Over the meal Masters described the people he'd seen hanging around Dean and his classmates and Sam roughed out a couple of preliminary sketches on napkins based on his initial descriptions, but they were pretty generic, lacking much in the way of distinguishing features. Sam wasn't sure how useful the information would be anyway. Masters' comments about the Mob were just as applicable to demons in the sense that they could be anyone and anywhere. Not all of them possessed the same victim for long periods; some just smoked in, did their damage and then moved on. All the same, Sam offered to fetch his sketch pad from the car so he could fine tune the portraits. He was surprised when Dean reacted against the idea.
"No! Sam, I didn't get you that for – " he came to an abrupt halt and sucked his lip for a moment, then he picked up the napkins and waved them at his friend. "Have you seen these dudes around town, Jim? Have you seen anyone suspicious? No?" He stuffed the napkins into his pocket. "Then this can wait until tomorrow," he insisted. "We were supposed to be taking a time out. Can we just . . . just have one day when we act normal. Normal people celebrate their birthdays, right Jim?"
Dean's voice had that edge that it got sometimes when he was feeling boxed in, and there was a flicker of the haunted, hunted expression behind his eyes. The revelation that demons had been watching him even back when he was a student had upset him, and Sam was concerned but, at the same time, he kind of wanted to kill him for bringing up that subject in front of the other guy.
Masters turned and raised his eyebrows at Sam. "Whose birthday? Yours?" he asked. "You should have said."
Dean backhanded his friend's shoulder. "Hey! Remember Tom's birthday last year? When we all went out to Biggerson's?" His mood was shifting to over hearty now. "And we made him stand on the table while the whole restaurant sang 'happy birthday' to him?" Dean must have seen the alarm in Sam's face because he hastily added "don't worry, Sammy, we're not gonna do that to you."
"No. No." Masters added soothing assurances. "We wouldn't do that." He turned toward the bar and, holding a pointing finger over Sam's head, he yelled "Hey, Eli! Big Flaming Woofter over here for the birthday boy!"
The whole bar stilled to silence and stared at their table. Masters cast an innocent glance around the room as if he didn't know what had drawn their attention. "What?" he demanded. "It's a drink. Eli, make that three!"
The other patrons gradually averted their stares and the murmur of conversation began to pick up again. Dean had the grace to look annoyed and embarrassed, and for his sake Sam . . . exercised restraint. Dean evidently didn't feel the need, since he punched his friend's arm, hard.
"Ow!" the man complained. "I felt that, you tosser!"
"You were meant to," Dean hissed at him. "You start a fight tonight, Jim, and I'll leave you to it, so help me."
The other guy laughed. "Relax, Winch. They all know me here. We're among friends."
"Yeah? Whose friends?"
Dean meant it as a flip rejoinder but Sam thought it was a pertinent question, along with others such as: who was this jackass, and why had he turned up now?
Masters was still rubbing his arm. "When did you get all rugged and muscley, anyway?" he asked Dean. "You been working out?"
Dean nodded emphatically. "And Sam's been teaching me some moves."
The man's lips twisted into a smirk, but Dean anticipated and forestalled any comment with another punch. "Oi! Watch it!" he warned Dean, rubbing his arm more energetically. "Don't flatter yourself I couldn't still take you!"
"Yeah, any time you want a piece of me, you just let me know," Dean retorted, assertively, and apparently unconscious of any double entendre.
The barman appeared with a tray loaded with glasses filled with some layered cocktail that looked like a Tequila Sunrise overflowing with fruit, umbrellas and plastic monkeys. From his expression, he wasn't much more impressed to be serving the drinks than Sam was to receive one. As the glasses were unloaded onto the table Dean and his friend both reached for their wallets but Masters insisted.
"Wrap your laughing gear round that," he said as he pushed the glasses in front of them.
Sam didn't feel much like laughing and it must have shown.
"You all right, Sammy?" Dean asked.
Sam frowned. "I'm fine," he said.
"Well, lighten up a little, Sammy – " Masters chipped in.
Sam cut him off. "He's the only one who gets to call me that!" he snapped. Maybe Dean's habit of calling his friend "Jimmy" was encouraging him to overuse the license Sam allowed him, but he was damned if he'd put up with the college buddy jumping on the bandwagon.
"Okay. No offence meant," Masters assured him. "Just celebrating a little. Wishing you many happies 'n all that."
Dean was looking at Sam oddly. He didn't want to appear churlish so he returned a tight smile and accepted the drink with thanks and took a small sip. What else could he do? The two of them were clearly very close and they hadn't seen each other in months. It wouldn't be fair of Sam to tell the guy to fuck off so he and Dean could have a conversation that after all, he supposed, they could have any time. And whatever else Sam's abilities might be, they apparently didn't stretch to willing an unwanted third wheel to spontaneously combust.
As Dean took a swallow from his own drink Sam shot him a look that urged him to take it easy. It was basicallyTequila Sunrise, with extra Tequila and God knows what else to make it stronger. Dean returned a dismissive "I can handle it" smirk, but he set the drink down all the same. Over time, though, the fruity concoction was just too easy to drink, and Sam watched the level on Dean's glass drop more rapidly than he could have wished, especially since he was mixing it with the beer they'd already bought. Masters was more than keeping pace with him, which was somewhat reassuring, but Sam did no more than sip politely at his own glass, nursing the drink quietly while he kept watch over the other two.
Maybe Sam was being churlish. Maybe it would be good for Dean to blow off some steam reminiscing about the good times with his friend. But when the pair of them started regaling him with stories of college pranks they doubtless thought were highly entertaining, Sam began to feel like he was the third wheel, or like a street urchin with his nose pressed against the window of a world where he didn't, and couldn't ever belong.
It was instructive . . . watching Dean with his friend . . .
Sam realized he hadn't had the opportunity to observe Dean interacting with anyone he knew since that first evening in the bar back in Dean's home town. Sam had forgotten how openly affectionate he could be around people he was comfortable with . . . his tendency to be physically demonstrative with his friends . . .
Dean was naturally tactile; he could be overly hands on even with strangers – witnesses, waitresses – he'd taken some physical liberties with Sam, too, back at the start . . . but at some point he must have picked up on the fact that it made Sam uncomfortable and had stopped. He was just starting to express himself physically again now, since the nature of their . . . relationship . . . had changed.
But this guy. Dean was all over him.
All right. That was an exaggeration – it was a thump on the chest here, a touch on the shoulder there – but the way these two moved easily into each other's space, ate from each other's plates, it all telegraphed a kind of casual intimacy the like of which Sam had never experienced. Not even with Dean.
He didn't think it was sexual. Not on Dean's side anyway. Occasionally he thought he caught something hungry in the looks Masters cast at Dean, and he didn't like it. Sam didn't trust the man, and not just because of the timing of his appearance, or because he was intruding, or even because he was a friggin' jerk (but he was). He just struck Sam as phony: the bottle blond hair, the studied, all black image, the theatrical accent – everything about the guy was a performance.
Dean didn't seem to notice, or didn't care. Apparently he found him entertaining. He laughed at the guy, regarded him with open fondness, even admiration. Clapped his shoulder. Slapped his thigh. It didn't mean anything, Sam recognized. It was just the way Dean was. But the realization stung; it boiled painfully in Sam's gut.
That's just the way Dean was. With his friends.
It didn't mean anything . . .
Masters had pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a book of matches. They were the kind that light anywhere, and he struck one with the end of his fingernail. Sam never enjoyed having his air passages assaulted with the smell of cigarette smoke but the sharp, all too familiar, odor of the match as it flared alight added insult to injury. Sam wrinkled his nose as the guy lit up and took his first drag, and then a waitress tapped him on the shoulder.
"Jim, you can's smoke in here," she reproved him. "The smoking section's round the corner." *
Sam didn't particularly see why they should move to enable Masters' sick habit, but they wound up shifting anyway, and to make matters worse it was twice as noisy in the smokers' area. There was a woman with a microphone standing on a raised platform in the corner and it sounded like she was performing a ritual sacrifice, but Sam caught a few recognizable lyrics from the Tammy Wynette number she was crucifying.
Dean grimaced and stuck a finger in one ear. "Don't give up your day job, sister," he muttered. "What's going on, Jimmy?"
"Tuesday's karaoke night."
"Oh, right." Dean chuckled as they sat down and leaned close to Sam's ear. "I take it all back, Sam," he murmured. "You have the voice of an angel." His hand rested on the arm of Sam's seat as he spoke and Sam had to fight an urge to grab it and lace their fingers together.
Even as it crossed his mind, Masters' voice interrupted his thoughts.
"When were you last on stage, Winch?" he asked.
Sam was slightly startled. Of course he knew Dean had been in a band but somehow he'd never thought about him being on stage.
Dean smiled and shook his head. "It's been a while, Jim." Masters continued to gaze at him, eyebrows raised meaningfully. "What?" he demanded, then "oh, no no no no no . . ."
"Oh, go on. It'll be fun," Masters insisted. "You, too, Sam. We can do a threesome."
"What?"
"He's talking about getting up and doing a number, Sam," Dean hastily explained. "Jim, no!" he called to Masters, who was already headed toward the guy who seemed to be hosting the event. "Don't worry. I'm not gonna," he added as Sam's eyes widened with alarm, but then Masters was back with a black song folder and Sam thought he could see something equivocal in Dean's expression as he glanced at it.
"What's your poison, Sam?" Masters asked him. "C&W? Rock? R&B?"
"I don't sing," Sam explained brusquely.
Masters just laughed. "Do this lot sound like they can sing?" He stabbed a thumb toward the makeshift stage. "Nobody cares about your voice. Just go up there and enjoy yourself."
Sam gave Dean a look: say something, but as Dean opened his mouth Masters shoved the folder in front of him and tapped the page, grinning, and when Dean saw where he was pointing Sam could see he was wavering, and then Masters was gone again and Dean was pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Dean, we need to keep a low profile," Sam reminded him.
"Do we, Sam?" Dean turned wide, pleading eyes on Sam. "Really? Do you seriously believe there are any demons in town? And, even if – they know we're here already, right?"
Dean looked like a labrador begging for ice cream, and Sam could feel his own conviction crumbling. A part of him wanted to see Dean perform, catch a glimpse of that side of Dean from the life he'd had before Sam, the Dean the other guy knew. Maybe it would be OK so long as Sam was watching out for him. That was Sam's job, after all. Dean could go and act up with his dick friend. Sam had his back.
Masters returned to inform Dean they were up next and Sam avoided Dean's gaze, but he could still feel its weight on him. "Go ahead," he sighed.
"Aren't you joining us, Sam?" Masters asked, and to make matters worse Dean added his voice to the suggestion.
"Yeah, come up with us," he coaxed.
"You're joking. I can't sing. You know I can't."
"You can just join in the chorus. It's easy. You'll soon pick it up." He tugged at Sam's jacket but Sam pushed him back.
"You go. I'll watch. Dean! I want to watch you!"
Dean finally desisted and with one last uncertain glance back at Sam he followed Masters to the other side of the room. Rock music was already playing as they took the stage and Dean soon fell into his air guitar routine, skilled fingers picking out the chords on imaginary frets. His friend strutted up and down stage doing something that might have been a Mick Jagger impersonation, though Sam was pretty sure this wasn't a Stones number. When the song began they passed the microphone from hand to hand, alternating the lyric for the verse then sharing the mic for the chorus.
"Guess who just got back today?
Those wild-eyed boys that've been away;
Haven't changed, haven't much to say
But, man, I still think those cats are great.
"They were asking if you were around,
How you was, where you could be found.
I told them you were living downtown,
Driving all the old men crazy."
Sam grudgingly conceded Masters had a good voice, though he wasn't sure if it suited the song. Frankly, neither one of them was perfectly in pitch with the backing track, or each other, but it didn't matter. Their performance had an energy and enthusiasm that soon had the audience engaged.
"The boys are back in town. The boys are back in town."
Masters started clapping above his head and, all around Sam, others were joining in. Sam clapped along, too, so he wouldn't look like a dick. Maybe, after a while, he even meant it.
"The boys are back in tow-ow-ow-ow-own!"
Because, there Dean was in his element, owning the stage and performing to a crowd. The light picked out the flash of his smile, the green in his eyes, and turned the tips of his hair gold, and if his voice wasn't perfect it was still beautiful, and his fingers made you believe in that guitar in his hands. Every face in the room was turned to him, sunflowers to the sun.
"The boys are back in town. The boys are back in town."
"The boys are back in town. The boys are back in town . . ."
In the musical break after the chorus, the two performers spontaneously broke into a hand jive that seemed totally inappropriate with the style of the song, but from the way they were grinning at each other and the audience Sam guessed they both knew that.
What was Dean doing in the shadows with Sam? He belonged in the light, in the world, having fun. And this man from his past knew that. He got Dean in a way Sam didn't. Gave him something Sam couldn't.
". . . That night over at Johnny's place -
Well, this chick got up and she slapped Johnny's face.
Man, we just fell about the place.
If that chick don't want to know, forget her . . ."
As they shared the mic for the second chorus they linked arms across each others' shoulders and Sam dropped his gaze to his knees; he didn't want to watch that. But then he glanced up and caught Dean watching him, and there was just something off about his smile, something anxious and desperate in his eyes before he averted them elsewhere. It gave Sam pause, but before he could reflect on the meaning of it, he noticed something that had his jaw tightening and his fingers clamping around the arms of his seat. Masters was fucking smelling Dean's hair!
The guy noticed Sam watching and Sam didn't care. He didn't even bother to hide the fact that he'd seen, or how he felt about it. As the singers broke apart and Dean took the mic, Sam held eye contact with the other man and let the thought of smacking that twisted smirk off the arrogant bastard's face play in his head and in his eyes.
"Friday night they'll be dressed to kill
Down at Deano's bar and grill.
The drink will flow and blood will spill,
And if the boys wanna fight, you'd better let 'em . . ."
"The boys are back in town. The boys are back in town."
(The boys are back. The boys are back.)
"The boys are back in tow-ow-ow-ow-own . . ."
The backing track faded out and the performers took their bows to ardent applause from the audience. Dean arrived back at the table pink and sweating from being under the lights, probably combined with a mix of adrenalin and alcohol. He stopped a waitress and ordered more drinks but, much to Sam's surprise, Masters demurred.
"Not for me, Winch," he said. "I'm calling it a night."
Dean looked positively shocked; he checked his watch. "You're kidding? This early?"
"Yeah, well I'm still shagged out from the trip up here," Masters explained, "and, besides, I don't want to out stay my welcome. I'll let you and Birthday Boy get back to your celebrations. You and me can catch up tomorrow, mate. All right?"
Sam frowned, puzzled. He was reluctant to accept the departure was motivated by consideration. Like Dean, Masters was slightly sweaty, though he looked pale by comparison, but Sam didn't believe it was because Sam had succeeded in intimidating him, either.
"Do you need a lift anywhere?" Dean asked.
Masters shook his head. "No worries: I'm staying here. Eli has a spare room upstairs." He turned to Sam. "Nice to have met you, Sam," he said. "Have a good one, Squire. I'll see you around."
For Dean's sake, Sam was prepared to shake the man's hand but, once again, it wasn't offered. He just slapped Sam's shoulder as he turned away then threw them both a loose salute before disappearing through a staff door.
Dean was wearing a perplexed frown now. "That was weird," he remarked. "Back in college, he was a real night owl." He shrugged and glanced at Sam then, just for a moment, a strangely wary expression crossed his face but he chased it away with an equally strange exaggerated grin.
"So, what do you want to do now, Birthday Boy?" he asked.
Sam could have smacked him, especially when he turned the question into a suggestion with a lewd hitch of his eyebrows. That was the last thing Sam felt in the mood for. Almost the last thing. Soul baring confidences were off the table now, too, if for no better reason than Sam suspected Dean was slightly drunk.
Suddenly there was cheering and Sam realized someone was calling Dean's name – calling for "Winch", anyway, and he was afraid Masters was back – but it turned out they'd won the karaoke. The host was holding up a bottle of Johnny Walker, and the audience was calling for an encore.
"Where's Jim?" the host wanted to know.
"Wimped out," Dean called back, but then he turned a hopeful face toward Sam and Sam could almost see the light globe appear over his head.
"Oh, no, Dean!"
"Oh, go on! Be a devil!" Dean cajoled. "If you can't have fun on your birthday – "
Sam snapped. "Dean, I don't care about my fucking birthday!"
Dean's face dropped, and in that moment Sam felt sick with regret. How ungrateful did that sound after all the effort Dean had gone to earlier that day?
"OK," Dean replied quietly. "Got the memo, Sam."
"Dean – " Sam tried to apologize, take it back, but Dean was already retreating across the room toward the stage. Over his shoulder he tossed back a wisecrack that sounded a lot more light-hearted than it felt.
"Sammy? Remind me to beat that buzzkill out of you later, all right?" he called.
.
* Smoking is now banned in most public places but, as I understand the laws in Montana as they're quoted in wikepedia etc, smoking was still permitted in bars, or parts thereof, until October 2009:
"The prohibition regarding smoking does not apply to bars (until September 30, 2009), provided that smoke from the bar does not infiltrate into areas where smoking is prohibited." smoking-regulations-in-montana/
"On October 1, 2005, the Montana Clean Indoor Air Act (MCIAA) went into effect, banning smoking statewide in all enclosed workplaces in Montana including restaurants, though bars were exempt until October 1, 2009." wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_United_States#.C2.A0Montana
