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alixtiiThis is the "ficlet" I promised to write for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
r_becca. Somehow the "ficlet" ended up being 2,000 words.
Title: With Love and a Hippo
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Faith/Dawn
Rating: NC-17
Sumary: It's time for Dawn to leave for Europe.
With Love and a Hippo
So they're in Cleveland, and have just had the most mindblowing sex, having more or less fucked out each other's brains, and pretty much the only thing Dawn is able to say at this point is "Guh."
But Faith pulls on a shirt and reaches for her underwear and looks at Dawn and asks "So when do you leave for Europe?" and suddenly, Dawn's world comes crashing back down to the ground.
"This afternoon," Dawn says. "You know, I'm sure we could manage some way or other to smuggle you out of the country if you wanted to come with--"
"No," Faith interrupts. "Buffy's right; someone has to stay here and guard the Hellmouth, and I'm the obvious choice."
Dawn pouts, and Faith leans over and kisses her. "Look," Faith says, "just 'cause you gotta go doesn't mean we can't take advantage of the time we have left."
* * *
So Dawn was thinking more sex, but then Faith kept on putting on her clothes instead of taking them off, so obviously that wasn't what Faith had in mind. Dawn's next guess was a bar or a strip joint or maybe even a movie, but instead when she follows Faith she finds the two of them getting off the bus right in front of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. At first she thinks this is Faith's wacky idea of what a girl like Dawn likes to do, but then as they walk through the park and Dawn sees Faith's face Dawn realizes that Faith is actually sincerely enjoying this herself.
They look at the bears and the tigers, explore the Australian Adventure and the African Savannah, spend an hour in the two-acre indoor rainforest. Faith curses when, after searching the zoo map every which way, she still can't find the hippopotami.
"I love hippos," Faith says. "They're such beautiful creatures, so graceful." Dawn searches Faith's face for any signs of irony, but the Slayer seems sincere. She smiles sadly then grabs Dawn's hand and pulls her onto the next exhibit, a flamboyance of bright pink flamingos.
Faith doesn't believe that that is what a group of flamingos is called, a flamboyance, and only crosses her arms and stares at Dawn incredulously the more Dawn insists that's what it is--until neither of them can take it anymore and they both burst out laughing.
They finally find a hippopotamus--a soft, stuffed baby hippopotamus calf with a tag that says "Hi! I'm Harriet!"--in a zoo gift shop, and Faith buys it for Dawn. Then, when they're looking at the elephants, they turn around and there they are, the real live hippopotami, and Faith's face lights up like a child's at the sight of her birthday cake.
* * *
The bathroom is clean for a zoo bathroom, and Faith shuts the door behind them with enough Slayer strength to jam it in the frame. Dawn gently sits Harriet the Hippo on top of the paper towel dispenser, then turns back to Faith and begins taking in the layout of the bathroom, observing her environment: three stalls to her right, a janitorial closet behind her, the row of sinks to her left and the large mirror which hangs above them, the window which is so high up no one can see in or out but which nonetheless lets in just the smallest amount of natural light.
Faith picks Dawn up by the waist and seats her on the counter between the two sinks. Dawn leans back so the back of her head is just touching the mirror behind her and grabs the faucets of the sink on either side of her, one with each hand, to brace herself as Faith squats and begins to unbuckle her sandals, letting the one shoe and then the other fall to the ground.
Faith kisses the top of each foot near the ankle, then slowly makes her way up Dawn's legs, kissing one leg and the other thing with just the lightest of kisses. She's worked her way up to Dawn's knees, and then is kissing the inside of her thighs, and Dawn is frozen in place, not moving, taking only the shallowest of breaths.
Faith's hands slip inside Dawn's skirt, and Dawn pushes down on the two sink faucets, braces her shoulders against the glass mirror, to lift herself just a hair off of the counter and let Faith slip off her panties, slip them down her legs, and off her feet. Faith stands, holding the pair of cotton panties, and makes a show of tucking them in the waistband of her leather pants.
Then Faith kneels, and infuriatingly she has begun again at the beginning, kissing the tops of Dawn's feet, and Dawn has to stifle a scream to get on with already, that she can't take it anymore, and she chokes it down in the back of her throat. She waits as Faith carefully leaves a trail of kisses up her calves and feels a thrill of victory as Faith reaches her knees and begins to kiss the insides of her thighs. Faith whispers something, and Dawn can't hear what she says but can feel the warm breath against her thigh.
And then it's only a few moments more and Faith is finally inside her, her face hidden underneath Dawn's skirt, and Dawn is struggling unsuccessfully to bite back the moans that involuntarily keep climbing their way up to her voice box from her abdomen. She closes her eyes, blocking out that avenue of sensation so that there is only the feeling of the mirror against the back of her head, the hard counter underneath her ass cushioned only by the thin fabric of her skity, the two sink faucets each biting into a palm, and of course and most spectacularly Faith working between her legs, her tongue moving inside Dawn in rhythmic strokes that begin slow and gentle and gradually become quicker. Faith works with the concentration and skill of a seasoned veteran, drawing out levels of pleasure from Dawn like no one else can, not even Dawn herself. Twice Faith slows, drawing out the experience right when Dawn is so close to climaxing, and it requires an act of will on Dawn's part to keep a clichéd phrase like "delicious agony" from passing through her thoughts. Even when she is being fucked in the bathroom of a Cleveland zoo by the girl who once tried to kill her sister, Dawn has some dignity, after all.
The sounds that make their way up to Dawn's voicebox are more frequent and more insistent now, and Dawn gives up attempting to suppress them. "Oh, yes," she whispers. "Oh, Faith."
And then--then there is a moment when even Faith disapears from Dawn's thoughts, if she can even be said to have thoughts. The sensation is so pure that thought is replaced with unmediated experience, and Dawn is not Dawn Summers, not the sister of the Slayer, not a human being with needs and desires, and Dawn cannot help but wonder if this is what it was like to be the Key, pure bodiless energy. Then she opens her eyes and she is Dawn again, and she is in a women's bathroom in the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and her girlfriend is standing up with a smile on her face.
"Not bad, huh?" Faith asks, and Dawn falls in love all over again.
Dawn hops down off the sinks, hoping the floor isn't too dirty as her bare feet hit the ground. In a moment she is all over Faith, and as their tongues re-explore the familiar territory of each other's mouths Dawn cups Faith's breast and since Faith isn't wearing a bra she can feel the nipple underneath the Slayer's t-shirt. They don't break the kiss until they have to in order for Dawn to be able to pull Faith's shirt off her head, and then Dawn begins kissing Faith's jaw, her neck, going lower and lower between her breasts, crossing Faith's stomach, until finally her lips rest just below the belly button.
Dawn begins to unbutton, then unzip, Faith's leather pants, and takes the pair of her own panties that Faith had had tucked into her waist. She is about to put them back on when Faith takes them back from Dawn and shakes her head.
"I got you Harriet over there," Faith says, gesturing with Dawn's underwear still in her hand at the plush pachyderm sitting on top of the paper towel dispenser. "Don't I get a souvenir too?"
Dawn doesn't say anything but kisses Faith on the lips, then on the chin, working her way back down, beginning once again at the beginning. She feels Faith's chest rise and fall as she takes a breath right when Dawn is kissing her between the breasts. Faith's anxious, ready to be fucked, but Dawn figures that turnabout is fair play, so she takes her time getting back down to where Faith's red thong is showing itself behind the open fly of Faith's leather pants. When she does get there, she pulls down the pants and the thong just enough to give her room to slip in one, then two, then three fingers, just the way that Faith showed her, gently working Faith's clitoris, massaging it. She works slowly but intently; she knows that as many times as she and Faith have done this, she's still an amateur compared to Faith, and for that matter a likely contingent of the girls Faith has fucked.
"Just like that," Faith says, encouragingly. "That's it."
Dawn slips in another finger, even though she's never done that before, and then, once she's worked Faith a little more with all four fingers, she figures out how to ball her hand into a fist and slip the whole thing inside. Faith takes a quick, sharp breath, and for a moment Dawn is afraid that she's done it wrong, that she has somehow hurt the Slayer, but then Faith says, "God, yes," and so Dawn keeps on working her fist inside Faith, moving it up and down in rhythm to Faith's quick breaths. "Faster," Faith says, and Dawn complies, until Faith releases an incoherent string consisting mostly of her own name and the word fuck and when she finishes Dawn realizes that she has climaxed.
Dawn removes her hand from inside Faith and turns to wash her hands at the conveniently located sink (next to which she has just been fucked) as Faith pulls back on her t-shirt. She slips her feet back into her sandals as she pulls a paper towel from the dispenser underneath Harriet the Hippo, and once her hands are dry she picks up Harriet then kneels down to buckle her shoes.
"Come on," says Faith, as with a quick pull she unjams the door. "We still have just enough time to visit the Monkey House."
* * *
Buffy is engrossed in her copy of The Da Vinci Code as the plane takes off. Dawn has read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and can name the ten thousand ways in which it is bunk (it doesn't even mention the well-known albeit completely erroneous legend that Mary Magdalene was a Slayer and Jesus her Watcher), so she ignores her sister and tries to focus on the in-flight movie instead.
It's some type of slasher movie, but she can't really pay attention to it because she keeps on thinking of Faith instead. The dynamism of Faith dancing, fighting, fucking, on patrol, in bed, at the zoo. Suddenly she can't keep her mind off the fact that under her skirt, she isn't wearing any underwear.
Hippos are beautiful, Dawn decides. They may occasionally look a little awkward because they have so much sheer power, but that means it takes all that more grace to simply go on living: to exercise, to feed, to drink, to mate. Because one wrong turn and all that power is suddenly heading in the wrong direction, and then even the hippopotamus itself is powerless to stop it. Hippos have to live up to a higher standard, Dawn realizes, than the rest of the zoo animals.
She hugs Harriet the Hippo even tighter and turns her head so that her sister won't see the tears streaking her face.
r_becca. Somehow the "ficlet" ended up being 2,000 words.Title: With Love and a Hippo
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Faith/Dawn
Rating: NC-17
Sumary: It's time for Dawn to leave for Europe.
With Love and a Hippo
So they're in Cleveland, and have just had the most mindblowing sex, having more or less fucked out each other's brains, and pretty much the only thing Dawn is able to say at this point is "Guh."
But Faith pulls on a shirt and reaches for her underwear and looks at Dawn and asks "So when do you leave for Europe?" and suddenly, Dawn's world comes crashing back down to the ground.
"This afternoon," Dawn says. "You know, I'm sure we could manage some way or other to smuggle you out of the country if you wanted to come with--"
"No," Faith interrupts. "Buffy's right; someone has to stay here and guard the Hellmouth, and I'm the obvious choice."
Dawn pouts, and Faith leans over and kisses her. "Look," Faith says, "just 'cause you gotta go doesn't mean we can't take advantage of the time we have left."
So Dawn was thinking more sex, but then Faith kept on putting on her clothes instead of taking them off, so obviously that wasn't what Faith had in mind. Dawn's next guess was a bar or a strip joint or maybe even a movie, but instead when she follows Faith she finds the two of them getting off the bus right in front of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. At first she thinks this is Faith's wacky idea of what a girl like Dawn likes to do, but then as they walk through the park and Dawn sees Faith's face Dawn realizes that Faith is actually sincerely enjoying this herself.
They look at the bears and the tigers, explore the Australian Adventure and the African Savannah, spend an hour in the two-acre indoor rainforest. Faith curses when, after searching the zoo map every which way, she still can't find the hippopotami.
"I love hippos," Faith says. "They're such beautiful creatures, so graceful." Dawn searches Faith's face for any signs of irony, but the Slayer seems sincere. She smiles sadly then grabs Dawn's hand and pulls her onto the next exhibit, a flamboyance of bright pink flamingos.
Faith doesn't believe that that is what a group of flamingos is called, a flamboyance, and only crosses her arms and stares at Dawn incredulously the more Dawn insists that's what it is--until neither of them can take it anymore and they both burst out laughing.
They finally find a hippopotamus--a soft, stuffed baby hippopotamus calf with a tag that says "Hi! I'm Harriet!"--in a zoo gift shop, and Faith buys it for Dawn. Then, when they're looking at the elephants, they turn around and there they are, the real live hippopotami, and Faith's face lights up like a child's at the sight of her birthday cake.
The bathroom is clean for a zoo bathroom, and Faith shuts the door behind them with enough Slayer strength to jam it in the frame. Dawn gently sits Harriet the Hippo on top of the paper towel dispenser, then turns back to Faith and begins taking in the layout of the bathroom, observing her environment: three stalls to her right, a janitorial closet behind her, the row of sinks to her left and the large mirror which hangs above them, the window which is so high up no one can see in or out but which nonetheless lets in just the smallest amount of natural light.
Faith picks Dawn up by the waist and seats her on the counter between the two sinks. Dawn leans back so the back of her head is just touching the mirror behind her and grabs the faucets of the sink on either side of her, one with each hand, to brace herself as Faith squats and begins to unbuckle her sandals, letting the one shoe and then the other fall to the ground.
Faith kisses the top of each foot near the ankle, then slowly makes her way up Dawn's legs, kissing one leg and the other thing with just the lightest of kisses. She's worked her way up to Dawn's knees, and then is kissing the inside of her thighs, and Dawn is frozen in place, not moving, taking only the shallowest of breaths.
Faith's hands slip inside Dawn's skirt, and Dawn pushes down on the two sink faucets, braces her shoulders against the glass mirror, to lift herself just a hair off of the counter and let Faith slip off her panties, slip them down her legs, and off her feet. Faith stands, holding the pair of cotton panties, and makes a show of tucking them in the waistband of her leather pants.
Then Faith kneels, and infuriatingly she has begun again at the beginning, kissing the tops of Dawn's feet, and Dawn has to stifle a scream to get on with already, that she can't take it anymore, and she chokes it down in the back of her throat. She waits as Faith carefully leaves a trail of kisses up her calves and feels a thrill of victory as Faith reaches her knees and begins to kiss the insides of her thighs. Faith whispers something, and Dawn can't hear what she says but can feel the warm breath against her thigh.
And then it's only a few moments more and Faith is finally inside her, her face hidden underneath Dawn's skirt, and Dawn is struggling unsuccessfully to bite back the moans that involuntarily keep climbing their way up to her voice box from her abdomen. She closes her eyes, blocking out that avenue of sensation so that there is only the feeling of the mirror against the back of her head, the hard counter underneath her ass cushioned only by the thin fabric of her skity, the two sink faucets each biting into a palm, and of course and most spectacularly Faith working between her legs, her tongue moving inside Dawn in rhythmic strokes that begin slow and gentle and gradually become quicker. Faith works with the concentration and skill of a seasoned veteran, drawing out levels of pleasure from Dawn like no one else can, not even Dawn herself. Twice Faith slows, drawing out the experience right when Dawn is so close to climaxing, and it requires an act of will on Dawn's part to keep a clichéd phrase like "delicious agony" from passing through her thoughts. Even when she is being fucked in the bathroom of a Cleveland zoo by the girl who once tried to kill her sister, Dawn has some dignity, after all.
The sounds that make their way up to Dawn's voicebox are more frequent and more insistent now, and Dawn gives up attempting to suppress them. "Oh, yes," she whispers. "Oh, Faith."
And then--then there is a moment when even Faith disapears from Dawn's thoughts, if she can even be said to have thoughts. The sensation is so pure that thought is replaced with unmediated experience, and Dawn is not Dawn Summers, not the sister of the Slayer, not a human being with needs and desires, and Dawn cannot help but wonder if this is what it was like to be the Key, pure bodiless energy. Then she opens her eyes and she is Dawn again, and she is in a women's bathroom in the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and her girlfriend is standing up with a smile on her face.
"Not bad, huh?" Faith asks, and Dawn falls in love all over again.
Dawn hops down off the sinks, hoping the floor isn't too dirty as her bare feet hit the ground. In a moment she is all over Faith, and as their tongues re-explore the familiar territory of each other's mouths Dawn cups Faith's breast and since Faith isn't wearing a bra she can feel the nipple underneath the Slayer's t-shirt. They don't break the kiss until they have to in order for Dawn to be able to pull Faith's shirt off her head, and then Dawn begins kissing Faith's jaw, her neck, going lower and lower between her breasts, crossing Faith's stomach, until finally her lips rest just below the belly button.
Dawn begins to unbutton, then unzip, Faith's leather pants, and takes the pair of her own panties that Faith had had tucked into her waist. She is about to put them back on when Faith takes them back from Dawn and shakes her head.
"I got you Harriet over there," Faith says, gesturing with Dawn's underwear still in her hand at the plush pachyderm sitting on top of the paper towel dispenser. "Don't I get a souvenir too?"
Dawn doesn't say anything but kisses Faith on the lips, then on the chin, working her way back down, beginning once again at the beginning. She feels Faith's chest rise and fall as she takes a breath right when Dawn is kissing her between the breasts. Faith's anxious, ready to be fucked, but Dawn figures that turnabout is fair play, so she takes her time getting back down to where Faith's red thong is showing itself behind the open fly of Faith's leather pants. When she does get there, she pulls down the pants and the thong just enough to give her room to slip in one, then two, then three fingers, just the way that Faith showed her, gently working Faith's clitoris, massaging it. She works slowly but intently; she knows that as many times as she and Faith have done this, she's still an amateur compared to Faith, and for that matter a likely contingent of the girls Faith has fucked.
"Just like that," Faith says, encouragingly. "That's it."
Dawn slips in another finger, even though she's never done that before, and then, once she's worked Faith a little more with all four fingers, she figures out how to ball her hand into a fist and slip the whole thing inside. Faith takes a quick, sharp breath, and for a moment Dawn is afraid that she's done it wrong, that she has somehow hurt the Slayer, but then Faith says, "God, yes," and so Dawn keeps on working her fist inside Faith, moving it up and down in rhythm to Faith's quick breaths. "Faster," Faith says, and Dawn complies, until Faith releases an incoherent string consisting mostly of her own name and the word fuck and when she finishes Dawn realizes that she has climaxed.
Dawn removes her hand from inside Faith and turns to wash her hands at the conveniently located sink (next to which she has just been fucked) as Faith pulls back on her t-shirt. She slips her feet back into her sandals as she pulls a paper towel from the dispenser underneath Harriet the Hippo, and once her hands are dry she picks up Harriet then kneels down to buckle her shoes.
"Come on," says Faith, as with a quick pull she unjams the door. "We still have just enough time to visit the Monkey House."
Buffy is engrossed in her copy of The Da Vinci Code as the plane takes off. Dawn has read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and can name the ten thousand ways in which it is bunk (it doesn't even mention the well-known albeit completely erroneous legend that Mary Magdalene was a Slayer and Jesus her Watcher), so she ignores her sister and tries to focus on the in-flight movie instead.
It's some type of slasher movie, but she can't really pay attention to it because she keeps on thinking of Faith instead. The dynamism of Faith dancing, fighting, fucking, on patrol, in bed, at the zoo. Suddenly she can't keep her mind off the fact that under her skirt, she isn't wearing any underwear.
Hippos are beautiful, Dawn decides. They may occasionally look a little awkward because they have so much sheer power, but that means it takes all that more grace to simply go on living: to exercise, to feed, to drink, to mate. Because one wrong turn and all that power is suddenly heading in the wrong direction, and then even the hippopotamus itself is powerless to stop it. Hippos have to live up to a higher standard, Dawn realizes, than the rest of the zoo animals.
She hugs Harriet the Hippo even tighter and turns her head so that her sister won't see the tears streaking her face.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-15 07:51 pm (UTC)Mary Magdalene was a Slayer and Jesus her Watcher
...write this. Please? Throw in Lilith as a really, really ancient vampire and you can have Mary/Lilith as Buffy/Angel :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-15 10:49 pm (UTC)I'm glad you liked the fic.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 02:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-25 11:39 pm (UTC)Mary: The Vampire Slayer. Starring:
Jesus, as the watcher.
Cain, as Angel.
Lilith, as Dru.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-15 08:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-15 11:01 pm (UTC)Thank you! And you're welcome.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-15 10:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-15 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-16 12:50 am (UTC)Also, I adore hippos! :)
Great job!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-16 01:10 am (UTC)This is the first time I've written femslash this explicit, so I'm glad it worked on the "guh" level--I was scared to death of getting something wrong. Usually I rush through sex scenes, or else fade to black as soon as possible, but here I forced myself to take my time.
I actually decided that Fath liked hippos first and then worked out the reason. I really don't know where that came from, but it felt right so I ran with it and I'm glad I did.
I'm glad the fic worked for you!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-16 01:38 am (UTC)Hippos have to live up to a higher standard, Dawn realizes, than the rest of the zoo animals.
*sniff*
Hippos are truly huge, scary beasts, in the way warthogs and orcas are and sharks and snakes aren't. I remember seeing a video where a cheetah (leopard? been a while) tried to grab a piglet in a full speed slash attack: three grown hogs wheeled, broke off from the pack and kicked that cheetah's ass. It had a broken tail and severe blood loss by the time they were done with it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-16 05:36 am (UTC)I hadn't thought about it that way, but you are right; that dynamic is totally there.
Hippos are truly huge, scary beasts, in the way warthogs and orcas are and sharks and snakes aren't.
I'm glad that element of the story worked for you.
Thanks for the feedback!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-16 05:18 am (UTC)where/when does this story take place? are there other stories that explain this AU? I was reading a comment above this one, and got confused - clarification would be appreciated.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-16 05:34 am (UTC)I'm glad you liked the story!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 02:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 02:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 02:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 02:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 02:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 08:21 pm (UTC)I'm glad the story managed to affect you! Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-24 02:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-24 02:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 06:46 pm (UTC)Adding this to my Faith/Dawn list.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 01:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 01:53 am (UTC)The S7 Faith/Dawn fic is Triangle. The entire whole big crazy universe those two stories take place in can be found here; all of my Faith fic is and my Dawn fic here. I know there's at least one more Faith/Dawn piece mixed in there somewhere.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 07:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 05:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 05:22 pm (UTC)You've been nominated at the Unlocked Awards!
Date: 2009-11-27 04:26 am (UTC)Your Nomination(s):
With Love and a Hippo by
Category(ies): Best Romance
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Re: You've been nominated at the Unlocked Awards!
Date: 2009-11-27 03:26 pm (UTC)