The Telegram, Chapter IV. An Intruder in the Night*
Sam is in a spot of trouble-and what a LARGE spot, it is.
“How could you leave her there? I’ll say, if the poor girl discovers the mind to box your ears, I’d leave her to it-sanction it, even-oh, Samuel John Winchester, you frightful thing!”
“I told you, I can explain-“
“The way she waited for you-beautiful girl like Jess, she was simply tragic in that exquisite, tattered Parisian dress-and she stayed true to you, wouldn’t join the next two numbers for fear she would miss your return, and still you never showed. ”
“-I feel horrid about it, I do!”
Ava’s fawn-like eyes turn irrepressibly doleful. “The things people were whispering…especially after the way that little blonde thing chased after you and your friend…” She shakes her head sorrily. “Why Sam, I’d be forced to sever ties with you from the humiliation of it all…”
“You’re just being ridiculous, now.”
“…were Jess not so gracious so as to permit you the chance to make it up to her, post-date.” Her expression turns impish, the corners of her lips tweaking into a feline smirk. “That’s some overture. You must have made quite the impression, Mr. Winchester.”
Ava’s abrupt transition in temper-wild-eyed fury galloping headlong into suggestive, coy pleasure-takes the bluster out from his sails and Sam, always a half-step behind the force of nature that is his best friend, is left gaping irrelevant defenses to the wind.
In the vocal lull, Ava is only all-too happy to fill him in on the details. As it turns out, plans have already been drawn up for the four of them-poor Brady has somehow been suckered into yet another transparent excuse for Ava’s match-making-and Sam, Jess, and the Gough newly-weds are to enjoy a casual after-work dinner, set for Thursday the following week.
“Be sure to confirm it with her after you get home,” Ava prattles cheerfully. “Or better yet, you can stop by the Western Union and wire Jess right away. She’ll appreciate the promptness, I’m sure-it would do well for you to demonstrate some capability of this virtue, after all.”
“All right, Ava, there’s no need to nag! You have a husband for that sort of activity now.”
Ava huffs a world-weary sigh. “I’m sure you find yourself very droll.”
Sam laughs in return, the sound loud and clear, and victim to it, Ava surrenders with a little smile of her own. She slaps him on the arm, crying, “Don’t make fun! I’m entirely serious here. You better not muddle this chance!”
“I won’t, old girl. I’ll be on my best behaviour.”
A waitress politely interrupts them, and Sam and Ava eagerly lean back in their chairs to accept a tiered tray of delicacies alongside their steaming cups of coffee. At the Old Poodle Dog27, the pre-eminent bastion of French cuisine in a Bohemian city of gourmets, the two friends enjoy their late lunch at its revivified location (one of the seemingly thousands that spring up by day, like phoenixes from ashes, each gaily victorious with their red bannered heralds of some Specialty this, or some Famous that). Here in the latest incarnation of the restaurant, Sam clears his plate with aplomb, before contentedly chasing it with incomparable French coffee that he slowly relishes upon his tongue.
All too quickly, the meal is over; the two friends find themselves with a hurriedly bused table and no choice but to pass on their seats to the rumps of street-weary patrons. At the front of the restaurant, Sam hails a buggy for Ava before moseying down the lane for his own transport when luck has it, the trolley rolls into view just ahead. A hasty hoof to the car lands him a tight squeeze near the back, and Sam is verily on his way home to Ivy street.
-----
At his apartment building, Sam is greeted by Charlie, the stodgy old door-man who has been watching over the edifice for decades, like a loyal dog to its master.
Wordlessly, Charlie hands over a cream-coloured card. His jowls lift into a sort of grimacing smile that Sam weakly returns as he takes the card, before turning and making his way up the stairs. He flips the card over-printed is: Jessica Lee Moore in tasteful script, followed by her address in the lower right corner. Sam stops, considers for a moment, then turns right around and marches outside as old Charlie regards him with disinterest.
The Western Union is but a five minute’s jaunt from his apartment. There, a punctilious reply is wired to the Moore home, and with it ends the leg-work Sam is expected to supply.
By the time Sam returns home, he finds the limited nature of the day’s longevity in profound assertion. The apartment is low on light, the furniture throwing haphazard shadows into crist-crosses of black. Surfaces glow in the sunken sun, in vivid hues.
Sam quickly sheds his topcoat, jacket, and waistcoat, tossing them unceremoniously over the tall rack in the corner where they catch on the arms and hang like willow. His homburg28 follows, snagged on the millinery knob peeking out from beneath wools and felts. With efficiency on his mind, Sam rolls up his sleeves and heads to the washroom, where he prepares a tub of hot, soapy water that will support him in diminishing the pile of neglected laundry that sits in his closet. Loth as Sam is to spend the remainder of his Sunday up to his elbows in dirty suds, the idea of embracing the work week with naught but third-worn shirts and street-dusty suits appeals to him even less-and so, he lugs his linen hamper into the washroom and plunges into the chore.
Night falls precipitously, and without remorse. Sam wrings out the last of his laundry-black dress pants, worn only once for Ava’s wedding, which were still relatively clean but for the spilled drink on the front rise-hangs it up to dry, and calls it a day.
And indeed, the day-time has truly passed on. The evening, however, is in itself an entirely separate beast.
-----
His name-the Stranger, that is-his name was Dean.
Sam rolls onto his side and stares at the wall. He can hear the methodical drip, drip of his hanging laundry on the other side and thinks of how it will feel the morrow, damp and clammy against his skin…
…not unlike the night at the Fairmont, when Dean had delivered the entirety of his drink across the front of Sam’s trousers and down one pant leg, with such perfect inconvenience that it suggested some celestial ploy (Lord, the snickers he was subject to).
Dean, Sam muses, holding the sound of that word behind his teeth. Dean, who’d only spilt his drink due to it being knocked from his grip when Sam charged him, only to be wedged apart by that flouncing blonde, Jo (unfortunate owner to an ugly, mannish nick-name). Later Sam would learn of her designation in full: Joanna Beth Harvelle, but upon first meeting he’d stood statuesque, shocked both by the wet freeze at his groin, and in equal parts by the scene that unfurled before him-Jo’s thin arms wound around Dean’s neck in a salacious embrace, cooing his name most intimately.
Coincidentally, this was the manner in which Sam learnt of the Stranger’s hitherto unattainable prenomen. And while this information is surely coveted, it is hardly the sole bounty he’d brought home that night-quite the opposite, in fact. After all, the things Dean had said…
---
“You open this up, there’s no going back.” Challenge paints itself across Dean’s face, as if the possibility exists that Sam could turn away now.
Sam steps forward and calmly says, “All right then, so there’s no going back.”
And just like that, all the bravado seeps from Dean’s stance. He scrubs his hand over his face, and the large, heavy sigh that escapes him sounds of a thousand years of weariness. He says resignedly, “You were supposed to the smart one, Sam.”
“Come again?”
“Never-mind,” Dean quickly recovers. “Look, if you want to know what happened to your mother, I’ll give it to you straight. Just don’t pretend to believe me if you really don’t, because I won’t waste my time.”
Sam anxiously wets his lips, thinking of how this man’s shortcomings in human interactions are more than off-set by his natural talent for whetting anticipation. Nodding tersely, Sam replies, “That’s quite the preface. Now the truth, if you will?”
Dean holds his gaze for a long moment, but when it becomes plain that an acquittal will never come to pass, he sweeps his near-forgotten drink up off the marble bench and loudly slurps at the brimming liquid, taking his time as Sam watches on, shivering from what must be the cold.
Half the Boothby has disappeared behind puckered lips before Dean lowers the glass to speak. “I’ll repeat myself only once. Like I said, there exists a lullaby. It is a cipher, created for the purpose of unlocking the whereabouts of a certain group of, well-a group of top-tier demons.”
Sam bites his tongue, despite the burning question that echoes through his mind-Literal or figurative demons? But in abhorrence to causing his informant to skitter away, Sam schools his face into what he hopes is an encouraging countenance, though he struggles beneath the pointed gaze that pins him so. Fortunately, the façade holds, and Dean continues.
“The thing is, not just anyone can know where they are, because these demons, they’re not your garden-variety devils or spirits. The Three-they’ve got power…power and means to murder you in your sleep if you happen upon this information even accidentally. The coded lullaby protects the innocents. It protects everyone who needn’t know of the dark things that go on around them, while conversely, it supplants those of us who should know, who must know where these ring-leaders are.”
“And I take it you’ve assumed the role of the latter?”
“Inherited, more like,” Dean says wryly, before rushing to clarify: “Don’t misunderstand-there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than hunting them down-Azazel, in particular. He’s a right old bastard-murdered your mother. Murdered your mother’s friends, and countless, countless others. He won’t stop, either; not unless guys like me do it for him.”
Heat flares up in verdant eyes and Dean looks up, directing palpable intensity towards Sam. The proximity of Dean’s thrumming body seems in an instant all too near-swallowing hard, in attempts to dislodge the viscous pressure engulfing his throat, Sam desperately seeks some channel through which to diffuse the emotions crackling through the dry, night air.
At length, he asks tremulously, “This lullaby you speak of…may I hear it?”
The electricity in Dean’s gaze breaks with the loss of contact, his eyes suddenly transfixed on the ground in a manner that could be deemed almost bashful, were it not so incongruous with the man’s character. It is all Sam can do but to grip that jaw in his fingers to force the gaze back, but his cognitive self madly clutches from such folly, and thankfully so, for it is only the stretch of silence that makes audible the barest of whispers that stems low from Dean’s throat when he begins to sing.
Frutescent Yovine Cappula.
It sounds of but a breeze at first, of wind streaming between tree branches on an early Spring day, but with the following verse Dean’s murmurs gradually strengthen until the only thing Sam can perceive anymore, the only tangible thing before him is the haunting melody of the lullaby and the way Dean’s voice modulates around it, lending a raw, bitten edge that shakes Sam right to his very core.
Frutescent Yovine Cappula,
Fulcrum Crustian Bailecito,
Fullage Romosity Armariolum,
The lullaby itself brings to the forefront all it embodies-the blood spilt over its creation can be heard in fearful, reverent consonants, while the rolling exhales of elevated vowels sound of the faint hope it brings to those who can grasp its power.
Navachy Navagante
Neoteric
The last couplet repeats itself, in rhythmic counterpoint to the pumping blood in Sam’s veins, until the echoes of it return to silence.
The silence, however, is anything but its denotation of stillness-instead, the space between them remains charged, magnetic. Sam wavers, falls infinitesimally nearer-near enough that he can hear the breath stir in Dean’s mouth.
There is a matter which persists in Sam’s mind, present ever since its introduction on that fateful day he met the Stranger. Sam parts his lips-allows himself to take in the involuntary flicker of Dean’s eyes-and says, “There’s something that’s been bothering me. The day at the cemetery, when you first saw me. You looked…the way you reacted…“
If there is some tact to be found for this particular question, Sam is blind to it, groping with empty fists, all the while Dean’s eyes slowly, sensually darken. Flustered, Sam blurts, “Do you know me?”
Dean’s eyes widen. “What? What in the world would give you-“
“Because,” Sam rushes to interject. “-because I saw you, I saw the way you looked at me after I introduced myself that day. Like you recognized me. And I just need to know if I imagined it. If I’m imagining all of this-”
With the panicked back-steps Dean takes, Sam feels his heart jump to his throat. He surges forward, desperate to perpetuate the moment, even while it slips away like fine sand through his fingers. “Who are you, anyway, and how do we know each other? Because I feel like we know each oth-“
A piercing cold suddenly spills over Sam’s lap, and he freezes-numbly looks down, tracking the progression of events from the drink staining his trousers, to the shattered glass on the concrete ground. He hadn’t noticed-hadn’t even realized he’d snatched up Dean’s arms until the two men stood apart, chasm growing while Dean rubs his biceps defensively.
The door behind them slams open, Sam jumping at the sound. A mass of silk hurtles past him in a rippling curtain of ivory, before throwing itself at Dean. The lightweight fabric calmly settles into the form of a gown, filled by the slender physique of a young woman.
“Dean,” she says simply, framing his jaw with her small hands. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get away-you know my mother, she would not let me out of her sight.. I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
Dean looks down at the girl in his arms, surprise dappled across his features for the briefest of instances before it is blinked it away in his recovery. Dean says, voice low and rough, “Jo. Hey.”
Sam observes the proximity of their bodies with an acrid sensation tricking down his throat-Dean’s hands look indomitable where they rest on the girl’s slim, boyish hips, and her arms have since slid over broad shoulders to curl around, bringing her pink lips against the crook of Dean’s neck, just below his ear, where the skin looks soft and vulnerable beneath the light of the moon.
What Sam doesn’t notice, however, is the green gaze that sweeps past blonde locks to study him, taking in the abject horror Sam effuses so thoroughly; indeed, Sam’s far too preoccupied (scandalized) with the familiar demeanor in which the young woman purrs Dean’s name to take note of the determination in Dean’s brow as he tugs her in to breach that last, meager inch of decency. Flesh and warmth displaces air in favor of a full-bodied press as Dean covers her mouth with his own; Sam stares woodenly, fixed in place.
That is, until the first slick noise of a lovers’ kiss reaches his ears-then, he is helpless but to banish the scene as far away as possible, beginning with his timely re-entry into the Fairmont Ball Room.
From there, Sam immediately thunders a straight path out the entrance, stopping for absolutely nothing until he has hailed a horse buggy and directed the driver home.
Once ensconced in the solitude of his bedroom, Sam hastily strips off his starched shirt and icy, still-damp slacks, and promptly dives under covers. Still, the initiation of slumber eludes him; every facet of his mind trembles with Dean-the smell of him (plain soap and light sweat) clings to Sam’s nose, while his eardrums reverberate with the ache of Dean’s voice as it carries a lullaby that is laden with meaning.
It is a long time before Sam drifts off into blessed unconsciousness. With one forearm slung over eyes and the other beneath his pillow, where knuckles barely graze the crumpled carte-de-visite kept there, Sam dreams of nothing but the night’s vivid sensations that haunt him so, inescapable as they are.
-----
Sam wakes. It is not the slow, lumbering ascent of a natural stirring; on the contrary, a snap impulse thrusts him into the world of the conscious and Sam finds himself furiously blinking away the edges of sleep, only to be confronted with the ghostly emergence of a man’s face.
He pauses at the sight, making no premature assumptions of its physical existence-it is deathly dark outside, still the thick of night, and only by the barest glow of street-lamp does Sam’s vision slowly adjust. The materialism of the room rises in subtle tones of clarity like a sunken ship that has regained buoyancy, yet the figure hardly draws back in shadow, preferring to gain in corporeality until even the features of the man’s face are discernable.
Sam’s eyes widen, slowly, until they’re large as plates-he fights off what must be an optical trick, or perhaps the lingering of a dream, but the scene before him refuses to change: as much as Sam may will it, it remains a fact that the proprietor of so much of his waking thought-Dean, that is-Dean is in his bed.
Statuesque, Dean has one hand braced against the wall, the other snuck below the very pillow Sam is using. He holds himself rigid, torso suspended mere inches above Sam’s. No part of them touches but the gaping eaves of Dean’s jacket, which silently rest on Sam’s belly, curled in repose.
Sam is the first to move. It is uncomfortably chilly in the room, and his hips roll up of their own accord, seeking out the warmth that emanates from the body so near him. While it seems innocuous enough, the moment their lower bodies collide, Dean jolts forward like a cracked whip, burying his entire arm underneath Sam’s pillow to strain for what could only be the carte-de-visite that’s hidden there.
For an interminable moment, their bodies are crushed together in struggle. Dean stutter-slips forward, fingers latching onto the CDV as Sam bunches up in alarm, throwing himself flush against Dean-stomach to stomach, chest to chest, their limbs tangle up into a fervent, kicking mess.
Luckily, Sam manages to lay claim to his mother’s photograph, crumpled into his tight, unrelenting fist. Said artifact may no longer be in the ship-shape it once boasted, but nonetheless it survives intact, and secure.
Dean realizes he no longer stands a chance-not with Sam fully awake (and vicious). He aborts his attempt to procure the carte-de-visite, launching his momentum backwards to extricate himself from Sam’s clutches. Awkward and gangling though his appearance may be, Sam conceals a strength and tenacity that rivals the most fearsome of beasts.
In other words-Sam is putting up much more of a fight than anyone could bargain for. In fact, he even manages to snatch the upper hand-with a move so deft it impresses even himself, Sam reverses their positions and finds himself toppled onto a shock-still body.
After a moment to settle in, Sam discovers he rather likes being in the position of power. He straddles Dean’s convulsing waist-traps jerking wrists against the mattress with a firm, two-handed grip and the sure lock of his elbows, and looks down, panting with exertion.
Finally, and then only in between laboured breaths, Sam demands, “Who are you, really? What is it you want from me?”
A curse worthy of a rascally old sailor rises up from Dean’s mouth, and though defiance is little more than Sam could have expected, it hardly prevents disappointment from pooling low in his abdomen.
Wait, he suddenly realizes, with no small amount of delight. I’m the one who has gained advantage, here. How wondrous, how venerable, this simple truth! Sam wriggles in his makeshift seat just to emphasize the point to Dean, who abruptly stops his ferocious struggling in favor of freezing up into a tense, unmoving block.
Peering down questioningly at his captive, Sam is reminded of the defence mechanism of various wild creatures to “play dead”, so to speak. The old trick won’t dupe Sam into relinquishing his leverage, though-far from it. Sam isn’t stupid.
Sam leans down as far as the tender stretch in his hamstrings will allow him and squarely pins Dean’s evasive eyes into place. When he is sure of the attention he so requires, Sam whispers, “Tell me. Dean, right? Tell me why you want that code so badly, that you will break the law to get at it.“
Dean only averts his gaze. Disgruntled, Sam presses the full extent of his weight into his hands, squeezing Dean’s wrists together tightly enough to pinch a grimace from his captive’s face. So be it, Sam thinks, overtaken by a sudden, rapacious need for Dean’s eyes to be trained on him, for Dean’s ears to be attuned to his every word.
When Dean emits a small grunt, the abortive noise feels like a minor slap. Sam immediately loosens his grip, before releasing it altogether. Tension quickly vacates his body, and concern floods in its place; feeling a bit sorry for the man beneath him, Sam scoots backwards from the cushion he has made of Dean’s stomach, removing his one-hundred-and-some-pound burden from the vulnerable belly beneath him in a small gesture of sympathy.
Only, the shift in positions diverts Sam’s attention to a wholly separate, yet equal (if not greater) source of discomfort.
A hard, unmistakable pressure makes itself known, just underneath Sam’s posterior. This time, it is Sam who is shocked into paralysis, as the very feel of it-stiff, and of what seems to be considerable length-invokes a barrage of sensations. In fact, just the existence of Dean’s evidenced arousal, whether through the simple physicality of their tussle (or risen from another, more damning origin) something stirs in Sam, unnamable and fierce.
In the next instant, Dean bucks with all his might and succeeds in tumbling Sam from his throne. The lone, bedroom window is still open-clearly from Dean’s previous tampering and method of entrance-and within the span it takes for Sam to even consider giving chase, the other man has dropped out the window and beat a hasty retreat.
There is a long, still moment in which Sam gapes after the open window. When he finally finds the mind to dash over and stretch his head out the window like a bird craning for food, not even the spectre of Dean remains in the quiet, lamp-lit streets.
Some time passes in this uncomfortable stance before Sam recollects himself enough re-tract from the window. He shuts it-latches it-and gathers himself back into bed.
In the still night-disconcertingly still, in the wake of such intense activity-it is impossible for Sam to ignore the evidence of his own arousal. And while Sam is hardly stranger to his own body, having discovered the utility of his own hand in relieving the excesses of lust from an appropriately early age, the context of this particular circumstance seems somehow too disturbing to indulge in such activity.
Through infinite, painstaking willpower, he quells the lingering excitement in his loins. When his body more or less returns to its natural state, Sam turns over onto his belly and lets a sudden wave of fatigue wash over him. He crosses his arms underneath his pillow and lays his head down, instinctively reaching out to feel for his mother’s carte-de-visite.
Despite the hollow feeling that has manifested itself within him, Sam holds the photograph tightly and thinks, At the very least, I still have this.
The thought does little to pacify him.
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27“San Francisco’s Poodle Dog Restaurants.” 05 Feb 2005. Smith’s History. 09 July 2008.
28“Homburg (hat).” 16 Apr 2008. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 09 July 2008.