Chapter Six
Never again. Not ever again. Never, ever, ever was she going to touch another shot of anything ever again. Not on an empty stomach, not on a full one. Not in a bar or in a car. Not on a boat, with or without a coat. Never again.
After spending the better part of the day bowing to the porcelain altar and praying to whatever God would listen to just please make the hurting stop, Cal wasn't too sure if she'd managed to reach the goal she'd set out to acheive the night before. So far she'd only managed to associate the monster hangover from hell with her favorite cheap high-test Mexican booze. Damned Mescal with its wrinkled, disgusting little worm. The only thoughts she'd managed to conjure up for Dean 'heartbreaker' Winchester had been the comforting kind. She was wallowing in happy memories of mornings spent lying around in bed, all rough stubble and warm sheets. No matter how much she was pining for the man and hating herself for it, the thought of a peaceful moment was way more pleasant than playing the 'when did I eat that?' game.
"So, did it work?" Fran asked wryly from the bathroom doorway. Cal couldn't see the smile from her position leaning over the bowl, but she could feel it was there. Same way a person could feel it when they were being stared down from behind: intuition.
"I don't know what you're talking about, and quit smiling so loudly. You're giving me the headache from hell." Cal didn't do hangovers all that well either.
"That would be a no." Fran did laugh then. Cal never would have imagined hating that particular sound until just then. "Alright, so maybe the binge drinking might not have been the brightest of ideas." She admitted more to herself than for Fran's benefit.
"Oh, I don't know hun. It was pretty well thought out. You wanted to associate the mother of all hangovers with the guy who broke your heart to keep yourself from running back if he ever comes calling again. You know as well as I do that it's a better reason than most folks have for drowning themselves in alcohol. The logic was really hard to argue with, which is one of the reasons we didn't bother trying until you got to the bottom of that first bottle." Fran wouldn't come into the room (maybe it was the raw stench of sick, ick), but she stood sentinel in the doorway apparently intent on staying by Cal's side if only from a safe distance.
"Yeah well, it's not like I would have let you take the stuff away, anyway." Someone would have ended up getting hurt. Anger management wasn't her strong suit.
The silence that followed that particular statement was thicker than molasses in January. Maybe Fran just kept whatever comment she might have had to herself out of respect. Cal was heaving again and she'd never felt so pathetic. "Uuuugh." Her moan echoed back at her from somewhere in the depths of the swirling waters below. "Did I really eat the worm?" The thought seemed so much more gross now than it had the night before. Her stomach gurgled at the hazy memory of a wrestling match between her and Sam as she was about to chug the last swig of the bottle; the same one that held that tiny little pickled worm. Ugh. Yuck.
"Yup, you sure did. The good news is that's when you reached your limit. You were just too drunk to care if we took the other bottle away." Not surprising in the least. Things got really shady in her mind after that.
"Did I hit someone?" There was the vaguest impression of a fist being swung out at someone, but nothing solid or definable. She could very well have just imagined it. "Nope. You tried but I don't think you could've hit the broadside of a barn by then." Okay, that was a little uncalled for. Granted Cal wasn't exactly the town drunk. She rarely drank in excess and even less so to get flat out plastered. Fran didn't have to sound so amused by it. Besides, Cal could throw a dart or a knife with deadly accuracy blindfolded with one hand tied behind her back in just about any situation. Miss the broadside of a barn eh? Not likely.
"Okay, fine. Did I pick someone up then?" As unlikely as that seemed at the moment Cal was going to entertain the idea of having found herself a man for to have a little fun with. After all, that did tend to be the other way things went when she was out for a good time. "Nope." The grin was back in her friend's voice and it was like nails on chalkboard. "Honestly Cal, by the time you started thinking along those lines you wouldn't have been able to hit on the broadside of a barn either." Crap. Well there went her reputation. Girl, you should have thought of that before you started downing the booze like it was water.
"I'd ask you what did happen, but I have a feeling I don't want to know." Cal was really trying not to overreact but it was hard. Emotions were really close to the surface and she tended to lean toward the fight side of 'fight or flight' when things got this uncomfortable. If moving were an option she'd probably peel herself off the cool linoleum and shoo Fran right out of the apartment.
Instead she pressed her burning forehead to the cold floor in hopes of easing the pounding in her head. Fran waited for her eyes to close then waited a while longer for the deep slow breathing that meant sleep before finally stepping foot into the bathroom. She took a cool facecloth to Cal's face, neck and hands hoping to wipe away the unpleasant feeling of sweat to give her friend a bit of relief. She waited another few minutes and when Cal stayed unconscious Fran tucked a folded towel under her head.
Cal was renowned for her ability to drink. She did it loudly, she did it raucously and she did it with a lust for life not many people were able to maintain. Not once in all the years she'd been coming to Fran's bar, not even when it had belonged to Fran's parents, had anyone seen or heard of the girl getting drunk or hungover. This was the type of first that stemmed sleepless nights for friends who cared enough to worry. "Don't you think for a second that I'm going to let you make a habit out of this, girl." Fran whispered to her sleeping friend's form. Cal answered by curling in on herself into a fetal position and moaning softly in her dreams.
When Cal opened her eyes again it was dark. The light in the ceiling above her had been turned off and the sky was lit with stars outside the small window. They winked at her, mocking her inability to shut off their bright cheerful little lights. "You suck." She thought she was talking to the stars, but she could just as easily have been speaking to herself.
"Gee thanks." A soft, amused male voice answered her from somewhere in the darkness. Sam's voice, if the long legs stretched across the floor were any indication. What was he supposed to be doing, keeping her company? Nope. The guy was babysitting her. Fantastic. Maybe if she ignored him he'd leave her alone. He wasn't Dean, after all.
"I wasn't talking to you." She grouched. "And I don't need a babysitter." What she needed was a hot shower, maybe a coffee if she could stomach it. If not then a Gravol would do. Oh, and a bed. She definitely wanted a soft, warm bed to sleep the rest of this hangover off.
"I'm not your babysitter Cal. Just think of me as a concerned friend." Sure. A concerned friend with ulterior motives. "You're trying to catch me at a weak moment so I'll agree to help you with Dean." If she sounded paranoid voicing her suspicions out loud like that he didn't say a word about it. He didn't deny the accusation either which didn't help the paranoia at all.
"So, about last night… I don't think I've ever seen you drunk before." She scowled ugly at him and stuck out her tongue. "I don't make a habit of it. Bad for business, worse for my health." Cal struggled to pull herself up using the rim of the toilet and the edge of the bathtub as leverage. It took her four tries and she had to push Sam's offers to help away twice but eventually she managed. She was as wobbly on her feet and her whole body was warring against her but this was a step in the right direction. At least that what she thought until she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.
"Oh my God! What happened last night?" Not that she really wanted to know, but given the rats nest on her head decorated with bits of lord-only-knew-what and the shadow of a bruise forming on her shoulder and cheek it seemed prudent to ask. Who knew what she'd done or who she'd pissed off? Better to be proactive about it and find out if someone was going to come back looking for the girl who had started trouble the night before. Maybe that's why her friends had decided she needed supervision.
"Before or after you wrestled me to the ground for the dregs at the bottom of the bottle?" He flashed her a crooked smile that said he understood, having been in a similar place before himself. It helped to ease the sting of the memory a little but poked uncomfortably at her injured pride. "After." She spoke carefully around the lather of the toothpaste in her mouth. "I remember the stuff before that just fine, thanks." When her stomach stayed calm at the taste of fresh mint in her mouth she began to hope that the worst of it was behind her.
"There isn't much to tell." He warned her. "None of it's pretty." No surprise there. How bad could it possibly have been? Sam had been there when she'd picked a fight with the Steroid Cowboy, he'd watched her knock Dean on his ass and give him a fine example of a black eye. He'd seen her feverish and hallucinating. He'd even seen her with wings getting down with her Martha Stewart homemaker self. One night of binge drinking couldn't really be that bad next to all that, could it?
"Do you remember falling out of the booth? That was pretty funny actually. I wouldn't be too surprised if you have some interesting bruises. You couldn't get back up, but you kept trying." Cal tossed a death glare over her shoulder in the general direction of the doorway. Sam had settled in to tell the tale of her ridiculousness, sitting with his back resting against the doorframe, one foot tucked under him for comfort. "You wouldn't let anyone touch you so we couldn't get you up off the floor either. I don't think I've ever seen you so unreasonable." There might have been a snapshot somewhere in her foggy head of an angry girl shoving away more than one set of well-meaning helping hands. Cal shoved that thought away as hard as she had the hands the night before. Better not think about it yet. It still felt like she was poking at a sore tooth. Too afraid to ask what came next she waited for him to continue, furiously trying to brush out the tangled mess of her hair. How had she managed to get her butt upstairs to Fran's old apartment if she couldn't even keep her own feet beneath her? As if reading her mind the answer spilled itself from Sam's lips.
"You crawled across the floor, out the back door and halfway up the stairs to the apartment." Well at least she'd had the presence of mind to get somewhere a tad more private before the alcohol started coming back to haunt her. It took a minute before she worked out in her fuzzy head that she hadn't made it all the way up to the apartment on her own steam. "Just halfway?" The disappointment was clear. Cal's larger than life pride did not like the thought that she'd needed help to make it the rest of the way.
"Yeah, uh, you fell asleep with your head hanging over the bottom of the railing in a really weird way. We're not really sure what it was you were trying to do, but again: funny as hell." Good to know he saw the humor in her most embarrassing moment. It was really funny alright, when you weren't the one feeling the morning after burn of shame and gut rot. "Uh-huh. Sure it was." But Sam just pretended like he hadn't heard her.
"I had to carry you up the rest of the way. Fran helped me settle you in on the couch but sometime after closing you crawled your way to the bathroom and I don't think you've left the floor since." Alright, so the night before hadn't been one of her proudest moments but it wasn't meant to be.
"Oh. I ruined your running shoes, didn't I?" Perfect! That would be the one moment of clarity she'd have, wouldn't it? As if she needed any other reason to hate herself right now. Sam huffed a quiet laugh but stifled it almost as soon as it came out. There was a distinct moisture in Cal's eyes that made them both more than a little uncomfortable.
Out of respect for the 'tough girl' front Sam left her to detangle both her emotions and her mop of hair, stepping out of the bathroom to putter around the living room. Never so far away that he couldn't hear her, he was smart enough to give her the distance she needed to get herself together again. Ha! Right. Like that was even possible right now.
"You mind if I start a pot of coffee?" Ever the thoughtful one, he was checking to make sure the smell wouldn't set her off to puking again. As much as she wasn't looking forward to any kind of strong scent right then, the thought of a cup of strong hot coffee definitely held some appeal. "Only one way to find out, right? Go for it."
When Sam walked back in on her ten minutes later he almost dropped the two full steaming mugs in his hands. Cal was sitting on the floor, her back against the side of the tub, still working out the same tangled bit of hair with tears streaming down her face. On the inside she was swearing like a sailor, but Sam couldn't know that. On the outside she was just a blubbering mess of girly emotion.
Sighing, he set the mugs down at her feet and took the brush from her hands. "Just… drink up, okay? I'll be right back." It said an awful lot that she didn't argue or fight him forthe brush so she could go right back to it. Closing her eyes she simply hugged the closest mug to her chest like it was her only lifeline.
Sam came back with a couple of towels, a comb and a bottle of cooking oil. "I know how this looks but just hear me out, okay?" Cal just closed her eyes again and took a very careful sip of coffee. She didn't twitch or stir when he sat behind her. She didn't ask any questions when he draped one of the towels over her shoulders and draped the second one over his lap and the little bit of linoleum that separated them. Maybe it was because this was Sam treating her with kid gloves that she was okay with it. Maybe it was because he treated everyone with this kind of consideration and care that she wasn't balking at it. Couldn't possibly be because she was that worn out.
How Sam knew to put the bottle of oil in warm water to heat it up Cal wasn't too sure, but she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He spent the better part of the next hour reaching in and out of the tub behind him, applying warm oil to her nightmare 'do' and waiting patiently for her to become something like human again.
"I'm starting to get what Fran sees in you, Sam." It was about as close to a thank you as she could manage at this stage of the game. She was too jaded to miss that he probably had an ulterior motive, like trying to convince her to help him clear Dean, but it was nice that he cared enough to put the effort in. You didn't take it upon yourself to detangle a girl's nasty mess of tangled hair just to get a favor. That sort of gesture speaks of genuine affection for a person. He was her friend and he wanted to help her feel better, no matter how gross she was right then.
The sting was bad when he started to work the tangled bits. The oil helped, but no matter how hard he tried to soften the pull, every tug at the knots felt like he was ripping the hair right out of her skull. "Okay?" It worried him that she wasn't making a sound. Shoulders slumped, Cal was completely apathetic. "This isn't going to work, you know." Unresponsive she might be, she still had ears and there was no doubt that whatever Sam said she would soak up like a sponge. It was her nature. "You're not going to be able to let this go." That got a grunt but not much else.
Not wanting to push Sam stayed quiet, letting her mull that statement over a bit. Every so often he'd hand her some hair to hold out of the way while he brushed another chunk of it out. "Dean's an ass Sam. It's not that I don't want to help you, it's that for the life of me I can't think of a reason good enough to help him right now." Still Sam said nothing choosing to wait instead, combing away while mulling. This gave Cal more time to think things through fully. The dude knew what he was doing, she had to give him that much.
"Where did you learn to comb out tangled hair so well, anyway?" She felt him tense a little bit, his fingers gripping at strands a little tighter. Not so much that it hurt but enough for her to feel the difference. Sam spoke just as she was opening her mouth to apologize, tell him he didn't have to answer if he didn't want to. "Jess had hair a little longer than yours. She played softball and it always used to get tangled under her hat." Right, Jessica. Things had become so comfortable, Sam so happy with Franny that sometimes it was hard to remember just how tragic the Winchester's lives had been before Cal came stumbling into it.
"I'm sorry." She truly was. "It used to be I had my shit together, you know? You're brother, he makes me feel like there are loose screws rattling around upstairs. I've spent my whole life believing that no matter how hard life gets it's worth it. The tragedy is there to remind us how important it is to enjoy the good stuff." It was either that or shut down completely. That was why the hunting lifestyle appealed to her so much. It was a constant reminder to enjoy while you can because it can get ripped out from under you at any time. She sighed so heavily it actually pulled at the hair in Sam's hands. "Now it feels like what's the point, you know?" Probably just the hangover talking. Maybe some lingering lethargy from the head injury. Couldn't possibly be depression by Winchester.
Sam set down the comb and wrapped his arms around her from behind in the kind of brotherly gesture that had never been available to Cal before. "Hey. Don't do this to yourself." A mumble somewhere above the chin now resting on top of her head. "My brother's an ass, but he means well." They both knew she understood that much. Until she'd sought the Winchesters out Cal had very much lived the same lifestyle as Dean. Well, mostly. She'd intentionally avoided building up any kind of relationship outside of the hunt to protect herself from that vampire and after that it was to protect everyone else from the type of trouble her lifestyle entailed. After all, it wasn't unheard of for your work to follow you home sometimes and that rarely ended well.
Sam was intuitive enough to know that the words, though clearly understood, needed to be said and heard for her to get it; really get it. "He's always been too aware of the dangers of the job to want to drag anyone into it. He doesn't have friends outside of the hunt. Dean's too afraid to bring this stuff home because most folks can't hold their own against these things. He's protective that way." In other words Dean took off on her, broke her heart and stomped all over her massively huge pride in order to protect her from something she'd never had to face before: big ole scary Uncle Sam. Yeah, thanks there captain obvious. Knowing that didn't help heal the wounds though, did it? Seriously. What did that say about his confidence in her ability to hold her own?
"The point I'm trying to make here is that you can't change the pig headed ass bit in Dean, it's a part of his genetic makeup and the people who care about him have to learn to live with it." There was a pregnant pause as Sam considered the best way to word the message he wanted relay. "The people who love him know how to work with it." So what was Sam saying here? Where did he figure she ought to go from here?
"I'm too hung over to beat around the bush Sam. What are you saying exactly? You're his brother, I get it: nobody knows the guy better than you. All I'm getting from you is that you know him well enough to work with the pig headed jerk inside when he trots it out. I don't want to work this out like some kind of messed up puzzle like I do everything else so you tell me, what's the next step here?"
"I'm saying we both know he's dead wrong in thinking he has to protect us from the feds chasing him down. I'm saying he made me a promise to check in on a regular basis. I'm saying that if you managed to hunt us both down all by yourself then two against one is totally unfair. Dean doesn't stand a chance. We're going to find him, and while we're looking there'll be time to figure out how to make his criminal record disappear." Jeeze, and all this time Cal had mistakenly believed herself the most stubborn of their little ménage of hunters.
"And Fran, the kids?" Not that she doubted for a second that this had already been worked out between them. Given the way Sam had been holding out on her she figured it was worth asking. It wouldn't do to underestimate the guy now would it?
"You're kidding right? You think anyone from social services is going to try to take Jace and Maggie from the woman who scared my brother off? They'd have to be suicidal. Fran won't stop at costing them their jobs. I think her exact words were 'they won't even be able to get a job at McDonald's, it'll put them within an unhealthy distance of kids.' That woman can be scary when she wants to be." No need to see his face to know he meant it. Anyone who'd ever faced Fran in a scuffle knew she was not to be messed with.
Okay, so maybe getting plastered to within an inch of her life the night before might have been just a tad melodramatic…even for Cal. Maybe. Jury was still out on that one. That particular decision was awaiting a few final bits of information. Information such as whether Dean would choose to stand by his slightly hasty decision to break things off between them when faced with her again. As it was he'd left her a free agent to do as she pleased and it just so happened that at the moment Cal wanted to find herself a Winchester.
"Where do we start?" Just like that she'd changed her mind and they were back in business. She rose to her feet, shaking Sam's hug off totally ready to hit the road right then and there. At least she had been ready on her way up off the floor. Somewhere between sitting between Sam's legs and fully standing Cal went all woozy again. Damn it! Sam didn't bother trying to hide the laughter now that the danger had passed and Cal was more solidly herself again. "How about you start by trying to get through a shower and a meal before we start planning a road trip, huh?" For once Cal couldn't argue. After all, what person in their right mind actually wanted to start logging an indeterminate amount of hours in a cramped vehicle after practically expelling every internal organ they had?
Come to think of it, as much as she'd have loved a good hot shower there wasn't a whole lot of energy left after all that thinking and reasoning and hair brushing. She was sitting on the floor again lustily eyeing the cool linoleum as if it were the most comfortable bed she'd ever seen.
Fran was in the hallway, hands filled with freshly laundered towels. The silent conversation she shared with Sam with just the slightest eye contact completely lost on the woman who lay asleep on the floor at his feet all over again.
"You think she'll remember this in the morning?" Sam had his doubts. Cal was more than capable of warping things in her favor when the need arose. It would not be beyond her to do so by using her powers of selective memory. She did like to brag that it was one of her most powerful superhero powers.
"Of course she will." Fran said it with the conviction of a mother and the dedication of a sister. "I won't let her forget it." Because Fran was more than capable of that too.
