Hunting Breaks - Part II
Title: Hunting Breaks Part II
Wordcount: 2,559
Rating: R
Warnings: Substance Abuse, Bad language, Canon Character Death
Summary: Unplanned second chapter to Hunting Breaks. What happened when Sam started hunting again. Covers Skin to Born Under a Bad Sign. Timeline of events and dates from HERE.
Part I
St. Louis, January 2006
"Are you fucking high?" Dean demanded. His fingers dug in around Sam's shoulders and his thumbs pressed cruelly hard just above Sam's collarbone.
Sam blinked and tried to focus on Dean's face. He'd been hit, he knew that, could feel the slow hot burn of his blood leaking out and dripping down his side. That didn't explain why the world was slowly melting around him, like some sort of twisted Dali painting.
"Dean. . ." Sam said, but the rest of his words slurred together and he couldn't make his tongue obey and spit out any more sounds.
Dean lowered him to the ground and Sam slumped forward, letting his brother support him. His brother's hands rearranged themselves and fingers pressed against his neck. "Damn it. Sam, you have a concussion, you can't just do something like this!"
His eyelids were heavy. Sam let them droop closed, Dean had reminded him and he could feel a phantom ache in the back of his head somewhere now, pounding in time with his heartbeat.
"Open your eyes." Dean ordered and Sam didn't. He didn't have to do what Dean said, Dean wasn't Dad and he didn't have to do what Dad said anymore either. "Sam, open."
Sam whined in protest when Dean lifted his eyelid and turned his head towards the light.
"You feel that?" Dean asked and his fingers tightened in Sam's hair.
"Hurts." Sam slurred but his garbled talk seemed to reassure his brother.
"Good." Dean hauled Sam to his feet. "Now you're gonna walk."
Sam let Dean half drag, half carry him through the streets. His legs felt rubbery and shook under his weight. Dean leaned him against the car and opened the door before shoving him into the back seat of the Impala.
"You keep your eyes open." Dean ordered and Sam did. He stared straight ahead and listened to Dean rustle around in the trunk.
Dean got into the front of the car and the engine growled to life. The sound was familiar and soothing, Sam felt his eyelids drift shut again, his head had stopped hurting and the movement of the car felt like someone was gently rocking him to sleep.
"Eyes open." Dean ordered and Sam was slow to obey the order, he sat straight up when something hard hit him in the shoulder. "Drink up." Dean ordered, shooting a look over his shoulder, Sam avoided his gaze.
The thing that had hit him was a water bottle, the top still sealed. Sam cracked it and drained half in his first gulp. His mouth and throat felt bone dry and the entire bottle didn't do much to change that.
"What did you take?" Dean asked, his voice quiet, not ordering.
Sam shrugged.
"Why do you do this? Do you want to die?" Dean turned the radio on, the news about the killings in St. Louis. It was quiet, low enough to not disrupt their conversation. "You did this before, on the hunt for the black dog when you were sixteen."
"I don't want to die." Sam mumbled, the first sentence he'd managed to string together.
Dean grunted and he was silent for a long time, Sam thought the topic had been dropped. "You're gonna die, if you keep this up." Dean said and he cranked the Metallica back up to ear splitting.
When Sam woke up, he was in a bed. The wallpaper said motel and the ache in his head and the shake in his heads said it had been ages since they'd left St. Louis. He managed to stumbled from the bed to the bathroom in time. Dean was sleeping in the other bed and when Sam finished and washed his hands, he went through the pile of their things until he found his coat.
He checked all the pockets, but they were empty and his secret pocket had been ripped open, with a knife, it looked like.
"Sam?" Dean's voice was quiet and heavy from sleeping.
"Yeah?" Sam put his jacket down and looked over.
"There's nothing in there. You aren't gonna find them." Dean got out of his bed and put a heavy hand on Sam's shoulder. "You need something, you ask me."
Sam nodded mutely, his mind already narrowing down the hiding places available in their gear.
A day out of Lawrence, March 2006
"Dean?" Sam pressed his fingers hard into his side as he stumbled back into the motel room. "Dean?" He called again, louder this time.
"Minute." Dean's voice came from the bathroom and Sam sat down on one of the bed, hissing as he eased his shirts away from the wound in his side. He missed the sound of the door opening until Dean spoke, "Shit. Why did you say?"
Dean's hands carefully peeled his shirts the rest of the way up and his fingers prodded at the cut just under Sam's rib cage. "What happened?"
"Guy didn't think I played a fair game." Sam had left three hours ago to hustle pool. He should have known better than to hit a biker bar.
"And you let him get you?" Dean got their First Aid kit and pulled on a pair of gloves. Sam clenched his jaw and held fistfuls of the comforter when Dean doused the laceration in whiskey.
"Parking lot, I wasn't expecting."
Dean looked up when Sam said that. He took the penlight from the kit and flashed it in Sam's eyes. "You taking drugs again?"
Sam shook his head. It wasn't from lack of trying. But Dean had clamped down on the money and the pill bottles. Sam had to ask his brother if he wanted an Aspirin or a couple bucks to get something to eat.
Dean grunted and pulled out a package of sutures. He dunked the needle in alcohol and pulled out with the needle driver.
"Dean?" Sa pit his lip as Dean threaded the needle and put the scissors at a close distance.
"Yah?" Dean pinched the sides of the cut together and lined the needle up.
"There's lido in the kit."
"I know." Dean pushed the needle in for the first stitch.
"Ow!" Sam tried to pull away, but Dean grabbed his shoulder and held him still.
"Don't move." Dean warned and he tied the first stitch off before starting the next one. "Should have thought of this before you went off and started swallowing down pills like they're m&ms."
Manning, October 2006
"Buck up Sam." Dean clapped him on the shoulder. "Dad'll be back with the pizza soon."
Sam closed his eyes, that was the problem. He couldn't be in the same room with the man any longer, Dad's scowl was burned into his eyelids and he couldn't stand to hear how he'd betrayed them anymore.
"Dean?"
"Yeah?" Dean filled another syringe from the jar of dead man's blood.
"I need, please Dean, I can't. . ."
Dean's jaw was set and Sam knew he wasn't going to get what he wanted. He had known it would end like this, but he had to ask.
"Go to sleep. I'll save you some pizza." Dean capped another syringe.
Sam sighed. He could feel a pit in his stomach and pizza wasn't going to fill it. Dad, it had brought back memories. Of the thing they were hunting, and why they were hunting it. Maybe if Dad had worked hard, he would have killed the demon before it got to Jess, before it wrecked Sam's life. Dad wanted to blame someone for ripping the family apart, he should just blame himself.
South Dakota, November 2006
Everything had gone to hell. Sam was curled up in a tiny plastic chair next to Dean's bed. There was a bandage wrapped around his arm and a dozen stitches in shoulder. He'd wrenched something in his neck and they'd given him some good drugs and a prescription for more. A week, hell, two days ago, Sam would have put up with anything to get a couple of pills. Now he'd trade them all for Dean to wake up.
That wasn't going to help anything. Sam paced around the room and went to the bathroom. He couldn't do anything, he was so useless now. He turned on the tap in the tiny bathroom and popped a couple of pills, washing them down with handfuls of water from the tap.
Sam went through his prescription fast, a day, maybe two and the little orange bottle was empty. He'd spent enough time in the hospital that no one looked twice at him. He was a concerned family member, looked true enough and if he opened the wrong door sometimes and ended up in a supply closet instead of the bathroom, no one thought anything of it.
It was the only good thing to come of this. Sam visited every unlocked supply closet in the hospital and restocked the Winchester First Aid kit. He took pills too, bottles and bottles of them. The backpack he'd bought in his third year had been destroyed in the wreckage and Sam bought a new one, one with a special secret pocket.
It was designed to hold expensive electronics, but Sam found a needle and thread and with a little bit of creative sewing, he changed the shape and filled it with his pill bottles. He put a lock on it, Dean could pick locks, but it would give Sam some privacy and a little bit more time for him to walk in on Dean going through his stuff if it came to that.
When Dean woke up and Dad died, it was time for them to get out. The police were stocking around the hospital, investigating stolen narcotics and Sam's bag rattled around until he stuffed one of his shirts into the secret pocket to muffle the sound.
He didn't save the pills anymore. He didn't have to wait to go on a hunt because life hurt enough to warrant the comforting warmth of the drugs. Dean could ache and moan and Sam put up with it, a barrier between him and his feelings.
Bobby's House, November 2006
"Are you using again?" Dean asked as he eased the minivan out of Bobby's driveway.
"None of your business." Sam shot back.
"Can you have my back if you're high?" Dean asked.
Sam shrugged. "Can you have mine if you've been drinking?"
"Shut up Sam. We're not talking about me." Dean put the pedal to the floor, taking out his anger on the pavement under them.
Sam would have talked about Dad. Dean was coiled up, his feelings buried inside. Sam could feel the hurt coming off his brother and he added another half pill to his dosage, every ten hours, on the dot.
The pills didn't cause a problem. They found the monster, killed it and Sam had his brother's back the whole time. He wanted to wave the fact in Dean's face, his brother didn't need him sober to work and the whole thing with Dad was easier to deal with when it didn't feel so fresh and recent, like a gaping hole in his chest.
"Shit Sam." Dean turned on the light in their motel room.
"Time to go?" Sam mumbled, pulling his jeans on as he got out of bed.
"Yeah." Dean flicked the light on and off. "Sammy." He pushed Sam down on the bed and took his wrist to take his pulse.
"What?" Sam snatched his wrist away.
"Your pupils are blown."
"Fuck off." Sam finished dressing and grabbed his backpack, it rattled when he lifted it.
"Sam." Dean took it and undid the zipper.
"Give my bag back." Sam pulled it away.
"This is too much. You can't just keep doing this. Where did you get the pills, Sam? We can't afford this habit." Dean let Sam put his backpack on and gathered up his own duffle bag and the weapons.
"They were free. And if you want to talk, I'm all ears."
"Fine." Dean didn't say anything else until they were back in the minivan. "Talk." He ordered as he pulled back onto the interstate.
"You first." Sam settled his backpack between his feet and leaned back in his uncomfortable seat. He missed the Impala.
"I'm not the one with the problem."
"Like hell you aren't! C'mon Dean, Dad's dead, he's dead and you have nothing to say? I'll talk about the pills, I'll tell you whatever you want, but you gotta spill first!" Sam burst out, his feelings breaking through the quiet lassitude of the drugs.
Dean didn't press it and they didn't talk again until the drive was over.
Bobby's House, March 2007
Sam can't find his backpack. It was in their motel room two weeks ago and he can't remember anything between going to bed that night and Bobby pressing the red hot metal to his arm.
"Looking for this?" Dean asked. He's got Sam's backpack, empty and hanging off his pinky finger.
"Yeah." Sam took it and his fingers sought out the lock. It's been ripped off and the secret pocket is totally empty. Even the pill he dropped by accident has been picked out of his hand sewn seam.
"Not anymore." Dean said. "You got over them while Meg was in you. Consider yourself lucky. This is done Sam. End of discussion. I'm going to pack the car, we're leaving in an hour."
"Stay there." Bobby calls from the kitchen when Sam gets up to follow his brother. He came into the living room with his own medical kit. "Let me see your arm."
Sam extended his arm and hissed when Bobby peeled back the compress over the burn on his arm.
"Should heal up all right. Gonna scar like a bitch." Bobby rubbed burn gel over the sigil and the line that broke it.
"You need something for that?" Bobby offered Sam an orange bottle of pills.
"Really?" Sam took the bottle anyway and under Bobby's watchful eyes he took one, draining his cup of cold coffee along with it.
"You're hurtin'." Bobby wrapped the burn under white bandages and taped it together.
"Dean didn't tell you?"
"Dean says a lot of things." Bobby took the pill bottle back but he didn't take the med kit and disappear back into the kitchen.
"It's gonna kill you." Bobby said and Sam hadn't been expecting that. "I don't know if you're gonna OD again, maybe on purpose or if you'll be too slow and a spirit'll get you, but it's gonna kill you."
Sam nodded and looked down at his lap. His arm was throbbing and his throat felt full and slimy.
"You can't go before him. He wouldn't survive that." Bobby clapped Sam on the shoulder. "If you can't do it for yourself, do it for him."
Sam gathered up the rest of their stuff. Laundry fresh from Bobby's dryer and snacks for the road. "Thanks Bobby."
"You call me. You need anything." Bobby gave him an index card. "There's my numbers. I mean it Sam, you need anything, you call me. Even if it's just to talk."
Sam nodded and tucked the card into his pocket. "Yeah."
Bobby sighed and shut the door, Sam could hear the bolts sliding into place as he headed down the steps to get back to his life.
Wordcount: 2,559
Rating: R
Warnings: Substance Abuse, Bad language, Canon Character Death
Summary: Unplanned second chapter to Hunting Breaks. What happened when Sam started hunting again. Covers Skin to Born Under a Bad Sign. Timeline of events and dates from HERE.
Part I
St. Louis, January 2006
"Are you fucking high?" Dean demanded. His fingers dug in around Sam's shoulders and his thumbs pressed cruelly hard just above Sam's collarbone.
Sam blinked and tried to focus on Dean's face. He'd been hit, he knew that, could feel the slow hot burn of his blood leaking out and dripping down his side. That didn't explain why the world was slowly melting around him, like some sort of twisted Dali painting.
"Dean. . ." Sam said, but the rest of his words slurred together and he couldn't make his tongue obey and spit out any more sounds.
Dean lowered him to the ground and Sam slumped forward, letting his brother support him. His brother's hands rearranged themselves and fingers pressed against his neck. "Damn it. Sam, you have a concussion, you can't just do something like this!"
His eyelids were heavy. Sam let them droop closed, Dean had reminded him and he could feel a phantom ache in the back of his head somewhere now, pounding in time with his heartbeat.
"Open your eyes." Dean ordered and Sam didn't. He didn't have to do what Dean said, Dean wasn't Dad and he didn't have to do what Dad said anymore either. "Sam, open."
Sam whined in protest when Dean lifted his eyelid and turned his head towards the light.
"You feel that?" Dean asked and his fingers tightened in Sam's hair.
"Hurts." Sam slurred but his garbled talk seemed to reassure his brother.
"Good." Dean hauled Sam to his feet. "Now you're gonna walk."
Sam let Dean half drag, half carry him through the streets. His legs felt rubbery and shook under his weight. Dean leaned him against the car and opened the door before shoving him into the back seat of the Impala.
"You keep your eyes open." Dean ordered and Sam did. He stared straight ahead and listened to Dean rustle around in the trunk.
Dean got into the front of the car and the engine growled to life. The sound was familiar and soothing, Sam felt his eyelids drift shut again, his head had stopped hurting and the movement of the car felt like someone was gently rocking him to sleep.
"Eyes open." Dean ordered and Sam was slow to obey the order, he sat straight up when something hard hit him in the shoulder. "Drink up." Dean ordered, shooting a look over his shoulder, Sam avoided his gaze.
The thing that had hit him was a water bottle, the top still sealed. Sam cracked it and drained half in his first gulp. His mouth and throat felt bone dry and the entire bottle didn't do much to change that.
"What did you take?" Dean asked, his voice quiet, not ordering.
Sam shrugged.
"Why do you do this? Do you want to die?" Dean turned the radio on, the news about the killings in St. Louis. It was quiet, low enough to not disrupt their conversation. "You did this before, on the hunt for the black dog when you were sixteen."
"I don't want to die." Sam mumbled, the first sentence he'd managed to string together.
Dean grunted and he was silent for a long time, Sam thought the topic had been dropped. "You're gonna die, if you keep this up." Dean said and he cranked the Metallica back up to ear splitting.
When Sam woke up, he was in a bed. The wallpaper said motel and the ache in his head and the shake in his heads said it had been ages since they'd left St. Louis. He managed to stumbled from the bed to the bathroom in time. Dean was sleeping in the other bed and when Sam finished and washed his hands, he went through the pile of their things until he found his coat.
He checked all the pockets, but they were empty and his secret pocket had been ripped open, with a knife, it looked like.
"Sam?" Dean's voice was quiet and heavy from sleeping.
"Yeah?" Sam put his jacket down and looked over.
"There's nothing in there. You aren't gonna find them." Dean got out of his bed and put a heavy hand on Sam's shoulder. "You need something, you ask me."
Sam nodded mutely, his mind already narrowing down the hiding places available in their gear.
A day out of Lawrence, March 2006
"Dean?" Sam pressed his fingers hard into his side as he stumbled back into the motel room. "Dean?" He called again, louder this time.
"Minute." Dean's voice came from the bathroom and Sam sat down on one of the bed, hissing as he eased his shirts away from the wound in his side. He missed the sound of the door opening until Dean spoke, "Shit. Why did you say?"
Dean's hands carefully peeled his shirts the rest of the way up and his fingers prodded at the cut just under Sam's rib cage. "What happened?"
"Guy didn't think I played a fair game." Sam had left three hours ago to hustle pool. He should have known better than to hit a biker bar.
"And you let him get you?" Dean got their First Aid kit and pulled on a pair of gloves. Sam clenched his jaw and held fistfuls of the comforter when Dean doused the laceration in whiskey.
"Parking lot, I wasn't expecting."
Dean looked up when Sam said that. He took the penlight from the kit and flashed it in Sam's eyes. "You taking drugs again?"
Sam shook his head. It wasn't from lack of trying. But Dean had clamped down on the money and the pill bottles. Sam had to ask his brother if he wanted an Aspirin or a couple bucks to get something to eat.
Dean grunted and pulled out a package of sutures. He dunked the needle in alcohol and pulled out with the needle driver.
"Dean?" Sa pit his lip as Dean threaded the needle and put the scissors at a close distance.
"Yah?" Dean pinched the sides of the cut together and lined the needle up.
"There's lido in the kit."
"I know." Dean pushed the needle in for the first stitch.
"Ow!" Sam tried to pull away, but Dean grabbed his shoulder and held him still.
"Don't move." Dean warned and he tied the first stitch off before starting the next one. "Should have thought of this before you went off and started swallowing down pills like they're m&ms."
Manning, October 2006
"Buck up Sam." Dean clapped him on the shoulder. "Dad'll be back with the pizza soon."
Sam closed his eyes, that was the problem. He couldn't be in the same room with the man any longer, Dad's scowl was burned into his eyelids and he couldn't stand to hear how he'd betrayed them anymore.
"Dean?"
"Yeah?" Dean filled another syringe from the jar of dead man's blood.
"I need, please Dean, I can't. . ."
Dean's jaw was set and Sam knew he wasn't going to get what he wanted. He had known it would end like this, but he had to ask.
"Go to sleep. I'll save you some pizza." Dean capped another syringe.
Sam sighed. He could feel a pit in his stomach and pizza wasn't going to fill it. Dad, it had brought back memories. Of the thing they were hunting, and why they were hunting it. Maybe if Dad had worked hard, he would have killed the demon before it got to Jess, before it wrecked Sam's life. Dad wanted to blame someone for ripping the family apart, he should just blame himself.
South Dakota, November 2006
Everything had gone to hell. Sam was curled up in a tiny plastic chair next to Dean's bed. There was a bandage wrapped around his arm and a dozen stitches in shoulder. He'd wrenched something in his neck and they'd given him some good drugs and a prescription for more. A week, hell, two days ago, Sam would have put up with anything to get a couple of pills. Now he'd trade them all for Dean to wake up.
That wasn't going to help anything. Sam paced around the room and went to the bathroom. He couldn't do anything, he was so useless now. He turned on the tap in the tiny bathroom and popped a couple of pills, washing them down with handfuls of water from the tap.
Sam went through his prescription fast, a day, maybe two and the little orange bottle was empty. He'd spent enough time in the hospital that no one looked twice at him. He was a concerned family member, looked true enough and if he opened the wrong door sometimes and ended up in a supply closet instead of the bathroom, no one thought anything of it.
It was the only good thing to come of this. Sam visited every unlocked supply closet in the hospital and restocked the Winchester First Aid kit. He took pills too, bottles and bottles of them. The backpack he'd bought in his third year had been destroyed in the wreckage and Sam bought a new one, one with a special secret pocket.
It was designed to hold expensive electronics, but Sam found a needle and thread and with a little bit of creative sewing, he changed the shape and filled it with his pill bottles. He put a lock on it, Dean could pick locks, but it would give Sam some privacy and a little bit more time for him to walk in on Dean going through his stuff if it came to that.
When Dean woke up and Dad died, it was time for them to get out. The police were stocking around the hospital, investigating stolen narcotics and Sam's bag rattled around until he stuffed one of his shirts into the secret pocket to muffle the sound.
He didn't save the pills anymore. He didn't have to wait to go on a hunt because life hurt enough to warrant the comforting warmth of the drugs. Dean could ache and moan and Sam put up with it, a barrier between him and his feelings.
Bobby's House, November 2006
"Are you using again?" Dean asked as he eased the minivan out of Bobby's driveway.
"None of your business." Sam shot back.
"Can you have my back if you're high?" Dean asked.
Sam shrugged. "Can you have mine if you've been drinking?"
"Shut up Sam. We're not talking about me." Dean put the pedal to the floor, taking out his anger on the pavement under them.
Sam would have talked about Dad. Dean was coiled up, his feelings buried inside. Sam could feel the hurt coming off his brother and he added another half pill to his dosage, every ten hours, on the dot.
The pills didn't cause a problem. They found the monster, killed it and Sam had his brother's back the whole time. He wanted to wave the fact in Dean's face, his brother didn't need him sober to work and the whole thing with Dad was easier to deal with when it didn't feel so fresh and recent, like a gaping hole in his chest.
"Shit Sam." Dean turned on the light in their motel room.
"Time to go?" Sam mumbled, pulling his jeans on as he got out of bed.
"Yeah." Dean flicked the light on and off. "Sammy." He pushed Sam down on the bed and took his wrist to take his pulse.
"What?" Sam snatched his wrist away.
"Your pupils are blown."
"Fuck off." Sam finished dressing and grabbed his backpack, it rattled when he lifted it.
"Sam." Dean took it and undid the zipper.
"Give my bag back." Sam pulled it away.
"This is too much. You can't just keep doing this. Where did you get the pills, Sam? We can't afford this habit." Dean let Sam put his backpack on and gathered up his own duffle bag and the weapons.
"They were free. And if you want to talk, I'm all ears."
"Fine." Dean didn't say anything else until they were back in the minivan. "Talk." He ordered as he pulled back onto the interstate.
"You first." Sam settled his backpack between his feet and leaned back in his uncomfortable seat. He missed the Impala.
"I'm not the one with the problem."
"Like hell you aren't! C'mon Dean, Dad's dead, he's dead and you have nothing to say? I'll talk about the pills, I'll tell you whatever you want, but you gotta spill first!" Sam burst out, his feelings breaking through the quiet lassitude of the drugs.
Dean didn't press it and they didn't talk again until the drive was over.
Bobby's House, March 2007
Sam can't find his backpack. It was in their motel room two weeks ago and he can't remember anything between going to bed that night and Bobby pressing the red hot metal to his arm.
"Looking for this?" Dean asked. He's got Sam's backpack, empty and hanging off his pinky finger.
"Yeah." Sam took it and his fingers sought out the lock. It's been ripped off and the secret pocket is totally empty. Even the pill he dropped by accident has been picked out of his hand sewn seam.
"Not anymore." Dean said. "You got over them while Meg was in you. Consider yourself lucky. This is done Sam. End of discussion. I'm going to pack the car, we're leaving in an hour."
"Stay there." Bobby calls from the kitchen when Sam gets up to follow his brother. He came into the living room with his own medical kit. "Let me see your arm."
Sam extended his arm and hissed when Bobby peeled back the compress over the burn on his arm.
"Should heal up all right. Gonna scar like a bitch." Bobby rubbed burn gel over the sigil and the line that broke it.
"You need something for that?" Bobby offered Sam an orange bottle of pills.
"Really?" Sam took the bottle anyway and under Bobby's watchful eyes he took one, draining his cup of cold coffee along with it.
"You're hurtin'." Bobby wrapped the burn under white bandages and taped it together.
"Dean didn't tell you?"
"Dean says a lot of things." Bobby took the pill bottle back but he didn't take the med kit and disappear back into the kitchen.
"It's gonna kill you." Bobby said and Sam hadn't been expecting that. "I don't know if you're gonna OD again, maybe on purpose or if you'll be too slow and a spirit'll get you, but it's gonna kill you."
Sam nodded and looked down at his lap. His arm was throbbing and his throat felt full and slimy.
"You can't go before him. He wouldn't survive that." Bobby clapped Sam on the shoulder. "If you can't do it for yourself, do it for him."
Sam gathered up the rest of their stuff. Laundry fresh from Bobby's dryer and snacks for the road. "Thanks Bobby."
"You call me. You need anything." Bobby gave him an index card. "There's my numbers. I mean it Sam, you need anything, you call me. Even if it's just to talk."
Sam nodded and tucked the card into his pocket. "Yeah."
Bobby sighed and shut the door, Sam could hear the bolts sliding into place as he headed down the steps to get back to his life.