I Left (My Sam in San Francisco), for morgan32 (Sam/Jo, PG)
Title: I Left (My Sam in San Francisco)
Author: ryuutchi
Recipient: morgan32
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sam/Jo
Summary: A chilly San Francisco night, a hunt or two, Sam, Jo, and some kitchenware.
Author's Notes: Set about a month post Season 3. Many thanks to my betas!
At night, the streets of San Francisco were cool and damp. Jo was used to the cold of the Midwest winters, dry and sharp enough to cut, not this pervasive summer damp that made her jeans and turtleneck feel like they were clinging to her skin and holding the cold in. But, for lack of anyone better, she'd inherited Gordon's little black book after his 'accident' and one of the resident hunters here had wanted to call her once-mentor in. She fished out the address from her pocket and hunted until she found the steps leading down into the basement of a CD store, the door marked with nearly illegible numbers. Her knock echoed dully and Jo glanced around, half expecting a window in one of the top floor apartments to open. The door opened, and an irritated expression peered out of the doorway at her. "What do you want? Do you know what time it is?" There was something about the voice that reminded Jo of her mother--all business, with more than a hint of restrained annoyance.
"Luen Martin called me," Jo said, just as briskly, laying her hand on the door.
The woman tipped her head back again. After what appeared to be a prolonged wordless conversation, the woman slumped and opened the door.
The room she entered was a small, cramped living room, dimly lit by a standing lamp in the corner. Every conceivable flat space was covered by paper: newspapers, police and coroner's reports, and printouts of dubious provenance, except for some sections of the long, black couch, where someone had obviously made pains to clear some room. The woman closed the door behind them. In the dim light, she looked young, no more than seventeen at the oldest, but careworn. "Luen went back to his room," she said curtly, pointing at one of the two open doorways. Jo could see more papers pinned to the wall and the steady golden light of a table lamp.
Laying in a bed that nearly took up the entire bedroom, Luen looked as though he'd only just hastily cleared a human-sized area in the blanket of papers for him sleep in. He looked up from shoving one pile of papers on top of another to give Jo a wry grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Sorry about Zhen. She’s really nice once you get to know her, but she’s an animal when you wake her up too early. So, where’s Gordon? He’s a nasty bastard, but good at the job, and I can hardly move around, much less go traipsing off after some silly little preta. Is he going to be late? Who are you, anyway? I didn’t think he was the type to go after a cute little thing like you, too serious by half, him. Adopted daughter? No, he’s got family issues.” Luen rambled on like that for a few minutes, giving Jo no time at all to answer his questions, so she didn’t try. He had a sweet voice, with an accent so faint she couldn’t place it.
When Luen stopped to breathe--Jo glanced at the clock, had he really been talking non-stop for five minutes?--she said, “Gordon’s dead. But I used to help him out some, if you still want a hand.” He froze, looking her up and down, and she knew he was seeing a scrawny little stick of a girl, who could probably barely lift a six-pack of beer, much less go hunting down blood-sucking monsters. “Gordon had a run-in with a vampire that he didn’t survive,” she said. It was the truth, if an edited version of it. “My name’s Jo Harvelle. I can kill your monster, if you still need a pair of hands and a shotgun.”
Luen sat up and looked her over, his dark eyes thoughtful. “Welcome to the clubhouse, Jo Harvelle,” he said. He shuffled some papers to make room for Jo to sit down, and outlined the hunt. Jo perused the reports he handed over, trying to separate out Luen’s ramblings from the pertinent information.
The sound of a shot interrupted an overly-detailed explanation of the ghost's ectoplasmic structure, and Jo was on her feet, reaching for the gun tucked at the small of her back before she even consciously realized what she was doing. Luen, too, had pulled out a wicked-looking knife from somewhere. “That’s not the usual sound of gunfire,” he said and arched an eyebrow at Jo’s questioning look. “Sometimes a hunter around here gets caught in the crossfire. Werewolves versus vampires and all that. But that was way too loud for a handgun.”
Jo shook her head, frowning. She’d heard that sound often enough to know it for exactly what it was--a shotgun blast. “I’m going to check it out,” she told him, dropping the report she was still holding back on the bed. “I’ll go after your ghost once I’ve made sure that wasn’t anything important.” Luen waggled his fingers and readjusted the printouts close to his feet so he could stretch out.
“If you’re back before eight, we’ll feed you breakfast,” he called after her.
The street looked deserted at first glance. In the calm she caught the echo of footsteps down a side street and she took off towards the sound, hand creeping to the small of her back to pull out her gun, its weight reassuring in her hand.
Jo ducked down the alley one moment and the next found herself gasping for breath, back against the wall, and a strong arm against her windpipe. And then there was that telltale prick of a knife against her belly too. She looked up at her assailant, fingers tightening on the trigger of her gun. Before the threat left her lips his identity sank in.
"Sam?"
Sam Winchester's eyes were dark and haunted, and for a moment the pressure on her throat increased, as though he didn't realize who she was. Or maybe recognition made him want to kill her more. Memories threatened to overwhelm her, a fear of the demon inside Sam that could and would kill her. Jo struggled for a moment to draw breath, and forced out, "Christo!" He didn't recoil the way he should have, but the expression in his eyes cleared--not enough to make her pulse stop racing, but he let her go. His forehead creased in annoyance and something enough like embarrassment to at least salve Jo's wounded pride.
The knife slid back into its sheath, and Sam ruffled his hair back a little. "Jo." It was an oddly blank statement, an acknowledgment of her existence, but more uncaring. Another moment passed before Sam seemed to remember what the next thing he was supposed to say was. "What are you doing here?" His voice was rusty--it sounded like he hadn't spoken for weeks.
She shrugged, trying to look more casual than she felt, looking into his hollow eyes. "I got called in to help get rid of a hungry ghost problem. What are you doing here? Besides repeating the whole 'slam Jo into a solid object' dance we went through last time I saw you." Jo gave him a teasing half-smile but Sam's expression just got darker.
"San Francisco's got a werewolf problem." Sam bent and retrieved his shotgun, checking it to make sure it wasn't damaged. "It was too fast for me to shoot, so I'm going to have to trap it first." He turned away and started off down the alley, dismissing Jo entirely.
“Hey!” Jo had to run a few steps to catch up, and she almost rested her hand on his elbow before recalling the pain of getting her head smacked into solid objects. Touching jumpy hunters was always a mistake. “Slow the hell down, gigantor. Where are you going?”
Sam didn’t even spare her a glance, but she saw his shoulders tighten a little. “I’m chasing a werewolf, Jo. Go back to your own hunt. I don’t need to be slowed down.”
Jo jerked her hand back as though she’d been burnt. Her throat went tight around a retort. She crossed her arms over her chest instead of grabbing for Sam’s throat the way she wanted to.
“Don’t think you’re going off to hunt big furry monsters without me. You’re going to need some back-up in case it decides to turn the puppy eyes on you and you break down crying,” she said after a minute of trailing him silently. Witty comebacks lost something when they weren’t immediate, Jo noted, cheeks heating up. Sam glanced back, and there was an unreadable expression on his face, like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or just be plain angry. Jo couldn’t tell what he’d settled on, but he slowed his pace a bit to let her catch up.
It might have been months since she last saw Sam, but Jo couldn’t remember him being so quiet. It felt like he was going to break any moment, barely leashed violence simmering under the surface. Jo considered Sam: his icy silence, his tense shoulders, his gritted teeth. "Are you going to tell me where we're going, or are you going to sulk the whole way?" The worst he would do was storm off. He wouldn't risk a hunt to beat her up for being irritating.
Sam looked at Jo and then around, pausing underneath the dingy red awning of a candy shop, head tipped up. "Its hunting grounds are in the business district." Sam pointed to a pale spot on the gum-spotted pavement where it looked like a dog had scraped grooves with its nails. Except a dog would need to be a lot bigger and a lot stronger than any Labrador to make scratches that long and deep. "It's possible during the day it's a broker or someone else who lives in the area. They tend to stick to areas frequented during the day, especially if there are lots of solitary travelers in those areas to snack on. I spooked it back there, so it's going to bolt for more familiar surroundings to find a meal." As he talked, Sam's face seemed to gentle a little. Not much, but enough that it loosened a knot in Jo's stomach. The blank expression reminded her too much of the look in Sam's eyes the last time she'd seen him.
"So we poke around down here until we find it or we hear a scream?"
Sam's expression slammed closed. "Or we could kill it now." His knife appeared in his hand before she could breathe, and Jo spun, reaching for her gun, when a body covered with thin bristle-like fur crashed into her. Her gun skittered out of her hand and off into the empty street. The creature's fangs snapped shut an inch from her cheek. Jo struggled to get a leg between them so she could shove it off, and was rewarded by the scrape of claws slicing through her jeans. She heaved with all her strength and the werewolf tumbled off her. Jo hissed in surprise at the sound of Sam's shotgun going off over her head. Her leg burned and she dropped back, catching her breath. The sound of claws on the pavement skittered away into the darkness and Sam ran a few steps before returning to where Jo lay.
She sat up, pressing one hand to her leg--the tear wasn't as deep as it had originally felt. "I'm okay. It didn't bite me."
"I know, Sam said. "If it had I would have shot you."
He offered her a hand up, and Jo took it. "That wasn't funny," she said.
"It wasn't meant to be." Sam wiped his hand on his jeans, and Jo realized she'd gotten her blood on him. She tugged at her torn jeans, trying to clean the jagged wound a bit. It didn't look as bad as it felt, and that was something. "Come on, it's bleeding now. We should be able to follow it."
Jo stumbled a bit as pain flared in her leg, and she grabbed for Sam's arm to keep from falling over. She felt him flinch, the muscles in his arm bunching under her fingers; she braced herself for him to hit her or throw her against a wall. Sam just stayed tense, frozen under her hands. His breath was loud in the nighttime silence, rough and tight.
When Jo pulled away, Sam jerked back into motion, stepping a long step away from her. His tongue flicked out over his lips and he shoved his hands into his pocket. "Can you walk by yourself?" Jo tested her leg--it was a dull ache now that she'd had a moment to get used to the pain--and nodded. He handed back her gun and Jo tucked it back into the holster.
For a while they walked quietly, Sam leaning down every few feet to check on the trail of blood, while Jo tried to think of something to say.
When she had thought about Sam before this it had always had a tinge of nostalgic amusement. Even though he'd been possessed the last time she saw him, she still thought of Sam as the gentle brother: big, sweet, and maybe a little bit dorky. She'd thought about what would happen the next time she saw him, about teasing him with what he'd done to her. If there was one thing she'd learned from hunters it was that as long there was no lasting damage and neither person was a blood-sucking fiend, there was no point in holding grudges. But she didn't know what to do with this Sam and the way he flinched from physical contact and wouldn't look at her.
Sam cleared his throat and Jo jumped. "What?"
"I'm," he stumbled over his words for a minute, glancing into her face and then away again. "I'm sorry. For what I did last time I saw you. I heard about what I did and I never got a chance to come back and apologize." He paused at a corner, a guttering street lamp lighting up the rueful expression on his face.
Jo couldn't help the crooked smile that grew on her face, although she held back the laughter bubbling up from her stomach. Defensive and angry he might be, but Sam was always going to be Sam. "I might forgive you for slamming my head into a bar and tying me up. But you'll have to beg me nicely." Sam made a face at that, and she did laugh. "Don't be such a bitch."
"Jerk," Sam responded, lips pursing in the beginning of a pout. Abruptly he went still. Jo could see muscles in his jaw jump. He glanced down the street and stuffed his hands in his pocket, shoulders hunching. "We're on the main street. Be careful."
Suppressing a sigh at the way Sam shut her out again, Jo checked around them. A couple of cars were on the road, but most of them were several blocks, and there didn't seem to be anyone besides them on foot. Sam went back to looking for traces of werewolf blood. He apparently found some because he beckoned to Jo and started off down the street. "I really hope our puppy friend hasn't stumbled over someone to snack on while we’re walking.”
Sam shrugged one shoulder up. “It’s following the main street because we spooked it, and there aren’t many people who’ll be in the business district this late at night. We just have to wrangle it before it gets the bright idea to head down into the residential areas to the south.” The look on his face was familiar now, brow furrowed with thoughtful worry.
Movement in the shadows of a storefront caught Jo’s eye, and she stared, trying to figure out if it was human, werewolf, or just a trick of the light. She cursed the pillars built into the storefronts--they made finding a hidden wolfman so much more difficult than it had to be. “Did you see--“ she started and Sam nodded. They slowed, moving quietly, and Jo reached for her gun.
The wiry werewolf snarled and lunged outward as Jo raised her gun. Instead jumping for them, though, it lifted its head and sniffed the air. The creature shook its head, bared its teeth again, turned and loped down the street away from them. Jo took off after it, and saw, out of the corner of her eye, Sam do the same. His legs were longer than hers, and he soon began to outpace her. Jo had to push herself harder to keep pace. Her leg started burning after two blocks, her breath coming in sharp, painful gasps after three, but she curled her free hand into a fist and ignored the pain. She felt like she was in a tunnel. The skyscrapers loomed above her, Sam and the werewolf directly ahead and nothing behind her but wind.
Sam faltered when they hit the plaza--it was the end of the street, the other side was just a market building against a pier. They could get a clean shot here, Jo realized and veered out of the line of fire. The shot echoed off the empty buildings, and the wolf howled--it hadn’t been a clean shot. The bullet had ripped into its arm and it turned to tear the shotgun out of Sam’s hands, sending the weapon clattering to the ground with half the barrel shredded. Jo pulled her knife--it wasn’t silver, she hadn’t prepared for this--and ducked the claws to slice a line up its leg. At least she was getting a little payback, she thought in a split second before the claws scored her arm.
Again the wolf turned. It could have gone up the major road, and they might have lost it, but, blinded with pain, and rage, the werewolf turned and headed for the building across the street-- a wide, squat, white building that might have looked clean and upscale during the day, but at night merely looked blankly empty. At least until the werewolf crashed through the glass doors and the alarms started blaring.
Jo grimaced at Sam. “How long would you say we have before the cops show up, Mr. FBI’s Most Wanted?”
Sam half-glared at her and picked his way through the broken glass. “Ten minutes. Fifteen at the outside. We should get this done before the cops show up to get mauled though.”
“Well,” Jo said, looking around, “At least we’re in San Francisco. I’m sure this wouldn’t be the weirdest thing they’ve seen all week.”
The building was painted in rustic beiges and yellows, although the flashing red and blue alarm lights painted out colors on what might have otherwise been a series of bucolic storefronts. At one end of the hallway, with broken glass caught in its fur and bleeding from the injuries they’d given it, stood the werewolf. It growled deep in its throat, and tensed, so Jo shot at it. Her shot went wide, splattering the plaster to the right of its head, and the wolf turned and crashed into the Sur La Table kitchenware store. Dimly, Jo could see that the other side of the store was a wall of glass, and realized the wolf, dazed from blood loss, might be trying to make its escape to the darkness of the pier beyond.
She and Sam stepped into the store. Sam slid his knife out, holding it at ready. The wolf crouched warily, backing up for every careful step they took, claws scraping at the hardwood floor. Sam snagged something from a nearby display and tossed it to Jo. “Here, you’ll need this.”
Jo caught it mid-air. “An egg-whisk? You can’t be serious.”
They separated, circling around the werewolf to either side, trying to divide its concentration. Jo end up between it and the wall of windows. “It’s silver-plated. Just be lucky they didn’t have out the platinum melon-ballers this month. Fucking Sur La Table.” Sam’s lips twisted up.
“Was that a joke? I’m pretty sure that was a joke.” Jo brandished her gun in one hand and the egg-whisk as menacingly as she could in the other. It gleamed in the flashing alarm-lights. She risked a side-long grin at Sam, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to banish his own crooked smile.
“Of course it wasn’t. Help me kill the werewolf, Jo.”
She aimed her gun, and raised the whisk in defense, but the werewolf had finally decided enough was enough. It leapt at her, and her shot only clipped its ear. She shoved up, managing to snap one of the silver-plated whisk tines into the thing’s chest. She was so engaged in trying to shove the snarling creature off her that she almost missed Sam moving above her. Until the shelf of pressure cookers leaning nearby tumbled over on top of them. One smashed down on her arm, another barely missed her face, but it distracted the wolf long enough for her to shove the broken tines deeper into its chest, and scramble away, and for Sam to kneel down and slice its throat with clinical precision. Claws raked his forearm, but he somehow kept away from the poisonous fangs.
They watched, Jo with morbid curiosity and Sam with a blank expression, as the werewolf slowly morphed back into a recognizably human form. He was long and lanky, with red hair made starker by the pallor of his face. Somewhere nearby police sirens wailed.
Sam and Jo glanced at each other and he ran to the exit, shoving it open with a hefty kick.
Once they’d made their escape down the wharf and up in into a park behind a set of apartment buildings, Jo slumped on a bench under an old-fashioned streetlamp. “Nothing’s ever simple with you, is it?” Sam made no move to sit beside her, his half-hearted humor disintegrating already. She made a sound in her throat and grabbed for his hand. “Sit the hell down, you’re giving me a crick in my neck,” she said.
She wasn’t expecting him to slam down onto the bench next to her and shove her back. “Jo, stop,” he said, his voice like crushed glass in his throat. “Stop trying to be cool and tough. You could have gotten killed back there.”
Jo looked up at Sam, at the rings under his eyes, the shaggy hair, the hollow expression. Not knowing where the impulse came from, but following its directives nonetheless, she leaned up and pressed a light kiss to his lips. It was softer, sweeter than any kiss she’d ever given or received, but Sam’s hands on her shoulders relaxed, slid down her body and rested on her hips. She could feel the strength in those hands, but the moved with such slow and careful motion that Jo wanted to forget about the bursts of anger and violence Sam had displayed. His thumbs rubbed in circles, gentle and erotic and she muffled a moan, trying not to squirm.
Sam was the one who broke the kiss, though, licking his lips. “Jo,” he started, but she shook her head.
“Don’t get all sappy on me,” she said, knocking his shoulder with her knuckles. He sat back, dropping his head, so his hair fell in his face. "I could come with you," she offered. "I still have a ghost to kill over in Chinatown, but after that, my dance card's pretty free."
Jo could read the emotions in the way Sam's shoulders flexed. There was the relaxed consideration, the slow tension of suspicion and tight wariness, and then the sharp snap of strain that bespoke grief. She knew before he sat up what his answer would be. She also knew he'd try to apologize, so she slapped his thigh lightly as the first syllable of regret crossed his lips.
"You have my number, Sam. And don't think I won't make time in my busy schedule to take an extra-special visit to kick your sulky, over-sized ass." She hopped up off the bench, favoring her good leg, and tugged at her shredded jeans. This close to the pier, the air was even colder than usual, and the fog felt like it was worming under the tears. "Go back to your motel room, but if you don't call me sometime in the next month I will hunt you down."
"Is that a threat?" Sam asked, getting to his feet. In all the running around and monster-fighting, she'd forgotten just how much taller he really was.
"It's a promise, gigantor." He huffed at the name and she grinned, pressing her hands against his chest. Jo leaned up and brushed a kiss against his cheek. "I have a ghost to hunt, so if you're not coming with me, I'm going to go."
He caught her hand. "Wait." His jacket was wrapped around her shoulders before she knew what Sam was trying to do. "You looked cold," he said, in answer to her startlement.
Jo barked a laugh and tucked the worn, beige fabric around her. It was warm with the remnants of Sam's body heat and she snuggled down into it a bit. When she looked up to thank him, Sam was already striding silently into the shadowy street. Jo watched the silhouette of his lanky form walk down the sidewalk until he turned a corner and stepped out of sight.
With one last wry smile, Jo tugged the jacket closer and headed back towards downtown, mentally ticking off all the items she'd need to pick up in order to exorcise Luen's pet ghost before morning.
Author: ryuutchi
Recipient: morgan32
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sam/Jo
Summary: A chilly San Francisco night, a hunt or two, Sam, Jo, and some kitchenware.
Author's Notes: Set about a month post Season 3. Many thanks to my betas!
At night, the streets of San Francisco were cool and damp. Jo was used to the cold of the Midwest winters, dry and sharp enough to cut, not this pervasive summer damp that made her jeans and turtleneck feel like they were clinging to her skin and holding the cold in. But, for lack of anyone better, she'd inherited Gordon's little black book after his 'accident' and one of the resident hunters here had wanted to call her once-mentor in. She fished out the address from her pocket and hunted until she found the steps leading down into the basement of a CD store, the door marked with nearly illegible numbers. Her knock echoed dully and Jo glanced around, half expecting a window in one of the top floor apartments to open. The door opened, and an irritated expression peered out of the doorway at her. "What do you want? Do you know what time it is?" There was something about the voice that reminded Jo of her mother--all business, with more than a hint of restrained annoyance.
"Luen Martin called me," Jo said, just as briskly, laying her hand on the door.
The woman tipped her head back again. After what appeared to be a prolonged wordless conversation, the woman slumped and opened the door.
The room she entered was a small, cramped living room, dimly lit by a standing lamp in the corner. Every conceivable flat space was covered by paper: newspapers, police and coroner's reports, and printouts of dubious provenance, except for some sections of the long, black couch, where someone had obviously made pains to clear some room. The woman closed the door behind them. In the dim light, she looked young, no more than seventeen at the oldest, but careworn. "Luen went back to his room," she said curtly, pointing at one of the two open doorways. Jo could see more papers pinned to the wall and the steady golden light of a table lamp.
Laying in a bed that nearly took up the entire bedroom, Luen looked as though he'd only just hastily cleared a human-sized area in the blanket of papers for him sleep in. He looked up from shoving one pile of papers on top of another to give Jo a wry grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Sorry about Zhen. She’s really nice once you get to know her, but she’s an animal when you wake her up too early. So, where’s Gordon? He’s a nasty bastard, but good at the job, and I can hardly move around, much less go traipsing off after some silly little preta. Is he going to be late? Who are you, anyway? I didn’t think he was the type to go after a cute little thing like you, too serious by half, him. Adopted daughter? No, he’s got family issues.” Luen rambled on like that for a few minutes, giving Jo no time at all to answer his questions, so she didn’t try. He had a sweet voice, with an accent so faint she couldn’t place it.
When Luen stopped to breathe--Jo glanced at the clock, had he really been talking non-stop for five minutes?--she said, “Gordon’s dead. But I used to help him out some, if you still want a hand.” He froze, looking her up and down, and she knew he was seeing a scrawny little stick of a girl, who could probably barely lift a six-pack of beer, much less go hunting down blood-sucking monsters. “Gordon had a run-in with a vampire that he didn’t survive,” she said. It was the truth, if an edited version of it. “My name’s Jo Harvelle. I can kill your monster, if you still need a pair of hands and a shotgun.”
Luen sat up and looked her over, his dark eyes thoughtful. “Welcome to the clubhouse, Jo Harvelle,” he said. He shuffled some papers to make room for Jo to sit down, and outlined the hunt. Jo perused the reports he handed over, trying to separate out Luen’s ramblings from the pertinent information.
The sound of a shot interrupted an overly-detailed explanation of the ghost's ectoplasmic structure, and Jo was on her feet, reaching for the gun tucked at the small of her back before she even consciously realized what she was doing. Luen, too, had pulled out a wicked-looking knife from somewhere. “That’s not the usual sound of gunfire,” he said and arched an eyebrow at Jo’s questioning look. “Sometimes a hunter around here gets caught in the crossfire. Werewolves versus vampires and all that. But that was way too loud for a handgun.”
Jo shook her head, frowning. She’d heard that sound often enough to know it for exactly what it was--a shotgun blast. “I’m going to check it out,” she told him, dropping the report she was still holding back on the bed. “I’ll go after your ghost once I’ve made sure that wasn’t anything important.” Luen waggled his fingers and readjusted the printouts close to his feet so he could stretch out.
“If you’re back before eight, we’ll feed you breakfast,” he called after her.
The street looked deserted at first glance. In the calm she caught the echo of footsteps down a side street and she took off towards the sound, hand creeping to the small of her back to pull out her gun, its weight reassuring in her hand.
Jo ducked down the alley one moment and the next found herself gasping for breath, back against the wall, and a strong arm against her windpipe. And then there was that telltale prick of a knife against her belly too. She looked up at her assailant, fingers tightening on the trigger of her gun. Before the threat left her lips his identity sank in.
"Sam?"
Sam Winchester's eyes were dark and haunted, and for a moment the pressure on her throat increased, as though he didn't realize who she was. Or maybe recognition made him want to kill her more. Memories threatened to overwhelm her, a fear of the demon inside Sam that could and would kill her. Jo struggled for a moment to draw breath, and forced out, "Christo!" He didn't recoil the way he should have, but the expression in his eyes cleared--not enough to make her pulse stop racing, but he let her go. His forehead creased in annoyance and something enough like embarrassment to at least salve Jo's wounded pride.
The knife slid back into its sheath, and Sam ruffled his hair back a little. "Jo." It was an oddly blank statement, an acknowledgment of her existence, but more uncaring. Another moment passed before Sam seemed to remember what the next thing he was supposed to say was. "What are you doing here?" His voice was rusty--it sounded like he hadn't spoken for weeks.
She shrugged, trying to look more casual than she felt, looking into his hollow eyes. "I got called in to help get rid of a hungry ghost problem. What are you doing here? Besides repeating the whole 'slam Jo into a solid object' dance we went through last time I saw you." Jo gave him a teasing half-smile but Sam's expression just got darker.
"San Francisco's got a werewolf problem." Sam bent and retrieved his shotgun, checking it to make sure it wasn't damaged. "It was too fast for me to shoot, so I'm going to have to trap it first." He turned away and started off down the alley, dismissing Jo entirely.
“Hey!” Jo had to run a few steps to catch up, and she almost rested her hand on his elbow before recalling the pain of getting her head smacked into solid objects. Touching jumpy hunters was always a mistake. “Slow the hell down, gigantor. Where are you going?”
Sam didn’t even spare her a glance, but she saw his shoulders tighten a little. “I’m chasing a werewolf, Jo. Go back to your own hunt. I don’t need to be slowed down.”
Jo jerked her hand back as though she’d been burnt. Her throat went tight around a retort. She crossed her arms over her chest instead of grabbing for Sam’s throat the way she wanted to.
“Don’t think you’re going off to hunt big furry monsters without me. You’re going to need some back-up in case it decides to turn the puppy eyes on you and you break down crying,” she said after a minute of trailing him silently. Witty comebacks lost something when they weren’t immediate, Jo noted, cheeks heating up. Sam glanced back, and there was an unreadable expression on his face, like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or just be plain angry. Jo couldn’t tell what he’d settled on, but he slowed his pace a bit to let her catch up.
It might have been months since she last saw Sam, but Jo couldn’t remember him being so quiet. It felt like he was going to break any moment, barely leashed violence simmering under the surface. Jo considered Sam: his icy silence, his tense shoulders, his gritted teeth. "Are you going to tell me where we're going, or are you going to sulk the whole way?" The worst he would do was storm off. He wouldn't risk a hunt to beat her up for being irritating.
Sam looked at Jo and then around, pausing underneath the dingy red awning of a candy shop, head tipped up. "Its hunting grounds are in the business district." Sam pointed to a pale spot on the gum-spotted pavement where it looked like a dog had scraped grooves with its nails. Except a dog would need to be a lot bigger and a lot stronger than any Labrador to make scratches that long and deep. "It's possible during the day it's a broker or someone else who lives in the area. They tend to stick to areas frequented during the day, especially if there are lots of solitary travelers in those areas to snack on. I spooked it back there, so it's going to bolt for more familiar surroundings to find a meal." As he talked, Sam's face seemed to gentle a little. Not much, but enough that it loosened a knot in Jo's stomach. The blank expression reminded her too much of the look in Sam's eyes the last time she'd seen him.
"So we poke around down here until we find it or we hear a scream?"
Sam's expression slammed closed. "Or we could kill it now." His knife appeared in his hand before she could breathe, and Jo spun, reaching for her gun, when a body covered with thin bristle-like fur crashed into her. Her gun skittered out of her hand and off into the empty street. The creature's fangs snapped shut an inch from her cheek. Jo struggled to get a leg between them so she could shove it off, and was rewarded by the scrape of claws slicing through her jeans. She heaved with all her strength and the werewolf tumbled off her. Jo hissed in surprise at the sound of Sam's shotgun going off over her head. Her leg burned and she dropped back, catching her breath. The sound of claws on the pavement skittered away into the darkness and Sam ran a few steps before returning to where Jo lay.
She sat up, pressing one hand to her leg--the tear wasn't as deep as it had originally felt. "I'm okay. It didn't bite me."
"I know, Sam said. "If it had I would have shot you."
He offered her a hand up, and Jo took it. "That wasn't funny," she said.
"It wasn't meant to be." Sam wiped his hand on his jeans, and Jo realized she'd gotten her blood on him. She tugged at her torn jeans, trying to clean the jagged wound a bit. It didn't look as bad as it felt, and that was something. "Come on, it's bleeding now. We should be able to follow it."
Jo stumbled a bit as pain flared in her leg, and she grabbed for Sam's arm to keep from falling over. She felt him flinch, the muscles in his arm bunching under her fingers; she braced herself for him to hit her or throw her against a wall. Sam just stayed tense, frozen under her hands. His breath was loud in the nighttime silence, rough and tight.
When Jo pulled away, Sam jerked back into motion, stepping a long step away from her. His tongue flicked out over his lips and he shoved his hands into his pocket. "Can you walk by yourself?" Jo tested her leg--it was a dull ache now that she'd had a moment to get used to the pain--and nodded. He handed back her gun and Jo tucked it back into the holster.
For a while they walked quietly, Sam leaning down every few feet to check on the trail of blood, while Jo tried to think of something to say.
When she had thought about Sam before this it had always had a tinge of nostalgic amusement. Even though he'd been possessed the last time she saw him, she still thought of Sam as the gentle brother: big, sweet, and maybe a little bit dorky. She'd thought about what would happen the next time she saw him, about teasing him with what he'd done to her. If there was one thing she'd learned from hunters it was that as long there was no lasting damage and neither person was a blood-sucking fiend, there was no point in holding grudges. But she didn't know what to do with this Sam and the way he flinched from physical contact and wouldn't look at her.
Sam cleared his throat and Jo jumped. "What?"
"I'm," he stumbled over his words for a minute, glancing into her face and then away again. "I'm sorry. For what I did last time I saw you. I heard about what I did and I never got a chance to come back and apologize." He paused at a corner, a guttering street lamp lighting up the rueful expression on his face.
Jo couldn't help the crooked smile that grew on her face, although she held back the laughter bubbling up from her stomach. Defensive and angry he might be, but Sam was always going to be Sam. "I might forgive you for slamming my head into a bar and tying me up. But you'll have to beg me nicely." Sam made a face at that, and she did laugh. "Don't be such a bitch."
"Jerk," Sam responded, lips pursing in the beginning of a pout. Abruptly he went still. Jo could see muscles in his jaw jump. He glanced down the street and stuffed his hands in his pocket, shoulders hunching. "We're on the main street. Be careful."
Suppressing a sigh at the way Sam shut her out again, Jo checked around them. A couple of cars were on the road, but most of them were several blocks, and there didn't seem to be anyone besides them on foot. Sam went back to looking for traces of werewolf blood. He apparently found some because he beckoned to Jo and started off down the street. "I really hope our puppy friend hasn't stumbled over someone to snack on while we’re walking.”
Sam shrugged one shoulder up. “It’s following the main street because we spooked it, and there aren’t many people who’ll be in the business district this late at night. We just have to wrangle it before it gets the bright idea to head down into the residential areas to the south.” The look on his face was familiar now, brow furrowed with thoughtful worry.
Movement in the shadows of a storefront caught Jo’s eye, and she stared, trying to figure out if it was human, werewolf, or just a trick of the light. She cursed the pillars built into the storefronts--they made finding a hidden wolfman so much more difficult than it had to be. “Did you see--“ she started and Sam nodded. They slowed, moving quietly, and Jo reached for her gun.
The wiry werewolf snarled and lunged outward as Jo raised her gun. Instead jumping for them, though, it lifted its head and sniffed the air. The creature shook its head, bared its teeth again, turned and loped down the street away from them. Jo took off after it, and saw, out of the corner of her eye, Sam do the same. His legs were longer than hers, and he soon began to outpace her. Jo had to push herself harder to keep pace. Her leg started burning after two blocks, her breath coming in sharp, painful gasps after three, but she curled her free hand into a fist and ignored the pain. She felt like she was in a tunnel. The skyscrapers loomed above her, Sam and the werewolf directly ahead and nothing behind her but wind.
Sam faltered when they hit the plaza--it was the end of the street, the other side was just a market building against a pier. They could get a clean shot here, Jo realized and veered out of the line of fire. The shot echoed off the empty buildings, and the wolf howled--it hadn’t been a clean shot. The bullet had ripped into its arm and it turned to tear the shotgun out of Sam’s hands, sending the weapon clattering to the ground with half the barrel shredded. Jo pulled her knife--it wasn’t silver, she hadn’t prepared for this--and ducked the claws to slice a line up its leg. At least she was getting a little payback, she thought in a split second before the claws scored her arm.
Again the wolf turned. It could have gone up the major road, and they might have lost it, but, blinded with pain, and rage, the werewolf turned and headed for the building across the street-- a wide, squat, white building that might have looked clean and upscale during the day, but at night merely looked blankly empty. At least until the werewolf crashed through the glass doors and the alarms started blaring.
Jo grimaced at Sam. “How long would you say we have before the cops show up, Mr. FBI’s Most Wanted?”
Sam half-glared at her and picked his way through the broken glass. “Ten minutes. Fifteen at the outside. We should get this done before the cops show up to get mauled though.”
“Well,” Jo said, looking around, “At least we’re in San Francisco. I’m sure this wouldn’t be the weirdest thing they’ve seen all week.”
The building was painted in rustic beiges and yellows, although the flashing red and blue alarm lights painted out colors on what might have otherwise been a series of bucolic storefronts. At one end of the hallway, with broken glass caught in its fur and bleeding from the injuries they’d given it, stood the werewolf. It growled deep in its throat, and tensed, so Jo shot at it. Her shot went wide, splattering the plaster to the right of its head, and the wolf turned and crashed into the Sur La Table kitchenware store. Dimly, Jo could see that the other side of the store was a wall of glass, and realized the wolf, dazed from blood loss, might be trying to make its escape to the darkness of the pier beyond.
She and Sam stepped into the store. Sam slid his knife out, holding it at ready. The wolf crouched warily, backing up for every careful step they took, claws scraping at the hardwood floor. Sam snagged something from a nearby display and tossed it to Jo. “Here, you’ll need this.”
Jo caught it mid-air. “An egg-whisk? You can’t be serious.”
They separated, circling around the werewolf to either side, trying to divide its concentration. Jo end up between it and the wall of windows. “It’s silver-plated. Just be lucky they didn’t have out the platinum melon-ballers this month. Fucking Sur La Table.” Sam’s lips twisted up.
“Was that a joke? I’m pretty sure that was a joke.” Jo brandished her gun in one hand and the egg-whisk as menacingly as she could in the other. It gleamed in the flashing alarm-lights. She risked a side-long grin at Sam, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to banish his own crooked smile.
“Of course it wasn’t. Help me kill the werewolf, Jo.”
She aimed her gun, and raised the whisk in defense, but the werewolf had finally decided enough was enough. It leapt at her, and her shot only clipped its ear. She shoved up, managing to snap one of the silver-plated whisk tines into the thing’s chest. She was so engaged in trying to shove the snarling creature off her that she almost missed Sam moving above her. Until the shelf of pressure cookers leaning nearby tumbled over on top of them. One smashed down on her arm, another barely missed her face, but it distracted the wolf long enough for her to shove the broken tines deeper into its chest, and scramble away, and for Sam to kneel down and slice its throat with clinical precision. Claws raked his forearm, but he somehow kept away from the poisonous fangs.
They watched, Jo with morbid curiosity and Sam with a blank expression, as the werewolf slowly morphed back into a recognizably human form. He was long and lanky, with red hair made starker by the pallor of his face. Somewhere nearby police sirens wailed.
Sam and Jo glanced at each other and he ran to the exit, shoving it open with a hefty kick.
Once they’d made their escape down the wharf and up in into a park behind a set of apartment buildings, Jo slumped on a bench under an old-fashioned streetlamp. “Nothing’s ever simple with you, is it?” Sam made no move to sit beside her, his half-hearted humor disintegrating already. She made a sound in her throat and grabbed for his hand. “Sit the hell down, you’re giving me a crick in my neck,” she said.
She wasn’t expecting him to slam down onto the bench next to her and shove her back. “Jo, stop,” he said, his voice like crushed glass in his throat. “Stop trying to be cool and tough. You could have gotten killed back there.”
Jo looked up at Sam, at the rings under his eyes, the shaggy hair, the hollow expression. Not knowing where the impulse came from, but following its directives nonetheless, she leaned up and pressed a light kiss to his lips. It was softer, sweeter than any kiss she’d ever given or received, but Sam’s hands on her shoulders relaxed, slid down her body and rested on her hips. She could feel the strength in those hands, but the moved with such slow and careful motion that Jo wanted to forget about the bursts of anger and violence Sam had displayed. His thumbs rubbed in circles, gentle and erotic and she muffled a moan, trying not to squirm.
Sam was the one who broke the kiss, though, licking his lips. “Jo,” he started, but she shook her head.
“Don’t get all sappy on me,” she said, knocking his shoulder with her knuckles. He sat back, dropping his head, so his hair fell in his face. "I could come with you," she offered. "I still have a ghost to kill over in Chinatown, but after that, my dance card's pretty free."
Jo could read the emotions in the way Sam's shoulders flexed. There was the relaxed consideration, the slow tension of suspicion and tight wariness, and then the sharp snap of strain that bespoke grief. She knew before he sat up what his answer would be. She also knew he'd try to apologize, so she slapped his thigh lightly as the first syllable of regret crossed his lips.
"You have my number, Sam. And don't think I won't make time in my busy schedule to take an extra-special visit to kick your sulky, over-sized ass." She hopped up off the bench, favoring her good leg, and tugged at her shredded jeans. This close to the pier, the air was even colder than usual, and the fog felt like it was worming under the tears. "Go back to your motel room, but if you don't call me sometime in the next month I will hunt you down."
"Is that a threat?" Sam asked, getting to his feet. In all the running around and monster-fighting, she'd forgotten just how much taller he really was.
"It's a promise, gigantor." He huffed at the name and she grinned, pressing her hands against his chest. Jo leaned up and brushed a kiss against his cheek. "I have a ghost to hunt, so if you're not coming with me, I'm going to go."
He caught her hand. "Wait." His jacket was wrapped around her shoulders before she knew what Sam was trying to do. "You looked cold," he said, in answer to her startlement.
Jo barked a laugh and tucked the worn, beige fabric around her. It was warm with the remnants of Sam's body heat and she snuggled down into it a bit. When she looked up to thank him, Sam was already striding silently into the shadowy street. Jo watched the silhouette of his lanky form walk down the sidewalk until he turned a corner and stepped out of sight.
With one last wry smile, Jo tugged the jacket closer and headed back towards downtown, mentally ticking off all the items she'd need to pick up in order to exorcise Luen's pet ghost before morning.