Chapter 2: Huntress and Hunter
The abandoned slaughterhouse held the cold like a tomb. Sadie’s back was pressed against a blood-rusted conveyor belt, the metal searing through her thin shirt, Xavier’s mouth hot and desperate on her throat as he moved inside her, a frantic rhythm against the deep, gathering silence. Their shared breath fogged in the frozen air, a stark contrast to the heat coiling low in her belly, tightening towards a release that felt less like pleasure and more like annihilation. A howl, low and guttural, echoed through the cavernous space above them, the sound lost beneath the roar of blood in her ears and Xavier’s choked groan as he spilled into her. The splintering crack from the rafters came a second too late, a shower of rotted wood and debris raining down as a pale, snarling shape dropped into the weak light between them and the door.
The world dissolved into a choking cloud of dust and splinters. Xavier shoved her sideways, his body a shield as a heavy timber crashed where her head had been seconds before. The pale thing unfolded itself from a crouch, joints popping, its muzzle stained a rusty brown. "Gun's by my bag," Xavier rasped, his voice raw, already moving to put himself between her and the wendigo. Sadie scrambled backward on her hands, her lungs burning, her eyes fixed on the impossible distance to their weapons.
The wendigo’s head snapped toward the movement, a blur of bone-pale skin and hunger. "Hey! Ugly!" Xavier barked, snatching a rusted meat hook from the floor and hurling it. The metal clanged against the creature’s ribs, buying her a heartbeat. Sadie didn’t waste it, scrambling back on elbows and heels, her palm slicing open on a shard of wood. The duffel bag was ten feet away, a mile. Xavier kept moving, circling, drawing its attention with his body, a predator’s calculus in every step. "The flare gun, side pocket!" he shouted, just as the thing lunged. He met it with a shoulder-check that sounded sickening, the two figures crashing into a stack of moldy barrels. Sadie’s fingers clawed at the bag’s zipper, finding the cool plastic grip. She turned, raised it, and fired without aiming. The brilliant red streak lit up the rotting room, missing the wendigo but scorching its arm. It shrieked, a sound that felt like needles in her teeth, recoiling into the shadows. "Now!" Xavier yelled, already moving toward her. They scrambled back, a frantic crab-walk toward the relative safety of a shattered brick partition, their hands grabbing for knives, for salt, for anything solid.
Their backs hit cold brick, chests heaving in unison. The wendigo’s clicking growl echoed, a dry sound like bones rattling in a sack, moving somewhere in the vast dark beyond their meager cover. "You hit?" Xavier’s voice was a tight wire, his eyes never leaving the gloom as his fingers found the hilt of his machete.
"Just splinters," Sadie hissed, clutching a hunting knife, its weight familiar and insufficient. A shape detached from the deeper shadows, gliding with an unnatural, skittering grace past hanging chains. It was learning the space, herding them. "It’s flanking."
Xavier’s jaw tightened. "Plan’s the same. Lure it, leg it, light it." The theory from the drive up sounded pathetic now. The creature’s head snapped toward his voice, and it charged, a streak of pallid flesh. Xavier met it, machete flashing, steel biting into bone-tough sinew with a wet crack. The impact jarred him backward, his boot slipping in something wet and foul. The wendigo lunged for his exposed throat.
Sadie didn’t think. Her arm drew back and shot forward in one fluid, furious motion. The hunting knife left her hand, a spinning streak of polished steel. It thudded deep into the creature’s clavicle, not a kill shot, but a brutal interruptor. The wendigo staggered, a shriek of pure outrage tearing from its lipless mouth. Xavier didn’t waste the opening. He swung the machete down in a vicious arc, severing its hamstring. The thing went down, thrashing. "Now, Sadie!" he yelled, scrambling clear. She already had the gasoline can, sloshing the liquid over the flailing form, and threw the lit Zippo. The fire took it with a soft, hungry whump, and its howls became something else entirely. They watched it burn, the light dancing over their sweat-and-grime-streaked faces. Xavier looked at her, his gaze landing on her empty hand, then the knife in the burning thing. He just gave one slow, acknowledging nod. It was enough.
The drive to the motel was a silent, shivering affair, the Impala’s heater fighting a losing battle against the cold clinging to their bones and clothes. The scent of gasoline and burnt hair lingered, a gritty reminder woven into the fabric of Xavier’s jacket, which he’d wordlessly thrown over her shoulders miles back. She stared at the broken yellow lines hypnotically streaming under the headlights, her knuckles white where they gripped the leather seat, every muscle singing with a profound and shaky exhaustion.
“Your brothers are already here,” Xavier said finally, his voice rough from disuse and smoke, nodding toward the familiar black Chevelle parked under a flickering sodium light outside the two-story motel. “Room 112. You’re in 114. I’m in 116.” He killed the engine, the sudden quiet a physical presence. “Get some sleep.”
Sleep felt like a fictional concept. A quick, jarring reunion with Sam and Dean in their cramped room involved tight hugs, a critical once-over of her minor injuries, and a barrage of questions she deflected with practiced ease. Their concern was a warm, heavy blanket she both craved and wanted to shrug off. She claimed exhaustion, which wasn’t a lie, and escaped to the sterile quiet of her own adjacent room. The shower water ran brown then pink then finally clear, scrubbing away the slaughterhouse but not the memory of his body moving against hers in the dark before the world broke apart. She fell into a thin, dreamless sleep in the stiff motel sheets.
The rasp of the lock-pick and the soft click of the door opening were sounds she was unconsciously waiting for. The digital clock glowed 2:07 AM when his silhouette filled the frame before easing the door shut. He didn’t speak, just crossed the room in three silent strides, the mattress dipping under
his weight as he knelt over her. His hands were rough, urgent, pushing the sheets aside, his mouth finding hers in the dark with a possessiveness that stole her breath. There were no words, just the slick heat of his tongue and the desperate scrape of his stubble against her skin as he moved down her body. He pushed her thighs apart with an insistence that bordered on violence, his breath hot against her, and then his mouth was on her, a ruthless, intimate claiming that made her back arch off the mattress.
A broken sound escaped her, fingers twisting in his hair, holding him to her as he worked her with a focused intensity that felt like atonement. The tension from the slaughterhouse, the shared terror, it all coiled and snapped into this single, sharp point of sensation. She came apart under his mouth with a stifled cry, her body pulsing against his tongue. He didn’t let up, drawing out every last shudder until she was boneless and gasping.
Then he was moving up her body, his own need raw and evident, pushing into her with a deep, claiming stroke that made her gasp his name into the hollow of his shoulder. The pace was punishing, a physical dialogue of relief and residual fear, each thrust a desperate anchor in the aftermath of nearly losing solid ground. She matched him, move for move, her nails scoring his back, their sweat-slick skin sliding together in the dark motel quiet. It was when his rhythm finally fractured, when he buried himself deep and stilled with a ragged groan against her neck, that the words came, husked into her skin like a secret.
“I thought you were going to die back there.” Xavier’s voice was wrecked, stripped bare.
The admission hung in the air, more vulnerable than any touch. Sadie turned her head, her lips brushing his temple, her own truth a whisper in the dark. “I did too.”
The words hung in the dark, a fragile bridge between them. She felt the exact moment his entire body went rigid above her, the confession hanging in the air like a struck bell. Her own breath caught, her mind scrambling back through every snarl, every condescending remark, every time he’d looked at her like she was an inconvenient child. Three years. Since she was sixteen. Since before she’d even known what a wendigo was.
“You what?” The question left her lips, quiet and sharp.
He didn’t pull away. Instead, his forehead dropped to her shoulder, his breath hot and uneven against her skin. His voice was a raw scrape, muffled by her flesh. “I saw you at that rally point in Tulsa. All that pink hair and rage, yelling at Dean for treating you like glass.” He let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. “You were a kid. A terrifying, magnificent kid. And I wanted you. It felt like a sickness.”
Sadie’s hands, which had been gripping his back, slowly loosened. Her fingers traced the ridge of a scar along his spine. The room was so quiet she could hear the rustle of the sheets as he turned his head, his lips brushing her collarbone. “Every damn hunt after that, I’d hear your name. Sadie took down a ghoul. Sadie translated the Enochian. Sadie pissed off a coven.” His arms tightened around her, a vise of desperation. “I stayed away because your brothers would’ve skinned me. Because it was wrong. And because I knew if I ever got this close, I’d break.”
He finally lifted his head, his eyes searching hers in the gloom. The usual granite was gone, replaced by something shattered and open. “I can’t lose you.” The words were a punch to her sternum. “I’ve wanted you for three years, Sadie. I don’t hate you. I never did.” He swallowed hard, the sound audible. “I only hated the fact that I wanted you when I couldn’t have you.”
His words hung in the dark, a confession that changed the geometry of the room. Sadie stared up at the water-stained ceiling, her mind a white noise of three years of misinterpreted glances and snarled arguments. The cold from the slaughterhouse still felt closer than the motel heater’s feeble breath. She finally turned her head on the pillow, her pink hair stark against the white cotton. Her voice, when it came, was low and utterly clear, stripped of all its usual defiance.
“You can have me now. Any way you want.”
Xavier went completely still above her, a statue of scarred muscle and suspended breath. The only movement was the rapid pulse in his throat. Something wild and unchained flashed in his eyes, the last of his control snapping. His mouth crashed down on hers again, but this kiss was different—softer, devastatingly thorough, a silent seal on the truth they’d just spoken. He pulled back just enough to speak against her lips, his voice a ragged promise. “I won’t be gentle.” “I don’t need gentle,” she breathed, her hands sliding up to cradle his jaw, her thumbs tracing the stubble on his cheeks. He shifted then, rolling them in one smooth motion until she was straddling him, the sheet falling away. The dim light from the parking lot outlined her form, the pale curves and dark shadows, the pink ends of her hair brushing her shoulders. He looked up at her, his hands settling on her hips, his grip possessive but reverent. “Show me,” he said, the command a raw whisper. She did, moving with a slow, deliberate rhythm that made his eyes drift shut, a low groan tearing from his chest. This was no hate-fuck against a conveyor belt. This was a claiming, a surrender, a three-year wait collapsing into the space between their sweating bodies. She leaned down, her mouth finding the shell of his ear. “All of it, Xavier. Everything you held back.” He opened his eyes, his gaze locking onto hers with a fierce intensity that felt like being known.
His hands slid up her ribs, calloused thumbs brushing the undersides of her breasts, a shudder running through him. “Look at you,” he breathed, the words full of raw wonder. “Taking me so deep, so perfect.” His hips lifted to meet her downward stroke, a slow, rolling grind that made her gasp. “That’s it, sweetheart. Use me. Just like that.” His praise was a low, continuous rumble, more felt than heard. “God, you feel like heaven. All that fire, and here you are, riding my cock like you were made for it.” Each crude, honest word stoked the heat coiling tighter inside her. “You take every inch so good, Sadie. My perfect, greedy girl.” She moaned, her head falling back, the pace turning frantic and needing. His grip on her hips tightened, guiding her, his own control visibly fraying. “Don’t stop. Come for me. Let me feel it.” The command shattered her, pleasure detonating through her veins, her cry swallowed by the dark room. He followed with a choked groan, his body bowing up into hers, holding her close as they trembled through the aftermath. For a long moment, the only sound was their ragged breathing syncing in the humid air. He gently lowered her onto his chest, his arms wrapping around her, his lips pressing into her damp hair. The silence wasn’t empty now; it was thick, filled with a truth too big for the shabby room.
The silence wasn’t empty now; it was thick, filled with a truth too big for the shabby room. She traced the scar on his back again, her fingertip following its raised, chaotic path. “Tulsa,” she finally said, the word testing the shape of the memory. “I don’t remember you.”
“You weren’t supposed to.” His voice was sleep-rough, his arm heavy across her ribs. “I made sure of it.” The first gray light of dawn began to bleed around the edges of the blackout curtain, turning the room a soft, desolate blue. It revealed the empty condom wrapper on the nightstand, her clothes in a heap by the door, the precise, brutal reality of them tangled together. His confession felt like a live wire in the quiet, still sparking.
MORNING COMES
It arrived not with a gentle glow, but with the sharp, invasive glare of full sun defeating the cheap curtains. The motel room was now a catalog of evidence: the rumpled sheets, the lingering scent of sex and antiseptic from her cleaned cuts, the profound, aching fatigue in every muscle. Xavier was already awake, a silent silhouette sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his boots. The line of his shoulders was rigid, the vulnerability of the night sealed away behind a familiar, impenetrable wall. Sadie watched him, the pink strands of her hair sticking to her cheek, not speaking.
The knock on the connecting door to her brothers’ room was firm, predictable. “Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!” Dean’s voice, all false cheer, followed by two sharp raps. Xavier didn’t even flinch, just finished lacing his boot. He stood, not looking at her, and grabbed his jacket from the floor. “We roll out in twenty,” he said, his tone flat and operational, the man from the night before completely erased. He unlocked his own door to the outside and left, the click of the latch final. Sadie was left alone in the wreckage of the bed, the echo of his words—I’ve wanted you for three years—colliding violently with the cold emptiness of his exit.
She stared at the closed door, the space still vibrating with his absence. Her body ached in places that were equal parts slaughterhouse struggle and his relentless possession. A hollow laugh escaped her, sharp and humorless in the quiet.
“This is going to get messy at some point…I can fucking feel it.” Sadie said to the now empty room, the words tasting like a prophecy. She forced herself up, the sheets sticking to her skin, and shuffled into the bathroom. The fluorescent light was a brutal shock, exposing the bloom of bruises on her hips, the shallow claw mark, the vivid pink of her hair against the pallor of her face.
A quick, scalding shower did nothing to wash away the cognitive dissonance. She dressed mechanically in clean jeans and a black tank top, the fabric soft against the raised edges of fresh scars. Another knock came, this time followed by the jingle of a lock-pick and Dean’s head poking in. “You decent? Coffee’s going cold.”
“Define decent,” she muttered, stuffing her few belongings into her go-bag. Sam followed, his observant eyes missing nothing—the two pillows used, the general disarray. He held out a steaming paper cup. “Long night?”
“You have no idea.” She took the coffee, avoiding his gaze, the bitterness of the brew a perfect match for her mood. Dean leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “So, Conners. He still treating you like a rookie?”
She sipped the coffee, letting it burn her tongue. “He’s treating me like a hunter.” The distinction was everything, and it hung there, loaded. Sam’s brow furrowed slightly, but he just nodded. “The wendigo case is closed. We got a ping on a possible haunting two states over. You riding with us, or…?” He left the question dangling, but they all heard the unspoken or with him?
She looked from Sam’s empathetic concern to Dean’s protective suspicion, then at the empty bed. Xavier’s confession was a stone in her gut, his exit a cold wind. “I’m with you,” she said, the decision solidifying as she said it. “For now.” She shouldered her bag, the weight of it familiar and grounding. “Let’s hit the road.”