Title: Building Castles at High Tide
Author: Sarken (sarken@gmail.com)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: NBC and Warner Brothers own Third Watch. I simply watch it and write about it.
Author's note: In season four, the show told us a lot about Faith's past. This story pieces together the details we've come to know through canon.
Thanks: Amber is such a wonderful person for beta reading. For other reasons, too, but this time it's for beta reading. And T stayed up much too late trying to help me find a title.
---
Leaving Fred's dorm room is the first time Faith sees her. "Who's that?" Faith asks, watching the blond argue with a guy in a sweater vest. The blond is half asleep, still in pajamas, but clearly winning.
"Claire. Don't know her last name." Fred lowers his voice to a whisper as he locks his door. "She's a lesbian. Says so herself."
"Really."
She smiles when Claire makes eye contact.
-
Fred is in class when Faith calls his room.
"Hey, Chris," she says to his roommate. She twists the phone cord around her hand. "Yeah, I know he's in bio, but I left something this morning and was hoping you'd sign me in so I could come look for it."
She laughs at Chris's comparison of his cinderblock-walled room to Fort Knox. "Yeah, it's ridiculous. How about I meet you out front in five?"
-
"Dammit," she huffs, and the exhalation lifts her bangs from her forehead. Hands on hips, she surveys the room. "I don't know what the hell I did with it."
Chris offers her a sympathetic look through his wire-rimmed glasses. "I hope you find it."
"Yeah, me too." Faith doesn't know what she's supposed to be missing.
"Need me to sign you out?" He's knee deep in books, his glasses crooked on his nose, and he looks like he could use a break.
"Nah, the guards know me well enough to let me do it myself. Thanks, though."
She stands outside the room and looks toward the elevators, but she walks the other way, stopping in front of the door that says dyke in sidewalk chalk.
She doesn't know what to say to the girl who opens the door. She hopes eye contact was enough.
-
Claire's room is cluttered with paints and canvasses. She's double majoring in Politics and Studio Art, and she tells Faith the guy from that morning was a College Republican.
"They actually exist here?" Faith laughs. "I thought they were an urban legend."
Claire isn't as amused. "Where do you think the artwork on my door came from?"
Faith looks at her lap, at her hands resting awkwardly on her thighs. She knew this wouldn't be as easy as she had hoped.
Claire sits next to her and covers Faith's hand with her own. Her nail polish is chipped, reduced to thick purple lines across the middles of her fingernails. "It's okay," she says.
This time, eye contact is followed with a kiss.
-
Faith gets dressed in Fred's bathroom at three in the morning. She writes a note about needing to study for an exam she doesn't have, and she closes the door quietly as she leaves.
She's grinning when Claire opens the door.
"Quick, before the fire alarm goes off," Claire says, ushering Faith inside and locking the door. She leans against it, smiling.
On the desk, Faith sees a joint resting atop a handmade clay dish.
A loose curl falls across Claire's left eye, and her smile is coquettish. "Want a hit?"
Faith shrugs, watching Claire pick up the joint and open the window. "Yeah," Faith says. "I want a hit."
They lean out the window, passing the joint back and forth. In the cold, their breath mixes with the smoke.
-
Faith wakes up with Claire's leg between her thighs, but she can only think about how thirsty she is. Her eyes are barely open when Claire asks, "Freddie your boyfriend?"
"Yeah." Faith gropes around for her clothes. Her eyes are blurry and as dry as her mouth. "Five and a half years."
Claire hums a response of indifference. "There's soda in the fridge," she says, rolling over to face the window. It's still open from last night.
Faith finds her jeans and that's good enough. Half naked, she gets up and opens the mini-fridge. The can opens with a pop, and cold foam sprays all over her. "Fuck," she says, but she's laughing too hard.
-
Fred kisses her neck while they're supposed to be studying. He wraps his arms around her and says, "We got two more weeks, babe."
Faith doesn't care about Dante's Inferno as much as she should, so she closes her Hi-Liter in the book and tosses it onto the floor.
"That's my girl," Fred says, chuckling. He lifts her onto his desk and kisses from her throat to her collarbone before sliding his tongue into her mouth.
He tastes like too much cheap booze, but Faith tastes like Coca-Cola and Claire.
-
Faith gets a B on her paper; Fred never hands his in. She gave up telling him to do his work back in high school.
"You know," he says, "I was thinking..."
Faith is holding her head and squinting at a textbook. "I'm trying to study," she snaps. "I actually care about my grades."
Fred grabs the book from under her nose. "I was thinking," he says again, sitting on the desk and leaning in close. His breath smells like alcohol. "You and that little blond down the hall, maybe you could hook up and--"
Faith knocks over the chair as she runs to the bathroom. She throws up twice.
-
"Claire," she says early one morning, dressed and running a finger around the rim of her soda can, "we can't do this anymore."
Claire twirls a dirty paintbrush between her fingers and tilts her head. She doesn't ask why they can't, but Faith answers anyway.
"I'm pregnant." Her eyes are filled with tears and she glances upward to keep them from spilling over. "I'm gonna drop out."
Claire sets the brush on the bed and wraps Faith in her arms. She holds her until they have to go to class.
:end: