Fic: Like Luggage of Some Departed Traveller; Five
Master Post
Prologue | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six
THREE : SAM
A honey bee diligently investigates a single clover flower. It looks fuzzy, like something you'd keep as a pet and stroke with a fingertip, but its eyes are large and alien. The bee waves its feelers and flies to a bright sunburst of a dandelion, dislodging dew that runs down the stem and into the long grass.
"S'probably Africanized, y'know," a voice mumbles sleepily.
Sam smiles before he twists to look over his shoulder. Dean's got one eye open and the other barely cracked. His hair is staging a soft and rumpled riot across his scalp, and Sam's man enough to admit that one of the more delightful side effects of the Apocalypse has been Dean's lack of access to hair gel. Sam likes him this way.
"My brother, the optimist." Sam shifts on his side, careful so he doesn't wake Jess, who's pillowed on Sam's arm, pressed against his front. "You want your arm back?" Dean must be losing circulation.
Dean makes a non-committal noise but extracts his trapped arm, uncurls the other from over Sam's waist. He goes up on an elbow to get a better look at Sam's face. Sam feels Dean's knees pressing against the sensitive backs of his own. "How long've you been awake?"
Sam gives a one-shouldered shrug. "A while." It's been a few hours and Sam could have happily lasted a few more if Dean had stayed asleep. Sam likes where he is right now - lazy and comfortable, occupied only with watching robins digging up worms with their deceptively sharp talons and baby skunks trailing behind their mother, a line of three fluffy tails parading through the grass. It's warm between Dean and Jess, under the unzipped sleeping bag, and Sam hasn't slept warm in months.
Yeah, Sam's perfectly content to stay just like this for as long as he can. When they get out of bed, there will be other things to worry about. Sam's brain skirts around the edges of that thought, mind's-eye averted carefully.
"How's your arm?" Dean examines Sam's free arm, the one with the bullet graze and, lower, a slash from Dean's silver knife.
"I've had worse." He wiggles his fingers. "Fix me up later?"
In retrospect, last night was the time to slap a few butterfly bandages and some gauze on Sam's arm, but last night was - not a good time for pragmatism. When Dean dropped his flashlight, the first thing Sam had done was stride forward, drop to his knees, take Jess's face in his hands and kiss her like he'd been storing it up for months. Long moments later, he'd realized that her gun was still between them, barrel harsh against his ribs. He pulled away. Dean, who had regained his flashlight and added a gun in his other hand, stared at Sam with wide owl eyes. Sam felt over-caffeinated and antsy, shifting minutely as Dean dug out his silver knife, wanting this part over with. His hands had opened and closed, empty. When the silver and a splash of holy water had no effect, Sam dipped his head at Dean, seeking confirmation. Dean nodded with a dazed look and Sam, staggering on his knees, had crushed Dean close with both arms, buried his face against Dean's bare shoulder. He'd felt the blood from his arm smearing on Dean's back and didn't care. Sam had been walking for hours - when the sun went down he couldn't bring himself to stop, not when he was so close - and as soon as Dean's arms loosened around him Sam had sagged as if gravity had suddenly kicked in, and in a delirious haze he'd found himself pulled down and tucked into their nest of sleeping bags by the remains of the fire.
Dean's voice pulls him back to the present. "Sam, what the hell happened?" His face is so close to Sam's - surely Dean can see every micro-expression that crosses Sam's face.
Sam stops craning his neck, turns back to the view of the meadow. The honey bee has moved on. "It's a long story," he says. He just wants another hour like this, warm and safe and sandwiched close between them. Another half-hour, even. Minutes.
"Well, I do have a full agenda of meetings today," Dean says testily, "but I'll have my secretary clear my schedule."
Sam flinches at the anger in Dean's voice and a horrifying thought occurs to him. He twists to see Dean again. "You know I didn't leave on purpose, right?" It hasn't escaped Sam's notice that Dean considers him the Olympic gold-medalist in walking out on his family. "I didn't want to."
Dean's features soften. "Yeah, Sammy. I know."
Sam's breath catches. He swallows and exhales carefully. "Hey, so when the world's ending and I didn't know if I'd ever see you again and stuff, do we get a few free passes to do stupid shit and then, like, never speak of it again?"
"Yes?" Dean says. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Can you just call me that again?" Sam looks past Dean at the treetops.
Dean visibly thinks for a moment, then shoots Sam a bemused smile. "Sammy?"
Sam nods shortly.
"Sure thing, Sammy. Whatever you want, Sammy." Dean grins like the smug bastard he is. "Samwise. Sammich. Samalamadingdong."
Sam's face heats and he knows how pink he gets. He presses his face against the flannel lining of the sleeping bag and groans. "Shut up."
"Sam, the Sammiest Sammy of them all."
"I hate you," Sam says, muffled into the flannel.
"You love me," Dean laughs.
"Yeah."
Gossiping sparrows chatter in the span of silence.
"Hey -"
"I missed you," Sam says. He opens his eyes and meets Dean's gaze.
Jess stirs at his side, making a sleepy noise, and her eyes slide open gradually. He feels her physically jolt when she focuses in on him, and then she's wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. Her rounded body presses against him, new and different and shocking when the last time he saw her, her pregnancy was only an abstract notion.
Sam thinks that's well and truly killed the conversation with Dean, but when Jess is puttering around, stoking the embers of the fire to get it going for their breakfast, Dean catches his elbow and pulls him in close. "I know you real well, Sam," Dean says quietly, holding eye contact. "And that means I know when you're avoiding a question."
Damn. Sam swallows hard and nods.
Fresh smoke rises from the embers.
Even using his unencumbered left hand, Sam manages to consume oatmeal with an efficient, mechanical intensity. The texture's gritty and he thinks there might be some sand mixed in with the rolled oats, but it settles thick and warm in his belly. He could eat four more bowls full, but a sharp-eyed examination of Jess and Dean confirms that they're both looking poorer-fed than when he'd seen them last, and he doesn't want to decimate their supplies.
Sam flinches at a particularly harsh twinge from his right arm, and the spoon clatters against his teeth. He sucks it clean of oatmeal and glances indignantly past his rolled-up sleeve. "Ow."
Dean tugs the fire-blackened needle through and ties off a stitch. He's just getting started on the graze on Sam's shoulder. "So Sammy," he says, and Sam can't stop his warm flush at the nickname, "let's hear it. What I Did For My Summer Vacation, by Samuel Q. Winchester."
"What's the Q for?" Sam asks.
"Quincy," Dean says. Sam wrinkles his nose. "Or Quentin. You can pick."
"Have you completely forgotten field first aid while I was gone?" Sam twitches the arm Dean's stitching. "'Cause I think this kind of hatchet job violates the Geneva Convention."
"Avoiding the sub-ject," Dean sing-songs in a low rumble.
"It's true," Jess says. "You are." She flashes him an apologetic look. "Sorry, babe, I know you too well."
Dean ties off the last stitch, pinching the flesh, but Sam's attention is elsewhere. He glances around the clearing, shifting on his tree stump seat. "Do you guys hear that?"
Dean snorts. "Seriously, you're trying that?"
"No," Sam says, brow creasing. "Really, do you hear that?"
Dean stops putting the first aid kit away and looks up at Sam. "Actually, yeah."
The low hum sounds almost electrical in nature, rising and receding periodically. Sam looks up into the birches. "Uh," he says.
Dean looks up. "Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me," he says. "I was joking!"
They break down their camp very quietly and very quickly. Sam fumbles with a metal pan, dropping it with a clatter, and they all freeze as the humming briefly heightens in intensity. Sam's gaze snaps back to the birches - a few bees break off from the writhing hive, but after circling the clearing they return. Sam swallows and mouths sorry.
First it's making tracks away from the killer bees, then it's a sudden rainstorm that forces them to higher ground, and after that they hear human voices down the road and judge that they're best avoided, but between one thing and another, Sam gets to stay in his blissed-out, back-where-he-belongs haze for another two days.
Because Dean is a crafty asshole who could take up a side career as an evil mastermind, he waits until Sam has literally got his dick in his hand before leaning casually against the tree next to the one Sam's pissing on, crossing his arms, and saying, "So, little bro, you want to tell me why you're wearing Dad's coat?"
Sam - remarkably calmly given the situation, he thinks - shakes off, zips up, and nods back toward the campsite. Sam knows he's an asshole for putting this off. He knows. He brushes an unshaven jaw against the collar of the coat. "Yeah."
Jess watches them curiously as Sam digs in his pack - Dad's pack, actually, since when Sam was taken from the orchard his own gear was left behind. His fingers close around what he's looking for - rough, unfinished leather - and he wrestles it out from under a box of .45 rounds and a chicken Cup o' Noodles.
As Dean takes Dad's journal out of Sam's hands his face doesn't just fall, it plummets. Sam watches Dean's Adam's apple as he swallows hard. Dean opens his mouth, but only a breathless sound comes out. He shuts it again.
"What's going on?" Jess approaches them tentatively, stays a few steps away.
Sam takes a deep breath and turns to her, but Dean's the first to speak. "Dad's dead," Dean says hoarsely.
Sam watches Jess make an abortive move to touch Dean's arm, then pull back, still looking worried. "I'm so sorry," she says, looking between them. Sam's glad she got to meet Dad, at least, even if she never really knew him. It means something that she met him. Jess hooks an arm through Sam's elbow, puts a hand on his chest.
It's good, too, to see Jess reaching out to comfort Dean - Sam had worried, all those months on his own, about whether they'd be able to work out their differences, and he's smiled to himself these last few days every time he sees how in sync they are. He doesn't think Dean and Jess even notice how smoothly they work together to set up and break down camp, to hunt for their dinner, even finishing each other's sentences a couple times.
"What happened?" Dean asks, looking as bewildered as if Sam had just punched him in the gut out of the blue.
Sam looks down and to the left, scuffs the toe of his own boot in the dirt - though his coat, shirt and even his jeans had been ruined, his boots were still his own. Sam prefers to wear Dad's clothes as little as possible. It was truly a pleasure to discover that Dean and Jess had saved a few of his things in their own packs. "He died saving my life," Sam says matter-of-factly. He nods until the nod turns into a shake of his head. "Because of me."
He risks a glance up and sees Dean staring at him. "Sam, what the hell happened to you?"
Sam spins them a pretty good horror story, all of which is true. It is factually correct; it gives them the necessary information. How Sam had gone to get water in the orchard and woken up flat on his back, aching and confused, staring up at a cloudy sky. How he'd quickly determined that he was in the ghost town Dad talked about. How the demon had dragged him there and dropped him in the middle of a bunch of psychic freaks, most of them out for his blood. How he'd been in a pretty sticky situation when Dad arrived on the scene, and that Dad saved Sam at the expense of his own life. Died a hero.
"The demon's dead," he tells them. "The Colt worked." Sam balls his hands up in the pockets of Dad's coat. "It's over," he says unsteadily, almost a question.
"Did Dad kill it?" Dean asks in crisp, clipped tones.
Sam thins his lips, presses them together. He shakes his head. "He was already gone."
Jess leans her face against Sam's arm, whispering reassurances. Sam's heart rate slows down; as much as he enjoyed the blissful ignorance, he feels better now that it's out. Now that they have some facts to chew on, no more mystery to wonder about. It's safer.
Later, when Sam's at the tiny trickle of a creek filling up a canteen, swishing the acrid iodine tablet around, he looks back over his shoulder and sees Jess touching Dean's elbow, speaking to him. Sam's too far away to hear their words, but a ghost of a smile flickers over his face. It really is gratifying to see them like this. As awful as these last few months have been, maybe this is what Jess and Dean needed in order to find some common ground - for Sam to be out of the way for a little while. If that's the case then Sam's glad they had the chance, no matter how furiously he wishes that the circumstances had been different. Sam's had plenty of opportunity to discover that he can't live without either of them.
Sam caps his canteen and walks back to camp, shaking it to mix the iodine. They both intently watch his return - they haven't been willing to let Sam out of their sight since he found them. Though he teases them about their combined protectiveness, it's nice to feel wanted.
Muttering and metallic clanging emanates from behind a stack of squashed cars. A spark plug comes flying into view. "God damn it," Dean's voice grumbles.
Sam smiles and pulls Jess in closer. He's got his chin hooked over her shoulder, arms around her waist so he can rest his hands on the round of her stomach. "Dean, this is nuts," he calls. "Any parts you find you're just going to have to carry across the country on your back. You don't even know when we're going to get back to the Rockies -"
Dean's irate visage pops out from behind a blue Studebaker with a sheared-off top. "We will go back for my car," he says.
Sam raises his hands in surrender. "I want her back, too, man."
"Good," Dean says sternly, gesturing with an torque wrench. "Good."
Sam drops his hands back down. He frowns suddenly, then smiles just as quick. "Holy crap," he says. He spins Jess in his arms, plants his hands back on her belly. The baby fires off another round of kicks, rapid-fire. Sam thinks maybe fireworks should be exploding spontaneously around them. He beams up at Jess, taps a hand lightly against her abdomen. "Hi, you," he says to the baby in there. He twists around to Dean, because he always wants to share good news with Dean. "Dean, you've got to feel this, the baby's kicking."
Dean's standing still with the wrench in his hand, smiling a little too carefully. "That's awesome, Sammy."
Sam chews on his lower lip and feels like an idiot. Oh. "I guess - I guess that's not exactly the first time, huh?"
Jess lays her hands over his. "It's the first time for this." She taps her fingers playfully. "First time I get to do this with you." Jess's eyes crinkle when she smiles at him and Sam loves her a really ridiculous amount.
Sam crouches to talk to her belly again and grimaces at the sound of something crashing in a crunch of metal and glass beyond the next aisle of cars. "For fuck's sake, Dean, there are salvage yards everywhere, you can get what you need later." Sam breathes in sharply. "Crap. I mean - " He looks up at Jess. "Do I need to stop swearing in front of the baby?"
When Dean stalks out of the jungle of old wrecks, an ample dusting of shattered glass glitters on his shoulders, his collar. Sam brushes him off, claps a hand on his shoulder. "I promise we'll get her back, Dean." Sam cares about the car, too.
Dean sulks all afternoon anyway.
"- and the guy had been selling him blanks the whole time," Dean says, nearly howling the end of the anecdote.
Jess is wiping tears from her eyes, breaking into aftershocks of giggles every few seconds. "Really, Sam, you should've seen his face, it was just - oh God, I can't even tell you."
Sam stretches his legs toward the campfire and lets it warm his toes inside his boots. He leaves a lazy smile on his face and lets it hang out there, twines a finger in the curls of Jess's hair. "Sounds pretty epic."
Dean yawns and stretches, baring a strip of navel between shirt and pants. "All right, I think retelling that just about killed me," Dean says. Jess stifles another laugh, waves a hand, sorry, sorry ignore me as she gathers herself together. Dean rolls his eyes at her. "I'm gonna turn in," he finishes. "Next time," - he points at Sam - "it's your turn. Give us your best story. We've got catching up to do."
"Sure thing," Sam says, nodding while Jess presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, clearing out more tears of laughter. "I'll save it up for you."
Sam'll have to put some serious consideration into whether his best story is the one where he watches a harmless stoner kid get ripped to shreds by an Acheri demon, or the one where he spends the fortieth night in a row eating cold peanut butter and sleeping alone.
Jess gives a tired-out sigh. "Let's turn in," she says, "I'm beat."
Sam waves her on towards bed. "You go ahead," he says. "I'm just gonna stargaze for a little."
"Suit yourself." She shrugs.
Betelgeuse burns bright and red. Sam wonders if it already burned itself out hundreds of millions of light years ago, the stunning burst of its supernova slowly making its way to here from across the universe. He scans the rest of the night sky and misses seeing the lights of airplanes intermingled there, taking travelers to their homes.
Whistling cheerfully but out of tune, Dean tromps heavily into the woods, axe slung over his shoulder.
Sam grabs Jess's hand. "Come on," he says, helping her to her feet. "He'll need at least a half hour to get enough for a fire."
"What? I don't - " Jess stares longingly back at her sunny nap spot till Sam gets her behind the treeline, screened from sight by fresh greenery. With a low sigh, he presses in close. It's been a week since he's been back, and he hasn't gotten her alone till now.
"God, I missed you," he sighs. Sam cups her chin and kisses her, slow and dirty and impolite, not a public kiss, not an in-front-of-Dean kiss. He runs a hand up the back of her shirt, spreads his fingers against her warm familiar skin. "I missed my wife," he mumbles against her neck, opening his mouth against it and kissing messily there.
"Sam," she says, "I'm not sure - " She pushes on his shoulders.
Sam straightens up. "Are you," he begins, suddenly uncertain. "I don't really know anything about, you know, all of this," he says, gesturing to encompass her midsection. "Are you not really … " Sam searches for the right word, treading carefully. It's been a long time since he read an issue of Cosmo in the doctor's waiting room, but he thinks there are lots of things that are supposed to be insensitive to say to pregnant women. "Not really interested right now?"
"No," Jess says. She drapes her arms over his shoulders. She doesn't fit against him quite the same anymore, her body transformed in what to him seems like overnight. "God, no, that's not it. I'm always going to be interested, Sam." Her mouth slides up mischievously in one corner as she slips a finger under his collar. "I'm just not sure this is the best time." Jess casts a glance back at their campsite. "Dean could get back any minute."
"Dean's a big boy," Sam murmurs, ducking low to brush his lips against the pink shell of her ear. "He'll deal." He kisses behind her ear. "I love you kind of really a lot," he says and Jess goes off-balance, sways into him. He clasps her wrist and pulls her till they find a spot of sun breaking through the canopy, and then he strips off every inch of her clothing. He stands back and takes a good long look at her.
"That's kind of unfair," she says. He bites his lip and goes for his buttons.
Sam kisses her everywhere, gets to know every silvery stretch mark and says, "I wish I'd been here for everything." Her hand strokes over his hair.
Sam laughs with delight trying to contort into a position that keeps her comfortable, and when she says, "Hey, it's not that funny," he presses short kisses to her cheek, the tip of her nose, reassures her, "I know, I know, I'm just glad I get to figure this out, it's perfect," and he rolls them onto their sides and pushes into her from behind, punching a deep moan out of her that he immediately seeks to provoke again. Sam eases in and out of her slowly, brain sent completely offline by the combination of warm and wet.
It takes Jess a long time to catch her breath afterward, and Sam entertains himself by walking two fingers across the round of her belly. They tiptoe, they tap-dance; when the baby kicks, he bends his wrist to take a bow. He smiles, enchanted, and only breaks from his reverie when he gets that being-looked at itch. Jess is looking down at him, watching him closely. "What?" he asks.
"Nothing." She shakes her head, curls tumbling. Her cheeks glow pink from exertion. "I just missed you."
They stroll back into camp holding hands. Dean turns his back to them as he stokes the fire. Jess drops Sam's hand to go fill a pot with water for cooking.
Sam slurps his noodles at dinner, buzzing with prolonged post-orgasmic contentment. Everything is - more or less - right with the world.
Dean disappears into the forest afterward, mumbling something about more wood for tomorrow. The first thing on Sam's mind is his desire to pull Jess away again, make her moan and tremble and forget all her troubles, but she's been quiet and pensive over dinner. He pulls her away to bed in the tent and kicks their nest of camping gear into shape. He leaves extra space for Dean on the far side, and doesn't turn out the light till Dean's safely returned and Sam can hear him puttering around, kicking ashes into the fire.
They pass out of the forests and into a series of desolate industrial towns. Sam personally suspects that these towns haven't changed substantially from their pre-Apocalypse state. Nobody's got work, the factories are silent, and the stairwells and porches are liberally scattered with tweakers. Sam presumes that no one's managing to cook up meth with non-electric, Dark Ages technology (and he sure hopes they aren't even trying,) so he wonders what people manage to get high off of after the end of the world. Slightly before the end of the world, he corrects himself. No, maybe during the end of the world.
An unearthly howling reverberates around the barren streets on the north side of town, where it's emptier and safer for squatting. Rounding a corner, they find a trio of teenagers laughing at a cat trapped in an oil drum. The kids have propped the metal barrel up and lit a fire underneath it, and underneath the sound of their laughter and the cat's wails, Sam could swear he can hear the pads of its feet slip-sliding against the traction-less walls as it tries to climb out.
Dean takes the first boy down with one punch, snapping his head back with a satisfying crunch of nose. Sam approaches the biggest one, a sandy-haired boy with a sweet face whose neighbors probably think he's a harmless dear. Eyes wide, the kid fumbles at his waistband and produces a tiny little pig-sticker of a knife. Sam lurches backward instinctively, ungainly and stupid. He takes a step to the side and, to his profound and lasting embarrassment, gets himself clotheslined by the third boy, a pipsqueak in untied Converse. Sam blinks on his back in the dust as Dean dispatches Converse and Penknife, sending the former limping home on a bad Achilles tendon and the latter cradling bruised ribs.
"Getting rusty, little brother." Dean extends a hand. Sam grasps it, oofs as he pulls himself up. He wipes sweat from his forehead with a dusty sleeve. "You're out of practice."
The barrel is too hot to touch so they tip it over. The cat streaks into an alley, yowling. "Assholes," Jess says, watching it go. It smells like burning fur.
Sam squints through the glare of the sun off empty shop windows. He wonders what unseemly deeds he'd have to commit to get his hands on a pair of sunglasses these days. He thinks he can feel the back of his neck slowly reddening, right through his previous sunburns. Sam avoids the glare of glass and fixes his eyes on the back of Jess's pack, the bundle of wild herbs that swings there. Jess didn't pick them, she wouldn't have the first fucking clue, but Dean's weirdly nerdy about that kind of thing. Sam thinks it's the product of Dean's combined survivalist streak and gluttony.
"Perfect," Dean says, footsteps halting in front of a boarded-up door and windows covered in newspaper. Sam knows enough to fear that tone of voice in Dean, so he squints up at the sign on the storefront. Wild Card Club, it says, and below it a burly red boxing glove.
"No, Dean," Sam says.
"Oh yes," Dean says.
"No."
"This is happening, Sam. Deal with it." He smacks Sam upside the head and kicks in the door.
The gym is one room, high-ceilinged and scattered, inexplicably, with a vast quantity of emptied bags of sunflower seeds. Dust motes dance in the beams of light from the second-floor windows; the windows down here are all newspapered over and it bathes the space in a nostalgic sepia tone.
Dean strips down to bare chest and boxers, and Sam's mouth goes dry. His gaze lingers on the angry red starburst of a scar high on Dean's abdomen - Sam had known about it abstractly, but seeing it is another matter. It must have really fucking hurt, and Sam wasn't there for him.
Sam drops his pack from his shoulders. He follows Dean's lead and strips down, but he lingers reluctantly on the bench as he pulls off his socks. "I would like you to know that I don't buy into hitting people as a sport," he tells Jess.
She sneaks a smile at him. "Yeah, for you Winchesters it's a hobby."
He kisses the top of her head and says, "You're a Winchester," before he ducks under the ropes to climb into the ring.
Dean's already warming up, hopping around like an extremely violent rabbit, and when Sam squares off with him he slows down, bouncing his weight on his feet. Dean raises bare fists. "Put up yer dukes."
Sam shakes his head and tries very hard to keep a straight face. He brings up his loosely-formed fists. "Rules?" he asks.
Dean replies with a left hook that Sam barely blocks. Sam grabs the punching arm and pulls hard, throws Dean off balance and right into Sam's body, where Sam gets an arm around Dean's neck and tries to grapple him into a submission hold. Dean drives a shoulder into Sam's belly and the air whooshes out of Sam's lungs. He staggers into the frayed ropes but they hold his weight and bounce him back.
Sam finds a steady stance again, shifting as Dean circles. Dean feints to the right and Sam doesn't fall for it, and Dean darts forward, quick on his feet, an elbow jabbing for Sam's ribs. Sam goes ahead and takes the elbow to the ribs 'cause Dean's bent low and Sam can get a knee in, driving high towards Dean's chin. Dean dodges and catches his foot, though, and to keep from wrenching his knee Sam has to jump back, off balance and uncontrolled. It gives Dean the chance to get in a solid kick that ought to land over Sam's kidneys, but with the way Sam's staggering it nails him in the lower back. Sam goes down and stays down.
Sam pounds a fist against the mat in frustration when his first attempt to get up leaves him dropping back to the floor, curling in on himself, then arching with a hiss when that only makes the pain flare worse.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Dean's saying. His knees hit the mat next to Sam's head and he grabs Sam's chin. Sam can almost hear Dean's mental checklist as he checks out Sam's pupils and looks for signs of actual injury. "Jesus, Sammy, I know I'm good, but - " Dean's words stop dead.
"It's not a big deal," Sam says, "I'm fucking winded." He pushes up on his elbows.
"Lie the fuck down," Dean says, and Sam obeys for fear of getting frostbite from the tone of Dean's voice.
Jess's hands clutch the ropes ringside. "Sam, you okay?"
Dean's hand brushes Sam's lower back and Sam shuts his eyes in resignation. He lets himself go limp on the floor.
"What the fuck is this?" Dean asks.
"Look," Sam says. He tries to shift onto his side so his face isn't right in the dusty mat, but Dean pushes him back down, gentle but absolutely unyielding. "It's not a fun story and I don't want to get into it. Let me up."
"You're getting into it," Dean says.
Jess is crawling through the ropes and into the ring. "What's going on?" Sam balls a fist and hits the mats again.
Dean fingers the knobs of Sam's vertebrae. He draws a thumb up and down that big ugly scar that Sam's only ever seen in the mirror. Up and down, around and around. "This is," Dean says.
Jess gasps, then coughs at the sudden intake of swirling dust. "What is that?" she says, trying to clear her throat.
"It's not a big deal." Sam reaches over to press a blunt fingernail into Dean's knee and he leaves a crescent mark. It fades quickly.
"It's a big deal," Dean informs Jess. "It's a bad location, it's a big fucking deal." Dean's hands brush over Sam's back as if he's checking for other, invisible injuries that Sam's been hiding from him. "Jesus, Sammy, how the hell did you even survive a wound that bad?"
Sam presses his face into the dirty mat and lets the grit go ahead and scrape his cheek. Lets the dust get in his eyelashes. He remembers the taste of a mouthful of mud; Dad hadn't caught him quite in time, had to haul him up out of a puddle. He remembers that much. Sam clears his throat carefully. He'll only say this once. "I didn't."
Dean's hands go still on his back.
"What does that mean?" Jess asks.
"Will you let me up now?" Sam says quietly to Dean. The restraining hands lift away. Sam pushes up to sitting and gets his first look at Dean's face. The blank, controlled set of Dean's features tells Sam that he hasn't handled this correctly. That's not a look he wants to put on Dean's face.
Jess's hands lie open, palms up on the mat, a pose of supplication.
"Tell me," Dean says dully.
Sam stands and splays his arms wide. "I died, okay? I got stabbed in the back, and Dad didn't make it in time, and I just - died. And it fucking sucked," he adds viciously, because death completely bites and he understands why spirits are so pissed off all the time. "And because Dad can't fucking let anything be, he went and he made a deal, and I woke up and I got a goddamn hour with him before he dropped dead on me." Sam's chest heaves. He bends, hands on his knees, breathes deeply. "And I was on my own with the demon still out there and Dad's body to deal with and this fancy demon-killing gun, and what was I supposed to do?" Sam hates everything he's saying, wants to punch himself in the face for complaining and feeling sorry for himself and acting like he's the only guy in the world with problems. He backs out of the ring and ducks under the ropes. He pads back over to the pile of his clothes on bare feet. "The demon's dead, Dad's dead, and somehow I'm the one left alive." He waits, and when Dean and Jess remain unmoving in the ring, Sam punctuates with, "The end."
Dean gets to his feet, body visibly thrumming with tension, but doesn't say anything.
Sam grabs his pants from the bench. He looks at the jumble of words made by the newspapers on the windows, layers of text pasted over each other haphazardly and lit by the sun outside. "Can we go now?"
Outside on the street a marmalade cat with patchy fur, missing in singed clumps, limps past them like its paws hurt. If Sam could have a pet he'd steal this one, he thinks.
Dean regards the cat seriously as it retreats, its tail still somehow held high. "Eight lives left," Dean says.
Mercifully, the messy and overwhelmingly physical business of survival takes them over for a while. Food is scarce, they're dehydrating fast in the hot weather, and the ground's periodic tremors - like the earth is shifting on its haunches, ready for a real burst of energy - have them, and everyone they meet, on edge.
A raccoon chews its way into Dean's backpack to get at a foil packet of Cheez-Its, and of all the stupid reasons for them to be slowed down on their journey, they're stopped in their tracks for almost the whole day while Dean tries to securely reattach the shoulder strap to the frame. Sam doesn't even bother offering to give it a go himself, nor does Jess - both their bodies bear evidence of Dean's precise stitching.
Sam gets honest-to-god mugged at gunpoint outside a small-town movie theater, thankfully when he doesn't have all his gear with him. He hands over all the cash in his wallet with a bemused smile, wondering where exactly they're planning to spend that kind of currency. When he gets back to their home base in the abandoned post office, Sam laughs as he describes the encounter to Dean and Jess, but neither of them particularly has a sense of humor about it. Jess tells him to be more careful and Dean sits way too close to Sam for the rest of the night.
Dean's body heat makes Sam twitchy and irritable. The more casual physical contact Dean sneaks in - grabbing things straight out of Sam's hands, tapping his shoulder to get his attention, brushing a fly off his sleeve, hip-checking him out of the way when Dean decides Sam's leading them too slowly down the road - the more of it Sam wants. That desire for Dean's affectionate touch is a very steep hill for Sam to fall down. No, not a hill. It's a cliff.
So it's time to back away, in the name of self-preservation. Sam shrugs off the arm Dean slings around his shoulder while they chat companionably on the road, and he deliberately positions Jess between them when they sit down to eat.
The murky motel pool sports clumps of slimy green algae and a seemingly improbable number of floating dead spiders. Sam splashes his feet in it happily, pants rolled up to his knees. Apparently all their standards have lowered, because Dean and Jess are right there with him. Sam rests a hand over Jess's navel and examines the once-neon flamingo on the darkened motel sign.
Dean's giving an elaborate, dramatic retelling of their escape from the sinister hospital, gesturing grandly, and Sam asks Dean a question just to throw off his storytelling stride. "What'd they want with you guys, anyway? It's not like we've had any more exposure to the viruses than everyone else on the freakin' planet." Sam skims the soles of his feet over the surface of the water, enjoying the tickle of it.
Dean's irritated sigh at being interrupted warms the cockles of Sam's little-brother heart. "I don't know," Dean says, "Jess?"
Jess keeps her eyes serenely closed. "Some blood thing."
Sam pauses with his feet just brushing the water. "Blood thing?"
Jess waves a dismissive hand. "Baby has a weird blood type or something. They were nuts and they were looking for something to latch onto. All the tests came back good, it's healthy. They just needed an excuse."
"There you have it," Dean says. "So I sneak down the hallway like a freakin' ninja - " but Sam's pulling his feet from the water and withdrawing his hand from Jess.
"Spiders," Sam says to their confused looks. "I'm afraid of spiders. Spiders in the pool." This is demonstrably untrue, since they've both seen him carefully carry wolf spiders on his bare hand to deposit them outside, but Sam can't come up with anything better right now.
Sam curls alone on a squeaky motel mattress and breathes deeply. He rests a thumb over the pulse in his wrist and feels the blood beating. Pounding.
Route 242 East drops them into the town of Stanton on its very last day as a town.
Only one person is sick when they arrive.
They trudge in with rumbling stomachs, looking to barter for something solid to sink their teeth into, and when they reach the town square a white-haired woman catches Dean's sleeve. "Are you here from the Medical Center?" she asks.
"Sorry," Dean says. "Just passing through."
"They're not going to come," the old lady tells a younger woman, maybe her daughter. "They're not going to come all the way out here when they're full of patients already."
"Something we can help with?" Jess asks.
"Do you know anything about the sickness?" the younger woman asks.
The sick teenager still keeps stuffed animals in her room. Someone's been conscientiously changing her sheets, because the ones she's lying on are clean white even though there's a sodden pile just outside the door. She's very pale.
"I don't think it can be that virus," the old woman says. "She's only been at the house or at the neighbor's, she hasn't met anyone she could have caught it from."
"I'm not sure it works that way," Sam says softly.
Something shatters, loudly, in the other room.
Chicken noodle soup spreads steadily across the cheerful yellow tiles of the kitchen floor. The middle-aged mother retches into the sink, spitting out red.
"Oh my God," Sam hears Dean say behind him.
Sam turns and sees the elderly woman with a hand to her throat and a distressed look. The moment Sam sees a hint of red on her lips, Sam grabs one of Jess's arms, Dean grabs the other, and they run, half-lifting her when she stumbles.
When they slam through the front door, a bald man is already stumbling down the neighbor's front steps. Inside a house across the street, a spatter of projectile red strikes a picture window.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Dean's saying under his breath.
As they run back to the highway, the town disintegrates around them. A man falls off a ladder from adjusting the church tower clock, blood staining his coveralls. A young boy runs his bicycle into a tree and doesn't seem to notice as he retches.
"This is fucking impossible," Sam says, "it doesn't spread like this." Except apparently it does.
They're a hundred yards from the highway when a little girl in a pink shirt and sparkly shoes rounds the corner and runs smack into them. Jess catches the girl's hands.
The girl wheezes in a breath through a nose stuffy with crying, then wipes her nose on her own shirt. "My mom's sick," she says, and promptly vomits blood all over Jess's hands and front.
They leave the girl crying in the street because there's nothing they can fucking do.
Jess strips off her shirt as soon as they're a safe distance away, throwing the sodden fabric away from herself. It takes three bottles of water and the sacrifice of a small towel to get all the blood of Jess's hands and belly, but later that night, when the campfire flickers just right Sam still sees it staining her.
When they spoon together to sleep, Jess pulls Sam's hand around to rest on her belly. Once she falls asleep, Sam drops his hand to the ground instead.
next
Prologue | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six
THREE : SAM
A honey bee diligently investigates a single clover flower. It looks fuzzy, like something you'd keep as a pet and stroke with a fingertip, but its eyes are large and alien. The bee waves its feelers and flies to a bright sunburst of a dandelion, dislodging dew that runs down the stem and into the long grass.
"S'probably Africanized, y'know," a voice mumbles sleepily.
Sam smiles before he twists to look over his shoulder. Dean's got one eye open and the other barely cracked. His hair is staging a soft and rumpled riot across his scalp, and Sam's man enough to admit that one of the more delightful side effects of the Apocalypse has been Dean's lack of access to hair gel. Sam likes him this way.
"My brother, the optimist." Sam shifts on his side, careful so he doesn't wake Jess, who's pillowed on Sam's arm, pressed against his front. "You want your arm back?" Dean must be losing circulation.
Dean makes a non-committal noise but extracts his trapped arm, uncurls the other from over Sam's waist. He goes up on an elbow to get a better look at Sam's face. Sam feels Dean's knees pressing against the sensitive backs of his own. "How long've you been awake?"
Sam gives a one-shouldered shrug. "A while." It's been a few hours and Sam could have happily lasted a few more if Dean had stayed asleep. Sam likes where he is right now - lazy and comfortable, occupied only with watching robins digging up worms with their deceptively sharp talons and baby skunks trailing behind their mother, a line of three fluffy tails parading through the grass. It's warm between Dean and Jess, under the unzipped sleeping bag, and Sam hasn't slept warm in months.
Yeah, Sam's perfectly content to stay just like this for as long as he can. When they get out of bed, there will be other things to worry about. Sam's brain skirts around the edges of that thought, mind's-eye averted carefully.
"How's your arm?" Dean examines Sam's free arm, the one with the bullet graze and, lower, a slash from Dean's silver knife.
"I've had worse." He wiggles his fingers. "Fix me up later?"
In retrospect, last night was the time to slap a few butterfly bandages and some gauze on Sam's arm, but last night was - not a good time for pragmatism. When Dean dropped his flashlight, the first thing Sam had done was stride forward, drop to his knees, take Jess's face in his hands and kiss her like he'd been storing it up for months. Long moments later, he'd realized that her gun was still between them, barrel harsh against his ribs. He pulled away. Dean, who had regained his flashlight and added a gun in his other hand, stared at Sam with wide owl eyes. Sam felt over-caffeinated and antsy, shifting minutely as Dean dug out his silver knife, wanting this part over with. His hands had opened and closed, empty. When the silver and a splash of holy water had no effect, Sam dipped his head at Dean, seeking confirmation. Dean nodded with a dazed look and Sam, staggering on his knees, had crushed Dean close with both arms, buried his face against Dean's bare shoulder. He'd felt the blood from his arm smearing on Dean's back and didn't care. Sam had been walking for hours - when the sun went down he couldn't bring himself to stop, not when he was so close - and as soon as Dean's arms loosened around him Sam had sagged as if gravity had suddenly kicked in, and in a delirious haze he'd found himself pulled down and tucked into their nest of sleeping bags by the remains of the fire.
Dean's voice pulls him back to the present. "Sam, what the hell happened?" His face is so close to Sam's - surely Dean can see every micro-expression that crosses Sam's face.
Sam stops craning his neck, turns back to the view of the meadow. The honey bee has moved on. "It's a long story," he says. He just wants another hour like this, warm and safe and sandwiched close between them. Another half-hour, even. Minutes.
"Well, I do have a full agenda of meetings today," Dean says testily, "but I'll have my secretary clear my schedule."
Sam flinches at the anger in Dean's voice and a horrifying thought occurs to him. He twists to see Dean again. "You know I didn't leave on purpose, right?" It hasn't escaped Sam's notice that Dean considers him the Olympic gold-medalist in walking out on his family. "I didn't want to."
Dean's features soften. "Yeah, Sammy. I know."
Sam's breath catches. He swallows and exhales carefully. "Hey, so when the world's ending and I didn't know if I'd ever see you again and stuff, do we get a few free passes to do stupid shit and then, like, never speak of it again?"
"Yes?" Dean says. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Can you just call me that again?" Sam looks past Dean at the treetops.
Dean visibly thinks for a moment, then shoots Sam a bemused smile. "Sammy?"
Sam nods shortly.
"Sure thing, Sammy. Whatever you want, Sammy." Dean grins like the smug bastard he is. "Samwise. Sammich. Samalamadingdong."
Sam's face heats and he knows how pink he gets. He presses his face against the flannel lining of the sleeping bag and groans. "Shut up."
"Sam, the Sammiest Sammy of them all."
"I hate you," Sam says, muffled into the flannel.
"You love me," Dean laughs.
"Yeah."
Gossiping sparrows chatter in the span of silence.
"Hey -"
"I missed you," Sam says. He opens his eyes and meets Dean's gaze.
Jess stirs at his side, making a sleepy noise, and her eyes slide open gradually. He feels her physically jolt when she focuses in on him, and then she's wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. Her rounded body presses against him, new and different and shocking when the last time he saw her, her pregnancy was only an abstract notion.
Sam thinks that's well and truly killed the conversation with Dean, but when Jess is puttering around, stoking the embers of the fire to get it going for their breakfast, Dean catches his elbow and pulls him in close. "I know you real well, Sam," Dean says quietly, holding eye contact. "And that means I know when you're avoiding a question."
Damn. Sam swallows hard and nods.
Fresh smoke rises from the embers.
Even using his unencumbered left hand, Sam manages to consume oatmeal with an efficient, mechanical intensity. The texture's gritty and he thinks there might be some sand mixed in with the rolled oats, but it settles thick and warm in his belly. He could eat four more bowls full, but a sharp-eyed examination of Jess and Dean confirms that they're both looking poorer-fed than when he'd seen them last, and he doesn't want to decimate their supplies.
Sam flinches at a particularly harsh twinge from his right arm, and the spoon clatters against his teeth. He sucks it clean of oatmeal and glances indignantly past his rolled-up sleeve. "Ow."
Dean tugs the fire-blackened needle through and ties off a stitch. He's just getting started on the graze on Sam's shoulder. "So Sammy," he says, and Sam can't stop his warm flush at the nickname, "let's hear it. What I Did For My Summer Vacation, by Samuel Q. Winchester."
"What's the Q for?" Sam asks.
"Quincy," Dean says. Sam wrinkles his nose. "Or Quentin. You can pick."
"Have you completely forgotten field first aid while I was gone?" Sam twitches the arm Dean's stitching. "'Cause I think this kind of hatchet job violates the Geneva Convention."
"Avoiding the sub-ject," Dean sing-songs in a low rumble.
"It's true," Jess says. "You are." She flashes him an apologetic look. "Sorry, babe, I know you too well."
Dean ties off the last stitch, pinching the flesh, but Sam's attention is elsewhere. He glances around the clearing, shifting on his tree stump seat. "Do you guys hear that?"
Dean snorts. "Seriously, you're trying that?"
"No," Sam says, brow creasing. "Really, do you hear that?"
Dean stops putting the first aid kit away and looks up at Sam. "Actually, yeah."
The low hum sounds almost electrical in nature, rising and receding periodically. Sam looks up into the birches. "Uh," he says.
Dean looks up. "Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me," he says. "I was joking!"
They break down their camp very quietly and very quickly. Sam fumbles with a metal pan, dropping it with a clatter, and they all freeze as the humming briefly heightens in intensity. Sam's gaze snaps back to the birches - a few bees break off from the writhing hive, but after circling the clearing they return. Sam swallows and mouths sorry.
First it's making tracks away from the killer bees, then it's a sudden rainstorm that forces them to higher ground, and after that they hear human voices down the road and judge that they're best avoided, but between one thing and another, Sam gets to stay in his blissed-out, back-where-he-belongs haze for another two days.
Because Dean is a crafty asshole who could take up a side career as an evil mastermind, he waits until Sam has literally got his dick in his hand before leaning casually against the tree next to the one Sam's pissing on, crossing his arms, and saying, "So, little bro, you want to tell me why you're wearing Dad's coat?"
Sam - remarkably calmly given the situation, he thinks - shakes off, zips up, and nods back toward the campsite. Sam knows he's an asshole for putting this off. He knows. He brushes an unshaven jaw against the collar of the coat. "Yeah."
Jess watches them curiously as Sam digs in his pack - Dad's pack, actually, since when Sam was taken from the orchard his own gear was left behind. His fingers close around what he's looking for - rough, unfinished leather - and he wrestles it out from under a box of .45 rounds and a chicken Cup o' Noodles.
As Dean takes Dad's journal out of Sam's hands his face doesn't just fall, it plummets. Sam watches Dean's Adam's apple as he swallows hard. Dean opens his mouth, but only a breathless sound comes out. He shuts it again.
"What's going on?" Jess approaches them tentatively, stays a few steps away.
Sam takes a deep breath and turns to her, but Dean's the first to speak. "Dad's dead," Dean says hoarsely.
Sam watches Jess make an abortive move to touch Dean's arm, then pull back, still looking worried. "I'm so sorry," she says, looking between them. Sam's glad she got to meet Dad, at least, even if she never really knew him. It means something that she met him. Jess hooks an arm through Sam's elbow, puts a hand on his chest.
It's good, too, to see Jess reaching out to comfort Dean - Sam had worried, all those months on his own, about whether they'd be able to work out their differences, and he's smiled to himself these last few days every time he sees how in sync they are. He doesn't think Dean and Jess even notice how smoothly they work together to set up and break down camp, to hunt for their dinner, even finishing each other's sentences a couple times.
"What happened?" Dean asks, looking as bewildered as if Sam had just punched him in the gut out of the blue.
Sam looks down and to the left, scuffs the toe of his own boot in the dirt - though his coat, shirt and even his jeans had been ruined, his boots were still his own. Sam prefers to wear Dad's clothes as little as possible. It was truly a pleasure to discover that Dean and Jess had saved a few of his things in their own packs. "He died saving my life," Sam says matter-of-factly. He nods until the nod turns into a shake of his head. "Because of me."
He risks a glance up and sees Dean staring at him. "Sam, what the hell happened to you?"
Sam spins them a pretty good horror story, all of which is true. It is factually correct; it gives them the necessary information. How Sam had gone to get water in the orchard and woken up flat on his back, aching and confused, staring up at a cloudy sky. How he'd quickly determined that he was in the ghost town Dad talked about. How the demon had dragged him there and dropped him in the middle of a bunch of psychic freaks, most of them out for his blood. How he'd been in a pretty sticky situation when Dad arrived on the scene, and that Dad saved Sam at the expense of his own life. Died a hero.
"The demon's dead," he tells them. "The Colt worked." Sam balls his hands up in the pockets of Dad's coat. "It's over," he says unsteadily, almost a question.
"Did Dad kill it?" Dean asks in crisp, clipped tones.
Sam thins his lips, presses them together. He shakes his head. "He was already gone."
Jess leans her face against Sam's arm, whispering reassurances. Sam's heart rate slows down; as much as he enjoyed the blissful ignorance, he feels better now that it's out. Now that they have some facts to chew on, no more mystery to wonder about. It's safer.
Later, when Sam's at the tiny trickle of a creek filling up a canteen, swishing the acrid iodine tablet around, he looks back over his shoulder and sees Jess touching Dean's elbow, speaking to him. Sam's too far away to hear their words, but a ghost of a smile flickers over his face. It really is gratifying to see them like this. As awful as these last few months have been, maybe this is what Jess and Dean needed in order to find some common ground - for Sam to be out of the way for a little while. If that's the case then Sam's glad they had the chance, no matter how furiously he wishes that the circumstances had been different. Sam's had plenty of opportunity to discover that he can't live without either of them.
Sam caps his canteen and walks back to camp, shaking it to mix the iodine. They both intently watch his return - they haven't been willing to let Sam out of their sight since he found them. Though he teases them about their combined protectiveness, it's nice to feel wanted.
Muttering and metallic clanging emanates from behind a stack of squashed cars. A spark plug comes flying into view. "God damn it," Dean's voice grumbles.
Sam smiles and pulls Jess in closer. He's got his chin hooked over her shoulder, arms around her waist so he can rest his hands on the round of her stomach. "Dean, this is nuts," he calls. "Any parts you find you're just going to have to carry across the country on your back. You don't even know when we're going to get back to the Rockies -"
Dean's irate visage pops out from behind a blue Studebaker with a sheared-off top. "We will go back for my car," he says.
Sam raises his hands in surrender. "I want her back, too, man."
"Good," Dean says sternly, gesturing with an torque wrench. "Good."
Sam drops his hands back down. He frowns suddenly, then smiles just as quick. "Holy crap," he says. He spins Jess in his arms, plants his hands back on her belly. The baby fires off another round of kicks, rapid-fire. Sam thinks maybe fireworks should be exploding spontaneously around them. He beams up at Jess, taps a hand lightly against her abdomen. "Hi, you," he says to the baby in there. He twists around to Dean, because he always wants to share good news with Dean. "Dean, you've got to feel this, the baby's kicking."
Dean's standing still with the wrench in his hand, smiling a little too carefully. "That's awesome, Sammy."
Sam chews on his lower lip and feels like an idiot. Oh. "I guess - I guess that's not exactly the first time, huh?"
Jess lays her hands over his. "It's the first time for this." She taps her fingers playfully. "First time I get to do this with you." Jess's eyes crinkle when she smiles at him and Sam loves her a really ridiculous amount.
Sam crouches to talk to her belly again and grimaces at the sound of something crashing in a crunch of metal and glass beyond the next aisle of cars. "For fuck's sake, Dean, there are salvage yards everywhere, you can get what you need later." Sam breathes in sharply. "Crap. I mean - " He looks up at Jess. "Do I need to stop swearing in front of the baby?"
When Dean stalks out of the jungle of old wrecks, an ample dusting of shattered glass glitters on his shoulders, his collar. Sam brushes him off, claps a hand on his shoulder. "I promise we'll get her back, Dean." Sam cares about the car, too.
Dean sulks all afternoon anyway.
"- and the guy had been selling him blanks the whole time," Dean says, nearly howling the end of the anecdote.
Jess is wiping tears from her eyes, breaking into aftershocks of giggles every few seconds. "Really, Sam, you should've seen his face, it was just - oh God, I can't even tell you."
Sam stretches his legs toward the campfire and lets it warm his toes inside his boots. He leaves a lazy smile on his face and lets it hang out there, twines a finger in the curls of Jess's hair. "Sounds pretty epic."
Dean yawns and stretches, baring a strip of navel between shirt and pants. "All right, I think retelling that just about killed me," Dean says. Jess stifles another laugh, waves a hand, sorry, sorry ignore me as she gathers herself together. Dean rolls his eyes at her. "I'm gonna turn in," he finishes. "Next time," - he points at Sam - "it's your turn. Give us your best story. We've got catching up to do."
"Sure thing," Sam says, nodding while Jess presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, clearing out more tears of laughter. "I'll save it up for you."
Sam'll have to put some serious consideration into whether his best story is the one where he watches a harmless stoner kid get ripped to shreds by an Acheri demon, or the one where he spends the fortieth night in a row eating cold peanut butter and sleeping alone.
Jess gives a tired-out sigh. "Let's turn in," she says, "I'm beat."
Sam waves her on towards bed. "You go ahead," he says. "I'm just gonna stargaze for a little."
"Suit yourself." She shrugs.
Betelgeuse burns bright and red. Sam wonders if it already burned itself out hundreds of millions of light years ago, the stunning burst of its supernova slowly making its way to here from across the universe. He scans the rest of the night sky and misses seeing the lights of airplanes intermingled there, taking travelers to their homes.
Whistling cheerfully but out of tune, Dean tromps heavily into the woods, axe slung over his shoulder.
Sam grabs Jess's hand. "Come on," he says, helping her to her feet. "He'll need at least a half hour to get enough for a fire."
"What? I don't - " Jess stares longingly back at her sunny nap spot till Sam gets her behind the treeline, screened from sight by fresh greenery. With a low sigh, he presses in close. It's been a week since he's been back, and he hasn't gotten her alone till now.
"God, I missed you," he sighs. Sam cups her chin and kisses her, slow and dirty and impolite, not a public kiss, not an in-front-of-Dean kiss. He runs a hand up the back of her shirt, spreads his fingers against her warm familiar skin. "I missed my wife," he mumbles against her neck, opening his mouth against it and kissing messily there.
"Sam," she says, "I'm not sure - " She pushes on his shoulders.
Sam straightens up. "Are you," he begins, suddenly uncertain. "I don't really know anything about, you know, all of this," he says, gesturing to encompass her midsection. "Are you not really … " Sam searches for the right word, treading carefully. It's been a long time since he read an issue of Cosmo in the doctor's waiting room, but he thinks there are lots of things that are supposed to be insensitive to say to pregnant women. "Not really interested right now?"
"No," Jess says. She drapes her arms over his shoulders. She doesn't fit against him quite the same anymore, her body transformed in what to him seems like overnight. "God, no, that's not it. I'm always going to be interested, Sam." Her mouth slides up mischievously in one corner as she slips a finger under his collar. "I'm just not sure this is the best time." Jess casts a glance back at their campsite. "Dean could get back any minute."
"Dean's a big boy," Sam murmurs, ducking low to brush his lips against the pink shell of her ear. "He'll deal." He kisses behind her ear. "I love you kind of really a lot," he says and Jess goes off-balance, sways into him. He clasps her wrist and pulls her till they find a spot of sun breaking through the canopy, and then he strips off every inch of her clothing. He stands back and takes a good long look at her.
"That's kind of unfair," she says. He bites his lip and goes for his buttons.
Sam kisses her everywhere, gets to know every silvery stretch mark and says, "I wish I'd been here for everything." Her hand strokes over his hair.
Sam laughs with delight trying to contort into a position that keeps her comfortable, and when she says, "Hey, it's not that funny," he presses short kisses to her cheek, the tip of her nose, reassures her, "I know, I know, I'm just glad I get to figure this out, it's perfect," and he rolls them onto their sides and pushes into her from behind, punching a deep moan out of her that he immediately seeks to provoke again. Sam eases in and out of her slowly, brain sent completely offline by the combination of warm and wet.
It takes Jess a long time to catch her breath afterward, and Sam entertains himself by walking two fingers across the round of her belly. They tiptoe, they tap-dance; when the baby kicks, he bends his wrist to take a bow. He smiles, enchanted, and only breaks from his reverie when he gets that being-looked at itch. Jess is looking down at him, watching him closely. "What?" he asks.
"Nothing." She shakes her head, curls tumbling. Her cheeks glow pink from exertion. "I just missed you."
They stroll back into camp holding hands. Dean turns his back to them as he stokes the fire. Jess drops Sam's hand to go fill a pot with water for cooking.
Sam slurps his noodles at dinner, buzzing with prolonged post-orgasmic contentment. Everything is - more or less - right with the world.
Dean disappears into the forest afterward, mumbling something about more wood for tomorrow. The first thing on Sam's mind is his desire to pull Jess away again, make her moan and tremble and forget all her troubles, but she's been quiet and pensive over dinner. He pulls her away to bed in the tent and kicks their nest of camping gear into shape. He leaves extra space for Dean on the far side, and doesn't turn out the light till Dean's safely returned and Sam can hear him puttering around, kicking ashes into the fire.
They pass out of the forests and into a series of desolate industrial towns. Sam personally suspects that these towns haven't changed substantially from their pre-Apocalypse state. Nobody's got work, the factories are silent, and the stairwells and porches are liberally scattered with tweakers. Sam presumes that no one's managing to cook up meth with non-electric, Dark Ages technology (and he sure hopes they aren't even trying,) so he wonders what people manage to get high off of after the end of the world. Slightly before the end of the world, he corrects himself. No, maybe during the end of the world.
An unearthly howling reverberates around the barren streets on the north side of town, where it's emptier and safer for squatting. Rounding a corner, they find a trio of teenagers laughing at a cat trapped in an oil drum. The kids have propped the metal barrel up and lit a fire underneath it, and underneath the sound of their laughter and the cat's wails, Sam could swear he can hear the pads of its feet slip-sliding against the traction-less walls as it tries to climb out.
Dean takes the first boy down with one punch, snapping his head back with a satisfying crunch of nose. Sam approaches the biggest one, a sandy-haired boy with a sweet face whose neighbors probably think he's a harmless dear. Eyes wide, the kid fumbles at his waistband and produces a tiny little pig-sticker of a knife. Sam lurches backward instinctively, ungainly and stupid. He takes a step to the side and, to his profound and lasting embarrassment, gets himself clotheslined by the third boy, a pipsqueak in untied Converse. Sam blinks on his back in the dust as Dean dispatches Converse and Penknife, sending the former limping home on a bad Achilles tendon and the latter cradling bruised ribs.
"Getting rusty, little brother." Dean extends a hand. Sam grasps it, oofs as he pulls himself up. He wipes sweat from his forehead with a dusty sleeve. "You're out of practice."
The barrel is too hot to touch so they tip it over. The cat streaks into an alley, yowling. "Assholes," Jess says, watching it go. It smells like burning fur.
Sam squints through the glare of the sun off empty shop windows. He wonders what unseemly deeds he'd have to commit to get his hands on a pair of sunglasses these days. He thinks he can feel the back of his neck slowly reddening, right through his previous sunburns. Sam avoids the glare of glass and fixes his eyes on the back of Jess's pack, the bundle of wild herbs that swings there. Jess didn't pick them, she wouldn't have the first fucking clue, but Dean's weirdly nerdy about that kind of thing. Sam thinks it's the product of Dean's combined survivalist streak and gluttony.
"Perfect," Dean says, footsteps halting in front of a boarded-up door and windows covered in newspaper. Sam knows enough to fear that tone of voice in Dean, so he squints up at the sign on the storefront. Wild Card Club, it says, and below it a burly red boxing glove.
"No, Dean," Sam says.
"Oh yes," Dean says.
"No."
"This is happening, Sam. Deal with it." He smacks Sam upside the head and kicks in the door.
The gym is one room, high-ceilinged and scattered, inexplicably, with a vast quantity of emptied bags of sunflower seeds. Dust motes dance in the beams of light from the second-floor windows; the windows down here are all newspapered over and it bathes the space in a nostalgic sepia tone.
Dean strips down to bare chest and boxers, and Sam's mouth goes dry. His gaze lingers on the angry red starburst of a scar high on Dean's abdomen - Sam had known about it abstractly, but seeing it is another matter. It must have really fucking hurt, and Sam wasn't there for him.
Sam drops his pack from his shoulders. He follows Dean's lead and strips down, but he lingers reluctantly on the bench as he pulls off his socks. "I would like you to know that I don't buy into hitting people as a sport," he tells Jess.
She sneaks a smile at him. "Yeah, for you Winchesters it's a hobby."
He kisses the top of her head and says, "You're a Winchester," before he ducks under the ropes to climb into the ring.
Dean's already warming up, hopping around like an extremely violent rabbit, and when Sam squares off with him he slows down, bouncing his weight on his feet. Dean raises bare fists. "Put up yer dukes."
Sam shakes his head and tries very hard to keep a straight face. He brings up his loosely-formed fists. "Rules?" he asks.
Dean replies with a left hook that Sam barely blocks. Sam grabs the punching arm and pulls hard, throws Dean off balance and right into Sam's body, where Sam gets an arm around Dean's neck and tries to grapple him into a submission hold. Dean drives a shoulder into Sam's belly and the air whooshes out of Sam's lungs. He staggers into the frayed ropes but they hold his weight and bounce him back.
Sam finds a steady stance again, shifting as Dean circles. Dean feints to the right and Sam doesn't fall for it, and Dean darts forward, quick on his feet, an elbow jabbing for Sam's ribs. Sam goes ahead and takes the elbow to the ribs 'cause Dean's bent low and Sam can get a knee in, driving high towards Dean's chin. Dean dodges and catches his foot, though, and to keep from wrenching his knee Sam has to jump back, off balance and uncontrolled. It gives Dean the chance to get in a solid kick that ought to land over Sam's kidneys, but with the way Sam's staggering it nails him in the lower back. Sam goes down and stays down.
Sam pounds a fist against the mat in frustration when his first attempt to get up leaves him dropping back to the floor, curling in on himself, then arching with a hiss when that only makes the pain flare worse.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Dean's saying. His knees hit the mat next to Sam's head and he grabs Sam's chin. Sam can almost hear Dean's mental checklist as he checks out Sam's pupils and looks for signs of actual injury. "Jesus, Sammy, I know I'm good, but - " Dean's words stop dead.
"It's not a big deal," Sam says, "I'm fucking winded." He pushes up on his elbows.
"Lie the fuck down," Dean says, and Sam obeys for fear of getting frostbite from the tone of Dean's voice.
Jess's hands clutch the ropes ringside. "Sam, you okay?"
Dean's hand brushes Sam's lower back and Sam shuts his eyes in resignation. He lets himself go limp on the floor.
"What the fuck is this?" Dean asks.
"Look," Sam says. He tries to shift onto his side so his face isn't right in the dusty mat, but Dean pushes him back down, gentle but absolutely unyielding. "It's not a fun story and I don't want to get into it. Let me up."
"You're getting into it," Dean says.
Jess is crawling through the ropes and into the ring. "What's going on?" Sam balls a fist and hits the mats again.
Dean fingers the knobs of Sam's vertebrae. He draws a thumb up and down that big ugly scar that Sam's only ever seen in the mirror. Up and down, around and around. "This is," Dean says.
Jess gasps, then coughs at the sudden intake of swirling dust. "What is that?" she says, trying to clear her throat.
"It's not a big deal." Sam reaches over to press a blunt fingernail into Dean's knee and he leaves a crescent mark. It fades quickly.
"It's a big deal," Dean informs Jess. "It's a bad location, it's a big fucking deal." Dean's hands brush over Sam's back as if he's checking for other, invisible injuries that Sam's been hiding from him. "Jesus, Sammy, how the hell did you even survive a wound that bad?"
Sam presses his face into the dirty mat and lets the grit go ahead and scrape his cheek. Lets the dust get in his eyelashes. He remembers the taste of a mouthful of mud; Dad hadn't caught him quite in time, had to haul him up out of a puddle. He remembers that much. Sam clears his throat carefully. He'll only say this once. "I didn't."
Dean's hands go still on his back.
"What does that mean?" Jess asks.
"Will you let me up now?" Sam says quietly to Dean. The restraining hands lift away. Sam pushes up to sitting and gets his first look at Dean's face. The blank, controlled set of Dean's features tells Sam that he hasn't handled this correctly. That's not a look he wants to put on Dean's face.
Jess's hands lie open, palms up on the mat, a pose of supplication.
"Tell me," Dean says dully.
Sam stands and splays his arms wide. "I died, okay? I got stabbed in the back, and Dad didn't make it in time, and I just - died. And it fucking sucked," he adds viciously, because death completely bites and he understands why spirits are so pissed off all the time. "And because Dad can't fucking let anything be, he went and he made a deal, and I woke up and I got a goddamn hour with him before he dropped dead on me." Sam's chest heaves. He bends, hands on his knees, breathes deeply. "And I was on my own with the demon still out there and Dad's body to deal with and this fancy demon-killing gun, and what was I supposed to do?" Sam hates everything he's saying, wants to punch himself in the face for complaining and feeling sorry for himself and acting like he's the only guy in the world with problems. He backs out of the ring and ducks under the ropes. He pads back over to the pile of his clothes on bare feet. "The demon's dead, Dad's dead, and somehow I'm the one left alive." He waits, and when Dean and Jess remain unmoving in the ring, Sam punctuates with, "The end."
Dean gets to his feet, body visibly thrumming with tension, but doesn't say anything.
Sam grabs his pants from the bench. He looks at the jumble of words made by the newspapers on the windows, layers of text pasted over each other haphazardly and lit by the sun outside. "Can we go now?"
Outside on the street a marmalade cat with patchy fur, missing in singed clumps, limps past them like its paws hurt. If Sam could have a pet he'd steal this one, he thinks.
Dean regards the cat seriously as it retreats, its tail still somehow held high. "Eight lives left," Dean says.
Mercifully, the messy and overwhelmingly physical business of survival takes them over for a while. Food is scarce, they're dehydrating fast in the hot weather, and the ground's periodic tremors - like the earth is shifting on its haunches, ready for a real burst of energy - have them, and everyone they meet, on edge.
A raccoon chews its way into Dean's backpack to get at a foil packet of Cheez-Its, and of all the stupid reasons for them to be slowed down on their journey, they're stopped in their tracks for almost the whole day while Dean tries to securely reattach the shoulder strap to the frame. Sam doesn't even bother offering to give it a go himself, nor does Jess - both their bodies bear evidence of Dean's precise stitching.
Sam gets honest-to-god mugged at gunpoint outside a small-town movie theater, thankfully when he doesn't have all his gear with him. He hands over all the cash in his wallet with a bemused smile, wondering where exactly they're planning to spend that kind of currency. When he gets back to their home base in the abandoned post office, Sam laughs as he describes the encounter to Dean and Jess, but neither of them particularly has a sense of humor about it. Jess tells him to be more careful and Dean sits way too close to Sam for the rest of the night.
Dean's body heat makes Sam twitchy and irritable. The more casual physical contact Dean sneaks in - grabbing things straight out of Sam's hands, tapping his shoulder to get his attention, brushing a fly off his sleeve, hip-checking him out of the way when Dean decides Sam's leading them too slowly down the road - the more of it Sam wants. That desire for Dean's affectionate touch is a very steep hill for Sam to fall down. No, not a hill. It's a cliff.
So it's time to back away, in the name of self-preservation. Sam shrugs off the arm Dean slings around his shoulder while they chat companionably on the road, and he deliberately positions Jess between them when they sit down to eat.
The murky motel pool sports clumps of slimy green algae and a seemingly improbable number of floating dead spiders. Sam splashes his feet in it happily, pants rolled up to his knees. Apparently all their standards have lowered, because Dean and Jess are right there with him. Sam rests a hand over Jess's navel and examines the once-neon flamingo on the darkened motel sign.
Dean's giving an elaborate, dramatic retelling of their escape from the sinister hospital, gesturing grandly, and Sam asks Dean a question just to throw off his storytelling stride. "What'd they want with you guys, anyway? It's not like we've had any more exposure to the viruses than everyone else on the freakin' planet." Sam skims the soles of his feet over the surface of the water, enjoying the tickle of it.
Dean's irritated sigh at being interrupted warms the cockles of Sam's little-brother heart. "I don't know," Dean says, "Jess?"
Jess keeps her eyes serenely closed. "Some blood thing."
Sam pauses with his feet just brushing the water. "Blood thing?"
Jess waves a dismissive hand. "Baby has a weird blood type or something. They were nuts and they were looking for something to latch onto. All the tests came back good, it's healthy. They just needed an excuse."
"There you have it," Dean says. "So I sneak down the hallway like a freakin' ninja - " but Sam's pulling his feet from the water and withdrawing his hand from Jess.
"Spiders," Sam says to their confused looks. "I'm afraid of spiders. Spiders in the pool." This is demonstrably untrue, since they've both seen him carefully carry wolf spiders on his bare hand to deposit them outside, but Sam can't come up with anything better right now.
Sam curls alone on a squeaky motel mattress and breathes deeply. He rests a thumb over the pulse in his wrist and feels the blood beating. Pounding.
Route 242 East drops them into the town of Stanton on its very last day as a town.
Only one person is sick when they arrive.
They trudge in with rumbling stomachs, looking to barter for something solid to sink their teeth into, and when they reach the town square a white-haired woman catches Dean's sleeve. "Are you here from the Medical Center?" she asks.
"Sorry," Dean says. "Just passing through."
"They're not going to come," the old lady tells a younger woman, maybe her daughter. "They're not going to come all the way out here when they're full of patients already."
"Something we can help with?" Jess asks.
"Do you know anything about the sickness?" the younger woman asks.
The sick teenager still keeps stuffed animals in her room. Someone's been conscientiously changing her sheets, because the ones she's lying on are clean white even though there's a sodden pile just outside the door. She's very pale.
"I don't think it can be that virus," the old woman says. "She's only been at the house or at the neighbor's, she hasn't met anyone she could have caught it from."
"I'm not sure it works that way," Sam says softly.
Something shatters, loudly, in the other room.
Chicken noodle soup spreads steadily across the cheerful yellow tiles of the kitchen floor. The middle-aged mother retches into the sink, spitting out red.
"Oh my God," Sam hears Dean say behind him.
Sam turns and sees the elderly woman with a hand to her throat and a distressed look. The moment Sam sees a hint of red on her lips, Sam grabs one of Jess's arms, Dean grabs the other, and they run, half-lifting her when she stumbles.
When they slam through the front door, a bald man is already stumbling down the neighbor's front steps. Inside a house across the street, a spatter of projectile red strikes a picture window.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Dean's saying under his breath.
As they run back to the highway, the town disintegrates around them. A man falls off a ladder from adjusting the church tower clock, blood staining his coveralls. A young boy runs his bicycle into a tree and doesn't seem to notice as he retches.
"This is fucking impossible," Sam says, "it doesn't spread like this." Except apparently it does.
They're a hundred yards from the highway when a little girl in a pink shirt and sparkly shoes rounds the corner and runs smack into them. Jess catches the girl's hands.
The girl wheezes in a breath through a nose stuffy with crying, then wipes her nose on her own shirt. "My mom's sick," she says, and promptly vomits blood all over Jess's hands and front.
They leave the girl crying in the street because there's nothing they can fucking do.
Jess strips off her shirt as soon as they're a safe distance away, throwing the sodden fabric away from herself. It takes three bottles of water and the sacrifice of a small towel to get all the blood of Jess's hands and belly, but later that night, when the campfire flickers just right Sam still sees it staining her.
When they spoon together to sleep, Jess pulls Sam's hand around to rest on her belly. Once she falls asleep, Sam drops his hand to the ground instead.
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