Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Girl Least Likely
Dawn had three classes on the day Faith came to visit her, and Faith followed her to each one. Every time the doors opened and the students streamed out, carrying thick books and ragged messenger bags, lighting up cigarettes, Faith meant to get up and find Dawn in the crowd. Instead she stayed put, leaning up against the wall or sprawled out on a concrete bench, and watched the girl with an outsider’s eye.
She still looked like a model, tall and skinny as hell, with narrow hips and perfect hair, but that prissy high schooler’s posture was gone, along with the prissy high schooler’s wardrobe. Instead, she slouched along with a sway in those narrow hips that raised Faith’s inner eyebrow, and her barely-there mesh top and tiny pleated skirt, combined with red fishnet stockings and punky Mary Janes, raised more than that.
The k*d had grown up in the big city.
Well, she wasn’t Dawn’s mother, and god knew she’d dressed like more of a slut when she was two thirds Dawn’s age, and the k*d was legal now anyhow. But the eyebrow stayed raised.
Faith knew better than to bug Dawn in front of her friends, so she hung around campus all day, picking up crappy knick-knacks in the bookstore and checking out the local testosterone scene. Didn’t seem like much to her — bunch of pretentious emo guys copping the Lou Reed look and carrying around Kerouac and Yeats. One dude in a motorcycle jacket and skinny tie was even smoking a pipe on the lawn outside the art building, and Faith didn’t bother to hide her laugh. College k*ds.
The chick scene, on the other hand, wasn’t so bad. Not like all those blonde skinny twats back in LA, or the snotty corn fed bitches in Cleveland; these girls had style. Looked smart too, and not just book smart. She bet more than one knew how to handle herself on the street, or in the sack.
When it got dark she ambled over to the dorms, finishing up a bag of Doritos. She caught sight of Dawn again, walking out of the dining hall with a couple of girls and now sporting a red leather trench, her smooth hair ratted up to match her dark eye makeup. Faith guessed what kind of an evening they had in mind, and followed them to the subway station.
The three girls sparked up in the alley outside the club, which was not much of a surprise. The skunky smell floated down to Faith, lounging behind a green dumpster, and she inhaled deeply, hoping for some kind of extended contact high. Five years of being clean felt like nothing when cute girls were having fun with substances and she was the old-maid chaperone. Even if they didn’t, strictly speaking, know she was there.
She waited a second to follow them into the building, letting the heaving crowd swallow them, then headed for the entrance. The butch bouncer carded her, which secretly cracked her up, especially given that her ratty paper New Jersey license read "Faith Summers," and she was good to go.
It took her longer, really, than it should have to figure out what kind of club Dawn and her friends had picked. Not too surprising, or even too unwelcome, but still. Always weird to find out your best friend’s k*d s*ster swung more than one way.
Being in a dyke club effectively killed all her chances of casually encountering Dawn, though, and she began to fight her way back to the exit. An amoebic thrust of the crowd threw her into the bar on the way, and she figured, what the hell. Have a coke. Pretend you don’t miss the whiskey.
She bellowed her order, then forked over too many dollar bills for her watery soda and leaned back against the bar, scanning the crowd. Lot of hot chicks here, no doubt. That redhead in the corner, working the cowboy hat and the tight Wranglers, or the dark-eyed girl in full motorcycle leathers, looking like a sweet piece of trouble. Definitely her kind of joint. She’d have to remember this one next time she was in New York.
Dawn swayed into view eventually, wrapped around one of the girls she’d come in with, a green-haired Goth girl with a boyish figure that matched Dawn’s own. They broke apart as the song changed, seguing from heavy techno to trippy Indian music, complete with high female wailing and sitar, and Dawn drifted to a small clearing on the floor.
Maybe it was the whiff of weed, maybe the bartender have given what she charged for and left the whiskey in after all, but Dawn looked pretty fucking hot dancing by herself. She had none of the frantic slayer energy that drove her s*ster and Faith, but a kind of sultry, throbbing rhythm of her own that made her fascinating to watch. Her eyes closed, arms above her tipped-back head, a sudden sway of her hips flipped her skirt to reveal black garters attached to the fishnets and Faith caught her breath.
Everything seemed suddenly drowned out, even the music, which was annoying as fuck.
Faith finished her drink.
Others noticed the Ishtar in their midst, and a dark girl in a short red velvet dress that hugged every delicious curve moved into Dawn’s space. Faith watched Dawn’s eyes open, and the two women melded into the kind of dance floor clinch that makes everyone else get out of the way. Faith had been in more than one of those clinches.
She set the empty glass back on the bar and pushed herself off it. She’d look the k*d up tomorrow, sometime well after noon, and pretend she’d just hit town. Best for everyone that way.
The crowd had a mind of its own and other ideas. Another violent heave tossed her into Dawn’s clearing just as the velvet chick slithered into someone else’s arms, and Faith caught Dawn’s eyes.
Sle*py and reddened as those eyes were, she wasn’t sure if she saw recognition or something else in Dawn’s face. True, it had been a couple of years, and Faith’s hair was chopped short and copper streaked, but it wasn’t like she’d had plastic surgery. The k*d was very, very stoned.
The k*d also kept dancing, that little skirt swishing and her breasts bobbing, nipples poking through the fine mesh of her shirt. She looked like exactly the kind of girl Faith took home when she was in a certain kind of mood, though that mood usually involved some pent-up aggression and a lot of beer.
Faith was starting to get in the mood.
Maybe Dawn was too. Dawn was … dancing closer, still swaying, arms descending from above to rest on Faith’s shoulders, slide down her arms, grasp her hands, and why was she still standing there like a fucking moron? Dance with the hot girl, or be an adult and get the fuck out of there, but now was not the time for her best impression of a statue.
Faith danced.
It was hard at first to get their rhythms matched, her with the energy and Dawn with that languid, sexy sway, but she found herself making a kind of revolution on the dance floor, with Dawn as her axis. The circles made her dizzy, though, as did watching Dawn’s tripped-out face as she leaned back to toss her hair, and when Dawn grabbed her hips, she grabbed back.
It took about six seconds to get to the kissing from there, and then the tongue, and then the kind of groping that should really be happening in a bathroom stall. She broke away long enough to spot the men’s room and dragged Dawn in that direction, figuring it had to be the least-used room in the joint.
She busted through the swinging door, dragging a tottering Dawn behind her by one hand, and discovered she was not the only one with the brilliant plan. Fuck it. She kicked open the door to the large disabled stall, ejected the two k*ds shooting up, and pushed Dawn back against the tiled wall.
This was better. This was fantastic. This was so fucking great that she had to stop kissing Dawn, lift her shirt, and get at those perky tits. And, having done that, she had to slide lower, kneeling on the nasty ass floor, to push up that goddamn little skirt and discover that Dawn didn’t wear underwear to lesbian clubs.
Faith spread Dawn’s legs and started licking her all over, looking for the spot that was going to make her squeak like a kitten. Instead, she got a long, throaty moan that encouraged her to use her hands. Jesus Christ, this was fucking weird, and maybe even kind of wrong, but as she brought Dawn off with her tongue and thrusting fingers, it kinda didn’t feel so bad.
When she stood up, the girl looked so spaced and fucked-up that the guilt set in immediately, a solid punch to the chest she hadn’t expected for at least another hour. Learning to listen to the little voice in her head was a goddamn pain in the ass sometimes.
She took Dawn back to the dorms, letting her sle*p on her shoulder as they rode the train, supporting her along the sidewalks, and finally carrying her like a sack of potatoes up three flights of stairs, then fishing the key card out of Dawn’s bra to get the door open. Dawn’s room was a senior’s single, and Faith briefly considered the welcome thought of crashing on the floor, but decided that getting herself out of this mess was more important than saving money on a fleabag motel. With any kind of luck, the k*d would wake up and think it was all a fantasy brought on by PCP-laced weed. Which, really, the whole thing kind of felt like.
She dropped Dawn on the narrow, squeaky twin bed, then massaged her shoulder for a minute before pulling the girl’s clunky shoes off and dr****g an afghan over her. It looked like something Buffy might have made, back when she was in that whole crafty period immediately post-Sunnydale. Ugly-ass bright colours, crappy, lazy stitches, yup. That was her girl.
The other girl, this strange Dawn who was about thirteen steps removed from the k*d she’d known, stirred on the bed. Faith backed up, hoping to get out fast, but she tripped over some kind of art project made of wire, and Dawn raised her head, squinting.
"Faith?" she rasped.
"Yeah," Faith said. "Uh, no. Go back to sle*p, Dawnie."
"Faith," Dawn repeated. "Buffy said you were coming today."
Shit. "Yeah, but I’m not. I’m coming tomorrow. Get some sle*p."
"No. You’re here," Dawn insisted. "You were here."
"Huh-uh, k*d," Faith lied, feeling desperate. "Someone else who looked like me." Dawn dropped her head back, and shook it against the pillow.
"Faith, I’m wasted, not stupid," she sighed. "And you kiss good. And you eat out like a pro." Faith did her statue impression again, feeling like she was carved from ice.
"Not gonna tell Buffy," Dawn mumbled, turning onto her side and curling up. "You prob’ly shouldn’t tell her either. She’ll get jealous."
"Dawn…" Faith started.
"Nah," Dawn said into the pillow. "We’re cool. We’re all cool. We all live in a yellow submarine…"
Faith stripped her clothes off and joined Dawn in bed, passionately kissing her, and getting kissed passionately in return.
“So… You like girls?” Faith asked as they lay there.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” Dawn replied as she cupped one of Faith’s breasts. “Buffy brought it out of me. But don’t tell her I told you.”
“My lips are sealed,” Faith said, a smile forming, knowing just what she was going to do with this information.
Dawn then kissed her again, “Love you.”
Faith was going to respond to it, but as she turned to face Dawn she was faced with the sle*ping form of a beautiful Dawn Summers.
“Ditto, D.”