Title: Last Night’s Sleep
Author:
pdragon76Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, Bela
Spoilers: through NRFTW
Disclaimer: It’s Kripke’s world, we’re all just living in it. *snaps fingers, points*
Summary: Sam knows he’s missing something.
A/N: For
july_july_july. When you fall overboard, she'll toss you prompts instead of rope. Speedy beta by the ever insightful, truly delightful
riverbella. Many thanks.
The driver door creaks open. Sam startles awake as Dean slides behind the wheel.
“I’m on it. I’m up.” The words garble out on a slur. He blinks the sleep from his eyes, tries to shake the lead out from behind his brow, but then stops. Winces. Shaking is a mistake.
Dean’s frozen, half leaning toward him, bloodshot eyes narrowed at the glove compartment.
“Can you tell me we didn't drink from a fish bowl we found in the bathroom last night?”
“Bathroom?” Sam presses the pads of his fingers against his puffed eyes. His gears are engaging particularly slowly, and his initial petition to the memory bank is denied. He’s aware he’s very, very hung over.
Dean makes an impatient gesture. “I know it would be a lie; I just need to hear it.”
The door behind Sam opens, and Bela Talbot gets into the backseat.
“What possible purpose would I have for lying to you, Dean?” she asks, exasperated.
Dean rubs his temple in a long-suffering fashion. “I don’t know…because you’re a soulless, shit-stirring bitch?”
Sam can’t believe she’s there. He starts to crane his neck to see, but he does it too quickly and a claymore goes off in his head. He stops, closes his eyes. In the absence of sight, he’s aware of her subtle, expensive perfume, underlain with a sharper, thicker scent. “Dean, why is Bela Talbot in the car?”
“Long story. Did we drink the stupid fish water or what?”
Sam feels his way around the accusation like a blind man, but his recollection fails him. “I don’t think that sounds like something I’d do.”
“See?” Dean throws to Bela, sounding vindicated.
She makes a condescending noise. “Oh come now, Dean. He said it doesn’t sound like something he’d do. And he’s absolutely correct. Your brother has a shred of self-discipline, which unfortunately doesn’t in any way exempt you from drinking out of inappropriate receptacles. If you recall, I said you drank out of the fish bowl. And as adorable as it is, under the circumstances you might consider dropping the Winchester Royal ‘We’.”
Dean twists to look at her, irritated. “Why the fuck would I even be in the bathroom, Abby?”
“Do you really think that name might bother me? And do excuse me - I tend to forget you’re far more at ease relieving yourself in public.”
A certain nostalgic pride lights Dean’s face. “Bet your stuck-up British ass, I am.”
Bela tuts. “Anyway. You made a complete arse of yourself. First impressions are lasting, Dean. If you plan on succeeding around here you’d do well to remember that.”
Dean breathes deep through his nose, and his eyes get lazy as he turns them on Sam. “Can you believe this woman?” He mimes a yammering sock puppet with one hand. “She just does not quit. And where the hell did you disappear to last night? Wingman, my fuckin’ ass.”
There’s a damp sound behind Sam.
“Oops. Do either of you gentlemen by any chance have a handkerchief?”
Sam starts to turn around, but Dean snaps up a finger. “Do not look. You’re just encouraging her.”
Sam stays straight-backed, staring at the windshield. He tries desperately to remember the circumstances under which Bela Talbot has come to be drinking with them, and when he fails to recall even the barest detail, he tries to imagine some completely fabricated scenarios with even less success.
“What are you waitin’ for? Written invitation? Gratuity?” Dean motions roughly to the windshield until Sam shifts uncomfortably and points out he’s the one behind the wheel. Dean frowns at the dash dumbly. “Oh.” He goes through his pockets. “Keys?”
Sam checks his, too, and comes up empty. “Christ, where are they? What the fuck happened last night?”
“Shit happened last night,” Dean says grimly. He gets out of the car, and crunches a slow circuit through the leaves around her perimeter. His hand makes a slippery, squeaky noise on the hood where it drags.
In the backseat, Bela flops on the leather with a vexed sigh. “I really don’t know what all of this is in aid of.”
“Bela, what are you even doing here?”
She doesn’t answer, blows out a bored breath instead.
Dean finds the keys in the outside of Sam’s door. He pulls them free and gives them a judgmental jingle outside Sam’s window. Sam averts his eyes.
“Nice securing of the vehicle, assface,” Dean says when he gets back in.
Sam doesn’t remember leaving the keys in the door, which is at least as alarming as the fact that he must have. “Whoops,” he says lamely, for want of a better excuse.
Dean’s still shaking his head when he starts the engine and turns his attention to the path directly ahead of them. He freezes. “Oooookay…”
Bela leans and folds her forearms on the back of the bench seat, peers out into the woods. Two thin spills of something dark slide down the leather from beneath the crooks of her elbows. Sam inches closer to the window so he won’t be touched.
Bela points. “Dean, exactly how are you expecting to-?”
“Shut up,” Dean snaps. He stares intently ahead at the thick undergrowth surrounding them, the lack of obvious egress. “Sam, how do we get outta here?”
Bela lifts her arms with a sucking wet sound and retreats back to her seat. “Stop speaking to me like I’m some sort of unfortunate disease you’ve contracted.”
“You are!” Dean snarls. He flicks eyes to Sam, expression grim, and when he smiles his teeth and lips are bloody. “See the shit I gotta put up with?”
Sam feels his breath quicken. He scans the woods for a break in the trees, but he knows there is none.
“Oh, please,” Bela says haughtily. “Don’t be so dramatic. The situation could be far, far worse.”
“How?” Dean demands, slapping both hands on his thighs. Spatter hits Sam’s face, and he flinches. “How could this be worse? Explain to me how this could be worse.”
“Well…”
“I know!” Dean says, with false enthusiasm. “You coulda stolen the Colt. And used it in a trade with demons. In exchange for sweet fuck-all.”
There’s a long awkward silence in which nobody seems sure of what to say.
“Well, I did apologize,” Bela says finally, without a hint of contrition, and Sam feels a tight hot urge to spin on the leather and hit her face - hit her again and again until she can’t say anything anymore. His head is still pounding with last night’s unrecalled dance. He wishes things weren’t so foggy. He wishes he knew what was happening. He watches Dean’s thumb tap compulsively on the steering wheel, so his eyes won’t keep tracking to the mess of his brother’s chest.
“Sam? How the hell am I gettin’ outta here?”
Sam’s gut tightens. His mouth feels tacky. He looks around, baffled. The vehicle is beset on all sides by trees. “Um, I don’t-”
“Well, maybe Dean,” Bela drawls, and his name gargles wetly in the back of her throat, “if you’d spent a little more time investigating your own predicament, instead of nosing around the confidential files of Scotland Ya-”
“I said, ‘Shut up!’” Dean tilts his face back and closes his eyes, teeth gritted. “Jesus Christ, Sam.” He grimaces and a dark slick cuts a path from his mouth, angles sharply under his jaw. “I swear I’m gonna kill her. Will you pull your goddamn shit together and tell me how the fuck I get outta here?”
In his lap, Sam’s cell begins to trill. Dean snaps to attention. He rubs at his jaw manically, smearing crimson, and points to the phone. “Ooooh,” he coos earnestly. “That could be Ruby. You should pick that up.”
}-*-{
His phone is ringing when Sam wakes. The air inside the Impala tastes silent and cold. His face feels bloated and hot. A slew of saliva sticks to the back of his hand when he wipes his mouth and his groin is wet. He thinks for a moment he’s pissed himself, until he shifts and the bottle tips on the fulcrum of his thigh and sloshes a final wave of whiskey into his lap. He shoves at it clumsily, stench rising with his gorge, and it falls with a clatter to the floor of the car.
He gets the phone to his ear, but his throat’s beyond words.
“Where are you?” Bobby sounds worried, and old. He sounds very old.
Sam gazes out the Impala’s window through the stand of trees.
“Illinois,” he manages, but it doesn’t really sound like anywhere. It doesn’t even sound like a word.
“Why don’t ya get on back here, kiddo.”
There’s a long pause. Sam swallows, and the trees blur.
“Come on back, Sam.”
He can’t see the cross from here, but he doesn’t think he needs to. That hollow jolt of mallet on wood will thud in his joints now with every beat of his pulse.
“No,” Sam tells Bobby. “I’ve got work to do.”
“While we are mourning the loss of our friend,
others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil.”
~John Taylor
Prompt: Can you tell me we didn’t drink from a fish bowl we found in the bathroom last night? I know it would be a lie; I just need to hear it. Source:
texts from last night .