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Tweak says, "Sometimes. I wet myself..."

Sam Winchester (demonboyking) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-04-02 00:44:00

Entry tags:

!complete, day 02, location: museum, sam winchester, shannon rutherford

Day 2 - Night
Who: Sam and Shannon
What: Sam and Shannon meeting face to face
When: Day 2, night
Where: Art Museum
Rating: PG-13

Sam was tired. The events of the day were finally beginning to get to him. The truth was he just wanted to fall into a bed somewhere, anywhere. Even the hardest motel mattress was better than the wooden floor he'd stretched out on last night in the clock tower. His exhaustion wasn't just physical either. It'd been a trying day mentally as he'd kept working the puzzle of all of them being there over and over in his mind as well as emotionally as he'd struggled with feelings of guilt over not being able to fully protect Luna or Andy from getting hurt. Not only that but the thought that Dean might be out there somewhere, or that he'd been abducted for some kind of test of his own had been worming it's way into his thoughts all day. He was almost certain that the Dean the Doctor had described had been his brother. But if it was, why hadn't he let Sam know that he was there? Sam was pretty sure that Dean could take on a normal wild animal without much trouble, but he knew as well as any hunter that all it took was one moment with your guard down to get yourself in trouble.

He stopped in front of the museum, looking at the sign posted on the door and feeling a tired smile stretch across his face despite himself. He had a feeling that Shannon had expected him much earlier and wasn't sure if her invitation still stood. Still, the thought of a dry place to lay out with the warmth of a fire prompted him reach out and knock on the heavy door.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and waited, slouching slightly as he stared blankly at the door in front of him. He knew he had a couple of hours ahead of him before he could rest. Shannon had talked about sleeping in shifts and that wasn't a bad idea, though he had an idea that it wouldn't make much difference. He didin't think it would be a problem staying up much longer, considering the fact that there was a part of him who was afraid of where he'd be when he opened his eyes again.

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demonboyking
2009-04-06 09:33 pm UTC (link)

Sam watched her move as she took down the painting and put it on the desk, his matchbox still in the palm in his hand. There was something graceful about her movement, a certain kind of fluidity that he wasn't used to. She smiled at him over her shoulder and he swallowed. He folded his fingers around the matchbook, and moved towards the desk as she turned towards him.

"Maybe just supervise," he said, giving her a grin when she asked if he wanted her to do it for him. He looked down at the tacks and then at the painting and wondered how long it'd taken Shannon to work through the canvas. He hesitated in mentioning the hunting knife he still had with him, afraid he'd startle her. If she found out he had it later, however, that would look much worse and he was going to have to sleep sometime. "Uh, actually, I might have something that will help with the cutting," he said, slowly. He crouched down, working his jean leg up. He paused when she thanked him for coming. "Your welcome," he said, a little awkwardly. "Yeah, sorry. I got...held up."

The sudden reminder of Andy's behavior made him shake his head slightly. He would've been here at least a good hour earlier if he hadn't had to stay with Luna. Not that he minded. He didn't want anything to happen to the cheerful blonde, but the fact that Andy had gone off on his own not entirely knowing just how dangerous this place could be was a bit of foolhardiness that he was finding hard to forgive. Andy hadn't exactly made it any easier when he'd made his smart ass comment about being a Winchester. Sam swallowed, the fresh rush of frustration doing more than the red bull to wake him up.

He pulled the knife out of the place it'd been wedged between his sock and shoe and put it on the table, careful to do it in a way that was as non-threatening as possible, with the handle pointing towards her and the blade towards him. He straightened up. "A reward for surviving this morning," he said. "It should come in useful."

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ballerinadreams
2009-04-07 12:40 am UTC (link)

Nodding, Shannon shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "I can do that," she replied easily. Seeing as how I'm mostly only good for sitting on my ass and staring at things, if you ask my brother, she found herself thinking. The smile faded slightly and even moreso when Sam said he had something to help with the cutting, crouching down and pulling up his pant leg.

Shannon froze, swallowing thickly and nodding in response to him saying he'd been held up. Held up how? She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but already she was scolding herself for being so quick to trust while she scoped out the fastest exit route. No matter which way she went, he'd be in the way. Shit, shit, shit!

Her eyes moved back to Sam's hand and widened slightly when he pulled out a knife. She licked her lips, watching him carefully as he laid it down so the handle was facing her and said that it had been a reward for surviving the morning. Stiffly, Shannon nodded. Locke had been big on knives. And had no problem throwing them at Sawyer's head, narrowly missing the other man on one occassion. Her eyes moved back up to Sam's face, gauging his expression warily.

"Right," she said with another stiff nod. She cleared her throat. "Uh, so, you just have to cut it out of the frame, first and then if you make a few slices, you'll be able to pull a few strips to tie the canvas onto a stick. There's a few more chair legs over there," she said, pointing rather than going to retrieve them for him this time.

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demonboyking
2009-04-07 09:40 am UTC (link)

Sam didn't miss the way Shannon stiffened beside him and the sudden change in her expression, though he could tell she was trying not to let him see it. She was staring at the knife on the table in front of them and he wondered how he could possibly convince her that he was a good guy. In a way he was relieved that she was being so careful and wary, he much preferred that than someone underestimating just how much trouble they could be in, but on the other hand it made things so much harder.

He met her eyes when she looked up at him. He debated whether or not to tell her again that he wasn't going to hurt her, though he wasn't sure it would make any difference. If anything it may come across as sounding like he wanted her to trust him too much. He figured actions would speak clearer than words, anyway.

"Right, okay," Sam said, his voice soft and low as he turned his back on her and the knife and moved over to the three legged chair in the corner. He kicked one of the legs down with his foot then worked it back and forth with his hands until he could pull it loose. He brought the leg back, setting it on the table before picking up the knife. He didn't look at her as he started following her instructions, afraid that maybe he was making her fears worse by being too aware of them. He tried to think of something, anything, to take her mind off their current situation. "So what do you do normally?" He asked, glancing up at her as he cut the strips. "I mean when you're not stuck on craphole island or curating a ghost town's only art museum."

He set the knife down on the table and stepped away from it as he started to tie the fabric around the chair leg.

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ballerinadreams
2009-04-07 01:08 pm UTC (link)

Sam seemed to be either oblivious to or actively avoiding the fact that Shannon was pretty obviously uncomfortable with the knife and the fact that not only had he had it, but it had been concealed. But, he moved away and went to work breaking one of the legs off the chair, so Shannon stood still and watched him. She moved off to the side to give him room to work when he returned to the desk and wrapped her arms around herself against the chill in the air. He'd been inside for a while, but just the short time he'd had the door open had negated all the warmth she'd managed to store in the large room; she'd have to start over. At least with a second torch, it might be faster the second time around.

Shannon didn't realize she'd been watching, mainly, his arms and hands as he worked, until he broke the silence and she had to look up to see his face. "Huh? Oh, uh..." she stalled. Nothing, because I'm not good at anything. "I was a ballet teacher," she replied. It wasn't entirely a lie; she had been, but it had been years ago. She'd spent the past couple of years using Boone to swindle the money she felt she deserved out of Sabrina. Shannon was fairly certain that didn't count as work and that was the inference behind his question. "What about you? When you're not fighting off wolves and being a giant?" she asked with a smirk.

When Sam set the knife down and started to tie the fabric around the chair leg, Shannon cleared her throat. "Um, you want to make sure that the painting part is facing up, because it kind of acts like a buffer or something," she pointed out. "Like, if you light it up, the oil paint ignites instead of the actual canvas, so it lasts longer. You know, like when you spray perfume or something and light your jeans on fire, it just sets the perfume on fire first and you have time to blow it out before it actually burns your leg..." her voice trailed off and she wrinkled her nose, blushing. "Maybe that's just something bored little rich girls do for kicks, I don't know," she finished sheepishly, tucking her hair behind her ears.

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demonboyking
2009-04-08 10:26 am UTC (link)

He nodded slightly when she said she'd been a ballet teacher. That explained the gracefulness of her movements. Jess had dragged him to a production of Swan Lake once. He'd enjoyed watching her reaction to it more than the actual dancing itself. He smiled to himself, remembering the way she'd gotten to her feet at the end and clapped, then reached down and pulled him up, urging him to follow suit. The two hours of boredom had been worth it, just for the way she practically sparkled afterwards. He was suprised to find that for the first time the thought of Jess didn't hurt. "How long have you been dancing?" he asked, glancing up at her.

He smiled at her question, giving her an amused look. "You mean on my off days?" He joked. He thought it was probably best to keep things as simple as possible. "I was a law student at Stanford, but I took some time off to go on a roadtrip across country with my brother." That was definitley putting it lightly.

Sam stopped winding the fabric and gave her a mildly impressed look as she started explaining why the oil side should be face up. In his exhaustion he probably wouldn't have thought about that on his own.

He grinned at her as she wrinkled her nose and he began unwrapping what he'd already started tying onto the end of the chair leg. "Yeah," he said, as he started to redo the job. "I can't really say I've ever tried that. Neat trick though."

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ballerinadreams
2009-04-08 12:20 pm UTC (link)

Sam asked how long she'd been dancing and Shannon smiled weakly. The ballet had been her father's way of helping her get her mind off the loss of her mother. He'd been a busy man and as much time as he tried to spend with her, there had been a need for something else to fill the void of the time that she'd spent with her mother when he'd been working.

So, she'd tried horseback riding...until one of the horses spooked over a mouse and threw her. Shannon never got back in the saddle. Then, she'd tried tennis, but it hadn't really been her thing. Somehow, when ballet was the next step, Shannon had taken to it like a duck to water even in spite of the fact that she was more than ready to hate it before she'd even begun. She'd been good.

"Since I was little," she replied. "Something like...fourteen or fifteen years, wow...I hadn't really thought about it, but yeah. A long time," she added. Her eyes got a bit of a faraway look in them for a second before Sam spoke again and broke the reverie.

Laughing, Shannon nodded in her amusement. "Do you get many of those?" she teased. He said he was a student at Stanford - a law student - and Shannon perked up, nearly missing the bit about the road trip. Stanford Law was an expensive school. Maybe he wasn't 'no money,' after all. Maybe new money, which would explain him not being used to something like the Ritz. "Yeah? Cool. Are you guys really close, then?" she asked, making a conscious effort not to let the pang of jealousy she was feeling seep into her voice. Once upon a time, Shannon and Boone had been really close, but that was before her father died and the world as she knew it had crumbled down around her.

Blushing slightly, Shannon shrugged. "The simple things in life are a lot more enjoyable when you never have the chance to enjoy them," she replied. She hadn't had much of a chance to enjoy simple things. Kisses from her mother before bed, for example, were a thing so far in the past that Shannon couldn't remember them. ...she couldn't even remember her mother's face when she tried and Sabrina had long since trashed the family photo albums that had preceded herself as an addition to them. Shannon's mother was just a name and a void in her heart, but that was all.

In a life where she'd been raised by nanny after nanny and her step brother, simple things were hard to come by. When she was upset, Daddy bought new toys. When she graduated high school, Daddy bought her a Jag and left a card in the driver's seat saying congratulations and he was sorry he couldn't make it to the ceremony. Something as ridiculous and simple as the "lighting your leg on fire" trick was something that had made Shannon's eyes sparkle with childlike excitement, even at the age of sixteen.

"Once you've got that all tied, you just have to light it. You'll wanna strike a few matches at a time or you'll just burn the match down to your fingers; it won't take right away," she explained, changing the subject.

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demonboyking
2009-04-10 12:23 am UTC (link)

"Definitely a long time," Sam said, glancing down at the work in his hands when he thought maybe he'd been staring at the thoughtful look on Shannon's face for a little too long.

He looked back up at her a moment later when she laughed and he let out a small one of his own. "Not lately," he admitted, his smile fading from genuine to something else as he thought about the last couple of days before he'd shown up wherever they were. "Yeah, we are," Sam said, his fingers pausing a moment as he wondered where Dean was and if he was okay. The lead he'd gotten from Shannon and the Doctor hadn't been much, but it'd been enough to get Sam to think maybe there was hope that his brother was here too.

Sam smiled when he saw her pale face gain some color and nodded his agreement. He understood completely. He'd had to fight for every bit of normalcy he'd gotten while growing up, often feeling as if he was disappointing his father by demanding it. Still, even the simple things like having a part in a school play, no matter how insignificant, or getting to play on a soccer team had been something that he hadn't taken for granted the way other kids his age had.

"Yeah," he said, turning his attention back to the torch as he retied the canvas around the leg with the oil side out. "I know what you mean."

He picked up the matches and pulled out two, not wanting to use anymore than necessary. As far as he knew everyone had gotten a book of matches, but they may need them later. He struck the matches against the table and held it up to the canvas, waiting for it to light. He held his breath for a moment as the matches got close to burning down and doing just what Shannon had warned, but then a small yellow flame licked it's way up the side of the canvas and then spread slowly.

He grinned at Shannon and held the torch out to inspect it. "Not bad."

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ballerinadreams
2009-04-10 11:18 pm UTC (link)

Shannon's smile faded once again when Sam confirmed that he and his brother were close. She wanted to say, "must be nice," or "don't fuck it up," but she just nodded. "Cool," she said instead and felt admittedly guilty for the total lack of enthusiasm in her voice. She looked down again.

The selfish part of her made her wish that the Dean the Doctor had met wasn't his brother at all, but a complete stranger just like practically everyone else. It made her hope, deep down in a place where even she could deny that the fleeting thought had been there at all, that if it was his brother, that they wouldn't find one another. The hope was nasty and unnecessary, but if she was going to be spending time with Sam taking shifts sleeping, she didn't want to do it with some other strange guy hanging around third-wheeling her and making her miss Boone all that much more when she felt she had no right to after the way she'd treated him for the past two years.

When Sam spoke again, Shannon looked up again in time to see Sam focus his attention back on the torch. "Yeah?" she asked, arching a curious brow at him. "Fucked up childhood for you too, huh? My mom died when I was little and my dad never had time for me," she revealed although she wasn't entirely sure why. Maybe just for conversation. So long as Sam was talking and distracted, she felt more comfortable. An awkward silence would surely send her back into tense and wary mode.

"C'est la vie, je suppose," she murmured more to herself that to Sam. "Qu'a fait est fait." Sometimes, Shannon would slip into French and not even realize she was doing it, just out of habit when saying something aloud that she probably should've been thinking. That's life, I suppose. What's done is done. A mantra Shannon should live by, but couldn't bring herself to truly accept it, because that would mean accepting the past for what it was and there were some things of which Shannon still couldn't quite let go.

With a soft sigh, Shannon shook her head. "Sorry, that was..." she waved a dismissive hand. "Nothing. Sometimes I do that...when I was an au pair, it was for a kid that only spoke French. It was in St. Tropez, actually, so..." She shrugged and gave Sam a sheepish look before watching him pull out two matches. He was going to light it, then? Shannon gave the torch a quick, silent overview and with nothing glaringly wrong, she felt no need to stop him. The matches nearly burned down to his fingers before the canvas finally took and then eventually...

"Voilà," she laughed as the whole thing went up in flames exactly the way hers had. "Magnifique. Not too shabby at all for your first torch," she teased playfully. "Now you just gotta find a place to stick it so it doesn't fall over and catch the whole place on fire," she pointed out with a smirk as she gestured lazily toward where her own torch was wedged into a hole in the floor.

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demonboyking
2009-04-13 12:09 am UTC (link)

Sam let out a low breath and shook his head when she'd asked if he'd had a fucked up childhood. He tightened the canvas by pulling it tight. "I guess you could say that," Sam said, looking back up at her. "My mom died when I was a baby. I never really got to know her. And my dad, he was on the road a lot working different jobs. My brother practically raised me." He shrugged. "We weren't exactly the Brady bunch and we moved a lot, it made things harder."

He looked over at her as she murmured something that sounded like French to herself. He nodded as she explained about being a teacher. "St. Tropez," he repeated. "That's near the Rivera isn't it? I think I had some friends from college backpack through there. They sent me a postcard." They'd actually been Jess's friends, but he could see the postcard that had been stuck up on the refrigerator in his mind's eye. "That mus have been neat, living in a different country."

He smiled as she laughed, liking the sound of it in the gloomy room they were holed up in. She almost seemed relaxed for a second. "Right," he said, looking around for a similar crack in the ground with a sweep of his eyes and not finding any. "Do you usually sleep near this one?" Sam asked, nodding towards the original. "It'd probably be best to keep them close and make it easier for the air to warm up."

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ballerinadreams
2009-04-13 12:26 am UTC (link)

Shannon gave Sam a sad smile. "Me too," she said. "I don't remember my mother. My dad was always flying somewhere or another on business and Boone raised me, too. Well, Boone and a shitload of nannies...he was rotten to them," she said. Theresa came to mind, but she didn't elaborate about how he'd driven Theresa into such a tizzy one day that she'd fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. "Although, I guess you win with the moving around bit. I at least got to stay in one place," she added.

Looking down, Shannon shook her head and let out a humorless huff of laughter. "Jesus, what a shitty bunch of stuff to have in common, huh?" she asked, looking back up at him. Nodding, Shannon gave Sam a facial shrug in response. "I spent that year drinking, not studying, so..." she said with an airy, sheepish laugh. "Could be near the Rivera, but I wouldn't know. It was kinda cool though, just to be able to say I lived somewhere else. I wish, in retrospect, that I'd actually taken advantage and looked around. I've been a few other places, but I spent the longest in St. Tropez."

When Sam smiled, Shannon caught his eye and smiled back. She thought that just maybe those had been the first genuine smiles they'd given one another. She looked away again, then, as Sam started looking for a place to put his torch. "Yeah, as close as I can to it without being within a distance where I'd knock it over on myself if I roll over or something," Shannon replied. She looked back up at him and nodded her agreement. "I think you're probably right. I wish we could build a real fire, but we'd have to, like, make a pit or we'd burn this whole place down..." she muttered, frowning slightly to herself.

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demonboyking
2009-04-14 12:21 am UTC (link)

Sam looked down when she mentioned her brother. He wondered how long ago she'd lost her sibling, something about the way she quickly moved on made him think that she wasn't exactly over it. Not that you'd ever really get over losing your brother. He could remember only too well the last two times Dean had ended up in the hospital and he'd been told he probably wouldn't live long and even though he'd given Dean a hard time about making the deal for him, he couldn't blame him. Not really. If their roles had been reversed, he wasn't so sure he wouldn't have done the same thing. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to push his worries bout Dean's current whereabouts far enough away that he could carry on a simple conversation. He returned her humorless laugh with a forced smile of his own. "Yeah, I guess it's not exactly the stuff most people brag about."

He was just as eager to move on in conversation topics and clutched onto the idea of living in a foreign country easily. "I've never left the forty-eight," he admitted sounding a little regretful. "I always thought it would be kind of cool to go traveling, but I just never really had the opportunity. Hit almost every state on the mainland though," he said with a shrug. He paused, wondering if that sounded weird. "Uh, our family really likes roadtrips."

The truth was he was glad for an excuse to duck his head when Shannon had made direct eye contact and given him a bright smile. It had made him feel slightly uncomfortable, though it wasn't a feeling that was entirely unpleasant. He only hoped that if he kept himself focused on the problem at hand, mainly finding a way to keep the second torch upright, that he wouldn't have time to think about other things, like the fact that his new roommate was attractive, especially when she smiled like that. He cleared his throat and squinted into the darkness, until he thought he saw something a few feet away. He moved towards it, holding the torch over it until he was sure it was an actual crack in the wooden floor and not a trick of the firelight.

"A pit would be nice," Sam agreed as he knelled and forced the leg down into the crack that was slightly too small with both hands. It took a minute of twisting, but he managed to get it down fair enough that it was standing on it's own. "There," he said, straightening up. He moved back over to the desk and picked up the half empty can of red bull and drained it. His eyes felt heavy now that he suddenly found himself without a job to focus on. He looked at Shannon, remembering how she'd managed to keep herself up for this long. "Still cold?"

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ballerinadreams
2009-04-14 03:04 am UTC (link)

"To say the least," Shannon agreed grimly, returning the forced smile that Sam had given her. Even if she'd been able to pull it off, its absense in her eyes would've severely betrayed her. She wondered if it would ever get easier having Boone gone from her life. She'd taken so much of his presence for granted when he'd been around and she was regretting it, now. Not that she should be surprised in the least considering the annoying saying that 'you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.'

The regret in Sam's voice made her smile wanly back at him. "If it makes you feel better, I've been in more foreign countries than states in our country...even though I've kind of always wanted to," she replied. "The grass is always greener, I guess."

When Shannon looked up again, at the sound of Sam's voice agreeing that a pit would be nice, she saw that he had knelt to force his torch into a crack in the floor. She gave him another genuine, if soft and tired, smile when he stood again and the torch was still upright, stuck in the floor. "Success," she agreed.

Her eyes followed him back to the desk and she tensed, relaxing only when she saw that he had only gone back for the rest of the Red Bull. His next question almost worked as a conductor. She'd nearly forgotten how cold she was until he'd asked and she hugged herself again, giving him a weak smile. "Yeah," she admitted. "I'm freezing my ass off, but I haven't had a chance to hit up the thrift shop I've been reading about, so it's not like I have dry clothes to change into." She shrugged. "I'll live."

And then she realized just how tired she was and felt awkward as she looked back at him. Was she supposed to just lie down and have at it? Ask him one more time if he was sure she was going to sleep first shift? Wait until he told her to go to sleep? Shannon shifted her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. "Um, well, if you're sure you want to take first shift, I'm gonna try to sleep," she finally said.

There was a short pause and then:

"Uh, I know this is going to sound, like, super awkward and weird, but can you, like, sit really close? To me, I mean?" she asked. "I'm kind of hoping to soak up some body heat in the meantime," she explained, gesturing toward their torches with one hand before returning it to her arm and rubbing her hands up and down the goosepimpled skin on her arms.

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demonboyking
2009-04-14 11:54 pm UTC (link)

He gave her a small smile when she said she'd done most of her traveling overseas. "I guess so," he said, not able to help but think that he would've traded his hours of time on the road for frequent flier miles any day. Then again he would've had to have gone alone, since he was pretty sure Dean was never setting foot on a plane again.

He stepped back and looked at the torch, wondering how long it would burn for. Shannon's looked much more used than his, but it was still burning fairly brightly. Eventually they were going to run out of paintings. Depending on how long they were there for and at this point he had no idea how long that might be. Still, he found it all too easy to return her smile before he moved back over to the desk.

Sam shot her a sympathetic look when she said she was still cold, wishing he had held onto his jacket. "It's weird that there's a thrift shop here," he said, looking at his feet while he stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the desk. "The whole layout of the town is weird. A museum, a thrift shop, a carnival..." He glanced up at her. "But no houses? It seems really random."

"Yeah, I'm sure," he said, giving her a small smile when she said she was going to try to sleep. She seemed to hesitate and then made her case about sharing body heat. Sam's tired face slackened a little in surprise before he had a chance to recover. He swallowed, his brows knitting slightly as he nodded. "Uh, yeah, no problem," he said, giving her a small, nervous grin as reached up and rubbed his neck. "I can do that." Though he sounded a little unsure.

Suddenly the whole situation was a little awkward. He wondered if he should try to rub her shoulders for her, or offer to. Though he was afraid that would come off as a little creepy. He could practically hear Dean's voice inside his head urging him to offer anyway. C'mon, Sammy.

He let out a slow breath and waited for her to move, trying not to make the situation any stranger than it already was. They were in some deserted town forced to make torches out of oil paintings and chair legs, sharing body heat wasn't really that much stranger. It made sense. More than that, it was smart. Wherever Shannon came from, she obviously knew a thing or two about roughing it.

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