warm, fast hands. Lilah twisted her arms back to grip the fence and her body to meet the stroboscopic groping of that sick-fuck psycho fox. Lilah's head jerked to the side as knife edge of Faith's hands moved down her body, smooth and potent. Faith tongued her mouth and sucked the lipstick off her lower lip. The rattle of the fence was darkly miscible with Lilah's alto moans; it was rough, feminine, and mesmerizing.
"If it isn't Captain Kirk!"
Faith stopped short and gruffly turned to face the interruption.
"You'd better believe I've got my phasers set on Faster Pussycat Kill Kill -- fuckin' hell, Cordelia?"
Cordelia stumbled back as Faith tumbled into her arms, leaving Lilah breathless against the fence.
"Cordelia Chase, you sylph! Do you know how long I've been waiting for you to sneak up on me?"
Cordelia just stared with a big, soft smile on her face, speaking, awestruck, "This is too wonderful for words. You're here and fully conscious and fully sentient and not chopped into a hundred million little pieces... Yet..."
"I am not going to dismember, weigh down, and sink a body that looks that good, Cordy... But I'll let the her loose."
Cordelia grinned smugly as Faith waltzed back over to Lilah.
"Ms. Morgan, I'm going to perch you right up there next to Theda Bara in the menagerie in my head. I'd love to stay and fuck your brains out, but I just came back from the dead, and I haven't seen this friend of mine in forever. So maybe another day. Later."
Faith backed into Cordelia's hug again, and they settled in to a drawling gait toward the street.
"God, Cordy, that was like fucking a myth. Doesn't she remind you of those deliriously statuesque heroines from black and white flicks?"
"Does it matter? She's getting into that car, and you're with me, full color and surround sound."
"Mmmm... Damn. You know this is exactly why I woke up. It got so drab. So I just said -- hey, fuck oblivion. I haven't hung out with Cordy in ages."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that, plus a slight case of overbombing in Sunnydale."
"Ew. I take it they were not--"
"It was like putting my hand through a cheese grater."
Faith sighed languidly as Cordelia slipped her fingers into her own. A firm grip, no rings, no weapons, no crap, nothing but old friends with real style. The kind of friend who at the drop of the hat, flips the damn thing right back on her head and tugs you back into her arms.
"Faith, You know I missed you? Right? Truly."
"Girlfriend, it's been to long."
"Light years."
"Dark ages."
"Come home with me?"
"As if I could say no."
Faith settled into the cleanly made bed, pulling Cordelia down on to her lap and the crisp sheets from their creases. Nothing says hello like a long, smooth kiss on the mouth, and there's nothing like a hello to make all the entropy alight to a solid hand, running down a thigh to the solid serenity of retrieved friendship. Faith could feel all that frenetic chaos inside her curl up like a kitten. And even Faiths know there's a time to pounce and a time to purr. She pulled Cordelia in, and that heavenly body acquiesced, whisper close. Faith nuzzled the nape of her neck, and the apartment softly fell away out of her consciousness. Faith felt like within this moment she could be anywhere with Cordy: in a clean feather bed, in a sacred grove, in an electric chair.
"Oh, come on, I thought this city was one big tangle of gossip. Why do you care?"
"Faith, you slide around this city, and it's entertaining until the light turns green. I want the homegrown, god-awful, good stuff. Faith, don't give me that look. I've got ice cream. When was the last time you had ice cream for breakfast?"
"Aw, baby..."
"So, I'm thinking real question is not why do I want to know, but are you woman enough to resist me?"
"I am... Jesus, Cordy..."
"No. Wrong answer. And do not mock me. I have the power to give Chunky Monkey, and believe me, I have the power to take it away."
Cordelia held a spoonful out in front of Faith, giving her a marble Medusa glare.
"Okay, Faith. I'll make it sweeter. For every good piece of high quality, nasty information I get, I will permit you to remove one article of clothing."
"You are the most fascist nineteen year old I've ever met. Where do you want me to start?"
"Your top-- oh, that. Okay. Nothing bad about Oz, because I just don't want to hear it. This is about glee; he's always been such a gentleman to me. And I've still got the stirfry feelings about Xanderpain... From the bits and pieces that have drifted down, they're both pretty screwed over, so none of them."
"I see what you want. Live girls. Geez, okay, okay. Um, Buffy. She's got a new boyfriend. A real Ken doll. Goodbye, skanky linoleum shirt."
"I take it you'd like to melt his head into his chest cavity?"
"He'd make a great piece of modern art if Buff ever went on a old feminazi kick."
Cordelia snorted and slipped the spoon into Faith's mouth.
"Oh, yum. The weird thing is, she wasn't really being all slayerly when I was there. One sock, two sock, push her off the dock. I mean, vampires were killed and all, but she was really getting all fizzy over some big Lego that got out of control. She was acting like it was the big bang. It was pathetic in the weirdest way. It's too frivolous for her. She's going to go down, and no one's going to care. The day she is killed, the earth should spin backwards and the constellations should swoop down from the sky to carry her into Valhalla." Faith leaned back on the headboard, pensive and harsh, "But that's not going to happen. That's what a slayer earns, but I don't know if she even deserves it anymore. Dux femina fucked up."
Cordelia crawled over and taking Faith's face in her hands, kissed her mouth fully. A smile slunk back across Faith's face and Cordelia pulled away, dragging her teeth over Faith's lower lip. Faith moaned a little and started talking again, "But you know what almost makes up for it? This is so worth a pair of pants. You remember that vamp that was fucking around in Sunnydale about when St. Peter went and lost it? Well, Buffy lost it, but anyway, this little chippie -- maybe one of her Transylvanian concubines, I don't know, that girl's got a ziplock neck --- he's back, you know, but get this. Apparently Buffy's boy jammed a screw driver into his head or something, because the vampire is absolutely harmless. The boy's null and void. He couldn't break a wishbone. God. It's such a joke. I don't know why Buffy and Willow don't just tie him down between their beds and hook jumper cables to his cheekbones."
"Aren't we the switch bitch?"
"What more can you do with a man like that but ride him off into the sunset until he snaps in two? Jesus. Why they put up with him is beyond me. Oh! There go my unmentionables."
"Cheater."
Faith smirked and roughly pulled Cordelia over, rolling her hips slowly, her bare skin piqued by the thin sheen of Cordelia's nightgown.
"And Willow. I just want to hold her head down in a babbling brook."
"Let her see how fucking cute that is."
"I could get over her unswerving hatred of me, if she could just do it with some panache. You've got to know what I mean--"
"Ugh. Remember? I sat through months of her for Xander. The girl is a walking, talking International Klein Blue."
"How could a redhead be so damn dull? All she did to me was screw up her nose and whine at this frequency only remora fish can here. That's the kind of darling little creature with which she replaced her wolf."
"No -- don't want to hear it --"
"Oh, sorry. Thoroughly, Willow was a disappointment. I figured if she be all bewitched, she'd have something to good and wild throw at me. But no. Nothing but cute and earnest hate."
"Poor, poor Faith, no one would beat the hell out of her."
"I got some play, but for the most part it was a get-out-of-my-hair bit. Down there I was nothing in the grand scheme of things--"
"You're in L. A., Fay Wray. That scheme is done, over, and out, and you are here and in my bed, so don't go all self-pitying on me. Sit up straight and smile, or get down and lick."
Cordelia didn't even get to see the look on Faith's face; Faith grabbed her by the waist and tossed her across the bed. Cordelia landed with a bounce and shriek and then propped herself up, her hips trembling on the edge of the bed. Faith met her with a kiss and lowered her down, curving Cordelia's back against the side of the bed, perpendicular to the floor and God's true intentions. Faith ran her nails down Cordelia's stomach with a laugh and piquant little bites. Cordelia hissed and slithered back down the smooth sheets, but Faith caught her, pushing her hips down hard to the bed and sliding her tongue up between Cordelia's labia. Faith kissed her clitoris lushly and dragged her tongue again and again and again roughly through the salt-ripe skin, thin above nerves. Cordelia breathed hard and blushed harder, all the blood rushing either down or up, caught by either gravity of physics or the gravity of Faith, back and safe and hers. She came, tumbling to the floor in a swarm of sheets and a swarm of soft kisses from Faith. Nothing in the world compared to Faith coming back to her.