The distant sound of running water from the shower was comforting as he sat at the table, tapping away at his computer. Motels were the closest approximation to home he had anymore and the sound of Shaun singing softly to himself in the shower helped Lucas relax. Hunts, even quick ones, always set his nerves on edge and they tended to stay like that until he found a way to relax. Just the simple sounds of his partner, elated that he was able to bathe, was enough to ease his tension. With his cup of tea steaming on the table beside him and the slowly burning cigarette in a nearby ashtray, he would be feeling relatively calm in no time.

He’d come close to digging out the speakers he had splurged on a few months ago, but then thought better of it. A faint pounding had begun in the back of his head the moment the bullets had started flying, and the music wouldn’t do much to improve that state of affairs. Well, that and he was sure Shaun would have come out of the bathroom complaining. Despite the progress they had made in learning to work well together, they still had the occasional vehement argument over their choice in music.

Lucas didn’t mind though, despite how much he might complain that Shaun never let him listen to anything halfway decent, he actually took more comfort from the sound of his partner’s voice coming from the bathroom. In another life, he thought perhaps Shaun could have gone far with his voice. Without any formal training whatsoever, the man’s deep voice had a surprising range and carried a melody with ease. Lucas couldn’t carry a tune to save his life, and it usually required a great deal of alcohol to get him to do more than hum softly.

The quiet man rubbed at the back of his neck, knowing the gesture would do nothing to alleviate the ache growing in the back of his skull. The headaches were a part of his life as much as the guns and monster hunting. Over the counter medicine barely put a dent in the pain, and anything stronger was apt to make him groggy or sick. The best he could do was keep himself relaxed and ride out the worst of it.

The bathroom door clicked open, and his eyes flicked up from the screen to track Shaun’s path across the motel room. Water ran in little rivers down his tanned skin, catching in his dark body hair. Shaun hadn’t bothered to wrap a towel about him, instead he’d tossed it carelessly over his broad shoulders. Everything about the man was big, which was part of the appeal of watching him move. His muscles were one good reason, those, and his excellent aim meant he was the one who got stuck into the worst of the fighting. They were also a delight to watch as they shifted beneath his skin. The various scars from the many fights he’d had over the years didn’t detract from his appearance, but rather enhanced it, in Lucas’ mind.

“Enjoyin’ the show?”

The rough voice still carried the deep woods accent Shaun had picked up in his hometown, and it made Lucas smile. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“You were starin’ hard enough to bore holes in the back of my head, or maybe some of my other bits.”

Lucas chuckled. “Fine, you caught me. But when you walk around looking like that, can you blame me?”

Shaun turned, eyeing him with a telling smirk. “I just got clean, and you’re over there thinkin’ dirty thoughts.”

Lucas shrugged, not sorry in the slightest as he watched Shaun rub the towel over his dark hair; black hair would probably be a better description. His partner was as dark as he was big, save for his eyes, which were the brightest blue Lucas had ever seen. In his opinion, it was hard to believe that some people looked at Shaun and thought he was a big, dumb brute. Yes, he was large, and yes, he spoke simply, but there was far too much sharp intelligence in those bright eyes to think, even for a moment, that Shaun was in any way close to stupid.

As if to prove him right, Shaun frowned at him as he asked, “Your head?”

It was then Lucas realized he had been absent mindedly rubbing the back of his head again. Grimacing, he shrugged and took a last drag on his cigarette before crushing it in the cheap glass ashtray. The pain wasn’t bad enough that Shaun should have to worry about him. In truth, he would have preferred to never let the other hunter know that it bothered him. The reality was, he couldn’t always hide it even if he wanted to. The pain could sometimes grow to the point that it was impossible to hide.

“It’s not a big deal,” Lucas assured him softly, trying to turn his attention back to his computer screen.

“I didn’t think one would have been so bad.”

Lucas sighed. “Wasn’t just one nearby. There were…others.”

Unsurprisingly, Shaun flinched in response to that, nostrils flaring. “Why didn’t ya say somethin’? That coulda been a problem, ‘specially with us separated like that.”

The bigger hunter’s accent was getting thicker, which meant he was whipping himself up quickly. Lucas knew his partner was thinking more about Lucas’ safety than he was about his own. Shaun had always had a bit of an invincibility complex, while simultaneously fussing over Lucas’s safety at every turn. It would be sweet if it wasn’t for the fact that Lucas had proven repeatedly that when the chips were down he could take care of himself.

“You really think I wouldn’t have said anything to you if there was going to be a problem? The werewolf was the only one we could deal with at that moment.”

Shaun snorted. “What’s the point of havin’ superpowers if you keep ‘em to yourself?”

“I wasn’t keeping anything from you that you needed to worry about, and they’re not superpowers.”

He didn’t know what to call his abilities, despite having had them his entire life. When he was younger, the monsters he could hear and see everywhere had been passed off as many things. A wild imagination was first, then came what one doctor diagnosed as “waking nightmares.” When the treatment for that didn’t work, they had begun looking for a possible neurological problem but found none. It sure as hell hadn’t stopped the droves of doctors from trying all sorts of new drugs and treatment programs on him for years.

He didn’t blame his parents, they were normal people trying to help the son they watched suffer every day from the unexplainable things he saw. However, it didn’t save them when one of the monsters they didn’t believe in broke into their home and slaughtered them. After the loss of his family, he was eventually found by hunters who knew a blessing when they saw one. They took him in and trained him, both as a hunter, as well as helping him hone his innate abilities.

It turned out to be good timing, when puberty hit, it hit like a proverbial truck. Suddenly, he was no longer able to just see the creatures under their human façade. Instead, with the rush of hormones and changes in his body came the ability to actually feel the creatures when they were nearby. He didn’t quite know how to describe the sensation to anyone who had never felt it. It was such an overwhelming sensation at first, like having several presences beyond his own, bearing down on his mind all at the same time. Eventually he learned how to shut them out and then even differentiate between them, allowing him to identify some of the creatures by the presence he felt. The lack of knowledgeable teachers made it harder, but over time, he was able to be a true asset to the hunters.

The downside was that it took its toll on him. Just seeing the creatures’ true forms didn’t cause him harm as he knew the truth now, and he no longer felt any fear at seeing them. It wasn’t as if these creatures knew they had been identified, or at least, they generally didn’t. It was allowing his senses to stretch out and find the nearby creatures presence that brought on the pain.

Shaun huffed in annoyance as he asked, “You didn’t go further than ya had to, didja?”

His accent was still thick, bringing a furrow to Lucas’ brow. “No, I just kept an eye on him and any others around.”

“It.”

“What?” Lucas asked, irritation creeping into his face when he realized why he was being corrected. “Oh God, not this again, Shaun.”

“Call it what it was, an ‘it.’ Wasn’t no person.”

Lucas breathed out slowly in an effort to keep himself calm. “I didn’t say it was a person, I said it was a male. It was alive, it had a gender, and that gender was male. Please.”

He watched as Shaun struggled internally, trying to decide between thinking he was right, and giving Lucas the peace he was asking for. Out of the two of them, Shaun was the most vehement about finding and killing every supernatural creature they could find. Lucas was all for killing the ones who inflicted harm on humanity, but he wasn’t quite as blood thirsty as his partner. Even the slightest hint of trying to humanize the creatures was a surefire way to ignite Shaun’s temper. This was not the first time Shaun had tried to “correct” him for giving a supernatural creature a gender, a name, or any sort of human characteristic.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he finally saw the fight dim in Shaun’s eyes. It was another sign of how far they had come, Lucas could appreciate that. Going back a few years, and Shaun wouldn’t have given up the fight quite that easily. If he was being honest with himself, Lucas knew he wouldn’t have given up that easily, either. He would have retreated into the cold comfort of cold facts, analyzing and breaking apart everything Shaun threw his way, incensing the other man even further. The argument would have escalated into Shaun shouting and slamming things, while Lucas eventually shut down into an icy silence.

Now he only had to deal with Shaun huffing as he jammed his legs into a pair of loose shorts, and pulled an undersized shirt over his chest. It did nothing to hide the body he was covering up, but Lucas knew whatever moment they might have been having had passed. Shaun was already making his way to the door, poking about for a loose pair of shoes.

“Going somewhere?” Lucas asked curiously.

“Gonna get some food, I know ya ain’t ate,” Shaun’s tone was accusing as he found a large pair of sandals to shove his feet into.

Lucas didn’t even try to protest. “You’re going to go out like that?”

Shaun looked down at himself in question. “What’s wrong with this?”

Lucas gestured toward Shaun’s body. “The shirt is practically painted on you, and the shorts aren’t much better. Remember what happened the last time you went out like that? You refused to leave the motel room after what that one woman did.”

“She was older than my mama! She coulda been my mama’s mama! And she was tryin’ to…to…well you know.”

“Sleep with you, yes, and I thought you liked older women?”

Shaun narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, and I bet ya still thought I had a thing for skinny blond guys too.”

“I am not skinny.”

So, he wasn’t Shaun’s size, that didn’t make him skinny. The other man was built like a human tank; it was hard to compete with that. Lucas was only a couple of inches shorter than Shaun, but he definitely didn’t compare in muscle mass. His genetics had seen fit to give him lean muscle and special abilities in preference to enough strength to wrestle a bear.

“Uh huh, that’s why I’m the one punchin’ things, and you’re the one going to town on that computer of yours, and whatever else you do besides that yoga stuff.”

Lucas rolled his eyes. “It’s not just yoga, thank you very much. And I’m the one who uses the computer because the last time I let you use one of my computers, you got about a dozen viruses on it. From porn. Do you know how hard you have to work to get viruses from porn nowadays?”

“I was lonely!”

“Horny, the word you’re looking for is horny. I don’t know why you didn’t wake me up or go out and find someone.”

“Last time I found someone and brought ‘em back here, you complained.”

That wasn’t completely fair. He hadn’t complained. Well, not really. He had however made sure to boot Shaun’s “companion” out as soon as Shaun had woken up the following morning. Then, he had spent the next couple of hours making fun of the guy Shaun had chosen. If Lucas had to endure being woken up to the sound of Shaun screwing someone that made noises resembling a sneezing poodle rather than the sighs, moans, and groans he associated with sex, then Shaun would have to endure a few snide remarks.

“Find someone who doesn’t sound like they’re about to win Best in Show next time,” Lucas helpfully supplied, turning back to his computer.

“I think you were just jealous.”

Lucas didn’t bother to react to the old, familiar jab. The two of them enjoyed a deep friendship, a solid partnership, and the occasional sexual relationship. It didn’t go any further than that for either of them. Both of them agreed to keep that sort of thing out of their partnership, and neither of them had seen fit to change that. The number of times they had watched partnerships fall apart because of feelings, served to remind them why they were smart to keep romance out of the equation. However, it didn’t stop Shaun from occasionally poking and prodding to tease Lucas.

“Don’t you have to go get us food and try to get groped by another geriatric woman who escaped the home?” Lucas asked as he continued skimming over his newest emails.

“Fuck you,” Shaun shot back, though the lack of any real force behind the words or his deep woods accent, told Lucas that it was nothing more than a casual curse. It was more of an absent-minded scratching of an itch you’d grown used to having, kind of curse. Lucas was pretty sure there were at least another couple of curses in there as Shaun stomped over to dig out some decent, clean pants and a better shirt.

“Maybe later,” Lucas replied breezily, earning the expected snort from Shaun.

Theirs was an odd partnership, but one that worked all the same. Sometimes it really felt as if they were an old married couple, bickering with each other and nagging back and forth. Yet there was a comfort in their bickering, and a safety in their routine. The fact that it was sometimes nothing more than foreplay for great sex didn’t hurt either. What it really came down to was that Lucas had something close to what he had lost when his parents died. He would never have thought it would be Shaun who gave that to him, but life had a way of making a fool out of you and your expectations.