Chapter 3: New Friends
“Sam, you’re pacing.”
“Sorry.”
“You’ve done nothing that you need to apologize for, but in light of your… tension, I feel inclined to ask if I strong-armed you into agreeing that this dinner was something you were okay with.”
Sam is nervous, yeah, but it’s a good kind of nervous. When Chalendra had asked him if it was okay to invite the Winchesters to dinner before they left town, to offer them a home-cooked meal before they were back to Biggersons’ questionable slop, Sam had wanted to jump for joy, just a little of course and in a very mature way. Chal doesn’t make friends easily, keeps them less frequently. Sure, he’d overreacted last night to interrupting whatever had been going on with her and Dean’s dad, but the opportunity to have Dean himself over, to talk to in their house about things that interest him, to tell him about feeding Cujo (they had to find a better name for the waheela) and how close it had come to his hand, is worth accepting the fact that maybe Chal isn’t as different as he’d thought and that maybe he has to grow up a bit about who she is. A part of him, though, still resents that she couldn’t have waited just two more years to start showing an interest in men.
Sam realizes as all his concerns about Chalendra and Dean’s dad whip through his head in the space of a second that he’s not just pacing with his feet but with his mind. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and draws from his training, focuses on his chosen mantra, holds his hands in Gyan mudras. It speaks to the number of times that he has done this with Chal that he doesn’t feel self-conscious about stopping mid-conversation to do this grounding exercise. His mind slows: autobahn, highway, street, lane, and finally, parking lot. He opens his eyes. Chal is still reading her book, a biography of Ezra Meekeran, an Oregon Trail explorer.
“I’m excited; I think it was a good idea.”
She looks up slowly, clearly enjoying the book but also eager to hear his thoughts. Chalendra has always been that way. She studies things, people, with an active attention no one else gives. “I’m glad. Dean seems like a good man. I like that he praised your fighting skills.”
Sam considers joking that she’s only happy because she was the one who taught him to fight, but he keeps his mouth shut; Dean had complimented him over twelve hours ago but it still makes him feel special. “John seemed nice too,” he offers and then feels even more embarrassed because it sounds like they’re trading compliments about each other’s dates or something.
When Chal smiles from her heart, her nose scrunches down like the Bewitched chick. It does so now and though he doesn’t really need any more clues that she has a crush on Dean’s dad, he gets it. “Men with good hearts are rarer than I had expected and yet now I have met at least three.”
It’s lame but he likes it when she refers to him as a man. He changes the subject, sort of, “The minestrone smells good.”
She nods. “It will smell better with your garlic bread?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“But don’t start it until they’re about due to arrive.”
“Three hours?” he asks.
She nods and he sighs.
When the doorbell rings, Sam bounces towards the door like an excited rubber ball. The mood is all set in the house, the smell of minestrone and garlic, dishware laid out on the table next to cloth napkins, and the rasp of Sarah Vaughan’s voice flirting with excited brass horns and rhythmic bass fiddles rumbling softly from the CD player. Sam and Chalendra haven’t even considered that maybe they’re overdoing things, just following the social protocol of films and television and what little interactions they’ve had with other families. Sam did rethink the button-up shirt, pulling an old sweatshirt over it at the last minute, the fancy collar peeking out from the low-stretched holed neckline.
After yanking the door open, Sam notes that, though the elder Winchester’s eye contact is still strong and unswerving, John is also nervous, mask of assertive confidence not as solid as he perhaps hopes. Still, John smiles and, behind him, Dean does the same. The light of their twin grins makes Sam feel self-consciously happy, nervous that he’ll do something to ruin the evening, that Dean will realize he’s too cool to be hanging out with a high-schooler, even if they are both hunters.
“Hello, Sam,” John greets.
“Hi, Mr. Winchester, Dean. Come on in.”
John steps over the threshold into their home. Even with how much Sam trusts the two, he thinks “Not a vampire.” Actually there are a number of monsters that would find entering the Ackles’ household difficult if not impossible, but it’s a silly thought since he knows that they’re hunters and good people. He feels guilty even for thinking it.
They’re looking around the living room. Sam looks too, trying to guess what the room says about who he and Chal are. There are sigils, though not all are visible, making them look a bit paranoid, thriving plants, both functional and decorative, making them look like hippies, and second-hand furniture making them look poor. Sam regrets having looked.
“Cozy place,” says John.
“Smells good,” adds Dean. Dean’s in a red flannel and jeans, dressed casual like Sam in his sweatshirt. Somehow Dean’s ended up in front of his father and Sam wonders, briefly, if he’s supposed to try and shake their hands or something. Dean’s presence fills the small room, like one musician on a stage still managing to capture the attention of the stadium.
“Your father said that you like food!” gushes Chalendra from the kitchen. She comes in then, wraps her strong arms around Dean and hugs him like a second son. When she pulls away and Dean’s face matches his flannel, Sam bites his tongue, but it doesn’t matter because Dean’s looking at him and sees how amused by Dean’s embarrassment he is. She turns then to John whom she also hugs tightly and Sam has to look away because it makes him feel strange, almost woozy, maybe angry. His eyes stupidly turn to Dean who gives him a shit-eating grin and Sam knows the pain of fast karma. “Thank you for coming, both of you.”
“Thanks for inviting us,” says John. “It isn’t often we get to have a home-cooked meal.”
Chalendra laughs. “That was how I presented the idea to your father!” she says towards Dean, though her body still faces John. “I suppose it was rather manipulative of me to resort to bribery.” Her voice falters and she looks uncertain. Sam knows how important it is to Chal to never inhibit the free will of others. She doesn’t even like to do that with him, which, in his eyes, has made her a pretty awesome parent, hunter lifestyle notwithstanding; he’s always appreciated how she lets him figure life out for himself.
John catches her concern and Sam is grateful when he says, “The company is also bribery,” even if it does sound flirtatious.
In response, Chal smiles and Dean coughs loudly as though he has a hairball. She invites them to sit at the dining table. It pleases Sam to note John give a surreptitious smack to the back of Dean’s head as Chal drifts off to the kitchen to fetch the meal.
“You’re not gonna be a pain in the ass tonight,” John growls at his son, his voice low and threatening, like Cujo had attempted to make its voice.
Sam sits at the table, glad to not be the target of the command.
The Winchesters look too big for the table or maybe they just don’t look natural at it, like the home life is so far beyond their experience that they don’t even know how to sit in the room. The table is round, sized better for two people, and Chal has a vase, perky yellow buttercup and all, in the center. Sam hadn’t noticed it until now, thinks for the first time that maybe he and Chal have overdone this evening. He doesn’t have long to worry about it though before Chal carries in the minestrone. It’s hearty, more of a stew than a soup, as Sam’s preference runs, and the steam curls temptingly up to the ceiling.
The divide between the families’ mannerisms announces itself as they eat. Dean and John eat quickly, as though they have something pressing to get to, and loudly, like their jaw noises are part of the jazz music. They don’t talk much, but they smile often, exaggerating, perhaps, their appreciation of the food. Dean mows through Sam’s garlic bread oblivious of his selfish hogging and he’s just lucky that Sam had thought to ready a second loaf since he knows that he and Chal have easily gone through one themselves. Of course, he and Chal did so slowly, enjoying the flavors of the food, and quietly, waiting to finish each swallow before broaching conversation and then only after having said grace. Chal doesn’t seem offended by the rude actions as she would be if Sam ever pulled that, seems, instead, to find it endearing. Sam would wonder why she was so endeared by the Winchesters except he already considers Dean both ally and friend. Sam pushes his judgment aside, easy enough to do with the pleasant atmosphere, and just enjoys having guests for once.
“So, we finally figure out that she had put a spell on her glasses!” John’s audience is receptive, snickers at the revelation, all except Dean who was there. “I wasn’t going crazy after all!”
Dean adds, “Well….” And John shoots him a good-natured warning look.
“But, it was pretty easy to wrap up once we put two and two together on that.” The specifics were mundane, one of the cases where they didn’t have to kill anything or anyone, the specific reason he’d chosen the tale. He didn’t want to sour the light-hearted atmosphere in the room with stories of the violence they had to inflict, the deceptions they had to weave, or the broken lives they left in their rearview mirrors over the years.
Sam joins in then, telling of a time that he and Chalendra had been slow to realize something on a hunt, picking up the topic of the last story. John watches the boy as he explains with great animation their foolishness, doesn’t much catch the words as he studies. This young man is so smart that he nearly shines with his intelligence. As Chalendra, whom Sam refers to as Chal, had implied, he also seems to be quite kind and well-mannered. John and Dean have the loveseat while Sam and Chalendra sit on the floor, though only after she’d convinced him that she does so often and doesn’t mind. Sam’s at Dean’s right side and his shoulder occasionally brushes Dean’s fingers. John thinks that it’s like the boy has a gravitational pull to his son. It’s cute, really, and he can’t imagine Dean having any problem with being the object of hero worship. He doubts that Dean has even noticed yet because he isn’t peacocking all over the place as he always does when girls show interest in him. God’s gift to horny barmaids.
John also studies Chalendra, her bright eyes and smile, the way she taps one fingertip on her leg in time to the music that the rest of them are ignoring. She doesn’t look old enough to be Sam’s mother and not just in a polite way, but in a doing the math in his head way. She looks about 25, 30 max. She must have still been in high school, maybe even junior high, when she had Sam. He wonders if that’s a contributing reason why she’s so strong and proud. Her brown eyes are large and so is her nose, skin a lovely tanned color, dark enough that he wonders if she has Middle Eastern ancestry. Her last name is pure Anglo-Saxon, but her first name is unique, perhaps just the result of new age parents. Her fingernails are cut short but even then he can see dirt beneath them from gardening (Sam had bragged about how many of the items in the minestrone were from her garden) and perhaps grave digging.
“John?” asks Chalendra.
He kicks himself for zoning out. “Sorry. Digesting.”
She likes the answer, though it doesn’t seem as though she entirely believes it. “Perhaps we should play a game? Sam likes Monopoly, but only when we have company.”
“That’s cause you don’t trade,” gripes Sam. Then, obviously self-conscious about liking a board game, he adds, “We haven’t played since I was a kid anyway.”
John wants to laugh. The cute scruffy-haired boy doesn’t want to look childish, wants to save face in front of Dean. “Shit, I haven’t played a board game in years. I’d be game. Dean?”
While displaying skepticism about the activity’s fun factor, Dean shrugs. “Sure. I get to be the car.”
After the game, Sam makes an excuse about showing Dean the neighborhood. After all, this is supposed to be Dean’s first time to their place, so it’s not so unreasonable. He’s pretty proud of the little nest he’s made the waheela pup, sneaking in some old blankets and shoes while Chal went to the grocery store. Chal jumps on the idea, suggesting he also show Dean his room.
Sam rubs at the back of his neck, feels the blush burning there, and nods at Chalendra. “Sure, I’ll take him around the block first though.”
“Of course, any order you prefer, Sam.” Chal turns back to John. “Do you have any reticence in sharing hunting information? I would welcome the opportunity to trade notes.”
“I suppose it’s better them nerding it up then getting all old-people frisky,” jokes Dean when they get outside.
It’s another moderate night, moderate for Michigan anyway, and the clouds aren’t completely covering the stars. Sam looks at them and smiles. He’s picked up Chal’s hobby of star-gazing. She has a telescope and they go up on the roof sometimes to look. It’s been months, though, on account of winter. They’ll see a lot more stars in Texas, he’s sure of it. It takes Sam a moment to replay what Dean said, forcing himself back into the realm of the social and away from the creative. “Don’t be gross,” he chides.
Dean’s hands are in his jean pockets, maybe he’s cold since he’s not wearing a jacket, and he grins at Sam. Together they walk back to the shed, knowing without needing to communicate it that it’s their destination. “Don’t like the idea of mommy making the beast with two backs?”
“No more than you do,” snaps Sam.
“I don’t mind the thought of your mom naked. Ow!” Dean clutches his arm as though the punch really hurts, which Sam doubts because it doesn’t wipe that stupid self-satisfied smile off Dean’s stupid face. “What? Maybe you should just deal with the fact that your mom’s a woman. You know, grow up.”
Dean’s playing, teasing, but the words hurt. Sam already feels like a nine-year-old next to Dean, already feels like Robin to his Batman. Fuck, Sam has no intention of being anyone’s damned sidekick. “At least I’m not the one blaming my loss on his game piece!”
“Well, how is anyone supposed to win the game driving a roadster? I mean, they’re silly looking!” Then, when Sam doesn’t reply, is too angry to reply, Dean adds, “Like you!”
“Do you want to see Cujo or not?” hisses Sam, voice low. They’re at the door of the shed but he’s angry. He doesn’t have to tell Dean the combination lock. Hell, if he wanted to, he could go right back into the house and tell Dean’s dad all about their four-legged adoption. Then John would kill it and Sam would feel miserable, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t relish the idea of seeing the look on Dean’s face as his dad chews him out for letting a monster live.
There is a wood board on the ground outside the shed, a little bridge to cover the mud that forms outside the shed door, to prevent slipping. The wood itself got icy as death during the winter which negated the whole point for a while, but now it’s just a dry board sitting atop mostly dry ground. It rocks back and forth a bit under Sam’s feet.
Dean’s looking at him, gauging his mood, Sam thinks. “You get cranky,” says Dean.
“Maybe I just don’t like being reminded that my mom is a woman or that I’m silly looking, okay?” When Sam gets mad his temperature goes up. He’s like a kettle, no water is boiling yet, but it will soon, if one of them doesn’t change the conversation.
“I was just kidding, man. You look fine, kind of cute.” Dean casually looks around the back alley, embarrassed either by having to issue a retraction of his earlier insult or the compliment that he coats it with. When he does look back, Sam feels his stomach butterfly a bit and he has to look away. Dean coughs. “Besides, dad’s hard to beat. You should see him at pool; the guy is an awesome hustler.”
Sam opens the padlock and lets them inside, anger slipping back into the low place in his stomach where it tends to sleep, or at least lie still as though sleeping, an insomniac waiting for morning. They shut the door behind them before Sam pulls on the cord for the light. He then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the napkin of food he’s smuggled. They’re just cold cuts, nothing fancy, things he managed to shoplift from the grocery store earlier. He has no idea how much a baby waheela eats, but he’s pretty sure it’ll like meat more than it did the dairy and grain products he’d brought to it in the morning. Chal’s vegetarianism isn’t normally a problem. Since she keeps the fridge stocked with non-meat products, he rarely makes separate trips to the store for meat for himself, and didn’t have any on hand.
Dean sits down, Indian-style, on the devil’s trap. Sam joins him after setting the napkin out in front of them a good foot and a half first. Then they wait. The light bulb illuminates things in a clearly defined circumference around the shed, creates spooky shadows in between boxes and ritual masks and hedge trimmers. Sam can smell Dean, cologne that makes him think of highways and hands dirty from gasoline. From the corner of his eye he admires the sharpness of Dean’s jaw, a knife edge with tiny dots of hair. Sam can’t grow a beard, the hair comes in patchy and reluctant; he doubts Dean has such trouble.
His senses so tuned in to Dean, Sam almost misses when the waheela shuffles out of hiding, black rubbery nose high in the air. It regards them nervously, makes a small whimper and then backs up so that its furry rump is back in the space between boxes. Then, when they make no move to catch it, it moves forward again, seemingly led by its nose. Timidly, untrustingly, Cujo makes its way to the napkin. While it eats, it keeps its eyes on them, somehow managing to keep both the large humans in the center of its vision while it inhales the slices of turkey and ham.
Dean’s voice catches both Sam and the waheela by surprise, makes them jump. “Cujo,” he says. The waheela reels backwards expecting an attack which doesn’t come. Slowly, the smell lures it back to feeding. Then, when Dean says, “Cujo,” again, it twitches but doesn’t stop eating. Dean repeats the name four more times, acclimatizing the beast to his voice, and then the cub is finished and retreating.
The smile on Dean’s face when Sam looks at him is far brighter than the shed’s bulb. “That’s a damn cute pet monster you’ve got there.”
Sam’s pride fills him. “It’s our pet,” he corrects. “You’re as guilty for this abduction as I am.”
“If my dad asks, I’m saying I knew nothing.”
“That’s fine. I’ll tell him that you’re lying.”
They mock-glare at each other for several seconds before smiles win out.
Sam asks, “Are we really calling it Cujo?”
“Yep,” says Dean.
Sam sighs. “What if it’s a girl?”
“Then it’s a girl named Cujo. God, I thought you were supposed to be, like, a genius or something!”
Sam rolls his eyes in Dean’s general direction before rising from the floor. “Come on, we don’t want them to come looking for us.”
“Cool, now I guess you give me the house tour.” When Dean looks at him slyly and says, “I believe you were told to start with your room,” Sam’s stomach twitches. He wonders as he takes in the green eyes, the chiseled jaw, the broad shoulders, the bowed legs, if maybe his interest in Dean Winchester is a little stronger than he’d first thought.
Sam’s a computer nerd. Dean isn’t surprised. He’s also a nerd nerd, another non-surprise, and Dean tries not to start up teasing him immediately as he comes in and sees the Star Wars poster on the wall. Sam’s already shown that he doesn’t take teasing too well, moody teenage shit, Dean hopes, and so he bites his lip since this is Sam’s turf that he’s on. He puts on his best “That’s pretty cool” face to the things that Sam shows him, personal website, book, video game, and collectible card collections, and action figures, which even Sam seems to know that he’s too old to be playing with, personally modified or not. He doesn’t want to hurt Sam’s feelings and he supposes that the little Boba Fett figure is kind of cool. He sits on Sam’s bed, raises the bounty hunter’s gun arm and aims at various things in Sam’s room. Sam is in his computer chair watching everything Dean does, judging his response to things.
There are short particle board bookshelves next to Sam’s pillow. The books on these look older than the glossy sci-fi series on his large bookcase. There’s even some kids’ books and Dean can tell from their worn spines that these were little Sam’s books, maybe read by little Sam’s mom to help put him to sleep. He reaches out and touches them reverently, swallows the envy and tries, for his own sake, to just be happy that some people got to have things like mothers to read them bedtime stories.
There are several loose papers tucked above the books on the bottom shelf. Dean picks one up; it’s covered in the most amazing hand-drawn images. People that look real, zits and all, and storefronts with sale signs, text written in perfect capital letters in frames above each picture. It’s a comic book. He picks up a couple of more of the pages. This is no stupid Superman shit either, this is edgy, one guy’s shooting up over the course of several panels. The details, veins, rubber band, face contorted in despair, fascinate Dean, make him feel uneasy.
“Oh those are just something I do when I’m bored in class,” Sam says dismissively. Dean can hear, anyway, the desire for praise, the importance of these drawings in the hopeful tone in Sam’s voice.
“You draw junkies in class?” asks Dean, flipping to another page where the junkie is holding a gun to his own temple. The gun looks dirty and so do the man’s hands, covered in dirt and crinkled hands with pruned fingertips. He can’t help saying it. “These are fucking amazing, Sam.”
He hears Sam stand and then he sits next to him one the bed and watches him. Dean feels the eyes on him, gaze stronger than ever before because Dean is looking at something Sam has created. Sam’s nervous like a parent on his kid’s first day at school. Dean’s fingers trace over the lines, wonders if he runs his fingers over them enough, if he can learn how to draw like this or if it’s some deep one-in-a-million talent.
Sam speaks in a whisper. “That’s Nick. He lost his kid and his wife. A crazy guy came in and killed them both.” Dean nods. It’s all he can do. He’s at a loss to comprehend the part of Sam that can draw this, that apparently has created an entire life for this poor illustrated junkie. He points to the gun, hopes that Sam can figure out what he’s asking. Sam gets it, replies, “He can’t. There’s something in him that won’t let him pull the trigger. He thinks it’s the devil.”
“Is it?” asks Dean. His fingers run over the craters on Nick’s cheeks. Even though the work is done in pencil, he can tell that they’re open, bloody.
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s not finished yet.”
“You have to finish, dude.”
Sam smiles. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, you… man… If I could draw like this, Dad would have to remind me to hunt. I’d spend all of my time doing this.” Dean nods at Sam, tries to get through how impressed he is with more than just words. “You draw amazing stuff, Sam.”
They’re sitting side by side and Dean can swear that he can feel Sam’s blush like a heat wave pouring over from Sam’s leg to his own. Embarrassing for the kid or not, he needs to hear it because Dean hates that these are just lying around crammed into a bookshelf and not bound in a book in their own right. “You should get these published.”
Sam laughs. “They’re not that good.”
“My ass!” says Dean loudly.
The reaction pleases Sam who smiles through the blush. “Well, they’re better than your ass.”
“Nonsense, my ass is amazing. Round and firm. Everyone loves my ass.”
Sam acts skeptical, but Dean is pretty secure in the way his body looks, so he just smirks.
The last page that Dean looks at, he suspects is the first drawn. Nick is in an alley. It’s raining and his hair is pressed down on his head. His face is wet, but not just from the rain, from the tears streaming from his red rimmed eyes; again Dean sees the color past the pencil grey.
“Can I have your email address?” asks Sam.
“Don’t have one.”
“How can you not have an email address?”
“Cause they’re for nerds!” Dean’s used computers before, of course, but he never saw the draw. There isn’t anything there that isn’t ten times less fun than doing it in real life. It’s like porn. Sam disagrees, obviously, but he is quiet, thinking. Dean bumps him with his shoulder. “Not nerdy in a bad way, just nerdy nerdy.”
“They’re good for staying in touch with people when you’re on the road.”
Dean considers this. He does want to keep talking with Sam, likes Sam and, more importantly, trusts Sam. “Fine, you set me up one. But, I don’t want to hear about Star Trek and shit. You use it to give me Cujo and Nick updates, okay?”
Before he even hears any agreement, Sam is up and at the computer. Pretty soon Dean’s wallet has a paper with Dmonhunter@aol.com and waheela123 printed in neat capital letters in it and they’re making their way back to their parents.
To Dean’s relief, John and Chalendra are not sucking face, but are instead comparing hunting journals. “Oh god, there’s two of them!”
Chalendra smiles at him, a greeting he’s coming to expect from her. “This is fun!” she says, sounding like a high school cheerleader. “Your father takes as many notes as I do.”
Sam speaks up behind him. “Not possible.”
“So, Sam isn’t the only nerd in the family?” Dean deserves the glare that his dad gives him; he is normally very respectful around his elders, but something about the Ackleses feels so comfortable and familiar.
“No, just like I’m not the only jackass in ours,” retorts John closing his journal. “What do you say to crashing here one more night and heading out in the AM? I know I said we’d go tonight, but not much use getting going this late anyway.”
Dad doesn’t often ask Dean his opinion on things, though he’s been putting forth more of an effort of camaraderie since he’s turned eighteen, and he knows that it’s more of a formality than anything else, but Dean still appreciates it. “Sure, sounds good to me.” Dean does briefly wonder what kind of fight it would cause if he were to object to John’s plan, but that’s just flirting with what-ifs since staying in town another night sounds great. It is going on midnight now.
John rises to his feet and Chalendra follows suit. She leaves her journal open and from where Dean stands, between the door and the dining room table, he can see copious amounts of tiny writing and a sketch here or there. Perhaps Sam gets his drawing talent from her, he thinks.
They say their goodbyes at the door. Promises to keep in touch and to drive safely float in the air. Chalendra hugs Dean, again covering him with the reminiscence of a woman long ago who held him with such care. She hugs John too, but also presses a firm close-lipped kiss to his lips. When she pulls away from it, Dean swears he can see his dad’s nervousness, and some giddiness too. Dean hugs Sam, a one-armed manly embrace that doesn’t feel anything like the one they shared in the woods. Still, he feels one of Sam’s hands, the same ones that created the artwork which had awed him so upstairs, tighten around his shoulder blade and it feels desperate, like Sam doesn’t want him to go. Once they break apart, Sam offers a hand to John who pleasantly accepts it. If Dean knows his dad, his grip is probably too tight, but Sam takes it in stride, perhaps seeing it, correctly, as evidence of respect.
Dean and John leave the Ackles’ house full of food, warmth, and love.