Fleeting

VI – Raise Me Up
A/N: and anotherone... aren't i good to you..? don't answer that one, my ego is fragile..

It felt like hours before either one of the slayers had relearnt how to once again pull breath into their bodies and release it again. They still lay on the bed, both wrapped around and in each other, enjoying the silken feel of the soft and slightly damp skin of their lover against their own as they heaved oxygen into their starved lungs.

“Guys, the next time you invoke enough power to raise a l isl island out of the ocean, a warning would be nice.” The sound of Willow’s voice broke through their small bubble of sated happiness, only to realise that their bubble was in fact a small sphere of magic, a protection spell, which the red head was currently holding up with the palms of her hands.

“What power?” Buffy’s voice was croaky as she spoke, but didn’t move. She was naked, Faith was naked, but the brunette currently laying full bodily on top of her seemed to be in a state of sleep. And for some reason, it didn’t occur to the blonde slayer to care whether Willow saw her naked or not.

“You didn’t feel that? Jesus, I think half of California felt that one Buffy. I’d be surprised if an earthquake doesn’t hit. The blonde replied simply with a raised eyebrow that let her best friend know that while she understood the single words that came out of her mouth, she didn’t understand what they meant all rolled into a sentence together, and in that particular order. “I tell you what, when that power’s dimmed a little bit, I’ll leave you two alone to get dressed and stuff, and then we’ll talk.”

“Speaking of which, what’re you doing here anyway?”

“Dawn needed a ride home. She was over at Jaq’s last night.” The blonde nodded, knowing in some distant part of her who Jaq was and why Dawn had stayed over their, but not having enough energy to actually try and formulate the answers to the seemingly long list of questions that crested her mind in tidals waves across her already bruised cranium.

~ ~ ~

“Look B, I have to ok?” Faith reached down and slammed the lid of her weapon’s trunk, throwing her quiver of arrows over the head and picking up her bow with the other. “I have a blood debt with him, and if I don’t do him this favour, he’s gonna take it out of me, in my flesh. And I like my ass, I don’t want any chunks missing.”

The blonde yanked on her socks as she sat on Faith’s bed, her soft features scrunched up in a frown as she tried to understand what her girlfriend was telling her.

She’d made a blood debt in hell so she could get out. Now she needed to pay off that debt by going back their. And she had to go tonight.

All she really understood that this morning when they’d had sex again, they’d invoked some form of power, or awoken one or something a long those lines, even if she found it very hard to believe herself. All she knew was that less than 24 hours after they’d gotten together, Faith was bailing.

It suddenly struck her that this was a hell of a lot like her ‘get some, get gone’ motto of years past. She felt the jolt of fear as it wormed its way up her spine and seemed to launch itself into the air around her. If she had some magical ability, she would have seem small tendrils of what seemed like black smoke, weaving their way across the room to Faith and wrapping her up in their steely grip.

But she didn’t have any magical ability, but she had her slayer ones. She could feel that power as it travelled over to her lover, as it weaved its way around her arms and legs, her chest and her head. Could sense as it wriggled its way down the brunettes spine and knew that while she was scarred for what Faith’s trip into hell might mean, she was down right terrified of Faith leaving her. Again.

The second that fear wrapped around Faith she froze, feeling it as it crawled over her skin and knowing instantly that it wasn’t her own fear, but that of her girlfriend. Some how she could feel it, like a snake, as if it was all the way over here with her. If she took a moment to focus, she would have seen that black smoke like emotion as it danced through the air towards her.

“Oh baby.” The words Faith spoke were very, very soft, breaking the soft hold that fear had on her and releasing her to go to her blonde counterpart, to drop to her knees at her feet and curl her fingers around the smaller woman’s calves. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll be back, before you even know it. But I am *not* leaving you.”

“Promise?” the dark slayer’s answer was to rise up on her knees and softly press her lips to her girlfriends, putting all of her emotions, all of her love and want and longing into that single kiss.

“I promise.”


Continued Next in: Wake Me Up Inside