[For Veronica]

[unchosen_son]

The whole Dean thing wouldn't get off Sam's mind, no matter how hard he tried to shake it. He'd tried shooting things, which didn't help. He'd tried sulking, but then he was afraid that his father was bound to catch him and start asking questions. So he'd eventually just given up and grabbed a book to just head for a walk, barely paying attention

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[neptune_sleuth]

Veronica had been headed down to the beach, jogging along with her headphones in her ears, but it was her practice to leave the volume down low enough that she could hear the world around her, so as never to be caught off guard. The sound of Sam's voice cut through the music, and before she was even fully certain what she was doing, she had started toward it, pulling the earbuds from her ears.

"Sam?" she called out, bursting through the brush to where he was. "Sam, oh my god." He was starting to sink down, and Veronica's first, irrational thought was that an ROUS was going to jump out at them and then a flame would spurt up, and — alright, her mind was a little out of control. She struggled to get her thoughts clear. Whatever he'd said, whatever he'd done, she wasn't about to let him drown in quicksand.

[unchosen_son]

It was slow, but it wasn't exactly nothing and Veronica hadn't found him until he'd sunk a good four to five inches. Granted, being six foot four meant he had a lot of inches to go, but he didn't exactly look forward to asphyxiating and given that he was about hip-deep already, this wasn't exactly going in a direction he liked.

"Hi," he greeted, as if he weren't sinking into a pit of sand. "Yeah, I sort of...wasn't really paying attention," he admitted, scanning the ground around him. "I don't know how widespread or patchy this is," he warned.

[neptune_sleuth]

"You know," Veronica said hurriedly, "there are times when paying attention? Really a good idea." She was looking frantically around for something, anything, to throw out to him to pull him in. Sure, he didn't exactly look like he was in a huge amount of danger right then, what with the whole thing where he was approximately the same height as the Empire State Building, but god knew how long it would take to drag him out or if the first plan would work at all.

Forcing herself to calm the hell down, she searched their surroundings, carefully staying in one place as much as she could. If she fell in, too, they'd be, as the old saying went, completely screwed. Edging forward cautiously, she headed toward a branch hanging crookedly from a nearby tree. It had probably been partially snapped by some large animal lumbering by or Chuck's friend John Casey, one or the other, but she was pretty sure she could pull it the rest of the way down.

[unchosen_son]

Sam didn't exactly want to get into the details of why he was so distracted because that was just way too much of a grey area to be talking about while he was sinking in quicksand. He took deep breaths and just kept calm, watching her go and feeling, impossibly, really strangely guilty for making her do this.

"Maybe some rope?" he offered, hoping his voice carried.