Chapter four:Take me to the river
***
2007
***
“I wasn’t originally planning on getting wasted tonight.” Faith put down her beer for a second and picked up her cigarette packet. “Never been big on drowning my sorrows.”
“Sweetheart, you getting hitched and then your groom failing to turn up at the airport to go on honeymoon the next day, sounds painful.” Dean sipped from his beer bottle, his eyes twinkling. “Painfully amusing.”
“Well the divorce was painfully fucking expensive.” Faith started getting up, she intended to have another cigarette. “But hey, everyone insisted I keep the wedding presents, so it worked out okay in the end. Everything always does huh? Rainbow after the storm and all that shit?”
"Sit down, Faith.” Dean leaned over and pulled out the cigar he’d bought at the liquor store, from his jacket pocket, unwrapping the cellophane from it. “Gotta light? I’ll out fume ya.”
Faith lit his cigar for him, her hands touching his for the briefest of seconds. Damn him, it still made her heart change beat to feel his skin against hers.
“I spent some time in a county jail in Arkansas. Sammy got freaked out when I won smokes playing poker, not realizing it was for currency purposes only.” Dean blew out a smoke ring.
Dean would know how to blow smoke rings Faith grinned to herself. Such a fucking show off. “So what the hell were you in the cage for? Having the biggest illegal ego on the planet?”
“You really were in the slammer too, weren’t you, baby?” Dean had been noticing the two and a half year gap in her story telling. “What for?”
Faith put another log on the fire. “Too late bud, I asked you first.”
***
1998
***
“When the night has been too lonely, and the day has been too long, and you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong.” Faith and Sammy chorused off key in the Impala together, putting their hands mockingly over their hearts.
John turned up the volume on the car radio so Bette Middler singing ‘The Rose’ could drown the yodeling brats out. “Thank you for ruining a perfectly good song.” He smiled against his will.
The girl had been with them sixteen days and counting. And it wasn’t so Dean could get laid she was still with them. John allowed Faith to keep sponging off them for Sammy’s sake.
John hadn’t wanted to think about how bored and lonely Sammy became, being left alone in motel units for days and evenings on end during his school vacation time.
Dean and John came back to a motel one night, in a small town near Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a smoke smelling kitchen, ten days after Faith joined them. Sammy and Faith were unable to stop chortling hysterically, because they set on fire, pancakes they cooked on the unit stove. The gray fumes set off the smoke alarm, the whole motel needed to be evacuated and the local volunteer fire brigade were called out.
Apparently the motel resembled a Keystone cops’ movie, in John and Dean’s absence.
The following day John stopped in an Albuquerque gas station to fill up. Faith popped in to use the station’s rest room and John had needed to move Impala while she did so. Faith came out into the sunshine, not seeing at first where John parked the car. The expression of hurt devastation on her face for three seconds, before she swallowed, looked resolved and immediately started scoping around hard-faced, for the next opportunity to come her way, made John honk the car horn immediately to get her attention.
Faith’s face lit up at the sound and for a second she looked her real age with sheer relief, which John estimated to be between sixteen and eighteen.
Mary and his own mother would have wanted John to give the kid a break. Faith never wavered in her determination to go to California. Her way and his family’s would definitely part before the first of October.
Faith leaned over the back seat and thumped Sammy on the arm. “Retard, I told you not to yodel!” She yelled cheerfully over the music.
“You were yodeling too, bitch!” Sammy snapped back, quick to take offense, as adolescent hormones raged through his system.
John pulled over instantly on to the side of the highway, turning off the car radio.
“Don’t ever talk to a woman like that again.” John ordered his youngest son, disgusted at him.
“Sorry sir.” Sammy mumbled resentfully.
“I don’t care, Mr. Winchester.” Faith defended Sammy. She kinda did, but she knew Sammy didn’t mean it. She called John - Mr. Winchester, because there was no way an uptight drill sergeant clone, was the type of man who wanted to be called by their first name by a teenager and there was no way she was calling him ‘sir’.
“Well you should.” John glanced over his shoulder at her appalled, turning onto the highway again. Christ Faith possessed low self esteem in lots of ways. She was letting Dean bone her for a start.
John loved Dean, but he knew his son was callously using the girl as a real life blow up sex toy.
Dean always expected Faith to leave them after a week in his heart of hearts, and was having trouble adjusting to sharing a room every night with a chick who didn’t think the sun shone out of his ass. Which was how Dean thought a girlfriend should act towards him, well be more sweet and polite anyway - respectful and stuff. Not that Faith was his girlfriend, Dean kept reminding himself. And the mind blowing sex fortunately made up for her contradicting him about crap every second sentence.
“What spook are you and Dean gonna ghost-bust tonight again?” Faith changed the subject.
“Should be a run of the mill exorcism of a dead child.” John answered, well aware Faith knew every detail already.
Faith worked out what the Winchesters were hunting exactly, on day four with them. She offered immediately to help but was politely refused as it being too unsafe for her. Faith thought that freaking funny and she thought the right word might be ‘ironic’.
She knew she must keep it a secret about her being a slayer from the general public, her watcher always made that clear. And if she told the Winchesters about Kakistos they might want to help her and that would be way too dangerous for them.
The final thing that made her not confess to the Winchesters about her real identity, her calling, followed a conversation she held in bed on her eighth night with Dean.
“So ever run into vamps, you know, vampires?” Faith rested her head on his shoulder, both of them covered in post coital perspiration, acerbated by their room’s air conditioning unit not working.
“They’re extinct.” Dean informed her firmly, stating all the reasons why this clearly happened to be the case.
“Uh huh. And how do you explain all the people who die of blood loss in big cities, pal?” Faith persisted, enjoying the temporary feeling of closeness with another human, having sex with Dean constantly brought about.
“Shape-shifters, malevolent spirits, demons.” Dean stroked his hand affectionately through her sweaty tangled hair. She was the best, tightest, lay he’d ever encountered to date. Made him wonder what other hot experienced chicks lay out yonder in the universe waiting for him.
“Yeah, and vampires are demons, right?” Faith batted his hand away from her hair, it felt irritating in the heat.
“Faith, I think I know a little bit more about demons than you, honey. You musta read too many Anne Rice books in the library today with Sammy.” Dean couldn’t believe where Sammy and Faith spent their day because the local library was free and air conditioned. Apparently Faith spent her time reading ‘Interview with a Vampire’ while there.
“So you know everythin’, huh Dean?” Faith knew he didn’t. “Ever heard of ‘vampire slayers’? The Anne Rice Book mentioned them. Teenage girls, super strong, who can stake vampires quicker than a priest can feel up a choir boy?”
“Interesting pipe dream, you’ve got going there. Chicks don’t make good hunters. But you make great baby sitters.” Dean placed his hand over her breast, kneading. “Great…” Losing his train of thought, he shuffled down the narrow bed and parted Faith’s thighs wide, kissing, nibbling and licking the soft inner skin. His fingers gently opened her crotch to him, he lowered his mouth, the damp coarse curls on her mound tickling his nose briefly, as he positioned himself in a more conducive way for the task at hand. He enjoyed making her come for the hell of it, but he could do without a crick in his neck.
Faith thought fleeting, what a dick Dean was sometimes. Thinking stopped happening for her the minute he started to eat her out. Faith pressed her head back on the pillow, arching her back, pushing her groin in his face to encourage him to suck and lick her harder, moaning unable to stop herself, after he slid two curving fingers inside her and began to work them in and out.
***
2007
***
“Christ you’re a dick, Dean.” Faith rolled her eyes, flicking her ash into the fireplace. “That stunt was completely lame-brained, even for you and Sammy.” He would always be loyal and intent on helping people, she admired those qualities about him.
“So why were you wearing Big House orange? Even you couldn’t make that color hot.” Dean and Faith were lying side by side on the wooden floor by the fireplace. They’d pulled out the cushions from the couch to rest their upper bodies on and were most comfortable, if in danger of having their hair and clothes catch on fire from sparks coming off the burning wood in the fire place.
“Yeah I could. But I wore denim most of the time; I hate the color blue now. Remember the blue skirt I lived in that summer?” Faith remembered how his hand would lift her skirt, sliding up her leg unhurriedly.
Dean remembered how her thighs were firm, her skin soft and the small brown mole on the top of her right thigh. “What were you inside for?”
Faith took another gulp of beer. “Okay, going back to when I woke up from my coma.”
“The eight month time out for you? That happened because you got into a cat-fight with this other slayer - Buffy, over her boyfriend, and she accidentally knocked you off your apartment balcony?” Dean recalled, doubting Faith told the whole truth about that story.
“Correct. You always were a great listener.” Another thing Faith always liked about him. “I was kinda fucked up in the head from being, well, me. Went to L.A. to make a new start. But I took out my anger management issues on a potential pimp, and a few other assholes, and this chick in a nightclub who did nothing to me except have a whiny voice that bugged the crap outta me, and I got busted for it. So I went down on aggravated assault charges. It was a relief to be locked up, Dean; I was scaring the shit outta myself.”
He doubted she was telling the whole truth about this story too. Apart from being glad to be locked away where she couldn’t hurt people. He knew she always wanted to do the right thing deep down and events would always conspire against her to achieve this goal. She brought a lot of crap on herself, but she was fundamentally unlucky. Faith could always see the bright side of any shit deal that landed in her lap, he always was impressed by her basic Pollyanna-like attitude to things. If Pollyanna wore black leather and gave head like an angel that is.
Dean’s leg touched hers and he could feel the heat of her body seep through the material of her jeans onto his.
“How long were you inside for?”
“Two and a half years, could’ve been longer but I got let out early.” Faith wished it could all have happened like that. She wished Dean wasn’t stroking her hair back from her neck, asking where she got the scar from. He’d been staring at her face, her mouth, unashamedly for the past five minutes.
“Vampire, kicked his ass, he’s dust.” And Faith wished Angel wasn’t dust, she wished Dean would stop asking questions she didn’t want to answer.
She wished Dean would fuck her instead.
Dean recognized the way her eyes hooded for a nanosecond, confirming his suspicion she would be eager to share a bed with him tonight. Thank god, because he sure as hell wanted to make love to her one more time. Dean pressed his lips against hers, wrapping his hands round her head, pulling her close against him.
Their mouths parted to begin hedonistic re-exploration of each other.
Faith clutched her arm around him, pressing her body against him as hard as she could manage without hurting him. She never bothered to dream she’d be given a second shot like this by life, to say good-bye to Dean properly this time around.
***
Cactus Bluff
Kitchener County
South Texas
1998
***
The Rio Grande snaked its way lazily before Dean’s eyes as he skipped a stone across the slow drifting water in the hot midday sun. He could hear Faith moving on the bank behind him.
“Hey Dean, do you get hornets in Texas?” Faith called to him curiously. “Should I poke this hive thing with a stick?”
“God almighty!” Dean spun around in horror. “Get away from it!”
Faith smirked, standing untouched on the riverbank, without a nest in sight.
“Hilarious, you thought a black line snake was a rattlesnake the other week, don’t forget.” Dean walked over to her and spun her around. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
“No I’m not.” Faith never got giddy no matter how long he spun her. It drove him nuts trying to figure out why not.
Slayer balance naturally.
Faith pushed him down and sat astride on top of him. “Easy to take you off guard, wuss.”
“City slicker.” He crept his hands up her skirt.
“Do you wanna go again?” Faith pulled her tank top off instantly. She sure did.
Did bears crap in the woods? Of course he wanted to be inside her again, he was nineteen. He’d been hard the second he picked her up to twirl her. “Those hickey marks around your belly button have gone.” Dean squinted his eyes against the glare of the sun, disbelievingly.
“You didn’t suck as hard as you think you did, yesterday. You don’t suck, period pal.” Faith whispered, bending down to kiss him, unhooking her black bra at the same time.
“Neither do you.” Dean agreed whole heartedly, unbuckling his belt. Making love to a pretty girl by the shores of a river, it was kinda romantic, except Faith was a runaway who couldn’t wait to get to California and was screwing him in payment for the free ride. Or he was paying her for her free ride.
The only reason he held her fiercely in his arms, (after she collapsed sunburned and sweating on top of him) kissing her face repeatedly and telling Faith she was the cutest, hottest girl in the whole inbred town they were staying in tonight, was because she was.
Parasite and host cleaned themselves up and headed back to Dean’s motorcycle, hand in hand. John Winchester was due back this evening with Sammy, Faith and Dean spent the day in their absence hooning around the county for six hours.
The people in this town were freaking backwards, Faith reflected, as she held on tightly to Dean on the back of his motorcycle.
People stared at them wherever they went in the rural town because Faith and Dean were strangers. An old passerby didn’t understand a word Faith said, when she asked what a huge marquee by the river was being set up for.
The man stared at Faith like she arrived fresh from another planet, which Faith began to feel she might have.
“My girlfriend just wants to know what the deal with the tent is.” Dean smiled charmingly at the local yokel and put his arm calmingly around Faith’s shoulders. What a communication problem for everyone down here who drawled their ‘R’s and Faith who sometimes sounded like she used none. Dean happily volunteered to interpret before Faith blew a gasket.
She always seemed poised to fly off the handle, Sammy mentioned to Dean yesterday while Faith was in the shower.
Sammy should know, he witnessed her punch a fat, sweaty, guy in the face, for pawing her ass, breaking his nose as a result. Faith and Sammy were standing in a crowd watching some small town parade last week, before the incident. The fat, sweaty, guy had gone down like a light.
Faith pushed her way out of the shocked crowd, with Sammy in tow, quickly. “You see Sam, it takes forty eight muscles to frown, but only four to smack the crap outta an asshole who deserves it.”
One time in the library, Sammy glanced up excitedly from a book, looked at Faith’s arm, checked the page of the book he was reading and announced. “Your tattoo isn’t Celtic, it’s Greek.”
“Gonna be the mutoid, giant freak of the Hardy Boys? Looking up crap about my body art? Practicing your research, so you can join your old man and big bro, nailing spooks?” Faith narrowed her eyes and Sammy felt scared of her for the first time. “Mind your own damn business.”
Sammy did from that point on.
Tonight, after he’d come back from the weird father and son bonding day, John Winchester dragged him out on, which always seemed to coincide with John having a severe hangover, Sammy and Faith were going to a revival meeting in a tent erected by the river.
“They’ve snakes, laying on of hands, and people are gonna roll around the floor hollering and talkin’ in tongues, I’ve never seen crap like that before, have you?” Faith wore a clean black t-shirt and her blue skirt, hand washed once more and dry within minutes in the sweltering furnace that was Cactus Bluff that evening.
Sammy walked out of the motel unit with her into the heat of the night. A Holy Roller night sounded possibly entertaining.
Sammy stopped Faith short-cutting across a field of dry grass. “Snakes.” The Winchesters were becoming more and more amazed Faith made it alive as far as Florida with her ignorance of nature.
Faith previously stuck to big cities. That’s where the vampires existed that it was her duty to destroy. God she was bad, not fulfilling her calling the past two weeks, her mystic destiny. Acting like a freaking loser, a coward, trying to save her own miserable skin. Slayers were meant to die young. Faith prolonged the inevitable, she wasn’t so amazing she deserved to live she knew. But she didn’t want to die! Not yet anyway. And her natural survival instincts always made her run away whenever life got too overwhelming for her to handle.
Faith took the long way to the revival meeting, using the road with Sammy, her head was down, thinking about other depressing shit. There was no other polite way for Dean to describe her apart from his ‘girlfriend’ to an old man, Faith guessed. She didn’t want to think too hard about how she’d describe the set up between her and Dean to an outsider.
***
“Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” The evangelical minister banged on the pulpit. “If that was good enough for Saint Paul to say, it’s surely good enough for me. Lust! Liquor! You all commit these sins. Why some of the young people in this town have smoked marijuana!”
“Hear that Faith?” Sam whispered in Faith’s ear as she sat beside him in the audience, fanning herself with a pamphlet about true love waiting. “This town isn’t as bad as we first thought.”
Faith nodded in agreement. Sammy grinned and stretched out his long legs. The tent was packed, the seats were hard, and the minister was just getting starting.
“Whores’, jezebels’, painted scarlet women, leading good men into the pits of Hellfire and Brimstone.” The minister flung out his hand and pointed it straight at Faith it seemed. “I’ve seen them pollute your community and so have you! Writhing to that lecherous jungle music on MTV.”
Faith relaxed, the slavering nutcase wasn’t talking about her personally. She decided on the whole, the Roman Catholic Church services her grandparents used to take her to when she was little, although full of hypocritical B.S., were a vast improvement on this anti-chick crap.
The snakes were brought out and handled in a manner that would give an animal rights activist a nervous breakdown. The faith healing happened. Sammy sniggered and looked at Faith significantly. Faith rolled her eyes. Christ she hated her name sometimes. People writhed on the floor burbling nonsense, because as the minister pointed out repeatedly, if glossolalia was good enough for St Paul, it was good enough for him.
People were saved! Baptisms in the river were held. Someone in the crowd had a heart attack with over excitement and had to be given C.P.R. by a retired nurse before the doctor arrived.
The revival meeting ended and the good minister sought out stray lambs and fallen women and anyone female with nice legs basically, to lead back on the path of righteousness.
“So are you saved tonight, my young sister?” The minister was in his early forties, very good looking and held Faith’s hand with extra sincerity.
“I can just see you holdin’ me down in the water while my t-shirt gets wet, padre.” Faith withdrew her hand and wiped it on her skirt. “Save Sam here, he watches MTV a lot.”
***
“I thought it would be like that.” Sammy told Faith as they trudged back to the motel unit. Cars and trucks from the revival meeting passed them by quickly into the star filled night. “But there are real faith healers out there. The snakes were good value, huh?”
“Yeah, but…” Faith stopped as a dusty SUV slowed down beside them.
“Need a ride?” A bunch of youths were hanging out the windows, beer bottles in hand.
“No thanks.” Sammy refused politely. Crap, they were dead meat. “We’re fine.”
“What about ya sister? Don’t she need a ride?” One of the guys turned to his friends, inspired. “She can ride on me.”
The group entered into animated discussion on which of them Faith would like to fuck first and who would be the best for her if she would care to get in their vehicle with them.
“Why not ride your mom, lover? Isn’t that what ‘you’all’ do in this god forsaken dump?” Faith kept walking. Screw them.
“Shut up, Faith.” Sammy thought she owned more street smarts than this. There were six guys and only two of them.
The guys were baying and cat-calling non stop now.
“They can shut up and so can you.” Faith spat at Sammy pissed off. Why couldn’t men leave her the hell alone? She offered another helpful suggestion to the occupants of the SUV. “Fuck each other, once you’ve found your own pricks with a magnifying glass!”
“Are you crazy?” Sammy panicked. His Dad taught him how to defend himself, but there were six of the sons of bitches!
“That’s a question up for grabs.” Faith muttered under her breath. The good ole boy assholes were stopping their vehicle and climbing out.
“Ya not his sister and ya not from around these parts.” The driver announced with confidence. He was the brains of the group.
“I’m just lucky I guess.” Faith retorted, she and Sammy kept walking.
One of the men grabbed her arm and swung her around. “Hey! We’re talkin’ to you darlin’.”
Sammy long ago worked out guys shouldn’t do that to Faith.
***
‘I wanna know that you’ll tell me, I love to stay, take me to the river, drop me in the water’ Talking Heads played on the car radio. Dean stared moodily out into the darkness of the countryside.
His father running over a jackrabbit broke into his thoughts for a second.
“I hate doing that.” John sighed ruefully to himself, he always worried the animal bones would puncture the tires. It sometimes happened.
Dean went back to his internal torment. If he got emotionally attached to Faith, Dean was a freaking moron. Faith had this one dimple when she smiled, her scent was musky when they made love, she climbed up a tree without hesitation in Roswell, to rescue a stuck cat for a little kid, rolling her eyes when the terrified cat clawed her arm, saying her pain threshold was high and she was five by five.
She healed real fast from those scratches. She healed unnaturally fast from everything - bruises for example. Dean left those on her ankles and hips sometimes with his thumbs and fingers when they screwed. Faith couldn’t be a demon; she consumed enough salty junk food with Sammy in one sitting, watching a horror movie marathon on TV, to knock out an army of demons.
Faith would be leaving his life in September. Dean wished she didn’t have to. No. He was mighty glad she was moving on, because she took too long in the shower, could be cold and moody, and a real bitch sometimes. Faith was good bed practice until the real thing came along. The right girl for him. A girl resembling the way he remembered his mother. Not someone like Faith.
A Sheriffs car was parked outside the motel unit when John and Dean returned.
“Only took eighteen days.” John hoped to god, statuary rape charges weren’t going to be laid, or Sammy hadn’t gotten involved, in whatever the hell Faith must have done at the revival meeting, the two said they were going to tonight. Trouble.
Sammy’s left eye was black and he had a swollen lip. Faith had a bruise on her cheek and her clothes were ripped.
The sheriff urged Faith and Sammy to press charges against the six guys that attacked them. They were well known to be the town assholes.
The evangelical preacher sat in the living room. He told the sheriffs and John and Dean he intervened as he drove past Faith and Sammy being set upon, to attend a soul in distress, (an attractive widow who felt the pull of the flesh most strongly).
Sammy and Faith declined to press charges. John wished they could lead a normal life so the two could press charges against the bastards who roughed up his young son and tried to rape a girl. He almost burst with pride at being told how Sammy knocked two of the guys out stone cold, breaking another one’s arm.
Sammy sat subdued and quiet on the couch, not saying much. Faith breezed through everything, flirting with the cute deputy sheriff. Nah, she wasn’t traumatized, Sammy saved the day, the guy was her hero.
The Sheriffs left, the preacher left, and John urged Sammy to go to sleep.
Sammy shot a dirty look at Faith before he went to bed, she so owed him. It was the second time he’d felt scared of her, tonight. For one heart stopping minute he thought she was going to start laying into him too, she just stopped herself in time, coming down from her bloodlust frenzy and then the preacher pulled up in his car. Sammy wondered just what the preacher saw and why he lied too.
Dean entered his bedroom, conscious of his father’s curt whispered instructions while she showered, to leave Faith the hell alone tonight. His Dad didn’t need to tell Dean that, Dean got angry with his father over the stupidity of that unnecessary advice. He and his father were angry already that they couldn’t shoot with a rifle, the six attackers of Sammy and Faith. Stupid laws against homicide.
Dean was prepared to be very understanding with Faith, maybe she would prefer him to sleep in another room tonight? Or if she wanted to cuddle, a good cry to get the attack out of her system? Dean wanted to be a manly shoulder for her to lean on, in her hour of post traumatic shock.
He sat upright on one of the beds waiting for her to finish in the bathroom. If there was one time she surely was entitled to use up all the hot water it was tonight.
Faith walked over to him, dropped her towel on the floor and placed his hands on her breasts. “Get me off.”
Faith could have cheerfully gone on breaking every bone in those six pricks bodies, if Sammy hadn’t yelled at her repeatedly to stop already.
The only thing that worried Faith at present, apart from Dean treating her like spun glass, when she needed him to be pounding away inside of her, was why had the preacher lied for her?
***
AN:Reviews postive or negative are always appreciated.
2007
***
“I wasn’t originally planning on getting wasted tonight.” Faith put down her beer for a second and picked up her cigarette packet. “Never been big on drowning my sorrows.”
“Sweetheart, you getting hitched and then your groom failing to turn up at the airport to go on honeymoon the next day, sounds painful.” Dean sipped from his beer bottle, his eyes twinkling. “Painfully amusing.”
“Well the divorce was painfully fucking expensive.” Faith started getting up, she intended to have another cigarette. “But hey, everyone insisted I keep the wedding presents, so it worked out okay in the end. Everything always does huh? Rainbow after the storm and all that shit?”
"Sit down, Faith.” Dean leaned over and pulled out the cigar he’d bought at the liquor store, from his jacket pocket, unwrapping the cellophane from it. “Gotta light? I’ll out fume ya.”
Faith lit his cigar for him, her hands touching his for the briefest of seconds. Damn him, it still made her heart change beat to feel his skin against hers.
“I spent some time in a county jail in Arkansas. Sammy got freaked out when I won smokes playing poker, not realizing it was for currency purposes only.” Dean blew out a smoke ring.
Dean would know how to blow smoke rings Faith grinned to herself. Such a fucking show off. “So what the hell were you in the cage for? Having the biggest illegal ego on the planet?”
“You really were in the slammer too, weren’t you, baby?” Dean had been noticing the two and a half year gap in her story telling. “What for?”
Faith put another log on the fire. “Too late bud, I asked you first.”
***
1998
***
“When the night has been too lonely, and the day has been too long, and you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong.” Faith and Sammy chorused off key in the Impala together, putting their hands mockingly over their hearts.
John turned up the volume on the car radio so Bette Middler singing ‘The Rose’ could drown the yodeling brats out. “Thank you for ruining a perfectly good song.” He smiled against his will.
The girl had been with them sixteen days and counting. And it wasn’t so Dean could get laid she was still with them. John allowed Faith to keep sponging off them for Sammy’s sake.
John hadn’t wanted to think about how bored and lonely Sammy became, being left alone in motel units for days and evenings on end during his school vacation time.
Dean and John came back to a motel one night, in a small town near Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a smoke smelling kitchen, ten days after Faith joined them. Sammy and Faith were unable to stop chortling hysterically, because they set on fire, pancakes they cooked on the unit stove. The gray fumes set off the smoke alarm, the whole motel needed to be evacuated and the local volunteer fire brigade were called out.
Apparently the motel resembled a Keystone cops’ movie, in John and Dean’s absence.
The following day John stopped in an Albuquerque gas station to fill up. Faith popped in to use the station’s rest room and John had needed to move Impala while she did so. Faith came out into the sunshine, not seeing at first where John parked the car. The expression of hurt devastation on her face for three seconds, before she swallowed, looked resolved and immediately started scoping around hard-faced, for the next opportunity to come her way, made John honk the car horn immediately to get her attention.
Faith’s face lit up at the sound and for a second she looked her real age with sheer relief, which John estimated to be between sixteen and eighteen.
Mary and his own mother would have wanted John to give the kid a break. Faith never wavered in her determination to go to California. Her way and his family’s would definitely part before the first of October.
Faith leaned over the back seat and thumped Sammy on the arm. “Retard, I told you not to yodel!” She yelled cheerfully over the music.
“You were yodeling too, bitch!” Sammy snapped back, quick to take offense, as adolescent hormones raged through his system.
John pulled over instantly on to the side of the highway, turning off the car radio.
“Don’t ever talk to a woman like that again.” John ordered his youngest son, disgusted at him.
“Sorry sir.” Sammy mumbled resentfully.
“I don’t care, Mr. Winchester.” Faith defended Sammy. She kinda did, but she knew Sammy didn’t mean it. She called John - Mr. Winchester, because there was no way an uptight drill sergeant clone, was the type of man who wanted to be called by their first name by a teenager and there was no way she was calling him ‘sir’.
“Well you should.” John glanced over his shoulder at her appalled, turning onto the highway again. Christ Faith possessed low self esteem in lots of ways. She was letting Dean bone her for a start.
John loved Dean, but he knew his son was callously using the girl as a real life blow up sex toy.
Dean always expected Faith to leave them after a week in his heart of hearts, and was having trouble adjusting to sharing a room every night with a chick who didn’t think the sun shone out of his ass. Which was how Dean thought a girlfriend should act towards him, well be more sweet and polite anyway - respectful and stuff. Not that Faith was his girlfriend, Dean kept reminding himself. And the mind blowing sex fortunately made up for her contradicting him about crap every second sentence.
“What spook are you and Dean gonna ghost-bust tonight again?” Faith changed the subject.
“Should be a run of the mill exorcism of a dead child.” John answered, well aware Faith knew every detail already.
Faith worked out what the Winchesters were hunting exactly, on day four with them. She offered immediately to help but was politely refused as it being too unsafe for her. Faith thought that freaking funny and she thought the right word might be ‘ironic’.
She knew she must keep it a secret about her being a slayer from the general public, her watcher always made that clear. And if she told the Winchesters about Kakistos they might want to help her and that would be way too dangerous for them.
The final thing that made her not confess to the Winchesters about her real identity, her calling, followed a conversation she held in bed on her eighth night with Dean.
“So ever run into vamps, you know, vampires?” Faith rested her head on his shoulder, both of them covered in post coital perspiration, acerbated by their room’s air conditioning unit not working.
“They’re extinct.” Dean informed her firmly, stating all the reasons why this clearly happened to be the case.
“Uh huh. And how do you explain all the people who die of blood loss in big cities, pal?” Faith persisted, enjoying the temporary feeling of closeness with another human, having sex with Dean constantly brought about.
“Shape-shifters, malevolent spirits, demons.” Dean stroked his hand affectionately through her sweaty tangled hair. She was the best, tightest, lay he’d ever encountered to date. Made him wonder what other hot experienced chicks lay out yonder in the universe waiting for him.
“Yeah, and vampires are demons, right?” Faith batted his hand away from her hair, it felt irritating in the heat.
“Faith, I think I know a little bit more about demons than you, honey. You musta read too many Anne Rice books in the library today with Sammy.” Dean couldn’t believe where Sammy and Faith spent their day because the local library was free and air conditioned. Apparently Faith spent her time reading ‘Interview with a Vampire’ while there.
“So you know everythin’, huh Dean?” Faith knew he didn’t. “Ever heard of ‘vampire slayers’? The Anne Rice Book mentioned them. Teenage girls, super strong, who can stake vampires quicker than a priest can feel up a choir boy?”
“Interesting pipe dream, you’ve got going there. Chicks don’t make good hunters. But you make great baby sitters.” Dean placed his hand over her breast, kneading. “Great…” Losing his train of thought, he shuffled down the narrow bed and parted Faith’s thighs wide, kissing, nibbling and licking the soft inner skin. His fingers gently opened her crotch to him, he lowered his mouth, the damp coarse curls on her mound tickling his nose briefly, as he positioned himself in a more conducive way for the task at hand. He enjoyed making her come for the hell of it, but he could do without a crick in his neck.
Faith thought fleeting, what a dick Dean was sometimes. Thinking stopped happening for her the minute he started to eat her out. Faith pressed her head back on the pillow, arching her back, pushing her groin in his face to encourage him to suck and lick her harder, moaning unable to stop herself, after he slid two curving fingers inside her and began to work them in and out.
***
2007
***
“Christ you’re a dick, Dean.” Faith rolled her eyes, flicking her ash into the fireplace. “That stunt was completely lame-brained, even for you and Sammy.” He would always be loyal and intent on helping people, she admired those qualities about him.
“So why were you wearing Big House orange? Even you couldn’t make that color hot.” Dean and Faith were lying side by side on the wooden floor by the fireplace. They’d pulled out the cushions from the couch to rest their upper bodies on and were most comfortable, if in danger of having their hair and clothes catch on fire from sparks coming off the burning wood in the fire place.
“Yeah I could. But I wore denim most of the time; I hate the color blue now. Remember the blue skirt I lived in that summer?” Faith remembered how his hand would lift her skirt, sliding up her leg unhurriedly.
Dean remembered how her thighs were firm, her skin soft and the small brown mole on the top of her right thigh. “What were you inside for?”
Faith took another gulp of beer. “Okay, going back to when I woke up from my coma.”
“The eight month time out for you? That happened because you got into a cat-fight with this other slayer - Buffy, over her boyfriend, and she accidentally knocked you off your apartment balcony?” Dean recalled, doubting Faith told the whole truth about that story.
“Correct. You always were a great listener.” Another thing Faith always liked about him. “I was kinda fucked up in the head from being, well, me. Went to L.A. to make a new start. But I took out my anger management issues on a potential pimp, and a few other assholes, and this chick in a nightclub who did nothing to me except have a whiny voice that bugged the crap outta me, and I got busted for it. So I went down on aggravated assault charges. It was a relief to be locked up, Dean; I was scaring the shit outta myself.”
He doubted she was telling the whole truth about this story too. Apart from being glad to be locked away where she couldn’t hurt people. He knew she always wanted to do the right thing deep down and events would always conspire against her to achieve this goal. She brought a lot of crap on herself, but she was fundamentally unlucky. Faith could always see the bright side of any shit deal that landed in her lap, he always was impressed by her basic Pollyanna-like attitude to things. If Pollyanna wore black leather and gave head like an angel that is.
Dean’s leg touched hers and he could feel the heat of her body seep through the material of her jeans onto his.
“How long were you inside for?”
“Two and a half years, could’ve been longer but I got let out early.” Faith wished it could all have happened like that. She wished Dean wasn’t stroking her hair back from her neck, asking where she got the scar from. He’d been staring at her face, her mouth, unashamedly for the past five minutes.
“Vampire, kicked his ass, he’s dust.” And Faith wished Angel wasn’t dust, she wished Dean would stop asking questions she didn’t want to answer.
She wished Dean would fuck her instead.
Dean recognized the way her eyes hooded for a nanosecond, confirming his suspicion she would be eager to share a bed with him tonight. Thank god, because he sure as hell wanted to make love to her one more time. Dean pressed his lips against hers, wrapping his hands round her head, pulling her close against him.
Their mouths parted to begin hedonistic re-exploration of each other.
Faith clutched her arm around him, pressing her body against him as hard as she could manage without hurting him. She never bothered to dream she’d be given a second shot like this by life, to say good-bye to Dean properly this time around.
***
Cactus Bluff
Kitchener County
South Texas
1998
***
The Rio Grande snaked its way lazily before Dean’s eyes as he skipped a stone across the slow drifting water in the hot midday sun. He could hear Faith moving on the bank behind him.
“Hey Dean, do you get hornets in Texas?” Faith called to him curiously. “Should I poke this hive thing with a stick?”
“God almighty!” Dean spun around in horror. “Get away from it!”
Faith smirked, standing untouched on the riverbank, without a nest in sight.
“Hilarious, you thought a black line snake was a rattlesnake the other week, don’t forget.” Dean walked over to her and spun her around. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
“No I’m not.” Faith never got giddy no matter how long he spun her. It drove him nuts trying to figure out why not.
Slayer balance naturally.
Faith pushed him down and sat astride on top of him. “Easy to take you off guard, wuss.”
“City slicker.” He crept his hands up her skirt.
“Do you wanna go again?” Faith pulled her tank top off instantly. She sure did.
Did bears crap in the woods? Of course he wanted to be inside her again, he was nineteen. He’d been hard the second he picked her up to twirl her. “Those hickey marks around your belly button have gone.” Dean squinted his eyes against the glare of the sun, disbelievingly.
“You didn’t suck as hard as you think you did, yesterday. You don’t suck, period pal.” Faith whispered, bending down to kiss him, unhooking her black bra at the same time.
“Neither do you.” Dean agreed whole heartedly, unbuckling his belt. Making love to a pretty girl by the shores of a river, it was kinda romantic, except Faith was a runaway who couldn’t wait to get to California and was screwing him in payment for the free ride. Or he was paying her for her free ride.
The only reason he held her fiercely in his arms, (after she collapsed sunburned and sweating on top of him) kissing her face repeatedly and telling Faith she was the cutest, hottest girl in the whole inbred town they were staying in tonight, was because she was.
Parasite and host cleaned themselves up and headed back to Dean’s motorcycle, hand in hand. John Winchester was due back this evening with Sammy, Faith and Dean spent the day in their absence hooning around the county for six hours.
The people in this town were freaking backwards, Faith reflected, as she held on tightly to Dean on the back of his motorcycle.
People stared at them wherever they went in the rural town because Faith and Dean were strangers. An old passerby didn’t understand a word Faith said, when she asked what a huge marquee by the river was being set up for.
The man stared at Faith like she arrived fresh from another planet, which Faith began to feel she might have.
“My girlfriend just wants to know what the deal with the tent is.” Dean smiled charmingly at the local yokel and put his arm calmingly around Faith’s shoulders. What a communication problem for everyone down here who drawled their ‘R’s and Faith who sometimes sounded like she used none. Dean happily volunteered to interpret before Faith blew a gasket.
She always seemed poised to fly off the handle, Sammy mentioned to Dean yesterday while Faith was in the shower.
Sammy should know, he witnessed her punch a fat, sweaty, guy in the face, for pawing her ass, breaking his nose as a result. Faith and Sammy were standing in a crowd watching some small town parade last week, before the incident. The fat, sweaty, guy had gone down like a light.
Faith pushed her way out of the shocked crowd, with Sammy in tow, quickly. “You see Sam, it takes forty eight muscles to frown, but only four to smack the crap outta an asshole who deserves it.”
One time in the library, Sammy glanced up excitedly from a book, looked at Faith’s arm, checked the page of the book he was reading and announced. “Your tattoo isn’t Celtic, it’s Greek.”
“Gonna be the mutoid, giant freak of the Hardy Boys? Looking up crap about my body art? Practicing your research, so you can join your old man and big bro, nailing spooks?” Faith narrowed her eyes and Sammy felt scared of her for the first time. “Mind your own damn business.”
Sammy did from that point on.
Tonight, after he’d come back from the weird father and son bonding day, John Winchester dragged him out on, which always seemed to coincide with John having a severe hangover, Sammy and Faith were going to a revival meeting in a tent erected by the river.
“They’ve snakes, laying on of hands, and people are gonna roll around the floor hollering and talkin’ in tongues, I’ve never seen crap like that before, have you?” Faith wore a clean black t-shirt and her blue skirt, hand washed once more and dry within minutes in the sweltering furnace that was Cactus Bluff that evening.
Sammy walked out of the motel unit with her into the heat of the night. A Holy Roller night sounded possibly entertaining.
Sammy stopped Faith short-cutting across a field of dry grass. “Snakes.” The Winchesters were becoming more and more amazed Faith made it alive as far as Florida with her ignorance of nature.
Faith previously stuck to big cities. That’s where the vampires existed that it was her duty to destroy. God she was bad, not fulfilling her calling the past two weeks, her mystic destiny. Acting like a freaking loser, a coward, trying to save her own miserable skin. Slayers were meant to die young. Faith prolonged the inevitable, she wasn’t so amazing she deserved to live she knew. But she didn’t want to die! Not yet anyway. And her natural survival instincts always made her run away whenever life got too overwhelming for her to handle.
Faith took the long way to the revival meeting, using the road with Sammy, her head was down, thinking about other depressing shit. There was no other polite way for Dean to describe her apart from his ‘girlfriend’ to an old man, Faith guessed. She didn’t want to think too hard about how she’d describe the set up between her and Dean to an outsider.
***
“Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” The evangelical minister banged on the pulpit. “If that was good enough for Saint Paul to say, it’s surely good enough for me. Lust! Liquor! You all commit these sins. Why some of the young people in this town have smoked marijuana!”
“Hear that Faith?” Sam whispered in Faith’s ear as she sat beside him in the audience, fanning herself with a pamphlet about true love waiting. “This town isn’t as bad as we first thought.”
Faith nodded in agreement. Sammy grinned and stretched out his long legs. The tent was packed, the seats were hard, and the minister was just getting starting.
“Whores’, jezebels’, painted scarlet women, leading good men into the pits of Hellfire and Brimstone.” The minister flung out his hand and pointed it straight at Faith it seemed. “I’ve seen them pollute your community and so have you! Writhing to that lecherous jungle music on MTV.”
Faith relaxed, the slavering nutcase wasn’t talking about her personally. She decided on the whole, the Roman Catholic Church services her grandparents used to take her to when she was little, although full of hypocritical B.S., were a vast improvement on this anti-chick crap.
The snakes were brought out and handled in a manner that would give an animal rights activist a nervous breakdown. The faith healing happened. Sammy sniggered and looked at Faith significantly. Faith rolled her eyes. Christ she hated her name sometimes. People writhed on the floor burbling nonsense, because as the minister pointed out repeatedly, if glossolalia was good enough for St Paul, it was good enough for him.
People were saved! Baptisms in the river were held. Someone in the crowd had a heart attack with over excitement and had to be given C.P.R. by a retired nurse before the doctor arrived.
The revival meeting ended and the good minister sought out stray lambs and fallen women and anyone female with nice legs basically, to lead back on the path of righteousness.
“So are you saved tonight, my young sister?” The minister was in his early forties, very good looking and held Faith’s hand with extra sincerity.
“I can just see you holdin’ me down in the water while my t-shirt gets wet, padre.” Faith withdrew her hand and wiped it on her skirt. “Save Sam here, he watches MTV a lot.”
***
“I thought it would be like that.” Sammy told Faith as they trudged back to the motel unit. Cars and trucks from the revival meeting passed them by quickly into the star filled night. “But there are real faith healers out there. The snakes were good value, huh?”
“Yeah, but…” Faith stopped as a dusty SUV slowed down beside them.
“Need a ride?” A bunch of youths were hanging out the windows, beer bottles in hand.
“No thanks.” Sammy refused politely. Crap, they were dead meat. “We’re fine.”
“What about ya sister? Don’t she need a ride?” One of the guys turned to his friends, inspired. “She can ride on me.”
The group entered into animated discussion on which of them Faith would like to fuck first and who would be the best for her if she would care to get in their vehicle with them.
“Why not ride your mom, lover? Isn’t that what ‘you’all’ do in this god forsaken dump?” Faith kept walking. Screw them.
“Shut up, Faith.” Sammy thought she owned more street smarts than this. There were six guys and only two of them.
The guys were baying and cat-calling non stop now.
“They can shut up and so can you.” Faith spat at Sammy pissed off. Why couldn’t men leave her the hell alone? She offered another helpful suggestion to the occupants of the SUV. “Fuck each other, once you’ve found your own pricks with a magnifying glass!”
“Are you crazy?” Sammy panicked. His Dad taught him how to defend himself, but there were six of the sons of bitches!
“That’s a question up for grabs.” Faith muttered under her breath. The good ole boy assholes were stopping their vehicle and climbing out.
“Ya not his sister and ya not from around these parts.” The driver announced with confidence. He was the brains of the group.
“I’m just lucky I guess.” Faith retorted, she and Sammy kept walking.
One of the men grabbed her arm and swung her around. “Hey! We’re talkin’ to you darlin’.”
Sammy long ago worked out guys shouldn’t do that to Faith.
***
‘I wanna know that you’ll tell me, I love to stay, take me to the river, drop me in the water’ Talking Heads played on the car radio. Dean stared moodily out into the darkness of the countryside.
His father running over a jackrabbit broke into his thoughts for a second.
“I hate doing that.” John sighed ruefully to himself, he always worried the animal bones would puncture the tires. It sometimes happened.
Dean went back to his internal torment. If he got emotionally attached to Faith, Dean was a freaking moron. Faith had this one dimple when she smiled, her scent was musky when they made love, she climbed up a tree without hesitation in Roswell, to rescue a stuck cat for a little kid, rolling her eyes when the terrified cat clawed her arm, saying her pain threshold was high and she was five by five.
She healed real fast from those scratches. She healed unnaturally fast from everything - bruises for example. Dean left those on her ankles and hips sometimes with his thumbs and fingers when they screwed. Faith couldn’t be a demon; she consumed enough salty junk food with Sammy in one sitting, watching a horror movie marathon on TV, to knock out an army of demons.
Faith would be leaving his life in September. Dean wished she didn’t have to. No. He was mighty glad she was moving on, because she took too long in the shower, could be cold and moody, and a real bitch sometimes. Faith was good bed practice until the real thing came along. The right girl for him. A girl resembling the way he remembered his mother. Not someone like Faith.
A Sheriffs car was parked outside the motel unit when John and Dean returned.
“Only took eighteen days.” John hoped to god, statuary rape charges weren’t going to be laid, or Sammy hadn’t gotten involved, in whatever the hell Faith must have done at the revival meeting, the two said they were going to tonight. Trouble.
Sammy’s left eye was black and he had a swollen lip. Faith had a bruise on her cheek and her clothes were ripped.
The sheriff urged Faith and Sammy to press charges against the six guys that attacked them. They were well known to be the town assholes.
The evangelical preacher sat in the living room. He told the sheriffs and John and Dean he intervened as he drove past Faith and Sammy being set upon, to attend a soul in distress, (an attractive widow who felt the pull of the flesh most strongly).
Sammy and Faith declined to press charges. John wished they could lead a normal life so the two could press charges against the bastards who roughed up his young son and tried to rape a girl. He almost burst with pride at being told how Sammy knocked two of the guys out stone cold, breaking another one’s arm.
Sammy sat subdued and quiet on the couch, not saying much. Faith breezed through everything, flirting with the cute deputy sheriff. Nah, she wasn’t traumatized, Sammy saved the day, the guy was her hero.
The Sheriffs left, the preacher left, and John urged Sammy to go to sleep.
Sammy shot a dirty look at Faith before he went to bed, she so owed him. It was the second time he’d felt scared of her, tonight. For one heart stopping minute he thought she was going to start laying into him too, she just stopped herself in time, coming down from her bloodlust frenzy and then the preacher pulled up in his car. Sammy wondered just what the preacher saw and why he lied too.
Dean entered his bedroom, conscious of his father’s curt whispered instructions while she showered, to leave Faith the hell alone tonight. His Dad didn’t need to tell Dean that, Dean got angry with his father over the stupidity of that unnecessary advice. He and his father were angry already that they couldn’t shoot with a rifle, the six attackers of Sammy and Faith. Stupid laws against homicide.
Dean was prepared to be very understanding with Faith, maybe she would prefer him to sleep in another room tonight? Or if she wanted to cuddle, a good cry to get the attack out of her system? Dean wanted to be a manly shoulder for her to lean on, in her hour of post traumatic shock.
He sat upright on one of the beds waiting for her to finish in the bathroom. If there was one time she surely was entitled to use up all the hot water it was tonight.
Faith walked over to him, dropped her towel on the floor and placed his hands on her breasts. “Get me off.”
Faith could have cheerfully gone on breaking every bone in those six pricks bodies, if Sammy hadn’t yelled at her repeatedly to stop already.
The only thing that worried Faith at present, apart from Dean treating her like spun glass, when she needed him to be pounding away inside of her, was why had the preacher lied for her?
***
AN:Reviews postive or negative are always appreciated.