Roof But No Ceiling (2/8)
Sam knew something had gone weird - not wrong, per se, but not even remotely normal - when he woke up before Dean.
Under most circumstances, that wouldn't be strange at all. But at the moment, Sam slept till mid-afternoon and Dean hadn't slept in that late in years.
When they were younger, Sam could always tell when their dad had come home from a hunt in the middle of the night because Dean slept in the next morning. He slept in every morning that John was home with them instead of out in the field, in the line of fire. Sam had quickly worked out that Dean only slept that hard, only let himself indulge that way, when he felt safe, when he felt secure. He hadn't seen Dean sleep in like this since before their dad died.
He didn't know what to make of that. He knew Dean saw the bunker as home, but this? This was strange. Either Dean was way more attached to the place than Sam had ever seen him get with anything - including the Impala - or Dean had been moonlighting.
Sam should have paid more attention to that damned death echo.
It took him an embarrassingly long time to lever himself up and over to the edge of the bed. Dean would have to have gotten him a king-sized one. Sure, it was pretty much the only bed he didn't feel like he dwarfed since he'd topped six feet, but it still seemed liked an infinite plane of squishiness when his body wasn't working right yet and he wanted to get up in a hurry. It was easier, he knew, once he got past the mattress - firm ground didn't mess with his muscles as much, even if he did have to at least pretend to navigate it upright - but getting there, when the damned memory foam kept trying to suck him back into the perfect, Sam-shaped divot in the middle and every pillow in the bunker was crowded in his way was a bit like trying to run an obstacle course made out of quicksand with his shoelaces tied together.
At least the door wasn't far. The bed took up pretty much the entire room, and Sam could wrap his hand around the door jamb from a seated position at the bed's edge. It was extremely useful for hauling himself up, and from there he could let the wall hold a good chunk of his weight while he made his way over to Dean's room.
The bunker seemed to have operated on a skeleton staff in its heyday, so while it was clearly built to house an entire army when the need arose, only a handful of the rooms were actually livable by the time Sam and Dean had gotten there. As a result, there were a whole two rooms between Sam's and Dean's, making it difficult for Sam to make out if Dean's door was open or not. Two rooms had barely seemed like anything when they moved in - the novelty of not having to cram themselves into the same tiny motel room had been so amazing that they'd barely blinked at being separated by maybe 25 feet of hallway. But that 25 feet was practically a marathon from where Sam stood - leaned - precariously.
He briefly considered just firing a gun into the air. Instead, he leaned harder against the wall, took a deep breath, and bellowed "DEAN!"
There was a crash down the hall, some mildly creative cursing, and then Dean swung out his door in nothing but his shorts, his dressing gown on upside down, his pistol in his fist.
And a turn of the century ladies' hat on his head.
Right. That was new.
"Sam!" Dean waved his pistol in a circle, then squinted down the hall at where Sam leaned. "Dude, what the fuck are you doing out of bed?"
Sam rolled his eyes. "Wondering where the hell you were."
Dean squinted harder, then rubbed his eyes. Sam hoped he hadn't slept in that hat. It looked like it had about a century's worth of dust all over it, and that couldn't be good for his brother's eyes. Or respiratory tract. Shit, did this place have asbestos? It was probably totally full of asbestos. Hell, they probably should have done a whole safety inspection before they just moved themselves in. They were used to staying in shitholes, but they were usually only there for a few days at a stretch, not weeks. When did people figure out radium poisoning was a thing?
"I was sleepin'." Dean sounded all of five, and the way he was scrubbing at his eyes with both fists now didn't help. He'd stashed his gun in his shorts, which were dragging rather dangerously down on his hip with the weight of it. "What time 'zit?"
"Like, 1 PM," Sam said. "What the hell, man? You throw a kegger last night or something?"
Dean finally stopped rubbing his eyes and blinked his way through a yawn. "Was, uh." He glanced over to the side. Sam followed his gaze automatically, but didn't see anything unusual about the wall he was frowning at. Dean really must've been tired if he was doing the whole looking away when lying thing. "Exploring." He straightened a little, tugging at his drooping waist band and yawned again. "Didn't notice how late it was getting."
"Uh huh." Sam's mouth curled up in a smirk. "Nice hat."
Dean frowned, confused, then glanced up and whipped the hat back off his head with a curse. It'd have been funnier if he didn't then stare at it like he was a rube who'd just seen his first ghost. "Yeah," he muttered, turning it slowly in his hand. "It was our cousin's."
Sam sighed, then heaved himself along the wall in Dean's direction. "Right. Let's get us both some coffee and you can tell me all about it."
Dean looked up and scowled. "Dude, where do you think you're going?"
"I'm already out of bed," Sam said. "I'm not even breathing hard, yet. I'm going to the kitchen and I'm going to sit at a table like a real person while you tell me who our 'cousin' is, and how the hell you ended up with her hat."
"Sam -"
"No arguing." Sam frowned across the hall at the kitchen, planning his attack, then finally just sort of flung himself at the doorway headlong, sagging down against the far wall with a thump. Dean opened his mouth, hand flung out, then winced and sighed.
"Fine, Jesus, at least let me help you, okay?"
"Yeah," Sam agreed. He was, in fact, now starting to feel a little winded. "Okay, we can do that." He stayed where he was until Dean came over and pulled his arm over his shoulder. "Dude. You smell like mothballs and ectoplasm."
Dean sighed. "Yeah, man. I know."
*
"Okay." Sam curled both his hands around his mug. As much of both hands he could get around it, anyway. His palms fit, but his fingers got all tangled up in each other and he was absolutely observing this because it made more sense than the story Dean had just told him. "So how did you end up wearing the hat?"
Dean shook his head. "Fuck if I know, man, I barely remember getting back out of there."
"Out of the ancient tunnels," Sam said, just to be absolutely clear. "That you found by following a death echo into a secret passage behind the sink."
"It opens into the hallway," Dean said. "But yeah, pretty much."
"Where the death echo," Sam found it important to emphasize that part, "spoke to you. Directly."
Dean took a sip of his own coffee. "Mmhm."
"So you could witness her death. Which was part of some ritual. For the Men of Letters."
"That's about it." Dean smiled tiredly, giving a little shrug.
"The death echo that shares our last name. Whose maiden name is the same as my old dead girlfriend's."
Dean frowned, looking away, and then up at the ceiling.
"Dude, you were at her funeral with me, I know you at least heard what her full name was."
Dean's eyes narrowed. He tilted his head, then nodded and shrugged again. "Hey man, it's not exactly an uncommon name. It's probably a coincidence."
"Nothing in our lives is coincidental, Dean. Nothing."
Dean took another long sip of his coffee, then pushed himself up from the table to go get the pot. "Which part is weirding you out, Sammy? The fact that this place was built on a foundation of human sacrifice, or the fact that you almost settled down to make babies with a potential, like, seventh cousin fifteen times removed?"
"That's not how -" Sam groaned. It was no good trying to get into the technicalities of genealogy with his brother. "I'm trying not to think too much about the human sacrifice thing, actually."
"She was pretty damned willing," Dean said. "She basically ordered the other dude to do it. Woulda been around 1913-ish, I think. The stuff the one guy was saying definitely sounded world-war-y, and, well." He set the coffee pot down on the table next to the dusty pile of feathers masquerading as ladies' head gear. "Hat."
"The tunnel you saw might have been an older bunker," Sam mused. "This place is too art deco to have been finished any earlier than, say, 1925."
"And the old college years rear their ugly head," Dean said. "Or have you been spending your downtime reading up on old timey interior decorating?"
"It's called 'paying attention', Dean." Sam smirked. It felt so good to be sitting here like this, trading barbs back and forth with his brother about a case, instead of lying on that pile of pillows in his room being tended to and doted upon. Maybe he'd have to try to catch this dead lady some night. It sounded like he might owe her a thank you or two. "Hell, this place was probably designed by Frank Lloyd Wright."
"Nah, man. Wright woulda stuck a waterfall in the middle of it." Dean smirked back, lifting his coffee mug in a little toast when Sam laughed. "Right, so. Why would World War I make the old Men of Letters perform a sacrifice here? The US didn't even pretend to get into that whole thing until 1917."
"Yeah, but that didn't mean we were all totally unaffected by what was going on overseas," Sam said. "I mean, yeah, okay, we're pretty far from any coast, so thinking it might affect this area directly is a little weird. We should do some research."
Dean nodded slowly, looking down into his mug, then clapped his hand on the table and stood up. "Right. I'll hit the books in the library while you go get some rest."
Sam sat up so hard the room spun. "No. No way, Dean, you are not benching me."
"Sam -"
"No. You're not the only one going stir crazy in here." He held up a hand before Dean could protest again about his levels of boredom and crazy. "If I don't spend at least a day out of the bed, I'm going to start shooting. You don't have to be able to stand to be able to do damage with a gun."
Dean heaved a deep sigh, running his hand over the back of his neck. "Fine. But you're sitting at the table. No getting up to look at the stacks. You think you need something, you tell me and I'll get it. And the minute - the minute your eyes start to droop, I am dragging your ass back into that room, you hear me?"
Sam smiled. "Yeah, man. I hear you." He held up both hands in an 'I surrender' gesture. "I promise not to move an inch from the library chair."
He didn't say he wouldn't move the chair. Though he was pretty sure he could reach the book stacks from the table anyway.
*
"Maybe you should use a camera, next time." Sam slouched in his chair at one of the library's central tables, poking disconsolately at Dean's laptop. Because, sure, they were saving lots of stolen, cheated, and fraudulent money not having to stay in motels every damn night of their lives, so they could buy things like fancy memory foam mattresses and giant tvs and Dean his own special laptop, but not a nice iPad Air or a Nexus 7 for Sam. Hell, even one of those Windows things they advertised by doing anything but actual work on them would be cool. But noooo.
Huh. Apparently Dean got himself a Facebook account.
"What?" Dean called from somewhere behind him. Sam had sent him on what was probably a wild goose chase for a World War I era Men of Letters journal. He'd planned to use the distraction to try his "getting his own books without technically leaving his chair" tactic, but the distance from the kitchen to the library was a lot longer than he remembered, and it currently felt like there were lead weights tied to his wrists and ankles.
"A camera," Sam said again. "When you go down to explore the vaults."
He imagined he could actually hear Dean's frown as he came up behind him, even before he started to speak. "The 'vaults'?" he asked. "What makes you think I'm going to go back down there?"
"Uh," Sam said. "I've met you?" He tilted his head back to look at him. "I'm just saying, Dean. It's obvious I'm not going to be able to go down there with you for awhile. But if you bring a decent web camera, I can still see whatever you find."
Dean slapped a couple of old leather-covered books onto the table and swung into the chair across from Sam. "You kidding me?" he said. "That place has got to be a death trap. Or several death traps. For all I know, Mary Annabelle pulled me into her little ritual so I could be the next human sacrifice."
Sam frowned and rubbed his chin - mostly to prove to himself that he could still move his fingers. Who knew walking down a hallway could take this much energy? "That's true. Do you remember the precise wording? It'd give us a better idea if this was a one-time kind of deal or one of those renewing rituals."
He heard Dean sigh. "Not really. But we're coming up on the hundred year anniversary of the archduke getting offed. If we're going with World War I, it wouldn't be a stretch to think it might be coming due."
Sam frowned harder. Dean had a point, and it wasn't like they'd managed to find a user manual on this place yet. They were pretty much taking it on faith that Mary Annabelle wasn't an omen - or worse. "Maybe we shouldn't have moved in here so fast," he said. "We don't actually really know that much about how this place works."
"We're legacies," Dean said, almost primly. "Apparently from really far back. This place is like our inheritance."
"And yet you were just now saying that you think the secret passage behind the kitchen wants to kill you."
"I didn't -" Dean groaned, picking up the top book of his stack and holding it out to him. "Here. Journal of one Mr. Richard Fisher, undated. She called the guy who offed her 'Richard', might be his. You want me to go all Indiana Jones on the 'vaults' - and yes, I admit it, so do I - then we gotta hit the books first. I don't want to end up in a room full of venomous snakes."
Sam took the journal, eyeballing the cover. It certainly looked old enough, though it was hard to pin down the precise age of a book just by looking at it. The fore-edge was roughly cut, the pages uneven, and the corners of the hard front and back covers were curled in. There was no dust jacket, and the inlay on the spine and cover just had the name, Richard Fisher, and the Men of Letters symbol. He carefully opened it, noting the lack of book plate or frontispiece, then turned the first few pages. It was handwritten in an old style script and what looked like a mix of short- and longhand styles, the ink faded from black to a purplish brown.
This was going to take him forever.
He dragged himself up a bit in his seat, resting the book on the table as he reached a shaky hand out to drag the lamp in the middle of the table a little closer to get more light. When he glanced over, he saw that Dean had already put a pen and a notepad - one they'd lifted from a particularly gaudy themed motel a few months back - next to him.
Well. At least he wasn't stuck lying in bed trying to keep Dean from figuring out he was watching Downton Abbey anymore.
*
There was a dark spot on the table, maybe two inches from where Sam rested his hand. A black smudge, about the size of a thumbprint, like a smear of engine grease but darker. Graveyard dark. Evil dark. Dean tried to ignore it, flipping through a journal by someone named "Esther Crumpacker" - which, really? - but the rest of the bunker was so clean. Sure, Dean had been keeping up with the upkeep of the place in the downtime, clearing up dishes and throwing out old wrappers and things and even occasionally wiping down the surfaces, but he'd barely had to do anything more than that. The main rooms of the place had some kind of dirt repelling aura around them, and frankly, if it meant he didn't have to don an apron and rubber gloves - or whatever you wore to clean things that weren't guns or cars - to make him and Sam feel at home, Dean wasn't complaining.
The smudge was annoying the crap out of him, though.
Sam must have done it. Somehow, in the last several minutes since making his way from the kitchen to the library, while Dean was in the stacks, Sam must've - well, Dean didn't even want to know what Sam must've done to get something that light-sucking on the otherwise radiant wood table.
Was it coffee? Dean was pretty sure he was changing the filters on a regular basis, but the old automatic coffee machine in the kitchen was almost beyond even Dean. It had pressure gauges and dials that looked like they belonged on a steam engine. Or a nuclear power plant. He leaned forward a little, more than happy to set Ms. Crumpacker (he was so using that for Sam's next alias) aside for the time being in favor of figuring out what Sam did to his table.
The smudge sprouted a really unnecessary number of legs and started running straight at Dean.
If anyone other than Sam were around to hear the noise Dean made as he scrabbled out of his chair, hands flinging out as if to shake the phantom feeling of tiny feet from his skin by sheer will alone, Dean would have had to run them through with a scimitar. Which he grabbed. And wielded at the once-again-pristine tabletop like it'd insulted his hunter heritage.
"Dean?" Sam sat at the table, his hand still sitting right where the thing had been lurking, still at least partially prissy-geeking out over Richard Fisher's journal like he wasn't now at risk of getting plague.
Wait, no. Plague was rats. Dean really hoped there were no rats. Oh crap, did that thing climb its way out of the vaults?!
"Did you see that?" Dean demanded, sword still raised, though clearly the answer was "no".
Sam looked around anyway, then gave Dean one of his little headshake-shrugs that said "I didn't tape over Zeppelin IV, I don't know what you're talking about."
"Fuck!" Dean hissed through his teeth, scanning the floor now, then gently put the scimitar away. "This fucking . . . bug."
Sam tried not to smirk, at least. Dean had to give him that. "What, like a silverfish? Cockroach?"
"Like a millipede and a roach did the nasty." Dean shook himself a little even thinking about it. "In Hell."
Sam nodded. "Okay," he said. "We'll pick up some traps next time we're out." He'd started doing that a couple days ago, talking about grocery shopping like it was something he and Dean did together right now, instead of something Dean did while Sam was sleeping too hard to notice he was gone.
Dean sighed, running his hand over his head. "Yeah. Whatever." He grunted once, shifted to sit back down, then changed his mind. "I'm going to grab a shower."
"Good idea." Sam gave Dean a once over, his lips pursed. "Wash the dust from the vaults off." The lip purse went a little wicked at the edges. "But be careful. Bugs love dark, damp places."
"Hilarious." Dean turned his back on his brother and the room in general and tried to shake the feeling that the bug was still there, watching him.
"Be sure to check under the toilet seat for spiders."
Dean flipped him off.
*
"'Don't forget to check under the toilet seat,'" Dean mimicked, stalking down the hallway towards the Men of Letters' giant ass shower room. "Stupid wise-ass piece of -" He rubbed his hands over his head, digging his fingernails into his scalp a little over his ear. Was his skin usually this rough? It itched. His head didn't usually itch.
"Fucking hat, too, probably loaded with evil magic lice or something." He brought his other hand up, scratching hard across the top of his head a few times before forcibly lowering his arms. He didn't have lice. The stupid bug on the table was just freaking him out.
It wasn't that he had a problem with bugs. He didn't. Bugs had their place in the world, just like every other non-supernatural being. It was just that, well, he'd seen locusts eat their way out of a cop's skull before and now there were bugs in the bunker when there hadn't been any bugs there before and he still had dust all up in his sinuses and probably ectoplasm or something, too, and his head itched.
Think about something else. He had to think about something - anything - other than evil lice and locusts in a guy's brain or he was going to freak himself into scratching his own scalp bloody.
Sam was getting better. Yeah, that was good. He was sitting up - well, mostly - in the library and he'd managed a whole conversation - three of them, even, in a row - without looking like he was going to fall asleep halfway through. He was even feeling up to getting all dickish at Dean about the bug on the table -
Nope. Back that up, skip around it.
They'd had a little bit of the old back and forth going there for a bit, was all. It was progress - great progress. In another couple weeks, Sam might even be able to walk around the bunker and get his own damned coffee again.
Okay, and that was depressing for a whole other reason. Not being exhausted by making your own coffee shouldn't have to be a mile marker. Not for Sam. And the fact that it was, that was all on Dean and his stupid issues with hellhounds.
Oh, and the fact that berating himself for something that pretty much anyone else would say wasn't his fault made him feel better was probably pretty wrong, too.
Still, he felt calmer as he made it into the shower area. He stripped down - he was still in the dressing gown and shorts, getting dressed in the morning was for suckers - shoved his things into one of the slightly less dusty lockers, and stepped into the first shower stall. He turned on the spray, the heat turned up as far as it would go for as long as he could stand it, and tipped his head down to let the water wash over his hair and his not infested, totally normal scalp. His eyes caught on the shiny white tile and beige grout, and he frowned. This place was cleaner than most motel bathrooms he'd seen. And it wasn't like Dean was busting out the Tilex every day or anything. There wasn't even any mildew. Bugs didn't belong in a place as preternaturally clean as this.
Maybe they should get a cat. Yeah, 'cause that'd help his sinuses.
He turned around, letting the hot water pound on his neck and shoulders, and watched as the skin where it streamed across his chest flushed, then turned hot pink, before he finally turned the temperature to a more reasonable level. The heat wasn't actually going to help much with the itchy feeling, but it made him feel cleaner, less like the vault was still clinging to him, filmed up over his skin like grease. He let the water run over him for a few more moments before grabbing a bar of soap and getting to work on the actual cleaning. Falling into his usual morning routine was helping, too. Getting dressed in the morning might possibly have its perks.
He brushed his teeth in the shower, not quite willing to step out from under the warm water just yet, then finally acknowledged that trying to shave there might not be the best plan and, with a sigh, turned the water off. He poked at his wrinkled thumb with his index finger, wobbling the swollen skin around while reaching for a towel with the other hand.
Watch out for spiders.
He froze, then snorted, picking up the towel and giving it one firm shake before wrapping it around his waist.
Fucking Sam.
The heat from the shower had steamed its way out into the locker room and the bank of sinks and mirrors, fogging everything up. Dean grabbed his razor and a hand towel, bit back a yawn, and wiped a big circle into the mirror, idly considering writing some sort of cryptic message in the condensation for Sam to find when he eventually got around to taking a shower of his own. "Redrum," he growled, wagging his finger as best he could while it was wrapped around his razor. Something weird enough for a quick little twitch from Sam without him actually falling too hard for it. Dean smirked, leaning over to plug in the razor - half expecting, as usual, for the fifties wiring to reject his 21st century appliance and send him flying across the room - and met his eyes in the mirror. Funny, he'd just been thinking about how he couldn't see the outline of Sam's skull under his skin any more, but there was his, clear as day in the antique fluorescents. He leaned in, setting the razor on the counter, and pressed his fingers into his cheekbone, watching the dark skin beneath his eye stretch and flex.
If the worst he got from his adventure with Mary Annabelle was heavy bags under his eyes, he should probably count himself lucky.
He turned his head, watching the way shadows played across the line of his jaw, imagining he could see the outlines of his teeth even through the afternoon stubble. He could feel them there, even with his fingers on the sink, was suddenly completely aware of how they rubbed against his lips when he swallowed, of the way the tendons in his jaw worked, the tension of the thin muscles of his scalp at the back of his head. He flexed his hands and felt the metatarsals - or metacarpals - or whatever the fuck hand bones were called - slip against each other, cushioned by cartilage and wrapped in tough, stringy muscle. He watched the pulse in his own neck, felt how it pushed against the skin of his throat, jumping and kicking up a gear or three, so close to the surface. Vulnerable. His windpipe tightened as he tried to suck in more and more air, and part of his mind watched it all, cool as a cucumber even as the rest of him braced for panic.
He threw around the term "meatsuit" all the time, but he'd never let himself really think about what it meant, about all the bits and pieces that stacked together to form his body. Even when he was injured, even when some of those pieces ended up on the wrong side of his skin. He could feel his bones, all two-hundred-and-whatever of them, working in concert. And he could feel the hot rush of bile rising in the back of his throat.
He leaned over the sink, both hands (every finger, every joint, all the layers of skin and nerve and meat, like the anatomy of a chicken wing) clenched around its edges. He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the sight of his own skin, the way the knuckle joints shifted just beneath it. He spat, forced himself to take a deep breath. Told himself to think of something else. Think of anything else.
Don't forget to check under the toilet seat for spiders.
Fuck. He guessed that'd have to do.
*
Sam gave himself a few minutes to just sit and chuckle softly after Dean fled the scene of the supposed bug attack. His brother was definitely getting way too into their new living quarters if he was threatening insects with a scimitar. He filed his brother's new fear of creepy crawlies away to use for later teasing - there was just so much ammunition, there - then looked back down at Fisher's journal.
It was written in the usual style for an early 20th century diary, which was to say sparsely. Sam had been surprised when he was younger to discover that the florid language of pre-Hemingway literature didn't extend to personal journals of the era, especially considering how popular epistolary novels could be at the time. He'd fully expected to find pages upon pages of excessively enthusiastic descriptions of everything from garden parties to courtship rituals. Instead, personal writing tended to be terse, and usually primarily concerned with the weather.
Feb 4. Clear today, a relief from the snow. Took horses into town for shoeing. Esther asked for more pickled eggs, so stopped at Clive's on way home. Then there was something about dinner, either "pleasant" or "pheasant", Sam couldn't be sure which.
It was riveting. Really.
Mar 18. Telegram in from CO: transfer timetable moved up. M.A. won't be happy. Still snowing.
Near as Sam could tell, Richard Fisher had been just a lowly manager in a small outpost far from the Men of Letters central command. The names "Esther" and "William" also featured prominently, two other employees at the outpost, and the initials M.A., which had to be an abbreviation for Mary Annabelle. Sam couldn't blame the man; he wouldn't want to have to write that name out long hand over and over, either. Mary Annabelle was at least nominally in charge of what seemed to be primarily a satellite storage facility, with Richard working immediately under her and Esther and William as clerk and handyman, respectively. Though he didn't give their ages, Esther at least came off as quite young; she was constantly making requests for surplus goods and begging rides into town. There is not much here, Richard wrote, to keep her entertained. It took time and more than a little imagination, but Sam slowly managed to parse out the narrative of their lives as he skimmed through several years worth of one or two daily sentences. William, for one, featured more and more prominently as time went on, frequently in the same phrase as Mary Annabelle. Sam couldn't help but smile, recognizing the slow progression of an old fashioned courtship. There was something fascinating about watching two of his presumed ancestors slowly falling in love, even through such a dry medium. By the time he read the words M.A. and William betrothed. Smells like rain coming, Sam was utterly charmed.
Which was why it took Kevin stumbling out of his reading room to make Sam realize just how long Dean was taking with his shower.
"Oh," Kevin said. He was clutching a mug in one hand, a bowl in the other. "You're up."
"Yep." Sam smiled. "And you're out here. Actually talking to people."
Kevin looked down at his bowl. "I ran out of cereal." He looked back up, eying the mess of books and papers on the table, then came over to take a look. "What are you researching?"
"Men of Letters history." Sam marked his place in Fisher's diary and gently closed it. "Dean found a secret passage last night, and we're trying to figure out what the deal is."
Kevin nodded. "Is that what the shrieking was about?"
Sam blinked. "Uh. No? That was only. . . ." He looked at the clock on Dean's laptop screen and frowned "Half an hour ago. He saw a bug."
"Oh." Kevin rubbed his forehead. "I thought I slept longer than that."
"'Sokay," Sam said distractedly, then shook his head. "I mean, no, that's not okay, man, that means you need to actually get real sleep more often. You look worse than I do."
Kevin's eyebrow went up. "I find that hard to believe." He lifted his bowl a little. "I'm going to get cereal. You want anything?"
"I'm good," Sam said. "But can you see if Dean's in there, maybe messing with the coffee machine or something?" Half an hour was far too long, even for one of Dean's showers. "And if not, make sure he didn't drown himself in the shower?"
Kevin shrugged blearily. "Whatever, man." He headed into the hallway. Sam listened to his shuffling footsteps. "Ew! Dean, pick your wet towel up off the floor!"
He smiled when he heard Dean grumble something in return, relieved that his brother was once again accounted for. The whole ritual, secret passage, mysterious history thing had him more on edge than he'd realized. A few moments later, Dean came in, his hair still wet and his skin red and blotchy under the collar of his t-shirt. He frowned over his shoulder at Kevin, then looked back at Sam.
"Drowned in a shower, Sammy?" he asked. Sam shrugged. Dean rolled his eyes. "You find anything?"
"Actually, yeah." Sam tapped the cover of the journal. "Pretty sure we've got the right Richard. Seems like this place was just a storage facility before the war. The main headquarters for the Men of Letters was somewhere in Northern Italy, near as I can tell."
"Huh." Dean sat down, leaning his elbows on the table and folding his hands. "Makes sense. Organization that old wouldn't have started stateside. So the war's probably what drove them over here."
"At first just the more valuable artifacts and information, yeah." Sam opened the journal and carefully turned the pages, pointing out a few of the entries. "Richard seems like he was something of a curator, managing the collections and keeping inventory. Mary Annabelle was the site director, or whatever the Men of Letters equivalent title would have been."
"'Need more racks for S.R. 355,'" Dean read. "'M.A. displeased.' M.A., huh? Emmay. I can dig it. She did mention being the 'senior legacy', or some shit. What was with the ritual, then? Why'd they off her if she was so important?"
Sam shook his head. "I haven't gotten that far, yet. Right now, they're mostly gearing up for Mary Annabelle and William's wedding."
Dean snorted. "Dude, use Emmay. It's way less of a mouthful."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Want me to call him 'Billy', too?"
"Whatever makes you happy."
"Anyway," Sam said. "There's still years left in this thing for me to go through. It's gonna be a little while before I have all the answers. Maybe you should take a nap."
Dean looked affronted at the very idea. "I don't need to nap, Sam."
"Uh huh," Sam said. "I've got about the endurance of a piece of paper and Kevin's practically sleepwalking his way to a bowl of Lucky Charms right now. We might as well make sure someone in this place stays functional. And that means you getting enough sleep not to freak out about bugs."
Dean scowled, one hand going up to scratch above his ear. "Sounds more like what I need to do is go buy more Lucky Charms." He pushed himself to his feet, putting his hands on his lower back as he stretched his shoulders out and up. "You want me to grab you anything in particular?"
"Lucky Charms sounds okay to me," Sam said. He could press Dean for more information - and get him to get more sleep - later.
*
The trip to the grocery store was, as always, uneventful, though it did remind Dean how important it was to make sure he got out and around, even while he and Sam did their "go to ground and lay low" deal. It didn't do the Impala a lick of good to be sitting around, especially out on the side of a grungy old access road, and honestly, it didn't do him much good, either. He'd spent his whole life out on the road, almost constantly in motion even when he was sitting still.
Maybe that was what this whole thing was, the bug and the hat and everything. His body reacting to inertia, the slow bleed of momentum.
In honor of Sam making it all the way out to the library that morning, Dean stayed out longer than he would have otherwise, swinging by the liquor store and then sort of window shopping through town. He stopped in the bookstore to pick up a couple of novels for Sam: brainless romances, mostly, because the look on Sam's face when he caught sight of the covers would be priceless and his brother could use some more brainless entertainment these days. And, hey, maybe they could foist some of them off on Kevin while they were at it. That kid pretty much just needed to stare at anything that wasn't carved into ancient stone. In a fit of perverse humor, Dean even picked up a used copy of Fifty Shades of Grey for Crowley. He was just looking through the sci-fi section for something for himself - Sam always gave him funny looks when it came up, but Dean really did read for fun on occasion - when his phone beeped, letting him know he had an incoming call.
"Yeah, Sammy."
"I found some info on the ritual." Dean heard the sigh lurking under Sam's voice and smirked. "And my butt's asleep."
Dean used his free hand to pull a mass market paperback off the shelf, eyebrow rising at the obnoxious pink color the publishers had chosen for the title font. What did hot 80s pink have to do with steampunk, anyway? "I will alert the media."
"You're not actually going to make me walk all the way back to my room by myself," Sam said, and Dean dropped the book with a curse. He'd totally forgotten he'd left Sam sitting up in the library when he made the grocery run.
"Get Kevin to help you." He eyed his book stack and then flicked a glance up at the front counter. Was it a weekend? That looked like a weekend kind of line.
"Kevin is also asleep."
"Huh." Dean hadn't been 100% sure that Kevin actually still did that. "Okay. Uh, I can finish up here in a sec, be home in about . . . fifteen minutes?"
"Are you at a bar?" Sam asked, an odd lack of condemnation in his tone. "It doesn't sound like you're at a bar."
"Nah, man." Dean's hand went for a Philip K. Dick novel almost of its own accord before he reminded himself he didn't have time for weekend lines. "Just . . . looking around."
Sam was silent for a long moment, and Dean snatched his hand away from the shelf again, wondering if Sam had passed out at the table. Maybe he'd dropped the phone and couldn't pick it up? Shit, fifteen minutes had been a conservative estimate, but it'd still take him at least ten to get all the way back to the bunker, even if he left now -
"Take half an hour," Sam said. Dean's shoulders relaxed so fast it actually hurt. "I can switch chairs."
"Yeah?" Dean winced at the hopeful note running under the syllable.
"Yeah," Sam said. "I'm the one who told you to get out more, right? Just, uh." There was another pause, not as long, but enough to make Dean's shoulders rise all over again. "Don't forget the Lucky Charms."
Dean shook his head, eyes rolling to the ceiling as he picked up the Philip K. Dick novel, then added the steampunk one on a whim. "Dude. When did I ever forget the Lucky Charms?"
"Hey, you also never used to freak out over one bug, either. Just playing it safe."
"Ha," Dean said. "I'm hanging up." He hit the end button, shaking his head, and slid the phone back into his pocket. He looked up at the line at the counter again.
Yeah. He had time to look for one more book. He smiled, putting the stack he already had under his arm, and headed for the horror section.
*
"Dude," Sam said, holding up the book, his eyes wide in irritation. "You bought me It?"
"Bugs and clowns, Sammy," Dean answered, stepping around behind Sam to hoist him up out of the chair and start maneuvering him back to bed. "Bugs and clowns." He took his time in the hallway, giving Sam the room he needed to take his own weight if he felt up to it. And, honestly, Sam might've had a point about that nap idea. A headache had started ratcheting up by the time he'd left the bookstore, and if he weren't so anxious to hear what Sam had found out about the ritual, he would've gone straight to bed after depositing Sam in his.
But he had to know. Had to. He'd never felt this kind of urgency when there wasn't someone actively in danger, before - and "what if I'm next" didn't count. He just . . . needed to know.
"Alright," he said, taking his usual half-bed, half-nightstand spot and fluffing a few of Sam's extra pillows. "So about the ritual."
Sam scowled blearily at him. He didn't so much blink as pass out and then immediately kick himself awake. Dean wanted to leave him alone, let him get his rest, but he just kept sitting there, staring at Sam expectantly. It was because she invaded his room, he decided. Emmay made it personal.
"Right," Sam said, fumbling at the journal he'd brought back with him from the library. "I coulda told you over the phone, you know."
"I was busy," Dean said. "Come on, cliff notes it."
"It was, uh." Sam rubbed his forehead and yawned, giving up on finding the page. "A power thing. The headquarters had to have all these spells built into it. Protections. They're powered by sacrifice, the most senior member tied to the site." He looked back up at Dean again, face serious. "She was willing, man, but I'm guessing it was pretty damn grudging."
"Seniority is through legacy," Dean said, nodding. The details clicked together in his head. "The oldest member with the longest legacy is in charge."
Sam's sigh was half-laugh. "You're not in charge, Dean."
Dean's mouth quirked. "Says you. Did it say anything about renewal? Is Emmay going to run out of juice?"
Sam fought against another yawn and lost. "I dunno, man. We'll figure it out, though. I'm not gonna let anyone start slicing up your arms."
Dean patted his shoulder and shoved gently against his head. "Yeah. 'Cause you're in shape to stop anyone from doing anything right now." He smiled, careful not to put any sting behind his words. He'd tried so hard to get back to teasing mode with Sam, but some things he still had to navigate carefully. "Get some sleep. We'll figure it out in the morning."
*
Dean called it an early night that night for all of them. He managed to march Kevin out of his little reading room hideaway around 9 PM, sending him to the sparsely made up "guest room" he'd cleaned out when he was setting up his and Sam's rooms last year. He pointed out when they got there that his room was between Kevin's and the library, and if Kevin decided to go back and do more research before at least 8 hours had gone by, Dean would catch him and - well, he'd balked at making any effective threat. Kevin was too busy rolling his eyes like Dean was less scary than his mother to be intimidated and they'd all know it was a lie anyway. Still, Kevin agreed and went into the room and when Dean checked back in on Sam, his brother was firmly passed out, the Fisher journal lying open on his chest.
It was possible that Crowley didn't hit the sack early, but Dean figured he didn't count. He wasn't getting out of the dungeon, or even the chair Dean had chained him to in the dungeon, so he wasn't really worried what the demon would get up to, down there. He was kind of hoping for folding the pages of Fifty Shades of Grey into creatively violent paper dioramas. That'd at least give Dean something interesting to look at when he went to check on Crowley every couple of days.
As Dean stretched himself out across his bed, his hands folded behind his head, he wondered if Emmay would make a return trip tonight. He knew she wasn't strictly a death echo, but the first couple of nights she'd done a damn fine impression of one, repeating the same steps over and over until someone managed to finally snap her out of it. If she was bound to the bunker, he supposed she could maybe be a bit of both, death echo and traditional spirit, making her final walk over and over until the right person interrupted her. Which meant that she probably wouldn't show - she'd served her purpose, gotten Dean's attention and shown him the way into the vaults where he could witness her sacrifice.
Unless there was more to show him. Unless he really was meant to make his own sacrifice here for the sake of the dead Men of Letters.
Unless unless unless.
He fell asleep without noticing, the last several long nights catching up with him. One moment he was lying awake in bed, going over everything he knew about Emmay and his family history and the Men of Letters and the bunker, and the next he was snapping awake, the bunker so quiet and the air so still that he knew that several hours must have passed.
Dean didn't startle when he woke up; Dad had trained that instinct out of him early. He woke quiet, taking stock with all his other senses before opening his eyes. Assess the threat. Keep the element of surprise. It was Sam who woke him up as often as it was a threat, after all. It wouldn't do to accidentally attack the one he was meant to be protecting.
It never took long to work out what woke him. In this case, it was light, specifically the one in the hallway outside his room. The lights here were old and they buzzed when they were switched on. The light in Dean's room was overhead, but what hit his eyelids wasn't bright enough to be that direct.
Trouble was, Dean never left the door to his room open when he slept.
He couldn't hear any footsteps in the hall, which meant whoever it was was trying to be quiet, in which case, why switch the light on at all? No, that wasn't it. They were standing still. Judging by the prickling proximity warning along Dean's scalp, they were in his doorway. Watching him.
So either Kevin had gone weirdly sentimental on Dean, Sam had started sleep walking, or someone else had snuck their way in, someone with only the barest concept of personal space.
"Cas?" Dean asked softly, eyes flicking open.
The figure in the doorway wore a dark suit, but otherwise bore no resemblance to Castiel at all. It was too tall, for one, tall enough to have to stoop in the doorway, and it was entirely bald, its skin pale to the point of translucency. Worst of all, though it was hard to tell from the way its head was turned, looking out into the hall, it seemed to be entirely lacking a face.
Dean never startled when he woke up. He assessed and then he attacked. By the time he had his gun trained on the creature - no more than a fraction of a second later - the thing had vanished, taking the light in the hallway with it, and leaving Dean sitting up in bed, pointing a gun at the darkness.
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