FIC: The Placement of Water and Lead (SPN)
Title: The Placement of Water and Lead
Author: katjad
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Word Count: 10,969
Disclaimer: All characters, situations, etc. belong to Eric Kripke and others.
Summary: Sam stops telling Dean about his visions.
Author's Notes: Picks up immediately after 2x17 'Heart' and contains spoilers through that point. Thanks to sierraphoenix for looking this over. All places mentioned in this fic actually exist (yay Mapquest!) and all remaining errors are my own. Concrit is more than welcome.
The Placement of Water and Lead
After Sam comes in from Madison's kitchen and says, "It's done," they don't say another word. Dean gets on 80 outside of San Francisco and stays on it, bisects California and the whole of Nevada. He keeps hearing Nevada's beautiful, but he can't concentrate on it; it slides past his window for five hours and he barely notices it's gone.
The silence is alive in the car, breathing, and Dean's beginning to think it would be easier if it stayed with them forever, third passenger in the car; if they never spoke again.
But fifteen minutes past the Utah border, Sam bucks forward in his seat, hand to his forehead, and bites out, "Dean. Dean, I--"
Dean's got the car on the side of the road and Sam's door open before he's even thinking about it. Sam is wincing, gritting his teeth and clutching at his head.
Dean grabs him by the shoulder. "Sam! Talk to me."
Sam doesn't even try to shrug him off. "Can't. Fuck. Dean--"
It's the worst vision yet. Sam's left hand is at his temple, right hand clawing into the leather of the seat, and Dean keeps repeating, "It's okay, Sammy, it'll be okay," over Sam's low pained cries.
It seems to last forever and then it's over: Sam's hand drops from his head and he slumps back against the seat, eyes closed. "Fuck," he says, quietly but with feeling.
"Yeah. You all right?"
"Could you get me some aspirin?"
Dean leans over him to fish in the glove compartment. "How many?"
"Uh . . . thirty?"
Dean uncaps the bottle and hands him six. Sam sits up long enough to throw the pills back, then slides down into the seat. "Fuck," he repeats. Dean can't remember the last time he heard Sam say "fuck" so many times in such rapid succession.
"That bad, huh?"
Sam cracks an eye at him and apparently decides that Dean's not actually trying to be a smartass. "Yeah. That bad."
"So what happened? In the vision, I mean."
"I--" And then he shuts his eyes and it's like his whole face closes off. "Do you think you could give me a minute?"
Dean wants to say no, but instead he runs a hand through his hair and says, "Sure, Sammy." He walks a few feet further off the road, scuffs his boots against the ground. He gives Sam five minutes, then wanders back to the car. Sam still looks like he got hit with the bad end of the ugly stick, but at least he's sitting up now. Dean walks up to the passenger side and peers in at him.
"You all right?"
"Will you stop asking me that?" Sam snaps. "Yes, I'm all right. Can we get back on the road now?"
Dean starts to snap back at him, but then he catches the strain in Sam's voice and swallows whatever he was going to say. "Yeah, okay."
After fifteen minutes Sam says, "So where're we headed?"
"You tell me."
Sam turns to meet his gaze. "What?"
"Never mind." Dean shifts his eyes back to the road.
"What, Dean?"
"Nothing. Just -- you had that vision, Sam."
"What, you think I didn't notice?"
Dean ignores the bitching. "Well, shouldn't we be heading toward wherever you saw the vision and stop it from happening? What was it about, anyway?"
Sam laughs a little, brittlely. "It's not something we can do anything about."
"What do you mean, not something we can do anything about? We've been able to stop the others, haven't we?"
Sam shakes his head. "It wasn't that kind of vision. There's nobody we can run off and save here, Dean."
Would it really kill Sam to be straight-up with him for once in his goddamned life? "What was it, then?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Sam--"
"Just drop it, Dean." His jaw is set.
"Fine," Dean says, gripping and uncurling his fingers around the steering wheel. "Fine. Where are we going, then?"
"I don't know. You pick."
Dean grits his teeth and doesn't reply. He wants to hit something. Instead he turns Black Sabbath way up and guns the Impala.
-----
He stays on 80 straight through Salt Lake City and for another hour past it, edging into Wyoming. He's starting to think that maybe he could just drive forever, outdrive Madison and the demon and whatever the hell is happening to Sam--
"Exit here," Sam says.
The sign's for Evanston. "How come?"
"Because we're in the middle of nowhere, and we've been on the road since nine this morning and I'm tired. Is that good enough?"
"Fine," Dean says. It feels like every third word out of his mouth today has been "fine," and it's stupid, because it's not like trying to smooth things over instead of having an argument is actually going to make things better, but the number one rule has always been "take care of Sammy" and not picking a fight with him is the only way he can think of to do that right now, and it makes him feel useless, like he should be able to do something better.
Dean follows the signs for the Holiday Inn Express. Sam trails behind him into the lobby, and when Dean asks for a room with two queen beds the girl at the desk gives him a look. "We haven't got any left. Does one king-size work?"
It's just like that goddamned haunted hotel in Connecticut, Dean thinks, with their Let me guess. Antiquers? crap; and he wants to chew the girl out. But then he looks at Sam, and damned if it doesn't look like he's going to flip his shit any second now; Dean doesn't even know what it is that's setting him off now, but there's only so much he can deal with at once, and Sam's imminent freak-out is more pressing than this hotel clerk shit.
"Fine," he snaps. "Fine, sure, we'll take the king-size."
"Room 136," she says. Bitch actually smirks at him. Dean does not punch her. Sam's rigid at his side, but at least he's quiet, and Dean will take what he can get.
Once they're out of the lobby Dean hands Sam one of the keycards and says, "I'll meet you in the room, okay? I'll get the stuff."
Sam starts to shake his head no like a child, but then he says, "I -- okay," and goes docilely.
Immediately Dean thinks he shouldn't let him go, because something nutso is going on in that crazy head of his, something more nutso than the just having had to kill the first girl he'd slept with since Jess because it turned out she was a werewolf kind of nutso. But he lets Sam go, concentrates on getting everything out of the trunk as fast as he can: duffel bags, rock salt, guns, the whole works. Probably they don't need all of it, seeing as they're in the middle of shit nowhere, but with the way Sam is acting right now Dean doesn't want any surprises.
He closes the trunk and pockets the keys and reflexively checks the knife at his belt. He catches himself at it and is furious at himself. He didn't want to leave Sam alone, sure, because whatever's going on in Sam's head right now is not good news, but no matter what he finds when he goes in Room 136 he's still not going to fucking stick a knife in Sam. But he does put down all the gear to open the door, makes sure his hands are free.
He slides the keycard into the lock and the latch unclicks. He pushes the door open. Sam is sitting on the bed, looking calm, relieved even.
"Dude, what the fuck?" he says before he can stop himself.
"Sorry about before. In the lobby, I mean. It was just -- never mind. We're okay for now."
Dean doesn't miss the wording. "For now?"
"Yeah." Before Dean can get his mouth open to argue, Sam says, "Can we have this conversation tomorrow, d'you think?"
Dean stares at him for a beat. All this not-talking is bad news, and it's going to bite him in the ass one of these days, but he can't help it; he says the only thing he's been saying all fucking day. "Fine."
He starts to salt the windowsills to keep himself from kicking the goddamned wall. Behind him he can hear Sam taking off his shoes and lying down on the left side of the bed, furthest from the door. By the time Dean's finished burning sage and drawing runes on scraps of paper, taping them to the door, Sam is snoring softly. His face is soft, lines smoothed out in sleep, and when Dean thinks about how different he looks during the daytime it makes him want to hurt the whole damned universe. He means to stay awake for a while, keep an eye on Sam, but the weight of his worry carries him into sleep and down.
-----
Dean wakes up knowing something is wrong. He feels for the gun under his pillow and cracks an eye open. Sam isn't in bed. He's sitting at the table in the middle of the room, cleaning one of the automatics. Dean tells himself that that's it, that the fact that Sam isn't sleeping is only thing that's off. When Sam looks over at him and attempts a smile, he wants to believe it.
"Hey," Sam says. "You're awake."
"So're you." He looks pointedly at the gun in Sam's hands.
"I woke up around five, couldn't get back to sleep."
"Yeah." Dean pushes the covers off and digs around in the pile of clothes on the floor for his jeans. "You wanna get some food?"
Sam frowns. "Maybe after I finish with the guns. I'm not really hungry."
"Okay." Dean shuffles into the bathroom, splashes water on his face. The worry wound tight in his stomach diminishes but doesn't go away. Sam looked normal enough and sounded normal enough, sitting there oiling the gun, but he's not all right; Dean doesn't need this feeling in his gut to tell him that. Thing is, he doesn't know how deep the not-all-right goes.
He wishes he knew how this psychic shit worked. They'd always been a little too busy trying not to get themselves killed by the crazy-ass homicidal psychics to sit down and ask them how exactly one went about becoming a crazy-ass homicidal psychic, anyway. He wonders if it's anything like demonic possession, where the more emotional you are, the easier it is for demons to get in; but sometimes they can get in anyway, if they want it bad enough. Sam wasn't that fucked up when the Meg demon possessed him, nothing like he is now, but Dean doesn't even know if that's how it works at all, if the rules of demonic possession have a damned thing to do with it. He fucking hates not knowing things.
And there's another thought, worse: the only way he knew Gordon was wrong, that it wasn't Sam doing those things, was because of the feeling in his gut. And his gut's not feeling too goddamned good right now--
He pushes the thought down.
When he comes back in Sam's cleaning a rifle. "You ready for breakfast?" Dean says, watching Sam run his fingers down the line of the barrel.
Sam exhales heavily and puts the rifle down. "Yeah, sure."
There's a 24-hour waffle place at the truck stop five minutes down the road. Their waitress is named Candi, blonde, big boobs. Dean doesn't even try to flirt with her, but checking out waitresses is as deeply ingrained as salting the windowsills and the line of the doorjamb before bed and feeling for the knife at his belt. Sam frowns all the way through his Belgian waffles.
Dean relaxes halfway through his second cup of coffee, because at least this is something he's familiar with, Sam getting pissed about him checking out their waitresses.
"I was thinking we could maybe go back to Peoria," Sam says, dragging his fork through the syrup on his plate.
"Keep looking for Ava, you mean? D'you think there's something we missed?"
Sam frowns. "Yeah. And I don't know. Just a feeling I've got."
Dean nods: this is something to do, something good, something that's not actually a job. "How far's Peoria from here?"
Sam taps at his Palm Pilot. "A couple of days."
"Right. Might as well get going, then." He pays the bill and follows Sam out of the diner.
It's easy to believe Sam's okay. He's stretched out in the front seat, messing with his Palm Pilot and bitching about the music. Dean grins against the wind; you'd think a little musical taste would have rubbed off on Sam by now. For a while he pretends that everything is all right, pretends it so hard that it's almost true.
Except it isn't. Just past Sinclair, Wyoming, Sam moves his hand to his temple, a light sneaking touch he's trying to keep Dean from seeing, although of course Dean does. Fucking visions. They could have dealt with the rest of it, with Madison's death and Sam's freaky dark side shit, but the visions come out of nowhere and they can't ever be ready for them.
This isn't anything like the last vision, though, at least not from where Dean's sitting. Sam keeps his hand on his head for a few minutes and makes low hissing noises, but when Dean touches his shoulder Sam shrugs him off, so he's got to be more or less okay.
When the vision's over Sam sits up and winces a little. "Aspirin's still in the glove compartment?"
"Yeah."
He finds it and throws back what looks like half the bottle.
"Same vision as last time?"
"Yeah. Kind of."
Dean eases back on the accelerator. "Kind of?"
"Yeah."
"D'you think you could tell me what it was about?" He pitches his tone as carefully as he possibly can, and Sam still takes it the wrong way. Of fucking course.
"No," he snaps.
Sometimes Dean's real glad he's not psychic, because if he were, he would have just made something explode with his mind. Something like that minivan in front of him that hasn't let him pass for the past ten minutes. He thinks calming thoughts about explosions and the Impala roaring through them like that scene in Twister with the gas truck, and then he says tightly, "Why not?"
"I can't. I can't, Dean, okay?"
"No, it's fucking not okay, Sam. You can't keep this shit from me. Not if--" I'm going to protect you, he wants to say but doesn't, because that's been Sam's favorite argument recently, that Dean can't protect him from everything and certainly not from this, so if he's going to succeed at it he'd damned well better stop talking about it.
He doesn't say it, but Sam still hears him loud and clear, of course. He sets his jaw. "You don't need to know everything, Dean."
Dean grits his teeth. "Why not?"
"It doesn't matter. Just drop it."
"No. I'm not going to drop it, Sam. What part of 'this is my business, too' are you not getting?"
But Sam is a stubborn bastard. Not that Dean isn't, but that's another thing about the number one rule: "take care of Sammy" seems to have translated to "give Sam whatever he wants" most of the time, so Dean doesn't really have all that much practice at out-stubborning Sam. He's probably going to lose the stubbornness contest, but he's going down fighting, damn it.
Sam looks at him, puppy-eyes weary, and just like that the fight goes out of Dean. "This isn't over," he tells Sam, eyes on the road.
Sam sounds even more worn-out than ever. "Yeah. I know."
-----
Ellen calls around the time they cross into Nebraska. "There's a job for you in Mobile, Alabama, if you want it. Looks like a haunted house. You boys up for it?"
The small thrill at the idea of a job courses through him, but Sam's curled up against the window, drooling on his hoodie, and Dean doesn't even have to think twice. "We're already working on something, actually. You'd better give it to someone else."
They're still on 80; it's the road that never ends, a straight shot up to within a hundred miles of Ava's doorstep. Whatever the vision was that Sam had the other day, it doesn't really seem to be bothering him; he's not itchy, out-of-control, the way he usually is until they've taken care of whatever it was he'd had the vision about. He'd never have passed out in the car after a normal vision, and it's weird: Dean's got this feeling, like if he looks at Sam the right way, out of the corner of his eye when he's not really paying attention, that he'll be able to figure it out, all of it, what the vision was about and why Sam's keeping it from him. He wants to scratch at this feeling until he figures out why he's so certain in his gut, the same place where the fear curls, that the answer should be obvious.
He keeps driving well into the night.
-----
Dean doesn't dream often, or if he does he doesn't remember his dreams, but in Giltner, Nebraska, he dreams of a man with three eyes who shoots him in the chest and smiles. "There's your answer," he says, though Dean hasn't asked a question, and when Dean tries to tell him so all that comes out of his mouth is blood.
-----
The demon's been back to Peoria. There's nothing subtle about it. Sulphur chokes the air for a three-block radius around Ava's house.
"How long do you think it's been?" Dean says, rubbing sulphur from the windowsill between his fingertips.
Sam doesn't answer. He's staring out the window, houndlike.
"You find something?" Dean asks.
"I'm not sure." But he walks through the kitchen and out the screen door, his strides more purposeful now, heading towards the center of the backyard. He stops abruptly, frowning. "There's something," he begins. "It's like there's something here."
"What kind of something?"
"I don't know."
Dean examines the grass beneath his feet. It's maybe a little browner than the rest of the yard, but not in the perfect circle that means unholy ground, and there's nothing else to distinguish it. "Like something happened here?"
Sam takes a long time to reply. Dean scuffs at the ground with the toe of his boot. "No. Not like that. This isn't going to make any sense, but it's like there's a vision here. In the air or something."
"A vision in the air?" Dean repeats, dubiously.
Sam continues as if he hadn't said anything. "Only the thing is, I can't see it. It's like -- I know it's there, but I can't access it. It's like it's barely there, and if I think about it too hard it fades."
"Wait. You're trying to get a vision?"
Sam glares at him.
"Okay. Fine. It's not working when you think about it, so why don't you try not thinking about it so hard?"
Sam's glare deepens. "I'm trying."
"Maybe it'll help if we look around the rest of the place, yeah?"
They go back into the house, but there's nothing but sulphur and uneasiness settling low in Dean's gut. "I don't feel so good about this place," he says experimentally, just to check if the fear's still there after he's voiced it. It is. "You ever seen this much sulphur?"
Sam runs his fingers along the mantel. "No. There's nothing in here, Dean. Let's go back outside."
Sam's shaking as they head back through the house, and after a moment Dean realizes it's with excitement. He really thinks he's found something. Dean hopes like hell that this pans out; he doesn't think Sam could deal with it being nothing. And God damn him, because it's like he's jinxed it: Sam returns to the spot from before and his face hardens with confusion. "It's gone."
"Gone?"
"It's like it wasn't here at all. There's nothing. I was getting that clenching in my stomach before, Dean, and it felt like my head was about to split open any moment, like the headaches I get, except it didn't actually hurt yet, it was just like it was about to, and now it's not here. There's nothing. I'm in the right spot, aren't I?"
"Yeah."
"Maybe it moved." He starts pacing through the backyard, restless. "I don't feel it anywhere. It can't have just disappeared, though, can it, Dean?"
He sounds like he's four years old and he desperately wants Dean to tell him no, the thing's around here somewhere, has he looked in his duffel bag -- like it's one of his Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Dean has all the answers.
Dean swallows thickly. "I don't know, Sam."
Sam paces through the backyard, looking like he's in a cell and can't figure out how he got there. He stops every few steps and stares hard into the air. From the way his expression gets more determined by the minute, he's not having any luck. They should really get out of here; anyplace with this much sulphur around has got to be the clubhouse of the Really Fucking Evil Society or something, but he can't bring himself to tell Sam to quit.
Sam's muttering under his breath -- "I'll figure this out. I will." -- Dean wants to believe him, because someone who's trying that hard should be able to figure out anything they want to; but that's not the way things work.
Dean's trying to decide how to tell Sam that it's no use when the air goes still. It wasn't windy before, not exactly, but now there's no movement at all. There's nothing to be heard but Sam's footsteps, and fear spasms in Dean's gut. "Sam," he says, his voice low and urgent. "We've got to get out of here."
Sam looks at him confusedly for a moment, but then wind rushes in, too swift to be natural.
"Now, Sam."
He doesn't have to be told twice. The fear is rolling in Dean's stomach and the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with electricity. He grabs Sam by the arm and flat-out runs for the Impala, because whatever it is is big and nasty and coming for them fast and he does not want to be there when it arrives. His heart is still jackhammering five blocks away from Ava's house.
"Dean. Turn around."
"What the fuck?"
"We have to figure out what happened to Ava," Sam says doggedly. "Turn around."
"Not gonna happen. We'll figure it out some other way."
"How?"
"I don't know. We'll figure it out. But we're not going back there."
"Where are we going, then?"
"I don't know. Massachusetts. Amsterdam. Mars." The hysterical urge to laugh balloons in his chest.
"We can't just leave."
"Yes, Sam, we really can."
"We could have stayed."
"And done what? Stood there and waited for whatever that was to get there and said, 'Sorry, Mr. Demon, before you fucking waste us, could you tell us if you've seen Ava Wilson?'"
"Why are you doing this?" Sam's voice is low and furious.
"Trying to keep from getting us killed?"
"No. That's not what you're doing." Sam's staring at the side of Dean's head like he can read his goddamned mind. "The only chance we have to find Ava is in this town, and you're running because you're trying to, what, keep me from getting hurt--"
"When an unknown evil thing is about to rain down on your head you get out of the fucking way, Sam!"
"Not all the way to Massachusetts, you don't. Do you really think -- after Madison--" It's the first time he's said her name aloud since they left San Francisco. "I thought you understood. It catches up with you, Dean. At some point it catches up with you and--"
The sentence breaks off into a moan and Sam presses his hand against his forehead. Another vision, and Dean hates himself for being glad of the interruption. It's a bad one, too, Sam's hisses more like screams -- but they're barely ten minutes out of Peoria, and he can't stop the car this close to Ava's house. Sorry, Sam, he thinks, and pushes the pedal to the floor.
The vision doesn't last long, at least, though when it's over Sam looks like he hasn't slept in a week. He fumbles with the latch of the glove compartment.
Dean reaches out to rub Sam's shoulder, and he jumps like a scalded cat. "Jesus!"
"What was that about?"
Sam shrugs his hand away. "Nothing. Just -- don't touch me."
"Fine. Jesus. I guess you don't want to talk about this one, either, then?"
Sam's only reply is to throw back the rest of the bottle of aspirin. His hands shake as he tries to replace the cap, then gives up, drops the empty bottle and the cap on the floor.
Dean wants to press the issue, but then Sam turns towards the window and makes a big show of pulling his hood over his head and curling up to sleep. Dean drives on, jaw clenched, in silence.
-----
At some point Sam must have actually fallen asleep, because when Dean pulls into a Super 8 parking lot around ten that night, somewhere in Indiana, he stretches out, cat-like, still half-dreaming. He goes rigid at the sight of Dean.
"Oh, for Christ's sake," Dean says. "Seriously, dude, what the fuck?"
"It's nothing," Sam lies through his teeth. "Can we get some food?"
What Dean means to say is, "Not until you've told me what the fuck is going on," but then his stomach growls hugely and he remembers that they haven't eaten anything since McDonald's a little after one. "Fine."
There's a Chinese place across the street. They leave the Impala in the hotel parking lot and walk over. Dean spends the meal glaring at Sam through bites of spicy beef with broccoli. Sam wolfs down General Tsao chicken and stares determinedly in every direction but Dean's.
Finally Dean pushes back his plate and sighs. "C'mon. Let's go check in."
Sam follows him back to the Super 8 in silence. They don't say anything through check-in or even as they're getting things out of the car, but the moment they're in the room Dean can't help himself; he's at Sam's throat.
"You have to tell me about the visions, Sam. Now."
"Get away from me." Sam tries to push him away, but Dean pushes back, doesn't back down.
"No. Not 'til I've got answers."
"I'm not telling you. It's for--"
"It's for what?"
"Nothing," Sam insists, and he's lying. He's a good liar but not to Dean, and Dean shoves against him harder.
"Tell me."
"Get away from me."
"No."
"No, Dean. I mean it. Get away from me." Sam's voice is strained, pleading, and his face is flushed like he's been running. Dean meets his eyes, trying to figure out what's going on, and then Sam's mouth is on his. Sam's tongue is in his mouth, he's touching his fingers to Dean's arm, and there's something he should be comprehending, but for the life of him Dean can't figure out what it is. Then it makes it through his head: Sam is kissing him. He jerks away.
"What the fuck was that?" He doesn't mean for it to come out as loud as it does or as angry-sounding.
Sam slumps against the door like he's trying to become a part of the woodwork. "I told you to get away from me," he says wearily.
"That was. That was the crazy psychic thing, wasn't it?"
"I -- no. Maybe. Could you -- I really don't want to talk about this right now."
For once, Dean is completely in agreement. "I'll be outside, I guess."
What he really wants is to find a bar and get wasted to the point that he doesn't know his own name, but he can't. Instead he sits on the curb outside of the Super 8 and does his best to think about nothing at all. He wishes he smoked; it would give him something to do with his hands, something to concentrate on, but he doesn't smoke, and finally his resolve breaks.
Sam kissed him. Straight-up kissed him on the mouth, and it was like any other kiss, except that no girl Dean's ever kissed has had a mouth that big and also, none of them has ever been his younger brother.
It's not like he should have been expecting this, should he? It's not like it's something that's been going on for a long time. Sam hero-worshipped him when they were younger, but it wasn't anything like that, was it? And Christ, if there's a conversation in the world that he less wants to have than the one that begins, "So Sam, you, uh, haven't had a crush on me all these years, have you?" Dean hopes he never finds out what it is.
He wishes there were another word than crush for this. A crush is the word for how you feel about the girl who sits in front of you in homeroom, not whatever it is that makes you want to kiss your brother. No, the word for this is incest, a weight settling heavy in his stomach.
This can't have been happening for long; there's just no way. He's been around Sam for almost two solid years, and in all that time Dean has never once seen Sam looking at him like that. He knows Sam better than he knows anyone in the world, better than he knows himself; if something like that were going on, he would have noticed.
But is that really true? Before Sam went to Stanford he wouldn't have hesitated to say yes. He'd known absolutely everything there was to know about Sam. But then he left for Stanford, and Dean saw him exactly once in four years; driving through Palo Alto and watching Sam's shadow move across the apartment window didn't count. Four years is a long time, and while Dean doesn't think Sam has it in him to learn how to keep something of this magnitude hidden, they were apart for four years, and he can't be sure. He's just got to hope he knows Sam well enough to be right about this.
-----
Sometimes when Dean thinks things through, his gut tightens into a dense leaden ball and he understands things that he didn't know before. He tried to explain the feeling to Sam, once, right after Sam first told him about the visions, but this is nothing like the visions. Sam's visions are about things he couldn't possibly know, that push into his mind uninvited; the lead in Dean's gut is made up of the things he already knows coming together until they fit, until they make obvious what he almost knew before and couldn't put his finger on.
He's never gotten this feeling often; his life has been all about guesswork lately, about dumb luck and keeping his fingers crossed and his weapons clean, but his gut tightens into the leaden ball now and he knows with absolute certainty that what happened earlier has something to do with Sam's vision, the one he had in the car as they were trying to put Peoria in the dust, and that whatever the connection is, it can't be good.
He heads back inside. Sam's asleep, drooling on his pillow. Dean's first instinct is to let him be, but they've put off talking too many times already. He shakes Sam's shoulder.
He comes awake easily and doesn't start at Dean's touch, but his eyes, even sleep-filled, are wary.
"We need to talk," Dean says. Sam sits up to make space for him on the bed, and Dean sits, hyperaware of where Sam's legs end, and this is so beyond fucked up.
"Okay," Sam says slowly. "What do you want to talk about?"
"What happened earlier, to start."
"I told you to get away from me." Sam presses at his eyes with the back of his hand.
"I know. Why'd you say it?"
"Why do you think?"
"You tell me, Sam."
He doesn't reply.
Dean's not actually trying to make this any harder on either of them than it already is; he's not trying to keep an ace in the hole. "It's got something to do with the visions, doesn't it? You had a vision yesterday morning. It's got something to do with that."
Sam still isn't saying anything, but it's a different kind of silence than before: he's waiting for the right question, Dean realizes. Sam's waiting for him to put together the last of what he knows. Instead, Dean says, "Tell me what the vision was about."
"I already did."
"What?"
"I already told you," Sam repeats, pressing at his eyes again, like he's willing Dean to understand whatever it is he isn't saying. And maybe they've spent too much time together, because suddenly he does: Sam might not have told him what had happened in the vision, but he'd showed him.
Dean is quiet for a minute, processing. "That wasn't," he begins, struggling to find the words he wants. "That wasn't the exact thing you saw in the vision, though. It wasn't the vision coming true, I mean."
Sam's eyes are bright in the darkness and his hair is sticking up stupidly, sleep-messed. "Has it occurred to you," he says slowly, "that there might be a good reason why I haven't been talking to you about the visions?"
"It hadn't, actually."
He smiles wearily. "Why am I not surprised? Look, Dean. What happened before -- it's not gonna happen again. Just stay away from me and it'll be okay."
It takes Dean a minute to process what Sam said, what he means by it, but after he does he splutters, "Wait, whoa, time out, buddy. You're still gonna have to tell me about the visions."
Sam gapes at him. "Did you not understand anything I just said? Dean, I'm not telling you about this. I can't. Can't you just let this be?"
"No," Dean says. "No. You're gonna tell me. I'm not gonna let you do this, Sam."
"You're a goddamn stubborn bastard, Dean, do you know that?" But there's no real malice in the words, only frustration. Dean meets his eyes and watches as something in them shifts into place, a decision and a heavy sadness. "All right," he says. "All right. I'll tell you. The visions? They've been about us, Dean."
"About us doing what?"
Sam's eyes bore into him like he's willing Dean to read his mind, but he can't, he's not that good.
"You're gonna have to spell it out for me, Sam."
Sam exhales. "Yeah. I know." The corner of his mouth curves in and he makes a vague hand motion. "We were. Um." He runs a hand through his hair and it sticks up at crazy angles. He meets Dean's eyes. "We were fucking."
There isn't any air in the room. "What?"
"I wouldn't joke about this," Sam says flatly.
"I -- yeah. I know." He doesn't say anything for a minute, tries to fit ordinary thoughts back into his head. "Your visions. They don't always come true, y'know? And -- and it's not like this is going to happen."
They're silent for a moment, then: "You wanted to know," Sam says finally, as if Dean hadn't spoken. "And now you do. I'm going back to bed now, if that's okay."
Dean glances at the clock. It's still the middle of the night. "Sure. Hey, Sam?"
Sam pauses halfway through rolling over. "Yeah?"
"Those other visions. Since San Francisco. They were about that, too?"
"Same vision, yeah." He pulls the comforter over his head. "G'night, Dean."
"G'night." Dean lies down on top of his bed, fully clothed, and does not sleep the rest of the night. He doesn't think Sam does, either.
-----
They don't talk about it in the morning. Dean gets back on 80-East just for a direction to head in, but he's itchy now, starting to reconsider his certainty that they weren't ready to take another job. That's the problem, he's beginning to think. They've had downtime before, and it was fine, but right now they need to do something that isn't just with each other; they've spent so long together that they're going insane.
He calls Ellen while Sam's in a truck stop bathroom, but someone else has already taken the Alabama haunted house job and she doesn't have anything else lined up. She must hear something in his voice, because she says, "Why don't you boys come by the Roadhouse for a few days? We've got a couple of spare rooms out back."
Dean says no without hesitation. The only thing they need less than the current situation is for someone who knows them to be around to observe the current situation. He keeps on driving. He's still heading towards Massachusetts; he doesn't know why, there's nothing for them there, but he'd mentioned it that once and now he's got it in his head and it doesn't really matter. Massachusetts doesn't really seem far enough, though. Amsterdam might be. Or Mars.
He's not planning on stopping for any length of time 'til nightfall, but around 1:30 his stomach rumbles so loudly he can hear it over Metallica. He pulls over in Cambridge, Ohio and parks outside of the first diner he sees. His palms are sweating; he wipes them on his jeans and heads inside. Sam follows him in.
It's crowded; the only table left is by the window, but Dean's glad of the noise. Their waitress is in her forties, dyed red hair cut short and a huge wad of gum in her mouth. Dean orders meatloaf. It looks like the kind of place that would have good meatloaf, probably somebody's mother's secret recipe, and his stomach growls in appreciation at the thought. Sam gets roast beef.
The food comes quickly, and Dean's right: the meatloaf is awesome, bacon on top and smothered in ketchup, mashed potatoes and gravy on the side and not a vegetable in sight. He likes this place better by the second. Sam seems to be enjoying the roast beef, although damned if Dean isn't going to kill him if he scrapes his knife across the plate like that one more time.
He looks up from the meatloaf to tell him so, only he never makes it to Sam's face: he gets stuck on the curve of Sam's wrist, the way his veins stick out as he's gripping the knife, and he doesn't know what the fuck is going on but suddenly he's harder than he's ever been in his life. He forces his eyes back down and stabs at his meatloaf and tries to remember how to breathe. When he was sixteen he could have gotten hard over anything and did, but he's not sixteen anymore and what the fuck is this about?
"Dean?" Sam says, and Dean realizes he's been sawing at the meatloaf so hard it's slopping off the plate.
He looks up to explain that it's nothing, but at the concern on Sam's face his cock twitches, and that's it. "I'll be right back," he says, hoping like hell he sounds normal, and makes a break for the bathroom. Before he gets the chance to think about what he's doing he's in the lone stall with his jeans down around his ankles and his cock in hand. Three pulls and he's coming, panting against the side of the stall.
This is so far beyond fucked up that there isn't even a word for it. He pulls the flask of holy water out of his jacket pocket and splashes some on his hand to see if he's possessed, but nothing happens. A curse, then, he thinks, except they haven't come into contact with any cursed objects in months, and he's never in his life heard of a curse with this kind of delayed-action. Doesn't mean it can't still exist, but from the way his stomach's roiling he doesn't think so.
He splashes cold water on his face and wills his pulse to slow down. He's still trying to work himself up to going back into the diner when the door opens and Sam's standing there. "Dean? You okay?"
"I'm fine," he says firmly, more trying to convince himself of it than anything else. He doesn't have much success. He pushes past Sam back into the diner and pays with cash, has the Impala's engine running before Sam's even in the parking lot. He doesn't look as Sam gets in and then he's back on the road, Metallica blasting as loud as it will go.
Dean's beginning to think that maybe he understands what Sam meant when he said there was a reason he was keeping the visions from him. Because Dean never would have thought about this sort of thing before, but now that Sam's mentioned it it's like a light's gone on in his head. He's not gay, and he's definitely not gay for his brother, but Sam mentioned it, so of course he'd be thinking about it. It's just urges or something. It's been a couple weeks since he got laid; he just needs to pick up a girl and he'll be fine.
And anyway, none of Sam's visions have come all the way true. They've come pretty damned close a few times, but he and Sam have always made it in time to stop them before. There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to stop this one, too.
-----
Sam sleeps most of the day, or fakes it. Usually Dean would be able to tell the difference from the rhythm of his breathing, but the music's cranked so loud that he can barely hear his own thoughts over the thumping bass line and he's not turning it down. Possibly ever.
He makes good time; they're in Allentown, Pennsylvania by nightfall. Dean pulls into the Howard Johnson parking lot and kills the engine. There's still a bit of light from the setting sun. Sam gets out of the car and stretches, his t-shirt riding up over his hips, and Dean can't stop himself from staring at the V of muscles disappearing beneath his jeans. Dean's mouth is dry and his cock is hard and he is well and truly fucked.
Dean slams the car door shut and prays to anything that might be listening to get him through this. "Just wait here," he says, tongue like wool. "I'll get the room."
Sam, still half-asleep, doesn't argue. Dean gets a room on Michael Atwood's Platinum VISA and retrieves his duffel from the trunk, gives Sam the keycard. He's careful not to let Sam's hand touch his and he's sure that Sam notices; Sam's always been aware of that sort of thing, but he can't help it; his nerves are singing and he's pretty sure that if he touched Sam he would actually explode.
Sam unlocks the door and pushes into the room. He doesn't even turn the light on before he goes rigid, stops breathing.
"What?" Dean moves up behind Sam and hits the switch and oh for the love of God. He'd been concentrating too hard on not thinking about things when he was paying for the room to remember to say what kind of room he wanted, and if there were ever a time in the world when the gay thing was not at all funny, it's right now.
It's okay. He puts his stuff down on the side of the bed nearest the door. It'll be okay. They can just draw a line down the middle of the bed, like the 38th Parallel or the Mason-Dixon Line, something that cannot be crossed, and everything will be fine. Sam snaps out of whatever trance he was in and puts his stuff down on the other side of the bed and it's fine. As long as they don't talk about it at all, don't acknowledge it in any way, they'll be fine. Except that he might be kind of hysterical.
Dean takes off his shoes and nothing else, and lays down carefully on top of the bed. Sam goes into the bathroom. Dean can hear the toilet flush and the sound of Sam brushing his teeth and as long as they don't make any sudden movements, everything will be fine.
He's still trying to convince himself of that when Sam slams his hand against the door and cries out, "Dean." Dean's at the bathroom door before he's even thinking about it, pulling at the knob. Inside Sam is hissing, and of course he would lock the goddamned door before having a vision.
"Sam! You've gotta unlock the door, I can't get in 'til you do," he says, keeps repeating something on the same theme until it gets through to Sam and the bolt turns in the lock. Sam's on the floor, fingers tangled in his hair, clutching at his skull and rocking. Dean pulls him out of the tiny, porcelain-hard bathroom, and into the room, onto the carpet, but the vision just won't end; he's practically howling now, and Dean stops thinking entirely and pulls Sam into his arms and close.
It's like trying to hold onto eight miles of octopus but he doesn't know what else to do, just clings to Sam and whispers to him, "It'll be okay, come on, Sam, I'm here, I'm here, it'll be over soon," and finally Sam stills and then goes rigid, tries to disentangle himself from Dean, but he's wiped out from the vision and when Dean doesn't let go easily Sam stops trying and slumps against him. Dean's still whispering; he doesn't know why he hasn't stopped yet. He loosens his grip a bit -- Sam's not going anywhere -- and pats Sam's shoulder and says, "It'll be okay, Sam. It's okay."
Sam lets out a shuddering breath. "Dean."
"Yeah?" He's still patting Sam's shoulder; it seems to be helping and that's the only thing that matters.
"You have to kill me if I ask you to."
Dean freezes, then keeps patting Sam's shoulder. "No."
"Do you know what this vision was about?" Sam's voice is low. "I was killing people. Hunters, mostly, but others, too, people who didn't do anything, and I was killing them, dozens of people -- and I liked it, Dean. I liked killing them. I was laughing and shooting them and the demon was pleased. He was saying I'd finally started doing what I was born to do, fulfilling my destiny and carrying out his plans, and I wanted to do it, Dean, I wanted to kill them--"
Dean grips his wrist, shakes him. "You aren't going to do that, Sam. I'm not gonna let you."
"You're right," Sam says. "You're not. Look at me, Dean."
He does. Sam's face is pinched and scary.
"You can't let this happen. Do you understand? When I ask you to shoot me, you have to do it. You can't let this happen."
He cuts his eyes away. "Sam--"
"You have to promise me, Dean. Promise you'll shoot me when I ask you to."
"I can't."
"Yes, you can. You have to. Dean."
Dean meets his eyes again and he looks worse than when Jessica died, worse than Madison or Dad. He still isn't crying, but his face is crumpled, and Dean would do anything to make that look disappear.
He wonders how long Dad knew about Sam. He wonders if he's been interpreting "take care of Sammy" wrong all along; if this was what Dad always meant. He hates the ambiguity of the words, but the need is raw in Sam's eyes and Dean doesn't have it in himself to keep from him something he so clearly needs.
"Dean," Sam says, curled against his chest, and something breaks in Dean: a kidney, maybe, a lung, something essential.
"Okay." He says it low and against Sam's head; it shouldn't be audible but he knows Sam hears him. "Okay." And then, because the deal isn't made until he's said the words aloud, he says, "If you ask me to. To shoot you. I'll do it. I'll do it, I'll--" He can't keep talking. His throat clamps down around the words. He's still clinging to Sam; he can't let go of him. He's got this idea that as long as he's holding onto Sam that nothing can happen to him; he won't let it.
But one of them shifts. He knows they can't stay in that position forever, but one of them shifts; he doesn't know which, and Sam gets turned around so he's facing Dean. Sam's eyes flick down to his mouth and Dean kisses him. It's not on purpose and he means to pull back but then Sam's mouth opens over his and Sam moans and presses into him and he needs this, needs Dean. Dean can't stop him, doesn't want to. He'll give Sam anything in the world but he's selfish, too, and he's not stopping this.
Sam's tongue is in his mouth. It shouldn't feel natural, but it doesn't feel wrong and the craziest idea moves through his head, like they were always going to come to this and they only needed the push -- but anyway there's no need to think. He pulls Sam down on top of him. Sam groans, rocks his hips against Dean's and Sam's cock presses against his thigh, hard through his jeans, and there need to be less clothes. Dean slides his hand between them, fumbles with his belt.
"Here," Sam says against his mouth. "Let me." Sam bites his jaw, rocks back and Dean's jeans are off. Dean gets Sam's shirt over his head, pulls off his own, bits Sam's lower lip, his neck. Sam pulls him to the floor, stretches out and slides his fingers over Dean's stomach and down past the elastic of his boxers, fists his cock.
Dean's vision goes black when Sam flicks his wrist but somehow he gets Sam's boxers off and he's beautiful, all of him, cock long and angry red, and when he takes it in his hand and pulls Sam bites out, "Dean," gravelly and broken, and Dean comes with Sam's mouth on his neck and Sam's fingers on his cock. He grips Sam harder and pulls and Sam's coming, too, biting down on his neck, shuddering against his side, and they pant against each other for a while, a year at least, and then Dean wipes his hand on Sam's jeans.
"Fucker," Sam says, smiling against his chest. Somehow they make it to the bed and Sam curls up against him and falls asleep all over him, and for a moment Dean has himself convinced that everything will be okay.
----
Dean wakes up and knows that something is wrong. He's awoken to sick curling fear before, and the force of his training takes over: he keeps his eyes closed and his breathing steady and slow, shifts as though in sleep to reach up under the pillow for his gun.
The gun is gone.
His heart is going triple-time, but he forces himself to stay still, because he doesn't have his gun and he's not going to go getting himself killed making any sudden movements. He rolls over slowly and sits up, blinks his eyes open.
It's still the middle of the night; that's the first thing he notices. The second thing is that Sam's sitting at the desk chair in the corner, facing the bed, turning Dean's gun over in his hands.
Dean stays still for a moment, making sure it's clear he's awake, no surprises, and then says, "Sam." He doesn't know what's going on here; it could still be nothing. He keeps his voice calm.
"I was having the weirdest dream," Sam says slowly, the words overly pronounced like he's drunk or in a trance.
Keep him talking, Dean thinks, and as soon as he's thought it he wishes the words gone. His instincts may be screaming but he was trying to keep his head separate from the fear in his gut, remember that Sam's just running the gun through his hands like a deck of cards, that it could still be nothing; but keep him talking was Dad's universal advice for all order of psychotics and now that the thought's in his head Dean can't avoid the next one: Sam knew something like this was going to happen. He knew, and that's why he'd made Dean promise earlier. He knew.
And that thought is followed by the next: Sam said the vision had been of them fucking, and they had; but he'd never said that that was all of the vision. That wasn't all Sam saw. Goddamn him, but Dean should have known better, too, should have figured out more than he did.
But those are thoughts for later, and so: keep him talking.
"What was the dream about?" Dean says, tongue dragging in his mouth.
Flickering light from the parking lot catches on Sam's face. "I dreamed you were dead."
The bottom drops out of Dean's stomach. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. You know the other thing?"
"What?"
Sam grins. "You were dead because I killed you."
If he had had fewer close calls in his life, if Dad hadn't raised him how he did, if he hadn't spent the past twenty years in a constant state of training and the possibility of fear, he wouldn't be fast enough; but he is. He throws himself off the side of the bed as Sam stands and shoots, bullet ricocheting off the bed frame and embedding in the wall. Dean keeps his head down against his chest, presses flush against the side of the bed.
Since he was six years old Dean has catalogued every room he's entered for exits, cover and weapons the moment he entered it, and this room is no different. He has the image of the whole place in his mind instantly. The bed's the only cover, and Sam's got his gun. The rest of the guns are under the front of the bed, out of reach. His knife is on his belt, which is somewhere on Sam's side of the bed, near the bathroom. There's only one door to the outside, which is on Dean's side of the room, but he'd never make it the ten feet between here and the door without giving Sam a clear line of sight.
The bathroom is on the other side of the bed. Its door is beside the desk, and its only window is too small to get out; it's useless to him. There are two bay windows at the foot of the bed. Dean can't tell how the latches work from here, and anyway he'd never make it out in time. But the blinds aren't down, and his boots are beside the bed, and he has an idea.
He flips one of his boots towards the window and Sam squeezes off two shots, the window shattering. He doesn't need to hear the footfalls to know Sam drives forward as he shoots -- he always does, one long stride towards the threat -- and it's enough to put him around the corner of the bed, enough for Dean to lunge at him.
Sam's fast but he's faster. The shot goes wide, and Dean slaps the gun out of his hand. It skitters across the bathroom floor, hits the wall. Sam punches him in the jaw once, twice; Dean blocks the third punch but he's sloppy, doesn't retract his arm quickly enough, and Sam catches it, flips him to the floor and pins him, hands on his throat. Dean forces himself to go limp against his darkening panic, then rocks up hard. It's not enough to loose Sam's grip on his throat but he manages to get a hand free, stabs his fingers into Sam's kidney.
Sam hisses in pain, looses his hands, and Dean punches him in the jaw, gasps in a breath. He rolls to a crouch, throws himself at Sam, arms tucked in and head low. He punches him hard and fast, no sloppiness now, and it takes him far too long to realize Sam isn't fighting back.
"Dean," Sam says, ragged over his bloody lips, and Dean flies off him; it's Sam talking, his brother, it can't be anyone else--
Sam picks himself up and grins, and before Dean can figure out what he's grinning about Sam clocks him one upside the jaw and dives past him for the gun.
Stupid, but there's no time for that: he grabs for Sam's ankles, pulls him back and goes for the gun. Sam's got his hand on it but Dean's faster and better; he claws at Sam's back and at the gun, comes up with it, scrambles back and trains it on him.
Sam is panting, laughing, back on the floor. "You gonna do this, Dean? You really gonna kill me?"
Dean tightens his grip on the gun and doesn't say anything, and Sam's face shifts, eyes go hard and concentrating. "Dean," he rasps. "You have to do it."
He doesn't want to fall for this again, but he's not falling for anything: it's Sam, it's him. "No."
"Dean. You have to do it, you promised."
"I can't, Sam, goddammit!"
"Dean. I can't hold it much longer--"
And Dean's heard those words before, has seen this wild determination. He didn't kill Dad when he had the demon trapped and Dad begged him to, but maybe he should have; Dad died anyway. He wonders wildly if this is his second chance to do the thing, do it properly and right -- and maybe that's what they mean by destiny, Sam and Dad, the things from which you cannot escape, what Sam meant when he said they couldn't run forever, because this has caught up with him, all right.
Sam looks up at him, eyes wide and questioning and suddenly Dean knows, gut solidifying like iron, heavy and hard, and it slams into him, shifts into place. He stares Sam down and his arm is steady and his aim is true. He pulls the trigger.
-----
The first time he and Dad took him hunting Sam almost died.
He was ten, a year younger than Dean had been on his first hunt, but Dad had assured him that Dean's had been more dangerous. This was just a spirit, and not a particularly vengeful one at that -- but the house was in need of a wrecking ball, floorboards rotting through, and as he dove out of the way of the spirit Sam came down hard on a section of the floor that was ripe with water damage and fell through to the basement's concrete floor.
It wasn't as bad as it looked. He broke his wrist, cracked his head open and got a concussion, but it wasn't as bad as it looked, not even hospital bad; but even as Dad was telling him that Sam was going to be fine, Dean couldn't stop seeing him on the basement floor, pallid and blood-streaked, not unconscious but dead. Even after Sam coughed and puked up on the backseat of the Impala and the relief rushed into him, Dean saw Sam dead on the basement floor for days, the image imprinted in his dreams.
Sam wasn't dead. The wrist healed and the knob on his head healed and he wasn't dead, but he could have been. Nobody could have said it was Dean's fault, but he'd felt like it was, somehow, that he should have known that the rotting section of floor was there, that he should have pulled Sam out of the way of the ghost instead of just letting him jump; that Sam at odd angles on the basement floor was something he could have prevented, had he only done his job better, had he only been better--
But Sam wasn't dead, and it wasn't his fault, and he'd known that all along, really; it just took him a while to remember it.
-----
Dean's been heading west for six hours now, sunburn on his left arm and Creedence on the radio, singing along while Sam pretends to sleep. Sam's existence is still a minor miracle to him, the fact that he is solid and real.
Dean can't keep from tapping the steering wheel in time with the beat, looking over at Sam and grinning. Every once in a while he touches Sam's shoulder, his leg, just making sure he's not going to flicker out of focus like a ghost.
"Stop it," Sam mumbles somewhere past Dayton.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Touching me. Stop it."
But he's just bitching. He doesn't mean it, and when Dean grins over at him Sam doesn't quite manage not to smile back.
"How'd you know it was going to work?"
Dean turns back to the road. "How'd I know what was going to work?'
"Shooting me in the chest. That's not anywhere in Dad's journal, and I've never heard of it. How'd you know it would work?"
"I didn't." That's the simple answer: he didn't know. He'd dreamed of a three-eyed man who told him it was the answer. He'd just done it and hoped like hell, and that shouldn't have been enough but somehow it had been, it was. He'd nearly killed Sam, but he hadn't. He'd just been counting on his luck not to give out yet and somehow it had worked.
Sam frowns. "We don't know that it's gone. The evil or whatever it is."
"Nope," Dean agrees, but there's a lightness in his chest that hasn't been there in years; he feels like he might burst from it.
They're on their way back to Peoria, back to look for whatever crazy-ass thing it was Sam had sensed in Ava Wilson's backyard. It might be gone but Sam doesn't think so and that's good enough for Dean. They'll find Ava; they will.
-----
"You lied to me about the visions," Dean says, somewhere in Ohio.
Sam smiles ruefully. "Didn't lie. I just maybe didn't tell you everything."
"What was in the full-length version?"
"Everything through you shooting me."
"And you didn't tell me because you'd decided you were just going to let me shoot you. Jesus Christ."
Sam puts a hand on his shoulder. "Hey," he says softly. "You had to. At least, I thought you had to. How was I supposed to know you shooting me in the chest would do any good?"
"Yeah, okay, whatever," Dean says, but there's a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He's been a little giddy lately and he knows he's going to come down from it one of these days but right now he doesn't care. It's been a week and Sam hasn't had any visions. They don't know for sure that they won't come back, that Sam might not still turn bad, but Sam's with him on this again, willing to fight it through, and that's enough.
Sam squeezes his shoulder and lets go. When Dean looks over at him he's smiling. It's enough.
the end
Author: katjad
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Word Count: 10,969
Disclaimer: All characters, situations, etc. belong to Eric Kripke and others.
Summary: Sam stops telling Dean about his visions.
Author's Notes: Picks up immediately after 2x17 'Heart' and contains spoilers through that point. Thanks to sierraphoenix for looking this over. All places mentioned in this fic actually exist (yay Mapquest!) and all remaining errors are my own. Concrit is more than welcome.
The Placement of Water and Lead
After Sam comes in from Madison's kitchen and says, "It's done," they don't say another word. Dean gets on 80 outside of San Francisco and stays on it, bisects California and the whole of Nevada. He keeps hearing Nevada's beautiful, but he can't concentrate on it; it slides past his window for five hours and he barely notices it's gone.
The silence is alive in the car, breathing, and Dean's beginning to think it would be easier if it stayed with them forever, third passenger in the car; if they never spoke again.
But fifteen minutes past the Utah border, Sam bucks forward in his seat, hand to his forehead, and bites out, "Dean. Dean, I--"
Dean's got the car on the side of the road and Sam's door open before he's even thinking about it. Sam is wincing, gritting his teeth and clutching at his head.
Dean grabs him by the shoulder. "Sam! Talk to me."
Sam doesn't even try to shrug him off. "Can't. Fuck. Dean--"
It's the worst vision yet. Sam's left hand is at his temple, right hand clawing into the leather of the seat, and Dean keeps repeating, "It's okay, Sammy, it'll be okay," over Sam's low pained cries.
It seems to last forever and then it's over: Sam's hand drops from his head and he slumps back against the seat, eyes closed. "Fuck," he says, quietly but with feeling.
"Yeah. You all right?"
"Could you get me some aspirin?"
Dean leans over him to fish in the glove compartment. "How many?"
"Uh . . . thirty?"
Dean uncaps the bottle and hands him six. Sam sits up long enough to throw the pills back, then slides down into the seat. "Fuck," he repeats. Dean can't remember the last time he heard Sam say "fuck" so many times in such rapid succession.
"That bad, huh?"
Sam cracks an eye at him and apparently decides that Dean's not actually trying to be a smartass. "Yeah. That bad."
"So what happened? In the vision, I mean."
"I--" And then he shuts his eyes and it's like his whole face closes off. "Do you think you could give me a minute?"
Dean wants to say no, but instead he runs a hand through his hair and says, "Sure, Sammy." He walks a few feet further off the road, scuffs his boots against the ground. He gives Sam five minutes, then wanders back to the car. Sam still looks like he got hit with the bad end of the ugly stick, but at least he's sitting up now. Dean walks up to the passenger side and peers in at him.
"You all right?"
"Will you stop asking me that?" Sam snaps. "Yes, I'm all right. Can we get back on the road now?"
Dean starts to snap back at him, but then he catches the strain in Sam's voice and swallows whatever he was going to say. "Yeah, okay."
After fifteen minutes Sam says, "So where're we headed?"
"You tell me."
Sam turns to meet his gaze. "What?"
"Never mind." Dean shifts his eyes back to the road.
"What, Dean?"
"Nothing. Just -- you had that vision, Sam."
"What, you think I didn't notice?"
Dean ignores the bitching. "Well, shouldn't we be heading toward wherever you saw the vision and stop it from happening? What was it about, anyway?"
Sam laughs a little, brittlely. "It's not something we can do anything about."
"What do you mean, not something we can do anything about? We've been able to stop the others, haven't we?"
Sam shakes his head. "It wasn't that kind of vision. There's nobody we can run off and save here, Dean."
Would it really kill Sam to be straight-up with him for once in his goddamned life? "What was it, then?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Sam--"
"Just drop it, Dean." His jaw is set.
"Fine," Dean says, gripping and uncurling his fingers around the steering wheel. "Fine. Where are we going, then?"
"I don't know. You pick."
Dean grits his teeth and doesn't reply. He wants to hit something. Instead he turns Black Sabbath way up and guns the Impala.
-----
He stays on 80 straight through Salt Lake City and for another hour past it, edging into Wyoming. He's starting to think that maybe he could just drive forever, outdrive Madison and the demon and whatever the hell is happening to Sam--
"Exit here," Sam says.
The sign's for Evanston. "How come?"
"Because we're in the middle of nowhere, and we've been on the road since nine this morning and I'm tired. Is that good enough?"
"Fine," Dean says. It feels like every third word out of his mouth today has been "fine," and it's stupid, because it's not like trying to smooth things over instead of having an argument is actually going to make things better, but the number one rule has always been "take care of Sammy" and not picking a fight with him is the only way he can think of to do that right now, and it makes him feel useless, like he should be able to do something better.
Dean follows the signs for the Holiday Inn Express. Sam trails behind him into the lobby, and when Dean asks for a room with two queen beds the girl at the desk gives him a look. "We haven't got any left. Does one king-size work?"
It's just like that goddamned haunted hotel in Connecticut, Dean thinks, with their Let me guess. Antiquers? crap; and he wants to chew the girl out. But then he looks at Sam, and damned if it doesn't look like he's going to flip his shit any second now; Dean doesn't even know what it is that's setting him off now, but there's only so much he can deal with at once, and Sam's imminent freak-out is more pressing than this hotel clerk shit.
"Fine," he snaps. "Fine, sure, we'll take the king-size."
"Room 136," she says. Bitch actually smirks at him. Dean does not punch her. Sam's rigid at his side, but at least he's quiet, and Dean will take what he can get.
Once they're out of the lobby Dean hands Sam one of the keycards and says, "I'll meet you in the room, okay? I'll get the stuff."
Sam starts to shake his head no like a child, but then he says, "I -- okay," and goes docilely.
Immediately Dean thinks he shouldn't let him go, because something nutso is going on in that crazy head of his, something more nutso than the just having had to kill the first girl he'd slept with since Jess because it turned out she was a werewolf kind of nutso. But he lets Sam go, concentrates on getting everything out of the trunk as fast as he can: duffel bags, rock salt, guns, the whole works. Probably they don't need all of it, seeing as they're in the middle of shit nowhere, but with the way Sam is acting right now Dean doesn't want any surprises.
He closes the trunk and pockets the keys and reflexively checks the knife at his belt. He catches himself at it and is furious at himself. He didn't want to leave Sam alone, sure, because whatever's going on in Sam's head right now is not good news, but no matter what he finds when he goes in Room 136 he's still not going to fucking stick a knife in Sam. But he does put down all the gear to open the door, makes sure his hands are free.
He slides the keycard into the lock and the latch unclicks. He pushes the door open. Sam is sitting on the bed, looking calm, relieved even.
"Dude, what the fuck?" he says before he can stop himself.
"Sorry about before. In the lobby, I mean. It was just -- never mind. We're okay for now."
Dean doesn't miss the wording. "For now?"
"Yeah." Before Dean can get his mouth open to argue, Sam says, "Can we have this conversation tomorrow, d'you think?"
Dean stares at him for a beat. All this not-talking is bad news, and it's going to bite him in the ass one of these days, but he can't help it; he says the only thing he's been saying all fucking day. "Fine."
He starts to salt the windowsills to keep himself from kicking the goddamned wall. Behind him he can hear Sam taking off his shoes and lying down on the left side of the bed, furthest from the door. By the time Dean's finished burning sage and drawing runes on scraps of paper, taping them to the door, Sam is snoring softly. His face is soft, lines smoothed out in sleep, and when Dean thinks about how different he looks during the daytime it makes him want to hurt the whole damned universe. He means to stay awake for a while, keep an eye on Sam, but the weight of his worry carries him into sleep and down.
-----
Dean wakes up knowing something is wrong. He feels for the gun under his pillow and cracks an eye open. Sam isn't in bed. He's sitting at the table in the middle of the room, cleaning one of the automatics. Dean tells himself that that's it, that the fact that Sam isn't sleeping is only thing that's off. When Sam looks over at him and attempts a smile, he wants to believe it.
"Hey," Sam says. "You're awake."
"So're you." He looks pointedly at the gun in Sam's hands.
"I woke up around five, couldn't get back to sleep."
"Yeah." Dean pushes the covers off and digs around in the pile of clothes on the floor for his jeans. "You wanna get some food?"
Sam frowns. "Maybe after I finish with the guns. I'm not really hungry."
"Okay." Dean shuffles into the bathroom, splashes water on his face. The worry wound tight in his stomach diminishes but doesn't go away. Sam looked normal enough and sounded normal enough, sitting there oiling the gun, but he's not all right; Dean doesn't need this feeling in his gut to tell him that. Thing is, he doesn't know how deep the not-all-right goes.
He wishes he knew how this psychic shit worked. They'd always been a little too busy trying not to get themselves killed by the crazy-ass homicidal psychics to sit down and ask them how exactly one went about becoming a crazy-ass homicidal psychic, anyway. He wonders if it's anything like demonic possession, where the more emotional you are, the easier it is for demons to get in; but sometimes they can get in anyway, if they want it bad enough. Sam wasn't that fucked up when the Meg demon possessed him, nothing like he is now, but Dean doesn't even know if that's how it works at all, if the rules of demonic possession have a damned thing to do with it. He fucking hates not knowing things.
And there's another thought, worse: the only way he knew Gordon was wrong, that it wasn't Sam doing those things, was because of the feeling in his gut. And his gut's not feeling too goddamned good right now--
He pushes the thought down.
When he comes back in Sam's cleaning a rifle. "You ready for breakfast?" Dean says, watching Sam run his fingers down the line of the barrel.
Sam exhales heavily and puts the rifle down. "Yeah, sure."
There's a 24-hour waffle place at the truck stop five minutes down the road. Their waitress is named Candi, blonde, big boobs. Dean doesn't even try to flirt with her, but checking out waitresses is as deeply ingrained as salting the windowsills and the line of the doorjamb before bed and feeling for the knife at his belt. Sam frowns all the way through his Belgian waffles.
Dean relaxes halfway through his second cup of coffee, because at least this is something he's familiar with, Sam getting pissed about him checking out their waitresses.
"I was thinking we could maybe go back to Peoria," Sam says, dragging his fork through the syrup on his plate.
"Keep looking for Ava, you mean? D'you think there's something we missed?"
Sam frowns. "Yeah. And I don't know. Just a feeling I've got."
Dean nods: this is something to do, something good, something that's not actually a job. "How far's Peoria from here?"
Sam taps at his Palm Pilot. "A couple of days."
"Right. Might as well get going, then." He pays the bill and follows Sam out of the diner.
It's easy to believe Sam's okay. He's stretched out in the front seat, messing with his Palm Pilot and bitching about the music. Dean grins against the wind; you'd think a little musical taste would have rubbed off on Sam by now. For a while he pretends that everything is all right, pretends it so hard that it's almost true.
Except it isn't. Just past Sinclair, Wyoming, Sam moves his hand to his temple, a light sneaking touch he's trying to keep Dean from seeing, although of course Dean does. Fucking visions. They could have dealt with the rest of it, with Madison's death and Sam's freaky dark side shit, but the visions come out of nowhere and they can't ever be ready for them.
This isn't anything like the last vision, though, at least not from where Dean's sitting. Sam keeps his hand on his head for a few minutes and makes low hissing noises, but when Dean touches his shoulder Sam shrugs him off, so he's got to be more or less okay.
When the vision's over Sam sits up and winces a little. "Aspirin's still in the glove compartment?"
"Yeah."
He finds it and throws back what looks like half the bottle.
"Same vision as last time?"
"Yeah. Kind of."
Dean eases back on the accelerator. "Kind of?"
"Yeah."
"D'you think you could tell me what it was about?" He pitches his tone as carefully as he possibly can, and Sam still takes it the wrong way. Of fucking course.
"No," he snaps.
Sometimes Dean's real glad he's not psychic, because if he were, he would have just made something explode with his mind. Something like that minivan in front of him that hasn't let him pass for the past ten minutes. He thinks calming thoughts about explosions and the Impala roaring through them like that scene in Twister with the gas truck, and then he says tightly, "Why not?"
"I can't. I can't, Dean, okay?"
"No, it's fucking not okay, Sam. You can't keep this shit from me. Not if--" I'm going to protect you, he wants to say but doesn't, because that's been Sam's favorite argument recently, that Dean can't protect him from everything and certainly not from this, so if he's going to succeed at it he'd damned well better stop talking about it.
He doesn't say it, but Sam still hears him loud and clear, of course. He sets his jaw. "You don't need to know everything, Dean."
Dean grits his teeth. "Why not?"
"It doesn't matter. Just drop it."
"No. I'm not going to drop it, Sam. What part of 'this is my business, too' are you not getting?"
But Sam is a stubborn bastard. Not that Dean isn't, but that's another thing about the number one rule: "take care of Sammy" seems to have translated to "give Sam whatever he wants" most of the time, so Dean doesn't really have all that much practice at out-stubborning Sam. He's probably going to lose the stubbornness contest, but he's going down fighting, damn it.
Sam looks at him, puppy-eyes weary, and just like that the fight goes out of Dean. "This isn't over," he tells Sam, eyes on the road.
Sam sounds even more worn-out than ever. "Yeah. I know."
-----
Ellen calls around the time they cross into Nebraska. "There's a job for you in Mobile, Alabama, if you want it. Looks like a haunted house. You boys up for it?"
The small thrill at the idea of a job courses through him, but Sam's curled up against the window, drooling on his hoodie, and Dean doesn't even have to think twice. "We're already working on something, actually. You'd better give it to someone else."
They're still on 80; it's the road that never ends, a straight shot up to within a hundred miles of Ava's doorstep. Whatever the vision was that Sam had the other day, it doesn't really seem to be bothering him; he's not itchy, out-of-control, the way he usually is until they've taken care of whatever it was he'd had the vision about. He'd never have passed out in the car after a normal vision, and it's weird: Dean's got this feeling, like if he looks at Sam the right way, out of the corner of his eye when he's not really paying attention, that he'll be able to figure it out, all of it, what the vision was about and why Sam's keeping it from him. He wants to scratch at this feeling until he figures out why he's so certain in his gut, the same place where the fear curls, that the answer should be obvious.
He keeps driving well into the night.
-----
Dean doesn't dream often, or if he does he doesn't remember his dreams, but in Giltner, Nebraska, he dreams of a man with three eyes who shoots him in the chest and smiles. "There's your answer," he says, though Dean hasn't asked a question, and when Dean tries to tell him so all that comes out of his mouth is blood.
-----
The demon's been back to Peoria. There's nothing subtle about it. Sulphur chokes the air for a three-block radius around Ava's house.
"How long do you think it's been?" Dean says, rubbing sulphur from the windowsill between his fingertips.
Sam doesn't answer. He's staring out the window, houndlike.
"You find something?" Dean asks.
"I'm not sure." But he walks through the kitchen and out the screen door, his strides more purposeful now, heading towards the center of the backyard. He stops abruptly, frowning. "There's something," he begins. "It's like there's something here."
"What kind of something?"
"I don't know."
Dean examines the grass beneath his feet. It's maybe a little browner than the rest of the yard, but not in the perfect circle that means unholy ground, and there's nothing else to distinguish it. "Like something happened here?"
Sam takes a long time to reply. Dean scuffs at the ground with the toe of his boot. "No. Not like that. This isn't going to make any sense, but it's like there's a vision here. In the air or something."
"A vision in the air?" Dean repeats, dubiously.
Sam continues as if he hadn't said anything. "Only the thing is, I can't see it. It's like -- I know it's there, but I can't access it. It's like it's barely there, and if I think about it too hard it fades."
"Wait. You're trying to get a vision?"
Sam glares at him.
"Okay. Fine. It's not working when you think about it, so why don't you try not thinking about it so hard?"
Sam's glare deepens. "I'm trying."
"Maybe it'll help if we look around the rest of the place, yeah?"
They go back into the house, but there's nothing but sulphur and uneasiness settling low in Dean's gut. "I don't feel so good about this place," he says experimentally, just to check if the fear's still there after he's voiced it. It is. "You ever seen this much sulphur?"
Sam runs his fingers along the mantel. "No. There's nothing in here, Dean. Let's go back outside."
Sam's shaking as they head back through the house, and after a moment Dean realizes it's with excitement. He really thinks he's found something. Dean hopes like hell that this pans out; he doesn't think Sam could deal with it being nothing. And God damn him, because it's like he's jinxed it: Sam returns to the spot from before and his face hardens with confusion. "It's gone."
"Gone?"
"It's like it wasn't here at all. There's nothing. I was getting that clenching in my stomach before, Dean, and it felt like my head was about to split open any moment, like the headaches I get, except it didn't actually hurt yet, it was just like it was about to, and now it's not here. There's nothing. I'm in the right spot, aren't I?"
"Yeah."
"Maybe it moved." He starts pacing through the backyard, restless. "I don't feel it anywhere. It can't have just disappeared, though, can it, Dean?"
He sounds like he's four years old and he desperately wants Dean to tell him no, the thing's around here somewhere, has he looked in his duffel bag -- like it's one of his Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Dean has all the answers.
Dean swallows thickly. "I don't know, Sam."
Sam paces through the backyard, looking like he's in a cell and can't figure out how he got there. He stops every few steps and stares hard into the air. From the way his expression gets more determined by the minute, he's not having any luck. They should really get out of here; anyplace with this much sulphur around has got to be the clubhouse of the Really Fucking Evil Society or something, but he can't bring himself to tell Sam to quit.
Sam's muttering under his breath -- "I'll figure this out. I will." -- Dean wants to believe him, because someone who's trying that hard should be able to figure out anything they want to; but that's not the way things work.
Dean's trying to decide how to tell Sam that it's no use when the air goes still. It wasn't windy before, not exactly, but now there's no movement at all. There's nothing to be heard but Sam's footsteps, and fear spasms in Dean's gut. "Sam," he says, his voice low and urgent. "We've got to get out of here."
Sam looks at him confusedly for a moment, but then wind rushes in, too swift to be natural.
"Now, Sam."
He doesn't have to be told twice. The fear is rolling in Dean's stomach and the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with electricity. He grabs Sam by the arm and flat-out runs for the Impala, because whatever it is is big and nasty and coming for them fast and he does not want to be there when it arrives. His heart is still jackhammering five blocks away from Ava's house.
"Dean. Turn around."
"What the fuck?"
"We have to figure out what happened to Ava," Sam says doggedly. "Turn around."
"Not gonna happen. We'll figure it out some other way."
"How?"
"I don't know. We'll figure it out. But we're not going back there."
"Where are we going, then?"
"I don't know. Massachusetts. Amsterdam. Mars." The hysterical urge to laugh balloons in his chest.
"We can't just leave."
"Yes, Sam, we really can."
"We could have stayed."
"And done what? Stood there and waited for whatever that was to get there and said, 'Sorry, Mr. Demon, before you fucking waste us, could you tell us if you've seen Ava Wilson?'"
"Why are you doing this?" Sam's voice is low and furious.
"Trying to keep from getting us killed?"
"No. That's not what you're doing." Sam's staring at the side of Dean's head like he can read his goddamned mind. "The only chance we have to find Ava is in this town, and you're running because you're trying to, what, keep me from getting hurt--"
"When an unknown evil thing is about to rain down on your head you get out of the fucking way, Sam!"
"Not all the way to Massachusetts, you don't. Do you really think -- after Madison--" It's the first time he's said her name aloud since they left San Francisco. "I thought you understood. It catches up with you, Dean. At some point it catches up with you and--"
The sentence breaks off into a moan and Sam presses his hand against his forehead. Another vision, and Dean hates himself for being glad of the interruption. It's a bad one, too, Sam's hisses more like screams -- but they're barely ten minutes out of Peoria, and he can't stop the car this close to Ava's house. Sorry, Sam, he thinks, and pushes the pedal to the floor.
The vision doesn't last long, at least, though when it's over Sam looks like he hasn't slept in a week. He fumbles with the latch of the glove compartment.
Dean reaches out to rub Sam's shoulder, and he jumps like a scalded cat. "Jesus!"
"What was that about?"
Sam shrugs his hand away. "Nothing. Just -- don't touch me."
"Fine. Jesus. I guess you don't want to talk about this one, either, then?"
Sam's only reply is to throw back the rest of the bottle of aspirin. His hands shake as he tries to replace the cap, then gives up, drops the empty bottle and the cap on the floor.
Dean wants to press the issue, but then Sam turns towards the window and makes a big show of pulling his hood over his head and curling up to sleep. Dean drives on, jaw clenched, in silence.
-----
At some point Sam must have actually fallen asleep, because when Dean pulls into a Super 8 parking lot around ten that night, somewhere in Indiana, he stretches out, cat-like, still half-dreaming. He goes rigid at the sight of Dean.
"Oh, for Christ's sake," Dean says. "Seriously, dude, what the fuck?"
"It's nothing," Sam lies through his teeth. "Can we get some food?"
What Dean means to say is, "Not until you've told me what the fuck is going on," but then his stomach growls hugely and he remembers that they haven't eaten anything since McDonald's a little after one. "Fine."
There's a Chinese place across the street. They leave the Impala in the hotel parking lot and walk over. Dean spends the meal glaring at Sam through bites of spicy beef with broccoli. Sam wolfs down General Tsao chicken and stares determinedly in every direction but Dean's.
Finally Dean pushes back his plate and sighs. "C'mon. Let's go check in."
Sam follows him back to the Super 8 in silence. They don't say anything through check-in or even as they're getting things out of the car, but the moment they're in the room Dean can't help himself; he's at Sam's throat.
"You have to tell me about the visions, Sam. Now."
"Get away from me." Sam tries to push him away, but Dean pushes back, doesn't back down.
"No. Not 'til I've got answers."
"I'm not telling you. It's for--"
"It's for what?"
"Nothing," Sam insists, and he's lying. He's a good liar but not to Dean, and Dean shoves against him harder.
"Tell me."
"Get away from me."
"No."
"No, Dean. I mean it. Get away from me." Sam's voice is strained, pleading, and his face is flushed like he's been running. Dean meets his eyes, trying to figure out what's going on, and then Sam's mouth is on his. Sam's tongue is in his mouth, he's touching his fingers to Dean's arm, and there's something he should be comprehending, but for the life of him Dean can't figure out what it is. Then it makes it through his head: Sam is kissing him. He jerks away.
"What the fuck was that?" He doesn't mean for it to come out as loud as it does or as angry-sounding.
Sam slumps against the door like he's trying to become a part of the woodwork. "I told you to get away from me," he says wearily.
"That was. That was the crazy psychic thing, wasn't it?"
"I -- no. Maybe. Could you -- I really don't want to talk about this right now."
For once, Dean is completely in agreement. "I'll be outside, I guess."
What he really wants is to find a bar and get wasted to the point that he doesn't know his own name, but he can't. Instead he sits on the curb outside of the Super 8 and does his best to think about nothing at all. He wishes he smoked; it would give him something to do with his hands, something to concentrate on, but he doesn't smoke, and finally his resolve breaks.
Sam kissed him. Straight-up kissed him on the mouth, and it was like any other kiss, except that no girl Dean's ever kissed has had a mouth that big and also, none of them has ever been his younger brother.
It's not like he should have been expecting this, should he? It's not like it's something that's been going on for a long time. Sam hero-worshipped him when they were younger, but it wasn't anything like that, was it? And Christ, if there's a conversation in the world that he less wants to have than the one that begins, "So Sam, you, uh, haven't had a crush on me all these years, have you?" Dean hopes he never finds out what it is.
He wishes there were another word than crush for this. A crush is the word for how you feel about the girl who sits in front of you in homeroom, not whatever it is that makes you want to kiss your brother. No, the word for this is incest, a weight settling heavy in his stomach.
This can't have been happening for long; there's just no way. He's been around Sam for almost two solid years, and in all that time Dean has never once seen Sam looking at him like that. He knows Sam better than he knows anyone in the world, better than he knows himself; if something like that were going on, he would have noticed.
But is that really true? Before Sam went to Stanford he wouldn't have hesitated to say yes. He'd known absolutely everything there was to know about Sam. But then he left for Stanford, and Dean saw him exactly once in four years; driving through Palo Alto and watching Sam's shadow move across the apartment window didn't count. Four years is a long time, and while Dean doesn't think Sam has it in him to learn how to keep something of this magnitude hidden, they were apart for four years, and he can't be sure. He's just got to hope he knows Sam well enough to be right about this.
-----
Sometimes when Dean thinks things through, his gut tightens into a dense leaden ball and he understands things that he didn't know before. He tried to explain the feeling to Sam, once, right after Sam first told him about the visions, but this is nothing like the visions. Sam's visions are about things he couldn't possibly know, that push into his mind uninvited; the lead in Dean's gut is made up of the things he already knows coming together until they fit, until they make obvious what he almost knew before and couldn't put his finger on.
He's never gotten this feeling often; his life has been all about guesswork lately, about dumb luck and keeping his fingers crossed and his weapons clean, but his gut tightens into the leaden ball now and he knows with absolute certainty that what happened earlier has something to do with Sam's vision, the one he had in the car as they were trying to put Peoria in the dust, and that whatever the connection is, it can't be good.
He heads back inside. Sam's asleep, drooling on his pillow. Dean's first instinct is to let him be, but they've put off talking too many times already. He shakes Sam's shoulder.
He comes awake easily and doesn't start at Dean's touch, but his eyes, even sleep-filled, are wary.
"We need to talk," Dean says. Sam sits up to make space for him on the bed, and Dean sits, hyperaware of where Sam's legs end, and this is so beyond fucked up.
"Okay," Sam says slowly. "What do you want to talk about?"
"What happened earlier, to start."
"I told you to get away from me." Sam presses at his eyes with the back of his hand.
"I know. Why'd you say it?"
"Why do you think?"
"You tell me, Sam."
He doesn't reply.
Dean's not actually trying to make this any harder on either of them than it already is; he's not trying to keep an ace in the hole. "It's got something to do with the visions, doesn't it? You had a vision yesterday morning. It's got something to do with that."
Sam still isn't saying anything, but it's a different kind of silence than before: he's waiting for the right question, Dean realizes. Sam's waiting for him to put together the last of what he knows. Instead, Dean says, "Tell me what the vision was about."
"I already did."
"What?"
"I already told you," Sam repeats, pressing at his eyes again, like he's willing Dean to understand whatever it is he isn't saying. And maybe they've spent too much time together, because suddenly he does: Sam might not have told him what had happened in the vision, but he'd showed him.
Dean is quiet for a minute, processing. "That wasn't," he begins, struggling to find the words he wants. "That wasn't the exact thing you saw in the vision, though. It wasn't the vision coming true, I mean."
Sam's eyes are bright in the darkness and his hair is sticking up stupidly, sleep-messed. "Has it occurred to you," he says slowly, "that there might be a good reason why I haven't been talking to you about the visions?"
"It hadn't, actually."
He smiles wearily. "Why am I not surprised? Look, Dean. What happened before -- it's not gonna happen again. Just stay away from me and it'll be okay."
It takes Dean a minute to process what Sam said, what he means by it, but after he does he splutters, "Wait, whoa, time out, buddy. You're still gonna have to tell me about the visions."
Sam gapes at him. "Did you not understand anything I just said? Dean, I'm not telling you about this. I can't. Can't you just let this be?"
"No," Dean says. "No. You're gonna tell me. I'm not gonna let you do this, Sam."
"You're a goddamn stubborn bastard, Dean, do you know that?" But there's no real malice in the words, only frustration. Dean meets his eyes and watches as something in them shifts into place, a decision and a heavy sadness. "All right," he says. "All right. I'll tell you. The visions? They've been about us, Dean."
"About us doing what?"
Sam's eyes bore into him like he's willing Dean to read his mind, but he can't, he's not that good.
"You're gonna have to spell it out for me, Sam."
Sam exhales. "Yeah. I know." The corner of his mouth curves in and he makes a vague hand motion. "We were. Um." He runs a hand through his hair and it sticks up at crazy angles. He meets Dean's eyes. "We were fucking."
There isn't any air in the room. "What?"
"I wouldn't joke about this," Sam says flatly.
"I -- yeah. I know." He doesn't say anything for a minute, tries to fit ordinary thoughts back into his head. "Your visions. They don't always come true, y'know? And -- and it's not like this is going to happen."
They're silent for a moment, then: "You wanted to know," Sam says finally, as if Dean hadn't spoken. "And now you do. I'm going back to bed now, if that's okay."
Dean glances at the clock. It's still the middle of the night. "Sure. Hey, Sam?"
Sam pauses halfway through rolling over. "Yeah?"
"Those other visions. Since San Francisco. They were about that, too?"
"Same vision, yeah." He pulls the comforter over his head. "G'night, Dean."
"G'night." Dean lies down on top of his bed, fully clothed, and does not sleep the rest of the night. He doesn't think Sam does, either.
-----
They don't talk about it in the morning. Dean gets back on 80-East just for a direction to head in, but he's itchy now, starting to reconsider his certainty that they weren't ready to take another job. That's the problem, he's beginning to think. They've had downtime before, and it was fine, but right now they need to do something that isn't just with each other; they've spent so long together that they're going insane.
He calls Ellen while Sam's in a truck stop bathroom, but someone else has already taken the Alabama haunted house job and she doesn't have anything else lined up. She must hear something in his voice, because she says, "Why don't you boys come by the Roadhouse for a few days? We've got a couple of spare rooms out back."
Dean says no without hesitation. The only thing they need less than the current situation is for someone who knows them to be around to observe the current situation. He keeps on driving. He's still heading towards Massachusetts; he doesn't know why, there's nothing for them there, but he'd mentioned it that once and now he's got it in his head and it doesn't really matter. Massachusetts doesn't really seem far enough, though. Amsterdam might be. Or Mars.
He's not planning on stopping for any length of time 'til nightfall, but around 1:30 his stomach rumbles so loudly he can hear it over Metallica. He pulls over in Cambridge, Ohio and parks outside of the first diner he sees. His palms are sweating; he wipes them on his jeans and heads inside. Sam follows him in.
It's crowded; the only table left is by the window, but Dean's glad of the noise. Their waitress is in her forties, dyed red hair cut short and a huge wad of gum in her mouth. Dean orders meatloaf. It looks like the kind of place that would have good meatloaf, probably somebody's mother's secret recipe, and his stomach growls in appreciation at the thought. Sam gets roast beef.
The food comes quickly, and Dean's right: the meatloaf is awesome, bacon on top and smothered in ketchup, mashed potatoes and gravy on the side and not a vegetable in sight. He likes this place better by the second. Sam seems to be enjoying the roast beef, although damned if Dean isn't going to kill him if he scrapes his knife across the plate like that one more time.
He looks up from the meatloaf to tell him so, only he never makes it to Sam's face: he gets stuck on the curve of Sam's wrist, the way his veins stick out as he's gripping the knife, and he doesn't know what the fuck is going on but suddenly he's harder than he's ever been in his life. He forces his eyes back down and stabs at his meatloaf and tries to remember how to breathe. When he was sixteen he could have gotten hard over anything and did, but he's not sixteen anymore and what the fuck is this about?
"Dean?" Sam says, and Dean realizes he's been sawing at the meatloaf so hard it's slopping off the plate.
He looks up to explain that it's nothing, but at the concern on Sam's face his cock twitches, and that's it. "I'll be right back," he says, hoping like hell he sounds normal, and makes a break for the bathroom. Before he gets the chance to think about what he's doing he's in the lone stall with his jeans down around his ankles and his cock in hand. Three pulls and he's coming, panting against the side of the stall.
This is so far beyond fucked up that there isn't even a word for it. He pulls the flask of holy water out of his jacket pocket and splashes some on his hand to see if he's possessed, but nothing happens. A curse, then, he thinks, except they haven't come into contact with any cursed objects in months, and he's never in his life heard of a curse with this kind of delayed-action. Doesn't mean it can't still exist, but from the way his stomach's roiling he doesn't think so.
He splashes cold water on his face and wills his pulse to slow down. He's still trying to work himself up to going back into the diner when the door opens and Sam's standing there. "Dean? You okay?"
"I'm fine," he says firmly, more trying to convince himself of it than anything else. He doesn't have much success. He pushes past Sam back into the diner and pays with cash, has the Impala's engine running before Sam's even in the parking lot. He doesn't look as Sam gets in and then he's back on the road, Metallica blasting as loud as it will go.
Dean's beginning to think that maybe he understands what Sam meant when he said there was a reason he was keeping the visions from him. Because Dean never would have thought about this sort of thing before, but now that Sam's mentioned it it's like a light's gone on in his head. He's not gay, and he's definitely not gay for his brother, but Sam mentioned it, so of course he'd be thinking about it. It's just urges or something. It's been a couple weeks since he got laid; he just needs to pick up a girl and he'll be fine.
And anyway, none of Sam's visions have come all the way true. They've come pretty damned close a few times, but he and Sam have always made it in time to stop them before. There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to stop this one, too.
-----
Sam sleeps most of the day, or fakes it. Usually Dean would be able to tell the difference from the rhythm of his breathing, but the music's cranked so loud that he can barely hear his own thoughts over the thumping bass line and he's not turning it down. Possibly ever.
He makes good time; they're in Allentown, Pennsylvania by nightfall. Dean pulls into the Howard Johnson parking lot and kills the engine. There's still a bit of light from the setting sun. Sam gets out of the car and stretches, his t-shirt riding up over his hips, and Dean can't stop himself from staring at the V of muscles disappearing beneath his jeans. Dean's mouth is dry and his cock is hard and he is well and truly fucked.
Dean slams the car door shut and prays to anything that might be listening to get him through this. "Just wait here," he says, tongue like wool. "I'll get the room."
Sam, still half-asleep, doesn't argue. Dean gets a room on Michael Atwood's Platinum VISA and retrieves his duffel from the trunk, gives Sam the keycard. He's careful not to let Sam's hand touch his and he's sure that Sam notices; Sam's always been aware of that sort of thing, but he can't help it; his nerves are singing and he's pretty sure that if he touched Sam he would actually explode.
Sam unlocks the door and pushes into the room. He doesn't even turn the light on before he goes rigid, stops breathing.
"What?" Dean moves up behind Sam and hits the switch and oh for the love of God. He'd been concentrating too hard on not thinking about things when he was paying for the room to remember to say what kind of room he wanted, and if there were ever a time in the world when the gay thing was not at all funny, it's right now.
It's okay. He puts his stuff down on the side of the bed nearest the door. It'll be okay. They can just draw a line down the middle of the bed, like the 38th Parallel or the Mason-Dixon Line, something that cannot be crossed, and everything will be fine. Sam snaps out of whatever trance he was in and puts his stuff down on the other side of the bed and it's fine. As long as they don't talk about it at all, don't acknowledge it in any way, they'll be fine. Except that he might be kind of hysterical.
Dean takes off his shoes and nothing else, and lays down carefully on top of the bed. Sam goes into the bathroom. Dean can hear the toilet flush and the sound of Sam brushing his teeth and as long as they don't make any sudden movements, everything will be fine.
He's still trying to convince himself of that when Sam slams his hand against the door and cries out, "Dean." Dean's at the bathroom door before he's even thinking about it, pulling at the knob. Inside Sam is hissing, and of course he would lock the goddamned door before having a vision.
"Sam! You've gotta unlock the door, I can't get in 'til you do," he says, keeps repeating something on the same theme until it gets through to Sam and the bolt turns in the lock. Sam's on the floor, fingers tangled in his hair, clutching at his skull and rocking. Dean pulls him out of the tiny, porcelain-hard bathroom, and into the room, onto the carpet, but the vision just won't end; he's practically howling now, and Dean stops thinking entirely and pulls Sam into his arms and close.
It's like trying to hold onto eight miles of octopus but he doesn't know what else to do, just clings to Sam and whispers to him, "It'll be okay, come on, Sam, I'm here, I'm here, it'll be over soon," and finally Sam stills and then goes rigid, tries to disentangle himself from Dean, but he's wiped out from the vision and when Dean doesn't let go easily Sam stops trying and slumps against him. Dean's still whispering; he doesn't know why he hasn't stopped yet. He loosens his grip a bit -- Sam's not going anywhere -- and pats Sam's shoulder and says, "It'll be okay, Sam. It's okay."
Sam lets out a shuddering breath. "Dean."
"Yeah?" He's still patting Sam's shoulder; it seems to be helping and that's the only thing that matters.
"You have to kill me if I ask you to."
Dean freezes, then keeps patting Sam's shoulder. "No."
"Do you know what this vision was about?" Sam's voice is low. "I was killing people. Hunters, mostly, but others, too, people who didn't do anything, and I was killing them, dozens of people -- and I liked it, Dean. I liked killing them. I was laughing and shooting them and the demon was pleased. He was saying I'd finally started doing what I was born to do, fulfilling my destiny and carrying out his plans, and I wanted to do it, Dean, I wanted to kill them--"
Dean grips his wrist, shakes him. "You aren't going to do that, Sam. I'm not gonna let you."
"You're right," Sam says. "You're not. Look at me, Dean."
He does. Sam's face is pinched and scary.
"You can't let this happen. Do you understand? When I ask you to shoot me, you have to do it. You can't let this happen."
He cuts his eyes away. "Sam--"
"You have to promise me, Dean. Promise you'll shoot me when I ask you to."
"I can't."
"Yes, you can. You have to. Dean."
Dean meets his eyes again and he looks worse than when Jessica died, worse than Madison or Dad. He still isn't crying, but his face is crumpled, and Dean would do anything to make that look disappear.
He wonders how long Dad knew about Sam. He wonders if he's been interpreting "take care of Sammy" wrong all along; if this was what Dad always meant. He hates the ambiguity of the words, but the need is raw in Sam's eyes and Dean doesn't have it in himself to keep from him something he so clearly needs.
"Dean," Sam says, curled against his chest, and something breaks in Dean: a kidney, maybe, a lung, something essential.
"Okay." He says it low and against Sam's head; it shouldn't be audible but he knows Sam hears him. "Okay." And then, because the deal isn't made until he's said the words aloud, he says, "If you ask me to. To shoot you. I'll do it. I'll do it, I'll--" He can't keep talking. His throat clamps down around the words. He's still clinging to Sam; he can't let go of him. He's got this idea that as long as he's holding onto Sam that nothing can happen to him; he won't let it.
But one of them shifts. He knows they can't stay in that position forever, but one of them shifts; he doesn't know which, and Sam gets turned around so he's facing Dean. Sam's eyes flick down to his mouth and Dean kisses him. It's not on purpose and he means to pull back but then Sam's mouth opens over his and Sam moans and presses into him and he needs this, needs Dean. Dean can't stop him, doesn't want to. He'll give Sam anything in the world but he's selfish, too, and he's not stopping this.
Sam's tongue is in his mouth. It shouldn't feel natural, but it doesn't feel wrong and the craziest idea moves through his head, like they were always going to come to this and they only needed the push -- but anyway there's no need to think. He pulls Sam down on top of him. Sam groans, rocks his hips against Dean's and Sam's cock presses against his thigh, hard through his jeans, and there need to be less clothes. Dean slides his hand between them, fumbles with his belt.
"Here," Sam says against his mouth. "Let me." Sam bites his jaw, rocks back and Dean's jeans are off. Dean gets Sam's shirt over his head, pulls off his own, bits Sam's lower lip, his neck. Sam pulls him to the floor, stretches out and slides his fingers over Dean's stomach and down past the elastic of his boxers, fists his cock.
Dean's vision goes black when Sam flicks his wrist but somehow he gets Sam's boxers off and he's beautiful, all of him, cock long and angry red, and when he takes it in his hand and pulls Sam bites out, "Dean," gravelly and broken, and Dean comes with Sam's mouth on his neck and Sam's fingers on his cock. He grips Sam harder and pulls and Sam's coming, too, biting down on his neck, shuddering against his side, and they pant against each other for a while, a year at least, and then Dean wipes his hand on Sam's jeans.
"Fucker," Sam says, smiling against his chest. Somehow they make it to the bed and Sam curls up against him and falls asleep all over him, and for a moment Dean has himself convinced that everything will be okay.
----
Dean wakes up and knows that something is wrong. He's awoken to sick curling fear before, and the force of his training takes over: he keeps his eyes closed and his breathing steady and slow, shifts as though in sleep to reach up under the pillow for his gun.
The gun is gone.
His heart is going triple-time, but he forces himself to stay still, because he doesn't have his gun and he's not going to go getting himself killed making any sudden movements. He rolls over slowly and sits up, blinks his eyes open.
It's still the middle of the night; that's the first thing he notices. The second thing is that Sam's sitting at the desk chair in the corner, facing the bed, turning Dean's gun over in his hands.
Dean stays still for a moment, making sure it's clear he's awake, no surprises, and then says, "Sam." He doesn't know what's going on here; it could still be nothing. He keeps his voice calm.
"I was having the weirdest dream," Sam says slowly, the words overly pronounced like he's drunk or in a trance.
Keep him talking, Dean thinks, and as soon as he's thought it he wishes the words gone. His instincts may be screaming but he was trying to keep his head separate from the fear in his gut, remember that Sam's just running the gun through his hands like a deck of cards, that it could still be nothing; but keep him talking was Dad's universal advice for all order of psychotics and now that the thought's in his head Dean can't avoid the next one: Sam knew something like this was going to happen. He knew, and that's why he'd made Dean promise earlier. He knew.
And that thought is followed by the next: Sam said the vision had been of them fucking, and they had; but he'd never said that that was all of the vision. That wasn't all Sam saw. Goddamn him, but Dean should have known better, too, should have figured out more than he did.
But those are thoughts for later, and so: keep him talking.
"What was the dream about?" Dean says, tongue dragging in his mouth.
Flickering light from the parking lot catches on Sam's face. "I dreamed you were dead."
The bottom drops out of Dean's stomach. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. You know the other thing?"
"What?"
Sam grins. "You were dead because I killed you."
If he had had fewer close calls in his life, if Dad hadn't raised him how he did, if he hadn't spent the past twenty years in a constant state of training and the possibility of fear, he wouldn't be fast enough; but he is. He throws himself off the side of the bed as Sam stands and shoots, bullet ricocheting off the bed frame and embedding in the wall. Dean keeps his head down against his chest, presses flush against the side of the bed.
Since he was six years old Dean has catalogued every room he's entered for exits, cover and weapons the moment he entered it, and this room is no different. He has the image of the whole place in his mind instantly. The bed's the only cover, and Sam's got his gun. The rest of the guns are under the front of the bed, out of reach. His knife is on his belt, which is somewhere on Sam's side of the bed, near the bathroom. There's only one door to the outside, which is on Dean's side of the room, but he'd never make it the ten feet between here and the door without giving Sam a clear line of sight.
The bathroom is on the other side of the bed. Its door is beside the desk, and its only window is too small to get out; it's useless to him. There are two bay windows at the foot of the bed. Dean can't tell how the latches work from here, and anyway he'd never make it out in time. But the blinds aren't down, and his boots are beside the bed, and he has an idea.
He flips one of his boots towards the window and Sam squeezes off two shots, the window shattering. He doesn't need to hear the footfalls to know Sam drives forward as he shoots -- he always does, one long stride towards the threat -- and it's enough to put him around the corner of the bed, enough for Dean to lunge at him.
Sam's fast but he's faster. The shot goes wide, and Dean slaps the gun out of his hand. It skitters across the bathroom floor, hits the wall. Sam punches him in the jaw once, twice; Dean blocks the third punch but he's sloppy, doesn't retract his arm quickly enough, and Sam catches it, flips him to the floor and pins him, hands on his throat. Dean forces himself to go limp against his darkening panic, then rocks up hard. It's not enough to loose Sam's grip on his throat but he manages to get a hand free, stabs his fingers into Sam's kidney.
Sam hisses in pain, looses his hands, and Dean punches him in the jaw, gasps in a breath. He rolls to a crouch, throws himself at Sam, arms tucked in and head low. He punches him hard and fast, no sloppiness now, and it takes him far too long to realize Sam isn't fighting back.
"Dean," Sam says, ragged over his bloody lips, and Dean flies off him; it's Sam talking, his brother, it can't be anyone else--
Sam picks himself up and grins, and before Dean can figure out what he's grinning about Sam clocks him one upside the jaw and dives past him for the gun.
Stupid, but there's no time for that: he grabs for Sam's ankles, pulls him back and goes for the gun. Sam's got his hand on it but Dean's faster and better; he claws at Sam's back and at the gun, comes up with it, scrambles back and trains it on him.
Sam is panting, laughing, back on the floor. "You gonna do this, Dean? You really gonna kill me?"
Dean tightens his grip on the gun and doesn't say anything, and Sam's face shifts, eyes go hard and concentrating. "Dean," he rasps. "You have to do it."
He doesn't want to fall for this again, but he's not falling for anything: it's Sam, it's him. "No."
"Dean. You have to do it, you promised."
"I can't, Sam, goddammit!"
"Dean. I can't hold it much longer--"
And Dean's heard those words before, has seen this wild determination. He didn't kill Dad when he had the demon trapped and Dad begged him to, but maybe he should have; Dad died anyway. He wonders wildly if this is his second chance to do the thing, do it properly and right -- and maybe that's what they mean by destiny, Sam and Dad, the things from which you cannot escape, what Sam meant when he said they couldn't run forever, because this has caught up with him, all right.
Sam looks up at him, eyes wide and questioning and suddenly Dean knows, gut solidifying like iron, heavy and hard, and it slams into him, shifts into place. He stares Sam down and his arm is steady and his aim is true. He pulls the trigger.
-----
The first time he and Dad took him hunting Sam almost died.
He was ten, a year younger than Dean had been on his first hunt, but Dad had assured him that Dean's had been more dangerous. This was just a spirit, and not a particularly vengeful one at that -- but the house was in need of a wrecking ball, floorboards rotting through, and as he dove out of the way of the spirit Sam came down hard on a section of the floor that was ripe with water damage and fell through to the basement's concrete floor.
It wasn't as bad as it looked. He broke his wrist, cracked his head open and got a concussion, but it wasn't as bad as it looked, not even hospital bad; but even as Dad was telling him that Sam was going to be fine, Dean couldn't stop seeing him on the basement floor, pallid and blood-streaked, not unconscious but dead. Even after Sam coughed and puked up on the backseat of the Impala and the relief rushed into him, Dean saw Sam dead on the basement floor for days, the image imprinted in his dreams.
Sam wasn't dead. The wrist healed and the knob on his head healed and he wasn't dead, but he could have been. Nobody could have said it was Dean's fault, but he'd felt like it was, somehow, that he should have known that the rotting section of floor was there, that he should have pulled Sam out of the way of the ghost instead of just letting him jump; that Sam at odd angles on the basement floor was something he could have prevented, had he only done his job better, had he only been better--
But Sam wasn't dead, and it wasn't his fault, and he'd known that all along, really; it just took him a while to remember it.
-----
Dean's been heading west for six hours now, sunburn on his left arm and Creedence on the radio, singing along while Sam pretends to sleep. Sam's existence is still a minor miracle to him, the fact that he is solid and real.
Dean can't keep from tapping the steering wheel in time with the beat, looking over at Sam and grinning. Every once in a while he touches Sam's shoulder, his leg, just making sure he's not going to flicker out of focus like a ghost.
"Stop it," Sam mumbles somewhere past Dayton.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Touching me. Stop it."
But he's just bitching. He doesn't mean it, and when Dean grins over at him Sam doesn't quite manage not to smile back.
"How'd you know it was going to work?"
Dean turns back to the road. "How'd I know what was going to work?'
"Shooting me in the chest. That's not anywhere in Dad's journal, and I've never heard of it. How'd you know it would work?"
"I didn't." That's the simple answer: he didn't know. He'd dreamed of a three-eyed man who told him it was the answer. He'd just done it and hoped like hell, and that shouldn't have been enough but somehow it had been, it was. He'd nearly killed Sam, but he hadn't. He'd just been counting on his luck not to give out yet and somehow it had worked.
Sam frowns. "We don't know that it's gone. The evil or whatever it is."
"Nope," Dean agrees, but there's a lightness in his chest that hasn't been there in years; he feels like he might burst from it.
They're on their way back to Peoria, back to look for whatever crazy-ass thing it was Sam had sensed in Ava Wilson's backyard. It might be gone but Sam doesn't think so and that's good enough for Dean. They'll find Ava; they will.
-----
"You lied to me about the visions," Dean says, somewhere in Ohio.
Sam smiles ruefully. "Didn't lie. I just maybe didn't tell you everything."
"What was in the full-length version?"
"Everything through you shooting me."
"And you didn't tell me because you'd decided you were just going to let me shoot you. Jesus Christ."
Sam puts a hand on his shoulder. "Hey," he says softly. "You had to. At least, I thought you had to. How was I supposed to know you shooting me in the chest would do any good?"
"Yeah, okay, whatever," Dean says, but there's a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He's been a little giddy lately and he knows he's going to come down from it one of these days but right now he doesn't care. It's been a week and Sam hasn't had any visions. They don't know for sure that they won't come back, that Sam might not still turn bad, but Sam's with him on this again, willing to fight it through, and that's enough.
Sam squeezes his shoulder and lets go. When Dean looks over at him he's smiling. It's enough.
the end