Skin - Part Two

Skin – Part Two

Billy wasn't a brave man.

Hell, we was barely even a man. At only eighteen he was still just a boy, though when his momma called him that he would sit in his room and lock the door and sulk for at least an hour.

But the point was, he wasn't brave. Never had been.

And another thing – he frikkin' hated this damn motel! He didn't know why his pop had to just randomly decide to up and move the whole family away from their home in the country just so he could live out his stupid vision of owning an ugly, dingy motel in a crappy city full of douchebag's and butthead's. And even worse, Billy was forced to work behind the counter! He actually had to interact with all the dirty, messed up folks that only came here in the first place because they couldn't afford anywhere nicer. Jerks.

Which is how Billy – not so brave and forced to work alone behind his pop's motel counter for the night – found himself holding his big brother Tommy's shotgun and standing outside room number 16, his clammy hands shaking as he debated whether or not he should break in.

The muffled screaming coming from inside the room had started up a while ago, and at first he hadn't thought anything of it. All sorts of dodgy people came through the motel. Drug dealers, whores, you name it. And all sorts of dicey business took place.

But the screams were still going on, and they were sounding more and more messed up by the minute. Billy was pretty sure there was something going on in there that was even more wrong than your run of the mill bad ass crime.

He could break down the door, guns blazing, and be a hero. He had the gun, that meant he had the power, right? He could take down anything as long as he had the gun...

Billy gulped, and scurried back to the desk, yanking up the phone to dial 911.

Buffy couldn't remember the last time she had been in so much pain. She didn't want to remember. She wanted to close her eyes and fall in to the unconsciousness that she knew was so close. But every time her eyelids began to drop, the shapeshifter would slap her extra hard, or dig the knife in just that little bit deeper. He wanted her to see him, to see Dean. He wanted her to see Dean doing these things to her. Torturing her.

Her only sense of relief was knowing that as long as he was here with her, he wasn't out there hurting Faith or Sam or the real Dean. And she couldn't think about the fact that he might already have gotten to them. She wouldn't think of it.

She was covered in splatters of her own blood. She could feel it trickling down her face, her arms, her legs, her chest. It covered her. It covered the bruises he had given her.

And she was helpless. No slayer strength to save her. She had thought being powerless had been bad all those years ago back in Sunnydale, but it had been nothing, not really. The fear she had felt then was nothing compared to what she felt now.

She was helpless. Just like all the other shapeshifter's victims.

Time seemed endless. Why was no one coming to help her? She was sure as hell making enough noise. She blamed it on the fact that they had chosen to stay in the first motel they had come across, which had clearly been in the nastiest part of the city. No one around here cared about other people's business, just as long as no one got in theirs.

She was alone.

It was almost a relief when she saw that look in his eyes. The look that told her he was done playing, that he was finally ready to finish this.

He span the dagger around in his hand skillfully. He had enjoyed using it, knowing that she had planned on using it on him. It had clearly given him some kind of sick satisfaction.

"You know, it really is a shame," he mused as he advanced on her once more. "I think out of all the girls, you've been my favorite. You make the prettiest sounds." He grabbed a hold of her chin and yanked her face up so that she was looking at him. "But I got things I gotta do."

He brought the knife up to her throat, and then paused, as he heard something move outside the motel door.

"Shi-" he cursed, as the motel door came bursting open, and the barrels of at least five guns were pointed at his face.

Dean waited impatiently outside the convenience store as Sam went inside to ask if he could use their bathroom. Sam had realized that he still had dried blood plastered to the side of his face from where the shifter had hit him with the tire iron, and since they'd had to walk through the city to get back to the motel because the shifter had taken the car, people passing by them had been staring at him in horror. Sam had insisted on finding somewhere to wash it off before they were stopped and questioned by the police. Dean had argued but only agreed in the end after Sam had pointed out that if they were stopped by the police, then it would take them even longer to get back to the motel and check up on Buffy.

Dean jolted in surprise when Sam suddenly came barreling out of the store, grabbing onto his arm and yanking him away. He ignored Dean's protests and only stopped dragging once they'd turned into a darkened alleyway, hidden from the view of the rest of the street.

"What the hell?" Dean growled, pulling his arm away from his brother hotly. "And ow!"

"Dean, there was a TV in the store-"

"Oh God, not a TV!"

"-and it was set to a news station," Sam continued in a low and urgent voice, ignoring his brother's sarcasm. "There was a news report about a SWAT team being called to a motel in the northern part of the city-"

Dean's eyes widened in horror as realization dawned. "Our motel was in the northern part of the city."

Sam's insides were churning as he continued. "A women from out of town was found bound and gagged to a chair and when the SWAT team found her, her attacker was still in the room. All the men were armed and he still managed to take them out before escaping. Dean, they've got a pretty good picture of you and they're gonna be showing it all over the city."

"What about the woman? Was it Buffy? Sammy, tell me it wasn't Buffy." Dean's heart was pounding unbearably in his chest.

Sam ran his hands through his hair and didn't reply.

Cursing loudly, Dean swung around and kicked out violently at a dumpster. He span back around to face Sam. "Where's Buffy now? Is she-"

"She's at the hospital," Sam replied quickly. "She's not dead. From the sounds of it, she's pretty banged up and she lost a lot of blood but she's gonna be okay."

Dean could barely even think over the furious red mist that was swirling around inside his mind. Fuck, did Buffy think that it was him? She knew the shifter was out there, so she must have put two and two together, right? But God, what if she hadn't and she was in the hospital right now, thinking that he was the one who had done whatever messed up things that sick bastard had done to her? And why did it have to go after Buffy in the first place? Out of all the people in the freakin' city, why her?

With a violent roar, he swung around and punched the wall, not even acknowledging the pain as the skin was ripped from his knuckles.

"Dean...Dean! You need to calm down," Sam yelled, frightened that his brother was going to do himself some serious damage.

"I am calm," Dean huffed, turning around and leaning back against the wall with a sigh. He tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. "I'm calmly considering the best way to rip his intestines out of his chest so that I can strangle him with them."

"I know this sucks, man, but seriously, Buffy's fine. I'm mad as hell that he hurt her too but she's not dead and that's all that matters. Why are you being so crazy about this?"

Dean opened and closed him mouth several times. "Because it's...Buffy," was his eventual, defeated reply.

Sam blinked, not at all sure on how he was supposed to answer that.

Dean pulled away from the wall. "We need to go to the hospital. We need to see her."

"We can't. You need to stay out of sight. The second you go in the hospital they'll arrest you, especially if you go anywhere near Buffy's room."

Dean wanted to argue some more, but he knew Sam was right. "Fine then. We need to go find me and kick the holy crap out of my admittedly very attractive ass."

"With what? Dean, the shapeshifter took all our things. Our weapons, silver bullets, everything. We can't go back to the motel 'cause it's a crime scene and we can't call Faith because we don't have our cellphones. Are you sure you don't remember her number?"

"No, I don't remember her goddamned number. It was keyed into my cell so I never bothered." He paused for a moment to take in a deep, calming breath. "So what are you saying, Sam? That we sit back and do nothing? This moronic good for nothing monster is skulking around out there wearing my face and hurting people that I care about! I seriously need to kill this guy!"

Sam sighed and nodded his head. "Okay. I know. But we still need our weapons back."

"We left them all in the car."

"Which I'm guessing he drove over to the motel. Think it's still there?"

"It freakin' better be."

Faith was seriously mad.

It had been hours since she'd last spoken to anyone. Hours since anyone had bothered to call her and since anyone had even bothered to pick up their phone to check if she was okay.

She could have just gone back to the motel and checked up on them there, but why the hell should she? Why should she have to go and make the effort when they clearly didn't give enough of a damn to do the same.

So she'd decided to head up into a nearby cemetery and had been having a blast taking out her anger on a couple of idiot vamps who had thought they were in for an easy snack when they'd come across her.

Finally getting bored with beating on them, she whipped out her stake and grinned in anticipation.

Just as she was driving the stake through the heart of the last vampire, she felt a presence behind her. She span around, stake in hand, only to let her hand drop down when she realized who it was. She blinked in surprise. "Dean?"

Dean looked somewhat surprised to see her too. His eyes widened and he swallowed hard. He was panting heavily and he looked behind him cautiously before looking back at Faith. "Faith, I've been looking for you."

She snorted and crossed her arms. "Whatever. Sure you have. Where've you all been at anyway? I've been wandering around for hours like a tool."

"Where do you think we've been? Hunting down the bad guy, that's where." His voice was low and purposely seductive, and when he took a step closer to her he smirked suggestively as he ran his eyes up and down her body. "But I'm bored now. I can think of much more interesting ways to get through the night."

Faith recognized that look alright. "What? Now you want some?"

"You complaining?"

If Faith hadn't been kinda mad that she'd been left alone all night, and kind of antsy and still unsatisfied from the fight she'd just had against the vampires, she may have questioned why Dean was suddenly interested in sex again even though they hadn't been at it since Cleveland. But she was, so she didn't. Instead, she allowed him to push her up against the wall of the mausoleum and kiss her hard and thoroughly.

As his mouth moved down, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back to allow his lips better access to her neck, and she missed the way that his eyes flashed silver as the moonlight hit them.

When he was finished, Dean zipped up his pants and turned on his heel and began to walk away from her.

Faith, yanking up her own pants, started after him in surprise. "Where the hell are you going?"

He turned back. "Well that was fun and all, but I got places I need to be." And with one cocky wink, he was gone, leaving a thoroughly confused Faith looking after him and wondering what in the hell had just happened.

"Oh thank God!" Dean breathed as they caught sight of the Impala parked up near the motel. "I was worried that he might have driven her right out of the city.

Whatever Sam had been about to reply was cut off by the sound of police sirens as the squad cars made themselves known.

"Crap."

It was just getting light by the time Buffy finally woke up in her hospital bed the the next morning. She was still drowsy, but the first thing that she determined was that she needed to check herself out. Which was exactly what she told her doctor the second he walked in to check on her.

He disagreed, of course, as all good doctors tended to do. Insisted that she needed to stay and rest while she healed up. But Buffy was determined. If she'd have had her slayer strength, she could have just forced her way out, but she didn't and also she wasn't sure what kind of drugs she was still hooked up to. Whatever they were, they were making her kind of dizzy.

Eventually he agreed, even as he pulled out a rather large and scary looking needle.

"What's that for?" she asked, her voice a little shaky as he advanced on her.

"You said you needed to leave," he declared innocently. "It would have been easier if you'd just stay put, but I can work around it."

Buffy didn't even have time to scream before the sleep inducing needle was poked into her arm.

The shapeshifter shook his doctor shaped head. This was getting far too easy.

Dean had been patient. He'd waited right up until morning, hiding and spying on his car.

Had the police been waiting for him there, or was it just a coincidence that they'd spotted him nearby?

But it had been hours, and he hadn't seen a single soul, and eventually he felt confident enough in sneaking over to it. He opened the door, making a mental note to kick the shifter extra hard for leaving her unlocked, before climbing inside.

"I'm sorry, baby," he said, patting the Impala on the steering wheel as he leaned down so that he could hot wire her.

First thing was first, he had to move his car somewhere the police wouldn't find her. Second, he was going back down to those tunnels. Screw what Sammy said. Sam was probably still stuck in a prison cell. He couldn't go to Buffy because he'd just get arrested and Faith was out of the question considering how he didn't have a single clue about where the hell she actually was.

So, tunnels it was.

Faith sat in the diner, stirring her coffee distractedly. She hadn't been back to the motel for the entire night, and no one had even bothered to call her and check if she was okay. Granted, she hadn't called them either, but that was besides the point.

But could she blame them, really? Wasn't this the kind of person she was? The kind that didn't come home sometimes, and nobody was surprised by that.

But after she and Dean had had their little thing last night, she thought he might have at least called to check in.

Sighing, she dropped some money on the counter and left the door. It was time to face the music.

Holy mothering freakin' crap.

The motel room was sealed off, and before Faith had been hustled away she had seen the splattering of blood on the carpet.

Who's blood was it?

Where was Buffy?

Dean?

Sam?

And why were they still not answering their cellphones?

Oh God, why did she have to be such a stubborn bitch? Why couldn't she have just gone back to the motel last night?

Fear for her friends causing her to break out into a cold sweat and her heart to beat painfully fast in her chest, Faith turned on her heel, ready to search every last inch of the city for her lost friends. If the shapeshifter had hurt them – or something else had hurt them – then they better pray for their evil, demonic lives.

This shapeshifter was one disgusting bastard, Dean decided, as he made his way through the discarded skin strewn sewers. It occurred to him that he had been down in the tunnels more times in the past couple of days than any normal person would have been during their entire lives. Okay, so sometimes their job really sucked.

Blobs of bloody, decaying skin were everywhere, and Dean gagged once as he almost put his hand in it.

Suddenly, he paused, sure that he had just heard a noise.

There it was again. A small, muffled whimper. Someone was down here. Walking faster, and still trying to keep quiet, Dean rounded a corner and stopped. Right ahead of him was another of the tarpaulin sheets that the shifter had thrown over him the last time he had been down here.

Scurrying forward, Dean quickly whipped the sheet off, and his heart broke at what he saw.

"Buffy," he whispered.

The first thing Sam did once he had been let out of prison was call up the hospital. A nurse confirmed that Buffy was still there and Sam hurried to be with her.

"Sam," she called out weakly when he entered the room. "God, I'm so glad to see you."

"Me too." He smiled and moved over to her side, grasping her hand. "How are you feeling?"

"Crappy," she replied, sitting up gingerly. "I need to get out of here."

Sam nodded. "I know. I don't want you here alone." He paused. "Buff, you do know it wasn't Dean, right?"

She nodded and squeezed his hand. "Of course I do. It was that stupid shapeshifting bastard, right?"

"Right." He nodded and let out a relieved smile, glad that he wasn't going to have to try and persuade her otherwise. His face became serious and he looked around nervously. "Okay, let's get you out of here."

The shapeshifter smiled to itself as it followed Sam Winchester out of the hospital, safe in the disguise of Buffy Summers. Fooling Sam had been too easy. He was perceptive, but clearly he didn't know Buffy well enough to figure out that she wasn't really her.

The frantic looking wild haired girl advancing towards them might be another problem, however.

"Jesus Christ all mighty! You scared the frikkin' crap out of me," Faith babbled, bringing the shapeshifter into a hug. "I went back to the motel room and there was blood everywhere and it was taped off and why the hell weren't any of you answering your damned cellphones?"

"Shapeshifter took them," Sam explained simply.

"And destroyed mine," the shapeshifter in Buffy's form added.

Faith pulled back and looked at Buffy and whistled. "Man, he did a good job on you." She paused her inspections and frowned. "You feel strange...different. Are you okay?"

The shapeshifter tried not to let its' panic show. Damn it all, it had forgotten about that stupid slayer bond thing. Forgotten that they could sense one another. This slayer was at full strength, and with the hunter, there would be no way for the shapeshifter to beat the both of them. "It's probably the drugs," she blurted. "Stupid thing gave me muscle relaxants."

Faith nodded, like that explanation made sense. "Just like your eighteenth birthday?"

"Sure."

Thank God she was more brawn than brains.

As the three walked down the street, they tried to figure out what they should do next.

"We need to find Dean," Faith pointed out.

Sam rubbed a distressed hand over his face. "But we have no idea where he is. You said you stopped by the motel, was his car still there?"

Faith shook her head. "No. And I looked around for it."

"Damn. He must have taken it somewhere. And it has all the weapons."

Faith snorted. "Like we need weapons. I think we should just head on down to the sewers and kill that thing."

"No!" Buffy protested. She cleared her throat uncomfortably when the other two looked her way in bafflement. "I don't think we should go down there."

"Why the hell not?" Faith asked.

"No, Buffy's right," Sam said, much to the shapeshifter's relief. "I mean, this shifter is clearly way smarter than the one we faced back in Cleveland. Stronger too. We need everyone on board. And with Buffy without her strength, we definitely need Dean. And the weapons."

Faith sighed. God, she hated patience! Whoever said that patience was a virtue clearly didn't have to go out and battle demons every day. "Fine, what do you think we should do then?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't we head over to Becky's?" Buffy suggested. "Maybe there's something else she can tell us?"

"Like what?"

Buffy shrugged. "Who knows? But we need to start somewhere."

"Guess it's better than no plan," Sam conceded. "Let's go."

"Looks like no one's home," Sam proclaimed after a good five minutes of knocking on Becky's door.

"Typical," Faith muttered, moving over to the window so that she could peer through.

"Faith," Sam hissed. "You can't just look through people's window's. It's..."

"Rude?"

"Weird," he finished.

"Whatever, Detective Manners. Come and look at this."

"Come look at what?"

Not answering him, she impatiently gestured both he and Buffy over.

Ignoring his own morals, Sam peered through the window.

"Oh God."

The inside of Becky's house looked a mess. Furniture was upturned and ornaments had been smashed. Something had clearly come for Becky, and she had obviously struggled.

Sam moved back over to the door. "Becky!" he yelled. "Becky, you in there?"

Faith rolled her eyes. "Yeah, 'cause that's gonna help."

"Well, what do you suggest?"

"She's clearly not here, or if she is, she's not willing or able to open up. We need to get inside. I could break the door down-"

"Or I could save us a visit from the police and just pick the lock," Sam suggested.

"Whatever."

Sam did as he said, and they were inside the house within minutes. The alarm by the door started to go off and Sam quickly shut it down.

"How did you know the code?" the shapeshifter asked curiously, her voice no higher than a whisper.

Sam shrugged. "I didn't. I just typed in Zach's birthday."

The Buffy lookalike refrained from rolling her eyes. Humans were so sentimental.

"Should we split up?" Sam asked.

"Buffy shouldn't be on her own," Faith replied instantly.

The shapeshifter nodded in agreement. "Yeah, really not up to my best right now. Why don't you go check upstairs and Sam and I will take a look around downstairs."

Faith nodded, and then disappeared through another set of doors. Moments later, they could hear the soft pads of her footsteps as she slowly mounted the stairs.

"Finally," Buffy whispered.

Sam looked at her in confusion. "Finally what?"

She grinned evilly. "Finally, I've got you all to myself."

Before Sam could say anything else, she lifted up a heavy ornament and hit him over the head with it. She darted forwards, catching him just before he hit the floor so that he wouldn't make any noise and alert Faith.

"OhGodohGodohGod," Dean mumbled to himself as he yanked out his knife to cut away the ropes that bound Buffy down.

She looked far worse than he had imagined. Bruised and cut all over, and fresh blood drying on the side of her face. The bastard must have taken her right out of the hospital and banged her up again before bringing her down into the tunnels.

With shaking fingers, he finally got her hands free.

As soon as she could, Buffy ripped out her gag and threw her arms around Dean, never so happy to see anyone in her entire life.

He didn't even think. Just wrapped his arms around her and pulled her as tight to him as he possibly could. He forgot about her injuries and so did she. Seeing her alive after spending the entire night worrying about her was like feeling the warmth of the sun for the very first time. It took his breath away. "It wasn't me," he mumbled desperately into her hair when he was once again able to form words. "I promise it wasn't me. Buffy, it wasn't me. You have to believe me." He repeated this over and over again.

"I know," she replied, digging her nose into his shoulder. "I knew it wasn't you as soon as I saw it. The very first second."

But Dean didn't seem to have heard her. "Sweetheart, I would never hurt you. Never."

"I know. I know you wouldn't."

He pulled back and cupped her face in his hands. "Wait, you knew?"

"Of course I did."

He leaned forwards and planted a long kiss on her forehead. She knew. She knew it wasn't him. How did she know him so well? How did he get so lucky to find someone so damned amazing that they could just look at him and know?

He leaned his forehead against hers, stroking her matted hair, pretending that there wasn't tears trickling down his cheeks.

Suddenly, Buffy pulled back.

"Buffy, what-"

She crawled away quickly over to where another body shaped sheet lay. Dean hadn't even noticed it. Buffy pulled it off quickly and uncovered a barely conscious Rebecca.

"Rebecca, are you okay?"

Rebecca stirred and groaned in pain, allowing Buffy to help her sit up and untie her. "What was that thing?" she asked, as terrified tears began to fall from her eyes. "I saw it...it changed...into you. It pulled off its...oh God, what was it?"

Buffy whipped around to face Dean. "It changed into me. That means it's probably going after Sam and Faith."

"But why take Rebecca."

She shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe to get her out of the way? Maybe it wants to use her house to do whatever it's planning."

"Why?"

"Because it's sick and twisted and likes playing games with people? Because that's kind of where this thing started with us? I don't know, Dean. But we have to go."

"You're right. Can you walk?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine. But you should probably get Becky."

"Okay." Dean leaned forward and scooped Becky easily up into his arms. "Come on, let's go."

"There's nothing up here," a severely disgruntled Faith called out as she stomped down the stairs, no longer bothering to be quiet. She knew they should have just gone down into the tunnels to find this thing. When no one answered, she huffed and called out their names. "This no one answering when I call thing is getting old fast," she grumbled to herself.

She let herself into the room that she had left Buffy and Sam in. "Hello?"

It was at that moment that she spotted Sam, tied up on the floor. He looked like he was in the process of waking up. With a worried curse, she started towards him, wondering what the hell had happened and where in Gods name Buffy had vanished to.

"Faith," Sam called out weakly, his eyes fluttering as he fought to stay awake. "Behind you."

She whipped around, just in time to see a silver eyed Buffy swinging a heavy ornament in the direction of her head. That might not have been enough to knock her out, but the blow she received as her head banged against the wall certainly was.

The shapeshifter looked down at Buffy's hands, admiring the slender way they were shaped. "As much as I like this body," she mused, before looking over at Sam and smiling sinisterly. "I think it'll be a whole lot more fun if I change back into your brother while I kill you."

Buffy followed Dean into Becky's house, her heart beating as she heard the unmistakable sounds of a fight being held. She ran after Dean towards the sound of the noise, fear in her heart for the lives of her friends.

"Get away from my brother, you bastard!" she heard Dean yell, before two loud shots rang out, echoing throughout the room.

The next thing Buffy heard was the sound of a body – the shapeshifter's, she realized with relief – hitting the wall and sliding down to the ground.

Everything seemed to slow down.

Dean lowered his gun, unable to take his eyes off the the dead shapeshifter that looked just like him, and Buffy glanced around the room with searching eyes. Sam, who had obviously been fighting the shapeshifter before they had arrived, was gasping and looking the worse for wear on the floor. His wrists were rubbed raw and as Buffy spotted the knife dug into a table and the cut ropes next to it, she thought she might know why.

The next thing she noticed was a slowly reawakening Faith, sporting a nasty egg shaped bruise on the side of her head, sprawled out not too far away from Sam. As she became more aware of her surroundings, Faith shook her head – wincing in pain – and climbed to her knees, crawling over to Sam to see if he was okay.

The room was in silence, aside from the quiet, pain filled moans emitting from Sam as Faith looked him over.

Buffy watched as Dean slowly made his way towards the dead shapeshifter. His movements were jerked and shaky. Seeing the thing that had hurt her and his brother was clearly affecting him deeply. He knelt down next to the body, pulling off the charm necklace that it had stolen from him and holding it tightly in his hand. As he stared at the shapeshifter, his face was filled with hatred, and a lone tear slipped down his face. Catching it, Buffy felt her heart break. Silently, she moved over to him and knelt behind where he was crouched, wrapping her arms around his body and leaning her forehead on his back. Even through his clothes, she could feel how hot his skin was. She pulled her arms around him tighter, offering him all the comfort she had to offer. He took it, grasping her hands in his and holding them to his chest.

"It's okay," she said soothingly. "It's over. It's dead and it's over."

No one else spoke for a long time.

Buffy and Dean held on to each other, and Sam and Faith did the same, watching the other two with blank expressions.

And this was how Rebecca found them as she stumbled in, tired of waiting in Dean's car, twenty minutes later.

"Well, you did it," Rebecca said to Sam the next morning.

"Did what?"

"Freed Zach." She shook her head. "I'm sorry that they're blaming your brother though."

"It'll be okay. They also think he's dead so it's not like they're gonna be hunting him down."

"Thank you, Sam." She reached up and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug. "You sure you don't wanna stay, wait until Zach gets home? I know he'd wanna see you."

Sam shook his head. "I'd love to, but I can't. We'd better get out of the city. Don't want anyone recognizing Dean."

She sighed. "So this is what you do? You and your brother, you hunt down these kinds of things..."

Buffy made her way out of Rebecca's house where they had slept the night before, struggling to lift up her heavy weapons bag.

"Need some help there, little darling?" Dean asked her teasingly, pulling the weapons bag out of her hand and lifting it up with pretend ease.

Buffy stuck her tongue out. "Knucklehead," she said, though there was obvious affection laced in with her insult. "When I get my strength back I'm so gonna beat you up."

Dean, shoving the bag into the trunk of his car, put his hand on his heart and gasped. "Big bully."

"Uh huh. And after that I'm gonna shove you in a locker and make you do all my math homework."

Dean chuckled at the imagery. "Why the hell did you take the weapons bag inside Becky's house last night anyway."

"I was beaten and tortured and tied up. Twice," Buffy reminded him dryly. "I like having my weapons around. They're like a comfort blanky."

"You totally went to sleep last night hugging your axe, didn't you?"

Buffy snorted and turned back to the house to get the rest of her stuff, but Dean saw the smile that she tried to keep hidden. He leaned back against the car and watched her with a smile of his own on his face as she walked away from him.

He felt someone come to stand next to him a moment later, but he didn't look up.

"It wasn't you, was it?" Faith finally spoke up after one long minute.

Dean finally dragged his eyes away from Buffy to look at Faith in confusion. "What wasn't me?"

"Last night? In the graveyard? Up against the mausoleum wall?"

Oh. Dean realized what must have happened with a start. Faith. And the shapeshifter. He didn't really know what to say to that, or how he was supposed to feel about it. Relief was at the top of the list, he supposed, for the fact that the shapeshifter had stopped at sex and not killed Faith while she was vulnerable. "No, it wasn't me."

Faith laughed, though it was more of a defeated sound than anything else. "I should have known, I guess. It's not like we've had sex since Cleveland, right."

Once again, Dean really didn't know how to reply. So he chose to say nothing.

"I guess karma really came to bite me in the ass," Faith continued with a snort.

"What do you mean."

Faith looked down. "It's not important. Just...me and B had this whole body swapping incident a while back. I did some pretty bad things involving her boyfriend. I guess you can never truly understand your actions until they've been done to you."

Dean turned back to watch the entrance of the house, smiling to himself as Buffy once again exited, laughing with Rebecca at something Sam had just said. Faith watched him watch her, a sad frown upon her face.

"She knew right away, didn't she?"

Dean didn't even need to ask Faith who she was talking about. Without even looking away from Buffy, he nodded silently. He doubted he could even have formed words anyway. Every time he thought about Buffy's admission, that she'd known it was him as soon as she saw him, it warmed him right through his entire body. For his brother to know was one thing. He and Sam had grown up together. Spent day in and day out training, hunting, traveling together. But the fact that Buffy knew it wasn't him immediately just blew him away. That must mean she cared about him, even a little, right?

Neither of them said anything else for a very long time.

They drove in silence for nearly two hours. There wasn't a single one of the four who weren't glad to be putting St. Louis far, far behind them.

Dean glanced behind him and smiled. Buffy and Faith were curled up together, asleep on the back seat. They looked peaceful, happy. It wasn't a look they ever wore when they were awake. He looked over at Sam, who was watching the passing scenery, a troubled look on his face. Dean was pretty sure he knew what the reason behind that expression was.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Sam turned to look at him, puzzled. "Why?"

"Because I think you get it now."

"Get what?" Sam asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew what his brother was talking about.

"Why we can't get close to people. Why we have to do this alone."

Sam looked into the backseat at Faith and Buffy. He'd do anything to keep them safe. They were his family now. Not like sisters, because even he had to admit that they were total babes and that occasionally he did have the occasional naughty dream abut them, and that would be just weird. But they were family, all the same. "Not completely alone," he said softly.

Catching the direction of Sam's glance, Dean shook his head. "You know what I mean."

Sam sighed. "Yeah, I do."

"I just...I never wanted you to have to learn that, truly I didn't. If I could take back the years, do something differently to make sure you had a normal life, I'd do it in a second."

"Dean, it's okay. Seriously. If you want to know the truth, the longer I spent with Becky the more I realized that I could never fit in with that crowd. I never did. Like you said, we're not normal. I've never been normal. Not even when I was at Stanford."

Dean snorted. "Well, that's 'cause your a freak. A strangely tall freak."

Sam chuckled. "Thanks, man. Way to make me feel better."

Dean shrugged. "No worries. I'm a freak too. And so are Faith and Buffy. Especially Buffy. She's the biggest freak of all." He smiled to himself. "And us freaks are all in this together. Right 'till the end."

Sam watched as Dean watched Buffy in the rear-view mirror. He watched as Dean watched her for a long time. Eventually he turned his focus back to the road, but more often than not, his eyes would flicker back, almost as if he was reassuring himself that she was still there.

Sam felt a sense of foreboding in his stomach. If what he thought was happening was really happening, if Dean was going and...falling for Buffy, then they might not all be together just as long as he thought.