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You said it just right: I never stay
long enough to fight—I just run away,
and it's you, my love,
it's you I'm running from.
Sam works eight hour shifts at the bar. Originally, Marty was just looking for coverage during happy hour when the servers are busy, but he says Sam has impressed him with his work ethic. Says Sam’s a good, dependable guy, and how does a little extra money sound, son? At the time, Sam had to suppress a flinch, but he accepted it anyway. Marty thinks Sam’s name is Keith, so his good opinion doesn’t matter. His money does. It’s not like Sam has anything better to do.
Sam’s making his rounds of the tables after what passes for the lunch rush, wiping down spilled sugar and condensation rings from the sweet tea every table seems to order. It’s a nice enough bar, considering. Less than a thousand people live in this town, but they get some traffic in off of Highway 15, from people who look like they can’t wait to get out of Oklahoma. They have places to be. Sam clears the trash from their tables, cleans their messes. For the most part, they don’t look at him twice, if they notice him at all. It’s… reassuring. It’s what he needs.
After he’s done with his tables, he does the barback duties, so that Marty can take a nap in the back office. Sam slices lemons very neatly. He uses the knife Marty told him to use, even though it’s dull. Even though he could pull his own knife, silver blade kept viciously, perfectly sharp. He’s taken to leaving his knives back at the motel, though. They’re just a reminder of what he can’t trust himself to have, what he’s not strong enough to withstand.
He slices the lemons. The juice stings the nearly-healed cuts on his hands. The radio’s playing that terrible country song, with some fake cowboy whining about losing his horse, his girl, how his heart’s broken. It always comes on the radio when they’re driving through the south, and Dean mocks it but leaves it on, listens to the whole thing, every time.
Sam’s hand convulses for a second around the knife. He closes his eyes. His heart is beating too fast. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to remember that his fingers are sticky with juice, not other things. That he’s being Keith, and Keith has to be normal, not a freak. He swallows. Keeps slicing. They’ll need the lemon wedges for the sweet tea tonight.
The waitress, Lindsay, says he looks tired. He likes her, kind of—she’s brisk, direct without being rude. He likes her, so he’ll never tell her that he’s tired because he’s trying not to sleep. That when he does succumb, he dreams, and that what he dreams is terrible. He wakes up with the taste of blood at the back of his throat, his hands clenched fists; he wakes up with a wet, stained face, with his chest aching. What he lost doesn’t fade with daylight—it’s there, all the time. It’s there when he opens his eyes and sees his big empty room, with its single bed, and it’s there when he has to convince himself, every morning, to sit up. To stand on his own feet and face what he’s done to himself.
He knows he’s being a coward, but he can’t care about that. Not now. He was furious, desperate. Self-righteous. Full of good intentions, and that should’ve been his first warning sign.
He wipes his hands on his apron, slides the lemon wedges into the bar bucket with the flat edge of the knife. Neat, precise. Trustworthy. The bar’s empty—not quite four o’clock, so they won’t get any of the rowdy farm workers in for a little while yet. “Taking a break,” he calls out, and there’s a grunt from the office as he wakes Marty up. Lindsay, reading her glossy magazine, just shrugs, doesn’t glance up.
Out back, it’s hot—August afternoon in Oklahoma, muggy and terrible. He sits on the concrete bench next to the dumpster, tips his head back against the brick wall, breathes in the thick, nasty air. Shame is a hard, roiling thing in his gut. It twins nicely with the want, itching along his veins, aching in his hands and throat. He can’t stand this—he needs—but he’s going to withstand it. He has to. He’ll keep running, keep chasing himself away from what he wants. He’ll flee across the country if that’s what it comes to. His shame, his guilt—it’s deep enough to drown him. It might yet. He curls his hands around the hot concrete of the bench, lets it heat his stinging skin. For now, he holds on. It’s all he can trust himself to do.