Gimme Shelter: Chapter Four part three
Present Day
Dean walked up the stairs to the motel room he shared with Faith, an anticipatory grin splitting his face. She had been talking about them taking an extended road trip, she had something personal to do in Cleveland and Dean had nowhere more important he had to be. He'd told her they'd wait until he'd saved up a couple hundred more bucks, but duty called. There was no reason why he couldn't take her with him. After all, he'd taken her on a couple hunting jobs without being too specific, leaving her in a relatively respectable bar, hustling pool players while he killed evil things. When he got back, she'd always been at the bar, waiting for him while she drank some of her winnings.
He stuck the key in the door and paused for a second. Something seemed off. Making sure his gun was within easy reach he turned the key and then pushed the door open.
She was sitting at the kitchen counter, dressed in a black leather jacket, an empty and crumpled pack of smokes and her cellphone on the counter-top. Her backpack and a duffel bag formed two eerily final humps by her booted left foot.
Dean felt his chest seize in shocked pain.
Swallowing convulsively he forced himself to speak. "What's going on?"
Faith shrugged, cracking a smile that didn't reach her eyes, "Time to motor."
Dean grinned, telling himself he was overreacting. "Well, sugar, why didn't you pack my stuff too? Hang on a sec, let me get my duffel."
Dean strode over to their bed, where all his freshly laundered clothes rested in a neatly folded pile. Skirting the bed he reached under it for his duffel bag and tossed it on the bed.
Faith closed her eyes and sighed, "Dean."
He picked up a couple shirts and arranged his clothes at the bottom of the bag neatly, not wanting to wrinkle them.
"Dean."
He stopped what he was doing and turned toward her.
"It's time for me to motor. Alone."
Dean abandoned the bag and walked over to her, a look of hurt and disbelief on his face.
She shrugged with a nonchalance she was far from feeling, and rose from her stool. Walking over to the mini-oven, she pulled out a plate with his sandwich and set it on the countertop. Dean's eyebrows went up and he sat down heavily on her vacated stool as she opened the fridge and pulled out a beer, which she cracked open and handed to him.
Running a nervous hand through her dark tresses she eyed him coolly.
"A roadtrip across America, settling down in some sleepy hollow? Come on, kiddo, that's not me and it's definitely not you…We both knew that this day was gonna come eventually."
Dean stared at her incredulously; he was at a complete loss for words. He automatically brought the beer to his lips and took a healthy swig.
"If your business in Cleveland couldn't wait Faith you could have just said so."
Faith took her cell phone off the counter and pocketed it.
"It's not about Cleveland. From one legal-lite citizen to another, I've just got shit to do, places to be, laws to break, yadda yadda yadda."
Dean held the beer bottle so tightly his knuckles turned white. "Just like that, huh?"
Faith shifted her weight from one foot to another. "Just like that."
Dean nodded slowly. "Okay, that's your excuse. What's the real reason?"
Faith narrowed her eyes at him. "Dude, we met, you saved my life, we shacked up together, fucked like rabbits and now it's time for me to go. That's all there is to it."
"Twice."
"What?"
"I saved your life twice, busted you out of hospital, nursed you back to health these last 6 weeks and now that you're as good as new you're fucking bailing."
Faith smiled at him coldly. "Oh, don't make it sound like you didn't get sufficiently rewarded for your efforts."
Dean's face darkened, "You did not just fucking say that to me."
"I thought I'd do you a solid and tell you to your face as opposed to, I don't know, leaving you a note-"
"Do me a solid? You call this bullshit doing me a solid? What's this really about, Faith? You scared to actually care about someone and let them in? Is that it? You scared to be honest for once in your fucking life?"
Faith bent down and hefted her bags, one on each shoulder. "I've gotta go and this is completely pointless."
Dean stood up and blocked her way. "We said we'd let it all out tonight and I get home and your bags are packed. If this is about Sunnydale and Stockton, I don't judge you."
Faith's eyes widened in shock. "How do you know about Sunnydale and Stockton?" There was an edge to her voice Dean hadn't heard since she'd woken up from her coma, but it was much scarier now that she was physically fit again.
"You think I wouldn't check up on you? I'm not an idiot, Faith."
Faith's eyes darkened for a second before she bestowed her most saccharine smile on him, "So you went behind my back and checked up on me, I got itchy feet and I'm bailing… who were we trying to kid here? It's true what they say, a tiger don't change its stripes."
Dean's face softened and he hated himself for what he was about to do. "Faith, please. Don't go. Whatever it is, we can-"
She rolled her eyes. "Spare me the rom-com bullshit. We had a good time but now I gotta go and there's nothing you can say or do to stop me. That's all there is to it."
"You don't mean that."
"Don't I?"
They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, before Dean backed down. Taking a step away from her, he went to sit back down on his stool and pulled the sandwich toward him. Faith watched him warily.
"You've made your point. So you wanna wait til I'm done my sandwich so I can give you a ride to the train station?"
Faith was confused. Had he just changed his mind about wanting her to stay, just like that?
"Uh, yeah, sure. Thanks. My train doesn't leave for another hour."
Dean took a bite of his sandwich and started to eat. If the bitch wanted to play hardball he could give as good as he got.
By the time he was done eating, Dean's Teflon Wall of Imperturbability was back up. He chugged the rest of his beer and got up, gesturing for Faith to precede him. She picked up her bags again and led the way out of the motel room without a backward glance.
The car ride to the train station was rife with tension and unspoken emotions. The cold bravado Faith had projected from the second Dean had stepped through the door had ebbed and she was wondering if this was a mistake. If she was making a mistake. Dean knew about her criminal record in Sunnydale and about her stint at Stockton and he didn't care.
Despite herself she asked him the question that had been plaguing her since his revelation: "So how long have you known about Sunnydale and Stockton?"
"Five weeks."
Cracks splintered their way through her words. "What did you find out?"
Dean spared her a glance and then diverted his attention back to the road.
"You were suspected of murdering Alan Finch, you were involved in a knife fight that left you in a coma for eight months, you caused criminal damage when you woke up before you ran to LA and killed two guys. Then you turned yourself in, confessed to the murders and you were sent to Stockton where you stayed for a handful of years before you broke out of prison. You were exonerated for your crimes for some reason, but that information was locked by the NSA."
Faith couldn't help the frog that formed in her throat as she heard her sordid past described so matter of factly by a man she thought the world of. There was no judgment in his tone, and this conversely made her feel worse. Steeling her shoulders she discreetly took a deep breath.
"Anything you wanna ask me about that?"
Dean silently mouthed her question and shook his head, an incredulous smirk twisting his lips. "Don't matter now, does it?"
Faith studied his profile for a while before looking out her own window, acid bubbled its way up her throat.
"Guess it doesn't."
-xxxx-
As soon as the Impala pulled into the train station, Faith shoved her door open and jumped out. Dean stopped the car and circled to the trunk, popping it open and handing Faith her bags.
She shouldered both of them easily and flashed him an empty smile.
"I'm not big on the chick flick moments, so uh… thanks for saving my life, and for all the memories, hot stuff."
Dean's hands curled into fists and he stuffed them into his jacket pockets, to stop himself from reaching out for her. He was so torn up he wasn't sure if he wanted to hold her or throttle her. Faith stared at him awkwardly, and Dean couldn't even muster a grin as she shrugged and then turned away. She strode into the station without looking back.
He watched her walk away, his heart shattering into a million pieces as the automatic fiber-glass doors slid shut behind her. Without thinking, Dean slammed the trunk then the driver's door shut, and ran after her.
Racing into the melee of people that were milling just inside the station, Dean swore volubly as he realised he had lost her. Dean searched the boards for Cleveland and when he found the platform number, raced up the escalator and across the station just in time to see the train pulling out.
Grabbing the back of his head Dean cursed loudly. Minx had lied to him about the train time. With one anguished look at the train, Dean strode back out of the station and into the Impala with a confidence he was far from feeling.
-xxx-
Faith backtracked to her locker at the station, and pulled out her Slayer gear and cash. Shoving the weapons into her duffel bag, she strode purposefully to a ticket booth and bought a ticket to Las Vegas. The train was leaving in a few minutes. Dean probably hadn't followed her into the station but just in case he had, he wouldn't know where she was going or when.
Faith paused by a bench and stared at her train. She forced herself not to think about Dean and everything else she was leaving behind. Buffy and her had a job to do, the mission was all that mattered right now, she could think about Dean when they'd completed that mission. And if she lived.
Boarding the train, Faith looked out at the Reno platform and knew that she would never come back to this city if she could help it. Her phone rang and she scrambled to pick it up, her treacherous heart hoping it was Dean.
"Hey!" Faith said breathlessly.
"Faith, it's Buffy. Your plane ticket to London will be waiting for you at the Las Vegas airport. You need to get here ASAP. This thing just tried to kill Dawnie."
"Shit, is she okay?"
"Yeah, she's got a broken arm but she'll live. We need to talk strategy. You got a pen and paper?"
Faith rifled through her backpack for the stationery. Unearthing a pen she uncapped it and nodded to herself. "Okay, shoot."
She was so busy writing down what Buffy said, she did not notice Dean walking past her train as it pulled out of the platform.
-xxx-
Dean sat outside the motel for hours, drinking Jim Bean and trying to work up the courage to go back in without her.
He was so numb from her betrayal he couldn't even muster the courage to hate her just yet. When the last drop of whisky was gone, and his bladder was pressing insistently for relief, Dean sighed and pushed open the door to the Impala. Locking the car, he gave the car a pat and walked up to the motel room.
Pushing the door open, he could not help the momentary flicker of hope that Faith was in there and the last four hours were a figment of his imagination. The empty motel room mocked him silently.
With a snort of self-disgust, Dean went to take a leak, avoiding the bathroom mirror the whole time. As he washed his hands in the sink, he could not help but think that for a minute, he had felt like he was home.
This motel had felt like home and it wasn't because it was relatively classy in comparison to all the other places he'd stayed, but because of Faith. She had felt like home, like family. And just like the rest of his family - John, Sammy - she'd found it so fucking easy to walk out on him and leave him alone. Dean splashed some water on his face then looked up into the mirror. He smashed his fist into the glass, fragmenting his reflection into multiple slivers. Rinsing his bloodied fist under the faucet, Dean shut it with his left hand and, grabbing a clean towel, wrapped it around his injured right knuckles.
Stumbling out of the bathroom Dean grimly resumed packing his clothes. Picking up the last pair of jeans he shoved them on top of all his other clothes absently as he noticed Faith's six inch Spanish blade on top of a note. He picked up the note which read, 'Just in case you find yourself staying in a skid-mark motel'.
Dean palmed the blade with his right hand, and crumpled the note with his left. A smirk tugged his lips as unbidden moisture sprang up in his eyes. She really was a piece of work.
Sitting down on the bed, Dean looked around the apartment and blinked the moisture away. His phone rang. He pulled it out of his back pocket and saw John's name on the call display.
"Yeah."
"You get my email, son?"
"Yes, sir."
"This is gonna be a big hunt, you gotta haul ass. Where's Faith?"
Dean looked around the room and the blade in his hand. "Faith's gone, Dad."
John Winchester hesitated on the other end. "Sorry to hear that."
Dean shrugged at the empty room. "Yeah, well, it was only a matter of time."
"True. Now get moving, you should be in Oregon by late afternoon tomorrow. I'm counting on you, Dean."
Dean smiled bitterly. "Sure thing, Dad. I'm on my way."