“Enemies” 3/14

[sroni]

He came out of his self-induced drug stupor and found her edgy, irritable, and agitated, and he knew that she was striking out as a defense. She was the closest to crying that he had ever seen her, and it scared him. Plain and simple, scared the pee out of him. Emotion + Faith = badness. “Faith? What’s the matter?” Yeah, like she’d answer you, numbskull.

She scowled viciously. “Nothing. No big. Everything is five by five. No need to give a shit.”

He was silent for a moment and just watched her pace. “What did I say last night?”

Her head snapped up in shock. “Huh?”

He kept his voice calm. “What did I say when I doped myself up?”

She shrugged belligerently. “What makes you think that whatever it was matters?”

He didn’t look away from her. “Did you hear what Caleb told me when he was busy poking his finger through my eye?” She nodded grimly and looked away. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I know what he meant by it. I see things. I know when something is going on, and I usually know why. So tell me. What did I say to you that’s messed you up this bad?”

She glared at him, scowled again, and turned away. “You’re like a dog with a squeaky toy. You never let go of anything.” She turned back in, and the look on her face told him to brace himself for yelling. He read her right. He met her fury with calm acceptance. “You wanna know what you said? You really wanna know what you effing said? Fine.” She spat the word at him. “You told me to get the hell away from you because there was no way you would let a murderer anywhere near you. Are you effing happy?”

He had to give her congrats on control. If she’d been Buffy, Willow

her old self

things would have been flying across the room and broken. As it was, she had placed herself in the middle of the room, away from everything, and she was holding herself there by sheer force of will and nothing else, shaking with the effort to keep her emotions pent up.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “What did you say after?”

“What makes you think I didn’t just leave your ass here?” she snarled at him.

He didn’t even blink. “Because you’re still here. You haven’t left since two days ago when you snagged the cot.”

“How would you know?” she sneered, still across the room from him. “You’ve slept through most of it.”

“The nurses like me, and they told me. You have cot marks on your face, so you were lying down. You’re exhausted, so you weren’t sleeping. So. Tell me. What did you say to me?”

She seemed to deflate a little and shrugged. “No big. I just said I wouldn’t hurt you.” She mistook his look of surprise for one of condemnation, and lashed out defensively. “What the hell was I supposed to say? Your blood pressure was jumping though the roof, and one of the nurses would have made me leave if you didn’t calm down before they got in here. B and Scarlet would kill me if I left you here alone. It’s not like I had a choice.”

He forced the calm to come back. “Did it work?”

“Jeez, can you just drop it already? I am so not in the mood to deal with this right now.”

“Please, Faith. I need to know.” He swallowed, and asked again. “Did I calm down?”

The ‘please’ threw her. It was obvious that it did. “Yeah. You shut up and your heart rate slowed. Now, can you let it go?”

“Faith?”

“Now what?” she yelled at him. “What the hell is so damn important now?”

He hated that he was causing her pain, but knew that it was necessary. He looked at her calmly and said three words he had never actually said to anyone before.

“I trust you.”

She jerked her restless movements to a dead stop. “You what?”

He motioned her over to the bed. “Come here. I want to talk to you without you being all the way across the room.” She walked over, trying to appear like she didn’t care. With anyone else, she might have succeeded. Not with him. He knew when people were fronting. “Sit.”

She rolled her eyes. “What am I, a damn dog you can order around? Think again. I ain’t no flea bag.” But she sat.

“Faith, I trust you,” he repeated, looking her straight in the eye.

She pulled away, facing away from him, but stayed sitting on the bed. “You were sure singing a different tune last night.”

He disagreed. “No, I wasn’t. If I didn’t trust you, why would I have calmed down after you promised you wouldn’t hurt me?” He pointed out logically.

She didn’t answer. Her head was ducked, and she was hiding behind her hair. Not like he’d have been able to see her face anyway.

When he saw her shoulders shake, he realized how much emotion she’d been holding in. Without saying anything, he pulled her to him. She resisted at first, but then allowed him to hold her against him, and she cried on his chest. When the tears subsided, she pulled away from him, swiping at her eyes. “I gotta go.” She started to stand up, but his hand on her arm stopped her. Against her better judgment, she looked back at him.

His eye was asking her to stay.

She stayed where she was.

“How long has it been since you cried?” The question shocked her. It showed in her eyes.

What shocked her more was that she answered truthfully. “Years. I learned a long time ago that they’ll leave you alone if you don’t cry.”

He kept looking at her, with that infuriating calm and acceptance written in his eye. It was obvious that he was waiting for her to tell him who “they” was. That wasn’t going to happen.

“What the hell are you looking at?”

It never occurred to him not to answer truthfully. “You.”

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