I was born a hunter.

I smell ash and the leather back-seats of age-old pick-up trucks.

I taste the back-of-the-throat acidic reek of blood that never washes out, no matter how much I scrub and scour, no matter many glasses of smoky gold corruption drip from my intently chewed lips.

I fight what I am. I am a lost cause. I am a bird with broken wings and scorched feathers.

I am alone.

"Hey-hey, stay with me, (Y/N) - Sam, get in here! Come on-wait stay with me, nonono-"

The blackness returned and it felt warm and deep and soft and it swallowed you whole like a sugar pill and you could feel yourself dissolving and breaking apart like the centre of a slow-burning star, and all you want to do is fall and sleep and stop fighting running the fearohgodthefear-

You vaguely register a name being spoken, yelled, but the dark is so warm and full you just want to stop trying to withstand the tide and sink-

A touch, fingertips - the same heat you feel from the engine when you go on a particularly long hunt - and it almost hurts, how distant the feeling is, how disconnected and separate you feel, nerves severed and cut loose, a puppet with a single string, dancing on the edge of the world-

And then-

A single tug, a reassuring heartbeat pull, and you feel something other than the dark – a heat, a warmth, not deep and dark, but bright and unfaltering like –

like-

a smile you caught in the rear-view mirror.

A stomach-twisting flash of lighting green, dark pupils blown asphalt black by surging adrenaline – fast, we were driving fast -

You sat in the back, slightly giddy but mostly unashamedly stroppy. The dust churned up from the smoking wheels stung your eyes slightly, the hot leather stuck to your skin, your throat painfully parched.

"SAM." Your voice cracked halfway through – hopefully that'll actually convince the fucking self-proclaimed protector of all food stuff currently located inside the Impala that hang-on-a-hot-second-I-actually-AM-DYING-OF-THIRST-MAYBE-I-WASN'T-JUST-ASKING-TO-PISS-YOU-OFF.

(Not finished, currently being edited yo)