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"Let's play mommy and daddy."
Faith's hair falls across her face as she moves, straying to catch on an eyelash or two, though she makes sure to keep her eyes on the girl. She smiles—a slight, toothy, smirk that would read as smug to anyone else, in any other world—and backs herself against the kitchen counter, until her waist hits the countertop.
"You'll be the mommy, B," she says, the utter factual truth of the matter. Not a game, not really, not even a role to play, but their true and absolute lives. What is the truth or not matters little to Faith, nor to the girl; the matter is the martyr, the subject of which the relationship rotates around. The wife must emit all energy, must take in the husband where she lands.
The girl does not let a single word out of her mouth. Faith attempts not to fill silence, but can't help but provoke. Poking proverbial bear. She stalks forward until her body lay in repose against the girl's back. Hands arranging themselves across the girl's waist.
"It's like this?" the girl asks her. The voice that comes from her is almost flat, but the question rings through Faith's head like a church bell. Filling up the space entirely, she must consider.
Faith instead laughs and presses her face close to the girl's hair. The scent of her fills her lungs—one that is familiar, yet she cannot put a name to. Whatever it is that home smells like, this must be exactly it. "I don't know, B," she answers, "you're the one with that area of expertise."
"You know that's not true," the girl corrects her, but the message lingers all the same. Faith nuzzles her nose into the crook of the girl's neck, as if they'd been lovers led astray. Her nose grazes the jugular. The girl doesn't move.
"Yeah, yeah," Faith murmurs, still engulfing herself in the sweet scent of her pretend-lover. "Are you gonna play along?" she only lifts her head to ask.
The girl suddenly, firmly, grasps her hands and brings them up to cover her heart. Faith cannot feel the beating, though she knows it is there. Her gazes draws down to their joined hands and to the fabric below it; something soft, a light pink, or maybe cream—the man of the house never knows these technicalities. The blood of the girl's non-beating heart may be bleeding into the fabric. Saturated in red.
"In sickness and in health," the girl tells her. Faith is her own groomsman, she talks herself up internally. She traces the bend of the flesh on one of the girl's fingers, a deliberate silence filling the room.
She wraps her own finger around it. "You wear a beautiful ring, honey," her voice rasps, a cat caught between play and destruction. Her claws dig into the pad of the girl's finger.
"Thank you," the girl replies, "my husband chooses well."
Faith's hold falters, hands instead smoothing down the white or red fabric covering the girl's coveted core until they grip onto the waistband of her jeans like reins. "She does."
Faith doesn't play well with others; she makes a good husband. Her hands come to still on the girl's hips. "Speaking of," she begins, always introducing a new mechanic, "I got you something."
She doesn't succeed tradition, but there's a place for it to lay in lieu of boredom and decay. Behind her, a hand leaves to seek out her gift for the girl—something so romantic, so treasured, tried, and true. A bouquet of roses. She's never asked the girl which flower she may favor, but the likes of wives seem often no different from one another. The rose should suffice. The red is romantic.
Presenting it to the girl, she brings the bouquet forward. "Look, flowers," she announces—her accomplishment to be marveled.
The girl looks down at them, and her hands finally move away from her own heart, where she'd led Faith. She takes the bouquet in hand. "They're beautiful," she says, inspecting each petal one by one. Faith ought to worry about the quality of them, how they stay in shape like so, but she simply watches as if immune to scrutiny through sheer will. The girl wouldn't care about those things.
"Thought so," Faith replies, all too pleased with herself, "you can put them in the window." Her now-free hand gestures up, the white-sheer of the curtains whishing.
"I have to cut the stems off, first," the girl insists, finally moving from Faith's half-handed grasp.
There is a cutting board, and there is a knife. Faith executes elaborate footwork on the floor, meandering out of the girl's way. Sticking just close enough to watch.
As the girl begins to slice, chop, and sliver, Faith's eyes trail the knife. "Be careful, B," she warns as the knife moves up higher, higher. "If you chop 'em too far, there won't be any pretty roses left for the window."
But the girl's hands don't move. Her free hand presses down on the flowers, crushing them beneath her palm as the hand wielding the knife continues—higher, higher. The flower's bright hue stains her fingers, leaving them a bright red where they lift. There's no stopping the wife's set mind.
Faith leans down, closer, attempting to herald the girl's attention back onto her, but it's no use.
"Buffy," she snaps; the knife parts the flower from the stem. "Buffy!"