Title: Further on Up the Road
Author: Karabair
Rating: R
Spoilers/Setting: AtS Post-Home, BtVS Post-Chosen; fits in canon or slight AU (or not so slight, depending on what happens next. Hmmm...)
Pairing: Wes/Faith
Summary: Guns and motorcycles and the Pacific Coast Highway. If that’s not Wes/Faith fluff, I don’t know what is!
Notes: Thanks to stoney321 (and Mr. Stoney) for advice on firearms, smashsc for and pointing out the perfect Faith song, and Bruce Springsteen for writing and singing it, & inlovewithnight for giving this a read, and for starting the whole madness in the first place! Written for: crayonbreakygal; Valentine’s Day Fluffython.

Where the road is dark and the seed is sowed
Where the gun is cocked and the bullet's cold
Where the miles are marked in blood and gold
I'll meet you further on up the road
-Bruce Springsteen, “Further on Up the Road,” Lyrics

Further on up the Road

Before sunrise, Wesley’s thirty-fourth birthday. Two weeks after his coming to Wolfram and Hart. Four days since Sunnydale collapsing into a crater. Faith stands in his doorway, holding a gun.

“Faith.” Wesley backs away, spreads his hands, wonders how he could ever answer a knock without a weapon, except that he’s still in his nightclothes and part of him has hoped Fred or Gunn or Angel might be stopping by to wish him well. “Be reasonable, Faith,” he says. Repeating the adversary’s name as often as possible. This is the only thing he can remember from the Academy unit on hostage negotiation. “This isn’t the answer.”

“Chill, Wes, it’s not loaded.” Faith keeps her hand on the muzzle and flips the grip toward him. “Happy birthday.” She breezes inside.

Wesley doesn’t even know where to start, so he just says her name again -- “Faith,” and then. “It’s good to see you’re well and. . .” His fingers run over the gleaming gold of the barrel. “Dear God, is this a Desert Eagle?” Israeli-made, .50 caliber. Faith has just given him the Cadillac of handguns. No, fuck General Motors. This is a bloody Lamborghini.

“Don’t ask me,” Faith answers. “You’re Guns & Ammo boy.” She shrugs and, although there are plenty of perfectly good chairs in the apartment, pulls herself up to sit on his dining room table. “Took it off a bogus cop tried to do me up Sunnydale way. Thought you might dig it.”

“Yes, I. . .” He fingers the weapon greedily, half-scared she might take it back. Faith must be able to read this look, because a playful smile creeps onto her face, and he grabs at the most obvious of a hundred questions. “How did you know it was my birthday?”

“Oh, I just remembered.” Faith rolls her neck around, as if working out some stiffness, and he hears her joints crack. “From back in Sunny-D. When I stole your wallet to memorize the credit card numbers, I thought the DOB might help.”

“Yes, of course.” And it’s suddenly clear why he had to spend seven hours on the phone with American Express explaining that he did not shop at The Leather Den, and how Faith, allegedly indigent and nearly homeless, had always managed to dress so sharply. But considering everything that has passed between them, five-year- old identify theft scarcely seems like a blip, and he says, “It’s a very nice gun, Faith, but why. . .?”

“Got a tip.” She pulls a large stake from her jacket and presses the dull end against her palm. “Nest of vamps on a farm north of Santa Cruz. Teamed up with a gang of Fyarl demons, which that thing can actually kill.” She points at the gun, then smiles. “I don’t need any girl-power-happy Slayerlings along for the ride. But I might could use a Watcher with an itchy trigger finger.”

”Faith,” he says again, still feeling a little like a hostage. “I have long ceased to be anyone’s Watcher, much less yours.”

“Fine,” she says. “I could use a rogue demon hunter. You still have the cards?”

“I believe they went up in flames with Angel’s first office.”

“You still have the bike?”

“Yes, but, Faith. . .”

“Good, I got one, too,” and, anticipating his question, “Fell off a truck. If we get on the road now, we can pull an ambush while it’s still light. Should all be five by five.”

“Faith! Slow down! I need to be at work in an hour. What am I supposed to tell Wolfram & Hart?”

”Tell them I forced you.” She grins. “Tell them I had a gun.”

***

Five hours on a motorcycle, cruising up the Pacific Coast Highway, is a long time to think about what exactly Faith wants to do with him. Fuck him or cut his throat are his best guesses; maybe both, he’s not sure in what order. He doesn’t know that he is prepared for either contingency – although making sure he is armed was perhaps her way of reassuring him that he has a chance of surviving the ordeal. He thinks the trip will help him sort things out, but he doesn’t end up doing much thinking on the road; there is enough to do trying to keep up with Faith.

Her bike is a little Kawasaki, not as powerful as his Big Dog. But it’s mobile, and she knows how to gun it up the winding cliffside roads. She has the bonus, apparently, that comes with lacking any fear of death. Faith weaves in and out of traffic, through fog banks and into the oncoming lanes. Sometimes she turns all the way around and waves at him, yelling taunts that he can’t untangle from the sound of the wind and the roar of the motor. But he picks up speed, and when she drives as close to the edge as she possibly can, he races even closer. So he might go off the cliff and be dead any minute, but at least right now, with the wind biting his face, the brilliant sky above and the ocean below, the solid weight of the Eagle strapped to his hip, he has no doubts that he is, at this moment, alive; he can’t remember the last time he was so sure of it.

Just past Santa Cruz, Faith pulls off the highway, through an artichoke field to an old wooden barn. They scare some cows, but the vamps never see them coming. After the death-daring ride, the fight is embarrassingly fast. Wesley senses just a little of what young Cassius Clay must have felt, decking Sonny Liston with that phantom punch in ‘65. Thrilled with the victory, but almost sorry it could be that easy; weeping, like Alexander, that there are no more worlds to conquer.

The highlight reel: Wes nails five Fyarls with three shots. All of Faith’s stakes find home, and she tosses him an extra, just so he’ll have something to do. Every motion clicks like the choreography of a ballet or a daydream; his mind moves back past his Council training – preparation preparation preparation and tests under controlled circumstances – to his boyish imaginings. Before Quentin Travers tried to train all the bloodlust of him, the boy Wesley imagined fighting beside a Slayer, in the field. The way his Father did, all those years ago, in New Zealand. But now, when they are finished, when the last vampire swirls into dust, Faith lets out a war whoop and jumps onto him, arms around his neck, and legs around his waist. And that was no part of his eight-year-old daydreams. He hopes she will think the hardness against her hip is his gun; then he hopes she won’t; then he doesn’t know what he hopes, until she laughs and jumps down and runs into the sunlight. She guns the bike, yells, “Come on, you slow old man!” And now he knows what he wants: to follow her.

They speed to the highway, and he readies to race back to L.A. But she turns right instead – north, up the coast, and he follows, no longer knowing where she leads, surrendering his care for anything but the chase. She turns inland at San Gregorio, and in Woodside they stop to fill their tanks, and Faith’s stomach, at a two gas-pump diner in the shade of the redwoods. Faith inhales a stack of pancakes and sausage links. Wes is starving but insists that he isn’t; he is almost out of cash after buying the gas, and he’s quite sure nothing he swallows will survive twenty minutes on the bike. Faith ignores his protests, orders him a slice of apple pie with ice cream, and demands a birthday candle. The waitress rolls her eyes, and when she leaves, Faith says: “Fuck that shit. Wait three minutes and follow me out back.”

On her way to the restroom, she stops at the juke box, and puts in a lot of quarters – surely, more than the value of the meal. Wes has never skipped out on a check before, but he can’t feel too bad about it, since he hasn’t actually eaten anything. It’s not as though he bears any real responsibility for Faith.

He meets her in the back, and as they power up the bikes, he has to ask:“What did you put on the stereo?”

“Neil Young song about a dead dog. Let Old Lady Rolls-her-eyes listen to that seventeen times in a row. I mean, props to Neil. Zuma rocks, and Harvest, but that ‘Old King’ song is the worst shit ever.”

***

She veers west again, toward the coast, and just before sunset they stop at an old light house on a promontory north of Half Moon Bay. A sign identifies it as a “Youth Hostel.” Faith pays the minimal fee – he decides not to think about where she got the cash -- and signs them in as Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Wes wonders if he looks like a man transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes, but no one seems to question or care. Well, California is a large state, and he doesn’t bother to feel guilty, because she is an adult, probably, and he has no idea what his purposes are. Moral or otherwise.

The beds all stand together, in a dorm, with a couple large communal bathrooms. Wesley goes to sponge the ash and smog off his body and change into the extra shirt he thought to bring. He still hasn’t eaten, so he gets a beef jerky and a Snickers bar from the vending machine. When he comes back, Faith is making small talk with some hikers. She nods at him, but says nothing. He hangs in the background, feeling her youth and American-ness, envying her a little of both.

When her companions start to turn in, Wesley asks if she’s thought about sleeping arrangements.

“Sleep?” Faith raises an eyebrow, “Don’t be a pussy. Race you to the beach.”

Faith scrambles down the rocky hillside. When she finally stops to let him catch her, Wes asks, “Why did you want to stop here if we’re not going to sleep?”

She reaches in the pocket of her jacket and slips out a small gold pipe and a bag of brow flaky leaves. “What these wannabe hippie hitchhiker kids lack in loss-prevention skills, they make up in weed.”

“Faith,” he says, the negotiator voice again. “I am not going to sit on the beach and smoke stolen marijuana with you.” Except that in a few minutes, that’s exactly what he’s doing. And soon after that, she lies on her back, in the sand, and her hair is dirty with seaweed, and his knee digs into gravel. They open their jeans just enough for him to push into her, for her to take him. And all that thinking he meant to do, about what she wants and what he wants? He still hasn’t gotten around to the thinking; now, they are only doing. Part of him feels very wrong and much of him feels very right, but mostly it is enough that he feels.

When they are done, she says, “Wes,” and he says, “Faith,” and he rolls off her, onto the sand and rocks and starfish, and they lie together, looking at the sky.

“Man,” she says, “This beach kind of reeks, huh?” They both laugh and they say they want to smoke another bowl. But then they fall asleep, right there, limbs jumbled together, under the stars, prey for any human or demon predator that comes along. They wake up in the morning to the rays of another sunrise. And they climb the hill. And they keep riding north.

THE END