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Book Four

Of Art Supplies and Ungodly Obsessions

Chapter Five

The bell above the door jangled cheerily as Sam pushed his way into the coffee shop. He had to hold tight to the door so it wouldn't tear from his hands and he heard the clatter of paper cups and condiments thrown to the floor by the force of the wind. After a short struggle, he managed to push the door closed and be certain it latched, even as the wind continued to hammer at it from outside.

"You must be one desperate coffeeholic to be braving weather as bitchin' as that."

"Gavin, watch your fucking mouth!" came a shout from the back.

"She says as she swears at me," the boy idly commented. He grinned at Sam. "Welcome to the Camelot Rift, my morning-addled friend. What can I get you this fine morning? And don't say alcohol. Morgan threw out my stash last time she found it and she threatened to cut off my bits if I brought in any more. Woman's got no taste for a good whiskey latte."

"Stick to visiting bars on the weekends and leave your concoctions out of my shop." A woman came out of the back carrying a large box filled with cups. Her dark hair was long and wavy, pulled back in a high ponytail from a beautiful but serious face.

"You do recall that I own this coffeehouse, don't you?"

"And I run it. That makes me your boss. And unless you intend to get your business degree and start performing the tasks required to keep this place running, you'll do as I say." She turned to Sam. "Good morning. I'm Morgan and I run the Camelot Rift. This idiot over here is Gavin and his name is on the business license because at least he knows how to sign his name."

"Yeah, not actually an idiot."

"Yes you are. You just don't know it because you're an idiot. But don't worry, I'll remind you."

Gavin rolled his eyes and turned back to Sam. "So, tall, broad, and lucious, what can I get you?"

Sam stared for a moment, startled. "Um… me?"

"You see any other gorgeous looking blokes in here?" He leaned over the counter and stage whispered, "That's your cue to tell me how sexy I look in this apron."

Sam felt his face burn with the force of his blush. Why did people keep hitting on him? He didn't remember it being like this the last time he was at Stanford. Granted, there had been a few people here and there but this time, he seemed to be attracting admirer's left and right. Especially in coffee shops. It was weird.

"Can I… uh… you look real nice in your apron?"

Gavin dropped his cheek into his hand and gave a lovesick sigh. "I'm all kinds of twitterpated. Look at me, blushing like an innocent maid."

"There's not an innocent inch on your body."

"There's quite a few inches that for sure aren't innocent."

"Gavin Noble, I trust you'll be giving Mister Winchester his coffee for free after harassing him."

"Harassment is such an ugly word, Professor Hot Stuff. I prefer being dashingly welcoming to his gorgeous body."

Sam was momentarily blindsided by the name Professor Hot Stuff. He half expected to turn around and find Gabriel standing there, dressed in a tweed jacket with too-long sleeves and a pair of glasses balanced on his nose. He looked behind him and couldn't ignore the flush of disappointment that made his stomach churn.

"Mmhm," they hummed at Gavin before looking over at Sam. They didn't appear familiar but apparently knew who Sam was.

"I'm Sam Winchester," he said anyway, holding out a hand.

"Professor Bennie Ryan," they said, shaking his hand. "I'm hoping to see you in my Arthurian Literature class in the future, Mister Winchester. Which, it happens, I am late for." They looked back at the barista. "Gavin, stop flirting with everyone who catches your attention or I might start to be concerned."

"Ah, Bennie, you got my whole heart wrapped around your very talented fingers, promise. But Sam here's got too much going on that I just can't ignore." He side-eyed them. "Besides, weren't you telling Gwen the other day how sexy she looked?"

"Yes. And I get the good coffee, don't I?" Morgan handed a steaming cup over the counter. "Thank you, my darling sister. Do try to keep my future husband in line."

"I'll do my best."

"Nice meeting you, Sam. You're ever bored of listening to dumbass doctors of bullshit history spew garbage, come join my class. I'll tell you what really happened in Camelot."

The door jangled cheerfully as they left and for a moment, Sam could only stare after them, completely at a loss. And, for some reason, really desperate to take a class on Arthurian Literature.

He turned back to Gavin. "Can I get that coffee?"

Art had become his least favorite class, which was hugely disappointing since he had really been enjoying learning how to paint. He also discovered that Professor Drake, despite her no-nonsense attitude and reputation as a dragon of the fiercest variety, was a good teacher who passed on her knowledge with no hesitation. Sam had walked in to his class the day after the midterm to find her patiently teaching the shy girl in the class how to paint fur. The individual lesson had leaked ten minutes over into their class but there was no note of rush in Professor Drake's voice and no frustration in her tone as the girl struggled to paint fur using the shown technique. Instead, Professor Drake has quietly encouraged her, complimenting her attempt, and class had resumed. The girl had kept a smile on her face the whole time and Sam couldn't blame her. After the debacle of Kennedy teasing her over her painting a few classes prior, Sam had been concerned he might have to intervene. He was pleased to find himself incorrect.

But not having to worry about the Professor didn't make his art class any less tiresome. Or rather, didn't make dealing with Kathy any less tiresome.

Or not dealing with her, as it happened. Although avoiding her was considerably more difficult than he would have expected.

His only saving grace seemed to be that any time she wasn't in class, Kathy seemed to be due at the coffee shop. So long as he was able to get into class late enough that they didn't have time to talk beforehand and get out before she was packed up, he could avoid her.

It should have been satisfying. Years of packing up and running had made Sam an expert at throwing his things in a bag in record time. He should have been pleased that he was so easily able to get away from Kathy and avoid the others. He'd found another coffee shop so he didn't run into her or Rey or Jess at The Feckin' Bean. Granted, the coffee wasn't as good and the barista seemed to have a ridiculous fascination with flirting with him, but he hadn't run into anyone he knew there. But Sam didn't care to spend his every waking moment outside of class at The Camelot Rift or his apartment, so he had to find some new haunts.

His morning runs had taken him all over campus and he'd found places that were unfamiliar to him. On the edge of campus there was a small park - a project belonging to the horticultural department - that hosted dark green grass, benches, an array of flowers, and a willow tree. It had caught his attention because California got so little rain during the year that willows, which consume a truly impressive amount of water, were very out of place.

But it turned out that the little park area had a man-made pond and the tree sat with its roots part-way submerged in the water. As he ran in the mornings, he found himself consistently gravitating back to that area, until he ended up back there during his break one Wednesday after his British Literature class. It was a quiet place to sit and read, stretched out with his back against a tree trunk, bare feet dangling in the water. There were some rocks positioned nearby with a small waterfall, nothing more than a trickle, but the sound of it was a peaceful backdrop.

As the weeks stretched on and he received his grades back for his midterms, he found himself going back there with his textbooks to study for his classes. Or, after receiving his grade for his art midterm (better than he expected but not as good as he would have hoped), he bought a sketchbook and some pencils and would sit for hours just practicing. It was different from painting, of course, sketching with a pencil, but it helped him learn to create an image with intent. Sam had drawn landscapes before - little things, like trees or houses. It was something that had tended to come out a lot when he was having visions. He'd sketch them idly on hotel notepads or in the margins of books, often without even realizing he was doing it until he'd look back at the book or notepad and find fifteen different renditions of the same subject.

He was doing it consciously now. Of course, trees and houses were the easy subjects, and not just because he hands were used to drawing them (or his mind was, at least). Drawing people was a different story. He'd tried sketching profiles but honestly, how were you supposed to draw a hairline? Did it just appear? Did he draw each individual hair? Was it just a line? He tore up most of the pages of his sketchbook before he'd decided to start smaller than attempting someone's whole head.

He'd searched the college bookstore (not the one by The Feckin' Bean since he was avoiding that) for books on art. One of the early lessons had involved drawing your own hand, so for a while, Sam had focused on the wrinkles at his knuckles and the shadows around his fingernails. Fists, he learned, were ridiculously difficult to draw and he much preferred having to do them from the back, where there was less need to draw the shadows in between curled fingers. He began to understand why so many cartoon characters wore gloves or mittens. It was to keep the artist from going batshit insane.

He'd eventually tired of drawing hands. It bothered him sometimes, looking at his skin and not seeing the familiar scars, and now he had this image in his head of hands that were his but weren't his. Not the him that existed in his own mind, the one that had apparently brought Lucifer to the past with him, despite everything that had been done to get him back here.

It seemed he really was destined to be stuck with Lucifer, no matter what he did.

The first day that he tried drawing someone's hands other than his own was also his last day. Halfway through sketching the handle of something held in a loose fist, he realized that he was drawing Lucifer's hands holding a whip. He'd thrown his sketchbook into the pond and turned and headed back to his apartment, actually forgetting his bag and his textbooks by the willow tree.

He'd found them the next day, no worse for wear and not even wet despite the rain that had fallen overnight (and of course it would rain the one night he'd left his stuff outside).

He bought another sketchbook a few days later but it took a while before he took it with him back to the willow. This time, he chose something different to focus on.

He bought a magazine at the college bookstore - some cheap thing that he'd been sure had pictures of people inside before he'd bought it. He folded it over until the woman's face was visible and then wedged it between two raised roots of the tree so he could keep it in sight before trying to sketch the woman's eyes.

It was surprisingly boring.

Drawing his own hand had been one thing - it was disturbing but also intriguing to see the lack of scars where he remembered them - but he didn't even know who this woman was. Her eyes were pretty, of course - an odd amber that seemed compelling and familiar, even though her face was unfamiliar to him and he couldn't find her name. Pepsi ads apparently didn't include the names of their advertising actors in articles. But though she was attractive and he found her eyes interesting, it just didn't keep his attention.

He found himself drawing from memory, something he hadn't expected he would have been able to do.

Dean's eyes were difficult to draw. Not because he couldn't get the dimensions right or he struggled to remember the exact shape. Sam couldn't have forgotten his brother's eyes if he'd wanted to. But the eyes that his fingers wanted to sketch weren't his brother's crinkled in laughter or the eyes Sam remembered so easily from their childhood. It was brows drawn down over a narrowed gaze. It was eyes filled with suspicion, distrust. It was an angry gaze that echoed with shouts and cruel words. It was "Listen here, you bloodsucking freak" and "If I didn't know you, I would want to hunt you" in an eagle-sharp gaze.

He'd found himself unable to stop sketching until his eyes were blurred with tears that splattered across the page.

He tried drawing other people's eyes but it was no better. The first time he'd attempted his father's eyes, there'd been all the rage of John on a mad hunt and he'd been unable to finish even shading in his iris before he'd had to tear the page out.

Easier to draw were the eyes of the Harvelle's, though his memory of them wasn't nearly as good and Ellen's eyes always seemed to come out stressed and distrustful, if not angry. Charlie's eyes hurt to sketch because, like Jo and Ellen, she had been lost, as well, and because they'd pulled her into this life.

The first time he'd drawn Bobby's eyes, he hadn't even realized that was who he was sketching. Not until he'd finished the sketch, pulled back to look at it, and seen those gruff lines and obvious care. It had hit him all at once that he was still alive. That Bobby, Jo, Ellen, Charlie, Adam - all of them were still alive , and Sam had burst into tears there at the foot of the willow tree and simply cried for hours. Coming back… coming back had been easy, fixing things that went wrong, but sometimes he forgot that it was more than just stopping the Apocalypse. He could save people. He could save people he loved .

He'd ended up missing his Painting class, calming himself down only to discover it was three thirty in the afternoon. He expected Professor Drake would be disappointed in his absence but would appreciate it even less if he showed up halfway through and interrupted everyone else's work. Besides that, he was emotionally exhausted and didn't think he could make it through even an hour of class with his focus intact.

Painting was his last class before Thanksgiving break started, anyway. He would have the rest of the week off and he wouldn't be surprised if other students hadn't left over the previous weekend to head home. Then again, she wasn't called The Dragon for nothing…

I've faced actual dragons, Sam thought as he made his way slowly back toward his apartment, bag slung over his shoulder and head aching. Drake doesn't scare me.

When he got back to his apartment, he took a minute to shoot his professor an email apologizing for missing her class due to a family emergency. No sense being foolish even if she was a human and not an actual dragon.

Then he threw himself onto his bed and dragged the blankets over his head, determined not to get up until Monday rolled around. Despite the burning desire in his gut to drive to South Dakota and see Bobby, Sam had no cause to do so that the older hunter would understand. For Bobby, the last time Sam had seen him was when he and Dean were kids. Sam just showing up at his door? Bobby would immediately know something was up, and he'd probably call John about it and Sam just wasn't ready to deal with that, yet. He knew it was inevitable, dealing with his dad, but not yet. He needed time to prepare for seeing his dad again. Time to prepare for dealing with the fallout of everything that was destined to occur.

He couldn't go see Dean, though he wanted to. Oh, he ached to see his brother. But Sam knew that if he went to Dean now, he wouldn't be able to resist telling his brother everything. Not now, with a Dean who was so young and still loved his brother. Sam just wouldn't be able to resist.

No. He couldn't risk going and seeing anyone and messing up the timeline. Better he stay here at Stanford and just sleep through the shit holiday.

Maybe he'd wake up and it wouldn't feel like reliving his life was just walking down the same damn path toward Lucifer all over again.