A/N: Shout-outs to The-Knight2000, addy9ring, Sage of Wind Dragons, courtneesworld21, Ninja Violinist, and OhForTheLoveOfDraco! Brief reminder that this fic is planned for a total of 15 chapters. And now on with the story!
June 21st, 2016, Naples, Florida, 9:45 a.m.
Dean wasn't entirely sure what to think of this new and improved version of the Slayer. Over breakfast (pancakes and sausages for him, waffles and bacon for her, coffee for both), she picked his brain about the movies and politics that she had missed during her stint in the Veil, all the while guzzling down cup after cup of coffee and making eyes at the scruffy co-ed waiter.
When the plates were cleared, the Slayer snuck off into the bathroom just as the check arrived. She emerged ten minutes later having exchanged her leather and spangles for a pair of bootcut jeans and a red tank top. The straying hairs at her forehead had been slicked down with water, and her ponytail sat jauntier at the back of her skull.
Raising his eyebrows, the demon taunted her, "Not feeling the 'walk of shame' look?"
Faith slung the strap to her bag up and over her shoulder. "Not all of us wear it as well as you do," she snarked back as she dug a crumpled one-dollar bill out of her pocket and dropped it onto the orange plastic table top.
"This," Dean gestured to his red and black plaid shirt, "ain't the morning after. Thanks to you, I didn't get no night before."
"Sorry," said the woman half-heartedly, taking a final swig from her coffee cup and then setting it back down on the table. "Lemme guess - was it gonna be that redheaded chick three seats down at the bar?"
He smirked and followed her towards the exit.. "Maybe. Hadn't made up my mind just yet."
"We-ell. Is every night Unattached Drifter Christmas these days?"
Dean's smile widened. He held the glass door to the diner open for her, his eyes tracking down her hips to better appreciate the lines of her jeans. "Night, day, morning, afternoon - take your pick. Hell, it's more than Christmas. It's a Rumspringa."
"Clever."
"I thought so." Positively preening with self-satisfaction, the demon slid behind the wheel of his car and began pulling out of the parking lot. "Which way to your red rubber ball?"
"Rubber band ball," the Slayer corrected him. "And take a left - back toward the highway."
"Got it."
They lapsed into silence for the next mile and a half, before Faith grew exasperated with the quiet and started to fiddle with the radio dial.
"Top Forty? Really?" commented the demon skeptically.
"You got a problem with that?" she countered.
Radio selections were not something that Dean felt like picking a fight over. "Nah," he said. "Just doesn't seem like your kind of thing, is all."
Apparently, this had not been the right thing to say, because the Slayer slammed her hand down on the volume dial, and the music stopped.
"You really think you know what my kinda thing is?" Faith asked with far too much sweetness in her voice.
"You really think I don't?" retorted the demon without heat. "Newsflash, sweetheart: nothing's changed up here but the guilt." He tapped at his temple as he spoke. "You may be zombie girl and I may be a Knight of Hell now, but I ain't forgotten a single thing."
"Is Zombie Girl seriously the best that you can come up with?" mused the Slayer, momentarily distracted.
He grinned in amusement. "Oh, I'm just getting started."
"Whatever." Closing her eyes, Faith tilted her head against the leather seat and yawned. "Wake me up when we get to the rubber bands?"
"What, I'm your chauffeur now?"
The Slayer pried one eye open and squinted at him. "You are a knight," she pointed out innocently. "Isn't it your job to ferry helpless young damsels to and fro?"
The demon snorted. "You're about the furthest thing from helpless."
"Damn straight," said a pleased Faith. "Look, how's this: you drive, and I'll pay for the entry fee to see the ball. With Sam's money, of course."
"Works for me."
June 21st, Lauderhill, Florida, 11:00 a.m.
"They sure don't make world records like they used to," mused Faith with a world-weary sigh as she completed her third circuit of the nearly eight-foot tall ball, wrapped in stretches of blue, white, and green elastic rubber six inches thick.
"Huh," said the demon at her side noncommittally. Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he had barely spared the rubber band ball more than a single glance. He needed to come to a decision about the woman walking next to him, but that felt far too much like effort at the moment.
Content to continue monologuing, the Slayer observed, "Used to be, the records were all world's smallest horse or world's oldest woman or world's longest fingernails . . ." Her voice trailed away suggestively.
This last caught his attention. "That is disgusting."
"As if you didn't have the people section of Guinness memorized when you were twelve."
"You're confusing your Winchesters again." he corrected her. "That was Sam."
"Oh." Faith grimaced and changed the subject. "Want to check out the gift shop?"
"They have a gift shop?" asked Dean, more than a little surprised.
"It's America, dumbass." She nudged his shoulder with her own. "Of course they have a gift shop."
"Just for that, you can buy me lunch."
The Slayer made a point of tugging the wallet out of her pocket and opening it to show a single faded five dollar bill. "After the tickets to get into here, I'm pretty sure I don't got enough to fill that empty gullet of yours."
Uninterested in letting her off the hook that easy, Dean shrugged. "Guess you'll just have to earn some then."
"You suggesting I turn tricks?" The Slayer's tone was playful, but an edge of steel glinted beneath it. "Because I know you know what I think about that idea."
To be honest, he had not meant that at all, but instead of apologizing he carried on with the misunderstanding. "I thought you didn't care about stuff like that anymore."
Faith froze in her tracks halfway down the dirt path that led from the rubber band ball to the wooden shed that served as a gift shop. She stepped in front of the demon, forcing him to a halt. "Dude, are you hangry or pissy or what? You always this passive-aggressive?"
"Not passive," said Dean with an unfriendly grin. "Just aggressive. I don't do well with stupid," he reminded her.
"I'm not being stupid." The Slayer poked him in the notch above his sternum, her finger pressing uncomfortably firm against his windpipe. "You're being a jackass."
Brushing her hand away, the demon shouldered her out of his way. "I meant poker, okay?" he admitted. "Not prostitution." It was the closest that he could bring himself to an apology. No point in alienating the Slayer. Not before he had reached his decision about her usefulness.
Faith recognized an olive branch when she heard one. "I could do poker." She fell back into step beside him. "Is your local yokel act not working anymore?"
"No."
"Huh." The Slayer lowered her voice so that the middle-aged couple leaving the gift shop could not hear them. "I guess animals can always spot their predator, then."
After a charming smile at the other rubber band patrons, Dean followed Faith inside the cramped shed, its tipsy shelves filled with kitschy rubber band decorations, craft kits for children, and odd books on the history of rubber. "Is that what you think I am now, a predator?" He was surprised by how much he wanted to hear the answer.
"No," said Faith thoughtfully, pulling one of the craft kits down from the wobbling shelf and examining the back with interest. The packaging gave directions for constructing one's very own rubber band gun. "You've always been a predator," she continued when it became apparent that he was still waiting for a better response. "Now you just don't feel conflicted about it."
"And you?"
Pursing her lips, the Slayer returned the kit to its place and began running her finger along the spine of the latest edition of Guinness World Records on the shelf above it. "Well, since you've got the immortality thing going on, if you're a wolf, that makes me a coyote - or something."
"You do kinda remind me of a coyote . . . scrappy, flea-ridden, bad teeth . . ." He flicked the end of her ponytail with his middle finger.
Mildly, Faith threatened, "Keep talking, and I'll start knocking out your teeth."
"Okay, okay." Dean reached over her head to better examine a pig made out of pink rubber bands. As he did so, he murmured in a quiet voice, "Don't sell yourself short, Zombie Girl. You're every bit as capable of being an evil, amoral son of a bitch as I am."
The Slayer turned in her book to the records on animals. "Tell me something new, Dean," she grumbled, scanning the blurb on the world's largest dog. "'Cuz I've known that since I was five."
He dropped the pig back onto its shelf. "And that's what I like about you."
"What?" Faith did not bother to look up from reading.
"You never pretended to be one of the angels."
Now, she did look up, but it was only to roll her eyes at him. "Dramatic, much?"
"Maybe." The demon peered over her shoulder at the glossy photo of a Great Dane side by side with a donkey for a size comparison. "You know," he went on, "I was almost surprised when I saw you. Almost, but not quite."
Turning the page to find out more about the world's fattest cat, the Slayer asked, "And why's that?"
"Ashes and dust . . ." Dean gave the woman a speculative glance. "Guess that doesn't mean much when Sammy gets ahold of you."
Faith snapped the book closed and shoved it between two other copies on the shelf. "I never asked him to do resurrect me," she said sharply, elbowing her way past the demon and heading for the exit.
"That's the problem with Sammy. He never really listens to what other people want."
Rocking back onto her heels in the gravel parking lot outside the locked Impala, the Slayer frowned. She waited for him to unlock the car and then she snatched up her duffel bag and retreated away from the Chevy.
"Sorry about this, your Knightlinesss, but I'm gonna have to call our little poker fundraiser off."
"Oh?"
"Whatever game it is that you're playing, with Sam or Crowley or whoever - I don't want any part of it." Her hand tightened on the black strap of the duffel. "I'm done with my old crowd, which means I'm done with yours, too." Faith straightened her shoulders. "So you can drive on, chauffeur. I'll find somebody around here to hitch a ride with."
"You sure?"
"Yeah." The Slayer nodded decisively. "I'm sure."
"I have some information that concerns you."
"I'm listening."
"The thing you're looking for can be found at 3501 Inverarry Boulevard."
"Why are you giving me this?"
"In honor of Her."
"For the Queen."
June 21st, 2016, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 12:40 p.m.
Hot water coursed down Faith's back, the scalding streams pelting against her shoulders, just a degree shy of being painful. Shutting her eyes tight, the Slayer raked her fingers through her shampooed hair and and tilted her skull backwards to better rinse off her forehead. This was her first shower in sixteen months, and she was going to enjoy every moment of it.
Faith shampooed and conditioned, washed and shaved, and then she clawed the dead skin away from her arms and stomach, her hips and calves, and finally the soles of her feet, leaving scarlet streaks in the wake of her nails. When she finished, she spun the shower dial even further to the right, until the plastic curtain was opaque with condensation and she could barely see through the steam rising around her.
The Slayer endured the nearly-boiling water for another five minutes before shutting off the water and stepping out of the off-white fiberglass tub. After running a towel over her skin and through her dripping hair, she pulled on a pair of heather gray sweatpants and her tank top from earlier. Faith wrapped her hair in the towel and ventured out into the brisk air conditioning of the main hotel room. She had not slept properly since Sam Winchester had dragged her back from the land of the dead - kidnapped naps in the trunks of cars did not count - and all she wanted at the moment was to fall straight into the middle of her king-sized bed and sleep until winter had come and gone.
As she stepped through the bathroom door, her good mood plummeted. Lying in the center of Faith's dreamt-of bed was none other than the demon she had optimistically left behind her two hours before. He had his muddy boots on her clean white covers, and he had the infernal gall to be smirking at her.
Exhaling in exasperation, Faith yanked once at her improvised turban, and her wet hair came tumbling down. "What the hell, dude?" she asked, more exhausted than angry.
Dean wriggled from side to side in an obvious show of making himself comfortable. "Thanks to you, I didn't sleep last night."
"Get up, jackass. That's my bed."
The demon beamed, a trademark Dean Winchester smile that had seduced many a country girl. "Guess we'll have to share then."
Faith tossed her towel over the back of a chair. "I'm not sleeping with you," she warned, accepting that it would be next to impossible for her to get rid of him now.
"Why not?" asked Dean with a jaunty lift of his left eyebrow.
"Not unless you're packing rubbers." The borrowed phrase from Spike slipped out without Faith's noticing it.
Sitting up completely, the demon leaned forward. "Last I checked, dead girls couldn't get pregnant."
"You've been checking?" wondered Faith rhetorically. After a beat of silence, she added, "Either way, you've been running wild with Crowley, and who knows what diseases you've picked up."
"Fair enough." He tugged off first one boot and then the other, dropping them onto the green carpet on the side of the bed.
"Good." The Slayer dropped onto the far side of the bed and swung her legs beneath the covers, sliding an angel blade beneath her pillow as she did so. Rolling over onto her stomach, she mumbled, "Now shut up so I can sleep."
"You're the one who's a fan of pillow talk, not me," Dean reminded her unhelpfully, stretching out on top of the comforter.
"Dean, if you don't shut your pie-hole, I am going to kill you."
"You can't."
She pushed up onto her elbows and gave him a bleary-eyed glare, gesturing to the weapon beneath her pillow. "I can damn sure have a fun time trying. So . . . Shut. It."
Chuckling, the demon winked at her. "I can take a hint," he said playfully.
The Slayer kneed him squarely in the side of his gluteus maximus. "No, you can't. Now be quiet," she ordered.
"Yes, ma'am."
June 21st, 2016, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 1:30 p.m
The motel room door burst open with a thunderous crash, startling Faith out of her light sleep. She got an eyeful of a dark figure in the doorway and the silver glint of a knife in its hands. That was enough proof of ill intentions for her. In the same instant that she saw his weapon, she hurled her angel blade at the intruder. The blade spun end over end and slammed into the intruder's guts. Red lightning flashed in his eyes and gaping mouth, and the stench of sulfur filled the room.
Faith scrambled out of bed. Where one demon attacked, more couldn't be far behind. She grabbed her new boots and began tugging them on over her sweatpants.
When Dean continued to lounge, his eyes half-open as he watched her dress, she seized his boots from the carpet and hurled them at him.
"Let's go, Buttercup."
Nodding at the dead demon in the doorway, Dean got to his feet with a leisurely stretch. "Probably one of Abbadon's groupies."
"Ginger had groupies?"
"I'm their new favorite target."
"How exciting for you."
The demon chuckled. "Welcome to the Rumspringa, short stack. Next time, though, you can leave it for me."
By unspoken agreement, they took the Impala south with the windows down, thirty minutes along the highway, until they reached Miami. There, they found themselves a much more expensive hotel, courtesy of Crowley's credit card. After dropping off her duffel bag on one of the two queen-sized beds in their suite, Faith wandered down to the hotel boutique while Dean took another nap.
Twenty minutes later, the woman returned upstairs. She left a pair of standard-issue navy board shorts for Dean on the dresser and then disappeared into the bathroom with the rest of her purchases, emerging after another ten minutes in a teal bandeau bikini, a pair of oversized sunglasses, and a floppy sun hat.
The demon wolf-whistled. "Damn, girl. I didn't think you look any hotter than you did in those leather pants from last night. Looks like I was wrong."
"Get changed," Faith commanded, lifting the trunks from the dresser and throwing them at his face. Still, she smiled. "We're hitting the beach."
They stayed outside until past sundown. Faith spent the first half hour swimming in the water, but then she saw a boy dog-paddling along with a shark-fin snorkel attached to his head, and she remembered far too much of Jaws to continue enjoying her swim.
"You bored already?" taunted Dean from his hotel-provided beach towel. He stopped his survey of the bikini-clad women around them long enough to lower his sunglasses and squint up at her.
In lieu of a reply, Faith tossed her head, sending droplets of salt water flying into his face.
"Bitch."
"Asshat." She sank gracefully down onto her own beach towel and rolled onto her stomach. Reaching into their orange beach bag (another hotel boutique find), she tugged out a dog-eared paperback.
"What the . . . Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives?" Dean jerked the book away from her and read the title scornfully. "Where the hell did you get that?"
Faith shrugged. "It was in the hotel book exchange area."
"I didn't realize you could read."
"Very funny. I'm peeing myself with laughter as we speak." The Slayer idly turned the first page to the table of contents and began tracking down the chapter titles with her index finger.
After a few seconds, Dean gave in and indulged his curiosity. "So, why the sudden Guy Fieri fixation?"
Faith shrugged. "Food's as good a way as any to figure out where I'm going next. I mean, I think I'm Grand Canyon or Yellowstone-bound eventually, but in the meantime . . . There's lots of meals on the road between there and here." She flicked through the book until she found the section on Georgia.
"You not sticking around for -"
"We went over this already," the woman cut him off. "You can Rumspringa damn well on your own. And me? I don't need demon drama. No offense - but I trust Crowley about as well as that three-year-old over there could throw him." She nodded towards a dark-haired toddler fifteen yards away who had just knocked down her older brother's sand castle.
"Cute kid," observed Dean automatically.
"Bet she turns into a monster teenager. They all do, sooner or later." Faith flipped another page. "Now leave me alone - unless you see a ten, I want to keep reading."
The demon glanced at the beach-goers around them. There were plenty of eights, but he had yet to see either a man or a woman that he would classify as a ten. "How about a nine point five?"
"Nope." Faith shook her head obstinately. "Tens only."
When the sun at last went down behind the Miami skyline, Faith reluctantly shook the sand out of her beach towel and tucked towel and book back into her bag. They traipsed slowly back along the warm sand towards the hotel where Faith changed back into her clubbing outfit from the night before, and then they ventured out into the city night life.
Within half an hour, however, the Slayer and the demon drifted apart. Faith left Dean at the bar of some overpriced tourist joint, and she moved alone from a townie bar to a salsa club, dancing against half a dozen random strangers at each place before leaving them frustrated and empty-handed.
Around midnight, she returned to the hotel. The Slayer peeled off her leather pants and crawled into bed in just a tank top and her underwear. Her earlier nap had been less than relaxing, and the long afternoon and evening in the sun had zapped her of energy.
She woke roughly two hours later to find a heavy body pressing into hers and the overly-loud breathing of a certain demon in her ear. Ramming her knee upward, she slammed it into his crotch and shoved the black-eyed demon off of her.
"You reek," were the first words out of her mouth. She reached beneath her pillow for her Bowie knife, and the serrated edge gleamed in the faint light from the street outside. "How many girls did you -"
"Two."
Faith raised her eyebrows. "Not bad," she mused aloud, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. "Not your personal best, but not bad. Simultaneous or sequential?" she asked as a follow-up.
"Simultaneous."
"Where'd they fall on the scale?"
"Looks-wise, both about seven and a halfs. But they were wild in be-"
The Slayer stopped him with an outstretched hand. "TMI." She wrinkled her nose. "No offense, dude, but you definitely need a shower." Rising, she wandered across the room to her duffel in search of sweatpants.
Dean watched her for a long moment, before saying in a gravelly voice, "So, you really still think you're leaving in the morning?"
"I am leaving in the morning." Faith glanced up from rifling through her clothes, her expression twisting into a frown.
"No, you're not." The post-sex good naturedness had disappeared from his tone.
Yanking her sweatpants up and over her hips, the woman tied the drawstring with quick, angry fingers. "What the frak?" she said in a play for time. Faith regretted leaving the Bowie knife on her bed. "You don't call the shots for me, Buster Brown. I call my own damn shots, remember?"
"You sure about that?" The demon moved into her personal space, and Faith instinctively dodged right in an attempt to side step him.
"And why is that?" Although her palms itched for a weapon - any kind of weapon would do - the Slayer kept her voice light.
He took another step forward, looming over her. "Because you're on my side." It was not a question. "You can act all high and mighty, but bottom line, we both know how this ends: you choose me."
Faith laughed, but nothing was funny. "G-d. You're full of yourself, aren't you? Listen up, Black Eyes. I'm on nobody's side but my own. " She pushed his chest, shoving him backwards. "Get the frak off me."
"Ah ah ah." The demon shook his head and smiled. "Good versus evil, Crowley versus Sam, the Slayers versus, well, everything . . . doesn't much matter, does it? You'll choose me. You'll always choose me." He tapped, hard, on the cross dangling on a long chain in the hollow between her breasts.
Damn it. She had almost forgotten putting the necklace on when she went to bed. It had seemed so automatic and natural to make sure that no one could take it and use it against her. Now, Faith wondered why she had not realized that Dean would find a way to use it against her regardless.
The demon leaned in even closer, pinning her against the wall with his hips, his hands braced against the plaster on either side of her head, his forehead pressed against her tousled brown hair, his lips nearly brushing her ear. "You already did, remember?" he whispered.
His breath, like the rest of him, was far too warm, and he stank of cheap alcohol and unwashed bodies. Oblivious to her revulsion, Dean continued, "All the things in the world that you could come back to, and you came back to me. But it's okay, Faith," he murmured, and his nose skimmed the goose pimples blossoming on her neck, too close to her Angelus scars for comfort.
The Slayer slapped him with a ringing smack that echoed off the hotel room walls. "Get your hands off me," she hissed furiously. "You're drunk."
"Shoulda saved that demon for me this afternoon, Faith," he said, his voice suddenly much clearer. The illusion of drunkenness vanished in an instant, and his eyes flashed back to black. "Feel this?" The demon pressed his right arm tight against the Slayer's side, until she could feel the burning that emanated from the crook of his elbow through the thin cotton of her tank top.
"Bit warm," commented Faith even as her pulse accelerated.
Dean snorted in appreciation of the understatement. "Exactly. Mark needs a little something-something."
"You just had a little somethi - . . . wait." Her frown deepening, the Slayer realized what he was implying. "You're saying the Mark wants blood?" She could not see the First Blade, but that didn't mean that it wasn't tucked away into the waistband of his jeans.
"Always, sweetheart." He smiled, a cold predatory thing that promised nothing but pain. "Didn't think it'd be tonight, but hey, maybe that explains why Crowley didn't raise a fuss about me taking off with you alone."
Oh, Hell no. Faith had absolutely zero intention of getting carved up into a zillion tiny ragged pieces just because of some damn Biblical curse thing. The Mark had been fine as an abstract, 'can't-touch-me' concept while she was a ghost, but now that the demon's anger issues were threatening her . . . to the Slayer's mild surprise, she found that she actually wanted to live. Just a little bit, but still. Even that little bit was more than she had expected.
These thoughts flashed through her mind in the space of a heartbeat, and then the woman struck. She brought her arm as far back as the wall would permit and slugged the demon, her fist smashing into his nose. Bone and cartilage went crunch. Blood spattered across his face and her forearm. Faith grinned. Not too bad for one punch.
"The frak was that for?!" Instinctively retreating backwards, Dean released her to cradle his broken nose with both hands.
"You were starting to tell me how much your new tattoo gets off on pain," shrugged Faith. "How's that for blood, Dean? You feeling tingly yet?"
"Not my blood, you bithh," he said with a sudden lisp.
Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, the Slayer darted around him and escaped to the middle of the motel room carpet. "Oh, come on, pretty boy," she taunted as she went. "Ditch the name-calling. Don't you want to show me how much of a Big Bad you are now? Why not let the darkness come out to play?"
Dean wiped blood onto his bare forearm. "You know it won't bother me if I kill you," he informed her conversationally.
"G-d, quit being such a tease." Faith took another step closer to her bed and the Bowie knife lying beside her pillow.
"You always were borderline suicidal," observed the demon, tracking her movements with his dark gaze.
"So were you," she pointed out. "Pretty sure it was why we got along."
Finally moving, he crossed the room in three quick steps and cut off her access to her knife. "Final warning," he threatened. "I won't hold back."
Fear and excitement warred within Faith. This . . . Cheeseburgers, rubber band balls, and hot dance partners aside, this was the closest that she had come to feeling alive since Sam had hauled her reluctant ghostly ass back to the land of the living. Her throat went dry at the realization, but she regained her composure and smiled wider up at Dean. "Promises, promises, Demon Boy," she almost trilled the words. "You woke me up, and now you're boring me to death. Come on and make me feel."
Ten minutes, two shattered chairs, and a noise complaint from the hotel proprietor later, Faith collapsed onto her queen-sized bed, Bowie knife in hand, her left arm wrapped protectively around her chest. A black and purple bruise was already beginning to form beneath her right eye. "Ouch," she grunted, exhaling slowly through gritted teeth. "Ouch, ouch, ouch."
Limping to the only surviving wooden chair, the demon lowered himself onto its cushioned seat. "Ughh." He pressed a warm washcloth to the nasty mess of congealing blood covering his face. "You broke my nothze."
"So? You cracked my ribs," the Slayer shot back in retaliation. "Jerk." She blinked against the agony in her left side. "Anyway, don't Knights of Hell have mystical powers? Can't you just heal yourself?"
Dean began to start carefully loosening the dried blood without causing further damage to the bridge of his nose. "I'm still working on that part," he mumbled.
"Uh huh." Fingertips creeping along her skin, Faith counted up from her lowest ribs to see which ones had been injured. "You feeling less homicidal now?"
"A little."
"Good."
"For the record, though, I'd like to point out that you hit me first," said the demon in amusement.
"Baby." The Slayer snorted and instantly regretted it as her ribcage shrieked in protest. "All I did was bust your nose."
Scraping blood off of his skin with his fingernails, he returned her snort with one of his own. "You enjoyed that bit, didn't you?"
Faith screwed her eyes shut tighter at the pain in her ribs. "Told you, sunshine. You're not the only one with a thing for violence. Ouch. Tomorrow, you're helping me to tape these."
"Or we get Crowley to heal 'em."
"I like that idea." Pausing, the woman reflected on something that he had said earlier, before trading barbed comments had turned into throwing punches. "You really that certain, huh? That I'd be loyal to you over Crowley and Sam and Buffy and everyone else?"
He tilted his head back against the wooden chair. Muffled by the washcloth, his next words came out soft and nasally, but they were all the more menacing for their quietness. "Thing is," he explained, "you and me both know that this thing with Crowley is only temporary. Sooner or later, he and I are gonna part ways, and trust me, sweetheart, that ain't gonna be pretty. If I didn't think you'd be a useful card to have in my hand when that time comes, well, I wouldn't have just broken your ribs. I wouldn't have stopped until I'd broken your skull and let your jelly brains leak all over this damn hotel carpet." The demon spoke without artifice or melodrama. It was nothing more than the bare truth, and they both knew it.
Swallowing, she said, "That's quite the picture."
Pushing himself up from his seat, he turned away from her and meandered towards the bathroom. "I told you that I remember everything," Dean reminded her as he pulled his t-shirt over his bloodied face and let it fall to the carpet. His belt and jeans soon followed. "You, me, all of it."
"Your point being?" wondered the Slayer, unsure of where this was going.
His back to her, Dean paused in the doorway. "You're not gonna screw me over, are you, Faith?" The question was dangerously pleasant.
Faith yawned, partially as a show of unconcerned bravery, partially because she was exhausted. "I'm dead. Screwing you over takes too much effort."
That won her a dry chuckle. The bathroom door closed with a gentle thud. Once again alone in the darkness, the Slayer pulled the comforter back over her head, wincing as the movement pulled on her fractured ribcage. Within minutes, she was lost in dark dreaming.
June 22nd, 2016, Miami, Florida, 9:27 a.m.
"Ouch," Faith whimpered as she inhaled and agony spread once again throughout her body. "Oh, G-d," she gasped. "I can't feel my legs. Can't you . . . please can't you make it - I don't know - faster?" she begged. "I mean, hey, this is killing me. Can't you do an old friend a favor and help move things along a little faster? Come on, Dean. It -" She inhaled again, sharper this time. "Oh, G-d, it hurts."
Somewhere in the air above her, Dean sighed. "The things I do for you."
He stepped closer to the edge of Faith's queen-sized bed, and then it happened. The ice cold sting that ripped all the oxygen out of her chest.
"Arghhh!" she bellowed, her hands tensing into fists.
"For a Slayer, you're being one hell of a baby," grumbled the demon as he commenced to rub in the piles of goopy ale vera along her backside from her mid-calf to the edge of her underpants and then from the small of her back up to her spine and shoulders. "Not my fault you sunburned your ass."
A knock sounded on the hotel room door behind them.
"Busy!" Faith called over her shoulder. The stabbing pain of her sunburn was slowly subsiding to a dull ache.
Despite her shout, the door swung open anyway, and Crowley entered, wearing his customary three-piece black suit. The demon raised an eyebrow at the scene that awaited him: the half-naked Slayer stretched out on her stomach across one bed while the newest Knight of Hell knelt over her, a bottle of green gel in his hand.
Clearing his throat loudly, Crowley wondered, "And what have you been doing in my absence, children?"
Dean shrugged. "You said you wanted to howl at the moon. Little Miss Lobster over here decided that since we were in Florida she wanted to howl at the sun. Guess she forgot that even zombies can burn.'
"Not a zombie," groused Faith, and she swung her elbow backwards to catch him in the ribs. "I have a heartbeat."
Under the pretense of working more aloe into the reddened skin along the Slayer's neck, Dean leaned forward to murmur, "Yeah, but you're still dead on the inside, aren't you, killer?"
Crowley cleared his throat a second time. "If you could save the foreplay for later, Dean? There's work to be done. That is . . . if the Slayer is in?"
"She's in," said the demon confidently.
Faith grimaced into the floral comforter. After the confrontation last night and with those black-eyes boring into her, how could she be anything else but in? Even if she took off again, Dean seemed more than capable of tracking her down unless she went completely underground, which she had no interest in doing. Still . . . she could find a way to make this work to her advantage.
When it became apparent that the demons were waiting for her answer, she rolled off the bed and slowly began dragging her jeans over her sunburns. "That's right. I'm in."