Don't Give a Damn - You Can Go Home Again (intro)

England.

The Mother Country.

To be perfectly honest, I'd never imagined that I'd ever find myself on her soil again, perhaps not even to be buried underneath it. But attempting predicting the path of my own life was, I knew, the greatest folly. Nothing that had happened over the last few years had ever remotely occurred to me as remotely possible, and yet here I was, somehow having survived to see the other side of it all. Barely.

Though she was more than content to be travelling the world and studying us bizarre humans, I knew that I would be forever indebted to Illyria for having been just in time to keep Vail from murdering me. Just as I knew that I would always count Spike and Gunn as stalwart comrades, even though the former was also abroad for reasons unknown and the latter, I was informed, died in that rain-filled alley after taking an inhuman number of his enemies with him.

And when I'd discussed Giles' offer with Angel, I knew what my recovering friend's opinion would be, as well.

"You're going to work for the people who took Dana? Who wouldn't even answer my phone call about Fred when she was dying? The ones who fired you?"

Angel had been incredulous, but he'd understood my need to belong again, to be part of a greater good. It was all I'd ever really wanted from life, and with what was left of Angel Investigations scattered to the winds, there was nothing left for me in Los Angeles. Nothing but ghosts that I'd laid to rest right about the time I'd thought I was about to become one myself.

So, I'd agreed to Giles' offer, packed up my apartment, sold both SUV and motorbike, and gotten onto the first BA flight to London. Father was there to pick me up, as was Giles, and given the time of my arrival, they'd taken me for a hearty English dinner and some excellent scotch before showing me the flat that had been hired according to my specifications.

Thanks to the inevitable jet lag, I'd stepped back out around midnight, looking for either amusement or trouble, and found both. Of everyone in the world, who should I run into in a dark London alley than Faith, on what one could only loosely term 'patrol'. We exchanged surprise and very nearly a few good punches, and filled each other in on current events in our lives as we dispatched a good half dozen or more vampires. Before I realized, it was four in the morning and we were closing down a pub when I finally had to call it a night.

Faith shrugged and 'let' me go, but not before promising she'd see me around the office and that if I was lucky, outside of it, as well. It was surely the weariness and the alcohol talking, but I could hear a distinct tone of proposition in the way she'd said it.

I'd slept quite well for just two and a half hours, and showed up at Giles' office bright-eyed enough to mask my slight hangover. Giles outlined the nature of my duties and I almost laughed out loud. Surely he knew as well as I did the repercussions of placing me in an equal position to Buffy?

"I'd like to think that Buffy's matured past such pettiness, my old friend. And if she hasn't, well... this surrogate father thinks it's bloody time she did."

We'll see, I thought, patting my new plastic-coated credentials and wondering just how hot a frying pan it was into which I was about to jump.

Prodigals - Incindiary Music

Kissing Faith is not like kissing any other woman.

Yes, every woman is unique-- a melody unrepeated by another individual, certainly, but as my own, somewhat limited experience told, all of them sounded as if composed by the same hand, for the same instrument. Virginia had been a clear, crisp scherzo tune, quick and sweet, but brief. Fred's single kiss had been stringendo-- beginning simply, but falling into a surprising intensity. Lilah's kisses were infuriatingly rubato, some lingering, some hurried, some sharp, some soft, but every one of them at least half a lie.

But there was only one sound as Faith's mouth attacked mine, as her hands pulled tightly against my body and slid through my hair-- the raging, pounding beat of my own heartbeat, and the rush of the blood surging with the almost instantaneous explosion of heat. It was a music loud and dissonant, and it at these moments, when I could taste the alcohol and the cigarettes and the raw, grasping lust, it was a sound entirely in time with mine.

Faith's legs were suddenly scissored around my waist, so tight I could scarcely breathe between the hungry, intense kisses. I pushed off of the couch and carried her to the bedroom, absolutely no question left in what would happen now.

And wasn't that what she'd wanted? For me to say, and for her to do? Wasn't that what I wanted, too?

I didn't think, couldn't think about that now. All I wanted was Faith.

I all but threw her down onto the bed.

( Andante, con fuoco (NC-17 content) )

((Open to Faith))