After Michigan
post Dead in the Water









*

After Michigan, Sam caves to the siren call of Dad’s journal. He’s been itching for it the whole time, but picking up Dad’s journal means something’s changed and Sam guesses he’s just been putting it off for as long as he can, as if it makes a difference whether he uses the journal now or later or not at all.

Maybe it does. Or maybe it’s just going to make things easier. Everything Dad knows is written down in this book, and there’s no reason to make their job harder than it already is by avoiding practical solutions because of what they mean emotionally, psychologically. They don’t actually have to mean it. They don’t actually have to mean anything. It’s just that maybe Dean thinks it means something it doesn’t mean and if Sam protests even a little, he’s already protesting too much.

Sam flips open the journal, past the old photographs, the telephone numbers, pages and pages of the weird code Dad worked out for himself, everything a reference to something else, like reading feminist texts or nineteenth century French lit. Sam’s handwriting has never looked anything like Dad’s and if he had his choice he’d keep track of what they’ve done and where they’re going on the computer, but the journal is heavy in Sam’s lap and it’s tradition and Dean is watching him.

“Keep your eyes on the road, man,” Sam says.

Dean shifts his weight away from Sam and looks away, too. “If you’re looking for a pen,” he says, “there’s one under the seat somewhere.”

As it turns out, there’s also an old, slimy burger wrapper under the seat somewhere and Dean laughs his ass off until Sam wipes the ancient ketchup on Dean’s jeans and Dean punches him and they swerve over the yellow line not once but twice. How old are they really, Sam wonders. Are they ever going to grow out of this? Sam hates feeling thirteen again.

“Real mature,” Sam says.

“Hey, these are my favorite freakin’ jeans,” Dean says. “You can wash your hand, dude.”

Sam doesn’t want to think about how it’s exactly like coming home from college after break, or like Sam always imagined coming home from college after break might’ve been if he’d ever actually come home. He has the same discomfort as when he had his first growth spurt, like nothing in his body fits who he actually is these days, who he was and who he’s supposed to be. This time it’s a little different, since Sam has Dad’s book. It shouldn’t make him feel any more important or any more mature. He still has ketchup on his hands.

“It’s gonna snow,” Dean says, nodding towards the window. “I figure, we get far as we can by the time it starts, hit up a motel somewhere in Illinois and see what’s happening with the locals.”

Sam’s a little disappointed, to be honest. Before the job in Lake Manitoc Sam just thought Dean wasn’t trying hard enough, but Sam was wrong. Being wrong makes Sam uncomfortable; being wrong about Dean makes him wince. The worst part is admitting to himself that Dean’s trying harder than he lets on and they’re still just hitting up a motel somewhere in Illinois to beat out the snow, to see what’s happening with the locals.

Dad is out there somewhere, but Dad’s journal is in Sam’s lap.

Sam flips to an empty page, uncapping the pen and scribbling hard with the point a couple of times until the ink starts flowing again. It’s pretty cold in the car, the sky heavy with fat, gray clouds. “Yeah, whatever,” Sam says. He takes a deep breath and writes it all in one go.

Lake Manitoc, WI.

Absolutely nothing happens.

Sam doesn’t feel any different. He wrote in Dad’s journal and absolutely nothing happened. He feels kind of embarrassed that he was expecting something, anything, like for Dad to appear or for his own handwriting to disappear or for bolts of lightning, apparently. It’s just a journal, pieced together and stubborn like all the Winchesters, really old, totally disorganized.

All that happens while Sam’s writing, still aware of Dean’s eyes on him from time to time, is that the sky finally gives up and it snows.

*

Geneva, Illinois is hung with pine and tinsel and they’re the only people staying in the motel, the only people served that evening in Jim’s Diner just down the road, too. Everyone has a family and a Christmas tree and they’re getting ready, finishing wrapping their presents, preparing for loving and hating their relatives but making a real nice scene with homes and living rooms and decent nights’ sleep. Add that to the list of things Sam hates: feeling like Frankenstein, stealing looks in people’s windows. That’s just creepy.

Sam pointed out the resemblance once, or he tried to, but all Dean had said was ‘Dude, you practically are Frankenstein, all you need is the bolt through your neck.’ Sam threw a pillow at him, Dean threw it back, and after Sam listened to all Dean had to say about Sam’s incredibly flat head Sam closed the book and turned out the lights and went to sleep, feeling thwarted and mad.

He’d been sixteen. Frankenstein was an assignment. Dean never read it, just knew the movie backwards and forwards and inside out. ‘Friiiiiiend gooooood,’ Dean said into the darkness. ‘Good night, Dean,’ Sam said, and Dean said, ‘Good night.’

“Man,” Dean says. “Nativity scenes freak me out. So does Rudolph. I mean, come on, glowing red nose? How is that part of the Christmas spirit?”

Sam shrugs deeper into his winter jacket and says nothing at all, sparse houses lining the road through town, lights on and shadows passing across the curtains. It’s not Christmas that bothers Sam. It’s whatever he’s doing in the midst of Christmas that bothers him.

Jim’s Diner is made up of Pepto-Bismol pink beneath vinyl, records hung on the wall and pictures of Marilyn Monroe, the works. There’s a potted dwarf Christmas tree by the door, hung with garish plastic ornaments and a big angel on top.

“Happy Christmas,” the waitress says as she seats them, leaning over Sam to set down the menus.

“Twas the night before Christmas,” Dean says, playing with his fork while they wait for their burgers. His eyes catch Sam’s and then twitch towards the waitress. Sam waits for the essential Dean shrug from his arsenal of essential Dean shrugs, the momentary incline of his head and a grin making the corners of his eyes crinkle.

Sam really, really wants to hit him when his cellphone buzzes in his pocket, against his thigh.

*

DEAN 12/24/05 8:34 PM
dont look now man but that waitress is totally checking you out just thought you should know tiger

DEAN 12/24/05 8:35 PM
rawr am i right???

DEAN 12/24/05 8:36 PM
no seriously dude she totally is

SAMMY 12/24/05 8:38 PM
Which one? Whatever you say man

DEAN 12/24/05 8:39 PM
her bra is showing seriously whats wrong with you her boobs have been in your face like seven times now

DEAN 12/24/05 8:41 PM
that means she likes you

DEAN 12/24/05 8:43 PM
earth to spaceship sammy

DEAN 12/24/05 8:45 PM
theyre really awesome boobs

SAMMY 12/24/05 8:48 PM
Dean Im serious, stop it. She’s a person

DEAN 12/24/05 8:49 PM
a person with really great boobs

SAMMY 12/24/05 8:52 PM
Shut up.

DEAN 12/24/05 8:53 PM
stop kicking me

DEAN 12/24/05 8:54 PM
her name is alice ps just thought you might like to know

DEAN 12/24/05 8:55 PM
it says so on the nametag ON HER BOOBS

DEAN 12/24/05 8:57 PM
you could start the conversation like this hey alice nice boobs

SAMMY 12/24/05 9:01 PM
If you were even half as good at coming up with pick-up lines as you are at burning things, dean, then maybe Id listen to you

DEAN 12/24/05 9:03 PM
you scared or something

DEAN 12/24/05 9:04 PM
wuss

DEAN 12/24/05 9:06 PM
dont look now but alice is behind you say hi alice

DEAN 12/24/05 9:11 PM
eight times make that eight times with the boobs in your face

SAMMY 12/24/05 9:13 PM
She has to lean over to put the food down.

DEAN 12/24/05 9:15 PM
i think somethings seriously wrong with you that sign is universal, man

SAMMY 12/24/05 9:17 PM
Is it universal for ‘fuck off, dean’ ?

DEAN 12/24/05 9:19 PM
no but its universal for say hi to my boobs sammy

DEAN 12/24/05 9:20 PM
notice meeeeeeeeeeeee

DEAN 12/24/05 9:23 PM
ow that hurt

DEAN 12/24/05 9:25 PM
shes coming over again if you dont do something about it sam I swear

DEAN 12/24/05 9:31 PM
Dean, I can’t believe you did that

DEAN 12/24/05 9:32 PM
what

SAMMY 12/24/05 9:33 PM
You are so immature

DEAN 12/24/05 9:34 PM
what what what

SAMMY 12/24/05 9:40 PM
This costs money dean

DEAN 12/24/05 9:42 PM
no it doesnt weve got family whatever minutes

SAMMY 12/24/05 9:44 PM
I still can’t believe you did that

DEAN 12/24/05 9:45 PM
what

DEAN 12/24/05 9:46 PM
what what what

DEAN 12/24/05 9:49 PM
look all I said was youd like some fries with that ass

DEAN 12/24/05 9:51 PM
aw are you giving me the silent treatment

DEAN 12/24/05 9:52 PM
that never works im way too annoying for that

SAMMY 12/24/05 9:55 PM
You’re right, you are

DEAN 12/24/05 9:56 PM
haha see

*

If a waitress that hot was looking at Dean with eyes like that, Dean would know what to do with it. Dean’s fine—okay, not fine, but finer—with knowing Sam’s just not interested or asexual or whatever, but sometimes Dean gets the feeling that Sam’s always going to be punishing himself. Glimpses of Dad, man. Freaky.

Dean’s shin hurts. Sam should grow a pair and stop kicking all the time like a pissed off girl.

“Bathroom,” Dean says.

Sam doesn’t say anything, king of the silent treatment since fourth grade, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“You’re awesome company, you know that?” Dean says, sliding off the vinyl-seat, wiping burger grease off his fingers.

“Hey, Alice,” Dean says on his way to take a leak, two cups of coffee and one coke plowing through like roto-rooter, but Alice and her great breasts are all about Sam Winchester. Little does she know. Dean could tell her a story or two, if they had time and Sam was otherwise occupied. “Great coffee.”

“Hm,” Alice says, giving him a sharp look. Ouch.

Dean’s still a little pissed off. OK, he’ll even be the first to admit that. Dean’s still pissed off that Sam left and meanwhile Sam’s still grieving, and whatever they blame each other for Dean sure as hell doesn’t want to talk about it. Give it enough time on the road and they’ll forget, get comfortable with each other again, what with Dean saving Sammy’s sorry ass and them sharing a common purpose and shifts behind the wheel and blood, for Christ’s sake. It means something.

Dean looks back over his shoulder at Sam bent over the journal and his French fries. The bob of his shoulder means he’s writing something down.

Truth is, Dean’s never been able to write like Dad; he could code things up in Pig Latin but not short sentences, cryptic Obi-Wan Kenobi Jedi mind-trick Enter The Dragon guru phrases like Dad came up with. Next thing Dean knows, he’ll turn around and Sam’ll be organizing Dad’s journal in haiku. Sam can do that, turn their lives into fortune cookies for posterity, and Dean really wishes getting the book didn’t feel like some kind of last will and testament. And to my sons I bequeath my legacy, kicking ghost ass and taking ghost names. Maybe Dad just doesn’t need it anymore. He’s probably got the whole thing memorized by now, wherever he is, driving his truck all alone down the interstate.

Dean doesn’t think about it, and he’s still a little pissed off.

He shoulders the door open and locks it behind him and unzips his fly, which is about when the toilet bowl goes completely crazy, flushing over and over again and making a sound like it’s gonna be less than a second before it explodes all over him. Toilet water gurgles up over the seat and Dean takes a quick step back before it ruins his shoes. These are new shoes, damn it.

“Aw, what the hell,” Dean says. He’s really had it with water acting up and they’re miles away from Manitoc by now, so what gives?

Someone bangs on the door. “Everything all right in there, sir?” It’s Alice, their waitress. The day probably can’t get any worse, Dean figures.

“Uh,” Dean says. “You have trouble with this thing before?”

*

Turns out they have. Toilet’s been acting up since ’97 and no one really knows why, except that they’ve had a couple of guys out to check the plumbing who couldn’t find anything wrong. Doesn’t mean there hasn’t been trouble, though. Freaky flushing at night, says Alice. Jim, who owns the place, says that one night he came down because he thought he heard a burglar and he swears there was a guy, real big guy, wandering around, but what the hell was he doing in the bathroom? Mrs. Jim, whose name Dean didn’t catch, sighs and rolls her eyes and tells them that they seem like nice boys, but that doesn’t solve the problem of the mess Dean’s made in the bathroom.

It’s around eleven when they get out of the place, smelling of soft scrub and bacon grease. All Dean wants is a shower, some sleep and revenge.

“I’m telling you, there’s something wrong with that thing,” Dean says.

“Yeah, there is,” Sam says. “You clogged it up, it exploded all over, your manly pride is wounded—now can we move on?”

“It’s haunted,” Dean insists. “You heard Alice. Since ’97.”

“Seriously, Dean,” Sam says, “what kind of spirit just hangs around in the bathroom and flushes a toilet?”

Dean shrugs. “A really bored one?”

Sam fixes Dean with a look that’s not fair because last Dean checked, he’s not the older brother. “This is ridiculous,” Sam says.

“Here’s an idea,” Dean says, “since you’re getting so friendly with Dad’s journal and all, why don’t you just look it up?”

“You think Dad’s got notes on haunted toilets in there?” Sam shakes his head and laughs, which beyond the circumstances is nice to see, and Dean would own up to it if he weren’t so pissed off. At least he’s admitting it, and admitting it is part of the journey, or whatever. “Is that what this is about, Dean?” Sam adds. “Are you freaked out because of the journal? ‘Cause if you are, you can have it, I don’t even want it, man, it’s not like it’s a thing—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Dean says. “Hold on a second. Are you psychoanalyzing me right now? Is that what’s happening?”

“If this is about Dad’s journal,” Sam says, deflects, switching angles. “I mean, if that’s what this is about—”

“It’s not about Dad’s journal, Sammy.” Dean fishes through his duffel. “It’s about a toilet.”

“A haunted toilet.”

“Yeah. A haunted toilet.”

Sam purses his lips and shakes his head, without a laugh this time. “OK,” he says. “Fine. This is about a haunted toilet. Did you see anything?”

“Not exactly,” Dean admits. “I’m serious. Look it up.”

Sam throws his things down on his bed and gets out Dad’s journal, which is living in Sam’s bag now, apparently. OK. Dean’s fine with that. Dean takes out a couple of guns that need cleaning and watches Sam over the barrel as he flips through the pages. Dean could say a lot of things, like, Any pig latin you need help translating, there? or something equally dumb, not the same kind of talking Sam’s so bent on, but similar. Sam really knows how to navigate Dad’s journal, which should make Dean happy or proud or something. The great thing about Sammy is that he really knows how to make Dean pissed off at himself.

“Well,” Sam says finally, Dean’s guns finished with and his hands smelling like a different kind of grease. “I’m sorry, man. There’s nothing in there about toilet ghosts.”

Sam looks at Dean for a long, fierce moment and if their job weren’t so ridiculous sometimes, Dean wouldn’t be able to laugh it off like he does now, shrugging and glancing away. “Whatever. You want first shower or what?”

*

When Sam comes out of the shower, Dean’s waiting for him with a grin on his face that Sam’s seen countless times before. It’s only just starting to get less weird, seeing it on Dean’s twenty-six year old face. A lot changes in four years and the man Dean is now has angles that the Dean Sam remembers never had. Dean isn’t ever going to talk about it, though, and the most Sam can do to retaliate is knock heads with him all the time, just to remind him it’s there.

This is part of why Sam left. They become these unfamiliar, unforgivable people when they’re together, people who drive each other nuts, because Dean refuses ever, ever to open up. Other people, sure, they have issues, but at the end of the day they sit down and work them out because they don’t know what might be waiting under their bed, or on the ceiling, and they haven’t been taught since they were six years old that letting your guard down means letting the ghosts in.

Sam never thought about it before the way he thinks about it now, post-Manitoc, seeing Dean open up to a kid like that and having to question his own assumptions about what Dean did or didn’t want. What the hell does he even want now? Who is he?

“Check this out,” Dean says, and turns the laptop around neatly on top of the bed.

Sam’s hair is wet at the back of his neck as he reads. Sam knows who Dean is—he’s Sam’s older brother, who googles toilet ghosts while Sam’s in the shower. “Hideous ghost won’t stop flushing pub loo,” Sam quotes, and sighs. “This doesn’t prove anything, you know. The Supernatural World—c’mon, you have to admit, this is pretty weak.”

“Next tab, dude,” Dean says.

In the next tab there’s an article about some guy in Minnesota who left instructions in his will to have his body cremated and his ashes flushed down the toilet of his favorite bar. It’s short and uninformative but has a few links to other, similar cases, one in Wyoming and one in Massachusetts. None of the toilets in question were haunted after that, at least not according to the article, but when you’re dealing with hauntings, you can’t assume anything. “All right,” Sam capitulates. “You got me. The toilet’s haunted. But it’s not actually hurting anyone.”

“Yeah, it is,” Dean says. “You said so yourself: my manly pride.”

“It’s just flushing the toilet. If it even is a ghost. Besides, how the hell are we supposed to un-haunt a toilet, anyway?”

Dean turns around, searching for something in his duffel, and comes out again with a lighter in one hand and a brand new container of rock salt in the other.

“The answer to everything can’t always be ‘burning it,’ Dean,” Sam says.

Dean cocks an eyebrow. “Why the hell not?”

*

When they wake up snow’s covered everything, the rooftops and the trees and the cars and the nativity scenes, the plastic Rudolphs. They eat at the same diner for breakfast and Dean only texts Sam once, with take one for the team sammy, which Sam deletes without replying. Anything else and he’s just encouraging him.

“So this—uh,” Sam says to Alice, when he heads up to the cash register to pay the check. It’s not fair, what he’s given to work with. He looks over his shoulder at their table and Dean cups his hands in front of his chest, mouthing boobs for good measure, as if Sam didn’t get the picture already, what with the obscene boob charade Dean’s putting on across the room. Cut it out, Sam mouths back, and goes back to watching Alice count out his change. “Uh, Alice,” Sam continues, ignoring him, “this—toilet problem you have…”

Alice gives him a look. She seems nice but Sam knows absolutely nothing about her, just that she’s blonde and the toilet of the diner she works in is haunted, and that’s pretty much the most he’s ever going to know about a woman again for a long time; he’s got a feeling about that. “Yeah?” Alice says. “You got a funny way of talking to a woman, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “My brother says the same thing. Listen, uh, do you know—when it happens?”

“The flushing?” Alice asks.

“Right,” Sam says. “The flushing.”

“It’s at night,” Alice says. “Doesn’t bother the customers much that way, ‘cept for late eaters like you and your brother.”

“Thanks,” Sam says, shoving the change in his pocket. “Hey, uh, you know if there was anyone—anyone particularly fond of this place, ate here all the time, maybe? Possibly, possibly dead now?”

If Alice thought he was worth her time before, Sam thinks, then she’s probably long since re-evaluated her initial assessment. All for the best, anyway. Maybe now Dean can stop driving him nuts about this, like Dean is personally invested in whether or not Sam gets laid in Geneva, Illinois.

“You’re cute,” Alice says, “but you’re weird. Yeah, there was a guy like that. Used to eat here every night. How’d you know that?”

“Huh,” Sam says. “Never mind. Thanks. Thank you, Alice.”

He leaves a big tip when Dean’s already out the door, and Alice blows him a kiss that Sam prefers to ignore.

“So we have a day to kill,” Dean says, heading for the gas station.

“I still don’t get why we have to waste it, Dean,” Sam says.

“Because it’s a ghost, Sam,” Dean replies.

“It’s not doing anything. It’s wasting water, that’s not exactly—”

“Exciting?” Dean snags a bag of Skittles and generic no-brand potato chips, some twizzlers, stops to ponder the ding-dongs. It’s kind of remarkable that all his teeth haven’t fallen out of his mouth yet. “It’s not all guns and glory, Sammy. Sometimes it’s lonely assholes who get some friend to pour ‘em down the toilet when no one’s looking. But that doesn’t mean they won’t hurt anybody. Besides.” Dean holds up peanut M&Ms—you want some?—and Sam shakes his head. “Isn’t toasting ‘em just like putting ‘em out of their misery, anyway? I mean, you said it yourself, man. What kind of spirit just hangs around in a bathroom and flushes the toilet?”

Sam shoves his hands deep into his pockets. There’s a hole in the left one and he pokes his thumb into it for a while, his fingers half-numb from the cold. “A really bored one. OK.”

At the counter Dean picks up some cheap gloves, two pairs, and tosses one of them to Sam before they swing out into the cold, Dean cracking peanut M&Ms between his molars and Sam wondering when the hell he really became this person again, or if he ever stopped being him to begin with.

*

That night Dean picks the lock to Jim’s diner and slips inside, Sam close behind him. Their reflections move silently across the big window and the gold JIM’S DINE lettering stamped and peeling across the glass, with the R missing. Dean can hear the phantom flushing echoing towards them, boring son of a bitch, sitting there and pressing the lever over and over again, like even being dead and knowing his own little mystery of the universe doesn’t make him capable of doing something more meaningful than just watching the water go down the drain. Not like it would matter, anyway. He’s pretty damn dead.

“So if the ashes got flushed down the toilet,” Sam begins.

“Then the guy’s bound to the toilet bowl for all eternity,” Dean finishes. “Pretty romantic, right?”

“Right,” Sam says.

“So we’re burning the toilet,” Dean says, and waits for it.

Sam sighs. “So we’re burning the toilet,” he agrees.

“See?” Dean says. “Works every time.”

“You know,” Sam says, “some families, they have Christmas trees and Christmas dinners and, and presents. They don’t break into diners in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve and set toilets on fire. Just something you should think about.”

Dean takes the rock salt out of his backpack and hands it to Sam. “Man,” he says, “some families are pretty fuckin’ boring.” Dean can practically feel Sam rolling his eyes behind him as he edges up to the bathroom door and nudges it open with his toe. The flushing sound stops. Now would probably be a great time to tell Sam that they’ve had Christmas trees, too, and Dean even bought him a book one year because Dean’s an amazing brother and even though it was the stupidest present ever, it was what Sam wanted. You don’t think, Dean would start out with—and that’s just the problem, Sam doesn’t think. Not about this, anyway.

Whatever, doesn’t matter. They’re setting a toilet on fire and Sam doesn’t really want to work it out; he just thinks he does. If he ever worked it out he’d have nothing left to chew on. Dean’s still a little pissed, but he’s willing to let it go because working together’s an important part of not getting your ass kicked.

“Hey, Dean?” Sam asks over the sound of the salt going down and the gasoline gurgling.

Dean flicks the lighter on, stands back by the doorway. “Yeah?”

“You, uh, ever set a toilet bowl on fire before?”

“We’re not setting it on fire,” Dean says. “We can’t set it on fire.”

“I thought—”

“We’re blowing it up,” Dean explains. “Then it’ll be on fire.”

“Great,” Sam says, with a little huff of disapproval. “That’s really—that’s great.”

One of Dean’s favorite family memories is Dad teaching him how to rig the makeshift flamethrower-bomb-thing for ‘things that need burning but don’t burn the regular way.’ Toilets fit that category, wooden seat but a porcelain bowl. It’s the gift that just keeps on giving.

“Stand back,” Dean says.

It’s a good feeling, not having to tell Sam twice.

*

Jim is a pretty fast guy. It helps that he lives upstairs from the diner, but he’s pretty spry for a man who’s got to be pushing sixty-five, and he’s pretty swift to respond when the bathroom explodes.

Sam throws their bags into the trunk and Dean guns the ignition while Sam slams into shotgun. The Impala is the greatest car in existence; there’s not another car in the world who’d start up so quick on a cold night like this one.

“We’re actually getting run out of town,” Sam says as Dean makes a sharp turn around an icy corner. “I can’t believe we’re actually getting run out of town. On Christmas. We blew up their bathroom on Christmas!”

“I know that, Sammy,” Dean says. “I was there. They following us?”

Sam cranes his neck to see and Dean stares into the rearview, but all that’s behind them is snow and night and more snow and more night. “I don’t know,” Sam says. “I don’t think so.”

Dean runs twenty seven miles over the speed limit for about half an hour anyway, until he’s sure no local police are on their tail. When he finally slows down a little Sam’s put his feet up on the dash—at least he’s taken off his shoes—and has Dad’s journal tucked between his knees, scrawling something onto a blank page.

“Dude, are you actually writing about this one?” Dean asks.

“Hideous ghost won’t stop flushing diner toilet,” Sam confirms. “Yeah, I am.”

“We never actually saw it,” Dean points out. “He might not’a been hideous. C’mon, this wasn’t even a job.”

“It’s not all guns and glory, Dean, remember?” Sam parrots.

Dean makes a noise like he’ll never get his kid brother, and maybe he won’t, but fine, whatever makes him happy. It’s about one in the morning when Sam closes up the journal and leans his head against the window and falls asleep, steaming up the glass with the rhythm of his sleep-breathing. Dean fishes quietly around in one of his bags from the gas station to hang a tree-shaped pine-freshener on the mirror. He taps it once, flicking his forefinger against his thumb to send it spinning in circles, and cranks the heat up.

It’s a cold night.

*