Chapter 36: The Truth
Dean dropped Sam and I back at the motel before driving off to find food. Once we got in, Sam sat down heavily on the bed, with a wince.
"So… uh… the wolf guy bit me," he said. I rushed over to him and he held up a hand. "It's fine, I'm not bleeding out. Guy wasn't an actual wolf. Could you take a look, though?"
He pulled his shirt and jacket down to reveal the mark on his neck. I could clearly see the imprint of human teeth, and it was bleeding a little, and had definitely started to bruise. I had him take his jacket off and unbutton his shirt while I went to wash my hands.
When I came back, he was sitting obediently on his bed, jacket off and shirt unbuttoned most of the way down. Unlike Dean, who usually fought me off when I tried to look at an injury, Sam always did as he was asked and followed my advice. I got the first aid stuff out of my bag and brought it over to him. I had bought a few supplies to add a little professionalism to the first aid kit, including actual antiseptic wash, which was a far more effective and cheaper alternative to washing a wound out with whiskey.
"Okay," I said, grabbing a chair to sit in front of him. "Take that arm out of the sleeve."
It wasn't too bad, but God knows what bacteria were in there, so I'd have to give it a clean.
"Thanks, Ellie," he said. "I'd just deal with it myself, but it's kinda hard to reach."
"No problem," I said, pouring the antiseptic out onto a clean cloth, and focusing on that instead of the beautiful bulge of his perfect bicep.
He didn't even wince as I wiped the antiseptic over the bite mark. It looked like skin had been broken just under the two top front teeth as well as three spots at the sides of the bite. There were four little punctures overall, with that mark from the big front teeth the deepest.
"The bruise will be nasty," I said. "People will think it's a hickey."
He smiled, as I turned the cloth over to pour out a little more antiseptic for a second wash, just to be sure.
"Um… Ellie?" he asked.
"Yup?"
"I'm sorry I asked what I asked before. It's none of my business. But… uh… I know it sucks, having to hide part of yourself from someone you see every day. So, uh… if there's anything you wanted to tell me, I'm okay with it. Whatever it is."
I smiled. Classic Sam. As I leaned in to wipe down the wound a second time, I thought about it. The thing was, I did hide it. All the time. My father had no idea, and I couldn't imagine any circumstance where I'd ever tell him. He didn't need to know and he wouldn't want to. Nobody in my life was more important than my father. This… thing… was just a tiny part of me, and why destroy my relationship with my Dad when it wasn't something he needed to know? Maybe one day, if things happened right, it would be necessary to tell him, but for the time being, it would only make him hate me for no reason.
At first, when I was young, I figured it was normal, so I didn't mention it because of that. Why bother, when I thought everyone was the same? Then I realised other girls weren't like me, and then I told myself it was nothing and I was just confused and imagining things. After all, I liked boys, the way everyone said I was supposed to, so anything else that seemed weird was probably just my imagination. Then I couldn't keep ignoring it, but I just told myself it was a one-off. Every time it was a one-off and just a thing that happened and I wasn't really that way. I was in college and just trying new things, that was all.
But I was that way and I always had been.
"You know how you get hungry, right?" I asked, putting the cap back on the antiseptic bottle. "But, also you get thirsty, too?"
"Yeah," said Sam, as he started to pull his shirt back on.
"Well… I guess you've probably noticed that sometimes I get very very hungry…"
He smiled. "Yeah, I've noticed." I looked down at his fabulous chest, and his enormous, strong hands as he started to reach for his shirt buttons, and I blushed.
I got up to put the first aid stuff away. "Well… I also get thirsty," I said, trying to figure out if I could maintain the metaphor so I wouldn't have to use that word. "And sometimes I get thirsty without even seeing a drink, so I go out and… um…"
Even while I rummaged around in my bag for nothing in particular, I could feel Sam sitting on the bed, turned towards me.
"I eat a lot more than I drink," I said, still blushing intensely, but from shame more than the thought of Sam. "But I do drink, sometimes. Um… remember the other week when I said I was going out on my own and didn't want you guys to come?"
"You went to… get a drink?" Sam asked.
We were in Chicago, and a big city like that, well, there's places you can go and the people you meet there are the right kind of people. You just gotta delete the search history on your computer and get a taxi to drop you four blocks away and then you're golden.
She was so pretty. Curly red hair, and bright green eyes and a smile that made me feel like actual sunshine was pouring straight into my heart. Every time she laughed, a little bit of pink swept across her freckly cheeks, and it was such a big, loud, unashamed sound. She had tiny little hands, and such soft, smooth skin, with those sweet brown freckles all over, just making her skin seem all the paler by contrast. Her voice was as soft as her laugh was loud and she was funny, and kind and said such sweet things about my hair and my face. Her name was Charlotte and it was so much better than anything had been since I left home. It was always better.
"Yeah," I said, snatching up a pair of jeans and folding them up properly, as my whole face burned with a mixture of pleasurable memory and terrible shame.
"Well, that's okay," Sam said, still sitting behind me. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't look at his face and see he was lying, that he couldn't tell me the truth, but that it wasn't okay at all.
"I don't do it all the time," I said. "I mean, it's not like I'm…" I couldn't say the word. Not even to deny it. Saying the word made it real. It would turn it from something I did sometimes to part of who I was and I couldn't be that.
"Okay," was all Sam said. Not a fast, dismissive okay, but a soft, gentle word to suggest that he really did think it was okay.
"Don't you ever tell anybody!" I said. "I mean it, Sam, don't ever!"
I could hear him get up as I wiped frantically at the tears welling up in my eyes. I couldn't make them go away by the time I felt him crouch beside me. I rubbed desperately at my tears with my right hand, while he reached out for my left.
"Ellie, I would never tell somebody else your business. Come here."
He stood back up, pulling me with him and then took me with him to sit on the bed. That was it. All it took was one arm around my shoulders and I didn't have the will to stop myself any more. At least I was crying silently, staring at a mark on the carpet while huge tears slid down my hot cheeks.
"If Dean thinks there's something wrong with you because you've read fairy tales, what does he think of me, Sam?"
"Dean loves you," Sam said.
"Until he finds out I sometimes…" Sleep with girls. Just three very simple words, but I couldn't say them. My throat seized up and nothing would come out.
"I honestly don't think he'd mind," Sam's hand was rubbing up and down my back now. "But we just won't tell him, okay? Not if you don't want to."
"Do you mind?" I asked, though I knew he'd never tell me if he did.
"Of course not. It doesn't make any difference to me what you do or who you do it with. Or what words you use to describe that."
"I… I know there's a word for me," I said. "And I know it's just a description and it's not offensive but I can't, Sam… I can't be that."
"You don't have to use any word you don't want to," he said.
"And I like guys," I said. "Okay? Just so we're clear. I like guys lots!"
"I know that," he said. "Ellie, you don't have to explain anything, or justify it or make excuses. You're still the same person you were this morning, I promise. I don't see you any differently."
There was such sincerity and love in his voice, I actually believed him. Not enough to just change how I felt, and leap up and start throwing that terrifying "B" word around like I hadn't lived twenty-five years of hearing my father say he didn't get "that whole deal" and girls at school who thought "lesbian" was the biggest insult there was. Sam's approval wasn't enough to make up for the teachers who were "concerned" that I didn't dress feminine enough, or the friends who asked why I would have a picture of Kate Winslet in my locker right next to the one of Brad Pitt ("I just find her really inspiring, okay!").
A five minute conversation and a hug was never going to make me feel like I wasn't wrong and dirty and weird. But for the time being, it was enough to know that there was one person in the world who definitely didn't hate me for being…
"Bisexual," I whispered.
"You don't have to call yourself that if you don't want to," said Sam. "But there's nothing wrong with you, Ellie."
But I cried anyway.
He must have held me for ten minutes, while I cried. He hugged me. He kissed my head and my cheek. He rubbed my back. It was a weird sort of crying, kind of desperate and hysterical, but also… sort of a relief. I'd never used that word before, and I'd never told anyone the things I had just told Sam before. Had I even cried about it before? With every tear, it felt like a little bit of weight was running down my face, and after ten minutes, it was so much lighter and brighter inside my head. Just saying it, once, had washed everything out and cleared up some of the heavy darkness inside me.
Finally, I managed to stop, breathing evenly again and marvelling at the new feeling. It was as if I'd carried a fifty pound weight all my life, and now I was only carrying forty pounds. Not gone, but better. Just the littlest bit better, but that was more than I'd ever thought I could have.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I just… I never told anyone before."
"I've always told you everything," Sam said. "You were always there to listen, and I'm so sorry. I feel like when you really needed me to do the same for you, I wasn't there."
Both my arms flew around his waist so fast that he fell backward, taking me down with him and we both ended up lying on the bed, me half on top of him, with my face buried somewhere in his ribs.
"That was not your fault!" I said, still holding onto him tight as I could.
"Not at first," he said. "But I should have… what are you doing?"
"I'm holding you hostage until you stop feeling guilty."
He began to wriggle, and I squished him tighter, wishing for longer arms so I could keep a better grip on him. "Ellie, I'm twice your size!"
"One and a half times, max! Eeeep!"
With one roll, he managed to break my grip on his waist, flip me over and pin me down with his hands on my shoulders and his knees either side of me.
"Get off!" I squealed.
"I'm not even twice your size," he teased.
I reached for his chest and pushed as hard as I could. I could feel him straining against me, but he was just stronger than me and I was not in a good position, especially with a soft mattress beneath me, making it hard to push off so I could flip him over.
"I thought you were a Black Belt or something!" he said.
"I can knee you in the balls from here."
He leapt up immediately, leaving me lying on the bed, looking up at him and laughing at his panicked face. As soon as I threatened to hit him where it would hurt, he had shot off the bed like he had springs.
I got back to my feet, and figured I had better go to the bathroom, in case I had gross red sobbing eyes. I didn't need Dean asking questions when he got back. On the way, I stepped towards Sam, and he flinched nervously, until I got up on my toes and kissed him on the cheek.
"Thanks. I love you."
"I love you too," he said. "No matter what."
The next morning, I was woken by someone shaking me roughly. Sam normally woke me much more gently, but someone was gripping my shoulder and rocking my whole body with such agitation.
I tried to bat them out of the way, as I opened my eyes. Confused morning Ellie, with hair everywhere and the blanket tangled up in her legs, blinking at the light. As I adjusted to being awake, I realised who was shaking me.
"Dean?"
"Did Sam say anything to you last night?"
"Huh? What? No!" The only conversation Sam and I had alone had been in the late afternoon, and there was no way Dean could have known about that, was there?
"So, you didn't hear him leave?"
I sat up, pushing all my hair back and out of the way as I did. "What? Where is he? Is he okay?"
"He went out to run or whatever. But I think he went out last night too."
I wasn't used to being woken so early and without coffee. "Maybe he couldn't sleep, I dunno…"
Suddenly, Dean was waving a gun in my face and I was fully awake in a moment. Instinct took over and I reached under my pillow for the knife.
"Whoa! Hey…" he said. "Calm down." He put the gun down onto my knees, on top of the blanket and I looked at it, confused, with my knife still in my hand. It was the Colt. I put the knife back under my pillow and reached out to pick up the Colt.
"Dean, I'm confused."
"It's missing a bullet," he said. "Since yesterday morning. We were together all day, so someone took it out sometime in the night and fired it. It sure as hell wasn't me."
At first I thought he accusing me, and I was about to protest but then I realised what he'd said earlier and managed to get my morning brain to connect all the dots. "Oh, Sam…"
"Son of a bitch went behind my back!" he shouted, getting back up to his feet, like the force of his anger was propelling him upwards.
Okay, so Sam had suggested summoning up a Crossroads Demon and then threatening her with the Colt so she'd give back Dean's contract. If that didn't work, then he'd proposed shooting her. And now, he'd taken the Colt in the night and fired it. But that didn't mean he'd gone and shot a Crossroads Demon. Possibly. Maybe…
I tried to think of some other explanation, some other reason Sam would sneak out with a demon-killing gun in the middle of the night, without telling either of us, and fire it.
"Have you talked to him this morning?" I asked, getting myself up.
"For five minutes. Didn't say anything about it!"
That didn't sound good. If Sam had a good reason for taking the gun and firing it, he'd surely have told Dean about it right away. He wasn't usually a liar. And he was desperate to find a way to save Dean's life.
"Maybe he's just looking for the right way to tell you?" I suggested, trying the concept out as I said it.
"He can't do this shit, Ellie! My contract says Sam dies if we try to break the rules."
I was aware of that, of course, but I appreciated that Dean was not in an emotional state to think clearly. He needed to shout a little bit, and I could understand that.
"Well, he came back, so we know he didn't die. Maybe it worked? He broke the contract?"
"Then why wouldn't he say that?"
Good question. "I don't know," I said, handing Dean back the Colt. "Okay… so… I think you should put it back, pretend you haven't noticed. Just give him a chance to come clean and explain what happened. If he doesn't, then we can confront him and remind him again that this could mean his life."
"Clearly, he's not listening!" Dean said, looking in the chamber again. "Dammit, Ellie!"
I couldn't tell if that was just a general "dammit" of frustration, or if it was directed at me. I hadn't done anything wrong, although I supposed it could be argued that since I was the one Sam confided in and listened to, I might have stopped him. If I'd known that he planned to go through with his scheme alone, I would certainly have tried to stop him, but I didn't know and since he didn't either, Dean could hardly blame me for that.
"Just give him a couple of days to come clean, and then I'll talk to him," I said. "He's not thinking straight. I'll make him see sense, I promise."
Dean sighed and grabbed the keys from his pocket, presumably so he could take the Colt back out to the Impala and put it in the trunk. Why had he taken it out in the first place? Was he checking up on Sam? Or had there been something suspicious that made him worry.
Before I could ask, he was out the door. With a sigh, I went to my bag, figuring I might as well get changed, since I was already awake. I looked at the time on the clock beside Dean's bed. 6:49? What? Dean may have been outraged about the whole Crossroads Demon thing, but being woken up before seven? That was the real outrage here!
Stupid Winchesters…