6. Lighten Up While You Still Can
It takes two to tell the truth: one to speak and one to hear.
She rides in the back of the black Impala – the car she has come to love, as it is an extension of the person she both loves and hates. He is the designated driver this day. Even with the sun shining through the glass windows glinting on his peach skin and the breeze stirring the short strands of his dark blonde hair making him look like a flying angel, she feels nothing more than acute annoyance towards him.
"Dean…" she says, drawing the word out until it is almost, but not quite, a whine; a child's plea for attention. "De-e-an…"
He sighs, and the motion ripples his shoulders beneath his leather jacket. If she was any less focused on the task she had set herself, she would have taken the time to notice, and thoroughly appreciate this. Fortunately, the task at hand was a pressing one, and she was dedicated. "You rang?" he asks, the trademark sarcasm evident in his voice, and she buries a smile.
"Yes. You know how much you love me?" How she wishes this was true. "And you know how absolutely amazing you are?" Butter him up, butter him up, never mind that she believes what she's saying. "Well…"
"Sam, does she have a point?"
"I'm not sure Dean. I'm just waiting to see when she runs out of compliments. It's you, so there can't be many left that aren't complete lies."
She smiles, tilting her head to the side and pretends she's agreeing with Sam's teasing remark. In actual fact, if you gave her twenty-four hours in which she couldn't say anything but Dean's good points, or talk about him exclusively, or list everything she loved about him, she could go on for about ten more, without drawing breath. But then, that was when she was in a good mood about him. If she was in a bad mood, she could go on about the bad things for the same amount of time – and probably extra.
Usually she was in a bad mood – he put her there with careless and amazing ease.
"I need to go shopping."
The startled glance he sends her through the rear view mirror is not missed, and Sam turns his head around, expressive aqua eyes just as confused as his brother's green ones. "What?" Sam asks, scrunching his nose up on one side, eyebrows beetling. This is the expression she often catches on his face when Dean says something to take him aback, or he's confused, or speechless. She views it with the affectionate detachment of an older sibling, then turns her eyes back to Dean. After all, he's the one she has to win over on this day.
"Well, you see…unless you want me to go insane and start killing you both, I need a new book, or ten, shampoo, good soap, moisturiser…" and, if her calculations and womanly instincts were correct, pads and tampons. But she won't tell them that, unless Dean is completely unreasonable, and it's the only way to turn him around. He wouldn't like her to stain the Impala would he? That's something she'd also rather avoid. "And stuff."
"Uh, in case it escaped your notice Lauren, we're kind of trailing an incubus here. Unless you'd like for innocent women to be raped in their beds and bear devil spawn of course."
"Oh, Dean, don't be so melodramatic. As you can clearly see, its day time. And incubi only attack at night. Besides, a fifteen minute stop at some gas station posing as a Wal-Mart will not cramp our hunting." Speaking of cramps…she bites her lip, closes her eyes and her eyebrows raise in the face she makes when suppressing pain. When she opens her eyes again it's with a silent sigh of relief – they hadn't noticed.
She really should have bought supplies before they left – but she'd still been half asleep, eyes puffy and glazed, mind still stagnant, and pink mouth yawning. There had been no time for a shower to wake her up, as Dean had been almost military in his precise actions and just as loud as any drill sergeant in his commands for her and Sam to get up, get dressed and pack. He'd found a hunt, and they needed to go, now, now, now people! He was, of course, being sarcastic. But it was still piercing enough to wake her up. That was the only way for her to come completely conscious in the morning – a shower. Or if that was unattainable, a big, steaming cup of black coffee, with approximately two spadefuls of sugar added.
Neither had been forthcoming, which is why she hadn't realised the date and attached consequences of it until all of ten minutes earlier. Her body clock was exactly that – like clockwork, and 'they' came exactly twenty eight days after each previous one. Sometimes she could even pinpoint the hour they were going to start. And then, even if she couldn't, her stomach always supplied her with ample warnings.
"You don't need any of those items right now, do you?"
None of the items she'd listed, perhaps, although they were all elementary for a woman's survival. Especially the books, when she was shoved into the back of a moving car every other day, with nothing to do but sleep, listen to music and watch the uninspiring scenery pass. She could practically feel her mind melting.
She knows that Dean won't stop for her on the basis of shampoo and books, but she really doesn't want to have to use the womanly troubles excuse. Things between the three of them would be embarrassed and strained for days afterwards. "As I said, unless you want me to start killing…yes, I need them. Now. Now, as in right now. As in, the next gas station we come across, you're stopping, or I'm jumping out of the car."
"Now who's being melodramatic?" he asks, and she narrows her eyes at the back of his head, happily imagining a couple of arrows sticking out of it, like the spikes on a porcupine's back. He was about as thick as a porcupine. Okay, no, that was a little harsh. Porcupines were far more intelligent than Dean Winchester, at this moment in time.
She turns her huge eyes on Sam, making them grow even wider and fill with tears. The glassy, hazel green and gold orbs seem to overbrim with sorrow, and she knows by the way he flicks his eyes uncomfortably away from her, to Dean, and back again, that he's falling for it. Her puppy eyes are almost as effective as his own.
Mentally, she smiles. With Sam on her side, Dean would cave, and soon. Very soon. He could never deny his little brother anything. Especially if Sam used his own puppy dog eyes. That expression was a masterpiece.
She'd observed this to her advantage over the past month and a half she'd been travelling with the brothers, and used it when it was necessary to get Sam on her side. She would never turn him against Dean; of course not…it was just that sometimes she needed a little extra help. Dean was difficult, often, and about the stupidest things. Like vegetables, eating in for once, instead of out at diners, and chores – like laundry and cleaning. If he really expected her to do it all, he was the worst kind of Neanderthal. She'd called him this, and several other much more insulting adjectives, when he'd refused to do his share…Sam had helped her out then too, going on and on about fairness and equality, how everyone needed to pull their own weight. If it wasn't the puppy dog look Sam was giving Dean, it was the never ending flow of words that finally convinced him to give in – he'd done all of the laundry that night.
"Look, Dean," Sam starts, his voice cajoling and smooth. He flicks his eyes in the woman's direction again, and the sight urges him to continue. "Fifteen minutes won't hurt. We'll still reach the town with plenty of time to pinpoint where it'd make its next move."
Dean's eyes glance, his annoyance obvious, at the two people staring at him, both with identical, 'come on Dean, please, please, please?' expressions on their faces. The female's holds an underlying smugness that tells him that she knows he's already giving in, and makes his eyes narrow even further. He ought to… then again, if he didn't agree now it'd only postpone the inevitable, and Dean wasn't one for drawing painful things out.
"Fine," he grunts, and the woman's smile is all worth it, her eyes lighting up with an inner fire he recognises in his own spirit, and full, bowed lips curving upwards, dimples appearing. His brother's smile mirrors hers, and they both settle back in their seats, content.
000
The tall boy sleeps in the back, form crumpled and folded into a pretzel shape that allows him to fit, however uncomfortably, onto the back seat with most of his body lying horizontal. His mouth is open and his breathing pattern steep and steady, rhythmic, and slow. His sea eyes are closed, their careful watchfulness shuttered for the time being, as the tarmac road passes swiftly by several layers of leather and metal beneath him. His long, scruffy brown mop is hanging down, covering half his face, and his head leans atop an arm and two jackets, one of them his, one of them hers. His other arm dangles somewhere amidst the debris on the floor – cartons and packets and paper cups and a half open backpack that spills books amongst the rubbish – while his long, lithe legs are lost somewhere under his brother's seat.
The woman sits in the front, next to the driver, whose eyes sport purples bags that do not inspire much confidence in his driving capabilities. She watches the tall boy with one watchful, almost maternal, eye, the other lingering with too much attention on the older boy to be entirely innocent. She turns the ACDC tape, which is singing loudly and powerfully about cats' eyes and hanging and being back in black, down another notch, because she knows that the tall boy needs his sleep, and he doesn't have any particularly affectionate feelings towards his brother's music taste.
The older boy is quiet, watching the road with a studied intensity, and she settles her head back against the smooth, buttery leather behind her, slumping in the seat and feeling like she could sleep for three days straight. Her young bones are exhausted and hurting, and she's pretty sure at least one rib needs strapping, but that's not important right now. What's important is the way the moonlight reflects upon Dean's stubbled jaw, making his whole profile out of blues and blacks and greys, the jutting of his cheekbones even more prominent, and turning the line of his neck that leads into his shirt into a column that begs to be followed with eyes and hands and tongue.
"Lauren," the older boy speaks up suddenly, his voice low and hoarse, jerking her out of her self-imposed half stupor, half fantasy, and guiltily into the present. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Didn't give me much choice, did you sunshine?" she retorts, in a whisper just as soft as his. She loves jerking Dean's chain. It supplies her with unlimited, never ending amusement and vengeance, as he did it just as often to her. "Yeah," she sighs when he doesn't rise to the bait. "What is it?"
"You could have gone on with your normal life, after dad and me and Sam left you ten years ago. Not exactly, but mostly, and maybe a little safer. Why didn't you?"
This deep questioning, especially from Dean, surprises the woman. If anyone, she would have expected Sam to have asked her about this issue. Dean avoided emotional, soul bearing conversations like this, as though they were the Black Plague.
She wonders if Sam put him up to it, or if he's just trying to find a way to keep himself awake. In any case, she's trying to find a way out of answering – things like this weren't her cup of tea either.
She hated tea.
"Uh…I'm not really sure," she answers, and her tongue runs over her suddenly dry lips, trying to bring a little moisture. "It just seemed like something I had to do." And on the other hand, she hadn't really had much choice.
"Why?" Dean asks, not taking his eyes off the road, the steady, illuminating headlights of the Impala brightening the tarmac before them with ease. His gaze follows the bend in the road, and they take the next exit out of the town, before she answers him.
"I left home so I could study things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-ology," she says, and sees his mouth quirk in the dark, an answering quirk hitting her stomach hard, desire pooling and melting the barriers she should have been building over this topic. His smile affected her in ways she couldn't even begin to dissect, nor did she want to spend that much time on trying to. Too fucking confusing. "After that poltergeist – my real dad – killed Thomas, the guy I thought was my dad, and my brother Scott, everything seemed a lie to me. Thomas had killed my real dad. Mom had lied to me about my parentage. The very foundations of real, and right and wrong seemed to have disappeared." In the darkness of the car her voice seemed to take on an almost ethereal quality, lending the story she was telling a mysterious and soulful edge. It was all true too, and as she related it to Dean, she felt as though she were reliving it – the images of her mother screaming as she found out what had happened, the disembowelled bodies of Scott and Thom, the thing that was her real dad standing transparent before her eyes each night, before she sent him away with scared, adolescent determination, his corpse burning on her bed, John and Sam and Dean helping her speak to the cops, John telling her the truth, all of it appeared behind her eyelids again, in an uninterrupted flow of faces and fire and blood. "And it occurred to me that other people were dying because of things like this. That mine wasn't the only family affected. And I just…I wanted to help them. No offence, Dean, but you guys can't do it all. There are plenty of jobs to go 'round for every hunter out there, and then some. So I just…yeah. Ten years later, here we are." It wasn't the whole truth, but it was enough. She didn't wish to think about the rest, even now. "You?"
Dean paused, his discomfort evident. He cleared his throat several times, rolled his shoulders and, although it was obvious he wanted to avoid the conversation he had initiated, continued. "See, I never really had a choice," Dean says, his voice husky from the punch in the windpipe he got from the incubi's mate. "It was always hunting, since I was four, and that son of a bitch killed my mom. And, I guess it's a good thing for me, that I never really wanted to do anything else. I know the importance of what it is we do, and Sam can deny it all he wants…but I think it's our destiny."
"You believe in destiny?" she asks, half actually surprised and curious, half just wanting to prod him. She knows he never would have opened up to her like this, but for the unique combination of dark, and travel and silence, their own exhaustion, and the sleeping presence of Sam behind their backs. She wants to keep it going as long as she can, wants to find out all she is able to about the man she's in love with, but in some ways, hardly knows at all.
"Sometimes," he answers, completely unruffled. He flicks his eyes towards her, black in the darkness. "Don't you?"
"I think its more cause and effect. If Thom hadn't killed my dad, and then vice versa, John wouldn't have come, I wouldn't have known about the paranormal, I wouldn't have become a hunter. Besides, I hate the idea of anyone, or anything having control over my life. Don't you?" she asks, mocking his question to put them back on an even footing again. All this uncomfortable soul bearing is making her wish for sleep even more fervently, which battles the desire to know Dean.
He turns his head to look at her completely now, gaze taking in her stiff posture, wide eyes and bloody lip, where the incubi they'd originally been after had dealt her a nasty uppercut. She was fidgeting, and he could tell the conversation was at a close when he turned his eyes back to the road again.
"Yeah." He smiles to himself, a secret, unseen smile, and they drive off into the silence of the night.
000
The acute tension between them stretched, taut and animal, like the seconds of silence before an explosion, the calm before the storm that rips half a roof off. Sooner or later, one of them was going to have to give, but both of them tell themselves in their silent, angry mentalities that it won't be them.
Two faces eye the road before them with the ferocity they wish they could turn on each other, but to start to would be the sign that they are weakening. And weakness has never been allowed, especially not between the two of them.
The silence in the classic, powerful black car is only compounded by the man's tape; a loud, rolling mixture of rock, acoustic and barely concealed animosity, and the song seems perfect somehow. Never free, the artist sings, so I'm dubbed the unforgiven.
The woman is the first to fold, her nature having been fighting against the strained quiet since it had started, and her pride wishing to thrash the man off of his hypocritical high horse. "I can't believe you think it's alright for you to practically pimp yourself out for information, but you won't let me do it! Pot and kettle much?"
"It's different for me."
"Oh, yeah? How so? Regale me with the stories of your superiority with handling such things, in comparison to little, unexperienced me."
"It's not like that, and you know it Lauren! You're trying to get the thing to notice you, not just get information from bystanders. Do you want to end up dead, or worse, its plaything?"
"You don't think I can take care of myself. That's what this is really about, isn't it? Well, you're not the first one to think like that, and look at me, I'm still here, still alive and in one piece, still fighting. What is it about me that makes people constantly underestimate what I can do? For fuck's sake, I can handle it okay? I was doing it long before you came along, and –"
"That is not what this is about! You're just putting yourself in danger to get this over with. You're so reckless sometimes, especially when we're hunting. It's like you don't even care what happens to you. Different hunts require different approaches, rather than just jumping in with guns blazing every single time."
"What's more different than guns blazing, etcetera, than ingratiating myself into its inner circle? If you'd just let me –"
"No. I don't like it, its not happening." He faces the front again, face unreachable, carved out of living stone; these are his last words on the subject and he will not be swayed.
If the tall boy were here, the older one knew that he would be on her side and calling him irrational, telling him it would probably work and it was the best idea they had. But he just couldn't view it in such a light.
On one hand, he didn't trust her not to just take the thing on herself, when she thought she had a clear shot; on the other he just didn't like the idea of her that susceptible to attack. She was like a train off its rails; rampaging and destroying everything in its path, uncaring of any damage the carriage itself happened to undergo. It was as though the woman didn't care whether she lived or died, as long as she took as many evil things as she could with her.
He didn't know who, or what it was that had made her so guarded, and closed off; who had made her view the world with such pessimistic aggression – but whoever he was, if Dean ever met them, they were going to pay the consequences in sweat and blood. Very rarely did she show anything that could be construed as human, and if she did, she immediately covered it up with a smart ass comment, trying to shield the pain and any other parts of her personality from them. It reminded him of the time when Sam had left to go to college – he'd been in a pain, felt a sharp betrayal, akin to the one he suspected she was going through. But he'd had his father to keep him safe, and watch his back. The woman had no one but him and Sam – and he wasn't going to let her go off and attempt stupid things like this, without the proper consideration they deserved, without thinking about it for a long time, viewing it from every angle and finally deciding on the right course of action.
Then again, it was her, and he never expected her to give in without a fight.
"This is not a negotiation Dean. Either let me do it, and do what you can to protect me, or I'll just go at it alone, without your help. There is no other way, and all the research Sammy's doing at the library is not going to change the facts."
He just shakes his head, watching the road, and the music fills the car again, leaving them both unsatisfied, and the solutions to their problems still inconclusive. Her eyes glide over his profile for a minute after he has turned away from her; their shields momentarily dropping to bare a soul brimming with unspoken truths and undercurrents. Little does she realise the man has just as many he could speak, but chooses not to.
These truths neither will voice, and even if either did, they knew the other wouldn't accept.
AN: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHH
The next chapter is so surprising and unexpected and WOW… :D I can't wait to update – but I'm not gonna, unless I get at least 3 reviews. THAT'S THREE REVIEWS OR NO UPDATING UNTIL I CAVE…. Which will take a long time because I'm so patient. :D:D 3. 3. 3. 3. THREE. Please. I know, evil. But I can't help it, I love reviews, and if I have to resort to these kind of tactics to get them, then that's just how its got to be. I hope you enjoyed this one, and that you have inklings of what's going to happen next. If you do, you're WRONG. MWAHAHAHAHA. But still tell me about them. Lauren, shut up. OK, bye!!!