A Coiling Tension
Their next hunt was a special one – a spirit who only appeared on leap years. As it just so happened, they were in the area – or at least, near enough to the small town in Utah that the spirit was located that it wasn't difficult to get there in time. It was around lunch on the 28th when they checked into their motel – two single beds and a futon they had to pay extra for.
(She and Dean might have shared a bed at their last motel, but the circumstances had been extenuating, and they were both in silent agreement that it would remain a one-time thing.)
They wouldn't be leaving for the haunted house until sundown. Sam and Dean decided to go for a walk to the nearest diner for lunch, but Faith remained behind. She didn't feel like going anywhere, and their room had an unusually large bath that she wanted to take advantage of.
"You're going to stay here and take a bath?" Dean asked as if it didn't make any sense. "But it's noon. Nobody takes a bath at noon."
She glared. "What are you, the bath police?"
Dean held his hands up in surrender. Sam smiled thinly. "We'll bring you back something to eat. Any requests?"
"Just a bacon burger and some cheese fries," she said. "Thanks, Sam."
He and Dean disappeared out the door, and Faith gladly retreated to the bathroom, where she filled the tub with blissfully hot water, dumped in some of the complimentary soap that was sudsy enough to create bubbles that filled the tub.
Faith undressed, then rolled up a towel to put under her head and slid into the wonderful water. For the first few minutes it was easy to just relax – enjoying the heat and the steam, toes curled with pleasure – but though she tried to keep her mind blank, it was inevitable that unwelcome thoughts would creep in.
All she'd been able to think about for four days was Lilith's attack on the sheriff's station, the deaths of Nancy and the other innocents, Ruby's revelations about Faith's parentage, and Dean's refusal to talk to her about how much time he had left in his crossroads deal.
The thoughts circled her head like water in a drain, and the muscles that had begun to relax tensed up again. Faith opened her eyes and glared up at the blotchy ceiling like it had wronged her. All the memories and questions in her head were going to drive her insane. She was just wishing – in an abstract, yearning sort of a way – that she had somebody else she could talk to, when her phone began to ring.
She'd left it on the counter and had to kneel up in the bath to reach it. She was surprised to see Toby's name flashing across the screen, and slid back down into the hot cocoon of the bath water, flipping open the phone and pressing it to her ear, feeling strangely breathless.
"Toby?"
"Faith," came his familiar voice. It washed over her like cool rain, and she slid deeper into the water, feeling some broken part of her heal over, just a little bit. "How are you?"
"Terrible."
They'd texted over the last week he'd been gone – mostly just him assuring her that he'd arrived safely and the odd text checking in to be sure she was still alive. She'd wanted to call him, but knowing where he was and why, well, she didn't want to bother him or distract him from whatever he had to deal with across the sea. She hadn't even told him yet that she was hunting with the Winchesters – she hadn't had the chance over text, not to mention the hurdle of the time difference.
This was the first call she'd gotten from him, and it felt just as good as sliding into the hot bath. Sort of like coming home. She hadn't even realised how much she'd missed her best friend until his voice was in her ear, warm and blissfully familiar.
"Is it really so bad at Bobby's?" he asked, sounding amused but also tired, like it was an effort to drudge up a smile.
"I'm not at Bobby's," she admitted, free hand running through the bubbles on top of the bathwater.
Toby paused. Said slowly, "Please tell me you're not hunting alone."
"I'm not alone," she assured him. "Dean invited me to come along with him and Sam – just until you get back."
Another pause, this one heavily pregnant. "You're with the Winchesters?"
"Yup." She cringed at how perky she'd made that sound.
"Faith, that's almost worse than being alone," he sighed. "Those two attract trouble like moths to a flame."
That brought an unexpected smile to her face. "Well, one could argue that I do, too."
Toby only sighed again, and the smile slid from her lips.
"How are you, Toby? Really?" she asked. "Are things … I mean, is everything going okay over there?" Whatever 'everything' was.
Toby didn't answer for a long moment, but Faith was patient, letting him gather his thoughts. "It's…well, it's a mess," he confessed. "Some days I wish I'd never come back."
"How was the funeral?"
"Long. Difficult. Awkward," he muttered. "The congregation made very clear that I wasn't welcome, but thankfully they weren't quite brazen enough to demand I leave. Still, it wasn't a very comfortable service, for me."
"I'm sorry, Toby," Faith whispered.
She could imagine him shrugging. "It is what it is," he said simply. "But now I'm stuck here, dealing with the power struggle left in dear old Dad's wake. Not to mention the issue of his estate. Mum's in no condition to handle any of it, and my brother's hopeless. It's basically just me."
The way he said it sent alarm bells ringing in Faith's head. "You're not coming back any time soon, are you?" she asked knowingly. Sadly.
"It's going to be another few weeks at the very least," he said, apologetic, and maybe a little bitter. Faith said nothing, popping bubbles with her fingertip and trying to fight the telltale sting behind her eyes. "Things can't be so bad with the Winchesters, though," he hurried to add, suddenly trying to find a silver lining to the whole Winchester thing, rather than warning her against it. That was the thing about Toby – he knew when to choose his battles. "You've always gotten along well with Sam."
"That's true," she allowed. "Sam's been great."
"And Dean?" he asked. "Are you two still at each other's throats, or have you finally just shagged it out already?"
Faith was just glad she was already flushed from the hot bathwater. "Jesus, Toby, it isn't like that," she grumbled, staring hard at a particularly large stain on the ceiling above.
"You're an idiot," Toby said affectionately.
"Stop distracting me."
His chuckle was like chocolate to her ears, and she relaxed further into her bath. "What have you been up to, then?" he asked. "Any interesting hunts?"
She opened her mouth, fully intending to blurt out everything that had happened since he'd been gone – Monument, Nancy, Ruby's revelations and Dean's deal – but she stopped herself at the last moment. Toby was dealing with enough without her piling all of her own shit on top of him. Besides, it wasn't the sort of thing you spoke about over the phone. He'd come back in a few weeks, and they'd be able to hash it all out then.
She settled instead for telling him about the hunt they were on at the moment – the spirit haunting a house that was only active every leap year, and their plans to sneak onto the property when darkness fell and put the thing to rest before it went through another destructive, four-year-long cycle.
It was a relief to speak to Toby – with whom her relationship was a simple as could be. There was no tension, no instances of him saying one thing but meaning another. Toby was just Toby, and she missed him with a fierceness that gripped her by the heart and yanked.
The two of them were still talking when there came the creak of the front door opening, footsteps on the floor. Sam and Dean were back.
"I'd better go," she told Toby, even as she slumped even further into the cooling warmth of her bath. "The boys just got back with lunch. I've gotta eat, and we'll have to get ready to leave soon."
Toby seemed just as reluctant to get off the phone. She wondered if he'd needed to hear her voice as much as she'd needed to hear his. Faith hoped whatever he was going back to after the call wasn't going to take any more from him than he was willing to give.
"Promise you'll be careful?" he asked. "That you won't do anything reckless?"
"Reckless? Me? Please."
He sighed once again. "I'll call you again soon, but don't hesitate to call if you need me. No matter the time."
"Toby, you're an ocean away," she pointed out drily. "Unless it's a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire question, how are you going to be any help at all in a crisis?"
"I needed you today," he replied simply. "And just talking to you helped me a great deal."
Stunned into silence, Faith wasn't sure what to say. She could almost see Toby's calm smile behind her eyes, the expression familiar and warm. She felt a pang of longing, missing him so much in that moment that it was almost impossible to breathe. "Talk soon?" she managed to croak.
"Of course. Stay safe."
"You too."
They hung up, but instead of getting out of the bath, Faith sank just that little bit deeper, the surface of the water gently lapping against the curve of her jaw. Now that she was off the phone, she could hear Sam and Dean's voices floating through the crack under the bathroom door. They were talking about something in low tones, but whatever the topic was, it started to get heated, and soon enough they were sniping at one another loud enough for the words to reach her ears.
"-barely less than two months left, Dean. Why the hell are we wasting our time with this hunt when what we should be doing is finding a way to get you out of this deal?!"
"The Morton house is a legend, Sammy," Dean shot back, sounding hardly as heated as his brother. "It's the hunter's version of the Grand Canyon. If I'm gonna go out, I wanna go out having tackled a classic."
"That's my point, Dean," snapped Sam, "I don't want you to go out at all!"
"Sam," said Dean, a great deal quieter, but somehow Faith still heard. "I know you wanna stop this. So do I. But we've gotta face facts—"
"I'm not going to face anything. This is bullshit, Dean. It's like you don't even wanna save yourself. Like you want to go to Hell."
Faith sucked in a sharp breath, then plunged herself down underneath the surface of her bathwater where she wouldn't be able to hear the brothers argue.
She'd known – in a distant, vague sort of a way – that Dean making a crossroads deal to save Sam meant that he would, inevitably, be going to Hell. That Dean wasn't just going to die, he was going to be stuck in Hell, tortured for all eternity. And if, by some chance, he did manage to one day crawl his way out of the pit, he wouldn't be Dean anymore.
He'd be a demon.
Faith's lungs screamed for air, but she stayed under the water, eyes squeezed tight, enjoying the way the water muffled everything, every sound and word she didn't want to hear. But eventually her screaming lungs got the better of her, and Faith shot back up to gulp down precious air.
Sam and Dean had stopped arguing in the main room, so Faith felt safe enough to climb slowly out of the bath. Drying herself off, she changed into clean, sturdy clothes, though when she left the bathroom, she was still towelling her dark hair dry.
Dean was on her bed, taking advantage of the motel's ancient Magic Fingers machine, while Sam was sat at the small kitchen table, a large burger and a can of Coke placed opposite him, waiting for her to devour.
"Did you get—"
"Double bacon and extra relish," drawled Dean without moving a muscle, reciting the order from memory. "Just how you like it."
Faith glanced at him, but found eyes shut tight, arms crossed over his chest as he enjoyed the bed's therapeutic buzzing. He knew her order but seemed not to care enough to look at her. She gritted her teeth and took a seat at the table.
"I'm gonna take a shower," said Sam abruptly, shutting his laptop with a click and disappearing into the bathroom. The door shut after him, and the rush of the shower started up. Faith glanced cautiously at Dean, who had yet to move an inch.
It took a few minutes and the rest of her burger for Faith to gather enough courage to say, "So."
Dean cracked open a single eye. "So?"
"Are we going to talk about it?"
Dean shut his eye again, relaxing back into her pillows. She noted absently that they'd smell of him later. "Talk about what, Princess?"
"About the fact you've bought yourself a one-way ticket to Hell."
Both of Dean's eyes snapped open and he propped himself up onto his elbows to glare at her. Faith met his stare, undaunted by his ire, and his eyes narrowed. "It's none of your business," he said tersely.
"Dean, you're going to Hell," she said, her voice breaking over the word. She could imagine what Hell was like, sure, but she knew that in truth, her imagination did its horrors no justice. "Talk to me about it. Is there a way out of the deal? Some loophole you haven't considered?"
Dean sat upright, still glaring at her. "It can't be stopped, okay?" he snapped. "It was part of the deal. Sam lives, I have one year till demon-central, and under no circumstances could I try to go back on my part, or Sam dies again. That was the bargain. And I was happy to make it."
"Bullshit," she blurted. "Nothing about you looks happy right now, Dean."
Dean huffed and climbed to his feet, padding across the room to the mini fridge, which they'd already stocked with beer. Priorities. "I've got two months to live," he said wryly, fishing out a beer and cracking it open on the edge of the counter. "Would you cut me a break?"
Faith stood too, glaring back at him. "Would you just talk to me about it instead of avoiding the topic like a fucking coward?"
Dean's green eyes flashed. "I'm not avoiding anything."
"Bullshit," she said again.
"What do you want me to say, Bueller?"
"I don't know," she snapped. "Maybe I just don't want you to give up like this."
"Sweetheart, the game was over before I even knew I was playing," Dean smirked sourly.
Faith pushed off from the table, pacing the length of the room, desperately wanting some space between them. When she spun back around to face him, her eyes blazed with fire. "Do you want to go to Hell?"
Dean was taken aback. "Do I want to go to Hell? Of course not. Nobody wants to go to Hell."
"So, you want to live?" she pressed stubbornly.
Dean opened his mouth but seemed to change his mind about whatever he wanted to say and shut it again. He swigged back some beer and said instead, "I don't want to live if it means my brother has to die. So, the choice is an easy one. Me or him. You'd understand if you had any family."
The words weren't all that harsh, or unexpected, or even at all untrue, but all the same they were like knives piercing at the cracks in her armour, the unforgiving bite of metal tearing into her chest. She pressed a hand over her heart as though to protect it from further attack.
Something close to regret might have passed across Dean's expression, but he quickly hid his face behind his beer bottle before she had a chance to know for sure.
"Maybe it's stupid of me, but I kind of thought I did have a family," she said, the quiet words taking even her by surprise. She'd made no conscious decision to speak. "Toby and Sam and you. And Bobby, who's always the one saying family doesn't end with blood. I guess I thought that meant something."
She grabbed her jacket from where it was hung over the back of a chair, shrugging into it and making a beeline for the door. "Where're you going?" Dean demanded, somehow surprised that she didn't want to stay and get stabbed some more.
"To get some air," she snapped, the door slamming shut in her wake.
The air outside was bitterly cold, but she just burrowed deeper into the folds of her parka, stomping off in the direction of the main street. She had no destination in mind, and the sun was making its descent towards the horizon. When it disappeared entirely, they'd have to get going to get to the Morton house for the job. She didn't have unlimited time to wander, but she kept walking anyway, deciding to just complete a lap around the block; give her head some time to cool.
But before she could reach the curb, a hand caught her arm and tugged her to a gentle stop. Faith knew she'd see Dean when she turned around, so she wasn't surprised to find him stood before her, looking stuck somewhere between angry and contrite.
"You can't just run away every time I say something you don't like," he grumbled.
Faith scoffed. "Dean, if I actually did that, you would literally never see me."
It brought a begrudging smile to Dean's lips, but he lifted a hand to physically scrub it away, as if it wouldn't leave his face any other way.
"I really did just need some air," she added, a tentative peace offering.
What better way to repair the rift than by offering a piece of herself; something she didn't want to share, but did anyway, because she wanted him to know her? Besides, hadn't she just admitted to considering them family?
"I keep thinking about you … being stuck down there, in Hell, and it just makes me wanna … throw something through a fucking window," she confessed through gritted teeth, shutting her eyes but then opening them again when all she saw behind her lids was Dean, broken and bloody.
All he wanted was to save his little brother, and this was the price he had to pay? Eternity in the pit? Torn apart by the very things he sent down there to rot? Feasted on by those demonic animals, day after endless, sunless day? It was enough to make her feel sick.
"And here I thought you couldn't stand the sight of me," said Dean, and when she looked up, he was smiling. Apparently, his looming expiration date was doing little to dampen his spirits. Or maybe he was just putting on a front.
She wondered what he was really like, underneath all the bravado. What nightmares and doubts plagued him when he tried to sleep? What he really, truly wanted out of life? How he really felt about her – and whether he truly loathed her as much he liked to pretend that he did.
But she'd never know. She wasn't the person Dean shared himself with, or ever would. She probably had just as long as he did left to live – what with the Cult breathing down her neck. It all had to come to a head at some point. She didn't imagine it would be very long until her own demons finally caught up with her.
"I guess you grow on a person," she said aloud, rather than voice any of her own darkness. If Dean didn't want to show her his, then he wasn't going to see hers. She wasn't going to give any part of herself to a person incapable of giving anything back.
Dean looked away, glancing at the sunset, before meeting her eyes again. "You're not wrong," he said, whispering it like a secret. She had to shift a few inches closer to hear. "You are one of us. Bobby loves you, and Sam thinks you're the bee's knees," he muttered it half bitterly, but she could hear the affection hidden beneath it.
It warmed her – gave her the courage to ask, "And you?"
He froze, not unlike a deer caught in the headlights. "Me?"
The question was terrifyingly direct, and she realised that wasn't the way to get the answers she wanted – not from Dean, so she hurried to redirect. She wasn't even sure she wanted to hear the truth, anyway. It had DANGER: DO NOT PROCEED written all over it.
"Do you think I'm the bee's knees?" she teased with her tongue caught between her teeth, leaning away and tucking her hands firmly into her pockets, where they could cause no trouble.
Dean snorted, seeming glad for the distraction. "I think, if anything, you're the bee's stinger," he muttered, hands tucked into his own jacket pockets. Almost as if he also didn't trust them to be out and roaming free.
"Because I'm such a pain?" she joked, eyebrows raised.
But his eyebrows furrowed, and he had a moment of quiet thought. "Because you're … dangerous," he finally said, more contemplative than she'd ever seen him.
She blinked in surprise. "Dangerous?" she echoed, heartbeat kicking up a notch. "I'm no more dangerous than you."
It was a lie. Or then, maybe it was the truth. She wasn't sure anymore. All she did know was that she wasn't entirely human, and sometimes she could be breathtakingly strong, or fast, or skilled in the art of war. And that sometimes that bloodlust took hold of her with both of its burning hands, leaving her no chance of escape. Faith knew what Ruby had said was true. Ares, the Greek god of war, was her father. But she'd yet to fully understand exactly what that meant for her, and her future.
Was she dangerous? All signs pointed to yes. You couldn't trust what wasn't human, and even then, one had to be careful. Any hunter would say the same.
She reasoned that Sam and Dean were working – in some small capacity – with Ruby. If they could stomach it enough to work with a full-blooded demon, did that mean there was hope for her? That she could be honest about her own heritage, about her origins and her shrouded, confusing destiny, and maybe they wouldn't write her off as something to hunt? That they might, just maybe, still see her as Faith?
"That's not what I meant," said Dean in a voice like whiskey and dark chocolate. Faith looked up, stunned by the force of it, finding his eyes lit with fire she'd never seen from him before. She realised that while she'd been panicking about being discovered as something less than totally human, Dean's thoughts had gone somewhere else entirely.
Her heart kicked into gear for another reason altogether, and she swallowed thickly, suddenly feeling very far out of her depth.
Thankfully, she was saved by Sam, who opened the motel door only a few dozen behind them, stuck his head out into the brisk chill, and shouted, "What the hell are you two doing? It's like thirty degrees out."
Faith grabbed hold of the opportunity like a deep-sea diver lunging for their life support. She stepped smoothly around Dean, ducking her head and escaping back inside the relative safety of the motel room, where Sam was now dressed and looking at her weirdly.
Dean followed close behind, and thankfully Sam launched straight into the specifics of the job they were working. No aimless chatter necessary. All hazardous topics easily avoided. They threw themselves into the job, and it helped relax Faith even more than her bath. There was nothing quite like working a case.
Although, the job itself turned out to be kind of a mess.
They weren't working it alone, for one thing. A group of amateur ghost hunters had set up shop in the haunted house, cameras positioned around the entire property, practically turning their hunt into an episode of Big Brother.
It turned out the guys running the would-be show – Ghostfacers, they called themselves; Faith privately thought they could have done a little better with the name – had crossed paths with Dean and Sam in the past. Some job they'd worked in West Texas over a year and a half ago, back when the brothers had only just begun hunting again, on the search for their dad – not long after the night they'd first met Faith.
Maybe if she, Dean and Sam had been alone to get the job done, it would have been an easy night. Instead, the wanna-be ghost hunter bozos made things ten times more difficult. When they weren't getting caught by the ghost or screaming at the top of their lungs every time a rat scuttled past, they were pointing cameras in their faces like it was a goddamn episode of Survivor.
For the first time since she'd started hunting, Faith felt like she had to play a part. She was self-conscious the whole time, running her hands obsessively through her hair and constantly straightening her clothes. It was a mess, and to top it all off, Dean noticed how uncomfortable she was, seeming to delight in her awkwardness.
"I don't do well in the spotlight, okay?" she'd muttered at one point, elbowing him hard in retaliation for his shit-eating grin.
They managed to get everyone out of that house by the time the sun was peeking up over the horizon – all except one.
Corbett was young, and sweet, and he hadn't deserved to die. Watching the Ghostfacers' footage back, her attention couldn't help but linger on Corbett, who looked so innocent, so blissfully unaware of the tragedy that awaited him at the hands of the supernatural. And she tried not to think that it could have just as easily have been her in his place, not so very long ago.
Sam and Dean wiped the footage so it wouldn't ever get to air – assuming that, by some miracle, it even got given the time of day by an executive – and the three of them drove off into the sunset to the cacophony of the Ghostfacers' distressed shouts.
Only it didn't feel like driving towards freedom, or adventure. With Dean in the driver's seat, the sunset turning his hair to fire, Faith thought it felt rather like driving towards the gallows.
It was mid-March, and Toby still wasn't back from England. They spoke every few days, but her partner was vague about what, exactly, was taking him so damn long back in the motherland. From the sound of his voice when he called – tired and withdrawn – his time there was taking more of a toll on him than he was willing to admit.
So, Faith stuck with Sam and Dean, living half in motel rooms and half out of the back of the Impala. Faith missed Toby, but there was something nice about life with Sam and Dean. Sam was distracted as of late, focused with single-minded intensity on getting his brother out of his contract with Hell. But he still took time to go over lore with Faith when she asked, and every time they stopped at a bar for a drink, he made a point to play a round of darts with her.
If Toby was like having a brother, then Sam was like having a friend.
Dean, for his part, acted as his usual self. If Faith hadn't known he was Hell-bound, she'd never have guessed he had less than two months to live. He was cheerful and playful, and cracked his usual amount of dumb, inappropriate jokes. He seemed, for all the world, like a guy with a long, happy future ahead of him.
But Faith knew he was burying his head in the sand. Knew he was avoiding thinking about the deal, and where he'd be three months from now – strung up on a rack and torn apart, piece by painful piece, until all that remained were the shreds of something that used to be human.
But his avoidance made him seem happy, so Faith didn't push him to talk about it. Maybe it was selfish of her, but she wanted to be able to remember him that way – happy and full of life.
One night, after Dean had enjoyed the happy hour at the local dive bar a little too much and collapsed on his futon in a pile of mussed clothes and snores, Faith and Sam made their way back to the bar. Just because Dean was out for the count, that didn't mean they had to call it a night.
"Is Dean always such a lightweight?" Faith wondered as the bartender – a very tall, very pretty woman with killer red lipstick and eyes full of secrets – handed her a martini glass rimmed with grated milk chocolate.
"Not usually," said Sam, taking his beer from the woman and awkwardly looking away from her interested smile. "I think he was just looking for a reason to fade into oblivion."
Faith considered that as she sipped her drink, rolling a stray toothpick between her fingertips.
"I can't believe you ordered a chocolate martini," said Sam suddenly, laughing good-naturedly at her expense.
Faith rolled her eyes. "It's my favourite," she muttered, refusing to feel embarrassed around this big, burly hunter who probably would only drink manly-man's beer even if held at gunpoint, but then added, "Um, do me a favour and don't tell Dean?"
Sam smiled thinly. "It's our secret."
They drank for a moment in comfortable silence, before Sam noticed the dart board across the room being abandoned halfway through a game. He tapped her shoulder, nodding to it in silent question. Faith happily agreed, and as Sam dusted down the scoreboard, she swayed her hips half-heartedly to the Runaways song playing from the jukebox in the corner, happily sipping her drink.
But Sam didn't seem anywhere near as care-free, and he was frowning as he lined up to take his shots.
"He seems to be coping okay," Faith said gently. Sam's expression tightened, knowing instantly what she meant. "I mean, he's freaking out a little – who wouldn't? But I think he's stronger than most."
Sam threw his first dart with a little too much force, and it thunked into the wall a few inches to the right of the board. "It doesn't matter how strong he is, Faith," he said, bitterness soaking his tone as he lined up his second throw, "He's still going to Hell in one month and twenty-two days."
Faith didn't know how to respond to such a statement. It was the truth. What did earthly strength matter against the everlasting suffering of Hell? If she wanted to get technical, almost nothing they did on this planet mattered, if in the end it was all going to end in fire anyway. But she couldn't afford to look at it that way; or else she'd wind up damned, too.
"There's nothing any of us can say to make it better, is there?" she mused, watching as his last shot hit the 25 ring, then strolling up to pluck the darts from their grooves and scratch his score onto the chalkboard. "I feel like the world's worst therapist."
Sam laughed a sour sort of laugh. "Welcome to life with the Winchesters," he said, lifting his beer in a mock toast. "Where every day feels like the world's worst therapy session."
Faith chuckled. "You make your life sound so awful."
"Because it is," said Sam, ripping a napkin to pieces as Faith took aim and threw her darts in quick succession. They hit exactly where she meant for them to land – impressive shots, but not so impressive they made Sam suspicious. Humans with impeccable aim were a thing; and as far as he was concerned, she just so happened to have the magic touch.
"Please, you've got it sweet," she said, strolling forwards again to gather the darts and change her score.
When she walked back up to Sam, he was staring at her like she'd declared the sky was hot pink and the clouds were made from cotton candy. "How do you figure?" he asked. His tone of voice made it clear that there was no right answer to this question.
And maybe she was feeling particularly brave, or maybe the alcohol had just loosened her tongue, but either way, Faith met him head on.
"You hunt for a living with your brother, who also happens to be your best friend – don't deny it," she added hastily when he opened his mouth to argue. "You don't have a nine-to-five. You can wake up whenever you want. You get to travel the country; see things most people can only dream about—"
"Yeah, in their nightmares—"
"And you're free. Totally, utterly, and completely free."
Sam stood slowly to his feet, reaching for the darts and taking his time lining up his first throw. "I'm really not, you know?" he finally said, weighing the second dart on his fingertips. "Free."
Faith said nothing, sensing there was more he wanted to say.
"I mean, there was the whole Azazel thing, the demon blood – this whole sense of destiny heaped upon me before I even knew how to talk. And then, growing up, I had to live knowing my future was only ever going to be this. Nothing more. Nothing normal. Nothing free about it," Sam growled, tossing the dart and landing it surprisingly close to the bullseye. He turned and looked Faith dead in the eye. "I don't want to be a hunter, Faith. I never have."
Faith frowned – she hadn't been expecting that. "Then why don't you just stop?"
Sam smiled grimly. "Because Dean's never going to stop, and he's all I have. This job is all I have. And, I s'pose, at the end of the day, at least I'm still saving people. Hunting things. The family business," he muttered the last part under his breath. Faith wasn't sure she was meant to hear it.
He threw his last dart and they swapped, Faith wandering over to the board. As she collected the darts, Faith considered what to say in reply.
"I never felt normal," she began, walking back to the piece of red electrical tape that marked where to stand for your turn. "Back before I knew about all this, I mean," she added, to give her statement some context. "I felt like … like an anomaly in the world. A leftover piece of the puzzle that just didn't fit."
Some nursed his beer and asked, "And now?"
She smiled and threw her first dart with an expert flick of her wrist. It hit the bullseye, so maybe she was showing off just a little. "Now, I finally feel like I found somewhere I belong. Somewhere things make sense, and I'm accepted, and – well, maybe I'm not really free, but something close to it."
She threw her second dart, landing it on the outer rim.
"I was never built for a normal existence. And I wasted so many years trying to fit in anyway. I wasn't passionate about anything, I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing. I was … a mess. And now that I've found it, I can't imagine anyone not wanting to hunt," she admitted. "Guess that makes me sound small-minded, doesn't it?"
"No," Sam assured her as she threw her third dart, then wandered forwards to update the scores. "I get it. I don't feel the same, but … I understand."
Collecting the darts, she met Sam at their table. "And you?" she asked softly. "Where do you fit in, Sam?"
Sam tried to smile, setting down his beer and taking the darts from her gently. "Still trying to figure that part out, I guess." His half-smile spluttered and died like a lamp's flame, melting into a grimace. He turned his attention to the dartboard, but Faith could tell it was just to hide. "If Dean dies…" he began, grip on his first dart white-knuckled.
Faith had no idea what to say, so she stayed quiet, watching as Sam tossed the dart. It thunked into the wall again, a half-dozen inches left of the board.
"I can't even say anything like, 'I know he'll still be with me'," he said suddenly, taking her by surprise. "Because he won't be with me. That's the trouble with being a hunter, Faith. You don't get any of the same ignorant bliss the rest of the world gets to enjoy. We have to live, and fight, and die, knowing the horrors that come afterwards. Knowing there is no hope. No salvation. Only torture – if not by a demon's hand, then by your own as a spirit."
It was the darkest she'd ever heard Sam speak, and she got the feeling that even when his brother wasn't on death row, he wasn't a particularly happy drunk. She reached out to touch his shoulder, and he looked at her with hope in his eyes, like she might have some glorious wisdom to impart. Something – anything – to make him feel better.
She searched the depths of her mind, wildly scrambling for something coherent and comforting to say.
"If there's a Hell," she began slowly, "then doesn't that imply the existence of a Heaven?"
Sam frowned and said nothing. Faith warily pushed on.
"The world isn't all bad; there's goodness here, too. And I believe there's goodness after death, for those who deserve it."
Sam reached for his beer, taking a deep swig. "But not for Dean," he muttered, sounding every bit The Man The World Fucked Over.
"No," she whispered, feeling, from somewhere deep inside, her heart crack in two, "not for Dean,"
Sam sniffled once, and Faith politely pretended not to notice. He threw his third dart and escaped up to the board to retrieve them. "I've never seen anyone fight with him like you do," he said when he returned to her, eyes and voice clear of grief.
"Yeah, well, annoying Dean seems to be my superpower," she drawled, taking the darts and stepping up to throw. "Lucky me."
"It's more than that," he insisted. "You challenge him in a way I don't think anyone has before. I know my brother. He was always the 'pull on her pigtails' kind of kid. I think half the time he only argues with you because he likes having your attention." Faith threw her dart and hit the bullseye again out of spite. "Besides, the tension between you two's getting so bad, I could cut it with a knife."
"What tension?" she asked defensively. "There's no tension."
Sam sent her a stare that simply said, "Please."
"What are you trying to do, Sam?" she sighed, attention back on the board. "Set me up with your brother? He's got two months to live. That doesn't exactly spell happily-ever-after."
"What I'm saying is that, on the slim chance that I…" Sam cleared his throat and threw back some more beer before croaking out, "that I can't save Dean, then I don't want him dying with any regrets."
Faith snorted sceptically. "And what? You think he'd regret not screwing me when he had the chance?"
Sam sent her his patented 'bitch-face'. "I think he'd regret not being honest about how he feels," he said mildly. Faith cast him a narrow-eyed stare, and Sam half-smiled. "And yeah, the tension's bad, and Dean's getting grumpier. You know he hasn't had a one-night stand since … hell, since before that damn case with the rabbit's foot last year."
Faith's dart landed outside the board, and this time it wasn't even intentional. "He hasn't?" she asked, interest undeniably piqued.
Sam smirked knowingly and Faith returned her attention to the dartboard. "I mean, I can't say for certain," Sam confessed. "But before that he used to kick me out of the motel room for a night at least every other week. But since then … it's just stopped."
She threw her last dart with slightly more force than necessary and turned to eye Sam dubiously. "Because he saw me in a towel?"
Sam didn't take the bait. "Because I think it was the first time he realised that maybe – just maybe – you might want him back."
Faith couldn't deny the things that sentence did to her heart. It fluttered and hopped and skipped a beat. It squeezed and dropped and thumped like it was trying to break a record. Faith threw back the rest of her chocolate martini in one gulp, signalling quickly to the bartender for another. Sam took his throws.
"All I'm saying is, he's a good guy, and I've seen the way you look at him. What's the point in holding back, really? Why not just be honest?"
She grimaced. "Historically speaking, honesty hasn't been my strong suit."
"Never too late to learn."
The waitress arrived with her martini and another beer for Sam. Faith eagerly licked up some of the chocolate shavings stuck to the rim of her glass. She passed Sam his beer and he smiled at her in a way she could only describe as encouraging. Faith rolled her eyes.
"Would you quit trying to get your brother laid?" she huffed. "If anything, it's turning me off."
Sam chuckled. "He always says I'm a terrible wingman."
Faith considered it. "Nah," she decided. "You're not so bad."
They finished their game – Faith won, obviously, and when Sam frowned at the impressive numbers, she made a mental note to pull back on the super-aim next time they played – but neither really felt like going back to the motel, where Dean would still be snoring away, the world would be quiet, and the bad thoughts would creep in like ghosts.
"Wanna hustle some pool?" Faith suggested, nodding to the guys at the pool table in the back of the bar.
Sam was sceptical. "You wanna hustle pool?"
"I'm running low on cash, and I wanna order the loaded fries," she explained, pointing up at the menu. "I'd just pick their pockets, but hustling pool feels more ethical, don't you think?"
"You have a very loose grasp of ethics," observed Sam, but it was not without amusement.
So they hustled pool, walking away with three-fifty (well, maybe a little less, after the loaded fries) in cash by the time the bar was announcing last call. Winding her arm through Sam's, the two of them walked sluggishly back to their motel.
As predicted, Dean was still out cold. Faith barely stayed awake long enough to brush her teeth, and by the time she was in bed, she was out like a light.
The next day, Dean and Faith were both nursing hangovers. Sam, on the other hand, seemed absolutely fine. "Super-human," Faith muttered, peering up from under her pile of blankets like a hungover goblin as he strolled through the door looking unfairly free of pain.
"I got a lead," said Sam brightly. "Mythology professor over at the local campus. Did his dissertation on – get this – Hellhounds."
"Hellhounds?" asked Dean, taking the coffee cup from Sam with a grunt.
"Yeah, and how they appear throughout history. He mostly talks about their symbolism in literature, and how they're depicted through art across the ages. But since we know Hellhounds are the preferred method of calling in demon deals—"
"You think he might know something," finished Dean with a heavy sigh.
Sam handed the other cup off to Faith, who took it like a priestess given an offering. She sent up a prayer of thanks to the coffee-gods and took a gulp that was all but a religious experience.
"Sam, this'll be like, the eighth professor we'll have spoken to this month," said Dean. "Can't we give it a rest?"
Sam made a show of looking down at his watch. "One month, twenty-one days, fifteen hours," he replied. "That's how long you have until your immortal soul is dragged into the pit by a bunch of bloodthirsty Hellhounds—"
"Jesus, Sam, I get it," muttered Dean, climbing to his feet and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Fine, we'll go."
He disappeared into the bathroom, still gripping his coffee like a lifeline. Faith peered blearily up at Sam. "How are you not a walking corpse right now?"
"It helps to live a healthy lifestyle—" he began, but Faith groaned noisily and pulled her covers back up over her face to block him out.
Midday saw the clouds above give way to rain, and she and Dean were sat on a bench in the downpour, huddled over their paninis in an attempt to keep them from going soggy. "I'm just saying, it's gonna be another dead end," Dean was saying adamantly.
Faith frowned. "You don't know that."
"I do know that, actually," he replied. "There's nothing that's gonna save me. He's just gotta accept it."
She swallowed her mouthful of bread, looking over at him with sad eyes. "You're telling me if your roles were reversed, you'd be able to sit back and watch his clock run out?"
Dean's phone rang, much to his relief, saving him from having to give the only answer they both knew was the truth. It was Bobby on the other end, and Faith pushed back her damp hair, finishing off the last of her panini, hoping it would soak up what little alcohol remained in her blood.
She listened only half-heartedly to Dean and Bobby's conversation but got the general idea that it was about a job. She was glad – they were only chasing their tails for leads on Dean's deal, and if she didn't get to actually do something worthwhile with her time, she was going to lose it.
Sam arrived just as Dean ended the call. "So?" Dean asked his brother expectantly.
Sam heaved a sigh. "So, the professor doesn't know shit."
"Shocking," Dean deadpanned. "Pack your panties, Sammy, we're hitting the road."
"What? What's up?"
"That was Bobby. Some banker guy blew his head off in Ohio and he thinks there's a spirit involved."
"So, you two were talking a case?"
Dean turned to look at Sam incredulously. "No, we were actually talking about our feelings. And then our favourite boy-bands… Yes, we were talking a case!"
Sam sighed and looked away, while Dean steamrolled on.
"The banker was talking about some sort of electrical problems at his pad for like a week. Phone was going hay-wire, computer was flipping on and off." Sam didn't react. "This is not ringing your bell?"
"Sounds like a spirit to me," offered Faith, snatching the last of Dean's panini from him and popping it into her mouth before he could argue.
"Thank you," said Dean, then scowled. "And also, hey!"
She wagged her eyebrows at him as she chewed. Dean made a face and grunted, turning back to Sam, and heaved a sigh and said in a tone of great importance, "Dean, we're already on a case."
"Whose?"
"Yours. I mean, what the hell else have we been doing lately other than trying to break your deal?"
"Chasing our tails, that's what," snapped Dean, stalking back towards his brother, frustration clear as day across his freckled face. "Sam, we've talked to every professor, witch, soothsayer and two-bit carny act in the lower 48. Nobody knows squat! And we can't find Bela, we can't find the Colt. So, until we actually find something, I'd like to do my job."
Sam took a shaky breath. "Well, there's one thing we haven't tried yet…"
Faith didn't see where he was going with this – but Dean apparently did. "Sam, no," he snapped, no give to his voice.
"We should summon Ruby."
"Jesus Christ," muttered Faith, reaching up to rub away the lingering hangover from her temples. The last thing she wanted was to see that demonic bitch again. Ruby might have been the first person – human or otherwise – to be honest with Faith about who and what she truly was, but that didn't mean she trusted her one iota. She was still, at the end of the day, a demon.
And besides, she'd done nothing but prove she knew far too many of Faith's secrets – including a few Faith didn't even know herself – and she was the last person Faith wanted to spend time with, especially if the Winchesters were going to be around while she did. The last thing Faith needed was Sam or Dean finding out she was a demigod and getting all stabby.
Dean, apparently, felt about as warm about the idea as she did. "I'm not gonna have this fight with you," he snapped, stomping away across the quad.
"She said she knows how to save you!" Sam shouted after him.
"Well, she can't."
"Oh really, you know that for sure?"
"I do."
"How?"
"Because she told me, okay!"
Sam looked heartbroken, and Faith couldn't have possibly felt more uncomfortable if she'd tried. She awkwardly shuffled to her right, hoping to get far enough away that she wasn't still privy to what was very clearly a private conversation between brothers.
The brothers continued to fight, not obnoxiously, but enough that Faith had to edge away to keep from being stared at. She held a hand over her eyes and glanced up at the sky. The town was under a thick blanket of grey and rain continued to fall, cold droplets splashing against her face. She wondered if it was going to storm, then realised that even if it did, they wouldn't be around for it.
That was life as a hunter; always moving. Never stood in one place long enough to get your socks wet.
"Guess I'm going to Ohio," Sam said with a note of ringing finality in his voice. Faith returned her attention to the brothers, finding Sam stalking away in the direction of the lot where they'd left the Impala.
"You could sound happier about it!" Dean called after his brother.
Sam didn't bother to respond. Faith came to a stop beside Dean, head tilted back just enough to look him in the eye. He looked stricken, and for one moment his walls were completely down, letting her glimpse the man behind the mask. Astonishingly enough, she found he was only human.
"He's only coping as best he knows how," Faith said quietly in Sam's defence.
Dean's expression hardened back into stone. "So am I."
And that was the end of that discussion. They climbed back into the Impala, stopped off at the small motel they were staying at just long enough to shove their meagre belongings into their bags, and then they were off again, heading east.
It was a two-day drive, and the tension in the car was palpable. Faith mostly just napped on the backseat of the car, listening to audiobooks through her earphones whenever Dean's classic rock tapes got to be too much.
The motel they pulled into was small and unimpressive – but then, most were. They got two beds and a couch which folded out into a mattress. Dean was particularly excited about that feature, and Faith felt a stab of guilt for taking his bed every night since she'd arrived. She considered just getting a separate room, but the more of a trace they left, the easier they were to find. And besides, she wouldn't admit it, but she didn't want to have to sleep in a room alone.
"First thing he'll wanna do is talk to the widow," said Sam once they'd settled in and eaten lunch, Dean disappearing into the bathroom to change into his Fed suit. Sam spoke to Faith in urgent undertones, and she already didn't like where this was heading. "Any more than two Feds is a red flag, so it's best you stay here. I've bookmarked some sites on my laptop; can you go through them while we're gone and see if anything jumps out at you?"
"What kind of sites?" she asked warily.
"I found a forum full of testimonials, from people who've been to Hell and back."
She immediately wrote it off. "Nobody comes back from Hell, Sam."
"Would you just read through the entries, see if anything seems legit?" he begged. She scowled when he turned on his 'puppy-dog eyes'. "Please? Besides, it's not like you'll have much else to do."
Well, he had her there.
"Fine," she grumbled. Sam smiled in brief thanks just as Dean stepped back into the room. His suit was a little boxy and shapeless, but something about it still made her heart skip a beat, and Faith reached for Sam's laptop to cover her reaction. "Don't worry, Sam's already convinced me to sit this interview out," she assured Dean as she slowly booted up the computer.
"He has?" Dean frowned.
"Two Feds attract enough attention as it is. Three would just be overkill."
"Well … good," he said lamely, a furrow between his brows.
"We'd better get going," said Sam, before the threat of uncomfortable silence could loom too heavily over their heads. Faith waved them off, and the brothers left with the promise to bring food back when they returned.
Then they were gone, and Faith was alone in the motel room. Left in the roaring silence, she suddenly missed Toby with a ferocity that took her breath away. She checked the time – it wasn't too late in London, but all the same, she decided against calling him.
Toby was going through enough of his own shit – a lot of it. Faith might not have known all the details, but she knew this was a difficult time for him, the least of which being grieving for his late father. She didn't want to bother him; not just because of something so simple and unimportant as the fact that she missed him.
She abandoned the laptop and moved over to the TV, switching it on and settling on some low-quality daytime movie with a plot she couldn't quite figure out, but was compelling all the same. She was still watching it when Sam and Dean returned, some hour and a half later, a bag full of Thai containers in hand.
"So, what'd the widow say?" Faith wondered as she cracked one of the containers open, using a cheap plastic fork to stab at the noodles inside.
Sam filled her in while Dean eagerly slipped into the bathroom to change out of his suit. Before his death, the husband had been getting calls from an unknown woman named 'Linda', but when the wife had picked up the other line to hear what was being said, she found nothing but static.
"Definitely strange," Faith mused. "So, what're we thinking? Ghost wired into the grid?"
"There have been plenty of cases of spirits using electronics to try to communicate with the tangible world. They operate on a frequency, just like a radio, and if they can tap into the right one…" Sam trailed off pointedly.
Faith nodded. "So, our first port of call is to figure out who Linda is."
Dean remerged from the bathroom, dressed in his usual distressed jeans and a dark flannel. "I figure it has to be someone from the victim's past," he said, drying his hands on a towel as he trudged over to the laptop Faith had left abandoned on the table, taking a seat and booting it up. "I'll look back through his life – try to find the connection."
They only had the one computer – so Faith and Sam dug into their food while Dean searched. Sam asked about the movie playing on the TV, and Faith explained what she could gather from the plot around mouthfuls of Pad Thai.
The food was gone and the movie was over by the time Dean found something worth sharing, and Faith looked up from the game of cards she and Sam had resorted to as Dean spoke.
"Linda's a babe," he said, the words thick with appreciation. "Or… was."
Sam abandoned their game, but Faith didn't mind. The case was more interesting anyway. "Did you find her?"
"Yeah, Linda Bateman. She and Ben Waters were high school sweethearts. Drunk driver hit them head on. Ben walked away."
"And she didn't," finished Faith. The earth could be a cruel place; utterly without justice. She wondered if it were gods like her father's fault. Gods with the power to help, to change, to make things better, and yet none of the will. Was it laziness, or did they simply just not care?
Or maybe they just weren't as powerful as they led people to believe.
"So, what? Dead flame calls to chat?" Sam wondered, pulling Faith from her musing.
"You would think, but Linda was cremated," Dean huffed, pushing away from the small kitchen table and pacing across the room. "So why's she still floating around?"
Sam sighed. "You got me."
"Maybe she's attached to an object, or someone kept a lock of her hair or something," Faith suggested.
"Maybe," Dean allowed, "but that wouldn't explain the phone calls. A spirit has to have some serious juice in them to manipulate the phone lines. I don't think a bit of left over hair would be enough." He turned to look at Sam. "What about that caller ID?"
SHA33 – it was a nonsense string of letters and numbers, like nothing Faith or either of the boys had come across before.
"Turns out, it's a phone number," said Sam with a huff of a laugh.
Dean snorted. "No phone number I've ever seen."
"Yeah, because it's about a century old," Sam explained, "back from when phones had cranks."
"So why use that number to reach out and touch someone?"
"Got me there too, but we should put a trace on it."
Dean scowled. "How the hell are we going to put a trace on something that's over 100 years old?"
"Phone company," said Faith. The brothers looked at her as if they'd momentarily forgotten she was there. "You've gotta go to the phone company. They'll have experts working there, and they'll be able to explain the source of the number, if not put a trace on the thing."
Sam and Dean exchanged a look, and then the latter nodded. "Okay," he said with a resigned sigh. "Guess we're suiting back up."
Faith collapsed back on the bed, reaching for the remote. Maybe she could find a rerun of Jeopardy or something to help pass the time.
"What're you doing?" Dean asked her. She glanced up, confused. "Get dressed; we've got a job to do."
Faith looked to Sam, who only raised his eyebrows and went back to pulling clothes out of his duffel bag. "Uh, you don't think I'll be in the way?"
"We'll be from headquarters," said Dean, not looking at her as he fished out his own monkey suit. "People from headquarters have assistants, don't they?"
"You want me to play your assistant?" Faith asked flatly.
"Got any better ideas, Bueller?"
She met his eyes, mischief in her own. "No sir," she said, holding his gaze and letting the corner of her mouth pull upwards. Dean's expression went suspiciously blank, and Sam made a noise of intense disgust from behind them. Faith smiled innocently, grabbed a handful of clothes from her duffel, and slipped into the bathroom before either of them had a chance to beat her there.
Through the door, she heard Sam mutter something she couldn't catch, then Dean bark, "Shut up."
She smiled to herself and changed into her pencil skirt and a ruffled white blouse. On the occasions she had to play bureaucrat, she tended to prefer tailored suits over skirts, but Toby had convinced her early on that some covers required a certain amount of demureness – and no matter how angry that made her, she had to play to her assets.
And I might be gay as the day is long, he'd told her with a teasing grin, but your arse is definitely an asset.
She threw her dark hair up into a messy bun, letting some hair fall loose to frame her face. She hated wearing heels, but they completed the look nicely, so she slipped them on and strode from the bathroom with all the confidence her tight skirt allowed her.
Dean made a choking noise when he saw her and Sam snorted loudly, turning away and shaking his head like an exasperated parent. Faith smiled at Dean, all sugar and poison, and grabbed the pair of plain glasses, worn for effect only. She grabbed the notebook Toby always insisted she carry, flipping it open to a new page, licked the tip of a pen, and looked at Dean expectantly.
"Do I look the part?" she asked innocently.
Dean only nodded, turning away without a word to check the clip of his gun, a deep grimace etching lines into his face. Faith glanced at Sam, who cast her a narrow-eyed look in return. She held her hands as if to say, "What?"
Dean drove to the phone company's lot, blasting Blue Oyster Cult so none of them could talk. As they drove, Faith wondered exactly how smart it was to tease Dean the way she was. It was in her nature to be flirty, and Dean was surprisingly easy to fluster. She found joy in it, something inside of her turning warm and soft when his eyes went wide, and he stared at her like she was beyond definition.
She couldn't deny there was something deeply satisfying about it, watching the usually-confident Dean splutter and blush when she flirted maybe just a little more than she should. She was playing a dangerous game. Her and Dean? Even just as something fun, with no strings attached?
It was a bad idea.
She knew this in the way she knew the sky was blue and decapitation killed vampires, and yet that didn't seem to be enough to stop her from pushing the boundaries, inching them closer and closer to the edge of a precipice.
She wasn't going to let anything happen between them; in that she was resolved. So what did it matter if they flirted, or she held his eye and made an innuendo or licked her lips just when his gaze flickered down? She was sure they were on the same page – it was just a game, and he played his part as thoroughly as she did hers.
She was in complete and total control of the situation, she told herself over and over again. She'd never be so stupid as to let it go beyond playful teasing. Right?
They parked outside the phone company's building, and as they strode into the reception, Faith tucked her pen behind her ear and held her notepad close to her chest. The receptionist behind the desk – a pretty blonde with sharp cheekbones – caught sight of Sam and Dean and immediately fixed her hair, pasting a pretty smile on her lips.
"Hi there," said Dean smoothly, leaning his weight on the chest-high desk and shooting the woman his most charming smile. "I'm Dean Raimi. This is my partner, Sam Campbell, and my assistant, Faith Joplin. We're in upper management, visiting from Headquarters, and were hoping to speak to your manager, a Mr…" He clicked his fingers at Faith, who made a show of shuffling through her notes.
"Clark Adams," she recited obediently.
"Clark Adams," echoed Dean with a smile, returning his attention to the receptionist. "Is he around? It's quite an urgent matter."
The receptionist blinked, stunned by the compelling force of Dean's pretty green eyes. "Uh, sure," she said in a voice like helium, "I'll page him down here now."
"That would be great," Dean smiled. "Thank you."
Clark Adams was a mostly-bald man wearing a cheap suit who reeked of cheap aftershave. He immediately took to Sam and Dean's story, confirmed when they showed him the IDs Sam had hastily made up for them before leaving the motel.
"We don't get many folks from HQ down here," he said, nervously adjusting his tie as he led them down a stairwell and into the bowels of the building.
"Well, the main office mentioned that there would be a lunch," said Dean, patting his stomach. Faith rolled her eyes and Sam shot Dean his usual bitch-face.
"Well, I'm sure we can arrange something. The man you wanna be speaking to is right this way…" A fly buzzed around Sam's head. He batted at it before it could dig its way into his hair. "I know, sorry," said Adams, still nervous. "We've got something of a hygiene issue down here if you ask me."
He led them around a corner to reveal the large basement of the facility. A single worker filled the space – a short man with oily hair and a badly-groomed beard, covered in crumbs, his fingers coated with Cheeto dust. On the screens behind him was a myriad of porn sites, and Faith's eyebrows shot upwards, looking over at the man who was hastily trying to shut down all of his monitors.
"Stewie, what did I tell you about keeping this place clean?" sighed Adams, looking not angry, but simply resigned.
"Stupid spam mail…" the man – Stewie – muttered, as if it would convince them in the slightest. Faith bit back a smirk as he hastily placed a clipboard over his crotch, trying his best to look innocent.
Adams just sighed. "Stewie Myers," he said tiredly, "This is Mr Campbell, Mr Raimi, and their assistant, Ms Joplin. They're from headquarters."
Stewie was still desperately trying to close all the porn tabs, while Faith just watched with a placid expression, plenty of jokes itching on the tip of her tongue. With only a little difficulty, she swallowed them back.
Adams looked like he desperately wanted to lie down. "Just … give them whatever they need," he ordered Stewie shortly, then with a nod at the three of them, turned to leave. Faith smiled at him as he disappeared around the corner, but the sweetness in it melted into something much more wolfish as she turned her knowing eyes onto Stewie.
Having shut the last of his tabs, Stewie finally turned to look at them. His eyes slid over the three of them absently, only for him to do a double take at Faith, his gaze appraising and his attention entirely on her. Faith's grin widened, and she fluttered her eyelashes. Stewie audibly gulped.
"Can – can I help you?" he stammered, still awkwardly bent over his own crotch, hiding it from sight.
"I don't know," said Faith innocently, biting down on her lip. "Can you?"
It was surprising poor Stewie didn't explode right there. Dean reached in between the two of them, snapping his fingers once. Stewie blinked and shook his head as if coming out of a daze, turning to glance at the stoic concrete of Dean's expression.
"If you wouldn't mind keeping your attention on the matter at hand, Stewie?" Dean said in a voice with no give. Stewie's eyes glanced back to Faith, who this time only arched a single brow. He nervously returned his attention to Dean. "We're here to trace a number," he said flatly.
Rolling his eyes at his brother, Sam pulled the small slip of paper from his pocket, holding it out for Stewie to take. He read the number twice, then frowned. "Where did you get this?" Stewie asked.
"Off caller I.D."
Stewie's frown deepened. "Oh no, that's impossible."
"It hasn't been used in a few years, we know."
"A few years? It's prehistoric," he snorted once. "Trust me, nobody is using this number anymore."
"Sure," said Sam with saintlike patience. "Could you run it anyway?"
"Sure," sneered Stewie, awfully confident for someone sat in a heap of his own filth and still sporting a semi. "Why don't I just rearrange my whole life first?"
Dean's smile sharpened to a knife's point, and Faith bit back another smile as he leant closer to Stewie, getting close enough that the poor guy had to lean back so their foreheads didn't collide.
"Listen, uh, Stewie," Dean began icily. "You got like six kinds of employee code violations down here, not to mention the sickening porn that is clogging up your hard-drive and the way you were leering down the front of my lovely assistant's blouse the moment we walked in here. Now when my partner says run the number, I suggest you run the number."
Stewie looked only a few words away from wetting himself, and with another audible gulp he spun around to clack away at his keyboard, bringing up the phone records. Dean stood back up to his full height, shooting Faith and Sam a smug grin. Faith rolled her eyes along with Sam.
A beat, then: "Holy crap."
"What?" Sam asked eagerly.
"I can't tell you where the number comes from," Stewie said quietly, peering at the information on his dual screens with a renewed interest, "but I can tell you where it's been going."
"What do you mean?"
The analyst printed out a series of papers, handing them to Sam with a sniff. "Ten different numbers in the past few weeks, all got calls from the same number," he said shortly, jerking his chin at the papers before retaking his seat and staring up at them expectantly. "So, are we done here? Cause I was sort of … busy?"
"Right," said Dean knowingly. Faith wrinkled her nose and kept her comments to herself. "Well, we'll leave you to your … business."
"Much appreciated," muttered Stewie, raking his eyes up and down the length of Faith's body one last time before turning back to his porn and his vending-machine dinner.
Back out in the fresher, cleaner air of the day, Faith, Sam and Dean divvied up the names on the list Stewie had printed for them.
"Why do I have to take the guy named Chad Banks?" Faith whined.
"Because Esme Darling sounds like a babe," argued Dean as though it mattered. "I'm sure I'll have more swing with her than you would. Besides, they're in the same apartment building."
Chad Banks was exactly how she'd pictured him – just barely out of high school, wearing a backwards cap and absolutely reeking of pot. He slouched lazily in his doorway and let his glazed eyes trail appreciatively down the length of her body.
"Can I help you?" he asked without lifting his eyes from her chest.
"I'm Faith Joplin, from the phone company," she said, ignoring the way he ogled her. He stood up straighter and despite how she wanted to fuck with him, she hurried to reassure him. "We're just here as a curtesy – there's been some unusual activity in the area."
His reddened eyes narrowed. "Unusual activity?"
"Unexpected calls, voices on the other end of the line, maybe they cut in and out?" she offered, tapping her heel against the floor impatiently.
Chad took a moment to think very hard. "Uhh, I dunno," he frowned, then leaned back into his apartment and called, "Hey babe, there's a chick from the phone place here. You get any fucked up calls?"
A moment, then a girl about his age peeked her head around the corner. She looked dishevelled but thankfully sober, and there was a furrow in her brow, something like fear in her blue eyes. Faith knew she'd hit the money.
"You've gotten some odd calls?" she said gently. Chad peered between the two of them, a look in his eye that made Faith sure he was picturing them naked and covered in oil. She focused her attention on the girl as she pulled Toby's stupid notepad from her pocket. "I'm afraid I'm going to need the approximate date, time and duration of the calls…"
Chad quickly lost interest, much to Faith's relief. He wandered away with a sniff, heading back into the apartment and leaving the two of them to talk. The girl stared at Faith like she was a deer in the headlights, and hoping to look less intimidating, Faith put away the pad and smiled at her softly.
"I'm Faith," she said quietly. "What's your name?"
Her doe-eyes remained wide. "Sara," she murmured after a moment of indecision.
"You're really not in any trouble, Sara," Faith assured her. "I just wanna know about the calls. I know they've probably been freaking you out. I'm just here to help. Promise."
Another moment, then Sara said, "I've been getting calls from my aunt."
Faith nodded slowly. "And your aunt…"
"Killed herself over four years ago," said Sara shortly, jaw tight and tears stubbornly stifled. She stared at Faith, daring her to call her a liar, or maybe blame the calls on the strong reek of pot coming from the inside of her apartment. When Faith did no such thing, Sara cleared her throat and said, "Must be a hell of a glitch with your system, if it can bring my aunt back from the dead."
Faith smiled softly. "You're not going crazy."
Sara snorted. "Really?"
"Does she say anything to you, your aunt?"
She shrugged. "We just talk."
Faith tried to fit all the pieces together, but it wasn't as easy as she'd hoped it would be. "Do you live here with Chad?" she asked carefully. Sara hesitated. "I'm not gonna tell anyone – believe me, your business is your own – I'm just trying to figure out how these calls are getting through to you."
After another long moment of hesitance, Sara said, "I'm not on the lease or anything, but I've been staying here a couple of months. Since graduation."
"And does anyone know you're here? Family? Friends?"
"No family," Sara murmured. "But a few of my friends know where to find me."
Faith nodded. "Okay," she said, preparing to leave when something occurred to her. "I'll get out of your hair, but before I go, I just wanna tell you that…" She wondered how to phrase it. "Whatever your aunt tells you – don't listen. Don't do a thing she says, okay?"
Sara swallowed loudly. "It's not a glitch, is it?"
Faith nodded, but Sara already knew that. "Thanks for your time, Sara."
The girl nodded, and Faith left with her thoughts swirling. She climbed down two flights of stairs, entering the floor where Dean's person lived. Dean was stood outside of an open doorway, and as Faith approached, she expected to find some gorgeous woman in yoga pants and a ponytail on the other side.
Instead, when she got close enough to hear the conversation, it astounded her. "He always had a mouth on him, my Jerry," an elderly voice was warbling. "But my goodness, some of the things he says to me now – so creative! Do you have any idea what ice cubes can be used for these days? I had no idea they'd feel so torturous when they're up—"
Dean caught sight of Faith and relief ricocheted across his face. "Mrs Darling, I'm so sorry, my partner's just come back," Dean interrupted the spirited old lady swiftly, snapping out an arm and wrapping it so tightly around Faith she nearly couldn't breathe. "You've been a great help. Lovely speaking to you."
"Oh," said Mrs Darling, disappointed. She had a shock of bright white hair and milky blue eyes. "Are you sure you won't come in for tea?"
"So sorry, we've got to get going." Dean was already guiding Faith at a breakneck pace down the corridor. "Lovely speaking to you!"
Pushing their way out into the daylight, Faith let herself laugh. "You were so right," she cackled. "Such a babe. How did you restrain yourself?"
Dean grumbled and grouched at her. "Did you learn anything?"
"Well, now that you ask, there might be something to that ice cube thing—"
To her shock Dean's cheeks actually flushed at her comment, and she grinned at him maybe a little too widely. "About the job, Bueller," he snapped, stalking furiously forwards, making her have to jog to catch up.
Still grinning, Faith relayed what she'd learned from Sara. When she was done, Dean gave a sharp recount of his own discoveries – they matched up fairly well. Except for the whole undead phone-sex thing.
Dean pulled out his phone to call Sam, and Faith only half listened to their conversation, making her way to the car.
"Faith met a girl who's been talking to her dead aunt, and I just talked to an 84-year-old grandmother who's having phone sex with her husband, who died in Korea! It redefined my understanding of the word 'necrophilia'," he said, and a passing girl gave him a sound of intense disgust.
Dean grimaced and ignored Faith's shit-eating grin. He listened to his brother speak on the other end of the line.
"Beats me," he finally said, "but we'd better find out soon. This place is turning into spook central. Yeah. See you soon."
He hung up and unlocked the Impala. "Should we stop for cheese fries?" Faith asked over the top of his beloved car.
Dean opened his mouth to answer, only for his phone to ring again. He rolled his eyes and answered without looking at the caller ID. "Yeah, what?" he asked who they could only assume was Sam. When there should have been talking, there was only silence. Faith looked back at Dean, finding him frowning into the distance. "Sam?" he pressed.
Still nothing, then Dean's entire countenance went utterly still. Faith tensed in response, one hand moving automatically towards the gun she had holstered to her thigh.
Dean said nothing, and Faith was seconds away from calling his name when he murmured, "Dad?" in such a small, scared voice that Faith wanted to wrap him in her arms and hold tight, if only for a moment. "Dad? Is that you?" Dean demanded, gaining back some of his life. He pulled the phone away from him, glaring down at the screen. "Dammit. The call dropped."
"Dean," said Faith, voice admirably steady. "You don't think that was actually…"
"I don't know," snapped Dean. He glowered into the distance another few beats before abruptly sliding behind the wheel and slamming his door shut after him. "Get in the car. We're going back to the motel."
Faith didn't so much as say a word in argument, which spoke volumes about her worry. Dean pulled almost recklessly out onto the road, and for the first time since meeting him, Faith was afraid of Dean's driving. She gripped the edges of the passenger seat, staring at him hard as he drove.
"Dean," she tried again, voice softer than ever before, "the chances of it actually being John…"
"You think I don't know that?" Dean snapped.
Faith raised her hands in shaky surrender. As Dean tore out onto the main road, Faith turned her attention out the window. The world was blurring by, and her mind wandered. If people in this town were getting calls from the dead – did that mean, maybe, she was going to be receiving a call of her own?
She wasn't sure whether the possibility excited or terrified her. At any moment her phone could ring.
One spirit connecting to the system. One spirit making contact over the phone lines. Maybe that she could believe. But this? Ghosts suddenly reappearing over the phone? It had already driven one man to kill himself. She didn't want to find out what it was going to do to Dean.
And to her? She hoped they wouldn't ever find out.
A/N: Hey everyone, so I posted this a few days ago on Ao3 but was having some technical problems and wouldn't let me upload. Here it is, though, for those of you following here! Sorry it's a little late. Hope everyone had happy holidays and a good new year!
Next time: Nemesis.