Chapter Notes:

Just a bit of warning -- this chapter is a little sexy (though not in any way explicit). I just didn't want to offend anyone's sensibilities with a little pawing and groping that leads to grunting and... you know. Again, not explicit (that's not my thing), but enough that you definitely know what's going on. *a-hem* Moving on... This one's a shortish chapter, so I decided to go ahead and post it, instead of waiting for tomorrow. Sort of like a teaser. Hope you enjoy -- and thanks again to everyone who read and reviewed! Your kind words feed my muse and make me all kinds of happy. :)

888

The music was loud, and terrible, pounding out an incessant, steady beat that hummed through his chest, thudding with numbing consistency like a second heartbeat. Janet Jackson's "It's All For You" blared from loud speakers lining the dance floor while men and women – mostly women – swayed to the rhythm on the crowded floor, pressed together like sardines in a giant meat grinder. Dean intensely disliked the dance club scene, but it was the perfect place to get plastered, get lost, and find some random chick to get lost with. In a place like this the girls would outnumber the guys three-to-one, as opposed to the bars he usually frequented, which tended to have more patrons of the XY variety. Dean suspected the dance floor was largely to blame.

But tonight he was looking for better ratios. More women meant better chances of getting laid, and right now all he wanted to do was get stupidly drunk and then fuck his brains out. It was like a carnal drive, a gut-deep need to just fill that whirling void with something, anything, so that he wouldn't feel so empty and numb. The only numbness he could tolerate right now was the whiskey soaked oblivion of gross intoxication, and the boneless collapse of a body completely spent in love-making. That was the kind of comfort he was seeking.

"Now that's a man's drink," a female voice called to him, close to his ear, as he tossed a few bills onto the bar and reached for his fourth glass of whiskey. "You looking to walk out of here under your own steam or be carried out on a stretcher?"

Dean paused before taking a sip, turning to look at the stunning brunette who was squashed next to him at the bar, her shoulder almost pressed against him as people behind her jostled their way forward in an attempt to squeeze their way to the front of the line-up for drinks. The entire club was packed.

"Well I'm not really sure," Dean admitted, shouting over the loudness of the music and the crowd around them. "But for what it's worth, I've got quite a lot of steam."

"I bet you do," she said ruefully, giving him a coy smile.

It was almost impossible not to look at her cleavage: they were so close, and being taller than she was, he had to look down to look at her. And there they were, tanned and round, peeking playfully from the edge of a lacy white tanktop. A fellow patron fell forward and suddenly the breasts were pressed against Dean's chest when she lost her footing.

"Sorry," she said, blushing as she regained her balance, pulling her body away from Dean's.

"Not a problem," Dean replied, grinning.

"So listen," she said. "You wanna come join me and my friends over there at our table?"

She pointed at a cluster of tiny tables on the far side of the room where a group of people, guys and girls alike, were crowded together, several of them waving at their friend at the bar as she caught their attention with a wiggle of her fingers in the air.

"Thanks," Dean said, "but no thanks. I'm not really looking to make friends right now."

She gave him an arch look.

"You here by yourself?" she asked, noticing that he didn't appear to have a girl hanging off of his arm, and that he hadn't yet made a move to leave the bar, even though he already had his drink.

"Yup."

She arched an eyebrow.

"Then what are you looking for?" she asked.

Dean gave her a look, the look, that left nothing to the imagination as to what he was looking for.

She swallowed hard, her cheeks flushing and her lashes fluttering slightly. But she didn't back down.

888

The cold wall of the bathroom stall, solid concrete smattered copiously with glossy gray paint, sent a chill down his back as it made contact with his bare flesh. Hands sought madly for the secret, tender places, lips pressing against lips, tongues teasing tantalizingly in and out. Her mouth tasted sweet, like whatever fruity chick drink she'd been sucking back all night, and Dean savoured the faint mango smell of her hair as he stole away from her lips to her neck. The women's washroom was as good a place as any, and this one was luckily tucked away on the top floor, away from the crowded dance floor below, so it got less traffic, though he thought he heard the sound of someone retching in the stall next to the one that he and his beautiful brunette were getting steamy in. He was too drunk to care.

Their shirts were on the floor already, their stomachs pressing together and then separating as they busied themselves with the hiking of her skirt and the unzipping of his pants. And then his arms were around her waist, pulling her hips toward his as she made a small leap, wrapping her legs around him as he steadied her weight with his hands on her ass.

He gasped at the connection, abandoning himself to the warmth blossoming in his midsection. This wasn't pain, or hurt, or abandonment – this wasn't being left behind, being forgotten. This was letting go and being found at the same time. The brunette, God, he didn't even know her name, was panting in ragged gasps, stifling a moan as their hips moved together, as he moved within her. He wanted to get lost in her, to fly away on that toe-curling feeling of ecstasy and never come back from it.

She cried out in spite of her intention to be quiet, a kind of sharp gasped, inhaled cry of pleasure. The sound warmed him, both in his soul and in his body. It ignited his passion even as it ignited some strange sense of purpose within him. Look Dean, he thought, you're not driving someone away or killing something. You're making her feel good. You're doing something right. It was a familiar dialogue, one he had had with himself before.

For Dean Winchester, sex was a many splendoured thing. It was a means of letting off steam, of letting go, of connecting, of feeling good and making someone else feel good. It had always been a special kind of private escape for him, but now it was something more. This was grasping. He knew it. This was a desperate attempt to be close to someone, anyone, so that he didn't have to feel alone. It was pathetic. It was weak. But right now he didn't care. Sam was gone. Dad was on the verge of becoming a wreck, which meant soon they'd be leaping headlong into some kind of suicidal hunt so that they could both keep busy enough to not feel Sam's absence. But right now Dean was happy distracting himself in the best way he knew how.

He felt no qualms about banging some nameless chick in a bathroom stall in the ladies' room at the Cosmo Club. He was swimmingly drunk and feeling no pain, his body lost in hedonistic abandon to the pleasures of the flesh. And by the sounds of her joy-cries, the nameless one was getting her boots filled. All in all, Dean was pretty pleased with himself.

Until he woke up several hours later in a complete, world-spinning fog of nausea and blinding headache. The entire room tilted when he opened his eyes and he had to grab hold of the bed to steady himself as he waited for the overwhelming vertigo to pass. He was alone, back in his motel room, and only half-dressed. His shirt was tossed in a heap on the floor, his pants trapped around his ankles from where he had tried removing them with his boots still on. The carpet burn on his face had dried out as it began to heal and now felt tight and slightly scabby. And he really needed to vomit.

The stallion from last night's sexcapades found himself crawling shamelessly along the floor, dragging his sorry, drunken ass toward the bathroom with his chin held up high as he attempted to hold the puke in until he could reach the toilet. It was a struggle: his jeans around his ankles acted like shackles, binding his feet close together so that he had to either inch or hurl himself across the floor. Dean opted for hurling, as he was rapidly losing the battle to hold the vomit in.

At long last he reached the bathroom, making one final lunge forward to grasp the toilet bowl. The heaves were painful in their intensity, his body lurching angrily to expel the unwanted and excessive alcohol. But in the end, the puking helped. The nausea melted back somewhat, though his hands still trembled against the porcelain as he tried to hold himself up. Then, trusting that the spasms had ended for the time being, he eased himself onto the floor, his sweaty back cooled against the cold fibreglass of the bathtub behind him.

Beyond the bathroom he heard the unmistakable sound of a door opening and closing, and by instinct he sat up, reaching for his pants to pull them up before his father could find him in his pitiful, degraded state, but the nausea rose like a wave and he immediately gave up, resting once again against the bathtub. Shuffling feet and a groggy, garbled call of, "Dean?" let him know right away that his father wasn't in much better shape.

The shuffling got closer. He looked up blearily to see his father, his face dark and drawn, his eyes droopy and his lips parted stupidly, looking down on him as he leaned against the door frame for support.

"I didn't hear you come in," he said in a gravelly voice that sounded like rocks running over sandpaper. Then his eyes took in the full sight of his half-dressed son lying helpless and dejected on the floor.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Too much whiskey," Dean mumbled, laying his right arm over his forehead to block out the light, which his father had just turned on. "You?"

John laughed.

"Like father like son." Then he winced and held a hand to his own throbbing head.

"I thought you were going to pass on the whole getting shitfaced front," Dean said, not bothering to look up.

"Changed my mind," John replied. "Do you need a hand with that?" He waved a hand in the general direction of the tangle of jeans around Dean's feet.

"If you're offering…"

John bent low and began untying his son's boots for him, huffing a laugh at the pathetic state he and his son found themselves in. It had been a hard night, though he suspected Dean had found more than one way to keep himself occupied in his grief.

"So how do you s'pose Sam's doin'?" Dean asked as his father pulled off Dean's right boot.

888

After a long, long walk along the highway with his thumb held aloft, and an even longer night squashed into the cab of old Earl Langley's truck, Sam was deliriously happy to find himself hitching comfortably in the back seat of Maureen Johnson's Ford Mustang. Granted, it was cramped, and his long legs were nearly driven up to his chest as he sat squashed in the back seat with her cousin Darla while Maureen and her sister Jenny discussed the finer points of Bradd Pitt's career in the front, it was still infinitely better than Earl's cab. Sam had been cold, hungry, and bored stiff listening to the sixty-something year-old man talk about his many and varied bodily ailments as he hacked up a lung and nearly ran off the road in his eighteen-wheeler with Sam clinging desperately to the door as his young life flashed before his eyes. Grateful though he was for the lift, he had never been so happy to get out of a vehicle in his entire life.

When the Mustang pulled alongside him barely ten minutes after his release from the transport from Hell, Sam couldn't believe his luck. The three young women inside were immediately taken in by Sam's puppy dog eyes and unassuming look – the mop of shaggy brown hair definitely helped. Sam knew that if Dean were here the constant chatter would have ended abruptly with the ring of buckshot and a few choice curses, but Sam found the prattle to be strangely soothing.

These were normal girls. Their playful banter and at times mindless talk was ordinary and not of the supernatural kind, and he was happy to be immersed in it because to him, it signalled the beginning of a new era. The Age of Sam: College Boy Extraordinaire! Though truthfully, Sam hoped that the girls at Stanford were a little bit deeper than these three. For now, though, it suited him well enough that the young women were chatting away. It left his mind free to wander.

This was it. When he thought about it too much, his hands would start to shake and his gut would wrench. He had left. He had packed his bags and walked out the door. No second glances, no turning back. Sam was on his own. For years he had longed for this, prayed for this, but now that it was here, he felt terrified and kind of empty. It would pass, he knew, but the overwhelming feeling of being suddenly tossed to the wolves, albeit of his own choosing, left him really wishing that Dean was here.

Had he even said goodbye to Dean?, he wondered. The twisting knot in his stomach told him he hadn't. God, he hadn't even looked at him when he left. He was just so mad: and Dad had told him to leave and never come back. Was that excuse enough, though? Would Dean understand?, he wondered. Probably not. Dean was John Winchester's perfect son. Wherever John went Dean would follow.

Dean is selfless… You're a selfish, spoiled brat. Dean's on board… Dean understands that what we're doing is important… His father's voice, with those stinging words, echoed stabbingly through his brain. He had made it very clear that Sam was the living embodiment of all that is disappointing in a son, while Dean was truly the apple of his eye.

And for that matter, where the hell was Dean when Dad was saying all this? Why hadn't he stood up for him? Why had he been happy to just stand back and allow their dad to cut Sam apart and banish him forever?

His heart sank within him. He knew why Dean had been quiet. Deep down he knew: Dean agreed with their dad. He thought that hunting was the most important thing in the world, and that Sam walking away was like a betrayal to the family. So Dean had zipped his mouth shut and had listened silently to the tirade because he agreed with Dad. Sam had never felt so alone in his entire life.

"So you say you're starting Stanford in the Fall, huh?" Maureen asked, yanking him away from his dark thoughts.

"Yeah," Sam said weakly.

"And you're hitch-hiking there because…?"

Sam shrugged.

"It's a long story."

Jenny turned in her seat to look at Sam, smiling sweetly.

"Well that's what road trips are for, Sammy."

"It's Sam," he corrected, clearing his throat. Only Dean was allowed to call him Sammy. And right now he was angry and upset with Dean.

"So you running away or something?" Maureen asked bluntly, eying him briefly through the rear-view mirror before turning her eyes back to the road. "Sneaking off in the dead of night to go to Stanford?" She laughed, clearly thinking that her suggestion was absurd.

"Pretty much," Sam admitted.

"Are you serious?" It was Darla speaking now. "You ran away to go to college?"

Sam nodded. Their shock and dismay was making him feel less and less like a disobedient freak.

"Jesus," Darla exclaimed. "Who's your family, the Von Trapps?"

"How'd you guess?" Sam joked, feigning light-heartedness. The truth was he was feeling heavy right through to his soul, and talking about him running away was making him feel worse.

"Aw, well that's too bad," Jenny said. "I guess families can be a big pain sometimes, especially when they've got plans for you that don't quite jive with what you wanna do, right?"

"I swear, if my mom tells me to go into Computer Sciences 'cos that's where the money's at,' one more time I'm going to scream," Maureen said emphatically. "She's convinced that the acting gig is going to leave me a waitress for the rest of my life. Which is probably true, but still. It's the principle."

"You're an actress?" Sam asked, his curiosity piqued. He had wanted to ask how old everyone was, and what they did for a living, but hadn't wanted to pry.

"A crappy one, yeah," she replied with a laugh. "Who am I kidding? I'm so totally going to end up waitressing for the rest of my life."

She laughed a hearty belly laugh, as if being a waitress against her parents' wishes was the funniest and greatest achievement ever.

"She wants me to go back to school," Maureen explained. "Both my parents do. But I'm happy doing what I'm doing, so I say screw it."

"Come on, Mo," Jenny coaxed. "That's not really fair. Mom just doesn't want to see you miss your chance to get an education."

"Says the second-year Bio major who's going to be a doctor," Maureen muttered. "You're mom and dad's dream kid."

"Huh." So the sisters in the front were definitely older than Sam. He suspected that the eldest, Maureen, might even be Dean's age. "So do you talk to your parents still? Are you on good terms with them?"

"When we're not trying to kill each other, sure." Her eyes glanced again through the rear-view mirror. "Listen, Sam, the Von Trapps are gonna be just fine. Just give it a little time and whatever's got you high-tailing it out of town will have blown over."

Sam highly doubted that. Stubbornness, thy name is John Winchester.

Still, it was comforting to listen to the two siblings in the front seat. They got along well, though they were night and day different in temperament, lifestyle, and appearance. The eldest was tall and athletic-looking, with dark hair and intense eyes – a perfect look for an actress, in Sam's opinion; while the younger was slight, petite, with pixie short blonde hair and soft blue eyes. One was an actress, the other a Biology major. And yet when they joked around, there was no mistaking the similarities in the sense of humour: their in-jokes were so numerous it was hard to follow their conversations.

Suddenly Sam felt a deep pang of regret, thinking about Dean. He'd have to drive by himself in the Impala now that Sam was gone. There'd be no one to joke with in the car, no one to play music Nazi for, no one to play stupid pranks on. No one to watch his back.

All at once he was overwhelmed by the urge to turn back and go home. How could he have left Dean? He hadn't even said goodbye! And what was he thinking, playing at being Joe Normal at Stanford of all places? He was going to be laughed off of campus. There was no way he'd fit in with all those classy, rich kids. Maybe he'd been fooling himself into thinking he could do this. Maybe he should go home.

… if you walk out that door… You walk out? You don't ever come back.

Sam couldn't go home. That proverbial door was closed to him now. His dad didn't want him to come back. Sam had committed a Cardinal Sin. He'd abandoned the family, abandoned the mission. And Dean agreed with him. He knew Dean didn't want him gone, but that didn't mean Dean wasn't disappointed in him. And he couldn't bear to see the disappointment on his brother's face. He just wished he could make him understand. Sam just didn't belong there.

And whether out of sadness, desperation, stubbornness, or anger, Sam never did know which, he decided that he would not reply to the three texts that he'd already received from Dean, except to send a hasty, "Caught the bus. Will b in Cali soon. Sam." If he was being honest with himself, Sam suspected the real reason was that he was a coward. He was running away.