Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars
Characters: Wallace Fennell, Faith Lehane.
Spoilers: BtVS 07x22, VM 01x22.
Rating: 17+ (language, violence; no sex)
Summary: Wallace is used to following a hot white girl with an attitude problem who won't tell him what's going on. At least this Faith has on tight leather pants.
Author's Notes: Thanks to sadiekate and invisionary for Beta services provided. Thanks to everyone who suggested Faith and Wallace in my little poll from a bit ago.
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Over the past year, Wallace has actually gotten somewhat used to following the directions of a hot white girl with an attitude problem who won't tell him what the hell is going on. At least this Faith has on tight leather pants. It's still no Nelly video, but it's a step in the right direction.
But then she picks up some three-hundred-pound thing with blue skin and slams it against the wall -- one-handed. The interrogation begins, and leather pants and attitude problems are the least of Wallace's concerns. The blue thing says vampires have Veronica, and if she's not already dead, she certainly will be by sunrise.
Knowing what is going on is not all Wallace thought it would be. Again.
4:05 A.M.
Stakeouts are incredibly boring. Wallace has been on six in the past three months. He doesn't complain, though; it's unspoken between them, but Veronica doesn't go investigate anything alone anymore. Backup doesn't count. Keith doesn't even tease them about being out late together. Much.
This one is for a missing girl. Information points to a cult, gang, something like that. Veronica doesn't exactly say, and Wallace doesn't ask. Business for Mars Investigations is good after Keith got credit for solving the Lilly Kane murder case. No one actually wants to admit they were wrong, and there's certainly no public apology or anything like that. Business just jumps, almost overnight.
"I can't believe we gotta do this on a school night," Wallace says as he sits in the car with Veronica. "I'm gonna be worthless today."
Veronica smirks, but keeps her eyes on the building. "There's a donut shop about a block away that opened at four. We eat now, we can bill breakfast."
"You sure?"
She turns to look at him, meets his eyes. "Yes. Go."
So he shrugs and heads out. Ninety-nine percent of the time, being friends with Veronica is like being friends with a guy. They don't discuss their feelings or emotions, or trade notes in school, or anything like that. The only real difference is that he doesn't much mind if she decides she wants a hug. Not that this happens often.
The guy at the shop counter seems confused to see someone there at four in the morning. It's too early for conversation, so Wallace uses the restroom while the guy puts the order together. Men's restroom graffiti is always good for a laugh, and this place is no exception. "From beneath you it devours," someone has scrawled in a jagged hand. A completely different handwriting offers the addendum, "Doggy-style'z wear it'z at."
He pays for the donuts and coffee, and exits the shop just in time to see a dark-haired woman slammed onto the trunk of Veronica's car by some skinny guy with a blond mullet. Wallace yells, "Hey!" but only gets a couple of steps before the mullet takes off into an alley.
The dark-haired woman groans and rolls off the trunk. Wallace runs up to check on her, and only then notices the glass on the ground beside the driver's-side door.
4:25 A.M.
The dark-haired girl is Faith. She has a split lip, a cut above her left eye that looks about a week old, and gives Wallace the most blatant once-over he's ever received. She calls him "Junior," and grilled him about abandoned warehouses, old crackhouses, ghettos, timeshares on the beach, and anywhere else he thought someone could wait out the day without being noticed.
Luckily, one learns these things if one is friends with Veronica Mars for long enough. They climbed onto the back of her motorcycle and headed off to the closest place.
"Lady, what the hell is going on?" he asks as they pull up to a beachfront bar.
"Ain't a lady," she says as she gets off the bike.
"Well, I ain't a junior, either," Wallace snaps.
Faith stops, facing away from him, and takes a deep breath. "Look, I'm sure the Scooby Gang shit you got going on is tight, all right? Just -- trust me, you ain't ready for this."
"Fuck ready -- they got my friend."
Faith chuckles and turns around. "What is it with you high school boys and running off to die for skinny blondes?" She smirks, shakes her head, and heads back toward the bar.
"You know, if you weren't wearing those pants, nobody'd put up with you," Wallace mutters under his breath.
Faith keeps going toward the door, but turns around and tugs the front of her tank top down a few inches. "Nah, Junior -- I always got these, too."
He spends the time she's in the bar trying to figure out how she heard him.
5:05 A.M.
By the third bar, Wallace just goes inside with Faith. There's no way he looks twenty-one, but one of Veronica's rules for getting in where you don't belong is, "When in doubt, Wonder Bra." Wallace got an entire week of math homework out of her for keeping that one from Keith.
Wallace doesn't have a Wonder Bra, and he doubts it would help if he did, but the bouncers obviously want Faith in the door. Wallace just makes it equally as obvious that he's with her and acts like he belongs. It works.
The barkeeper is a big, burly guy with a graying beard. He says nothing as Faith and Wallace walk up to the bar.
"Orpheus," Faith says. Wallace wonders if she's Trinity.
"What?" the barkeeper says.
"Thanks," Faith says, and walks out.
Wallace follows after her. Once they're back at the bike, he asks what the hell is going on.
Faith stares at him for a moment. It's a test, he knows that, but he doesn't know how to pass, so he just stares back. After a second, she breaks eye contact and puts on her helmet. "It's a specialized drug, only the guys we're looking for would be able to supply it," she says as they climb on the bike.
5:35 A.M.
The seventh place, a little hole in the wall further inland, they hit jackpot.
The place is closed, but at the word Orpheus, the man behind the door opens up and leads them downstairs into a dim basement. Inside, a big blue... thing sits at a table counting cash. It looks up as Faith and Wallace enter, then jumps up in alarm.
"Slayer!" it growls.
Faith moves faster than Wallace can follow. The guy who lead them in tries to grab her, then suddenly stumbles backwards with a bloody nose. Wallace gives him a taste of Veronica's taser, and binds him up with plastic strips the way Keith taught him. He hears a couple of thuds, and by the time he looks up, Faith has the blue thing pinned against the wall and is smiling at him.
"Damn, Junior," she says. "Guess you're a little more ruthless than I thought."
Wallace stands up and pounds a fist against his chest. "King Kong ain't got nothing on me."
Faith gives him a skeptical look, but the smile is back in place as she turns to face the blue thing. "And, you know, he's the friendly one," she says. "Feel like talking?"
The blue thing does.
6:07 A.M.
Wallace waits outside an abandoned house as Faith scouts the building. He tries to watch her approach, but loses sight of her the moment she hits the shadows. It's possible the girl's got as much skills as she says she does.
Demons. Vampires. Slayers -- girls who can bench-press a Volkswagen and fight back the darkness. He hopes Faith gets back before he can really think about it; he's been running on equal parts worry and adrenaline, and he'd like to keep it that way until this is over. He's just not sure he can believe any of it, even with the blue thing from before.
Wallace never imagined Veronica could get him involved in shit that made the revelations of the previous spring seem tame, but damn if it only took her three and a half months to pull it off.
"Hey, Junior," Faith calls out from behind him.
Wallace jumps and spins around, taser at the ready. "How'd you--"
"Yeah, yeah," Faith interrupts. "Listen. They got seven vamps in there, and all the girls but your V are trippin' and useless. I can't take that many at once."
"We could call--"
"We can't call nobody, Junior," Faith says. "You and me, that's it. Better if it was just me, you ain't supposed to know about this shit."
"Lady, I ain't thrilled, either, but we're here." Wallace takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He thinks about video games and comic books. "How many can you take at once? Maybe we can split them up, take them one at a time."
Faith looks at him in a way that Veronica has several times before. Times he always hated. He knows that look.
He's about to be bait, or a distraction, or something. Again.
6:25 A.M.
Wallace knocks on the front door. "Hey. I heard you got Orpheus."
Someone snickers inside. The door opens.
"Yeah, we got O," some dead guy with a perm says. "What you got?"
"O positive," Wallace says. Faith supplied the answer.
The vampire laughs. He grabs Wallace by the shoulder and drags him inside. "Fresh meat!" he yells to everyone inside.
Faith should be starting now, Wallace thinks. He doesn't listen for her; if he hears her, or notices her, the vamps definitely will. Be cool, Soda Pop, Veronica's voice whispers in his mind.
Perm Guy leads Wallace to a back room full of old mattresses. Veronica's in a corner, blindfolded and tied to a chair. She looks unconscious. He barely spares her a glance; can't look too interested in anything but getting high.
"You done this before?" Perm Guy asks. "Or I gotta walk you through it?"
Wallace shakes his head. "Nah, I -- " He trails off and shakes his head.
He looks around the room more closely now that he can pass it off as being nervous and avoiding the moment. There are three kids in the room other than Veronica, two girls and a boy. Each has a needle on the mattress near them, and a vampire sucking on an arm. It is, without a doubt, the grossest thing he has ever seen short of the time he walked in on Veronica's dad and his mom naked on the kitchen table.
Wallace turns back to Perm Guy just in time to watch him burst into dust. The three other vampires in the room are up almost immediately, and Wallace is shoved out of the way as Faith engages them.
His job is to get Veronica and any others to safety while Faith fights, but he's frozen. He's seen fights before, professional and street, and even been in a few over the years -- but nothing like this. The sheer speed is breath-taking. Faith dodges and blocks punches before Wallace even realizes they're coming. A rapid succession of blows he can't follow, and one of the vampires bursts into dust. It's just... amazing.
The term Slayer makes perfect sense to him, now.
7:00 A.M.
Faith disappears before the authorities get there. She leaves Wallace a card with telephone numbers in London and Los Angeles, but no name or business or it.
"You know what to look for, Junior," she says. "Ain't no one else here gonna. Leave a message for me, and someone'll get back to you, and they'll take you seriously."
He nods and grins. "Just don't call me Junior, lady."
She smirks. "Whatever you say, Boy Toy," she says, and leaves.
epilogue:
Veronica glares at him as he pulls his lunch out of a brown paper bag.
"So you followed the guys who took me, but didn't think to use my car for this?" she says.
It was easy to get the cops off the case -- surprisingly easy. "Gang members on PCP," Faith told him to say. He thought she was crazy, until the cops nodded and walked off without another word. Well, he still thought Faith was crazy, just with one less reason.
It's hard to get Veronica off the case -- unsurprisingly hard.
"Okay, okay," Wallace says. He grins. "Some fine-ass honey in tight leather pants showed up with a motorcycle and killed all the vampires that kidnapped you for their nefarious drug trafficking ring."
Veronica glares at him. "See, now you've even learned to get past my finely-honed bullshit detector," she says. "We are so not BFFs anymore."