Chapter 11: Your Papa never told you about right and wrong
Part One
Flashback: Las Vegas Demon Bar August 2005.
"My god Xander, you've got to check out the mechanical bull man." Faith said excitedly, dashing up to Xander at the Las Vegas Demon bar. Faith automatically checked out the guy Xander was talking to, an incredibly handsome dark haired man of forty odd. "If you fall off, it works as a sacrifice to Mithras. But it looks a great ride. I'm real tempted to go on it."
"Okay, I'm here to say no. No Faith." Xander said sternly.
"You're my pal Xander." Faith said giving him a hug. "What would I do without you, helping me keep on the straight and narrow?"
"I love that you can smoke inside this place. Demon bars are the best man!" she reached for her cigarettes in her hand bag. The man Xander was with automatically lit her cigarette for her.
"Faith, this is John Constantine." Xander said to Faith. "He's helped me out once or twice in Cleveland. He just helped me out again tonight"
Faith shook Constantine's hand. "Ooh, strong warm grip." She flirted outrageously. "I like that in a man."
"So you're a slayer?" Constantine asked her, he appreciated the way her tight red dress clung to her body. "I've met Buffy in Rome, do you know her?"
"Yeah, Buffy rocks doesn't she?" Faith said laughing; assuming Constantine must be sweet on Buffy, like most men who met her. "Xander's, Buffy's best bud though. You want Buffy information, Xander's your man."
"She's not my type. I prefer brunettes." Constantine said bluntly. He definitely preferred the girl in front of him. "Can I get you a drink?"
"Yeah, shot of bourbon thanks. So how did you help out Xander here?" Faith inquired sitting on Xander's lap and ruffling his hair affectionately, there were no spare bar stools.
"Weirdest thing," Xander explained "This demon just starting picking a fight with me at the pool table, for no reason. Constantine was passing by on his way out and stepped in, saved my ass from a beating with a pool cue."
"Did he persuade you to stay to meet his new girlfriend?" Faith asked Constantine confidingly. "Apparently the love of his life is flying in from Cleveland tonight."
"Do the great loves of one's life come from Ohio?" Constantine joked sardonically. "Must be where I've been going wrong all my life."
"Wait till you meet Ellen, she's quite something." Xander said smugly. "She's the one."
"I'm so happy for you Harris." Faith said with mock excitement, squeezing Xander again.
"So, you've no love in your life Constantine?" Faith inquired knocking her bourbon back. "You look like a loner."
"You're a little drunk aren't you kid?" Constantine said shortly to her.
Faith got a bottle of water from the bar keep. She was feeling woozy and she didn't want to get drunk, it just led to trouble and she was not a self destructive person any more. She was not. Faith kept telling herself this, constantly aware of the divorce decree, sitting like a leaden weight in her hand bag.
The evening wore on, Faith danced with Xander, at one with the music. She was totally aware of the attention she was getting from men and demons, only the winged angels seemed impervious to her charms.
Constantine sat at the bar chatting with his friend Chas, a recently made angel. Constantine kept finding his eyes drawn to Faith unwillingly. If the woman had sex the way she danced, she'd be an amazing lay.
"That girl is just looking for trouble, isn't she?" Constantine commented, wondering why he gave a shit.
"She's lonely." Chas said to him, hating himself for what he had been instructed to do. "Her persona is just an act to cover up a frightened child."
"She doesn't look like a child from here." Constantine said looking at the way Faith was now rubbing her pelvis against a female vampire on the dance floor.
"Don't be hard on her Constantine; she's in real emotional pain." Chas insisted.
"You sound like an L.A. version of Dr. Phil, since you've got feathers." Constantine said rudely.
"You should be kind to her." Chas told him.
"I'm unlikely to speak to her again Chas. She'll be probably crawl home with some shithead tonight, once Harris's new girlfriend arrives." Constantine snorted "Anyway she's probably eighteen, what does she talk about acne cream?"
"I'm sure you'll run into her again. She's a slayer, you're an exorcist, talk about that." Chas suggested.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to match us up." Constantine shrugged, knocking back his bourbon.
Faith walked through the bars back rooms upset, how rude of Xander to fuck off like that with his new girlfriend. They were probably screwing somewhere. Faith supposed Xander took longer to come these days, than he had when he was a teenager. She needed somewhere to lie low for a while, there was this stupid demon that kept hitting on her and if she got into a fight she might get thrown out.
Constantine sat in a back room, wondering what was keeping Chas. The curtain parted and Faith walked in cheeks blazing, eyes shining.
"Do you mind company Constantine?" Faith asked swaying slightly, confident in the fact men never minded her company.
Constantine noticed how on the verge of tears she seemed. He supposed it wouldn't kill him to be nice to the girl.
"I make exceptions, when company looks like you..." he shrugged. Faith was mind blowing in her sexiness.
Faith sat on the chair and took another drink. "So you exorcise demons huh? Isn't it kinda fucked, you hanging out at the same bars as them?"
"I saw a group of vampires here you weren't staking." Constantine observed coolly, taking another drink himself.
They talked about demons for a while, their conversation laden with double entendres. Excusing herself, Faith got up to go to the restroom. Xander was still nowhere to be found, so she staggered back to Constantine, who was still sitting alone.
"You honestly don't mind me being here?" she asked collapsing in a chair. She didn't want to inflict herself on anyone, if she wasn't wanted. Although in her onset of drunken pity, she couldn't see why anyone would want her for anything but sex.
"No, I think my friend's not going to turn up." Constantine said unaccountably pleased she had returned. "Must be out saving someone's soul."
"I can't find Xander anywhere." Faith complained. "I hope he hasn't left. I hate it when people leave." she slurred, drunken tears filling her eyes.
"I'm going to the restroom, stay here." Constantine instructed her.
Queuing at the urinal, the condom vending machine seemed very prominent. Despising himself more every more moment, Constantine put coins in the vending machine's slot.
Faith was sitting weeping silently in her chair, when Constantine returned. A flash of pity for her came over him. He walked over to her and gently pulled her up to her feet.
"Is this your own private drunken crying jag, or can anyone join it." Constantine asked her.
He gathered her into his arms, amazed at the underlying strength in her slender body. Constantine let her sob on his shoulder until she calmed down. He felt the biggest heel in the world, knowing what would happen next, as surely as night follows day.
Faith looked up at him and kissed him hesitantly. Constantine felt the blood leaving his brain and running straight to his groin. He kissed her back ferociously. Constantine had wanted her the second he saw her.
He couldn't help himself, he really couldn't, the smell of her, the taste of her, was too much.
Faith was just as taken aback, by her own response to Constantine. She had never felt this kind of passion with Woods. The only man who had ever come close to making her feel this way was Wesley.
The two hapless victims of divine machinations, pulled at each others clothes. Then in a heart stopping moment, she was astride him and he was inside her.
"I don't want you to go after this." he muttered incoherently burying his face in her neck, sucking at what looked like a vampire bite scar.
"You'll end up leaving me." Faith said brokenly, moving back and forth.
Constantine released her neck, looking at the bruise he had left. "I'd never leave you Faith." he told her earnestly. His cynical brown eyes met Faith's too old too soon gaze. "Kid, I think you're wonderful." he told her, bunching her hair in his hands and kissing her tenderly.
Xander and Ellie looked in on them. Ellie pulled Xander away swiftly. Sometimes Ellie got weary of acting as Satan's whore.
Part two.
June 2006.
"What I don't get, is how we ended up married?" Faith said as she lay naked on the floor, with Constantine.
"I told you, I can't remember that part." He kissed her lovingly.
"Aren't you glad we did?" Constantine stroked her stomach. To his relief he'd been able to convince Faith he didn't give a shit about her stretchmarks, or anything else having twins had done to her body.
"Maybe I don't do it for you anymore." He joked, stroking her hair with the tenderness she always brought out in him.
"Oh you do it for me" Faith assured him, completely physically satisfied.
Part Three
June 2006
Faith stood in front of a group of slayers. The twins were in vision range, lying on a blanket at the back of the Watcher's council hall.
"Kick, kick, spin stake," She demonstrated to the latest five newbies. "Now you guys practise."
A short red headed man came into the back of the hall. He knelt down in front of the twins, looking at them, sniffing them.
Faith walked over puzzled, "Oz?"
Oz stood up. He had filled out, looked more muscular than before, grown a goatee beard. The way he was looking at her, seemed to indicate he was going to impart bad news.
"Hey Faith." He looked awkward. "I really need to talk, to you and your husband."
Three hours later Constantine sat on an armchair, his tie loosened, back from an exorcism. He nursed a beer. His gut told him whatever tidings this Californian werewolf brought, weren't going to be good.
"Woods saw me, when he came back to Paris, both he and his girlfriend think you smell related." Oz said with out preamble.
"Related?" Faith said puzzled.
"You smell closely related. Werewolves can tell if people are related by blood and you guys smell way too close." Oz explained forthrightly.
"How close?" Constantine asked immediately.
"Half brother and sister, father and daughter or uncle and niece, close" Oz said uncomfortably.
"That's impossible." Faith protested choking with fright. "I mean that's ridiculous."
"You never knew who your father was." Constantine pointed out to her in a reasonable tone.
"And he's what, your father, you?" Faith scoffed a note of panic in her voice.
"We can get blood tests." Constantine said calmly. "Your birth date is December 14 1980? You would have been conceived nine –ten months before that. So that's me out of the picture. I was in a mental asylum in Connecticut from February to May of that year. My dad wasn't the cheating type. He and my brother were in Hartford Connecticut anyway. Your Mom was teenage white trash, in South Boston Massachusetts right? Not a likely candidate to visit the Mark Twain House in Hartford."
"You don't seem as surprised, as I thought you'd be." Oz mentioned to Constantine, he kept looking between Faith and Constantine, noticing how similar they looked once you realised they must be related.
"Nothing surprises me." Constantine said jadedly. "It would explain a lot of things."
"Like what?" Faith asked angrily. She regarded her husband with wary surprise. 'I can't believe... you believe this shit."
"Our instant attraction to one other for one thing, it was bizarre. I've never truly loved any woman before, so why you now?" Constantine said ruthlessly. "You were acting like a drunken slut the night we met and I wanted to marry you? I've always thought that never made sense."
Oz looked like he wanted to be anywhere else. It was bad enough having to bring bad news, without watching the couple you gave it to, destroy each other because of it.
"Fuck you." Faith said stunned, utterly devastated by his cruelty. She had seen Constantine inflict the cruel truth on others before, but never her.
"Yeah, I believe you did kid." Constantine stopped himself and smiled coldly. "Perhaps I should come up with a new term of endearment?"
"Wouldn't Charles and Johanna be born mutants if we were related?" Faith pointed out to him. "They're totally healthy and beautiful children."
"Of course they're healthy." Constantine put his head in his hands in despair. "They're miracles remember?"
Part Three
Oz left and Faith looked at Constantine entreatingly. John felt like the onset of a blinding stress headache was building in him.
Constantine held out his arms to her. She looked blurry as Constantine's vision started to fail with his oncoming headache. Faith rushed into his outstretched arms and he held her fiercely.
"I'm sorry I hurt you." he whispered, as she started to shake with sobs.
"No Faith." He tried to stop her, as she started to kiss his neck feverishly and undo his belt. The left side of his head started to throb with pain. She ignored him and ripped his t-shirt off. For the first time in their marriage he felt threatened by her. He worked out with weights regularly, to hold his own with the possessed but she was much stronger than him.
He pushed her away, with all his strength. "I said stop it!" he yelled at her. "I have a headache," he pleaded in a normal voice
Faith looked like he had slapped her. She broke out of his grasp and ran blindly out the front door.
Constantine stumbled towards the bathroom, looking for his painkillers. He hadn't had a headache this bad since he'd been diagnosed with lung cancer.
While he was in the bathroom, his body decided it was a good time to throw up. Constantine dry heaved repeatedly in the toilet, wondering what the fuck he was going to do.
Constantine woke up from where he had collapsed on the bed. He looked at the time it was eleven o'clock. Christ he'd been asleep for eight hours. His mouth tasted disgusting, he went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth.
Constantine looked at himself in the bathroom cabinet mirror; he never had liked the person he saw there. Tonight he particularly disliked that man.
Constantine went into the living room and saw Faith sitting on the couch. The TV and stereo were off, she was staring into space. They didn't say anything to each other. Constantine went to the kitchen cupboard and took out a bottle of water, gulping it down.
Constantine joined Faith on the couch.
"I don't know what to say." Constantine told her.
"Well let's start with that you think I'm disgusting, for wanting to have sex with you." Faith said coldly.
"Bullshit. I had a headache" Constantine said tiredly. "I know it was lousy timing on my part, seeing sex is your panacea for all emotional ills. But it was a bad headache."
"What's a panacea?" Faith asked him baffled.
"A medicine that cures all ills, it comes from Greek Mythology." Constantine explained patiently.
"Kinda like magical chicken soup huh?" Faith clarified.
"Yeah," Constantine nodded wearily. Faith's general knowledge had severe gaps, he normally just found that cute, she always was willing to learn. Tonight, it just seemed to accentuate how unlikely it made them as a couple.
"Are you saying I'm some kind of sex addict?" Faith asked defensively.
"No, don't put words in my mouth." Constantine said annoyed at her. He could tell she was presently having a fantasy about killing him. He knew she never would.
"Are the twins asleep?" he asked her in a normal tone.
"Yeah, put them down half an hour ago, they'll be out for two more hours." Faith said automatically.
"Good." said Constantine. He pushed her down on the couch and kissed her painfully. Biting her lips and pulling her hair. Faith dug her nails into his back in startled protest and he could feel her cutting skin, he scraped her flesh with his own nails and then roughly pulled off her jeans and panties.
Fortunately he never had had erection problems in his life. Probably through screwing Ellie a succubus so long, she'd beneficially hexed him in some way. Constantine took off his own trousers and shorts and penetrated Faith roughly. She was dry and unready for him and winced out in discomfort. He bit her neck hard, where she still had the scar from Angel's most recent biting of her. Constantine had always hated that scar, once he found out from Andrew, how she had come by it. Faith gasped with pain.
Constantine moved in and out of her uncaringly and came before she had a chance to.
"There." He told her impatiently, shaking her in fury as she lay on the couch. "Was that degrading enough for you? Do you feel validated now? Did I just convince I still love you?"
Faith looked up at him, curiously persuaded by his brutal assault that he did. "It's weird, but something about all this, just feels so right." she told him.
"We don't know we're definitely related yet." Constantine told her and himself. "There's no sin..."
"Shit, here we go..." Faith said crossly, flinging her head back angrily on the arm rest of the couch. "You wanna know why you really married me? You just thought it was better to marry than burn."
"Excuse me for not wanting to screw my sister." Constantine said frustrated at her. "Jesus, …you just don't get it, do you Faith?"
"No you don't get it Constantine." Pushing him off her, Faith hissed in a low tone, so she wouldn't wake the twins. "I just don't fucking care. So you're my brother, my uncle, my freakin father so what?"
She got up and pulled her jeans back on. "Were you around when my mother was passed out from a pill overdose and I had to dial 911 at eight years old? When the bitch missed my first holy communion because she passed out drunk, were you there when her boyfriend …?"
"Christ Faith, if I could fix your childhood I would." Constantine cut her off.
"I'm just saying you were never like family to me, so why act like it matters now?" Faith snapped at him.
"Because it just does. Because 'he' has got a sick sense of humour" Constantine told her coldly. "I'm not going down on a one way trip and neither are you. I'm not letting anything happen to you."
AN: I welcome any questions on this story.