angelgazing (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
angelgazing) wrote2005-04-19 03:17 pm
angelgazing) wrote2005-04-19 03:17 pm
fic: this place of stunted growth - faith/bellatrix
title: This Place of Stunted Growth
rating: R
pairing: Faith/Bellatrix
disclaimer: I don't own the characters. Or the idea. That's someone else's fault as well.
warnings: cracked-outtedness, violence... er... blood kink?
notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
catnamedbuffy for her birthday. It's all her fault. Blame her. And restless_jedi for doing the beta thing and Not Talking Me Out of This. I'll just be over there hiding under that rock if you need me.
It's not a chase so much as it's a relocation.
England was colder than LA, wetter than Sunnydale and less like home than any place in America—even the ones she'd never been to—but some things never changed no matter what part of the world you were on. Graveyards tended to be the same, all stone and brick and green grass.
Faith cocks her head sometimes in the middle of the cemetery with her arms at her sides and stake clenched in her hand just right and listens for the sound of bones shifting in their graves.
She'd popped in on Buffy in Rome, popped up behind her in the middle of the night and Buffy didn't miss a step. Faith's lip was split before she'd said hello and Buffy's cheek was blooming a blue-purple bruise.
(Bruises were their flowers. Were their hello, how are you, nice night? Thanks for dinner. God, I hate you now. Wanna see a movie? Fucking hell, I love your fists.)
That was a chase.
This is just a relocation of the fight, just a push of…
She doesn't go to nightclubs since they all remind her of the Bronze. Remind her of white skin and big eyes and curled fingers just brushing her arm and things she doesn't want because she couldn't have. Faith stopped going to nightclubs and wore jeans instead of leather like that was gonna make her the good one for once.
Instead she goes to cemeteries in the middle of the night like Giles always tries to teach the new ones, the young ones. The ones who still don't know their own strength, all in lines, same moves, same time, same beat.
One day a big bad was gonna come along with a spell or a claw or an ancient magic something or another and pick them off one by one. It'd only get easier as it went on too. They never knew to switch it up, never knew to not use the same moves as the girl standing next to them.
The grass is overgrown here, so maybe Faith is still switching it up. Maybe she isn't, maybe she's just tired and looking to walk over graves were bones stay still. Stay lying like bones should, quiet instead of creaking.
(All bones are waiting to be turned into dust. Waiting for the chance to fly through the air like ashes on a day when the sunlight is coming off the ocean bright enough to blind. All bones are just waiting to be gone, like that'll be their freedom, finally.)
But Giles sent her here, mentioned suspicious activity and Faith followed his orders like one of the new girls. Like she hadn't played the game on her own for years. Like she was just another slayer that wasn't Buffy, that wasn't the slayer.
Maybe it counts for something that she found what she was supposed to be looking for, but she doubts it.
The overgrown grass is mostly weeds, dead or dying like the tree twisted and black against the almost full moon. They're wet from the rain and the water soaks through the denim of her jeans to her thighs, the wind blows around her sharply cold, and Faith can taste all the things this isn't like something bitter on her tongue.
She'd flipped through the heavy pages of books older than dirt one night, watching as the other girls studied, pretending she had something to teach them. Found a picture of The Four, of Angelus and Darla, of Spike and Drusilla.
That's what she thought at first when she saw this woman. She thought of Drusilla, sickly thin with crazy eyes and her fingernails digging into Spike's arm, her dark hair stark against the white of Darla's throat with her head resting on Darla's shoulder.
(She thought of Spike who loved Buffy enough to get a soul for her and if he would've asked, Faith could've told him it wasn't going to work and Angel could've told him it wasn't going to work. Because Buffy was like Darla, vampire pale with deadly hands and sharp teeth and hair so blonde it hurt in the sunlight, looking like she wasn't just going to shove Drusilla off of her, she was going to snap her neck and bleed her dry first.)
It wasn't Drusilla, but just as crazy. Sitting on a headstone pulling weeds up one by one, naked except for her skirt and digging her toes into the dirt she'd cleared with the moon too large just behind her, like it only ever was in horror movies.
Faith stepped forward then and she ran and it wasn't a chase. Faith doesn't chase demons in the night because she doesn't have to. Kill 'em all before they get away, that's what a real slayer does.
The stake in her hand is comforting; the splinter she gets just that much more so.
Faith can hear her heartbeat, the rush of blood through chilled limbs louder than the ocean the night she'd spent hunting underneath the docks of a town whose name she couldn't even remember now. Doesn't really matter anyhow, vamps are vamps in every town; they all dust the same.
They hit the stone hard. Well, she hits the stone, Faith hits her when she can't quite stop, when she slips on the wet grass. The fence is high and there's no escaping now.
(Faith isn't sure which of them would try to, though.)
"Ok," Faith says, inching back. "No more running."
And Faith knows the woman is crazy—from the skirt to the bare feet to her shirt having disappeared sometime before Faith arrived and her fingertips grazing the tops of weeds as she moves—and Faith doesn't have to hear her speak to know it. She can smell it coming off of her in waves, can feel the way the crazy bubbles in the back of her throat. Faith learned some things in prison, after all, she learned to sense the unstable ones quick.
"Muggle," she hisses through her teeth and grins. "You want to play?"
"Maybe," Faith answers, and shifts her stance just slightly, shifts back as Crazy breaths in deep. Her breasts brush against Faith's like a tease. "Probably not with you though."
"You will if I want," Crazy says, smiling like she's just been handed a toy. Her hair is matted, black but streaked with gray.
Faith knows the smell of dampcoldsoulrotting places, she's known that since she's known the scent of home. It's not easy to forget and it's not easy to hide. It hangs off this woman like her full skirt hangs off her hips.
(But she's a woman, not a vamp, not a demon. It's blood going through her veins, trickling slowly down the cut on her collarbone. It's air she's breathing in sharply, moving against Faith like that'll make Faith crumble, like she's got any idea of the secrets Faith holds in her head. Her heartbeat is slow, steady, like she's calm as only a fucking crazy person can be when faced with Faith the Vampire Slayer with a stake in her hand.)
"Not the way it works," Faith says sharply, stepping back as she shoves back. The sound of bare flesh hitting the stone fence is louder than anything in the graveyard. "I mean, maybe I'm just being a little suspicious, but you're gonna have to tell me who you are and why you're here."
"We're going to play," she smiles, blinking already wide (dead) eyes open wider, like innocence. "You aren't worthy of knowing my name, you pathetic Muggle."
"Says who?"
"Says my blood and yours."
Faith smirks, the corner of her mouth twitching with it. "You don't know the first thing about my blood." If her fingers clench tighter around her stake it's only because she likes the weight of it in her hand. "What's your name," she says, the question a demand.
"Bellatrix," Crazy hisses again, her fingernails are sharp and blood red as she drags them down her own arm and shivers in something like bliss. Her skin is damp, and shimmers pale silver-blue in the moonlight when she moves. "Do you think you're going to hurt me, Muggle? Do you think you can?"
And it's the kind of dare Faith has never been able to back down from.
"If that's what it takes," Faith answers, very carefully not shifting her stance. "Why are you here?"
Bellatrix laughs. "Why are you?"
"Something about rats, I think. Cleaning up pests that hang around dark and scary places at night. But you wouldn't know anything about that, right?"
"The only pests around are your kind," Crazy sneers, suddenly shockingly angry. "The filth of you, of Muggles and Mudbloods walking around our streets, our bone yards, even rats have more decency than to be here. They know their place and they cower from our power, they don't try and make our blood weak and dirty the way your kind does. They don't assume to try and steal away what's ours."
"My kind?" Faith answers with a grin. "You don't know a thing about my kind, lady, so how about you just answer my question and we can both go home."
She sways forward then, smiling again and tilting her head all seductive, bashful calm. Like she's got any tricks Faith hasn't seen yet. The tips of her fingers never leave the top of the weeds that surround them, thigh high and swaying with her movements, swaying in the breeze. "I've got power like you've never dreamed of, little girl. I can make the Earth move with me, make the stars sing you their final song. I can make the dirt grow flowers when I whisper to it, make your silly weapons sail into my palm like they were always meant to be there. I could turn you inside out with a word."
Faith caught Bellatrix's wrist when she reached her hand out. "And I could crush your windpipe before you were half-way through your word, and not even have to make an effort. So let's not try and one up here." She tightened her fingers just so. Just enough to get the point across. "One more time," Faith said slowly, like she was talking to a child who didn't understand. "What are you doing here?"
She feels clumsy in her new boots, they hurt her feet and if she steps on bare toes when she shoves Bellatrix back against the wall then that was why. That was the only reason. Not because she wants to cause harm or find answers.
Bellatrix sways forward again, whispers, "I'm growing," and laughs.
Another thing Faith learned in prison. She doesn't always want to get the joke. She pushes (a little harder than necessary, maybe, but only a little) Bellatrix back against the fence. The sound of the impact is almost drowns out the laughing. Almost.
Faith watches, with a sick sort of something hanging in the back of her throat and the pit of her belly, as Bellatrix spreads her fingers through the blood slowly oozing from the wound on her collarbone.
"Think you can hurt me?" she asks; repeats. Almost like she's begging.
They both know she can.
"Yeah," Faith answers, her eyelids almost dropping.
Bellatrix drops her hand again, blood smeared across her fingertips and when she brushes the weeds this time, she whispers something, sounds like Latin, like a fucking spell, and the weeds grow and wrap themselves around Faith's left wrist.
And it's… Fuck, it's stupid. Faith hits her before she can not, fist first and the stake Faith still holds is sharp enough to cut her.
She laughs again, one cheek pressed to stone that's more blue than gray in the moonlight, the other sluggishly bleeding almost black. "You still want to make me bleed, Muggle?" Bellatrix asks, sounding like she's torn between giggling and cackling.
Fucking witches. Faith has never been a fan.
The weeds are easy enough to pull free from, just a quick jerk and they're free from the ground and dead again, no longer moving slowly, tightening around her wrist. They fall and Faith steps on them when she steps forward. They don't grab at her ankle like she half expected them too, so either the trick was half-assed or Bellatrix doesn't have half the power she thinks she does.
Faith is banking on that one, but she catches Crazy's wrists when they go back down towards the weeds. Holds both her wrists tight against the stone above her head. And Faith doesn't really have to try very hard to keep her pinned there.
"More than you know," Faith says, a sharp answer to a mostly forgotten question. "You still think you can stop me?" she asks, sliding her thigh into the folds of Bellatrix's skirt, and pinning her against the wall there too with her knee.
Bellatrix slides her hips, shifts that tiny bit against Faith's thigh and she shivers. "Yes," she hisses, and leans forward to bite down hard on Faith's lip.
"You're a witch." Faith sneers, pulling her head back sharply. The scrape of teeth makes her lip bleed. "I've got a few friends in the business of magic. Sold crystal balls to college students and when that town ran out they were teaching protection spells to little girls trying to get by being too fucking different for words in the newly big bad world. Your growing is less than impressive, Trixy, and I can't say your bonds thrill me. You're the one against the wall; I'm the one holding you there, and I'm not even trying. So let's be clear here on who's got the power, shall we?"
"You're a Muggle," Bellatrix laughs, rolls her head against the stone and then slides her tongue across her bottom lip like a starving man who's just caught sight of his feast. "You're nothing," she hisses, "same as all the others, got no magic in you, no power. Not good for anything but playing with and Muggles tire as toys so easily."
Faith tightens her fingers and grins. She's still got the stake in her right hand and she thinks that—"You wanna play?" she asks, presses the sharp end of the stake just lightly against Bellatrix's temple and slides it down like she did to Wesley once with glass.
Faith likes the blood, still, the rusted copper taste of her own in her mouth, the thick scent of it in the air, the color it takes when night makes everything monochrome. She's never understood why it turned Buffy's stomach. Never understood why the baby slayers are puking their guts out when the scent hits them first thing when they walk into a vamp's den the first time. Doesn't understand it anymore now, when almost-black blood slowly wells behind the slide of her stake across the blade-sharp bone of Bellatrix's cheek.
"We can play," Faith whispers, and Bellatrix makes strangled sounds in the back of her throat. "But sooner or later you're gonna answer my questions."
She grins as she licks away the blood, a slide slower than that of the stake. The sounds Bellatrix make could be from pleasure or could be from pain. Faith's never really been able to tell the difference. It's where she's gotten into trouble before.
It's hard to decide if she cares.
"What's a Muggle," Faith asks, her thumb pressed tight against the pulse in Bellatrix's wrist. Her fingernails dig into the black snake that curls on Bellatrix's skin.
"You," she answers with a sneer, or best she can manage. Her hips are shifting steadily along Faith's thigh now. "Non-Magical, they say, like it's any less perverse. Just a lot rodents with filthy blood, running around and spreading their diseases."
"Filthy blood?" Faith laughs harshly, presses her thigh higher, closer. "Seems to get you flowing just fine." She pauses with the tip of the stake just barely brushing Crazy's jaw, making her back arch when Faith scratches it against the cut already bleeding. "Been an awful lot of deaths that look suspicious around these parts lately. You kill to keep your blood clean, Trixy?"
"Yes," she grins. "With pleasure." Bellatrix laughs and the charred snake on her arm slithers beneath Faith's fingers. "But you know about killing, don't you? You've got blood on your hands because you liked it there."
"What I like where is beside the point." Faith twists her wrist, sends the stake from mostly harmless against her jaw to pressing dangerously against the pulse in Bellatrix's throat. "You think I'm gonna let you walk away from this, B?"
Bellatrix groans, leans forward and bites down on Faith's lip again, reopens the cut and she can't be too afraid of the filth of Faith's blood, way she fucking laps at it. "I don't think you're going to have a choice," she whispers across Faith's cheek and her words burn like a dull blade, like a poor weapon. When she kisses Faith this time, Faith lets her.
But only because she knows it isn't true.
rating: R
pairing: Faith/Bellatrix
disclaimer: I don't own the characters. Or the idea. That's someone else's fault as well.
warnings: cracked-outtedness, violence... er... blood kink?
notes: For
catnamedbuffy restless_jedi for doing the beta thing and Not Talking Me Out of This. I'll just be over there hiding under that rock if you need me.It's not a chase so much as it's a relocation.
England was colder than LA, wetter than Sunnydale and less like home than any place in America—even the ones she'd never been to—but some things never changed no matter what part of the world you were on. Graveyards tended to be the same, all stone and brick and green grass.
Faith cocks her head sometimes in the middle of the cemetery with her arms at her sides and stake clenched in her hand just right and listens for the sound of bones shifting in their graves.
She'd popped in on Buffy in Rome, popped up behind her in the middle of the night and Buffy didn't miss a step. Faith's lip was split before she'd said hello and Buffy's cheek was blooming a blue-purple bruise.
(Bruises were their flowers. Were their hello, how are you, nice night? Thanks for dinner. God, I hate you now. Wanna see a movie? Fucking hell, I love your fists.)
That was a chase.
This is just a relocation of the fight, just a push of…
She doesn't go to nightclubs since they all remind her of the Bronze. Remind her of white skin and big eyes and curled fingers just brushing her arm and things she doesn't want because she couldn't have. Faith stopped going to nightclubs and wore jeans instead of leather like that was gonna make her the good one for once.
Instead she goes to cemeteries in the middle of the night like Giles always tries to teach the new ones, the young ones. The ones who still don't know their own strength, all in lines, same moves, same time, same beat.
One day a big bad was gonna come along with a spell or a claw or an ancient magic something or another and pick them off one by one. It'd only get easier as it went on too. They never knew to switch it up, never knew to not use the same moves as the girl standing next to them.
The grass is overgrown here, so maybe Faith is still switching it up. Maybe she isn't, maybe she's just tired and looking to walk over graves were bones stay still. Stay lying like bones should, quiet instead of creaking.
(All bones are waiting to be turned into dust. Waiting for the chance to fly through the air like ashes on a day when the sunlight is coming off the ocean bright enough to blind. All bones are just waiting to be gone, like that'll be their freedom, finally.)
But Giles sent her here, mentioned suspicious activity and Faith followed his orders like one of the new girls. Like she hadn't played the game on her own for years. Like she was just another slayer that wasn't Buffy, that wasn't the slayer.
Maybe it counts for something that she found what she was supposed to be looking for, but she doubts it.
The overgrown grass is mostly weeds, dead or dying like the tree twisted and black against the almost full moon. They're wet from the rain and the water soaks through the denim of her jeans to her thighs, the wind blows around her sharply cold, and Faith can taste all the things this isn't like something bitter on her tongue.
She'd flipped through the heavy pages of books older than dirt one night, watching as the other girls studied, pretending she had something to teach them. Found a picture of The Four, of Angelus and Darla, of Spike and Drusilla.
That's what she thought at first when she saw this woman. She thought of Drusilla, sickly thin with crazy eyes and her fingernails digging into Spike's arm, her dark hair stark against the white of Darla's throat with her head resting on Darla's shoulder.
(She thought of Spike who loved Buffy enough to get a soul for her and if he would've asked, Faith could've told him it wasn't going to work and Angel could've told him it wasn't going to work. Because Buffy was like Darla, vampire pale with deadly hands and sharp teeth and hair so blonde it hurt in the sunlight, looking like she wasn't just going to shove Drusilla off of her, she was going to snap her neck and bleed her dry first.)
It wasn't Drusilla, but just as crazy. Sitting on a headstone pulling weeds up one by one, naked except for her skirt and digging her toes into the dirt she'd cleared with the moon too large just behind her, like it only ever was in horror movies.
Faith stepped forward then and she ran and it wasn't a chase. Faith doesn't chase demons in the night because she doesn't have to. Kill 'em all before they get away, that's what a real slayer does.
The stake in her hand is comforting; the splinter she gets just that much more so.
Faith can hear her heartbeat, the rush of blood through chilled limbs louder than the ocean the night she'd spent hunting underneath the docks of a town whose name she couldn't even remember now. Doesn't really matter anyhow, vamps are vamps in every town; they all dust the same.
They hit the stone hard. Well, she hits the stone, Faith hits her when she can't quite stop, when she slips on the wet grass. The fence is high and there's no escaping now.
(Faith isn't sure which of them would try to, though.)
"Ok," Faith says, inching back. "No more running."
And Faith knows the woman is crazy—from the skirt to the bare feet to her shirt having disappeared sometime before Faith arrived and her fingertips grazing the tops of weeds as she moves—and Faith doesn't have to hear her speak to know it. She can smell it coming off of her in waves, can feel the way the crazy bubbles in the back of her throat. Faith learned some things in prison, after all, she learned to sense the unstable ones quick.
"Muggle," she hisses through her teeth and grins. "You want to play?"
"Maybe," Faith answers, and shifts her stance just slightly, shifts back as Crazy breaths in deep. Her breasts brush against Faith's like a tease. "Probably not with you though."
"You will if I want," Crazy says, smiling like she's just been handed a toy. Her hair is matted, black but streaked with gray.
Faith knows the smell of dampcoldsoulrotting places, she's known that since she's known the scent of home. It's not easy to forget and it's not easy to hide. It hangs off this woman like her full skirt hangs off her hips.
(But she's a woman, not a vamp, not a demon. It's blood going through her veins, trickling slowly down the cut on her collarbone. It's air she's breathing in sharply, moving against Faith like that'll make Faith crumble, like she's got any idea of the secrets Faith holds in her head. Her heartbeat is slow, steady, like she's calm as only a fucking crazy person can be when faced with Faith the Vampire Slayer with a stake in her hand.)
"Not the way it works," Faith says sharply, stepping back as she shoves back. The sound of bare flesh hitting the stone fence is louder than anything in the graveyard. "I mean, maybe I'm just being a little suspicious, but you're gonna have to tell me who you are and why you're here."
"We're going to play," she smiles, blinking already wide (dead) eyes open wider, like innocence. "You aren't worthy of knowing my name, you pathetic Muggle."
"Says who?"
"Says my blood and yours."
Faith smirks, the corner of her mouth twitching with it. "You don't know the first thing about my blood." If her fingers clench tighter around her stake it's only because she likes the weight of it in her hand. "What's your name," she says, the question a demand.
"Bellatrix," Crazy hisses again, her fingernails are sharp and blood red as she drags them down her own arm and shivers in something like bliss. Her skin is damp, and shimmers pale silver-blue in the moonlight when she moves. "Do you think you're going to hurt me, Muggle? Do you think you can?"
And it's the kind of dare Faith has never been able to back down from.
"If that's what it takes," Faith answers, very carefully not shifting her stance. "Why are you here?"
Bellatrix laughs. "Why are you?"
"Something about rats, I think. Cleaning up pests that hang around dark and scary places at night. But you wouldn't know anything about that, right?"
"The only pests around are your kind," Crazy sneers, suddenly shockingly angry. "The filth of you, of Muggles and Mudbloods walking around our streets, our bone yards, even rats have more decency than to be here. They know their place and they cower from our power, they don't try and make our blood weak and dirty the way your kind does. They don't assume to try and steal away what's ours."
"My kind?" Faith answers with a grin. "You don't know a thing about my kind, lady, so how about you just answer my question and we can both go home."
She sways forward then, smiling again and tilting her head all seductive, bashful calm. Like she's got any tricks Faith hasn't seen yet. The tips of her fingers never leave the top of the weeds that surround them, thigh high and swaying with her movements, swaying in the breeze. "I've got power like you've never dreamed of, little girl. I can make the Earth move with me, make the stars sing you their final song. I can make the dirt grow flowers when I whisper to it, make your silly weapons sail into my palm like they were always meant to be there. I could turn you inside out with a word."
Faith caught Bellatrix's wrist when she reached her hand out. "And I could crush your windpipe before you were half-way through your word, and not even have to make an effort. So let's not try and one up here." She tightened her fingers just so. Just enough to get the point across. "One more time," Faith said slowly, like she was talking to a child who didn't understand. "What are you doing here?"
She feels clumsy in her new boots, they hurt her feet and if she steps on bare toes when she shoves Bellatrix back against the wall then that was why. That was the only reason. Not because she wants to cause harm or find answers.
Bellatrix sways forward again, whispers, "I'm growing," and laughs.
Another thing Faith learned in prison. She doesn't always want to get the joke. She pushes (a little harder than necessary, maybe, but only a little) Bellatrix back against the fence. The sound of the impact is almost drowns out the laughing. Almost.
Faith watches, with a sick sort of something hanging in the back of her throat and the pit of her belly, as Bellatrix spreads her fingers through the blood slowly oozing from the wound on her collarbone.
"Think you can hurt me?" she asks; repeats. Almost like she's begging.
They both know she can.
"Yeah," Faith answers, her eyelids almost dropping.
Bellatrix drops her hand again, blood smeared across her fingertips and when she brushes the weeds this time, she whispers something, sounds like Latin, like a fucking spell, and the weeds grow and wrap themselves around Faith's left wrist.
And it's… Fuck, it's stupid. Faith hits her before she can not, fist first and the stake Faith still holds is sharp enough to cut her.
She laughs again, one cheek pressed to stone that's more blue than gray in the moonlight, the other sluggishly bleeding almost black. "You still want to make me bleed, Muggle?" Bellatrix asks, sounding like she's torn between giggling and cackling.
Fucking witches. Faith has never been a fan.
The weeds are easy enough to pull free from, just a quick jerk and they're free from the ground and dead again, no longer moving slowly, tightening around her wrist. They fall and Faith steps on them when she steps forward. They don't grab at her ankle like she half expected them too, so either the trick was half-assed or Bellatrix doesn't have half the power she thinks she does.
Faith is banking on that one, but she catches Crazy's wrists when they go back down towards the weeds. Holds both her wrists tight against the stone above her head. And Faith doesn't really have to try very hard to keep her pinned there.
"More than you know," Faith says, a sharp answer to a mostly forgotten question. "You still think you can stop me?" she asks, sliding her thigh into the folds of Bellatrix's skirt, and pinning her against the wall there too with her knee.
Bellatrix slides her hips, shifts that tiny bit against Faith's thigh and she shivers. "Yes," she hisses, and leans forward to bite down hard on Faith's lip.
"You're a witch." Faith sneers, pulling her head back sharply. The scrape of teeth makes her lip bleed. "I've got a few friends in the business of magic. Sold crystal balls to college students and when that town ran out they were teaching protection spells to little girls trying to get by being too fucking different for words in the newly big bad world. Your growing is less than impressive, Trixy, and I can't say your bonds thrill me. You're the one against the wall; I'm the one holding you there, and I'm not even trying. So let's be clear here on who's got the power, shall we?"
"You're a Muggle," Bellatrix laughs, rolls her head against the stone and then slides her tongue across her bottom lip like a starving man who's just caught sight of his feast. "You're nothing," she hisses, "same as all the others, got no magic in you, no power. Not good for anything but playing with and Muggles tire as toys so easily."
Faith tightens her fingers and grins. She's still got the stake in her right hand and she thinks that—"You wanna play?" she asks, presses the sharp end of the stake just lightly against Bellatrix's temple and slides it down like she did to Wesley once with glass.
Faith likes the blood, still, the rusted copper taste of her own in her mouth, the thick scent of it in the air, the color it takes when night makes everything monochrome. She's never understood why it turned Buffy's stomach. Never understood why the baby slayers are puking their guts out when the scent hits them first thing when they walk into a vamp's den the first time. Doesn't understand it anymore now, when almost-black blood slowly wells behind the slide of her stake across the blade-sharp bone of Bellatrix's cheek.
"We can play," Faith whispers, and Bellatrix makes strangled sounds in the back of her throat. "But sooner or later you're gonna answer my questions."
She grins as she licks away the blood, a slide slower than that of the stake. The sounds Bellatrix make could be from pleasure or could be from pain. Faith's never really been able to tell the difference. It's where she's gotten into trouble before.
It's hard to decide if she cares.
"What's a Muggle," Faith asks, her thumb pressed tight against the pulse in Bellatrix's wrist. Her fingernails dig into the black snake that curls on Bellatrix's skin.
"You," she answers with a sneer, or best she can manage. Her hips are shifting steadily along Faith's thigh now. "Non-Magical, they say, like it's any less perverse. Just a lot rodents with filthy blood, running around and spreading their diseases."
"Filthy blood?" Faith laughs harshly, presses her thigh higher, closer. "Seems to get you flowing just fine." She pauses with the tip of the stake just barely brushing Crazy's jaw, making her back arch when Faith scratches it against the cut already bleeding. "Been an awful lot of deaths that look suspicious around these parts lately. You kill to keep your blood clean, Trixy?"
"Yes," she grins. "With pleasure." Bellatrix laughs and the charred snake on her arm slithers beneath Faith's fingers. "But you know about killing, don't you? You've got blood on your hands because you liked it there."
"What I like where is beside the point." Faith twists her wrist, sends the stake from mostly harmless against her jaw to pressing dangerously against the pulse in Bellatrix's throat. "You think I'm gonna let you walk away from this, B?"
Bellatrix groans, leans forward and bites down on Faith's lip again, reopens the cut and she can't be too afraid of the filth of Faith's blood, way she fucking laps at it. "I don't think you're going to have a choice," she whispers across Faith's cheek and her words burn like a dull blade, like a poor weapon. When she kisses Faith this time, Faith lets her.
But only because she knows it isn't true.
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*gibbers incoherently*
Faith/Bella! FAITH/BELLA!
*rereads*
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I like incoherency. ::nods::
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Thanks for linking me to it!
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Fantastic job, I really like how they interact together, the power struggle was brilliant.
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