Angst Bingo Round 3 Fic #2.6

[telaryn]

Title: Ties That Bind and Choke
Author: telaryn
Word Count: 2030
Fandom: SPN/BTVS
Characters: Faith/Dean, Sam, Bobby
Rating: R
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: No ownership implied, no profit obtained.
Summary: Sam, Faith and Dean deal with the aftermath of Dean's radical attempt to save Faith's life.
Author's Note: Written for angst_bingo's Round 3, for the prompt "soul-bonding". For anyone interested in reading more stories about Faith as the Winchesters know her can go here.


Faith knew immediately what he’d done. “You stupid son-of-a-bitch,” she breathed, eyes wide with horror. She was in the hospital, tubes and sensors trailing from more points on her body than she dared think too hard about. Bandages wrapped multiple places on both arms, and she could feel gauze on her stomach and legs.

She still wasn’t sure what had attacked them – only that it was faster than anything she’d ever faced, with claws that had been virtually impossible to avoid. They’d sliced into her flesh over and over, killing her by inches as she fought to protect her boys. Faith couldn’t remember when she’d realized she wasn’t going to walk away from the battle, but she’d been absolutely at peace with dying as the darkness closed in on her.

As long as Sam and Dean were able to get away, she was fine with however Fate and the Powers that Be had chosen to punch her ticket.

She was absolutely not fine with this turn of events.

“Bobby told him he’d need to stay away from you until you were out of the woods.”

Faith whipped around to see Sam sitting in a chair in the corner. She immediately regretted the movement – her head started throbbing with the beginnings of a massive headache. “He listened?” she asked incredulously, wincing against the pain. “I’m stunned.”

Sam’s mouth quirked in a wry, bitter smile. “Only way Bobby would agree to give him the spell.”

“Faith?”

She turned to see that Dean had appeared in the doorway to her room, Bobby hovering protectively behind him. “Thank God,” he breathed when their eyes met – starting towards her. “You’re all right. You’re going to be okay…”

Dean was many things and Faith loved him – warts and all, as the saying went. This time though, his impulsive streak had led him into casting a spell like nothing he’d ever tried before. It had save Faith’s life against all logic and reason, but at an impossible price.

And the very nature of the spell made it impossible for them to avoid facing what had happened. “I’m not sorry,” Dean said defensively – his pace slowing and his expression changing as he realized what Faith was feeling. “Faith, you can’t expect me to apologize for…”

She groped for his hand and squeezed it – trying to sort out the tangle of her own emotions before she started screaming at him. Idiot. Stupid…stupid…stupid… “You shouldn’t have done it,” she said finally, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Dean, goddammit – you’ve got no idea…” Her eyes ticked past him to light on Bobby. “I can’t believe you’re okay with this.”

The older hunter raised his hands. “Don’t look at me. It was this or chaining him up until he stopped seeking out every crossroads demon left in the state. Lesser of two evils, far as I’m concerned.”

Soul-bonding. Somehow – Faith didn’t even want to imagine how – Dean had cast a spell tying their souls together; holding her back from death with his own life force. The proof that it had worked was the fact that she was sitting here, relatively whole, able to be pissed at him for risking everything on such a bonehead play.

“I’m not sorry,” Dean said stubbornly, moving closer to the bed and stroking her hair back off her forehead.

Faith drew a deep, shuddering breath, swiping at her tears with the back of her free hand. “You magically tied our souls together, Dean. Even ignoring the risk of you dying if I take a bad enough hit, you can feel what I feel now. There’s no way this ends well.”

He went unexpectedly quiet. Faith felt his hand tighten on hers.

“Maybe it won’t be as bad as we’re thinking,” Sam offered – getting to his feet and coming to stand on the other side of Faith’s bed. “Once your body’s had a chance to heal, once the Slayer powers kick in…”

Faith looked past Dean at Bobby. In a deeply twisted way she was reassured that one of the three of them knew how bad this could potentially get.
********************
Even with her Slayer powers, and the force Dean was able to contribute by way of the spell he’d cast, Faith was in the hospital for nearly two weeks. When the doctors finally agreed to release her, she was ordered to return to Bobby’s for another two weeks of “taking it easy”. Dean was grateful that he had plenty of support for his insistence that Faith follow the doctor’s instructions to the letter.

He’d been prepared for the hyper-awareness of Faith’s emotions – despite everyone’s belief that it had been an entirely impulsive move on his part, he knew the woman he’d married. She was a creature of extremes – everything she did, everything she felt, was typically dialed up to eleven. Sex was an easy solution to those times when Faith was frustrated or annoyed by her situation. It took Dean a few tries before the feedback loop stopped throwing off his rhythm, but once he had it figured out, he got off on the added sensation.

After the first night, Sam had begged off sharing their bed. “I know you’re probably not feeling it like I am Dean,” he said when the two of them had a quiet moment to themselves, “but you’ve changed things. A lot.”

Dean didn’t immediately answer the charge. The balance between the three of them had shifted – Sam had gone from being an integral part of his relationship with Faith to a piece that didn’t quite fit. He suspected that if Faith wasn’t still more hurt than she was willing to admit he would have been hearing similar complaints from her.

The problem was he didn’t know how to answer Sam, and he definitely didn’t have the first clue how to set things right again. Not without risking Faith. “You would have done the same thing in my place,” he said quietly, leaning against the Impala for support.

Sam’s answering smile was mercifully sympathetic. “You say this like it’s a good thing.”

Sam and Bobby were patient with him though, and Dean was grateful for that. Faith and he didn’t talk much, but as she got stronger and more like her old self he could feel her struggling to gain some measure of control over her emotions.

“You don’t have to protect me you know,” he said one morning while he was watching her get dressed. “I knew what I was getting into – and these past couple weeks haven’t been bad, have they?”

He heard her quiet sigh, saw her shoulders slump, and Dean felt a knot of tension twist in his gut. She was sad…scared…and he’d made her that way. “Faith,” he said, slipping off the bed and going to stand behind her, “please stop worrying.” He pulled her back against his chest, and she didn’t fight him. “You need to be focused on getting better.”

“I am better,” she said. “Slayer powers working like they should, everything back on line and functioning.” She twisted around in his embrace to look up at him. “You need to stop hovering and start thinking about what’s going to happen once we go back to work.”
**************
It was less than a week before Sam and Bobby came up with a job. “Looks like a pack of were-coyotes, menacing towns along the Texas-New Mexico border,” Bobby told them over dinner, distributing the photos he’d pulled off the web.

“Silver knife, up close and personal,” Faith said, looking at a particularly gruesome photo of one of the victims. Her head was turned away, but she still managed to smack the back of Dean’s hand when he tried to sneak one of her fries. “Sounds good.”

“And the sane members of this family will be firing from a distance,” Bobby snorted. “You sure you’re ready to get back on the horse there, Faith?”

Dean grinned in spite of himself, riding a surge of dark pleasure through his bond with his wife. “Oh she’s ready.”

The three of them were on the road at dawn.
******************
They’d left South Dakota two weeks prior to the first night of the full moon. Even Faith had to admit with a job to distract them she was less aware of her closer connection to Dean. Their rhythm wasn’t smooth or perfect anymore, but gradually the three of them managed to find a groove that felt somewhat familiar. Faith walked it gratefully, losing her worries in endless rounds of research and recon. It ended up taking the three of them the full two weeks to locate the pack and determine their next likely hunting ground.

By the time they had a workable plan in place, she was ready for a fight. “You know some women get this excited shopping,” Sam quipped, glancing sidelong at Dean.

“I’ll take the blood lust, thanks,” Dean countered. “Easier to manage on our budget.” He looked over at shoulder, and she grinned at him. “If you ever divorce me, it’s gonna be for that blade, am I right?”

Leaning forward, Faith kissed him on the cheek. “You know me very, very well.”

It was an unusual situation – coyotes were solitary hunters, the same way weres tended to be. Sam and Dean had run into an occasional mated pair of wolves that hunted together, but a functioning pack of six was almost unheard of. It was going to be Faith’s job to draw the Alpha out. “All he’s going to do is laugh at you two with the guns,” she’d argued. “The problem with distance fighting is that he’s faster than you. There’s nothing in it for him if he engages.”

“And everything to win if he gets his claws in you,” Sam pointed out.

Faith winked at him. “Then it’s up to me to make sure he doesn’t get what he wants.”
********************
He knew the woman he’d married. It had been Dean’s entire argument for performing the spell that had bound their souls and saved Faith’s life.

The fact that she enjoyed fighting and killing was no surprise to him. What he hadn’t counted on was the almost sexual pleasure she took in carving up the Alpha while he and Sam dispatched the other members of the pack. Even once it was over, and she was kneeling on the ground by a mutilated human corpse, Dean was still vibrating with sympathetic ecstasy.

“Dean,” Sam said sharply – drawing his attention. “Dude, you okay?” He’d checked the remaining bodies himself, dragging them into a pile. They only had a few hours to dispose of the remains; once the sun rose Dean knew they had to be on the road – putting as much distance between them and the border as possible. Intellectually he understood that he was supposed to help. Burning six bodies wasn’t a one person job, and Faith was usually too pumped after a fight to be much good.

Now though, he was the one who was much too pumped. Sweating, shaking, achingly hard – he wanted nothing more than to grab Sam and Faith and fuck them both senseless. The blood wasn’t a turn off – far from it. He craved the feel of the Alpha’s blood on his skin, how it thickened and tightened as it dried.

“I warned you.” Faith’s voice was unnaturally calm – Dean met her eyes across the clearing. She was outwardly the picture of control, but he could feel the lust boiling just under the surface like an echo in his own skin. “You thought you understood.”

He flinched as she stepped around the corpse, moving in his direction. “I’m a killer, Dean. It’s what I was born to do, kill monsters. And I’m very, very good at my job.”

“I didn’t think you liked it,” he protested weakly. “Not this much. Faith, this…” Words failed him.

She was quiet for a long moment. Dean struggled to bring himself under control, to gain some sort of emotional distance from the bliss that had him firmly in its grip. Finally Faith shrugged – hard edges and her own emotional defenses finally coming to bear.

“If I didn’t love the work, I’d do something else.”