Damned if I don't, damned if I do.

Hi again. There is some Italian/Greek arguing in this chapter which is written in Italian and Greek, however I just cut and paste from Google-translate so its not particularly accurate. You don't really need to know what is being said, but for those who are curious, I wrote the gist of what they are saying at the bottom.
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Chapter 5: Deep sea diving in a raincoat - b

Buffy’s childish attempt to get the attention away from her worked like a treat; just not in the way she’d hoped.

“You’re running away from all this?” Xander asked sarcastically, gesturing to the picnic avec lots of old people. “Have you gone mad?”

“You’re running away to Italy? How romantic,” gushed Melissa.

“The city of amore,” Andrew breathed, smiling dreamily at Troy.

“The city of pizza,” Faith corrected. “And, you know, amore too,” she winked up at Troy.

“So are you two eloping?” Kennedy finally put down her textbook and took an interest, taking her time to appraise Troy in a big-sisterly way which would have been funny in any other situation.

Buffy felt herself go green, for several reasons, but feeling sick was at the top of the list. The peanut-butter and jelly she’d consumed earlier swirled around in her tummy looking for a way out. She saw Willow looking at her questioningly and managed to shake her head in an unbothered way, and she knew that if she could fool Willow into thinking she was fine with the conversation, Toni would be fooled too.

Was that the explanation for what had happened earlier?

Faith had mentioned something about the sexual tension still playing mary heck with their feelings; maybe what she’d really meant was that she wanted one last roll in the hay before she settled down for good?

What if there had been no magic sexually inspiring cavern; maybe it had just been a cavern? And what if it had nothing at all to do with the Easter Bunny demon? Buffy hadn’t seen it down there, only Faith had. What if it had all be a clever ploy to get Buffy’s pants off one last time in a way that Buffy could never blame her for?

What if all the orgasms had knocked something loose in her brain and Buffy was now ready to be shown her nice new padded bedroom?

“Not that I’m aware of,” Faith said after a moment, looking up at Troy with a sweet, slightly teasing, smile.

Troy was smiling back, and said cryptically, “A wild heart can not be tamed by shackles.”

“No, but it’s a good way to keep one in one place,” Buffy muttered under her breath, wondering if she could shackle Faith later and make her miss the flight.

“So why are you going to Rome?” Willow asked, obviously trying to turn the flow of the conversation before Buffy slayed on the spot.

“There is a dig at the mouth of the River Tiber, believed to date back to the twelfth century BC.” Troy explained to her. “I am hoping to learn much there.”

Buffy sat forward. “Twelve BC as in twelve hundred years before Christ?”

“Yes, although it is not necessarily accurate.”

“But we’re talking over three thousand years ago?” Troy nodded, looking annoyed that his conversation with Willow had been interrupted. “Wow, okay that’s a little interesting – why weren’t you talking about that before?”

“Why, won’t there just be dinosaur bones and stuff down there?” Faith asked, not looking convinced. “I thought you were all into Roman burial sites at the minute, looking for…”

“Humankind goes back hundreds of thousands of years, Fai,” Troy cut her off quickly. “Although not human civilisation,” he added with a grimace.

“Oh,” Faith couldn’t have looked less bothered about her mistake.

Buffy perked up; the way Troy had just cut Faith off was very interesting, not to mention unprecedented.

“Did you believe dinosaurs were wandering the earth a mere three thousand years ago Faith?” Toni asked, her smile not altogether nice.

“You mean they weren’t?” Xander chuckled nervously. Buffy saw him glance between Faith and Toni as she did the same.

“Never really given it much thought, I got better things to do than waste my time on the past,” Faith shot back. “No offence,” she added quickly to Troy.

He looked mildly put out, but covered it with a smile, “Sometimes in the past we can find answers to the questions we will face in the future,” he said softly.

“Well you keep digging for answers and I’ll copy yours.” Faith ran her hand through the black springy curls at the back of his head, gently pulling him around to look at her. “If that’s alright with you, of course,” she smirked.

“Of course.” His smile grew wider and more relaxed as he gazed into her happy eyes.

“So Troy,” Buffy began, Faith’s response bringing memories of their shared past flooding back to her, a time both too painful to dwell on and . . . well, painful pretty much summed it all up. “What answer is it exactly that you’re hoping to find in the mouth of the tiger?”

“I’m sorry?” Troy asked, politely turning to her again.

“You mean the Tiber,” Toni corrected her with a giggle. “It is the river that runs through Rome.”

“Okay, there then,” Buffy shrugged. “What’s so special about this particular place that you have to drag Faith half-way around the world for?”

Troy looked confused, “I am not ‘dragging’ her any where. Faith made her own decision to accompany me, a decision that delights me but was most unexpected.”

“That’s not really answering my question,” Buffy pointed out, not wanting to give any thought to Faith’s apparent inability to live without the Greek hunk, whatever she claimed to the contrary. Why else would she be going to Italy? It wasn’t like Faith was culture-girl or anything, and she wouldn’t care to know a designer label unless one bought her a beer.

“And what was your question again?” he asked genially. Was he trying to exasperate her into shutting up?

“I’m just wondering what kind of answers you’re hoping to learn from this particular trip.”

“Well, I don’t know yet. The site is very, very old and many ages of man have settled there.” Troy told her. “An old… colleague of mine has uncovered part of a ship that is believed to date from circa. twelve hundred BC. This discovery could possibly end century’s worth of speculation about the founding of the city of Rome…”

Buffy was the only one not really listening as he jabbered on, her keen ears only on the listen-out for any keywords that might help her figure out what he was up to. So far the only thing at all suspicious was his hesitation over the word colleague. It wasn’t the hesitation of someone not sure of his English, but of someone who was using a word they really didn’t like the taste of. Buffy would bet money that Troy’s ‘colleague’ was either a rival in the archaeological field, maybe a fellow student who’d gotten better grades than he. Or he was a rival of a completely different kind?

Quantiaro.

The name burned in her mind. If she could find out what Quantiaro was planning, she could find out why Troy was so desperate to stop him.

“How long will you be away?” Toni asked, the sound of her girlfriend’s soft voice bringing Buffy back to the conversation.

“Ahh, I could be there many years and not get bored, but Faith, I fear, will not feel the same.” He smiled, brushing Faith’s cheek with his thumb. “And so, it will be a short trip.”

“You know I have commitments here, big guy. S’not like I can just drop them all and move indefinitely to Italy.” Faith said, sounding like it wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation.

“Ochi,” he agreed, and the look he sent Buffy turned the warm spring afternoon freezing.

“Ouchy indeed,” she muttered.

He obviously considered her one of Faith’s annoying commitments, but she knew that wasn’t the case. Faith was talking about the slaying, possibly her party planning and maybe even the home she’d made for herself with them all. She definitely wasn’t talking about her though.

“Ochi means no,” Toni explained, having missed the cold look her best friend had given Buffy. “It’s Greek.”

“Right, gottcha,” Buffy nodded at her. Back to Troy, “All this digging you do, ever found any buried treasure?” she asked conversationally. “I mean, old ships might be fascinating to you, but personally - I’m more of a chest of gold doubloons kind of girl.”

“No.”

“You mean: ochi.” She corrected with a sardonic smile.

“I mean, I am not a glorified treasure hunter,” he said, blue eyes hard as ice. “I take my work very seriously.”

“So you’ve never found anything of value,” Buffy asked, genuinely surprised.

She could remember digging in the garden, back when she was seven or eight and living with her mom and dad in LA. She’d been digging for worms for a school science project and over the course of an afternoon she’d found three dollars and a nickel – she’d felt rich when showing her dad her horde. If Troy had really been going on archaeological digs since he was a boy, wasn’t it a bit odd he had never turned up anything he could take to the bank.

“I have found things of great value to the foundation of discovery, but my work involves mud huts, middens and battlefields that were drenched with blood millennia ago. Not royal palaces or pirates’ watery graves,” he answered her tersely.

What was he getting so upset about? She’d only asked. That was what she got for showing a smidgen of real interest for once. What did Faith see in him again?

“Hey, what about that old key thing hang…” Faith began.

“Simply a key I exhumed in England,” Troy spoke over her, leaving Faith blinking at him in surprise. “It is worthless aside from decorative value.”

“But I thought you said it was solid gold,” said Faith. “Not that it looks gold to me. You ever hear of black gold, B?”

“No, it is not gold.” Troy said quickly. “It is actually an alloy of many inexpensive metals.” He gave a chuckle that sounded nervous. “It’s is pretty though, yes? This is why I have kept it.”

Buffy’s brain jumped all over his answer, gleaning every possible bit of information from it she could. She didn’t get a lot from his words, except that he had a key of black gold from England that he didn’t want anyone to know about. His reaction was everything though – it was definitely the reaction of a creep with an evil secret.

She looked around at her friends, expecting to see the same suspicions showing on their faces, but all she saw was genuine interest in his stories, and, in Andrew’s case, adoration.

Willow started to cheerfully ask him, “So where abouts in England were…,”

“Come ha visto la chiave? Che altro siete stati trascurati con?”

Toni’s sudden Italian outburst took everybody by surprise, completely cutting off Willow’s sentence and making Buffy sit up straight and stare at her girlfriend.

Troy apparently understood her; he answered her in English, his voice soothing, his eyes warning, “It is okay, Antonella.”

“Non è giusto, Troy. Che cosa se scopre che cosa è!” Toni shot back, apparently not soothed.

Troy shrugged, and answered Toni in her native tongue, “Allora le cose saranno avanzate che avrebbero gradito, ma non proporranno un problema. Andiamo a Roma questa notte.”

Buffy looked from Toni to Troy to Faith, for any clue as to what they were arguing about. Buffy’s Italian was terrible, as she’d already proved. She couldn’t understand what Toni said even when she was speaking slowly, so this rapid exchange of heated words was way beyond her.

Faith glanced at her, also at a loss as to what was going on. She mouthed, “Any ideas?” to Buffy who could only shake her head in bewilderment as Toni spoke to Troy again, her voice rising as she became more impassioned.

“Il vostro girlfriend forse stupido ma la miniera non è!”

Buffy could practically feel the exclamation mark at the end of Toni’s sentence and winced even further from her girlfriend. “Uh, Toni?”

“Uh yeah, so…looks like the races are starting over there, and I’ve got my spoon.” Xander spoke up over the arguing pair as he grabbed the table spoon from a tub of coleslaw and got to his feet. Licking it clean, he asked eagerly, “Anyone else?”

Everyone else jumped to their feet too and began talking at once.

“Oh yeah, Kennedy and I are going in the three-legged race,” Willow grinned, pulling the small slayer up after her.

“It’s a pity there isn’t a three-eyed race,” Xander said to his girlfriend as he put his arm around her and lead her away. “We’d be a sure thing for sure.”

“I’m gonna find Dawn and Christian on the bouncy castle,” Andrew announced hurrying off in that direction.

Buffy and Faith watched them all go and then on some invisible cue, they began to inch away from their partners and towards each other, stopping when they were close enough to talk in low voices. The arguing friends didn’t even seem to notice.

“Faith non è stupido e nessuno è lei che si infastidisce penosamente quanto Buffy.” Troy sounded like he was getting angry now too.

“Guess they’re arguing about us then,” A corner of Faith’s mouth lifted in amusement as they heard their names mentioned. “Are you getting any of this?”

“Ha pensato che i dinosaurs fossero di intorno tre mila anni fa!” Toni gave a derisive chuckle.

Buffy was watching the argument like she was watching Wimbledon, her eyes going from side to side. She shook her head now as she said, “I think dinosaurs means dinosaurs, but other than that...”

“Great,” Faith rolled her eyes. “She’s taking a pop at me in Italian so I can’t defend myself.”

“I think he’s probably defending you,” Buffy replied with a smirk.

Troy’s voice was barely below a shout as he leaned in to Toni, but most people were now watching the races on the other side of the common and taking no notice of the four of them. “ας εμάs όχι ξεχνώ ποιόs έχει επικρατών πάνω ποιόs εδώ.”

“Okay they’re not speaking Italian now,” Buffy mused as Troy switched languages.

“Greek probably,” Faith shrugged. “And before you ask, no, I don’t understand a word.”

“κάνω όχι τραβώ ότι επικρατών crap επάνω μου my αδελφόs. έναs λέξη από εμένα και δικό σου σχέδιο θα ποτέ έλα σε fruitation.” Apparently Toni could speak Greek too, as she did so now, icily.

“Ed una parola da me Antonella e voi non potrà ripetere mai qualche cosa…” Troy switched back to Italian and once more his voice was almost mockingly calm. At the end of his sentence he snapped his fingers in front of Toni’s face and smiled.

Toni’s eyes narrowed at her friend.

“Maybe we should go and give you guys some privacy,” Buffy said in the uncomfortable silence that fell.

She started to rise to her feet, Faith doing the same next to her, until Toni rounded on her angrily. Buffy gulped in shock. “Or not.” She quipped uneasily.

“Your ankle,” Toni growled at her, before making an attempt at lightening her tone. “I’m sorry, il mio amore, you should not walk on it yet.”

Buffy plopped back down on her butt, “Good point. But you two could always take a walk and try and clear the air,” she suggested, her voice bright enough to blind passers-by. “You obviously have some issues.”

Toni looked like she was either going to deny the argument had ever happened or at least play it off as unimportant as she smiled at Buffy, but Troy stood up next to the blanket.

“Excuse us ladies, but for once Buffy has made a good suggestion. Toni, come and talk to me while I purchase some beverages.”

Toni stood up reluctantly and the two of them headed off towards a stall selling beer, sodas and bottles of water.

“Get one for me,” Faith called after them.

“Hey, what do you mean: For once Buffy has a good suggestion?” Buffy called after them. “I have lots of good suggestions!”

“B, leave it. At least they’re gone for a while,” Faith flopped over on to her back, looking exhausted.

Buffy looked down at her and realised that they were alone on the blanket. In fact there were quite a few empty blankets around them too, making them even more alone.

She cleared her throat and pulled a strawberry from the tub of fruit in front of her, studying it rather than eating it, as an excuse not to look down at Faith. “So that was pretty intense.”

Faith let out a long sigh. She had one arm thrown casually over her eyes to block out the sun, which was still bright and warm as it slid down the sky in the west. “Been a pretty intense kind of day, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, I would definitely say,” Buffy agreed. “So what do you think they were so worked up about? I’ve never heard Toni have a cross word to say about Troy before. And she had lots of cross words just then, bilingual cross words even.”

Faith let out another sigh and shrugged, her shoulders rubbing against the chequered blanket. She’d removed her leather jacket when they’d arrived and her cotton shirt was creased from being used as a mattress earlier. Faith had tried to make it less noticeable by unbuttoning the bottom and tying the shirt-ends together under her breasts.

Faith’s stomach had ever so slightly caught the sun during the picnic, tingeing her previously pale midriff with a little pink; Buffy bit into the strawberry and looked away to see her girlfriend across the other side of the common, near the beer stall with Troy but neither of them were in line. It was hard to tell from the distance and with people in between them, but Buffy thought they were still arguing with each other.

“Maybe they…” Faith began, and hesitated bringing Buffy’s eyes darting back to her. Faith moved her arm so that she was just shielding her eyes with the palm of her right hand. “Maybe they know,” she said, her voice low.

Buffy looked back over at Toni and Troy, panic rising in her heart. “How could they? Did you say anything to him?”

“Yeah Buffy, I told Troy we were screwing underground all morning, and so now he’s yelling at Toni,” Faith said sarcastically, shaking her head.

“Yeah, you’re right; if you’d told him that he’d probably be yelling at me, wouldn’t he?” Buffy realised. “Well that means they can’t know, then, or else why aren’t they yelling at us instead of each other?”

“So why do you think they’re going at each other like a couple of foreign Pit bulls?”

Buffy noisily exhaled while she came up with her best guess. “I think Troy was being an ass to me and Toni didn’t like it,” she said honestly.

“He was being perfectly nice to you,” said Faith. “You just can’t see past the Troy-shaped chip on your shoulder.”

“Oh actually Faith, I think he could have been a little bit nicer,” Buffy replied. “You just can’t see it through your Troy-tinted spectacles.”

“Toni called me stupid a couple of times,” Faith pointed out. “That wasn’t very nice of her, was it?”

“How do you know - I thought you couldn’t understand anything?” Buffy asked. It was odd the way the two of them were having an argument about their partners in such a pleasant friendly way; neither of them raising their voices for once. They were just telling it like it was and it was…oddly enjoyable.

“It takes less than a genius to work out what stupido means, B.” Faith grinned.

Buffy gave that some thought, nodding sagely, “Okay, I’m obviously less than less-than-a-genius, but I did get dinosaurs.” She grinned.

“Good for you,” Faith’s smirk slowly eased into a real smile.

Buffy smiled back down at her, before raising her eyes to the cornflower-blueness of the sky. “When did things get so crazy?” A baffled chuckle trickled past her lips as she looked back to Faith for an answer. “I mean…how did we get here?”

Faith rolled to her side and propped her head up on her hand so that she could tilt her face up to see Buffy without the sun in her eyes. “Do you mean here-here?” She waved a hand around, encompassing the picnic. “Or here-here?” She asked more softly, waving a hand between them.

“If you have the answer to either one that would be good,” Buffy smiled.

“Do you think anyone else knows?” Faith asked quietly. “Do you think any of them could tell?”

Buffy didn’t know whether Faith was asking out of curiosity or some worry that one of their friends would let it slip to Troy or Toni. Only one way to find out though…

“I don’t know, maybe Willow, but I doubt it.” Buffy shrugged. “Are you scared someone will tattle on us?”

“No,” Faith responded quickly. “Nothing like that. I’d just love to know what they’re all thinking right now. They knew full well that you weren’t out jogging this morning, and as soon as Toni said something about me still being in the same clothes, Xander, Willow and Dawn were eye-balling like there was no tomorrow.”

“They did? I didn’t realise, I was too busy freaking out.” Buffy admitted.

“Yeah well, I was fine until they all made me as paranoid as hell, and then I started freaking out too!”

Their matching grins spilled over into quiet giggles that wouldn’t stop until they made a conscious effort to look away from each other.

“How do you think Troy would react if he found out?” Buffy asked.

“Honestly?” Faith ran a hand back through her hair, pushing it away from her face before making the fifty-fifty gesture. “There would probably be lots of shouting in gobbledygook, and then, if I didn’t ditch his ass for giving me a headache, he’d be alright.”

“Really?” Buffy asked, surprised.

Faith gave a one-shouldered shrug, “Yeah. You heard all that bullshit about wild hearts running free – he really believes all that, but… he really doesn’t like you, which is where all the yelling gobbledy…”

“Yeah, I get it,” Buffy sighed. At least Faith was now openly admitting Troy didn’t like her… Wait, how did that make things better? Now if she went to Faith with any evidence that Troy was evil, Faith would be even more inclined to think she was just trying to slur his universally adored good name.

Buffy twisted on the blanket so that she was sitting with her legs crossed Indian style, leaning back on her hands and looking over to the man in question again.

Troy was pacing now, gesturing wildly with his finely manicured hands, while Toni appeared to be ranting back, one hand pointing at him angrily… she actually looked kind of hot, very hot even, all fiery and passionate and sexy. Buffy found herself wishing for her to land Troy a punch on the nose – Toni certainly looked like she wanted to.

“What do you think Toni would do?” Faith asked after a minute or two of comfortable silence between them. “If she knew about us this morning?”

“Oh she’d be gone,” Buffy said, completely convinced of this. “There’d just be a feisty Italian-shaped hole right there.” She pointed to where Toni was standing. “It would be arrivederci time.”

Faith lifted her head to look over at the pair. “You don’t think she’d want to work it out?”

“I think what she’d want would be to walk me off a short pier in a pair of uncomfortable yet affordable concrete boots.” Buffy sighed, knowing she had nothing that would go with concrete boots.

“And me?” Faith asked with a chuckle.

“Let’s just say, it wouldn’t be pretty,” Buffy smirked at her.

“Well you’ve always got the truth to fall back on if all else fails,” Faith reminded her, rolling onto her back again. “Just explain it was all the damn Bunny’s fault and there was nothing you…we… could do to stop it.”

“Is that the truth?” Buffy asked quietly, sitting forward again so that she could look down into Faith’s eyes. “I don’t know what happened down there Faith.”

“It was the demon,” Faith said slowly. “It did something to us or…or the air in the cave… to make us… horny.”

“Why though? Why go to all the trouble of luring us into the pleasure dome just for the sake of that?” Buffy asked. “There has to be more to it, a bigger reason for why some floppy-eared demon wanted us to…have sex,” she finished in a bashful whisper, smiling down at Faith, her eyes twinkling at the memory of said sex.

“Maybe,” Faith bit her bottom lip for a second. “But you agree that whatever it was all down to the demon though, right?” Buffy didn’t answer, but Faith carried on talking anyway. “I mean, we weren’t ourselves down there – something was controlling us, making me act differently and feel like…”

“Like what?” Buffy asked when Faith paused, looking uncomfortable.

Faith looked straight up into the sky above them and took a deep breath before she answered, “Like I was sixteen again.”

“What do you mean?” Buffy didn’t get it. What did Faith being sixteen have to do with anything?

Faith lowered her eyes from the darkening blue to meet Buffy’s.

“You were sixteen when you first slept with someone?” Buffy guessed. Faith gave her a look that plainly said ‘Hell no’, Buffy tried again, “No…you were sixteen when you…came to Sunnydale,” she remembered.

“Which was when you met me.” She added slowly; her heart beat seemed to slow down and speed up all at once as thought about what that might mean to Faith.

She wasn’t sure if she was right with her train of thought or if Faith was about to laugh at the size of her giant ego. Faith stayed quiet and let her eyes drift heavenwards again, and Buffy nodded at her rightness.

“See, I knew this was about more than just sex,” she said triumphantly.

“What makes you think it wasn’t all about sex when I was sixteen?” Faith grinned, but she didn’t look at her.

“Because if it had been, I think I’d have known about it a lot sooner; you weren’t exactly shy about showing an interest back then, with guys anyway.”

“I showed you plenty of interest, B.”

“Yeah, the bad knife-to-my-throat kind. As I recall, you actually showed more sexual interest in my boyfriends than me most of the time,” Buffy frowned. “What was that about?”

“It might have skipped your notice, but there was about a year or so there where I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. What can I say, fucking your boys made sense at the time – or trying to fuck in Angel’s case – I regret it now,” Faith sounded as sincere as she ever had and Buffy didn’t even know why she’d brought it up – it was probably the damn rabbit’s fault.

“S’okay, water under a bridge under a ton of Sunnydale now,” she promised.

Faith sat up, “Hey, if you want I’ll let you take Troy for a spin – even it up a little.”

“Please tell me you’re joking,” Buffy pleaded, blanching at the thought of being intimate with that jerk.

Faith shrugged, looking across the common to where the jerk was. Buffy followed her gaze. It looked as though Toni and Troy had finally resolved their differences and were now in line at the drinks stall.

“So how did it make you feel this morning?”

Faith’s soft question pulled Buffy’s wide eyes back to her. That was kind of a direct question, maybe she was making up for the lack of interest in past years. Buffy stumbled and stuttered as she tried to describe how she’d felt in words that made sense,

“I, uh, well it was… I mean, obviously it was good, and… and new, a lot of it was new, uh, for me and, well, us… I guess, and the…the kissing, with, uh, you is always…What?” Faith was looking at her like she was on crack.

Faith, in a move that completely surprised Buffy, slipped her hand into hers, entwining their fingers comfortably as she chuckled at her. “I was asking how did the demon make you feel, Spaz-attack? Did it send you back to 1999 too?”

Buffy curled her fingers around Faith’s, “No, no I was twenty-three, possibly a slightly younger twenty-three, but still in the year of the Monkey, which would be this year, if we were in China, but we’re not so…yeah.”

Why was Faith holding her hand, all out in the open like this? Okay so their joined hands were actually hidden between their bodies with the way they were sitting so close to each other, but… Why were they sitting so close to each other, all out in the open like this?

A quick look showed Toni and Troy still in a big queue; they’d be a while yet.

“So you never actually said how you did feel in 1999?” Buffy pointed out.

“Like I could take on the world and win,” Faith explained simply with a smile.

“And what would you have won?” Buffy felt shaky despite the lingering warmth of the sunny day. She hoped Faith couldn’t pick up on it through their touching, not touching – holding, hands.

Faith smiled at her, “Probably something resembling this mornings little boink-fest,” she admitted. “Except, you know, without the part where we stopped…”

Buffy squeezed her hand while nudging her in the ribs with her elbow. Faith, grinning, kept on talking,

“And a parade, of course. Angel’s head on a spike out the front of my new Palace…” That earned her a much harder nudge causing Faith to giggle. “Doublemeat, of course, to curb the munchies during all the boinkfesting.”

“Boinkfesting is not a word,” Buffy was giggling too despite trying not to.

It was just that this was a different fluffier side to Faith, one Buffy had caught snatches of during their brief close friendship earlier in the year, but this was even different to that – because there was hand-holding.

“Course it is, it’s German for: ‘Lots of sex.’” Faith waggled her eyebrows.

They both settled down, the way they were looking into each other eyes making Buffy feel brave and nervous all at the same time.

“Sounds like a good life,” she offered, her thumb lightly stroking Faith’s.

“Nah, you wouldn’t like it,” Faith shook her head with a wry smile. “There would be a noticeable lack of any kind of snuggling.”

“Well, with a body like yours,” Buffy joked. “Who’s gonna wanna waste time snuggling?”

“True.” Faith gave a little grin, making Buffy wait a beat before she added, “You’re pretty smokin’ yourself, B.”

“I am extremely smokin’, F,” Buffy corrected with a grin of her own.

Faith nodded absently, her grin slipping away, “Yeah, but I’m not sixteen anymore.”

“Does that matter?” Buffy wasn’t even sure what she was asking here. This conversation had completely taken her by surprise. Not to mention the touchy-feely thing their hands had going on. She thought about mentioning that their hands seemed to be snuggling just fine together and maybe Faith could learn the art from them, but she didn’t want to say anything that might put this current contact into jeopardy.

“Yeah it matters. Things are different now, you know that,” said Faith.

“So what are you saying exactly?” Buffy asked, leaning forward even more for better eye contact. “Why are we sitting here, talking about this?”

Faith hesitated over answering, but she didn’t look away.

“Hey Gals, what’s shaking?” They both startled badly at the unexpected voice.
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Toni:“How does she know about the key? What else have you been careless with?”
Toni:“No, it is not fine! What if she learns its true meaning?
Troy:“Then things will be further advanced that I would have liked, but it will not pose a problem, we will be in Rome tonight.”
Toni:“Your girlfriend may be stupid, but mine is not!”
Troy:“Faith is not stupid, and neither is she as painfully annoying as Buffy.”
Toni:“She thought dinosaurs were around 3000 years ago!”
Troy:“Mind yourself. Let us not forget who has dominion over whom.”
Toni:“Do not pull that dominion crap with me, my brother. One word from me and your plan will never come to fruitation. “
Troy:“And one word from me, Antonella, and you will never say anything… ever again.”