glorious_spoon | We Drank a Thousand Times

Jay looks tense and suspicious, edging into genuinely pissed off, and Dean bites back a sigh. Seriously, this is the problem with getting close to people. Once you do, it starts to matter when they think you're a crazed sociopath. Or a insensitive douchebag of a Peeping Tom, whatever. "Look," he starts. "I'm not--"

The sudden, sinking chill is his only warning, and he barely has time to think oh, fuck before he's flying through the air. He hits the cold ground hard, impact rattling through his skull. And god damn it, he lost his grip on the gun and now there's a bulky shape materializing out of shreds of fog a few yards away.

It's been a few years since he saw Big Eddie, but the son of a bitch was pretty memorable. He looks about the same, shapeless jeans and saggy t-shirt, ball-cap pulled down over his heavy brow. The bloody hole between his eyes is new, though.

To his left, Jay bites out a curse, brings his shotgun up and fires. It's a beautiful shot, straight through the middle of the dead redneck's ugly face. Too bad his gun's just loaded with lead shot; Eddie shudders a little as it passes through him, but makes no move to disappear.

Gun. Fuck, where's his gun? Dad's gonna kill him--

Jay gets off another shot, and then he's flying through the air too, hitting a nearby oak with a thunk that makes Dean wince. And great, just when he thought this couldn't get worse, the trailer door opens. From this angle, he can see a slender shape silhouetted against the kitchen light, but no details. Must be Nellie, coming out to see what all the noise is about.

"Are you nuts?" Dean yells. "Get back inside!"

The ghost is already spinning back to him and he chokes on the rest of the words, but at least the door slams shut again. As long as the dumb kid doesn't come running out here--

"I 'member you."

Thing about the undead is that they can make even Big Eddie's slurry half-drunk talk sound eerie. The fact that his eyes look like they've been scooped out and replaced with shriveled raisins doesn't help matters, either.

"Yeah," Dean says, keeping his voice light as he scans the yard frantically for his gun. "I'm a memorable guy."

"You scammed me."

"You really know how to hold a grudge, you know that?" Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"I don't like cheaters," the ghost whispers, stutter-stepping closer, head cocked. It's attention is totally on Dean now; out of the corner of his eye he can see Jay collapse into a heap at the base of the tree.

"Yeah, well, I don't like dumb-as-a-rock rapists with lousy hygiene, so I'd say we're even."

A glint of moonlight out of the corner of his eye, and thank fucking Christ, that's his shotgun, buried in the overgrown grass just out of reach. He rolls toward it, arm stretching, face half-squashed in the dirt, and his fingers are just brushing the stock when the ghost is suddenly a whole lot closer, looming over him.

His hands feel like lead weights, his skin too heavy for his body. Big Eddie leans his bleeding, blank-eyed face right down in Dean's space, blocking out the sky, and Dean thinks, dazedly, oh, shit, I'm gonna die looking at this ugly motherfucker--

"Hey, Eddie, you fat fuck."

What the hell?

"Come on, you dumb, sorry asshole." It's Jay, the stupid son of a bitch, still slumped against the tree where he landed, and if he's scared at all, he's doing a good job of hiding it under a thick layer of pissed off. "Come on, you chickenshit bastard. You like to fuck around with kids? Why don't you try fucking with me? Come on. I'm right here."

You stupid asshole, Dean thinks, but the icy lassitude is lifting from his limbs, the ghost's face turned away, and with those pit-black eyes off of him, he finds that he can move. The gun slides into his fingers and he doesn't even bother trying to stand, just pumps an iron slug straight up. The recoil knocks him back in the dirt, hard.

Big Eddie disappears. Dean manages to get his feet under him, makes it almost all the way up to a standing position before there's another icy blast of air behind him and he spins, fires again.

It's like playing that goddamn gopher game, is what it is. Hit them once, they just pop up somewhere else. He chambers another round, braces the shotgun against his shoulder and scans the yard, eyes straining in the dim light. Under the tree, Jay's struggling to his feet, shadows carved into the spare lines of his face, pale hair disheveled without his customary baseball cap.

"Come out, come out wherever you are," Dean murmurs. "Come on out and let me take a shot at you, you big ugly fucker."

If he can keep Eddie busy here, maybe the bastard will stay the hell away from the jail. Hopefully. Hopefully Dad and Sam will take care of the body before he runs out of ammo, too.

"I know you're listening. Come on, you scared? I kicked your ass last time, I can do it again."

Still nothing.

"Too much of a pussy to duke it out? You always gotta go after little girls? Of course, Mae kinda got the jump on you, didn't--"

Oh, yeah, that did the trick. A wall of cold hits Dean so hard that for a second he could swear that his eyeballs are freeze-drying in his face, and the ghost explodes furiously into being.

"SHE KILLED ME!"

The only reason he doesn't go flying is that he's braced for it, and even so it's a near thing. Rage crackles off the spirit like lightning, raising the hair on the back of Dean's neck. He swings the shotgun up, fires. The round hits Eddie in the shoulder and his outline goes fuzzy for an instant, but then he shakes his head and advances, head down, bull shoulders and blood sliding down his face. Fuck. Maybe this wasn't the best tactical decision after all. That spook is pissed.

He takes a step back, leading it away from the trailer and Jay, pumping the shotgun and swearing under his breath. Before he can fire again, the ghost stops, suddenly, rears back up to its full height, face rippling, and bursts into a column of flame.

It screams once, raw and inhuman, and then it's gone.

"Good timing, guys," Dean mutters. "Really, really freaking good timing. Thanks." He means it to come out sarcastic, but he's a little too relieved.

Jay pushes himself away from the tree, takes a couple of steps that are wobbly enough to make Dean wonder if he's got a concussion. When he speaks, though, his voice is remarkably calm. "So."

Dean grins at him, giddy with the leftover adrenaline. "So."

"Reckon you ain't crazy after all."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Dean says, lowering his gun. "How's your head?"

Jay grimaces, reaches up to feel the back of his skull. His long fingers come away dark with blood in the moonlight. "Not so good."

"Want me to take a look?"

"Is that son of a bitch coming back?"

"Eddie? Nah, he's toast. Fucking finally."

"Good." Jay nods, then winces. "We oughta let Nellie know we ain't dead. Poor kid must be scared out of her mind."

"Oh," Dean says. "Right." He watches Jay take a couple more staggering steps toward the trailer, then crosses the space between them and offers his shoulder. Jay only hesitates for a second before leaning into Dean's supporting arm, all lean muscle, wire and whipcord. He smells like Marlboros and cool night air. Not that Dean's paying attention.

His toe catches on the porch steps and they almost go down, half-falling against the cheap press-board door. It jerks open from the inside, and there's a skinny girl standing in the kitchen with a butcher knife clutched in a white-knuckled grip.

Dean decides right then and there that he likes her.

***

Nellie gets Jay settled in a chair with an ice-pack, offers Dean a beer in a tone of voice that's still skirting the edge of scared. He can't really blame her--having a bloody, unshaven stranger with a gun hanging out in the kitchen is probably kind of unnerving even under the best circumstances, which these aren't--but it still stings a little.

He takes the beer and leans against the door, as far away from her as he can get without actually being outside, looks around. It's an old trailer, bright and cheap and clean, colorful alphabet magnets on the fridge, the old TV in the living room muted on a rerun of 'Saved by the Bell'. There's a grizzled, potbellied man who must be Nellie's father passed out on the couch with an ashtray on his chest, completely dead to the world.

Nellie and Jay are talking quietly at the kitchen table, and Dean tunes in just in time to hear Jay ask "...Missy okay?"

"Yeah," Nellie says, and cuts another nervous glance at Dean. "She's in her room."

"Good," Jay says. "That's good, sweetheart. You wanna tell me what happened?"

Nellie tucks her hair behind her ears and looks down at the tabletop. Her expression is too old for her face. It's one Dean's seen in a mirror a time or two. "You're gonna think I'm nuts."

"Doubt it."

"I think I'm nuts."

"Big Eddie, right?" Dean says. She jumps and looks up at him, eyes wide and dark. There are bruises on her neck. She can't be more than sixteen. He clears his throat. "It was Big Eddie, right?"

"He's dead," says Nellie flatly. Her eyes are red and hurt in her pale face.

"Yeah. But you still saw him."

She looks away. "I don't know what I saw."

Jay take out his cigarettes and starts shaking one out. He really doesn't look nearly as freaked out by this as he probably should, but that might just be the concussion. "Honey, what the hell do you think we were shooting at out there?"

"I don't know, okay?" She bites her lip hard, looks up at Dean, looks away. Normally, he'd be the one smiling and charming and reassuring--that's his job, because Sam's usually too busy sulking and Dad just scares the hell out of people--but she's still looking at him like he might suddenly leap across the room and attack her. Better to just let Jay handle it.

He has to call Dad anyway, let him know he's still breathing. "Gotta step out," he mutters, and isn't at all surprised that neither one of them barely glances up at him when he slips out into the cool night. He dials the number by feel with fingers that aren't shaking, not at all.

Dad picks up halfway through the first ring. "Report."

"Well, I'm not dead," Dean says, propping his hip against the porch railing.

"What about the spirit?"

"He's history. Good timing on that one, by the way. You guys make it out okay?"

In the background, Sam says something too quiet to hear, but his grumpy tone comes through loud and clear. Great.

"We're fine," Dad says shortly. "Heading back to the motel now."

"Good," Dean says. And then, for no good reason he can think of, adds, "I'm gonna stick around here for a little while, make sure everybody's okay."

He's half-expecting Dad to order him to get his ass back to the motel pronto--God knows leaving him and Sam alone for any stretch of time is freaking terrible idea right now--but he doesn't. "Fine. I expect you back here by morning, though. We're heading out. I want to get a couple of days in at the Boston College libraries before classes start up again."

So that's why Sam's being all pissy. Got it. Tomorrow's gonna be loads of fun. "Yessir," he says, and hangs up.

He hesitates for a long minute with his hand on the doorknob, watching Jay and Nellie talk through the window. It's not exactly a portrait of Rockwellian happiness, but there's something about their easy familiarity that makes him feel a little wistful. Maybe just the way Dad and Sam have been sniping at each other for the past three days, with no end in sight. Even under these circumstances, it's nice to be around people who aren't constantly trying to start a fistfight.

He stands there on the dark porch for a few more minutes, watching them, then shakes his head and goes back inside.

***

"A ghost," Nellie says, and lets out a sharp, pained bark of laughter. "A ghost."

Jay lights his cigarette. Mae would slap him silly for smoking in her house, but he's feeling the need for a little nicotine comfort right about now. "You saw him too, sweetheart."

"I must be losing my damn mind."

"Yeah," Jay says, rubs the back of his head. The concussion ain't bad, but it's making his mind slow and groggy. Makes the whole thing seem unreal. Hell, maybe he is losing it. Maybe they all are. At least Nellie has an excuse. "Believe me, I know."

"I called the police on a ghost," Nellie says, sounding more than a little hysterical. "Can I have a cigarette, please?"

"You know what your mama would do to me?" he asks, but he's already shaking out another smoke and handing it over.

She lights it, face tight. "Yeah, well, Mama's not here right now. That fucker."

"He's gone now."

"What, getting the back of his head blown off didn't do the trick?"

The front door swings open on creaky hinges, and Jay don't miss the way Nellie jerks and turns white, looking at it. It's just Dean, though. He shuts the door behind him and leans back against it, heavy-limbed. The gun's holstered at his side, familiar, easy. "Restless spirits suck," he says. "Jay's right. He's gone."

"Yeah," Jay says. "You planning on telling me how that works? I thought we were all dead meat."

That gets him a little smile, the kind that wants to be amused but can't quite pull it off. "Dad and Sammy broke into the funeral home and torched the body. Salt and burn. It's the only sure-fire way to get rid of a ghost problem."

For a couple of long moments, the kitchen's silent. Then Jay lets out a low whistle, hollow to his own ears. "You ain't kidding. Ghost problem, huh."

"Hey, we all saw it. You want to pretend it was just some kind of mass hallucination, be my guest. I really don't give a rat's ass." He says it more like he wants it to be true than like it really is, and when he catches Nellie's eyes, his laughing eyes are tired and sad. "Anyway, he's gone for good now. I promise."

She takes a long drag on her cigarette, mouth turned down at the corners and too old for her face, and nods. "Thanks."

"All part of the service package," Dean says, and if it's supposed to be a joke it falls damn flat. Jay shifts his grip on the ice pack he's holding with one hand, taps the column of ash off the tip of his cigarette with the other. Tonight, he just saw an honest-to-god impossibility in the flesh, so to speak. Seems like he ought to be able to muster up some feeling over it, but all he can manage is dull, tired relief.

"So this is what y'all do. Hunt ghosts."

"Monsters, too."

"What?"

"Not just ghosts. Monsters, wraiths, demons, creepy-crawlies of every description..." He glances at Nellie again and stops. "It's a job. Sort of."

"Sure," Jay says. "Monsters. Why the hell not." He takes a final drag on his cigarette and stands up, braced for the way the world starts to tilt sluggishly beneath his feet. Been a while since he cracked his head this good. It's just as much fun as he remembers.

Goddamn Eddie, anyway. Shoulda figured that bastard wouldn't have the sense to stay dead. He lets out a snort, grips the table hard to steady himself, and then Dean's there, warm and solid and way too close for comfort. "You okay?"

"I'm great."

"Yeah," Dean says. "I see that. Sit down."

"I gotta--" Jay makes a vague motion with the butt of his smoke, and Dean plucks it out of his fingers, pinches out the cherry and drops in in the garbage can by the door.

"Just sit, okay? Jesus."

He sounds so much like a fussy nursemaid that Jay has to grin. "Sure thing, boss."

***

They hang around until Nellie goes to bed. Jay's steady enough on his feet by then to walk her to the room she shares with Missy, kiss her on the forehead and tell her to call if she needs anything. Missy's sound asleep in bed, hair spread across her pink Barbie pillow, and Nellie crawls onto the mattress behind her without even kicking her shoes off.

"Sleep tight," Jay says, hand on the doorknob.

"Yeah." Her voice is muffled against her sister's hair, equal parts sleepy and bitter. "If I'm lucky, maybe this was all just a bad dream."

He don't know what to say to that, so he just pulls the door shut behind him and stands in the hall for a couple of minutes, hand braced against the wood-paneled wall.

When he makes it out to the kitchen, the dark outside is turning gray and Dean's waiting by the door, flipping his keys around and around in the palm of his hand. "You gonna be okay to drive?"

His head feels like--well, kinda like somebody slammed it into a tree as hard as it would go. His gut still ain't happy with him either, but it's not that far to his place even if he takes it slow. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

It ain't quite morning when they step outside, but it's light enough that Jay can see Dean's big black car parked behind a patch of bushes, where it'd be out of sight in the dark. Jay pauses there on the way to his truck, watches Dean settle one hand on the wet sheet metal. He touches that car like a lover, careless and possessive, and the spark of heat that sends down Jay's spine ain't so much unexpected as it is unwanted.

"So," he says.

Dean squints at him, wary. "Yeah?"

"You're heading out." It ain't a question.

"Yeah, Dad's got this...thing. In Massachusetts." He rolls his eyes, and there's a hint of a smile there for the first time since that ghost disappeared. "Should be a fun ride."

"So, he's really gone. For good. Eddie," Jay adds, in case that wasn't clear.

"Yeah."

"Some job you got."

Dean sighs. "Yeah, tell me about it. Hey, you got a pen?"

He always keeps a couple in his front pocket, stolen from motels, mostly, and covered in axle-grease fingerprints. Dean takes it and scribbles something down on what looks like a crumpled receipt. He hands it and the pen back to Jay, and their fingers brush in a way that feels like it maybe could be on purpose.

Jay looks down at the paper in his hand. It's a phone number.

"In case you ever have any more spook infestations," Dean says. If Jay was fifteen years younger or a different person, he'd maybe try to read something else into it, but he ain't, so he just shoves the paper in his pocket.

"Appreciate it. What'd you shoot him with?"

"What?"

"Eddie. Bullets didn't do much good."

"Oh," Dean says, and grins. "Uh, iron rounds. Good against most nasties."

"Good to know." Jay holds out a hand, and Dean takes it.

"Keep in touch," he says, and Jay nods.

"Sure will."

He heads back to his truck as the Impala roars to life behind him, and Dean flicks him a little wave as he rolls out onto the driveway. Jay waves back, unlocks his truck, climbs inside. Then just sits there for a couple of minutes, letting his thoughts settle.

"Ghosts," he says out loud, just testing the word out, and if the laugh that comes out of his mouth sounds a little hysterical, well, he thinks he can be forgiven for that.

***

Mae's trial is in August. It's a big damn circus, reporters circling like vultures, and Nellie spends most of the summer hiding out at the trailer or the garage. She's got another year of school left, and he's not sure if she's gonna go. Be a damn shame, her so smart, but there it is.

"Just get so sick of them staring all the time," she tells him when she drops in on the way to pick Missy up from her piano lesson. Jake is out of town on a construction job, the first real work he's had in months. Normally, Nellie waits tables at Fran's Diner over the summer vacation, but not this summer. They're tight on cash without the extra income, and Jay takes to dropping off groceries once a week or so. They visit with Mae at the county jail, and she always talks about things like the annual craft fair and the weather. Never her trial. Never Eddie.

The shape of the world still seems so off, tilted sideways like he's on a ship and he don't know how to find his sea-legs.

"You know," Marty says one night over a case of beers and a game of darts after the bar closes, "ain't any real reason you gotta stick around here."

Jay snorts and crosses the room to jerk his darts out of the pocked corkboard. Not one of them's on target. "You went and gave me the set that was bent, didn't you?" he says instead of answering.

"Nah," Marty says, taking his first shot with a perfect, almost casual, flick of the wrist. Bullseye. "You never were much good at this game."

"Yeah," Jay says absently, reaching for another beer out of the case under the table. Maybe it's a little bit of a strange habit, him bringing a case of beer around to a goddamn bar, but half the time Marty don't charge him anyways, and it ain't entirely fair to keep on drinking up the man's stock.

It ain't exactly a normal kind of friendship, but this place has been a refuge for Jay since back in his restless high-school days, back when Marty was just one of the bartenders, and it still feels kind of safe. Friendly, maybe.

And Marty's one of the only people who never gave him shit about where he was and what he was doing in the eleven years he was gone. That counts for a lot.

"All in the wrist," Marty says, sending another dart flying toward the board. "I swear, my grand-daughter is better at this than you, and she's four."

"Her mama lets her play with darts?" Jay asks, twisting the cap off his beer and taking a swig. "How's New York treating Shayna, anyhow?"

"Doin' good," Marty says easily, crossing over to gather up his darts and mark down his score with the nub of chalk.

"Good. That's good."

"Yeah. You could take a page outta her book, you know."

"How's that?"

Marty rolls his eyes. "Don't you play dumb with me, boy. Shayna lit on out of here soon as she got the chance, same as you did. You could do it again. Ain't like you got much keeping you here."

"Somebody's gotta keep an eye on Nellie and Missy," Jay says, taking his first shot. He puts a little more force into it than he has to, and the dart misses the board to land quivering in the wall. "Anyway, where the hell else am I gonna go?"

Marty sighs, but lets it go.

***

Jake gets back in time for the trial, dresses up in a suit and tie and sits in the courtroom with his daughters, looking awkward and out-of-place. Jay can sympathize with that, but he can't sympathize with the way the man still can't seem to look Nellie in the eye and the way he ain't been to see Mae one single time since she turned herself in.

He's polite, though, when he sits down on Nellie's other side, and doesn't complain when she squeezes his hand so hard he's pretty sure there's no blood left in it when the judge reads the verdict. We find the defendant guilty of manslaughter in the first degree.

Ain't exactly a shock, but that don't make it easier to hear.

Nellie curses a blue streak all the way to the car. Jay nods and agrees and lets her steal a couple of smokes off of him before he goes in to see Mae.

"Hey, sweetheart," she says, smiling.

"Believe your daughter's about ready to bust you out already," he tells her. "She cussed out the sheriff."

Mae smiles wider. "That's my girl. You'll look after her, won't you, Jay?"

Should be the kid's father looking after her, but it's been the other way around for too long already. Jay's a lousy second choice and he knows it, but he's also all there is. "Yeah," he says. "Course I will."

***

Dean's number is stuck to a piece of corkboard over the kitchen table. Ten digits in an unfamiliar blocky script. Jay ain't labeled it, but he don't need to.

It only takes five beers before it seems like a good idea to call.

***

"What, are you serious?" Dean sounds outraged, and that makes Jay feel a little better. He blows smoke out into the low dusk of his kitchen. Outside, the sky is heavy and gray and he can see streaks of lightening over the line of trees across his backyard.

"Yeah. Manslaughter one."

"After what he did--"

"Yeah," Jay says again.

"Well, that's fair."

"Could have been worse," Jay says. He's been trying to convince himself of that very thing through the whole drive home and all five beers. "She'll be out in six years with good behavior."

"Still."

"Yeah."

Dean's quiet for a couple of minutes. "Sammy wants to be a lawyer," he says after a while.

"Lawyer, huh." There's one more beer in the six-pack in front of him. He pulls it out and twists the cap off, holds the cool glass against his cheek for a minute.

"Yeah," Dean says sourly. "He's been collecting college applications, stuff on pre-law programs. Cornell, Stanford, fucking Harvard. He thinks I don't know."

Most families'd be proud, but the Winchesters ain't most families. Sam's a smart kid, Jay remembers. Stubborn as hell. This is gonna end ugly, he thinks, and Dean probably knows that as well as he does.

"Boy's gotta find his own path," he says, then stops. Ain't really his place to say anything, even if Dean brought it up, but Dean just sighs.

"Dad's not gonna see it like that," he says. "I don't know. I mean, our life isn't that bad, you know?"

"Uh-huh." He remembers Dean at nineteen, skinny as a twig in thirdhand clothes, all bluster and desperation. He turned out okay, but that ain't a life Jay'd wish on anybody.

"I don't know, man, I just--" He cuts off sharply.

Over the line Jay can hear a door slam shut, a clatter. "Shit," Dean mutters, muffled like he has a hand over the phone. "Dad, are you--Sammy, what happened?" Then, shortly, "I gotta go."

"Sure," Jay says, but he's already talking to dead air.

***

Dean calls him back a couple of days later, as he's closing up the garage. "Hey."

"Hey, Jay." He sounds tired. "Sorry about the other day. Banshee."

Banshee. Sure. Why the hell not. "Don't worry about it."

"Thanks," Dean says, and sighs. "We're in Arizona. It's about three hundred degrees outside, and the A/C's broken. Good times."

"Sounds like it."

"Yeah, and Sam keeps trying to pick a fight. I'm hiding out in the car, but I think my skin's about to fuse with the seats." He stops for a long minute. "Sorry, man. You probably don't need to hear about all my shit."

"That's alright," Jay says, and means it. "Reckon everybody needs to unload every once in a while."

"Usually I just go pick a bar and find an excuse to punch somebody's lights out." Dean coughs. "Which I guess you kinda knew."

Jay stops by the truck, leans back against the sun-hot metal, and laughs. Really laughs, for the first time in a while. "You and me both."

Dean's laughing too, wry. "Sam says I have anger management issues." There's a creak, a burst of noise that might be shouting in the distance. "Anyway, I gotta get going. Just wanted to let you know we're all still breathing."

"Appreciate it," Jay says, turning to unlock his truck door. It's getting on towards nightfall and the air is cool, but the truck's like a sauna inside. "Y'all look after yourself, hear?"

"Yeah, you too." Dean's voice is softer, like maybe he's smiling on the other end of the line, and that pulls a smile onto Jay's face. "Good talking to you, man."

"You too," Jay murmurs. He hangs up, drops the phone in his pocket, and leans his forehead against the doorframe with a sigh. He's so fucked.

***

In September, Nellie starts her senior year of school with the rest of her class. She's gonna go to college, she tells Jay. Be a nurse. Get the hell out of this shithole town.

It's a little like talking to himself, back in '84, after the blowout that got him kicked out of the house three days after he finished high school. Join the military. Be a Marine. Get the hell out of this shithole town. Seven years in the service and then four down in Texas with Keith, and here he is, thirty-five years old and right back where he started.

He don't say that to Nellie, though. Maybe she'll have better luck than he did. God knows the kid deserves it.

***