Fic: Steady Rollin' Woman (SPN)
Title: Steady Rollin' Woman
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters: Dean, Sarah, and a Sam cameo
Summary: Dean wakes to darkness.
Spoilers: Set in some nebulous post-S1 timeframe; spoilers through Provenance, I guess.
Disclaimer: Dude, this show owns me, not the other way around.
A/N: Written for cadhla for the Why Can't We Be Friends Ficathon. Her prompt was simply Dean and Sarah, so I did the best I could. Hope you enjoy, Cadhla, and I hope you'll forgive the delay. :)
Steady Rollin' Woman
All I ask for when I pray, steady rollin' woman gonna come my way.
Need a woman gonna hold my hand, won't tell me no lies, make me a happy man.
- Led Zeppelin, "Black Dog"
Dean wakes to darkness. Not that unusual, but then he realizes that this isn't his typical dropped-my-flashlight or no-moon-tonight darkness, this is genuine I-can't-open-my-eyes, I-have-no-fucking-idea-where-I-am kind of darkness, and he starts to panic a little. "Sam?" he tries, quietly, hopefully.
"Oh, thank God you're awake." The voice is female, tight and breathless with terror. Dean's heart plummets. If Sam isn't here, he's probably freaking the fuck out right now.
Well, that would make three of them. "Sarah? Are you all right? Where's Sam?"
"I don't know, we were at the restaurant and he went back in to get my purse and it just… what the hell was that thing?"
"Leszachka, I think," Dean grits, testing the strength of whatever's keeping his hands tied behind his back. It's scratchy and tough, barely any perceptible give in it; this could be bad. "I can't open my eyes, Sarah. I need you to tell me if you're all right."
"I'm fine, sorry," she answers quickly. "I mean, you know, I've been better, but… you've got some kind of… stuff all over your face. You really can't open your eyes at all?"
"Nope. Stuck shut." It's hard to say it out loud. He swallows down a queasy wave of fear. Bad enough that he's here, trussed up like a damn turkey-a blind turkey, even better-but there's Sarah, and if anything happens to her, Sam won't blame Dean, he'll blame himself, and that's-
No. He shuts that train of thought right the hell down, because it's not happening. They're going to be fine. "We're going to be fine," he tells Sarah. "We're going to be fine."
"OK," she says, "maybe you want to stick with just saying things once if you want me to believe you."
He huffs out a breath, wishes for a second that Sam had chosen a dumber girl, then realizes he'd rather not be stuck in this situation with a dumber girl, so. Just chill out, Dean. "Sorry. Tell me what you see. Where are we?" He thinks he can answer at least part of that question-the air is damp, cool against his exposed skin, and beneath the traces of Sarah's perfume, he can smell wet earth and mold.
Sure enough, "Underground somewhere," Sarah replies. He can feel her fidgeting next to him, her arm pressing against his. "Tied to tree roots, I think." She pauses. "There's a sentence I never expected to say."
"Yeah, sorry about that." He flexes his hands behind him, trying to reach his Leatherman, but the angle's all wrong. "Dammit."
"What?"
"I don't s'pose you can reach the pocket of my coat, can you?"
"No." There's a little smugness now, over the fear. "But I can reach mine."
"You're packing? On a date?" OK, she's Sam's girl, but that doesn't mean he can't be turned on by that, right?
"Considering how my last couple of dates with Sam went, hell yes."
Dean laughs. "OK," he says approvingly. "Hand it over."
"What? Why?"
He'd blink if he could. "So that I can cut through… whatever this is, and get us the hell out of here. Can you see what this is, by the way?"
"Vines, I think. Why do you get the knife? It's my knife."
"What are we, in kindergarten? You're an art auctioneer."
"I'm an art auctioneer who can reach her knife."
Dean sighs. "Lemme put it this way: you been tied up a lot, Sarah? 'Cause if so, I probably need to warn Sam-I'm not sure the kid's heart can take it." Silence for a few seconds, then the thunk of cold metal into his open palm. "Thank you."
"'Packing'?" she says sullenly, after he's gotten the blade open and started carefully sawing away. "You know no one says that outside of cop movies, right?"
OK! Subject change. "The thing that grabbed you-you get a look at it?" One bright side in the way all this is going down is that Dean will probably never have to admit to Sam that whatever the hell this was had dropped him before he'd even had time to turn around.
"Tall. White skin. Vines and grass for hair, and, well, you know about the slime."
"Shit. Yeah, sounds like a leszachka." Dean shakes his head. "Damn thing must've followed us."
"Sam said you weren't working," she says, sounding betrayed. Dean hastens to clarify; he doesn't want anything to get in the way of the joyful reunion sex that he hopes his brother and Sarah will be having, preferably soon, preferably while he's getting free drinks and admiring looks from a pretty waitress.
"We aren't. Or at least we weren't. We wasted a leszy-male version-in Massachusetts about a week ago, before we headed up here; thing must've had a mate."
"So this is, what? A revenge thing?"
Damn, he's tired of evil suddenly developing family loyalty and quests and shit. "Yeah, I guess." He considers it, letting the methodical motion of the knife across the vine steady and focus him. "Sam shot the one in Massachusetts-I guess the little woman figured we were important to him, and grabbed us up to try to piss him off."
"Lucky us."
"Yep. Probably blinded me on purpose, too. Bitch."
"Any idea when it-she-will be back?"
"Nope. Which is why we're going to get out of here as soon as possible." He stops sawing briefly, tries to test the depth of the cut he's made.
"Looks good," she says, her arm pressing against his again, her voice a little closer to his ear. "About a quarter of the way through, I think."
The quick rush of warmth in his chest surprises him. He's used to being in these situations with either his family or complete strangers; the in-between is new. "Thanks," he says, feeling awkward. He settles the knife back into the groove and starts cutting again.
"It's pretty weird, you know?" she says after a minute. "Ghosts trying to protect their kids, monsters avenging their mates." She laughs a little. "I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around that concept."
"Yeah," Dean grunts, rueful, "tell me about it."
"Sam won't talk about her," Sarah confesses suddenly. "His girlfriend, the one who died. He won't even tell me her name. Do you think that's a bad sign?"
Whoa. Christ on a cracker. Prodding his brother to sack up and actually enjoy some female company is one thing, but he did not sign up for relationship counseling, particularly while tied to a tree root and blinded by leszachka slime. But the hurt in her voice tugs at him, so he tries, "Sam just… holds on to things. I guess it's kind of a family trait." He grimaces. "This isn't really-"
"I know, it's not fair for me to ask you, I'm sorry," she says, and she sounds like she means it. "But I'm going nuts just sitting here. Talk to me about something else. Something you can tell me about."
He's so relieved at the subject change that he blurts out without thinking, "Why not me?"
"I'm sorry?"
Not really the direction he wanted to go, but it's too late to save himself now, so he just fixes his cockiest grin in place and brazens it out. "At the auction. Why'd you go for Sam and not me? I mean, sure, once you get to know us, but first sight? Come on. I'm a little insulted."
There's a pause, and then, "I could see right away that you'd never love me like you loved that mini quiche," she answers dryly, and despite everything, a laugh bursts out of him. He likes this girl, just likes her, and he's not exactly sure where to go with that when he knows it won't end in bed.
"What about you?" she asks, nudging him a little with her shoulder. "Have you got a girl somewhere, waiting for you to drop by after killing some monster?"
It catches him off-guard, the intimacy and affection in her tone. He grins again, shrugs as a pretense for putting a little space between them. "Are you kidding? I got a hundred of 'em."
"Dean." The word is dripping with disapproval.
"You're with Sam, not with me," he protests. "Why do you care?"
"Sam loves you," she says simply.
His hand falters on the knife; he feels the blade slip briefly against his fingers. Not hard enough to cut, fortunately, and Jesus. He's pretty sure the last five minutes have fulfilled his chick-flick-moment quota for approximately five years.
"Sorry," she says when he doesn't respond, and he can hear the smile in her voice. "Did I violate some Winchester Code of Manliness? The first rule of caring about each other is don't talk about caring about each other?"
"No sign of that leszachka yet, right?" he mutters, not sure whether he's dreading or hoping for it, and she actually laughs.
"All right, fine. Keep cutting, Dr. Phil."
After that, she's mercifully quiet for a while; Dean strains his ears for a hint of the leszachka, but there's only Sarah's slightly unsteady breathing and the rasp of the knife against the vine.
"Do you think Sam's OK?" she asks finally. For the first time since he met her, she sounds small, hesitant.
"He's fine," he answers, and makes sure he only says it once. "Doesn't make much sense to bring us here for the whole tie-and-torture bit if there isn't gonna be an audience."
"Torture?" she repeats, her voice spiraling up an octave, and he thanks every deity he can think of when the vine chooses that moment to snap in two behind his back.
"Gotcha, you little son of a bitch," he hisses triumphantly, wiggling his hands to free them. Sarah makes an incoherent sound of relief. "OK," he says, a little high on the familiar adrenaline rush, "I swear I'm not trying to put the moves on you, but hold still." He finds her shoulder, follows the path of her arm down to where her hands are tied.
"That's quite a pickup line." Then, "Ah, Dean?" she says nervously as he traces the bumps with his fingers, mapping the pattern of the vine around her wrists.
"Yeah?"
"Don't you think you should get that stuff of your face before you come near my hands with that knife?"
"Won't work," he says shortly, resting the blade as close to the crude knot as he can get it. "This crap is like superglue, needs a solvent to take it off. We try to peel it off now, I'd probably lose my eyelids along with it. Believe me, I'm not any happier about it than you are." He bears down, getting ready to start sawing, and she half-shrieks,
"Wait!"
He takes one hand off the knife, wraps it around her clenched fists. "Sarah, I need you to trust me," he tells her in his best I-do-this-for-a-living voice. "Just hold your hands still and you'll be fine. You think I'm gonna hurt you? Sammy'd kick my ass. Or," he amends, because even in emergencies there's such a thing as brotherly pride, "he'd try, and then I'd have to kick his ass, and then he'd be totally useless to you and we'd have come all this way for nothing."
That gets a breathless half-laugh, and a pleading, "Dean-"
"Just trust me, OK? Now hold still." Quickly, he finds his place again on the vine, then rests his other hand on her forearms so he can tell if she flinches. She's breathing hard, but to her credit, she doesn't move. "You're doing great, Sarah," he assures her, sawing steadily. With the improved angle, it only takes a couple of minutes for the vine to snap under the blade.
"Done," he says immediately, flicking the knife closed with one hand and unwrapping the vine with the other. She gives a shuddering sigh of relief. "See? No problem."
Except that's not quite true; now that they're mobile, or about to be, he's suddenly acutely aware of his blindness again. He hesitates, realizing he doesn't even know if there's room to stand.
"Here." She grabs his hand and rises with him before he can shake her off; he releases her as soon as they're upright.
"OK," he says, groping for the tangle of roots behind him as an anchor, trying to regroup. "You see any ways out of here?"
"It looks like there are a couple of tunnels, or passageways or something. One in front of us, and one to the left."
He concentrates; after a few seconds, he thinks he can feel a faint puff of fresh air on the side of his face. "Let's try the left."
"OK." She pauses. "Do you… how… the ground's all uneven here; I'm gonna have to lead you, OK?"
He can feel all the muscles in his body tighten in a reflexive no fucking way, and he hates this, he hates it. "Yeah," he grits out finally, reluctantly.
It takes them a couple of minutes to find an arrangement that works, her arm under his hand like she's escorting him to the fucking prom, and goddamn, he hates this. Every time he puts a foot out in front of him, he's afraid he's going to fall into an endless pit of nothingness, even though Sarah is clearly doing nothing of the kind right next to him. Even as fun as that mental picture is, though, it's a Disney movie compared to what he fears might be creeping up behind them.
"Come on, Dean," she tries, after the first few dozen shuffling steps. "It's not so bad. Didn't you ever play that trust game in school, where you'd have to get blindfolded and have someone else lead you around?"
"Yeah-I decked the teacher who tried to blindfold me," he answers through clenched teeth, and he feels a tremor of silent laughter run through her arm.
"OK, bad example."
"Plus," he adds, "in that case, there wasn't a bitchy forest spirit stalking me." His hand is sweating into the soft wool of her coat where he's clutching her arm; his back feels ridiculously exposed, like he's got a flashing neon "please kick my ass" sign hanging on him. It takes everything he has just to keep moving forward, to keep himself from backing up against something solid and just staying there until either Sam or the leszachka finds them. Half-unconsciously, he starts humming under his breath, and after a few seconds, Sarah picks up the words, sings them soft and unsteady:
"On Sundays I elude the eyes, and hop the turbine freight…"
"You like Rush?" he says incredulously. It's suddenly a little bit harder not to be jealous of his brother.
"I like Puccini, too," she answers; he can practically hear her rolling her eyes. "It's a big musical world out there, Dean."
"Mph." He wrinkles his nose, at least the parts of it that aren't immobilized, the jealousy fading. "You sound like Sam."
"I do?" She's obviously pleased, and he can't really blame her.
"Yeah."
"That's… good," she says, like he just gave her an answer to something. "I worry, with what you see every day…"
"What?" Normally this would be the time that he'd try to deflect the conversation by any means necessary, but at this point, every second that he's considering Sam and Sarah's deathless romance is a second he's not considering what it would feel like to find himself on the business end of a sharpened branch or something equally unpleasant, so he's going for the lesser of two evils.
She pauses, then, "I just worry." She laughs a little. "I sell art to rich people, you know? Sometimes haunted art, which is even worse, and... it's just… it must seem pretty trivial and mundane to you guys, considering what you do."
"Well," he grunts, "I got good news for you. Sam's all about that kind of trivial and mundane."
"Um… thanks?" She gives that wry half-laugh again.
"No offense," he says quickly. "I'm serious." He's suddenly exhausted, and pissed off and frustrated and he just wants this to be over, wants to fall into a bed and sleep for a week. "Hunting, this life… it isn't what he wants. It isn't what he's going to want. Talking about art and crap, going to operas, 2.5 kids and a day job-that's what he's gonna want, trust me."
Another pause. "You don't think he'll want you," she says finally. It's not a question.
He pulls away automatically, then has to reach back when he remembers she's his only way out. "You're pretty freakin' nosy, you know that?" he snaps instead.
"Well, since you tricked Sam into staying here the first time, I figure I owe you one." Smart girl, and it sounds like she's smiling. There's that warmth in his chest again, even through the tension. "Dean," she continues, her hand moving to cover his, "I've spent a total of about a week with the two of you, and even I can tell that he worships you. You've been there his whole life. Even if he does decide to go back to school, or stay here, or move to Zimbabwe, it won't be because he doesn't love you or want you to be part of his life."
And OK, they've officially reached the point where his lurid fantasies of being gruesomely slaughtered from behind seem like the preferable option. "Look, can we just-"
And then he hears it: distant, unearthly laughter, twisting down the passageway behind them.
"Oh, my God, Dean," Sarah gasps, her hand tightening to a death-grip on his. "I think it's coming."
He allows himself a brief moment of utter, irrational terror, then forces past it. "OK. OK. We're gonna get out of this." Think, Winchester. "Is there anything lying around? Anything sharp, a stick, a rock?"
"Yeah, both. Just… hold on." She tears her arm away from his hand, and for a few endless seconds he's alone and blind and horribly, horribly exposed. He tries to take deep breaths, tries to swallow the panic bubbling up hot in his throat. He's straining to hear the leszachka, wondering if he can gauge its movement and attack somehow without hurting Sarah, but his heart is pounding so loud in his ears that it drowns out everything else.
He's half a breath from clawing the hardened slime away from his face, not caring if his eyelids go with it, when Sarah pushes her arm under his again. "OK," she says breathlessly. "Got a stick, and a rock about the size of a baseball. Now what?"
"Rock first," he tells her. Unconsciously, his free hand steals up to grip the talisman around his neck. "Soon as it gets close enough that you think you can hit it. Aim for the eyes, it's most vulnerable there. That doesn't work, when it's within range, try the stick."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"We'll think of something else," he mutters, and hears her faint,
"Oh, God."
He shifts his grip to her shoulder and squeezes, hard. "I know you're scared, Sarah, but you have to do this. Do you see it yet?"
"No. Oh, Jesus, Dean, oh, God-" She's babbling now, a steady mantra of curses that he'd actually be admiring if he wasn't so worried about imminent death.
"I know. I know. We'll get out of this," he repeats, over and over as she chants, their words flowing together in a jumble of fear and determination.
"I see it," she says suddenly, breaking their odd rhythm. Her tone is a mixture of horror and fascination. "It's actually kind of-"
"Throw the damn rock, Sarah," he growls; he feels her arm draw back and then release. The leszachka howls in pain. "Got her! You're like Cy fuckin' Young!" He claps Sarah jubilantly on the shoulder.
"She's still moving-Dean, I don't think I-"
Out of nowhere, the sharp crack of a gunshot tears through the words, almost unbearably loud to Dean's sensitized ears. The leszachka wails again. "Sam?" Dean shouts, in unison with Sarah's welcoming cry.
He can feel the air rush past him on his right side, carrying with it the familiar scent of his brother and sweat and adrenaline and dirt. His knees buckle a little, and he sways against Sarah as she leans against him. He hears more shots, and a series of muted, earthy thunks.
Then, "Dean?" Sam calls, his voice rough and tight, his heavy footfalls pounding back toward them.
"We're good," Dean manages, "we're good."
"Hey-that time, I actually believed you," Sarah tells him as she's pulled away from him, into Sam's arms, and it takes about point-three seconds for them both to dissolve into hysterical laughter. Sam, muttering incoherently about the crazy fucking people he gets stuck with, grips Dean's hand where it still rests on Sarah's shoulder and just holds on.
*****
At Sarah's insistence, they only make a brief stop at the motel to pick up a change of clothes before heading to her place to clean up. Dean spends most of the trip in the back seat of the Impala, grumbling dire threats in response to Sam's relentless teasing about getting kidnapped by Jane of the Jungle. Sarah giggles at both of them from the passenger seat, asks Sam if he thinks it would be hot if she put vines in her hair, and Dean rests his head against the seat and lets himself relax for the first time in what seems like days.
Getting the slime off is no picnic, just like he'd been afraid of. Fortunately, Sam had spent some of the time on the trip up from Massachusetts doing his geek boy research thing, and he's got some concoction of foul-smelling herbs and goop that's supposed to work as a solvent.
"Dude, this is so cool," Sam says, all Bill Nye the Science Guy as he slowly peels the stuff away. "You can practically see it, like, separating on a molecular level."
"I'm gonna separate your head on a molecular level if you don't hurry up," Dean growls. "Fix me now, geek out later."
"You know that separating my head makes no sense, right?" Sam asks conversationally. Dean tenses his leg, getting ready to kick whatever part of Sam is nearest-he's blind, he can't be held responsible-and Sarah commands,
"Here, Sam, let me." Dean hears Sam chuckling as he's pushed aside. His brother's freakishly large hands are replaced by Sarah's fingers, cool against his skin, gentle and inexplicably comforting. His chest tightens a little; he covers it with a smirk.
"Do I even want to know?" Sarah asks dryly, clearly only half-concentrating on what she's saying.
"Just sorry I'm missing the view," he drawls, figuring she's bending over in front of him, and Sarah snorts before smacking him on the head with a goop-covered hand. "Hey! Not the hair!"
"Serves you right."
After roughly an eternity and more than a few eyebrow hairs lost forever, Sarah tells him he can open his eyes. He obeys gratefully, blinks in the soft light. "Thanks," he says, massaging the skin on his cheek with one hand, taking in the deep blues and greens of Sarah's bedroom, and Sam-still in his "date" clothes, which he'll obviously be needing to replace-sprawled out like a felled tree in an armchair next to the bed.
"You're welcome," Sarah replies. It's weird, somehow, actually seeing her, when the girl who faced down the leszachka with him had been all voice and touch. Neither one of them can quite seem to meet the other's eyes.
Eventually, Sam clears his throat and offers to help Sarah get cleaned up, and Dean may not have been to college but he knows a sock on the door when he hears one. He excuses himself, wanders downstairs and tries not to break anything. When Sam and Sarah come down an hour or so later, they're both scrubbed clean and grinning like idiots, Sarah's hair in a long, damp braid down her back.
The angle of the living room wall means that he sees them before they see him, and he just lets himself look at Sam for a minute, at the way his hand rests on the back of Sarah's neck, the light in his eyes that Dean hasn't seen in… ever, maybe. Despite his travel-worn clothes and oversized shirt, he looks at home here, with Sarah's books and art and music and her comfortable, tasteful furniture. Looks like he belongs. Dean puts down the brass figurine he'd been fiddling with and looks down self-consciously at his muddy boots.
"Hey," Sam greets him, coming around the corner, oblivious. His smile is wide and affectionate, with just a hint of cockiness around the edges that's probably about as close to he shoots, he scores as Sam's ever going to get. "So you managed not to get your ass kicked by any houseplants while we were gone, huh?"
Dean scowls, grateful for the distraction. "Shut it, Sammy, or I'll tell your girl here about the time you got laid out by a leprechaun."
"What?" Sarah's jaw drops, and she looks at Sam in wide-eyed disbelief.
"I was nine years old, you jackass," Sam mutters, flushed and glaring, "and those little bastards are mean."
Dean just smirks. "Best thing was, after that, I always got all the Lucky Charms."
"Dude, I should have let that leszachka feed you to the bears." But he's smiling again, despite his threatening tone, and Dean can never help smiling back. Just outside the corona of his brother's grin, he sees Sarah shift a little; when he looks at her, she meets his eyes directly, her expression halfway between uncertainty and I told you so.
"Well," he says, still watching Sarah, "I should probably get out of here, let you two lovebirds get back to your hot date."
There's a brief, awkward pause, and then Sam lifts a shoulder, his hand sliding around Sarah's waist. "Uh, yeah, OK." He looks down at her, his smile going goofy again. "You ready?"
Sarah leans into him, but she doesn't take her attention from Dean. "You must be hungry, Dean," she says deliberately. "You should come with us."
He blinks. "Oh. Well," he stalls, on shaky ground again, "I… I never order food I can't pronounce."
"There's a great bar not far from here." She looks determined now, and he suddenly thinks he has an idea how the leszachka must have felt, staring her down. "A hundred percent of your recommended daily allowance of beer and grease, I promise. And onion rings that'll make you cry."
Dean looks at Sam; his brother has a pleased-sad expression on his face that that makes Dean wonder if Jess had ever wanted to take them both out for a beer.
"Yeah, Dean," Sam says quietly. "Come on."
"They have Rush's Greatest Hits on the jukebox," Sarah offers, turning the full brilliance of her smile on him, and that's it. He'll never admit it, but the warmth rushes from his chest all the way down to his boots before he can stop it.
He smiles back, surrendering. "Sold."
"Oh, God," Sam groans, aiming a wounded look at Sarah. "Not you, too." She laughs and hooks an arm through Dean's, leading them both toward the door.
"Don't worry, Sammy," Dean assures him. "It'll be a nice break from all the embarrassing stories I've been storing up about you all this time."
Sam lifts his arm from around Sarah's shoulders long enough to smack Dean on the back of the head. Dean catches Sam's hand and twists it. Sarah just admonishes, "Play nice, boys," and they stumble, laughing, out the door.
END
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters: Dean, Sarah, and a Sam cameo
Summary: Dean wakes to darkness.
Spoilers: Set in some nebulous post-S1 timeframe; spoilers through Provenance, I guess.
Disclaimer: Dude, this show owns me, not the other way around.
A/N: Written for cadhla for the Why Can't We Be Friends Ficathon. Her prompt was simply Dean and Sarah, so I did the best I could. Hope you enjoy, Cadhla, and I hope you'll forgive the delay. :)
Steady Rollin' Woman
All I ask for when I pray, steady rollin' woman gonna come my way.
Need a woman gonna hold my hand, won't tell me no lies, make me a happy man.
- Led Zeppelin, "Black Dog"
Dean wakes to darkness. Not that unusual, but then he realizes that this isn't his typical dropped-my-flashlight or no-moon-tonight darkness, this is genuine I-can't-open-my-eyes, I-have-no-fucking-idea-where-I-am kind of darkness, and he starts to panic a little. "Sam?" he tries, quietly, hopefully.
"Oh, thank God you're awake." The voice is female, tight and breathless with terror. Dean's heart plummets. If Sam isn't here, he's probably freaking the fuck out right now.
Well, that would make three of them. "Sarah? Are you all right? Where's Sam?"
"I don't know, we were at the restaurant and he went back in to get my purse and it just… what the hell was that thing?"
"Leszachka, I think," Dean grits, testing the strength of whatever's keeping his hands tied behind his back. It's scratchy and tough, barely any perceptible give in it; this could be bad. "I can't open my eyes, Sarah. I need you to tell me if you're all right."
"I'm fine, sorry," she answers quickly. "I mean, you know, I've been better, but… you've got some kind of… stuff all over your face. You really can't open your eyes at all?"
"Nope. Stuck shut." It's hard to say it out loud. He swallows down a queasy wave of fear. Bad enough that he's here, trussed up like a damn turkey-a blind turkey, even better-but there's Sarah, and if anything happens to her, Sam won't blame Dean, he'll blame himself, and that's-
No. He shuts that train of thought right the hell down, because it's not happening. They're going to be fine. "We're going to be fine," he tells Sarah. "We're going to be fine."
"OK," she says, "maybe you want to stick with just saying things once if you want me to believe you."
He huffs out a breath, wishes for a second that Sam had chosen a dumber girl, then realizes he'd rather not be stuck in this situation with a dumber girl, so. Just chill out, Dean. "Sorry. Tell me what you see. Where are we?" He thinks he can answer at least part of that question-the air is damp, cool against his exposed skin, and beneath the traces of Sarah's perfume, he can smell wet earth and mold.
Sure enough, "Underground somewhere," Sarah replies. He can feel her fidgeting next to him, her arm pressing against his. "Tied to tree roots, I think." She pauses. "There's a sentence I never expected to say."
"Yeah, sorry about that." He flexes his hands behind him, trying to reach his Leatherman, but the angle's all wrong. "Dammit."
"What?"
"I don't s'pose you can reach the pocket of my coat, can you?"
"No." There's a little smugness now, over the fear. "But I can reach mine."
"You're packing? On a date?" OK, she's Sam's girl, but that doesn't mean he can't be turned on by that, right?
"Considering how my last couple of dates with Sam went, hell yes."
Dean laughs. "OK," he says approvingly. "Hand it over."
"What? Why?"
He'd blink if he could. "So that I can cut through… whatever this is, and get us the hell out of here. Can you see what this is, by the way?"
"Vines, I think. Why do you get the knife? It's my knife."
"What are we, in kindergarten? You're an art auctioneer."
"I'm an art auctioneer who can reach her knife."
Dean sighs. "Lemme put it this way: you been tied up a lot, Sarah? 'Cause if so, I probably need to warn Sam-I'm not sure the kid's heart can take it." Silence for a few seconds, then the thunk of cold metal into his open palm. "Thank you."
"'Packing'?" she says sullenly, after he's gotten the blade open and started carefully sawing away. "You know no one says that outside of cop movies, right?"
OK! Subject change. "The thing that grabbed you-you get a look at it?" One bright side in the way all this is going down is that Dean will probably never have to admit to Sam that whatever the hell this was had dropped him before he'd even had time to turn around.
"Tall. White skin. Vines and grass for hair, and, well, you know about the slime."
"Shit. Yeah, sounds like a leszachka." Dean shakes his head. "Damn thing must've followed us."
"Sam said you weren't working," she says, sounding betrayed. Dean hastens to clarify; he doesn't want anything to get in the way of the joyful reunion sex that he hopes his brother and Sarah will be having, preferably soon, preferably while he's getting free drinks and admiring looks from a pretty waitress.
"We aren't. Or at least we weren't. We wasted a leszy-male version-in Massachusetts about a week ago, before we headed up here; thing must've had a mate."
"So this is, what? A revenge thing?"
Damn, he's tired of evil suddenly developing family loyalty and quests and shit. "Yeah, I guess." He considers it, letting the methodical motion of the knife across the vine steady and focus him. "Sam shot the one in Massachusetts-I guess the little woman figured we were important to him, and grabbed us up to try to piss him off."
"Lucky us."
"Yep. Probably blinded me on purpose, too. Bitch."
"Any idea when it-she-will be back?"
"Nope. Which is why we're going to get out of here as soon as possible." He stops sawing briefly, tries to test the depth of the cut he's made.
"Looks good," she says, her arm pressing against his again, her voice a little closer to his ear. "About a quarter of the way through, I think."
The quick rush of warmth in his chest surprises him. He's used to being in these situations with either his family or complete strangers; the in-between is new. "Thanks," he says, feeling awkward. He settles the knife back into the groove and starts cutting again.
"It's pretty weird, you know?" she says after a minute. "Ghosts trying to protect their kids, monsters avenging their mates." She laughs a little. "I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around that concept."
"Yeah," Dean grunts, rueful, "tell me about it."
"Sam won't talk about her," Sarah confesses suddenly. "His girlfriend, the one who died. He won't even tell me her name. Do you think that's a bad sign?"
Whoa. Christ on a cracker. Prodding his brother to sack up and actually enjoy some female company is one thing, but he did not sign up for relationship counseling, particularly while tied to a tree root and blinded by leszachka slime. But the hurt in her voice tugs at him, so he tries, "Sam just… holds on to things. I guess it's kind of a family trait." He grimaces. "This isn't really-"
"I know, it's not fair for me to ask you, I'm sorry," she says, and she sounds like she means it. "But I'm going nuts just sitting here. Talk to me about something else. Something you can tell me about."
He's so relieved at the subject change that he blurts out without thinking, "Why not me?"
"I'm sorry?"
Not really the direction he wanted to go, but it's too late to save himself now, so he just fixes his cockiest grin in place and brazens it out. "At the auction. Why'd you go for Sam and not me? I mean, sure, once you get to know us, but first sight? Come on. I'm a little insulted."
There's a pause, and then, "I could see right away that you'd never love me like you loved that mini quiche," she answers dryly, and despite everything, a laugh bursts out of him. He likes this girl, just likes her, and he's not exactly sure where to go with that when he knows it won't end in bed.
"What about you?" she asks, nudging him a little with her shoulder. "Have you got a girl somewhere, waiting for you to drop by after killing some monster?"
It catches him off-guard, the intimacy and affection in her tone. He grins again, shrugs as a pretense for putting a little space between them. "Are you kidding? I got a hundred of 'em."
"Dean." The word is dripping with disapproval.
"You're with Sam, not with me," he protests. "Why do you care?"
"Sam loves you," she says simply.
His hand falters on the knife; he feels the blade slip briefly against his fingers. Not hard enough to cut, fortunately, and Jesus. He's pretty sure the last five minutes have fulfilled his chick-flick-moment quota for approximately five years.
"Sorry," she says when he doesn't respond, and he can hear the smile in her voice. "Did I violate some Winchester Code of Manliness? The first rule of caring about each other is don't talk about caring about each other?"
"No sign of that leszachka yet, right?" he mutters, not sure whether he's dreading or hoping for it, and she actually laughs.
"All right, fine. Keep cutting, Dr. Phil."
After that, she's mercifully quiet for a while; Dean strains his ears for a hint of the leszachka, but there's only Sarah's slightly unsteady breathing and the rasp of the knife against the vine.
"Do you think Sam's OK?" she asks finally. For the first time since he met her, she sounds small, hesitant.
"He's fine," he answers, and makes sure he only says it once. "Doesn't make much sense to bring us here for the whole tie-and-torture bit if there isn't gonna be an audience."
"Torture?" she repeats, her voice spiraling up an octave, and he thanks every deity he can think of when the vine chooses that moment to snap in two behind his back.
"Gotcha, you little son of a bitch," he hisses triumphantly, wiggling his hands to free them. Sarah makes an incoherent sound of relief. "OK," he says, a little high on the familiar adrenaline rush, "I swear I'm not trying to put the moves on you, but hold still." He finds her shoulder, follows the path of her arm down to where her hands are tied.
"That's quite a pickup line." Then, "Ah, Dean?" she says nervously as he traces the bumps with his fingers, mapping the pattern of the vine around her wrists.
"Yeah?"
"Don't you think you should get that stuff of your face before you come near my hands with that knife?"
"Won't work," he says shortly, resting the blade as close to the crude knot as he can get it. "This crap is like superglue, needs a solvent to take it off. We try to peel it off now, I'd probably lose my eyelids along with it. Believe me, I'm not any happier about it than you are." He bears down, getting ready to start sawing, and she half-shrieks,
"Wait!"
He takes one hand off the knife, wraps it around her clenched fists. "Sarah, I need you to trust me," he tells her in his best I-do-this-for-a-living voice. "Just hold your hands still and you'll be fine. You think I'm gonna hurt you? Sammy'd kick my ass. Or," he amends, because even in emergencies there's such a thing as brotherly pride, "he'd try, and then I'd have to kick his ass, and then he'd be totally useless to you and we'd have come all this way for nothing."
That gets a breathless half-laugh, and a pleading, "Dean-"
"Just trust me, OK? Now hold still." Quickly, he finds his place again on the vine, then rests his other hand on her forearms so he can tell if she flinches. She's breathing hard, but to her credit, she doesn't move. "You're doing great, Sarah," he assures her, sawing steadily. With the improved angle, it only takes a couple of minutes for the vine to snap under the blade.
"Done," he says immediately, flicking the knife closed with one hand and unwrapping the vine with the other. She gives a shuddering sigh of relief. "See? No problem."
Except that's not quite true; now that they're mobile, or about to be, he's suddenly acutely aware of his blindness again. He hesitates, realizing he doesn't even know if there's room to stand.
"Here." She grabs his hand and rises with him before he can shake her off; he releases her as soon as they're upright.
"OK," he says, groping for the tangle of roots behind him as an anchor, trying to regroup. "You see any ways out of here?"
"It looks like there are a couple of tunnels, or passageways or something. One in front of us, and one to the left."
He concentrates; after a few seconds, he thinks he can feel a faint puff of fresh air on the side of his face. "Let's try the left."
"OK." She pauses. "Do you… how… the ground's all uneven here; I'm gonna have to lead you, OK?"
He can feel all the muscles in his body tighten in a reflexive no fucking way, and he hates this, he hates it. "Yeah," he grits out finally, reluctantly.
It takes them a couple of minutes to find an arrangement that works, her arm under his hand like she's escorting him to the fucking prom, and goddamn, he hates this. Every time he puts a foot out in front of him, he's afraid he's going to fall into an endless pit of nothingness, even though Sarah is clearly doing nothing of the kind right next to him. Even as fun as that mental picture is, though, it's a Disney movie compared to what he fears might be creeping up behind them.
"Come on, Dean," she tries, after the first few dozen shuffling steps. "It's not so bad. Didn't you ever play that trust game in school, where you'd have to get blindfolded and have someone else lead you around?"
"Yeah-I decked the teacher who tried to blindfold me," he answers through clenched teeth, and he feels a tremor of silent laughter run through her arm.
"OK, bad example."
"Plus," he adds, "in that case, there wasn't a bitchy forest spirit stalking me." His hand is sweating into the soft wool of her coat where he's clutching her arm; his back feels ridiculously exposed, like he's got a flashing neon "please kick my ass" sign hanging on him. It takes everything he has just to keep moving forward, to keep himself from backing up against something solid and just staying there until either Sam or the leszachka finds them. Half-unconsciously, he starts humming under his breath, and after a few seconds, Sarah picks up the words, sings them soft and unsteady:
"On Sundays I elude the eyes, and hop the turbine freight…"
"You like Rush?" he says incredulously. It's suddenly a little bit harder not to be jealous of his brother.
"I like Puccini, too," she answers; he can practically hear her rolling her eyes. "It's a big musical world out there, Dean."
"Mph." He wrinkles his nose, at least the parts of it that aren't immobilized, the jealousy fading. "You sound like Sam."
"I do?" She's obviously pleased, and he can't really blame her.
"Yeah."
"That's… good," she says, like he just gave her an answer to something. "I worry, with what you see every day…"
"What?" Normally this would be the time that he'd try to deflect the conversation by any means necessary, but at this point, every second that he's considering Sam and Sarah's deathless romance is a second he's not considering what it would feel like to find himself on the business end of a sharpened branch or something equally unpleasant, so he's going for the lesser of two evils.
She pauses, then, "I just worry." She laughs a little. "I sell art to rich people, you know? Sometimes haunted art, which is even worse, and... it's just… it must seem pretty trivial and mundane to you guys, considering what you do."
"Well," he grunts, "I got good news for you. Sam's all about that kind of trivial and mundane."
"Um… thanks?" She gives that wry half-laugh again.
"No offense," he says quickly. "I'm serious." He's suddenly exhausted, and pissed off and frustrated and he just wants this to be over, wants to fall into a bed and sleep for a week. "Hunting, this life… it isn't what he wants. It isn't what he's going to want. Talking about art and crap, going to operas, 2.5 kids and a day job-that's what he's gonna want, trust me."
Another pause. "You don't think he'll want you," she says finally. It's not a question.
He pulls away automatically, then has to reach back when he remembers she's his only way out. "You're pretty freakin' nosy, you know that?" he snaps instead.
"Well, since you tricked Sam into staying here the first time, I figure I owe you one." Smart girl, and it sounds like she's smiling. There's that warmth in his chest again, even through the tension. "Dean," she continues, her hand moving to cover his, "I've spent a total of about a week with the two of you, and even I can tell that he worships you. You've been there his whole life. Even if he does decide to go back to school, or stay here, or move to Zimbabwe, it won't be because he doesn't love you or want you to be part of his life."
And OK, they've officially reached the point where his lurid fantasies of being gruesomely slaughtered from behind seem like the preferable option. "Look, can we just-"
And then he hears it: distant, unearthly laughter, twisting down the passageway behind them.
"Oh, my God, Dean," Sarah gasps, her hand tightening to a death-grip on his. "I think it's coming."
He allows himself a brief moment of utter, irrational terror, then forces past it. "OK. OK. We're gonna get out of this." Think, Winchester. "Is there anything lying around? Anything sharp, a stick, a rock?"
"Yeah, both. Just… hold on." She tears her arm away from his hand, and for a few endless seconds he's alone and blind and horribly, horribly exposed. He tries to take deep breaths, tries to swallow the panic bubbling up hot in his throat. He's straining to hear the leszachka, wondering if he can gauge its movement and attack somehow without hurting Sarah, but his heart is pounding so loud in his ears that it drowns out everything else.
He's half a breath from clawing the hardened slime away from his face, not caring if his eyelids go with it, when Sarah pushes her arm under his again. "OK," she says breathlessly. "Got a stick, and a rock about the size of a baseball. Now what?"
"Rock first," he tells her. Unconsciously, his free hand steals up to grip the talisman around his neck. "Soon as it gets close enough that you think you can hit it. Aim for the eyes, it's most vulnerable there. That doesn't work, when it's within range, try the stick."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"We'll think of something else," he mutters, and hears her faint,
"Oh, God."
He shifts his grip to her shoulder and squeezes, hard. "I know you're scared, Sarah, but you have to do this. Do you see it yet?"
"No. Oh, Jesus, Dean, oh, God-" She's babbling now, a steady mantra of curses that he'd actually be admiring if he wasn't so worried about imminent death.
"I know. I know. We'll get out of this," he repeats, over and over as she chants, their words flowing together in a jumble of fear and determination.
"I see it," she says suddenly, breaking their odd rhythm. Her tone is a mixture of horror and fascination. "It's actually kind of-"
"Throw the damn rock, Sarah," he growls; he feels her arm draw back and then release. The leszachka howls in pain. "Got her! You're like Cy fuckin' Young!" He claps Sarah jubilantly on the shoulder.
"She's still moving-Dean, I don't think I-"
Out of nowhere, the sharp crack of a gunshot tears through the words, almost unbearably loud to Dean's sensitized ears. The leszachka wails again. "Sam?" Dean shouts, in unison with Sarah's welcoming cry.
He can feel the air rush past him on his right side, carrying with it the familiar scent of his brother and sweat and adrenaline and dirt. His knees buckle a little, and he sways against Sarah as she leans against him. He hears more shots, and a series of muted, earthy thunks.
Then, "Dean?" Sam calls, his voice rough and tight, his heavy footfalls pounding back toward them.
"We're good," Dean manages, "we're good."
"Hey-that time, I actually believed you," Sarah tells him as she's pulled away from him, into Sam's arms, and it takes about point-three seconds for them both to dissolve into hysterical laughter. Sam, muttering incoherently about the crazy fucking people he gets stuck with, grips Dean's hand where it still rests on Sarah's shoulder and just holds on.
*****
At Sarah's insistence, they only make a brief stop at the motel to pick up a change of clothes before heading to her place to clean up. Dean spends most of the trip in the back seat of the Impala, grumbling dire threats in response to Sam's relentless teasing about getting kidnapped by Jane of the Jungle. Sarah giggles at both of them from the passenger seat, asks Sam if he thinks it would be hot if she put vines in her hair, and Dean rests his head against the seat and lets himself relax for the first time in what seems like days.
Getting the slime off is no picnic, just like he'd been afraid of. Fortunately, Sam had spent some of the time on the trip up from Massachusetts doing his geek boy research thing, and he's got some concoction of foul-smelling herbs and goop that's supposed to work as a solvent.
"Dude, this is so cool," Sam says, all Bill Nye the Science Guy as he slowly peels the stuff away. "You can practically see it, like, separating on a molecular level."
"I'm gonna separate your head on a molecular level if you don't hurry up," Dean growls. "Fix me now, geek out later."
"You know that separating my head makes no sense, right?" Sam asks conversationally. Dean tenses his leg, getting ready to kick whatever part of Sam is nearest-he's blind, he can't be held responsible-and Sarah commands,
"Here, Sam, let me." Dean hears Sam chuckling as he's pushed aside. His brother's freakishly large hands are replaced by Sarah's fingers, cool against his skin, gentle and inexplicably comforting. His chest tightens a little; he covers it with a smirk.
"Do I even want to know?" Sarah asks dryly, clearly only half-concentrating on what she's saying.
"Just sorry I'm missing the view," he drawls, figuring she's bending over in front of him, and Sarah snorts before smacking him on the head with a goop-covered hand. "Hey! Not the hair!"
"Serves you right."
After roughly an eternity and more than a few eyebrow hairs lost forever, Sarah tells him he can open his eyes. He obeys gratefully, blinks in the soft light. "Thanks," he says, massaging the skin on his cheek with one hand, taking in the deep blues and greens of Sarah's bedroom, and Sam-still in his "date" clothes, which he'll obviously be needing to replace-sprawled out like a felled tree in an armchair next to the bed.
"You're welcome," Sarah replies. It's weird, somehow, actually seeing her, when the girl who faced down the leszachka with him had been all voice and touch. Neither one of them can quite seem to meet the other's eyes.
Eventually, Sam clears his throat and offers to help Sarah get cleaned up, and Dean may not have been to college but he knows a sock on the door when he hears one. He excuses himself, wanders downstairs and tries not to break anything. When Sam and Sarah come down an hour or so later, they're both scrubbed clean and grinning like idiots, Sarah's hair in a long, damp braid down her back.
The angle of the living room wall means that he sees them before they see him, and he just lets himself look at Sam for a minute, at the way his hand rests on the back of Sarah's neck, the light in his eyes that Dean hasn't seen in… ever, maybe. Despite his travel-worn clothes and oversized shirt, he looks at home here, with Sarah's books and art and music and her comfortable, tasteful furniture. Looks like he belongs. Dean puts down the brass figurine he'd been fiddling with and looks down self-consciously at his muddy boots.
"Hey," Sam greets him, coming around the corner, oblivious. His smile is wide and affectionate, with just a hint of cockiness around the edges that's probably about as close to he shoots, he scores as Sam's ever going to get. "So you managed not to get your ass kicked by any houseplants while we were gone, huh?"
Dean scowls, grateful for the distraction. "Shut it, Sammy, or I'll tell your girl here about the time you got laid out by a leprechaun."
"What?" Sarah's jaw drops, and she looks at Sam in wide-eyed disbelief.
"I was nine years old, you jackass," Sam mutters, flushed and glaring, "and those little bastards are mean."
Dean just smirks. "Best thing was, after that, I always got all the Lucky Charms."
"Dude, I should have let that leszachka feed you to the bears." But he's smiling again, despite his threatening tone, and Dean can never help smiling back. Just outside the corona of his brother's grin, he sees Sarah shift a little; when he looks at her, she meets his eyes directly, her expression halfway between uncertainty and I told you so.
"Well," he says, still watching Sarah, "I should probably get out of here, let you two lovebirds get back to your hot date."
There's a brief, awkward pause, and then Sam lifts a shoulder, his hand sliding around Sarah's waist. "Uh, yeah, OK." He looks down at her, his smile going goofy again. "You ready?"
Sarah leans into him, but she doesn't take her attention from Dean. "You must be hungry, Dean," she says deliberately. "You should come with us."
He blinks. "Oh. Well," he stalls, on shaky ground again, "I… I never order food I can't pronounce."
"There's a great bar not far from here." She looks determined now, and he suddenly thinks he has an idea how the leszachka must have felt, staring her down. "A hundred percent of your recommended daily allowance of beer and grease, I promise. And onion rings that'll make you cry."
Dean looks at Sam; his brother has a pleased-sad expression on his face that that makes Dean wonder if Jess had ever wanted to take them both out for a beer.
"Yeah, Dean," Sam says quietly. "Come on."
"They have Rush's Greatest Hits on the jukebox," Sarah offers, turning the full brilliance of her smile on him, and that's it. He'll never admit it, but the warmth rushes from his chest all the way down to his boots before he can stop it.
He smiles back, surrendering. "Sold."
"Oh, God," Sam groans, aiming a wounded look at Sarah. "Not you, too." She laughs and hooks an arm through Dean's, leading them both toward the door.
"Don't worry, Sammy," Dean assures him. "It'll be a nice break from all the embarrassing stories I've been storing up about you all this time."
Sam lifts his arm from around Sarah's shoulders long enough to smack Dean on the back of the head. Dean catches Sam's hand and twists it. Sarah just admonishes, "Play nice, boys," and they stumble, laughing, out the door.
END