2702/Blood Ties

Blood Ties
Date of Scene:	09 October 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Dean Winchester, Claire Temple

---

Dean Winchester has posed:
Finally having talked to his brother, Dean Winchester has allowed his thoughts to simmer. It's been weeks since he was possessed by Alistair and saw Sam take on the white-eyed-demon's blood. The conversation around the blood and intended plans had left Dean in want. Sam had, however, incurred Claire's name.

Consequently, while Sam is still at work, Dean takes a walk. He treads from the comfort of the Winchester apartment to go visit a neighbour.

There's a loud rap at Claire's door. And when she opens it, she's greeted by a sardonic smile. Everything about Dean's posture and expression is tense. But he manages to fight it with a faint glimmer of amusement behind his green eyes.

He holds out a metallic measuring cup, "Spare a cup of sugar, neighbour?"

Claire Temple has posed:
For the record, one which she employs to beseech the Lord Himself every damn day: Claire Temple does not do unemployment well.

She thinks she's losing her mind -- literally and totally -- in a way even those Hydra sons of bitches couldn't do to her. At least trapped in that white-walled room, day in and day out, there was a certain peace in surrender; the acceptance of an animal conditioned into its learned helplessness to know it can never leave that locked door. Trapped in. Deal with it.

Now awarded freedom and all this time and no /job/ any more to fill it with -- Claire realizes her years of grousing over too-long hours was her own anathema. To not work is just strange.

So she fills every waking moment the best she can; when not on calls with her unpaying moonlighting job as the night nurse, she occupies her head any way it can. Fills it to the brink so that a stray, unoccupied thought takes her back to some weeks ago --

Not thinking about it. Instead, in a moment that finds herself alone in her own place, she drinks coffee and digs into a deep pile of photocopied notes -- Hunter's notes, gifted to her on behalf of one Sam Winchester. Most of it she can barely parse, much less /believe./

Until the knock -- Claire turns her head. And she /hates/, more than anything, that her first reflex is to tense up, and wonder if she should call James over. Over for what? For a neighbour at her door? She can't go back to that. Back to being /afraid/.

Steeling herself, she moves to her front door, checks the peep hole -- and lifts both eyebrows.

The door opens. It reveals Claire Temple, back from abduction and looking relatively normal, dressed in jeans and a NYU sweatshirt. Her eyes veer down at the cup and back up, before wryness tugs at her face.

"You can ask anyone: you won't be finding /anything/ sweet in here," Claire deadpans, with easy humour that tries to undo her own tension. She holds wide the door; he's welcome in. "What's up?"

Dean Winchester has posed:
There's an informality about Dean that fits easily with the wry humour, and his appreciation of it becomes clear as that tension shifts. It fades some. He's guarded, but not painfully so. There's another quirk of his lips--a twitch of a smile that is accompanied by a narrowing of green eyes, "So I take it everything's salty." He fills in the blank. "I can appreciate that."

His eyebrows lift as he's invited in, and he hesitates at the door's edge. The question merits consideration. "Oh you know, the sky. Clouds." His lips purse. "My blood pressure." He actually smirks following that, and crosses the threshold. His eyes scan the room. "Nice place."

His lips twist to the side uncertainly while his thoughts linger on the question more seriously. The metallic measuring cup is set on the counter. He doesn't actually want sugar anyways. His shoulders lift towards his ears and his hands tuck deeply into his pockets while his eyes trail to the floor.

There's a twist in his expression; a brokenness that seems to extend as he allows the question to just roll over his thoughts. But it gets smoothed once again. He finally lands on a real response: "Sam."

Claire Temple has posed:
"Well, c'mon in," invites Claire, laconic as ever -- the emergency nurse with the timeless patience of falling snow. "We can check that blood pressure if you want. You'll get some coffee for it, either way."

She closes and emphatically locks the door behind him. For all her easy-going manner, much of it seems skin-deep. Claire Temple is tense in many ways, more reasons than being a woman living alone in somewhere like Hell's Kitchen.

The compliment on her apartment earns Dean a slanted look, and she accepts it with a humoured huff of breath, not convinced, but not offended either. Nothing really looks nice in this neighbourhood.

Her reading material left behind on a coffee table in front of her couch, she bypasses it on a beeline straight to her cramped kitchen, leaving Dean at her back to get acquainted with the place at his leisure. "So," she calls, on the way to the coffee machine, opening a cupboard to dig for a mug. "What brings Beefcake the Second around my neck of things?"

Sam, he says.

It earns Dean a look; Claire turns it over the rise of her shoulder, some of her humour easing off into a pensive seriousness. She tries to read him with her sharp eye, his bearing, the brief catches in it. She is quiet a moment, then offers, "He's going to be OK."

Dean Winchester has posed:
"I eat like an overgrown man-child," Dean counters with another turn of his lips. "Blood pressure'll be high for years to come." His fingers trace the edges of his hairline, "S'fine though. Only need it to last a year." His nose wrinkles and he begins to flip through her reading material. "No porn?" he lifts a single eyebrow.

And there's definitely something he objects to, even after the reassurance, "//I'm// Beefcake the First." He lifts a pointed finger. "Four years older should at least win me the one behind my name, thanks." He shoots her another crooked smile.

But it falters with the reassurance and his head droops. He leans forward and finally allows himself to slump on Claire's couch. "Is he?" he finally asks. His body becomes taut--a mess of tight lines and tension with the two word question that he hasn't been able to process. "Claire..." there's weight to the name.

Claire Temple has posed:
"Porn?" Claire calls back, with a laugh imbued into her voice. Her swerved gaze has more life to them now than days. This is her medication: choice words spit from a smart mouth. She appreciates it. "Like I'd let a vanilla little thing like you see /that/." Her smile climbs briefly into the corners of her eyes. "But, no. Just the notes your brother dropped off for me -- probably is porn to /you/ guys. All that cannibal leprechauns and serial killer unicorns and crap. How you take your coffee?"

A laugh leaves her at his correction of his name. "My apologies, heir apparent," replies Claire. Probably the two fanciest words she knows.

She brings a mug of coffee over to where he's dropped himself onto her couch, sitting there, looking in every way a man carrying to much weight on his back. Claire looks down at him, appraising, under her half-hooded lids. She knows that look well.

Gingerly, she joins him, sitting down, delivering his drink to the table. Her freed hand joins its sister, twining her fingers together; his question bows her own head, looking down, as Claire tries to assemble the thoughts in her head.

She picks absently at the cuff of her left sleeve. "The truth is I'm not sure. I'm new to this, but I'm going to do what I can. You should just say what you're thinking."

Dean Winchester has posed:
"Ahhh," there's definite appreciation in the emission of air. "The classics then? Sam get you to read the Penny Dreadfuls too? That kid. I swear. He turned ten and it was like that tablet became glued to his fingers." His fingers rake through his hair again. "All limbs, wire, and brains." His fingers flip through the pages with dextrous muscle memory. Each sheet represents another case, another hunt, and another monster. It sedates him. Familiarity, strangely, breeds comfort.

How does he take his coffee? "Just black. Dad always said if you can't take it black you're not man enough to drink it," his eyebrows lift. "Besides," he manages another smirk, "as you already pointed out, I'm vanilla enough."

But bravado and humour utterly fail with the assertion he should speak his mind. He's a secret keeper, and has been for the better part of his life. It's difficult to loose them. But the invitation to say what he's thinking also upsets the balance. Maintaining silent steadfastness had been his father's way.

That's John's bullshit.

His eyes lid and his shoulders sink. It's resignation rather than relaxation. "I think I'm losing Sam." He looks pointedly at Claire.

Claire Temple has posed:
Claire Temple, beneath all her clever comments and bravado of easy humour, stays sharp. It doesn't miss her the way Dean waxes maudlin about his brother, stories of Sam Winchester as some bright-eyed child before the hunt would hone that innocence into something else. The way the older brother speaks of it has the sound of a parent; she takes that to memory.

She learns as she goes.

She learns too how Dean Winchester takes his coffee. "Your dad sounds old school," she says, following directions.

The mug she leaves on the table is as bitterly black as machismo directs it.

Claire takes up the opposite corner of the couch, turned slightly toward Dean: giving him her attention without making too much a fuss about it. She's no stranger to secrets, and she can see its familiar signs writ all over his face, his bearing, the tight line of his shoulders. She's a dealer of secrets, and keeps them safe for many people. The night nurse has to be discreet.

Or was. Hydra beat a lot of those secrets out of her. Make it hurt until all was left was to speak and --

Not thinking about that. Claire breathes in, and meets Dean's look. Her eyes look into his. So many people can't hold eye contact, unused to it, made awkward fast. She can. "I don't think you are. I can tell you why. Addicts -- be it drugs or demon blood, what they go through isolates them. He wants to be helped, and to me, that's what I'm putting my cards on. Unless there's something else? I need to know."

Dean Winchester has posed:
The coffee gets Dean's full attention. He inhales a deep breath and already feels his senses easing. Food and drink both have other steadying qualities. His tastes are simple. He wouldn't ever deny that. And the ritual continues when Dean draws the mug to his lips and takes a long drink of the black fluid.

His free hand tenses, sliding towards his jacket only to stop. Polite company doesn't make their coffee Irish. And while Dean doesn't consider himself as such, it's also early. And they're discussing Sam's issues. Always best to keep his own demons at bay. So his free hand just rests on his leg.

Claire's penetrating gaze has Dean stiffening further. The fingers around the mug curl tighter, white knuckling as if he were driving the Impala out of hell itself.

"His eyes are going black." It's the first piece. He rubs his face. "Not always, but enough. I don't know what Sam told you already, but..." his eyebrows knit together tightly. "The demon that killed our Mom was only in our house because it fed Sam demon blood as an infant. Somehow it changed his nature."

Dean's eyes turn upwards to the ceiling. "I don't know how much is true, but he's not human the way you or I are human. At that age, it did something to him. And until recently," Hydra, "it was just dormant. Now? I don't know."

He sucks on the inside of his cheek, "And what he can do with it? He's got powers like one of them. One of those demons we hunt." He takes another long drink of his coffee. "And let me be clear, I'm not afraid of my brother. I'm not. I never will be. He could threaten to kill me and I wouldn't be afraid of him. I'm afraid //for// him." That's an important distinction.

Claire Temple has posed:
He tenses under her gaze; Claire's eyes mollify just a bit.

She looks away long enough to give him space, taking sudden and great interest on one of the old, familiar, long-unrepaired cracks spiderwebbing her ceiling stucco. Old ass apartment. Old ass building.

The little, odd things Claire thinks as Dean Winchester digs deep and tells her the things changing his younger brother. "I've seen the eyes," she confirms, and with no real weight -- just another detail to add to the growing pile of the way her entire world has changed. A furrow sits between her averted eyes. Her mouth flattens briefly. "He told me about being fed demon blood."

Not his mother. Jesus Christ.

Looking down briefly at her hands, as Dean tells her Sam's humanity is not like theirs, Claire considers the very rational thought, and for a moment, if she's in over her head. How is she to suppose to know /anything/ about this world? Full of monsters and magic and whatever is moving through Sam Winchester's veins?

But has that ever stopped her before? Isn't the want to help enough?

"Listen, I am too," she says to that. "And so is Sam. To not know what's happening to your own body? It's terrifying. I as much as anyone want to be educated on this. What I do know is that cold turkeying him isn't going to help, especially if his biology accepts it, like you said -- and has for all his life. But it can't go on as it is now. We have to try to find some sort of halfway. A treatment plan we both know will work and won't kill him to follow. Is there anything in particular you want me to do?"

Dean Winchester has posed:
That small reprieve from the eye contact has Dean's gaze settling somewhere on the floor. Speaking to inanimate objects has far more appeal than trying to talk to a person. And between the eyes, the telekinesis, and the changes that he's noticed in his younger brother, it seems Claire knows most of it.

That simple reassurance that she's aware quells some of Dean's anxieties. At least the woman has some idea of what she's getting into. Even if it's very little. He sets the mug down on the coffee table. And despite his earlier decision not to reach for it, allows his hand to trail into his interior jacket pocket to extract the small metallic flask he's keeping there.

The lid is unscrewed and he takes a swig of the fluid. It burns when it goes down.

The flask is returned to its place in his pocket.

His fingers thread through his hair. "He can't do this cold turkey," the agreement may be unexpected but it's there. "We were," there's uncertainty in giving details about the story, and so Dean lands on, "on a case in Virginia. And driving back. Sam had drank," he frowns, "a white-eyed demon's blood during the case." A glance is given to the coffee table, "Don't know what you know about demon rank, but white eyes are about as high as they get in hell. Powerful. Like the devil's second-in-command." He swallows hard, wishing he'd kept the flask out.

"But we were driving back. And, Claire, I swear he was going to die. He was in a bad way. Went too long without and he was convulsing and unconscious. And even when I got him the blood he didn't wake up right away. Needed a double dose."

Claire's last question though meets silence. His lips press together tightly. His eyes cinch shut. His voice cracks around the answer: "Don't let him die."

Claire Temple has posed:
A slant of her dark eyes doesn't miss that there-and-gone appearance of the flask.

It is still early enough in the day that, anywhere else, Claire would be compelled for some sort of remark. But she lets it go. There's worse things to worry about.

The story about Virginia earns her thoughtful silence, the air of a nurse gleaning whatever details about Sam's symptoms as she can. It doesn't disagree with what Sam warned her, himself: that going off the blood of demons could actually kill him. Whatever it is, it seems similar to GABAergic withdrawal -- which might be a start. She has no idea how to treat /demon blood/ on a neurological level. Maybe with Mercy's help, and with SHIELD resources, they can find a bridge.

What is more important, however, is the way Dean looks on her couch. Drinking from a flask, hollowed-out, and scared shitless about his brother.

"I know he spoke to me about others wanting him to quit, flat," Claire begins, her voice thin, careful, "and I told him flat out it's bullshit. He asked me aboard to help. I don't know much about your world, other than what I've been reading -- but I'm good at my job. No, I'm actually great at my job. One of the best you'll ever see. I'll fight for his best interests."

And then -- Dean shuts down and lets her see him in a moment of weakness. Shut eyes. The hitch in his voice. And though it might be a demand, might even be a threat, to Claire Temple, it only sounds like a plea.

She's not the best with words. Which is why she reaches over. And to the man who had trouble with her holding his eyes -- Claire tries to take Dean's hand. Her long, deft fingers are warm. It hits her, in that moment: the weight of Sam Winchester's life, on her shoulders. "Trust me."

Dean Winchester has posed:
Claire's warm fingers find cool ones, and the contact has Dean trying to lock down the emotion again. Growing up under John's thumb meant manning up. And the touch feels foreign, but not unwanted. It calls to a very different time, long before even John pursued things that go bump in the night.

Eyes still clamped shut, Dean efforts to shut his feelings down. He sniffs sharply but when he opens his eyes, he still has to rub them with his sleeve to absorb any moisture that he wouldn't allow to trail down his face.

The two words are left to linger. Trust, in his world, is life and death. And the fear Dean has for Sam writes easily over his face. With a faint frown he nods slightly.

His voice cracks again, "Mom is long gone. Dad has been a shell since she died. Sam is all the family I have." He blinks hard against the burning sensation he feels behind his eyes. Tears threaten to fall. Dean won't let them. "Dad was gone a lot and I raised that kid. I poured everything I had into him." He rubs the back of his neck. "He's a good, decent human being. And he doesn't deserve this shit."

Claire Temple has posed:
Manning up: not a foreign thing to Claire.

The men in her life have been brusque, reserved, and tough, in blunt counterpoint to the emotional force of nature that is her mother. She's used to old world machismo, and it's a means of survival where she grew up. Reputation goes a long way in Claire's old stomping grounds, where being just and honest and fair were important: as much as being staid, strong, and inaccessible.

She can see it in Dean; she gets it. She respects it even. Where she comes from, it's the cross men have to bear.

But, even then, it can't stop her from laying her hand over his. Contact goes a long way, and Claire speaks her most clear and true with her hands. Her fingers press down over his knuckles before they drift away again, leaving the man to recover on his own.

"From what I've learned, there are few people -- if any -- that deserve the shit that gets handed to them," she says, her voice low, gentle. "And yet it still happens. When something's unfair, what we do is fight it. And I promise you I'm going to fight for him. It's a fight I know all too well." She exhales out through her nose, one hand pulling through the heavy mass of her dark hair. "All I ask is your help. Be on hand, but trust in my lead. You and Sam -- I owe you my life. The least I'm going to do is pay back that debt."

Dean Winchester has posed:
Silence washes over Dean again. "You don't owe us anything. That is just what we do. It's the right thing to do, so we do it. Don't get me wrong," there's a flicker of humour and bravado in there once more, "we do a lot of questionable things along the way. But it's still the right thing." But even so, he respects something about her: "But I get it. This is also what //you// do." His chin drops into a nod as he's given his hands again.

There's a heaviness on him when he notes, "And Sammy trusts you. That holds a lot of weight for me. Normally a good judge of character." He manages a crooked smile as he rises to his feet, "Normally." "

He's walking towards the door, this has been enough time with his feelings; he needs a proper drink. "And I'll be there. I'm not going anywhere. Never have. Never will." He can't imagine abandoning family. The thought actually makes his chest ache. "Thanks Claire. Just... thanks." And with that, he steps into the hall to find the nearest bar.

Claire Temple has posed:
One of those many scientists and technicians, scrubbed and gloved and masked, lingers a little too long at the little girl's bedside.

Between her dark skin, familiar eyes, and the TEMP tag clipped to her sleeve, it looks undoubtedly Claire Temple, whom -- despite her non-agent status with SHIELD -- has won a place behind the glass due to her position in the rescue, the backing of Steve Rogers, and her own merits as the covertly-known night nurse.

The woman hunkers her height down a little, apparently speaking to the child, and those the mask hides the movement of her lips, her eyes are soft. Only at the last moment, they cut away -- seeing for herself the growing congregation of familiar faces.

Claire pulls away and notifies to the others her intent to take a break.

It is not long for her to move through quarantine -- thanks to some intermediary room that blasts a cloud of /something/ to kill all foreign agents -- and the woman emerges, demasked and degloved, her lips pressing in quiet greeting. "Hey, guys. She seems to be doing a lot better."