Faith was six when her parents decided a quick way to make a good buck was to put their only daughter on everyone’s screens. For the next ten years she was a regular staple in Disney shows and movies, becoming a product to sell - the perfect product of graceful smiles and pink ribbons in her hair.
It all came crashing down when she was sixteen, papped stumbling out of a club in her usual attire away from the cameras — leather, crop-tops, heavy make-up, glossy lips and a wicked grin that spat out language her grandmother would scold her for.
Quickly, headlines made her out to be another Disney star desperate to shed her childhood image. To prove herself worthy and capable of being an adult, mature, not a child—the truth was Faith just enjoyed hard liquor and boys that got hard just by looking at her; she liked the attention and the freedom and the way her hips moved in time to the music in clubs. It didn’t hurt that it was a chance for her to lash out at the image of the girl she never was, the girl her parents and label molded and shaped to earn them millions.
It was around the time she hit twenty-one that her manager pushed her into an empty room and told her point-black if she ever even wanted a hint of a career in the future she needed to do something—something other than getting high every other weekend, photographed in clubs and out of clubs and at parties and coming out of parties, sleeping around with every fucking star she could bang, using inappropriate language on her social media pages to prove a point about nothing other than the fact she’s not the little girl that danced across their screens for years.
It’s how she ended up in Russia, shooting a spy flick with Hollywood’s newest IT girl, Buffy Summers. Blonde, beautiful, a double edged sword of sweetness and sharp wit; if she didn’t hate everything Hollywood so much she might like the girl. But Buffy was everything her managers and parents and label wanted her to be—like-able, but still herself. Buffy had been in the biz for three years, jetting from continent to continent, filming blockbuster after blockbuster, taking time to film indie movies that gave her a cool pretentious cred.
“Don’t you ever get tired of being a mess?” Buffy bites out at her one morning, freezing cold in a foreign country with water drenched through the thin tank-top and jeans she’d been put in for the fight scene they were supposed to be filming. Her assistant was rushing to pick up the fur coat Buffy had requested moments earlier.
Faith snorts, taking a quick look-over at the girl next to her. “Don’t you ever get tired of being a diva?”
Buffy’s mouth parts open in shock, her eyebrows furrowing in disbelief but before she can bite Faith’s head off, dig into her like she’s the best meal she’s ever had, her assistant comes running out with her coat. “Don’t worry, girls. We’ll be back to filming in a few minutes!” Her assistant says cheerily, catching onto the tension between the two stars of the movie.
Buffy is the lead, the beautiful blonde spy who’s all charisma and wit and beats the bad guys at the end of the day—she’s the one little girls are going to watch and awe at, hang posters up of in their rooms.
Faith is the villain, the all sex crazed vixen who’s intent on hunting Buffy down and ruining her victory—she’s the one going to be labelled a whore and a slut and a bitch.
It’s funny how life can imitate art. Buffy is the Golden Girl in everyone elses eyes, the star, and Faith is the uncontrollable mess who turns up to set drunk and disorderly with her learns not learnt. Buffy hates Faith and in return Faith hates Buffy.
Their last week of filming is back in L.A., in a studio. Faith is trying to find her way around the studio, walking down hallways that lead to offices and staircases that lead to parking lots, when she takes another wrong turn and ends up on the top floor. Ends up where Buffy Summers is sitting in a corner. Crying.
Buffy looks up when Faith makes a strangled sort of choking noise at the sight of Buffy. Her eyes are red and puffy when she looks up, smudged eyeliner and mascara underneath her right eye; her left eye’s makeup damage was minimal.
“What are you doing here?” Buffy gasps, wiping at her eyes furiously, trying to get the tears away.
“Are you okay, B?” Faith asks softly, the venomous nickname she’d picked up for her on their first week coming out as caring instead of malicious. Faith isn’t the sort of girl who asks if you’re okay, she’s the girl who ignores you and carries on partying but she feels obliged to make sure her co-star is holding in there. If only because their reputations on set can’t be tarnished so close to finishing.
Buffy doesn’t say a word, she glances in the opposite direction and Faith slowly moves forwards towards her.
“I get why you lashed out everyone. Why you need to create a new image for yourself.” Buffy whispers. Faith stands still in shock, she expected snide remarks or a screaming fit for Faith to get out of her room; she expected a roll of eyes and a pun; she didn’t expect sincerity and sadness.
“It’s such a lonely business. It’s turning me into stone. I can feel it isolating me from everyone I love and I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how I go back to being me again.” Buffy whispers, not once looking up to face Faith who’s moved to the corner of the room, who’s looking out the window and seeing dots of figures walking past and relating everything Buffy is saying to the swirling mess of pent up emotions inside of her—that have been growing and festering for years.
“How-how did you do it?” Buffy asks. It’s what causes Faith to turn over and look at Buffy, at the girl for the past three months she’s been at war with while secretly dreaming about every night. The girl she’s been throwing digs and remarks at while they nail a scene each day. The girl she once had a milkshake and talked about movies with, carefree and goofy until the wrong thing was said and the two of them went back to being hostile towards each-other.
“I found whiskey and vodka.” Faith jokes, sitting down next to Buffy. It brings a smile to Buffy’s lips for a brief second, a flash of the grin that’s plastered across every god damn magazine across the country.
“Does it work?” Buffy asks.
“No.” Faith replies immediately. “It doesn’t. It makes you feel lonelier and you just feel more pain and more hate and more bitterness. It makes everything worse.” It feels like a revelation as the words spill out of her mouth, like a fact that’s always been at the back of her mind and hasn’t quite come to the forefront until now; until an answer has been demanded of her.
Buffy laughs, hollow, “I don’t feel anything anymore.”
Faith doesn’t know what to say to that.
“We should probably get to set.” Buffy awkwardly says, standing up. She doesn’t look back at Faith as she walks out the door.
Not once do either of them mention the incident for the next week they film. Faith avoids Buffy all together, ducking into another room whenever she catches sight of her hair, or starts talking to a crew member whenever she hears her laugh.
On the last day of filming, Buffy comes up to Faith. In her hands is a small present wrapped in festive Christmas paper. In the back of her mind Faith is reminded that it’s December, that Christmas is around the corner, that she’ll have to see her parents and her family soon.
“I guess I’ll see you at the premier.” Buffy says, her voice light. It’s a difference from anyway she’s acted around Faith before (cancel out the milkshake encounter).
“Yeah. Can’t wait to see what puns you’ll be telling all the interviewers about spies and Missions.” Faith jokes.
“Can’t wait to see what sleazy diss you’ll be tossing around about Missions.” Buffy retorts, raising an eyebrow.
“B, I get that you’re trying to get on my level and all but there’s not that much that’s dirty about a movie called Missions.” Faith replies. Forgotten is every other day that they’ve worked on this movie together. Buffy shrugs, hands her the present in her hands and flounces off to another cast member.
Faith eagerly unwraps the present when she gets home, greedy hands grabbing at the book inside; it’s got a note attached to the front of it. Buffy’s name and number and an order to call her, let’s be friends it says.
It turns out that Faith calls and that Buffy’s a pretty good bowler and that they’re good with talking about topics that cover Hollywood stardom and all the misery it entails but they’re also pretty good at talking about food.
By the time the premier rolls around Buffy has become a staple in Faith’s life, to the extent there’s an entire drawer dedicated to her clothes at Faith’s apartment, to the point where the excessive drinking and clubbing has all faded to a point of barely there, to the point where if Faith doesn’t kiss Buffy soon she’s pretty sure she’s going to die.
It’s melodramatic, Faith thinks, but she’s an actor. She gets a free pass on melodrama.
Buffy wraps an arm around Faith’s waist on the red carpet and it lands on every website in the morning, hinting at something more than friends. Critics say the highlight of Missions is the chemistry between Faith Lehane and Buffy Summers, a stunning pair together, with the end of the movie being better if it ended up that the hero and villain were exes from long ago. Or fell in love along the way.
Faith reads it out to Buffy over breakfast and Buffy kisses her then, over pancakes, and Faith can only think It’s about time — the title of the next movie they’ve been booked to star in together.