fic: Fifteen Percent Concentrated Power of Will (SPN/BtVS; Dean/Faith, Sam)
Title: Fifteen Percent Concentrated Power of Will
Author: victoria p. [musesfool]
Summary: In which Dean and Faith fuck, and Sam has an existential crisis.
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: Dean, Sam, and Faith all belong to people who are not me.
Notes: Thanks to luzdeestrellas for encouragement and betaing. All errors are mine. Spoilers through "Hunted" for SPN, post-"Chosen" for BtVS
Word count: 2,898 words
Date: January 16, 2007
~*~
Fifteen Percent Concentrated Power of Will
The first time they fuck, he doesn't know her name, doesn't give her his. She doesn't ask, and he doesn't expect to ever see her again, though he wouldn't mind another round or three, somewhere more comfortable than the alley out back behind the dive bar where they met.
He knows another hustler when he sees one, though, and she's working the table like a pro, cleaning out guys too busy staring at the way her tits push up against the leather of her vest and the denim clings to the curves of her ass to pay attention to the way she's clearing the table, all blatant innuendo and topspin.
He's not immune, either, but he holds his own when it's finally his turn, watches her focus narrow and change as they play; she's less flamboyant as the game goes on, and more businesslike, once she realizes he's not distracted by her tricks. And maybe, just maybe, she's a little distracted by his. Interested, definitely, and not shy about it.
"You're pretty good with a stick," he says.
She grins, mouth red and lush around sharp, white teeth. "Baby, you have no idea."
It's all sweetheart and baby and fuck, yeah, just like that when he lifts her up against the brick wall in the alley and fucks her, her legs wrapped around his hips and her tongue hot in his mouth, her body clenching wet and tight around his dick when she comes, dragging him along with her, all white hot light behind his eyes and pleasure so intense it's nearly pain.
And then it's, See you 'round, sweetheart, and Have a good night, sugar, and she's just another girl in another town in his rearview mirror, nice to think about when he jerks off in the shower sometimes, but nobody special.
*
The second time they fuck, it's in her motel room, after they clean out a nest of vampires together.
He can't say he ever expected to see her again, let alone in the middle of the night in an abandoned barn in East Bumfuck, Tennessee, shoving what looks like a wooden stake into the chest of a vampire that laughs it off and tosses her against the wall like a ragdoll.
She goes down and pops back up like one of those inflatable plastic clowns Sam used to be scared of, with a right hook that floors one of the vampires.
Dean swings his machete to take out the one that's coming at him. "You have to cut off their heads," he tells her, and she produces a wicked looking knife from her boot and wades in like a pro, dipping and twirling like something out of a John Woo movie, except Chow Yun Fat never looked that good in black leather pants and a red tank top.
He's distracted watching her, and Sammy has to get a vamp coming at him from behind, so he gets back to business, and the next time he looks up, she's riding piggyback on a vamp, legs wrapped round its waist, trying to saw through its neck with her knife, which isn't really suited to the task. The vampire knocks the knife from her hand, so she grabs it by the chin and forehead and twists, muscles in her arms moving smoothly under the skin, like it's no effort at all. Dean probably shouldn't find that as much of a turn-on as he does.
The vampire goes down and she jumps clear, not even breathing hard.
"Hey," Dean shouts, and when she looks up, he tosses her the machete. She catches it easily and decapitates the vampire on the follow-through.
"Wooden stakes don't work," he tells her over beer and burgers at the closest bar.
"They do where I come from."
"And where's that?" Sam asks. He didn't fuck her in an alley (though given the way she's looking at him, he probably could have, and given the way he's smiling back, he maybe even would have, if Dean hadn't gotten there first), so he can ask the questions Dean can't, won't, because they don't mean the same thing coming from him.
"Here and there," she answers. She takes a long swallow of beer and laughs, though she hasn't said anything funny. "Not so much here, really, as there." Sam looks skeptical. She steals a fry off his plate, pushes it around in the ketchup, and eats it. Then she licks the salt off her fingers and grins. "Your boyfriend want to come along this time, join the party?"
Dean holds his breath, waits for Sam's answer.
Sam shakes his head. "We're brothers," he says. "And no, thanks."
She gets up, pulls Dean out of the booth, and says, "Maybe next time." Sam chokes on his beer, and she laughs again; it sounds genuine this time.
Her motel room is pretty much exactly the same as theirs, except with less stuff in it, and only one king-size bed. She pushes him down onto it, crawls on top of him, smile as sharp as his machete.
He thinks maybe he can question her, get her talking while they fuck, but his brain shorts out when she rolls the condom onto him with her mouth and then climbs up into his lap to ride him hard. He's barely breathing and he can still feel the slow, fading pulse of orgasm in his veins when she pushes him onto his back and shoves a pillow under his head. His fingers dig into the firm flesh of her ass while he licks at her wet cunt, sucks her swollen clit until she comes again with a low hoarse grunt that vibrates through him like thunder.
In the morning, when he comes out of the shower, he finds her dressed and sitting on the end of the bed, his phone and hers in her hands.
"Faith," she starts.
He interrupts before she can say anything else. "Sorry, sweetheart, that ain't my gig."
"Don't be a dick, Dean." And okay, she's been playing with his phone, so of course she knows his name now, but it still kind of catches him off guard. "My name is Faith. I programmed my number into your phone. Gimme a call if you ever need help. Vampires are kinda my specialty, but I kill all sorts of other beasties, too."
He nods, doesn't mention that she was going about the vampire-slaying all wrong. She's got the moves, even if her research could use a little work. He can't blame her on that one. "You got my number?"
She holds up her phone. "Yeah."
"Well, then." This is why he tries to leave before they wake up; he sucks at small talk, and hates feeling like there's more he could be giving any of these women, hates that there are times when he wishes for more himself.
"Don't worry, sweet cheeks, I'm leaving. Check-out's eleven, so you have until then to get your ass dressed and gone."
But she kisses him before she goes; she's not wearing lipstick, and she tastes like coffee and possibility.
He doesn't delete her number.
*
The third time they fuck, she blows into town like a hurricane, works out her frustration that they didn't leave her anything to kill with a marathon fucking session that makes Dean wonder if he's ever going to walk again. Not that he's complaining.
She trails her fingers over his scars, and he tells her his stories, secretly glad to have found someone else he can share them with.
"This one," a thick white stripe about two inches long on the back of his thigh, "is from a kappa bite--I was fifteen and stupid. My dad--" It still hurts to talk about him, but it kind of helps, too. "My dad saved my ass." He traces the thin white mark on her abdomen first with his fingers, then his lips. "You?"
"Knife fight. I--I made some bad choices, and B--She was just doing her job, cleaning up the mess we made." She rolls away, sits up with her back to him, and he knows he's hit a nerve. She runs her hand through her tangled, sweaty hair, and for the first time, she looks awkward, young. She's probably the same age as Sammy, at most, and she's got the same weary eyes. "What do you know about the Slayer?"
He shakes his head, then realizes she can't see him. "They rock the fuck out, but that Nazi shit is more than a little creepy."
"Not the band, Slayer, the Slayer. One girl in all the world--" She stops, and he sits up, puts a hand on her shoulder, rubs gently. "It's different here, I think. I haven't found any mention of the Slayer, or the Council, in any of the books I've checked, but sure as shit there's still a Wolfram and Hart."
"Wait, what? Wolfram and Hart? Aren't they lawyers?"
"Yeah, why? Do you--"
He gets up, grabs his phone, and calls Sam.
*
They sit in the back booth of the bar, and Sam says, "Yeah, I interviewed with them to do an internship in their LA office the summer before my senior year. But Jess was staying in Palo Alto, and I didn't want to be that far away from her, so I turned it down. Everyone said I was crazy, that interning there would make me contacts I could use to get ahead, and if I did well, I'd be set for life."
She mutters something that sounds like, "For life, and the afterlife, too," but Dean thinks he might be hearing wrong. The music in the place is loud. Then she asks, more clearly, "You set up the interview, or they called you?"
"I applied, but everyone told me they only took law school students, so I didn't expect them to call. But they did."
She nods. "They probably wanted to snap you right up, get you on their team, take you out of the equation. You've probably killed some of their clients."
"Killed some of their--" Sam says.
At the same time Dean says, "What the fuck?"
She pinches Dean's thigh and he gives a mock yelp. "They're a demonic law firm, sweet cheeks. Their senior partners are pretty high-ranking in terms of hellspawn."
"You gotta be kidding me."
"If I'm lying, I'm dying," she answers, way too easily. "Look 'em up. Not in Forbes or whatever, but in one of your grimoires or whatever you guys use to do your research. You'll find Wolfram and Hart has a tentacle in every bad thing that comes down the pike, and the ones it doesn't, well, it wants to."
Sam bolts to his feet, jolting the table, making the drinks shake like an earthquake's just rolled through, and then he's out the door, face twisting in anger and pain.
"Sam. Sammy." Dean goes after him, can't not.
Sam's pacing out in the parking lot, shaking his head as if he's in the middle of a conversation with himself, ignoring the cold and the rain. "They picked me, Dean." He flings his arms wide, then draws them in, taps his chest with one hand. "They knew, and they fucking picked me, because of whatever it is that's in me."
"We don't know that."
"If what Faith says is true--"
"It is," she puts in, and he turns and glares at her, because this is private, family business, and none of hers. She doesn't back down. "You don't believe me, you can check it out yourself." They both just look at her, so she shrugs, holds up her hands, palms out, refusing responsibility. "Whatever. Listen, don't listen, no skin off my nose. But if you got something they want--and it sounds like you do--you better be a lot more careful than you have been. 'Cause they're evil sons of bitches, and they've got spies everywhere."
"And they want me to be evil, too." Sam scrubs his wet hair back off his forehead, and for a few seconds, he looks like the little kid Dean used to give piggyback rides to.
"I'm not gonna let that happen, Sammy, you know that."
"What if you can't stop it, Dean? You can't protect me forever. And you shouldn't have to."
Which is what it always comes down to, and Dean hasn't been able to stop thinking about it since Dad whispered in his ear, but he doesn't want to think about it right now.
"I gotta take a leak," he says, heading back into the bar, not checking to see if they follow.
They do. They're back in the booth when he comes out of the men's room, new pints of beer on the table, and a round of shots, too.
Sam is telling Faith about the wendigo hunt, how they killed it with flare guns. "We don't have superpowers," he says, looking at her like she's got a secret, and Dean remembers the way she fought against the vampires, isn't surprised Sam's noticed, too. He wonders if she's one of the kids like Sam, wonders if she fits the pattern, if there even is a pattern. "We've learned to be flexible."
"In Cleveland, I jumped into a hellmouth to close it," she says, and there's something in her tone, in her eyes, dark and bruised and tired, that makes him believe it, though in all their research, they've never come across a way to actually close a hellmouth. He's always kind of wanted to drop some C4 into one and see what popped out, but neither Dad nor Sam has ever been drunk enough to go along with that plan. Faith, on the other hand, sounds like she might. "Woke up in a graveyard in Kansas, in a world where I never existed before." She knocks back the shot and bangs the glass down on the table. "I've kinda made flexible my middle name."
"You jumped into a hellmouth to close it?" Sam asks. He reaches out, then draws his hand back as if he's not sure he's allowed to touch her.
Faith has no such reservations. She grabs Sam's hand in hers, examines it with interest, running her fingers along his in a way that makes Dean shift a little in his seat and clear his throat. She grins at him. "And came out the other side."
"Is that part of this slayer thing you keep mentioning?" Dean asks.
She sips her beer, and she doesn't look insane, but Dean knows you can never be too sure. "Yeah."
"So when you say you're not from here, you mean you're not from here?" Sam asks.
"That's what I mean, yeah."
He and Dean exchange a glance and Dean says, "Okay." Because there's some weird shit out there, and she could be crazy, or she could be telling the truth, and he can't judge right now.
She laughs again and shakes her head. "You don't have to believe me," she repeats, "but it's true."
"But why?" Sam asks, and Dean remembers him asking that question over and over again; his whole life, all Sam's done is ask why. Sometimes, Dean wishes he had an answer for him. Mostly, Dean wishes the answers he does have didn't suck so much.
"Someone had to."
"Why?" Sam asks again.
"Because otherwise, a lot of people were gonna die." She takes a long drink of beer. "There was a prophecy--"
Sam leans forward, interested. "A prophecy?"
"Yeah. But that doesn't mean shit, does it? When it comes down to it, you have a choice." She leans in, too, fingers tightening on Sam's hand, and Dean recognizes the determination in her eyes. "And what we choose makes us who we are. I made some bad choices when I was younger, and I didn't want to be that person anymore. So I made another choice." She looks around the bar, then back at Sam. "You've gotta take control, though, not let other people do it for you, and then complain about how it turns out." She glances at Dean, who doesn't look away. Fuck that. He'll make the choices if Sam can't, and he'll take the blame if he has to, as long as Sammy's still standing at the end of the day. He's been doing it their whole lives, and only one person has a chance of making him change that, and it ain't Faith. "Long as you're still breathing, there's always another choice."
"What if none of the choices are good?" Sam sounds like he's about six, but Faith doesn't relent.
She shakes her head, lays her free hand on her belly, over the scar Dean kissed earlier. "Sometimes, you're the sacrifice, and sometimes, you're the knife." He doesn't like the sound of that, but they've been drinking all night, so who the fuck knows what it means? "Didn't work out too bad for me." She finishes her beer, nudges Dean so she can get out of the booth. "Story time's over for tonight, boys," she says, grabbing his hand. "Let's go back to the motel and fuck."
*
Faith is gone when Dean wakes up in the morning. There's no note, but there are two fresh cups of coffee and a box of doughnuts on top of the television.
He knows she's got his number. He hopes she calls.
end
***
Note: Title from "Remember the Name" by Fort Minor. Shut up. I love that song.
***
Feedback is beloved.
~*~
Author: victoria p. [musesfool]
Summary: In which Dean and Faith fuck, and Sam has an existential crisis.
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: Dean, Sam, and Faith all belong to people who are not me.
Notes: Thanks to luzdeestrellas for encouragement and betaing. All errors are mine. Spoilers through "Hunted" for SPN, post-"Chosen" for BtVS
Word count: 2,898 words
Date: January 16, 2007
~*~
Fifteen Percent Concentrated Power of Will
The first time they fuck, he doesn't know her name, doesn't give her his. She doesn't ask, and he doesn't expect to ever see her again, though he wouldn't mind another round or three, somewhere more comfortable than the alley out back behind the dive bar where they met.
He knows another hustler when he sees one, though, and she's working the table like a pro, cleaning out guys too busy staring at the way her tits push up against the leather of her vest and the denim clings to the curves of her ass to pay attention to the way she's clearing the table, all blatant innuendo and topspin.
He's not immune, either, but he holds his own when it's finally his turn, watches her focus narrow and change as they play; she's less flamboyant as the game goes on, and more businesslike, once she realizes he's not distracted by her tricks. And maybe, just maybe, she's a little distracted by his. Interested, definitely, and not shy about it.
"You're pretty good with a stick," he says.
She grins, mouth red and lush around sharp, white teeth. "Baby, you have no idea."
It's all sweetheart and baby and fuck, yeah, just like that when he lifts her up against the brick wall in the alley and fucks her, her legs wrapped around his hips and her tongue hot in his mouth, her body clenching wet and tight around his dick when she comes, dragging him along with her, all white hot light behind his eyes and pleasure so intense it's nearly pain.
And then it's, See you 'round, sweetheart, and Have a good night, sugar, and she's just another girl in another town in his rearview mirror, nice to think about when he jerks off in the shower sometimes, but nobody special.
*
The second time they fuck, it's in her motel room, after they clean out a nest of vampires together.
He can't say he ever expected to see her again, let alone in the middle of the night in an abandoned barn in East Bumfuck, Tennessee, shoving what looks like a wooden stake into the chest of a vampire that laughs it off and tosses her against the wall like a ragdoll.
She goes down and pops back up like one of those inflatable plastic clowns Sam used to be scared of, with a right hook that floors one of the vampires.
Dean swings his machete to take out the one that's coming at him. "You have to cut off their heads," he tells her, and she produces a wicked looking knife from her boot and wades in like a pro, dipping and twirling like something out of a John Woo movie, except Chow Yun Fat never looked that good in black leather pants and a red tank top.
He's distracted watching her, and Sammy has to get a vamp coming at him from behind, so he gets back to business, and the next time he looks up, she's riding piggyback on a vamp, legs wrapped round its waist, trying to saw through its neck with her knife, which isn't really suited to the task. The vampire knocks the knife from her hand, so she grabs it by the chin and forehead and twists, muscles in her arms moving smoothly under the skin, like it's no effort at all. Dean probably shouldn't find that as much of a turn-on as he does.
The vampire goes down and she jumps clear, not even breathing hard.
"Hey," Dean shouts, and when she looks up, he tosses her the machete. She catches it easily and decapitates the vampire on the follow-through.
"Wooden stakes don't work," he tells her over beer and burgers at the closest bar.
"They do where I come from."
"And where's that?" Sam asks. He didn't fuck her in an alley (though given the way she's looking at him, he probably could have, and given the way he's smiling back, he maybe even would have, if Dean hadn't gotten there first), so he can ask the questions Dean can't, won't, because they don't mean the same thing coming from him.
"Here and there," she answers. She takes a long swallow of beer and laughs, though she hasn't said anything funny. "Not so much here, really, as there." Sam looks skeptical. She steals a fry off his plate, pushes it around in the ketchup, and eats it. Then she licks the salt off her fingers and grins. "Your boyfriend want to come along this time, join the party?"
Dean holds his breath, waits for Sam's answer.
Sam shakes his head. "We're brothers," he says. "And no, thanks."
She gets up, pulls Dean out of the booth, and says, "Maybe next time." Sam chokes on his beer, and she laughs again; it sounds genuine this time.
Her motel room is pretty much exactly the same as theirs, except with less stuff in it, and only one king-size bed. She pushes him down onto it, crawls on top of him, smile as sharp as his machete.
He thinks maybe he can question her, get her talking while they fuck, but his brain shorts out when she rolls the condom onto him with her mouth and then climbs up into his lap to ride him hard. He's barely breathing and he can still feel the slow, fading pulse of orgasm in his veins when she pushes him onto his back and shoves a pillow under his head. His fingers dig into the firm flesh of her ass while he licks at her wet cunt, sucks her swollen clit until she comes again with a low hoarse grunt that vibrates through him like thunder.
In the morning, when he comes out of the shower, he finds her dressed and sitting on the end of the bed, his phone and hers in her hands.
"Faith," she starts.
He interrupts before she can say anything else. "Sorry, sweetheart, that ain't my gig."
"Don't be a dick, Dean." And okay, she's been playing with his phone, so of course she knows his name now, but it still kind of catches him off guard. "My name is Faith. I programmed my number into your phone. Gimme a call if you ever need help. Vampires are kinda my specialty, but I kill all sorts of other beasties, too."
He nods, doesn't mention that she was going about the vampire-slaying all wrong. She's got the moves, even if her research could use a little work. He can't blame her on that one. "You got my number?"
She holds up her phone. "Yeah."
"Well, then." This is why he tries to leave before they wake up; he sucks at small talk, and hates feeling like there's more he could be giving any of these women, hates that there are times when he wishes for more himself.
"Don't worry, sweet cheeks, I'm leaving. Check-out's eleven, so you have until then to get your ass dressed and gone."
But she kisses him before she goes; she's not wearing lipstick, and she tastes like coffee and possibility.
He doesn't delete her number.
*
The third time they fuck, she blows into town like a hurricane, works out her frustration that they didn't leave her anything to kill with a marathon fucking session that makes Dean wonder if he's ever going to walk again. Not that he's complaining.
She trails her fingers over his scars, and he tells her his stories, secretly glad to have found someone else he can share them with.
"This one," a thick white stripe about two inches long on the back of his thigh, "is from a kappa bite--I was fifteen and stupid. My dad--" It still hurts to talk about him, but it kind of helps, too. "My dad saved my ass." He traces the thin white mark on her abdomen first with his fingers, then his lips. "You?"
"Knife fight. I--I made some bad choices, and B--She was just doing her job, cleaning up the mess we made." She rolls away, sits up with her back to him, and he knows he's hit a nerve. She runs her hand through her tangled, sweaty hair, and for the first time, she looks awkward, young. She's probably the same age as Sammy, at most, and she's got the same weary eyes. "What do you know about the Slayer?"
He shakes his head, then realizes she can't see him. "They rock the fuck out, but that Nazi shit is more than a little creepy."
"Not the band, Slayer, the Slayer. One girl in all the world--" She stops, and he sits up, puts a hand on her shoulder, rubs gently. "It's different here, I think. I haven't found any mention of the Slayer, or the Council, in any of the books I've checked, but sure as shit there's still a Wolfram and Hart."
"Wait, what? Wolfram and Hart? Aren't they lawyers?"
"Yeah, why? Do you--"
He gets up, grabs his phone, and calls Sam.
*
They sit in the back booth of the bar, and Sam says, "Yeah, I interviewed with them to do an internship in their LA office the summer before my senior year. But Jess was staying in Palo Alto, and I didn't want to be that far away from her, so I turned it down. Everyone said I was crazy, that interning there would make me contacts I could use to get ahead, and if I did well, I'd be set for life."
She mutters something that sounds like, "For life, and the afterlife, too," but Dean thinks he might be hearing wrong. The music in the place is loud. Then she asks, more clearly, "You set up the interview, or they called you?"
"I applied, but everyone told me they only took law school students, so I didn't expect them to call. But they did."
She nods. "They probably wanted to snap you right up, get you on their team, take you out of the equation. You've probably killed some of their clients."
"Killed some of their--" Sam says.
At the same time Dean says, "What the fuck?"
She pinches Dean's thigh and he gives a mock yelp. "They're a demonic law firm, sweet cheeks. Their senior partners are pretty high-ranking in terms of hellspawn."
"You gotta be kidding me."
"If I'm lying, I'm dying," she answers, way too easily. "Look 'em up. Not in Forbes or whatever, but in one of your grimoires or whatever you guys use to do your research. You'll find Wolfram and Hart has a tentacle in every bad thing that comes down the pike, and the ones it doesn't, well, it wants to."
Sam bolts to his feet, jolting the table, making the drinks shake like an earthquake's just rolled through, and then he's out the door, face twisting in anger and pain.
"Sam. Sammy." Dean goes after him, can't not.
Sam's pacing out in the parking lot, shaking his head as if he's in the middle of a conversation with himself, ignoring the cold and the rain. "They picked me, Dean." He flings his arms wide, then draws them in, taps his chest with one hand. "They knew, and they fucking picked me, because of whatever it is that's in me."
"We don't know that."
"If what Faith says is true--"
"It is," she puts in, and he turns and glares at her, because this is private, family business, and none of hers. She doesn't back down. "You don't believe me, you can check it out yourself." They both just look at her, so she shrugs, holds up her hands, palms out, refusing responsibility. "Whatever. Listen, don't listen, no skin off my nose. But if you got something they want--and it sounds like you do--you better be a lot more careful than you have been. 'Cause they're evil sons of bitches, and they've got spies everywhere."
"And they want me to be evil, too." Sam scrubs his wet hair back off his forehead, and for a few seconds, he looks like the little kid Dean used to give piggyback rides to.
"I'm not gonna let that happen, Sammy, you know that."
"What if you can't stop it, Dean? You can't protect me forever. And you shouldn't have to."
Which is what it always comes down to, and Dean hasn't been able to stop thinking about it since Dad whispered in his ear, but he doesn't want to think about it right now.
"I gotta take a leak," he says, heading back into the bar, not checking to see if they follow.
They do. They're back in the booth when he comes out of the men's room, new pints of beer on the table, and a round of shots, too.
Sam is telling Faith about the wendigo hunt, how they killed it with flare guns. "We don't have superpowers," he says, looking at her like she's got a secret, and Dean remembers the way she fought against the vampires, isn't surprised Sam's noticed, too. He wonders if she's one of the kids like Sam, wonders if she fits the pattern, if there even is a pattern. "We've learned to be flexible."
"In Cleveland, I jumped into a hellmouth to close it," she says, and there's something in her tone, in her eyes, dark and bruised and tired, that makes him believe it, though in all their research, they've never come across a way to actually close a hellmouth. He's always kind of wanted to drop some C4 into one and see what popped out, but neither Dad nor Sam has ever been drunk enough to go along with that plan. Faith, on the other hand, sounds like she might. "Woke up in a graveyard in Kansas, in a world where I never existed before." She knocks back the shot and bangs the glass down on the table. "I've kinda made flexible my middle name."
"You jumped into a hellmouth to close it?" Sam asks. He reaches out, then draws his hand back as if he's not sure he's allowed to touch her.
Faith has no such reservations. She grabs Sam's hand in hers, examines it with interest, running her fingers along his in a way that makes Dean shift a little in his seat and clear his throat. She grins at him. "And came out the other side."
"Is that part of this slayer thing you keep mentioning?" Dean asks.
She sips her beer, and she doesn't look insane, but Dean knows you can never be too sure. "Yeah."
"So when you say you're not from here, you mean you're not from here?" Sam asks.
"That's what I mean, yeah."
He and Dean exchange a glance and Dean says, "Okay." Because there's some weird shit out there, and she could be crazy, or she could be telling the truth, and he can't judge right now.
She laughs again and shakes her head. "You don't have to believe me," she repeats, "but it's true."
"But why?" Sam asks, and Dean remembers him asking that question over and over again; his whole life, all Sam's done is ask why. Sometimes, Dean wishes he had an answer for him. Mostly, Dean wishes the answers he does have didn't suck so much.
"Someone had to."
"Why?" Sam asks again.
"Because otherwise, a lot of people were gonna die." She takes a long drink of beer. "There was a prophecy--"
Sam leans forward, interested. "A prophecy?"
"Yeah. But that doesn't mean shit, does it? When it comes down to it, you have a choice." She leans in, too, fingers tightening on Sam's hand, and Dean recognizes the determination in her eyes. "And what we choose makes us who we are. I made some bad choices when I was younger, and I didn't want to be that person anymore. So I made another choice." She looks around the bar, then back at Sam. "You've gotta take control, though, not let other people do it for you, and then complain about how it turns out." She glances at Dean, who doesn't look away. Fuck that. He'll make the choices if Sam can't, and he'll take the blame if he has to, as long as Sammy's still standing at the end of the day. He's been doing it their whole lives, and only one person has a chance of making him change that, and it ain't Faith. "Long as you're still breathing, there's always another choice."
"What if none of the choices are good?" Sam sounds like he's about six, but Faith doesn't relent.
She shakes her head, lays her free hand on her belly, over the scar Dean kissed earlier. "Sometimes, you're the sacrifice, and sometimes, you're the knife." He doesn't like the sound of that, but they've been drinking all night, so who the fuck knows what it means? "Didn't work out too bad for me." She finishes her beer, nudges Dean so she can get out of the booth. "Story time's over for tonight, boys," she says, grabbing his hand. "Let's go back to the motel and fuck."
*
Faith is gone when Dean wakes up in the morning. There's no note, but there are two fresh cups of coffee and a box of doughnuts on top of the television.
He knows she's got his number. He hopes she calls.
end
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Note: Title from "Remember the Name" by Fort Minor. Shut up. I love that song.
***
Feedback is beloved.
~*~