brightly_lit (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brightly_lit) wrote2013-11-03 03:57 pm
brightly_lit) wrote2013-11-03 03:57 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Inescapable
Title: Inescapable
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brightly_lit
Rating: R for somewhat violent sex, bondage, dom/sub, language, violence, death
Genre: het, outsider pov, emotional h/c, comfort sex, angst
Pairing: Sam/OFC
Characters: Sam, Dean, OFC
Word Count: ~9,800
Spoilers: Takes place in the early second half of S8, after Sam has started the trials but before he's become to weak to fight effectively.
Summary: The tall guy she was supposed to lure to a hotel room and roofy seemed so sweet and innocent, such an easy mark, but he turns out to be something else entirely once she finds herself instead roofied and tied up in his bed--someone dangerous and inescapable ...
Despite the warnings, what you really need to look out for with this story is the emotional intensity--hopefully, it will make you cry (in a good way, of course). But the sex never gets too graphic or disturbing. It was a hard story to write, and it's a hard story to tag, because it doesn't fit into any of the usual categories.
"Seeing herself next to Sam, his goodness against her badness, her weakness ... maybe she wouldn’t ever be good like him, but she could be better. She could try."
She felt for the vial in her pocket, made sure her gun was securely holstered in the back of her pants, and headed for the mark.
She felt kind of bad; he seemed like a nice boy, and such an easy play. But feeling bad for your mark wasn’t the way you got paid.
She sidled up to their high table--him and his pretty brother. The brother would be way easier to get to a hotel room alone, they said, but it was the tall one--Sam--they wanted. Sure enough, the brother, Dean, smiled at her expectantly, like he already knew what she was there for. She and Dean bantered a little--her bosses had been right about him. Sam was a hard play. Luring Dean to the room was a last resort, to use as bait for Sam, but getting the brothers separated was the whole idea. Sam had a soft spot for sad, lonely women, they said, being sad and lonely himself, so if she couldn’t hook him now, she’d hang around the bar looking sad for the rest of the night and see if she could get him that way. If not, it’d have to be the brother, but she hoped it would be Sam. Sam was nice. After he’d sweetly rejected her the third time, Dean made a face and said, “My brother doesn’t pay for sex. As he once told me.” Here they exchanged an indecipherable look. “Actually, he doesn’t really have sex at all,” Dean went on teasingly. Yeah, Dean was kind of a dick. Easier to get to the room, harder to take down once there, despite Sam’s looming height and size.
“Well,” she said, attempting to sound truly desirous, “I don’t always charge for sex, either.” She was a little annoyed they thought she was a prostitute, but the quick ones often did. Her come-ons must ring false. It was always smarter to play it like she was what they thought she was; if she tried to convince them she was something else, she might lose them completely. Most guys were so flattered at the idea of being wanted by a prostitute--or some were so money-grubbing, they couldn’t resist the idea of a good deal--they couldn’t say no. Sam wasn’t one of these guys. In fact, he was getting annoyed at her persistence. She sighed. This job could have been over in fifteen minutes. She could have collected and been home in time for a Star Trek rerun. She had a long night of trying to look sad ahead of her. Sad wasn’t her best skill. “Okay. Sorry. Guess I’m just ... really lonely.”
She turned away before she could see how this sat with Sam and started wandering--sadly--away, when there was a quick, urgent, inaudible discussion between the brothers, a scuffle for their bags, and then Sam was there beside her, saying, “Look, I can’t just let you be lonely.” The smile on her face was genuine, but not for the reason he thought.
“Okay, then, let’s go,” she said, taking his hand.
She made a big show of deciding to “splurge” on the mini-bar and letting him decide what he wanted to drink. Chivalrously, he said he would pay for it, though from the looks of him, he didn’t have a dime to spare. She had certain skills that got her by in this line of work, and one was sleight of hand; with her back to him, she emptied the vial in his bottle of beer as she opened it for him in one quick motion. Even another professional might not have caught it. She handed him his beer with a sly smile she hoped looked flirty, and sat down next to him on the bed, clinking bottles in a toast.
“Ooh, yours looks good,” he said suddenly. Crap. Why did a job never go off without a complication? Never once. “Is that one of those artisan beers?”
She glanced at her own beer, annoyed. She hadn’t paid attention to what she chose, only making certain the labels looked sufficiently different that she wouldn’t end up accidentally roofying herself. It’s not like she would be drinking tonight, on the job. She didn’t even like beer. “I’m ... I’m not sure,” she admitted sheepishly. You needed to utilize true emotion wherever possible; it lent a much-needed aura of sincerity to everything else you said.
“Let me see,” he said, holding his hand out for it with a sweet smile. He was so sweet. She got nervous for a second, wondering if he was onto her, but looking at that smile, she couldn’t mistrust him. She handed him her beer.
Sure enough, he only looked it over, comparing the labels, waxing on stultifyingly about his favorite beers, just like a guy. You looked for any reason at all not to feel sorry for your mark, however minute, and this was working pretty well. She hated guys, especially when they did typical guy-stuff like this. She tried not to roll her eyes too obviously, waiting out this obsession, looking around the room (casing it, counting exits, noting where his stuff was, where her stuff was, in case any of this information suddenly became necessary), before he finally handed it back to her, saying, “You’ll have to tell me if it’s as good as it looks.” She smiled as sincerely as she could manage, and since he seemed to be waiting for it, took a sip.
Something was wrong. Her vision started swimming instantly. She was having a hard time keeping upright. Sam set down his beer on the bedside table uncertainly. “You okay?” he said, concerned. As she sagged, he jumped up and lay her out on the bed ... then proceeded to remove handcuffs and a rope from his unassuming-looking knapsack and tied her up. She stared at his impassive face as he worked quickly over her, unable to believe that sweet-looking man could turn out to be this cold.
When she was thoroughly restrained, he sat on the bed next to her and regarded her coolly. He glanced at his bottle. “Must be high-powered stuff. I was only able to top off yours with mine, and it still took you out in less than ten seconds. Who hired you?”
She didn’t even attempt to speak. He shrugged. “Okay, if you want, I can leave you here for them to find, and me and Dean can lay in wait for ’em.” He took out his cell phone.
“No,” she managed, and he stopped, looking at her expectantly. She could tell from his calculating expression that he probably thought she was afraid of her bosses finding her like this--and she was--but in fact, she was making an attempt to salvage the situation. Even tied up and drugged, she still might be able to complete the job. He was, at least, separated from his brother, so half the job was already done. If she could make him easier for her bosses to subdue when they arrived, all would still have gone more or less according to plan. She could convince them it had, she was pretty sure. They knew every job had complications. This complication was just worse than most ... but still not irretrievable. It wasn’t irretrievable until you were dead. “Please,” she said. The drug made her voice sound appropriately vulnerable and quavery. Sure enough, he lowered his cell phone. Maybe he really was a softy. It was her only shot now. “If they find me like this, they’ll kill me.”
He looked remarkably unsympathetic. “Hm. And what were they going to do to me if they’d found me like this?” He gestured to her helpless state.
“I don’t know. I really don’t. My job was just to get you to the room and knocked out.” This was true. It was better if you didn’t know.
“But not Dean,” he said, contemplating. “All right, then. What did they look like? The person who hired you?”
She blinked, confused--first one eye, then the other, due to the drug, which must have looked pretty freaky, but Sam seemed unbothered, only watching and waiting for her response. “They looked ... like they always do. It’s the same guy who always hires me.”
Sam’s expression quirked. “Short, kind of stocky, English accent?”
She thought of her crime bosses. “Huh?”
He seemed convinced she didn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe she wasn’t as good an actor as she thought. Not as good as him, for sure. “So you’re a subcontractor,” he said, still ruminating. “And that was the job? Just get me unconscious? Do you know what’s in the bottle?”
She shook her head mutely. She just used what they gave her.
She gasped as he was suddenly on top of her. Oh, no. But then he sat back just as quickly, holding her gun, which he withdrew from where it was still holstered. He looked it over appreciatively. “Nice gun,” he said, showing it to her, then set it on the bedside table. Great, he was a weapons expert, too. They could have warned her. “This is how we knew you weren’t on the up-and-up, by the way,” he said, oddly helpful, like he was giving her pointers on her nefarious job. “This is why I agreed to come with you, so we could find out what was up and get the jump on whoever’s after us. Next time, make sure your gun is better concealed. I’d recognize a weapons bulge anywhere.” He rummaged in her pockets, too, pulling out what was in there--an extra vial in case she spilled the first, and some money. He examined the vial in the light, said something that sounded like the name of a drug, and set it, too, on the bedside table, then proceeded to feel her up shamelessly. He stopped just short of a cavity search, seriously. “No keys?” he said irritably.
She shook her head.
“Is this what you always do? Lure guys to a room, roofy them?”
She shook her head slightly. She was already feeling better. She assumed the drug was measured out according to Sam’s height and weight, calculated for the amount of liquid in an average beer bottle and how much he was likely to down with the first swig, which meant she’d gotten a tiny fraction of what he was meant to get, and it was wearing off quickly. Good. He didn’t need to know that, though. She tried to keep on slurring her speech ... but as he’d proved, her acting skills didn’t seem sufficient to fool him. She wondered if it was working. “Sometimes I rob them, usually just one thing, like their phone or their keys.” Those were the easiest jobs. No one got hurt. “Or sometimes I just have to get them someplace.” Usually an out-of-the-way place. She always tried to leave before the screaming started.
He nodded. “How long have you been doing this?”
It must be the drug that allowed the sick feeling to overpower her so completely. Usually she was able to keep it at bay. She had to hesitate a long few seconds before she could answer. “Long as I can remember.” It was so much easier when she was little. Kids are cold and pragmatic, and she was cute then. The bosses were nicer, long ago. But she wasn’t the only one who’d done bad things. It took a real player to play her. “What about you?” she asked pointedly.
He smiled, his eyes empty. “Long as I can remember,” he agreed. “So that was the job: get me to this room, roofy me, and ... get me away from Dean.” As he realized this, he grabbed his phone and dialed, ignoring her desperate squirming attempt to stop him. She could tell from the look on his face that Dean always answered ... only he didn’t answer. For the first time, Sam looked dangerous as he dialed again. “What did they do to Dean?” he demanded.
She shook her head anxiously. “I don’t know! He wasn’t part of the job!”
Sam got up and grabbed his knapsack, tossing everything he’d collected from her into it--including her gun--and headed for the door. “They’ll kill me!” she cried. He hesitated, looking from her to his phone. He wasn’t really thinking about helping her out when it was her fault his brother might be in trouble, was he? Surely he wouldn’t try to help her, she had just distracted him for a moment. The question was moot when a knock came at the door. She and Sam looked at each other quickly. Suddenly they’d gone from enemies to something more like allies, when another, worse enemy showed up.
Sam crept to the door and looked out the peephole. He crept back to her side, leaned close to her ear, and whispered, “It must be your boss and his flunkie. What are they expecting?”
“They’re expecting me to answer the door!” she hissed back.
“I could take you hostage,” he whispered back. At first she thought it was a threat ... then she realized it was an offer. He was offering her a way out, where she could save face. He was offering to take her with him. He was offering to save her life.
Quick thinking--that was another skill that served her well in this job. She was able to calculate any number of possibilities in less than a second. She shrugged hopelessly. “I’m not valuable enough to them to use me as a hostage. They’d just kill me.”
There was another knock. On impulse, she shouted at the door, “Just a second!”
Sam flinched, looking alarmed that she’d communicated with her boss on the other side of the door ... then something came over his face, as if it occurred to him that maybe she was making an offer, too. “There’s only one exit,” he whispered, his hair brushing her cheek. “We’re four stories up.”
After contemplating dozens of eventualities in the past few seconds, it had become clear she had only one hope ... and it would require her to trust him. It would require them to trust each other. “Untie me, get your gun, hide it under you. Lay on the bed like you’re out,” she whispered to him.
He looked in her eyes for a long moment ... and then--she couldn’t believe it--he did it.
She staggered as she got up, the drugs still acting on her. He steadied her and made sure she was okay to stand before returning to his work. It was actually nice working with another professional--no words had to be exchanged; they both knew exactly what had to be done. He collected what he needed and lay down, as she tried to shake off the lingering effects of the drug. She rubbed her wrists and pulled down her sleeves, hoping they wouldn’t notice the red marks left by the handcuffs, and went to the door. She looked back at Sam. He was good at looking dead to the world. Even she would have been convinced. So much better at acting than she was. She opened the door.
Her boss came in with his assistant, shut the door behind them, and took in the scene. “No problems?”
She smiled wryly. “No problems.” Ha, that should have been his first hint that she was lying out her ass, but no one but Sam was that perceptive.
“Good, I’ll call my contact.” He dialed his cell phone. “We’ve got him. Room 411.” He ended the call. “They’re on their way.” He came closer to Sam, peering at him. “Went down so easy, huh? Right on the bed?”
Shit. “Half off,” she said quickly. “That’s why I’m kind of out of breath, trying to drag him back onto it. He’s a giant.” She pushed on his immovable form to demonstrate--and Sam sat up, grabbing her and holding his gun to her head. She screamed believably--it’s not like they’d planned this, and she hadn’t expected him to be so violent, his threat to feel so real. Maybe it wasn’t an offer after all. This was as good a time as any for him to make his move, she supposed, but she’d already told him taking her hostage would accomplish nothing. Then it hit her: he took the part of the plan that served him. He believed her when she said they would just kill her. She wasn’t his hostage; she was his meat shield.
Sure enough, her boss laughed. He drew his gun as his assistant did the same. “You think that’s gonna help?” he said. “Just one more body to shoot through.”
“She’s worked for you since she was a little kid. She must be like a daughter to you,” Sam spat. She must still be a little fuzzy from the drugs, because what Sam was saying didn’t make any sense, unless ... unless he really was trying to save her life.
Her boss shrugged. “More like a loyal dog. More where that came from. But I’d rather not have to train another one. Come on, let her go. There’s no way out. I know a thing or two about you, Sam. One is, you’re not a killer. You’re not gonna kill her.”
“You’re right,” Sam said softly. He cocked his weapon and pointed it at her boss instead.
Her boss looked her in the eye, smiling at her very slightly, and she could read it like a headline: this was him saying goodbye to her. He cocked his weapon, too. She flinched when a gun went off, expecting pain, then again when there was a second shot, then Sam was slinging his bag over his shoulder and running with her, running down the hall, murmuring frantically, “You’re okay, I’ve got you.” There was no pain, no blood, no nothing, just two bodies in room 411, and Sam holding her up in the elevator because her knees shook too much for her to stand up anymore. It was the drug, it was surely the drug, it couldn’t be emotion because she never felt for herself. It must be why she was crying, too, not because the man she couldn’t help thinking of as a parent was dead, not because she’d just almost died, not because the life she’d known, pathetic as it was, was the third body in that room, and all she had now was Sam, the player, the killer, the unknowable mystery that had taken her life and made it his. If she really was a loyal dog, then he must be her new master.
That wasn’t how he thought of it, apparently. Up in a highrise hotel, in a silent room that looked out over the Vegas strip, he got the handcuffs and rope out of his knapsack again and seemed to wait expectantly for her to let him bind her. She couldn’t help the sense of betrayal that washed over her. She’d saved his life, and thought she’d have to give hers to do it, and he still didn’t trust her? He saw it pass across her face, the way he saw everything, and his expression softened. “I’m sorry, but I have to get some sleep, and you’re still a wild card. I have to know you won’t try anything while I’m out.” They’d driven around for a while in a stolen car, looking for Dean as she silently freaked out, before he’d given up and gotten them a room in one of the nicer hotels on the strip. “Come on,” he said, trying to lighten her mood. “You know I won’t try anything ... right?”
“You’ve already felt up everything I’ve got,” she said sourly, but she reluctantly held out her arms, wrists together.
He was smirking slightly. “Have you ... ever been a prostitute?”
“No,” she said sharply as he cuffed one of her wrists, breath quickening. There was this whole assemblage of guys who thought if you had, you were open for business, even if you said no. “Why; what difference does it make?” she demanded.
“Just ... that’s what me and Dean pegged you for, because your come-on was so insincere, but since then, you’ve seemed pretty ... closed, physically.”
“Totally closed,” she insisted harshly.
He took his hands away from hers--the handcuffs were now on--and regarded her soberly. “I promise I won’t do anything. I never would. I’m kinda ... closed, too, like Dean told you. It’s not like that. We’re just going to sleep, then in the morning, we’ll find my brother and then we’ll take you wherever you want to go. I guess you’re ... kind of in the unofficial witness protection plan now. Start thinking about where you want to start a new life.” He got up, got two washcloths from the bathroom, and stuffed them between the metal of the cuffs and her skin--so they wouldn’t dig into her anymore, she realized with wonder. These little kindnesses ... she’d never met anyone like him before, so kind, so competent, so brave, so self-sacrificing. She didn’t know people like that existed, except in movies.
He finished making sure their room was secure, which, for him, for some reason involved pouring salt around the doors and windows--all she could think was that maybe he had some way of making it blow in the bad guys’ eyes or something. He seemed truly regretful as he sat down next to her with the rope in his hands. Everything else had been done; all that remained was for them to sleep ... and for him to tie her feet together. She couldn’t look him in the eye as she extended her legs to him, ankles together, shaking. “I’m sorry,” he murmured as he did it--again, tying a handtowel under the ropes so they didn’t chafe so much. “I’m really sorry.”
He gently pulled back the covers and lay her under them ... then climbed in with her. Her breath quickened again. There were two beds. She didn’t know this was part of the bargain ... the bargain in which she’d had no leverage, the bargain she hadn’t had any say in at all. “Why don’t you get in the other bed?” she hissed, hoping he couldn’t hear the way her voice shook.
He froze, surprised. “Well, because you could work your way out of the cuffs, and then ... I mean, I have to be able to feel if you move.”
She rolled over to stare him hard in the eyes. This was all getting pretty fishy. He looked so sincere ... but he was such a good actor. “I promise,” he said, kind of petering out at the end, because they both knew with her completely helpless like this, words meant not a thing.
She stared at him a long time in the darkness, lit only by the lights of the strip, a dozen stories down. “Please,” she finally whispered, glad it was dark so maybe he couldn’t see the hot tears that splashed down onto the pillow.
“I promise,” he whispered, just as fervently, and at last, there was nothing for it but to roll over, her back to him, let him put his arms gingerly around her, and pray.
As she lay there, far too tense to sleep, it occurred to her maybe he was being smart to bind her like this, because now that she had time to think and process all that had gone down that night ... the truth was, she might have escaped. She might have called one of the other bosses she worked for. She might even have offered Sam to them, telling them she knew where he was, on the off chance they knew about the job, too, and wanted in, now that the one who originally had the job was out of the picture. She doubted she would do that ... but she couldn’t be 100% sure. A wild card. Sam knew things about her she didn’t even know about herself.
He was asleep within fifteen minutes, never having moved a muscle after they settled into a relatively comfortable position, and she felt a strange gladness to feel his body around her, protecting her, preventing her from doing some of the crazy, self-destructive things she’d lived her life doing. A loyal dog. That was all her late boss thought of her. A retriever. Well, a shitty master could expect to create a shitty dog; that was the way these things worked. Sam was twice the man he’d ever been.
The relief and lightness that flooded her the next morning when he untied her was equal to the sorrow and heaviness she’d felt getting tied up in the first place. He really hadn’t tried anything--nothing at all. He was so unresponsive to having a female in his arms, so utterly devoid of sexuality, she wondered if he was even human. Perversely, she suddenly found him irresistable. She hadn’t thought of him that way before (it was better to try to think of your mark as little as possible), but now something new was striking her about his manner or his body or his appearance every time she looked at him: his long, strong arms; his height; his sweet face. She found herself getting annoyed that he hadn’t made a single move all night. Thank god he hadn’t tried to overpower her, but it would have been nice if he’d given some small indication that he’d even thought about her that way. It would have been nice to be wanted. But no one had ever wanted her--not the parents who abandoned her, or the boss who was a hairs’ breadth away from killing her for convenience last night, nobody. Of course Sam wouldn’t, either. He was using her, same as everybody else--in this case, to find his asshole brother, because she knew this town and its seedy underbelly so well.
“Where do you think he could have gone?” he demanded, getting increasingly frantic as every lead yielded nothing, driving around again the next day in a new stolen car. “Where would they take him, if they got him?”
She thought. It had to be someone in cahoots with her boss, someone working the job with him, only the crime bosses in this town didn’t play well with others, so he wouldn’t have wanted to share the spoils. She kept telling Sam it had to be unrelated, that Dean was probably passed out in some hotel room with a hooker, but Sam insisted otherwise ... until she hit on it. Whoever hired her boss must have been clever enough to hire another boss to handle Dean, separately. “Why did they want you?” she asked.
“That’s why I kept asking you all those questions last night, so I could figure out who hired your boss. If I knew that, I might be able to tell you why they’re after me.”
She burst out with a startled laugh. “Why; how many people are after you, and how many reasons have they got?”
He plainly didn’t find it funny, and she stopped laughing and stared. “Lots of people, lots of reasons,” he finally said tightly.
She was troubled ... and turned on. He was the perfect bad boy: desired by all, dangerous, and he knew how to treat a girl right. Still, her mind worked easily at the problem, mentally running through lists of potential crime bosses, who would take such a job, at what level, who would need to be involved, who they would be willing to involve .... So many variables made it difficult, but she was still able to narrow it down. Maybe she would be able to narrow it down further, if she could get a little more information. “Do you think you’re really the one they wanted, or do you think it was Dean, or both? Is it that you’re too hard to beat when you work together, or would they have some other reason for separating you?”
Sam considered, expression hard. “There are guys who just want me, and guys who just want Dean, but the fact that they wanted you to take me first tells me it was probably me they wanted. Maybe they just took Dean to keep him out of the way so he couldn’t come find me.”
“And what do they want you for?”
Sam was silent--angry, she thought ... until she realized he was only calculating in his cold, inhuman way. “I’d be most useful as bait for Dean, but that’s obviously not it. And I don’t think they want information; they could get that from either of us. So probably ... I have certain ... skills that I don’t use anymore, which ... they might be interested in ... utilizing.”
“Oh, well, that’s specific,” she said sarcastically. “You just helped me crack the mystery. Care to elaborate?”
“Well, there’s one guy who wants to use me for ... a really big job, but I think he’s still locked up in his cage. And there’s a couple of different groups of people who might want me to use that ... skill, which, um ... makes me really powerful against a certain kind of bad guy.”
“What kind of bad guy?” she snapped impatiently. “Seriously, why are you so cagey? I’m in the same line of work! You think I’m gonna be shocked?”
“Demons,” he said shortly. She frowned, contemplating. What could he be referring to? Was it the name of a crime syndicate? He took in her reaction, and amended, “It’s a really nasty, like ... gang. Crowley’s their boss. Heard of him?”
She shook her head, but it wasn’t surprising that she wouldn’t have heard of him; they kept her out of the loop in case she switched sides. Still, that bit about keeping Dean out of the way so he couldn’t interfere was the most helpful thing he’d said yet; there were a few guys in town who specialized in that. There was only one thing she had to know to narrow it down further: “Do you think they wanted them to keep Dean out of the way, or do you think they wanted them to ... kill him?”
Sam’s expression didn’t appear to change, but nevertheless she saw an unmistakable darkness come over it. “I think they’d want him alive,” he said at last softly, hopefully.
“Egbert or Daniels,” she said instantly, telling him where they each headquartered. He gunned it, heading for the first place on the list.
“Wait, wait, not so fast!” she said, clutching the car to hold her in her seat as he cornered at thirty-five. “You want to go in the morning! They work all night, sleep at dawn, only a couple of guards until afternoon. You don’t want to go now; they’ll just be winding up now.” Sure enough, the blazing sun was just setting. Didn’t everyone know this? The place would be swarming with goons in an hour.
“Will they keep him alive until then?” he demanded. “Because if not--if there’s even a chance--I’m going now.”
“They keep them alive if they’re told to keep them alive,” she said, cowed by his intensity. He searched her eyes at the next light as if he could read them like a text message, and finally nodded a little. “Okay,” he said, relaxing slightly. “Okay. Just a couple of guys, you said?”
“Sure,” she said nervously, already picturing their dead bodies at the door. “But ... you know, maybe you don’t have to kill them.”
He glanced over at her with a creepy smirk. Why was this funny? He looked the more amused as she looked at him with her growing horror, but then his expression softened. “It’s okay. I really don’t kill people unless ... unless people will die if I don’t. I don’t do it unless there’s no other option. I try to save people. That’s my thing. I won’t kill them unless I can’t see any other way. Okay?” She nodded, kneading her hands anxiously. “Friends of yours?” he asked.
Ted and Robbie would probably be on duty, maybe Fred. Friends? She didn’t have anyone she would call a ‘friend,’ but they were acquaintances she didn’t despise. She nodded slightly. “I’ll keep ’em alive,” he said quietly. “I’ll do my best. Tomorrow morning, then, bright and early. Which means you’re stuck with me here for another night.” He smiled at her apologetically. “You know ...,” he said, his mind obviously still stuck on Dean, “Vegas is Dean’s favorite place in the world. You happened to catch us during our, uh ... annual ‘sacred pilgrimage’ here ... which is really just me trying to win us some money while he ....”
“Gets drunk and sleeps with hookers?” she guessed.
Sam shrugged assent.
“That could still be where he is.”
Sam’s budding smile disappeared. “It’s not where he is.”
She nodded.
“We need to keep you out of the casinos,” he said as he headed back to their highrise hotel. “Face-recognition software. But, uh ... if you need to go somewhere else, maybe ....”
She smirked slightly. What had remained unspoken all day had just gotten a little more explicit: She may as well still be cuffed and bound here in the passenger seat, because he wouldn’t let her get away from him. As much as his eyes darted around, looking for signs of his brother, just as often they went to her, to watch her, to keep track of her, to keep control. “Well, I’m hungry.”
“Me too. What do you want?”
He let her pick the kind of food, but not the place--just in case she happened to know someone who worked there and could tip them off, she figured, but he evidently had an inflated idea of her importance and the number and loyalty of her allies. She’d have to go much deeper than a restaurant back room to find someone who would take her in.
They got some Thai and went back to their room. “You can watch t.v., whatever you want,” he said generously after they’d eaten. “I’ll get you a soda if you like. There’s a machine down the hall.”
“What I need is a shower.”
“Sure,” he said with another creepy smirk. “As long as I’m in there with you.”
“How am I gonna escape from the bathroom??” she asked irritably. “We’re twelve stories up!”
“You’d be surprised what I’ve seen.”
She was sure this was true. Hm, a shower. With him there. Maybe that might finally get his motor running. “Okay,” she said. But though the door was made of etched glass, noble Sam sat there on the toilet, facing politely away from her, only glancing back at her very briefly every now and then to make sure she was still in there. He even greeted her emergence with a huge towel spread out far to the sides and wrapped her in it instantly, looking into her eyes the whole time as if to prove he hadn’t taken a single peep. He probably thought he was being considerate, but it only made her the more horny and irritable.
God, how long had it been since she’d gotten some? Months. Never, ever with a guy who looked like Sam. Never even with a guy who treated her nice. Still, it didn’t explain this overpowering lust. It was when she was flipping through the channels while Sam worked on his laptop that it hit her, as someone narrowly escaped death onscreen, just like she had last night. Some of the guys she worked with said a brush with destruction made you passionate for creation--the physical act of creation: sex. It didn’t happen to everyone who almost died, but it happened often enough that nobody was surprised when someone brought up getting super horny after a close call. Some of the guys had taken to calling it “cheap Viagra.” She found some porn on the t.v. and watched until she began to gather it was making Sam uncomfortable. Weird; she’d never been around anyone who was made uncomfortable by porn, although a few of the guys she worked with thought it was funny that a girl liked it. She turned it off; it was only making her more horny, anyway.
It was only a little after eight, but Sam seemed glad when she turned off the t.v., closing his laptop. “Um ... it’s early, but since we’re getting such an early start ....”
“No problem,” she said quickly. In bed with Sam was exactly where she wanted to be.
“I’ll, um ... I’ll have to tie you up again ...,” he said guiltily, completely missing her wicked grin. He couldn’t miss her cheerful acquiescence to the process, though, the way she stretched her legs toward him tantalizingly. It felt quite intimate, kind of awkward, as a silence fell over them both once he figured out her mood. He wouldn’t meet her eyes--didn’t even lay her down this time, pulling open the covers and letting her squirm her own way in there. It took until he lay down behind her and didn’t put his arms around her before she figured out the problem was that he was even more uncomfortable with this than the porn. What kind of prude old grandma was he?!
“Are you gay?” she asked brusquely. She rolled over a little toward him then, as she realized how smug that sounded. “I mean, not that you’d want me, but every guy ... I mean, seriously, I’ve never known a guy who would turn down free sex.”
He sighed and moved; she squirmed around to face him. He’d sat up a little, his elbow on the pillow. “You’re my prisoner. You’re tied up in my bed. What kind of scumbag would take advantage of that?”
She grinned. “It’s not taking advantage when I’m willing,” she hinted unsubtly.
“I’m, um ... not sure you even ... know how to say no.”
She frowned. What the--?! “I said no last night! And you didn’t. And now I’m saying yes, and you still won’t! What gives?”
“Almost every girl I fuck dies,” he said suddenly, bluntly. “It’s not a risk you want to take.” She giggled, then giggled harder as he frowned. “So many people have died. It’s really not funny.”
“Everybody dies,” she said.
“Yeah, when they’re old, after a happy life.”
“Not any of the people I know,” she said plainly, then burst out giggling again. This time, a tiny answering smile quirked at his mouth. “That’s just so funny! You don’t seem like the superstitious type.”
“I’m not superstitious,” he huffed, but he was relaxing, the mood lightening with her giggling. “Anyway, I still couldn’t untie you. Especially if we did it.”
“Why?”
“Because how would I know your sudden change of heart isn’t really just a ploy to get me vulnerable so you can ... whatever you might do to me?”
She considered. It made sense. She grinned and tried to snuggle up to him. “That’s okay!” she said brightly. “Maybe it’d be even sexier.” It’s not like she hadn’t done bondage before, but she’d never enjoyed it. For the first time, she was seeing the appeal.
Sam withdrew as she snuggled closer. “No. I can’t stop thinking about my brother, or the women who .... And the bondage thing, especially when you were unwilling ... just no. Anyway, we need sleep.” He unceremoniously rolled her over again, facing her away from him, and clasped her tightly as if to clamp down on her runaway sexuality and hold it inside her. She couldn’t help snorting and giggling some more. She was slap-happy or something. He may have tied her up, but he’d inadvertently freed her from the life that had held her in bondage for as long as she could remember. He might be the most dangerous man she’d ever met, but when she was close to him, she felt safer than she’d ever felt in her whole life. Tomorrow ... tomorrow could be anything. The whole world had opened up before her, so wide it scared her. She just wanted to be here in the dark in this small, manageable hotel room, alone with the one person she wasn’t afraid of. She wanted this night never to end.
She hadn’t put any thought into where she would go, like he’d asked her to. She didn’t know anything about other places. As far as she knew, the whole world was just like Vegas, except everyone said Vegas was like no other place on Earth. That meant nothing to her. She didn’t care where she went. She just wanted to stay with Sam: safe Sam, respectful Sam, kind Sam, sexy Sam, Sam who had made everything all right. She would be his dog any day. “Quiet!” he hissed finally when she couldn’t stop giggling, but there was a smile in his voice. She was so happy. She had never been so happy. It was like she’d graduated, classes were out, and she was still hanging around school, just doing the fun stuff, not having to do any of the hard work, only she didn’t know what was next. She didn’t really want anything to be next. She would hang around until they kicked her out.
She sobered eventually, thinking about what was next, and Sam fell asleep while she stayed wide awake there in his arms, wanting to enjoy every minute of this while she had it. She knew what was next after all. It would be one of two possibilities: Either someone would figure out she’d worked with Sam and ended up getting her bosses killed, upon which they’d put out a hit and she’d be dead within weeks, or she’d try to start a new life somewhere else, and she’d fall in with the same kinds of people, doing the same kinds of things, and it would go back to the way it had always been. She didn’t know another way to live. Maybe Sam would teach her ... but it seemed like he didn’t know another way to live, either.
Sam grunted softly in his sleep, and his left arm twitched, instantly reawakening the fire he’d so rudely doused before. Well, even if he wouldn’t fuck her, she was in his arms, smelling him, feeling his soft breath on her neck. There were other ways to be satisfied. Slowly, she moved her arms lower, glad her wrists were cuffed, not tied together, so at least she could move them independently to a degree and she didn’t have to figure out a way to jam both her hands between her legs without attracting his attention.
It turned out it took much less to get his attention, she discovered as he suddenly grabbed one of her wrists tightly. “What are you doing?” he whispered menacingly in her ear. He couldn’t be all the way awake yet; she knew he was asleep before. Besides, he never sounded that dangerous when they were up and about, talking.
“Nothing,” she squeaked. Okay, it was a little embarrassing.
He yanked her arms away from where they’d been headed and patted around there a little under the covers. “You hid a gun?”
She tsked irritably. “I didn’t hide anything. Go ahead,” she suggested then wickedly. “Frisk me.”
To her surprise, he took her up on it, feeling her up at least as unapologetically as he had last night, but it was more intrusive now, because she insisted on wearing only a tank top and underwear to bed, claiming her jeans were too “restrictive.” She felt sorry for him suddenly. He still didn’t seem quite awake, and this was his first assumption in his sleep? He could jump to disturbing conclusions and follow up on them, still barely half-awake? She’d thought her life was pathetic, but how bad had his been? “Where is it?” he demanded in a low voice.
She rolled over flirtatiously to face him. “Cavity search?”
He flipped on the light. She was shocked to see his face, cold and hopeless and empty. Was all his daily good cheer an act, to seem like he was okay when he really wasn’t? “What were you doing?” he asked again, voice devoid of feeling.
“I was going to masturbate,” she told him unapologetically, then she added defensively, “I’m allowed! If you aren’t going to fuck me, I get to at least take care of myself.”
She did see a little flicker of something in his eyes then. “You want me to fuck you?” he asked in that same way. A flare of fear raced through her chest. He seemed dangerous again for the first time since last night. She had wanted it so much. The terror and excitement twined inside her. She searched his face, hoping for that sweetness (even though she knew it was sometimes a lie), hoping for approval, hoping she might even see a hint of the love she felt for him, but she saw nothing, and it didn’t stop her, it only made her want to give more, give everything, until he was satisfied. She managed to nod.
He rolled her onto her stomach. She was shaking. She felt him kick off his jeans, heard the crackle of a condom wrapper, felt the weight of his massive body on her. He pressed his face into the hollow just above her shoulder blades, stroking haphazardly down her breast, his giant hands dwarfing every part of her. Abruptly he hooked his fingers under the hem of her shirt and drew it over her head, letting it bunch at her wrists. He stroked her bare chest more gently than she’d have expected, pausing just to clutch her body hard against his chest for a long few moments, before letting go to take off his shirt.
She found herself fighting against the handcuffs, just like she’d fought everything her whole life. If there was another way of living, she didn’t know it. Here, with indomitable Sam looming above her, in the grip of cold steel at her wrists, aware she was finally receiving what she’d all but begged for, even so, she couldn’t help it, fighting until his hands came around her wrists and he murmured, “Stop.” He held her down so she couldn’t fight anymore. She twisted more violently, and he suddenly flung her onto her back, frowning at her dauntingly. “You want this or not?”
She felt her face twist with anxiety. She forced herself to nod. “Then stop fighting me,” he murmured, even more softly, and her whole body relaxed as she became aware that, with this dangerous stranger, she was handing over her very life. It felt wrong, but inevitable, like she’d finally relinquished her grip on something that had never belonged to her in the first place. She loved Sam, wanted to give herself to him for some reason. Everything would be simpler if she could hand the reins to someone else and let them take over her life. Then the weight of all her terrible choices would be lifted from her. Sam was strange and dangerous and unpredictable ... but of all the people she’d ever met, he most deserved the gift of her self.
He smiled at her surrender, a warm smile that struck her as nonetheless wicked and mirthless, but his touch was gentle as he seemed to deliberately test her submission, stroking down her hipbones, then slipping his hand between her legs. She didn’t resist. It was too late for that now. She only stared at his face, now calm, feeling destruction dance around the edges of creation. Death was near, and for the first time, she wasn’t afraid of it; she let it be what it was, let herself be as she was, as Sam let her be as she was. She felt as if God was absolving her of her sins, baptized by Sam and all that poured forth from him. She was overpowered with gratitude and sorrow. Tears filled her eyes. He smiled naughtily as he worked her wet underwear down off her hips and let them settle around her ankles with the rope. When he saw the tears in her eyes, he sobered abruptly, touching her face tenderly. “Shh, sh,” he whispered, kissing her lips. “It’s okay.” She saw a great sadness in his expression, too, and she stared at it, awed. In this moment, they were the same. “You sure you want this?” he whispered, and this time, she nodded without hesitation.
He tried to find a way to get between her legs, but her ankles were bound too tightly. She saw him worrying the problem, troubled. He was afraid of her, somehow. He must never have known anyone he could really trust, either. She could assure him she was entirely his and that she would surrender to his will, but words meant not a thing, so she rolled over onto her knees, the way he originally seemed to intend to do it, and he took her invitation. She thought it would seem dirtier and less intimate this way, but not with Sam, who was so large he could envelop her completely, his neck stretched alongside hers, their cheeks pressed together. Plus, this way his own body didn’t get between him and touching any part of hers any way he wanted to, and he did, starting off gentle and getting wilder as it went on, animalistic, almost violent.
Where had this wild man come from, out of the non-reaction of last night, whose sexuality now seemed like a force as overwhelming as a bullet from his gun? It was like a volcano he kept tightly capped, because when he let out even a little, it exploded with a force able to level entire villages. He seemed to be losing himself as much as she had, growing heedless of her fragility, his animal groans drawn unself-consciously out of him. She’d be covered with hickeys by tomorrow, a few bruises and bite marks, but she didn’t care. Even pain didn’t seem scary here, even sorrow and fear and despair. She felt like she was looking at life as it was for the first time, all the horror and beauty and loss and tenderness and failure and sweetness, like its truth was forced into her by Sam’s uncontainable violence, and she could accept it as it was, because there was no other option. Orgasm hit her like defeat, and it seemed to hit Sam even harder, groaning miserably as he thrust helplessly into her, clutching her like he was holding on for dear life, collapsing beside her afterward dewy with sweat. “Thank god,” he muttered breathlessly, pulling her body against his effortlessly. “Thank god you wanted that.” She felt exactly the same. She found his hand and held it tightly with one of hers, her other arm dragged along behind it. She had never felt so at peace. Whatever tomorrow held, she could face it now.
The first thing he did when they woke up was remove the handcuffs and ropes, checking her wrists and ankles anxiously for bruising, muttering about how she’d struggled against them the night before. He suggested they shower together, and only there in the unforgiving light did his eyes begin to travel over her shoulders, her neck, looking confused, then alarmed, then horrified. “Did--?” He touched her upper back gently. “Was it already like this, or did I--?”
She was such a terrible liar. He must have been able to tell from her reaction. “Oh my god,” he gasped. “I’m sorry.” Watching him search himself for the driving force behind this violence, how this could have happened, she knew in that moment he was truly good, and she ... really wasn’t. “Oh my god. The last time I really let go like that was with Ruby, and she, with her, it didn’t ... matter.” His disgust with himself was so plain.
“Stop, Sam,” she said, taking his hands and trying to smile. “I’ve never done it like that, but ... wow, it was awesome.”
“But how--how could I--?”
“I dunno. Last night was weird, but ... good, right? You felt good by the end ... didn’t you?” Her own voice sounded so small, and she was aware of her desperation to hear him confirm her hopes, but at a distance now, like whatever the answer, however she felt as a result, was all part of life’s rich tapestry, and she would be okay, either way. She’d never been okay, but somehow, she knew, she would be okay now.
“Yeah, but did you?” he asked incredulously.
She nodded and embraced him, which he allowed reluctantly, but not before she saw the look on his face, like he thought there must be something wrong with her for liking it. Well, there was a lot wrong with her. He was right. He pressed his lips into her hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I know. But I’m not.” She pulled back and smirked wickedly at him, then changed the subject, bitching about Egbert’s cruddy digs and his incompetent help, telling Sam where they would keep Dean if he was there. She had an intuitive sense that getting Sam’s mind on Dean would get it off his inexorable guilt, but now she realized this was only because his guilt over Dean was even heavier, if possible. She listened to everything he said about his brother, and especially everything between the lines, and began to wonder why they stayed together, when the baggage between them was so heavy, they both seemed barely able to move anymore.
The disturbing strangeness of the night receded in the bright Nevada morning sun, but the intimacy that had developed between them didn’t, and she was glad of it. They’d been through something together. Consequently, she offered to go with him into Egbert’s place so he could utilize her knowledge of the labyrinthine layout. “You sure?” he said uncertainly. “If they see you helping me, you can never work in this town again, you know that, right? It’ll be witness protection for sure.”
“I couldn’t, anyway,” she said, and she knew it was true. Seeing herself next to Sam, his goodness against her badness, her weakness ... maybe she wouldn’t ever be good like him, but she could be better. She could try. She had to try. She didn’t think she could live with herself anymore otherwise.
Sam burst through Egbert’s operation, kicking in doors, knocking out guards, accidentally letting a couple prisoners escape, and flying back out of there when he didn’t find Dean. He kept her close beside him the whole way, and there by his side, for the first time in her life, she felt invincible. They headed on to Daniels’ place, her peppering him with warnings about his various flunkies and their skills all the way, and Sam repeated the performance there, only finding Dean at the end of it. She expected some kind of thanks out of Dean, maybe a heartfelt brotherly hug, but it was all business. Sam freed him, tossed him a gun, and they fought their way out of there like superheroes, never hit by flying bullets, the other one always there to get him out if one of them got into a bad situation with one of the bad guys.
She faltered there at the end, as they came out of the building into the sunlight, and seeing this, Sam put his arm around her, pulled her up just like that first night they met, and helped her to the car, where he shut the back door behind her, tossed the keys to Dean, and they peeled out.
The brothers chortled over their success and traded stories. Dean was annoyed he hadn’t been able to bust out on his own--and in fact, he had, more than once, but Daniels’ guys always managed to drag him back. Sam was telling him about some of his own adventures, leaving out anything about romantic entanglements, when suddenly, Dean’s eyes widened with horror. “Dude, you were hit!”
Everyone’s eyes went to Sam’s hand, the entire palm of which was red with drying blood. Sam stared at it, felt around on himself, seeming to find nothing. He froze, then turned around to look at her, where she was beginning to lean to one side, despite the seatbelt. “No,” he choked, flinging off his seatbelt and crawling into the backseat with her. “Dean, hospital, now!”
Without a word, Dean floored it, changing directions. Sam unbuckled her seatbelt and felt around until he found wetness at her side. He opened her jacket and lifted her shirt, cursing under his breath. Everything seemed hazy and far away. Funny things were striking her, like how jealous Dean’s sharp glances in the rearview mirror seemed, and how Sam’s eyes kept straying guiltily to her hickeys even now, how funny it was that getting shot was her biggest fear, how she always thought it would hurt so bad and it turned out she didn’t feel a thing except cold spreading slowly through her body. She looked down at herself and saw blood pooling under her. She flung her head back against the soft headrest with a groan. “And we just showered this morning!” she exclaimed weakly. She meant it to be funny, but no one laughed.
“Dean!”
“Two minutes, Sammy.”
“She doesn’t have ....”
He didn’t finish the sentence, which annoyed her unaccountably. “She doesn’t have two minutes,” she finished for him, then smiled at him, which grew into a grin, and it didn’t seem strange that she should grin wholeheartedly at him while he stared horror-struck at her, his eyes filling with tears. She tried to lift her hand to his face, but it wove around on the way, knocking into the window instead. Sam grabbed it and pressed it against his cheek. “I never thought anyone would cry for me when I died,” she said, her voice seeming to fade more and more, or maybe it was her hearing that was fading. “But someone did.” The relief of this was indescribable.
She pursed her lips and tried to lean forward to kiss him one last time, but that was way beyond her reach, so she just patted his cheek while he made it possible, gazing into his warm eyes and finally feeling like she could read everything in there, now, when it was too late to tell him everything he needed to know about himself.
“Not you too,” he was whispering brokenly, and she couldn’t tell him about that, either, that it wasn’t his fault, that it wasn’t a maelstrom of destruction he created as he believed, but rather the swath of truth he carved into the earth everywhere he went. Pointless lies like her just burned to ash in his path, but not before he’d redeemed them, their souls, and made it all all right. She was going to be all right.
~ The End ~
Notes:
- THIS WAS THE HARDEST STORY TO WRITE. Sex scenes are extremely difficult for me to write, the ephemeral nature of the story was hard to put into words, Sam and the female character are both so screwed up and damaged, the way they connect is so specific and rare ... ARGH! But I'm quite happy with the result.
- This story was largely inspired by the TOTALLY AWESOME Orphan Black, specifically Sarah and Paul's uneasy relationship in 1.06, but I haven't seen enough Orphan Black to feel like I could write (even crossover) fic for it yet, and I would have a hard time reconciling that world with the SPN world, so instead I envisioned a similar dynamic between a woman and Sam.
- I really, really freakin' hate Vegas, but I was struck by certain things when I was there, many of which worked their way into this story, like the rhythms of the town, how dead it is in the morning, and how merciless even the evening sun is.
- I couldn't think of a good name for the female character, and then one never became necessary. In the male-centric SPN world, it's pretty easy to have a female character without a name and just use pronouns. It worked well for this character, since she's a nobody who lives under the radar and thinks she doesn't matter at all ....
Author:
brightly_litRating: R for somewhat violent sex, bondage, dom/sub, language, violence, death
Genre: het, outsider pov, emotional h/c, comfort sex, angst
Pairing: Sam/OFC
Characters: Sam, Dean, OFC
Word Count: ~9,800
Spoilers: Takes place in the early second half of S8, after Sam has started the trials but before he's become to weak to fight effectively.
Summary: The tall guy she was supposed to lure to a hotel room and roofy seemed so sweet and innocent, such an easy mark, but he turns out to be something else entirely once she finds herself instead roofied and tied up in his bed--someone dangerous and inescapable ...
Despite the warnings, what you really need to look out for with this story is the emotional intensity--hopefully, it will make you cry (in a good way, of course). But the sex never gets too graphic or disturbing. It was a hard story to write, and it's a hard story to tag, because it doesn't fit into any of the usual categories.
"Seeing herself next to Sam, his goodness against her badness, her weakness ... maybe she wouldn’t ever be good like him, but she could be better. She could try."
She felt for the vial in her pocket, made sure her gun was securely holstered in the back of her pants, and headed for the mark.
She felt kind of bad; he seemed like a nice boy, and such an easy play. But feeling bad for your mark wasn’t the way you got paid.
She sidled up to their high table--him and his pretty brother. The brother would be way easier to get to a hotel room alone, they said, but it was the tall one--Sam--they wanted. Sure enough, the brother, Dean, smiled at her expectantly, like he already knew what she was there for. She and Dean bantered a little--her bosses had been right about him. Sam was a hard play. Luring Dean to the room was a last resort, to use as bait for Sam, but getting the brothers separated was the whole idea. Sam had a soft spot for sad, lonely women, they said, being sad and lonely himself, so if she couldn’t hook him now, she’d hang around the bar looking sad for the rest of the night and see if she could get him that way. If not, it’d have to be the brother, but she hoped it would be Sam. Sam was nice. After he’d sweetly rejected her the third time, Dean made a face and said, “My brother doesn’t pay for sex. As he once told me.” Here they exchanged an indecipherable look. “Actually, he doesn’t really have sex at all,” Dean went on teasingly. Yeah, Dean was kind of a dick. Easier to get to the room, harder to take down once there, despite Sam’s looming height and size.
“Well,” she said, attempting to sound truly desirous, “I don’t always charge for sex, either.” She was a little annoyed they thought she was a prostitute, but the quick ones often did. Her come-ons must ring false. It was always smarter to play it like she was what they thought she was; if she tried to convince them she was something else, she might lose them completely. Most guys were so flattered at the idea of being wanted by a prostitute--or some were so money-grubbing, they couldn’t resist the idea of a good deal--they couldn’t say no. Sam wasn’t one of these guys. In fact, he was getting annoyed at her persistence. She sighed. This job could have been over in fifteen minutes. She could have collected and been home in time for a Star Trek rerun. She had a long night of trying to look sad ahead of her. Sad wasn’t her best skill. “Okay. Sorry. Guess I’m just ... really lonely.”
She turned away before she could see how this sat with Sam and started wandering--sadly--away, when there was a quick, urgent, inaudible discussion between the brothers, a scuffle for their bags, and then Sam was there beside her, saying, “Look, I can’t just let you be lonely.” The smile on her face was genuine, but not for the reason he thought.
“Okay, then, let’s go,” she said, taking his hand.
She made a big show of deciding to “splurge” on the mini-bar and letting him decide what he wanted to drink. Chivalrously, he said he would pay for it, though from the looks of him, he didn’t have a dime to spare. She had certain skills that got her by in this line of work, and one was sleight of hand; with her back to him, she emptied the vial in his bottle of beer as she opened it for him in one quick motion. Even another professional might not have caught it. She handed him his beer with a sly smile she hoped looked flirty, and sat down next to him on the bed, clinking bottles in a toast.
“Ooh, yours looks good,” he said suddenly. Crap. Why did a job never go off without a complication? Never once. “Is that one of those artisan beers?”
She glanced at her own beer, annoyed. She hadn’t paid attention to what she chose, only making certain the labels looked sufficiently different that she wouldn’t end up accidentally roofying herself. It’s not like she would be drinking tonight, on the job. She didn’t even like beer. “I’m ... I’m not sure,” she admitted sheepishly. You needed to utilize true emotion wherever possible; it lent a much-needed aura of sincerity to everything else you said.
“Let me see,” he said, holding his hand out for it with a sweet smile. He was so sweet. She got nervous for a second, wondering if he was onto her, but looking at that smile, she couldn’t mistrust him. She handed him her beer.
Sure enough, he only looked it over, comparing the labels, waxing on stultifyingly about his favorite beers, just like a guy. You looked for any reason at all not to feel sorry for your mark, however minute, and this was working pretty well. She hated guys, especially when they did typical guy-stuff like this. She tried not to roll her eyes too obviously, waiting out this obsession, looking around the room (casing it, counting exits, noting where his stuff was, where her stuff was, in case any of this information suddenly became necessary), before he finally handed it back to her, saying, “You’ll have to tell me if it’s as good as it looks.” She smiled as sincerely as she could manage, and since he seemed to be waiting for it, took a sip.
Something was wrong. Her vision started swimming instantly. She was having a hard time keeping upright. Sam set down his beer on the bedside table uncertainly. “You okay?” he said, concerned. As she sagged, he jumped up and lay her out on the bed ... then proceeded to remove handcuffs and a rope from his unassuming-looking knapsack and tied her up. She stared at his impassive face as he worked quickly over her, unable to believe that sweet-looking man could turn out to be this cold.
When she was thoroughly restrained, he sat on the bed next to her and regarded her coolly. He glanced at his bottle. “Must be high-powered stuff. I was only able to top off yours with mine, and it still took you out in less than ten seconds. Who hired you?”
She didn’t even attempt to speak. He shrugged. “Okay, if you want, I can leave you here for them to find, and me and Dean can lay in wait for ’em.” He took out his cell phone.
“No,” she managed, and he stopped, looking at her expectantly. She could tell from his calculating expression that he probably thought she was afraid of her bosses finding her like this--and she was--but in fact, she was making an attempt to salvage the situation. Even tied up and drugged, she still might be able to complete the job. He was, at least, separated from his brother, so half the job was already done. If she could make him easier for her bosses to subdue when they arrived, all would still have gone more or less according to plan. She could convince them it had, she was pretty sure. They knew every job had complications. This complication was just worse than most ... but still not irretrievable. It wasn’t irretrievable until you were dead. “Please,” she said. The drug made her voice sound appropriately vulnerable and quavery. Sure enough, he lowered his cell phone. Maybe he really was a softy. It was her only shot now. “If they find me like this, they’ll kill me.”
He looked remarkably unsympathetic. “Hm. And what were they going to do to me if they’d found me like this?” He gestured to her helpless state.
“I don’t know. I really don’t. My job was just to get you to the room and knocked out.” This was true. It was better if you didn’t know.
“But not Dean,” he said, contemplating. “All right, then. What did they look like? The person who hired you?”
She blinked, confused--first one eye, then the other, due to the drug, which must have looked pretty freaky, but Sam seemed unbothered, only watching and waiting for her response. “They looked ... like they always do. It’s the same guy who always hires me.”
Sam’s expression quirked. “Short, kind of stocky, English accent?”
She thought of her crime bosses. “Huh?”
He seemed convinced she didn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe she wasn’t as good an actor as she thought. Not as good as him, for sure. “So you’re a subcontractor,” he said, still ruminating. “And that was the job? Just get me unconscious? Do you know what’s in the bottle?”
She shook her head mutely. She just used what they gave her.
She gasped as he was suddenly on top of her. Oh, no. But then he sat back just as quickly, holding her gun, which he withdrew from where it was still holstered. He looked it over appreciatively. “Nice gun,” he said, showing it to her, then set it on the bedside table. Great, he was a weapons expert, too. They could have warned her. “This is how we knew you weren’t on the up-and-up, by the way,” he said, oddly helpful, like he was giving her pointers on her nefarious job. “This is why I agreed to come with you, so we could find out what was up and get the jump on whoever’s after us. Next time, make sure your gun is better concealed. I’d recognize a weapons bulge anywhere.” He rummaged in her pockets, too, pulling out what was in there--an extra vial in case she spilled the first, and some money. He examined the vial in the light, said something that sounded like the name of a drug, and set it, too, on the bedside table, then proceeded to feel her up shamelessly. He stopped just short of a cavity search, seriously. “No keys?” he said irritably.
She shook her head.
“Is this what you always do? Lure guys to a room, roofy them?”
She shook her head slightly. She was already feeling better. She assumed the drug was measured out according to Sam’s height and weight, calculated for the amount of liquid in an average beer bottle and how much he was likely to down with the first swig, which meant she’d gotten a tiny fraction of what he was meant to get, and it was wearing off quickly. Good. He didn’t need to know that, though. She tried to keep on slurring her speech ... but as he’d proved, her acting skills didn’t seem sufficient to fool him. She wondered if it was working. “Sometimes I rob them, usually just one thing, like their phone or their keys.” Those were the easiest jobs. No one got hurt. “Or sometimes I just have to get them someplace.” Usually an out-of-the-way place. She always tried to leave before the screaming started.
He nodded. “How long have you been doing this?”
It must be the drug that allowed the sick feeling to overpower her so completely. Usually she was able to keep it at bay. She had to hesitate a long few seconds before she could answer. “Long as I can remember.” It was so much easier when she was little. Kids are cold and pragmatic, and she was cute then. The bosses were nicer, long ago. But she wasn’t the only one who’d done bad things. It took a real player to play her. “What about you?” she asked pointedly.
He smiled, his eyes empty. “Long as I can remember,” he agreed. “So that was the job: get me to this room, roofy me, and ... get me away from Dean.” As he realized this, he grabbed his phone and dialed, ignoring her desperate squirming attempt to stop him. She could tell from the look on his face that Dean always answered ... only he didn’t answer. For the first time, Sam looked dangerous as he dialed again. “What did they do to Dean?” he demanded.
She shook her head anxiously. “I don’t know! He wasn’t part of the job!”
Sam got up and grabbed his knapsack, tossing everything he’d collected from her into it--including her gun--and headed for the door. “They’ll kill me!” she cried. He hesitated, looking from her to his phone. He wasn’t really thinking about helping her out when it was her fault his brother might be in trouble, was he? Surely he wouldn’t try to help her, she had just distracted him for a moment. The question was moot when a knock came at the door. She and Sam looked at each other quickly. Suddenly they’d gone from enemies to something more like allies, when another, worse enemy showed up.
Sam crept to the door and looked out the peephole. He crept back to her side, leaned close to her ear, and whispered, “It must be your boss and his flunkie. What are they expecting?”
“They’re expecting me to answer the door!” she hissed back.
“I could take you hostage,” he whispered back. At first she thought it was a threat ... then she realized it was an offer. He was offering her a way out, where she could save face. He was offering to take her with him. He was offering to save her life.
Quick thinking--that was another skill that served her well in this job. She was able to calculate any number of possibilities in less than a second. She shrugged hopelessly. “I’m not valuable enough to them to use me as a hostage. They’d just kill me.”
There was another knock. On impulse, she shouted at the door, “Just a second!”
Sam flinched, looking alarmed that she’d communicated with her boss on the other side of the door ... then something came over his face, as if it occurred to him that maybe she was making an offer, too. “There’s only one exit,” he whispered, his hair brushing her cheek. “We’re four stories up.”
After contemplating dozens of eventualities in the past few seconds, it had become clear she had only one hope ... and it would require her to trust him. It would require them to trust each other. “Untie me, get your gun, hide it under you. Lay on the bed like you’re out,” she whispered to him.
He looked in her eyes for a long moment ... and then--she couldn’t believe it--he did it.
She staggered as she got up, the drugs still acting on her. He steadied her and made sure she was okay to stand before returning to his work. It was actually nice working with another professional--no words had to be exchanged; they both knew exactly what had to be done. He collected what he needed and lay down, as she tried to shake off the lingering effects of the drug. She rubbed her wrists and pulled down her sleeves, hoping they wouldn’t notice the red marks left by the handcuffs, and went to the door. She looked back at Sam. He was good at looking dead to the world. Even she would have been convinced. So much better at acting than she was. She opened the door.
Her boss came in with his assistant, shut the door behind them, and took in the scene. “No problems?”
She smiled wryly. “No problems.” Ha, that should have been his first hint that she was lying out her ass, but no one but Sam was that perceptive.
“Good, I’ll call my contact.” He dialed his cell phone. “We’ve got him. Room 411.” He ended the call. “They’re on their way.” He came closer to Sam, peering at him. “Went down so easy, huh? Right on the bed?”
Shit. “Half off,” she said quickly. “That’s why I’m kind of out of breath, trying to drag him back onto it. He’s a giant.” She pushed on his immovable form to demonstrate--and Sam sat up, grabbing her and holding his gun to her head. She screamed believably--it’s not like they’d planned this, and she hadn’t expected him to be so violent, his threat to feel so real. Maybe it wasn’t an offer after all. This was as good a time as any for him to make his move, she supposed, but she’d already told him taking her hostage would accomplish nothing. Then it hit her: he took the part of the plan that served him. He believed her when she said they would just kill her. She wasn’t his hostage; she was his meat shield.
Sure enough, her boss laughed. He drew his gun as his assistant did the same. “You think that’s gonna help?” he said. “Just one more body to shoot through.”
“She’s worked for you since she was a little kid. She must be like a daughter to you,” Sam spat. She must still be a little fuzzy from the drugs, because what Sam was saying didn’t make any sense, unless ... unless he really was trying to save her life.
Her boss shrugged. “More like a loyal dog. More where that came from. But I’d rather not have to train another one. Come on, let her go. There’s no way out. I know a thing or two about you, Sam. One is, you’re not a killer. You’re not gonna kill her.”
“You’re right,” Sam said softly. He cocked his weapon and pointed it at her boss instead.
Her boss looked her in the eye, smiling at her very slightly, and she could read it like a headline: this was him saying goodbye to her. He cocked his weapon, too. She flinched when a gun went off, expecting pain, then again when there was a second shot, then Sam was slinging his bag over his shoulder and running with her, running down the hall, murmuring frantically, “You’re okay, I’ve got you.” There was no pain, no blood, no nothing, just two bodies in room 411, and Sam holding her up in the elevator because her knees shook too much for her to stand up anymore. It was the drug, it was surely the drug, it couldn’t be emotion because she never felt for herself. It must be why she was crying, too, not because the man she couldn’t help thinking of as a parent was dead, not because she’d just almost died, not because the life she’d known, pathetic as it was, was the third body in that room, and all she had now was Sam, the player, the killer, the unknowable mystery that had taken her life and made it his. If she really was a loyal dog, then he must be her new master.
That wasn’t how he thought of it, apparently. Up in a highrise hotel, in a silent room that looked out over the Vegas strip, he got the handcuffs and rope out of his knapsack again and seemed to wait expectantly for her to let him bind her. She couldn’t help the sense of betrayal that washed over her. She’d saved his life, and thought she’d have to give hers to do it, and he still didn’t trust her? He saw it pass across her face, the way he saw everything, and his expression softened. “I’m sorry, but I have to get some sleep, and you’re still a wild card. I have to know you won’t try anything while I’m out.” They’d driven around for a while in a stolen car, looking for Dean as she silently freaked out, before he’d given up and gotten them a room in one of the nicer hotels on the strip. “Come on,” he said, trying to lighten her mood. “You know I won’t try anything ... right?”
“You’ve already felt up everything I’ve got,” she said sourly, but she reluctantly held out her arms, wrists together.
He was smirking slightly. “Have you ... ever been a prostitute?”
“No,” she said sharply as he cuffed one of her wrists, breath quickening. There was this whole assemblage of guys who thought if you had, you were open for business, even if you said no. “Why; what difference does it make?” she demanded.
“Just ... that’s what me and Dean pegged you for, because your come-on was so insincere, but since then, you’ve seemed pretty ... closed, physically.”
“Totally closed,” she insisted harshly.
He took his hands away from hers--the handcuffs were now on--and regarded her soberly. “I promise I won’t do anything. I never would. I’m kinda ... closed, too, like Dean told you. It’s not like that. We’re just going to sleep, then in the morning, we’ll find my brother and then we’ll take you wherever you want to go. I guess you’re ... kind of in the unofficial witness protection plan now. Start thinking about where you want to start a new life.” He got up, got two washcloths from the bathroom, and stuffed them between the metal of the cuffs and her skin--so they wouldn’t dig into her anymore, she realized with wonder. These little kindnesses ... she’d never met anyone like him before, so kind, so competent, so brave, so self-sacrificing. She didn’t know people like that existed, except in movies.
He finished making sure their room was secure, which, for him, for some reason involved pouring salt around the doors and windows--all she could think was that maybe he had some way of making it blow in the bad guys’ eyes or something. He seemed truly regretful as he sat down next to her with the rope in his hands. Everything else had been done; all that remained was for them to sleep ... and for him to tie her feet together. She couldn’t look him in the eye as she extended her legs to him, ankles together, shaking. “I’m sorry,” he murmured as he did it--again, tying a handtowel under the ropes so they didn’t chafe so much. “I’m really sorry.”
He gently pulled back the covers and lay her under them ... then climbed in with her. Her breath quickened again. There were two beds. She didn’t know this was part of the bargain ... the bargain in which she’d had no leverage, the bargain she hadn’t had any say in at all. “Why don’t you get in the other bed?” she hissed, hoping he couldn’t hear the way her voice shook.
He froze, surprised. “Well, because you could work your way out of the cuffs, and then ... I mean, I have to be able to feel if you move.”
She rolled over to stare him hard in the eyes. This was all getting pretty fishy. He looked so sincere ... but he was such a good actor. “I promise,” he said, kind of petering out at the end, because they both knew with her completely helpless like this, words meant not a thing.
She stared at him a long time in the darkness, lit only by the lights of the strip, a dozen stories down. “Please,” she finally whispered, glad it was dark so maybe he couldn’t see the hot tears that splashed down onto the pillow.
“I promise,” he whispered, just as fervently, and at last, there was nothing for it but to roll over, her back to him, let him put his arms gingerly around her, and pray.
As she lay there, far too tense to sleep, it occurred to her maybe he was being smart to bind her like this, because now that she had time to think and process all that had gone down that night ... the truth was, she might have escaped. She might have called one of the other bosses she worked for. She might even have offered Sam to them, telling them she knew where he was, on the off chance they knew about the job, too, and wanted in, now that the one who originally had the job was out of the picture. She doubted she would do that ... but she couldn’t be 100% sure. A wild card. Sam knew things about her she didn’t even know about herself.
He was asleep within fifteen minutes, never having moved a muscle after they settled into a relatively comfortable position, and she felt a strange gladness to feel his body around her, protecting her, preventing her from doing some of the crazy, self-destructive things she’d lived her life doing. A loyal dog. That was all her late boss thought of her. A retriever. Well, a shitty master could expect to create a shitty dog; that was the way these things worked. Sam was twice the man he’d ever been.
The relief and lightness that flooded her the next morning when he untied her was equal to the sorrow and heaviness she’d felt getting tied up in the first place. He really hadn’t tried anything--nothing at all. He was so unresponsive to having a female in his arms, so utterly devoid of sexuality, she wondered if he was even human. Perversely, she suddenly found him irresistable. She hadn’t thought of him that way before (it was better to try to think of your mark as little as possible), but now something new was striking her about his manner or his body or his appearance every time she looked at him: his long, strong arms; his height; his sweet face. She found herself getting annoyed that he hadn’t made a single move all night. Thank god he hadn’t tried to overpower her, but it would have been nice if he’d given some small indication that he’d even thought about her that way. It would have been nice to be wanted. But no one had ever wanted her--not the parents who abandoned her, or the boss who was a hairs’ breadth away from killing her for convenience last night, nobody. Of course Sam wouldn’t, either. He was using her, same as everybody else--in this case, to find his asshole brother, because she knew this town and its seedy underbelly so well.
“Where do you think he could have gone?” he demanded, getting increasingly frantic as every lead yielded nothing, driving around again the next day in a new stolen car. “Where would they take him, if they got him?”
She thought. It had to be someone in cahoots with her boss, someone working the job with him, only the crime bosses in this town didn’t play well with others, so he wouldn’t have wanted to share the spoils. She kept telling Sam it had to be unrelated, that Dean was probably passed out in some hotel room with a hooker, but Sam insisted otherwise ... until she hit on it. Whoever hired her boss must have been clever enough to hire another boss to handle Dean, separately. “Why did they want you?” she asked.
“That’s why I kept asking you all those questions last night, so I could figure out who hired your boss. If I knew that, I might be able to tell you why they’re after me.”
She burst out with a startled laugh. “Why; how many people are after you, and how many reasons have they got?”
He plainly didn’t find it funny, and she stopped laughing and stared. “Lots of people, lots of reasons,” he finally said tightly.
She was troubled ... and turned on. He was the perfect bad boy: desired by all, dangerous, and he knew how to treat a girl right. Still, her mind worked easily at the problem, mentally running through lists of potential crime bosses, who would take such a job, at what level, who would need to be involved, who they would be willing to involve .... So many variables made it difficult, but she was still able to narrow it down. Maybe she would be able to narrow it down further, if she could get a little more information. “Do you think you’re really the one they wanted, or do you think it was Dean, or both? Is it that you’re too hard to beat when you work together, or would they have some other reason for separating you?”
Sam considered, expression hard. “There are guys who just want me, and guys who just want Dean, but the fact that they wanted you to take me first tells me it was probably me they wanted. Maybe they just took Dean to keep him out of the way so he couldn’t come find me.”
“And what do they want you for?”
Sam was silent--angry, she thought ... until she realized he was only calculating in his cold, inhuman way. “I’d be most useful as bait for Dean, but that’s obviously not it. And I don’t think they want information; they could get that from either of us. So probably ... I have certain ... skills that I don’t use anymore, which ... they might be interested in ... utilizing.”
“Oh, well, that’s specific,” she said sarcastically. “You just helped me crack the mystery. Care to elaborate?”
“Well, there’s one guy who wants to use me for ... a really big job, but I think he’s still locked up in his cage. And there’s a couple of different groups of people who might want me to use that ... skill, which, um ... makes me really powerful against a certain kind of bad guy.”
“What kind of bad guy?” she snapped impatiently. “Seriously, why are you so cagey? I’m in the same line of work! You think I’m gonna be shocked?”
“Demons,” he said shortly. She frowned, contemplating. What could he be referring to? Was it the name of a crime syndicate? He took in her reaction, and amended, “It’s a really nasty, like ... gang. Crowley’s their boss. Heard of him?”
She shook her head, but it wasn’t surprising that she wouldn’t have heard of him; they kept her out of the loop in case she switched sides. Still, that bit about keeping Dean out of the way so he couldn’t interfere was the most helpful thing he’d said yet; there were a few guys in town who specialized in that. There was only one thing she had to know to narrow it down further: “Do you think they wanted them to keep Dean out of the way, or do you think they wanted them to ... kill him?”
Sam’s expression didn’t appear to change, but nevertheless she saw an unmistakable darkness come over it. “I think they’d want him alive,” he said at last softly, hopefully.
“Egbert or Daniels,” she said instantly, telling him where they each headquartered. He gunned it, heading for the first place on the list.
“Wait, wait, not so fast!” she said, clutching the car to hold her in her seat as he cornered at thirty-five. “You want to go in the morning! They work all night, sleep at dawn, only a couple of guards until afternoon. You don’t want to go now; they’ll just be winding up now.” Sure enough, the blazing sun was just setting. Didn’t everyone know this? The place would be swarming with goons in an hour.
“Will they keep him alive until then?” he demanded. “Because if not--if there’s even a chance--I’m going now.”
“They keep them alive if they’re told to keep them alive,” she said, cowed by his intensity. He searched her eyes at the next light as if he could read them like a text message, and finally nodded a little. “Okay,” he said, relaxing slightly. “Okay. Just a couple of guys, you said?”
“Sure,” she said nervously, already picturing their dead bodies at the door. “But ... you know, maybe you don’t have to kill them.”
He glanced over at her with a creepy smirk. Why was this funny? He looked the more amused as she looked at him with her growing horror, but then his expression softened. “It’s okay. I really don’t kill people unless ... unless people will die if I don’t. I don’t do it unless there’s no other option. I try to save people. That’s my thing. I won’t kill them unless I can’t see any other way. Okay?” She nodded, kneading her hands anxiously. “Friends of yours?” he asked.
Ted and Robbie would probably be on duty, maybe Fred. Friends? She didn’t have anyone she would call a ‘friend,’ but they were acquaintances she didn’t despise. She nodded slightly. “I’ll keep ’em alive,” he said quietly. “I’ll do my best. Tomorrow morning, then, bright and early. Which means you’re stuck with me here for another night.” He smiled at her apologetically. “You know ...,” he said, his mind obviously still stuck on Dean, “Vegas is Dean’s favorite place in the world. You happened to catch us during our, uh ... annual ‘sacred pilgrimage’ here ... which is really just me trying to win us some money while he ....”
“Gets drunk and sleeps with hookers?” she guessed.
Sam shrugged assent.
“That could still be where he is.”
Sam’s budding smile disappeared. “It’s not where he is.”
She nodded.
“We need to keep you out of the casinos,” he said as he headed back to their highrise hotel. “Face-recognition software. But, uh ... if you need to go somewhere else, maybe ....”
She smirked slightly. What had remained unspoken all day had just gotten a little more explicit: She may as well still be cuffed and bound here in the passenger seat, because he wouldn’t let her get away from him. As much as his eyes darted around, looking for signs of his brother, just as often they went to her, to watch her, to keep track of her, to keep control. “Well, I’m hungry.”
“Me too. What do you want?”
He let her pick the kind of food, but not the place--just in case she happened to know someone who worked there and could tip them off, she figured, but he evidently had an inflated idea of her importance and the number and loyalty of her allies. She’d have to go much deeper than a restaurant back room to find someone who would take her in.
They got some Thai and went back to their room. “You can watch t.v., whatever you want,” he said generously after they’d eaten. “I’ll get you a soda if you like. There’s a machine down the hall.”
“What I need is a shower.”
“Sure,” he said with another creepy smirk. “As long as I’m in there with you.”
“How am I gonna escape from the bathroom??” she asked irritably. “We’re twelve stories up!”
“You’d be surprised what I’ve seen.”
She was sure this was true. Hm, a shower. With him there. Maybe that might finally get his motor running. “Okay,” she said. But though the door was made of etched glass, noble Sam sat there on the toilet, facing politely away from her, only glancing back at her very briefly every now and then to make sure she was still in there. He even greeted her emergence with a huge towel spread out far to the sides and wrapped her in it instantly, looking into her eyes the whole time as if to prove he hadn’t taken a single peep. He probably thought he was being considerate, but it only made her the more horny and irritable.
God, how long had it been since she’d gotten some? Months. Never, ever with a guy who looked like Sam. Never even with a guy who treated her nice. Still, it didn’t explain this overpowering lust. It was when she was flipping through the channels while Sam worked on his laptop that it hit her, as someone narrowly escaped death onscreen, just like she had last night. Some of the guys she worked with said a brush with destruction made you passionate for creation--the physical act of creation: sex. It didn’t happen to everyone who almost died, but it happened often enough that nobody was surprised when someone brought up getting super horny after a close call. Some of the guys had taken to calling it “cheap Viagra.” She found some porn on the t.v. and watched until she began to gather it was making Sam uncomfortable. Weird; she’d never been around anyone who was made uncomfortable by porn, although a few of the guys she worked with thought it was funny that a girl liked it. She turned it off; it was only making her more horny, anyway.
It was only a little after eight, but Sam seemed glad when she turned off the t.v., closing his laptop. “Um ... it’s early, but since we’re getting such an early start ....”
“No problem,” she said quickly. In bed with Sam was exactly where she wanted to be.
“I’ll, um ... I’ll have to tie you up again ...,” he said guiltily, completely missing her wicked grin. He couldn’t miss her cheerful acquiescence to the process, though, the way she stretched her legs toward him tantalizingly. It felt quite intimate, kind of awkward, as a silence fell over them both once he figured out her mood. He wouldn’t meet her eyes--didn’t even lay her down this time, pulling open the covers and letting her squirm her own way in there. It took until he lay down behind her and didn’t put his arms around her before she figured out the problem was that he was even more uncomfortable with this than the porn. What kind of prude old grandma was he?!
“Are you gay?” she asked brusquely. She rolled over a little toward him then, as she realized how smug that sounded. “I mean, not that you’d want me, but every guy ... I mean, seriously, I’ve never known a guy who would turn down free sex.”
He sighed and moved; she squirmed around to face him. He’d sat up a little, his elbow on the pillow. “You’re my prisoner. You’re tied up in my bed. What kind of scumbag would take advantage of that?”
She grinned. “It’s not taking advantage when I’m willing,” she hinted unsubtly.
“I’m, um ... not sure you even ... know how to say no.”
She frowned. What the--?! “I said no last night! And you didn’t. And now I’m saying yes, and you still won’t! What gives?”
“Almost every girl I fuck dies,” he said suddenly, bluntly. “It’s not a risk you want to take.” She giggled, then giggled harder as he frowned. “So many people have died. It’s really not funny.”
“Everybody dies,” she said.
“Yeah, when they’re old, after a happy life.”
“Not any of the people I know,” she said plainly, then burst out giggling again. This time, a tiny answering smile quirked at his mouth. “That’s just so funny! You don’t seem like the superstitious type.”
“I’m not superstitious,” he huffed, but he was relaxing, the mood lightening with her giggling. “Anyway, I still couldn’t untie you. Especially if we did it.”
“Why?”
“Because how would I know your sudden change of heart isn’t really just a ploy to get me vulnerable so you can ... whatever you might do to me?”
She considered. It made sense. She grinned and tried to snuggle up to him. “That’s okay!” she said brightly. “Maybe it’d be even sexier.” It’s not like she hadn’t done bondage before, but she’d never enjoyed it. For the first time, she was seeing the appeal.
Sam withdrew as she snuggled closer. “No. I can’t stop thinking about my brother, or the women who .... And the bondage thing, especially when you were unwilling ... just no. Anyway, we need sleep.” He unceremoniously rolled her over again, facing her away from him, and clasped her tightly as if to clamp down on her runaway sexuality and hold it inside her. She couldn’t help snorting and giggling some more. She was slap-happy or something. He may have tied her up, but he’d inadvertently freed her from the life that had held her in bondage for as long as she could remember. He might be the most dangerous man she’d ever met, but when she was close to him, she felt safer than she’d ever felt in her whole life. Tomorrow ... tomorrow could be anything. The whole world had opened up before her, so wide it scared her. She just wanted to be here in the dark in this small, manageable hotel room, alone with the one person she wasn’t afraid of. She wanted this night never to end.
She hadn’t put any thought into where she would go, like he’d asked her to. She didn’t know anything about other places. As far as she knew, the whole world was just like Vegas, except everyone said Vegas was like no other place on Earth. That meant nothing to her. She didn’t care where she went. She just wanted to stay with Sam: safe Sam, respectful Sam, kind Sam, sexy Sam, Sam who had made everything all right. She would be his dog any day. “Quiet!” he hissed finally when she couldn’t stop giggling, but there was a smile in his voice. She was so happy. She had never been so happy. It was like she’d graduated, classes were out, and she was still hanging around school, just doing the fun stuff, not having to do any of the hard work, only she didn’t know what was next. She didn’t really want anything to be next. She would hang around until they kicked her out.
She sobered eventually, thinking about what was next, and Sam fell asleep while she stayed wide awake there in his arms, wanting to enjoy every minute of this while she had it. She knew what was next after all. It would be one of two possibilities: Either someone would figure out she’d worked with Sam and ended up getting her bosses killed, upon which they’d put out a hit and she’d be dead within weeks, or she’d try to start a new life somewhere else, and she’d fall in with the same kinds of people, doing the same kinds of things, and it would go back to the way it had always been. She didn’t know another way to live. Maybe Sam would teach her ... but it seemed like he didn’t know another way to live, either.
Sam grunted softly in his sleep, and his left arm twitched, instantly reawakening the fire he’d so rudely doused before. Well, even if he wouldn’t fuck her, she was in his arms, smelling him, feeling his soft breath on her neck. There were other ways to be satisfied. Slowly, she moved her arms lower, glad her wrists were cuffed, not tied together, so at least she could move them independently to a degree and she didn’t have to figure out a way to jam both her hands between her legs without attracting his attention.
It turned out it took much less to get his attention, she discovered as he suddenly grabbed one of her wrists tightly. “What are you doing?” he whispered menacingly in her ear. He couldn’t be all the way awake yet; she knew he was asleep before. Besides, he never sounded that dangerous when they were up and about, talking.
“Nothing,” she squeaked. Okay, it was a little embarrassing.
He yanked her arms away from where they’d been headed and patted around there a little under the covers. “You hid a gun?”
She tsked irritably. “I didn’t hide anything. Go ahead,” she suggested then wickedly. “Frisk me.”
To her surprise, he took her up on it, feeling her up at least as unapologetically as he had last night, but it was more intrusive now, because she insisted on wearing only a tank top and underwear to bed, claiming her jeans were too “restrictive.” She felt sorry for him suddenly. He still didn’t seem quite awake, and this was his first assumption in his sleep? He could jump to disturbing conclusions and follow up on them, still barely half-awake? She’d thought her life was pathetic, but how bad had his been? “Where is it?” he demanded in a low voice.
She rolled over flirtatiously to face him. “Cavity search?”
He flipped on the light. She was shocked to see his face, cold and hopeless and empty. Was all his daily good cheer an act, to seem like he was okay when he really wasn’t? “What were you doing?” he asked again, voice devoid of feeling.
“I was going to masturbate,” she told him unapologetically, then she added defensively, “I’m allowed! If you aren’t going to fuck me, I get to at least take care of myself.”
She did see a little flicker of something in his eyes then. “You want me to fuck you?” he asked in that same way. A flare of fear raced through her chest. He seemed dangerous again for the first time since last night. She had wanted it so much. The terror and excitement twined inside her. She searched his face, hoping for that sweetness (even though she knew it was sometimes a lie), hoping for approval, hoping she might even see a hint of the love she felt for him, but she saw nothing, and it didn’t stop her, it only made her want to give more, give everything, until he was satisfied. She managed to nod.
He rolled her onto her stomach. She was shaking. She felt him kick off his jeans, heard the crackle of a condom wrapper, felt the weight of his massive body on her. He pressed his face into the hollow just above her shoulder blades, stroking haphazardly down her breast, his giant hands dwarfing every part of her. Abruptly he hooked his fingers under the hem of her shirt and drew it over her head, letting it bunch at her wrists. He stroked her bare chest more gently than she’d have expected, pausing just to clutch her body hard against his chest for a long few moments, before letting go to take off his shirt.
She found herself fighting against the handcuffs, just like she’d fought everything her whole life. If there was another way of living, she didn’t know it. Here, with indomitable Sam looming above her, in the grip of cold steel at her wrists, aware she was finally receiving what she’d all but begged for, even so, she couldn’t help it, fighting until his hands came around her wrists and he murmured, “Stop.” He held her down so she couldn’t fight anymore. She twisted more violently, and he suddenly flung her onto her back, frowning at her dauntingly. “You want this or not?”
She felt her face twist with anxiety. She forced herself to nod. “Then stop fighting me,” he murmured, even more softly, and her whole body relaxed as she became aware that, with this dangerous stranger, she was handing over her very life. It felt wrong, but inevitable, like she’d finally relinquished her grip on something that had never belonged to her in the first place. She loved Sam, wanted to give herself to him for some reason. Everything would be simpler if she could hand the reins to someone else and let them take over her life. Then the weight of all her terrible choices would be lifted from her. Sam was strange and dangerous and unpredictable ... but of all the people she’d ever met, he most deserved the gift of her self.
He smiled at her surrender, a warm smile that struck her as nonetheless wicked and mirthless, but his touch was gentle as he seemed to deliberately test her submission, stroking down her hipbones, then slipping his hand between her legs. She didn’t resist. It was too late for that now. She only stared at his face, now calm, feeling destruction dance around the edges of creation. Death was near, and for the first time, she wasn’t afraid of it; she let it be what it was, let herself be as she was, as Sam let her be as she was. She felt as if God was absolving her of her sins, baptized by Sam and all that poured forth from him. She was overpowered with gratitude and sorrow. Tears filled her eyes. He smiled naughtily as he worked her wet underwear down off her hips and let them settle around her ankles with the rope. When he saw the tears in her eyes, he sobered abruptly, touching her face tenderly. “Shh, sh,” he whispered, kissing her lips. “It’s okay.” She saw a great sadness in his expression, too, and she stared at it, awed. In this moment, they were the same. “You sure you want this?” he whispered, and this time, she nodded without hesitation.
He tried to find a way to get between her legs, but her ankles were bound too tightly. She saw him worrying the problem, troubled. He was afraid of her, somehow. He must never have known anyone he could really trust, either. She could assure him she was entirely his and that she would surrender to his will, but words meant not a thing, so she rolled over onto her knees, the way he originally seemed to intend to do it, and he took her invitation. She thought it would seem dirtier and less intimate this way, but not with Sam, who was so large he could envelop her completely, his neck stretched alongside hers, their cheeks pressed together. Plus, this way his own body didn’t get between him and touching any part of hers any way he wanted to, and he did, starting off gentle and getting wilder as it went on, animalistic, almost violent.
Where had this wild man come from, out of the non-reaction of last night, whose sexuality now seemed like a force as overwhelming as a bullet from his gun? It was like a volcano he kept tightly capped, because when he let out even a little, it exploded with a force able to level entire villages. He seemed to be losing himself as much as she had, growing heedless of her fragility, his animal groans drawn unself-consciously out of him. She’d be covered with hickeys by tomorrow, a few bruises and bite marks, but she didn’t care. Even pain didn’t seem scary here, even sorrow and fear and despair. She felt like she was looking at life as it was for the first time, all the horror and beauty and loss and tenderness and failure and sweetness, like its truth was forced into her by Sam’s uncontainable violence, and she could accept it as it was, because there was no other option. Orgasm hit her like defeat, and it seemed to hit Sam even harder, groaning miserably as he thrust helplessly into her, clutching her like he was holding on for dear life, collapsing beside her afterward dewy with sweat. “Thank god,” he muttered breathlessly, pulling her body against his effortlessly. “Thank god you wanted that.” She felt exactly the same. She found his hand and held it tightly with one of hers, her other arm dragged along behind it. She had never felt so at peace. Whatever tomorrow held, she could face it now.
The first thing he did when they woke up was remove the handcuffs and ropes, checking her wrists and ankles anxiously for bruising, muttering about how she’d struggled against them the night before. He suggested they shower together, and only there in the unforgiving light did his eyes begin to travel over her shoulders, her neck, looking confused, then alarmed, then horrified. “Did--?” He touched her upper back gently. “Was it already like this, or did I--?”
She was such a terrible liar. He must have been able to tell from her reaction. “Oh my god,” he gasped. “I’m sorry.” Watching him search himself for the driving force behind this violence, how this could have happened, she knew in that moment he was truly good, and she ... really wasn’t. “Oh my god. The last time I really let go like that was with Ruby, and she, with her, it didn’t ... matter.” His disgust with himself was so plain.
“Stop, Sam,” she said, taking his hands and trying to smile. “I’ve never done it like that, but ... wow, it was awesome.”
“But how--how could I--?”
“I dunno. Last night was weird, but ... good, right? You felt good by the end ... didn’t you?” Her own voice sounded so small, and she was aware of her desperation to hear him confirm her hopes, but at a distance now, like whatever the answer, however she felt as a result, was all part of life’s rich tapestry, and she would be okay, either way. She’d never been okay, but somehow, she knew, she would be okay now.
“Yeah, but did you?” he asked incredulously.
She nodded and embraced him, which he allowed reluctantly, but not before she saw the look on his face, like he thought there must be something wrong with her for liking it. Well, there was a lot wrong with her. He was right. He pressed his lips into her hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I know. But I’m not.” She pulled back and smirked wickedly at him, then changed the subject, bitching about Egbert’s cruddy digs and his incompetent help, telling Sam where they would keep Dean if he was there. She had an intuitive sense that getting Sam’s mind on Dean would get it off his inexorable guilt, but now she realized this was only because his guilt over Dean was even heavier, if possible. She listened to everything he said about his brother, and especially everything between the lines, and began to wonder why they stayed together, when the baggage between them was so heavy, they both seemed barely able to move anymore.
The disturbing strangeness of the night receded in the bright Nevada morning sun, but the intimacy that had developed between them didn’t, and she was glad of it. They’d been through something together. Consequently, she offered to go with him into Egbert’s place so he could utilize her knowledge of the labyrinthine layout. “You sure?” he said uncertainly. “If they see you helping me, you can never work in this town again, you know that, right? It’ll be witness protection for sure.”
“I couldn’t, anyway,” she said, and she knew it was true. Seeing herself next to Sam, his goodness against her badness, her weakness ... maybe she wouldn’t ever be good like him, but she could be better. She could try. She had to try. She didn’t think she could live with herself anymore otherwise.
Sam burst through Egbert’s operation, kicking in doors, knocking out guards, accidentally letting a couple prisoners escape, and flying back out of there when he didn’t find Dean. He kept her close beside him the whole way, and there by his side, for the first time in her life, she felt invincible. They headed on to Daniels’ place, her peppering him with warnings about his various flunkies and their skills all the way, and Sam repeated the performance there, only finding Dean at the end of it. She expected some kind of thanks out of Dean, maybe a heartfelt brotherly hug, but it was all business. Sam freed him, tossed him a gun, and they fought their way out of there like superheroes, never hit by flying bullets, the other one always there to get him out if one of them got into a bad situation with one of the bad guys.
She faltered there at the end, as they came out of the building into the sunlight, and seeing this, Sam put his arm around her, pulled her up just like that first night they met, and helped her to the car, where he shut the back door behind her, tossed the keys to Dean, and they peeled out.
The brothers chortled over their success and traded stories. Dean was annoyed he hadn’t been able to bust out on his own--and in fact, he had, more than once, but Daniels’ guys always managed to drag him back. Sam was telling him about some of his own adventures, leaving out anything about romantic entanglements, when suddenly, Dean’s eyes widened with horror. “Dude, you were hit!”
Everyone’s eyes went to Sam’s hand, the entire palm of which was red with drying blood. Sam stared at it, felt around on himself, seeming to find nothing. He froze, then turned around to look at her, where she was beginning to lean to one side, despite the seatbelt. “No,” he choked, flinging off his seatbelt and crawling into the backseat with her. “Dean, hospital, now!”
Without a word, Dean floored it, changing directions. Sam unbuckled her seatbelt and felt around until he found wetness at her side. He opened her jacket and lifted her shirt, cursing under his breath. Everything seemed hazy and far away. Funny things were striking her, like how jealous Dean’s sharp glances in the rearview mirror seemed, and how Sam’s eyes kept straying guiltily to her hickeys even now, how funny it was that getting shot was her biggest fear, how she always thought it would hurt so bad and it turned out she didn’t feel a thing except cold spreading slowly through her body. She looked down at herself and saw blood pooling under her. She flung her head back against the soft headrest with a groan. “And we just showered this morning!” she exclaimed weakly. She meant it to be funny, but no one laughed.
“Dean!”
“Two minutes, Sammy.”
“She doesn’t have ....”
He didn’t finish the sentence, which annoyed her unaccountably. “She doesn’t have two minutes,” she finished for him, then smiled at him, which grew into a grin, and it didn’t seem strange that she should grin wholeheartedly at him while he stared horror-struck at her, his eyes filling with tears. She tried to lift her hand to his face, but it wove around on the way, knocking into the window instead. Sam grabbed it and pressed it against his cheek. “I never thought anyone would cry for me when I died,” she said, her voice seeming to fade more and more, or maybe it was her hearing that was fading. “But someone did.” The relief of this was indescribable.
She pursed her lips and tried to lean forward to kiss him one last time, but that was way beyond her reach, so she just patted his cheek while he made it possible, gazing into his warm eyes and finally feeling like she could read everything in there, now, when it was too late to tell him everything he needed to know about himself.
“Not you too,” he was whispering brokenly, and she couldn’t tell him about that, either, that it wasn’t his fault, that it wasn’t a maelstrom of destruction he created as he believed, but rather the swath of truth he carved into the earth everywhere he went. Pointless lies like her just burned to ash in his path, but not before he’d redeemed them, their souls, and made it all all right. She was going to be all right.
~ The End ~
Notes:
- THIS WAS THE HARDEST STORY TO WRITE. Sex scenes are extremely difficult for me to write, the ephemeral nature of the story was hard to put into words, Sam and the female character are both so screwed up and damaged, the way they connect is so specific and rare ... ARGH! But I'm quite happy with the result.
- This story was largely inspired by the TOTALLY AWESOME Orphan Black, specifically Sarah and Paul's uneasy relationship in 1.06, but I haven't seen enough Orphan Black to feel like I could write (even crossover) fic for it yet, and I would have a hard time reconciling that world with the SPN world, so instead I envisioned a similar dynamic between a woman and Sam.
- I really, really freakin' hate Vegas, but I was struck by certain things when I was there, many of which worked their way into this story, like the rhythms of the town, how dead it is in the morning, and how merciless even the evening sun is.
- I couldn't think of a good name for the female character, and then one never became necessary. In the male-centric SPN world, it's pretty easy to have a female character without a name and just use pronouns. It worked well for this character, since she's a nobody who lives under the radar and thinks she doesn't matter at all ....
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I liked the weird way she and Sam were similar, too ... and I think it's interesting that you already knew she would die. :-)
Thanks for reading, and commenting.