Fic: Bridge (Jimmy/Nick)
Title: Bridge
Author: thunder_nari
Recipient: joyyjpg
Word count: ~10 500
Characters/pairings: Jimmy Novak/Nick
Rating: R
Warnings: angst, brief mention of suicidal thoughts
Summary: For two years, Jimmy never had to think, he never had to feel. Now Castiel is gone and he can't do either. For one year, all Nick felt was overwhelming hatred and pain. Now Lucifer is gone and that's all he feels. Jimmy doesn't feel enough, Nick feels too much, so they try to find a way to bridge the gap and balance each other out. Naturally this all happens on Sam's sofa. An AU from 5.22 Swan Song.
Author notes: Written for spnraritiesfest. I didn't work with the prompts so much, I'm sorry joyyjpg. But I did get some of the 'likes' in there. Including 'angst', 'banter' and a pseudo-road trip. I hope you like it!
Beta'd by tawg, thank you for being so awesome and quick.
AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/264200
**
Bridge
**
Jimmy has fallen asleep in front of the television again. His back is stiff and an infomercial for some magic screen door is on the screen. It works with magnets. Jimmy stares at it and bets it keeps insects out but not demons or monsters or psychotic hunters.
Maybe he's turning a little agoraphobic these days, but like so many of his thoughts it doesn't bother him the way it should.
Sometimes Jimmy expects Castiel to just drop back inside him and that makes it excusable to stay home. To not get a job, to not reacquaint with friends or neighbors. As if these walls could keep an angel out. He'd even found a butcher because lambs blood kept angels out, right? Amelia had made him wash it off the door frame.
Amelia never came to wake him for bed anymore. For awhile it had been good between them again, like being with someone for the first time, experiencing everything new. They were happy for a while or something close to it and then that newness had started to wear off. Jimmy had started wondering 'what next?' and Amelia started wondering 'when are you going to leave now?'
“I don't want to leave. But how am I supposed to control it, Aimes?” he'd asked desperately. There was the blood of a sheep beneath his fingernails and it was swirling red in the bucket of soapy water at his feet.
“You shouldn't have said yes in the first place.” She had said it with a resigned sigh. She knew somehow that his thoughts didn't rest with her.
His thoughts didn't rest much anywhere these days and he often lost himself in a blank gaze until he dozed off. Amelia had stopped waking him to come to bed days ago.
Jimmy understands. Some part of Amelia that grows stronger all the time blames him for what happened to her. Because of him, Amelia knows about the shadows of the world and she knows what it feels like when one of those shadows takes you over. Because of him, Amelia knows what it's like to watch her husband fade away a second time before her eyes.
Because of Jimmy, their daughter knows the loss of an angel and what it feels like when her own hands kill what were once innocent men.
It's Claire who says to him, while Jimmy is still lying in the recliner and the television has started talking about miracle bras, “There's something going on in the house next door.”
Jimmy shifts his blank stare from the infomercial and blinks at her to try and gather his thoughts together. He'd spent so long without need for thoughts. “What?”
“Where Roger lived.”
A new family had moved into the long abandoned house a couple weeks ago. Jimmy remembers watching the U-Haul pull in and the sharp bark of a Border Collie. He doesn't need to ask to know that by 'something' she means 'monster'. “How do you know?” he asks, finally sitting up and rolling his head to work the kinks from his neck.
Claire shrugs and Jimmy's little girl is looking at him with something like pity. “It's easy to see when you look.”
It sounds like she's telling him to pull his head out of his ass and Jimmy blinks at her. That night he checks it out and Claire is right. He's standing on the sidewalk under one of the street lights. The house is quiet, the new family is asleep the way Jimmy should be. Amelia will worry, he thinks, except Amelia is so used to him not being there that she won't notice.
A light near one of the front windows begins to flicker on and off, and there's a charge in the air that sets the hair along Jimmy's arms on end. A spirit? Jimmy focuses on it and its presence crawls along his skin in a way that makes him wonder how he hadn't noticed it before.
He tries to ignore it but now he knows it's right there living beside him and he can always feel it. There's something in that house and Jimmy can guess who it is. It's not anyone he ever wants to face. He ignores it until someone is dead.
An ambulance comes and takes the body away. The family go as well, for now at least. Jimmy watches from his kitchen window with his heart in his throat and he knows Claire wants him to go over there. She told him to look. Open your eyes, Jimmy, there's a lot in this world that you can't be blind to anymore. Jimmy tells himself that, takes a deep breath, and breaks into Roger's old house while it's empty.
He crawls in through a window in the back and immediately he's hit with an icy blast of air that turns his breath to mist. A moment later and Roger is flickering into view before Jimmy. An angry red gash mars his throat.
“I watched it come into my house,” Roger says and Jimmy listens, fear ticking away at the back of his mind. “I watched it kill my wife. I killed her. I felt it inside me like tar.”
Jimmy's vision is blurring at the pure agony in Roger's voice. “I'm sorry. I let it in, it's my fault,” Jimmy whispers.
“I'll never let anyone in this house again.”
Roger throws Jimmy backwards so hard that he crashes through the window. The glass splinters cut into him but Jimmy can hardly feel them. Jimmy runs, looking back over his shoulder, heart pounding, but Roger doesn't follow him. He thinks he sees the menacing shadow of Roger watching from the broken window. How could his best friend turn into that while Jimmy stood by and did nothing?
That night, after he's dug up Roger's grave, he reads final rites as the bones burn. He prays Roger is given guidance on his way home and he asks forgiveness for his trespasses against Roger's family and the new family living in that house.
**
Jimmy is exhausted when he gets home. It's already dawn and he falls into bed. A few minutes later and Amelia is getting up. She has a job. She has to get Claire to school. She doesn't ask Jimmy where he was all night. Jimmy stays home but for once he feels accomplishment tingling along his limbs. He can't feel the ghost next door now, the air is cleansed and he's certain that Roger has moved on to that better place. He doesn't know how he knows, he just does.
It's easy to see when you look, Claire told him. Jimmy sleeps until noon and then gets up and goes out of the house. He looks. He picks a random direction from his house and starts walking. Before too long there's a subtle sensation of cool air along his arms, and almost without his say so, his feet take him to stand outside the yard of a townhouse. It's just like any other on the block. Except in the front yard of this one there is a little girl, gray edged and smiling at him. Jimmy watches as she floats on light feet around the yard as if making sure everything is fine. Until a bright light envelopes her and the girl and Jimmy's sense of her are gone.
There are no other restless spirits to encounter but each day Jimmy goes out to look for them. After a week, he hunts the streets of Pontiac by public transport. Amelia always uses the car and Jimmy won't ask her for it.
Many days Jimmy comes home late. He misses dinner a handful of times and when he finally finds another vengeful spirit, he doesn't come back until morning. There's graveyard dirt beneath his fingernails again, and caked to his clothes that are drenched through with sweat. Jimmy is sure that Dean and Sam never had it this hard. He read the spirit last rites again and maybe it will help guide them where they want to go. Now he can't stop smiling as he heads towards the shower but he sets foot on the first stair and Amelia's voice stops him cold.
“Where were you?” Her voice is bland but she knows exactly where he was and it's worse than being caught cheating. “You can't do this here. You can't bring this into our house again.”
“I didn't bring it in the first time. It found me,” Jimmy snaps at her. Tired and bone sore and feeling good for first time in weeks. How dare she try to take this away from him.
“You're the one who listened to it.”
Jimmy looks down, unable to refute the accusation in her tone. He did listen. To Castiel and now to the pull of the unknown, of ghosts, and the emptiness inside him. When he has no answer to give, Amelia sighs.
“I want you to leave.”
Jimmy doesn't even try to argue.
**
“You're going to go hunt monsters?” Claire asks him while Jimmy packs a scattering of belongings into a couple duffel bags.
He smiles and shrugs. “I don't know. Maybe.”
She jumps up onto the bed, sitting on the edge with a slight bounce and Jimmy can't look at her. “Can I help?” She really isn't helping.
“Don't be silly. Mom needs you here.”
“What about you?” She reaches out to touch his arm, forcing him to stop and look at her.
He forces himself to smile at her. “Hey, I know people,” he says in a light tone and turns back to packing. “I'll find someone.”
“You can call me,” she offers and he stops. As if he wouldn't call her. Everyday. And he only wishes it would be fair on her to take her along but he doesn't want grave dirt beneath her fingernails. He doesn't want lamb's blood staining her jeans.
His eyes are welling up. “Yeah, of course I will.” She hugs him and lets him go a lot easier than he does to her. But she already knows she can live without him, she did it for two years. Jimmy supposes he knows that he can manage as well.
**
Jimmy heads out of town via a five hundred dollar car he bought a few days ago with money he stole from his wife. It runs- Barely. He manages to get across a whole three states before the engine practically falls out of it. He deals with two vengeful spirits in that time and one poltergeist. When he hits Colorado, that's when the engine dies and he's back on a bus. He has enough money to get half-way across Utah and then he's kind of screwed.
In Beaver, Utah, he gets a job washing dishes at a run-down diner. He doesn't like to stop, though. When he stops for too long, his thoughts begin to glaze over again. A day or two have been his longest stays at any one town so far. Long enough to deal with a vengeful spirit if there's one there. But he has no more cash for food or hotels and this place pays him under the table and doesn't ask for references. In return, Jimmy doesn't site them for the hundred and one probable health code violations even if he wants to.
There is a job in this town though so it's not too bad.
Jimmy works for a week, twelve hours a day and in return, he gets five bucks an hour and they let him sleep in an old apartment above the diner that he shares with a waitress who looks even more down on her luck than he is. He's finally allowed a day off after seven and he spends it walking around the town. That's when he finds the job. That's when he makes his first and likely last mistake when he doesn't realize there are three spirits in this house.
Though he's honestly not sure if it's them that cause his fall or if it's just the rotting floorboards of the old two story building. Either way, he crashes through the second floor, hits the first and goes all the way to the basement. It's freezing down here and he can sense the presence of the spirits like sharp fingernails dragging down his spine.
There's blood dripping down his forearm, caught on a broken piece of wood. His ankle is at the wrong angle and there's so much pain through his pelvis that tears sting his eyes and he knows he's not getting up.
The spirits seem content to let him linger. He doesn't see them and he's unsure if the air is so cold from their presence or if he's going into shock. If he managed to struggle to his feet, would they even let him pass?
For the rest of the night, he stays on the dirty floor of the basement, slipping into unconsciousness but something wakes him. There's dawn light coming through the hole he put in the floor by the time he manages to drag his mind together enough to grapple for his cell phone.
His fingers hit the buttons automatically and instead of an ambulance dispatch or the police, Claire's voice comes through the line. He kept that promise, at least. He calls her everyday.
“Hey, baby.” He's surprised at how hoarse his voice sounds and he clears his throat.
“Hey, dad,” comes the sleepy reply. Jimmy can picture Claire rubbing her hand over her eyes and he suddenly feels guilty for calling her cell so early. He's surprised she answered it at all, nothing gets his girl out of bed. Then he remembers that she's got a special ring tone for him and everything. “Why're you calling so early?”
“What time is it?” he asks.
“Like, 6am.”
He looks at the dim light coming through the broken floorboards and shivers at the cool air. It makes him shift a little and a fresh spike of pain makes him stifle a gasp.
“...What's wrong?” Claire sounds suddenly alert.
“Nothing, I uh... I guess I just missed you.” He is absolutely going to cry. “I'm really sorry.”
“Sorry for what? What's going on? Dad?”
But his fingers have gone numb and the phone slips from his grasp. He can't find the energy again to pick it up and he can hear the distant sound of Claire yelling his name.
**
“Hey, Jimmy. Jimmy?”
Jimmy blinks his eyes open to a light shinning into his face and winces. That's the devil in front of him and for a moment all Jimmy does is stare blandly at him. Then the realization hits him that he's not ready to die yet and he tries to scrabble backwards but his body screams at him and he's not sure he moves even an inch.
“Take it easy,” Lucifer tells him and then absurdly introduces himself. “I'm Nick. Dean!” 'Nick' calls back over his shoulder while Jimmy soundlessly repeats the name. “I got him!”
Heavy boots clatter down the stairs and Dean steps into view, the beam of Nick's flashlight catching him. There is someone Jimmy can trust and he lets his eyes slip closed again.
**
Jimmy wakes up warm. He can feel drugs swimming in his mind, can hear the sound of a heart monitor, but most importantly, there's no scratch of a ghost at his back and there's no pain accompanying every breath.
For some reason Lucifer is sitting by his bed reading a daily digest. “Lucifer?” Jimmy whispers and kind eyes turn on him.
“I'm Nick,” the man says and he sets down the magazine to extend his hand. Jimmy takes it clumsily, confusion pouring through but he thinks he might be too tired to care.
“What happened?” Jimmy asks and he startles a little as another voice barges in.
“You didn't research before going into a hunt,” Dean informs him, a little too pleased sounding with himself and he drops into a chair next to Nick.
Jimmy closes his eyes and it comes back to him. “There were three of them.”
“Yep,” Dean says. “But don't worry, we went back and finished them off while you were out.”
Jimmy really doesn't care. He falls asleep again.
**
“Were you hunting?” Jimmy asks when he's awake, watching as Nick jumps and looks over at him. Maybe Jimmy should have cleared his throat or something to warn Nick he was awake but it's a little amusing watching the devil startle.
Nick shakes his head. “We were just leaving California. Dean got a call from your daughter, scared out of her mind.” Jimmy grimaces. He vaguely remembers that phone call and wonders now how he'd been so stupid as to make it. “She told us what you were doing and what town you were in last.” Jimmy always kept her well updated on where he was each day. “That's a stupid idea, you know.”
“What? I was out of my mind, I didn't mean to call-”
“Not that. Telling her where you are every day? That doesn't strike you as a bad trail to leave for demons or other hunters even?”
Jimmy stays silent, staring down at the blankets that are pulled up to his chest. Was he putting his daughter in danger even though he wasn't anywhere near her? He feels sick at the anger in Nick's tone.
“You don't think saying 'yes' to Lucifer was a stupid idea?”
“Go back to sleep,” is all Nick responds with so Jimmy does.
**
“Let's see,” Dean is rattling off all the damage Jimmy managed to do to himself. Jimmy has already heard it all. Not ten minutes ago, in fact, when a doctor had been in to check on him. But Dean seems determined to rub Jimmy's stupidity into his face and Jimmy can hear the unspoken words; You're not a hunter. And this is why.
“You managed to concuss yourself, slice open your arm, break your ankle and tailbone. What else?”
“Internal bleeding,” Nick pipes in.
Jimmy glares at them. Maybe a little sympathy would be nice. He wants to call Claire but after his last conversation with Nick, he's afraid to ask if he can. “How long do I have to stay in here?” he asks instead. Where is he supposed to go when he's let out? How is he even paying for this? Nick seems able to read the questions in him.
“Dean...got you some insurance and fake ID. So they won't kick you out right away. You're stuck here for a few days and then we're going to take you to California.”
“What's in California?” Jimmy asks.
“Sam,” Dean says. Jimmy finally realizes what's been missing in the room. At his questioning look, Dean goes on, a mix of pride and uncertainty in his eyes. “He decided to go back to school. Got a nice apartment there and everything. He'll look after you.”
Jimmy would rather go home but he nods. Where is home these days anyway?
“I will too.” Nick's words have Jimmy blinking at the man in surprise and Nick shrugs, momentarily uncomfortable. “Vessels. We oughta keep together. Plus, I used to be a nurse. I'll be more help than Sam.”
Jimmy has one more question to ask. “How did you find me?”
“Turns out ex-vessel's are like walking EMF meters,” Dean says. “Can't get Nick within a hundred feet of a spirit before his ghost-senses are tingling. Guessing that goes for you, too.”
Jimmy nods, eyes wide as he stares at Nick. Maybe they should stick together. “Nice to know I'm not the only freak in the room.” He tries some humor and the corner of Nick's mouth twitches to a smile.
**
Three days in the hospital don't pass very pleasantly. Not when they take the IV out of his arm, and with that the morphine drip. He's switched onto prescription painkillers and antibiotics for the remainder of the week to deal with the infection in his arm. Once the antibiotics are done, that's a good time to have the stitches taken out though they've already begun to itch.
Jimmy just nods through all of it, content to let Dean and Nick handle the details of his recovery. A nurse had brought in some of his personal effects while Nick and Dean had been out of the room, his phone among the items taken from his pockets. Now Jimmy is too busy during his awake moments surreptitiously texting Claire to listen.
They give him crutches to practice walking on a bit but Jimmy already knows his way around them. It's not the first time he's broken his leg. Last time had been trying to jump his bike over a garbage can when he was fifteen in an attempt to impress Amelia. He bets Amelia is real impressed with him now.
They're set with his medications and instructions for what to do once they reach San Diego, California, where Sam is going to school for law which doesn't fit with the image of Sam Jimmy has in his mind. It's a ten hour trip with Dean's speeding and breaks thrown in but Jimmy can't even make it two hours.
Dean's car vibrates worse than anything Jimmy has felt and it crawls along his spine and settles in his broken tailbone until Jimmy's eyes are stinging with tears and he has to gasp out, “I can't do this.”
They pull over long enough to let the ache ease off after Jimmy takes two of his painkillers. He discovers it's a bad idea almost as soon as Dean puts them back onto the road. His tailbone still hurts though not with the same edge to it. But the pills on top of Dean's boat of a car make him so nauseous he's vomiting all over himself in an effort not to get it on the leather seats.
Nick hauls him into a bathroom at a gas stop while Dean curses over his car. “Ignore him,” Nick says once they make it into the dirty bathroom. He props Jimmy up against the sink and grabs some paper towel to wet beneath the tap and begin carefully cleaning Jimmy.
“Jesus, I can clean myself up,” Jimmy snaps. He immediately feels guilty for it but Nick doesn't meet his eyes and he doesn't stop. “A week ago I was vanquishing spirits, now I'm having vomit cleaned off my shirt by Lucifer.” It might be amusing, if Jimmy could push his emotions that far and didn't just feel tired instead.
“Vanquishing?” Nick asks with a raised eyebrow and Jimmy shrugs. Nick smiles and goes on to reassure. “I was a nurse. I've seen way way worse, believe me. Now rinse your mouth out.”
Jimmy does as he's told and in the end, he throws his shirt out and Nick fetches him a fresh one from the duffel Dean had retrieved for him. Nick helps him into the backseat since Dean evidently isn't speaking to him. At least there's enough room for Jimmy to sit sideways, casted leg resting across the seats. They manage to get him to a nearby motel and Jimmy spends the rest of the day dozing off.
He wakes occasionally to hear snippets of conversation from Nick and Dean.
“So you're really going to stay with him, huh?” Dean is asking quietly.
The bed is dipping to Jimmy's side and movement proves that Nick is reclining next to him. Jimmy can picture that conversation and of course Dean would win the argument of who got a bed to himself. Certainly not the injured guy. Jimmy almost smiles but holds it back. If they're going to talk about him, he's going to eavesdrop.
Nick's voice comes from close beside him. “Seems like the best choice. Sam's overloaded with classes and, no offense, Dean, but you have terrible bedside manner.”
“What?” Dean definitely sounds offended. “I do not. What about when you got clipped by the knife that poltergeist threw?”
“...You fed me half a bottle of whiskey, told me to shut up and then went to sleep. It was the first time I got hurt on a hunt.”
“Ah, you got over it.”
Jimmy wonders how long these two have been hunting together to have this easy banter. How Nick found Dean. How he got out of the possession of Lucifer or how he got into it in the first place.
Nick's voice softens. “I just think vessels should stick together.”
**
Dean goes to a pharmacy the next morning and buys Jimmy a cushion for Jimmy to sit on and ease the pain in his tailbone.
“It's uh...” Dean says, stifling laughter as he hands it over to Jimmy so he can position it and himself on the backseat of the car. “It's called a tush cush.”
Jimmy glares at him. “I find it disturbing that the world was saved by a child.”
The cushion does make the drive more bearable and that coupled with only one pain pill has Jimmy dozing through a good deal of the drive. They make it the rest of the way to San Diego and Jimmy's awake to breathe in the humid air and take in the palm trees. He's been all over the globe and all over time as Castiel's vessel. But in his own life he's never been outside of Illinois until he struck out across country on an insane ghost hunt. He wishes suddenly that he'd paid more attention to the roads he was driving. He probably passed the world's largest ball of twine and didn't even notice. Claire might have liked that.
They head up to a decent looking apartment building and Dean lets them into the lobby with the spare keys Sam gave him. “Kid's probably at the freakin' library or something,” Dean mutters and takes them up in the elevator.
There's no spare room but Dean pulls out the sofa bed while Jimmy hobbles around the small space on his crutches. It's not ideal but it's better than nothing and just watching Dean and Nick make a bed for him clogs up Jimmy's throat with sudden emotion.
They blow up a slim air mattress to go beside the sofa bed and Nick claims that while Dean retreats into Sam's room. It's been a long day for all of them, the drive twice as long as it should have been to give Jimmy breaks. Dinner had been at a greasy diner an hour ago and now they all fall asleep within an hour of arriving at Sam's. Jimmy feels like one of them should stay awake to say hi to the man but it won't be him.
“Ow, Jesus Christ!” Jimmy is woken by the loud yelp near him and a thump as someone hits the floor with the distinct sound of an air mattresses squeak. “Nick?”
Jimmy squirms onto his side and peers over to see Sam sitting on the floor and rubbing his knee. Nick is half-on the floor, having rolled off the air mattress to get out of the way of Sam's big feet.
“Hey, Sam,” Nick greets, sleep making his voice rough and irritated.
“You had to put this right in front of the door?” Sam demands.
“'S the only place it'd fit.”
Jimmy grins a little and the sofa bed creaks as he shifts, causing both Sam and Nick to look up at him. Sam's expression immediately turns to sympathy and Jimmy looks away. “Hey, Jimmy.”
“Hey,” Jimmy returns. What do these people see when they look at him?
“I'll uh, I'll let you guys get back to sleep.”
“Thank you,” Nick complains and both him and Jimmy watch as Sam clambers away. The apartment falls back into a momentary silence until there's another squawk from Sam's bedroom.
“Dean, what the hell are you doing in my bed?”
“Better go sleep in the bathtub, Sammy.”
The door shuts and then all Jimmy can hear is the murmur of their voices.
Nick chuckles to himself before he's settling down again, air mattress groaning in protest. “G'night,” he says and Jimmy echoes it.
**
Sam wanders through the apartment a couple times through the night and somehow he's still the first one awake in the morning. The smell of coffee wafts through the house and wakes Jimmy. He feels better this morning and he maneuvers his way around Nick on the air mattress to join Sam in the small kitchen.
The cushion Dean got him is placed strategically on one of the chairs at a small table and Jimmy rolls his eyes as he settles on it. He is definitely going to have to thank Dean for this somehow though. He's going to have to thank all of them.
“Bet you didn't expect to be seeing us again.” Sam smiles and pours Jimmy some of the coffee he's obviously come for.
“Ditto.”
Jimmy tries to remember Sam ever looking so sympathetic as Sam settles at the table across from him but there's not much he remembers at all. After the apocalypse, all Jimmy had wanted to do was get away from these guys but now he's back, he feels oddly in place.
“So university, huh?” Jimmy asks.
Sam shrugs. “Thought it might be time to...indulge in some old dreams, I guess.”
Jimmy nods, wishing he could do the same. The happy family with the picket fence. He hopes Sam manages to follow through with that better than he did.
The air mattress groans louder than Nick as the man sits up, knuckling his eyes and glaring over at them. “Coffee?” He asks and Sam indulges by bringing a cup to him.
It's a quiet morning. Dean joins them in time for a bacon and eggs breakfast, announcing before Sam leaves for class that he's going to be taking off.
“I gave Bobby a call, he's got a hunt planned so we're gonna hook up and see what's what.” His leg is jogging beneath the table, itching to move. This is Dean's life, Jimmy thinks as he watches him. There's pride in his eyes, an eagerness to go do the job. The same eagerness Sam holds to get to school.
What about Nick? Jimmy looks over to the man and Nick picks that moment to glance at him but Jimmy can't read a thing in his gaze. And beyond that, what about Jimmy?
**
Dean takes off with easy goodbyes, promising Sam he'll be as careful as ever which isn't really very reassuring at all. He'll be back in a week or so. Not long after Dean's departure, Sam finally heads out as well and that leaves Jimmy alone with Nick.
Should he be nervous? Nick is the guy who said yes to Lucifer after all. But Jimmy only feels curious as Nick starts cleaning away the dishes from breakfast. While the sink is filling with soapy water, Nick thunks Jimmy's antibiotics on the table in front of him and Jimmy finds he can't feel nervous of this man at all.
“Thanks,” Jimmy says and takes his pill. He forgoes the pain pills, tired of feeling detached from the world. He was that way for too long, is still that way even now that Castiel is gone. He's afraid that slipping into that state might be too comfortable and he wants to be here, he does. He wants to try even if he's not succeeding very well so far.
“You can ask me if you want,” Nick says and Jimmy realizes that he's been staring for the last few minutes.
Jimmy hesitates and then shakes his head. “No. When I said yes I thought it was a great idea too. It doesn't really matter why.”
Nick turns, leaning back and gripping the counter with his hands. “So you're not scared of me?”
“No,” Jimmy answers immediately. Then he gives it a moments more thought. “I don't really remember Lucifer, I don't remember much of anything. So why should I be scared of you?”
“Dean is sometimes.” Nick turns back to the dishes, dismissive. Jimmy doesn't understand why but Nick seems almost unhappy with the answer. “I'll check your arm after.” Nick changes the subject and Jimmy lets it go. Being an ex-vessel isn't easy on any of them.
**
The day spent in Sam's apartment passes in the same routine blur that all Jimmy's days seem to have been spent in since Castiel left. He watches a lot of daytime TV and he texts Claire whenever he thinks no one is looking.
Until Nick snaps at him. “Quit texting like we don't know you're doing it and call your daughter.”
Jimmy does and says that he is so so sorry.
The next day is the same, and the one after that. When Sam realizes that Jimmy can, Jimmy starts cooking for them. It gives him something to do, keeps his hands busy while his thoughts stray in no particular direction. Things go back to normal for him and as much as he's not sure how to feel about anything these days, he's not sure how to feel about that either.
Sam is out every day and two days after he leaves, Dean calls and says he'll be longer than he thought. Jimmy thinks that Dean just doesn't really want to come back and face any of them. Nick stays. He sits on the sofa bed with Jimmy and they watch TV together but Nick grows restless quickly and when he disappears for an hour or two, Jimmy doesn't ask where he's been.
Every night he wakes more than once and he always sees Nick laying on the floor beside the sofa bed. Nick will be awake as well sometimes. Or Jimmy will have to reach down and stretch across the short distance between them to nudge Nick awake. Nick has nightmares. Jimmy has nothing.
Jimmy reaches out and brushes his fingers over the scars on Nick's face.
**
**
Hunters don't blend in as well as they think. It's easy to find one when you know what you're looking for and Nick knows exactly what he's looking for.
He wakes up in some hospital in Detroit with John Doe written on his files. They ask him his name and for the longest time, Nick keeps telling them it's Lucifer. For the longest time, that's what he believes. Because Lucifer kept him awake for everything and Nick can hear his voice “This is how we gain vengeance.” Nick asked for that, how can he possibly ask for help from anyone else now?
They assume he's some nut off the street, writing him off and telling him the next time he wants to sleep off a hangover, don't do it in front of the hospital doors. Nick has no idea how he got in front of the hospital in the first place.
His clothes are returned to him, freshly washed and smelling too strongly of fabric softener. Nick catches sight of his face in a mirror while he dresses and remembers. There's scars on his face, old blistered scars along his cheekbones. A day ago they were fresh, they stung. Lucifer never shielded him, not even while Nick burned away around him.
When he remembers the truth, he says nothing. Nick Marsh is a mass murderer with blood all over him.
There are no stains on his clothes but Nick can see it. Red splattered everywhere. It's on his hands, up to his elbows and caked beneath his nails. He has to turn from the mirror before he shatters it under his fist.
He has no ID, no insurance, no money. They give him back his clothes and show him the door and Nick is thankful for as long as it takes him to realize that he can't go home.
Where can he go? Who can he ask for help when Lucifer is still whispering in his head? When the world will still be hunting him?
That's when he decides to find Dean Winchester. Dean is the complete antithesis of everything Lucifer and Nick were. Dean will have to help him. He's done it once because who else would have brought Nick to the hospital? It's the only plan Nick has and he latches onto it, desperate as a starving man.
Luck gives him the means to find Dean. Nick hesitates to think it might be fate.
For two nights he sleeps on the streets but he doesn't complain about it, not even to himself. He gets enough pity from a passerby that he can afford to go into an old diner and get something to drink and eat. That's where he overhears a pair of hunters in the booth behind his. They're talking about rat infestations and electrical problems and cold drafts. But Nick knows what they're not saying and screwing up his courage, he gets up and obtrusively slides into the booth to join them. There is no showing weakness with hunters and after having the devil in his head, there isn't a whole lot left to scare Nick.
“I need to find Dean Winchester,” he tells them.
In the end, he gets the number for Bobby Singer.
“Who wants to know?” Bobby says when Nick calls. Rain is battering against the plastic sides of the pay phone and Nick hunches his shoulders against the chilly air.
“My name's Nick. Dean's the only one that can help me.”
“Nick?” Bobby repeats, suspicion clouding his voice and Nick knows that Bobby knows exactly who he is.
“Please, you have to help me. I don't have anywhere else to go. You can tell Dean to kill me if you want, but just please tell me where he is.”
Something must strike the heart of Bobby because he sighs and gives in, telling Nick that Dean is on a hunt. He scores Dean's cell number but there's no answer when Nick tries to call and just like that, he's out of change and out of luck. With no other idea, he starts hitchhiking towards South Dakota, the area code of Bobby Singer's number.
On the way, he realizes that he can sense the presence of ghosts. And other things as well, attuned to the supernatural world, some current in the air. It draws him on and Nick tells himself to forget about it. He has to get to Bobby's, he can't stop and help anyone else.
Humans aren't worth saving. Look what you've all done. Lucifer's voice hisses through his head. Look what humans did to their own kind, to you.
Nick hesitates, god help him, he stops for a moment and wonders if he should bother. No one helped him. No one saved his family. But he's not Lucifer. He's not a devil. If anything deserves the anger in his veins, it's the thing in that house and Nick follows the current in the air. Ghosts, Nick can sense them. And parked a half a block away sits Dean fucking Winchester's car. Nick bolts into the house, heart suddenly pounding where a second ago, he'd felt as calm as a pool of water. He's there in time to grab the iron bar that Dean has dropped and he slices it through the ghost while it's busy battering Dean against the wall. It shrieks as it disappears.
“Dean-” he starts and Dean launches himself at Nick and together, they crash hard to the floor. The breath rushes from Nick's lungs and the iron pipe clatters from his grip. By the time he can talk, Dean has it across his throat, pressing down and cutting off his air again. “It's me! Nick!” Nick wrenches out.
Dean hesitates and the pressure on Nick's body fades away. He laughs, breathless, exhausted and sure he's gone out of his mind.
**
Nick wakes with a jolt. Sam's apartment is as dark as it can get, blinds pulled closed tightly. Jimmy doesn't like the light very much, Nick has come to realize. Nick gets it. The angels were always bright as the sun but cold as winter night. The air mattress beneath Nick does nothing to fend off the ice Lucifer was always sparking through his veins, every exhalation one that misted the air before them. Jimmy doesn't seem to feel the cold as much though.
Since Jimmy showed up, Nick keeps listing their differences in his mind.
Nick still doesn't entirely understand what happened to him or even what's still happening. He feels bursting with emotions, whether he's terrified out of his mind or so so angry. Lucifer had never allowed Nick the kindness of oblivion. The angel had been locked up for so many thousands of years with no outlet. Nick almost feels sorry for him, almost understands. What sort of person sympathizes with the devil?
In comparison, Jimmy hardly seems to feel much of anything.
Nick watches him and sometimes finds himself willing Jimmy to over react to something. But Jimmy doesn't react very much at all. A burst of humor might shine his eyes for a second but it fizzles quickly. Or fear, like the first time he'd set eyes on Nick. He'll do as he's told and engage in conversation if someone else makes the first move but there's little effort and Nick is sure there's not much thought going on behind his mostly blank eyes. The only time life seems to settle in him is when he's talking to his daughter.
Or in the night, when he reaches over and shakes Nick awake, eyes shinning with sympathy. Not many people look Nick in the eyes these days. It's the scars on his face or for Dean, it's the lingering reminder of Lucifer in his eyes.
Sam had it easy, Nick thinks. Lucifer liked Sam.
“Are you okay?” Jimmy asks and Nick nods, getting ready to settle back into sleep like he's done every night for the last two weeks Jimmy has been here. Only this time Jimmy's fingers don't withdraw so quickly and Jimmy says, “You may as well come up here. It hurts when I have to lean over every night.” There's that spark of humor in Jimmy's voice. The softness he only holds in the dark. “Well?” He pushes when Nick hesitates and carefully shifts across the sofa bed to make room.
Nick jerks into action, clambering up onto the sofa bed and Jimmy lets out a sharp protest as Nick jostles him. “Sorry,” Nick says.
“Tailbone still hurts,” Jimmy replies and Nick nods as they both settle down again.
“And your leg?”
“Not too bad.” Nick can't see Jimmy very well in all the dark but he can hear Jimmy's smile in his voice. “And the rest of me is fine too,” he says before Nick can ask. Jimmy's arm is healing well, Nick checks it every day but the stitches are long gone and the edges of the wound are holding fine. His bruises are fading as well.
Satisfied, Jimmy turns his back on Nick and goes to sleep. Nick drifts awake for a little while, reveling in the warmth of the solid mattress beneath him and Jimmy's body beside him. Jimmy doesn't feel half as cold as Nick does.
**
A chiming noise wakes Nick only a couple hours later, followed by clicking that he can't quite place. When he opens his eyes, there's a bright light that baths Jimmy in its glow.
“What are you doing?” Nick asks, voice rough.
Jimmy jumps and tosses a guilty look back over his shoulder. “Texting Claire.”
Nick feels jealousy rise up in him like a tidal wave. He would give anything to be able to talk to his dead daughter in some way. “It's the middle of the night.”
“Weekend.” Which means it's entirely okay to keep his daughter up all night and Nick snorts. He's never been very patient with Jimmy's devotion to his daughter, from the first moment in the hospital until now. He doesn't understand why he never got the chance to have that, why Jimmy would throw that chance away. Sometimes he finds himself wondering why God punished him but that's only Lucifer speaking to him. Nick wonders if he'll ever be free of that influence, making him want to rip the cell phone from Jimmy's hand and toss it across the room.
Jimmy's tapping away on the keys again and Nick turns over, angry and tense, until Jimmy's hand settles on his shoulder. “Tell me what's wrong.”
“No.”
“You're the one that said vessels need to stick together,” Jimmy insists.
Nick is quiet for a long while and Jimmy's phone chimes at him again but he doesn't move to answer it. “I had a daughter. Not for very long though.”
“Did Lucifer-?”
“No. I had a wife too.” But Nick can't let himself think that Lucifer orchestrated their deaths. It wasn't God wrongly punishing him either. Just happenstance. “So I just don't get how you walked away from yours,” he finishes angrily.
Jimmy doesn't answer him. His phone goes off again and this time he takes his hand away from Nick to reply. Nick half-expects Jimmy to get angry at him, but of course Jimmy doesn't. Jimmy quietly talks to his daughter for a few minutes and then Nick is surprised to find an arm winding around him and holding a phone in front of his face.
“Claire says hi,” Jimmy says and Nick for some reason feels his eyes sting but he forces it back. Jimmy sets the phone down by Nick's head and Jimmy's arm stays draped over him for the rest of the night.
**
It's Nick's first real hunt with Dean.
He's been with Dean for a couple months now, learning everything that Dean has to teach him but so much of it Nick already knows. He knows how to kill monsters (and angels). He can speak Latin. He doesn't need to track them because whenever he gets close to something supernatural, he can sense it. Not just ghosts but everything. It's a tingle at the back of his head so Dean calls it his spidey-sense which always makes Nick roll his eyes. To him it's more like a headache and if the creature is powerful enough, he can get a migraine for the next two days. Dean tells him he's lucky that's his worst problem. But Dean doesn't know the half of it.
Dean teaches him how to keep himself hidden and out of the eyes of the police and even other hunters.
“You were Lucifer, dude,” Dean tells him. “You said yes. It doesn't matter if you had reasons, you need to be careful because some hunters are going to look for an excuse to kill you.”
Nick nods and doesn't think too hard about that being the better option but he feels the anger beneath his skin. Would any hunter have done better under the same situation?
They do their research for a few days and because of that, they're too late to stop the creature - a shifter - from slaughtering an innocent family. Nick walks in on the carnage and sees the shifter and without pause, he bludgeons it with a table lamp until it's whimpering on the ground. Then he guts it with the silver knife Dean gave him.
There's blood up to his elbows and Dean is staring at him in shock. When Nick looks at him, Dean takes a step back and Nick can see Dean's fingers tighten around his own knife as if to raise it to Nick's chest.
“It's just me,” Nick says. Dean doesn't look so sure and when Nick looks down to the mess he's made, Nick isn't so sure either.
**
Nick has moments where he just can't hold everything in and explodes. He's done it to Dean before because Dean could be a pushy little fucker when he wanted and Nick does not want to be pushed, not into anything. He gets tense when there are too many people and he used to work in a hospital. He gets annoyed at small habits, like the way Sam bounces the end of his pencil rapidly on the table when he's reading one of his text books. Hunting acts like an outlet for him and he misses the rush that comes with burying his knife into the chest of some evil son of a bitch.
He hates the way Jimmy just seems to get on with things, no questions, no thought, no nothing. Doesn't Sam's pencil bother him? What about seeing his daughter only through words on a phone? Jealousy wars through Nick alongside his incomprehension and he finds himself yelling, breaking the silence of Sam's apartment so abruptly that both Sam and Jimmy startle. Jimmy's eyes widen in shock and Nick likes that.
“Don't you feel anything?” He spits out at Jimmy.
“Nick,” Sam warns.
“Oh fuck off, Sam. You think you can tell me anything because you were a vessel for a whole day?”
Nick turns abruptly and stalks out of the stifling apartment, aware that he's crossed a line but he's crossed so many by this point that it hardly seems to matter. He slams the door on Sam quietly telling Jimmy that's it's okay. Nick just does this sometimes.
He's expecting to be left alone to walk it off. That's Sam and Dean's usual way of dealing with it, trying to give him the space he so obviously needs. Nick's not entirely sure what he wants and he's annoyed that no one tries to follow him. That is until someone does.
There's the distinctive sound of Jimmy's crutches and hobbling gait coming down the sidewalk behind him. That annoys Nick as well and he'll chalk this down as one of his bad days. He's certain he used to be more level headed than this but he's not sure how to get that back.
“Nick, wait.” Jimmy pants, struggling to catch up. “Come on, man, this isn't fair for a guy on crutches.”
Nick stops, letting Jimmy catch up to him.
“I feel things,” Jimmy insists but to Nick he sounds like he can't quite believe it himself.
“Like what? Guilt for abandoning your daughter? Aren't you pissed that angels did this to us? Don't you want more than this?” Nick is sure there's more than sitting around in Sam's apartment or Dean's car chasing ghosts. But that's more than just another line to cross. It's a chasm and Nick isn't sure how to do it.
Jimmy just stares back at him, a flicker of something in his usually shallow gaze. “I don't know.”
Nick shoves him and Jimmy stumbles back a step, wincing as his weight comes down on his cast. “Feel something. Do something!” Help me, Nick thinks, and he shoves Jimmy again and this time, Jimmy reacts.
Jimmy stabs his crutch between Nick's legs, a flare of anger in his gaze, and Nick trips. He drags them both down to the ground, Jimmy landing on top of him on the sidewalk.
“Don't pretend like you know what's in my head,” Jimmy growls at him. “And don't ever tell me how I feel about my daughter.”
But Nick is hardly listening. He just wants to keep this fire going in Jimmy's eyes and he catches Jimmy off guard with an elbow in his ribs and they grapple on the ground. It lasts all of a minute and Nick can hear footsteps running up to them and someone yelling at them to stop. But it's Jimmy's whole body shuddering beneath him that stops them and Jimmy's voice yelping out “Wait wait, fuck, ow,” in genuine pain. They've struck his tailbone in just the wrong way against the pavement and he's gone stiff as a board, his fingers digging into Nick's forearms.
“Fuck, stop,” Jimmy pants and Nick's exuberance turns to worry.
“Are you okay?”
Jimmy shakes his head and laughter starts bubbling out of his chest. Nick stares at Jimmy like he's lost his mind but that makes Jimmy laugh harder until Nick has to join him. He helps Jimmy up to his feet and retrieves Jimmy's crutches. Any onlookers have walked away, writing the pair of them off. Sam just shakes his head at them when they come back inside and Nick pops the tabs on a beer for each of them.
**
“I do feel things,” Jimmy tells him after a few more routine days have slid by.
The apartment is dark again. Through the wall at their heads, Sam snores occasionally. Jimmy has been fidgeting all night, when usually he simply turns over away from Nick and falls immediately into sleep. Nick has never seen Jimmy fidget before. He can tell that Jimmy has been building up the courage to say this for awhile.
“But it's...hard. The whole time Cas was in me, there was nothing. I couldn't see anything or do anything. I was just there, like a table is there. I still feel like that.”
Nick turns over but all he can see is the dark outline of Jimmy's profile. He can feel Jimmy picking at his fingernails until Nick reaches out and threads their fingers together.
“Leaving Amelia and Claire, I was terrified and excited. Every time I found a spirit? I got such a rush. Every time I hear Claire's voice or I get a text from her, I feel so high. Even when you shoved me, I just...” Jimmy trails off and shakes his head. “But it never lasts.”
Nick feels a swell of sympathy for him.
Well, if Jimmy wants those rushes then Nick can help him. All Nick wants is an outlet for his overwhelming emotions and suddenly Jimmy seems perfect for that.
“I can try to help,” Nick says. He drags they're joined hands down Jimmy's chest and stomach to settle in the end over the front of Jimmy's boxers. For a moment, he thinks Jimmy is going to squirm away from him or punch him. It would be a reaction at least. Jimmy's heart is beating so hard that it vibrates through his body and Nick can feel it. But it means that Jimmy is feeling something as well, whether that's discomfort or fear or excitement.
Finally Jimmy parts his legs just a little in invitation and lets out a sigh. “Yeah, okay.”
Nick closes his mouth over Jimmy's and pours everything he can into it.
**
Jimmy moves stiffly over the next few days and Nick is worried he might have hurt the man in his own exuberance but when he asks, Jimmy shakes him off. Sam won't quite look at them but he doesn't mention it so neither do they. They carry on while Sam is at classes or hopefully asleep in his own room.
Nick pushes Jimmy up against the table in the middle of the day or mouths along the back of his neck in the middle of the night. Jimmy doesn't complain that he's a little rough and Nick always backs off if Jimmy hisses in pain or tells Nick to just wait a second. Maybe it's not the best coping method they could have found but it's better than a lot of alternatives. Putting a bullet into his head for one, and Nick has considered that more than once. Instead, when he gets overwhelmed or when Jimmy has spent too long sitting in the kitchen unmoving, he touches Jimmy and Jimmy always responds to him.
“You couldn't get this from your wife?” Nick asks him one night, when he's carefully pushed Jimmy onto his back and slid their cocks together.
Jimmy laughs. “Not unless she was willing to strap on a...y'know, strap on.” He reaches down to wrap his fist around them. “I have more plans for us, as soon as this tailbone heals. But this is good. This is new.”
“And when it's not anymore?”
Jimmy hesitates. “We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
**
Nick doesn't ask when that bridge might come up. It doesn't matter. Life is a series of short events these days anyway. A hunt here, another there, now Jimmy. And yeah, Nick knows he's messed up. He knows that Jimmy is, that PTSD is probably just one in a list of problems and this isn't the way to fix it. The thing is that he doesn't know how to fix it. He doesn't know what else to do about the burning anger that builds up inside him except let it out. It feels so good when he lets it out, he wants to do it again and again, and Jimmy never argues with him, getting off on the rush of it as much as Nick does, even if it's for different reasons.
Nick is almost positive Sam has walked in on them more than once. Sam is away from the apartment as often as he can be and Nick gets the distinct impression that they've past worn out their welcome.
They start making plans to leave. When Sam is out of the apartment, they sit and pool together their resources and their knowledge, as if they're actual hunters. They are, aren't they? Nick has built up a small store of weapons, both hand me downs from Dean and things he's bought over the months. He's got fake ID's from Dean and the know how to make them for Jimmy. They spend hours every day bent over newspapers or clicking through online articles.
“Here's a good one,” Jimmy says and Nick walks over to where Jimmy is sitting at Sam's desktop. He leans over Jimmy's shoulder and Jimmy's hair tickles his nose. Jimmy himself is becoming as addictive as the outpourings of anger and Nick inhales deeply for a moment, ready to maybe distract them both when a window flashes open on the screen.
“You talk to your daughter while looking for things to kill?” Nick asks when he realizes it's a chat window.
“Who said I was looking for things to kill?” Jimmy retorts and brings the other window to the front.
Nick's eyebrows shoot up. “The...world's largest ball of twine?”
Jimmy shrugs. “It could be fun. Claire suggested it...” He suddenly sounds unsure of himself, focusing back on the computer, clicking back to the chat window with his daughter. “You know, just until my bones heal.”
Nick tries not to read the almost heartbreaking sweet interaction between Jimmy and Claire. It makes him question if they're doing the right thing. Maybe they should both go home, get out of this while they still can. But there is no going home and there is no getting out. Nick turns his face against Jimmy's neck and stays there until Jimmy's arms wrap around him in a tight hug.
If they can't get out, maybe they could at least take a vacation.
**
Dean comes back and that seems as good a time as any for Jimmy and Nick to say they're leaving.
“It's past time we got out of your way,” Jimmy says when Dean and Sam exchange glances. Nick's hand is resting low on Jimmy's back, protective like he thinks Dean or Sam might try to stop them. Dean might, as he narrows his eyes at Nick in something close to a warning. Sam tries to hide it but Nick thinks he exhales quickly in relief.
If anyone knows Nick these days, it's Dean. They were on the road together for months, just the two of them, Dean showing him the ropes of hunting. Most things Nick already knew, all those leftover ways to kill things horribly, passed down to him from Lucifer.
Dean knows that Nick can be violent and merciless, but he is never that way with Jimmy. Jimmy is there to even him out and Nick is there to pick Jimmy up. Jimmy makes sure that Nick is careful.
Lucifer will always be present, though. The way Castiel will always be present in Jimmy's mind. Jimmy still forgets to think, that he needs to do that now, and sits for hours staring at nothing. Nick still feels a sudden pulse of throbbing anger than he can't always place. He punched Dean once out of that anger so maybe Dean has every right to be worried about Jimmy.
But Dean doesn't say a word and Jimmy goes on to explain what they have planned though he leaves out the details. This is Nick and Jimmy's plan, this is the best escape they have for however long it lasts. He reassures them that they did research this time, they're prepared.
“I've got the devil with me, what could go wrong?” Jimmy laughs and Nick smiles. There's new depth in Jimmy's gaze, slowly replacing that glassy expression of his.
Dean doesn't laugh and it's no surprise when Dean draws Nick away at the first opportunity.
“If you hurt him, so help me God, I will hunt you down.”
Nick accepts the threat but he still wonders who Dean thinks he's protecting. Jimmy? Or Castiel. It's one reason why they have to get out of here. Dean and Sam will always look at Nick, the ice in his eyes and the scars on his face, and see Lucifer. They'll always look at Jimmy and wish it was Castiel.
“I'm not going to hurt him,” Nick promises.
“Where are you going to go?” Dean asks, not at all convinced.
Nick doesn't even feel irritated. This might not be the right thing to do but it's the only thing. “There's this thing in Minnesota.”
“And how are you going to go?”
“I don't know.” Nick pauses. “Bus?”
Which is how they end up on a greyhound with a seven day ticket to anywhere. Somehow they seem to have forgotten their weapons and their research but whatever, Nick thinks, they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.
Author: thunder_nari
Recipient: joyyjpg
Word count: ~10 500
Characters/pairings: Jimmy Novak/Nick
Rating: R
Warnings: angst, brief mention of suicidal thoughts
Summary: For two years, Jimmy never had to think, he never had to feel. Now Castiel is gone and he can't do either. For one year, all Nick felt was overwhelming hatred and pain. Now Lucifer is gone and that's all he feels. Jimmy doesn't feel enough, Nick feels too much, so they try to find a way to bridge the gap and balance each other out. Naturally this all happens on Sam's sofa. An AU from 5.22 Swan Song.
Author notes: Written for spnraritiesfest. I didn't work with the prompts so much, I'm sorry joyyjpg. But I did get some of the 'likes' in there. Including 'angst', 'banter' and a pseudo-road trip. I hope you like it!
Beta'd by tawg, thank you for being so awesome and quick.
AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/264200
**
Bridge
**
Jimmy has fallen asleep in front of the television again. His back is stiff and an infomercial for some magic screen door is on the screen. It works with magnets. Jimmy stares at it and bets it keeps insects out but not demons or monsters or psychotic hunters.
Maybe he's turning a little agoraphobic these days, but like so many of his thoughts it doesn't bother him the way it should.
Sometimes Jimmy expects Castiel to just drop back inside him and that makes it excusable to stay home. To not get a job, to not reacquaint with friends or neighbors. As if these walls could keep an angel out. He'd even found a butcher because lambs blood kept angels out, right? Amelia had made him wash it off the door frame.
Amelia never came to wake him for bed anymore. For awhile it had been good between them again, like being with someone for the first time, experiencing everything new. They were happy for a while or something close to it and then that newness had started to wear off. Jimmy had started wondering 'what next?' and Amelia started wondering 'when are you going to leave now?'
“I don't want to leave. But how am I supposed to control it, Aimes?” he'd asked desperately. There was the blood of a sheep beneath his fingernails and it was swirling red in the bucket of soapy water at his feet.
“You shouldn't have said yes in the first place.” She had said it with a resigned sigh. She knew somehow that his thoughts didn't rest with her.
His thoughts didn't rest much anywhere these days and he often lost himself in a blank gaze until he dozed off. Amelia had stopped waking him to come to bed days ago.
Jimmy understands. Some part of Amelia that grows stronger all the time blames him for what happened to her. Because of him, Amelia knows about the shadows of the world and she knows what it feels like when one of those shadows takes you over. Because of him, Amelia knows what it's like to watch her husband fade away a second time before her eyes.
Because of Jimmy, their daughter knows the loss of an angel and what it feels like when her own hands kill what were once innocent men.
It's Claire who says to him, while Jimmy is still lying in the recliner and the television has started talking about miracle bras, “There's something going on in the house next door.”
Jimmy shifts his blank stare from the infomercial and blinks at her to try and gather his thoughts together. He'd spent so long without need for thoughts. “What?”
“Where Roger lived.”
A new family had moved into the long abandoned house a couple weeks ago. Jimmy remembers watching the U-Haul pull in and the sharp bark of a Border Collie. He doesn't need to ask to know that by 'something' she means 'monster'. “How do you know?” he asks, finally sitting up and rolling his head to work the kinks from his neck.
Claire shrugs and Jimmy's little girl is looking at him with something like pity. “It's easy to see when you look.”
It sounds like she's telling him to pull his head out of his ass and Jimmy blinks at her. That night he checks it out and Claire is right. He's standing on the sidewalk under one of the street lights. The house is quiet, the new family is asleep the way Jimmy should be. Amelia will worry, he thinks, except Amelia is so used to him not being there that she won't notice.
A light near one of the front windows begins to flicker on and off, and there's a charge in the air that sets the hair along Jimmy's arms on end. A spirit? Jimmy focuses on it and its presence crawls along his skin in a way that makes him wonder how he hadn't noticed it before.
He tries to ignore it but now he knows it's right there living beside him and he can always feel it. There's something in that house and Jimmy can guess who it is. It's not anyone he ever wants to face. He ignores it until someone is dead.
An ambulance comes and takes the body away. The family go as well, for now at least. Jimmy watches from his kitchen window with his heart in his throat and he knows Claire wants him to go over there. She told him to look. Open your eyes, Jimmy, there's a lot in this world that you can't be blind to anymore. Jimmy tells himself that, takes a deep breath, and breaks into Roger's old house while it's empty.
He crawls in through a window in the back and immediately he's hit with an icy blast of air that turns his breath to mist. A moment later and Roger is flickering into view before Jimmy. An angry red gash mars his throat.
“I watched it come into my house,” Roger says and Jimmy listens, fear ticking away at the back of his mind. “I watched it kill my wife. I killed her. I felt it inside me like tar.”
Jimmy's vision is blurring at the pure agony in Roger's voice. “I'm sorry. I let it in, it's my fault,” Jimmy whispers.
“I'll never let anyone in this house again.”
Roger throws Jimmy backwards so hard that he crashes through the window. The glass splinters cut into him but Jimmy can hardly feel them. Jimmy runs, looking back over his shoulder, heart pounding, but Roger doesn't follow him. He thinks he sees the menacing shadow of Roger watching from the broken window. How could his best friend turn into that while Jimmy stood by and did nothing?
That night, after he's dug up Roger's grave, he reads final rites as the bones burn. He prays Roger is given guidance on his way home and he asks forgiveness for his trespasses against Roger's family and the new family living in that house.
**
Jimmy is exhausted when he gets home. It's already dawn and he falls into bed. A few minutes later and Amelia is getting up. She has a job. She has to get Claire to school. She doesn't ask Jimmy where he was all night. Jimmy stays home but for once he feels accomplishment tingling along his limbs. He can't feel the ghost next door now, the air is cleansed and he's certain that Roger has moved on to that better place. He doesn't know how he knows, he just does.
It's easy to see when you look, Claire told him. Jimmy sleeps until noon and then gets up and goes out of the house. He looks. He picks a random direction from his house and starts walking. Before too long there's a subtle sensation of cool air along his arms, and almost without his say so, his feet take him to stand outside the yard of a townhouse. It's just like any other on the block. Except in the front yard of this one there is a little girl, gray edged and smiling at him. Jimmy watches as she floats on light feet around the yard as if making sure everything is fine. Until a bright light envelopes her and the girl and Jimmy's sense of her are gone.
There are no other restless spirits to encounter but each day Jimmy goes out to look for them. After a week, he hunts the streets of Pontiac by public transport. Amelia always uses the car and Jimmy won't ask her for it.
Many days Jimmy comes home late. He misses dinner a handful of times and when he finally finds another vengeful spirit, he doesn't come back until morning. There's graveyard dirt beneath his fingernails again, and caked to his clothes that are drenched through with sweat. Jimmy is sure that Dean and Sam never had it this hard. He read the spirit last rites again and maybe it will help guide them where they want to go. Now he can't stop smiling as he heads towards the shower but he sets foot on the first stair and Amelia's voice stops him cold.
“Where were you?” Her voice is bland but she knows exactly where he was and it's worse than being caught cheating. “You can't do this here. You can't bring this into our house again.”
“I didn't bring it in the first time. It found me,” Jimmy snaps at her. Tired and bone sore and feeling good for first time in weeks. How dare she try to take this away from him.
“You're the one who listened to it.”
Jimmy looks down, unable to refute the accusation in her tone. He did listen. To Castiel and now to the pull of the unknown, of ghosts, and the emptiness inside him. When he has no answer to give, Amelia sighs.
“I want you to leave.”
Jimmy doesn't even try to argue.
**
“You're going to go hunt monsters?” Claire asks him while Jimmy packs a scattering of belongings into a couple duffel bags.
He smiles and shrugs. “I don't know. Maybe.”
She jumps up onto the bed, sitting on the edge with a slight bounce and Jimmy can't look at her. “Can I help?” She really isn't helping.
“Don't be silly. Mom needs you here.”
“What about you?” She reaches out to touch his arm, forcing him to stop and look at her.
He forces himself to smile at her. “Hey, I know people,” he says in a light tone and turns back to packing. “I'll find someone.”
“You can call me,” she offers and he stops. As if he wouldn't call her. Everyday. And he only wishes it would be fair on her to take her along but he doesn't want grave dirt beneath her fingernails. He doesn't want lamb's blood staining her jeans.
His eyes are welling up. “Yeah, of course I will.” She hugs him and lets him go a lot easier than he does to her. But she already knows she can live without him, she did it for two years. Jimmy supposes he knows that he can manage as well.
**
Jimmy heads out of town via a five hundred dollar car he bought a few days ago with money he stole from his wife. It runs- Barely. He manages to get across a whole three states before the engine practically falls out of it. He deals with two vengeful spirits in that time and one poltergeist. When he hits Colorado, that's when the engine dies and he's back on a bus. He has enough money to get half-way across Utah and then he's kind of screwed.
In Beaver, Utah, he gets a job washing dishes at a run-down diner. He doesn't like to stop, though. When he stops for too long, his thoughts begin to glaze over again. A day or two have been his longest stays at any one town so far. Long enough to deal with a vengeful spirit if there's one there. But he has no more cash for food or hotels and this place pays him under the table and doesn't ask for references. In return, Jimmy doesn't site them for the hundred and one probable health code violations even if he wants to.
There is a job in this town though so it's not too bad.
Jimmy works for a week, twelve hours a day and in return, he gets five bucks an hour and they let him sleep in an old apartment above the diner that he shares with a waitress who looks even more down on her luck than he is. He's finally allowed a day off after seven and he spends it walking around the town. That's when he finds the job. That's when he makes his first and likely last mistake when he doesn't realize there are three spirits in this house.
Though he's honestly not sure if it's them that cause his fall or if it's just the rotting floorboards of the old two story building. Either way, he crashes through the second floor, hits the first and goes all the way to the basement. It's freezing down here and he can sense the presence of the spirits like sharp fingernails dragging down his spine.
There's blood dripping down his forearm, caught on a broken piece of wood. His ankle is at the wrong angle and there's so much pain through his pelvis that tears sting his eyes and he knows he's not getting up.
The spirits seem content to let him linger. He doesn't see them and he's unsure if the air is so cold from their presence or if he's going into shock. If he managed to struggle to his feet, would they even let him pass?
For the rest of the night, he stays on the dirty floor of the basement, slipping into unconsciousness but something wakes him. There's dawn light coming through the hole he put in the floor by the time he manages to drag his mind together enough to grapple for his cell phone.
His fingers hit the buttons automatically and instead of an ambulance dispatch or the police, Claire's voice comes through the line. He kept that promise, at least. He calls her everyday.
“Hey, baby.” He's surprised at how hoarse his voice sounds and he clears his throat.
“Hey, dad,” comes the sleepy reply. Jimmy can picture Claire rubbing her hand over her eyes and he suddenly feels guilty for calling her cell so early. He's surprised she answered it at all, nothing gets his girl out of bed. Then he remembers that she's got a special ring tone for him and everything. “Why're you calling so early?”
“What time is it?” he asks.
“Like, 6am.”
He looks at the dim light coming through the broken floorboards and shivers at the cool air. It makes him shift a little and a fresh spike of pain makes him stifle a gasp.
“...What's wrong?” Claire sounds suddenly alert.
“Nothing, I uh... I guess I just missed you.” He is absolutely going to cry. “I'm really sorry.”
“Sorry for what? What's going on? Dad?”
But his fingers have gone numb and the phone slips from his grasp. He can't find the energy again to pick it up and he can hear the distant sound of Claire yelling his name.
**
“Hey, Jimmy. Jimmy?”
Jimmy blinks his eyes open to a light shinning into his face and winces. That's the devil in front of him and for a moment all Jimmy does is stare blandly at him. Then the realization hits him that he's not ready to die yet and he tries to scrabble backwards but his body screams at him and he's not sure he moves even an inch.
“Take it easy,” Lucifer tells him and then absurdly introduces himself. “I'm Nick. Dean!” 'Nick' calls back over his shoulder while Jimmy soundlessly repeats the name. “I got him!”
Heavy boots clatter down the stairs and Dean steps into view, the beam of Nick's flashlight catching him. There is someone Jimmy can trust and he lets his eyes slip closed again.
**
Jimmy wakes up warm. He can feel drugs swimming in his mind, can hear the sound of a heart monitor, but most importantly, there's no scratch of a ghost at his back and there's no pain accompanying every breath.
For some reason Lucifer is sitting by his bed reading a daily digest. “Lucifer?” Jimmy whispers and kind eyes turn on him.
“I'm Nick,” the man says and he sets down the magazine to extend his hand. Jimmy takes it clumsily, confusion pouring through but he thinks he might be too tired to care.
“What happened?” Jimmy asks and he startles a little as another voice barges in.
“You didn't research before going into a hunt,” Dean informs him, a little too pleased sounding with himself and he drops into a chair next to Nick.
Jimmy closes his eyes and it comes back to him. “There were three of them.”
“Yep,” Dean says. “But don't worry, we went back and finished them off while you were out.”
Jimmy really doesn't care. He falls asleep again.
**
“Were you hunting?” Jimmy asks when he's awake, watching as Nick jumps and looks over at him. Maybe Jimmy should have cleared his throat or something to warn Nick he was awake but it's a little amusing watching the devil startle.
Nick shakes his head. “We were just leaving California. Dean got a call from your daughter, scared out of her mind.” Jimmy grimaces. He vaguely remembers that phone call and wonders now how he'd been so stupid as to make it. “She told us what you were doing and what town you were in last.” Jimmy always kept her well updated on where he was each day. “That's a stupid idea, you know.”
“What? I was out of my mind, I didn't mean to call-”
“Not that. Telling her where you are every day? That doesn't strike you as a bad trail to leave for demons or other hunters even?”
Jimmy stays silent, staring down at the blankets that are pulled up to his chest. Was he putting his daughter in danger even though he wasn't anywhere near her? He feels sick at the anger in Nick's tone.
“You don't think saying 'yes' to Lucifer was a stupid idea?”
“Go back to sleep,” is all Nick responds with so Jimmy does.
**
“Let's see,” Dean is rattling off all the damage Jimmy managed to do to himself. Jimmy has already heard it all. Not ten minutes ago, in fact, when a doctor had been in to check on him. But Dean seems determined to rub Jimmy's stupidity into his face and Jimmy can hear the unspoken words; You're not a hunter. And this is why.
“You managed to concuss yourself, slice open your arm, break your ankle and tailbone. What else?”
“Internal bleeding,” Nick pipes in.
Jimmy glares at them. Maybe a little sympathy would be nice. He wants to call Claire but after his last conversation with Nick, he's afraid to ask if he can. “How long do I have to stay in here?” he asks instead. Where is he supposed to go when he's let out? How is he even paying for this? Nick seems able to read the questions in him.
“Dean...got you some insurance and fake ID. So they won't kick you out right away. You're stuck here for a few days and then we're going to take you to California.”
“What's in California?” Jimmy asks.
“Sam,” Dean says. Jimmy finally realizes what's been missing in the room. At his questioning look, Dean goes on, a mix of pride and uncertainty in his eyes. “He decided to go back to school. Got a nice apartment there and everything. He'll look after you.”
Jimmy would rather go home but he nods. Where is home these days anyway?
“I will too.” Nick's words have Jimmy blinking at the man in surprise and Nick shrugs, momentarily uncomfortable. “Vessels. We oughta keep together. Plus, I used to be a nurse. I'll be more help than Sam.”
Jimmy has one more question to ask. “How did you find me?”
“Turns out ex-vessel's are like walking EMF meters,” Dean says. “Can't get Nick within a hundred feet of a spirit before his ghost-senses are tingling. Guessing that goes for you, too.”
Jimmy nods, eyes wide as he stares at Nick. Maybe they should stick together. “Nice to know I'm not the only freak in the room.” He tries some humor and the corner of Nick's mouth twitches to a smile.
**
Three days in the hospital don't pass very pleasantly. Not when they take the IV out of his arm, and with that the morphine drip. He's switched onto prescription painkillers and antibiotics for the remainder of the week to deal with the infection in his arm. Once the antibiotics are done, that's a good time to have the stitches taken out though they've already begun to itch.
Jimmy just nods through all of it, content to let Dean and Nick handle the details of his recovery. A nurse had brought in some of his personal effects while Nick and Dean had been out of the room, his phone among the items taken from his pockets. Now Jimmy is too busy during his awake moments surreptitiously texting Claire to listen.
They give him crutches to practice walking on a bit but Jimmy already knows his way around them. It's not the first time he's broken his leg. Last time had been trying to jump his bike over a garbage can when he was fifteen in an attempt to impress Amelia. He bets Amelia is real impressed with him now.
They're set with his medications and instructions for what to do once they reach San Diego, California, where Sam is going to school for law which doesn't fit with the image of Sam Jimmy has in his mind. It's a ten hour trip with Dean's speeding and breaks thrown in but Jimmy can't even make it two hours.
Dean's car vibrates worse than anything Jimmy has felt and it crawls along his spine and settles in his broken tailbone until Jimmy's eyes are stinging with tears and he has to gasp out, “I can't do this.”
They pull over long enough to let the ache ease off after Jimmy takes two of his painkillers. He discovers it's a bad idea almost as soon as Dean puts them back onto the road. His tailbone still hurts though not with the same edge to it. But the pills on top of Dean's boat of a car make him so nauseous he's vomiting all over himself in an effort not to get it on the leather seats.
Nick hauls him into a bathroom at a gas stop while Dean curses over his car. “Ignore him,” Nick says once they make it into the dirty bathroom. He props Jimmy up against the sink and grabs some paper towel to wet beneath the tap and begin carefully cleaning Jimmy.
“Jesus, I can clean myself up,” Jimmy snaps. He immediately feels guilty for it but Nick doesn't meet his eyes and he doesn't stop. “A week ago I was vanquishing spirits, now I'm having vomit cleaned off my shirt by Lucifer.” It might be amusing, if Jimmy could push his emotions that far and didn't just feel tired instead.
“Vanquishing?” Nick asks with a raised eyebrow and Jimmy shrugs. Nick smiles and goes on to reassure. “I was a nurse. I've seen way way worse, believe me. Now rinse your mouth out.”
Jimmy does as he's told and in the end, he throws his shirt out and Nick fetches him a fresh one from the duffel Dean had retrieved for him. Nick helps him into the backseat since Dean evidently isn't speaking to him. At least there's enough room for Jimmy to sit sideways, casted leg resting across the seats. They manage to get him to a nearby motel and Jimmy spends the rest of the day dozing off.
He wakes occasionally to hear snippets of conversation from Nick and Dean.
“So you're really going to stay with him, huh?” Dean is asking quietly.
The bed is dipping to Jimmy's side and movement proves that Nick is reclining next to him. Jimmy can picture that conversation and of course Dean would win the argument of who got a bed to himself. Certainly not the injured guy. Jimmy almost smiles but holds it back. If they're going to talk about him, he's going to eavesdrop.
Nick's voice comes from close beside him. “Seems like the best choice. Sam's overloaded with classes and, no offense, Dean, but you have terrible bedside manner.”
“What?” Dean definitely sounds offended. “I do not. What about when you got clipped by the knife that poltergeist threw?”
“...You fed me half a bottle of whiskey, told me to shut up and then went to sleep. It was the first time I got hurt on a hunt.”
“Ah, you got over it.”
Jimmy wonders how long these two have been hunting together to have this easy banter. How Nick found Dean. How he got out of the possession of Lucifer or how he got into it in the first place.
Nick's voice softens. “I just think vessels should stick together.”
**
Dean goes to a pharmacy the next morning and buys Jimmy a cushion for Jimmy to sit on and ease the pain in his tailbone.
“It's uh...” Dean says, stifling laughter as he hands it over to Jimmy so he can position it and himself on the backseat of the car. “It's called a tush cush.”
Jimmy glares at him. “I find it disturbing that the world was saved by a child.”
The cushion does make the drive more bearable and that coupled with only one pain pill has Jimmy dozing through a good deal of the drive. They make it the rest of the way to San Diego and Jimmy's awake to breathe in the humid air and take in the palm trees. He's been all over the globe and all over time as Castiel's vessel. But in his own life he's never been outside of Illinois until he struck out across country on an insane ghost hunt. He wishes suddenly that he'd paid more attention to the roads he was driving. He probably passed the world's largest ball of twine and didn't even notice. Claire might have liked that.
They head up to a decent looking apartment building and Dean lets them into the lobby with the spare keys Sam gave him. “Kid's probably at the freakin' library or something,” Dean mutters and takes them up in the elevator.
There's no spare room but Dean pulls out the sofa bed while Jimmy hobbles around the small space on his crutches. It's not ideal but it's better than nothing and just watching Dean and Nick make a bed for him clogs up Jimmy's throat with sudden emotion.
They blow up a slim air mattress to go beside the sofa bed and Nick claims that while Dean retreats into Sam's room. It's been a long day for all of them, the drive twice as long as it should have been to give Jimmy breaks. Dinner had been at a greasy diner an hour ago and now they all fall asleep within an hour of arriving at Sam's. Jimmy feels like one of them should stay awake to say hi to the man but it won't be him.
“Ow, Jesus Christ!” Jimmy is woken by the loud yelp near him and a thump as someone hits the floor with the distinct sound of an air mattresses squeak. “Nick?”
Jimmy squirms onto his side and peers over to see Sam sitting on the floor and rubbing his knee. Nick is half-on the floor, having rolled off the air mattress to get out of the way of Sam's big feet.
“Hey, Sam,” Nick greets, sleep making his voice rough and irritated.
“You had to put this right in front of the door?” Sam demands.
“'S the only place it'd fit.”
Jimmy grins a little and the sofa bed creaks as he shifts, causing both Sam and Nick to look up at him. Sam's expression immediately turns to sympathy and Jimmy looks away. “Hey, Jimmy.”
“Hey,” Jimmy returns. What do these people see when they look at him?
“I'll uh, I'll let you guys get back to sleep.”
“Thank you,” Nick complains and both him and Jimmy watch as Sam clambers away. The apartment falls back into a momentary silence until there's another squawk from Sam's bedroom.
“Dean, what the hell are you doing in my bed?”
“Better go sleep in the bathtub, Sammy.”
The door shuts and then all Jimmy can hear is the murmur of their voices.
Nick chuckles to himself before he's settling down again, air mattress groaning in protest. “G'night,” he says and Jimmy echoes it.
**
Sam wanders through the apartment a couple times through the night and somehow he's still the first one awake in the morning. The smell of coffee wafts through the house and wakes Jimmy. He feels better this morning and he maneuvers his way around Nick on the air mattress to join Sam in the small kitchen.
The cushion Dean got him is placed strategically on one of the chairs at a small table and Jimmy rolls his eyes as he settles on it. He is definitely going to have to thank Dean for this somehow though. He's going to have to thank all of them.
“Bet you didn't expect to be seeing us again.” Sam smiles and pours Jimmy some of the coffee he's obviously come for.
“Ditto.”
Jimmy tries to remember Sam ever looking so sympathetic as Sam settles at the table across from him but there's not much he remembers at all. After the apocalypse, all Jimmy had wanted to do was get away from these guys but now he's back, he feels oddly in place.
“So university, huh?” Jimmy asks.
Sam shrugs. “Thought it might be time to...indulge in some old dreams, I guess.”
Jimmy nods, wishing he could do the same. The happy family with the picket fence. He hopes Sam manages to follow through with that better than he did.
The air mattress groans louder than Nick as the man sits up, knuckling his eyes and glaring over at them. “Coffee?” He asks and Sam indulges by bringing a cup to him.
It's a quiet morning. Dean joins them in time for a bacon and eggs breakfast, announcing before Sam leaves for class that he's going to be taking off.
“I gave Bobby a call, he's got a hunt planned so we're gonna hook up and see what's what.” His leg is jogging beneath the table, itching to move. This is Dean's life, Jimmy thinks as he watches him. There's pride in his eyes, an eagerness to go do the job. The same eagerness Sam holds to get to school.
What about Nick? Jimmy looks over to the man and Nick picks that moment to glance at him but Jimmy can't read a thing in his gaze. And beyond that, what about Jimmy?
**
Dean takes off with easy goodbyes, promising Sam he'll be as careful as ever which isn't really very reassuring at all. He'll be back in a week or so. Not long after Dean's departure, Sam finally heads out as well and that leaves Jimmy alone with Nick.
Should he be nervous? Nick is the guy who said yes to Lucifer after all. But Jimmy only feels curious as Nick starts cleaning away the dishes from breakfast. While the sink is filling with soapy water, Nick thunks Jimmy's antibiotics on the table in front of him and Jimmy finds he can't feel nervous of this man at all.
“Thanks,” Jimmy says and takes his pill. He forgoes the pain pills, tired of feeling detached from the world. He was that way for too long, is still that way even now that Castiel is gone. He's afraid that slipping into that state might be too comfortable and he wants to be here, he does. He wants to try even if he's not succeeding very well so far.
“You can ask me if you want,” Nick says and Jimmy realizes that he's been staring for the last few minutes.
Jimmy hesitates and then shakes his head. “No. When I said yes I thought it was a great idea too. It doesn't really matter why.”
Nick turns, leaning back and gripping the counter with his hands. “So you're not scared of me?”
“No,” Jimmy answers immediately. Then he gives it a moments more thought. “I don't really remember Lucifer, I don't remember much of anything. So why should I be scared of you?”
“Dean is sometimes.” Nick turns back to the dishes, dismissive. Jimmy doesn't understand why but Nick seems almost unhappy with the answer. “I'll check your arm after.” Nick changes the subject and Jimmy lets it go. Being an ex-vessel isn't easy on any of them.
**
The day spent in Sam's apartment passes in the same routine blur that all Jimmy's days seem to have been spent in since Castiel left. He watches a lot of daytime TV and he texts Claire whenever he thinks no one is looking.
Until Nick snaps at him. “Quit texting like we don't know you're doing it and call your daughter.”
Jimmy does and says that he is so so sorry.
The next day is the same, and the one after that. When Sam realizes that Jimmy can, Jimmy starts cooking for them. It gives him something to do, keeps his hands busy while his thoughts stray in no particular direction. Things go back to normal for him and as much as he's not sure how to feel about anything these days, he's not sure how to feel about that either.
Sam is out every day and two days after he leaves, Dean calls and says he'll be longer than he thought. Jimmy thinks that Dean just doesn't really want to come back and face any of them. Nick stays. He sits on the sofa bed with Jimmy and they watch TV together but Nick grows restless quickly and when he disappears for an hour or two, Jimmy doesn't ask where he's been.
Every night he wakes more than once and he always sees Nick laying on the floor beside the sofa bed. Nick will be awake as well sometimes. Or Jimmy will have to reach down and stretch across the short distance between them to nudge Nick awake. Nick has nightmares. Jimmy has nothing.
Jimmy reaches out and brushes his fingers over the scars on Nick's face.
**
**
Hunters don't blend in as well as they think. It's easy to find one when you know what you're looking for and Nick knows exactly what he's looking for.
He wakes up in some hospital in Detroit with John Doe written on his files. They ask him his name and for the longest time, Nick keeps telling them it's Lucifer. For the longest time, that's what he believes. Because Lucifer kept him awake for everything and Nick can hear his voice “This is how we gain vengeance.” Nick asked for that, how can he possibly ask for help from anyone else now?
They assume he's some nut off the street, writing him off and telling him the next time he wants to sleep off a hangover, don't do it in front of the hospital doors. Nick has no idea how he got in front of the hospital in the first place.
His clothes are returned to him, freshly washed and smelling too strongly of fabric softener. Nick catches sight of his face in a mirror while he dresses and remembers. There's scars on his face, old blistered scars along his cheekbones. A day ago they were fresh, they stung. Lucifer never shielded him, not even while Nick burned away around him.
When he remembers the truth, he says nothing. Nick Marsh is a mass murderer with blood all over him.
There are no stains on his clothes but Nick can see it. Red splattered everywhere. It's on his hands, up to his elbows and caked beneath his nails. He has to turn from the mirror before he shatters it under his fist.
He has no ID, no insurance, no money. They give him back his clothes and show him the door and Nick is thankful for as long as it takes him to realize that he can't go home.
Where can he go? Who can he ask for help when Lucifer is still whispering in his head? When the world will still be hunting him?
That's when he decides to find Dean Winchester. Dean is the complete antithesis of everything Lucifer and Nick were. Dean will have to help him. He's done it once because who else would have brought Nick to the hospital? It's the only plan Nick has and he latches onto it, desperate as a starving man.
Luck gives him the means to find Dean. Nick hesitates to think it might be fate.
For two nights he sleeps on the streets but he doesn't complain about it, not even to himself. He gets enough pity from a passerby that he can afford to go into an old diner and get something to drink and eat. That's where he overhears a pair of hunters in the booth behind his. They're talking about rat infestations and electrical problems and cold drafts. But Nick knows what they're not saying and screwing up his courage, he gets up and obtrusively slides into the booth to join them. There is no showing weakness with hunters and after having the devil in his head, there isn't a whole lot left to scare Nick.
“I need to find Dean Winchester,” he tells them.
In the end, he gets the number for Bobby Singer.
“Who wants to know?” Bobby says when Nick calls. Rain is battering against the plastic sides of the pay phone and Nick hunches his shoulders against the chilly air.
“My name's Nick. Dean's the only one that can help me.”
“Nick?” Bobby repeats, suspicion clouding his voice and Nick knows that Bobby knows exactly who he is.
“Please, you have to help me. I don't have anywhere else to go. You can tell Dean to kill me if you want, but just please tell me where he is.”
Something must strike the heart of Bobby because he sighs and gives in, telling Nick that Dean is on a hunt. He scores Dean's cell number but there's no answer when Nick tries to call and just like that, he's out of change and out of luck. With no other idea, he starts hitchhiking towards South Dakota, the area code of Bobby Singer's number.
On the way, he realizes that he can sense the presence of ghosts. And other things as well, attuned to the supernatural world, some current in the air. It draws him on and Nick tells himself to forget about it. He has to get to Bobby's, he can't stop and help anyone else.
Humans aren't worth saving. Look what you've all done. Lucifer's voice hisses through his head. Look what humans did to their own kind, to you.
Nick hesitates, god help him, he stops for a moment and wonders if he should bother. No one helped him. No one saved his family. But he's not Lucifer. He's not a devil. If anything deserves the anger in his veins, it's the thing in that house and Nick follows the current in the air. Ghosts, Nick can sense them. And parked a half a block away sits Dean fucking Winchester's car. Nick bolts into the house, heart suddenly pounding where a second ago, he'd felt as calm as a pool of water. He's there in time to grab the iron bar that Dean has dropped and he slices it through the ghost while it's busy battering Dean against the wall. It shrieks as it disappears.
“Dean-” he starts and Dean launches himself at Nick and together, they crash hard to the floor. The breath rushes from Nick's lungs and the iron pipe clatters from his grip. By the time he can talk, Dean has it across his throat, pressing down and cutting off his air again. “It's me! Nick!” Nick wrenches out.
Dean hesitates and the pressure on Nick's body fades away. He laughs, breathless, exhausted and sure he's gone out of his mind.
**
Nick wakes with a jolt. Sam's apartment is as dark as it can get, blinds pulled closed tightly. Jimmy doesn't like the light very much, Nick has come to realize. Nick gets it. The angels were always bright as the sun but cold as winter night. The air mattress beneath Nick does nothing to fend off the ice Lucifer was always sparking through his veins, every exhalation one that misted the air before them. Jimmy doesn't seem to feel the cold as much though.
Since Jimmy showed up, Nick keeps listing their differences in his mind.
Nick still doesn't entirely understand what happened to him or even what's still happening. He feels bursting with emotions, whether he's terrified out of his mind or so so angry. Lucifer had never allowed Nick the kindness of oblivion. The angel had been locked up for so many thousands of years with no outlet. Nick almost feels sorry for him, almost understands. What sort of person sympathizes with the devil?
In comparison, Jimmy hardly seems to feel much of anything.
Nick watches him and sometimes finds himself willing Jimmy to over react to something. But Jimmy doesn't react very much at all. A burst of humor might shine his eyes for a second but it fizzles quickly. Or fear, like the first time he'd set eyes on Nick. He'll do as he's told and engage in conversation if someone else makes the first move but there's little effort and Nick is sure there's not much thought going on behind his mostly blank eyes. The only time life seems to settle in him is when he's talking to his daughter.
Or in the night, when he reaches over and shakes Nick awake, eyes shinning with sympathy. Not many people look Nick in the eyes these days. It's the scars on his face or for Dean, it's the lingering reminder of Lucifer in his eyes.
Sam had it easy, Nick thinks. Lucifer liked Sam.
“Are you okay?” Jimmy asks and Nick nods, getting ready to settle back into sleep like he's done every night for the last two weeks Jimmy has been here. Only this time Jimmy's fingers don't withdraw so quickly and Jimmy says, “You may as well come up here. It hurts when I have to lean over every night.” There's that spark of humor in Jimmy's voice. The softness he only holds in the dark. “Well?” He pushes when Nick hesitates and carefully shifts across the sofa bed to make room.
Nick jerks into action, clambering up onto the sofa bed and Jimmy lets out a sharp protest as Nick jostles him. “Sorry,” Nick says.
“Tailbone still hurts,” Jimmy replies and Nick nods as they both settle down again.
“And your leg?”
“Not too bad.” Nick can't see Jimmy very well in all the dark but he can hear Jimmy's smile in his voice. “And the rest of me is fine too,” he says before Nick can ask. Jimmy's arm is healing well, Nick checks it every day but the stitches are long gone and the edges of the wound are holding fine. His bruises are fading as well.
Satisfied, Jimmy turns his back on Nick and goes to sleep. Nick drifts awake for a little while, reveling in the warmth of the solid mattress beneath him and Jimmy's body beside him. Jimmy doesn't feel half as cold as Nick does.
**
A chiming noise wakes Nick only a couple hours later, followed by clicking that he can't quite place. When he opens his eyes, there's a bright light that baths Jimmy in its glow.
“What are you doing?” Nick asks, voice rough.
Jimmy jumps and tosses a guilty look back over his shoulder. “Texting Claire.”
Nick feels jealousy rise up in him like a tidal wave. He would give anything to be able to talk to his dead daughter in some way. “It's the middle of the night.”
“Weekend.” Which means it's entirely okay to keep his daughter up all night and Nick snorts. He's never been very patient with Jimmy's devotion to his daughter, from the first moment in the hospital until now. He doesn't understand why he never got the chance to have that, why Jimmy would throw that chance away. Sometimes he finds himself wondering why God punished him but that's only Lucifer speaking to him. Nick wonders if he'll ever be free of that influence, making him want to rip the cell phone from Jimmy's hand and toss it across the room.
Jimmy's tapping away on the keys again and Nick turns over, angry and tense, until Jimmy's hand settles on his shoulder. “Tell me what's wrong.”
“No.”
“You're the one that said vessels need to stick together,” Jimmy insists.
Nick is quiet for a long while and Jimmy's phone chimes at him again but he doesn't move to answer it. “I had a daughter. Not for very long though.”
“Did Lucifer-?”
“No. I had a wife too.” But Nick can't let himself think that Lucifer orchestrated their deaths. It wasn't God wrongly punishing him either. Just happenstance. “So I just don't get how you walked away from yours,” he finishes angrily.
Jimmy doesn't answer him. His phone goes off again and this time he takes his hand away from Nick to reply. Nick half-expects Jimmy to get angry at him, but of course Jimmy doesn't. Jimmy quietly talks to his daughter for a few minutes and then Nick is surprised to find an arm winding around him and holding a phone in front of his face.
“Claire says hi,” Jimmy says and Nick for some reason feels his eyes sting but he forces it back. Jimmy sets the phone down by Nick's head and Jimmy's arm stays draped over him for the rest of the night.
**
It's Nick's first real hunt with Dean.
He's been with Dean for a couple months now, learning everything that Dean has to teach him but so much of it Nick already knows. He knows how to kill monsters (and angels). He can speak Latin. He doesn't need to track them because whenever he gets close to something supernatural, he can sense it. Not just ghosts but everything. It's a tingle at the back of his head so Dean calls it his spidey-sense which always makes Nick roll his eyes. To him it's more like a headache and if the creature is powerful enough, he can get a migraine for the next two days. Dean tells him he's lucky that's his worst problem. But Dean doesn't know the half of it.
Dean teaches him how to keep himself hidden and out of the eyes of the police and even other hunters.
“You were Lucifer, dude,” Dean tells him. “You said yes. It doesn't matter if you had reasons, you need to be careful because some hunters are going to look for an excuse to kill you.”
Nick nods and doesn't think too hard about that being the better option but he feels the anger beneath his skin. Would any hunter have done better under the same situation?
They do their research for a few days and because of that, they're too late to stop the creature - a shifter - from slaughtering an innocent family. Nick walks in on the carnage and sees the shifter and without pause, he bludgeons it with a table lamp until it's whimpering on the ground. Then he guts it with the silver knife Dean gave him.
There's blood up to his elbows and Dean is staring at him in shock. When Nick looks at him, Dean takes a step back and Nick can see Dean's fingers tighten around his own knife as if to raise it to Nick's chest.
“It's just me,” Nick says. Dean doesn't look so sure and when Nick looks down to the mess he's made, Nick isn't so sure either.
**
Nick has moments where he just can't hold everything in and explodes. He's done it to Dean before because Dean could be a pushy little fucker when he wanted and Nick does not want to be pushed, not into anything. He gets tense when there are too many people and he used to work in a hospital. He gets annoyed at small habits, like the way Sam bounces the end of his pencil rapidly on the table when he's reading one of his text books. Hunting acts like an outlet for him and he misses the rush that comes with burying his knife into the chest of some evil son of a bitch.
He hates the way Jimmy just seems to get on with things, no questions, no thought, no nothing. Doesn't Sam's pencil bother him? What about seeing his daughter only through words on a phone? Jealousy wars through Nick alongside his incomprehension and he finds himself yelling, breaking the silence of Sam's apartment so abruptly that both Sam and Jimmy startle. Jimmy's eyes widen in shock and Nick likes that.
“Don't you feel anything?” He spits out at Jimmy.
“Nick,” Sam warns.
“Oh fuck off, Sam. You think you can tell me anything because you were a vessel for a whole day?”
Nick turns abruptly and stalks out of the stifling apartment, aware that he's crossed a line but he's crossed so many by this point that it hardly seems to matter. He slams the door on Sam quietly telling Jimmy that's it's okay. Nick just does this sometimes.
He's expecting to be left alone to walk it off. That's Sam and Dean's usual way of dealing with it, trying to give him the space he so obviously needs. Nick's not entirely sure what he wants and he's annoyed that no one tries to follow him. That is until someone does.
There's the distinctive sound of Jimmy's crutches and hobbling gait coming down the sidewalk behind him. That annoys Nick as well and he'll chalk this down as one of his bad days. He's certain he used to be more level headed than this but he's not sure how to get that back.
“Nick, wait.” Jimmy pants, struggling to catch up. “Come on, man, this isn't fair for a guy on crutches.”
Nick stops, letting Jimmy catch up to him.
“I feel things,” Jimmy insists but to Nick he sounds like he can't quite believe it himself.
“Like what? Guilt for abandoning your daughter? Aren't you pissed that angels did this to us? Don't you want more than this?” Nick is sure there's more than sitting around in Sam's apartment or Dean's car chasing ghosts. But that's more than just another line to cross. It's a chasm and Nick isn't sure how to do it.
Jimmy just stares back at him, a flicker of something in his usually shallow gaze. “I don't know.”
Nick shoves him and Jimmy stumbles back a step, wincing as his weight comes down on his cast. “Feel something. Do something!” Help me, Nick thinks, and he shoves Jimmy again and this time, Jimmy reacts.
Jimmy stabs his crutch between Nick's legs, a flare of anger in his gaze, and Nick trips. He drags them both down to the ground, Jimmy landing on top of him on the sidewalk.
“Don't pretend like you know what's in my head,” Jimmy growls at him. “And don't ever tell me how I feel about my daughter.”
But Nick is hardly listening. He just wants to keep this fire going in Jimmy's eyes and he catches Jimmy off guard with an elbow in his ribs and they grapple on the ground. It lasts all of a minute and Nick can hear footsteps running up to them and someone yelling at them to stop. But it's Jimmy's whole body shuddering beneath him that stops them and Jimmy's voice yelping out “Wait wait, fuck, ow,” in genuine pain. They've struck his tailbone in just the wrong way against the pavement and he's gone stiff as a board, his fingers digging into Nick's forearms.
“Fuck, stop,” Jimmy pants and Nick's exuberance turns to worry.
“Are you okay?”
Jimmy shakes his head and laughter starts bubbling out of his chest. Nick stares at Jimmy like he's lost his mind but that makes Jimmy laugh harder until Nick has to join him. He helps Jimmy up to his feet and retrieves Jimmy's crutches. Any onlookers have walked away, writing the pair of them off. Sam just shakes his head at them when they come back inside and Nick pops the tabs on a beer for each of them.
**
“I do feel things,” Jimmy tells him after a few more routine days have slid by.
The apartment is dark again. Through the wall at their heads, Sam snores occasionally. Jimmy has been fidgeting all night, when usually he simply turns over away from Nick and falls immediately into sleep. Nick has never seen Jimmy fidget before. He can tell that Jimmy has been building up the courage to say this for awhile.
“But it's...hard. The whole time Cas was in me, there was nothing. I couldn't see anything or do anything. I was just there, like a table is there. I still feel like that.”
Nick turns over but all he can see is the dark outline of Jimmy's profile. He can feel Jimmy picking at his fingernails until Nick reaches out and threads their fingers together.
“Leaving Amelia and Claire, I was terrified and excited. Every time I found a spirit? I got such a rush. Every time I hear Claire's voice or I get a text from her, I feel so high. Even when you shoved me, I just...” Jimmy trails off and shakes his head. “But it never lasts.”
Nick feels a swell of sympathy for him.
Well, if Jimmy wants those rushes then Nick can help him. All Nick wants is an outlet for his overwhelming emotions and suddenly Jimmy seems perfect for that.
“I can try to help,” Nick says. He drags they're joined hands down Jimmy's chest and stomach to settle in the end over the front of Jimmy's boxers. For a moment, he thinks Jimmy is going to squirm away from him or punch him. It would be a reaction at least. Jimmy's heart is beating so hard that it vibrates through his body and Nick can feel it. But it means that Jimmy is feeling something as well, whether that's discomfort or fear or excitement.
Finally Jimmy parts his legs just a little in invitation and lets out a sigh. “Yeah, okay.”
Nick closes his mouth over Jimmy's and pours everything he can into it.
**
Jimmy moves stiffly over the next few days and Nick is worried he might have hurt the man in his own exuberance but when he asks, Jimmy shakes him off. Sam won't quite look at them but he doesn't mention it so neither do they. They carry on while Sam is at classes or hopefully asleep in his own room.
Nick pushes Jimmy up against the table in the middle of the day or mouths along the back of his neck in the middle of the night. Jimmy doesn't complain that he's a little rough and Nick always backs off if Jimmy hisses in pain or tells Nick to just wait a second. Maybe it's not the best coping method they could have found but it's better than a lot of alternatives. Putting a bullet into his head for one, and Nick has considered that more than once. Instead, when he gets overwhelmed or when Jimmy has spent too long sitting in the kitchen unmoving, he touches Jimmy and Jimmy always responds to him.
“You couldn't get this from your wife?” Nick asks him one night, when he's carefully pushed Jimmy onto his back and slid their cocks together.
Jimmy laughs. “Not unless she was willing to strap on a...y'know, strap on.” He reaches down to wrap his fist around them. “I have more plans for us, as soon as this tailbone heals. But this is good. This is new.”
“And when it's not anymore?”
Jimmy hesitates. “We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
**
Nick doesn't ask when that bridge might come up. It doesn't matter. Life is a series of short events these days anyway. A hunt here, another there, now Jimmy. And yeah, Nick knows he's messed up. He knows that Jimmy is, that PTSD is probably just one in a list of problems and this isn't the way to fix it. The thing is that he doesn't know how to fix it. He doesn't know what else to do about the burning anger that builds up inside him except let it out. It feels so good when he lets it out, he wants to do it again and again, and Jimmy never argues with him, getting off on the rush of it as much as Nick does, even if it's for different reasons.
Nick is almost positive Sam has walked in on them more than once. Sam is away from the apartment as often as he can be and Nick gets the distinct impression that they've past worn out their welcome.
They start making plans to leave. When Sam is out of the apartment, they sit and pool together their resources and their knowledge, as if they're actual hunters. They are, aren't they? Nick has built up a small store of weapons, both hand me downs from Dean and things he's bought over the months. He's got fake ID's from Dean and the know how to make them for Jimmy. They spend hours every day bent over newspapers or clicking through online articles.
“Here's a good one,” Jimmy says and Nick walks over to where Jimmy is sitting at Sam's desktop. He leans over Jimmy's shoulder and Jimmy's hair tickles his nose. Jimmy himself is becoming as addictive as the outpourings of anger and Nick inhales deeply for a moment, ready to maybe distract them both when a window flashes open on the screen.
“You talk to your daughter while looking for things to kill?” Nick asks when he realizes it's a chat window.
“Who said I was looking for things to kill?” Jimmy retorts and brings the other window to the front.
Nick's eyebrows shoot up. “The...world's largest ball of twine?”
Jimmy shrugs. “It could be fun. Claire suggested it...” He suddenly sounds unsure of himself, focusing back on the computer, clicking back to the chat window with his daughter. “You know, just until my bones heal.”
Nick tries not to read the almost heartbreaking sweet interaction between Jimmy and Claire. It makes him question if they're doing the right thing. Maybe they should both go home, get out of this while they still can. But there is no going home and there is no getting out. Nick turns his face against Jimmy's neck and stays there until Jimmy's arms wrap around him in a tight hug.
If they can't get out, maybe they could at least take a vacation.
**
Dean comes back and that seems as good a time as any for Jimmy and Nick to say they're leaving.
“It's past time we got out of your way,” Jimmy says when Dean and Sam exchange glances. Nick's hand is resting low on Jimmy's back, protective like he thinks Dean or Sam might try to stop them. Dean might, as he narrows his eyes at Nick in something close to a warning. Sam tries to hide it but Nick thinks he exhales quickly in relief.
If anyone knows Nick these days, it's Dean. They were on the road together for months, just the two of them, Dean showing him the ropes of hunting. Most things Nick already knew, all those leftover ways to kill things horribly, passed down to him from Lucifer.
Dean knows that Nick can be violent and merciless, but he is never that way with Jimmy. Jimmy is there to even him out and Nick is there to pick Jimmy up. Jimmy makes sure that Nick is careful.
Lucifer will always be present, though. The way Castiel will always be present in Jimmy's mind. Jimmy still forgets to think, that he needs to do that now, and sits for hours staring at nothing. Nick still feels a sudden pulse of throbbing anger than he can't always place. He punched Dean once out of that anger so maybe Dean has every right to be worried about Jimmy.
But Dean doesn't say a word and Jimmy goes on to explain what they have planned though he leaves out the details. This is Nick and Jimmy's plan, this is the best escape they have for however long it lasts. He reassures them that they did research this time, they're prepared.
“I've got the devil with me, what could go wrong?” Jimmy laughs and Nick smiles. There's new depth in Jimmy's gaze, slowly replacing that glassy expression of his.
Dean doesn't laugh and it's no surprise when Dean draws Nick away at the first opportunity.
“If you hurt him, so help me God, I will hunt you down.”
Nick accepts the threat but he still wonders who Dean thinks he's protecting. Jimmy? Or Castiel. It's one reason why they have to get out of here. Dean and Sam will always look at Nick, the ice in his eyes and the scars on his face, and see Lucifer. They'll always look at Jimmy and wish it was Castiel.
“I'm not going to hurt him,” Nick promises.
“Where are you going to go?” Dean asks, not at all convinced.
Nick doesn't even feel irritated. This might not be the right thing to do but it's the only thing. “There's this thing in Minnesota.”
“And how are you going to go?”
“I don't know.” Nick pauses. “Bus?”
Which is how they end up on a greyhound with a seven day ticket to anywhere. Somehow they seem to have forgotten their weapons and their research but whatever, Nick thinks, they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.