It Is The Hour Of Departure
Faith knows which scars her hands put on Wesley's skin. Her hands, her will; she did it all herself, tied the ropes, used the super- strength not meant for fighting men but demons. Scarred him up realpretty but she couldn't make him cry.
"I didn't do this one," she murmurs to him, licking the ropy red line that someone else carved into his throat. "Can I kill 'em for you?"
"No. And she had her uses, later." Wesley lies back on the hotel bed, as un-self-conscious as if he were still dressed, and she continues her exploration of him with fingertips and the point of her tongue. He has a lazy assurance that he never had before, when she ignored him and mocked him.
(She thought it should be raining outside, but the casements of the room opened onto the soft California night. It should be raining.)
She wouldn't ignore anything he said, now, in that soft English voice. Too bad for her that she was about to leave Los Angeles to fight the good fight back in old Sunnydale. Too bad that he wasn't saying anything.
(Fighting Angelus wasn't like fighting Angel. Angelus wanted his own Slayer to bite. And they were fighting for Angel's sake.)
Maybe she could get Wesley to say something before Willow started looking for her. She would like to lie next to him and listen to him talk, now that she couldn't ever be able to, now. Never again.
(She wanted to make her Watcher scream.)
She kisses the puckered wound beside his belly button. "Gut shot? Who shot you?"
"Zombie cop. Angel killed them." His hand brushes her face, smoothing back her hair behind her ear. "Come here, Faith," he says. "We don't have long."
Instead of replying, she sits back on her heels and strips off her tee shirt, then wriggles out of her pants. When she moves back to him, she doesn't understand why his eyes are crinkled in amusement, but she doesn't stop to ask why, because Wesley pulls her to him, and they're closer than she's been to a living man since...since she cut through his skin with a shard of glass.
Wesley puts his hand up to touch Angelus' bite on her neck. "What a Watcher fears most on earth," he says. "A vampire's mark on his Slayer."
(She had seen the scar on Buffy's neck, felt it, knew it was Angel's mark. How Buffy had saved Angel after Faith poisoned him. Been savagely happy to have it be her scar, her neck when she was in Buffy's skin. )
"Only, B and I are still alive," she said. "Still here."
"Yes, you two have rewritten history. Shown the uselessness of the Council," he said dryly. His tone could have been the same aggravating tone of her brand-new Watcher, lecturing her, except that his fingertips were tracing circles around her nipples, making them hard as little marbles.
(It should be raining.)
Faith reaches between them, begins stroking him. "You'll always be my Watcher, Wes," she whispers. He grabs her hand, stops her.
"Then it's time for me to show you something," he says, and pushes her back and pulls her legs over his shoulders, and begins to eat her out.
How did he know---God---and the rough sensation of his beard stubble there nearly sends her out of her mind. She moans and moans and almost comes twice; each time, he stops, and says, in that quiet voice, "Not yet, Faith."
Oh, Jesus, she had been the stupidest bitch on earth to think that his quietness meant he was weak.
(She was trying to kill herself. She was trying to make Angel beat her down in the rain. Wesley is out there, got out of her knotted ropes. To take her down.)
When she's finally as juicy and hot as she can ever remember, he stops and finally enters her, and it's so wild to feel a dick again, so wild to feel Wesley's dick, that she stuffs her fist in her mouth so she won't bring Angel and the gang into the room with her cries.
Wesley kisses her, finally, pulling her hand from her mouth,and she tastes herself on him, and that's tremendous, her prissy Watcher with girljuice on his lips. He waits until she opens her eyes, and he says, "You'll always be my Slayer, Faith," and she jams her fist back into her mouth, arching up from the mattress, and feels him shooting into her.
(She still hears his limping footsteps on the concrete, over the sound of her own sobs, and the sound of the rain. Her Watcher.)
"Jesus, Wes," she murmurs, still with arms and legs locked around him in Slayer strength. His face is in her hair. "If I'd known, I'd 've busted out sooner."
He gives a half-snort of amusement, and then rolls off her. "Back to business, I'm afraid. Willow needs to leave."
(Faith hears the knife drop out of her Watcher's hand onto the wet pavement.)
"You're such a badass," she says admiringly. She sits up and reaches for her pants.
Wesley is already zipping up, and he picks up his shirt. He pauses, as he is buttoning it, and looks out the window. "That's funny. I thought it was raining."
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night
fastens to all the timetables.
----Pablo Neruda