A/N: So... I couldn't wait. I've been stoked to release this chapter since I wrote it almost two weeks ago. Also we're celebrating the best viewing stats I've receive since initially publishing. It might not seem like much, but 85 views in the first 12 hours is pretty exciting for me.
Read on.
The dress hangs on the back of her door; royal blue, knee length, strapless, full skirt. She adores it, standing in its presence, taking it in. Her hair is pulled up delicately. Shaggy bangs sweep to the side, framing her face. Her makeup is minimal, simply accentuating her features; a touch of mascara, balm that brings out her lip's natural rosiness, a hint of a shimmering powder dusted on the high points of her face. It crosses her mind how surprisingly girly she is, being raised by hunters and her only friend being a guy. The guy that will be picking her up in about fifteen minutes.
She takes down the adored dress. The zipper slides up her back as she fixes herself into it. The color of the satin fabric makes her deep blue eyes pop and her freckles stand out even more than usual. She feels beautiful. She looks beautiful. A flutter of disappointment comes over her as she looks in the mirror. Her uncles aren't here to see this. They up and left this morning on a tip they received from Bobby. Although she can imagine how it would have gone.
Walt wouldn't even have picked her up, Dean would have driven her over to Walt's house, not before Sam snaps pictures on his phone and digs out the old Polaroid for one last shot with the three of them. At Walt's house his parents would take a thousand more pictures and then her uncles would threaten Walt to some degree and demand Mai be home precisely at 11:00. After that Sam and Dean would sit in the parking lot of the school during the dance just to be safe. But this is all assuming she and Dean were fine.
We are fine. We just have a different relationship now.
She pushes the thought from her head and slips on some low pumps. Her jewelry is simple, thin dangling earrings and her silver locket; the keepsake that houses a picture of her mom and dad. She touches it nostalgically as it falls against her chest. Part of her hopes that they can see her, but she knows that would mean her mother is a vengeful spirit, and it was impossible for her father to be in this world.
A knock is heard at the door. Walt is early. Mai more or less anticipates this; she figures he'll want to meet her uncles. A spritz of perfume flies in the air and Mai walk through it. She grabs her clutch and rushes down the steps in the most ladylike fashion she can manage through all her excitement. In her head she runs over the story she has prepared for why her Uncle's aren't home.
Visiting my grandpa in Kansas and will be back in a couple days. They're sorry they can't be here.
In reality both of her grandfathers are dead, but she keeps John Winchester alive in case he's needed, like now. There's another knock on the door, this one a bit impatient.
"Hold on Walt, I'm coming" Mai yells, smiling. She opens the door.
"Not Walt." The boy kneeling at the doorstep says. The boy being Jett, or rather what's left of him.
Mai drops everything in her hands.
"Fuck." The word falls out of her mouth involuntarily.
Jett's a broken mess. Bruised and coated in blood; some is dried, some still seeping out of wounds. He holds his right shoulder which Mai can tell is popped out of its socket. Claw marks rake his side and there's a softball sized burn on his thigh where his jeans have been seared.
"…Aw, fuck" Vulgarity is a rare thing for Mai.
As if on instinct she leans down and pulls the older boy into the house. Jett groans and recoils in pain with every move. If she can get him into the bathroom, it'll be easiest to work on him there. Jett leans against the girl, trying to get himself on his feet but failing, most of his weight falls on Mai. He'd scarcely made it to the front door when the pain began to set in again. He starts to shake. The boy has to be over 170 lbs. Mai's barely able to move him forward, but she digs into the floor and tosses him into the bathroom. He falls to his knees and leans his left side against the tub.
"Demons…" He respires.
She knows the next step would be to pull out the medical kit from under the sink but she takes a moment to process what's happening. She looks down at her dress and back at the boy buckled over in pain on her bathroom floor. It's evident that the dance is no longer in the picture.
Fuck
She grabs the cordless phone and calls Walt's cell.
"Mai? Hi, I'm heading out the door now to pick you up, you ready?" Mai cringes and puts him on speakerphone as she hunts for a bottle of Jack in the kitchen.
"Walter, I'm so sorry. There's been a change of plans. I can't go tonight my Grandpa John just had a heart attack." She feels dirty at being able to lie so smoothly to her best friend, "We're leaving for Kansas immediately." Her guilt overwhelms her, "I'm so sorry."
Jett moans then swears loudly in the background.
"No, Mai he's family go be with him, is something going on over there though?" She snags the medical kit and throws it towards the bathroom door.
"Yeah, no. That's my uncle Dean, very torn up, it's pretty emotional. I have to go. I'll talk to you on Monday." She hangs up before he can say goodbye.
Head hung, she can envision Walt at the door in his suit, with a thin royal blue tie and his floppy red hair almost tame. His face is utterly disappointed but equally concerned. Facing him Monday is going to be the worst. But there are more pressing issues, such as Jett and his broken everything. She kneels beside Jett at the tub. Blood has spilled out everywhere, but she decides the first thing to do is reset his shoulder.
"I'm going to pop it back in okay?"
She touches his shoulder causing him to wince. He nods hesitantly. Mai bends his arm and grips his elbow pulling away from him. Placing a hand on his forearm she begins rotating the elbow. Jett grimaces, giving sharp grunt in pain and tenses every muscle, but he holds in how much it actually hurts. He isn't going to start sobbing like a little girl because of a dislocated shoulder. He's a man, and even more, a hunter.
"Almost…"
They hear a 'pop' and the shoulder snaps back into the socket. Jett falls back away from her, and gingerly rolls his shoulder. It sears pain with every motion.
"Wasn't so bad" he says more to convince himself than reassure her.
She's emotionless at this point. There's a job to be done. She shoves the bottle of Jack in his face.
"Drink. I don't have drugs strong enough to take away the pain. You'll need to kill it with alcohol." Grabbing some scissors from the kit she starts cutting off his pants.
"Woah! Not on the first date." He exclaims downing a swig of whiskey.
His remark is the friendliest he's been to her since they met, it also reminds her of Dean. Jett takes another shot of liquor. She pulls his shredded jeans out from under him. The burn on his thigh is only a second degree burn, which gives Mai some relief. She makes a cool compress with a cloth and applies it to his mid-thigh. She can feel him pull back. He sips again from the bottle.
"You're getting pretty handsy there Miss."
She wonders if attempting smoothness is his coping mechanism for the pain or if he just turns into Casanova after such a small amount of alcohol. Either way, she can't stand the nickname "Miss".
"My name's Mai." She informs him pressing a fresh compress onto the burned flesh. He pressed the bottle to his lips and breathes out.
"My name is Jett with two 'T's." He holds up two fingers and drinks some more. Mai shifts herself closer to him and starts cutting off his shirt.
"Shit Mai, I liked this shirt."
Being in such close proximity she can smell the reek of other mixed alcohols. He has definitely been chugging down the hard stuff before she handed him a bottle; trying to numb the pain no doubt. How did he even get here this drunk? Why hadn't she noticed as she was dragging him in? At this point those questions are irrelevant.
From the kit she grabs gauze, rubbing alcohol, a needle and some thread. Cleaning out his wounds, she goes to work on his claw marks. They are deep and still dripping blood. She applies pressure but her bandages keep bleeding out. Her knees now rest in a pool of red ooze. Nothing seems to be stopping it and she wonders if the alcohol is thinning out his blood making it difficult to clot. Didn't she read about that somewhere? He is losing blood quickly and she curses herself for not tending to this sooner. Without time to figure out if her hypothesis is correct she grabs the bottle of whiskey out of Jett's hand as he presses it to his lips for another quaff.
"What the hell was that for!?" He shouts at her.
"You're losing blood fast dumbass. Aren't you light headed?"
She adds more gauze to the area applying pressure until her wrists can't take it anymore and she has to switch positions. Jett's arm holds steady to the side of the tub as she pushes into him. Mai can see his veins stand out and hear his nails dig into the acrylic. The blood continues to seep out of his side.
"The fact that you are even still conscious after the amount of alcohol you've consumed is astonishing to me." She starts to panic.
Something must have ruptured when she was helping him in or setting his shoulder back in place; he wasn't bleeding out this quickly when she answered the door.
Some real medical help would be wonderful. Oh bleeding please stop. Please!
A cold shiver runs down her spine through her arms and into her blood covered hands. Incandescent warmth spreads over her palms, down to her fingertips while an oscillating cold rotated back and forth in her shoulder blades. Paresthesia runs up and down her arms, tensing every muscle. In an instant the sensation comes on and dissipates. Mai shakes it off as a weird chill at first, but then the bleeding stops. The bleeding actually stops. She peels away the soiled gauze. The slashes on Jett's side are gone. She breathes out more profanities.
He is completely healed in that one area. His skin is fresh and untarnished; there are no scars, no bruising, no swelling or redness. It's as if he had never been sliced. Getting closer and taking another look, she runs her hands up and down his abdomen to make sure she isn't delusional. The blood on her fingers smears against his skin.
"Again Miss Mai, you're getting handsy…" Jett's words slur. He's fading into a loopy state, most likely a combination of the booze and the blood loss.
"How the hell…?" She removes her hands from his body, completely at a loss. For a decent amount of time she stares at his bare skin, bare skin that's magically reattached itself together.
What is he?
A/N: Dun, dun, duh!
I have zero medical knowledge, just putting that out there. Google is my best friend during times of gore.