#<5k

On the counter, Sam’s phone buzzes. The vibrations ripple throughout the stained plywood, prompting his brandy to quiver in its glass pyxis and his body to shiver in turn. Something pushes towards the surface, pollution like ink spreading throughout water, and his legs bounce fervently for all of a second.

Get a grip, Softie, echoes off the walls of Sam’s skull, and his body stiffens.

Stop calling me that, a brasher, indignant voice responds. Laughter follows in that same, chillingly cool inflection.

The bartender comes into view, peering cautiously into Sam’s eyes. He must have been twitching again. The voice knows to fall silent, isn’t a fool, and so the man’s suspicion drains away.

“Refill?”

Sam’s eyes tick towards his mostly full glass. Assessing, the one they call ‘Soft’ takes the initiative and responds, “Just the tab.”

Nodding, the man steps away. Customers are waiting, a low hum dinning throughout the bar, but he goes to follow the request immediately. The cool voice murmurs something crass without much feeling, and the louder one clamours for quiet.

Counterproductive, the second voice remarks idly.

“Shut up,” Sam mutters. A second later a shadow falls over him, his eyes lifting slowly to meet the bartender’s. They remain locked for a pregnant moment, before the paper slips from between the man’s fingers and he leaves to attend to his patrons.

More words choke the back of Sam’s throat, but abort themselves. Rising to his feet, Sam fishes a few notes from his pocket and lets them slip from between his fingers to land atop the bill. Hastily, but without enough vigour to draw attention, Sam stalks through the bar, eyes fixed squarely on the exit. Strains tugging them this way or that rise up, but a solid thump to the chest - causing a nearby woman to jump - settles the revolt with nothing more than an exhale.

The chill of the outside air, rushing in from all sides and slipping like breath down the back of Sam’s neck, brings clarity. The entangled mass cools, igneous, and defines clearly the divide between three pieces; two near the front, one burrowing as far into the spine as possible.

The instant Sam’s back meets cool brick, solidifying the buried piece until it ceases to pulse at all, Sam’s mouth twists.

“We agreed I’d drive,” Soft snaps, stress turning to anger.

Sam’s lips curl. “You need to retake your test, buddy.”

Sam’s fist thumps the hard wall, but he goes silent. Catastrophizing is loud, or so Soulless says, and the internal grumbling starts almost as soon as Soft falls into a rut of it.

“God, loosen up. If you’re so worried about appearing normal, why don’t you stop struggling and just hand me the reins?”

Sam laughs. So loudly that it echoes throughout the parking lot, drawing looks from bikers smoking at the mouths. Sam laughs again, a little crazed.

“Right. You’ll make us look normal, you fucking sociopath.”

“Hey, Larry,” a voice comes. Foolishly, Sam’s head turns to the source, locking eyes with a bearded man carrying a half-empty pint glass. “Look at this wacko over here.”

Larry pokes his head from inside the building, hot on his friend’s heels. He leers at him like a circus attraction, stripping Sam's body to the bone.

Assessing his reaction, the two begin a slow prowl forwards. Their boots crunch gravel, like jaws snapping bone, until finally they reach him, standing far enough away to avoid a swing. Testing him out.

“Who you talking to, boy?” Not Larry asks, a lopsided grin revealing two rotten teeth and a false one. He’s shorter than his companion, but he closes in more quickly. Leaning in too close for comfort, the stench of beer launching a preemptive assault. “The voices in your head? The ghosts only you can see?”

First option, Soulless replies, but Soft swallows it down. He opts instead to stare silently as they close in, one on either side of him with his back against a wall, where the third fragment burrows more deeply.

Not Larry reaches out a hand, waving it in front of his face and drawing out a few rapid blinks. An ugly laugh bubbles up in the man’s throat, thick with intoxication. “How do you know that we’re real?”

That draws a drunken giggle from Larry, who grows emboldened. He reaches out, flicking his forehead with his forefinger. A pressure begins to rise like a tide, inevitable. As they burst into sniggers, Soft falters for a moment regarding whether he even wants to hold it back, and in that split second the hands grab him, shove him down, and his head spins as he goes underwater.

He can still see, but the images are blurred. In the moonlight, everything looks black and blue, so no splashes of new colour can aid him. He can still just barely hear beyond screeching tinnitus, which worsens the more he fights for air. He scrambles, drowning, while commands ripple through the muscles of his vessel, sparking along his synapses and shocking him into submission.

His head spins, and spins. Until two hands grasp him, and pull him to the surface.

Gasping, Soft reorients himself. Sam is marching toward the outdoor bathroom block, liquid dripping from his knuckles where they swing at his sides. Delayed adrenaline rushes the more he regains his footing, and he can hear Soulless sniggering.

“Why the hell did you do that?” Soft squeaks rather than snarls, so loudly that it comes out of Sam’s mouth. He pauses, holding Sam’s breath, but they’re alone under the wan ceiling light.

Soft sees Sam’s mouth twist in the mirror before he feels it. Disoriented, he can’t prevent the march forward, where Sam’s hand twists the faucet before diving under the spray, running red down the undulations of his knuckles.

“Come on, Softie,” Soulless murmurs. “We both know you would’ve let them step all over us. You wanna be treated like a circus freak by two drunk cunts in Fuckville, Nowhere?”

Sam’s mouth twists with distaste. “I don’t give a shit how two drunk cunts in Fuckville, Nowhere look at me. I care that you haven’t stopped fucking doing that even though I told you not to!”

Soulless laughs. A sinister sound, colder than the cheap sink where he rests Sam’s hands on it. “You’re not the only one in here.”

“Yeah, but I’m the default one, I’m fucking in charge, and when you try to take control you only fuck things up!”

Soft’s head is back beneath the water before he even realises he’s lost control. He squirms, gasping for air, finds himself let up for a second only to be shoved back down. Soulless is waterboarding him.

By the time his head is spinning and their vessel is about to lose consciousness, Soulless lets his head break into the air. Soft is afforded a few seconds to gasp before Sam’s eyes are wrangled to stare deeply into his reflection. A blank expression, relaxed and tense at once.

“Listen,” Sam murmurs, close enough to the mirror that it fogs up, though his eyes remain sharp like cut crystals. “You get to steer most of the time. That’s fine. I let you. You’re right; you’re the default. But you’re also a fucking sissy who’ll let anyone walk all over you because you’re scared of everything. Of Sam’s mind shattering into tinier pieces, of Dean seeing you like th-” Soulless pauses to wrangle Soft down, silencing his protest. He’s still so dizzy that he can’t fight it. “One of us has to take the initiative sometimes, and I’m stepping up to the mark.” Sam leans in closer, his breath rebounding off the glass and washing warm over his face. “Is that so wrong?”

Soft falls silent. Soulless’s eyes bore into his through the mirror, and he turns away to avoid them. He looks back, where the curled mass shivers and shivers, silent and impartial. The shattered piece doesn’t remember what morals are, doesn’t talk, doesn’t move unless to shudder. He won’t side with him, and he won’t keep him company. Soulless is the only one he has in here.

He turns back around to find Soulless curling Sam’s mouth at the edges. “It’s not just us; we’ve got the one back there to think about. We’ve gotta show him that people can’t just trample all over us; maybe we’ll even be able to get him to talk.” They both fall utterly silent. No sign of a response, or that the subdued one even heard them.

Sighing, Soulless straightens Sam up, finally loosening his grip on Soft. He lets him have control, but slowly trails a hand across Sam’s sensitive throat. Soft shudders.

“We’re fragile. If you don’t want to crawl back to that brother of Sam’s, that’s your prerogative; that just means we’ve gotta look out for our own. Alright?”

Sam’s hand brushes back and forth across the vulnerable skin of his neck, distracting. Dizzy, Soft nods.