TITLE: Fire In Apartment B1
AUTHOR: Ragna (writinggoddess@aol.com)
RATING: FRT
CLASSIFICATION: Spike/Faith
SUMMARY: Faith sets the oven on fire.
SPOILERS: Takes place about eight years after this season 5 of A:tS; directly mentions events in "A Hole In The World," though the ep is slightly rewritten.
DISTRIBUTION: Any sites with my fic up; you all have unspoken permission. I write it, you can post it. Everyone else just keep my name on it and let me know.
DISCLAIMER: If you don't recognize it, chances are it's my own creation. If you do, I don't own it. Joss Whedon, Kazui Sandollar, The WB, UPN, et. al. most likely do.
FEEDBACK: Please send it offlist and let me know it's feedback; I do rapid delete on my account due to a lot of spam.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Went to Challenge In A Can and got "Faith," "lonely" and "candles." Also an answer to the challenge at Warm Champagne.

***

The minute Spike smelled smoke coming from apartment B1, he finished opening the door and went inside.

Idly, he wondered what Faith had done this time...

There stood Faith, aiming a fire extinguisher at a burnt oven. Her right arm had a nasty burn on it, and Faith almost looked like she wanted to drop the extinguisher, but she still held on and aimed.

Thick white foam covered the fire, which had started to spread to the counter. She followed the trail of flame, covering the entire mess with foam. When it was extinguished, then she dropped the fire extinguisher.

"Motherfucker."

Even Spike had to laugh at that. Faith whipped around, noticing him in her brand new apartment for the first time.

"Staring problem?"

"No, jus’ taking stock of your wounds—how you feeling?"

"Like a hostage."

"Fair enough. Just featured you'd still be sore."

"I'm good. Better than when you dragged me in here, and apparently still breathin' so, cant really complain."

"You were tossing about all night, you sleep okay?"

"Not really, pain kind'a an intrusion on the whole sleep concept. What's with you and the twenty questions anyway?"

Spike thought back to the night before, the nasty fight Faith had with her biker boyfriend. Actually, he thought to himself, ex-biker boyfriend. Man tried to do a number on her when she said it was over.

The first rule Spike had ever learned as a vampire was never to mess with a Slayer. Pity that biker hadn't been a vamp, or he'd have learned that rule, too. Whether he'd have followed it or not would have been another matter.

"Just wondering what goes on in that little mind of yours." He sat on the couch and stared at the mess in the kitchen. "Did you have a prophetic dream? Maybe about the mess that is your kitchen."

Faith gave him her middle finger and went to the sink, turning on the water. "Yes, but not about the kitchen."

Spike shook his head. "We have to move again?"

"No. We just have to take a side trip to O'Fallon later in the week, take care of a demon or three there."

"Three?" He watched her wet a washcloth and carefully wipe her burn. "Hurt much?"

"Yeah, kinda." She dropped the washcloth in the sink and headed for the refrigerator.

"No ice, love. It'll make it worse."

"Fuck off, Spike. It hurts."

"I'm serious." He stood up and moved to the refrigerator before Faith got there, standing in front of it with his arms crossed.

"I swear, I'll pull you and the fridge from the wall if you don't move."

"Follow me." He took her left arm and looked over at her right, seeing blisters. "Second degree burn. That means immersion in cool water, then a sterile dressing."

"And you know this for what reason?"

"When Angel was Angelus, I got really damn bored sitting in a wheelchair pretending to be lame. So I sent some minions out for books. One of them got a first aid guide. After I staked him for bringing such a stupid book, I read it. Ended up memorizing it."

"Okay, that's slightly impressive." Faith watched as he moved the dishcloth and filled up the sink. "You were a weird vampire."

"You aren't the first to tell me so." He dunked her forearm into the water. "Any chance we have a first aid kit?"

Faith shrugged. "I usually let the Slayer healing powers do their thing, you know?"

"You stay here, with your arm in the sink, and don't move. I'll be back." He headed towards the door of their tiny apartment.

"Hey!"

Spike turned around. "Yes?"

"What if I get lonely?"

"Imagine it was Biker Boy's head you just lit on fire." Then he walked out the door.

***

Faith glared at the sink, then looked out the window at the dismal St. Louis view. Spike was impossible. He was arrogant, rude, a royal pain in the ass...

So why was she traveling the US with him, kicking demon ass?

She slipped her other arm into the cool water, leaning in towards the sink. This was their fifth apartment together since the whole LA thing went bust. The LA thing...it was easier to describe it that way than to mention the loss of their friends to...whatever the hell it was Fred had turned into.

Faith had come back just in time to help fight her...it...whatever Fred had become. It. Calling the thing formerly known as Fred an "it" was just easier. It hadn't wanted to be taken down. Took the blood of two immortals to do it.

Only one got the chance to become human afterwards, and the other just died.

Had to be Angel to make the sacrifice, she thought, shaking her head. Told her to go and make a difference in the world, kill the demons.

Wolfram & Hart had been shot to hell, literally. Harmony and Wesley were the only other ones who got out, and Wesley hadn't lasted that long afterwards. They'd found him dead in his hospital room, and the doctor's never figured out what did it.

"Guess he really did love her," she muttered, moving her arms in the water and watching the waves she made.

"He really loved who?" Spike said, walking through the doorway, carrying a small brown paper bag.

"Nobody," she said, watching some of her hair fall into the sink. "My hair's getting wet.

"You can stop soaking the arm now."

"Arms," she said, pulling them out and showing him two dripping wet arms from the hands to above the elbows.

Spike smiled and shook his head. "You're a strange little bint."

"I'm not little," Faith said with a tiny pout.

"But you're still a strange bint."

Faith took a clean dishtowel from the sink area and wiped her arms off, dabbing the burnt area. "Whatever."

"Got antiseptic spray, a big gauze pad and some of that stretchy stuff to wrap around it, and some medical tape to keep the bloody thing there." He pulled out the medical supplies as he named them. "Also figured, something to dull the pain." He pulled out a bottle of clear liquid.

"Tequila," Faith said, grinning widely. "My kind of medicine."

"So, sit your arse down, we'll get the burn dressed, and then mourn the loss of our stove."

Faith grabbed two glasses from the overhead cabinet on her way out of the kitchen. "Shit. This means we lost our deposit, didn't we?"

"Maybe. I'll see what I can get done to fix it." He motioned for her to come over to him faster. "I also ordered a pizza from around the corner."

"Pepperoni?"

"Double."

"You know me well." She set the cups down and sat next to him. "It's been, what, eight years? I mean, since LA..."

"Something like that," he said, opening the box of gauze bandages and taking two out. He then picked up the spray.

"Ever...well, ever think about it?"

"Sometimes." He looked at her. "Arm up."

Faith held her forearm up. "What's it like being human again?"

"Weird." He sprayed the spray on the burn and blew on it slightly. "Probably just defeated the purpose of the spray by doing that, but..."

"Hey, well." Faith smiled. It had been a while since someone had taken care of her. Even in the eight years she and Spike had been traveling, she preferred to nurse her wounds in private.

"You know, with the knocks you took last night, I'm surprised you were up at all. What were you trying to do?"

"Make some scrambled eggs."

"Couldn't you have waited till I got here?"

Faith shrugged, earning a glare from Spike as he placed the gauze in the wrong area. "Got hungry."

Spike shook his head. "I swear, Faith, some times..."

"Actually, it was a nice dinner. Figured I'd surprise you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, in thanks for dragging my ass back here before I killed Mick last night."

Spike smiled slightly as he started to wrap the cotton binding over the gauze pads. "And if you'd succeeded, what would we be dining on tonight?"

"Steak, with baked potatoes."

Spike nodded. "Sounds good."

"Yeah, well, I didn't think the steak was going to flash up like that when I put it on the pan."

"The steak or the fire?"

"The fire, I mean." She watched him tape the dressing down. "I had the table set, too. Candles and everything."

"Almost sounds like the beginnings of a seduction." Faith remained quiet. "Faith..."

"Hey, I know I'm not Buffy, but..."

"She hasn't spoken to me in years. Doesn't matter much."

"And we sleep in the same bed! Well, you know, except..."

"When you had your mates over and I was on the couch, I know."

"Why didn't you ever hook up with anyone?" Faith asked, snatching the bottle of tequila out of Spike's grasp.

Spike snorted. "With my track record? Love, I'd have found the one bleedin' homicidal maniac in the city." He reached for the tequila but Faith hid it behind her back.

"Why didn't you think of me?"

"Do you know how bloody hard it is to sleep next to you and not want to touch you? There's times I wished we had enough money for another bed, love, so I wouldn't be so damned tempted."

"So you do want me." It was Spike's turn to be silent. "Damnit! Give me an answer!"

Spike leaned forward quickly, capturing Faith's mouth in a hungry kiss. She moved the bottle from behind her back and dropped it on the floor before she reached up and pulled him closer, carefully, with her right hand.

Spike pulled back, panting slightly. "That enough of an answer?"

"Yeah, good start," Faith said, her voice soft. She pushed him back slightly, enough so she could sit up. Her eyes looked slightly dazed. "Spike?"

"Yeah?"

"Why the hell'd you wait so long?"