Chapter 6: Home Fires
Author's Notes: I know that some of my gentle readers are concerned that this is not fluffy and wonder whether this story will have a less than friendly Spike in it's future or be unredeemingly bleak. I can't reveal to you where we are going as I believe it detracts from the story as it unfolds naturally, even though I know that some of you find it difficult to wait. I can promise that athough it is not fluffy, and does contain some difficult subjects - violence, abuse, rape, hard bumps in the road, etc - that the end will not be bleak and the times are not all terrible and depressing. I don't think I am going to be writing anything gratuitously violent or grim. I am bringing the characters along as they are, neither all good nor all bad, and I can assure you that no major character in this story falls on one side entirely or the other. The problem I do have, though, is that I plot this story out and then start to write, but almost immediately I find myself watching the characters play out their parts in their scenes, and they tend to take over and diverge from where I thought they were going to go. They are stubborn and very willful like that. I don't always know what they are going to do. Anyway, I hope you'll stick around and trust me on this one. Thank you to all who leave reviews, they are water to a thirsty girl.
The night of the 'field trip' to the Sunnydale Mall, Buffy lay awake in bed thinking about the kids she hid from that afternoon. They were carefree girls, shopping and eating and teasing and talking about boys and what to wear to the next party. This last year she had suffered through and experienced things she had never even considered previously, and was a different person here at the other end of it. But today she was reminded that, not so very long ago, she was one of those girls. Once upon a time, she had had such friends, and all the time in the world to be young and silly and extravagant and carefree. Her life then had revolved around beautiful clothes and cute boys and sneaking out to parties. She thought she'd been at the start of her life then. How did it so suddenly become the end of it instead? A few months, that's all it was, just a few months.
Today, her world was constricted by feeding schedules, diaper changes, mystery stains, and some how/some way, finally getting enough sleep.
Sleep! I'd better stop this pity party and get some before cranky miss wakes up again!
Buffy turned over on her futon and tried to will herself to slumber. But when her eyes closed, the blond boy with the leather coat appeared before her, deeply kissing his girlfriend right there in the mall in the middle of the afternoon before God and everybody. Intense, single-minded, concerned only for the kiss, the girl, that moment in time. She carried the deep impression within her that today she'd glimpsed a moment in the life of someone who was absolutely, thoroughly, unapologetically
alive.
Had she ever been alive like that?
Could she ever be?
Argh! Sleep, dammit! You want to be alive, you're gonna need some sleep!
She punched her pillow and turned back over. Closed her eyes.
That was a great coat.
Sigh.~~~~~~~~
Buffy's head was swimming with ideas of what clothes she wanted to re-make for herself and for Fred. The mall trip had given her so many ideas. Faith had said her ex was an artist, and her room still had some boxes of things he'd left there, so Buffy decided that possession being nine tenths of the law and all, she was free to see if there was anything there she could use for herself. She'd look first, and if anything looked promising, she'd ask Faith if she minded Buffy using it. After all, he was Faith's ex, not Buffy's, and she didn't think Faith would take kindly to her appropriating the things without permission. She rifled through them and found, among other less interesting items:
A clock radio/CD player (great! for that far off future time when I actually
want to wake up again!)
An Exacto-blade kit
Some unopened artist's clay
Drawing pad with half of the pages still left
Drawing pencils and artist's crayons and chalk
These were a great find and Buffy couldn't wait to ask Faith if she could use them. It'd be hours before Faith came home though, so she decided to use a couple pages of the paper and the pencils & crayons to sketch some ideas that wouldn't stop clamoring to come out of her head and onto the blank page. She thought Faith would understand. Faith wouldn't mind letting her have these things. They were just sitting there, after all.
~~~~~~~
Dinner.
Well, if you only defined 'dinner' as the evening meal, then I suppose this is 'dinner', Faith thought morosely.
Buffy had, once again, cheerfully placed toast and scrambled eggs on the table for their evening meal. She was, in fact, quite giddy that she had
not burned the eggs this time, and Faith had to admit the toast was perfect. Buffy had just recently been trying out new things to cook, and eggs seemed to be a big favorite of hers. Although she had attempted other egg recipes - if you could call them that - it was only the
scrambled eggs she seemed able to get to the plate without some unfortunate incident. Although Buffy was quite proud of her scrambled eggs, Faith thought that her success with them had more to do with the fact that the actual
scrambling was inherent in the dish itself.
It was now two weeks until Christmas, and the home front was proving a strain on Faith's patience. She realized it wasn't fair, that Buffy was just a kid and still getting little sleep and completely consumed by taking care of Katie, but dammit, the girl could at least pick up after herself sometimes. Faith was tired of coming home after working all day to an apartment that looked like it had been left in the hands of a pack of trolls. There were wet towels on the bathroom floor. There was art paper and pencils scattered upon every table and chair. There were cloth diapers
everywhere - clean ones, ones with spit up on them, ones used to wipe up mystery substances, dirty ones in the diaper hamper in the bathroom or in the bag waiting by the door for the diaper service pickup. Some days there wasn't a clean dish in the house. And forget ice cubes - Buffy
never remembered to re-fill the trays.
Katie slept a little longer at a stretch - now she was nursed at 10 p.m., and didn't wake up again until 3 a.m. to eat some more. Sometimes Buffy wouldn't even hear her crying - how! how! how! can you not hear that screeching two feet away from your head for God's sake!? - and then Faith would have to get up and shake the girl hard until she wakened and took care of business. After which, fully awake now, Faith would stumble back to bed and try to sleep again before her alarm went off at 6 a.m..
Faith decided then and there that she was
never having kids. Seriously. Never.
"Sooo, how was your day?" Buffy asked breezily as she sat down to eat.
Faith thought she sounded like 'the little woman', asking her husband how things went at the office. That thought was so disturbing that Faith tried to banish it immediately. It refused to leave.
"Different day, same ole shit." Faith groused as she buttered her toast.
Buffy put down her fork. "Ewww," she frowned.
"Don't start, Buffy," Faith fired her warning shot.
"Sorry. It's just, you know, dinner and everything. Didn't need that visual." Buffy rolled her eyes and picked her fork back up.
Faith was starting to get pissed. "And how did we wind up as Ozzie and Harriet anyway?" she snapped.
Buffy stopped eating again. "What?"
"And if we
are doing this whole nineteen fifties happy couple scene, could you at least
pretend to do the housecleaning? I can be Ozzie if you want, but you'd better damned be Harriet!"
Buffy was thoroughly confused now. "Huh?"
"And I know everyone thinks Ozzie was all mister nice guy, walking around in those sweaters and making sure everyone was happy all the time, giving fatherly advice, but I don't
think so! I'll bet he wasn't all sweet and understanding when the cameras turned off! No, not at all! And don't you think for a minute that I wouldn't put you over my knee and
spank some sense into you if things don't start changing around here!"
Faith threw her toast down on the table and marched out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.
Buffy was stunned.
Did she just threaten to spank me?
~~~~~~~
It was gone 2 a.m. before Faith wandered back to the apartment, drunk. What lay on the other side of that door was anyone's guess, so she steeled herself and opened it to find -- a clean room. Several clean rooms to be exact. Kitchen, living room, bathroom, all had gotten a good once over and everything was in it's place.
Faith opened the door to Buffy's room and just watched the two girls sleeping soundly side by side. She had to smile at the sound of the light snores coming from the bed. Buffy or Katie? Hmmmm. Buffy.
She shut the door quietly and went to bed. She was asleep as soon as she hit the pillow.
~~~~~
Next morning, Faith woke heavily to a respectable hangover. She arose slowly and padded into the kitchen, keeping her eyes scrunched against the light that was stabbing directly into her brain.
Coffee. She poured herself a cup from the fresh batch waiting there and popped some aspirin.
Buffy sat at the table in her pajamas, eating a bowl of cereal and reading a fashion magazine. Her eyes never left the page. "Sorry." The apology was quiet but firm. Buffy shoveled another spoonful into her mouth.
"Back atcha," Faith offered, taking a sip and staring out the window over the now spotless sink.
Silence.
"Truth." Faith decided to put that out there.
Buffy never looked up. "Truth."
"It was the spanking, wasn't it?"
Silence.
"Actually, that part sounded kinda kinky." Buffy turned another page.
Faith grimaced. "Oh,
gross!"
Buffy was unable to suppress a small smile.
Silence.
Faith thought about it a minute, and then suggested, "
Although...it wouldn't be so gross if there was --"
"-- a hot guy!" they both exclaimed in unison.
They were both grinning now.
Faith finished her coffee and wandered off to take a shower.
Buffy's eyes never left her magazine. "Skank."
From the living room. "Perv."
Buffy smiled, and turned the page.