SPN fic: Dazzleland 7/10, part B
...and here's the rest of it. Ask me how much I like LJ today, hm?
Niagara Falls High School, Niagara Falls NY, November 2006
He’d waited and it hadn’t come. All through morning classes, lunch. The vision hadn’t been specific, no matter how hard he tried to recall it. No convenient clock or calendar, no newspaper open to the correct date. Only Elise and a gunshot louder than god.
Then, a frantic call from Dean, Sam’s phone going off in the middle of the staff room, Sam taking it out in the hallway as soon as he heard the thin edge of panic in his brother’s voice, that deep rumble that always sounded like Dad when he heard it from afar. A pang, thinking of Dad, thinking of where he was, then moving on because Dean was going a mile a minute.
Billy’s one of them, Sam, don’t care about the twenty-two year time line, his mother died in a fire when he was a baby. He’s an evil little fucker and he can fucking read minds, like he’s got a goddamn bug in my head. And he knows that we’re connected and…and…
“Slow down,” Sam said, ignoring the fact that Dean’s use of the word ‘them’ sounded slightly off, because wasn’t Sam one of ‘them’ too? “Slow down,” he repeated.
Get out of there, Sam, because I was thinking about Dad in that cabin and…oh, god, Sam thought, because Dean hadn’t really talked about that, about what had happened in the cabin when their father hadn’t been their father and when he’d said what he had. “Dean, where are you?”
It’s okay, I’m back at the motel, but I’m gearing up, I’ll be over there in ten minutes…
And Sam suddenly envisioned Dean storming the school’s front doors with a shotgun, ready to blow everything and everyone apart and he actually froze up then, standing in the hallway outside the staff room, thinking that maybe it was Dean, maybe it was Dean who pulled the trigger.
“No!” he shouted into the phone and a group of students passing by looked sharply at him and he turned, bent against a bank of lockers, tried lowering his voice. “No. Listen, I checked. He’s not even here today-”
He’s coming. He’s on his way and so am I.
“No, you’re not. Seriously, Dean. Stay put. If he’s on his way, I’ll have him next class, double period, right till the end of the day. I’ll keep him away from the gym. Just don’t-” and how was he going to say this without alienating Dean all the way to next week? “Stay there. We’ll meet up after. Just…”
The bell rang and the hallway immediately filled with students. Sam ducked back into the staff room. “I mean it, Dean. You can’t come here. This is why I took the job in the first place, remember?” Mr. Isbister was staring at him and Sam smiled tightly, thinking of terms like sediment and igneous and escarpment. “Promise me.”
A long pause. He’d asked Dean to follow him to Niagara Falls, to the one location where Dean truly didn’t want to be, and then asked him to stay there. Stay put and stay bored. Stay guilty and grieving with nothing useful to do while Sam acted normal and was actually weirdly happy. Sam was suddenly aware of all he was asking, knew that Dean wouldn’t say anything about it and at the same time would express all of what he was feeling through his fists and his drinking. Learned behaviors. It was what he had always done and somehow it was so easy to let it happen. Was a known dance that both could do in their sleep.
Sam wished it was all different, everything, but right now he had no time. “Please, Dean.”
I’m leaving my phone on. And I’ll be at that coffee shop across the street, okay? You go there right after. You promise me. It was a capitulation, it was loud as a shouted ‘uncle’. Dean giving up cut Sam to the quick, especially because Sam was forcing it, forcing Dean to his will. Most of the time he didn’t even have to say please.
So Sam promised him. I’ll see you right after school, won’t wait around. Promised to himself: I will stand on my own two feet, Dean. I can’t expect you to look after everything. He clicked the phone shut, was now late for class.
Billy sat expectantly at his desk, eyes lucid, strangely direct. The noise subsided as soon as Sam entered, calmed like a wind had died down on choppy water. He looked at them, some scared, all expectant. The exams, of course.
Sam stared at Billy. You getting this? Can you hear me? he thought.
Billy stared back, motionless.
They went over the exams line-by-line. No tears, no shouting. Then they watched a video of the program COPS with the sound turned off. He asked them to figure out what was going on without the police commentary. They watched it again with the sound up, broke into groups to discuss.
Making up stories when we don’t know the truth, Sam thought, looking at the back of Billy’s head. You hear me, Billy?
“Hey,” he heard from the doorway while the groups continued to discuss. Sam looked up, smiling as he did so, recognizing her voice, her accent, soft and broad like a good bed.
Elise leaned against the doorjamb, her eyes scanning the class. She took a few steps in, and Sam took a few steps towards her, lowered his head. “Looks like it’s going well,” she said with a laugh.
Sam shrugged, felt danger like electricity, the ozone smell before a lightning storm. “Easy to do with COPS. Bad boys and all.” Resisted the urge to reach out, to touch her.
She did something with her lips - pressed them together like she’d just put on lipstick - that made Sam’s heart stop. “Listen, I have a double spare right now, so I’m going to go home, do some lesson planning for next week. Call me?”
Oh, god, this was perfect. Yes, go. What are you still doing standing here? Sam looked over his shoulder quickly. Everyone was still working. “Sure. But we’ll see you tomorrow, right? Turkey?”
She smiled long and slow, nodded, and Sam watched her walk away, couldn’t help himself, reckoned he’d earned it. He came back in, turned, and Billy’s eyes were on him. Maybe had been on him that whole time.
“Hey, Mr. W!” Emily Dando, hand up, calling him over, and it was like being swept into a swift current, back into the rhythm of the class.
After the final bell sounded, Sam told Billy to remain where he sat. His large idiot pal Marcus - who had probably failed some grade early in his career and now seemed about five years older than anyone else - cuffed Billy on the shoulder, said that he’d meet him at the mall after and Billy mouthed a desultory agreement. Kept his eyes on Sam.
Sam left the door open, sincerely hoped that Dean wouldn’t make a second appearance. He didn’t have much time, because Dean would come looking and Sam had made him a promise.
“Billy, your exam…well, it didn’t exactly look as though you were trying very hard.” Sam undid his tie, stuffed it into his backpack as he talked, glancing up every once in awhile to see what Billy was doing.
The kid shrugged. “I know.”
“Do you care, Billy?”
“’Bout what?”
Sam resisted the urge to say ‘anything’. “School? Grades? What you’re going to do after?”
Billy’s weight was at the edge of the seat, back slumped against the wall, legs sprawled. Indifferent, maybe. “Hey, Mr. Winchester.”
Sam stilled, gave Billy his undivided attention. “Yes?”
Billy looked up, and for one minute Sam saw something flicker in those gray eyes, something like fear. Worry. “Anything weird ever happen to you?”
Sam thought: yellow-eyed demon inhabiting my father’s body like a sock puppet, my girlfriend on the ceiling, burning. Dean shedding his skin in a puddle on the sewer floor. Kept his steady gaze on Billy, who seemed even jumpier than before. “Yes.” Sam rested one hand on his casted arm. “All the time.”
“I can’t hear you,” Billy murmured so softly that Sam almost didn’t catch it. Then, “This school is so stupid. It must have been stupid when you went here, too, right?”
Careful, Sam warned himself. “I didn’t like it much. But I survived.”
“My sister Erica goes here. She’s fucking perfect. Everyone says she’s perfect. It’s hard, having a perfect sister.” Met Sam’s eyes. “You have someone like that in your family?”
Sam shook his head. “Nope. My brother and me? We’re both total screw-ups.”
That pulled Billy’s mouth to one side. “I knew all that stuff on the exam.”
Sam nodded. “I know.”
Billy got to his feet, looked out the door. Elise would be gone by now, and Dean would be furiously waiting at the coffee shop, probably starting fights with the baristas. It wasn’t going to happen today, after all.
I can save you, Sam thought, but he knew Billy couldn’t hear him.
“Maybe next time,” Billy added as he brushed past Sam and it was so loaded Sam flinched. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
--
Niagara Falls NY, April 2001
When Sam heard the jangle of keys in the door, heard it open and close, he slid from the seat in front of the desk and told Toad to keep playing the game on his laptop. “I just want to see where Dean’s been,” he said quietly, and Toad plugged in the headphones, attention on the screen.
Good. If a fight was in the offing, it would happen when Toad was safely in the electronic world of becoming a roller coaster tycoon.
The only light in the living room came from the television, and it illuminated John’s weary face, the beard now gone for whatever reasons his dad ever had to keep it or get rid of it, relaxed in sleep. Soft snores interspersed by some show about survival and tribes and challenges. Sam’s eyes slowly adjusted enough to spot Dean in the kitchen. He heard him first, actually, heard the metallic friction of cap being unscrewed from glass. Sam watched as Dean drank straight from the bottle of tequila, the blue light from the TV catching the length of his neck as he swallowed. Once, twice. Three times.
“Dean?” Sam asked uncertainly.
The bottle glinted blue as it came down, and Sam snapped the light switch beside the stove. The overhead fluorescents blinked on with a buzzing noise from the faulty ballast, bathing the kitchen and Dean in the kind of glow that would make anyone look like a corpse, let alone anyone in Dean’s condition. Dean didn’t look at Sam, took another long pull of the bottle before capping it and sliding it onto the counter.
He was covered in dirt, soaking wet, and his eyes were strangely vacant, face white under a layer of clay and soil. Where his hands weren’t covered in mud, they were red and sore looking. He’d dripped mud and water across the floor; Sam could see the trail from the door. It reminded him of that night when it had been blood, and it softened his next question considerably.
“Where have you been, man?” Dean took one step back, pulled over a kitchen chair from the table and collapsed onto it. Sam noticed he was shivering. “Coffee?” Sam offered and Dean nodded.
Sam clattered around looking for the filters, his head behind an open cupboard door. It wasn’t a good sign that Dean wasn’t even answering. He should get out of those wet -
“Dean?” he asked suddenly, forgetting about the coffee, forgetting about Toad and roller coasters, about Dad and tribal alliances. “You dug them up, didn’t you?”
He knelt by Dean’s side and his brother opened his reddened hands like Sam was going to give him something - Dean hadn’t brought gloves, the idiot, and there were open blisters weeping on his palms - before dropping them to his knees. “It didn’t shut them up.”
“Why are you all wet? You didn’t…you didn’t…” and Sam couldn’t even think about it, recalling the vastness of the Falls, the sheer enormity of the power concentrated there.
Dean shrugged. “Found four bodies, just like Delisle said. Put them in the water. Didn’t fucking shut them up, Sam.” His voice was quiet, and wrapped in it, despair, and Sam didn’t want to hear it, had never expected to hear that. This was Dean.
“Why didn’t you salt and burn?” And it made them jump, the close sound of their dad, standing in the archway, coming up to them on his cat feet, enormous coiled power, dreadful in the truest sense of the word. “You found bodies and you didn’t take care of it?” His voice was Nebraska flat, not quite an accusation, not yet.
“That’s not gonna do it,” Dean whispered. “You shoulda seen them, Dad.” And Dean’s attention was now on John, was a conversation between two hunters. Sam knew why Dean was doing it, knew that it was to protect him, was to protect them both.
From John. From their father and his abiding obsessions.
“They found bodies under the rubble, in 1969,” Sam broke in. He didn’t exactly know why he said it: Dean was going to catch most of the shit for this, not Sam. “Found hundreds of bodies, all intact, all held there by something. Not corrupted, like a saint, preserved for a god. Offerings to a higher power. It’s not about a demon, Dad. It’s not about hell or ghosts.”
The lights didn’t help. Their wash illuminated every scar on John’s face, every blow that he’d taken chasing something, killing something. Sam remembered many of them, had sewn up a number himself. By the cruel light, he could see the adjustment his father made: deal with Dean later, Sam needs some setting straight now.
“Sam’s helping with this?” There it was: accusation, plain and hard.
Dean sighed, glanced quickly at Sam, who could read him like a book - shut up, Sam, let me handle it.
But Dean was fucking done and Sam was sick to death of Dean always coming to his defense. So he didn’t shut up. “Yeah, we went and interviewed one of the guys-”
Forcing Dean to stand up, even though he looked as though he’d rather be sitting. Rather be unconscious. “I went and interviewed the guy, he told me what they’d found. They’d buried four of the bodies in ’69, left the rest as they were. That’s when it started, ordinary people jumping in, thinking they were superheroes. I thought if I put those bodies back-”
John drew close and Sam watched the current that ran between them, the direction of it. Sam knew which way it would go, which way it always went and it made him white hot with sudden anger.
Sam cut between them, not able to bear Dean’s protection, not anymore. “A willing sacrifice. That’s what those guys were, that’s what’s needed now. Their bodies were untouched, Dad. They jumped knowing the cost, and Dean just returned them to where they were supposed to be.”
“It’s about glory,” Dean’s words ran over Sam’s, maybe trying to make a point that Sam didn’t see, couldn’t hear, or trying to shut him up. “In the big picture sense. About doing it for a higher power, whatever that is-”
Sam back at it: “I don’t know if it’s a river god or the Snake, or what, but whatever it is, it needs to be appeased, Dad. You can’t fucking kill it. Those clowns,” and that was a deliberate jab, was still fighting, not persuading, because he was talking about his father’s hunter friend McGreevy, “that jumped in because they were promised fame? They weren’t willing sacrifices - they actually thought that they’d survive. That’s not a sacrifice, is it?”
John was so close now Sam could feel his breath. Then Sam straightened, full height, no slouch, and he was taller. Had been for a while, just never realized it till this very moment.
“You finished, son?” John whispered.
Sam was afraid now, but didn’t show it, didn’t move a hair. Turned his head to the side, felt Dean’s presence behind him.
“Sam,” Dean said, low. A warning.
“You,” John raised his eyes to meet Sam’s and there was give to the gesture, a small acknowledgement that his son had grown tall, had grown. “Are not to go down there.”
“He didn’t,” Dean muttered behind him. “I did.”
“I’m not talkin’ to you,” John said harshly, and Sam flinched at the sound of it. “This is not some ‘god’. No such thing. We have ghosts, their voices. Nothing that some salt and burn, maybe an exorcism, will take care of. We can hear them, and we can use that-”
“I can’t hear them,” Sam interrupted. “Why is that, Dad?” He knew the answer. He’d known for some time. “But I’m not a willing sacrifice, never will be. Stubborn, I think you’ve called it. Self-centered. Willful.”
And John backed up a step, eyes flashing. Between them, suddenly, Dean, dragging Sam to the side, because he’d seen it too, the flash, knew what it portended. Sam didn’t care. He had a letter to Stanford and he was getting the fuck out of here and that man? That man was some kind of monster to put his sons through this, to ask of them what he did.
“You are full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you?” John grated as though Dean had suddenly disappeared, vanished from the room. “What the fuck are you talking about? Listen to yourself: River gods? Willing sacrifices? You gonna set up some dreamcatchers and crystals, see if the Moon’s in your second house?”
A point of contention, like organized religion. There was supernatural shit that you paid attention to because it was dangerous. And then there were unicorns and Santa and astrology, which were bullshit. Nothing in between, not in John’s Winchester’s world.
Sam snorted through his nose. Contempt. How far could he push this before his dad blew? He didn’t know, didn’t care. “Those ghosts are asking for a willing sacrifice. They’re testing people and people are failing. Dean did the right thing.”
“The right thing? Sneaking away to go where I told him not to? Making you part of this hunt when I-”
“It’s all about you, isn’t it?” Sam flung back and Dean being between them wasn’t enough then; Sam was never sure afterwards who threw the first punch, him or his dad, but it descended then, the rage. Not white hot, not this time, but red.
Sam had a long reach, sure, but John was faster, more confident of his abilities, colder in his precision and Sam was on his ass in under a second. John made another lunge, still cold with fury, but Dean was quick enough this time, got in between, put two hands on John’s shoulders and pushed him back, gently. With respect. Held his hands out from his sides, open to whatever their dad wanted to inflict next.
Covered in grave mud, wet with river. Going against orders, perfectly willing to take whatever lumps were coming to him because of it.
And Sam wasn’t. He struggled to find his feet, but Dean stepped back, put his heel sharply down on the fabric of Sam’s jersey-knit shirt, held him down enough that Sam had to stay put on the kitchen floor. In that space of time, Sam looked up, hearing a wheezing sound, and saw Toad, big Bills coat over his shoulders, standing in the archway, just beyond the spill of kitchen light.
“Sam,” Dean said, low, pained. “You and Toad take off. Dad needs to have a few words with me.” Between hunters. He eased his foot off Sam’s shirt and Sam came up, but not as fast as he originally thought he would.
John wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t look at anyone, was rubbing his fist where it had connected with Sam’s ear. He was barely out of breath.
Dean looked at Sam, raised his eyebrows. Do this for me, he implored.
Sam didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge either of them. Fuck them and their crazy code. Fuck them and the things they hunt, he thought as he jogged down the stairs and into the night, Toad following, laptop in knapsack, eyes big with wonder. Sam didn’t have any more tears in him, really, he didn’t. And he didn’t mean it, couldn’t actually understand these sharp foreign thoughts teasing him apart like wheat from chaff. Fuck both of them. Didn’t mean it, not really.
Not yet.
--
Deveaux Park neighborhood, Niagara Falls NY, Thanksgiving, 2006
It was relief that Sam felt, pure and simple. After the pumping adrenaline of the day, waiting for what didn’t happen, he’d felt wrung out. Then wondering what mayhem Dean had created not just at the coffee shop, but at the Shuter household. A long discussion over bitter black coffee, the staff shooting them dirty looks Sam didn’t want to parse, Dean talking non-stop.
So exhausted, both of them, that they’d ordered in pizza and been asleep before eleven.
Sam had woken early, just in time to get a head start worrying about Thanksgiving dinner at Elise’s, felt like he was bringing a wild animal with him, a liability, a ticking bomb. But, like the other things, all that worry was for nothing.
Because when Dean was on, he was on. Dean was operating at the top of his astonishing game, charming, smiling, listening deferentially, laughing at her jokes - hell, laughing at Sam’s jokes - eating everything on his plate without question, chewing with his mouth closed, even the Brussels spouts which Sam knew for a fact he hated.
Had fucking seconds.
Elise had gone all out, set red candles onto new table linens, made the pumpkin pie from scratch, served up a bottle of Californian Pinot Noir that must have cost more than the turkey itself. Right from the moment Dean had parked the Impala outside her house, Sam directing him where to pull over, Dean had behaved himself. So polite and casually contained that he reminded Sam of their dad when he wanted something.
Unfair, Sam chided himself. Dean wasn’t like their dad, had never been like their dad. Sam was nervous, was looking for fault. Wanted desperately for Elise to like Dean, wanted her not to think all the Winchesters were freaks. Wanted Dean to like Elise. Remembered vividly that confrontation in the high school’s office with Carcetti and Elise, after the knife incident. Dad, all bristle and sharp edges and Elise not backing down. And him, Sam, wanting so badly for the floor to open up, for this period of his life to be over.
Sam looked across the turkey carcass, the table littered with crumbs of bread, a smear of cranberry sauce, saw without hearing. Dean was nodding at something Elise was saying, the candles reflecting from his eyes, pale cheeks brought to color by the slight flush red wine usually delivered to Winchester men - hell, maybe we’re allergic, Sam thought suddenly - and knew that Dean was trying. Hard. To fit in, to be nice, to hold still.
To give Sam a fighting chance.
Maybe sensing Sam’s attention, Dean looked over, smiled at him. “Remember that Thanksgiving we walked across the Rainbow Bridge?”
Unlike Dean, to bring up that time. Five years ago to the day. But here they were, same place, a much different Thanksgiving. A different set of reasons to give thanks. We’re alive, Sam thought. At such a price, but I’ll give thanks for it anyway. Thanks, Dad. “Yeah. I remember. We went to…that arcade.” Don’t mention the daredevils, don’t mention that photo of the dry Falls when everything had clicked. Don’t mention the voices and the cold walk and the hell to pay later.
“Dazzleland,” Dean nodded. “That was fun.”
“Didn’t really do Thanksgiving, did we?” Sam clarified, more for Elise than for Dean, who seemed a million miles away, thinking about what Sam didn’t know. The flashing lights, the claim of ‘family fun’ to be had, the shine and gleam, like edible oil product icing on a bland grocery-store birthday cake.
“So, what was it like, growing up, just you boys and your dad?” Sam heard Elise ask, and Sam fought a surge of panic. At the beginning, Jess had asked questions like this of him. She’d stopped asking after awhile, meeting the wall that Sam put up. Elise wasn’t asking Sam, though. She was asking Dean.
Who smiled, leaned back in his chair, not looking at Sam. He’s good at this, Sam marveled, way better than I ever was.
“Well, Sam was always grousing about food, kept a hoard in his knapsack, under his bed. I usually found it,” Dean started. “You have brothers?” Throwing it back into her court, maybe, because Sam didn’t think Dean was trying to engage her, draw her in. Connect her to them.
Elise nodded. “Two younger ones.”
Dean nodded like that meant something to him. And he was trying to connect her, Sam saw, was trying so damn hard. He’s doing this for me.
“Well you know, then. Always scrapping. Hey, Sam,” and looked at Sam, but Sam couldn’t tell what his brother was going to say, was so off balance. Who was this guy that had suddenly manifested himself like a fairy godbrother in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner? And what had he done with Dean? “You remember that time when you wanted a pet? And on the Thanksgiving weekend you brought home that…what was it? A rat? A rat from your kindergarten class?”
“A hamster,” Sam corrected, remembering. “And there were two of them.”
Dean looked surprised. “Really? ‘Cause I only remember one.”
“The second one escaped when you were flushing the first one down the toilet.”
“It was dead, Sam.”
Elise was gathering their dishes, laughing along with Dean, ignoring Sam’s indignation. She came back with the pie, set it on the table, sat down with them.
“It wasn’t dead when I went to the Saturday morning reading club at the library.” He turned to Elise and she was leaning forward on one elbow, chin cupped in her hand, a smile tugging the corner of her lips. “And when I got back the toilet was overflowing, Dad was apeshit and the cage was wide open and empty.”
“How was I supposed to know that a hamster would plug the freakin’ toilet?”
“That apartment didn’t exactly have decent plumbing,” Sam conceded, starting to laugh. “But you could have at least waited till I got home before trying to get rid of the body.”
Dean’s grin was lupine and his eyes were mere glints in the candlelight. He addressed his comments to Elise. “Sam went a little crazy, tackled me, but the bathroom floor was soaking wet, and we both went sliding onto our backs, and we took out Dad like a bowling pin. Dad had out one of those plungers and suddenly, the whole thing-” he gestured with his hands and Sam was laughing so hard his breath was coming in little gasps. “And all this crap came up like a geyser and there was this little rodent, floating on top-”
“What did Dad call us?” Sam managed between wheezes.
Dean wiped his tearing eyes, face flushed with laughter more than wine. “The Winstooges.” And that started the both of them on another long run of loud choking laughter.
Elise served up the pie, shaking her head. “Must have been quite the small society, you guys.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, voice dropping soft, taking the plate from her with a nod of thanks. A little wary, had left himself open. “It was.”
They fell into silence for a moment, the weird quiet that came after hilarity, maybe marking how fleeting these moments were. “I met your dad, once,” Elise ventured, maybe trying to build a bridge between them, to offer something new. Natural, so natural to want to do that.
“This pie is amazing,” Sam intervened. He looked at his brother, but Dean was contained, eyes down on the table, his fork stalled midway between mouth and plate. “The whole dinner was amazing.”
“Yeah?” Dean asked, in between shutting down and wanting more, wanting any scrap of their father like it was a collector’s item.
Elise was getting a piece of pie for herself, was concentrating on the knife, on the cut. “Thanks, it was my pleasure, feeding you guys.” She transferred the pie lifter into her right hand. “He came to the school once. I can’t say that we got along. He was…” her voice trailed off and she looked thoughtful, a small crease between her brows. She was between, as Sam had been since he’d returned to Niagara Falls. Stuck between present and past. Between a lover and a teacher. A student, for chrissakes. For all that, it felt more odd than wrong to Sam. “Your father seemed really devoted to your family. Sam. Protective.”
Dean nodded, shoved some pie in his mouth and Sam noticed how Dean wasn’t looking at him. “Mmmnn,” Dean said noncommittally.
“That was the day your SAT scores came in, right?” Elise checked with Sam. “Those were the best SATs I’ve ever seen in my life. We were so ecstatic.”
For one moment, Sam was back in that office, with Ms. Simon and their dad and knowing nothing short of a faked seizure was going to stop it. Was going to stop this.
Elise turned to Dean, who had stopped chewing, waiting, anticipating, eyes perfectly blank which meant he was steeling himself for something he wouldn’t like. “Sam had all his applications sent here, to this house. He worried so much about how your dad would take it. I remember,” and she smiled at this, so wistfully and she was really extraordinarily beautiful by candlelight and Sam prayed that she’d just leave it be, but she was sharing, was trying to understand, was trying to solicit Dean’s help in understanding something essential about Sam. “I remember when he first came into my office at the beginning of the year and he had no idea that he was good enough for college. I mean, how couldn’t he have known that, right?”
Dean blinked hard, was hanging in there, Sam could see. “Right,” Dean agreed, bleak, not knowing what he was agreeing to.
Elise shook her head. “He’s so smart. And he had no idea.”
And there, there was the shift in Dean, the fork came down on the table beside the half-eaten pie and Sam knew everything about the evening was about to change.
“You know-” Sam started, tried to head it off, but it was like stopping a freight train with his bare hands.
“So,” Dean’s mouth twitched into a frown, then turned on a dime, reemerged as a tight grin. A runner checking himself at second, pulling up and it was no smile that Sam recognized, “so you talked him into applying for colleges, showed him what he had to do?” Seemed innocent, was so capable at sounding innocent, had such practice at it. Was eying his next move, thinking of stealing third, dekeing out the pitcher on the mound.
Elise nodded, grinning like it was a conspiracy. “Well, yeah. He had no idea. Hadn’t even thought about it. So I prepped him for the SATs and then all the applications went through me. I wrote recommendations. Hard to get into a place like Stanford without stellar references, a kick-ass entrance essay. Sam’s grades were always superior, he just needed some help with the other stuff.” She turned to Sam, maybe wondering why the brothers had suddenly gone so quiet. Took his hand on the table, a very slender smile, tentative. “And look how you turned out.”
Dean balled up his napkin, threw it on the table and Sam drew his attention from Elise’s face to see the cord working in Dean’s jaw. “Sam turned out some fine, all right.” Hard stare at the crumbs, the remainder of the meal, strewn across the table, all that was left. “You know,” and he was still trying to hold on to civility, Sam could see, but needed to get out, had reached the limit of his ability to fake it, “I really…I really…” Got to his feet, pushed in his chair.
“Oh,” Elise was confused, of course she was confused, she had no idea.
Sam grabbed Dean’s arm as he passed, knowing it was probably better to let him go, but the change was so abrupt and so massive, that letting Dean loose on the dark world giving thanks for their blessings felt totally irresponsible. To everyone, Dean included.
Dean pulled away, kept walking to the door and Sam wondered if his brother was having some kind of panic attack - funny how a Thanksgiving dinner would give him a panic attack when zombies and ghosts and vampires didn’t - but knew it wasn’t that. It was realizing, it was-
Sam glanced at Elise, got up and followed Dean to the hall.
“Dean,” quietly, at the foot of the stairs, Dean already sorting his coat out of the hall closet, face pink in the wan lamplight. “You can stay, it’s okay.”
Took a moment to turn, marshalling something, sharpening knives, who knew. When their eyes met, Sam saw anger, not panic. A little laugh, barely an indrawn breath. “Always wondered how you did it, man. How long you’d been planning it. Took a bit of effort, didn’t it?”
Under the thin veneer of anger, bedrock of hurt, but Sam couldn’t address it. Not all of it was his doing. But some of it? Some of it was. You have no idea what it was like, after you left.
“Where are you going?” Sam asked, even though he knew Dean had no idea, wasn’t so much going somewhere as leaving someplace. “Stay.”
But Dean already had his coat on, jaw working on anger or other things, an array of shit stirred up beyond his easy ability to push down. “You stay,” he whispered, not meeting Sam’s eyes. “It’s okay,” and he had to look up at that, but the light was shitty and Sam had no idea what was going on in Dean’s messed up head. “It’s okay. Thank her for dinner, but I gotta go, man.”
Sam followed him out the front door in his socks. “Dean!” he shouted after him, but his brother only lifted a hand, the keys catching the streetlight, heading for the car.
--
TBC
Read the next chapter
a/n: So sorry it’s a little more than my usual week between posts. What can I say? It’s a busy time of year for me in realifeland. Thanks for hanging in there - sorry also if it takes me a little while to respond to comments.
And, just in case you skipped smilla02's amazing cover:
-
Niagara Falls High School, Niagara Falls NY, November 2006
He’d waited and it hadn’t come. All through morning classes, lunch. The vision hadn’t been specific, no matter how hard he tried to recall it. No convenient clock or calendar, no newspaper open to the correct date. Only Elise and a gunshot louder than god.
Then, a frantic call from Dean, Sam’s phone going off in the middle of the staff room, Sam taking it out in the hallway as soon as he heard the thin edge of panic in his brother’s voice, that deep rumble that always sounded like Dad when he heard it from afar. A pang, thinking of Dad, thinking of where he was, then moving on because Dean was going a mile a minute.
Billy’s one of them, Sam, don’t care about the twenty-two year time line, his mother died in a fire when he was a baby. He’s an evil little fucker and he can fucking read minds, like he’s got a goddamn bug in my head. And he knows that we’re connected and…and…
“Slow down,” Sam said, ignoring the fact that Dean’s use of the word ‘them’ sounded slightly off, because wasn’t Sam one of ‘them’ too? “Slow down,” he repeated.
Get out of there, Sam, because I was thinking about Dad in that cabin and…oh, god, Sam thought, because Dean hadn’t really talked about that, about what had happened in the cabin when their father hadn’t been their father and when he’d said what he had. “Dean, where are you?”
It’s okay, I’m back at the motel, but I’m gearing up, I’ll be over there in ten minutes…
And Sam suddenly envisioned Dean storming the school’s front doors with a shotgun, ready to blow everything and everyone apart and he actually froze up then, standing in the hallway outside the staff room, thinking that maybe it was Dean, maybe it was Dean who pulled the trigger.
“No!” he shouted into the phone and a group of students passing by looked sharply at him and he turned, bent against a bank of lockers, tried lowering his voice. “No. Listen, I checked. He’s not even here today-”
He’s coming. He’s on his way and so am I.
“No, you’re not. Seriously, Dean. Stay put. If he’s on his way, I’ll have him next class, double period, right till the end of the day. I’ll keep him away from the gym. Just don’t-” and how was he going to say this without alienating Dean all the way to next week? “Stay there. We’ll meet up after. Just…”
The bell rang and the hallway immediately filled with students. Sam ducked back into the staff room. “I mean it, Dean. You can’t come here. This is why I took the job in the first place, remember?” Mr. Isbister was staring at him and Sam smiled tightly, thinking of terms like sediment and igneous and escarpment. “Promise me.”
A long pause. He’d asked Dean to follow him to Niagara Falls, to the one location where Dean truly didn’t want to be, and then asked him to stay there. Stay put and stay bored. Stay guilty and grieving with nothing useful to do while Sam acted normal and was actually weirdly happy. Sam was suddenly aware of all he was asking, knew that Dean wouldn’t say anything about it and at the same time would express all of what he was feeling through his fists and his drinking. Learned behaviors. It was what he had always done and somehow it was so easy to let it happen. Was a known dance that both could do in their sleep.
Sam wished it was all different, everything, but right now he had no time. “Please, Dean.”
I’m leaving my phone on. And I’ll be at that coffee shop across the street, okay? You go there right after. You promise me. It was a capitulation, it was loud as a shouted ‘uncle’. Dean giving up cut Sam to the quick, especially because Sam was forcing it, forcing Dean to his will. Most of the time he didn’t even have to say please.
So Sam promised him. I’ll see you right after school, won’t wait around. Promised to himself: I will stand on my own two feet, Dean. I can’t expect you to look after everything. He clicked the phone shut, was now late for class.
Billy sat expectantly at his desk, eyes lucid, strangely direct. The noise subsided as soon as Sam entered, calmed like a wind had died down on choppy water. He looked at them, some scared, all expectant. The exams, of course.
Sam stared at Billy. You getting this? Can you hear me? he thought.
Billy stared back, motionless.
They went over the exams line-by-line. No tears, no shouting. Then they watched a video of the program COPS with the sound turned off. He asked them to figure out what was going on without the police commentary. They watched it again with the sound up, broke into groups to discuss.
Making up stories when we don’t know the truth, Sam thought, looking at the back of Billy’s head. You hear me, Billy?
“Hey,” he heard from the doorway while the groups continued to discuss. Sam looked up, smiling as he did so, recognizing her voice, her accent, soft and broad like a good bed.
Elise leaned against the doorjamb, her eyes scanning the class. She took a few steps in, and Sam took a few steps towards her, lowered his head. “Looks like it’s going well,” she said with a laugh.
Sam shrugged, felt danger like electricity, the ozone smell before a lightning storm. “Easy to do with COPS. Bad boys and all.” Resisted the urge to reach out, to touch her.
She did something with her lips - pressed them together like she’d just put on lipstick - that made Sam’s heart stop. “Listen, I have a double spare right now, so I’m going to go home, do some lesson planning for next week. Call me?”
Oh, god, this was perfect. Yes, go. What are you still doing standing here? Sam looked over his shoulder quickly. Everyone was still working. “Sure. But we’ll see you tomorrow, right? Turkey?”
She smiled long and slow, nodded, and Sam watched her walk away, couldn’t help himself, reckoned he’d earned it. He came back in, turned, and Billy’s eyes were on him. Maybe had been on him that whole time.
“Hey, Mr. W!” Emily Dando, hand up, calling him over, and it was like being swept into a swift current, back into the rhythm of the class.
After the final bell sounded, Sam told Billy to remain where he sat. His large idiot pal Marcus - who had probably failed some grade early in his career and now seemed about five years older than anyone else - cuffed Billy on the shoulder, said that he’d meet him at the mall after and Billy mouthed a desultory agreement. Kept his eyes on Sam.
Sam left the door open, sincerely hoped that Dean wouldn’t make a second appearance. He didn’t have much time, because Dean would come looking and Sam had made him a promise.
“Billy, your exam…well, it didn’t exactly look as though you were trying very hard.” Sam undid his tie, stuffed it into his backpack as he talked, glancing up every once in awhile to see what Billy was doing.
The kid shrugged. “I know.”
“Do you care, Billy?”
“’Bout what?”
Sam resisted the urge to say ‘anything’. “School? Grades? What you’re going to do after?”
Billy’s weight was at the edge of the seat, back slumped against the wall, legs sprawled. Indifferent, maybe. “Hey, Mr. Winchester.”
Sam stilled, gave Billy his undivided attention. “Yes?”
Billy looked up, and for one minute Sam saw something flicker in those gray eyes, something like fear. Worry. “Anything weird ever happen to you?”
Sam thought: yellow-eyed demon inhabiting my father’s body like a sock puppet, my girlfriend on the ceiling, burning. Dean shedding his skin in a puddle on the sewer floor. Kept his steady gaze on Billy, who seemed even jumpier than before. “Yes.” Sam rested one hand on his casted arm. “All the time.”
“I can’t hear you,” Billy murmured so softly that Sam almost didn’t catch it. Then, “This school is so stupid. It must have been stupid when you went here, too, right?”
Careful, Sam warned himself. “I didn’t like it much. But I survived.”
“My sister Erica goes here. She’s fucking perfect. Everyone says she’s perfect. It’s hard, having a perfect sister.” Met Sam’s eyes. “You have someone like that in your family?”
Sam shook his head. “Nope. My brother and me? We’re both total screw-ups.”
That pulled Billy’s mouth to one side. “I knew all that stuff on the exam.”
Sam nodded. “I know.”
Billy got to his feet, looked out the door. Elise would be gone by now, and Dean would be furiously waiting at the coffee shop, probably starting fights with the baristas. It wasn’t going to happen today, after all.
I can save you, Sam thought, but he knew Billy couldn’t hear him.
“Maybe next time,” Billy added as he brushed past Sam and it was so loaded Sam flinched. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
--
Niagara Falls NY, April 2001
When Sam heard the jangle of keys in the door, heard it open and close, he slid from the seat in front of the desk and told Toad to keep playing the game on his laptop. “I just want to see where Dean’s been,” he said quietly, and Toad plugged in the headphones, attention on the screen.
Good. If a fight was in the offing, it would happen when Toad was safely in the electronic world of becoming a roller coaster tycoon.
The only light in the living room came from the television, and it illuminated John’s weary face, the beard now gone for whatever reasons his dad ever had to keep it or get rid of it, relaxed in sleep. Soft snores interspersed by some show about survival and tribes and challenges. Sam’s eyes slowly adjusted enough to spot Dean in the kitchen. He heard him first, actually, heard the metallic friction of cap being unscrewed from glass. Sam watched as Dean drank straight from the bottle of tequila, the blue light from the TV catching the length of his neck as he swallowed. Once, twice. Three times.
“Dean?” Sam asked uncertainly.
The bottle glinted blue as it came down, and Sam snapped the light switch beside the stove. The overhead fluorescents blinked on with a buzzing noise from the faulty ballast, bathing the kitchen and Dean in the kind of glow that would make anyone look like a corpse, let alone anyone in Dean’s condition. Dean didn’t look at Sam, took another long pull of the bottle before capping it and sliding it onto the counter.
He was covered in dirt, soaking wet, and his eyes were strangely vacant, face white under a layer of clay and soil. Where his hands weren’t covered in mud, they were red and sore looking. He’d dripped mud and water across the floor; Sam could see the trail from the door. It reminded him of that night when it had been blood, and it softened his next question considerably.
“Where have you been, man?” Dean took one step back, pulled over a kitchen chair from the table and collapsed onto it. Sam noticed he was shivering. “Coffee?” Sam offered and Dean nodded.
Sam clattered around looking for the filters, his head behind an open cupboard door. It wasn’t a good sign that Dean wasn’t even answering. He should get out of those wet -
“Dean?” he asked suddenly, forgetting about the coffee, forgetting about Toad and roller coasters, about Dad and tribal alliances. “You dug them up, didn’t you?”
He knelt by Dean’s side and his brother opened his reddened hands like Sam was going to give him something - Dean hadn’t brought gloves, the idiot, and there were open blisters weeping on his palms - before dropping them to his knees. “It didn’t shut them up.”
“Why are you all wet? You didn’t…you didn’t…” and Sam couldn’t even think about it, recalling the vastness of the Falls, the sheer enormity of the power concentrated there.
Dean shrugged. “Found four bodies, just like Delisle said. Put them in the water. Didn’t fucking shut them up, Sam.” His voice was quiet, and wrapped in it, despair, and Sam didn’t want to hear it, had never expected to hear that. This was Dean.
“Why didn’t you salt and burn?” And it made them jump, the close sound of their dad, standing in the archway, coming up to them on his cat feet, enormous coiled power, dreadful in the truest sense of the word. “You found bodies and you didn’t take care of it?” His voice was Nebraska flat, not quite an accusation, not yet.
“That’s not gonna do it,” Dean whispered. “You shoulda seen them, Dad.” And Dean’s attention was now on John, was a conversation between two hunters. Sam knew why Dean was doing it, knew that it was to protect him, was to protect them both.
From John. From their father and his abiding obsessions.
“They found bodies under the rubble, in 1969,” Sam broke in. He didn’t exactly know why he said it: Dean was going to catch most of the shit for this, not Sam. “Found hundreds of bodies, all intact, all held there by something. Not corrupted, like a saint, preserved for a god. Offerings to a higher power. It’s not about a demon, Dad. It’s not about hell or ghosts.”
The lights didn’t help. Their wash illuminated every scar on John’s face, every blow that he’d taken chasing something, killing something. Sam remembered many of them, had sewn up a number himself. By the cruel light, he could see the adjustment his father made: deal with Dean later, Sam needs some setting straight now.
“Sam’s helping with this?” There it was: accusation, plain and hard.
Dean sighed, glanced quickly at Sam, who could read him like a book - shut up, Sam, let me handle it.
But Dean was fucking done and Sam was sick to death of Dean always coming to his defense. So he didn’t shut up. “Yeah, we went and interviewed one of the guys-”
Forcing Dean to stand up, even though he looked as though he’d rather be sitting. Rather be unconscious. “I went and interviewed the guy, he told me what they’d found. They’d buried four of the bodies in ’69, left the rest as they were. That’s when it started, ordinary people jumping in, thinking they were superheroes. I thought if I put those bodies back-”
John drew close and Sam watched the current that ran between them, the direction of it. Sam knew which way it would go, which way it always went and it made him white hot with sudden anger.
Sam cut between them, not able to bear Dean’s protection, not anymore. “A willing sacrifice. That’s what those guys were, that’s what’s needed now. Their bodies were untouched, Dad. They jumped knowing the cost, and Dean just returned them to where they were supposed to be.”
“It’s about glory,” Dean’s words ran over Sam’s, maybe trying to make a point that Sam didn’t see, couldn’t hear, or trying to shut him up. “In the big picture sense. About doing it for a higher power, whatever that is-”
Sam back at it: “I don’t know if it’s a river god or the Snake, or what, but whatever it is, it needs to be appeased, Dad. You can’t fucking kill it. Those clowns,” and that was a deliberate jab, was still fighting, not persuading, because he was talking about his father’s hunter friend McGreevy, “that jumped in because they were promised fame? They weren’t willing sacrifices - they actually thought that they’d survive. That’s not a sacrifice, is it?”
John was so close now Sam could feel his breath. Then Sam straightened, full height, no slouch, and he was taller. Had been for a while, just never realized it till this very moment.
“You finished, son?” John whispered.
Sam was afraid now, but didn’t show it, didn’t move a hair. Turned his head to the side, felt Dean’s presence behind him.
“Sam,” Dean said, low. A warning.
“You,” John raised his eyes to meet Sam’s and there was give to the gesture, a small acknowledgement that his son had grown tall, had grown. “Are not to go down there.”
“He didn’t,” Dean muttered behind him. “I did.”
“I’m not talkin’ to you,” John said harshly, and Sam flinched at the sound of it. “This is not some ‘god’. No such thing. We have ghosts, their voices. Nothing that some salt and burn, maybe an exorcism, will take care of. We can hear them, and we can use that-”
“I can’t hear them,” Sam interrupted. “Why is that, Dad?” He knew the answer. He’d known for some time. “But I’m not a willing sacrifice, never will be. Stubborn, I think you’ve called it. Self-centered. Willful.”
And John backed up a step, eyes flashing. Between them, suddenly, Dean, dragging Sam to the side, because he’d seen it too, the flash, knew what it portended. Sam didn’t care. He had a letter to Stanford and he was getting the fuck out of here and that man? That man was some kind of monster to put his sons through this, to ask of them what he did.
“You are full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you?” John grated as though Dean had suddenly disappeared, vanished from the room. “What the fuck are you talking about? Listen to yourself: River gods? Willing sacrifices? You gonna set up some dreamcatchers and crystals, see if the Moon’s in your second house?”
A point of contention, like organized religion. There was supernatural shit that you paid attention to because it was dangerous. And then there were unicorns and Santa and astrology, which were bullshit. Nothing in between, not in John’s Winchester’s world.
Sam snorted through his nose. Contempt. How far could he push this before his dad blew? He didn’t know, didn’t care. “Those ghosts are asking for a willing sacrifice. They’re testing people and people are failing. Dean did the right thing.”
“The right thing? Sneaking away to go where I told him not to? Making you part of this hunt when I-”
“It’s all about you, isn’t it?” Sam flung back and Dean being between them wasn’t enough then; Sam was never sure afterwards who threw the first punch, him or his dad, but it descended then, the rage. Not white hot, not this time, but red.
Sam had a long reach, sure, but John was faster, more confident of his abilities, colder in his precision and Sam was on his ass in under a second. John made another lunge, still cold with fury, but Dean was quick enough this time, got in between, put two hands on John’s shoulders and pushed him back, gently. With respect. Held his hands out from his sides, open to whatever their dad wanted to inflict next.
Covered in grave mud, wet with river. Going against orders, perfectly willing to take whatever lumps were coming to him because of it.
And Sam wasn’t. He struggled to find his feet, but Dean stepped back, put his heel sharply down on the fabric of Sam’s jersey-knit shirt, held him down enough that Sam had to stay put on the kitchen floor. In that space of time, Sam looked up, hearing a wheezing sound, and saw Toad, big Bills coat over his shoulders, standing in the archway, just beyond the spill of kitchen light.
“Sam,” Dean said, low, pained. “You and Toad take off. Dad needs to have a few words with me.” Between hunters. He eased his foot off Sam’s shirt and Sam came up, but not as fast as he originally thought he would.
John wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t look at anyone, was rubbing his fist where it had connected with Sam’s ear. He was barely out of breath.
Dean looked at Sam, raised his eyebrows. Do this for me, he implored.
Sam didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge either of them. Fuck them and their crazy code. Fuck them and the things they hunt, he thought as he jogged down the stairs and into the night, Toad following, laptop in knapsack, eyes big with wonder. Sam didn’t have any more tears in him, really, he didn’t. And he didn’t mean it, couldn’t actually understand these sharp foreign thoughts teasing him apart like wheat from chaff. Fuck both of them. Didn’t mean it, not really.
Not yet.
--
Deveaux Park neighborhood, Niagara Falls NY, Thanksgiving, 2006
It was relief that Sam felt, pure and simple. After the pumping adrenaline of the day, waiting for what didn’t happen, he’d felt wrung out. Then wondering what mayhem Dean had created not just at the coffee shop, but at the Shuter household. A long discussion over bitter black coffee, the staff shooting them dirty looks Sam didn’t want to parse, Dean talking non-stop.
So exhausted, both of them, that they’d ordered in pizza and been asleep before eleven.
Sam had woken early, just in time to get a head start worrying about Thanksgiving dinner at Elise’s, felt like he was bringing a wild animal with him, a liability, a ticking bomb. But, like the other things, all that worry was for nothing.
Because when Dean was on, he was on. Dean was operating at the top of his astonishing game, charming, smiling, listening deferentially, laughing at her jokes - hell, laughing at Sam’s jokes - eating everything on his plate without question, chewing with his mouth closed, even the Brussels spouts which Sam knew for a fact he hated.
Had fucking seconds.
Elise had gone all out, set red candles onto new table linens, made the pumpkin pie from scratch, served up a bottle of Californian Pinot Noir that must have cost more than the turkey itself. Right from the moment Dean had parked the Impala outside her house, Sam directing him where to pull over, Dean had behaved himself. So polite and casually contained that he reminded Sam of their dad when he wanted something.
Unfair, Sam chided himself. Dean wasn’t like their dad, had never been like their dad. Sam was nervous, was looking for fault. Wanted desperately for Elise to like Dean, wanted her not to think all the Winchesters were freaks. Wanted Dean to like Elise. Remembered vividly that confrontation in the high school’s office with Carcetti and Elise, after the knife incident. Dad, all bristle and sharp edges and Elise not backing down. And him, Sam, wanting so badly for the floor to open up, for this period of his life to be over.
Sam looked across the turkey carcass, the table littered with crumbs of bread, a smear of cranberry sauce, saw without hearing. Dean was nodding at something Elise was saying, the candles reflecting from his eyes, pale cheeks brought to color by the slight flush red wine usually delivered to Winchester men - hell, maybe we’re allergic, Sam thought suddenly - and knew that Dean was trying. Hard. To fit in, to be nice, to hold still.
To give Sam a fighting chance.
Maybe sensing Sam’s attention, Dean looked over, smiled at him. “Remember that Thanksgiving we walked across the Rainbow Bridge?”
Unlike Dean, to bring up that time. Five years ago to the day. But here they were, same place, a much different Thanksgiving. A different set of reasons to give thanks. We’re alive, Sam thought. At such a price, but I’ll give thanks for it anyway. Thanks, Dad. “Yeah. I remember. We went to…that arcade.” Don’t mention the daredevils, don’t mention that photo of the dry Falls when everything had clicked. Don’t mention the voices and the cold walk and the hell to pay later.
“Dazzleland,” Dean nodded. “That was fun.”
“Didn’t really do Thanksgiving, did we?” Sam clarified, more for Elise than for Dean, who seemed a million miles away, thinking about what Sam didn’t know. The flashing lights, the claim of ‘family fun’ to be had, the shine and gleam, like edible oil product icing on a bland grocery-store birthday cake.
“So, what was it like, growing up, just you boys and your dad?” Sam heard Elise ask, and Sam fought a surge of panic. At the beginning, Jess had asked questions like this of him. She’d stopped asking after awhile, meeting the wall that Sam put up. Elise wasn’t asking Sam, though. She was asking Dean.
Who smiled, leaned back in his chair, not looking at Sam. He’s good at this, Sam marveled, way better than I ever was.
“Well, Sam was always grousing about food, kept a hoard in his knapsack, under his bed. I usually found it,” Dean started. “You have brothers?” Throwing it back into her court, maybe, because Sam didn’t think Dean was trying to engage her, draw her in. Connect her to them.
Elise nodded. “Two younger ones.”
Dean nodded like that meant something to him. And he was trying to connect her, Sam saw, was trying so damn hard. He’s doing this for me.
“Well you know, then. Always scrapping. Hey, Sam,” and looked at Sam, but Sam couldn’t tell what his brother was going to say, was so off balance. Who was this guy that had suddenly manifested himself like a fairy godbrother in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner? And what had he done with Dean? “You remember that time when you wanted a pet? And on the Thanksgiving weekend you brought home that…what was it? A rat? A rat from your kindergarten class?”
“A hamster,” Sam corrected, remembering. “And there were two of them.”
Dean looked surprised. “Really? ‘Cause I only remember one.”
“The second one escaped when you were flushing the first one down the toilet.”
“It was dead, Sam.”
Elise was gathering their dishes, laughing along with Dean, ignoring Sam’s indignation. She came back with the pie, set it on the table, sat down with them.
“It wasn’t dead when I went to the Saturday morning reading club at the library.” He turned to Elise and she was leaning forward on one elbow, chin cupped in her hand, a smile tugging the corner of her lips. “And when I got back the toilet was overflowing, Dad was apeshit and the cage was wide open and empty.”
“How was I supposed to know that a hamster would plug the freakin’ toilet?”
“That apartment didn’t exactly have decent plumbing,” Sam conceded, starting to laugh. “But you could have at least waited till I got home before trying to get rid of the body.”
Dean’s grin was lupine and his eyes were mere glints in the candlelight. He addressed his comments to Elise. “Sam went a little crazy, tackled me, but the bathroom floor was soaking wet, and we both went sliding onto our backs, and we took out Dad like a bowling pin. Dad had out one of those plungers and suddenly, the whole thing-” he gestured with his hands and Sam was laughing so hard his breath was coming in little gasps. “And all this crap came up like a geyser and there was this little rodent, floating on top-”
“What did Dad call us?” Sam managed between wheezes.
Dean wiped his tearing eyes, face flushed with laughter more than wine. “The Winstooges.” And that started the both of them on another long run of loud choking laughter.
Elise served up the pie, shaking her head. “Must have been quite the small society, you guys.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, voice dropping soft, taking the plate from her with a nod of thanks. A little wary, had left himself open. “It was.”
They fell into silence for a moment, the weird quiet that came after hilarity, maybe marking how fleeting these moments were. “I met your dad, once,” Elise ventured, maybe trying to build a bridge between them, to offer something new. Natural, so natural to want to do that.
“This pie is amazing,” Sam intervened. He looked at his brother, but Dean was contained, eyes down on the table, his fork stalled midway between mouth and plate. “The whole dinner was amazing.”
“Yeah?” Dean asked, in between shutting down and wanting more, wanting any scrap of their father like it was a collector’s item.
Elise was getting a piece of pie for herself, was concentrating on the knife, on the cut. “Thanks, it was my pleasure, feeding you guys.” She transferred the pie lifter into her right hand. “He came to the school once. I can’t say that we got along. He was…” her voice trailed off and she looked thoughtful, a small crease between her brows. She was between, as Sam had been since he’d returned to Niagara Falls. Stuck between present and past. Between a lover and a teacher. A student, for chrissakes. For all that, it felt more odd than wrong to Sam. “Your father seemed really devoted to your family. Sam. Protective.”
Dean nodded, shoved some pie in his mouth and Sam noticed how Dean wasn’t looking at him. “Mmmnn,” Dean said noncommittally.
“That was the day your SAT scores came in, right?” Elise checked with Sam. “Those were the best SATs I’ve ever seen in my life. We were so ecstatic.”
For one moment, Sam was back in that office, with Ms. Simon and their dad and knowing nothing short of a faked seizure was going to stop it. Was going to stop this.
Elise turned to Dean, who had stopped chewing, waiting, anticipating, eyes perfectly blank which meant he was steeling himself for something he wouldn’t like. “Sam had all his applications sent here, to this house. He worried so much about how your dad would take it. I remember,” and she smiled at this, so wistfully and she was really extraordinarily beautiful by candlelight and Sam prayed that she’d just leave it be, but she was sharing, was trying to understand, was trying to solicit Dean’s help in understanding something essential about Sam. “I remember when he first came into my office at the beginning of the year and he had no idea that he was good enough for college. I mean, how couldn’t he have known that, right?”
Dean blinked hard, was hanging in there, Sam could see. “Right,” Dean agreed, bleak, not knowing what he was agreeing to.
Elise shook her head. “He’s so smart. And he had no idea.”
And there, there was the shift in Dean, the fork came down on the table beside the half-eaten pie and Sam knew everything about the evening was about to change.
“You know-” Sam started, tried to head it off, but it was like stopping a freight train with his bare hands.
“So,” Dean’s mouth twitched into a frown, then turned on a dime, reemerged as a tight grin. A runner checking himself at second, pulling up and it was no smile that Sam recognized, “so you talked him into applying for colleges, showed him what he had to do?” Seemed innocent, was so capable at sounding innocent, had such practice at it. Was eying his next move, thinking of stealing third, dekeing out the pitcher on the mound.
Elise nodded, grinning like it was a conspiracy. “Well, yeah. He had no idea. Hadn’t even thought about it. So I prepped him for the SATs and then all the applications went through me. I wrote recommendations. Hard to get into a place like Stanford without stellar references, a kick-ass entrance essay. Sam’s grades were always superior, he just needed some help with the other stuff.” She turned to Sam, maybe wondering why the brothers had suddenly gone so quiet. Took his hand on the table, a very slender smile, tentative. “And look how you turned out.”
Dean balled up his napkin, threw it on the table and Sam drew his attention from Elise’s face to see the cord working in Dean’s jaw. “Sam turned out some fine, all right.” Hard stare at the crumbs, the remainder of the meal, strewn across the table, all that was left. “You know,” and he was still trying to hold on to civility, Sam could see, but needed to get out, had reached the limit of his ability to fake it, “I really…I really…” Got to his feet, pushed in his chair.
“Oh,” Elise was confused, of course she was confused, she had no idea.
Sam grabbed Dean’s arm as he passed, knowing it was probably better to let him go, but the change was so abrupt and so massive, that letting Dean loose on the dark world giving thanks for their blessings felt totally irresponsible. To everyone, Dean included.
Dean pulled away, kept walking to the door and Sam wondered if his brother was having some kind of panic attack - funny how a Thanksgiving dinner would give him a panic attack when zombies and ghosts and vampires didn’t - but knew it wasn’t that. It was realizing, it was-
Sam glanced at Elise, got up and followed Dean to the hall.
“Dean,” quietly, at the foot of the stairs, Dean already sorting his coat out of the hall closet, face pink in the wan lamplight. “You can stay, it’s okay.”
Took a moment to turn, marshalling something, sharpening knives, who knew. When their eyes met, Sam saw anger, not panic. A little laugh, barely an indrawn breath. “Always wondered how you did it, man. How long you’d been planning it. Took a bit of effort, didn’t it?”
Under the thin veneer of anger, bedrock of hurt, but Sam couldn’t address it. Not all of it was his doing. But some of it? Some of it was. You have no idea what it was like, after you left.
“Where are you going?” Sam asked, even though he knew Dean had no idea, wasn’t so much going somewhere as leaving someplace. “Stay.”
But Dean already had his coat on, jaw working on anger or other things, an array of shit stirred up beyond his easy ability to push down. “You stay,” he whispered, not meeting Sam’s eyes. “It’s okay,” and he had to look up at that, but the light was shitty and Sam had no idea what was going on in Dean’s messed up head. “It’s okay. Thank her for dinner, but I gotta go, man.”
Sam followed him out the front door in his socks. “Dean!” he shouted after him, but his brother only lifted a hand, the keys catching the streetlight, heading for the car.
--
TBC
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a/n: So sorry it’s a little more than my usual week between posts. What can I say? It’s a busy time of year for me in realifeland. Thanks for hanging in there - sorry also if it takes me a little while to respond to comments.
And, just in case you skipped smilla02's amazing cover:
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