Ordinary Day
by SwaySlayer
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Buffy and Faith do not belong to me, however, seeing that they
are both such an integral part of my creative bursts, I think that joint
custody is only fair…
Author's Notes: If you’re reading this it means you think I have something
interesting to say. Never assume. LOL. Anway, this needed to be written
because I believe that love is an extremely underrated emotion and people
should never be fearful of taking a chance. And did you SEE the oxymoron in
the summary?! My high school English teacher would be so proud.
Dedication: This is for the person who made me realise that I was able to
love, be in love and be loved in return. It may have been years ago, but
you are still the one that got away. I would have walked the Earth to look
into your eyes. To Brent, a million miles away, yet you remain in my heart.
I love you.
Feedback: My inbox is beginning to resent me for lack of praise. Be nice
and prevent further hostility?
Electricity. That’s what flowed through my body when I knew that she was going to say ‘yes’. ‘Yes’ to me, ‘yes’ to us and ‘yes’ to what I was offering her. It was nowhere special, on an ordinary day. The sky was not particularly intriguing and the Earth was dozing quietly, accompanied by no movement of human, beast or flora. The temperature was not too hot and not too cold and the way we were dressed would have no effect on how we recalled the event in question. I don’t even remember what day of the week it was. I don’t have the date scribbled down in a diary to remind myself of how I felt nor do I buy nonsensical gifts to commemorate it. I remember it. She remembers it. There is no need for either of us to ever put a stamp on it for fear of forgetting a detail, for the day, in all its ordinary glory, remains imprinted on our hearts.
However, the history behind the event itself is one that can be discussed freely. Filled with troubles and turmoil that defy classification, we hunted each other with a tenacity found only in the most primal of creatures: human beings. Our capacity to desire, achieve, love, lust, want, covet and risk, overtook any indications of logic and practicality. We were tumbling into a world of obsession. An obsession with love and our ability to vehemently refuse it. Were we good at it? Let’s put it this way: if there were a Nobel© Prize for denial, we would have shared it. Although, to be honest, I was always a few steps above her on the ladder of ‘hell no, not me’. Surprised? I thought you would be. As long as the two of us have shared the same area of cohabitation, everyone has always pegged me as the forceful one. The one who never shies away from a confrontation and the one who is never afraid of taking a chance. They were wrong. I have no problem facing up to a six-foot demon, but facing my own? That’s an entirely different story.
She has never been afraid to risk her heart, and while it tends to get crunched up in a garbage disposal before being returned, not once has she ever let the hurt consume her. There is always room in her heart for one more. Just one more…. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have me. Flawed in ways that even the gods weren’t able to fix and filled to the brim with anxiety over leaving myself open to another human being. But she wasn’t just another human being – and I’m not only referring to her being a Slayer – she was, and still remains, the only person who ever called me a coward. Not exactly the wooing you were used to, is it? But I’m not a hearts and flowers girl. Never have been, and she knew this. She took one look at me and she knew that I was the one. I wasn’t another innocent to save and I wasn’t the one who was going to martyr her. I was the one who was going to break her. And so help me, I did. I fought her tooth and nail, on every level imaginable, and do you know what she did? She fucked me. She fucked me royally without even so much as laying a finger on me. She had this annoyingly endearing way of looking at me when my defence mechanism was running at full throttle, like she could physically see it increasing its pace, and she would smile at me and everything would slow down. I watched as her eyes closed as she blinked, pining the minute her green souls disappeared from sight and sighing in relief as they were revealed to me once again. And then she would catch me with that look on my face. And I was fucked.
I won’t tell you how long it took me to be able to smile at her, the way she smiled at me, but it involved gratuitous amounts of dancing, slaying and late-night pizza sessions. It was during those times that I realised that I had been trying to make her like me, but the truth was that I was more like her. I didn’t want to be by myself. Solitude sounds better than loneliness. Enigma is more appealing than outcast. These thoughts prevented me from admitting to what I desperately wanted: a friend. Someone to talk to when the thoughts in my head got too loud, someone to vent to when my soul was out of touch and someone to hold my hand when the scars on my body were too much to look at. And she did it. She did it all. Her thoughts became decibels higher so that mine were soft in comparison. Her soul reached for mine and grounded it. Her hand never broke in mine. Yet, for all this, I wasn’t ready to say it. I was not even the slightest bit ready to step outside my castle walls and call out to the knight who was my destiny.
So she did it for me. She took hold of my raven locks and yanked me out of my comfort zone with the strength of a thousand men, confident in her actions and anticipating the extent of my wrath with a defiant chin. She assumed. She was wrong. I never went back to my castle, for as soon as I left, the walls crumbled behind me. I look back upon them with a certain amount of nostalgia, because I know that without them, she would never have dragged me out of there. But what was I to do now that she had released me from my supposed sanctuary? What right did I have to expect her to be there for me now that the rescuing was done? I waited for her departure with a knot in my stomach and my teeth grinding together furiously. I assumed. I was wrong. My knight never left me. She stayed with me while I adjusted to this new experience, which, while a normal occurrence for others, was completely foreign to me. She taught me how to embrace it, how to mould it to fit my own lifestyle and most importantly, how to share it. I followed her advice with painstaking precision. I embraced it and I moulded it, and when it came to sharing it, I knew there was only one person I wanted to share it with. Her.
You know those stories where people perform amazing feats of bravery and agility in situations where their loved ones are threatened? We’ve all heard the one about the woman who lifted a car off her husband when it has fallen off its raises and landed on his chest, or the one about a man who scaled a fence of impossible height when he was being chased by a wild animal. These stories have only one thing in common with mine. They involved superhuman amounts of adrenaline and a solitary thought before embarking on the event at hand: “Go!” And baby, did I go. I flew right into the thick of things, paying no heed to anything another than what I was intent on doing. I raced at the speed of light in my head, but in reality, it was as slow as the sun setting on the horizon. There was a moment, when I had finished, when I glanced around and took in the faces of others around us. I was convinced that everyone knew what was going on, that they were glued to our moment and waiting for the result so they could broadcast it to the world. In previous years, I would have speculated that they were anticipating my failure, but it wasn’t the result that mattered. The important part, for me, had already been completed. I had done it. I hadn’t backed out or sidestepped anything. I had stayed true to what she had taught me. The only remaining obstacle was her response.
In a small café, two people sat opposite each other. Two girls to some, two women to others, yet to each other, the world. She listened while I spoke, seeing the fear in my eyes as I prayed for her to bestow on me, the smile that had become my saving grace. She didn’t smile. Instead, she tilted her head back and laughed, rising from her seat in order to walk over and crouch before me. I wiped her tears away with my thumb and she mirrored the gesture. I didn’t realise I was crying, but I stopped. It’s relatively difficult to cry when an angel is kissing you. She didn’t stop kissing me until I cried out for breath and even then she was reluctant to let go.
“B,” I cried. “I’m dying over here!”
“Faith,” she replied. “I’m living.”
As I’ve mentioned before, it was a day that will never be recalled in the future. There was no eclipse, there was no acid rain, there was no impending apocalypse. No major disasters occurred in or around the vicinity and there was not so much as a kid falling off a bicycle to place any significance on the occasion. It was the most important day of my life. My life began on that day.