I'm making sure another late night drags on
Just one more drink, but you know I'm wrong
Sooner or later, when everyone's gone
You just shake your head and take my hand
There are times when I drink too much. I mean … way too much. I know that. I tell myself it's to numb the pain, or to forget about the failures, or even to just have a few laughs once in a while. But those are the lies I tell other people so they don't work too good on me.
Okay, so they're not entirely lies, but they're not the whole truth either. I need to forget, and I need the numbness and god knows I need some help getting out of the mess of my head from time to time. But mainly I drink to take away the responsibility that sits on me like a concrete overcoat and that I can handle for so long and then not anymore. This year's been bad for that, doesn't matter if I try and joke it off, the damned crap that's been goin' on still ends up feeling like it's gonna crush me. Probably to death.
You seem to know what it takes me time to tell
But then you know me, surprises me how well
You make me an offer that I can't refuse
Take my arm and walk away
The song's an old, old favourite and it'd been playing in the car on the drive up. Couldn't get it outta my head. Too close to how I been feeling, maybe. Way too close to the way it is between me and her.
She knows me. Like that. Knows why I drink and why I do what I do. I don't know how, it's not like I told her about this need, this sometime-compulsion. She just … knows me. In fact, it's a constant fucking surprise to me just how well she knows me. It takes me time to figure out why I do the things I do, sometimes longer than others – she knows why straight away. She'll smile slightly, the corners of her mouth tucking in, her eyes getting a bit brighter and I know she's already figured it out.
She's not really pretty. Her colouring's too vivid. Her features are striking; one of those women who're going to look the same at sixty as they do at thirty. The scars that cross her skin are fine but still obvious but somehow they don't take away from her looks, they kind of add to them. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. And when she smiles … man, I look for that smile all the time, and sometimes it gets in so deep, I feel like I'd be okay with dying straight after I've seen it.
The bar we're sitting in is not that big. It's kind of crappy-looking, kind of lived-in, you know? Those are the places I look for. No one cares who you are or what you do. The food's usually good and the music's usually older stuff. Normally, I'd be here with my little brother, or on my own. But this time, Ellie found us spinning our wheels in this little no-name town and Sammy figured he'd get his me-time and leave us alone.
Two hours ago it was full, but now there are only few people left, finishing their drinks, packing up their stuff. The bartender is watching me, probably wondering if I'll be able to stand when she calls for closing. And on the other side of the table, Ellie waits patiently, knowing I want to close it out, that small smile still playing on her lips.
My head's pounding already. Self-inflicted, I started the evening with tequila, had a craving for shots and lemon and salt. Then I switched to whiskey a couple of hours later. Smart people don't mix spirits if they can avoid it. Especially light and dark ones. Not tequila and whiskey. Guaranteed trouble not too far down the line.
"Okay folks, time to close. Finish your poison and get the hell out of my bar." The bartender looks around the room, her over-made-up gaze zeroing in on me, for some reason.
"You about done?" Ellie asks me quietly. I look down at the glass next to my hand. There's a little left at the bottom. I nod to her, watching as she gets up, and offers me her hand.
"Let's get you home."
I lean on her a bit, shifting my weight from chair to feet and floor. Watch the muscles leap smoothly in her shoulders and arms as she counterbalances my slight sway. Discreetly. She's not that big, maybe five-five, five-six at the most, and slender, all whipcord muscle over bone. But she's strong. Weight for weight I think she's probably stronger than I am. You should see her fight – it's awesome, like watching a cat, fast and accurate and scary as hell if you're on the receiving end. She's not predictable, you know? That's where most people fall down in a fight. They gotta certain number of moves and after maybe a minute you've seen 'em all. Not her.
She steps close to me and tucks her arm through mine, walking slowly to the door and matching her stride to my dragging-toes-stumbling pace, pretending that I'm supporting myself, that I'm not listing to the right and half-leaning on her.
"Don't breathe deeply when you hit the outside air," she reminds me softly and opens the door, pushing me through first.
I take shallow breaths and my feet stutter down the three steps outside of the door, before I can catch the railing and anchor myself. The night air is freezing, and our breath is white as it leaves the warmth of our lungs. Ellie moves close to me, ducking under my arm and draping it over her shoulders. The motel is about three blocks away and we walk – well, she walks and I weave – haphazardly down the street toward it.
"Why d'you … uh … that … Ellie?" I forget what I was going to ask her, just the middle bit, in the middle of doing the actual asking. It doesn't matter, she knows.
She wrinkles up her nose a bit, looking at me. "You wanted to cut loose, remember?"
I don't have many clear memories of the early part of the evening, to be honest. I nod anyway.
"And it's easier to do if you're not worried about being able to shoot straight while you're wasted."
"So … you, uh … you're protecting me?"
She snorts. "I'm just making sure you get home okay. That's all."
"Are you armed?" I can feel my eyes widening as I look down at her. There's something pretty damned sexy about a chick with a gun, right? Not talking Daisy Duke, here, you can keep the hot pants and overflowing tits, but a chick who knows what she's doing? That's fucking smokin'.
"Yeah. Ready for anything." She pats my hand gently and keeps me walking. I have an annoying tendency to try to stop every time my mouth opens. I don't know why. Maybe not being able to do two things at the same time? Who knows?
"I have to – uh – you know –" I wave a hand around generally at the scenery. "Take a leak."
The need comes very suddenly and I can see her lips compress. Not sure if she's pissed with me, or laughing at me. We're under the partial shadows of a tree and I can't see her face clearly anymore.
"Knock yourself out." She steps away from me, taking a couple of paces toward the motel. I look around for somewhere suitable, and unzip, concentrating hard on making sure I'm aiming properly. Usually I know how much I've had to drink by how bad my boots smell the next day. One of the drawbacks of drinking on your own.
"Okay," I mutter to myself when the pressing feeling's all gone.
I walk toward her, slowing down a bit when I realise that the street is starting to kind of sway and roll. I can feel my eyes squinting up, trying to make it go away. It stops doing that when I reach her and put my arm around her shoulders again. She's like this kind of – uh – stabiliser, you know? She keeps it all level and calm. She talks to God too. Sometimes God even talks back. Not that she's ever shared an actual conversation with me. She tells me about it on the rare occasions when she's had one or two too many.
I can feel her gently pushing me to the left and when I look around, I can see we're already at the motel. The Challenger is sitting in front of the room, lookin' how I feel, neglected and in need of some pretty serious TLC. Ellie's moving a bit faster. I think she's probably cold. I don't feel it. I got enough anti-freeze in my bloodstream to last all night out here.
Help me find my way home
Along this rocky road, 'cause I can't carry on
Will you help me to my bed
Ease my aching head, take me where I belong
The song keeps playin' along in the background, and I know just what Rodgers means. I can feel a – a longing to just lie down and feel her arms around me. I'm not usually one for those sappy romantic songs, you know, all the 'feels' and none of the fire, but this one time I'm in sync and I think, just a couple more minutes and I'm there.
She opens the door and pushes me a little so I go through first. I baulk a bit at the doorway, 'cause, you know, it's, uh, pretty ungentlemanly of me to walk in first. For some reason the idea that I should've been opening the door and holding it for her is sticking in my brain.
"C'mon, Dean," she cajoles me, crowding close behind me.
I take another step and think maybe role reversals are a good thing for a relationship. Don't ask me where the fuck that came from but it's kind of funny, 'cause my knowledge of how relationships work is pretty thin. I'm thirty three and I've had three in my life. Relationships, I mean. I been with a lotta chicks, but there's no way you could call 'em relationships. Not sure the first one even counted, it only lasted a couple of weeks and even on the reprise it was more about the sex than anything else. The second one was longer but I wasn't there for the right reasons and when I look back, I can see it was kind of doomed to fail, even without Sammy comin' back and everything getting screwed over again.
Behind me I can hear the door close. Looking around, the motel room depresses me again. It's cheap and convenient to the job we've been working but you really have to wonder about the people who were in charge of the decorating. It looks like a six year old girl's bedroom. Too much pink. Too much shag. Too much fluff. I make a half-assed mental note to tell my little brother to check out the décor, next time he picks us a place to stay. Can just see the bitchface he'll pull when I say it too.
Ellie walks around in front of me and pushes my jacket over my shoulders, catching it as it slides down my arms toward the floor. She hangs it over the back of a chair, and goes to the kitchen counter, getting a glass of water and a couple of Tylenol from her bag and handing them to me.
"Let's just pre-empt the hangover, okay?"
"Yeah, okay." I swallow the pills and drink all the water. There's a lot of sloshing in my stomach. It doesn't feel combative. I look down as her fingers unbutton my shirt quickly, her hands sliding up my chest and over my shoulders to push it down my arms.
"Hey." I smile down at her as her light touch sends flickers of arousal through my nerves. That's always been the way between us. Touching is like holding onto a low-voltage wire, getting zapped, those little jolts going straight to you-know-where. No idea why, but it doesn't seem to be going away. I ain't got a hope in hell of doing anything about it tonight, but sometimes you still have to go through the motions, you know?
"Hey." She smiles back at me, her expression a little bit gentle and just slightly rueful and I know she knows there's no way I can get it up tonight.
She's already tossed the shirt over the jacket, and she gestures to the bed behind me, catching me around the ribs as I misjudge the distance and almost end up on the floor. See what I mean? Strong. I take a couple more steps back and feel the edge of the bed against the back of my legs, sitting down fast. She kneels in front of me and undoes the laces on my boots.
It's a weird thing, watching her do it. On the one hand, it's kind of … I dunno … nice … to be taken care of like this. On the other hand, I don't want her to feel like she has to do it.
"I got it."
She looks up and gives me one of those long-suffering smiles she usually reserves for very small children and those with toys in the attic. "Last time you knotted the laces so bad we had to cut them so you could get them off. You don't remember?"
"Huh."
I don't remember. It sounds kind of like something I might have done. Restraint isn't exactly one of my strongest points.
She pulls the boot off and starts on the other one, fingers flying. My eyes already feel tired and sore and I close them, opening them again quickly and too wide. Way too much spinning going on with them closed.
The other boot comes off and she gets to her feet, bending close as her fingers undo my belt, unbutton and unzip my jeans. I can smell her scent, some mix of the shampoo she uses, the soap and her own indefinable smell. It smells good. She smells very good. I'm inhaling appreciatively when she slips her arm around me and pulls me to my feet again, the jeans sliding down off my hips and into a crumpled heap. Looking down I really have to concentrate to get my feet out without sending us both crashing onto the floor. I admire her patience at times like these.
She pulls back the covers on the bed and I'm tired suddenly, tired and wanting nothing more than to close my eyes and sleep. Lying down, the room still spins but not as badly. I think the Tylenol is starting to kick in as well; the jackhammer guy in my skull is receding to the middle distance.
Sometimes you smile at the clothes that I wear
You listen to reason when I just don't care
It's bringing me down, then I start to fall
You catch my heart and don't let it go
Damn song won't stop playing but over it I can hear the rustle and whisper of her clothes, falling free as she strips off. I open my eyes and watch her, her fine-boned frame and creamy skin, the faint outline of her ribs and long, lean legs. For someone who doesn't carry much weight, she's got knockout curves. Hey, I'm a guy. We notice that stuff.
She gets into the bed and moves next to me, her head lying on the pillow next to mine, her skin cool and silken along my shoulder and arm.
"What's going on?" Her voice is just a whisper.
I sigh. More of a letting out of a breath kind of thing. I could keep pretending to be fine but I know that she knows I'm not, and to tell you the truth, I need to talk to someone about it. I don't know how exactly she got under all my defences, but she did, an' there's no one I trust more with the stuff I just can't tell anyone else.
"Sam. The Vegas job."
"I thought that was a spell? All over with now, back to normal?"
"Yeah, yeah, it is. It's just …" I don't know what to say, I don't know why it felt like everything I've ever known just collapsed into a pile at my feet when he told me that I should take care of myself, for a change.
"Like he grew up when you weren't looking?"
I can hear the smile in her voice and I turn my head to look at her. "Yeah, goddamnit. He doesn't need me any more."
Her arm slides under the pillow, under my neck and I shift over, finding the slope of her breast with my cheek, her arm curling around me. Damn but it feels good, being held for a change.
"No, he doesn't need you, Dean." Her lips brush lightly against my forehead. "But he still loves you, still wants to watch your back, know that you have his."
"Yeah." I pull in a deep, deep breath.
"Do you still need him?" She hesitates for a moment. "Is that still how you see yourself, as his protector?"
The question takes me by surprise and I fumble around for an answer. "Uh … no."
Fuck, that's not true. "Yeah, sometimes. Mostly, okay?"
"Thought you got through this when Sam took Lucifer into the Cage?" she says it casually, but I can hear the question behind the question.
"So did I." Not that I let him go then. And while I'd tried to stay away, to keep my so-called normal life with Lisa and Ben when he came back, it didn't take much to reverse that decision. "I guess, you know, the hallucinations … the, uh, just … worrying about him going sideways …"
"Yeah, it's harder to let go if you think they're going to end up in a rubber room."
"Right." I feel a wave of relief at her clear grasp of the situation and let my eyes close again.
"Of course, he's not," she continues quietly. "Going to end up in a rubber room, I mean."
"No." I agree, a bit more reluctantly. I'd been waiting for it, but it hadn't happened. Didn't mean it wouldn't, sometime, but it hadn't yet. "Doesn't look like it."
"So maybe it's not Sam who needs to grow up?"
Wham! Right in the kisser.
I'm gunna blame being mostly tanked for the way I didn't see that coming. If I'd been sober, I'd've known it was coming because sneak attacks are kind of her speciality, but yeah … uh, no, it hit me out of the blue.
"Maybe you need to think about if you want to stay Sam's guardian, or if you want a life of your own."
The lightning jab is followed by a straight right. She's not fighting fair 'cause I'm in no shape to take on combos and I got a sinking feeling she's not done yet.
"Is taking care of Sam an excuse so that you don't have to go after what you want, Dean?"
And that would be the left hook that takes me down. I know I brought it up, and I know, somewhere in the soggy, alcohol-soaked part of my brain, that she nailed the reason, but I'm damned if I know what to say.
I been protecting my little brother, trying to keep him safe – or alive, at least – since I was four years old. I don't know any other way to be. The last few years, a lot of what I took for granted changed. Some of it so much I still don't have it straight in my head. But I don't know how to deal with it. I thought I wanted a normal life, no monsters, no angels, no demons, just, you know, a regular job and a family and all the junk ordinary people have to deal with. Turned out that wasn't true. At least, it wasn't what I wanted. Not that way. So I went back to hunting, figuring I should do what I was good at. Turned out that'd changed too.
I'm lying there, and her arm tightens around me a little because she already knows that I feel uncomfortable enough to want to get some space between us. And she's not going to let me worm out of this, no matter how crappy I'm feeling generally.
"I have what I want," I say, partly to get past the awkwardness of this moment.
"Do you?" Her voice is quiet, thoughtful. "I hope so. Because otherwise you're using your brother as an excuse to not have to think about it, or make a choice that just for you."
Her best moves are the ones that don't look like moves at all. I wait, pretty sure there's more to come, but there isn't. S'like throwing a rock into a pool, the ripples look impressive but basically she waits until the rock sinks to the bottom.
The rock is me.
I did have what I wanted, pretty much. I got my brother, free of Hell and with most of his marbles intact, and a soul. I got the woman who's lying beside me, finally back, most of the time. It took a long time for that to happen and I still have trouble believing it sometimes. She keeps me from rolling off the deep end whenever I get too close. She isn't around as much as I want but when she's here, it's all good. Those were the things I asked for, and I have them now.
I also had a new threat to the world in the shape of these unkillable monsters who bleed black goo. And I'd lost my best friend to them. At least, he'd been my best friend, fuck, damn near my only friend, before he decided to lie to me and try and pull off a save-the-world coup on his own. There's a part of me that's still pissed at him 'cause trusting anyone comes hard and between him and my little brother, the two of them had made trusting fucking near impossible now. Oh yeah, and my car was locked down in an anonymous storage unit in the middle of the country, but you know, you can't have everything.
"You think I don't have what I want, Ellie?" My voice sounds high to me, and I clear my throat, tryin' to get it back down to normal levels.
"I think that you don't let yourself think about what you want, most of the time, Dean."
Huh. No idea what to say to that.
"Been kind of busy with other things."
"Sure. Always. That's the life, isn't it?" Her arm loosens a little, and I curve mine around her waist. It took a while to figure this out, this way of being together and talking about stuff that's too damned hard to talk about. She holds on, when I want to leave, and I hold on when she wants to. Seems to work out okay.
"Are you – uh –" I can't think how to make the question I don't want the answer to come out. "Um, not – uh – happy, with us?"
I hate asking these questions. I don't know why I do it. It's like wearing a sign that says 'Hit Me!' 'cause that's nearly always what happens.
I hear her exhale, and her hand lifts to my face, her fingertips following the line from temple to jaw so lightly I can hardly feel it. "I'm very happy with us."
"Good." Probably shouldn't say that out loud but the alcohol's taken most of my ability to make sound decisions away. "So what's the problem?"
Yeah. See what I mean? Again with the 'hit me' sign. Apparently I don't learn.
"The problem is I don't think you're happy with us."
There are times when you can hear things in the silence. This sounded like a skull being smacked with a cast iron frying pan, and I swear I could hear the ringing for the next few minutes. The thing of it was, she was right. I wasn't. Happy.
"What-uh-why would you say that?" I move back, and this time she lets me go.
That one thing, as small as it was, rings the alarm bells for me. Like I said, the way we do it works pretty well. We don't get to leave the discussion until it's over. Now, it feels like she's just holding the door for me.
She smiles a little and I can hear the wry note in her voice. "Just a hunch."
I can feel my pulse increasing, my heart banging away on the inside of my ribs. I don't want to upset the status quo really. I mean I'm not happy all the time – who the fuck is? – but that doesn't mean I want to change anything. You start messing around with that stuff and it can go either way. Fucked if I know how or why I did what I did next.
"You're right. I'm not happy."
The words fall out without my thinking about them, and if I wasn't so drunk I might've seen the fear in her eyes and made the effort to preface them with something less end-of-the-world-ish. She actually moves about a foot away from me, from my pillow to the one on the other side, and even in the dim lighting of the room I can see the tension in her body and face.
I can be a dick. I know that. I try not to be one, 'cause, you know, who wants to be a dick? But it still happens. The last few months had been weird. Weirder than my normal life, that is. Which comes in around an eight on a scale of one to ten. This year it'd been redlining around eleven. Hell, the last couple of years had been a cluster fuck of major proportions.
I still don't know why I tried so hard to keep going with Lisa and Ben. When Sam got back and I got blindsided by the djinn, I just about turned myself inside out, trying to figure out how to keep them safe and out of my world. Maybe some of that was 'cause I finally figured out that no one knew me, no one still around knew me well enough to know that the last year had been torture straight out of Hell so what fucking difference did it make if I had to be someone else to fit in? Maybe it was 'cause when Sam came back, Ellie didn't. I don't know. All I could think was that Lisa and Ben were in this thanks to me. 'Cause I'd taken the easy way out and tried to be normal with them. I didn't want another failure. Another thing in my life that I couldn't do, wasn't good enough to do. I didn't want to have nothing.
When Ellie came back, I kind'a went into orbit. The whole time she'd been gone, I kept trying to tell myself that what'd happened between us wasn't real. You know, trying to make out it wasn't hurting so fucking much. It made it hard to believe in it, even when that's all I wanted to do. She had a lot of stuff to do and like us, she had to go a lot and every time she went … well, it got to the point where I wasn't always ready to think she was coming back and instead of working out how to deal with that, I tried to tell myself that I loved her, but I didn't need her.
Yeah, right.
What a fucking dick, eh?
Hit on a bartender in Dearborn, hell knows what I thought I was gonna do if the god hadn't grabbed me before I had to face her. The psychic chick in Lilydale, I didn't even think about it, you know? I was just doin' the job and when she turned up before we left, I was surprised as hell that she seemed like she was interested. Nothing happened. I mean, I tried to let her down gently but the only thing I wanted was to get the hell out of that town and get back to some semblance of normality. Our kind of normality. Sam suggested we go to Vegas, spend a week there, kick back, cut loose … and then the douche bag went off into the desert to 'find himself' or whatever it was he wanted to do. I couldn't even call Ellie. I got drunk and the waitress at the club was … yeah, she was interested. I wasn't going to do anything about it, but the vibe was fun. Took me out of myself. Then she asked me why I was there on my own not even looking at the girls. I don't know why I answered her. I have zero fucking clue why I told her about Sam. She told me to look at myself. I mean, that says it all, doesn't it? Not going any further after a conversation like that. Not that it could. Or that I wanted it to.
Fuck.
When it's all summarised up like that … I don't have any excuses. The only places I ever got out of my head was in a bottle or in some chick's bed. I was drinking plenty back then, but it wasn't having much effect. I figure I'm not so different from the next guy, you know. Pretty girls have an effect. I wouldn't've done anything about it, but not being me – working my ass off trying not to be me – for a little while helped. At least, that's what I was telling myself.
Tell you the truth, I didn't know what I was doing. I still don't. What I wanted, I couldn't have. Wait a sec … that's not what I mean. I mean, I got it – I have it – just … not the way I need. Not the way I want it. Now. All the time.
I shake my head, ill-advisedly 'cause it sets off the spinning again, reaching out for her, trying to undo the last piece of stupidity that'd fallen out of my mouth.
"Ellie, c'mon. I didn't mean that the way it ..." My head is turning somersaults and I have to lie down again, close my eyes and hope like hell she doesn't get up and leave while I do it.
Most guys will tell you, when you're feeling under the weather, sympathy and tender, loving care from a woman who loves you is the only way to get over it. It's not that it's impossible on your own, more like it's too easy to get all whiny on your own or you know, get all macho and make out like there's nothing wrong and carry on. Having my head do its own version of Rock of Ages miraculously turns it around. She's back by my side, her arm around me and my cheek resting against her breast in seconds. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to.
Trying to figure out what I did mean in the middle of the rolling, swaying waves of nausea, I'm not sure I can explain it in a coherent, intelligible kind of way. We'd already talked about the amped up effects that'd been courtesy of the Egyptian god I'd run into. I'd been hoping the way I'd been feeling had all been due to his influence, but it seemed like he just took what was there and turned it up to max volume. A lot of it had gone away, too slowly for me, but I could still feel it. Call it whatever you want – despair, depression, black dog nipping at my heels – it wasn't going 'cause I wasn't dealing.
In spite of what you might've heard, I'm not stupid. It takes me a while to process crap but I get there in the end. I just have trouble getting it out. In whole sentences.
"I – uh – you know – it's –"
Oh, yeah, Mr Articulate, in person.
I try again, sucking in a couple of deep breaths before opening my mouth.
"I'm trying, Ellie, I really am. It's not working. When you're around, I got it all figured, I know what I'm doing. When you're gone … shit, it all goes to hell," I say, this time not caring that my voice is edging closer to a squeak. "You know what I want. I want you to stay. With me."
I feel like I've just run a thirty second mile. Why was it easier to tell her I love her than it is to admit to needing her around? How's that work? Isn't feeling like this enough? It has to be public too?
"That's it? That's why you're not happy?"
She's peering at me as if she can't believe what I just said and I can't tell from the tone of her voice if she is relieved or angry or about to cry. All my good radar packs it in under the influence of alcohol and then I'm pretty much as emotionally challenged as the average guy when it gets down to the nuances.
"Well, yeah."
She makes a noise, somewhere in her throat, and I feel her ribs rise and fall under my cheek, hear her heart slow down, become steady and even again.
I gotta say … women amaze me. They really do. They're complicated. Way more complicated than your ordinary guy. Most guys are never gonna know what's going through a chick's head. Or their own, even. Maybe that's by design. I don't know. I mean, take your furniture, for example. It's a sofa. The only thing important about it is, is it comfortable or not? What difference does it make what colour it is? Or if the arms are round or square? Say that to a chick and you'll get the world's dirtiest look. And most guys have no clue of why they got that look. It's a goddamned sofa, for cryin' out loud.
Another thing about women is they're strong. But they don't know it. I've seen women take crap that would grind a man down into the dirt, get up, keep going … they don't seem to get that. But the weird thing about women is the way they think about guys. In probably ninety percent of the women I've met, even the really strong ones, the ones who have it all together, they still want to be ying to some guy's yang. I'm not talking about sex here either.
The woman lying next me is a case in point. I know her, maybe not as well as she knows me, but still pretty well. She's strong and she's a helluva lot more capable than most of the hunters I've met. She can handle anything that comes at her and no matter how many times she's knocked down, she gets up again, her teeth bared, and just goes back for more. There isn't anyone else I know, male or female, with the determination and will she has. But you know what? She loves me – me, just in case we're not entirely clear on that – and the thing that scares her most is not getting gutted by monsters or trampled under the powers of Heaven or the demons of Hell, or dying or anything like that. What scares her the most is losing me. It just so happens that that's what scares me the most too – losing her. So I guess we're both pretty much on the same page there. But I didn't know that until right that minute, when I heard that noise and the pieces fell into place and it hit me, like a fucking ton of bricks, what she was feeling.
Hey, I told you before, it takes me a while to figure stuff out.
I might have gotten there faster if I'd had the slightest hint she'd automatically analysed the moodiness and depression of the past few days as dissatisfaction, instead of me trying to avoid the real issue which was what she'd nailed me with earlier – not knowing how to think of myself when it came to my little brother. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping the whole lot buried, but, uh, yeah … apparently not.
It took me a long time, but now when I think of losing her – and trust me, I try real hard not to do that 'cause thinking that crap can just make you crazy – it's not about losing her to someone else, or because I've fucked up somehow, although the odds on that are pretty damned good lately. It's just the reality of the life we live. Sometimes your luck can run out. I'm better about it now that than I used to be, 'cause I've seen her in situations that'd turn your hair white and I've seen her get out of them. But still, that's the worry for me – one day she won't be quick enough or something'll get the drop on her, and she'll be gone.
Ellie, on the other hand, worries that I'll find someone else. Or will somehow stop loving her. It's her blind spot, because she damned well knows me like the back of her hand in every other respect. She's not so worried about me buying it on a job these days. Maybe that's because of her conversations with God, I don't know. But there's a part of her that thinks that it's possible for me to … I don't know … forget, I guess. Forget I can't live without her? Forget when I'm with her, I feel like anything's possible? Truthfully? I don't know.
I slide my arm over her waist, and my thigh over hers, making sure she knows I'm not going to let her move until we're through this.
"You thought I wanted to leave?"
She's silent for a moment. "I thought you weren't happy."
"You thought I was looking around for something else?" I wasn't going to let her make out this was about something it wasn't. We're going to deal with this for once.
She sighs. "The last time I saw you, it was … messy. A lot happened. I wasn't sure how you felt when I left."
"I felt like I'd been given a reprieve from the gas chamber," I tell her. I still have nightmares about the way she'd left the bar and finding out that she'd been taken by vampires not an hour later. That was on me. If I hadn't needed her take on that goddamned god's effect on me, it never would've happened.
"You told me that you had doubts about this working," she says in a very small voice.
I swear, women have recorders instead of memories. Okay. I knew I'd said something along those lines, but I'm pretty damned sure that I said something else later on that should have cancelled it out. But she remembered the one thing I'd said that made her question how I was feeling and now, weeks later, I can't remember the details of any of it. I do remember that the conversation she's referring to had been before all the rest of the crap over those two days. Before I'd told her I'd wanted to die. You'd think that might have erased the previous conversation. You'd be wrong. Nothing gets erased.
"I did. Until I saw you again." I decide to be blunt about it. "You were right. This isn't easy. It's never going to be easy. But it's always going to be worth it."
That had to be the understatement of the century. When I was younger, I'd loved hunting. Loved killing the things that lived in the shadows and preyed on ordinary people. Loved the way it made us – me and my dad and my brother – special. Heroes, maybe. Over the last few years, that's changed. I lost a lot of people and went through a lot of crap, most of which is still churning around like a defective fucking washing machine in my head. Some of it, because of this woman, I'd started to … work my way through, I guess you'd call it. I wasn't that young, smart-mouthed kid anymore. I wasn't the man I'd wanted to be either. But with her, I was closer to him. A lot closer. And I could find that man, I thought, if she was around. She gives me a way through I just can't get anywhere else.
It's a good thing to lie against someone's chest when you're talking to them about this kind of stuff. I hear her heart skip a beat, and hear her holding her breath, while she absorbs what I've said. Better than trying to figure out from someone's expressions what they're thinking.
I'm starting to worry about the held breath when she finally releases it.
"I had no idea loving you would be so – so fucking terrifying," she says quietly, her fingers running lightly through my hair.
I smile a little, closing my eyes. She doesn't swear much. When she does, it's an indication of how much she's feeling. "It doesn't have to be. Just have some faith in me."
I can almost see her rueful smile, hearing it in her voice as she answers. "Guess I deserve that."
"Yeah, you do." Physically, I can't get any closer to her than I already am, but I try anyway, sucking in a breath as I try to get my shit together enough to make it clear. "I love you. You're the only person I've said that to, and there's a reason for that."
I take another lung-busting breath, realising that the headache and the I-wanna-hurl-spinning has gone, and what I want to say to her – hell, what I need to say – is getting easier as the words come out. "You're the only one I've felt it for. And it doesn't matter what happens, or how bad things get, that isn't going to change. It's never going to change."
I can hear her heart speed up a little as I say it, then slow down to big, booming thumps.
"I don't want to be anywhere else. I don't want to be with anyone else." It's funny how much it hurts to say that out loud. It's true. Maybe that's why it feels like my skin's being peeled back and I'm risking everything I am telling her.
I open my eyes and tilt my head back, carefully, still mindful that hangovers, even ones that haven't really started yet, can ambush you when you least expect it.
"This is where I belong."
She might have been crying, it was hard to tell with the lack of light and the angle I was looking. I inched up, sliding my arm more closely around her. The last time we were together, I figured out I wanted to live. Now I know it's more than that. I want more in my life than just being my brother's guardian. I want a life with her, maybe even a family with her. I don't know how that will work or even if that's what she wants, but it's finally all clear in my head.
End
Help me find my way home
Along this rocky road, 'cause I can't carry on
Will you help me to my bed, and ease my aching head,
take me where I belong
~Bad Company