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There are a certain number of things that Buffy Summers did not expect to have to deal with after college, acne and health insurance were surely never mentioned. Acne was one of those things that she was pretty sure was supposed to somehow miraculously disappear after high school. You walk into college as a freshman and poof!acne is gone. And health insurance was just a given, an adult breaks their wrist sparring with an overambitious teenager trying to show off for the girls in the corner, it’s paid for. It doesn’t land you in crippling debt. Or morecrippling, anyway. Somehow student loans and dead end jobs weren’t in the brochure for adulthood, either. Funny the things that adults will keep from kids. Like how the perfect pancake doesn’t just come naturally. Or that there wasn’t going to be a job lined up after you go to school for years doing the thing you are passionate about.
Buffy squinted at the blaring screen in front of her and snorted, scratching at the pimple on her chin, “These questions are fucking ridiculous.”
Faith looked up from a pile of files spread out on the table in front of her, “What?” She had that glazed sort of look that she gets when she’s buried in one of her kids. Buffy shook her head and turned back to her computer. Faith looked down at her files and started mumbling to herself.
Turns out that having a passion for military history makes you really interesting at parties, but being interested in social work helps more with paying the cable bill; even if you don’t have enough spare time to actually watch tv and you cancel it because Netflix is easier and cheaper anyway… the point still stands.
Buffy growled at the laptop and slammed it shut, wincing as she did so, setting it on the ground under the futon, swearing the whole time. “Ouch. Fuck. Damnit.”
Sometime between sixteen and twenty the “what do you want to be when you grow up” shifted to “what’s your major” and along with it any sense of responsibility. Counselors and parents and friendly old people at the farmer’s market were suddenly hammering into your head how wonderful college was for finding your passionand throwing yourself into a cause. Buffy had personally bounced from cause to cause, passion to passion, as though it was an Olympic sport, all while her mother nodded her head and her father sent encouraging, though distant and rather placating, emails.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Faith murmured from the kitchen table, running her hand through her curly hair.
“Do you think we could just get married?”
She had stood on a street corner with signs held over her head and paint all over her body during the 2008 election, cried into her beer as her girlfriend Cordy held her hand as the television blared out the sad truth:Proposition 8 passed in California. The day the Supreme Court changed her world, she got a txt from Faith as she rushed between the coffee shop where she was a barista in the mornings and the Karate studio she worked in the afternoons. It said: looks like we’re legal now. Buffy sent back a little emoji with heart eyes and that was that. They didn’t celebrate in a bar or go downtown to meet with some of her old chums. It was just like any other night, they watched an episode of Bones and fell asleep with their clothes still on.
“Can’t afford the marriage license, babe.”
Buffy flung herself back on the futon, “Cheaper than taking me to the emergency room I bet.”
Faith’s head popped up over the edge of the futon, her forehead wrinkled with concern, “Your earth logic is flawed again.”
“If we were married I could go on your insurance and then this—“ Buffy flung up her swollen, purple wrist, “--- wouldn’t be such an issue.”
Faith’s eyes widened, “What the actual holy hell, B? Did you fight off a mugger again?” She dashed into the kitchen and began rummaging around in the freezer. “I told you to stop picking fights in this neighborhood.”
Buffy rolled her eyes.
It wasn’t that she picked fights so much that in the past six months that they’d moved here, fights seemed to find her. First was the thirteen year old that tried to snatch her purse as he rolled past on his rollerblades. It wasn’t her fault that he got a minor concussion! Or a twisted ankle. Then, there was the drunk that picked a fight with a wall when she was taking the trash out around three in the morning on her way to work, she walked in as wide a circle around him as she could, but he was just sober enough to see her in his periphery. All he got was a bruise on the shin.
So really, it wasn’t all that bad. If anything, she was a tribute to the neighborhood, saving unsuspecting widows from thirteen year old pickpockets and sixty year old alcoholics.
Faith perched on the edge of the futon next to Buffy’s hip and applied a bag of frozen peas to her swollen wrist, “I know this isn’t the greatest building---“
“But it’s what we can afford---“
Faith raised a single eyebrow, “It’s close to my office and on a bus line so you can get to work.” She looked around their studio apartment, “It’s not that bad.”
Buffy let her eyes follow Faith’s around the room. It was a tiny square with a leg on it. Shaped like a little b – like you, Faith had said on their first day. The front door opened on the main room, which comprised of a card table they liked to call a ‘kitchen table’ even though it mostly took up real estate anywhere they pushed it on any given day. At the back against the windows was their old futon and a pile of blankets and pillows they’d gathered over the years, with a nice widescreen tv perched on an old coffee table, both were a gift from Buffy’s mom when they moved in. To the right was the bathroom/closet combo and behind that, out of sight of the main room, was the tiny little kitchen. The narrow hallway that separated the main room from the kitchen saved them from the stink of many a burnt meal.
Neither of them was what anyone would call good cook… or even a mediocre cook. They’d probably be able to save money if there was any way for them to stop eating take-out.
“Nope,” Buffy hit the top of the futon with her good hand affectionately, “Good ol’ Peter does good as a couchand a bed.”
They met on Peter at a house party three years before, just after graduating from college and still with hearts full of dreams. Buffy had been drunk and kissed Faith by accident during a very sloppy game of truth or dare. They’d eventually tracked down the futon and bought it from the owner for $25 and a bag of chocolate-covered cashews Buffy’s mother had given them the night before, with the promise that they’d name the damn thing after him. They moved it into Buffy’s tiny room in a house she still shared with her college roommates and dragged it across town when they moved into their own place.
Faith smirked and planted a kiss on Buffy’s forehead, “You are just bruised, not sprained. No need for the emergency room.”
Buffy frowned, “It hurts!”
“I know it. Was it someone in the neighborhood again? I told you, after last time—“
“No! It was that airhead in the sparring class this afternoon. Too busy making googly eyes at my sister to land his kicks right.”
“Is this Peter or Joshua?”
“Mateo.”
It seemed like every week Calendar’s School of Karate had a new fresh-faced recruit there just to ogle at Dawn. Not that Jenny or Buffy minded. Another student meant another week they weren’t scraping the bottom of the barrel. Faith had bet Jenny a few months back that Dawn was somehow intentionally dragging them in to save the school, but as of yet there was no solid proof.
Buffy pulled herself up to a sitting position and draped one leg over Faith’s lap before resting her head against the other girl’s shoulder. “Mom wants us to come over for dinner tomorrow. Can you make it?” She rubbed Faith’s back with her good hand, small circles with her fingertips that got slowly bigger and bigger. Faith shivered under her touch and Buffy smiled.
“I want to, but I just got handed a bunch of Cynthia’s cases while she’s on vacation. I swear the bitch leaves all the hard ones for me to take when she’s gone.”
Buffy trailed one finger down the length of Faith’s spine gently, “I thought she just got back from Hawaii?”
Faith turned towards her and kissed her on the lips softly, taking her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment before pulling away with a shrug, “Her husband's a lawyer, she can take as many vacations as she wants.”
“I’m sorry I’m not a lawyer,” Buffy groaned, her fingers teasing at the exposed skin above Faith’s waistband. “I could just go back to school and then my loans would be put on hold for a little while at least.”
Faith hummed and massaged Buffy’s now-nearly-numb wrist gently. On the table behind them, Faith’s phone chimed gently, she sighed. “That’s probably Antoine.”
“Good news or bad?”
“Could be either, it’s been one of those weeks.”
Buffy planted a tiny bite near Faith’s hairline just below her ear, “You’re amazing, you know.”
Faith pushed Buffy off the futon with a laugh and stood up, “And you’re a lazy bum. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t do the dishes again last night.”
Buffy pouted from the ground, “I’m injured.”
Faith picked up her purse and a few files from the table, “You’ll survive. I’ll see you later.”
While her girlfriend was off saving the world one runaway teen at a time, Buffy did the dishes, folded the laundry, scrubbed the toilet, took a long bath, and looked at law school applications while watching Fight Club on the tv. Faith found her curled up face-down on the futon, swollen hand dangling off the edge.