The Monsters In Our Heads (Book 7 Arrow/SPN Crossovers)

Truth In Spades

"Yeah, I guess maybe I am. I think. I mean, I don't want you to think you can't pull me back in if things get hairy again but.."

"The desire to hunt is gone. It's not what you want anymore. It's fine, I'm happy for you," he smiled.

"Really? I'm kind of bailing on you."

"No you're not. You're doing what you want, like I told you to do and like you needed to do. Nothing wrong with that."

"So you're okay with this?"

"I'm more okay with it than you are I think. Although it's kind of weird being the hunter in the family."

"Yeah, it's even more weird not being the hunter in the family. Not sure if that means you've grown up or I have."

"I think it's a bit of both. Look, I'm a lot happier with knowing you're here, alive, safe and happy then having you next to me, miserable and throwing yourself into suicide missions. I much prefer sitting with you on a porch next to a firepit than putting you on a pyre and giving you a hunter's funeral. Roy and I work well together and we're staying as clear as possible of demons. I don't want them to know you're not hunting anymore and I sure as hell don't ever want to deal with them again myself. Outside of demons, everything else is pretty run of the mill."

"Don't get cocky," I warned him.

"We aren't, promise, but Dean, you've got to understand that you've earned this. Don't see it as quitting, it's getting what you deserve. No one else in our family made it out of hunting in one piece. We're all that's left, one of us should."

"When you talk like that it doesn't make me want to stay out you know."

"Sorry, must of have been that last beer."

I saw a whole hell of a lot of me in his face right then and I didn't like it. "Sam, nothing says you have to stay in either."

He tried to smile but failed, "Maybe I'll find another reason to get out some day, but not right now. You've got a road map now, with the truck stop, helping Coyote, the people here. That's what you need to follow. I don't have anything else yet. Maybe just sharing yours is the best I can do right now. Hunting with Roy has made me remember why we do what we do. It's not the perfect life but it's where I need to be."

I didn't argue, everything I could have said he'd said to me at some point or other in the past so there wasn't any point. As much as he was being supportive of me it still hurt him, I'd been where he was but he was handling it a lot better than I ever did. "All right. We should probably get some sleep."

"Yeah."

We put the firepit out, gathered up our cans and headed back inside.

"Do you want Baby back now?"

His face didn't show it but he couldn't quite keep it out of his voice. He needed her a lot more than I did right then. "No, she's a hunter's car, not a retired hunter's car. Keep her."

There was no missing his reaction to that, "Thanks, I'd miss her."

"Yeah, I know. Night."

"Night."

He'd left about two days after that, we didn't talk about any of that again, we just went on like nothing had happened. When I told Coyote about it she, like Sam, wasn't all that shocked that I'd finally called it quits.

"You're not all that surprised." I told her after she calmly went about cooking dinner. I was sitting at the table chopping up some vegetables for her.

"After the first month here, you stopped sleeping with a gun under your pillow, the second month you didn't take anything but a blade outside with you and since the third month most of the time you barely even do that. You hang out in Rabbit's garage for hours talking about cars and sports, play with the kids and have helped me in some way or other with every project I've started this year. You're organizing neighborhood cookouts for pete's sake. Just because you haven't said that you quit doesn't make it any less true. Babe, you checked out of hunting by the end of the first month you were here. The first time you told Sam to keep Baby I knew what you'd decided, I just knew better than to say anything to you about it."

"Smart woman."

"I know." She winked. "How's Sam? You told me what he said but how is he?"

"Hurting but I can't do anything to help with that, much as I want to. He probably won't be in the Bunker much now. It's a big place to be by yourself all the time. I just hope he doesn't go on hunts alone to keep himself occupied."

She turned away from the stove, crossed the kitchen, put her arms around my shoulders and leaned into me. "I don't think he will. That's not his way of dealing with things."

"I don't know, he looked a lot like how I used to look."

"He's more likely to pack up all those books, take them to Starling and have Felicity help him with the project. Sam doesn't deal with things by spending time alone, he needs to be around people. He's always been the more social of you two."

"True."

About two weeks after that Sylvia had rolled up in her beat up 69 Mustang coupe that I knew would be perfect for him. He'd gone for a Mustang when he'd been soul less, although it was a crappy ass new one. I figured he must have liked them since when he had a choice about what to drive that's what he took. His birthday was coming up, usually we skip those but I thought it was time to change that and went to work.

Once I'd gotten it through my head that I was actually out of the family business I started missing Baby. Coyote's car was nice and all but in one of those screwy emotional shifts it started feeling like for me to truly be at home I had to have her with me. I knew I wasn't going to go back to hunting, having her in front of me wouldn't change that and she'd been through as much as I had. Maybe it was time for both of us to retire but I wasn't going to leave Sam without something just as tough as she was.

I'd painted her this dark pewter color. Black shows too much dirt and Sam's OCD always kicked in when Baby got dusty. I gave her black cloth seats, wired her up so he could jack in his phone or Ipod for music, found some sweet ass rims and bigger tires. Everything under the hood was brand new and top of the line. I went with a V-8 350 and set the exhaust, tranny and everything else up to be as fuel efficient and fast as possible. I still remembered his crack about Baby not getting good mileage back when he had that Mustang. I built the weapons box in the trunk and hid it a bit better than the one in Baby, had to as the trunk wasn't as deep so it was harder to cover up. I just hoped he wouldn't be upset about me asking for Baby back after I'd already told him he could keep her.

I finished my beer, finished the last bit of wiring that I wanted to do and went back inside. At the rate I was going the car would be done tomorrow, I'd take her on a few more test drive and then start working on the other surprise I was planning for him. Just because I wasn't on the road with him didn't make him any less important and I was going to make it crystal clear to him that if he ever wanted to do more than just share the road map I had now he could.