Electricity flows

Thanks to all who reviewed, here's the next chapter, hope you like.
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Chapter Nine: What Feeling is This?
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Faith helped Buffy as far as her motel room, but once inside she let go and the blonde sank heavily onto the unmade bed.

“Don’t sit down!” The younger girl yelled at her.

Buffy tilted her woozy head to look up. “Huh?”

“Get up! You’ll get the sheets all muddied. Jeez. Think why don’tcha?”

Faith didn’t look like she was joking, so pulling a face Buffy got back to her feet, biting her lip against her aches and pains. “Faith, you really have to work on your bedside manner.” She grumbled.

The brunette looked sorry as she moved behind the blonde. “Sorry, B, but its not like I gotta cupboard full of clean, dry sheets anywhere around here.”

Buffy let Faith peel the soggy, muddy denim jacket from her back. She hadn’t even thought about the sheets. She didn’t have to think about stuff like that and she’d never thought of Faith having to think about stuff like that either. She tried to look over her shoulder at the bed, to see if she’d left a mark.

Faith was between her and the bed now so she couldn’t tell. She held out her arms to make it easier for Faith to remove her own light-weight coat, it was thrown to the floor like the other one. Together they created a puddle on the threadbare rug by the door.

“Undo your shirt.” The soft instruction made Buffy look up at the taller girl again. The bedside manner was getting better, but probably because Faith was slipping into an entirely different type of bedside. “I need to see the wound now we got proper light; I still think you should be in hospital.”

At the mention of the place, Buffy hurried to comply. Her fingers were shaky with cold and blood loss and awkwardness; and they skittered over the little buttons several times unable to get them undone.

Faith’s fingertips gently nudged hers out of the way. “Let me.” It took less than a second for the brunette to get them all. Oh yeah, Faith was good, you couldn’t deny that.

Buffy tried to shrug out of the shirt casually, but the deep slice in her side was aggravated and she stopped dead, the pain making her body tense up. She looked away as Faith removed it for her tenderly and it joined the growing pile of her clothes on the floor.

One more item and there’ll be more clothes on the floor than on me, she thought nervously, blushing at the idea.

Faith took a minute to squat and check the cut, Buffy looked down at it too. It looked nasty, red and raw, but the blood had stopped, so she wouldn’t need stitches, just a chance to let her accelerated healing kick in and she’d be as good as new. Some heat might be nice too.

Standing in just her soaking pants and bra, with wet skin and hair, wasn’t nice; and it had to be warmer outside than it was in here at the moment.

Faith straightened back up and inspected some claw marks across her shoulder, Buffy hadn’t even noticed them, but it explained why the skin there felt so tight and itchy. The brunette smoothed her fingers over the already healing scratches, then down to the deep crescents in her stomach caused by the last vampire’s girl-fight tendencies.

Buffy shivered with greater intensity as the fingertips brushed over her cuts and grazes, looking for anything besides the knife wound that might need immediate attention.

It was Buffy’s teeth chattering that finally made Faith stop her extremely thorough inspection of every inch of bare skin she could find and look back up at the blonde.

“Cold in here, huh?” The blonde nodded dumbly, she’d been standing quietly for so long she felt like she’d forgotten how to use her voice. “Right well let’s get you out of these wet pants and into a hot shower.” The brunette dropped to her knees in front of Buffy and reached out.

“Uh, how about we come up with another plan?” Buffy tried to step away, forgot she had a bad ankle and shifted all her weight to it, making her stumble. The only way to go was back on the bed and she wasn’t going to get yelled at again, so instead she grabbed at Faith’s head to stop her going over.

Faith sat there grinning, her head pressed up against Buffy’s stomach, while Buffy found her balance and shifted her grip to her shoulder.

“I take it you’re feeling the…” Buffy cleared her throat, was it dry in here? Feeling better able to make words, she tried again. “Fight getting to you?” She settled on, slightly teasing, mostly wondering if she had any energy left to fight off a horny Faith.

Faith, still on her knees, grinned up. “Like it’s not you?”

“No it’s not.”

“Quit lying.”

“Faith, right now I’m in pain, I’m cold, I’m wet…”

“Precisely what I’m talking about.” Faith winked.

“…and I’m really not.” And didn’t Faith know it was rude to point out peoples lies right in front of them, or was that fashion mistakes? Whatever! Faith didn’t have a clue how she felt so there was no need to encourage her.

Faith shrugged. “Relax girlfriend, you’ve already decided I’m all talk right? So what am I going to do?” She reached out again towards Buffy’s fly.

Buffy let go of one of Faith’s shoulders and clamped a hand over her button and zipper. At least three-parts unintentionally and one-part sneaking it past her brain, her middle finger pressed tightly over the seam of her pants. One eye twitched as she watched Faith lick her lips. She licked her own and forced her hand to listen to reason. “Yeah well, this morning, I don’t feel up to testing my theory.”

Buffy began to doubt Faith had recognised her moment of weakness, when she just leaned back on her calves, all flirtation gone from her voice as she looked into Buffy’s eyes and said. “I’m not trying to…You’re in pain and you need to get these pants off. I’m just trying to help.”

Now Buffy felt bad. “I know…” She started, but she didn’t, not really so she wasn’t sure what to say next. “But I can manage.” Was where the path of sense-making started. And some of that would be good right about now.

They stayed motionless both of them.

Buffy had one hand still covering her fly, resisting the urge to press more firmly, denying herself all but the slightest friction, denying she even had the itch to scratch and wondering why the hell she couldn’t just grow up and go to the hospital when she was hurt. A day of people waiting on her hand and foot wouldn’t be so bad. Her other hand was keeping her upright with the help of Faith’s shoulder. She had to fight to keep those fingers still too. In fact she was having to cope with quite a lot right now and it was starting to piss her off, thank you very much!

Faith was switching between staring at Buffy’s un-naturally still hand and looking up at her face.

“Well come on then.” She said at last, getting impatient.

Coming to the conclusion that tonight was bordering on wacky, Buffy closed her eyes and tried to turn a smile into a smirk. “Not while you’re down there.”

Faith groaned. “You don’t trust me, that hurts.” But got to her feet so she was face to face with the blonde.

Buffy grinned. “You’ll get over it. Now just don’t let me fall.” She warned, quickly unsnapping her pants button and lowering the zipper. Letting go of Faith’s shoulder she leaned her torso against the brunette, her neck tilted up at a painful angle to keep her face out of the soft, dark waves of her hair and used both hands to push the heavy, wet material down her thighs to her knees.

Where they stuck.

“Uh Faith, I kinda need to sit down for this bit.”

Faith sighed. “You want me to carry you into the bathroom. You can sit on the edge of the tub, then hop straight in when you’re done.”

Faith carrying her into the bathroom in just her bra and panties with her jeans hanging off the end of her legs was an image somewhere between funny and…a completely different kind of funny. A funny that made her tummy go wobbly. Like she’d eaten a whole bowl of jello. Scary jello.

“I can shuffle.” Buffy decided.

“Come on then.” Faith started laughing as they made the few short strides to the bathroom into a really slow process. The jeans had pooled around Buffy’s ankles and made a scuffing noise on the carpet. The blonde had an arm around Faith for balance and was hopping, but her good foot kept getting caught in the bunched material, nearly landing both Slayers on the ground.

“B, just step out of them.” Grinned Faith at the bathroom door.

The blonde looked down at them sheepishly, and first, carefully disentangled her bad ankle and then hopped her good one out.

Letting go of Faith she did one big hop and gingerly sat down on the cold edge of the bath. Faith stood in the doorway.

“Okay, thanks I’m good now.”

Faith just looked at her, smirking.

“I can take it from here thanks Faith.”

“You’re going to need my help getting in the shower.” Faith smiled brightly, dimples coming into play. “I don’t mind.”

She thought about it, and decided it wouldn’t be too hard. She had the wall she could lean on and her ankle was feeling better. She’s mostly hopped before because it had made Faith laugh. Really laugh for once. Buffy liked it, so it was worth the sharp sting it brought to her cut. It wasn’t worth giving Faith an eyeful of any more than she’d already seen.

“I’ll be alright, if you could just put the water on for me.”

With another over-worked, under-paid sigh, Faith came and leaned over the bath and fiddled with the taps and the shower head. “I’d offer to not look, but then you’d just get offended.”

Buffy didn’t answer because she was too busy trying to unhook her bra with one hand, her other was holding the flimsy material against her chest. Her back had met a lot of hard places tonight and the bruises must have been starting to come out, because it ached from top to bottom. Making what should have been an automatic reflex action triggered by her getting undressed into a really ouch-filled, stressful affair.

Feeling like an idiot for being such a mess, when Faith was so utterly not, she turned her face as far from sister-slayer as possible and bit her lip in an effort not to cry as she twisted and turned every way she could think of. But she still couldn’t make her hands reach without tearing a muscle, or possibly a lung.

“Can I help or is it going to be classed as bad-touching.”

Faith’s tone was mocking, but a quick glance proved she was still deliberately facing away from the blonde, one hand testing the heat of the spray.

Buffy thought about showering in her underwear, she thought about showering with Faith in her underwear, she thought about booking herself into a mental hospital, instead of the regular kind.

“Do what you want.” She gave up. Her back burned from her contortions and her knuckles were white on the rim of the bath. A tear of frustration, caught in her lashes, glistened in the dim light from the overhead bulb.

Faith kept her hand under the spray and with the other leaned across and deftly unhooked her bra. Buffy didn’t bother to catch it as it fell from her arms to her lap and then to the floor. She looked down at it, face red.

Pulling her hand out of the water Faith wiped it on her jeans. “The water’s hot now, you should get in.” She walked to the bathroom door and reached behind her for the handle, eyes facing front. “Don’t hog it all, I want one next.”

Buffy stared at her back. “Aren’t you going to wait and see if I need help with my panties?” She asked, flirting dangerously, defensively.

“Nope.”

Then Buffy was staring at the closed door trying to work out what had just happened, and coming up seven shades of blank.