He's getting old. There are the beginnings of crow's feet and sprinkling of gray hairs by his ears. Sam tells him that no one really notices, but Dean does. Every time he looks in the mirror, every time he smiles at a woman in the bar. He's still young, Sam reminds him. 'You're only thirty-five for crying out loud', echoes in his head sometimes. Tonight he drinks to drown it out.
He's in town for a job, something low-key, a pretty nasty poltergeist haunting a nice little family. But tonight when he dug up the grave, all that was there was an urn with the ashes, no body, no hair or anything that resembled DNA. He went back to the house, got beaten up a bit. He takes a shot of whiskey.
A woman comes up to the bar near where he sits. She is out of breath, young and pretty. Her hair is the color of fire and she wears feathers in it. She drops a heavy bag by her feet (clanking like its filled with metallic objects). An equally heavy sigh as she pulls back that flaming hair and rests her elbows on the table. She flags the bartender. "You guys have hamburgers?"
"Yeah."
She nods. "Good, I'd like that please and a beer. I don't care what kind of import or bottle or whatever, just what's cheap and what's on tap."
"Sure thing, honey," he fills a mug and gives it to her, then turns back to the kitchen.
"Don't call me honey," she calls after him before taking a swig.
Dean is amused but says nothing until ten minutes later when the burger finally arrives and she loads on the ketchup, picks off the lettuce and then chomps down. He laughs and turns to her. "Not every woman can take on a burger that big."
She takes another sip of beer. "Have you tried this?" She gestures. "It's like heaven in your mouth."
"Yeah," he laughs again. "Then again you don't see too many women, you know, eat."
"In my line of work you don't stop to worry about how many calories you're putting in that day."
He nods at her. "What kind of work is that?"
She swallows her latest bite and pushes hair behind her ears and with a slight grin, a grin that is barely there answers: "I hunt." Those two words are always a code amongst them, if you're part of the group you make it known, if you're not you think you're talking about taking down deer and rabbits.
Something in his eyes flickers. "Aren't you a little young for that?"
She rolls her eyes. "Old enough to drink old enough to hunt. But something tells me you know a little something about that."
He laughs. "How'd you guess?"
"You've got a look. That 'something just kicked my ass' look. I can spot them a mile away."
He shrugs and offers his hand to her. "Dean."
She shakes it. "No offense, but I know."
"Really?"
"Everyone knows who the Winchesters are." She finally lets go of his hand. "I'm Scout. What are you working on?"
He explains the poltergeist, how the poor family that lives there now has to live in a hotel until its gone. She's not surprised about the troubles he's having; Old Mrs. Howard wasn t a nice lady.
"You knew her?" he asks. He's moved closer.
She finishes up her burger and beer. "I lived a few streets away. She's not a poltergeist, she's just a bitch. She was mean in life and now in death. Wanna go take care of it?"
"Now?" his eyebrows scrunch.
She wipes her mouth and turns in the chair to face him directly. "Yeah. You got something more important to do?" Dean shrugs and shakes his head. "Well come on." She hops off the stool and grabs her heavy bag.
"She was cremated."
"Gotta dig up her leg."
"Excuse me?" It's defiantly one of the more interesting things he's heard.
Scout walks by him and puts a hand on his shoulder to usher him down. "Lost her leg, had it buried in the back yard. Come on. You'll drive right?"
"Yeah." He looks her up and down from her dirty sneakers to that hair that reminds him of a torch. He doesn't need to be asked twice.
***
They go to the house, around the back yard and dig up a small pine-wood box. "Well you gonna open it?" She asks.
He puts the shovel in the ground and leans on it, taking a breath. "Why don't you open it? You know, ladies first?" He flashes her a half smirk.
She rolls her eyes and kicks open the mini casket. A foul smell and dust and they both take a step back to look down at the limb, sure enough a woman's leg, from the knee down, dressed in a stocking and shoe. "Oh that's just gross," says Dean as he begins to pour salt on the rotting flesh.
There is a shift in the wind and objects from the yard begin to fly around. Scout and Dean do a fairly good job at dodging these things, the sprinkler, a baseball and rocks. Until a tiny garden gnome, with his ugly painted red hat flies across the yard and right into Scout's face, knocking her flat on her back.
"Mother fucker," she mumbles as for a split second she sees a cluster of random colors. She sits up, and unholsters her shotgun. Dean turns to her but she waves him away. "Burn the bitch." She stands up, blood dripping down her cheek. Mrs. Howard appears, flickering with her hands folded over her stomach, sweetly smiling.
"Get off my lawn deary," the old woman says.
Scout pulls the trigger, rock salt cutting threw the apparition like butter.
Now they just hear a voice: "You people need to get out of my home!"
The smell of gasoline and flick of match and there is a large flame, rising up and almost setting part of the house of fire. Mrs. Howard appears a second, screams as the spirit seemingly goes up in flames as well. Scout walks to Dean and spits out blood that has seeped into her mouth. "See, what could me more entertaining that this?"
***
In the bathroom of the Cadillac Motel, Scout washes away blood from her face with a washcloth in cold water. It stings and she winces, but she keeps on. She spits out more blood and gently touches under her cheek bone with the cloth, hoping that it's not broken. As soon as the bleeding stops, she lets her hair down, and fluffs it in the back, readjusts the feather barrette. She glances around at the few belongings he's left on the sink. A disposable razor, deodorant stick, a t-shirt in the bathtub covered in blood soaking in water. There's a pile of dirty clothes by the door.
When she comes out at the table, Dean sits, with a beer open. She comes around to sit, and he hands her a make-shift ice pack. Ice in a Ziploc bag, wrapped by a t-shirt. "Thanks."
The bruise is all ready forming under her eye. "Sorry about that," he tells her as she presses it to her skin. She has a bruise forming under her eye. It's stopped bleeding. Dean hands her a make-shift ice pack. "Sorry about that," he tells her as she presses to her skin. He pops open the beer.
"You didn't do it." She grabs the same bottle and takes a swig. "And to think I sold that old bat Girl Scout cookies." Her cheek throbs, and the ice stings a bit. She removes the pack. "What do you think?"
He chuckles. "That'll be a good one."
She shrugs. "I've had worse." Another swig and she puts the pack back on her face. "But I'm still pretty, right?" Hair falls into her face. He nods and clears his throat. He tries to avoid looking at her neck, the way a drop of sweat drips down her clavicle.
"Yeah," he answers.
She looks at him too, the way his muscles flex under the shirt, his tasseled hair. She likes the sound of his voice, deep and raspy; the way that eyebrows move when he talks. She's the one that makes the first move, that closes the gap between them, and tentatively places her lips on his. He kisses back, at first just as unsure, then harder.
They move to stand and she pushes the jacket off his shoulders onto the floor. He breathes in her hair, the mixed scent of gunpowder and motel shampoo. She peels off his shirt and runs her nails up his arms, pausing at the hand shaped burns on his biceps. "What happened?" she asks, a thumb going over the rigid skin.
He swallows and looks down at the marks, then back into her eyes. "Bad vacation."
Almost sadly, she keeps the trail up to his shoulders. Her shirt quickly follows. Like every hunter, like him, she has scars littering her body. A slash on her ribs, a burn mark on one hip, pentagram tattoo on the other. He yanks down her jeans, a big scar on her knee, like from a gunshot. He goes back up to capture her lips again, pressing his body against hers until she is really pinned between him and the wall.
It moves quickly from there. She's on the bed on her back, he kisses down her stomach, fluttering over the slashed ribs, running his fingers over her burn mark. For some reason she can't stop touching the hand marks on his biceps. The prints are bigger than hers, that once gripped tightly, what could have done such a thing. He's heavy on top of her, his fingers in hair, in silky fire.
She fiddles with a condom and when its on, he's quick to enter her, but he moves smoothly, the right amount of presser on her pelvic bone, his hand moving in the perfect spot up her thigh. A heavy breath escapes her lips as she pulls at the sheets. He's careful of her bruised cheek.
She's not quite sure that she's going to come, until he switches things up, moving his hips at a slightly different angle. When she does, she claws at his back, from his shoulder blades down to his waist. He follows, burying his face in her hair. "Wow," she exhales.
He rolls to his side. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," she laughs.
He licks his lips and grins and reaches out to touch her hair again, pushing strands behind her ear. "I should go," she suddenly says.
"You don't have to."
"Shouldn't we just keep things simple?" she props herself up on an elbow.
"Stay the night." A few hours and he's completely smitten with her, more than the sex. The way she talks, and fires a gun.
And how can she resist that smirk? "Okay."
***
They stay in bed, but he brings over two beers as she props herself up, making sure to keep the sheet around her body and thighs. He sits across from her. "What's that from?" he runs a free hand up her leg over the knee on the sunburst shaped scar.
"Oh." She looks at it then pulls her leg back under her. "My brother shot me with some rock salt. Burns like a son-of-a-bitch."
"Yeah." He nods. "You do a lot of hunts with him?" Things are easier with a partner, a sibling none the less. They have your back, they have yours.
But she becomes quiet, folds within herself, holding the bottle close to her chest. He sees almost a crack as strands of red fall into her face. She thinks that she's hiding, that he can't see the overcast in her eyes, but he sees it. "He's dead," she answers and swallows. "On a wendigo hunt about three years ago."
He feels bad and takes another drink. "I'm sorry."
She shakes her head. "It's okay. He saved my life, so." She takes a long gulp that ends up burning in her throat. He runs the same hand down her leg and without looking up at her admits that his parents are dead. "Well aren't we quite the pair?" she muses.
They finish their beers and they talk. Best hunts, worst hunts; he makes her laugh. But when the sun comes up she checks her watch then bites her lower lip. "It's time for me to go." She tells him simply. She gets dressed and packs up her heavy bag. She scribbles down her number on a napkin. "In case you need help again, or the other way around."
"Yeah."
She puts on a pair of thick rimmed black sunglasses, making her look like a rock star and gives him a kiss, touching the center of his chest. "Take care of yourself."
"You too."
She leaves the motel with her bag and the icepack on her face. He lays back in bed. Sam comes in an hour later, with information on a different project, something bigger, more important than these little haunting jobs. "Oh God you're not sleeping naked again are you?" Sam asks as he closes the door behind him. Please tell me that when I go into the bathroom there s not some poor girl you picked up at the bar.
Dean shakes his head and ignores his brother and rolls back over, pressing his face into the pillow, savoring the smell of her shampoo.