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He meets the man that saved him the next day.
He’s taller than David remembers, but he smiles at him, all soft and hunches over himself like he sees David’s apprehension and is trying to make himself less intimidating.
David’s lucky he’s a journalist and has decent investigative skills, because Sam was almost impossible to find even in a small town like Ford City. Lucky that his mysterious saviour is well over 6 foot and covered in scars and dresses like he owns two shirts at most so that he sticks out enough to identify.
David isn’t sure how much he should believe that Sam Burkowitz actually exits, considering that beyond the insurance card he used at the hospital (a little shady for David to even have possession about that sort of information, but it’s a small town and David’s a curious man), and a quick deep dive to find anything on the man dredged up exactly nothing.
But when he finally manages to find Sam Burkowitz, curled away in some shitty motel that looks as run down as David feels, he seems nice enough, even if he looks worse than David feels.
Still, Sam meets him where David’s standing beside his car and now that the man is standing in front of him, looming and scarred he’s not sure what to say.
What happened to me? What was it? Why do you know about it?
If Sam’s perturbed by the silence, he doesn’t show it, just keeps a careful distance between Sam and David and David’s car, like he’s trying not to encroach on his space, and David realises that this is like riding a bicycle for him. These aren’t foreign steps or even a weird day for Sam. He's relaxed, if worn down and tired, but David's almost positive it has nothing to do with talking to him.
“Would you like to talk somewhere more private?” Sam asks, and his voice his rough, like it’s wearing out. There are scars around his throat, and David can see distinct lines that crisscross the skin there - ligature strangulation, he realises, he's covered enough crime to know, and he shuts it down just as quickly.
He looks at Sam’s face, and there’s a pinched look about him now, looking David over carefully, assessing, and he tries not to feel like Sam can read him like an open book.
“Yes, that’d be great but uh,” he gestures to his car. “We could just sit in there if you want.”
Sam looks at it, says nothing for a moment, and David wants to know what he’s thinking, wants to ask Sam what the fuck is he doing out here in Nebraska, who is he really, what the fuck tried to kill him less than 24 hours ago, why did Sam know what it was?
“Sure,” Sam is saying. He’s smiling again, and David distinctly realises that Sam’s trying to calm him down and David tries to school his features, even if he knows he does a poor job at it.
They clamber in, David in the driver’s seat and Sam in the passenger side. He has to push the seat back to fit his legs in, and he can’t straighten up without hitting his head on the roof. It’s not a big car, but it’s not overly small either.
“So,” David says, he’s not sure what to say or how to say it. He just knows that something tried to kill him, and this man and his partner stopped it, just knows whatever tried to kill him wasn’t - wasn’t human.
“It was a reaper,” Sam says. His voice is softer in the car somehow, and he waits until David manages to nod before he pulls out a book, leather wrapped and worn from years of use, bits of paper and clippings stick out at every angle. He flips through pages of messy scrawl and crude drawings until he reaches a page - reaper written across the top, thick black ink, all capitals.
“This is my dad’s journal.” He spins it around so David can see. “It’s how those people were being healed. Trading a life for another.”
“Oh,” David gets out. He leans forward, squinting at the writing, at the paper clippings.
Sam waits, says nothing until David pulls back, takes a deep breath, and slows down the beating of his heart, like it’s going to break out of his chest.
“You’re serious,” he says. He means it as a question, but it comes out flat - he already knows the answer.
“You know what you saw wasn’t human,” Sam closes the journal, lets it rest on his lap.
“So, Roy wasn’t healing people?”
“Ah, no.” Sam tilts his head slightly, eyes roaming across David’s face again, looking him over like a big cat. “It’s a little complicated, but I can tell you if you want.”
David wants to know - needs to know. His mother would curse at him, tell him that his thirst for knowledge will get him killed one day, and maybe she’s right, but David would rather die knowing the truth, than live in blissful ignorance.
Whatever is written across David’s face must speak for itself because Sam takes a breath, and tangles his fingers together over the top of the journal in his lap and starts talking like he’s reciting how to make scrambled eggs and not this.
“Roy didn’t actually know what was happening, it was Sue Ann. She was using a binding spell, making the reaper kill people she saw as immoral,” Sam finger quotes the air so hard it almost makes David laugh, a noise rips past anyway, a choked off noise of amusement - exactly what Sam was aiming for, he realises again when Sam smiles at him.
“When I destroyed the talisman she was using to keep the reaper in check, well it wasn't too happy and so the reaper took care of her.”
Sam’s so flippant about it that he takes David a moment to realise what he said; that the reaper killed - or reaped - her. The death of Sue Ann for Sam was not much more than another timestamp in a long road of deaths. David had heard of Sue Ann’s death, thought it was bizarre, the timing weird and unexplainable, but he honestly hadn’t thought much of it. He just knew that she died the same night he nearly did.
“You do this often?” He feels insane for even asking, when he accidentally looks at the scars around Sam’s neck, the smaller ones across his face that he can see now they're this close, whatever else his three layers of shirts are hiding, he knows the answer.
“Yeah, me and my brother,” Sam says.
Silence drifts between them as David searches for the next thing he wants to ask, as he feels time run out between them.
“How long have you been doing this... been a...?” he hears himself ask. It’s not what he wanted to say, and it feels invasive, but he wants to know about this hidden, insane profession that he never knew he existed.
“A hunter, and since as long as I can remember.”
“That’s fucked up,” David says, blurts it out like he’s ever been one to blurt out anything, and then he looks away, spotting a stain near the gear stick and focusing on it.
“I know,” Sam says, whispers almost.
“Your name isn’t actually Berkowitz right?”
Sam snorts then, pulls out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and scribbles down something as he leans on one bony knee and hands it over.
There’s a phone number written on there, and a name. Sam Winchester.
“If something comes up, if you’re ever in trouble, I can help,” he smiles again, nodding and David just nods, reaches out and grabs Sam’s hand in his own, rough and calloused compared to David's smooth, unblemished one.
“Thanks,” he says. “For saving me.”
Sam squeezes back, and then he pulls away, folding himself out of the car with more grace than he should be able to muster, and David inanely hopes he’ll see this hunter again.
If reapers exist, then anything is possible.