Triptych [Gen, PG-13]
So, spn_summergen authors were revealed today, which means I can officially claim ownership of my story (originally posted here), which was written for dolimir_k and beta'd by therealw under conditions no one should have to endure. Seriously. It was the middle of the night, and then there was golfing, and I am just really lucky that she puts up with me.
It's a pre-series AU which will be followed by what I like to think of as the rest of the story. Mainly, I think of it that way because this stands alone, so it won't be Part 2, and it can't be a sequel because it's, you know, not a sequel. So. Anyway. Have some fic! Yay!
Triptych [Gen, PG-13]
They spend all of July in motels, pushing late nights into mornings, shuffling tabs into slots until puzzles become pictures, and Dean spends most of it afraid to be more than a few yards away from Sam for any length of time and afraid to admit why.
Triptych
Sammy’s thirteen, exactly thirteen, the day Dad finally gives in and lets him stay home alone.
In the end, Dean has no idea how he wins the argument. Dad matches him point for point, declares that Sam’s average can survive one day of missed classes, points out that what Dean calls responsibility might very well be nothing more than a lack of opportunity to screw up, says he couldn’t care less that Dean’s been doing it since he was six because they’re talking about Sam.
And then he says, “Okay.”
And Dean says, “Okay,” and that’s the end of it.
It’s not like it’s a great birthday present, but they pretend it is, and Sam’s happy, and that’s good enough. On the way out the door, Dean musses Sam’s hair and says, “No slumber parties,” like the gift is what he’s getting, not what he’s getting out of.
Dad stops in front of Sam, and Sam blurts out, “I know!” before Dad even has a chance to go over the rules for the five hundredth time.
Dean braces for the reprimand, but Dad just chuckles and swipes his palm over the top of Sam’s head. Sam ducks away, but between Dean and Dad, the damage has already been done. Dean smiles brightly in Sam’s direction, and Sam tries to glare back, but it tips over into a chuckle pretty quickly. Dad decreed ages ago that the long hair was okay as long as Sam was willing to deal with the consequences. Dean’s pretty sure Dad expected him to give in and ask for a haircut, but it never happened, and it’s awesome, as far as Dean’s concerned, because parent-approved sibling torture can’t be overrated.
Dad holds out a twenty, says “Pizza is not an emergency,” and tousles Sam’s hair again when he steps in close enough to grab the folded bill, but it’s the one Dean kind of thinks of as Dad’s I love you tousle, and Sam doesn’t protest.
“We probably won’t be back before you leave for school,” Dad says. At the door, he pauses and adds, “Happy Birthday, Sammy.”
Dean spends most of the drive thinking about how he’s never been away from Sam on his birthday before. The further they get from their little bungalow, the more important that seems, but he doesn’t bring it up because he’s pretty sure Dad wouldn’t understand.
He spends the rest of the drive thinking about that.
They set up camp in a little motel about three hours away. Dean spends two nickels and a dime on a faded postcard in the lobby, and then he throws it out in the moldy bathroom wastebasket. They haven’t even left the state, and this isn’t exactly an occasion he wants to memorialize with souvenirs, anyway.
Dad sets an alarm, and somewhere along the line, pretending to sleep turns into sleeping. Dean dreams about Sammy tripping as he runs through the goopy frosting on a giant birthday cake, falling before his silver-tipped blade can pierce through the heart of the candle that’s chasing him.
He wakes up hungry, and half disgusted with himself. Sammy didn’t want to come out on this one, and Dean made it happen. He’s gotta let it go.
They head out to the office building after midnight, and up to the second floor. It’s the creepy kind of abandoned, like everyone rushed outside for a fire drill and just never came back. The school’s a maze of little classrooms and lounges, chairs and tables and-other things, just waiting to pick up where they left off.
“When you said med school, I thought you meant…” Dean says, examining the phlebotomy demonstration that’s set up in one of the rooms, blood still lining the collection bag. “Like, doctors, not Dr. Nick.”
He scribbles the room number down before moving on, just in case. Human remains are human remains, after all, even if he’s not sure exactly how they’d burn a plastic bag of crusty old blood.
There are sixteen rooms in all, but nothing trips the EMF meter, and aside from the fact that there’s a really sketchy looking abandoned medical school on the second floor of a functioning office building, there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary.
It’s pretty much exactly the same amount of nothing their research turned up, just live and in person.
“So what next?” Dean says.
A few hours later, he’s sorry he asked. “Well, something’s haunted,” he says, as the elevator chimes and opens its doors onto the second floor lobby. Again. And again and again and again. “I just don’t get whether it’s the second floor or the elevator.”
He ends up wishing he hadn’t said that, either. The elevator doors clip Dad’s bootheel when they slam shut, and he’s left inside with his answer: definitely the elevator.
Dad shouts, “Dean, you okay?” through the steel doors, but he doesn’t have a chance to answer before the elevator drops, down past the first floor to a basement level that he’s pretty sure isn’t supposed to be here.
When the doors open, light from the elevator gets sucked out into the darkness, swallowed by it, and he can barely make out the floor a few feet into the basement. He’s got a .45 in his hand and a knife in his boot and no clue what’s waiting out there in the dark.
When nothing comes, he reaches into his left front pocket. His lighter’s never failed him and it doesn’t now, but it’s shit to see by, doesn’t increase his field of vision at all.
The last time he got a look out the windows was up on the fourth floor maybe a half hour ago, and dawn had just barely lightened the sky, so sunrise can’t be too far off. The blackness down here is complete, though, which means there are no vents or windows.
So much for the easy escape.
He gives Dad five minutes to get the hell down here with the flashlight, and then five more, and then the elevator lights start flickering.
“Fucking great,” he mutters. He tucks the gun into his waistband and grabs the iron blade out of his boot, uses the handle to pound the elevator’s numbered buttons a few more times. “C’mon, Dad, where are you?”
“He’s not coming. No one’s coming.” The voice is female, shallow and raspy and dry.
“Bet you say that to all the guys,” Dean says, squinting out into the darkness.
She comes into the half-circle of grey light slowly, stiffly, like moving hurts. Kinda hot, for a dead chick, but as she gets closer, her face hollows and her eyes sink deep into their sockets, her skin shrivels around the lines of her skull and her white coat catches on unnatural angles that should be curves.
“No one’s coming,” she says again.
When she gets within striking distance, Dean lashes out, and she dissipates like water vapor around his blade.
The second time’s not as easy. She stays just out of his reach and watches him intently as she wastes away to nothing in front of his eyes. By the time she tries to speak, all that comes out is a long groan, low-pitched and thready. It echoes around the room, changes timbre with each stretch of her shriveled lips, and it doesn’t stop until Dean can’t handle it anymore, takes a lurching step out into the basement and slashes his knife across her chest.
That’s when the elevator door closes.
He backs up against it, kicks at it, but it doesn’t budge.
“God damn it,” he says into the darkness. His lighter lets him see a foot or so in either direction, a flickering circle of dim light that shows him nothing. He keeps his back to the elevator and waits.
After a few minutes, she says, “Why didn’t you come?”
He lunges blindly with the knife a few times, but he can’t tell whether he hits her. He gets his answer when she says, “Why, Dean?” and that’s when he feels it. A little, gnawing pang in the pit of his stomach that expands outward in waves. Before he can lash out again, his head gets heavy and achy and his mouth goes dry, and his stomach seizes and clenches. A wave of dizziness tumbles him down onto his knees, where he retches onto the stone floor. When he starts shaking, he can’t stop, even though the stuttering movement sears his muscles like an iron brand.
It’s not like he can see, but he’s pretty sure his vision goes a little fuzzy, and the clatter of the knife as it falls the foot or so onto the ground resonates in his head like an atomic bomb.
“Dean!” he hears Dad yell, finally, “Dean, get down!”
He’s not entirely sure he’s not imagining it, but slumping down onto the floor is actually one of the very few things he thinks he can handle right now, so he does it anyway.
It’s kind of a fucked up story, in the end. When the basement of the building was partitioned off to save on heating costs, the elevator was supposed to be in the accessible part of the partition, but there was a miscommunication with the contractors. Instead of fixing it, they changed the elevator instead, made it so it can’t go down past the first floor.
Only sometimes, apparently, it does.
Greta Garrison was twenty-two when she went missing five years ago, somewhere between her apartment and the school where she was training to become a medical assistant. No one ever thought to look in the unused part of the basement.
There are five bodies, total. Greta, curled up at the top of the staircase, and four more that seem to match the descriptions of the people who’ve gone missing over the past three years.
They leave the path to the basement open when they go; the door that was hidden by a utility cabinet in the back of the supply closet next to the elevator leads into a narrow, windowless hallway, which winds around behind the elevator shaft to the basement door. It’s not like anyone’s gonna miss it, but Dad calls in an anonymous tip anyway, from a payphone on the back wall of a convenience store thirty miles down the highway.
“You think Greta killed all of them?” Dean asks. “Or do you think the elevator just malfunctioned a bunch of times and they all starved to death?”
“Dehydrated, most likely,” Dad says, and he picks up the biggest Gatorade he can find and two bags of peanut M&M’s on the way to the front of the store. “And I don’t know.”
“I still say we shoulda burned the bitch,” Dean mutters as they walk out into the early morning sunlight.
In the car, Dad dumps the provisions in Dean’s lap and says, “She’s somebody’s daughter.” An hour later, Dean’s nearly asleep when he says, “I’ll keep an eye on the news; if we have to, we’ll take care of the bodies after the families have had them properly buried.”
When they get home, Dean manages to stumble from the passenger seat to the bottom bunk without crossing the line from half-asleep to awake. He sprawls down face-first, digs his nose into the pillow and toes clumsily at his boots. They don’t come off, and after a second, he gives up.
The creaking, rustling bed noises die out along with the muted thunk of colliding rubber soles, and that’s when Dean hears it.
It feels like a dream at first, like one of those weird, self-aware nightmares, because he knows he’s not back in the basement with Greta’s raspy, wordless moans swelling up around him, but the sound is here all the same, low and broken and wrong.
There’s something different about it, though, and when he finally puts it together, realizes that he’s awake and there’s something here, making that noise, he’s armed and on his feet in seconds.
It’s instinct and training that keep his mind ahead of the game, his hand locked around a knife rather than a gun because he can’t rule out any of the primary categories yet, and guns are great when it comes to rabid animals and uninvited guests, but they’re shit against spirits.
He silently taps Sammy’s soccer ball out the open door as he crosses the room, figures it’ll get Dad’s attention, as usual, and he stops in front of the closet.
Whatever it is, it’s behind the flimsy track door.
He rests a finger lightly in the waist-high brass circle for a second, braces it inside the lip of the inverted knob, and then he shoves the door open so hard it rattles in its track. His blade’s hovering in front of his stomach, low enough to defend against some kind of animal, high enough to take on a person or a thing, and he’s ready for whatever’s going to jump out at him.
He’s not ready for Sammy, curled up in the back corner of the closet.
“Sam?” he says. “Sammy. Hey.”
Sam doesn’t answer, just curls up tighter and shoves his face into the corner. He’s shaking, inhaling in jerky gasps and exhaling raspy moans that sound like nothing he ever wants to hear coming out of his brother’s mouth.
“Hey,” he says, “Hey!” And yeah, maybe he’s using what Sam likes to call his lame-ass Dad-voice, but he doesn’t give a shit. Dad uses it for a reason, and Dean needs some fucking answers. “Sam, talk to me. Now.”
Sam doesn’t even look over. He squeezes his knees tighter against his chest and clutches at the corner where the two walls meet. It’s so wrong that Dean knows his first instinct should be to grab for the holy water, but it’s not. Instead, he drops to his knees on the worn carpet, tosses his knife aside in a way that ignores all of Dad’s lessons on weapons safety and maintenance, and says, “Sammy, come on. Come on, dude, what’s wrong?”
He’s closer now, and he can see that Sam’s face is puffy and streaked with tears.
“Sammy,” he says, again, but he doesn’t really expect an answer.
Dad walks in with the soccer ball, looks like he’s about to murder the thing, but he stops short when he sees Dean in front of the closet. Dean sees his eyes flick to the knife on the ground, but all he says is, “Dean?”
It’s the kind of Dean that means Dean, full report, now, but hell if he knows. He doesn’t have a clue what the fuck happened or what’s happening now, or what happens next. All he knows is that it’s Sam, so that’s what he says.
“It’s Sam.”
It’s Sam, and he needs to fix it, now. The need to make it better itches under his skin, but his arms are deadened with the weight of uncertainty. This isn’t a concussion or a broken bone or a gash oozing blood, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Dad walks further into the room and gets a good look at Sam in the closet.
“What the hell happened?” he says, his voice low and rough.
Dean says, “I don’t know,” but he can’t just sit here watching Sam paw at the closet wall, listening to him make these wrong, inhuman sounds.
“Okay,” he says, dropping forward onto his hands and crawling into the closet, “Okay, come on, Sammy.” It’s a tight fit, and there’s barely enough room for him to twist around so he can sit up against the wall next to Sam, but as soon as he’s there, Sammy slumps down against him.
“Hey,” he says, as his hand threads automatically through Sam’s hair.
Sam sighs and goes completely boneless, and Dean stretches his legs out of the closet so Sam’s head can rest in his lap. The position is nothing new. Dean spent a hell of a lot of years perfecting his patented method of petting Sammy back to sleep after a bad dream or an upset stomach, and his hands are almost shaking with relief that it’s working now.
“Dean,” Sam mumbles softly as his breathing eases back to normal, “thought you were gone.” His words are slurred and sleepy.
Dean keeps up his slow circles over Sammy’s scalp and says, “Yeah, but we’re back now.”
“Dad?” Sam says.
“Yeah,” John says from outside the closet. He mutters something else that Dean can’t make out, and then he says, “What happened?” Sam’s eyes flutter open for a second, and he sighs again and burrows his forehead against Dean’s knee.
“Sammy?” Dean says. “Hey.” He tugs softly at a lock of hair.
“Whrf,” Sam says. It’s not an answer, but it’s gonna have to do because they’re obviously not going to get anything else out of him while he’s half asleep.
“Okay, up and at ‘em, kiddo,” Dean says. It’s unbalanced and awkward, and he has to duck at a really weird angle, but he manages to gather Sam up against him and walk him out of the closet. Sam stumbles over the track as they cross over into the room, and Dean hefts him up and deposits him on the bottom bunk.
He looks young with his face buried in Dean’s pillow, younger than he has in a while, and Dean watches him sleep until Dad’s hand on his shoulder pushes him out of the room.
Dad makes a pot of coffee and sets two cups down on the table. Steam rises up and vanishes into the air for the first few minutes, and Dean can’t think of anything to say. Part of him just wants Dad to do something that’ll make whatever the hell just happened in there okay, but it’s been a long time since his dad was that kind of hero.
“What a fucked up day,” is what he says, and Dad doesn’t question his language.
“It wasn’t anything supernatural,” Dad says. Dean wants to ask how he can be sure, because from where he’s standing, supernatural is the good option.
“Possession?” Dean says.
Dad shakes his head. “Didn’t respond to the name of God.”
“Controlled by a spirit, maybe?” Dad shakes his head, and Dean says, “Well maybe it was like-”
“Dean,” Dad says. Meaning Dean, enough.
His first sip of coffee is cold, that weird kind of icy coolness that only happens with hot beverages and time, like heat is the only thing they understand, and without it, they have no idea what temperature to be.
Sammy drifts out of the bedroom just after sunset, says, “Hey,” as he passes the kitchen table but doesn’t stop until his head’s stuck in the refrigerator.
Dean doesn’t strangle him.
He also doesn’t hug him or drag his ass over to the table, sit him down, and demand an explanation, but it’s a close call.
Dad says, “How you doing, kiddo?”
“Fine,” says Sam, and then he looks up over the fridge door with wide eyes, like he’s just realized he should say something about what happened earlier. “Oh. I didn’t go to school today. I mean, I-I don’t really, uh.”
The fridge rattles as the motor kicks on, and Sam doesn’t move. There’s a question in his eyes, a little spark of fear that Dean doesn’t want to see there, and Dean pastes a smile onto his lips, leans across the table to nudge Dad’s elbow with his own, and says, “Give him an inch, and he takes a mile, huh?” He gives his best eyebrow raise and slants a look at Sam. “Think I oughta teach him a lesson?”
Dad just chuckles and Dean’s out of his chair with Sammy slung over his shoulders before the kid can do more than yelp in protest. Dean dumps him on the couch with a whoop and tickles him until they’re a crazy tangle of bodies and limbs, panting around bursts of laughter. Sam’s smile is huge, the way it should be.
“Pizza?” Dad says from the kitchen, and Dean raises a thumbs up over the back of the couch.
“Mushrooms!” Sam says, breathlessly, then adds, “Please!”
Sam’s still fighting giggles when Dean tugs at a lock of his hair and says, “So what gives, dude?”
He wiggles a little, like he wants to get up, but Dean’s leg is really comfortable right where it is, and he’s not moving it.
“I don’t know?” Sam says. “I just had this really weird dream that was like... swishy. Like bad special effects or something. And then I woke up with a headache, and I couldn’t even-I don’t know, it was too bright, and too loud, and just. I don’t think I remember everything.”
“Sounds like a migraine,” Dad says, and Dean sits up to see him. Sammy sits up too, and pulls his legs up onto the couch. “Your mom used to get them once in a while.”
“Yeah?” Sam says.
Dad nods, and Dean nudges Sam with an elbow. “See that? Nothing to worry about,” he says, like he knew it all along, like there’s not a doubt in his mind.
May passes in a bleary chain of late nights and early mornings, and Dean does most of his sleeping in school. It’s enough to keep him somewhat functional, alive and awake and accounted for.
Halfway through the month, Dad says, “Dean,” like, Dean, that’s enough, and when he falls asleep without listening to Sam breathe for half the night first and nothing bad happens, it’s easy enough to slip back into old routines.
Dad takes out a poltergeist on his own, and the next weekend, they get a lead on a ghost, only it turns out to be something else entirely. They go into research mode, late nights over piles of books on the kitchen table, too much coffee and too little sleep, unanswered questions piling up, literally, on scraps of paper heaped in the middle of the table.
When things start to take shape, Dad lays them out on the living room wall, but the key pieces are still gaping holes where the wallpaper shows through.
On Saturday night, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla is muted on the TV, and Sammy’s asleep, face pressed against the pages of a book on local legends. They haven’t come up with anything new since they left the library with stacks of photocopies, and Dean’s putting serious thought into whether he can get a handlebar mustache drawn on Sam’s face without waking him up when Dad says, “I think it is a ghost.”
“How do you figure?” Dean asks.
Dad chuckles and scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know,” he says. “Old man’s intuition?”
Dean laughs and shakes his head. “Gotta do better than that, Old Man.”
Sammy snuffles into his book, and Dean figures he’s got a forty-sixty shot with the mustache, but Dad rubs a hand over Sam’s hair and says, “Come on, kiddo. Bed.”
Dean follows not long after, falls asleep to the sound of Sam’s easy breathing and wakes a few hours later to the sound of something that’s not quite right. Sam’s still asleep on the top bunk, and it’s quiet except for the sound of his almost-snoring.
He holds his knife out in front of him on his way to the kitchen, steps quietly, but all that’s out there is a note from Dad. Figured it out. Back soon.
“Fuck,” he says, slamming the broad side of the knife down on the table, and he cringes at the noise, hopes it didn’t wake Sam. “Damn it, Dad.”
It’s plain as day, now, laid out on the living room wall. The holes are filled with names and dates, places and answers.
It’s a woman in white, but it’s a new one, without the death toll Dad would’ve been looking for. He’s tracing his finger over the woman’s photocopied obituary, reading how she’s survived by her husband and parents but not by her three lovely children when he hears it. A little, hitching breath in the silence, a creak that could just be Sammy flipping over.
He freezes, like the motion of his limbs through the air might drown out whatever he’s listening for, and for a moment, there’s only the weighty hush of the earliest morning hours.
When Sam’s scream rips through the stillness, despite everything Dad’s taught him, despite everything he’s learned, he wishes there was a monster. He wishes there was something he could lay his hands on, something he could kill. Something he could battle with a gun or a knife instead of Dad’s bottle of prescription-strength ibuprofen.
It only takes him a second to get back to the bedroom, and another to get up to the top bunk with the two bottles-pills and water-he’s been keeping next to the bed.
Sam’s scream tapers off into a whimper, and he doesn’t answer when Dean says, “Sammy, hey, sit up for me, okay?” Instead, he curls his knees up to his chest and burrows into his pillow, gags a little into the soft fabric.
“Fuck,” Dean says, “Sammy, come on,” and he can hear the edge of panic in his voice, too bright against Sam’s muffled moans.
“Sorry, kiddo,” he says, but he’s gotta get Sam upright to take the painkillers. He scoots back against the wall to brace himself, and then he grabs Sam around the middle and pulls. It’s not graceful, but it gets the job done. Sam lands mostly in his lap, and Dean nudges him upwards.
“Hey, Sammy, you gotta take one of these for me, okay?” he says.
“Dean,” says Sam. He snuffles against Dean’s shoulder like Dean’s the world’s biggest tissue, and Dean doesn’t even give a shit, just reaches across his body to run a hand over Sam’s hair and tells himself that talking is a good sign.
“This is gonna make you feel better, okay?”
Sam snuffles again and says, “I think he died.”
“Who did?”
“In my dream.” He curls up again and lays his forehead near Dean’s knee.
“Another dream?” Dean says. He nudges gently with the knee under Sam’s head, but Sam doesn’t budge.
Sam nods, and his hair flops into his eyes. “I read about it,” he says, and he sighs when Dean brushes his hair back. “With migraines, some people have triggers, like chocolate or stress or whatever.”
“And you think…”
“Bad dreams are my trigger. Yeah.” He turns so he’s on his back, facing up at the ceiling. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Is there anything about you that’s not weird?” Dean says, poking Sam lightly in the side.
Sam rolls his eyes and ignores the question. “I feel better,” he says, instead. “I think it’s ’cause you woke me up right away.”
Dean’s hand pauses half threaded through Sammy’s hair, and Sam nudges it with his head to get it going again.
“How better?” he says, and he has a momentary flash of anger at Dad. He can’t be everywhere, can’t take care of Sam and have Dad’s back at the same time, and it’s not fair to make him choose one over the other.
“Great, actually,” Sam says, and his brow creases a little. “Why?”
Dean tries for a cocky grin and ends up being glad there’s only a tiny bit of light filtering in from the kitchen. “Feel like rescuing the old man?” he says.
“Meaning…”
“Meaning Dad figured it out and went after the damn thing,” Dean says. “He left a note.”
Sam says, “Fuck,” and Dean silently agrees, doesn’t even bother calling him on his language.
He gives one last tug through Sam’s hair and says, “Clothes on, ten minutes?”
It’s an easy sprint down to the housing development two neighborhoods over, and just as easy to wire up a generic import. He spends the drive back concentrating on keeping exactly to the posted speed limit, not over, not under, and not thinking about what might have happened if he wasn’t there for Sam, and what might be happening now, because he’s not there for Dad.
He’s got no fucking clue why Dad took this one alone. Dean’s read the journal, he knows just how much Dad’s done without backup, but he also knows they’re stronger as a team, stronger as a family, and it doesn’t make sense for Dad to go off alone when he doesn’t have to.
It’s not even a school night, for God’s sake.
Sammy runs out when Dean pulls up, says “Nice wheels,” as he pulls open the door. “You know Dad’s gonna kill you, right?”
Dean shrugs, even though Sam’s right and his little smirk says that he knows it. “I figure as long as we save his life first, he’ll let us off the hook,” he says.
Sam raises an eyebrow. “You sure about that?” he says, and then, “Wait, us? There is no us, Dean.”
Dean just laughs because, yeah, he’s dead either way, while Sam continues: “There is you, and a stolen car, and a direct order which you have failed to obey.”
“Hey,” Dean says, turning left towards the hilltowns, “there was no direct order.”
Sam rolls his eyes like they’re headed out for dinner or school or anything but a hunt Dad should never have taken on his own, and says, “I’m pretty sure Don’t follow me on a hunt when I leave you behind is implied.”
“And I’m pretty sure implied is the opposite of direct order,” Dean says, and he smiles brightly, like Sam doesn’t know he’s worried out of his fucking mind.
In the end, they do save Dad, and after, he helps ditch the stolen car without comment. Sam curls up in the backseat of the Impala on the ride home, and he’s asleep by the time they’re halfway there.
“Dean,” Dad says.
“Yeah, I know.”
Dad nods slowly. “Okay,” he says, but there’s nothing exasperated or angry in his tone, and Dean doesn’t know what to say in response to an invisible lecture, so he settles back and dozes, too.
On the way through the kitchen, Dad catches Dean’s elbow before he can follow Sam to their bedroom. “I didn’t want Sam to be here alone,” he says.
Dean whips around without thinking and bites out, “Well, congratulations; nearly getting yourself killed was a great start.”
Dad just nods, that same slow nod from the car. “There more where that came from?”
“No, Sir,” Dean says, almost a whisper. He feels drained, suddenly, hollowed out and beyond tired, like his outburst took all the energy he had left to give and a loan on tomorrow’s, too. “But it happened again. Sammy, I mean.”
Dad sits at the table and huffs out a heavy sigh. “I figured it was coming,” he says. “Your mom. Her migraines were monthly, and it’s getting to be near a month, now. You give him the stuff?”
“Had it,” Dean says, “but he didn’t need it. Said he felt okay because I woke him up so soon.”
“He had a nightmare again?”
Through a yawn, Dean says, “Yeah, said something about nightmares being his trigger.”
Dad leans back, studies the ceiling for a minute, then he gets up and heads for his room. He squeezes Dean’s shoulder as he passes, and Dean follows a minute later. Sammy’s curled up in the bottom bunk, and Dean shoves him over toward the wall when he gets in.
“He was driving,” he mumbles. “In my nightmare. She killed him in his car.”
Dean sighs dramatically and says, “I think all that research is finally messing with your mind,” and he runs a hand through Sammy’s hair until his breathing goes soft and even and doesn’t think about how close tonight really was, how it could’ve been Dad, dead in the Impala, if they’d been a few minutes later.
A month after Dean’s quality time with Greta in the basement, he’s back down there, sharing a ring of salt and a pack of gum with Sam.
It’s different now. There’s still no basement button on the elevator, but when it decides to make the trip anyway, the doors open up into a freshly painted hallway, lights set every other panel in the dropped ceiling, and a little memorial plaque on the wall.
It’s almost creepier this way, a deadly quiet combination of carpet and insulation, unnatural light that hits the walls at strange angles.
Dad caught wind of someone else ending up down here a few days ago, a woman who called nine-one-one and told three separate operators, two cops, and a reporter that someone threatened her in the basement hallway, some kind of vagrant or junkie, or maybe just a really haggard homeless woman.
Dad’s betting on Greta, and Dean figures he’s right. He’s not really looking forward to seeing her again, though. She’s kind of a bitch.
Sam’s tracing designs along the inside edge of the salt line, and Dean nudges at his leg with his boot. “What’s with you today?”
Sammy shrugs, and then he says, “I don’t like it here.”
“Here in this hallway or here in general? ’Cause I gotta tell you, the whole walls and lights thing is a big improvement.”
For people who clearly have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to spirits, they did a hell of a nice job on the hallway. It leads straight to a staircase that opens up into the first floor lobby, and the escape route’s wide open, not even a door between the elevator and freedom.
“What’d it look like before?” Sam asks.
“I don’t know,” Dean says. “Dark.”
Sam rolls his eyes, but he laughs and throws a handful of salt in Dean’s direction. “Way to be descriptive.”
“What can I say, it’s a gift,” Dean says, and then the lights flicker, and he says, “Well what do you know, Sammy, it’s showtime.”
She’s standing just outside the circle when he turns, and he throws her a wide smile, says, “Greta, babe, we gotta stop meeting like this!” He hears Sam’s breathing turn raspy and shallow beside him, and he steps out in front, puts one hand behind his back and Sam grabs on, just like he used to when he was little and things got too scary.
That’s the only thing that’s not part of the plan.
Everything else works out perfectly. Greta shows up right on time, does her little shtick and then poofs out right smack in the middle of the hour window Dad set up for the salt and burn, thus proving that none of the creepy blood bags and hair samples and God only knows what else up on the second floor are gonna keep her tied here.
When she’s gone, Sammy packs up the extra salt, puts away their weapons and sits back down in the center of the circle. They’ve got at least an hour until Dad shows up, maybe more, and Dean says, “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Sammy’s seen scarier things than Greta hanging out in a mostly lit hallway. Hell, he’s killed scarier things; Greta should have been a piece of cake.
“I haven’t seen her before, right?” Sam says, chasing a few loose grains of salt over the carpet with his finger. “I don’t-I mean, I don’t know. Did she hurt you?”
It’s kind of a strange question, even for Sammy. They didn’t tell him everything about the first time they were here. Dean didn’t, because there was no point, he was fine. And he’s still fine, and he can’t quite put together why Sam’s even asking, and why now. When the silence stretches on a little too long, he just laughs as brightly as he can and says, “Yeah, with her face.”
Hell, it’s even kind of true.
Sammy shakes his head and doesn’t look up from the ground. “No, I mean, before?” he says, eventually. “It’s all fuzzy, but I just. Did she?”
“Nah,” Dean says, “no damage,” and then he grins and holds his arms out wide, makes a space about as big as the lie he’s telling. “Why, don’t I look perfect to you?”
Sam looks up and says, “Loser,” but a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, and he brushes the salt off his hands and fishes a deck of cards out of his jacket pocket.
Dean’s ahead two loads of laundry to Sam’s spaghetti and meatballs when Dad finally comes down the stairs into the hallway.
“We all set here?” he asks.
“Yes, Sir,” Dean answers.
Dad says, “Good,” and then, “Bobby’s got something for us up north. I want to be on the road by tonight.”
Dean thinks maybe it’s a good thing this time, maybe going somewhere new will be good for Sam, and he can’t help hoping that the dreams and the migraines and the strange questions will get left among the scattered piles of domesticity they’ll inevitably leave behind.
Bobby’s something turns out to be an honest-to-God haunted animal graveyard, and Dean is creeped the fuck out by dead pets. It’s been seven years, and he still hasn’t recovered from reading Pet Sematary alone in the dark when he was ten years old.
He skirts the edges of the graveyard when they scope it out the first morning, grunts, “I’ll take the outside,” like it’s a completely normal thing for him to say.
That night, Sam manages to come up with five bucks to rent a VCR from the motel lobby, brings back Pet Sematary and Pet Sematary Two and spends the next day hissing, “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louisssss,” every chance he gets.
Dean’s plotting his revenge when Dad comes through the orange door of the motel room and says, “Let’s go.”
When they get to the cemetery, Dad pulls signs from the trunk instead of weapons. Things like KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING and WARNING: CONTAMINATED SOIL STORAGE AREA. Dean figures they’re all pretty appropriate.
They work in silence for just under an hour, and at the end of it, the air is a dusky gray that softens edges and lengthens shadows.
Dad thunks a hand down on top of Sammy’s head and says, “Sometimes, with cursed land, there’s nothing you can do, kiddo. Just gotta try to keep people off of it.”
“What did the…” Sam says, squinting a little. “I mean, at the reservation, what did they,” he continues, but then his breath hitches on a sharp inhale and he drops to his knees before Dad can catch him.
Dean’s sprinting across from where he hung his last sign even before Sam’s scream splits the air, and as he runs, the sound shapes into words like, “Dean!” and, “No!” Dad joins in the shouting after a second, but Dean doesn’t stop until he hears a low snarl cut through the twilight.
“Dean,” Dad says, “you’re on the land.” They’re only about ten feet away now, and even over his own heavy breathing and the vicious rumble behind him, he can hear Sammy sobbing on the ground. “Listen to me. Turn around and walk ten steps away from us, slowly. We’ll meet you at the car.”
It takes him a second to turn away from Sam, and when Dad says, “Dean,” it means, Dean, now.
He hasn’t gone more than three steps when the snarling escalates into an unearthly howl, and two more when he hears Dad’s .45 explode. The muted thump of bone and flesh falling to the ground behind him is much too heavy, too close.
“Keep going,” Dad says, before he can turn.
When they get to the car, Dad tucks Sammy into the back seat. “It wasn’t a spirit,” he says. “More like a guardian.”
Dean shakes his head, says, “They’re visions, aren’t they?” and doesn’t ask whether Dad’s known that all along.
Dad leaves both questions unanswered, and that’s all the answer Dean needs.
Sammy’s curled up behind the passenger seat, and Dean sits on the edge, moves his hand toward Sam slowly, and then pulls it back.
“Dean,” Dad says, and for once, Dean has no idea what he means. He lays his palm over Sam’s trembling shoulder, and Sam lets out a long breath; he melts into the seat, stretches out and sighs peacefully against the worn leather.
Dean lets his hand run down Sam’s arm and onto the seat before he looks at Dad and says, “What do you call that?”
They spend all of July in motels, pushing late nights into mornings, shuffling tabs into slots until puzzles become pictures, and Dean spends most of it afraid to be more than a few yards away from Sam for any length of time and afraid to admit why.
If Sammy notices him hovering, he doesn’t say, but then, they’ve never really had the space to spread out, anyway.
Dad gets stuck on a piece that doesn’t fit for two weeks, and Dean’s pretty sure he doesn’t sleep at all for one of them. Dean doesn’t sleep much, either, just lays in bed, waiting.
The visions get stronger, more frequent, and when Sam whispers, “What’s happening to me?” into the pre-dawn haziness, Dean just nudges their kneecaps together and says, “You’re getting too big to share the bed, that’s what.”
The next morning, Dad says, “I don’t want you to tell him.”
It fits right in with the list of things they don’t do, the list of ways they don’t draw attention to themselves, but Dean just says, “He’s not stupid, Dad. He’s gonna figure it out.”
By the end of the month, they’ve tripped and stumbled into a new routine, sleeping during the day, researching and hunting every night, Sammy’s visions filling the space in between. “I know they’re not just dreams, Dean,” he says, barely a whisper. “And I know the headaches aren’t migraines, and I know why they go away.”
Dean stares up at the ceiling and says, “Get some sleep, kiddo.”
When Dad gets a lead on their favorite basement acting up again, he’s out the door before Dean’s even awake enough to send his regards to Greta. It’s a solid six hours from where they are now, so Dean’s not expecting him back for a full day at least, and he takes the opportunity to order double extra onions on his pizza and eat it in bed.
Sam calls him a rebel, and they let the research sit where Dad abandoned it on the rickety kitchenette table.
“It’s not her,” Dad says when he checks in later. The line’s a little staticky. “Caleb’s gonna come down and we’re gonna take care of the rest of the bodies.”
“How long?” Sam asks once Dean’s off the phone.
“A week,” he answers, and Sam laughs and says, “Too bad you used up your best move on the first day!”
Three days into it, Dean’s bored enough to finish up the research on the table and stack the books neatly by the door. The next day, Sam spreads them back out across the table, calls them interesting, and on the fifth day, Dad checks in again, reports that there’s one more body to go.
“How’s Sam?” he says, after a pause.
“Total geek,” Dean answers.
Dad’s, “Dean,” means Dean, don’t be a smartass, and Dean says, “Good. No headaches or anything. He’s good.”
When Dad walks in a week after he left, he’s already knee deep in new research before he even gets halfway across the room. “Dean, remember that spirit in Tulsa,” he says instead of hello, and he pats Sam’s head as he goes by, saying, “the one that was-Sammy?”
Dad’s hand is still hovering an inch above Sam’s head, and it trembles like an admission.
Sam has his eyes squeezed shut, and his hands clench at his sides like he’s looking for something to hold on to. Dean knows that it’s him, that he’s the something Sammy needs to grab onto right now, but he feels like a bug in sap, slow and disconnected, watching a thousand different angles on the same picture, Dad’s eyes locked with his own.
When Dad looks away first, the only question he has left is how long Dad’s known.
And then Sam’s shaky exhales melt into whimpers, and he wonders how long this can go on.
They move into a rental house in August, just in time for the school year. Dad buys an old truck and starts fixing it up, spends all of his time in it and under it, out in the garage.
The night before school starts, he pulls a wrench out of his toolbox and says, “None of this was my choice, Dean. You think this is what I want for him? For us?”
“No,” Dean says. “But I think we could choose something else. All of us.”
Something safe, he doesn’t say. Something where the worst Sam’ll get for touching Dad is the score of tomorrow’s baseball game or maybe the make and model of the next car that’s gonna come in for an oil change.
The next morning, he stops in the guidance office before homeroom.
“I want to go to college,” he says. “How can we make that happen?”
###
Much thanks to dolimir_k for her prompts: Dean with powers. Sam comes into his power at a younger age. How does John cope with the boys during their teenage years? and AU - Dean goes to college and takes Sam with him. (No John bashing if you please)
It's a pre-series AU which will be followed by what I like to think of as the rest of the story. Mainly, I think of it that way because this stands alone, so it won't be Part 2, and it can't be a sequel because it's, you know, not a sequel. So. Anyway. Have some fic! Yay!
Triptych [Gen, PG-13]
They spend all of July in motels, pushing late nights into mornings, shuffling tabs into slots until puzzles become pictures, and Dean spends most of it afraid to be more than a few yards away from Sam for any length of time and afraid to admit why.
Triptych
Sammy’s thirteen, exactly thirteen, the day Dad finally gives in and lets him stay home alone.
In the end, Dean has no idea how he wins the argument. Dad matches him point for point, declares that Sam’s average can survive one day of missed classes, points out that what Dean calls responsibility might very well be nothing more than a lack of opportunity to screw up, says he couldn’t care less that Dean’s been doing it since he was six because they’re talking about Sam.
And then he says, “Okay.”
And Dean says, “Okay,” and that’s the end of it.
It’s not like it’s a great birthday present, but they pretend it is, and Sam’s happy, and that’s good enough. On the way out the door, Dean musses Sam’s hair and says, “No slumber parties,” like the gift is what he’s getting, not what he’s getting out of.
Dad stops in front of Sam, and Sam blurts out, “I know!” before Dad even has a chance to go over the rules for the five hundredth time.
Dean braces for the reprimand, but Dad just chuckles and swipes his palm over the top of Sam’s head. Sam ducks away, but between Dean and Dad, the damage has already been done. Dean smiles brightly in Sam’s direction, and Sam tries to glare back, but it tips over into a chuckle pretty quickly. Dad decreed ages ago that the long hair was okay as long as Sam was willing to deal with the consequences. Dean’s pretty sure Dad expected him to give in and ask for a haircut, but it never happened, and it’s awesome, as far as Dean’s concerned, because parent-approved sibling torture can’t be overrated.
Dad holds out a twenty, says “Pizza is not an emergency,” and tousles Sam’s hair again when he steps in close enough to grab the folded bill, but it’s the one Dean kind of thinks of as Dad’s I love you tousle, and Sam doesn’t protest.
“We probably won’t be back before you leave for school,” Dad says. At the door, he pauses and adds, “Happy Birthday, Sammy.”
Dean spends most of the drive thinking about how he’s never been away from Sam on his birthday before. The further they get from their little bungalow, the more important that seems, but he doesn’t bring it up because he’s pretty sure Dad wouldn’t understand.
He spends the rest of the drive thinking about that.
They set up camp in a little motel about three hours away. Dean spends two nickels and a dime on a faded postcard in the lobby, and then he throws it out in the moldy bathroom wastebasket. They haven’t even left the state, and this isn’t exactly an occasion he wants to memorialize with souvenirs, anyway.
Dad sets an alarm, and somewhere along the line, pretending to sleep turns into sleeping. Dean dreams about Sammy tripping as he runs through the goopy frosting on a giant birthday cake, falling before his silver-tipped blade can pierce through the heart of the candle that’s chasing him.
He wakes up hungry, and half disgusted with himself. Sammy didn’t want to come out on this one, and Dean made it happen. He’s gotta let it go.
They head out to the office building after midnight, and up to the second floor. It’s the creepy kind of abandoned, like everyone rushed outside for a fire drill and just never came back. The school’s a maze of little classrooms and lounges, chairs and tables and-other things, just waiting to pick up where they left off.
“When you said med school, I thought you meant…” Dean says, examining the phlebotomy demonstration that’s set up in one of the rooms, blood still lining the collection bag. “Like, doctors, not Dr. Nick.”
He scribbles the room number down before moving on, just in case. Human remains are human remains, after all, even if he’s not sure exactly how they’d burn a plastic bag of crusty old blood.
There are sixteen rooms in all, but nothing trips the EMF meter, and aside from the fact that there’s a really sketchy looking abandoned medical school on the second floor of a functioning office building, there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary.
It’s pretty much exactly the same amount of nothing their research turned up, just live and in person.
“So what next?” Dean says.
A few hours later, he’s sorry he asked. “Well, something’s haunted,” he says, as the elevator chimes and opens its doors onto the second floor lobby. Again. And again and again and again. “I just don’t get whether it’s the second floor or the elevator.”
He ends up wishing he hadn’t said that, either. The elevator doors clip Dad’s bootheel when they slam shut, and he’s left inside with his answer: definitely the elevator.
Dad shouts, “Dean, you okay?” through the steel doors, but he doesn’t have a chance to answer before the elevator drops, down past the first floor to a basement level that he’s pretty sure isn’t supposed to be here.
When the doors open, light from the elevator gets sucked out into the darkness, swallowed by it, and he can barely make out the floor a few feet into the basement. He’s got a .45 in his hand and a knife in his boot and no clue what’s waiting out there in the dark.
When nothing comes, he reaches into his left front pocket. His lighter’s never failed him and it doesn’t now, but it’s shit to see by, doesn’t increase his field of vision at all.
The last time he got a look out the windows was up on the fourth floor maybe a half hour ago, and dawn had just barely lightened the sky, so sunrise can’t be too far off. The blackness down here is complete, though, which means there are no vents or windows.
So much for the easy escape.
He gives Dad five minutes to get the hell down here with the flashlight, and then five more, and then the elevator lights start flickering.
“Fucking great,” he mutters. He tucks the gun into his waistband and grabs the iron blade out of his boot, uses the handle to pound the elevator’s numbered buttons a few more times. “C’mon, Dad, where are you?”
“He’s not coming. No one’s coming.” The voice is female, shallow and raspy and dry.
“Bet you say that to all the guys,” Dean says, squinting out into the darkness.
She comes into the half-circle of grey light slowly, stiffly, like moving hurts. Kinda hot, for a dead chick, but as she gets closer, her face hollows and her eyes sink deep into their sockets, her skin shrivels around the lines of her skull and her white coat catches on unnatural angles that should be curves.
“No one’s coming,” she says again.
When she gets within striking distance, Dean lashes out, and she dissipates like water vapor around his blade.
The second time’s not as easy. She stays just out of his reach and watches him intently as she wastes away to nothing in front of his eyes. By the time she tries to speak, all that comes out is a long groan, low-pitched and thready. It echoes around the room, changes timbre with each stretch of her shriveled lips, and it doesn’t stop until Dean can’t handle it anymore, takes a lurching step out into the basement and slashes his knife across her chest.
That’s when the elevator door closes.
He backs up against it, kicks at it, but it doesn’t budge.
“God damn it,” he says into the darkness. His lighter lets him see a foot or so in either direction, a flickering circle of dim light that shows him nothing. He keeps his back to the elevator and waits.
After a few minutes, she says, “Why didn’t you come?”
He lunges blindly with the knife a few times, but he can’t tell whether he hits her. He gets his answer when she says, “Why, Dean?” and that’s when he feels it. A little, gnawing pang in the pit of his stomach that expands outward in waves. Before he can lash out again, his head gets heavy and achy and his mouth goes dry, and his stomach seizes and clenches. A wave of dizziness tumbles him down onto his knees, where he retches onto the stone floor. When he starts shaking, he can’t stop, even though the stuttering movement sears his muscles like an iron brand.
It’s not like he can see, but he’s pretty sure his vision goes a little fuzzy, and the clatter of the knife as it falls the foot or so onto the ground resonates in his head like an atomic bomb.
“Dean!” he hears Dad yell, finally, “Dean, get down!”
He’s not entirely sure he’s not imagining it, but slumping down onto the floor is actually one of the very few things he thinks he can handle right now, so he does it anyway.
It’s kind of a fucked up story, in the end. When the basement of the building was partitioned off to save on heating costs, the elevator was supposed to be in the accessible part of the partition, but there was a miscommunication with the contractors. Instead of fixing it, they changed the elevator instead, made it so it can’t go down past the first floor.
Only sometimes, apparently, it does.
Greta Garrison was twenty-two when she went missing five years ago, somewhere between her apartment and the school where she was training to become a medical assistant. No one ever thought to look in the unused part of the basement.
There are five bodies, total. Greta, curled up at the top of the staircase, and four more that seem to match the descriptions of the people who’ve gone missing over the past three years.
They leave the path to the basement open when they go; the door that was hidden by a utility cabinet in the back of the supply closet next to the elevator leads into a narrow, windowless hallway, which winds around behind the elevator shaft to the basement door. It’s not like anyone’s gonna miss it, but Dad calls in an anonymous tip anyway, from a payphone on the back wall of a convenience store thirty miles down the highway.
“You think Greta killed all of them?” Dean asks. “Or do you think the elevator just malfunctioned a bunch of times and they all starved to death?”
“Dehydrated, most likely,” Dad says, and he picks up the biggest Gatorade he can find and two bags of peanut M&M’s on the way to the front of the store. “And I don’t know.”
“I still say we shoulda burned the bitch,” Dean mutters as they walk out into the early morning sunlight.
In the car, Dad dumps the provisions in Dean’s lap and says, “She’s somebody’s daughter.” An hour later, Dean’s nearly asleep when he says, “I’ll keep an eye on the news; if we have to, we’ll take care of the bodies after the families have had them properly buried.”
When they get home, Dean manages to stumble from the passenger seat to the bottom bunk without crossing the line from half-asleep to awake. He sprawls down face-first, digs his nose into the pillow and toes clumsily at his boots. They don’t come off, and after a second, he gives up.
The creaking, rustling bed noises die out along with the muted thunk of colliding rubber soles, and that’s when Dean hears it.
It feels like a dream at first, like one of those weird, self-aware nightmares, because he knows he’s not back in the basement with Greta’s raspy, wordless moans swelling up around him, but the sound is here all the same, low and broken and wrong.
There’s something different about it, though, and when he finally puts it together, realizes that he’s awake and there’s something here, making that noise, he’s armed and on his feet in seconds.
It’s instinct and training that keep his mind ahead of the game, his hand locked around a knife rather than a gun because he can’t rule out any of the primary categories yet, and guns are great when it comes to rabid animals and uninvited guests, but they’re shit against spirits.
He silently taps Sammy’s soccer ball out the open door as he crosses the room, figures it’ll get Dad’s attention, as usual, and he stops in front of the closet.
Whatever it is, it’s behind the flimsy track door.
He rests a finger lightly in the waist-high brass circle for a second, braces it inside the lip of the inverted knob, and then he shoves the door open so hard it rattles in its track. His blade’s hovering in front of his stomach, low enough to defend against some kind of animal, high enough to take on a person or a thing, and he’s ready for whatever’s going to jump out at him.
He’s not ready for Sammy, curled up in the back corner of the closet.
“Sam?” he says. “Sammy. Hey.”
Sam doesn’t answer, just curls up tighter and shoves his face into the corner. He’s shaking, inhaling in jerky gasps and exhaling raspy moans that sound like nothing he ever wants to hear coming out of his brother’s mouth.
“Hey,” he says, “Hey!” And yeah, maybe he’s using what Sam likes to call his lame-ass Dad-voice, but he doesn’t give a shit. Dad uses it for a reason, and Dean needs some fucking answers. “Sam, talk to me. Now.”
Sam doesn’t even look over. He squeezes his knees tighter against his chest and clutches at the corner where the two walls meet. It’s so wrong that Dean knows his first instinct should be to grab for the holy water, but it’s not. Instead, he drops to his knees on the worn carpet, tosses his knife aside in a way that ignores all of Dad’s lessons on weapons safety and maintenance, and says, “Sammy, come on. Come on, dude, what’s wrong?”
He’s closer now, and he can see that Sam’s face is puffy and streaked with tears.
“Sammy,” he says, again, but he doesn’t really expect an answer.
Dad walks in with the soccer ball, looks like he’s about to murder the thing, but he stops short when he sees Dean in front of the closet. Dean sees his eyes flick to the knife on the ground, but all he says is, “Dean?”
It’s the kind of Dean that means Dean, full report, now, but hell if he knows. He doesn’t have a clue what the fuck happened or what’s happening now, or what happens next. All he knows is that it’s Sam, so that’s what he says.
“It’s Sam.”
It’s Sam, and he needs to fix it, now. The need to make it better itches under his skin, but his arms are deadened with the weight of uncertainty. This isn’t a concussion or a broken bone or a gash oozing blood, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Dad walks further into the room and gets a good look at Sam in the closet.
“What the hell happened?” he says, his voice low and rough.
Dean says, “I don’t know,” but he can’t just sit here watching Sam paw at the closet wall, listening to him make these wrong, inhuman sounds.
“Okay,” he says, dropping forward onto his hands and crawling into the closet, “Okay, come on, Sammy.” It’s a tight fit, and there’s barely enough room for him to twist around so he can sit up against the wall next to Sam, but as soon as he’s there, Sammy slumps down against him.
“Hey,” he says, as his hand threads automatically through Sam’s hair.
Sam sighs and goes completely boneless, and Dean stretches his legs out of the closet so Sam’s head can rest in his lap. The position is nothing new. Dean spent a hell of a lot of years perfecting his patented method of petting Sammy back to sleep after a bad dream or an upset stomach, and his hands are almost shaking with relief that it’s working now.
“Dean,” Sam mumbles softly as his breathing eases back to normal, “thought you were gone.” His words are slurred and sleepy.
Dean keeps up his slow circles over Sammy’s scalp and says, “Yeah, but we’re back now.”
“Dad?” Sam says.
“Yeah,” John says from outside the closet. He mutters something else that Dean can’t make out, and then he says, “What happened?” Sam’s eyes flutter open for a second, and he sighs again and burrows his forehead against Dean’s knee.
“Sammy?” Dean says. “Hey.” He tugs softly at a lock of hair.
“Whrf,” Sam says. It’s not an answer, but it’s gonna have to do because they’re obviously not going to get anything else out of him while he’s half asleep.
“Okay, up and at ‘em, kiddo,” Dean says. It’s unbalanced and awkward, and he has to duck at a really weird angle, but he manages to gather Sam up against him and walk him out of the closet. Sam stumbles over the track as they cross over into the room, and Dean hefts him up and deposits him on the bottom bunk.
He looks young with his face buried in Dean’s pillow, younger than he has in a while, and Dean watches him sleep until Dad’s hand on his shoulder pushes him out of the room.
Dad makes a pot of coffee and sets two cups down on the table. Steam rises up and vanishes into the air for the first few minutes, and Dean can’t think of anything to say. Part of him just wants Dad to do something that’ll make whatever the hell just happened in there okay, but it’s been a long time since his dad was that kind of hero.
“What a fucked up day,” is what he says, and Dad doesn’t question his language.
“It wasn’t anything supernatural,” Dad says. Dean wants to ask how he can be sure, because from where he’s standing, supernatural is the good option.
“Possession?” Dean says.
Dad shakes his head. “Didn’t respond to the name of God.”
“Controlled by a spirit, maybe?” Dad shakes his head, and Dean says, “Well maybe it was like-”
“Dean,” Dad says. Meaning Dean, enough.
His first sip of coffee is cold, that weird kind of icy coolness that only happens with hot beverages and time, like heat is the only thing they understand, and without it, they have no idea what temperature to be.
Sammy drifts out of the bedroom just after sunset, says, “Hey,” as he passes the kitchen table but doesn’t stop until his head’s stuck in the refrigerator.
Dean doesn’t strangle him.
He also doesn’t hug him or drag his ass over to the table, sit him down, and demand an explanation, but it’s a close call.
Dad says, “How you doing, kiddo?”
“Fine,” says Sam, and then he looks up over the fridge door with wide eyes, like he’s just realized he should say something about what happened earlier. “Oh. I didn’t go to school today. I mean, I-I don’t really, uh.”
The fridge rattles as the motor kicks on, and Sam doesn’t move. There’s a question in his eyes, a little spark of fear that Dean doesn’t want to see there, and Dean pastes a smile onto his lips, leans across the table to nudge Dad’s elbow with his own, and says, “Give him an inch, and he takes a mile, huh?” He gives his best eyebrow raise and slants a look at Sam. “Think I oughta teach him a lesson?”
Dad just chuckles and Dean’s out of his chair with Sammy slung over his shoulders before the kid can do more than yelp in protest. Dean dumps him on the couch with a whoop and tickles him until they’re a crazy tangle of bodies and limbs, panting around bursts of laughter. Sam’s smile is huge, the way it should be.
“Pizza?” Dad says from the kitchen, and Dean raises a thumbs up over the back of the couch.
“Mushrooms!” Sam says, breathlessly, then adds, “Please!”
Sam’s still fighting giggles when Dean tugs at a lock of his hair and says, “So what gives, dude?”
He wiggles a little, like he wants to get up, but Dean’s leg is really comfortable right where it is, and he’s not moving it.
“I don’t know?” Sam says. “I just had this really weird dream that was like... swishy. Like bad special effects or something. And then I woke up with a headache, and I couldn’t even-I don’t know, it was too bright, and too loud, and just. I don’t think I remember everything.”
“Sounds like a migraine,” Dad says, and Dean sits up to see him. Sammy sits up too, and pulls his legs up onto the couch. “Your mom used to get them once in a while.”
“Yeah?” Sam says.
Dad nods, and Dean nudges Sam with an elbow. “See that? Nothing to worry about,” he says, like he knew it all along, like there’s not a doubt in his mind.
May passes in a bleary chain of late nights and early mornings, and Dean does most of his sleeping in school. It’s enough to keep him somewhat functional, alive and awake and accounted for.
Halfway through the month, Dad says, “Dean,” like, Dean, that’s enough, and when he falls asleep without listening to Sam breathe for half the night first and nothing bad happens, it’s easy enough to slip back into old routines.
Dad takes out a poltergeist on his own, and the next weekend, they get a lead on a ghost, only it turns out to be something else entirely. They go into research mode, late nights over piles of books on the kitchen table, too much coffee and too little sleep, unanswered questions piling up, literally, on scraps of paper heaped in the middle of the table.
When things start to take shape, Dad lays them out on the living room wall, but the key pieces are still gaping holes where the wallpaper shows through.
On Saturday night, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla is muted on the TV, and Sammy’s asleep, face pressed against the pages of a book on local legends. They haven’t come up with anything new since they left the library with stacks of photocopies, and Dean’s putting serious thought into whether he can get a handlebar mustache drawn on Sam’s face without waking him up when Dad says, “I think it is a ghost.”
“How do you figure?” Dean asks.
Dad chuckles and scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know,” he says. “Old man’s intuition?”
Dean laughs and shakes his head. “Gotta do better than that, Old Man.”
Sammy snuffles into his book, and Dean figures he’s got a forty-sixty shot with the mustache, but Dad rubs a hand over Sam’s hair and says, “Come on, kiddo. Bed.”
Dean follows not long after, falls asleep to the sound of Sam’s easy breathing and wakes a few hours later to the sound of something that’s not quite right. Sam’s still asleep on the top bunk, and it’s quiet except for the sound of his almost-snoring.
He holds his knife out in front of him on his way to the kitchen, steps quietly, but all that’s out there is a note from Dad. Figured it out. Back soon.
“Fuck,” he says, slamming the broad side of the knife down on the table, and he cringes at the noise, hopes it didn’t wake Sam. “Damn it, Dad.”
It’s plain as day, now, laid out on the living room wall. The holes are filled with names and dates, places and answers.
It’s a woman in white, but it’s a new one, without the death toll Dad would’ve been looking for. He’s tracing his finger over the woman’s photocopied obituary, reading how she’s survived by her husband and parents but not by her three lovely children when he hears it. A little, hitching breath in the silence, a creak that could just be Sammy flipping over.
He freezes, like the motion of his limbs through the air might drown out whatever he’s listening for, and for a moment, there’s only the weighty hush of the earliest morning hours.
When Sam’s scream rips through the stillness, despite everything Dad’s taught him, despite everything he’s learned, he wishes there was a monster. He wishes there was something he could lay his hands on, something he could kill. Something he could battle with a gun or a knife instead of Dad’s bottle of prescription-strength ibuprofen.
It only takes him a second to get back to the bedroom, and another to get up to the top bunk with the two bottles-pills and water-he’s been keeping next to the bed.
Sam’s scream tapers off into a whimper, and he doesn’t answer when Dean says, “Sammy, hey, sit up for me, okay?” Instead, he curls his knees up to his chest and burrows into his pillow, gags a little into the soft fabric.
“Fuck,” Dean says, “Sammy, come on,” and he can hear the edge of panic in his voice, too bright against Sam’s muffled moans.
“Sorry, kiddo,” he says, but he’s gotta get Sam upright to take the painkillers. He scoots back against the wall to brace himself, and then he grabs Sam around the middle and pulls. It’s not graceful, but it gets the job done. Sam lands mostly in his lap, and Dean nudges him upwards.
“Hey, Sammy, you gotta take one of these for me, okay?” he says.
“Dean,” says Sam. He snuffles against Dean’s shoulder like Dean’s the world’s biggest tissue, and Dean doesn’t even give a shit, just reaches across his body to run a hand over Sam’s hair and tells himself that talking is a good sign.
“This is gonna make you feel better, okay?”
Sam snuffles again and says, “I think he died.”
“Who did?”
“In my dream.” He curls up again and lays his forehead near Dean’s knee.
“Another dream?” Dean says. He nudges gently with the knee under Sam’s head, but Sam doesn’t budge.
Sam nods, and his hair flops into his eyes. “I read about it,” he says, and he sighs when Dean brushes his hair back. “With migraines, some people have triggers, like chocolate or stress or whatever.”
“And you think…”
“Bad dreams are my trigger. Yeah.” He turns so he’s on his back, facing up at the ceiling. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Is there anything about you that’s not weird?” Dean says, poking Sam lightly in the side.
Sam rolls his eyes and ignores the question. “I feel better,” he says, instead. “I think it’s ’cause you woke me up right away.”
Dean’s hand pauses half threaded through Sammy’s hair, and Sam nudges it with his head to get it going again.
“How better?” he says, and he has a momentary flash of anger at Dad. He can’t be everywhere, can’t take care of Sam and have Dad’s back at the same time, and it’s not fair to make him choose one over the other.
“Great, actually,” Sam says, and his brow creases a little. “Why?”
Dean tries for a cocky grin and ends up being glad there’s only a tiny bit of light filtering in from the kitchen. “Feel like rescuing the old man?” he says.
“Meaning…”
“Meaning Dad figured it out and went after the damn thing,” Dean says. “He left a note.”
Sam says, “Fuck,” and Dean silently agrees, doesn’t even bother calling him on his language.
He gives one last tug through Sam’s hair and says, “Clothes on, ten minutes?”
It’s an easy sprint down to the housing development two neighborhoods over, and just as easy to wire up a generic import. He spends the drive back concentrating on keeping exactly to the posted speed limit, not over, not under, and not thinking about what might have happened if he wasn’t there for Sam, and what might be happening now, because he’s not there for Dad.
He’s got no fucking clue why Dad took this one alone. Dean’s read the journal, he knows just how much Dad’s done without backup, but he also knows they’re stronger as a team, stronger as a family, and it doesn’t make sense for Dad to go off alone when he doesn’t have to.
It’s not even a school night, for God’s sake.
Sammy runs out when Dean pulls up, says “Nice wheels,” as he pulls open the door. “You know Dad’s gonna kill you, right?”
Dean shrugs, even though Sam’s right and his little smirk says that he knows it. “I figure as long as we save his life first, he’ll let us off the hook,” he says.
Sam raises an eyebrow. “You sure about that?” he says, and then, “Wait, us? There is no us, Dean.”
Dean just laughs because, yeah, he’s dead either way, while Sam continues: “There is you, and a stolen car, and a direct order which you have failed to obey.”
“Hey,” Dean says, turning left towards the hilltowns, “there was no direct order.”
Sam rolls his eyes like they’re headed out for dinner or school or anything but a hunt Dad should never have taken on his own, and says, “I’m pretty sure Don’t follow me on a hunt when I leave you behind is implied.”
“And I’m pretty sure implied is the opposite of direct order,” Dean says, and he smiles brightly, like Sam doesn’t know he’s worried out of his fucking mind.
In the end, they do save Dad, and after, he helps ditch the stolen car without comment. Sam curls up in the backseat of the Impala on the ride home, and he’s asleep by the time they’re halfway there.
“Dean,” Dad says.
“Yeah, I know.”
Dad nods slowly. “Okay,” he says, but there’s nothing exasperated or angry in his tone, and Dean doesn’t know what to say in response to an invisible lecture, so he settles back and dozes, too.
On the way through the kitchen, Dad catches Dean’s elbow before he can follow Sam to their bedroom. “I didn’t want Sam to be here alone,” he says.
Dean whips around without thinking and bites out, “Well, congratulations; nearly getting yourself killed was a great start.”
Dad just nods, that same slow nod from the car. “There more where that came from?”
“No, Sir,” Dean says, almost a whisper. He feels drained, suddenly, hollowed out and beyond tired, like his outburst took all the energy he had left to give and a loan on tomorrow’s, too. “But it happened again. Sammy, I mean.”
Dad sits at the table and huffs out a heavy sigh. “I figured it was coming,” he says. “Your mom. Her migraines were monthly, and it’s getting to be near a month, now. You give him the stuff?”
“Had it,” Dean says, “but he didn’t need it. Said he felt okay because I woke him up so soon.”
“He had a nightmare again?”
Through a yawn, Dean says, “Yeah, said something about nightmares being his trigger.”
Dad leans back, studies the ceiling for a minute, then he gets up and heads for his room. He squeezes Dean’s shoulder as he passes, and Dean follows a minute later. Sammy’s curled up in the bottom bunk, and Dean shoves him over toward the wall when he gets in.
“He was driving,” he mumbles. “In my nightmare. She killed him in his car.”
Dean sighs dramatically and says, “I think all that research is finally messing with your mind,” and he runs a hand through Sammy’s hair until his breathing goes soft and even and doesn’t think about how close tonight really was, how it could’ve been Dad, dead in the Impala, if they’d been a few minutes later.
A month after Dean’s quality time with Greta in the basement, he’s back down there, sharing a ring of salt and a pack of gum with Sam.
It’s different now. There’s still no basement button on the elevator, but when it decides to make the trip anyway, the doors open up into a freshly painted hallway, lights set every other panel in the dropped ceiling, and a little memorial plaque on the wall.
It’s almost creepier this way, a deadly quiet combination of carpet and insulation, unnatural light that hits the walls at strange angles.
Dad caught wind of someone else ending up down here a few days ago, a woman who called nine-one-one and told three separate operators, two cops, and a reporter that someone threatened her in the basement hallway, some kind of vagrant or junkie, or maybe just a really haggard homeless woman.
Dad’s betting on Greta, and Dean figures he’s right. He’s not really looking forward to seeing her again, though. She’s kind of a bitch.
Sam’s tracing designs along the inside edge of the salt line, and Dean nudges at his leg with his boot. “What’s with you today?”
Sammy shrugs, and then he says, “I don’t like it here.”
“Here in this hallway or here in general? ’Cause I gotta tell you, the whole walls and lights thing is a big improvement.”
For people who clearly have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to spirits, they did a hell of a nice job on the hallway. It leads straight to a staircase that opens up into the first floor lobby, and the escape route’s wide open, not even a door between the elevator and freedom.
“What’d it look like before?” Sam asks.
“I don’t know,” Dean says. “Dark.”
Sam rolls his eyes, but he laughs and throws a handful of salt in Dean’s direction. “Way to be descriptive.”
“What can I say, it’s a gift,” Dean says, and then the lights flicker, and he says, “Well what do you know, Sammy, it’s showtime.”
She’s standing just outside the circle when he turns, and he throws her a wide smile, says, “Greta, babe, we gotta stop meeting like this!” He hears Sam’s breathing turn raspy and shallow beside him, and he steps out in front, puts one hand behind his back and Sam grabs on, just like he used to when he was little and things got too scary.
That’s the only thing that’s not part of the plan.
Everything else works out perfectly. Greta shows up right on time, does her little shtick and then poofs out right smack in the middle of the hour window Dad set up for the salt and burn, thus proving that none of the creepy blood bags and hair samples and God only knows what else up on the second floor are gonna keep her tied here.
When she’s gone, Sammy packs up the extra salt, puts away their weapons and sits back down in the center of the circle. They’ve got at least an hour until Dad shows up, maybe more, and Dean says, “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Sammy’s seen scarier things than Greta hanging out in a mostly lit hallway. Hell, he’s killed scarier things; Greta should have been a piece of cake.
“I haven’t seen her before, right?” Sam says, chasing a few loose grains of salt over the carpet with his finger. “I don’t-I mean, I don’t know. Did she hurt you?”
It’s kind of a strange question, even for Sammy. They didn’t tell him everything about the first time they were here. Dean didn’t, because there was no point, he was fine. And he’s still fine, and he can’t quite put together why Sam’s even asking, and why now. When the silence stretches on a little too long, he just laughs as brightly as he can and says, “Yeah, with her face.”
Hell, it’s even kind of true.
Sammy shakes his head and doesn’t look up from the ground. “No, I mean, before?” he says, eventually. “It’s all fuzzy, but I just. Did she?”
“Nah,” Dean says, “no damage,” and then he grins and holds his arms out wide, makes a space about as big as the lie he’s telling. “Why, don’t I look perfect to you?”
Sam looks up and says, “Loser,” but a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, and he brushes the salt off his hands and fishes a deck of cards out of his jacket pocket.
Dean’s ahead two loads of laundry to Sam’s spaghetti and meatballs when Dad finally comes down the stairs into the hallway.
“We all set here?” he asks.
“Yes, Sir,” Dean answers.
Dad says, “Good,” and then, “Bobby’s got something for us up north. I want to be on the road by tonight.”
Dean thinks maybe it’s a good thing this time, maybe going somewhere new will be good for Sam, and he can’t help hoping that the dreams and the migraines and the strange questions will get left among the scattered piles of domesticity they’ll inevitably leave behind.
Bobby’s something turns out to be an honest-to-God haunted animal graveyard, and Dean is creeped the fuck out by dead pets. It’s been seven years, and he still hasn’t recovered from reading Pet Sematary alone in the dark when he was ten years old.
He skirts the edges of the graveyard when they scope it out the first morning, grunts, “I’ll take the outside,” like it’s a completely normal thing for him to say.
That night, Sam manages to come up with five bucks to rent a VCR from the motel lobby, brings back Pet Sematary and Pet Sematary Two and spends the next day hissing, “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louisssss,” every chance he gets.
Dean’s plotting his revenge when Dad comes through the orange door of the motel room and says, “Let’s go.”
When they get to the cemetery, Dad pulls signs from the trunk instead of weapons. Things like KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING and WARNING: CONTAMINATED SOIL STORAGE AREA. Dean figures they’re all pretty appropriate.
They work in silence for just under an hour, and at the end of it, the air is a dusky gray that softens edges and lengthens shadows.
Dad thunks a hand down on top of Sammy’s head and says, “Sometimes, with cursed land, there’s nothing you can do, kiddo. Just gotta try to keep people off of it.”
“What did the…” Sam says, squinting a little. “I mean, at the reservation, what did they,” he continues, but then his breath hitches on a sharp inhale and he drops to his knees before Dad can catch him.
Dean’s sprinting across from where he hung his last sign even before Sam’s scream splits the air, and as he runs, the sound shapes into words like, “Dean!” and, “No!” Dad joins in the shouting after a second, but Dean doesn’t stop until he hears a low snarl cut through the twilight.
“Dean,” Dad says, “you’re on the land.” They’re only about ten feet away now, and even over his own heavy breathing and the vicious rumble behind him, he can hear Sammy sobbing on the ground. “Listen to me. Turn around and walk ten steps away from us, slowly. We’ll meet you at the car.”
It takes him a second to turn away from Sam, and when Dad says, “Dean,” it means, Dean, now.
He hasn’t gone more than three steps when the snarling escalates into an unearthly howl, and two more when he hears Dad’s .45 explode. The muted thump of bone and flesh falling to the ground behind him is much too heavy, too close.
“Keep going,” Dad says, before he can turn.
When they get to the car, Dad tucks Sammy into the back seat. “It wasn’t a spirit,” he says. “More like a guardian.”
Dean shakes his head, says, “They’re visions, aren’t they?” and doesn’t ask whether Dad’s known that all along.
Dad leaves both questions unanswered, and that’s all the answer Dean needs.
Sammy’s curled up behind the passenger seat, and Dean sits on the edge, moves his hand toward Sam slowly, and then pulls it back.
“Dean,” Dad says, and for once, Dean has no idea what he means. He lays his palm over Sam’s trembling shoulder, and Sam lets out a long breath; he melts into the seat, stretches out and sighs peacefully against the worn leather.
Dean lets his hand run down Sam’s arm and onto the seat before he looks at Dad and says, “What do you call that?”
They spend all of July in motels, pushing late nights into mornings, shuffling tabs into slots until puzzles become pictures, and Dean spends most of it afraid to be more than a few yards away from Sam for any length of time and afraid to admit why.
If Sammy notices him hovering, he doesn’t say, but then, they’ve never really had the space to spread out, anyway.
Dad gets stuck on a piece that doesn’t fit for two weeks, and Dean’s pretty sure he doesn’t sleep at all for one of them. Dean doesn’t sleep much, either, just lays in bed, waiting.
The visions get stronger, more frequent, and when Sam whispers, “What’s happening to me?” into the pre-dawn haziness, Dean just nudges their kneecaps together and says, “You’re getting too big to share the bed, that’s what.”
The next morning, Dad says, “I don’t want you to tell him.”
It fits right in with the list of things they don’t do, the list of ways they don’t draw attention to themselves, but Dean just says, “He’s not stupid, Dad. He’s gonna figure it out.”
By the end of the month, they’ve tripped and stumbled into a new routine, sleeping during the day, researching and hunting every night, Sammy’s visions filling the space in between. “I know they’re not just dreams, Dean,” he says, barely a whisper. “And I know the headaches aren’t migraines, and I know why they go away.”
Dean stares up at the ceiling and says, “Get some sleep, kiddo.”
When Dad gets a lead on their favorite basement acting up again, he’s out the door before Dean’s even awake enough to send his regards to Greta. It’s a solid six hours from where they are now, so Dean’s not expecting him back for a full day at least, and he takes the opportunity to order double extra onions on his pizza and eat it in bed.
Sam calls him a rebel, and they let the research sit where Dad abandoned it on the rickety kitchenette table.
“It’s not her,” Dad says when he checks in later. The line’s a little staticky. “Caleb’s gonna come down and we’re gonna take care of the rest of the bodies.”
“How long?” Sam asks once Dean’s off the phone.
“A week,” he answers, and Sam laughs and says, “Too bad you used up your best move on the first day!”
Three days into it, Dean’s bored enough to finish up the research on the table and stack the books neatly by the door. The next day, Sam spreads them back out across the table, calls them interesting, and on the fifth day, Dad checks in again, reports that there’s one more body to go.
“How’s Sam?” he says, after a pause.
“Total geek,” Dean answers.
Dad’s, “Dean,” means Dean, don’t be a smartass, and Dean says, “Good. No headaches or anything. He’s good.”
When Dad walks in a week after he left, he’s already knee deep in new research before he even gets halfway across the room. “Dean, remember that spirit in Tulsa,” he says instead of hello, and he pats Sam’s head as he goes by, saying, “the one that was-Sammy?”
Dad’s hand is still hovering an inch above Sam’s head, and it trembles like an admission.
Sam has his eyes squeezed shut, and his hands clench at his sides like he’s looking for something to hold on to. Dean knows that it’s him, that he’s the something Sammy needs to grab onto right now, but he feels like a bug in sap, slow and disconnected, watching a thousand different angles on the same picture, Dad’s eyes locked with his own.
When Dad looks away first, the only question he has left is how long Dad’s known.
And then Sam’s shaky exhales melt into whimpers, and he wonders how long this can go on.
They move into a rental house in August, just in time for the school year. Dad buys an old truck and starts fixing it up, spends all of his time in it and under it, out in the garage.
The night before school starts, he pulls a wrench out of his toolbox and says, “None of this was my choice, Dean. You think this is what I want for him? For us?”
“No,” Dean says. “But I think we could choose something else. All of us.”
Something safe, he doesn’t say. Something where the worst Sam’ll get for touching Dad is the score of tomorrow’s baseball game or maybe the make and model of the next car that’s gonna come in for an oil change.
The next morning, he stops in the guidance office before homeroom.
“I want to go to college,” he says. “How can we make that happen?”
###
Much thanks to dolimir_k for her prompts: Dean with powers. Sam comes into his power at a younger age. How does John cope with the boys during their teenage years? and AU - Dean goes to college and takes Sam with him. (No John bashing if you please)