Chapter 4/She Finds You
Disclaimer-nation: Officer Kripke, I'm down on my knees, 'cause no one wants a fella with a social disease. Wait. Wrong musical you say? Officer Kripke's in charge; I'm still deciding if I want to be a Jet or a Shark.
Here Be Monsters: Céline Dion, a circus clown, and a big-ass buffalo -- all the usual suspects. Swearing, oblique het-sexual content and, um, maybe one glancing example of car-porn. Fraternal misunderstandings abound, fasten your seatbelts for the Angstobahn. WIP, will be 9 chapters. Originally written for the spnnorth challenge over at lj.
Nominations for Sainthood: I don't believe there is a Saint jmm0001 of Story Continuity, nor a Saint Lemmypie of the Encouraging Word, so I'm calling the Pope right now just to clear things up.
Story Thus Far: Following Sam's dreams of bison and demons, the Winchester brothers drive to Québec, where Sam is confronted by his visions in the form of Céline Dion and a Cirque du Soleil casino extravaganza. Both brothers are keeping secrets from the other: Dean commences an affair with an ambivalently-intentioned cirque contortionist; Sam neglects to tell Dean that he's dreaming of his own death. While engaged in a sexual encounter in a preposterous location, Dean overhears a conversation between Céline and her evil husband; unfortunately, it's entirely in French. Meanwhile, at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Sam tentatively embraces a vision of sacrifice while avoiding overly-stimulated private school girls.
--
Still half in a dreamstate, Sam unlocked the motel door, mind entirely on bison and submission. Abstractedly, he noticed the saltline intact across the threshold, which meant things inside were safe. Dean wasn't one of those things, however, and just as Sam thought that, but before panic had time to surface, the phone inside his canvas book bag rang. He lifted the bag from across his shoulder and dropped it onto the unmade bed, rifled through it, and opened the phone with relief. "Dean?"
"I missed you at the museum," came his brother's voice, oddly phrased. Was he...contrite? "Sorry." Just might be. Contrition never boded well, though, it just veiled acts of bad behavior. Dean behaving badly didn't bear thinking about.
"Yeah," Sam agreed, not digging, not yet, enjoying the mild sensation of superiority that came with an apologetic Dean. "Should have known better, trying to get you to a museum, even though it was crawling with Catholic schoolgirls."
A pause; Dean had been expecting a lecture, probably. "Schoolgirls?"
"You know, in knee socks and kilts, speaking French. I think they were following me."
"You get lucky, Sammy? 'Cause French schoolgirls...damn, that's pretty...twisted. Especially for you."
Getting lucky was somewhat beside the point. They had differing opinions on luck. Sam thought about the bison again, and falling, and his naturally skeptical disposition towards notions of 'fate' and 'luck'. He just wasn't there yet, but this was his brother's life on the line. Thought about what it would take to keep Dean safe, what it would cost. About Dean's kind of luck, which manifested itself all over the board. Shit, they really didn't have time for luck, couldn't depend on it even if they did. "Where have you been? Where are you?"
"At the casino."
Damn, okay. Stay calm. Dean at the casino by himself wasn't good. No wonder Sam had heard guilt. "You're just gambling, right? Not going anywhere near the Cirque? We're supposed to talk to the Lithuanians after the performance tonight," Sam tried to keep alarm from his voice, that and anything like reproach. "We should do this together, Dean."
Another pause, and Sam strained to hear what was going on in Dean's world. All casinos were noisy, slot machines and music and talk and the sudden exciting slide of coins to metal trays. Nothing like that, and Sam smiled slowly, realization dawning. Dean wasn't at the casino; he was with whatever girl he'd suddenly developed an interest in. Yeah, you should be guilty, asshole. Actually, this might work to Sam's advantage, because right now, he wanted a couple of hours to himself.
"Yeah, yeah," Dean responded testily. "I know. You're the reporter. Theatre critic." Laughed. Sam winced, but kept calm. "Are you still at the museum? Shit, a whole day at a museum, Sam? You are such a freak."
"I'm back at the motel, now. Thought I'd take a rest." Which was sort of the truth and was also a bit low. Dean was worried about him and Sam knew it, knew that catching up on his disrupted sleep was the one thing that would keep Dean at bay, at least for a couple of hours. That and the new piece of ass. An easy sell.
"Sure thing, enjoy the beauty sleep, princess. I'll swing by later," and hung up before Sam asked the kind of questions that Dean would have to out and out lie about. Locating himself falsely at the casino had been more than enough.
At least they hadn't had an argument, but Sam had learned when and how to have arguments with Dean. Not with their father, never had figured out how to avoid that, but Dean? Hell, yes. Knew how to distract, and bait and switch, cut and run, long, short and medium cons. Pretty much had Dean down pat. Sam didn't feel good about knowing how to manage Dean, was getting too old for it. Fun as a kid, moments of little-brother payback, but not now.
Not unless he had a purpose.
Dean would have a complete psychotic episode if he knew what Sam was going to do with the hour or two he'd just purchased. No way Sam was ready to tell him about this, because the dreams had become visions and Sam didn't need Dean to look at him any funnier than he already did. Or even differently. Sam grabbed the bedside alarm clock, studied the buttons. Set the alarm to go off in forty-five minutes. He was tired enough for sleep, and hadn't finished that coffee in the cafeteria, which might work in his favor.
He took off his shoes, shut the curtains so it was completely dark in the room, lay down on the bed and hoped for sleep. Hoped for dreams. Visions. Concentrated on that note hanging in the air the same way the girl had hung in the air, thought hard about the bison. Stopped wondering what the images meant, didn't go with them so much as went after them.
--
Okay, four hundred dollars got you a hell of a hotel room. There was a difference.
Not that Dean was about to pay the difference, but being with one of the Cirque stars definitely had its perks and one of them was a free room in the Hilton between check out and check in if you knew how to sweet talk the staff. Béa's bag of tricks was bottomless, Dean was discovering.
He had a choice of three different shampoos, and there were terry robes (not that he wore one, but he saw them folded up on the countertop, bound by a silk cord) an assortment of good-quality small appliances at liberty to leave with any guest, an enormous marble bath separate from a shower with more jets than O'Hare. The bed was vast as a football field and felt like angels had died on it. Down pillows piled three deep, a flatscreen TV with a DVD player that would have fetched a couple of hundred dollars on the street, and towels so plush that a single one could have soaked up all the blood in a human body.
The chambermaid had said two hours, and they used them efficiently, right from the second the door had snicked shut behind them. The spacious room had more horizontal surfaces than Dean cared to count, and any of them would do, though 400 thread count sheets were more than okay by him. The chinchilla-soft carpet was in front of the unlit gas fireplace was also adequate, he found out, as was the living room's couch, twenty stories above the manmade lake, great view if he'd managed to actually look. And the shower, the shower was especially fine, if not technically a horizontal surface. They'd improvised.
They'd finally been able to make as much noise as they liked, but that hadn't satisfied Dean, not in the way he wanted. Noise wasn't the same as talk, and that had been sorely absent.
He decided to watch TV while Béa finished showering, examined the complex remote control that worked lights and television and DVD player, experimented with the combinations of buttons until the television went on. After a few minutes, the number of weird channels that he couldn't understand got on his nerves, only served to illustrate how far he was from home, wherever that was. Not here in this opulent room, surrounded by expense and luxury, fucking an eye-poppingly flexible woman with a strange accent who had gone quiet in a way that mattered to him profoundly.
He switched off the TV when he discovered a sports channel that momentarily cheered him, but then just nattered on about Les Kansas City Royales. No thank you. He lay spread eagled on the bed and glared at the ceiling a whole twelve feet above, eerily like being on the open ocean, adrift, and seeing strange stars.
Béa had refused to tell him what had scared her so much in the closet, what it was that she'd overheard. Although the afternoon's lazy stopover at the Hilton had been nice – hell, way more than nice – she was now distant, smiling apprehensively, eyes still spooked. Dean had seen plenty of spooked in his lifetime; he knew what it looked like. It looked like Béa, and he was disappointed with himself that he couldn't charm or cajole or gentle her from it.
Not for lack of trying. But with his every mention of the overheard argument, Béa had turned away, had done something that had been goddamn distracting. The wanting to talk thing was new to him, and it confused him. She confused him. This, he reminded himself, staring at the ocean-sky-ceiling, is why you don't stick around. This is why you don't get involved. And if the whole circus thing hadn't touched on Sam and his dreams, Dean knew, he'd probably have been long gone, no matter how great the sex was.
She needed to go at three; her first show was at four. They parted in the room and after she was gone Dean ate all the shortbread cookies from the hospitality basket, followed up with a couple of perfect apples washed down with imported water cold from the fridge. Felt like an imposter. Not such an unusual feeling, unfortunately, but strong at the moment, here alone.
Without even a twinge of regret, he dressed and left the room, wandered through the hotel's lobby, stately bordering on bizarre, a combination of wood paneling and weird orange glass chandeliers, the arches framing a perfect view of the too-perfect lake, and Dean felt like he was watching someone else play Dean in the movie of his life. Like with the shapeshifter, but worse, somehow, because he was inside here, was present and watching and so out of his zone.
Which was? And he dismissed that voice with a grimace, went to the parking lot and sat in the Impala until he started to feel more...normal. Shook his head, thinking that. Normal. Fuck.
Running one hand over the Impala's steering wheel in the same way he'd run fingers down Béa's spine, feeling every bump, he tapped the wheel once as though he was saying hello and slid the car key in the ignition. Before turning the engine over, he glanced at the passenger side, noticed a book Sam had been reading slumped on the floor next to a crumpled coffee cup from the Couche-Tard, and a folded newspaper from some small upstate New York town they'd passed through a few days ago, the crossword mostly done.
His car, surprisingly, had been cleaner when Sam had been at Stanford. Cleaner and emptier in a way that Dean had come to despise, because it meant he was alone and only caring for the things that he'd put there, not responsible for anything or anyone else. Had hated that.
Dean checked his watch, wondered how long he should leave Sam to sleep. Thank god Sam was getting some rest, because those nightmares were a bitch. Sooner or later Sam would spill, but until then, things were tense and Dean hated that too, but not as much as the lack of tension when Sam had been away.
Sam had dreamt about Jess for days before it had happened, he'd finally confessed to Dean. The look on Sam's face when he'd said it was heartbreaking: I'm a freak. I've become what we hunt, haven't I? As though it changed Sam. As though it changed something between them.
Dean didn't care what kooky shit Sam's psychic-ass mind dreamed or didn't dream, he was still Sam and always would be. Soon as he got over that, sooner they'd be able to use whatever it was that Sam was channeling. But he had to be careful about the asking, because Sam was touchy about it, and Dean hated being careful about anything. Sam's perfectly normal. By Winchester standards, anyway. That's what Dean told himself, over and over.
He took his time getting back to the motel, drove for awhile, hoping for some comfort in the familiarity of the Impala. The car was fine, the car was always fine, but the territory was so strange, the traffic signals turned on their sides and shaped like diamonds and squares, the language confusing, the way people drove logic-defying, and not even having a map or a proper sense of what city he was in, or near, meant that the act of driving, which was usually so restful, so easy, was nerve-wracking and unpleasant.
Dean drove for an hour, just looking and driving and feeling unsettled, until he needed to see Sam worse than he needed to leave him alone.
Their motel was awful, he could see that now, one in a series of shabby places worn down with simply standing up to weather and indifference. Gunned the engine before killing it, warning Sam that he was back – Why? In case he had a French schoolgirl in there? – and slammed the door harder than he needed to. Wiped his face with one hand, studied the darkening sky. Too early for sunset. Storm moving in, maybe, smell of ozone and pavement.
Sam didn't look as though he'd had much of a rest. Before Dean had even knocked on the door, Sam had it open, and was leaning on the doorframe, was looking beyond Dean to the sky and then back with a haggard, weary grin.
"No good?" Dean said, coming in, peering into Sam's eyes before thumping him on the shoulder and making his way to the bathroom.
Before Dean had finished washing his hands, the rain slammed into the city, furious and dense. He grabbed a bottle of acetaminophen from his open shaving kit and passed it wordlessly to Sam, who dry-swallowed four without looking at Dean, handed the bottle back. Nothing to talk about. Dean left the opening and Sam went right by it.
In a fit of nostalgia that seemed to go with his growing sense of unease, Dean suggested cards. Using the minor arcana part of a tarot deck from the trunk, he showed a surprisingly willing Sam how to play casino style blackjack and baccarat and Caribbean stud poker. Sam tacitly allowed Dean his fraternal authority; both of them needed it and it was something to do and it required no deep conversation, only the cards and their shared silences punctuated by the occasional instruction from Dean, question from Sam.
Between hands, when the hammer of rain and wind made the silence familiar and calm, Sam told Dean where they were on the continent and Dean let it wash over him, happy to hear Sam's careful voice, the laughter when he described the girls, the wonders he'd seen at the museum, everything from clay pots to totem poles to bottles of Victorian cure-alls. Sam's pleasures were those comprehended with the head, not the heart, a puzzle like so much that was Sam, Dean straining to understand, to pick up the clues. Like they were kids.
Dean needed this, just needed to hear Sam's voice, and the only tension at the moment was the known one of waiting to go to work, which was okay. This tension he knew, this tension made him think of family, of being together, a certain weird calm in a sea of uncertainty.
The rain had passed and night had fallen and they walked to Bistro 1847 to find the Lithanians in full vodka-fuelled frivolity. The acrobatic squad of Cirque performers occupied the restaurant's back section, steeped in a macabre mix of Slavic splendor and trilling laughter, several pitchers of beer on the huge table, strewn plates of a demolished dinner, a single near-empty bottle of Polish vodka resting in the center of the action like a last remaining solider.
The Québecoise gymnasts were bright and cheerful as a cageful of antipodean parrots, bursting with excitable French chatter. The others shouted in a strange ungodly mix of Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian, the male gymnasts falling into two distinct categories: little and big. The big ones were super-size, beer-pulling draught horses. The little ones were sleek, mobile as otters. All were astonishingly drunk, considering the performance had only ended an hour ago.
Dean spotted Béa at the long mahogany bar, negotiating with a heavily tattooed woman, both vacillating between laughter and haranguing. She didn't notice them as they came from behind the velvet curtain that separated the front room from the back, kept on talking, gesturing with her hands in a way that made Dean hide a smile. He leaned both elbows on the bar beside her and she looked up with an energetic smile, eyes meeting his before darting behind him.
To Sam. And something slid into her gaze. Surprise, quickly followed by apprehension.
"Sam Winchester?" she said, raising her slender brows. "Etienne said you might come by." Her tone changed slightly at that; Dean picked it up, surprised both by how easily she identified Sam and by how she said the name 'Etienne' like it was an unexpectedly discovered and many-legged insect.
Out the corner of his eye, he saw Sam's arm snake round to shake Béa's hand. She laughed, darted a glance to Dean. "Oh," Dean heard Sam say, heard the slight pause, waited for Sam to lie, which is what that pause usually meant. "This is Dean. My, uh..."
"Boss," Dean finished, and Béa's smile widened as she took his hand, gave it a firm shake. Dean smiled in return, because anything else was impossible. This, he realized, might actually be fun. Felt the unmistakable arousal that Béa's proximity stirred; why was it that illicit affairs were the best kind?
"Béatrice Viau," she said and once again, Dean wanted to say her name to watch her hear it from his mouth. "I'm trying to get this bitch," over her shoulder to the grinning bartender, "to give us another bottle of fucking vodka."
"Ah, Béatrice, you remember what they did last time? Took me months to repair the bathroom!" Switched back to French, and an intense volley ensued, at the end of which Béa led them to the table with a new bottle of vodka.
They were welcomed like champions returning with a World Series trophy, introduced around and Dean sat next to Béa as Sam took an empty chair across the table, started talking to one of the huge Lithuanians, Tadeusz, who was big as an ox with a near-shaved head, blue eyes swimming with alcoholic hilarity.
Béa introduced Sam and Dean to some of the others, names as fleeting as confetti released from an open window. Dean was usually good about things like names, but he was at a disadvantage tonight between the free-flowing vodka and the fact that Béa had a hand on his leg under the fall of tablecloth, was running fingers up and down the inside of his thigh.
They told him about the circus, about how they'd come to this life. Tales of broken bones and hapless amateurs mixed with stories of high-level gymnastic competitions in countries with impossible names. Some, like Béa, came from circus families, which Dean realized was probably just one rung up on the scarred-for-life scale from his own nomadic childhood. All had been with the Cirque for a number of years.
Occasionally, Béa translated words for Sam on the other side of the table.
Dean watched Sam's face, tried to hear what snatches of conversation he could: Sam was intent and focused, had a small half-grin that Dean had come to associate with Sam Getting the Job Done. Suddenly, he realized that Sam had a plan. All evening, playing cards, and Sam hadn't bothered to let him know about any plan, the little shit. What the hell was Sam doing?
Sam looked at Béa and asked, "What's 'bison' in Lithuanian?"
Under the table, Dean had his hand in Béa's, so he felt her fingers constrict. "Zubir," she said. "Why do you ask?"
"I saw the exhibition at the museum today. Looks like the zubir is an important part of the culture. And they're in your Cirque show."
Might have mentioned that along with the totem poles and Victorian cure-alls, Sam. Dean tried to catch Sam's eye, but his brother's attention was on the Lithuanian.
Tadeusz laughed, a big hearty, I-swallow-a-dozen-raw-eggs-for-breakfast laugh. "Sure. The zubir is our wild thing...yah? The," and he gestured to his chest, thumping hard, a one-handed Tarzan move. "Our..." and he looked to Béa with a question and a string of Lithuanian.
Béa let go of Dean's hand and leaned across the table. It was loud and she had to speak up to be heard. "Heart of the people. But separate, too. Two halves, together. It is what is not us, what is not human, not understood by humans. It's old. And..." she shrugged, but with frustration. "Unassailable? Is that the word?"
Tadeusz threw an arm around Sam's shoulders, pulled him close. "Un-ass-sail-boat." Laughed like a madman. Then dropped into a sudden worry, entirely typical of someone who'd had a lot to drink, quickly. "I don't like. The show. The zubir. Not right."
He disengaged from Sam to take the bottle of vodka. He poured for both, pushed an enormous glass into Sam's hand. Dean thought he'd like to see what condition Sam would be in if he finished it.
Watched with a little disappointment as Sam took a cautious sip, then put the brimming glass down, one more casualty on the tabletop battlefield.
"What do you know about human sacrifices and the zubir?" Sam was looking to Béa now, not Tadeusz. Then Sam smiled slightly, mouth tipping into dimples. Dean had seen countless people from cops to librarians melt at that smile. Wondered if it would work with Béa. Felt again like he was just watching the whole thing from outside himself, was too surprised by Sam to be angry. "The label at the museum," Sam explained.
Béa was still, both hands linked on the tablecloth, dark hair hanging in dark eyes, which were locked with Sam's. Dean didn't know what Sam was digging for, but he thought he might be able to distract Béa enough for her to give a straight answer. Help Sam out, even when he had no idea what he was up to. Time enough to chew him out later. We should work together on this...fuck, isn't that what Sam had said earlier today? Yeah, let's work together, Sam.
Disguising his intentions by putting his weight on one elbow, Dean slid the palm of his other hand under Béa's skirt, up the length of her slightly parted thighs. She squeezed her knees together, trapping him. Her thighs were like iron.
She shrugged again, not for lack of vocabulary this time. "My mother threatened me with that when I was little." She laughed, but it wasn't the laugh Dean knew. It fell under the same category of 'spooked' he'd seen in the hotel room. "I was a brat, and Lithuanian mothers are fucking strict. You mean the tree, yes? With the skin?" and spoke to Tadeusz and his friends in Lithuanian, who returned with more loud observations and a toast that finished the vodka bottle.
Dean thought the blood had probably stopped running to his fingers.
"What," Sam asked, half-smile still on his face. "What did they..."
"Old tales. Folk tales, Sam," she replied, relaxing her muscles and freeing Dean's hand. He wiggled his fingers experimentally and Béa's smile deepened. "And they want to get some poutine."
That sparked a round of discussion in three different languages. Béa stood and excused herself, explaining that they were going to find a chip wagon and another bottle of vodka. Tadeusz shouted something at that, seeming to indicate one bottle wasn't going to be enough. The Americans were welcome to join them.
Dean followed her out as the others took their time to get their coats and umbrellas, settle up the bill. As he moved through the velvet curtain to the front room, he stepped into a hard kiss, Béa's arms around him, and he reciprocated. It was late and half the restaurant tables were empty, the only one paying attention was the headwaiter, who cleared his throat to pass by them.
Dean realized in an excruciating split second that she was as turned on as he was and that they weren't going to be able to do anything about it, not without attracting a certain amount of attention.
"That's your brother, yes?" she whispered, breathless, one arm hooked around his neck. Dean nodded. Béa pulled away from him a little, so she could look him in the eye, searching. "You're worried about him."
Dean tried to smile, but saw the spooked look again. This time, somehow, it was wrapped up in Sam. "I'm his big brother. Of course I worry about him," he agreed, serious. He paused, looked at the door where streetlights glistened through the glass. He returned his attention to her. "I worry about you." She could take that anyway she liked.
She pulled away and put on a smile as Tadeusz appeared through the curtain with two bottles, one in either hand, and announced that the chip wagon on Jean-Talon had the best poutine. One of the Spanish web gymnasts argued otherwise, and they staggered out into the wet streets, loud and looking for poutine. Whatever the hell that was.
--
Poutine: hot French fries liberally covered with clumps of white melting cheese curds, smothered in silty brown gravy. Heart attack in a cardboard container. In rising appalled horror, Sam watched Dean make short work of the container's contents, used his fingers as though he'd been raised in a monkey house. Sensing Sam's disgust, maybe, Dean looked up, and by the light of the cloud-shrouded moon and sulfurous chip wagon light, Sam could see the expression in his face – transported pleasure.
"Give me that," Sam said, reaching out, not curious. Protective. Shit, food like this could kill you. Reluctantly, Dean passed it over, the cardboard cup warm in Sam's grip. Beside him, Tadeusz tipped the vodka bottle back, draining it. The Lithuanian was both very morose and very talkative. He was only intermittently understandable. The translator, Béatrice, sat on the bumper of a car parked on the street beside the primitively painted chip wagon, was going like Niagara Falls with the other Québecoises.
"'S good," Dean protested, sucking one finger. Sam shook the cup, hoping one less-coated fry might rise to the top of the slimy pile, but it was no good. He handed the cup back wordlessly. Dean grinned, and wandered off to Béatrice.
And because Sam had a lifetime of watching Dean around women, he noticed that, too.
Dean had just succeeded in becoming his biggest worry in a day full of worries and revelations. They had played cards together, all the while Sam yammering on about inanities, all the while trying to figure out how he was going to protect Dean when the last thing in the world that Dean ever wanted was protection. Especially when Sam was the one doing the protecting.
Sam had not gotten any rest earlier: he'd dreamed. The very first thing he'd dreamed about was the sound of his brother's heartbeat, saw it on a monitor beside Dean in a hospital bed, feeble but present. Fading. Then only the sound, as it had been in the theatre. Followed immediately by the high note and the wash of white demon-flame, which had swallowed the heartbeat whole.
It was a threat, or a warning. and Sam didn't care about the difference. Sam was the only thing that could stand between Dean and the flame, the demon. Sam willing to offer himself: it was what the demon wanted. Not necessarily a good thing, to be in agreement with a demon, but Sam could live with it, if it meant that Dean was safe.
This afternoon's vision: heartbeat, note and flame, Sam between, then joined by the bison, running, surrounded by fire. Off a fucking cliff. Sam wondered if the Lithuanians had summoned their god – that wasn't quite the right word, but it would have to do – to North America, and that the zubir was different from the demon at work here. Summoned to protect them from a demon? Summoned in response to an act of disrespect? The demon and the zubir were powers, but they weren't aligned, not as far as he could figure out.
Thank god for the alarm clock pulling him back from the dream's edge, because although Sam had pursued the vision, he hadn't been in control once he'd found it. The whole thing had left him with a blinding headache and scared out of his mind. The zubir, however, engendered a different kind of fear than the demon; it was more elemental, a dark thread running wild underneath the demon's work. A force of nature, about as evil as a hurricane, or an avalanche, or the sea.
He watched Dean smile at Béatrice and she smiled back, laughing about the empty cardboard cup and just from the way Dean angled his body towards her, the way he let his guard down, Sam knew what was what. Sam hadn't time to work out the implications, only had time to feel the danger, as though a knife had just been pressed to his jugular. Actually, to Dean's throat, though his brother might not be feeling the sharp edge.
Béatrice Viau, girl on fire. Béatrice finds you.
Time to go home, someone suggested, and the collective groan was met by the rallying cry of Tadeusz, who swung a bottle round the hot past-midnight air, sticky and cloying after the storm, pavement redistributing the day's heat. The Lithuanian lasted a block before stumbling into an ornamental bush, and Dean was closest at that moment, so he helped Tadeusz scramble to his feet, but was then caught in the bear's embrace as Tadeusz starting singing and guiding them to the apartment buildings the cirque performers called temporary home.
An immediate opportunity and Sam took it. He fell into the step with Béatrice, started a light conversation, and then slowed his walk incrementally, forcing her to lag behind with him as the rest sang and staggered ahead. He wouldn't have much time, but it was important that she know. She was connected to the demon, one way or another. Time to serve notice.
"You hurt him," Sam whispered suddenly, not even introducing the subject, voice low and unrecognizable. "And I will hunt you down. You'll never hurt anyone again, not ever."
Béatrice stopped, face pale in the inadequate light. Sam kept moving, but unhurriedly, and she followed. It was too dark to properly see her face and her accent disguised much. "What? What are you..."
Sam stared at her, tried to see her. Couldn't, not with any precision. "Don't. Whatever game you're playing, you and Etienne Marcoux, leave Dean out of it," barely kept the fear from his voice. "You deal with me."
They had been walking to the sound of a Lithuanian song, which Tadeusz was trying to dance to, but now Sam stopped, all of a sudden so angry he had to put his hands on his hips to give them something to do. Béatrice was looking away, and light caught the side of her face and Sam saw the shine of her eyes.
"I'm not...it's not like that." And turned to Sam. "Everyone does what Etienne says. And René. Or...or it gets bad." Her hand scrubbed her face, a hard complete gesture not lost on Sam: unused to sudden emotion. Or playing him. He was suddenly uncertain. "You must be careful. Be careful."
Sam cocked his head, wished he had more light.
She straightened, voice steady, almost steely. "But Dean? It's between us. Not your business."
And walked away, leaving Sam angry and confused, the sounds of Baltic folksongs ringing down the narrow streets, that and drunken shouting and French from an open window, yelling something perfectly understandable in any language.
TBCa/n: This and the next chapter were originally one ungodly long chapter, so the good news is that the next chapter will follow shortly, because it's already written. Excellent, eh? I've been on vacation, too, with limited access to the wired world, sad as that might seem. So bear with me as I thrash about trying to get this puppy out.
