strangetrip | [EP] What a nice surprise

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[EP] What a nice surprise

"Eugene Thompson," repeated the Innkeeper, when Sam finally broke down and stopped searching for the wheelchair guy to ask. "One moment, please. Do you need any--"

"No. I have plenty of towels." What the heck was it with the towels, anyway? Sam shifted his weight to his other foot and tried not to screw up his face too much. The guy was just doing his job. Even if that was literally all he could do. "Um, but thanks."

"You're welcome." The Innkeeper did something that was probably smile, but Sam couldn't have described it, or his face for the life of him. "Ah, yes." He tapped a finger against the rounded black monitor screen that was as almost as old as Sam. "Mr. Thompson has checked out."

"Huh?" Sam's felt the surprise overtake his face and he had to work hard to plant his hands at the edge of the counter instead of reaching across to grab the guy by the collar. "I thought you said we couldn't leave."

"That is correct."

"But Flash--"

"Flash Thompson has checked out."

"How does that even make--" Never mind. The lyrics of Hotel California came to him. "So, you're saying he's dead and I should look for his ghost?"

"I have no record of His Ghost."

Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Okay, yeah. Thanks."

After he'd stalked away from the front desk, Sam dropped into one of the round red leather booths in the Copper Cafe and pulled out his cell...which was absolutely fucking useless and he still forgot half the time. "Great. The Innkeeper's useless. Flash has 'checked out'. And I can't text anyone to tell them about it."

Oh yeah. Life in the days before instantaneous communication sucked. And blew.

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Henry let out a dry chuckle as he sat down. "No, I suppose it isn't." His own father had been much the same way. Henry himself was generally alright with being a little softer when it came to the people he cared about. "I promise I won't tell your brother I have any lick of concern for other people if you don't. Heaven forbid a Winchester have a kind heart and let the world see it," he teased.

He rolled his shoulders, a settling kind of gesture as he considered things. "I just never saw any point in raising someone to think emotion makes him less of a man, but I suppose that hardly matters now and neither of us probably wants to talk about John anyway."

"Yeah, no." Talking about Dad inevitably led to wondering what Dad would've been like if Henry had raised him, and from there, whether Dean could have had a life, what Sam would've done with his. He shrugged instead and pointedly changed the subject.

"It's nothing serious, anyway." At least not the stuff on this side of whatever dimension shift they occupied. So far as he'd figured out. "Just little shit. Having to actually find Dean or page him instead of texting if I want to tell him something. Ghosts that won't stay banished. The hotel staff's obsession with towels and anti-obsession with answers... and not being able to figure this place out so we can go home."

Henry frowned a little. "You haven't tried enchanting small notebooks to serve in place of texting?" he asked, tilting his head curiously. Surely even without an education with the Letters, John had to have known about that. It was basic. Or had John known about it and just never bothered teaching the boys because not only was all magic evil and wrong, but the advances in communication...clearly made such things obsolete.

"The towels aren't even anything worth writing home about and I think the most frustrating thing is the permanence of the decor."

"..." Sam started to answer, then shut his mouth before he sounded like an idiot. Instead, he blinked and looked a little like one. He pressed his lips together to hide the way his tongue rolled behind his teeth in irritation with himself.

Finally, he couldn't help it and had to blurt, "Enchanting notebooks? You can do that?"

Henry blinked several times. "Of course you can do that. How on earth do you think we communicated at distance before texting and the constant access to phones? Josie and I didn't attend the same school, but we couldn't tell any of our peers what all we were learning outside school so...so we'd talk about things. We never set up a system for alerts, but I can't imagine that would be all that hard. We were a little more concerned with other people being able to read it."

He waved all that off. "Nevermind all that. I could teach you. I'd be more than happy to." He'd even try not to be too smug about his analog ways finally becoming useful. "It'd be no problem at all to set something up that worked for you and Dean. Better if I show you how to do it than just do it myself. The enchantment relies on a central pivot, intent more than anything. No blood magic or curses or anything like that. Nothing weird or dangerous." He frowned. "i"m not doing a very good job at explaining it am I?"

He cleared his throat, trying to martial his enthusiasm just a bit. "Let's try that again. Yes you can enchant notebooks. You can enchant basically anything. Would you like to learn how?"

Sam had about a thousand questions, starting with who Josie was, but the pivot was the more important. He thought he understood that. It made sense that any kind of enchantment would need something to work off.

"It's okay. I pick things up pretty quick. The idea of a pivot... you'd need one for any kind of magic to keep it grounded. It would be the thing that makes the messages go to the right notebook, right?" And his eyes had lit up, bright with curiosity. "And, yeah, please. I'd love to learn. Anything you want to teach me."

Henry's smile was brilliant. He knew he liked Sam for a reason. What a lovely young man.

"Well, most magic you'd want to keep grounded. There are some benefits to strategic chaos," which of course Sam already had to know by this point. Hunter or not, some principles were the same. "But yes, essentially that. The notebooks seem like a good and worthwhile first project, I think, and we can work from there. Is there anything in particular you're interested in? I'm happy to teach you anything I know."

"Everything?" Sam smiled sheepishly and reached back to scratch the back of his neck. He realized Henry didn't know very much about him. He'd probably never heard Dean call him 'college boy', or any of the other nerd-names Dean had for him. He shrugged finally and said, "I'm serious about that. I'm interested in everything, but maybe we should start with stuff that's relevant to getting out of here. But warding and healing would probably be good, too."

"Warding and healing is easy. They're one of the first things you learn." Both were absolutely essential. "Anything that might get us out of here..." Henry sighed heavily. "Magic that strong, first you're going to have to learn how to tap into the power of your soul. That takes...it's a delicate process, very delicate, to learn how to do. You'll need a great deal of practice to get to that point. I'm not saying no, just that it's not immediate. Once you know how to do it it's like...riding a bike, I suppose."

He cleared his throat and pressed on, thinking about that level of magic. "You're going to need to learn Enochian," he said, certain that John hadn't taught them because John probably hadn't learned in the first place. "Are you decent with languages?"

"Why didn't you heal yourself?" was Sam's immediate question. If he could, it seemed like he should have. But if you had to to draw on the power of your own soul, "Is it not possible to perform magic directly on yourself?" Of course, Henry had asked him a question. "Yeah, I'm good at languages. I have a couple of them. And, uh, I might have a leg up on the tapping into my own soul thing... it's kind of complicated, and we probably shouldn't talk about it here."

It was weird to be so open about what he knew, was capable of, and wanted, especially with another Winchester. But it felt pretty good, too, because for once, the stuff someone wanted him to do was the stuff he was actually good at.

"I didn't have any supplies on me for a basic healing and after...after everything I'd been through before I arrived here, if I'd tried to tap into my soul again, it would've killed me," Henry said quietly, more sheepishly than he'd otherwise have liked. "And not to sound too melodramatic, but at that point it felt like perhaps...perhaps I'd earned a bit of physical pain."

Henry cleared his throat. "I'm willing to listen to whatever you have to say whenever you're ready to say it and wherever you feel we might need to have that conversation." He was pretty sure that nothing his grandsons said could surprise him at this point.

Sam screwed up his face at Henry saying he deserved a little bit. It sounded like Dean saying a year was a good deal for his life. Since he didn't know Henry well enough to argue with that, he just let it go. Besides, there was the other topic, which was a lot more fraught.

"Uh, yeah. Maybe not today. Nothing about you, but I'd rather you and Dean were on speaking terms before I opening the family bone closet."

Henry nodded a little and cleared his throat. "Right, well, as I said before, that's on Dean. I'm not going to-" He pressed his lips together. "I'm not opposed to speaking with or getting to know him properly, but I also am well aware that should that be done in an indelicate manner on my part, I risk getting assaulted again. I have nothing against Dean, I just don't know him well enough to know how to approach him properly." That sounded good enough. He nodded to himself.

"Anyway, whenever you'd like to get started learning, we can. I'd like a couple days to...lesson plan I suppose, maybe find a less public place to discuss what you might already know a little more freely?"

"Yeah," Sam said about all of it together. When you spend your life talking and running, you didn't exactly get good at startng or ending conversations. "Maybe you can send me an enchanted message and I can work on trying to figure it out until then."

Well, that was a sure sign of his grandson shutting down if Henry had ever heard one. "Right," he said, smiling stiffly as he got up. "I'd be happy to. I'll leave you to whatever it was you were doing." He'd make the boys each one and find some way to have it delivered. Clearly he'd crossed a line somewhere. "If you need anything at all, I'm in 118." It was an offer that would probably fall on deaf ears, but one that Henry needed to make all the same.

Sam looked up and gave him a tentative smile. It wasn't Henry's fault. Sam just didn't know how to do normal conversation with family. "Thanks."

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[EP] What a nice surprise

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