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So, I asked for fic commentary requests. (I’m still happy to do more, if anyone wants one.)

This was written for [livejournal.com profile] lavastar, who requested a commentary for Dreaming. You should probably read that before looking at this commentary.

The original fic still looks like it did, and my notes are the bits in blockquotes.




Dreaming

The title should be fairly self-explanatory, really…

This fic was written as a birthday present for [livejournal.com profile] dreamincolor, who loves Buffy/Faith, but can’t actually write it. So I decided to write some for her.
Unfortunately, I’m rather nutty about staying canon compliant, so I had to figure out a time when they could plausibly get together on the show – which basically meant:
a) season 3, when they’re friends
b) season 3, when they’re enemies
c) while Faith’s in a coma
d) while Faith’s in prison
e) season 7, in a house full of Potentials
f) post-series
…so, naturally, I decided to go for the weirdest one.

This fic is set just prior to Checkpoint.


The room is exactly like it was the last time she saw it – feature for feature – with only one exception.

The room in question being the room Buffy moved out of during Family.


That particular exception is currently leaning against the window sill, wearing a red tank top and jeans.

(Faith not wearing leather pants just seems wrong…)


Yep – jeans. Which actually suit her pretty well.

As for the rest, it’s all there. Desk, bed, cd collection, weapons chest – everything. Just the way she wanted it.

“Damn, B. Why’d you give this place up?”

…because she had to protect Dawn. And look after her mother.


She walks forward slowly, trailing her eyes along the edge of the desk she never got to study at, and replies, “It wasn’t my choice.”

“There’s always choice.” Faith shakes her head, smiling sadly, and then turns to Buffy, arms still resting gently against the window sill. “Pizza or donuts, studs or hoops, good or evil, sister or world, to jump or not, to kill or not, to love or not to love, to be or not to be… all choice. Forever.”

Pretty much every time Faith is mentioned in this dream, there’s something about what she looks like. Buffy is focusing on her, and what she looks like. Right now, it’s her arms…

Also, please note: Faith is referring to a couple of choices that haven’t happened yet. (“sister or world, to jump or not”) This is because it’s a dream, and a Slayer dream at that, and they can do things like that.


Buffy grins, wryly. “You’re quoting Shakespeare. You.”

“Are you sure about that?”

…or is it just a dream?


And they stand, watching each other, just a few feet of carpet keeping them apart.

Fifty short moments later, the cat jumps onto her bed, and starts washing itself.

I loved writing “fifty short moments later”. It helped the dream-like quality of the whole thing.

And, here’s the cat.
This is the cat from the Graduation Day dream. I’ve seen a lot of discussion of Buffyverse dreams on the internet, and there are two cats – which generally get linked either to Faith, or to Dawn. So I decided to go with that.


Faith watches it. Buffy watches Faith – the curls of her hair catching tiny glances of light as it comes through the window – and realises it must be almost evening. The window faces west, after all.

(We’ve moved from Faith’s arms to her hair…)

“Almost evening” is because, soon, Buffy’s going to die.


“It’s nearly time.”

“Yep.” Faith frowns and adds, “Seriously, B, I know you’re running short, but couldn’t you have spent a few of those hours being here? It’s got two doors and all that – perfect for some bawdy frenching.”

This is a reference to when she moved out. Xander noticed the two doors, and described the room as “perfect for a bawdy French farce”. Faith being Faith, she thinks kinda differently.


…which sounds kind of appealing, actually. “But you know I couldn’t. I had to move back home.”

“And why was that again?”

…Dawn.


Weird. It’s important – always – but from here she can’t quite remember. “It’s a secret.”

“Not your secret,” Faith points out.

It’s not. It’s the monks’ secret. Buffy’s just the one who got stuck with it.


“It still needs to be kept safe.”

No reply.

Screw this. Buffy sits in the desk chair and spins, and the room goes bed, window, desk, bed, window, desk, bed-window-desk-bed-window-desk-bed-desk-bed-desk-bed-desk… and then becomes nothing but a mad blur of colour spinning back the other way. She slams her hand against the side of the desk, and stops.

(Another thing that’s meant to emphasise the dream-ness.)


“Have you found out her name yet?”

Here’s a reference to Willow’s dream in Restless. Tara and her discussed Miss Kitty Fantastico, and her “real name”. A lot of internet discussions seem to see that as a reference to Dawn.


Buffy turns. Faith is sitting on the bed, patting their cat, with a soppy grin. “She’s kinda cute. But she needs a name.”

(From curly hair to soppy grin…)


“I think she’s got one.” She joins them on the quilt cover, and tries to join in on the patting too, but Faith’s hand is in the way.
So instead she watches Faith’s hand, as the smooth even strokes move from head to tail in a constant circle.

(From grin to hand…)


The cat purrs – and then jumps off the bed and out the window.

“That was rude.”

Faith shrugs. “Smart, though. She’s got what she wants, and we’re left hanging – so we’ll still be mad on to pat her next time she’s got the urge.” She looks up, lips curving slightly. “It’s about power, B. Always is. The chick with the power’s the one who calls the shots.”

(From hand to lips…)

This sentence is – sort of – the point of the dream. From a why-is-it-happening perspective. Faith is giving Buffy a whole lot of advice that’s going to be really useful in about a week, when Quentin Travers gets to town.


“When exactly did you get all wise?”

“That’s what freedom does to you.”

“Freedom?” Buffy frowns. “Is that what you call it?”

…other people might call it prison.


Faith’s smile is sad and far away. “Always.”

A breeze flutters through the window, billowing the curtains for a moment.
They barely notice.

(Ahh, symbolic wind. I love symbolic wind.)


“Power?”

Faith, who is sitting there with a wry look on her face, and her legs swinging idly off the side of the bed, nods. “Power.”

(Okay, I’m going to stop cataloguing all the different bodyparts of Faith now, because they’re about to be taking over the story completely…)


“I’ll bear it in mind.”

“That’s not why you came, though.” A raised eyebrow. Legs still swinging. “Is it?”

“It’s not?” Her heartrate increases for no reason at all. “Then why am I here?”

Curved hips. Messy hair. “Same reason as always, I’d say.” Quirked smile. Soft hands.

“This isn’t real, you know.” She says it reluctantly. “It’s just a dream.”

“You’re right, B. It’s not real.” Faith turns to face her, and says quietly: “So why don’t you show me something that is?”

As a rule, Faith tends to push, to take charge, and Buffy sits there stubbornly insisting that she not do stuff.
So, what would happen if Faith sat there doing nothing, and waited for Buffy to act?


…Buffy grabs her and kisses her, hard.

Something like that. That’s what.

I have a thing for Buffy suddenly leaping onto Faith. It makes me squeal with delight with other people do it – and so far, I’ve written it twice.


Faith responds as per normal – a brief moment of shock and then hands trailing up to sink into Buffy’s hair – and the kiss continues, both of them too caught up to notice the normal college-dorm sounds that should be outside in the hall if this were reality.

This is all very much from Buffy’s POV. So she’s too caught up to notice stuff… and she’s also noticing the fact that she’s too caught up to notice it…

Dreams are like that.


The shirt, though, is wrong.

Buffy breaks away first, annoyed and needing to catch her breath.
“That top’s the wrong colour. It should be white.”

In This Year’s Girl, Faith’s top was yellow. And then Buffy stuck a knife through her gut.


“Don’t look at me. You’re the one who got it stained like this.”

Which could be true. But it will continue to be the wrong colour, and to keep Faith’s breasts hidden from view, so she rips it right down the front and throws it away.

Kissing resumes, interlaced with groping, hair-pulling, hands sliding over not-usually-bare skin, bursts of irritated lust from her and gaspy laughter from Faith, intimate whispers, licking, and the destruction of several more items of clothing.

I’m not all that experienced at writing sex scenes. And I certainly wouldn’t be able to write one in the standard list-form (1 - Buffy kisses Faith, 2 - Faith fondles Buffy’s breast, 3…) without completely losing anything that was interesting about the story. So I just, well, got a whole bunch of interesting verbs, threw them all in a blender, and watched it go…


And for a while the dorm room disappears and the world becomes lips and thighs and hands and eyes and boobs and blushes and deep shuddering breaths and frantic want and everything and nothing and them together…

(And the blender thing seems to be the way Buffy’s mind is working by the end of this anyway, so that works out okay.)


* * * * *

Buffy wakes up, flushed.

I had to come up with a whole lot of interesting physical stuff, and give half to Buffy, and half to Faith. Buffy gets “skin tingling”; Faith gets “body trembling”. Buffy’s heart is beating “way too fast”; Faith’s is “way too loud”.


Wow.

It takes a moment for her breathing to reach normal speed again, and she sits up in bed, pushing her hair back from her face, and listening to her heart still beating way too fast.

That dream (or rather, that sort of dream, because it’s always slightly different) has happened much too often lately.

…“slightly different” meaning that it’s set in different places, with different conversations, and different pretty-much-everything-else. The only really similar thing is that she always ends up having sex with Faith. Every single time.


Always pretty much out of nowhere.

Her heart is still pounding in her ears, her skin is tingling… and it’s ridiculous, really.

Completely ridiculous – but what is she supposed to do exactly? Say to Willow, “Hey Will, I’ve been having all these dreams of lusty badness where I’m putting the moves on my former archnemesis – who’s in jail, and possibly still evil, and a girl, and I’m completely not attracted to her, so could you maybe do some kind of spell to stop them from happening?”

(It just occurred to me – that would actually be a hilarious conversation to write.)


She’d never live it down.

(And plus, there’s part of her – a teeny, not-at-all-totally-taking-over-her-brain part of her – that doesn’t actually want them to stop all that much.)

Buffy. Queen of denial.


Buffy washes her face, and stumbles back to bed, where the sheets slide over her bare skin, her lips tingle with memories of things that didn’t happen, and her breathing still hasn’t really slowed down at all.

Up until now, the story has been entirely a story about Buffy having a dream. That’s the story: Buffy has a dream, and then she wakes up and thinks about it. The end.

Sometimes, a normal scene will suddenly have a twist at the end: surprise! it’s all been a dream!
This time, though, I made it absolutely clear from the very beginning that it was a dream. And the twist? Well, actually, it’s not just a dream. It’s just that both of the people having the dream think it is…


* * * * *

Faith wakes up, flushed.

There’s that dream again.

Her eyes stay closed for a minute, body still trembling, skin still singing, as she breathes in her last long memories of something that never really happened.

(Buffy’s reaction to the dream!sex: “Ack! What the hell?! Again?”
Faith’s reaction: “Oh… that was really nice…”)


But then a guard in the corridor says something into his radio, the bed’s metal frame creaks below her, that fucking pipe is still dripping loud as ever, and the real world floods back in.

It was just a stupid dream.

Her heart’s still beating, way too loud.






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