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Nobody even knew Addie was bleeding until she got arrested.
"Goddamn it, Addie!" Dad and Addie come busting out of the sheriff's office like a thunderclap. Dad's got one hand clamped around the back of her neck and Sam knows intimately what that feels like, rubbing the nape of his own neck in sympathy as he piles back in the oven-hot car. Last thing he wants to do is piss off Dad when he's already sky-high.
"Toldja not to get out," Dean comments in an undertone.
"Shut up, Dean."
Dad shove-drags Addie down the stairs, and practically pushes her into the car on top of Sam. Addie's face is as tomato-red as her t-shirt as she and Sam disentangle from each other to withdraw to either side of the demilitarized zone represented by the seam that goes down the middle of the bench seat. Dean looks over his shoulder at them—or really, at Addie—eyebrows kinked like he's got something to say, but just then, Dad slams into the driver's seat. Dean goes back to eyes-front, pushing up in the seat.
"Well," Dad says, starting the Impala up with a ball-shaking growl that echoes the one in his voice, "I hope nobody is especially tired or hungry because as soon as we get back to the motel and pack all our shit, we're putting a couple hundred miles between us and this town, courtesy of your sister. And you'd all better hit the head damn quick, because there's no bathroom breaks, either."
Dad's glaring into the rearview mirror and Sam guesses that he could be looking at Addie, but it feels like Dad's eyes are boring straight into him, daring Sam to say something. Sam won't say that he's never lipped off, but he's also not suicidal. He keeps his lip zipped and looks straight ahead.
Dad makes a heh noise under his breath and turns his eyes to the road, clunking the Impala into gear and squalling out from the curb. Sam doesn't make the mistake of thinking this is the end of it.
***
Addie's sitting at the front of the motel, counting over the decades of her rosary with her eyes closed. Though she's twenty now, a woman, and not the little girl Sam remembers leaving, the familiarity of it is somehow soothing. A sign that not everything about them—the Winchester kids—has changed.
Sam sits next to her on the creaking redwood bench, careful even now to maintain that invisible middle line between them. Though he guesses it matters less now than it ever has, his skin prickling with awareness and proximity. And that reminds him all over again that things are different.
"Dean called," he says finally, feeling less like he's saying it to her and more as though he's floating it out on the air in offering. "He'll be here in about twenty."
"Okay." Addie lets the rosary drip down into her palm in a soft rattle of turquoise beads but, otherwise, she makes no move to get up, get ready. Sam gets it; though he knows Dean will be impatient, eager to put some space between them and the memories of this motel, he doesn't feel any more desire than Addie to return to that small, wrecked room or its overwhelming reek of sex. It's better out here in the dusty-dry air, breeze caressing lazy and gentle across his skin.
***
They get to the motel and everyone scrambles out but Dad, still wearing that coming-storm look on his face. "I'm gonna get gassed up," Dad says, looking at Dean but talking to all of them. Addie's hands are fisted at her sides, but her eyes are locked on her shoes, or maybe the ant trundling a chip of Dorito across the asphalt between them. "And get supplies. Dean, you make sure we're wheels up by the time I get back, hear me?"
"Yes, sir," Dean says and Sam's halfway surprised Dean doesn't salute; Daddy's fucking soldier.
Sam half-turns to nudge Addie, watch her roll her eyes, but she's already popping the lock on the motel room, disappearing inside.
"Hey," Sam says, following her in. He flops on the bed. "So what'd you get arrested for, anyway, Bugsy?"
"Nothing," Addie mutters, shoulders hunched up as she drags her duffle from under the bed. "Shut up, Sam."
"Both of you shut up," Dean says, pushing Sam further into the room with a shove between Sam's shoulder blades, "and pack up your shit. Dad's going to be back soon."
"I just want to know what she did," Sam says, rolling gamely off the bed and groping for his own duffle. "I think it was stealing. I mean, it had to be, right?" He looks at Dean, rolling up t-shirts like he's trying to wring the life out of them. "She's too scrawny to be a prostitute."
"Fuck you, Sam!"
Sam was expecting some kind of reaction but he wasn't expecting to end up face-first on the nasty motel carpet, the back of his skull smarting from whatever the hell it is that Addie threw at him.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Addie!" Sam jumps up, intent on a little payback, but Dean loops both Sam's arms and jerks him back in a full nelson. Sam kicks out in her direction anyway, just cause. "What the fuck is your problem? You act like you're on the rag or something."
Even more red-faced than when Dad had dragged her out of the cop shop, Addie stoops to snatch up a whetstone from the floor—what she hit him with, Sam guesses—and makes like she's going to brain him with it again.
"Addie!" Dean roars, sounding so much like Dad that Sam half-twists around, looking to see if Dad came back early.
Addie makes a choked noise, hikes the whetstone into the floor and then whirls and runs for the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Dean lets Sam go all at once, pushing Sam away with a disgusted noise of his own. Sam, who's usually quickest on the uptake is thoroughly confused. "What'd I say?"
***
Sam feels like there are so many things he wants to say to her—about the scar, about Dad, about the sex. Other things; things that have been bottled up from even before he left. Stupid things, like I love you, Addie, or I'm sorry, Addie, things that he might be able to say if they were some other kids from some other family. But Sam's learned the hard way that, no matter how far he runs, he's always going to be a Winchester kid. Just like Addie. Just like Dean.
Sometimes it feels like an anchor around his neck, the weight of it. Other times, it feels like all that's keeping him afloat, the buoy of family.
When Addie spreads the rosary between her fingers to rewrap it around her wrist, Sam nudges her knee with his. "Do you actually believe in all that?"
"All what?" She turns her head to eye him sidelong, cautious, wary, but seeming game enough to play along with him until she figures out if it's a trap or not.
He tugs the trailing cross. It's not a crucifix, he notices for the first time, though he's seen the rosary hundreds of times over the years; only hand-worn silver nicked by collisions or rattling around in her pockets with change and keys. "This. God. The whole…" Sam wobbles his hand, "…thing. Religion."
Addie draws her knees up, planting bare feet on the wood and looping her arms around to scratch her insteps with her short, ragged nails. "I don't know," she admits with a shrug. Her voice is scratchy and tired, the usual angry sharp edges dulled. "I don't… It's not for God," she says slowly, as though she's testing out the words to see if they'll hold her weight. "It's not about that. It's for me. To find a quiet place."
"Huh," Sam says, more surprised by the answer than he wants to admit. "I didn't think you liked the quiet much, Ads."
Instead of taking offense, the corner of her wide mouth hooks up in an expression not quite a smile. "Everyone needs a quiet place sometimes. Especially in this family."
"Huh," Sam says again.
***
After Dad's stern warning that the Winchester Express would be running non-stop, Sam thinks everyone's a little surprised when, a mere forty miles outside of town, Dad pulls up to a Rexall.
"Dean, I want you to go inside and buy tampons and pads for your sister," Dad says, holding out a sheaf of money.
"Dad, no!" Addie launches up from the seat and latches onto the shoulder of Dean's shirt in an effort to keep in him the car, blotchy red creeping across her face again.
Dad cranes a little more to look at Addie over his shoulder. "We don't always have much, but we're not thieves, Addie."
Since when? Sam, who's been shoplifting since he was old enough for Dean to stuff donuts and candy into his diapers, wants to ask, but he's still on high alert, so he holds his tongue and glances at Dean, who's blushing nearly as hard as Addie, even as he takes the money from Dad's hand.
"I'll go!" Addie offers, wrapping skinny arms around Dean's neck, hanging half over Sam's legs to do it. "Please, Dad. Just…let me. I'll get it. Please."
"I want you where I can keep an eye on you," Dad says, turning back to the front and settling deeper into the driver's seat. "Dean's your brother. He can take care of it."
Dean untangles himself from Addie's arms with some trouble, ducking out of the car before she can reassert her hold.
"Sam." Just settling back into his seat, Sam flinches. Dad doesn't even look back at him. "Go with your brother."
"Dad—"
Sam sometimes forgets how fast Dad can move. Dad whips around, his eyes bloodshot and deadly serious. "Don't argue with me, Sam, just do it!"
Sam mutters under his breath—calculated below the threshold that Dad will make a stink about it—but he climbs out of the car. What the fuck else is there to do?
***
"Dean's gonna be here, soon," Addie says finally, breaking what's otherwise become a surprisingly comfortable silence. "We should pack up."
"Yeah," Sam says, reluctant.
"C'mon." Addie gets up from the bench in an impatient lunge, not even looking to see if he'll follow. Sam doesn't know if that's confidence or uncaring. She'd asked him if he was going to leave.
Addie doesn't stop in the doorway of the room, but Sam does, struck all over again by its destruction and the memories of how all of it occurred. The mattress is askew on the bed, the sheets and cover puddled on the floor. The rest of the room looks just as…disheveled, what few belongings they brought in with them scattered, like a hurricane hit. And, of course, the smell is still there, even with the windows thrown open to the night winds. It turns his stomach and clutches at his balls at the same time; his sister had been a good lay.
Half-sister, whispers the voice of the part of his brain that's searching desperately, wildly for any rationalization.
Sam's gorge rises with a thick noise from his throat, but he swallows it down. On the floor gathering up their spare change and stray weaponry, Addie settles back on her heels and gives him a questioning look over her shoulder. Sam shakes his head.
***
"This is such fucking bullshit!" Sam swore kicking the bathroom doorframe hard enough that the door juddered in the jamb and slapped back into the plaster. "You start bleeding from vag and now I'm confined to the room like I did something wrong!"
Addie lunges at him like a bobcat pouncing. She's grown some in the past year, while Sam is still at the same shrimpy height he's been for the last couple years. He's never going to fucking grow. And then he's too busy to keep Addie's bony knees from his nads to worry about how tall he is. Or isn't.
"Jesus Christ, will both of you cut it out?" Dean sounds pissed. The deep, stretched out pissed he gets when Dad's bailed and left Dean holding the bag—which is exactly what's happened. Again.
Dean pulls them apart and Sam becomes aware that there's someone else in the room with them. A someone else in a very short skirt, very low-cut shirt and seriously high heels. Sam scrambles up, brushing at his shirt. Addie does the same, more slowly.
"This is my friend," Dean says. "Uh…" He glances sideways.
"Honey," Dean's "friend" supplies, tossing long hair back over one shoulder. Her eyes skip over Sam the way girls' eyes usually do to light on Addie. Honey whistles. "Jesus, someone sure did a number on your hair, girl."
"I like my hair," Addie mumbles, her jaw squaring tight like Dad's.
"You into girls?" Honey tilts her head, questioning.
"No!"
Nobody's asking him, but Sam's a little freaked out by the idea of Addie—little Addie—being 'into' anyone.
Honey holds her hand out. "C'mon. Let's you and me have a conversation."
***
"Addie…" Sam sits down on the bed's edge, turning his pocket knife between his fingers before he looks across the room at her. "Will you tell me about Dad?"
Addie growls quietly, still searching under the dinette for any strays. "Sam." Then she sighs. "Can we just…talk about this later? I'll tell you everything you want to know, just not now. Not today. Could you do that for me?"
She says it in a way that tells Sam she fully expects him to press it, fully expects the two of them to fight over it, the way they've been fighting about everything else…but the truth is that Sam doesn't have it in him tonight to fight with her, any more than she does.
"Yeah," he agrees, tucking the knife—and the memory of Dad giving it to him—away. "Okay."
His hoodie is still in the bathroom, he recalls, sodden and wadded in the bottom of the tub from when they were trying to wash the venom off. A part of him wants to leave it there, but he's too well trained to leave that much of himself behind and they don't have so much that he can afford to buy another one just because he's squeamish.
He's trying to figure out what to do with the thick, wet mass when Addie ventures in that same quiet, sane voice, "He really missed you, you know."
"Who? Dean?"
"No." Addie shakes her head and gets up slowly, carefully. He wonders if she's sore. God knows he is. "Dad."
Sam thinks that's so ludicrous, so completely absurd, that he can't think of anything to say in reply.
***
"Dean, that's a hooker!" Sam hisses, once Addie and "Honey" have disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door behind them.
"Maybe," Dean says, like it's the most reasonable thing in the world, "but she's also a girl."
"Okay, but she's a hooker!" Sam repeats, because this fact seems to have somehow escaped Dean.
Dean rubs his hand down his face. "Do you want to talk to Addie about what to do with all that…" he waves a hand in the direction of the bathroom, "stuff? You want to have a deep, intimate talk with your sister about her…bits?" He grimaces and so does Sam.
"Okay, no," Sam concedes. "I don't…ew. I don't even want to think about Addie having…bits."
Dean spreads his hands. "You think Dad's going to tell her what to do?"
Sam thinks of when Dad sat Dean down for "the big talk", a full four years after Dean had banged his first girl. Dean had told Sam everything he needed to know and, though Sam didn't entirely believe Dean about everything, he knew it was a lot better than the awkward, hem-and-haw fest he'd get with Dad. The thought of Dad trying to talk to Addie, and about her period…
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
"Yeah, whatever," Sam grumbles and shoves Dean. "Give me some money. I want a Coke."
***
They hear the Impala coming, even before Dean gives the horn two curt toots.
Back in her clothes, her scar hidden and weapons distributed on her person, Addie looks cool, calm and collected, the eye before her personal storm. She's twenty, Sam thinks, knowing it in a way that makes the knowledge feel new. Twenty.
She's not a child anymore. Not someone who doesn't know her own mind. Not someone who needs her older brother—needs him—to make it up for her.
It won't last, this fragile peace. But in the hours that it does, Sam will lean into it, let him buoy him above the red tides of anger, confusion and pain.
"Let's go," he says, reaching and taking Addie's hand. Her fingers are sweaty and flinch, like she wants to pull away, but after a deep, suspicious look at him, she leaves them where they are.
Sam thinks that's progress.