Chapter 4: Indescribable
Buffy’s POV:
“Leave me alone, Dawn.” She looks at me, worried.
“Did you go see Faith?” My head snaps up a little too quickly.
“How did you know that?”
I just came home and I found Dawn sitting in my room. Apparently she heard me leave and decided to wait up for me. I guess it’s sweet but right now… Other things on my mind, you know? Now she wants to have a little all-night talk, like we used to have. But I’d rather be all broody and seriously, how does she know I went to Faith anyway?
She rolls her eyes at me and sighs.
“Who else would you be driving off to in the middle of the night?”
I roll my eyes right back at her. I could be driving off to plenty of people. Willow, Xander, Giles… Hello? Slayer here. Could be an apocalypse at hand. Who knows?
“Uh. I dunno. Angel?” My fourteen year-old sister is somehow able to look at me like mom does when she catches me lying. Scary stuff, I’ll tell you that.
“Did you?”
…No. She takes my silence as confirmation.
“How is she?”
Alright… Now put yourself in my position. I’m feeling like crap, extremely mad at myself because Faith feels like crap and then someone asks me that. I’m ashamed to say that I tend to take out some frustrations on Dawn sometimes.
“Go away.” I say through gritted teeth.
I can’t help it and every time I do it, I feel even worse and promise myself I won’t ever do it again but it’s inevitable really… I’m such a crap sister.
She never was good at hiding emotions and the hurt I caused is obvious for me to see. She gets up and walks away wordlessly.
Yup, feeling even crappier now.
I miss Faith so bad. Just a week ago I thought things were looking up. I was just about to take a chem exam and suddenly I hear tapping. And there she was. My own personal automatic smile bringer. … Smile bringer? You know what I mean.
She always takes my breath away. She drew this little heart on the window and cocked an eyebrow. She didn’t have to ask me twice. Before I knew it, I was outside, buzzing with energy.
She does that, you know.
I remember thinking there was some meaning behind the heart. But I also remember the disappointment when she started talking about a vampire nest.
But I’m with Faith, and I just skipped class and I’m with Faith and I’m going to go stake some baddies and I’m with Faith and…
“Wow…”
“Wow what?” She asks.
“I’ve never done that before.”
Look at me! Buffy Summers skipping an exam!
She looks at me skeptically.
“Done what? You’ve never skipped class before?!”
“No! I’ve skipped!” I can be a bad girl. “I’ve skipped a-plenty.”
Do bad girls say ‘a-plenty’?
“I just never climbed out the window during a chem exam before.”
“Oh.” She says. But then she stops walking.
“Wait, you have a chem exam??”
Yup. Me bad.
“Uh, yeah.”
And then she starts walking back. Just like that.
Faith’s weird.
“Damnit, B, you gotta tell me these things. And what the hell’s the matter with you anyway? A chem exam?”
What is she talking about?
“Where are you going?”
She stops and looks at me.
“I’m taking you back.”
She walks back towards me and grabs my arm, pulling me with her.
“What?! Why?”
Oh no, don’t you roll your eyes at me, mister! You’re the one being weird, not me.
“Cuz you have a chem exam, B. Get with the damn program.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me!”
This is rich! Faith is not letting me skip an exam?
But she’s not laughing. She’s not smirking, she’s just mumbling the word ‘stupid’ over and over.
“Oh my god, you’re serious!” I look at her accusingly.
“Fuck yeah.” She crouches when we reach the window and peeks in.
“So big bad Faith is cool with skipping class as long as there isn’t an exam?!”
Tell me you’re joking, Faith!
“When it comes to you? Yeah.”
Is this girl ever going to make sense?
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She takes another look through the window and then looks up at me seriously.
“It means that I don’t give a shit if I miss and exam or whatever but you gotta take it.”
Oh well, now I get it.
Not.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” I yell.
She pulls me into a crouch.
“Shh. And yeah it does. Now get your ass back in there.” She whispers.
“How does that make sense?” I whisper back.
She sighs.
“You’ve got a good thing going. Skipping a few classes won’t mess that up. But skipping a few classes and blowing an exam just might. The nest can wait.”
She opens the window and motions for me to enter.
“Huh.” I say.
I have just had the strangest thought.
“What?” She asks.
“You care.”
She cares! It’s obvious now, isn’t it?
Ofcourse it is!
Faith cares about me! She cares!
She seems flustered and then scowls.
“No I don’t.”
She pushes me roughly into the class and I fall flat on my butt.
I look back up but she’s disappeared.
“She cares!”
I look up to find Willow, Xander, and just about everyone in the room looking at me.
Oops.
Just thinking about her makes my heart all malfunction-y. In a good way. But it’s just weird. I mean… I get that when you see someone you have a crush on, you get all… crushy. But just thinking about that person? And the intensity of it… It’s just very very… weird. I can’t even describe it really. I feel warm and cold at the same time. Everything becomes more focused but blurry. Intense but soft. … I don’t know, it’s just… I never knew someone was even able to feel so much. Feeling overload.
Right now though… It’s still there. If I just think about her, just Faith, I still get the happiness and utter fluffyness but… The situation is shit. So I’m sad. Extremely so.
I’m lying on my side in bed, just kinda staring at the wall. Thinking about all kinds of stuff. Mostly about her, naturally. And then I hear it. I’m not even sure if I heard it exactly. I think I just…felt it.
“Buffy…” It was so soft and gentle and I was getting the overload all over again.
I sit up in bed and turn around, towards the window. Cue the momentary loss of breath.
I will never, and I mean never, be able to describe to you exactly how beautiful she is and what she makes me feel. Seeing her there, out my window, perched on the branch, moonlight caressing her frame, igniting her big brown eyes…
It’s like… Have you ever seen something that was so beautiful, it almost hurt? Or heard a song, and it touches you to the core, all you can do is feel. You want to somehow express what you’re experiencing but… all you can really do is feel. Do you know what I mean? I hope you do, because those moments are priceless.
If you do know what I mean, try to go back to that moment. How you felt. Now multiply it by infinity. You’re a little bit closer to knowing how I feel around her. Most of all though, I hope you know exactly what I mean, because you have someone who makes you feel the same.
But then again… I’d like to think only Faith can do this.
I never claimed to make sense.
I shakily get out of bed and walk towards her. This would be a real shitty time for my heart to explode. But I swear, it feels like it will, any second now.
Standing by the window I trace her form on the glass. I guess it’s just because she’s so… everything. She’s everything. Beautiful. Breathtaking. Inexplicably… everything.
I’m for mush. I can’t help it, I like mush. Fluffy mush. But normally, even I have my limits. Apparently, not around her though.
I swear, I’m lost in her eyes. These moments are the most difficult to describe. Because words barely even come to play. I just feel.
How ‘bout I try to leave away the feelings for now and just explain what happened?
Okay, so I trace her form through the glass, never breaking eye-contact. She looks back at me, she looks slightly dazed.
Eventually, I do open the window though. I could easily just stare at her silently forever, but that’s not really realistic. And there’s a big chance she might run away, freaked out. Besides, my apology is begging to be let out.
“Faith…”
She seems surprised and kind of shakes her head from whatever daze she was in and looks at me.
“B.” Her eyes dart nervously to her hands.
No, no, keep looking at me.
“I’m sorry, I-..” She starts.
Woah, hold on there! She’s apologizing?
“Faith, no, don’t. It’s me, I-…”
I guess she’s not the only one who tends to interrupt people.
“B, no. Just lemme say this, alright?” She looks at me pleadingly and what can I say?
I nod, again threatening to get lost.
“I ain’t ever been good at this shit and fuck knows I never will be but…What I said at the Bronze… I’m sorry. I didn’t… I mean… I’m not mad at you, you know? You have to know. Because… Well… I just need you to know. I was drunk and… I wasn’t mad at you. I’m not.” Her words are softly spoken and she was looking at her hands all the time.
But now she looks back up at me. She wants to know if I believe her. God… What I feel… This is love. I close my eyes for a moment and treasure the feeling of it.
Next thing I know, I feel soft lips on my forehead. But they’re gone too soon. I open my eyes.
“Sorry, B.” And she hops to the ground.
I… What? She… What? She’s already on the sidewalk… I have to…What?
“Faith!”
She turns back hesitantly.
I love you.
“I…I’ll see you tomorrow?”
She kinda half grins, half smiles at me. It’s the most adorable goofy smile I have ever seen.
“You bet.”
For almost a minute we just stand there. Me leaning half out my window. Her, standing on the lawn looking up at me.
