(no subject)
Weathered
by whereupon
Ellen/Sam. R, spoilers through 2.10, 3,935 words.
Never meant to linger here so long.
Ellen doesn't believe in magic, not that kind, but she thinks that if she did, the amount of blood that's been spilled on her floors would surely make this a sacred place. Not all of it has been shed as a result of violence within these walls; some has been spilled by the hunters who drag themselves here because it's the only safe place around and they trust that she will do what she can to take care of them, when there's nowhere else to go, that she will stitch them up and send them on their way,
She's not a doctor, and she's nobody's wife anymore, but she does what she can. There are a few rooms out back; she lets them sleep there sometimes, until the bleeding's stopped or until they're sober once more or until the ones who've been driving for days can see something other than endless roads and the scythe-edge of the horizon.
She gives them what she can: her stitches, once crooked, are straight, and the first aid kit is well-stocked, these days. She knows how to listen, she always has, and she has heard the nightmare tales of men and women alike.
When they scream in their sleep, she doesn't go to them, most of the time. She's not their mother; some of them are older than she is, and what they need, she cannot give them.
She has no power of absolution. She has no way to make them forget, other than the obvious, and that's her livelihood. She doesn't think it counts as granting temporary absolution if her earnings are reported to the IRS.
Not much blood has been spilled tonight, not yet, and that's something for which she can be grateful. She doesn't think she could clean up someone else's mess right now, doesn't think she has the strength to be anything approximating gentle and kind. Jo's last postcard is tacked to the bulletin board in her office, next to the photos she no longer notices because she's seen them so many times.
That postcard came twenty-three days ago. Ellen hates that she knows that, because it means that she's counting the days, and she wonders how long it would be before she stopped counting, if it ever came to that.
She knows, really, that she never would.
Some nights Ellen tells herself that her little girl had to grow up someday, and that at least Joanna chose to do this. She made her choice; she wasn't pushed into it. At least she had the chance to turn away. And some nights Ellen doesn't believe it; some nights she curses Bill, because she knows that Jo never would have chosen this life if it weren't for him, if she didn't love her daddy so much. Ellen hates him for that, but only a little, and she loves him for it, too.
She sees echoes, sometimes, echoes of Bill in the hunters who pass through, and sometimes she thinks that's the only reason she's stayed here, the only reason that she's kept the Roadhouse open for so many years.
It's not a role that she intentionally accepted, though maybe she knew what she was doing, on some level. She knew, after all, what Bill was, and she knew that when he was gone, she would be left to make sure there was a place to which he could return, a safe place for him and for those like him.
She hadn't known how long it would last, when she began. She hadn't known that in time, it would become her life, but it's only ever in myths that people are fully aware of the roles they are about to take on. And if her hands, now, speak of hours spent oiling the bar, of repairing the damage done by passing storms, if they ache sometimes with the memory of the rifle's kick, she thinks that maybe it's what she chose.
After all, she could have turned back. She could have turned away.
John Winchester asked her that, once, a few months after he brought Bill's wedding ring back to her. He asked her if she would stay on, if she would keep the Roadhouse open, and she'd thought that he was giving her permission. She'd thought he was saying that he would understand if she no longer wanted to run this place, if she wanted to get out, and her cheeks had stung. How dare he think that he had the authority to give her that option, as though she needed his permission, as though she needed his forgiveness?
She hadn't been doing this for him, and she hadn't needed him to tell her that it was a choice.
She hadn't told him that, of course. She had only turned away and asked if he wanted another drink, and that was one of the last times she saw him.
She didn't hate him for what happened to her husband, not once the raw ache of grief began to clear into something tenable, and she thinks that he knew as much. That knowledge hadn't made it any easier for him to look at her, though, which is why she hadn't hit him when he'd offered her that way out.
She wonders, sometimes, what she would tell his sons, if they were to ask about their relationship. She wasn't a soldier, not the way he was, so she doesn't think she could claim that kind of bond, though it was something close to that. They had both known grief. They had both lost. They had been too alike for anything more than that, she thinks. The ghosts that haunted them were too similar, too important, too real.
She is wondering this again tonight because Sam Winchester is one of the last remaining customers in her bar. He came in an hour ago and said that his brother was otherwise occupied; he hoped she wouldn't mind if he stayed here for a little while.
She told him not to be stupid; it was a public bar, and besides, he was like family. He smiled at that, though his eyes were sad, and she asked what he wanted to drink. She left him alone after that; if he wants company, he knows where to find her, and if not, she won't push. She has other things to do.
It's the time of night when the music on the jukebox begins to sound slower and sadder, the evening winding down and giving the strings a certain melancholy weight as it does. Duncan waves goodbye from the doorway and Alan Harding wants to pay his tab; there are glasses to be polished and Rev Jones wants to know whether she's heard anything about werewolves in Montana. Ellen busies herself with those small tasks, but she doesn't forget that Sam's still there.
She doesn't talk to him again until she's wiping down the bar. When she's worked her way to where he's sitting, she asks, "You staying around here?"
Sam shrugs. "Yeah, I figured I'd get a room in town," he says. "I was just, uh. Sometimes it gets quiet."
"Yeah," she says. "I know what you mean." She rests one hand on the rag atop the bar and says, "There're a couple a' rooms out back, if you wanna stay here, save the drive."
"I couldn't," he says. "I wouldn't want to impose." And she wants to laugh, because of his formality, his sincerity, his awkwardness. John raised his boys all right, but then, she never doubted that he would.
She bites the inside of her cheek and regards him for a moment before fishing the keys out of her pocket. "Lock up the front," she says. "Turn off the lights, and then you'll have earned it."
He grins. She sets the keys on the counter and he drains what's left of his beer before taking them. She watches the tired slant of his shoulders as he heads towards the door, but only for a moment before turning back to her own work.
She's in the office when he finds her. He hands her the keys, towering hesitantly in the doorway as though apologizing for his height. She sets the keys on her desk and says, "Want a drink?" She wonders how long it will take him to ask about his father. She doesn't want to be entirely sober when he does.
"Sure," he says. "Yeah, that would be great."
She grabs a bottle from one of the boxes of inventory stacked beside her desk and tilts her head. "C'mon," she says. He follows her into the kitchen, stands back while she gets two tumblers from the cabinet. He stands in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, and she wonders what he's thinking about as he looks around. She's never been very good at domesticity. She's better at familiarity; the coffee cups on the rack are serviceable and clean. She's had them for years.
There's something like longing in his expression, or envy, and when she clears her throat to get his attention, he doesn't look down fast enough to hide it.
It's too cold to sit outside, this time of year, so they sit at her kitchen table. She takes a swallow, lets the liquor warm her mouth, her throat. He sits across from her with his hands around his glass and his hair in his eyes, and he looks like any of the other men who come into her bar, battle-scarred, grieving, weary. It's not until he looks up that she thinks about how young he is, the shadows beneath his eyes like something that doesn't belong, the unslept creases like something stolen from someone much older, as though years were ever an accurate measure of pain and experience.
He throws back his whiskey without warning, downs it quickly, as though he's come to a decision. She carefully doesn't raise an eyebrow, doesn't show any reaction. She knows what's coming, she thinks, and she wonders how she will tell the son of the man who watched her husband die that his father was a good man. That his father loved him, no matter what words were exchanged, no matter what happened.
For all the years she's spent doing this, picking up the pieces of those who try in their own small ways to take back what was taken from them, she would have thought it would get easier after awhile.
Sam doesn't say anything, though; he merely edges the glass in the direction of the bottle, his glance inquisitive, and she nods, refills it. She sips from her own, savoring the burn, and listens to the ticking of the clock above the sink. When he's ready, he'll ask, and she's not in any hurry.
"You heard from Jo lately?" he asks. She hadn't expected that, and she swallows slowly.
"The last postcard she sent was from Connecticut," she says. "That was a couple of weeks ago."
"Oh," he says. "She's doing okay?"
"Yeah," she says. "She's doing fine."
"She's tough," Sam says. "She's, she knows what she's doing."
Ellen won't let herself close her eyes, even for a moment. She will not flinch. "I sure as hell hope so," she says evenly. She lets Sam refill both of their glasses before she says, "And Dean? How's he doing?"
"Fine," Sam says, and then, "The same as ever. He, uh. He's doing okay, I think. He, uh, he spent more time with Dad than I did."
Ellen shrugs. "Doesn't mean you can't miss him just as much," she says. Sam licks his lips, looks away, like he's so used to pretending not to care that he's not sure what to do when someone tells him that he's allowed to. "He'll be okay," Ellen says, after a moment. "You'll both be. It takes time."
"Yeah," he says. "I know. I mean, thank you."
"Nothing to thank me for," she says, not unkindly.
He lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. "The drink?" he offers.
She allows herself to smile in response. "Yeah, okay." He grins and when he looks down, his hair falls across his eyes again, shadowing his face. She swallows and looks away; she doesn't allow herself to hope that he will not have to know more pain than this, that he will never become less innocent than he already is.
She knows the kind of tricks fate plays with wishes, the terribly cruel ways in which they can be fulfilled.
Instead, she takes another sip from her glass and tries not to think about Joanna, about all of the ways in which she has seen hunters bleed, about all of the stories they have told her of things that cut and tear and twist.
The level of liquid in the bottle is significantly lower by the time Sam asks about John. The clock is still ticking, rhythmic and hypnotic, though Ellen has lost track of the time. She's forced herself to be cautious, to sip slowly, all the same; much as she would like to be drunk when he asks, she thinks that she owes this to him.
He doesn't need the burden of her grief in addition to his own, especially not when his own is still this fresh. Hers is buried, scarred over and mostly safe; across the table, he's drinking like he still believes each mouthful might contain a remedy for his own.
He is very young, she thinks, to be able to believe that, but perhaps that's not entirely true. Hunters older than she is try to do the same thing every night in her bar.
She thinks it would be nice to be able to believe as they do. She thinks it would be nice to be able to let go.
Sam refills his glass; he draws a breath, deliberate and resolute, and Ellen tells herself that this isn't dread, weighing like stones in her stomach as she waits for him to speak. "Dean, I just, uh, I can't ask him," he says. "He's got enough to worry about without me giving him this, too."
"He would understand," she says. Dean isn't the only one who lost his father, and maybe Sam needs to remind him about that.
Dean's life has been far from easy, but this isn't his alone to mourn.
Sam raises his eyebrows. "I know," he says, almost wryly. "That's why I can't."
Ellen nods, once. She wonders if that will be the death of both of them, the way they try to hide their own wounds, each thinking that they might be able to fool the other one. She wonders how often it works. They're very young to be this scarred, this weary, but then, she wasn't much older than he is now when she was pregnant with Jo, and she and Bill had already made their first payment on the bar by then. "It's okay," she says, empty words spoken out of habit, because sometimes there's nothing else.
Sam bites his lip. If he doesn't believe her, he doesn't say anything. "What was he like?" he asks, finally, his fingers loose around his glass.
It shouldn't hurt this much, she thinks. It should be easier, because she was expecting this. All the same, it hurts to draw a breath. "He was a good man," she says. "Stubborn as hell, and a damned ornery bastard sometimes, but a good man."
Sam smiles a little. He takes another sip from his glass, amber sloshing against the sides when he sets the tumbler down again. "Yeah," he says. "Bobby threatened him with a shotgun, last time he saw him."
"And Bobby's a stubborn son of a bitch himself," Ellen says. She pauses, and she meets his eyes when she speaks again. "Your daddy, he loved you boys, you know. You were the most important people in his life. He used to come by here, check in, and sometimes he'd bring a picture, and sometimes he'd tell stories. He wouldn't shut up about you two, and neither of us had the heart to make him. Everything you were doing. He used to talk about you, Sam, and how you took after your mother. Said you were just as stubborn as she was, and just as smart. He loved you, kid, you know that."
"I know," Sam says. He wipes his hand across his mouth. His breath hitches. His eyes are glistening, but that could just as easily be a trick of the light. "He, um. He used our college funds to buy ammo."
Ellen's laugh is startled, surprised despite herself. "Yeah, that sounds like him," she says. "He meant well."
"I know," Sam says. "That's what he, that's what he said." He drains the last of his glass, then, and sighs, his shoulders slumping.
"Ready to call it a night?" Ellen says, as gently as she can, when the silence stretches on. "C'mon, I'll show you where you can sleep."
He nods. She pushes her chair back and comes around the table to touch his shoulder in reassurance, but only for a moment. She doesn't take a step back, when he gets up, but she looks up at him, and she is very aware of how close she is standing, how close they are. She is aware of the darkened line of his jaw, and the wreck of his eyes, and the lines of his shoulders. "Thank you," he says, and she nods.
"Of course," she says. Her mouth is dry and she takes a step back. "This way," she says. Her steps are mostly steady; his are less so, but he keeps up. At the end of the hallway, she turns to direct him to his room, and she rests one hand against the wall, temporarily dizzy. He reaches out as though to steady her, his hand warm through the fabric of the shirt. The only source of light is the dull copper glow spilling out from the kitchen, and his eyes are unreadable.
When he leans forward, she doesn't pull away.
His hand slips around her waist. She tilts her head up, half-reflexively, and he kisses her. His mouth is warm and she closes her eyes.
It would be so easy.
Though she doesn't push him back, nor does she lean in, kiss him back or open her mouth. After a moment, he steps back, blushing furiously. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm, I'm sorry."
"Don't be," she says. She takes a breath. It's far more shuddering than she would like, and she is distantly aware that her hands are trembling. She's not sure how much she's had to drink, much less how much he's had. She swallows, and she reaches up to rest one hand on the side of his neck. She doesn't think about how long it's been, or about Bill, or anyone else. She thinks only about the grieving man before her, and the drowning pull of her own grief, and how his arms encircle her easily, drawing her close. She breathes against him, his head lowered so that she can press her mouth against his, and when they break apart for air, for space, for sanity, she leans against his chest and feels beneath her palm the pounding of his heart. "Your room," she says, and she turns to open the door.
He follows her in, and she closes the door behind them. Ash is sleeping several rooms away, but perhaps they would have been quiet anyway, their words hushed, their sounds muted. The room is sparse, a bed in one corner and a lamp on the bedside table, and they do not turn on the lights. He fumbles with the buttons of her shirt until she takes over, undoing them as neatly as possible. He's less careful with his own shirt; she hears a button pop and fall to the floor, and he skins roughly out of the t-shirt he's wearing beneath. His fingers tangle in her hair as he lifts her and they stumble together, their legs tangling, catching. She shivers when the cool sheets touch the bare skin of her back, and he presses his mouth against her chest, his fingers slipping behind her to undo her bra.
She swallows, her breath coming hard, ragged. She can't remember the last time she was in this room; there is dust on the bedside table, and then he is tugging at his belt and she leans forward to help him. The buckle jangles when it hits the floor and he presses against her, his breath on the side of her neck like a miserere. His hands are hot and heavy against the front of her jeans, catching the zipper of the fly, and when he peels the denim open, her breath catches.
In the dark, she thinks, he could be anyone. In the dark, her hands skim across his back, across smooth skin and ridges of scar tissue, and she thinks that she will never know how he got those scars, each and every one of them, but she can imagine.
She can imagine all too well. She has stitched countless wounds like them, and so she lifts her hands to his neck, twisting against the hair trapped there, because she has had enough of death, for now. Maybe forever.
The mattress shifts with the weight of them, the springs creaking like the cry of a small trapped bird, and when she lets go of his neck, when she lets her hands fall back against the pillow and opens them like benediction, he takes one of them, his palm rough against hers, and she closes her eyes into heat and depthless black.
It's not a large bed, and afterward, there's barely room of the two of them. She sits on the edge of the mattress, buttoning her shirt, and his hand comes to rest on her hip.
He doesn't say anything, and neither does she. She covers her hand briefly with her own before she gets up, before his palm slips away with that movement.
She looks back, once, as she closes the door, and he is lying on his side, his eyes closed, the blankets rucked around his waist. She wants, for a moment, to pull them up, as though that might protect him.
She closes the door.
Her own room is cold and the bed seems too large. She thinks about going back to the kitchen for the rest of the bottle, now that his question has been answered, but in the end, she only gets into bed and closes her eyes.
He's gone when she wakes. The bed in which he slept has been neatly made, a gesture more polite than anything, because she'll strip and wash the sheets in a little while.
On the kitchen table, he has left a note. She reads it while she drinks her coffee, and she smiles before setting it aside and going to take a shower.
She's grateful that she didn't have to watch him drive away. She's never been good at saying goodbye, and anyway, she knows that one day, more likely than not, he won't come back. And there is work to be done in the meantime, and there will be work to be done on that day, too, and so she will be here. She will be here, tending bar and stitching wounds. She will be here, telling stories about the dead to comfort the living, and washing the blood of both from the floor.
Someone has to.
--
end
by whereupon
Ellen/Sam. R, spoilers through 2.10, 3,935 words.
Never meant to linger here so long.
Ellen doesn't believe in magic, not that kind, but she thinks that if she did, the amount of blood that's been spilled on her floors would surely make this a sacred place. Not all of it has been shed as a result of violence within these walls; some has been spilled by the hunters who drag themselves here because it's the only safe place around and they trust that she will do what she can to take care of them, when there's nowhere else to go, that she will stitch them up and send them on their way,
She's not a doctor, and she's nobody's wife anymore, but she does what she can. There are a few rooms out back; she lets them sleep there sometimes, until the bleeding's stopped or until they're sober once more or until the ones who've been driving for days can see something other than endless roads and the scythe-edge of the horizon.
She gives them what she can: her stitches, once crooked, are straight, and the first aid kit is well-stocked, these days. She knows how to listen, she always has, and she has heard the nightmare tales of men and women alike.
When they scream in their sleep, she doesn't go to them, most of the time. She's not their mother; some of them are older than she is, and what they need, she cannot give them.
She has no power of absolution. She has no way to make them forget, other than the obvious, and that's her livelihood. She doesn't think it counts as granting temporary absolution if her earnings are reported to the IRS.
Not much blood has been spilled tonight, not yet, and that's something for which she can be grateful. She doesn't think she could clean up someone else's mess right now, doesn't think she has the strength to be anything approximating gentle and kind. Jo's last postcard is tacked to the bulletin board in her office, next to the photos she no longer notices because she's seen them so many times.
That postcard came twenty-three days ago. Ellen hates that she knows that, because it means that she's counting the days, and she wonders how long it would be before she stopped counting, if it ever came to that.
She knows, really, that she never would.
Some nights Ellen tells herself that her little girl had to grow up someday, and that at least Joanna chose to do this. She made her choice; she wasn't pushed into it. At least she had the chance to turn away. And some nights Ellen doesn't believe it; some nights she curses Bill, because she knows that Jo never would have chosen this life if it weren't for him, if she didn't love her daddy so much. Ellen hates him for that, but only a little, and she loves him for it, too.
She sees echoes, sometimes, echoes of Bill in the hunters who pass through, and sometimes she thinks that's the only reason she's stayed here, the only reason that she's kept the Roadhouse open for so many years.
It's not a role that she intentionally accepted, though maybe she knew what she was doing, on some level. She knew, after all, what Bill was, and she knew that when he was gone, she would be left to make sure there was a place to which he could return, a safe place for him and for those like him.
She hadn't known how long it would last, when she began. She hadn't known that in time, it would become her life, but it's only ever in myths that people are fully aware of the roles they are about to take on. And if her hands, now, speak of hours spent oiling the bar, of repairing the damage done by passing storms, if they ache sometimes with the memory of the rifle's kick, she thinks that maybe it's what she chose.
After all, she could have turned back. She could have turned away.
John Winchester asked her that, once, a few months after he brought Bill's wedding ring back to her. He asked her if she would stay on, if she would keep the Roadhouse open, and she'd thought that he was giving her permission. She'd thought he was saying that he would understand if she no longer wanted to run this place, if she wanted to get out, and her cheeks had stung. How dare he think that he had the authority to give her that option, as though she needed his permission, as though she needed his forgiveness?
She hadn't been doing this for him, and she hadn't needed him to tell her that it was a choice.
She hadn't told him that, of course. She had only turned away and asked if he wanted another drink, and that was one of the last times she saw him.
She didn't hate him for what happened to her husband, not once the raw ache of grief began to clear into something tenable, and she thinks that he knew as much. That knowledge hadn't made it any easier for him to look at her, though, which is why she hadn't hit him when he'd offered her that way out.
She wonders, sometimes, what she would tell his sons, if they were to ask about their relationship. She wasn't a soldier, not the way he was, so she doesn't think she could claim that kind of bond, though it was something close to that. They had both known grief. They had both lost. They had been too alike for anything more than that, she thinks. The ghosts that haunted them were too similar, too important, too real.
She is wondering this again tonight because Sam Winchester is one of the last remaining customers in her bar. He came in an hour ago and said that his brother was otherwise occupied; he hoped she wouldn't mind if he stayed here for a little while.
She told him not to be stupid; it was a public bar, and besides, he was like family. He smiled at that, though his eyes were sad, and she asked what he wanted to drink. She left him alone after that; if he wants company, he knows where to find her, and if not, she won't push. She has other things to do.
It's the time of night when the music on the jukebox begins to sound slower and sadder, the evening winding down and giving the strings a certain melancholy weight as it does. Duncan waves goodbye from the doorway and Alan Harding wants to pay his tab; there are glasses to be polished and Rev Jones wants to know whether she's heard anything about werewolves in Montana. Ellen busies herself with those small tasks, but she doesn't forget that Sam's still there.
She doesn't talk to him again until she's wiping down the bar. When she's worked her way to where he's sitting, she asks, "You staying around here?"
Sam shrugs. "Yeah, I figured I'd get a room in town," he says. "I was just, uh. Sometimes it gets quiet."
"Yeah," she says. "I know what you mean." She rests one hand on the rag atop the bar and says, "There're a couple a' rooms out back, if you wanna stay here, save the drive."
"I couldn't," he says. "I wouldn't want to impose." And she wants to laugh, because of his formality, his sincerity, his awkwardness. John raised his boys all right, but then, she never doubted that he would.
She bites the inside of her cheek and regards him for a moment before fishing the keys out of her pocket. "Lock up the front," she says. "Turn off the lights, and then you'll have earned it."
He grins. She sets the keys on the counter and he drains what's left of his beer before taking them. She watches the tired slant of his shoulders as he heads towards the door, but only for a moment before turning back to her own work.
She's in the office when he finds her. He hands her the keys, towering hesitantly in the doorway as though apologizing for his height. She sets the keys on her desk and says, "Want a drink?" She wonders how long it will take him to ask about his father. She doesn't want to be entirely sober when he does.
"Sure," he says. "Yeah, that would be great."
She grabs a bottle from one of the boxes of inventory stacked beside her desk and tilts her head. "C'mon," she says. He follows her into the kitchen, stands back while she gets two tumblers from the cabinet. He stands in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, and she wonders what he's thinking about as he looks around. She's never been very good at domesticity. She's better at familiarity; the coffee cups on the rack are serviceable and clean. She's had them for years.
There's something like longing in his expression, or envy, and when she clears her throat to get his attention, he doesn't look down fast enough to hide it.
It's too cold to sit outside, this time of year, so they sit at her kitchen table. She takes a swallow, lets the liquor warm her mouth, her throat. He sits across from her with his hands around his glass and his hair in his eyes, and he looks like any of the other men who come into her bar, battle-scarred, grieving, weary. It's not until he looks up that she thinks about how young he is, the shadows beneath his eyes like something that doesn't belong, the unslept creases like something stolen from someone much older, as though years were ever an accurate measure of pain and experience.
He throws back his whiskey without warning, downs it quickly, as though he's come to a decision. She carefully doesn't raise an eyebrow, doesn't show any reaction. She knows what's coming, she thinks, and she wonders how she will tell the son of the man who watched her husband die that his father was a good man. That his father loved him, no matter what words were exchanged, no matter what happened.
For all the years she's spent doing this, picking up the pieces of those who try in their own small ways to take back what was taken from them, she would have thought it would get easier after awhile.
Sam doesn't say anything, though; he merely edges the glass in the direction of the bottle, his glance inquisitive, and she nods, refills it. She sips from her own, savoring the burn, and listens to the ticking of the clock above the sink. When he's ready, he'll ask, and she's not in any hurry.
"You heard from Jo lately?" he asks. She hadn't expected that, and she swallows slowly.
"The last postcard she sent was from Connecticut," she says. "That was a couple of weeks ago."
"Oh," he says. "She's doing okay?"
"Yeah," she says. "She's doing fine."
"She's tough," Sam says. "She's, she knows what she's doing."
Ellen won't let herself close her eyes, even for a moment. She will not flinch. "I sure as hell hope so," she says evenly. She lets Sam refill both of their glasses before she says, "And Dean? How's he doing?"
"Fine," Sam says, and then, "The same as ever. He, uh. He's doing okay, I think. He, uh, he spent more time with Dad than I did."
Ellen shrugs. "Doesn't mean you can't miss him just as much," she says. Sam licks his lips, looks away, like he's so used to pretending not to care that he's not sure what to do when someone tells him that he's allowed to. "He'll be okay," Ellen says, after a moment. "You'll both be. It takes time."
"Yeah," he says. "I know. I mean, thank you."
"Nothing to thank me for," she says, not unkindly.
He lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. "The drink?" he offers.
She allows herself to smile in response. "Yeah, okay." He grins and when he looks down, his hair falls across his eyes again, shadowing his face. She swallows and looks away; she doesn't allow herself to hope that he will not have to know more pain than this, that he will never become less innocent than he already is.
She knows the kind of tricks fate plays with wishes, the terribly cruel ways in which they can be fulfilled.
Instead, she takes another sip from her glass and tries not to think about Joanna, about all of the ways in which she has seen hunters bleed, about all of the stories they have told her of things that cut and tear and twist.
The level of liquid in the bottle is significantly lower by the time Sam asks about John. The clock is still ticking, rhythmic and hypnotic, though Ellen has lost track of the time. She's forced herself to be cautious, to sip slowly, all the same; much as she would like to be drunk when he asks, she thinks that she owes this to him.
He doesn't need the burden of her grief in addition to his own, especially not when his own is still this fresh. Hers is buried, scarred over and mostly safe; across the table, he's drinking like he still believes each mouthful might contain a remedy for his own.
He is very young, she thinks, to be able to believe that, but perhaps that's not entirely true. Hunters older than she is try to do the same thing every night in her bar.
She thinks it would be nice to be able to believe as they do. She thinks it would be nice to be able to let go.
Sam refills his glass; he draws a breath, deliberate and resolute, and Ellen tells herself that this isn't dread, weighing like stones in her stomach as she waits for him to speak. "Dean, I just, uh, I can't ask him," he says. "He's got enough to worry about without me giving him this, too."
"He would understand," she says. Dean isn't the only one who lost his father, and maybe Sam needs to remind him about that.
Dean's life has been far from easy, but this isn't his alone to mourn.
Sam raises his eyebrows. "I know," he says, almost wryly. "That's why I can't."
Ellen nods, once. She wonders if that will be the death of both of them, the way they try to hide their own wounds, each thinking that they might be able to fool the other one. She wonders how often it works. They're very young to be this scarred, this weary, but then, she wasn't much older than he is now when she was pregnant with Jo, and she and Bill had already made their first payment on the bar by then. "It's okay," she says, empty words spoken out of habit, because sometimes there's nothing else.
Sam bites his lip. If he doesn't believe her, he doesn't say anything. "What was he like?" he asks, finally, his fingers loose around his glass.
It shouldn't hurt this much, she thinks. It should be easier, because she was expecting this. All the same, it hurts to draw a breath. "He was a good man," she says. "Stubborn as hell, and a damned ornery bastard sometimes, but a good man."
Sam smiles a little. He takes another sip from his glass, amber sloshing against the sides when he sets the tumbler down again. "Yeah," he says. "Bobby threatened him with a shotgun, last time he saw him."
"And Bobby's a stubborn son of a bitch himself," Ellen says. She pauses, and she meets his eyes when she speaks again. "Your daddy, he loved you boys, you know. You were the most important people in his life. He used to come by here, check in, and sometimes he'd bring a picture, and sometimes he'd tell stories. He wouldn't shut up about you two, and neither of us had the heart to make him. Everything you were doing. He used to talk about you, Sam, and how you took after your mother. Said you were just as stubborn as she was, and just as smart. He loved you, kid, you know that."
"I know," Sam says. He wipes his hand across his mouth. His breath hitches. His eyes are glistening, but that could just as easily be a trick of the light. "He, um. He used our college funds to buy ammo."
Ellen's laugh is startled, surprised despite herself. "Yeah, that sounds like him," she says. "He meant well."
"I know," Sam says. "That's what he, that's what he said." He drains the last of his glass, then, and sighs, his shoulders slumping.
"Ready to call it a night?" Ellen says, as gently as she can, when the silence stretches on. "C'mon, I'll show you where you can sleep."
He nods. She pushes her chair back and comes around the table to touch his shoulder in reassurance, but only for a moment. She doesn't take a step back, when he gets up, but she looks up at him, and she is very aware of how close she is standing, how close they are. She is aware of the darkened line of his jaw, and the wreck of his eyes, and the lines of his shoulders. "Thank you," he says, and she nods.
"Of course," she says. Her mouth is dry and she takes a step back. "This way," she says. Her steps are mostly steady; his are less so, but he keeps up. At the end of the hallway, she turns to direct him to his room, and she rests one hand against the wall, temporarily dizzy. He reaches out as though to steady her, his hand warm through the fabric of the shirt. The only source of light is the dull copper glow spilling out from the kitchen, and his eyes are unreadable.
When he leans forward, she doesn't pull away.
His hand slips around her waist. She tilts her head up, half-reflexively, and he kisses her. His mouth is warm and she closes her eyes.
It would be so easy.
Though she doesn't push him back, nor does she lean in, kiss him back or open her mouth. After a moment, he steps back, blushing furiously. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm, I'm sorry."
"Don't be," she says. She takes a breath. It's far more shuddering than she would like, and she is distantly aware that her hands are trembling. She's not sure how much she's had to drink, much less how much he's had. She swallows, and she reaches up to rest one hand on the side of his neck. She doesn't think about how long it's been, or about Bill, or anyone else. She thinks only about the grieving man before her, and the drowning pull of her own grief, and how his arms encircle her easily, drawing her close. She breathes against him, his head lowered so that she can press her mouth against his, and when they break apart for air, for space, for sanity, she leans against his chest and feels beneath her palm the pounding of his heart. "Your room," she says, and she turns to open the door.
He follows her in, and she closes the door behind them. Ash is sleeping several rooms away, but perhaps they would have been quiet anyway, their words hushed, their sounds muted. The room is sparse, a bed in one corner and a lamp on the bedside table, and they do not turn on the lights. He fumbles with the buttons of her shirt until she takes over, undoing them as neatly as possible. He's less careful with his own shirt; she hears a button pop and fall to the floor, and he skins roughly out of the t-shirt he's wearing beneath. His fingers tangle in her hair as he lifts her and they stumble together, their legs tangling, catching. She shivers when the cool sheets touch the bare skin of her back, and he presses his mouth against her chest, his fingers slipping behind her to undo her bra.
She swallows, her breath coming hard, ragged. She can't remember the last time she was in this room; there is dust on the bedside table, and then he is tugging at his belt and she leans forward to help him. The buckle jangles when it hits the floor and he presses against her, his breath on the side of her neck like a miserere. His hands are hot and heavy against the front of her jeans, catching the zipper of the fly, and when he peels the denim open, her breath catches.
In the dark, she thinks, he could be anyone. In the dark, her hands skim across his back, across smooth skin and ridges of scar tissue, and she thinks that she will never know how he got those scars, each and every one of them, but she can imagine.
She can imagine all too well. She has stitched countless wounds like them, and so she lifts her hands to his neck, twisting against the hair trapped there, because she has had enough of death, for now. Maybe forever.
The mattress shifts with the weight of them, the springs creaking like the cry of a small trapped bird, and when she lets go of his neck, when she lets her hands fall back against the pillow and opens them like benediction, he takes one of them, his palm rough against hers, and she closes her eyes into heat and depthless black.
It's not a large bed, and afterward, there's barely room of the two of them. She sits on the edge of the mattress, buttoning her shirt, and his hand comes to rest on her hip.
He doesn't say anything, and neither does she. She covers her hand briefly with her own before she gets up, before his palm slips away with that movement.
She looks back, once, as she closes the door, and he is lying on his side, his eyes closed, the blankets rucked around his waist. She wants, for a moment, to pull them up, as though that might protect him.
She closes the door.
Her own room is cold and the bed seems too large. She thinks about going back to the kitchen for the rest of the bottle, now that his question has been answered, but in the end, she only gets into bed and closes her eyes.
He's gone when she wakes. The bed in which he slept has been neatly made, a gesture more polite than anything, because she'll strip and wash the sheets in a little while.
On the kitchen table, he has left a note. She reads it while she drinks her coffee, and she smiles before setting it aside and going to take a shower.
She's grateful that she didn't have to watch him drive away. She's never been good at saying goodbye, and anyway, she knows that one day, more likely than not, he won't come back. And there is work to be done in the meantime, and there will be work to be done on that day, too, and so she will be here. She will be here, tending bar and stitching wounds. She will be here, telling stories about the dead to comfort the living, and washing the blood of both from the floor.
Someone has to.
--
end