Old Business
Faith sat down, but only for a moment before standing up again. She lifted her coffee mug from the table and spun it around in her hands, staring into the dark liquid.
"You did turn me in, you know."
He watched her from where he was sitting, his eyes calm and serious. "I know that, yes."
"See, all I'm saying is..." She raised her hands in an expressive motion, and he frowned.
"Are you trying to play the blame game with me, Faith?"
She put the coffee mug down, never looking up from it. "No. Course not."
"Good. Because I dare say I'd have a greater chance of winning."
God, she was starting to remember why it had felt so good to hit him. That smug bastard. "What did I ever do to you?"
And she knew how idiotic that question was before she asked it, but there was no raising of eyebrows or chiding comments like she'd half expected. Instead, his face showed so much fury and pain it made her feel guilty – and strangely comforted. At least he wasn't all chilly marble, even if the expression was gone within seconds.
"Well, apart from that. That was later, anyway."
He straightened up, meeting her eyes. "Faith, there's no such thing as 'apart from that'. There never will be."
"I know." Her voice was low, but then anger flared and she stood up. "You think it was easier for me? To just forgive and forget? Well, screw that, Wesley!"
The silence that followed was heavy as lead. Fuck. Probably better to get out before she made things even worse.
But she didn't move.
"I did what I thought was right. At the time."
The words startled her, disrupting the silence like that. They were tough to believe, too, although she didn't know why they should be. Wesley had been all about what's right, and no mercy on anyone's flaws.
"Think there's anything good on TV?" she asked, walking up to the sofa and sitting down.
As she started flipping through the channels she could feel Wesley's eyes on her. He had to wonder what she was doing there. She was wondering herself. She'd been cruising California, slaying where she got the chance and feeling damn great about it, and then all of a sudden she asked Robin to go wait in an L.A. bar while she sorted out some old business.
No questions asked. Great thing about the guy.
"So it wasn't that your pride was hurt?"
He sat down on the other end of the sofa, watching the TV. It was currently set to some dumb cop show, but she didn't feel like switching channels anymore.
"I might have been a jackass in many ways back then, but not quite so bad I'd have a girl locked up just because she rejected me."
"So if we'd never fucked..."
"I would have done the exact same thing."
"Good to know." And she meant that. When he put it like this, she could believe him.
On the cop show, some suspect was delivering a truly bizarre story, and Faith reached out for the remote, but Wesley caught it first, switching to Letterman. It was in the middle of a pretty funny top ten, but Faith was too distracted to laugh.
"Although I have to admit my pride was hurt," he said, his voice barely audible. You practically kicked me out of your bed, after all. I had to wonder what I'd done to deserve it."
And what the hell could she answer to that? She could hardly say that it had been one of those instances when you finish what you're doing and immediately wonder what the fuck you were thinking to do it in the first place. Even if he'd felt the same at some point, it was pretty much the worst insult you could give someone. Especially now – he was so different, and although she knew it would have been a quick romp in any case, she couldn't imagine dissing this Wesley quite in the same way she had the old one...
"It was just sex, okay?" she said harshly.
He sighed. "Yes, I suppose I should be grateful you didn't try to strangle me."
So he'd heard about that. Well, no big deal. Wasn't exactly a secret.
"And now you're seeing Nicki's boy. Is that 'just sex' too?"
Funny that he'd call Robin "Nicki's boy" as if he was much older, when they really had to be about the same age.
"Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't." If he thought she would get into details, he was sadly mistaken. "You and the dead chick?"
"It isn't. Unfortunately."
Okay, they definitely needed to talk about something else before this became any more awkward.
He turned off the TV. "Why are you here, Faith?"
"Hey, I can leave if you want."
"I didn't ask you to leave. I'm just curious to know what it is you want. Is it knowledge? Reconciliation?" His mouth twisted and he added ironically, "More wanton sex?"
It was pretty obvious he wasn't serious, but the opportunity to do something that didn't require awkward talking was hard to resist. "Do you want that?"
He stilled. "Do I want wanton sex?"
Though her heart was pounding fast and worried, she could feel her face pulling into a self-confident smirk.
"Sure," he answered himself. "Why not?"
For a heartbeat, she just sat there, and then she leaned over to unbutton his shirt. Once she slid it down from his shoulders, he freed himself from the sleeves and reached up, pulling her tank top over her head. She rose a little to be able to pull down her skirt, not bothering to make it look sexy. This wasn't seduction, it was some sort of fucking pact.
He'd improved. She noticed that the moment his hand reached her cunt. She wasn't what you'd call a foreplay kind of a girl, but just a bit of touching was a whole different matter.
She squeezed together around his fingers and moaned. Either he'd done way too much reading up on erogenous zones, or she owed his girlfriend big time. But what could you give a dead chick except white roses and a hole in the ground? She sucked at his neck and nipped his skin with her teeth while she tried to figure out the answer to that one.
More than ready, she clawed at his zipper. He was still stroking her, but once she got his cock out she pushed his hand aside to guide it in.
Last time he'd finished while she was just starting to feel good, and she half expected things to turn out the same way now. Somewhere in the middle of her orgasm, a "whafuck?" turned up in her head, because he was still going at it. And she hadn't even been all that horny going in – no post-slayage heat this time.
Soon after, he softened and pulled out. So, no blow-your-mind multi-orgasmic experience, just a fast fuck, but still something she wouldn't mind doing again.
There was a quiet minute when neither of them did anything, and then Wesley started doing up his zipper. "I guess you should go find your boyfriend."
The words were amiable enough, but there was no mistaking their finality. Faith felt her face heat up as she hurried to pull on her clothes.
"Yeah. Sure. I'll do that."
He didn't follow her to the door, and the last thing she saw before leaving his apartment was that he'd gotten his clothes on and picked up a book. She hurried down the stairs and then stopped right outside the door, looking up.
The lights in Wesley's window showed no shadowed outline of a body. She waited for a while, but nothing happened.
Fuck it all.
She sat down on the curb and wished for a vampire to come by. She needed to kick the crap out of something.