[Fic] Summer In The City

[white_hart]

I started this years ago on a humid summer's day. I can't remember how I intended to finish it, but this is the ending today's humid day has produced. The Buffyverse and its characters belong to Joss Whedon; this is set at the same time as the end of Season 2.

Summer in the City

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty…

The music floated out of the window of an apartment block five stories above the hot city street.

Jeez, don’t people in this town make with the hip’n’happening any more?

Mom liked that song. Always got a wistful look in her eyes when she heard it. ‘It reminds me of when your father and I were courting’, she’d say.

Courting? What is this, the Middle Ages? And as for reminding her of Dad…well, it’d be nice to have something to be reminded of. Not just a face in a photo, holding a baby he bailed on before she was a year old.

Guys suck, she reminds herself. Only after one thing, and they sure as hell don’t stick around once they’ve got it.

Still, I’m not gonna get caught that way. Footloose and fancy-free, that’s me.

She saunters on, her step picking up the rhythm of the song despite herself. Her stride proclaims her self-confidence. She catches sight of herself in a store window and smiles: tall, lean, wild dark hair loose down her back, tight jeans and skimpy tank top showing every inch of her figure to advantage…If I was a guy, I’d bone me. She’s at home on these streets, this is where she grew up, and these few square miles of the city are the closest thing she knows to a home; certainly closer than the cramped apartment she shares with Mom, and more often than not Mom’s current guy: Sleazebags, the lot of them. She’s given up even remembering their names now, they never last more than a couple of months.

At home or not, confident or not, she walks through the streets alone, moving between the groups of guys and girls hanging out on stoops and corners, talking, laughing, passing cigarettes, flirting, getting closer and closer to actually making out as the evening draws on. Occasionally she exchanges a couple of words, once she bums a cigarette and walks on smoking it; but she doesn’t stop. She isn’t part of any of these groups, although she knows, and is known by, many.

Passing one group, a guy detaches himself, moves towards her.

‘Hey, Faith. Wanna beer?’

She looks at him, considering. He’s a good-looking guy, and the offer of beer is tempting, but…

‘What is this? You following me round like my little puppy-dog now?’

The guy looks crushed. ‘Hey, I just thought we could hang. Y’know, like the other night?’ There’s an edge of pleading in his voice, but she ignores it.

‘”Like the other night”? You think because I get horizontal with you you’re gonna be my boyfriend? Get real, Chris, I don’t do that mushy stuff! You’ve seen me with other guys before.’

‘But…’

‘You thought you were special? Awwww, how sweet!’ She moves closer to him, lowers her voice. ‘Nobody’s special. None of you guys. I see a guy, I want, I take…and I move on. You better do the same.’

And she walks off, leaving Chris gazing after her. He looks back at the group, then shrugs, and moves off, heading in the direction Faith went.

* * *

She’s restless tonight. Feels like she’s waiting for something but doesn’t know what. Can’t settle anywhere, doesn’t want to go home although it’s getting towards midnight. Feels kind of weird, seeing some seriously messed-up shit in her mind’s eye – people with their faces all wrong, a girl with some kind of pointed thing, darkness, destruction, death. But she’s totally straight tonight. What the fuck is going on?

It’s only when she’s halfway down the alley that she sees the two guys. Shit. This is the wrong part of town. How’s she going to get out of this one? And then she realises. These guys’ faces are all wrong. Has someone slipped her a mickey? But she doesn’t feel high. She doesn’t feel scared, either, come to it, because she realises she knows what to do. And it doesn’t even feel like it’s her who’s fighting these two guys, kicking and punching and knocking one of them down, grabbing a slat off one of the old crates left outside someone’s back door for the dustcart, plunging the pointy end straight into his chest, watching in astonishment as he explodes into dust while his friend runs off.

Okay, what the fuck…?

But whatever the fuck, that’s it, that’s what she’s been waiting for. She feels loose, released, laid-back. Horny as hell. And when Chris, who’s been following her all this time, bless his little puppy-dog eyes, comes round the corner, open-mouthed at what he’s seen, she grabs him, shoves him against the wall, and that deals with that.

She leaves him still struggling with his pants zip. She’s always been pretty sure she was special, but there was just a chance she was only as special as anyone else. Now she knows she really is, although she still doesn’t quite understand this knowledge that’s suddenly flooding through her. But there’s a whole world out there, and now she knows that she has the power to get whatever she wants from it.

Comments

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

Note to self; maybe don't forward the URL for this entry to Mum. Oddly, my only piece of Seasonal Affective Writing is one I wouldn't care to share with the APs.

Seriously, sis, I know you said that you were having trouble writing Faith, but from that perspective at least, that's two years well spent. Ordinarily, I find swearing in fanfic jarring, because it would sound out of place in an episode, but given the PoV, this actually works.

Props.

[white_hart]

I'm glad you like it. And yes, the swearing is entirely Faith, because as a general rule I don't swear in writing.

And no, I really wasn't intending to recommend this to the APs.

[thebirdwoman.livejournal.com]

This is great! I love Faith and you've really got her voice here.

[white_hart]

Thanks - I'm glad you liked it!

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I liked this a lot! Captures Faith's attitude very nicely. :)

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Nice. Very nice.