Two-Headed Boy: Fourteen
The last weekend in September, Jess drags Sam to a carnival. It’s small and a little sketchy, but Jess is as excited as a kid when she reads the flier to Sam and talks about the film she already bought for her camera to take pictures while they’re there. Sam sighs and drops his shoulders and it’s as good as a yes and they both know it.
He’s got his hoodie zipped up against the chill in the air and Jess is buzzing around him like a hyper little bee, a swirl of blonde hair tossed up into a ponytail and the grey of her sweater and the soft click-spin-spin-click of her old Kodak Pony. Sam keeps his hands in his pockets and watches her instead of the spectacle around them, his smile soft and only for her.
“You wanna split a funnel cake?” She’s beside him again for the moment, the camera winding film up in a noisy churn while she fishes another roll out of her purse. He watches the whole thing with amused interest, eyebrows lifted to show it.
“Not really?”
She stops what she’s doing and just looks up at him, leveling him with a stare that makes him take a step back, a laugh tripping out of his mouth that he can’t seem to hold back.
“Are you kidding me, Winchester? You’re actually gonna funnel-cakeblock me?”
He laughs again, pulling a hand out of his pocket to wrap it around her waist and pull her in against him, tickling her a little when she tries to squirm away.
“Hey, I didn’t say you couldn’t get one. Knock yourself out.” He tugs her toward the brightly-lit stands advertising everything from fresh-squeezed lemonade to fried Twinkies. He wrinkles his nose at the greasy-sweet smell of it all. “Here. I’ll even pay for it.”
He goes to reach for his wallet and she scoffs at him, the smile on her lips giving away how much she’s enjoying this. “Keep your money, grandma. Here.” She pushes her camera and a new roll of film into his waiting hands. “Load the film while I get it.”
The kiss she gives him is a quick smack and she’s gone, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the milling throngs of people. It’s all so bright and loud here: kids shrieking with laughter, teenage-girl perfume drifting by every few seconds, the victorious ding-ding! of games won, the luring shouts of the men in charge of booths, trying to coax people in to win cheap toys and printed photos of celebrities.
He’s been raised to expect things to go wrong, to be suspicious of each and every thing around him, and so he finds himself trying to catalogue it all as he loads the camera, his fingers sure and patient just like Jess taught him. He tries to memorize each ride and their operators, tries to keep track of especially loud sounds, tries to identify each of them. It’s so much, too much. His hands slip a little as he closes the camera back up, letting the film get settled in and start to wind itself down into place but he catches it just in time.
A man walks by holding a lit cigar, a sweaty, meaty shoulder jostling Sam and almost making him trip over his own feet. He wants to go home suddenly, wants to be in a quiet room where all the sounds are expected ones, wants to only hear one voice, smell one thing. His grip tightens on the camera and he looks up to try and find an exit, an escape when Jess appears again in his line of vision, holding a paper plate with a heavy, winding funnel cake topped with powdered sugar and strawberries weighing it down.
“Hey.” She touches his arm, her entire expression drawn into concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m.” He stops, doesn’t have the mind to lie just now. “Can we go take a break or something? Find somewhere to sit?”
“Sure. Of course.” Her smile is the warmest he’s ever seen and she leans up to press a kiss to eyebrow before she takes her camera back and drops it down into her bag. “C’mon. There are a few tables around here somewhere. I saw ‘em when we first came in.”
The sky is clear and velveteen overhead, stars dancing in seeming merriment as they make their way through the crowds. It starts to thin out once they get away from most of the rides, only a few booths over this way, all apparently selling things they don’t feel the need to shout about.
There’s a single, rickety picnic table that has seen more days than Sam and Jess combined at the very end of the line of booths, plenty far from most of the craziness for Sam to feel like he can breathe again. There are a few lights overhead that are almost blindingly bright, but at least it’s not sitting in the dark.
They make their way over without a word, Sam winding his way around so he can sit facing out toward the rest of the carnival while Jess plops down beside him.
There’s a woman at the table already, curled down over a little styrofoam cup that’s billowing steam up toward her face. She looks neither old or young, her hands strong and lithe and lined with rings where they clasp the cup. Jess doesn’t pay her any mind, doesn’t see anything past the strawberry on her fork that she’s lifting up to Sam’s mouth very graciously, an understanding smile on her face.
He leans over and catches the strawberry on the fork with his lips, eating it just because she wants him to. The smile she gives him is a little relieved and it makes him relax, body sinking down further onto the bench.
“Not much of a crowd person, are you?”
Sam looks over for that, for the soft strength in that voice. The woman is looking right at him, her eyes an unfathomable color like dark grey or maybe a deep forest green, and he shivers a little when they meet his own.
“Not really,” he finds himself saying, not even really thinking before answering. She makes a sound of agreement before lifting the cup to her mouth, taking a careful sip before she speaks again.
“What are you doing here?”
Her tone is off, almost accusing. Sam sits up a little then, sits back and glances over at Jess who is just watching him, powdered sugar dusting her lips, fork hovering, everything from the quirk of her eyebrows and the wide of her eyes telling Sam that she’s just as lost as he is. He looks back over at the woman.
“Um, I just wanted to take a break from it all. Jess here wanted to come and take pictures and--”
“That’s not what I mean.” The woman lifts her head for the first time and looks him in the face. She’s probably in her late-fifties, her hair long and soft brown and framing her face in wind-lost curls. Her mouth is beautiful in its unhappy line, it’s soft and sensuous and almost too young to belong on her face. Sam’s heart picks up speed for how boldly she’s looking at him, for how her gaze is piercing him, prying right into him in places that he guards with tight fists. “What are you doing here? Away from him?”
He reaches for his pockets immediately and finds them empty, of course. Civilian Sam doesn’t carry salt or holy water, doesn’t have any charms on him to at least give him the illusion of safety. He closes himself off then, cloaking his mind and not letting her in any further. His expression hardens and she sets her cup down, the tag from the teabag inside of it getting trapped underneath.
“Excuse me, but who are you?” Jess pushes her funnel cake away and turns her body in toward Sam, a hand resting on his forearm, like she knows what’s going on, like she can guard him from anything. Sam angles himself away from her then, protecting her as much as she’s trying to protect him.
The woman doesn’t look away from Sam to acknowledge Jess, doesn’t break eye contact even once. Her eyes soften and she lets out a sigh, hair tumbling around her shoulders as she shakes her head.
“Lost. Poor boy, you’re just so lost. Don’t even know how much.” She lifts her arms then, her bracelets sounding like the ringing of bells as she cups her hands together to reach for Sam. He leans in toward her, lifts his hands to offer them to her even as Jess is tightening her grip on his arm, trying to pull him away from her.
“Sam, don’t. She’s crazy. Let’s just go.” Jess stands up, unfolds her long body from the table and pulling her purse up onto her shoulder. The woman closes her hands around Sam’s and he feels it like lightning all through his bones and he knows without question that this woman is a true psychic, a reader, and that she’s prying his soul open with kid gloves right now and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
He slams his eyes shut to the tears that drag themselves up, he clutches his hands together between hers and lowers his head, jaw clenching hard. He hears the woman make a noise, a soft sound of almost pity, hears Jess drop back down into the seat next to him.
“Sam--”
“He’s near the end of his rope. He wanders around lost, just like you. Except he’s looking for trouble. Looking for someone to take it out on. Looking for someone to take him down. Doesn’t think anyone will care anymore.” Her eyes are closed when he dares to look back up at her, her eyeballs working behind her lids like fluttering wings, her beautiful mouth whispering unheard words.
“Tell me more.” His voice sounds raked apart, like he’s been crying all night. Like this has torn him wide open and he can’t stop the bleeding. He untangles his hands from each other and turns them so that his palms line up with hers, so that she can access any part of him she needs to, anything to get her to tell him more. “Is he okay?”
“Lost, so lost,” she murmurs, like it’s a song, a forgotten prayer. Her thumb strokes over his knuckles, the silver of her rings cold on his skin. “He knows where you are and so he can’t look for you. Can’t pretend that’s his quest, not anymore. You were always his North, always the thing to work for and work toward and so what is he now? What is he protecting now?”
“Everyone,” Sam interrupts, trying to meet her eyes, pleading with her, arguing with her. “He protects everyone. He doesn’t need me. He doesn’t--”
“You cannot tell someone they don’t need their soul.” Her voice sounds even stronger now, the whole tone of it lower, like someone else is taking hold of it. She meets his eyes and he sees that they’re green, the green on maps, the green that lives with brown. He feels like he’s known her forever. “You cannot tell someone they don’t need half of themselves. He needs you just as you need him. Do not blaspheme against what you are to each other, boy.”
“Sam, we’re leaving. Now.” Jess is up again and she’s pulling on him so hard that she’s hurting his arm. He blinks then, tearing his eyes away from the woman to look up at Jess. He blinks at her like he really is lost, like he has no idea who she is. She looks terrified and angry and she uses all of her strength to yank him up, to make him listen.
He scrambles up from the seat, pulling his hands from the woman’s grip and running his hands through his hair, trying to get control of himself, trying to sew himself back up again as fast as he can.
Jess snatches his hand, tucking her fingers between each of his and she pulls him away from the table, away from the woman who is just watching them, watching him. She reaches out just as they walk by, wrapping long fingers around Sam’s wrist, drawing him back into her gaze just as easy as breathing.
“Please,” he whispers, not knowing exactly what he’s asking for, what he wants. Jess’ hand is trembling in his own and the night is alive around them, bright with sounds and people’s voices and the smell of smoke and sugar and the cool of autumn, but he can only hear the low rasp of Dean’s voice when he’s just woken up, can only feel how warm Dean’s skin gets in the sun, can only smell the inside of the Impala and that secret scent of Dean’s skin on his neck, right where Sam tucks his face to hide from everyone, from everything. He’s drowning.
“Go to him,” she says right back just as soft, like she doesn’t want anyone else to hear it. Her eyes are bright in the dark and imploring with him, her grip tightening on the bones in his wrist. “There’s so much blood in your life, boy. So much blood. You can’t escape it, but you can be there beside him when it happens. There’s burning and there’s blood but you don’t have to be alone. He doesn’t have to be alone. And lost. So lost.”
She collapses back down onto the bench, her cup rattling on the table. Jess pulls Sam so hard that he almost falls into her, almost trips over his own feet. They stumble back through the alley between lines of booths, everything almost sinister now, skewed like a funhouse mirror. He sees a little table off to the side that he hadn’t seen before, one containing just a stack of cards, an unlit candle, a bell, and a small, handwritten sign that says “Back in Twenty.”
A mind-reader.
He stops in his tracks and looks back toward the woman at the table with her back to them, her hair spilling long down her back, her shoulders drawn in.
“Sam, stop it. Stop it. You’re freaking me out.” Her voice is shaking and Sam looks over at Jess, really looks at her for the first time since they sat down over there. Her eyes are shining with tears and her face is pale, everything about her expression pleading with him. “What the fuck was that? What was she talking about?”
“Can we just go home?” He feels exhausted and it’s all of a sudden, out of nowhere and it hits him like a tidal wave. “Can we leave? Please?”
She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something else, like she’s going to argue, but she stops. Takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
They make it back to the apartment without speaking another word, both of them lost in their own heads. The apartment is just starting to feel like home, all their stuff unpacked and blending together until it’s finally starting to feel like their stuff.
Jess turns on the light in the livingroom and Sam keeps walking until he gets to the bedroom. He doesn’t bother turning on the light, doesn’t look around before he starts stripping off his clothes layer by layer. He falls down onto the bed in just his underwear, pulling the blankets up around his shoulders, his mind still spinning with words, with lost and blood and alone and do not blaspheme against what you are to each other, boy.
His eyes are closed by the time Jess comes into the room, everything about her movements quiet, careful. She closes the door behind her, the soft patter of her clothes hitting the ground comforting before she climbs into bed with him.
Her hand on his shoulder has him immediately submitting, turning over to sprawl on his back so she can tuck up against his side, her cheek resting warm and soft on his chest, right over his heart. He strokes her hair back from her face just as she wraps her arms around him, neither of them sure what to say yet, it seems. He watches the ceiling above him, watches the play of headlights there, wondering what she’s thinking.
“Who was she talking about?” It feels like they haven’t spoken for hours, the low hum of her voice almost loud in the utter silence of the room. His hand pauses at the base of her skull just as his heart speeds up right under her ear.
“Just,” he starts, his voice rusty, thick with lies, “somebody from my past.”
She doesn’t say anything again, just nestles in closer to him, her hand spreading out on his stomach. He focuses on breathing, on a steady in and out that will calm him down.
“Do you still love him?” She sounds carefully neutral, like the answer wouldn’t affect her either way. He glances down at her, at the top of her head, feeling with a strange clarity how young she is, how innocent to so many things. How unlike him she really is.
“Like I said. Somebody from my past.” He cranes down to press a kiss to her forehead, right over that beauty mark he teases her so adoringly about. He feels her relax a little, feels a smile creep onto her face as she tips her head up to kiss him.
They settle back down and Sam indulges in taking a deep breath that he lets out in a slow, aching sigh, his eyes falling closed. Dean is there behind his eyelids, like he’s just been waiting. Sam can see him as clear as day, sleeping in the Impala, no blanket, no pillow, no real rest. Scruff on his face, haunt in his eyes.
There’s burning and there’s blood but you don’t have to be alone.
“Do you believe in soulmates?”
Sam’s eyes snap back open then, dragged back into tonight and reality and away from Dean, from the worn leather and pain of him that Sam could almost, almost smell. He tries to crane his neck, to look down at Jess again, a frown digging at his mouth.
“Hm?”
“Soulmates,” she says again, turning a little more so she’s mostly on her stomach and braced up on his chest, finally meeting his eyes. She’s searching his face, looking for tells and secrets and answers. He knows better than to give her any of them. “Do you believe in soulmates?”
He shrugs, wriggling a little to settle deeper into the mattress, eyes slipping closed once more. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think everybody finds theirs, if they do exist.”
He can feel her eyes on him still and he’s aware of how tense his body is under the outward appearance of relaxation, aware of how much he’s really holding his breath, waiting for this conversation to be over.
“Hm.” She sighs and curls down around him again, hand running up and down his side now, bumping over the bones of his ribs and the tiny curve of his waist. “Do you think you’ve found yours?”
Yes. He knows the answer before she’s even done speaking, knows without question. He forces a smile onto his face, pushes himself into making one last effort to end this whole moment before he flies right out of his skin.
“I can’t even find a matching pair of socks most days.” His tone is teasing and light and it works, thank God. She smacks him flat on his stomach and he coughs up a laugh, his own hand sliding down to tickle at her ribs.
“You’re an ass.” She’s grinning again and he opens his eyes to see it. He smiles right back and kisses her when she comes in for it, arching a little under her hand that makes its way down his body, to his hip, to his thigh.
“You love my ass,” he mumbles against her lips, shivering a little for the way that hand immediately slides down and beneath him to grip his ass, pulling hard on one cheek like she owns it.
“Still wanna get fucked, Winchester?” She works her way under his underwear and nudges at his hole with a dry finger, rubbing at it in tiny circles. He pulls back to meet her eyes again, giving her a gentle smile that hopefully lets her down easy.
“Maybe in the morning. I’m kind of drained and it takes us twenty minutes to get that thing strapped onto you.”
She groans, pushing into him with the tip of her finger before she withdraws it completely, giving him one final kiss and then sinking back down beside him.
“Fine, fine. Expect an early wakeup call, then.” She sounds just as tired as he is, and he can’t keep the affection out of his smile as he tugs the covers up over her.
“Noted.” He kisses the top of her head, hugging her as tight against him as he’ll let himself. “Love you.”
“Mm. Love you, too, babe.”
It takes him two hours to fall asleep, every single one of the old woman’s words repeating themselves over and over again in his mind, all of them making him want to get out of bed and find his shoes and a car and just drive, just find him. Even though it will end in blood, just like she said. Even though it would have always ended in blood anyway.
There’s burning and there’s blood.
He dreams about Jess burning on ceiling that night for the first time, pinned like a butterfly, bleeding like a slaughtered animal, burning like a sacrifice.
“Goddamnit, Dean, turn around!”
Dad’s voice is so shrill, so frantic that Dean flinches before he gets his shit together enough to just obey. It all takes a total of two entire seconds but he’s ready, gun cocked and aimed as he does a 180.
It’s a girl, this werewolf, can’t be a day over twenty, but she’s gone, disappeared under a mouth of deadly fangs and the feral, blind stare of an animal. Dean tenses right when she does, reacting just quick enough when she lunges for him to pull back on the trigger, nothing but years of practice putting the bullet straight into her heart without effort.
She’s a girl again before she hits the ground, and she does so with a sickening thud. Dean’s heart is racing in his ears, pulse jumping in his neck as he takes a step toward the heap of her body, both hands still on his gun, finger on the trigger.
Dad is next to him and Dean doesn’t know when that happened, only knows that he can smell Dad’s blood and it should frighten him more that he knows the scent.
“She’s dead,” Dean pants, the words needless but he’s got to say something. He chances a look over at Dad and finds his face drawn, ashen and grave. Their eyes lock and Dad manages a sneer.
“Gonna get yourself fuckin’ killed one of these days.” Worry is threaded through Dad’s voice so Dean doesn’t take it--or the look on Dad’s face--to heart. He eases his tense finger off the trigger and pushes the safety on before tucking his gun back into his pants. He wipes the sweat dripping from his face off on his jacket, about to open his mouth and say something else before Dad shoulders past him, knocking into him hard as he does.
“Burn it. I’m heading back into town.”
Dean looks around, at the dripping alley between two crumbling skeletons of warehouses outside of Spokane, and lets out a tired bark of laughter.
“Dad, how the hell am I supposed to get back to the motel?”
“I don’t know, Dean! Figure it out. While you’re figuring out where your fucking head was at when you were supposed to be watching my back tonight.” Dad’s back is to him and he’s getting farther away with each word, every one of them echoing off the quiet around them.
Dean stares after him, his body shaking with exhaustion and adrenaline and no small amount of pain, chest heaving as he tries to think of something to defend himself.
“I’m never riding with you again!”
He thinks it’s a pretty good retort, but when Dad doesn’t even miss a step as he walks away, Dean sighs. He hears the sound of that god-awful truck start up and he turns back to stare down at the girl, at her pretty brown curls damp with dirty rainwater and her own blood.
“Goddamnit,” Dean says, soft and defeated. He closes his eyes, trying to prepare himself for the damaging moment of dragging a still-warm person to a dry place to light their body on fire. It never gets any easier.
Every bone in Dean’s body aches but he shuts his mind down, turns it all off to reach down and lace his fingers with hers, silently counting to three as he lifts her, dragging her up onto his shoulder.
The rest is muscle memory.
He gets back into town almost two hours later, shuffling into a liquor store to buy a couple of bottles of rotgut with the last few dollars he has on him. He gets about half of one bottle drank before he shoves his key into the lock of their motel room door.
Dad’s sprawled out on his bed, a bandage around his arm, a good beer nestled in his palm. Dean sets his jaw and stubbornly ignores the burn of the piss-flavored liquor in his throat.
“Thought you’d decided to spend the night out there or somethin’.” Dad at least sounds amused, and it’s enough to take most of the fight out of Dean. He sighs and steps into the room proper, shouldering the door closed behind him.
“Almost did.” He reaches down to yank at the laces on his boots, setting the brown bag he’s holding down on the floor to do so. “And there wasn’t a dry spot anywhere so I had to--”
“Check the salt line.”
Dean whips around and runs his gaze along the floor in front of the door, looking for any disturbances he might’ve caused coming in.
“It’s fine. I’m takin’ a shower.” He plunks his gun down on the table before toeing off his socks and shrugging off his jacket, dropping it down on the wobbly table. He shuffles toward the bathroom, his shoulders and neck aching for whatever hot water this shittest motel can give him.
“Your phone rang about half an hour ago.”
Dean pauses, his heart leaping up stupidly into his throat. He closes his eyes, glad his back’s to Dad for the moment so he can find his game face. He takes a deep breath that he makes sure comes out as normal as possible.
“You answer it?”
Dad grunts in the negative, the wet sound of him guzzling more beer all Dean hears for a few seconds. “Figured it was none-a my business. Figured it mighta been a booty call or somethin’.”
Dean groans, rubbing his hands hard over his face. “Jesus Christ, Dad. Could you just not say the words ‘booty call’ ever again?”
That earns an amused snort from Dad, and it’s enough to make Dean turn around, eyes rushing over the nightstand in search of his phone. He spies it on the unmade bed finally and snatches it up, trying to shove down any hope at all that it’s a call from. From.
“Oh.” He stares down at the name listed under Missed Calls on his screen, his shoulders falling in disappointment. “It was Bobby.”
“I’ll call him back.” Dad reaches for the remote to hit ‘mute.’
Dean manages a laugh as he drops his phone back on the bed, tired fingers falling to his belt buckle, tugging it loose. “Doubt he wants to talk to you, old man. ‘S probably why he called me in the first place. Didn’t realize we were doing this one together.”
“Go get in the shower,” Dad gruffs, grabbing his own phone and staring down at it like he can’t remember how to work it, or that he’s maybe too drunk to.
Dean turns to walk away again, belt clinking as he reaches up to tug his shirt off. He flicks the bathroom light on and almost steps inside when Dad’s voice stops him again.
“Who were you hopin’ it was?”
Dean stares straight ahead into the low-lit bathroom, finding himself face to face with his own reflection in the dirty mirror.
“Nobody, I guess.” He stares straight into his own eyes and realizes this is what he looks like when he’s lying.
“A girl?” There’s a smile in Dad’s voice, a tiny overlay of pride. Dean’s tired, a shiver settling over his bones like a thin layer of ice. He doesn’t have anymore truth left in him tonight.
“Yeah, Dad. A girl.” He steps inside and closes the door behind him, not meeting his own gaze anymore.
He showers, military-efficient and unthinking, and brushes his teeth harder than he should. He makes his way back into the room and Dad’s still on the phone with Bobby, lamp beside the bed on, journal out and he’s hurriedly scratching notes into it.
Dean drags the towel through his hair one more time before tossing it on the ground next to his bed. He crouches down to rifle through his bag, listening in on Dad’s conversation but he’s mostly just surprised that Dad and Bobby are being civil to each other.
“...Well, yeah, we’re in Nine Mile Falls outside of Spokane. It’d take me until sometime tomorrow to get down there even if I leave right now.”
Dean pulls on a pair of sweatpants and he doesn’t letting himself overthink it too much when he unearths a soft, faded maroon hoodie. He pulls it on over his head, the stitching of the letters itching his skin and scratching his nipples up all to hell but it’s worth it. It’s a Sam-hoodie kind of night.
“Yeah. Yeah, alright. Well, I’ll leave first thing in the morning, then. I just--well, what the fuck am I supposed to do about that?! I can’t be in two places at once!” Dad lets out a laugh that’s half annoyed, half something that could have once been called playful. Dean sinks down onto his squeaky bed and watches Robin Williams talk animatedly to Jay Leno on the TV screen, trying his best not to feel like a little kid with the way the sleeves of Sam’s hoodie cover his hands and the way he’s just waiting for his dad to get off the phone and tell him what’s going on. “Tell you what. You finish up your haunted nursery thing and I’ll see where I get in Jericho after a couple of days, and we’ll see who can head down to New Orleans the fastest.”
Jericho. New Orleans. Dean’s heart races with thoughts of driving, with the pull of his car even though he would probably drive off the road if he tried to get anywhere tonight. But Jericho. If Dad means Jericho, California, then that’s way down past Palo Alto. Maybe they can--
“Dean, did you hit your head or somethin’?”
Dean blinks, yanking his head out of the fucking clouds and sitting up straight, hands on his thighs. “No, sir. What’s Bobby talkin’ about? Haunted… babies?”
“Hm?” Dad finishes off his beer and hauls himself out of bed, groaning with every movement but he’s reaching for his boots. Every bone in Dean’s body aches but the obedient son in him forces him to stand up, too. “No, it was, uh. An old lady who used to work there or somethin’. Haunts the place and scares all the babies shitless every day. Like, two dozen screaming babies all day long. Bobby’s about to go out of his mind.”
Dean manages a smile as he reaches for his boots that are still soaking wet, still dripping bloody water onto the carpet. “Where’re we goin’? Jericho? The one in California?”
“Couple hours east’ve LA, yeah.” The quiet, satisfying murmur of Dad pulling his shoelaces tight and the split second to tie them both up with double knots and then he’s up and shrugging on his jacket. “Guys keep gettin’ killed along this one road, all in the same stretch of highway. And he said that he just got a call from a friend of his about some people droppin’ dead down in New Orleans, no cause apparent of death.”
Dean pushes his feet down into his boots, socks getting soaked. He pauses. “Sounds like voodoo.”
“Or witches. Who knows? Anyway, you comin’ to Jericho?” Dad’s suddenly completely dressed, keys dangling from his hand, eyes wide awake and only half drunk now with the promise of a new hunt in front of him.
Dean pauses, lowering his eyes from Dad’s to think for a minute. He licks his lips, focuses on tying his shoes.
“Jericho’s past Palo Alto. Right?”
He can feel it, when the room changes. When the air leaves it and fills instead with Dad’s anger, his impatience. “Yeah. And?”
“And nothin’.” Dean shrugs and stands up, not caring that he’s in sweats because he’s just going to be driving all night, and he’s gonna sleep in the car, most likely. “Just thought maybe we could stop in, see how Sam’s doin’. Couldn’t hurt, right?”
“Dean. We’re not driving straight down through California. We’re taking I-84. Palo Alto’s about five hours out of the way.” Dad looks taller now, just like he always does when Dean can sense that they’re about to have a fight. But sometimes Dean just can’t help himself.
“Not really. I mean we could just take that one highway that runs down through Oregon. It’s a better drive anyway. Just. Maybe we could take him out for breakfast or somethin’. We don’t have to--”
“You really think we have time to stop and eat fucking pancakes with Mr. College Boy when people’s lives are at stake, Dean? Are you really that selfish or are you just tryin’ to piss me off?”
Dean’s quiet as he packs up the rest of his shit, shoving clothes into his bag and kicking his wet towel into the bathroom. He pockets his phone and reaches for his gun, tucking it awkwardly into the back of his sweatpants.
“Nevermind, Dad,” his voice is a mumble, barely heard over the sound of his boots on the rough carpet. “Let’s just go.”
“No. No, Dean, I don’t think it’s a good idea. We’re kind of shitty at hunting together anymore, in case you didn’t notice.” Dad moves to stand in front of the door, the heel of his boots grazing the salt line. There’s more grey in the whiskers of his beard now, more lines around his eyes but they’re staring right at him, piercing him. He’s already made his decision.
“So, what? You just want me to stay here? This is the first case we’ve worked together in almost six months.” Dean drops his bag on the floor with a loud thump, aware suddenly of how quiet it is in their room, of how easily he can hear the couple in the next room fucking against the wall behind him.
“I have a lot of shit going on, and I don’t need you in the middle of it. Especially not if you’re just going to pout like a fucking schoolgirl over some boy the entire time.” Dad opens the door and a sharp twist of wind cuts into the room, slithering all over Dean, curling through his wet hair and making him shiver. His cheeks burn hot at Dad’s words, at the implication of them.
“I just thought we could go see Sam! I didn’t think it was that big of a deal!”
“Maybe Sam doesn’t want to see us! He doesn’t give a shit about us anymore. He would’ve called if he did! Stop lying to yourself, Dean. Christ. It’s getting to be pathetic and you know it.” It’s raining outside behind Dad. The werewolf-girl’s mother had told them earlier in the day that it’s supposed to snow tonight. That she was worried about her daughter being out there alone in such bad weather. Dean’s head throbs in his left temple and he reaches out on instinct for the brown bag liquor beside him.
“Whatever, Dad.”
“You’re not going. Smartass. Call Bobby and get the intel on the case in New Orleans. You’re heading down there first thing in the morning at the very latest. That’s not a suggestion.”
Dean lifts the bottle at his dad in a salute before he gulps down a few mouthfuls, the ruinous taste of it spreading all through him like razors. He slams it back down on the table and turns his back to on Dad, trying to kick his shoes off again.
“If I hear about you in Palo Alto, so help me, boy. Do you hear me?”
“Goodbye, Dad.” He yanks off his once-clean socks and his jacket, letting them both fall where he is. Gun thunking back on the table. The trip back to the bed is short and Dean can feel Dad fuming in the open doorway.
“You’re going to New Orleans and you will call me when you get down there. If I don’t hear from you in two days, there will be hell to pay, Dean Winchester. There are some things a little more important than Sam, believe it or not. New Orleans. That is an order.”
He collapses back on the bed and closes his eyes, letting his brain swim around in an ignorant haze behind them. Sam’s hoodie is almost too soft now, too many hours worn, too many washes. Dad hasn’t even commented on it. He never has.
“Yessir.”
Dad is slamming the door before Dean even finishes getting the word out. The truck’s engine shatters the quiet a few seconds later, the bright headlights shining on the rain-slicked windows. Dean listens to him leave, listens to the sound of being alone once again settle in all around him.
He turns over onto his side, his eyes sliding open to gaze over at the empty bed next to his own. His hands are so cold that they feel numb, his knuckles raw and scratched pink, skin so dry it’s cracking. He stretches out the sleeves and pulls them over his hands, trying to warm them up.
He and Sam have always shared a bed. They used to try and get a cot for Sam to sleep on sometimes when they were fighting, but Dean’s guilt would win out and Sam would end up curled in bed next to him more often than not. But if Sam were with him now, if Sam hadn’t left, they’d have separate beds. Sammy’s so big now, so long, he’d never want to share a bed again. Surely. They could never make it work.
And Dean knows he’ll never find out, that he’s chasing ghost stories, at this point. Dean is Here and Sam is There, and that’s just the way it is now. Nothing could bring Sam back at this point, not after he’s been gone for so long.
The bitch of it is, he knows Dad’s right. Sam’s gone because he wants to be gone. That’s the long and short of it. Doesn’t matter what things would be like if he was here. It’s almost like wondering what things would be like if Mom was here.
And Dean doesn’t let himself think about that, either.
Another heartbeat or two and he’s forcing himself to sit up, rubbing hard at his eyes to try and wake up. New Orleans is almost two days away. Better to just get it over with.
Truth is, he finished the case in three days. Turned out to be some woman on a revenge spree against a guy’s family because he wouldn’t leave his wife for her when she told him she was pregnant.
It was one of the most surprising moments of his life when he tracked the evil voodoo priestess with a serious hard-on for Marie Laveau down and saw balloons on her mailbox for a baby shower.
She’d taken one look at him, raised her eyebrows, and invited him in. The shower was just wrapping up, women leaving in hordes after kissing Violet on both cheeks and petting her tummy, every single one of them eyeballing Dean with undisguised hunger as they slinked out. He’d looked around, baby blue crepe paper everywhere, tiny baby shoes, pacifiers. Goddamnit.
Violet had locked the door after them all and turned to face him, hands on her stomach, and said, “Knew you was a hunter the minute I saw you. And what do you want, boy?”
He let her live, of course. Voodoo priestess or not, she was fucking pregnant. Gave her as stern a talking-to as he could while eating her homemade pimento cheese. Turns out she only killed her baby daddy (deserved: he was a cheating bastard), the guy’s brother (tried to sleep with her once himself and it’d almost gotten ugly when she’d said no), and his monster bitch of a mother (self-explanatory). She sweet-talked him all the way out the door, promised to name her baby boy Dean, promised she’d be good from here on out, and the next thing he knew, he’s in his car, heading back toward the Quarter with a smile on his face.
Damn mind-reading, head-fucking magic women.
New Orleans opens up to him then, keeps her arms wide to cradle him for nearly two weeks. He’d chased warmth all the way across the country and felt the last remnants of it down here on the edge of the Mississippi, and he isn’t in any hurry to leave. Especially when he’s got nowhere to really go. Especially since Dad hasn’t called like he’d threatened, hasn’t even answered his damn phone.
And so why the fuck not drink too much, why the fuck not do a few drugs he’s always been curious about trying, why not lose a few brain cells and not remember what a goddamn terrific time he had down in good ol’ New Orleans.
And maybe his arm itches where the needle went in a couple of days ago, maybe his hands have been shaking a little bit more these days but the bars are eternal, vampiric in their nocturnal immortality, in how their inhabitants can’t seem to get enough of him. He’s kissed more mouths, been on and under and in more bodies in the past eleven days than all the rest of his life combined, and why not?
Only twenty-six once. And the one person whose opinion he actually cares about is probably holed up in some library, seducing some girl with a fucking rant about orphanages in Bosnia or something. Probably hasn’t thought about Dean in weeks. Months, even. So who the fuck cares, bring it on, please sir, can I have another.
Now, it’s four days later and he’s sprawled out naked as a newborn on a mattress in the tiniest apartment he’s ever seen, ass on full display while he dozes and who cares if it is?
“I have to go to work.” Olalla, the girl who he’d gone home with two nights ago and who is taking almost suspiciously good care of him comes bustling in from the bathroom, smelling like something peppery and warm, some spicy perfume that makes him lick his lips as he remembers what she tastes like. “Are you going to be a lazy bones again?”
He grins as she slips into a pair of red flats, her tits pushed near up to her chin and goddamn, she looks good.
“You sure you just don’t wanna come back to bed?” He flops over onto his back and stretches out on the bed, fingers bumping against the jelly jar holding a handful of dead dandelions on the windowsill. His dick lays heavy on his stomach, half-hard just because he’s awake and been getting sex on the regular and his body just knows what to do.
She groans, pushing a hand up through her horse-tail thick dark hair and lets out a string of words in Spanish that he’s pretty sure are all about how he’s a fucking sexgod. She struts over to the bed and wraps a sure hand around his dick as she leans over and kisses him, smearing his mouth with red lipstick. He moans, bucking up into her hand and licking into her mouth, chasing after the sweet spice of her that he tastes even in her mouth. He doesn’t remember how he got here, was way too drunk the night he met her to recall the technicalities of it all, but she’s been real sweet to him, fed him and kept his dick happy, and he’s been as good to her as he knows how to be.
“Believe me, I would rather ride your dick all night than make drinks for sweaty old men, but you ain’t payin’.” Her Cuban accent is softened around the edges by her New Orleans one, and that in combination with the way she plays with his slit is making his toes curl.
“Maybe not in cash, but--” His phone bursts to life on the bedside table, ringing and vibrating into the empty condom wrappers. His green eyes lock on her brown ones and she gives him a smile. She reaches down to give his balls a hard rub before she’s standing up again.
“Go ahead and answer it. I’ll be home around 4 or so. You’d better be awake because imma be ready for you, you hear me?” She’s wrapping a scarf around her neck and grabbing her purse, and Dean is already pouting, about to open his mouth to complain about food. “There’s muffulettas in the fridge, don’t be a baby.”
He relaxes a little then.
She grins as she heads to the door. “White boys. Always hungry for food y papayas.” She turns to look at him one more time, her eyes raking hard over his body and his now fully-hard dick lifts at the attention. “Mm. Bye, cariño."
The phone has stopped ringing by the time she closes the door and leaves, and Dean gets that distinctly itching feeling he always does when he's stayed too long in one place. Pet names are a sure sign that he needs to get the fuck out. He ignores his dick for the moment to grab his phone when it chirps that he's got a message.
He falls back onto the bed after he pushes all the right buttons to check his messages, fingers sliding down to idly pluck at the hairs of his happytrail.
“Dean… somethin’ big is starting to happen… I need to try and figure out what's goin’ on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger.”
He stares at the ceiling with unseeing eyes, his mind racing frantically to catch up with what he just heard. He yanks the phone away from his face and hits the button to listen to the message again, his blood running cold as he sits up in bed.
He listens again, a finger jammed in his other ear, eyes closed. He’s missing chunks of what Dad’s trying to tell him, but he gets the general idea of what he’s saying. There’s something there though, something interfering.
“Gotta be EVP,” he murmurs to himself, brain already five steps ahead of his body. He climbs out of bed and listens to the voicemail one more time, eyes tracing the darkening room for his pants.
“...We’re all in danger.”
We? We who? Him and Dad? Bobby? The world?
He saves the message and calls Dad back as he yanks his jeans on over his bare ass, phone cradled between his cheek and his shoulder.
“This is John Winchester. If you--”
“Damnit, Dad.” He stops in the middle of the strange apartment and snaps his phone closed, night settling in around him, the sounds of the Rue Ursulines waking up outside the cracked window. Dad doesn’t use the word danger lightly. Doesn’t just say it if he doesn’t mean it. He only uses it with Dean as a way to underline what he’s already warning him about, and he usually only says it when he’s talking about--
“Sammy,” Dean breathes, the ancient, greedy air of the French Quarter taking the word from him immediately, sucking it straight up and carrying it away out the window. He shoves his phone in his pocket and finds his shirt, working on auto-pilot now. Shirt on, jacket on, shoes on. Find your gun. Find your keys.
The questions are rumbling around in his head, the whys and hows and whos, but none of them eclipse the possibility of something happening to Sam. Sam who’s practically an innocent now, who’s unarmed and unprepared and alone.
He grabs a muffuletta and a can of Diet Coke out of the fridge, not leaving a note in his wake because he doesn’t want Olalla to romanticize whatever it was they had. Better if she realizes that he was just a dick, that all guys are dicks, that she needs to better protect herself from assholes like him, pretty smile and talented tongues or not.
He dials Dad on his way down the wrought-iron staircase, nearly throwing his phone when he gets his voicemail again. Three weeks. Three fucking weeks, he hasn’t heard a word from him, and now this. It all slots into the vague feelings of dread and worry and not right he’s had the entire time, and it’s enough for him to climb into his car just as the sun is setting in late October in New Orleans and prepare himself to drive back across the fucking country for the second time in less than a month.
If Sam’s at risk, there’s no question where he’s got to go.
next.
He’s got his hoodie zipped up against the chill in the air and Jess is buzzing around him like a hyper little bee, a swirl of blonde hair tossed up into a ponytail and the grey of her sweater and the soft click-spin-spin-click of her old Kodak Pony. Sam keeps his hands in his pockets and watches her instead of the spectacle around them, his smile soft and only for her.
“You wanna split a funnel cake?” She’s beside him again for the moment, the camera winding film up in a noisy churn while she fishes another roll out of her purse. He watches the whole thing with amused interest, eyebrows lifted to show it.
“Not really?”
She stops what she’s doing and just looks up at him, leveling him with a stare that makes him take a step back, a laugh tripping out of his mouth that he can’t seem to hold back.
“Are you kidding me, Winchester? You’re actually gonna funnel-cakeblock me?”
He laughs again, pulling a hand out of his pocket to wrap it around her waist and pull her in against him, tickling her a little when she tries to squirm away.
“Hey, I didn’t say you couldn’t get one. Knock yourself out.” He tugs her toward the brightly-lit stands advertising everything from fresh-squeezed lemonade to fried Twinkies. He wrinkles his nose at the greasy-sweet smell of it all. “Here. I’ll even pay for it.”
He goes to reach for his wallet and she scoffs at him, the smile on her lips giving away how much she’s enjoying this. “Keep your money, grandma. Here.” She pushes her camera and a new roll of film into his waiting hands. “Load the film while I get it.”
The kiss she gives him is a quick smack and she’s gone, leaving him standing alone in the middle of the milling throngs of people. It’s all so bright and loud here: kids shrieking with laughter, teenage-girl perfume drifting by every few seconds, the victorious ding-ding! of games won, the luring shouts of the men in charge of booths, trying to coax people in to win cheap toys and printed photos of celebrities.
He’s been raised to expect things to go wrong, to be suspicious of each and every thing around him, and so he finds himself trying to catalogue it all as he loads the camera, his fingers sure and patient just like Jess taught him. He tries to memorize each ride and their operators, tries to keep track of especially loud sounds, tries to identify each of them. It’s so much, too much. His hands slip a little as he closes the camera back up, letting the film get settled in and start to wind itself down into place but he catches it just in time.
A man walks by holding a lit cigar, a sweaty, meaty shoulder jostling Sam and almost making him trip over his own feet. He wants to go home suddenly, wants to be in a quiet room where all the sounds are expected ones, wants to only hear one voice, smell one thing. His grip tightens on the camera and he looks up to try and find an exit, an escape when Jess appears again in his line of vision, holding a paper plate with a heavy, winding funnel cake topped with powdered sugar and strawberries weighing it down.
“Hey.” She touches his arm, her entire expression drawn into concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m.” He stops, doesn’t have the mind to lie just now. “Can we go take a break or something? Find somewhere to sit?”
“Sure. Of course.” Her smile is the warmest he’s ever seen and she leans up to press a kiss to eyebrow before she takes her camera back and drops it down into her bag. “C’mon. There are a few tables around here somewhere. I saw ‘em when we first came in.”
The sky is clear and velveteen overhead, stars dancing in seeming merriment as they make their way through the crowds. It starts to thin out once they get away from most of the rides, only a few booths over this way, all apparently selling things they don’t feel the need to shout about.
There’s a single, rickety picnic table that has seen more days than Sam and Jess combined at the very end of the line of booths, plenty far from most of the craziness for Sam to feel like he can breathe again. There are a few lights overhead that are almost blindingly bright, but at least it’s not sitting in the dark.
They make their way over without a word, Sam winding his way around so he can sit facing out toward the rest of the carnival while Jess plops down beside him.
There’s a woman at the table already, curled down over a little styrofoam cup that’s billowing steam up toward her face. She looks neither old or young, her hands strong and lithe and lined with rings where they clasp the cup. Jess doesn’t pay her any mind, doesn’t see anything past the strawberry on her fork that she’s lifting up to Sam’s mouth very graciously, an understanding smile on her face.
He leans over and catches the strawberry on the fork with his lips, eating it just because she wants him to. The smile she gives him is a little relieved and it makes him relax, body sinking down further onto the bench.
“Not much of a crowd person, are you?”
Sam looks over for that, for the soft strength in that voice. The woman is looking right at him, her eyes an unfathomable color like dark grey or maybe a deep forest green, and he shivers a little when they meet his own.
“Not really,” he finds himself saying, not even really thinking before answering. She makes a sound of agreement before lifting the cup to her mouth, taking a careful sip before she speaks again.
“What are you doing here?”
Her tone is off, almost accusing. Sam sits up a little then, sits back and glances over at Jess who is just watching him, powdered sugar dusting her lips, fork hovering, everything from the quirk of her eyebrows and the wide of her eyes telling Sam that she’s just as lost as he is. He looks back over at the woman.
“Um, I just wanted to take a break from it all. Jess here wanted to come and take pictures and--”
“That’s not what I mean.” The woman lifts her head for the first time and looks him in the face. She’s probably in her late-fifties, her hair long and soft brown and framing her face in wind-lost curls. Her mouth is beautiful in its unhappy line, it’s soft and sensuous and almost too young to belong on her face. Sam’s heart picks up speed for how boldly she’s looking at him, for how her gaze is piercing him, prying right into him in places that he guards with tight fists. “What are you doing here? Away from him?”
He reaches for his pockets immediately and finds them empty, of course. Civilian Sam doesn’t carry salt or holy water, doesn’t have any charms on him to at least give him the illusion of safety. He closes himself off then, cloaking his mind and not letting her in any further. His expression hardens and she sets her cup down, the tag from the teabag inside of it getting trapped underneath.
“Excuse me, but who are you?” Jess pushes her funnel cake away and turns her body in toward Sam, a hand resting on his forearm, like she knows what’s going on, like she can guard him from anything. Sam angles himself away from her then, protecting her as much as she’s trying to protect him.
The woman doesn’t look away from Sam to acknowledge Jess, doesn’t break eye contact even once. Her eyes soften and she lets out a sigh, hair tumbling around her shoulders as she shakes her head.
“Lost. Poor boy, you’re just so lost. Don’t even know how much.” She lifts her arms then, her bracelets sounding like the ringing of bells as she cups her hands together to reach for Sam. He leans in toward her, lifts his hands to offer them to her even as Jess is tightening her grip on his arm, trying to pull him away from her.
“Sam, don’t. She’s crazy. Let’s just go.” Jess stands up, unfolds her long body from the table and pulling her purse up onto her shoulder. The woman closes her hands around Sam’s and he feels it like lightning all through his bones and he knows without question that this woman is a true psychic, a reader, and that she’s prying his soul open with kid gloves right now and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
He slams his eyes shut to the tears that drag themselves up, he clutches his hands together between hers and lowers his head, jaw clenching hard. He hears the woman make a noise, a soft sound of almost pity, hears Jess drop back down into the seat next to him.
“Sam--”
“He’s near the end of his rope. He wanders around lost, just like you. Except he’s looking for trouble. Looking for someone to take it out on. Looking for someone to take him down. Doesn’t think anyone will care anymore.” Her eyes are closed when he dares to look back up at her, her eyeballs working behind her lids like fluttering wings, her beautiful mouth whispering unheard words.
“Tell me more.” His voice sounds raked apart, like he’s been crying all night. Like this has torn him wide open and he can’t stop the bleeding. He untangles his hands from each other and turns them so that his palms line up with hers, so that she can access any part of him she needs to, anything to get her to tell him more. “Is he okay?”
“Lost, so lost,” she murmurs, like it’s a song, a forgotten prayer. Her thumb strokes over his knuckles, the silver of her rings cold on his skin. “He knows where you are and so he can’t look for you. Can’t pretend that’s his quest, not anymore. You were always his North, always the thing to work for and work toward and so what is he now? What is he protecting now?”
“Everyone,” Sam interrupts, trying to meet her eyes, pleading with her, arguing with her. “He protects everyone. He doesn’t need me. He doesn’t--”
“You cannot tell someone they don’t need their soul.” Her voice sounds even stronger now, the whole tone of it lower, like someone else is taking hold of it. She meets his eyes and he sees that they’re green, the green on maps, the green that lives with brown. He feels like he’s known her forever. “You cannot tell someone they don’t need half of themselves. He needs you just as you need him. Do not blaspheme against what you are to each other, boy.”
“Sam, we’re leaving. Now.” Jess is up again and she’s pulling on him so hard that she’s hurting his arm. He blinks then, tearing his eyes away from the woman to look up at Jess. He blinks at her like he really is lost, like he has no idea who she is. She looks terrified and angry and she uses all of her strength to yank him up, to make him listen.
He scrambles up from the seat, pulling his hands from the woman’s grip and running his hands through his hair, trying to get control of himself, trying to sew himself back up again as fast as he can.
Jess snatches his hand, tucking her fingers between each of his and she pulls him away from the table, away from the woman who is just watching them, watching him. She reaches out just as they walk by, wrapping long fingers around Sam’s wrist, drawing him back into her gaze just as easy as breathing.
“Please,” he whispers, not knowing exactly what he’s asking for, what he wants. Jess’ hand is trembling in his own and the night is alive around them, bright with sounds and people’s voices and the smell of smoke and sugar and the cool of autumn, but he can only hear the low rasp of Dean’s voice when he’s just woken up, can only feel how warm Dean’s skin gets in the sun, can only smell the inside of the Impala and that secret scent of Dean’s skin on his neck, right where Sam tucks his face to hide from everyone, from everything. He’s drowning.
“Go to him,” she says right back just as soft, like she doesn’t want anyone else to hear it. Her eyes are bright in the dark and imploring with him, her grip tightening on the bones in his wrist. “There’s so much blood in your life, boy. So much blood. You can’t escape it, but you can be there beside him when it happens. There’s burning and there’s blood but you don’t have to be alone. He doesn’t have to be alone. And lost. So lost.”
She collapses back down onto the bench, her cup rattling on the table. Jess pulls Sam so hard that he almost falls into her, almost trips over his own feet. They stumble back through the alley between lines of booths, everything almost sinister now, skewed like a funhouse mirror. He sees a little table off to the side that he hadn’t seen before, one containing just a stack of cards, an unlit candle, a bell, and a small, handwritten sign that says “Back in Twenty.”
A mind-reader.
He stops in his tracks and looks back toward the woman at the table with her back to them, her hair spilling long down her back, her shoulders drawn in.
“Sam, stop it. Stop it. You’re freaking me out.” Her voice is shaking and Sam looks over at Jess, really looks at her for the first time since they sat down over there. Her eyes are shining with tears and her face is pale, everything about her expression pleading with him. “What the fuck was that? What was she talking about?”
“Can we just go home?” He feels exhausted and it’s all of a sudden, out of nowhere and it hits him like a tidal wave. “Can we leave? Please?”
She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something else, like she’s going to argue, but she stops. Takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
They make it back to the apartment without speaking another word, both of them lost in their own heads. The apartment is just starting to feel like home, all their stuff unpacked and blending together until it’s finally starting to feel like their stuff.
Jess turns on the light in the livingroom and Sam keeps walking until he gets to the bedroom. He doesn’t bother turning on the light, doesn’t look around before he starts stripping off his clothes layer by layer. He falls down onto the bed in just his underwear, pulling the blankets up around his shoulders, his mind still spinning with words, with lost and blood and alone and do not blaspheme against what you are to each other, boy.
His eyes are closed by the time Jess comes into the room, everything about her movements quiet, careful. She closes the door behind her, the soft patter of her clothes hitting the ground comforting before she climbs into bed with him.
Her hand on his shoulder has him immediately submitting, turning over to sprawl on his back so she can tuck up against his side, her cheek resting warm and soft on his chest, right over his heart. He strokes her hair back from her face just as she wraps her arms around him, neither of them sure what to say yet, it seems. He watches the ceiling above him, watches the play of headlights there, wondering what she’s thinking.
“Who was she talking about?” It feels like they haven’t spoken for hours, the low hum of her voice almost loud in the utter silence of the room. His hand pauses at the base of her skull just as his heart speeds up right under her ear.
“Just,” he starts, his voice rusty, thick with lies, “somebody from my past.”
She doesn’t say anything again, just nestles in closer to him, her hand spreading out on his stomach. He focuses on breathing, on a steady in and out that will calm him down.
“Do you still love him?” She sounds carefully neutral, like the answer wouldn’t affect her either way. He glances down at her, at the top of her head, feeling with a strange clarity how young she is, how innocent to so many things. How unlike him she really is.
“Like I said. Somebody from my past.” He cranes down to press a kiss to her forehead, right over that beauty mark he teases her so adoringly about. He feels her relax a little, feels a smile creep onto her face as she tips her head up to kiss him.
They settle back down and Sam indulges in taking a deep breath that he lets out in a slow, aching sigh, his eyes falling closed. Dean is there behind his eyelids, like he’s just been waiting. Sam can see him as clear as day, sleeping in the Impala, no blanket, no pillow, no real rest. Scruff on his face, haunt in his eyes.
There’s burning and there’s blood but you don’t have to be alone.
“Do you believe in soulmates?”
Sam’s eyes snap back open then, dragged back into tonight and reality and away from Dean, from the worn leather and pain of him that Sam could almost, almost smell. He tries to crane his neck, to look down at Jess again, a frown digging at his mouth.
“Hm?”
“Soulmates,” she says again, turning a little more so she’s mostly on her stomach and braced up on his chest, finally meeting his eyes. She’s searching his face, looking for tells and secrets and answers. He knows better than to give her any of them. “Do you believe in soulmates?”
He shrugs, wriggling a little to settle deeper into the mattress, eyes slipping closed once more. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think everybody finds theirs, if they do exist.”
He can feel her eyes on him still and he’s aware of how tense his body is under the outward appearance of relaxation, aware of how much he’s really holding his breath, waiting for this conversation to be over.
“Hm.” She sighs and curls down around him again, hand running up and down his side now, bumping over the bones of his ribs and the tiny curve of his waist. “Do you think you’ve found yours?”
Yes. He knows the answer before she’s even done speaking, knows without question. He forces a smile onto his face, pushes himself into making one last effort to end this whole moment before he flies right out of his skin.
“I can’t even find a matching pair of socks most days.” His tone is teasing and light and it works, thank God. She smacks him flat on his stomach and he coughs up a laugh, his own hand sliding down to tickle at her ribs.
“You’re an ass.” She’s grinning again and he opens his eyes to see it. He smiles right back and kisses her when she comes in for it, arching a little under her hand that makes its way down his body, to his hip, to his thigh.
“You love my ass,” he mumbles against her lips, shivering a little for the way that hand immediately slides down and beneath him to grip his ass, pulling hard on one cheek like she owns it.
“Still wanna get fucked, Winchester?” She works her way under his underwear and nudges at his hole with a dry finger, rubbing at it in tiny circles. He pulls back to meet her eyes again, giving her a gentle smile that hopefully lets her down easy.
“Maybe in the morning. I’m kind of drained and it takes us twenty minutes to get that thing strapped onto you.”
She groans, pushing into him with the tip of her finger before she withdraws it completely, giving him one final kiss and then sinking back down beside him.
“Fine, fine. Expect an early wakeup call, then.” She sounds just as tired as he is, and he can’t keep the affection out of his smile as he tugs the covers up over her.
“Noted.” He kisses the top of her head, hugging her as tight against him as he’ll let himself. “Love you.”
“Mm. Love you, too, babe.”
It takes him two hours to fall asleep, every single one of the old woman’s words repeating themselves over and over again in his mind, all of them making him want to get out of bed and find his shoes and a car and just drive, just find him. Even though it will end in blood, just like she said. Even though it would have always ended in blood anyway.
There’s burning and there’s blood.
He dreams about Jess burning on ceiling that night for the first time, pinned like a butterfly, bleeding like a slaughtered animal, burning like a sacrifice.
“Goddamnit, Dean, turn around!”
Dad’s voice is so shrill, so frantic that Dean flinches before he gets his shit together enough to just obey. It all takes a total of two entire seconds but he’s ready, gun cocked and aimed as he does a 180.
It’s a girl, this werewolf, can’t be a day over twenty, but she’s gone, disappeared under a mouth of deadly fangs and the feral, blind stare of an animal. Dean tenses right when she does, reacting just quick enough when she lunges for him to pull back on the trigger, nothing but years of practice putting the bullet straight into her heart without effort.
She’s a girl again before she hits the ground, and she does so with a sickening thud. Dean’s heart is racing in his ears, pulse jumping in his neck as he takes a step toward the heap of her body, both hands still on his gun, finger on the trigger.
Dad is next to him and Dean doesn’t know when that happened, only knows that he can smell Dad’s blood and it should frighten him more that he knows the scent.
“She’s dead,” Dean pants, the words needless but he’s got to say something. He chances a look over at Dad and finds his face drawn, ashen and grave. Their eyes lock and Dad manages a sneer.
“Gonna get yourself fuckin’ killed one of these days.” Worry is threaded through Dad’s voice so Dean doesn’t take it--or the look on Dad’s face--to heart. He eases his tense finger off the trigger and pushes the safety on before tucking his gun back into his pants. He wipes the sweat dripping from his face off on his jacket, about to open his mouth and say something else before Dad shoulders past him, knocking into him hard as he does.
“Burn it. I’m heading back into town.”
Dean looks around, at the dripping alley between two crumbling skeletons of warehouses outside of Spokane, and lets out a tired bark of laughter.
“Dad, how the hell am I supposed to get back to the motel?”
“I don’t know, Dean! Figure it out. While you’re figuring out where your fucking head was at when you were supposed to be watching my back tonight.” Dad’s back is to him and he’s getting farther away with each word, every one of them echoing off the quiet around them.
Dean stares after him, his body shaking with exhaustion and adrenaline and no small amount of pain, chest heaving as he tries to think of something to defend himself.
“I’m never riding with you again!”
He thinks it’s a pretty good retort, but when Dad doesn’t even miss a step as he walks away, Dean sighs. He hears the sound of that god-awful truck start up and he turns back to stare down at the girl, at her pretty brown curls damp with dirty rainwater and her own blood.
“Goddamnit,” Dean says, soft and defeated. He closes his eyes, trying to prepare himself for the damaging moment of dragging a still-warm person to a dry place to light their body on fire. It never gets any easier.
Every bone in Dean’s body aches but he shuts his mind down, turns it all off to reach down and lace his fingers with hers, silently counting to three as he lifts her, dragging her up onto his shoulder.
The rest is muscle memory.
He gets back into town almost two hours later, shuffling into a liquor store to buy a couple of bottles of rotgut with the last few dollars he has on him. He gets about half of one bottle drank before he shoves his key into the lock of their motel room door.
Dad’s sprawled out on his bed, a bandage around his arm, a good beer nestled in his palm. Dean sets his jaw and stubbornly ignores the burn of the piss-flavored liquor in his throat.
“Thought you’d decided to spend the night out there or somethin’.” Dad at least sounds amused, and it’s enough to take most of the fight out of Dean. He sighs and steps into the room proper, shouldering the door closed behind him.
“Almost did.” He reaches down to yank at the laces on his boots, setting the brown bag he’s holding down on the floor to do so. “And there wasn’t a dry spot anywhere so I had to--”
“Check the salt line.”
Dean whips around and runs his gaze along the floor in front of the door, looking for any disturbances he might’ve caused coming in.
“It’s fine. I’m takin’ a shower.” He plunks his gun down on the table before toeing off his socks and shrugging off his jacket, dropping it down on the wobbly table. He shuffles toward the bathroom, his shoulders and neck aching for whatever hot water this shittest motel can give him.
“Your phone rang about half an hour ago.”
Dean pauses, his heart leaping up stupidly into his throat. He closes his eyes, glad his back’s to Dad for the moment so he can find his game face. He takes a deep breath that he makes sure comes out as normal as possible.
“You answer it?”
Dad grunts in the negative, the wet sound of him guzzling more beer all Dean hears for a few seconds. “Figured it was none-a my business. Figured it mighta been a booty call or somethin’.”
Dean groans, rubbing his hands hard over his face. “Jesus Christ, Dad. Could you just not say the words ‘booty call’ ever again?”
That earns an amused snort from Dad, and it’s enough to make Dean turn around, eyes rushing over the nightstand in search of his phone. He spies it on the unmade bed finally and snatches it up, trying to shove down any hope at all that it’s a call from. From.
“Oh.” He stares down at the name listed under Missed Calls on his screen, his shoulders falling in disappointment. “It was Bobby.”
“I’ll call him back.” Dad reaches for the remote to hit ‘mute.’
Dean manages a laugh as he drops his phone back on the bed, tired fingers falling to his belt buckle, tugging it loose. “Doubt he wants to talk to you, old man. ‘S probably why he called me in the first place. Didn’t realize we were doing this one together.”
“Go get in the shower,” Dad gruffs, grabbing his own phone and staring down at it like he can’t remember how to work it, or that he’s maybe too drunk to.
Dean turns to walk away again, belt clinking as he reaches up to tug his shirt off. He flicks the bathroom light on and almost steps inside when Dad’s voice stops him again.
“Who were you hopin’ it was?”
Dean stares straight ahead into the low-lit bathroom, finding himself face to face with his own reflection in the dirty mirror.
“Nobody, I guess.” He stares straight into his own eyes and realizes this is what he looks like when he’s lying.
“A girl?” There’s a smile in Dad’s voice, a tiny overlay of pride. Dean’s tired, a shiver settling over his bones like a thin layer of ice. He doesn’t have anymore truth left in him tonight.
“Yeah, Dad. A girl.” He steps inside and closes the door behind him, not meeting his own gaze anymore.
He showers, military-efficient and unthinking, and brushes his teeth harder than he should. He makes his way back into the room and Dad’s still on the phone with Bobby, lamp beside the bed on, journal out and he’s hurriedly scratching notes into it.
Dean drags the towel through his hair one more time before tossing it on the ground next to his bed. He crouches down to rifle through his bag, listening in on Dad’s conversation but he’s mostly just surprised that Dad and Bobby are being civil to each other.
“...Well, yeah, we’re in Nine Mile Falls outside of Spokane. It’d take me until sometime tomorrow to get down there even if I leave right now.”
Dean pulls on a pair of sweatpants and he doesn’t letting himself overthink it too much when he unearths a soft, faded maroon hoodie. He pulls it on over his head, the stitching of the letters itching his skin and scratching his nipples up all to hell but it’s worth it. It’s a Sam-hoodie kind of night.
“Yeah. Yeah, alright. Well, I’ll leave first thing in the morning, then. I just--well, what the fuck am I supposed to do about that?! I can’t be in two places at once!” Dad lets out a laugh that’s half annoyed, half something that could have once been called playful. Dean sinks down onto his squeaky bed and watches Robin Williams talk animatedly to Jay Leno on the TV screen, trying his best not to feel like a little kid with the way the sleeves of Sam’s hoodie cover his hands and the way he’s just waiting for his dad to get off the phone and tell him what’s going on. “Tell you what. You finish up your haunted nursery thing and I’ll see where I get in Jericho after a couple of days, and we’ll see who can head down to New Orleans the fastest.”
Jericho. New Orleans. Dean’s heart races with thoughts of driving, with the pull of his car even though he would probably drive off the road if he tried to get anywhere tonight. But Jericho. If Dad means Jericho, California, then that’s way down past Palo Alto. Maybe they can--
“Dean, did you hit your head or somethin’?”
Dean blinks, yanking his head out of the fucking clouds and sitting up straight, hands on his thighs. “No, sir. What’s Bobby talkin’ about? Haunted… babies?”
“Hm?” Dad finishes off his beer and hauls himself out of bed, groaning with every movement but he’s reaching for his boots. Every bone in Dean’s body aches but the obedient son in him forces him to stand up, too. “No, it was, uh. An old lady who used to work there or somethin’. Haunts the place and scares all the babies shitless every day. Like, two dozen screaming babies all day long. Bobby’s about to go out of his mind.”
Dean manages a smile as he reaches for his boots that are still soaking wet, still dripping bloody water onto the carpet. “Where’re we goin’? Jericho? The one in California?”
“Couple hours east’ve LA, yeah.” The quiet, satisfying murmur of Dad pulling his shoelaces tight and the split second to tie them both up with double knots and then he’s up and shrugging on his jacket. “Guys keep gettin’ killed along this one road, all in the same stretch of highway. And he said that he just got a call from a friend of his about some people droppin’ dead down in New Orleans, no cause apparent of death.”
Dean pushes his feet down into his boots, socks getting soaked. He pauses. “Sounds like voodoo.”
“Or witches. Who knows? Anyway, you comin’ to Jericho?” Dad’s suddenly completely dressed, keys dangling from his hand, eyes wide awake and only half drunk now with the promise of a new hunt in front of him.
Dean pauses, lowering his eyes from Dad’s to think for a minute. He licks his lips, focuses on tying his shoes.
“Jericho’s past Palo Alto. Right?”
He can feel it, when the room changes. When the air leaves it and fills instead with Dad’s anger, his impatience. “Yeah. And?”
“And nothin’.” Dean shrugs and stands up, not caring that he’s in sweats because he’s just going to be driving all night, and he’s gonna sleep in the car, most likely. “Just thought maybe we could stop in, see how Sam’s doin’. Couldn’t hurt, right?”
“Dean. We’re not driving straight down through California. We’re taking I-84. Palo Alto’s about five hours out of the way.” Dad looks taller now, just like he always does when Dean can sense that they’re about to have a fight. But sometimes Dean just can’t help himself.
“Not really. I mean we could just take that one highway that runs down through Oregon. It’s a better drive anyway. Just. Maybe we could take him out for breakfast or somethin’. We don’t have to--”
“You really think we have time to stop and eat fucking pancakes with Mr. College Boy when people’s lives are at stake, Dean? Are you really that selfish or are you just tryin’ to piss me off?”
Dean’s quiet as he packs up the rest of his shit, shoving clothes into his bag and kicking his wet towel into the bathroom. He pockets his phone and reaches for his gun, tucking it awkwardly into the back of his sweatpants.
“Nevermind, Dad,” his voice is a mumble, barely heard over the sound of his boots on the rough carpet. “Let’s just go.”
“No. No, Dean, I don’t think it’s a good idea. We’re kind of shitty at hunting together anymore, in case you didn’t notice.” Dad moves to stand in front of the door, the heel of his boots grazing the salt line. There’s more grey in the whiskers of his beard now, more lines around his eyes but they’re staring right at him, piercing him. He’s already made his decision.
“So, what? You just want me to stay here? This is the first case we’ve worked together in almost six months.” Dean drops his bag on the floor with a loud thump, aware suddenly of how quiet it is in their room, of how easily he can hear the couple in the next room fucking against the wall behind him.
“I have a lot of shit going on, and I don’t need you in the middle of it. Especially not if you’re just going to pout like a fucking schoolgirl over some boy the entire time.” Dad opens the door and a sharp twist of wind cuts into the room, slithering all over Dean, curling through his wet hair and making him shiver. His cheeks burn hot at Dad’s words, at the implication of them.
“I just thought we could go see Sam! I didn’t think it was that big of a deal!”
“Maybe Sam doesn’t want to see us! He doesn’t give a shit about us anymore. He would’ve called if he did! Stop lying to yourself, Dean. Christ. It’s getting to be pathetic and you know it.” It’s raining outside behind Dad. The werewolf-girl’s mother had told them earlier in the day that it’s supposed to snow tonight. That she was worried about her daughter being out there alone in such bad weather. Dean’s head throbs in his left temple and he reaches out on instinct for the brown bag liquor beside him.
“Whatever, Dad.”
“You’re not going. Smartass. Call Bobby and get the intel on the case in New Orleans. You’re heading down there first thing in the morning at the very latest. That’s not a suggestion.”
Dean lifts the bottle at his dad in a salute before he gulps down a few mouthfuls, the ruinous taste of it spreading all through him like razors. He slams it back down on the table and turns his back to on Dad, trying to kick his shoes off again.
“If I hear about you in Palo Alto, so help me, boy. Do you hear me?”
“Goodbye, Dad.” He yanks off his once-clean socks and his jacket, letting them both fall where he is. Gun thunking back on the table. The trip back to the bed is short and Dean can feel Dad fuming in the open doorway.
“You’re going to New Orleans and you will call me when you get down there. If I don’t hear from you in two days, there will be hell to pay, Dean Winchester. There are some things a little more important than Sam, believe it or not. New Orleans. That is an order.”
He collapses back on the bed and closes his eyes, letting his brain swim around in an ignorant haze behind them. Sam’s hoodie is almost too soft now, too many hours worn, too many washes. Dad hasn’t even commented on it. He never has.
“Yessir.”
Dad is slamming the door before Dean even finishes getting the word out. The truck’s engine shatters the quiet a few seconds later, the bright headlights shining on the rain-slicked windows. Dean listens to him leave, listens to the sound of being alone once again settle in all around him.
He turns over onto his side, his eyes sliding open to gaze over at the empty bed next to his own. His hands are so cold that they feel numb, his knuckles raw and scratched pink, skin so dry it’s cracking. He stretches out the sleeves and pulls them over his hands, trying to warm them up.
He and Sam have always shared a bed. They used to try and get a cot for Sam to sleep on sometimes when they were fighting, but Dean’s guilt would win out and Sam would end up curled in bed next to him more often than not. But if Sam were with him now, if Sam hadn’t left, they’d have separate beds. Sammy’s so big now, so long, he’d never want to share a bed again. Surely. They could never make it work.
And Dean knows he’ll never find out, that he’s chasing ghost stories, at this point. Dean is Here and Sam is There, and that’s just the way it is now. Nothing could bring Sam back at this point, not after he’s been gone for so long.
The bitch of it is, he knows Dad’s right. Sam’s gone because he wants to be gone. That’s the long and short of it. Doesn’t matter what things would be like if he was here. It’s almost like wondering what things would be like if Mom was here.
And Dean doesn’t let himself think about that, either.
Another heartbeat or two and he’s forcing himself to sit up, rubbing hard at his eyes to try and wake up. New Orleans is almost two days away. Better to just get it over with.
Truth is, he finished the case in three days. Turned out to be some woman on a revenge spree against a guy’s family because he wouldn’t leave his wife for her when she told him she was pregnant.
It was one of the most surprising moments of his life when he tracked the evil voodoo priestess with a serious hard-on for Marie Laveau down and saw balloons on her mailbox for a baby shower.
She’d taken one look at him, raised her eyebrows, and invited him in. The shower was just wrapping up, women leaving in hordes after kissing Violet on both cheeks and petting her tummy, every single one of them eyeballing Dean with undisguised hunger as they slinked out. He’d looked around, baby blue crepe paper everywhere, tiny baby shoes, pacifiers. Goddamnit.
Violet had locked the door after them all and turned to face him, hands on her stomach, and said, “Knew you was a hunter the minute I saw you. And what do you want, boy?”
He let her live, of course. Voodoo priestess or not, she was fucking pregnant. Gave her as stern a talking-to as he could while eating her homemade pimento cheese. Turns out she only killed her baby daddy (deserved: he was a cheating bastard), the guy’s brother (tried to sleep with her once himself and it’d almost gotten ugly when she’d said no), and his monster bitch of a mother (self-explanatory). She sweet-talked him all the way out the door, promised to name her baby boy Dean, promised she’d be good from here on out, and the next thing he knew, he’s in his car, heading back toward the Quarter with a smile on his face.
Damn mind-reading, head-fucking magic women.
New Orleans opens up to him then, keeps her arms wide to cradle him for nearly two weeks. He’d chased warmth all the way across the country and felt the last remnants of it down here on the edge of the Mississippi, and he isn’t in any hurry to leave. Especially when he’s got nowhere to really go. Especially since Dad hasn’t called like he’d threatened, hasn’t even answered his damn phone.
And so why the fuck not drink too much, why the fuck not do a few drugs he’s always been curious about trying, why not lose a few brain cells and not remember what a goddamn terrific time he had down in good ol’ New Orleans.
And maybe his arm itches where the needle went in a couple of days ago, maybe his hands have been shaking a little bit more these days but the bars are eternal, vampiric in their nocturnal immortality, in how their inhabitants can’t seem to get enough of him. He’s kissed more mouths, been on and under and in more bodies in the past eleven days than all the rest of his life combined, and why not?
Only twenty-six once. And the one person whose opinion he actually cares about is probably holed up in some library, seducing some girl with a fucking rant about orphanages in Bosnia or something. Probably hasn’t thought about Dean in weeks. Months, even. So who the fuck cares, bring it on, please sir, can I have another.
Now, it’s four days later and he’s sprawled out naked as a newborn on a mattress in the tiniest apartment he’s ever seen, ass on full display while he dozes and who cares if it is?
“I have to go to work.” Olalla, the girl who he’d gone home with two nights ago and who is taking almost suspiciously good care of him comes bustling in from the bathroom, smelling like something peppery and warm, some spicy perfume that makes him lick his lips as he remembers what she tastes like. “Are you going to be a lazy bones again?”
He grins as she slips into a pair of red flats, her tits pushed near up to her chin and goddamn, she looks good.
“You sure you just don’t wanna come back to bed?” He flops over onto his back and stretches out on the bed, fingers bumping against the jelly jar holding a handful of dead dandelions on the windowsill. His dick lays heavy on his stomach, half-hard just because he’s awake and been getting sex on the regular and his body just knows what to do.
She groans, pushing a hand up through her horse-tail thick dark hair and lets out a string of words in Spanish that he’s pretty sure are all about how he’s a fucking sexgod. She struts over to the bed and wraps a sure hand around his dick as she leans over and kisses him, smearing his mouth with red lipstick. He moans, bucking up into her hand and licking into her mouth, chasing after the sweet spice of her that he tastes even in her mouth. He doesn’t remember how he got here, was way too drunk the night he met her to recall the technicalities of it all, but she’s been real sweet to him, fed him and kept his dick happy, and he’s been as good to her as he knows how to be.
“Believe me, I would rather ride your dick all night than make drinks for sweaty old men, but you ain’t payin’.” Her Cuban accent is softened around the edges by her New Orleans one, and that in combination with the way she plays with his slit is making his toes curl.
“Maybe not in cash, but--” His phone bursts to life on the bedside table, ringing and vibrating into the empty condom wrappers. His green eyes lock on her brown ones and she gives him a smile. She reaches down to give his balls a hard rub before she’s standing up again.
“Go ahead and answer it. I’ll be home around 4 or so. You’d better be awake because imma be ready for you, you hear me?” She’s wrapping a scarf around her neck and grabbing her purse, and Dean is already pouting, about to open his mouth to complain about food. “There’s muffulettas in the fridge, don’t be a baby.”
He relaxes a little then.
She grins as she heads to the door. “White boys. Always hungry for food y papayas.” She turns to look at him one more time, her eyes raking hard over his body and his now fully-hard dick lifts at the attention. “Mm. Bye, cariño."
The phone has stopped ringing by the time she closes the door and leaves, and Dean gets that distinctly itching feeling he always does when he's stayed too long in one place. Pet names are a sure sign that he needs to get the fuck out. He ignores his dick for the moment to grab his phone when it chirps that he's got a message.
He falls back onto the bed after he pushes all the right buttons to check his messages, fingers sliding down to idly pluck at the hairs of his happytrail.
“Dean… somethin’ big is starting to happen… I need to try and figure out what's goin’ on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger.”
He stares at the ceiling with unseeing eyes, his mind racing frantically to catch up with what he just heard. He yanks the phone away from his face and hits the button to listen to the message again, his blood running cold as he sits up in bed.
He listens again, a finger jammed in his other ear, eyes closed. He’s missing chunks of what Dad’s trying to tell him, but he gets the general idea of what he’s saying. There’s something there though, something interfering.
“Gotta be EVP,” he murmurs to himself, brain already five steps ahead of his body. He climbs out of bed and listens to the voicemail one more time, eyes tracing the darkening room for his pants.
“...We’re all in danger.”
We? We who? Him and Dad? Bobby? The world?
He saves the message and calls Dad back as he yanks his jeans on over his bare ass, phone cradled between his cheek and his shoulder.
“This is John Winchester. If you--”
“Damnit, Dad.” He stops in the middle of the strange apartment and snaps his phone closed, night settling in around him, the sounds of the Rue Ursulines waking up outside the cracked window. Dad doesn’t use the word danger lightly. Doesn’t just say it if he doesn’t mean it. He only uses it with Dean as a way to underline what he’s already warning him about, and he usually only says it when he’s talking about--
“Sammy,” Dean breathes, the ancient, greedy air of the French Quarter taking the word from him immediately, sucking it straight up and carrying it away out the window. He shoves his phone in his pocket and finds his shirt, working on auto-pilot now. Shirt on, jacket on, shoes on. Find your gun. Find your keys.
The questions are rumbling around in his head, the whys and hows and whos, but none of them eclipse the possibility of something happening to Sam. Sam who’s practically an innocent now, who’s unarmed and unprepared and alone.
He grabs a muffuletta and a can of Diet Coke out of the fridge, not leaving a note in his wake because he doesn’t want Olalla to romanticize whatever it was they had. Better if she realizes that he was just a dick, that all guys are dicks, that she needs to better protect herself from assholes like him, pretty smile and talented tongues or not.
He dials Dad on his way down the wrought-iron staircase, nearly throwing his phone when he gets his voicemail again. Three weeks. Three fucking weeks, he hasn’t heard a word from him, and now this. It all slots into the vague feelings of dread and worry and not right he’s had the entire time, and it’s enough for him to climb into his car just as the sun is setting in late October in New Orleans and prepare himself to drive back across the fucking country for the second time in less than a month.
If Sam’s at risk, there’s no question where he’s got to go.
next.