Title: The Last Good Kiss
Author: Karabair
Rating: R
Spoilers/Setting: AtS Post-Home, BtVS Post-Chosen; AU.
Disclaimers: These things are not mine. Wes & Faith & others belong to Joss and Mutant Enemy. The Last Good Kiss is a marvelous novel by James Crumley that flavored the mood of this piece (or at least the mood of my brain as I wrote it).
Pairing: Wes/Faith & others
Summary: Guns and motorcycles and the Pacific Coast Highway.
Notes: Sequel to Further on Up the Road

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
-Richard Hugo, Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg,
quoted by James Crumley as an epigraph to The Last Good Kiss

The Last Good Kiss

Faith leads the way north from Half Moon Bay, up the highway through a fog bank. They’re riding blind, and Wesley is still ravenous. He half-wonders if what happened between them last night was some side effect of extreme hunger. Then he thinks that eating might jog him back into sanity, and he isn’t sure he wants that. Sanity would tell him to turn around and go back to L.A. and walk into work, side-by-side with Angel, for the organization that has spent the last four years trying to destroy them and. . .all right, maybe sanity wouldn’t say that. He wonders if he would actually recognize a sane notion if he had one. Now, following Faith? Clearly nuts. And it feels so damn good.

She pulls off in a town called Pacifica and stops at another diner. He’s starting to notice a pattern. Her tastes don’t exactly run to haute cuisine, but then there is the thing where he is ravenous. Both of them eat about three meals worth of food, without saying much, and when the check comes, Faith nods at the back door. Wesley takes out his wallet. “Why don’t we do something novel and pay?” He sets a credit card on top of the sales slip, then says drily, “Unless you just want to tell them the numbers. I assume you still remember.”

“Ooooh,” Faith says, ignoring the dig at her larcenous habits. “I always figured you for a guy would buy a girl breakfast the next morning.” She leans over closer to him and mouths, “Classy.”

“Faith. . .” Wes feels the heat rise to his face as he moves back from her.

“S’okay, Wes. This doesn’t mean we’re gonna have to talk about it.” She cracks her knuckles. “Slaying makes me hungry and horny. Always been that way. You were convenient.” He gives her a curious look and she laughs. “Now, admit it, Wes. You thought you were gonna wake up with your head chewed off like a praying mantis.”

“I certainly did not,” he chokes out, indignantly. “Although,” he adds, “if I ever did meet a woman who seemed likely to engage in post-coital cannibalism. . .” Leaning closer to her, he murmurs, “Well, I already cut her head off.”

“You?” Faith looks at him like she’s waiting for the punchline.

“Though, only, I must emphasize, after she was already dead. By the hand of . . .one or the other of my two closest friends. Acting under demonic influence, of course, but. . .I’m fuzzy on the details.”

Faith gives him a long look and says, “So you’re not that easy to shock these days. That's what you're saying? A little no-blanket beach bingo isn't going to do it.”

“No," says Wesley, "It doesn't have to mean anything."

“No,” she says. "But I'll tell you what it does mean." She touches his sleeve, then lowers his hand to the leg of her jeans. “These clothes are rank.”

***

There’s a dollar store up the road from the diner, and Wesley buys them both jeans, fresh T-shirts and clean underwear, anything that doesn’t smell like seawater and pot and sex. They change in the restroom, and drop most of their old clothes in a dumpster. They’re walking back to the bikes, and Faith stops at a thrift store window to lust after a pair of Harley-Davidson motorcycle boots, still in great shape. She grins up at him. “It's my birthday?”

“What a coincidence! Mine was yesterday." His eyes narrow. “Really?”

She shrugs. “Well, it could be. I’d need one of those snazzy birth certificates for that shit, and my honey of a mom always thought we should stay out of the system.”

“June first,” he said. “Good a day as any. Besides,” he rationalizes. “Those boots are functional.”

“Functia-what?” she says. “No, fuck that, man. Those are gonna be my lucky boots.” She leans close, and winds a foot around the back of his calf. “If you distract the guy,” she says. “I can get out of here with those and . . . Hmm, maybe I should distract the guy?”

He puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got it.” She gives him a strange half-frown, whether it’s over the hand or the offer, he doesn’t know. “Happy birthday, Faith.” And once again, Wesley’s American Express is buying leather for her.

On the way out, they pass a used bookstore. Wesley’s eyes travel that way by instinct. “Go ahead, library guy,” she mocks. “I’ll stand guard. I’m kind of allergic to those places. Too much like school or, you know. Prison.”

“Really, Faith.” Wesley says, and he hears the Watcher coming out in spite of himself. “All the wealth of human knowledge and you can’t find a thing that interests you?”

“Jesus,” she answers, “You sound just like the last guy, and he was a high school principal.”

“If you promise to come in here with me?” he says. “I promise not to ask about that.”

She rolls her eyes, but trudges in behind him. He goes straight for rare editions, and she starts to walk out again.

“Wait.” He pulls her towards paperbacks. “Look, I bet I can find something you want. Give me – give me one sentence, all right? How about. . .” He pulls out a dog-eared copy of On the Road. “A classic, and quite appropriate.”

“OK,” she warns, “If you’re gonna turn into Xander Harris on me, this is over.”

“I suppose Kerouac is a little cliché.” He decides not to try and process the meaning of her ‘this’, just runs his finger down the shelf. “Chandler, too urban; Fitzgerald, too Hollywood; Hemingway, just too – too. Dear Lord, have they never heard of alphabetization in this country and. . . Now there’s a thought.” He flips a paperback off the shelf and hands it to her.

She reads from the cover. “The Last Good Kiss?” Her look says that this is it, he’s finally cracked; like the kid in The Princess Bride, she’s not going to read any damn kissing book.

“Just read the first sentence,” he says.

Faith shrugs, but she opens it, and bends back the cover. Her eyes move along the page, and then she laughs out loud. “An alcoholic bulldog?” She looks up. “This is in a book? A book that you’ve read? I thought they’d be more about tea parties and shit.” Flipping it over to look at the price tag, she says, “I guess if you want to add a buck-fifty to my birthday present.”

“That’s the spirit,” he says, and she actually stands there and reads, while he browses some more. Wesley pretends to be shopping for himself, but he’s really diving into territory he hasn’t explored since early adolescence. Jim Thompson and James Cain, Richard Stark’s Parker books and some early Elmore Leonard. Stories about beautiful losers, wandering the vast mysterious space of America; under-the-covers reading when he was at school, as impossible and distant as science fiction, then, and considerably moreso, for a budding Watcher, than most of what was passed off as fantasy. He can’t even remember which of these he’s read, and he wouldn’t mind looking them over again, to see how they’ve aged. But mostly he can imagine handing them off to Faith, one by one; he can see her mainlining prose like heroin.

And suddenly he realizes that he’s thinking about giving her these books, not just tonight but tomorrow and next week and next month and as long as he can keep it up, and there is absolutely no way in hell that either of them is going back to Los Angeles, not any time soon.

***

It is time to tell Angel. They stop at a coffee shop across from the post office, and Wesley uses his credit card to make a call from the pay phone. He explains the circumstances, as well as he can understand them himself, ending with, “I feel that perhaps I was too hasty in accepting that position in the – he starts to say ‘occult’ but there are people in the dining room and he switches to –“research division. And since I got the impression that the offer was largely directed at you, perhaps it’s not too late.”

Angel’s end of the line is quiet, and finally he says, “So you’d rather work as a field agent. I’m sure the firm can arrange. . .”

“No,” Wesley is quiet but implacable. “I think that, at this point, I’d like to have no affiliation with Wolfram & Hart. If, I mean – if you can spare me.”

Wesley waits, and Angel wouldn’t even need to say ‘no.’ He only needs to hesitate, to express the smallest doubt, and Wes will walk away from Faith, from whatever this is and whatever it might become, just as he walked away from Lilah. He sees Faith’s eyes, and he knows that she knows.

“Yeah, Wes,” says Angel. “I think that’s probably for the best.” For a moment, it feels like a gutpunch, but then Angel goes on, and Wes thinks that he detects a note of envy in his old friend’s voice. “Somebody needs to be out there fighting the good fight.” He pauses, then says. “You and Faith? Is this a Slayer-Watcher thing? You’re going back to the Council?”

“I am no longer Faith’s Watcher,” he answers, and lets that mean what it means.

He hands the phone off to Faith, who laughs as she seems to be answering questions. “Yuh-huh. Yuh-huh. Yup. How’s Wes?” She looks at him. “Oh, you know. Lots of stamina. But he hogs the covers.” For a moment, she has to hold the phone away from her ear, and then she yells, “Of COURSE I’m kidding.” Then, quieter, “There were no covers.” Another moment. “As serious as you want me to be. . .Yes, I understand why you took the offer. I mean, it’s batshit crazy, but I understand. You’ve been through crazy and come out on the other side. Wes? Six months in that place and he’ll be locked in the office talking to himself. He needs a change of scene, that’s all. I’ll get him back in one piece.” Listening again. “OK, sure. I’ll tell him.” She hangs up, and looks at Wesley. “We’re meeting Gunn and Lorne tomorrow, in Reno. They’ll bring us some things.”

***

In San Francisco, they get a room in another cheap hostel, but this time they curl up together and just sleep, for twelve hours straight. At least, Wesley does, though when he wakes up, she’s beside him, reading, though she tries to pretend like she wasn’t. Over breakfast, she declares that her bike sucks, and they should both ride his to Nevada, then figure it out from there. So they go to Golden Gate Park, and she sells the rice-burner for three-hundred bucks, plus a hundred-dollar bag of what a kid who calls himself Yogi refers to as “some seriously dank shit.” Wesley feels weird about seeing drugs sold, more or less in public, but considering the extremely unlicensed Israeli handgun concealed under his jacket, he doesn’t have much room to talk. Besides, hard-boiled pulp fiction and sex on the beach aren’t the only adolescent tastes that Faith has managed to resurrect in him.

They walk back to the Big Dog, parked up on Haight Street, and Wesley tries to climb onto the front. “Hey!” Faith protests. “I’m nobody’s bitch.”

“It’s my bike!” he gripes.

“And you ride like my dead gramma, and I’d like to get to Reno before the next Apocalypse.”

And so he gets behind her, and fastens his hands around her waist, and pushes his chest against her back and she settles between his legs and he knows there is absolutely no way they are getting to Nevada without stopping to shag. And he’s right. A one-seat restroom in a truck stop north of Dixon gets the honor. The rest of the way, Faith rides on the back.

***

They meet Lorne and Gunn in a parking lot, and even though it should be friendly, Wes has the odd feeling of a prisoner exchange. Lorne drives up in an SUV, while Gunn has brought Angel’s old convertible, with everything Wes said he would need – a bag of clothes, a few of his books, a small laptop, and the cell phone he ran off without. Gunn also has some things for Faith: a driver’s license and Canadian passport, identifying her as Bianca Savage, born in 1979 in Victoria, British Columbia. Faith the wanted fugitive is no more -- if she ever was, in a legal sense. Gunn also gives both of them his card, with the Wolfram & Hart logo. Lots of copies. “Don’t abuse this or nothin’,” he says, with a glance at Faith. “But let’s just call it, Get out of Jail Free.”

Lorne is uncharacteristically quiet, but looks from Wes to Faith intently. Wes can’t get away from the uncomfortable feeling that his aura is being read. He doesn’t like the idea, but on the other hand, he is pretty damn curious about what it would say. Wesley, as usual, feels like the last one to know anything about Wesley.

Gunn gestures for him to come to one side, and Lorne suddenly starts babbling to Faith. “Honey, you just have to tell me about those boots, and can I just say? It’s not every girl who can pull off a motorcycle helmet and have her hair look that good.” Wes is vaguely aware that this is some sort of distraction that Lorne and Gunn have planned.

“Is he trying to read her?” Wesley asks, craning to see past Gunn. “I think the chances of Faith bursting into song are. . .”

“Hey, English!” Gunn claps his hands, and Wes turns to him. “This is gonna be good-bye for us for a while, least you can do is look at me. Be honest, you and Faith. This is really what you want?"

Wesley has to hold back a laugh. "Are you asking if she abducted me? Is that what Angel thinks?"

"I'm asking why you changed your mind. Is it some Slayer/Watcher thing I’m not gonna get?”

“I haven’t been a Watcher for a long time. You know that.” He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, wanting to give Gunn something and so almost telling him what he couldn’t say to Angel. “And I’m quite certain that you can get what kind of thing this is.”

“You and Faith? Faith and you?” Gunn frowns and leans close. “Wes, man. . .didn’t she try to kill you?”

Wes manages a smile. “You do remember my last girlfriend, right?”

“I haven’t been a lawyer very long,” Gunn says, “But I do know there are some precedents you don’t cite when you want to help your own case.”

“Lilah being one?” Wes sighs. “Faith’s all right, Charles. Angel would be the first one to tell you that. But Faith’s not the reason. I’m doing what I need to do. Just . . .look out for the others.”

“You mean Fred,” says Gunn flatly.

“I mean the others. Angel. Cordelia. And of course.” He shakes his head, but doesn’t say the name. “Her. And don’t mention. . .what I said about Faith. It’s not as though I’m expecting it to last forever. Or at all. But that doesn’t mean I’ll be back there with my tail between my legs. Just tell them I’m sorry. Tell them I couldn’t do it. I’m not trying to prove I’m better than anyone, but I’ve been deep in the belly of that beast and. . .” He smiles. “Faith seems to think this is some sort of therapy.”

Gunn glances her way. “You’re taking mental-health suggestions from Faith now?” And smiles creep across both their faces, and then they move back toward the others. Gunn puts out his fist, and Wes meets it, so that they touch skin at the knuckles.

“Stay strong,” says Wes.

“Be well,” says Gunn.

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” Wes answers.

They start to move apart, and then Lorne comes in and presses them together with a hug. “We’ll miss your crazy pretty face around the big glass house.”

“Thank you,” Wesley sputters. He manages to escape the demon’s embrace, and starts rubbing off his jacket, looking anywhere but at the other men. Which leads to looking at Faith, who is grinning in amusement.

“Ease off, man,” Gunn says to Lorne. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere, and we have to drive back to L.A. together.”

“Drive together?” Wes says with a frown.

Lorne points at his face, “The FAA ain’t exactly crazy about putting me on a plane. I call it species profiling, and I was trying to get Legal Eagle here on a civil rights case.”

“And I told him, ‘demon’ is not a protected class under Title Seven,” Gunn says wearily. “Many times,” he adds, then tosses a set of keys to Wesley. “I took a last spin in the Plymouth, Lorne’s driving me back.

Faith is the first to get it. “Angel’s giving us his car?”

“Gunn, we can’t take this!” Wesley protests. Faith smacks him on the arm, and maybe she forgets how hard a Slayer can hit, though maybe she doesn’t.

“Angel won’t take no for an answer,” says Gunn. “Believe me, ‘cause I wanted this baby. For me. And bad. But the firm gave him more cars than you can shake a stake at. And Angel said you used to be his wheel man, back in the day,so he liked the idea of the old baby getting its share of action on the open road.”

Before Wesley can say anything else, Faith smacks his arm again, and just for good measure, she takes the keys. Then everyone starts to say good-bye, and they realize it’s been said, so Lorne and Gunn get in one car, and they drive away.

Faith climbs behind the wheel of the convertible, cackling, “Best birthday present, ever!”

“I thought we decided that was yesterday.” Wesley speaks absently, looking after the others. Something is emptying out inside of him, but it isn’t exactly sad; it’s both a loss and a lightening. It isn’t that he will never see Gunn again. If life has showed him anything, it is that you can hardly ever count on anyone being gone for good. Yet, he stands here and it is entirely possible that he might never see Gunn again, and that, if they don’t, it may be all right, because everything that needs to happen between them has happened already. The story that binds them together is not so much over as complete. They might very well meet again, but it will be the start of a new chapter.

“Hey Wes,” Faith says softly. He turns to her, half bewildered. “You know what I’m thinking?” And, when he shakes his head ‘no.’ I’m thinking you should get on that bike, and I should drive this car, and we should get a real hotel room. And then we should fuck our brains out.” She smiles. “How does that sound?”

He smiles, and starts to speak, and she warns, “If you say ‘five by five’? I might just have to kick your ass.

TBC...