Two are Halves of One

She intercepted a meaningful look from Carter to his brother, obviously a signal that he needed to talk to him. With a sigh, she pushed away from the table. "I'll get the next round. You two... play nice." She gave them both a wry smile.

Ducking through the crowd to the bar, she marveled at how many people were packed into the building. Wasn't there some sort of occupancy limit? It seemed like the entire town was squeezed into the large, dark room. There was a semi-organized line at the bar, so she slid in behind a couple of girls wobbling in sky-high heels.

"A girl as pretty as you shouldn't be waiting for your own drinks," someone shouted over her shoulder, and she turned to see who was speaking. A broad-shouldered blonde guy in an Ed Hardy shirt was as close to her as he could be without touching, leering down at her. When her initial shock of discomfort wore off, she realized he was waiting for a response.

"Oh, you know, just-"

He cut her off, so perhaps he hadn't been waiting on a response at all. "Can I buy you something?"

"Sure," she said quickly, more to get him out of her personal space than because she wanted the free beer. He wandered off to the back bar, where the line was shorter, and she sighed, relieved to have no one hulking over her.

Her line didn't seem to be moving, and Emma peered around the pair of girls gesticulating at each other in front of her. Leaning across the bar and flirting for all he was worth with the female bartender, the guy at the front of the line was ignoring the drink she was trying to shove into his hand. He was clearly drunk already; Emma wondered that the bartender hadn't just cut him off, but the tip he left when he finally stumbled off was sizable.

The next guy had a huge order of shots for his table, so Emma crossed her arms and settled in for a wait. To her dismay, Ed Hardy was back.

"Here, sexy," the guy half-bellowed, handing her an electric blue drink in a stein.

"What the hell is this?" she asked, eyeing the drink doubtfully. She hadn't drunk many fruity drinks since freshman year, when she'd gotten totally wasted on them and spent the better part of the night hugging a toilet at her friend's place.

He shouted something that Emma couldn't understand, but she assumed it was the name of the drink. She sniffed it; smelled like berries. She took a sip and was pleasantly surprised, although it was a little sweeter than she usually liked her drinks. The guy kept chatting her up as the line moved forward again, although she could barely hear him over the music. She drained some more of the blue stuff so she wouldn't have to formulate a response.

When they finally got to the front of the line, Emma waved three fingers at the bartender, pointed at the Budweiser sticker on the bar and hoped the girl would understand. She turned her body away from the lurker, hoping that he would catch the hint that she was with friends and didn't want his company, but he stayed, shout-flirting and occasionally touching her shoulder or arm.

Emma traded her empty glass for the three bottles and passed the bartender some bills, then tried to turn on her heel and ditch her admirer. She found herself a lot dizzier than she'd anticipated; after all, she'd only had one beer and that stupid blue drink, which hadn't even tasted alcoholic. Catching her balance required a startling amount of concentration, and she almost dropped all three beers in the process.

"Jeez," she muttered, and it came out long and drawn out. She blinked and shook her head, trying to refocus and get back to her table. For some reason, Emma was having a hard time navigating the dark bar through all these people. They seemed to be jostling her unnecessarily, throwing her off balance and trying to pull the drinks from her hands.

"Whoa, watch out," somebody said as she nearly fell over trying to swerve around a laughing couple. It was that infernal drink-buyer, catching her arm and holding her up. "Looks like you've had a bit too much to drink, my friend," he called out.

"No," she protested, "I've had barely anything. I have to find my friends."

He wouldn't let go of her arm, and she was having a hard time shaking him off with her hands full of bottles. She dropped one of the beers with a loud crash as she tried to push his hand away.

Ed Hardy laughed. "I am your friend," he said, pulling her toward him and off balance again. He took the other two bottles out of her hands and set them on a nearby table, then draped an arm around her like he was supporting her.

"Get off," she said, but she found herself dragged stumbling along beside him. Where did he think he was taking her? That was the front door ahead of them, not the tables. Dean and Carter were the other way. He tightened his hold on her as she tried to shrug out from under his arm, even as her limbs threatened to go limp and give out on her.

Someone else grabbed her arm, and her whole body jerked like a rag doll as the two opposing forces tugged her in opposite directions. There were a few quiet, angry words, followed by some angrier shouting. The arm around her shoulders disappeared and someone pulled her back into the bar, away from a pair of men that she could see now were fighting.

Her head felt loose on her neck, and she thought she might be sick. "Emma? Emma?" someone was saying, but she didn't respond, and things went dark and quiet after a while.

***

Carter tried to hold Emma up as he led her to the car. She giggled like a child, swaying back and forth to the beat of the music still pumping out through the open doors of the bar. Dean caught her free arm and laughed when she looked at him with wide, startled eyes.

"Where'd you come from?" she slurred. "You were just over-" She swung her head to look back at Carter, then laughed, squeezing her eyes shut. "There's two of you."

"Nope. I just run at light speed," Dean quipped lightly. "You got her?" he called over her head to Carter.

"Yeah." Carter wasn't quite ready for lighthearted banter. Most of his thoughts were still angry as he thought about the guy who'd tried to snatch Emma, and about the bouncer who had been so spectacularly unhelpful in detaining him. The jerk had booked it as soon as Dean took a swing at him, and neither of them had gotten a good enough look at him to describe him to authorities.

"Dance with me, Carter," Emma said, grabbing him around the waist. She was grinning from ear to ear, her eyes not quite focused. "Don' care what Rachel says, you're the hot one."

Dean exploded with laughter as his brother peeled Emma off of his body. "Well, I guess she likes you! What's wrong with her anyway? She only had one beer."

"He had to have drugged her. We've seen her drink - she's not this much of a lightweight." Carter struggled to keep the anger out of his tone as he caught Emma lightly around the waist, picking her up after she tripped on the rough pavement. "Jesus Christ, what an asshole. If I ever see him again..."

"Should we take her to the hospital or something?" Dean put a hand out as Emma twirled, trying unsteadily to dance, but Carter's hand on hers was enough to keep her on her feet.

Carter contemplated just carrying her; she was difficult to steer and impossible to reason with at this point. "She seems ok. And anyway, I don't think they can do anything about it if she was drugged. Probably needs to just sleep it off. Let's take her home. Her sister can take care of her."

It took a few tries to get Emma into the backseat of the car. She seemed confused and a little paranoid, asking them over and over where they were going and why there were two of them. At length, they convinced her to sit down, and Carter leaned in to buckle the seatbelt around her. He had to put her arm back on her lap twice to get it out of the way before he closed the door.

Carter plopped into the driver's seat while his brother swung in on the passenger side. "What I'd like to do to that asshole," Carter muttered.

When he looked into his rearview mirror to back out, he saw that Emma had already slumped over into unconsciousness. She appeared to be peacefully asleep, curled up against the window. They didn't try to wake her when they pulled up in front of her building. Instead, Dean carried her out of the car while Carter jogged up the steps to open the door.

"Shit. It's locked." He rattled the door again, in case it could be shaken open. He glanced around, but there were no buzzers, and he didn't know which apartment was Emma's in any case. "Call Rachel."

"Here," Dean said, passing Emma's limp form to his brother and digging through his pockets for his phone. He found Rachel's number with no problem, but it didn't even ring, jumping straight to voicemail. "She's got it turned off. Hey, Rachel, it's Dean. Look, your sister got drugged by some shithead at the bar, and we're trying to bring her home. Call me back!" He hung up and looked helplessly at his twin.

"Well... what do we do until she calls?" Carter asked. "Do you know where that Katie girl lives? We could drop her there."

Dean shrugged. "Don't know her. Never had a class with her. Do you know any of their other friends?"

Carter adjusted his grip on Emma, whose dead weight was heavier than he would have thought. "I don't know. Come on, think. We have to know somebody else she'd be safe with."

They stared at each other, racking their brains. It was a lost cause; she didn't have classes with them, hadn't pledged a sorority and kept mostly to herself. Her friend circle was a complete unknown for them.

"I guess we could take her home with us," Carter said at last. "Although I don't know that she'd thank us for it in the morning. I don't want her to think-"

"Just until her sister calls," Dean said. "Unless we're just going to drop her right here on the steps, I can't think of anything better."

They loaded the girl up in the car again, certain they looked like some sort of kidnappers to anyone watching from their apartment windows, and drove back to the little house they rented at the edge of town.

"It's a shame Rachel bailed," Carter said. "Hope you didn't get too bored."

"Nah, Emma's fun." Dean grinned deviously at his brother. "Maybe next time I'll switch you."

"I get the feeling that Emma and Rachel wouldn't take too kindly to being treated interchangeably," Carter said quickly. He didn't want to switch. "You remember how pissed we used to get when people mixed us up."

"How pissed you used to get. I never gave a damn. It's like when that girl - what's her name - Melanie?" Dean laughed as Carter winced. "It's like when she screamed your name in my bed. Didn't bother me a bit, so long as she kept riding me."

"Well, I would have liked to know she was also screwing you on the side."

"And didn't I tell you as soon as I figured it out? Well, as soon as she left, anyway. Ha. If it's any consolation, she was with you first, so-"

"I don't want to talk about it," Carter interrupted. "It's not particularly a consolation."

Emma made a small noise in the back seat, and they both turned to check on her; she was still unconscious. "Hope she doesn't throw up in the car," Dean said helpfully.

They weren't far from the house, though, and Emma didn't upchuck. Carter parked in the driveway and let Dean take his turn carrying in the sleeping Emma. She stirred when he lifted her off the seat. "Carter?" she asked drowsily.

"Close," Dean said with a grin. He hefted her up and kicked the door shut, then weaved through the mess of their garage and into the house. "She's totally sleeping in your bed, Cart. She's your date."

"Fine. Got no problem with the couch." Carter felt a little bad about the messy state of his room when they brought her in, but he supposed Emma was in no condition to care. And it was infinitely better than Dean's train wreck. Dean tucked the girl in neatly, but Carter pulled the blankets back off with a grunt of annoyance and bent to take off her shoes.

"Do you think she'd prefer to sleep in something more comfortable?" Dean asked, gesturing at Emma's tight outfit. She did look pretty uncomfortable in her bar get-up.

"I think if you take her clothes off at this point, you officially qualify as a pig no matter what your intentions," Carter said decisively, dropping Emma's second shoe and pulling the blankets up to her neck.

"Eh, you're probably right," Dean said. There was a wistful note in his voice that made his twin scowl fiercely at him. "Oh, come on, like you weren't hoping to see her naked tonight."

Carter shoved his brother toward the door, ignoring his brother's continued needling about what he might or might not have expected out of the night and kicking his trashcan over close to the head of the bed. "Let's let her sleep."

***

Emma woke to a pounding head, cotton mouth and eyes that stubbornly refused to open and deal with the morning light streaming in across her face. She moaned, rolled to put her face against the wall - and was startled to find her bed at least twice as wide as it should have been. Her eyes opened immediately.

What the hell? Whose bed was this? Whose house was this? A quick scan of the room suggested it belonged to a guy, and not a particularly neat one. Fighting rising anxiety, she struggled to remember how she'd gotten here. She'd gone out with the Moores, and - and what? Had she really gotten so wasted she couldn't remember anything?

In full panic now, she ripped the covers off and looked over herself. Well, she was fully dressed, aside from her shoes. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and nearly kicked over a small plastic trash can someone had put next to the bed. She was relieved to see she hadn't needed it. There was also a cold glass of water on the bedside table, thoughtfully accompanied by a couple of aspirin.Â

Dread tightened her gut, despite the signs that someone had taken care of her. She picked up her shoes like a weapon and crossed to a closed door on the opposite wall from the bed, half afraid to open it and find out who was on the other side.

It turned out to be a bathroom, which Emma hastily backed out of before she had to see what a mess she looked. There were two other doors in the room. One was open and clearly a closet, so she crossed to the other, feeling decidedly unsteady on her feet. Why couldn't she remember how she'd gotten here? She cracked the door and peeked out. There was no one in sight, and the room she was in was at one end of a hallway. She could hear someone moving around in the house at the other end.

Emma glanced behind her, wondering if she should slip out a window instead, but she was too anxious to know the details of what had happened the night before and how on earth she'd ended up - wherever she was. Cautiously, she padded down the hall in her bare feet.

She emerged into a bachelor's living room; shabby hand-me-down furniture, beer signs and band posters on the walls, a big-screen TV with a couple of game consoles hooked up to it. It was open straight into the kitchen, so she could immediately see the person sitting at the breakfast bar eating a huge bowl of cereal. To her relief, it was Dean.

"Ah, she lives!" he cried with a mouthful of Cheerios. He waved his spoon at Emma and gestured for her to come sit next to him. She took the seat shyly, wondering just how badly she had embarrassed herself the night before. And why, why, why she was in their house with total amnesia about the night. "So," Dean began, then swallowed his food so he could speak more clearly, "how are you feeling? Did you take the aspirin?"

"No, I... I wanted to figure out where the hell I was first," she said with a hollow laugh.

"Ah." He nodded, shoveling another huge spoonful into his mouth. "What all do you remember from last night?"

The way he said it filled her with embarrassment without even knowing what had happened; she was sure she had totally shamed herself. Oh jeez, had she slept with Dean? Was that his bed she had woken up in? She could feel her eyes getting wider and her cheeks getting redder as she contemplated all the ways she could have totally screwed up the plan.

Before she could even try to shape an answer to Dean's question, the front door opened, and Carter plodded in, followed by Rachel.

"Oh, Rachel!" Emma crossed the living room in two strides and stopped her sister in the doorway with a huge hug.

"I guess Dean told you what happened, huh? What an asshole," Rachel said, patting Emma's back with her one free hand. In her other hand was a drink carrier full of coffees, which she held out for Carter to take into the kitchen.

Emma pulled back in confusion. "Dean's an asshole?" Even if he was, what would Rachel know about it?

"No," Rachel said with a surprised laugh. "I guess he didn't tell you. And I figured you wouldn't remember. Here, drink some coffee, wake up."

Emma accepted the hot beverage. Something about Rachel's easy, casual tone made her feel better about the situation, even though she didn't know anything yet. "Ok, so from the beginning, whose bed did I just wake up in, and why?"

"That would be mine," Carter said, "and because some asshole at the bar spiked your drink and we couldn't get hold of your sister."

"Spiked my-" Emma remember the Ed Hardy-shirt guy, the behemoth of a dude who wouldn't leave her alone. "Ooh, that is the last time I drink a fruity drink."

"I can't believe you took a drink from some random guy, Em," Rachel said, pausing in picking the peel off an orange to take a sip of her coffee. "That's, like, Going to Bars 101. Don't drink anything someone else gives you."

Emma felt her face coloring. "Yeah... Pretty stupid, I guess."

"No worries," Dean said. Finished now with his bowl of cereal, he patted Emma on the shoulder as he went to rinse his dishes in the sink. "We weren't going to let any 'roided up dudes take you home all drugged up. That's our job, apparently."

"Dean," Carter warned, irritated. To Emma, he said, "Don't worry, we drove you here, took off your shoes and left you alone. No funny business."

She believed him. "And Rachel, you...?"

"My phone was dead in my purse, and I didn't even think about it. When I plugged it in this morning, it started blowing up. I guess the guys were calling and texting for a while. Anyway, I headed over as soon as I knew where you were. Carter and I got breakfast. You just sit there; I'm gonna make you a bacon sandwich."

Ah, she loved her sister. She knew Emma's hangover food of choice. Dean had disappeared from the kitchen, but he reappeared a moment later with the glass of water and the aspirin. "You're gonna want this too," he said, setting it next to her on the counter.

"Bless your sainted heart," Emma said, draining the water. She plodded over to their fridge to refill it so she could take the pills as well. Her clothes felt itchy and rumpled and very slept in. She hated to think what her hair must look like. "Rach, you didn't bring any toiletries with you, did you? I'm feeling decidedly... morning after."

Rachel pointed at her oversized purse on the floor near the door. "Course. Go get cleaned up."

She grabbed the bag, thanking the heavens for her wonderful sister, and ducked back into the room she'd woken up in. She cut into the bathroom, smiling to herself at the pile of dirty clothes laying in front of the vanity. No hampers for Carter, apparently. Within minutes, Emma felt better; teeth brushed, makeup redone, hair pulled back, deodorant on. It could have been in combination with the water and pills, but she felt like a new woman.

Breakfast was ready when she came out, and she ate everything on her plate with gusto. She was the only one eating; the guys had apparently already had breakfast, and Rachel had finished her orange.

"Hey," Dean said, "I didn't hear a 'thank you' for rescuing you, Miss Damsel in Distress." He laughed, but his eyes were intent on Emma.