Prop me up with another Pill

Mar 27, 2007 07:01

Title : The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Author : Kiwikatipo
Rating : F18

Disclaimer : The BtVS folks belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Faith's bio from ‘Go Ask Malice’ by Robert Joseph Levy. Devour people belong to William and Seth Gross and Bigel/Mailer Films.

Humor: It’s not haha so much, as crack, in that you have to believe Faith doesn’t give a crap her boyfriend is the son of Satan. It’s certainly not angst, and there will be humorous one liners throughout I promise.

Summary: Faith Lehane fell off the roof after B. gutted her and onto the back of a truck bound for Washington. When she awoke from her coma a week later, she was amnesiac and knocked up.

In May, 2004 she hooks up with Jake Gray in pysch rehab. He did not commit the murders of his adoptive parents, Satan did. Faith killed her vampire boss. No one believed them.

Now it’s 2007. Faith and Jake are real happy together, except for various opposing groups wanting Faith and Jake dead. And who is this mystery one eyed guy, newly arrived in the small Washington town of Cheever Lake, who looks kinda like Faith’s daughter Caitlyn?

Timeline: Story takes place December 2006. So Faith almost twenty- six. Jake twenty-three.

***

PROLOGUE

***
Washington State
June 2004

“I dunno, I look in the mirror sometimes, and wonder how old I really am. The docs’ reckon, I’m aged twenty-three to twenty-five. Is my name really Faith?” Faith chewed off another piece of flesh from around her bitten to the quick nails. “I mean, all I had to go on was a screwed up ‘post it note’ found in my jeans pocket, which said. ‘Faith, clinic called, appointment now 2.20pm.’”

Faith guessed the message must have been regarding a medical check up. For when she awoke from her week long coma in Seattle, Washington, after being found unconscious on the back of a truck, the doctors informed her she was four months pregnant. She hadn’t looked knocked up. Faith had carried high, right up until the time she gave birth.

“But at least I have Caitlyn, I’m not alone. So even though no one knows who I am, I don’t know who I am, what I was, I’m good.” What would become of her five year old daughter Caitlyn, in foster care, with those two humorless, do gooders looking after her? They weren’t bringing Caitlyn to visit Faith enough.

Faith crossed her legs defensively. “I look in the mirror and I see the scar on my belly and wonder who would do that to a teenager? Who would gut them with a knife? Hit me around so much, that the head injuries have given me permanent amnesia about who I am? What kinda sick weirdo…” Faith realized where she was sitting. There were lots of candidates for that kind of action, in the room with her right now.

“Thank you, Faith.” The group therapist excused her from continuation of social embarrassment. “Jake, would you like to tell us about yourself?”

“Not especially.” Jake hunched over his chair. Should he describe who his schizophrenic visions made him out to be? The twenty one year old son of Satan?

“I’m Jake Gray. I grew up in Cheever Lake, Washington, with my Dad, a mill worker and my Mom, who was an invalid. They were devout Christians, good people. I went to Cheever Lake Community College, before I did stuff that landed me here.”

The stuff, being murdering his adoptive parents in the woods. Except Jake hadn’t murdered his parents. His birth mother, Satan, had killed them, hoping for Jake to choose to be the new Prince of Darkness. Jake refused and Satan forced him to drink his adoptive parents’ blood out of a silver cup in punishment.

Bonus, he was now completely human and didn’t get constant visions from Satan telling him to kill everyone any more. Downside, he was locked up in this mental asylum for the criminally insane, framed by the Devil for his parents’ murders, in punishment for his rejection of her.

But then Jake worried if he was crazy he would think that. So he guessed he really did kill his Mom and Dad. That honestly sucked.

Faith sneaked a peak at the guy sitting beside her on a chair. Like herself he was garbed in gray track pants and a t-shirt, slippers on his feet. He would probably normally be considered good looking, tall, sandy brown haired, hazel eyed, symmetrically featured. His face was puffy from his medication however, and he had a straggly, two month, beard going on for him.

Faith didn’t belong in this room with monsters like him. She wasn’t crazy. Was she? How had she ended up here? She thought in a drugged haze, back to the circumstances leading her to be in this hot room, where an electric fan slowly whirled in the corner.

Faith’s boss at the gas station where she worked, had called her up, asking her to come over to his house on important business, two months ago. Faith had gone over immediately, because Mr Foster, her employer for the past two years, was a decent guy, completely on the up and up.

Boy oh boy, was Faith wrong. Mr Foster had savagely attacked her the minute she came in through the front door. Ripping at her clothes. Biting at her neck. She guessed terror lent her the extra strength needed to save herself. She pushed him off her instinctively, sending him flying through his living room. Mr Foster had hit the blind cord against the wall, causing the roller blind to spring up. The midday sun had streamed in on him, causing him to burst into flames on the faded carpet.

And she’d covered it up, (not well, and why would she? It was hardly like she was a natural born killer) because she didn’t think anyone would believe her story, that Mr Foster had fangs when he tried to rape her, and she couldn’t see his reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, during his attempted forcing himself upon her.

No one did believe Faith. Everyone thought she was a paranoid schizophrenic, and had murdered her kindly boss, by burning him to death. Of course paranoid schizophrenics didn’t think they were crazy. So maybe Faith truly was. She’d experienced bad post natal depression after Caitlyn’s birth, she obviously suffered a tendency toward mental illness.

***

July 2004

“That’s nice… what you’ve done to your basket.” Jake reached over to pick up more colored beads, from the tray on the table between them.

“Uh, thanks.” Faith regarded her beaded basket with pride. “I kinda like making stuff. Yours is coming along okay, too.”

“Not as good as yours.” Jake dropped his beads on the floor. The medication he was taking made him clumsy.

Faith took pity on his unco fumbling.

“Hold on, pal.” Faith reached down and lifted the table up to reach an inaccessible bead for him. “There you go.”

“Shit, you’re strong.” Jake blinked. He didn’t think that was a hallucination he just witnessed. It wasn’t violent at least, thank god.

“Yeah.” Damn, Faith normally tried to hide her freak strength, but the new pills, the white coats, had switched her to, made her head fuzzy.

***

“So why the orchid? It’s real pretty, in a manly way of course.” Faith kicked her legs languidly beside Jake in the therapy pool. Faith didn’t want to be a bitch.

“My mom’s favorite flower.” Jake felt pleased that was what the tattoo on the inside of his wrist looked like again these days to him. Not a goat’s head.

“I wish my tattoo was a flower. This barbed wire tat on my arm? It’s kinda biker chick, so not me.” Faith raised her right leg high in a slender calved stretch.

“You could get roses done over the top of it.” Jake suggested. Faith was very sweet, she was right; the barbwire tattoo didn’t suit her at all. He guessed he’d find her hot if circumstances were different, but he had the libido of a cucumber at the moment, thanks to the new drugs the shrinks had put him on.

The fact she murdered her boss was a turn off too.

***
November 2004

“I feel all wound up.” Faith confessed to Jake, as they sat huddled on the grass together, hidden by the trees on the grounds of the asylum. “Having a fight like that with Caitlyn’s foster parents, and not being able to slap that smug cow’s face. Hold me?”

Jake put his arms around her, squeezing her tightly. The sensible pony tail, Faith always wore her hair up in, bunched up in his face.

“Thanks, I just wanna be touched, you know?” Faith leaned back in Jake’s arms chastely. “I thought there was a higher power looking after us.”

“Don’t ever say that.” Jake shuddered, he knew who the higher power looking after him was.

Faith ignored him, carrying on. “Like, that new detective in the Seattle P.D., works out I’m innocent, because my boss died outta spontaneous human combustion. And you get cleared, because it was obvious judging from the re-examination of forensic evidence, it was your crazy ex girlfriend, who framed you for those murders.”

“And what happened?” Jake kissed her the back of head comfortingly. He wasn’t trying anything on. Faith wasn’t that kind of girl.

“I’m not getting Caitlyn back, not until I can prove I have a decent place to live and a job.” Faith’s eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away. No point being a cry baby. That wouldn’t get her Caitlyn back.

“You can stay in my folks house if you want, until you get on your feet. No strings…” Jake couldn’t get it up if he tried still, even though it had been two days since he stopped taking his drugs. “I’ve inherited my parents house, now it’s been proven I didn’t kill them. I’m gonna go away and finish my schooling somewhere else. I’ve got my parents life insurance policy to pay for my education and I owe you.”

“Hey, I owe you.” Faith replied back, smacking his thigh gently in reprimand.

Faith overhearing Satan disguised as a nurse, tempting Jake to be evil one more time, proved to them both they were sane.

***
January 2005

“So what do you think?” Jake finished showing Faith around his parents’ house.

“Oh god, it’s wicked sweet! Caitlyn will love it here. I love it here!” Faith gazed at the blue and white furnishings filling the spacious three bedroom house, in delight. The two storied, wooden residence, was such a lovely family home. The leaf covered, swimming pool out the front was a safety hazard, she’d have to get a fence put around it, until she could teach Caitlyn how to swim.

“Yeah, has a good feeling again, since I got Father Moore, to bless the basement where Satan appeared to me.” Jake admitted, he flung himself down on a couch. “So it’s yours for the time being. I’ll sell the place when I come back from Washington U.”

***

May 2006

Faith walked beside Jake by Cheever Lake. It was a spring day, pink and white blossoms on the trees, reflected back on the calm surface of the large body of water. Caitlyn was in school.

Jake skimmed a stone over the water. “Shit, all I ever wanted was to leave this town. But I’ve seen the world now and I find out I like it best here. Crazy, huh?”

“We are officially insane, don’t forget, bud. Cheever Lake’s, a kinda cracked set up, for all its picket fenced charm.” Faith put her hands in the pockets of her tan sheepskin jacket. She dressed pretty conservatively, what with being a single mom on a tight budget. And Washington could get real cold, so why display flesh you didn’t need to? “Weird things happen here.”

“Yeah. It is that kind of town.” Jake agreed, putting his hands in his own denim jacket pockets. “So you’re not seeing anyone?”

“Nah, had a nice boyfriend for a while, but he got transferred to Portland for his job.” Faith smiled shyly. “Didn’t I mention that in an e-mail?”

“Yeah. But I thought by now…” Jake didn’t know quite how to change the pen pal relationship he’d developed with Faith into something else.

“No.” Faith waited for him to make the first move. She wasn’t going to throw herself on him like some sex crazed slut. On the other hand she had always found Jake incredibly attractive, ever since he came off his medication and started shaving again. There was a sex crazed slut that lurked within every woman she guessed. Hurry up Jake!

“I’m trying to play this cool. I’m gonna fail.” Jake pulled her in his arms and lowered his mouth to hers.

Their kiss turned out to be quite heated.

“Mmm.” Faith detached herself reluctantly from him, half an hour later. “I need to pick up Caitlyn from school. She has a welcome back party planned for you.”

Caitlyn got on well with Jake whenever he visited them in the past year.

Their shared romantic kiss had not come out of the blue for Faith and Jake, in any respect.

***

A naked Jake hopped out of bed and blew out the candle burning on the window ledge.

“I thought for one awful minute, you were gonna drip it on me.” Faith chuckled, drawing the covers back over him when he returned to her.

“You’re enthusiastic but straight as they come in bed, Faith.” Jake grinned teasingly at her. “I just wanted to set the mood."

‘Hey, ya not into weird sex crap are you?” Faith screwed up her nose in distaste. “I’m not into making love combined with pain in any way. It’s bent!”

“Well, don’t squeeze my ribs so hard next time.” Jake tickled her in pay back.

“God, I’m sorry! Sorry!” Faith shrieked happily, pushing him off her.

“Man, I love you.” Jake stroked her upper arm once they calmed down. Her previous tattoo currently disguised as an ornate feminine wreath, of black and white flowers.

Faith’s boss, at her job in a tattoo and piercing parlor, had performed the body art modification for her. Her gray bearded boss, was a born again Christian, ex-Satanist, Jake knew.

“Love you too.” Faith cuddled into him. “You know, even if that P.I., Kate Lockley, I hired in Seattle last week, to find out who I really am, can come through with something? Sounds retarded, but I don’t think I could ever be happier than I am right now.”

“Glad to hear it. What, not even if Caitlyn learns how to swim finally?” Jake checked disbelieving. Caitlyn was phobic of water for some reason.

“Oh yeah, scratch that.” Faith looked up at him and winked shamelessly. “Hey, scratch me, for round two?”
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