Contact 14
Title: Contact 14/36
Author: Deanish
Rating: PG13
Length: 2,800 / 60,700 words
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam/Jess (but I'd still say it's more gen than het)
Summary: A 'what might have been.' What if the demon had stayed in hibernation for just a little longer?
Chapter 14
The dream persisted for about a week, then inexplicably stopped. Sam wondered about it - what had triggered it, why it kept coming back and, then, why it stopped - but not for long. Jessica slept like a normal person, like a person not trained from age 7 to expect trouble, so she never woke up to question Sam about it. And Sam didn’t think it warranted mention. Soon he had forgotten all about it.
But then it happened again.
It wasn’t the same dream, but it felt similar, and he was once again sitting up in bed, panting and trying to piece together his memories.
This time, instead of a blonde woman in a gray house, there had been a man in an old car, pulling into a garage late at night. And then … something happened. The car doors locked themselves and the engine ignited. The garage began filling up with fumes and the man began struggling. Sam shuddered. It had been … horrible … to watch. He could smell the exhaust. And the man’s gasps - Sam’s nightmares were enough to give Sam nightmares.
He sat on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands. Where, where, had that come from? What was going on in Sam’s subconscious that would cause him to dream violent deaths for total strangers? He tried to analyze it using what he’d learned in freshman psychology, but he came up dry.
‘After all, it hadn’t been criminal psychology,’ he thought, darkly. He wondered if serial killers dreamed of death and danger in gory cinematic detail. He didn’t remember reading that they did, but then it seemed more likely than the idea that this was normal.
Sam cringed, feeling sick to his stomach.
He glanced over at Jessica, momentarily considering waking her. But instead he got up and walked to the bathroom.
Luckily, however, he didn’t actually have to pee. If he had, he might have wet himself when a voice behind him croaked, “Dude. Lights,” as soon as he flipped said lights on.
Sam spun around, banging into the door in the process. He clamped a hand over his now-bloody nose and exclaimed, “Dean!”
At which a vague lump on the couch mumbled, “Dude. Noise.”
Sam’s mouth fell open as he tried to put the pieces together. He was sure Dean hadn’t been there when he went to bed. Granted, he was feeling a little muzzy from the dream, but he’d remember that. He hadn’t seen his brother in more than a month - not since the bachelor’s party, actually. And he hadn’t talked to him in more than a week. Dean was supposed to be back in a couple more weeks for a tuxedo fitting, but Sam was certain Dean was not supposed to be on his couch right now.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in, it must be admitted, somewhat shrill confusion.
Dean growled in response. “Trying to sleep. Emphasis on trying.”
“But how did you get in?”
At that, Dean cracked one eye and shot a Sam a look fill with as much ridicule as most people could hold in two eyes. Sam rolled both of his own.
“You broke into my apartment?”
Dean growled again and rolled over, clearly trying to escape the conversation.
“Dean! What are you doing here?”
The growl was louder this time, but Dean finally sat up, evidently concluding - correctly - that Sam wasn’t going to take his … well, hints was too mild a term.
“You said I could come visit anytime,” he accused.
“Yeah, but the invitation didn’t extend to your lock pick,” Sam shot back.
“Well, it was late,” Dean ground out. “I didn’t want to wake you. Apparently I’m the considerate brother.”
Sam would have snorted at that if it hadn’t been 4 a.m. Since it was, however, he just grew more incredulous.
“Dean!” he said again. “What if I’d heard you? I could have come out swinging a baseball bat or pointing a gun!”
Dean apparently didn’t have a problem snorting at 4 a.m.
“Dude. I haven’t even left the couch and your nose is bloody. Can’t say I’m feeling the threat.”
Not being able to argue with that, Sam gave the conversation up as lost. He turned back to the bathroom, wet a washcloth to clean himself up with and ambled back into the living room. Maybe he could start over.
“So, what are you doing here?” he asked in a lower octave and a less-accusatory tone. He sat down on the coffee table in front of the couch and tried not to look impatient.
“Eh,” Dean said through a yawn. “You know. Same old, same old.”
He stretched, but there was something stiff about it that caught Sam’s attention. And now that he looked, even in the dim light from the bathroom something seemed off about Dean’s face, too.
He reached over and turned on a nearby lamp.
“Dean!” he was back to squealing. What was it about Dean that brought that out in him? “What happened? You look like … ” He trailed off, unable to come up with an adequate simile. “ … Crap,” he finally settled on.
It looked like the whole right side of Dean’s face was doing its best imitation of a Monet painting - all blues and greens and purples running together. Except for the red pouring out of his split lip.
“You’re bleeding on my couch,” Sam pointed out.
“Yeah, well. You’re one to talk,” Dean said with a significant look at Sam’s nose. Sam sighed, but offered Dean the blood-stained washcloth. Dean gave him a look of utter disgust and wiped his lip on his shirtsleeve.
“I was a couple of towns over dealing with a spirit. Things got a little … dicey. But nothing I couldn’t handle. And I decided to save myself a few bucks by visiting my awesome little brother.”
He backed that story up with a crocodile smile that Sam didn’t buy for a minute.
“When has flattery ever gotten you anywhere?” he asked.
The smile morphed into a smirk. “What? You’re gonna’ throw me out?” Dean replied.
“If I thought it would work,” Sam returned. “Just … clean up the blood in the morning.”
At that, he got up and made to return to bed.
“Hey,” Dean called out. “Wait.”
Sam turned around.
“You OK? You look a little … sick.”
Sam grimaced, remembering why he was up to begin with. He suddenly wasn’t so eager to go back to bed. But he wasn’t about to tell Dean he couldn’t sleep because of bad dreams. He’d stopped doing that more than a decade ago.
Instead he converted the grimace into a scoff.
“Yeah, well, your face is nauseating.”
He must have pulled it off, because Dean suddenly grinned manically at him.
“Yeah, well, you look somebody threw up on your face.”
Sam groaned. It was an old game, started when Sam was too young to keep up with Dean in the cut down department. During an argument, Dean had thrown out the insult: “You look like somebody threw up on your face.” And Sam had predictably floundered. Unable to come up with a suitable retort, he had finally stammered out, “Yeah … well … you look like … somebody … threw up on your face.”
Which immediately ended the argument, since Dean couldn’t stop laughing hysterically at his brother’s ineptness. Sam had pouted for a few minutes, but soon joined in and it became an inside joke. After that, from time to time, one of them would casually accuse, “You look like somebody threw up on your face,” which would launch the war. They could go back and forth for stretches of 30 minutes or more. It drove their dad crazy. He couldn’t understand what was so funny.
“Yeah, well, you look like somebody threw up on your face.”
“Oh yeah? Well, you look like somebody threw up on your face.”
“Ha. Well. You look like somebody threw up on your face.”
It was one of those things that seem funny when you’re 12 and you and your brother have been in a car for 11 hours. But Sam was 22 now. And … even though he’d meant it when he’d told Dean they were OK, he wasn’t quite ready to joke like old times.
He rolled his eyes to cover his unsteadiness. “Dude. Grow up,” he said. And started to turn away.
But as he did, he caught just a glimpse of the … was it disappointment that crossed Dean’s face? Whatever it was, it made him regret his callousness.
So he stopped in the doorway and turned back.
“Hey Dean?” he said in a hesitant voice.
“Yeah?” Dean sounded tired.
“You look like somebody threw up on your face.”
And for some reason, when he crawled back into bed, Sam didn’t have any trouble falling back into a dreamless sleep.
OOO
When he woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of Dean and Jess laughing in the living room. Dean seemed to be regaling Sam’s bride-to-be with stories from their childhood. Sam prepared for the worst as he rolled out of bed.
“Oh, that’s too cute,” Jessica was saying. “His name was Drew?”
“Yeah, and he lived in this old camouflage hunting cap of Dad’s. Anything that went wrong, Sam blamed it on Drew.”
“Hey!” Sam protested, joining them. “You shouldn’t make fun. Drew took the blame for a lot of things that might have otherwise been traced back to you. And besides, he didn’t live in the cap. It was his cap. That’s what he wore.”
“Aw, Sweetie,” Jess said, smiling up at him. “Drew sounds like a great guy.”
She was obviously fighting to hold back her laughter.
“Eh,” Sam shrugged, trying to affect indifference. “I knew he wasn’t real. But he sure was convenient. Dad didn’t read much Dr. Spock. He didn’t know it was normal for kids to have imaginary friends. He thought I had mental problems for awhile. Split personality or something. I caught on to that pretty quickly and realized I could use it. It took him awhile to figure out my strategy.”
Actually, John had believed the hunting cap to be possessed in some way. He hadn’t figured out Sam’s game until an exorcism failed to end the problem.
“Well, regardless,” Jessica said with a straight face, “excellent taste in hats.”
She held up a photo Sam hadn’t realized she’d been holding. It showed him just inches away from the camera, sticking out his tongue and wearing an enormous camouflage hat, complete with ear flaps that went down past his shoulders.
“Dean. You didn’t.”
“Oh yeah I did.”
Jess crowed at the exchange and gasped out, “But this one is my favorite.”
Sam took one look at the photo she held out and spun around to face Dean.
“Dude. I am so turning you in as a pedophile.”
Dean just gave him a Cheshire cat grin, so Sam turned back to Jessica.
“Give me those,” he demanded in his most threatening tone and made a grab. Jess yelped and tried to twist away, but Sam knew all her ticklish spots, so the struggle didn’t last for long.
Sam glared down at the snapshot of his 2-year-old self, naked except for a pair of his dad’s boots and an enormous smile. He shook his head.
“This is so going into our next fire,” he said and began flipping through the rest. “And this one,” he said over Dean and Jess’s protests. “And this one and this one and this … ”
He stopped.
The next shot on the stack was a picture of his parents holding a 4-year-old Dean and what he knew to be an infant version of himself. He had seen the picture before, but it had been a long time.
Maybe that’s why he hadn’t immediately recognized the house and tree when it showed up in his dream.
It took a few seconds, but Jess and Dean eventually realized Sam wasn’t playing anymore and the laughter died down.
“Sweetie?” Jess ventured as she scooted across the carpet to where he was sitting. “You OK?”
She looked down at the photo in his hand. “Your parents, right?” she asked. Sam figured she recognized them from the picture on his nightstand. He nodded absently.
“Y’all make a beautiful family,” she said, softly. And Sam realized she had mistaken his confusion for introspection. She thought the sight of his parents made him sad.
Sam glanced up at Dean and saw he had not made the same mistake. He was frowning at Sam with an alert look that Sam recognized from hunts. When he caught Sam’s eye, he raised his eyebrows in silent question.
Sam just shook his head and looked back down. “Yeah,” he said in response to Jess’s statement.
“Hey Dean, this is our old house, right? In Kansas?” he held up the photo so that Dean could see.
Still frowning, Dean nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
“Uh,” he started, wondering what to say. “Nothing. It’s just … weird. I dreamed about it a few times a few weeks ago.”
Dean’s face cleared.
“Oh. Huh. Yeah, that is weird. I wouldn’t think you’d have remembered it.”
“Yeah,” Sam answered distractedly, and went back to his study of the photo.
That sent Dean back to frowning.
“What were you doing?” he asked. Sam looked up, confused by the question. “In the dream. What were you doing in the dream?”
Now Sam frowned. “I wasn’t in the dream.”
He didn’t volunteer any more information, which apparently didn’t satisfy Dean’s curiosity.
“Sam?” Dean asked. Sam blinked up at him. “Who was in the dream?” he asked slowly, as if speaking to a small child with ADD.
Sam glowered at him, but answered.
“I didn’t know her. It was this blonde woman - ”
“Hey!” Dean interrupted in his most lascivious tone. It earned him a glower from both Sam and Jessica.
“Dude. Mind. Gutter,” Sam said. “She was … I don’t know. In trouble or something.” He hated the way it sounded, so melodramatic and … weird. “But I couldn’t tell from what. She was banging on the window, trying to get out I guess? And she was yelling, but I couldn’t hear what.”
He looked up and saw that Dean was no longer in a joking mood.
“Was it … Mom?” he asked tentatively.
“No. I don’t think so,” Sam said. “I didn’t recognize her. It was … weird. Not like a normal dream.”
“Huh,” Dean grunted.
“But it was,” Jess comforted. “Dreams are always weird. You know what mine are like.” She grinned trying to lighten the mood.
Sam smirked at her. “Yeah, but this wasn’t a talking cat telling me to be sure and buy more toothpaste.”
She planted a kiss on his smirk.
Sam noticed that Dean was still staring thoughtfully at him. But when he saw Sam looking, he shook his head and pushed whatever he was thinking away.
“It’s pretty weird,” he said, grinning. “But I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, right? Look at the source: Your freaky-ass head.”
If the kiss hadn’t done it, that would have. Sam’s attention was pulled firmly away from the photo. He fixed Dean with a withering stare.
“And if my subconscious is permanently scarred, who do you think is to blame for that?”
Dean put on his most innocent smile.
“Nuh uh, man. You can’t blame that on me. I was nothing if not a doting big brother.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up at that.
“Doting, huh? Not exactly the word I’d have chosen to describe someone who convinced his little brother that he was adopted and that the kid in The Omen was his real older brother.”
“Heh,” was Dean’s only answer. His face clearly communicated his pleasure at the memory.
“Yeah, laugh it up,” Sam said. “It was about as funny as the time you convinced me I might be a witch and that to be safe, we needed to try out one of the Salem witch trial tests you’d read about in history. I almost drown.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t,” Dean said, still grinning unrepentantly. “And hey, how many people can say for sure that they’re not a witch? I bet you’re the only person in this room.” He looked questioningly at Jessica, who was trying to smother a smile so that she could shake her head solemnly.
Sam gave a cry of betrayal. “E tu, Jessica?” he said in feigned sorrow.
She gave him an apologetic look, but brightened.
“Hey,” she said, “at least I know my fiancé’s not a warlock. That’s a relief.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You’re as bad as he is.”
But he smiled and looked forward to the rest of the day with his two favorite people.
Chapter 15
Author: Deanish
Rating: PG13
Length: 2,800 / 60,700 words
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam/Jess (but I'd still say it's more gen than het)
Summary: A 'what might have been.' What if the demon had stayed in hibernation for just a little longer?
Chapter 14
The dream persisted for about a week, then inexplicably stopped. Sam wondered about it - what had triggered it, why it kept coming back and, then, why it stopped - but not for long. Jessica slept like a normal person, like a person not trained from age 7 to expect trouble, so she never woke up to question Sam about it. And Sam didn’t think it warranted mention. Soon he had forgotten all about it.
But then it happened again.
It wasn’t the same dream, but it felt similar, and he was once again sitting up in bed, panting and trying to piece together his memories.
This time, instead of a blonde woman in a gray house, there had been a man in an old car, pulling into a garage late at night. And then … something happened. The car doors locked themselves and the engine ignited. The garage began filling up with fumes and the man began struggling. Sam shuddered. It had been … horrible … to watch. He could smell the exhaust. And the man’s gasps - Sam’s nightmares were enough to give Sam nightmares.
He sat on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands. Where, where, had that come from? What was going on in Sam’s subconscious that would cause him to dream violent deaths for total strangers? He tried to analyze it using what he’d learned in freshman psychology, but he came up dry.
‘After all, it hadn’t been criminal psychology,’ he thought, darkly. He wondered if serial killers dreamed of death and danger in gory cinematic detail. He didn’t remember reading that they did, but then it seemed more likely than the idea that this was normal.
Sam cringed, feeling sick to his stomach.
He glanced over at Jessica, momentarily considering waking her. But instead he got up and walked to the bathroom.
Luckily, however, he didn’t actually have to pee. If he had, he might have wet himself when a voice behind him croaked, “Dude. Lights,” as soon as he flipped said lights on.
Sam spun around, banging into the door in the process. He clamped a hand over his now-bloody nose and exclaimed, “Dean!”
At which a vague lump on the couch mumbled, “Dude. Noise.”
Sam’s mouth fell open as he tried to put the pieces together. He was sure Dean hadn’t been there when he went to bed. Granted, he was feeling a little muzzy from the dream, but he’d remember that. He hadn’t seen his brother in more than a month - not since the bachelor’s party, actually. And he hadn’t talked to him in more than a week. Dean was supposed to be back in a couple more weeks for a tuxedo fitting, but Sam was certain Dean was not supposed to be on his couch right now.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in, it must be admitted, somewhat shrill confusion.
Dean growled in response. “Trying to sleep. Emphasis on trying.”
“But how did you get in?”
At that, Dean cracked one eye and shot a Sam a look fill with as much ridicule as most people could hold in two eyes. Sam rolled both of his own.
“You broke into my apartment?”
Dean growled again and rolled over, clearly trying to escape the conversation.
“Dean! What are you doing here?”
The growl was louder this time, but Dean finally sat up, evidently concluding - correctly - that Sam wasn’t going to take his … well, hints was too mild a term.
“You said I could come visit anytime,” he accused.
“Yeah, but the invitation didn’t extend to your lock pick,” Sam shot back.
“Well, it was late,” Dean ground out. “I didn’t want to wake you. Apparently I’m the considerate brother.”
Sam would have snorted at that if it hadn’t been 4 a.m. Since it was, however, he just grew more incredulous.
“Dean!” he said again. “What if I’d heard you? I could have come out swinging a baseball bat or pointing a gun!”
Dean apparently didn’t have a problem snorting at 4 a.m.
“Dude. I haven’t even left the couch and your nose is bloody. Can’t say I’m feeling the threat.”
Not being able to argue with that, Sam gave the conversation up as lost. He turned back to the bathroom, wet a washcloth to clean himself up with and ambled back into the living room. Maybe he could start over.
“So, what are you doing here?” he asked in a lower octave and a less-accusatory tone. He sat down on the coffee table in front of the couch and tried not to look impatient.
“Eh,” Dean said through a yawn. “You know. Same old, same old.”
He stretched, but there was something stiff about it that caught Sam’s attention. And now that he looked, even in the dim light from the bathroom something seemed off about Dean’s face, too.
He reached over and turned on a nearby lamp.
“Dean!” he was back to squealing. What was it about Dean that brought that out in him? “What happened? You look like … ” He trailed off, unable to come up with an adequate simile. “ … Crap,” he finally settled on.
It looked like the whole right side of Dean’s face was doing its best imitation of a Monet painting - all blues and greens and purples running together. Except for the red pouring out of his split lip.
“You’re bleeding on my couch,” Sam pointed out.
“Yeah, well. You’re one to talk,” Dean said with a significant look at Sam’s nose. Sam sighed, but offered Dean the blood-stained washcloth. Dean gave him a look of utter disgust and wiped his lip on his shirtsleeve.
“I was a couple of towns over dealing with a spirit. Things got a little … dicey. But nothing I couldn’t handle. And I decided to save myself a few bucks by visiting my awesome little brother.”
He backed that story up with a crocodile smile that Sam didn’t buy for a minute.
“When has flattery ever gotten you anywhere?” he asked.
The smile morphed into a smirk. “What? You’re gonna’ throw me out?” Dean replied.
“If I thought it would work,” Sam returned. “Just … clean up the blood in the morning.”
At that, he got up and made to return to bed.
“Hey,” Dean called out. “Wait.”
Sam turned around.
“You OK? You look a little … sick.”
Sam grimaced, remembering why he was up to begin with. He suddenly wasn’t so eager to go back to bed. But he wasn’t about to tell Dean he couldn’t sleep because of bad dreams. He’d stopped doing that more than a decade ago.
Instead he converted the grimace into a scoff.
“Yeah, well, your face is nauseating.”
He must have pulled it off, because Dean suddenly grinned manically at him.
“Yeah, well, you look somebody threw up on your face.”
Sam groaned. It was an old game, started when Sam was too young to keep up with Dean in the cut down department. During an argument, Dean had thrown out the insult: “You look like somebody threw up on your face.” And Sam had predictably floundered. Unable to come up with a suitable retort, he had finally stammered out, “Yeah … well … you look like … somebody … threw up on your face.”
Which immediately ended the argument, since Dean couldn’t stop laughing hysterically at his brother’s ineptness. Sam had pouted for a few minutes, but soon joined in and it became an inside joke. After that, from time to time, one of them would casually accuse, “You look like somebody threw up on your face,” which would launch the war. They could go back and forth for stretches of 30 minutes or more. It drove their dad crazy. He couldn’t understand what was so funny.
“Yeah, well, you look like somebody threw up on your face.”
“Oh yeah? Well, you look like somebody threw up on your face.”
“Ha. Well. You look like somebody threw up on your face.”
It was one of those things that seem funny when you’re 12 and you and your brother have been in a car for 11 hours. But Sam was 22 now. And … even though he’d meant it when he’d told Dean they were OK, he wasn’t quite ready to joke like old times.
He rolled his eyes to cover his unsteadiness. “Dude. Grow up,” he said. And started to turn away.
But as he did, he caught just a glimpse of the … was it disappointment that crossed Dean’s face? Whatever it was, it made him regret his callousness.
So he stopped in the doorway and turned back.
“Hey Dean?” he said in a hesitant voice.
“Yeah?” Dean sounded tired.
“You look like somebody threw up on your face.”
And for some reason, when he crawled back into bed, Sam didn’t have any trouble falling back into a dreamless sleep.
OOO
When he woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of Dean and Jess laughing in the living room. Dean seemed to be regaling Sam’s bride-to-be with stories from their childhood. Sam prepared for the worst as he rolled out of bed.
“Oh, that’s too cute,” Jessica was saying. “His name was Drew?”
“Yeah, and he lived in this old camouflage hunting cap of Dad’s. Anything that went wrong, Sam blamed it on Drew.”
“Hey!” Sam protested, joining them. “You shouldn’t make fun. Drew took the blame for a lot of things that might have otherwise been traced back to you. And besides, he didn’t live in the cap. It was his cap. That’s what he wore.”
“Aw, Sweetie,” Jess said, smiling up at him. “Drew sounds like a great guy.”
She was obviously fighting to hold back her laughter.
“Eh,” Sam shrugged, trying to affect indifference. “I knew he wasn’t real. But he sure was convenient. Dad didn’t read much Dr. Spock. He didn’t know it was normal for kids to have imaginary friends. He thought I had mental problems for awhile. Split personality or something. I caught on to that pretty quickly and realized I could use it. It took him awhile to figure out my strategy.”
Actually, John had believed the hunting cap to be possessed in some way. He hadn’t figured out Sam’s game until an exorcism failed to end the problem.
“Well, regardless,” Jessica said with a straight face, “excellent taste in hats.”
She held up a photo Sam hadn’t realized she’d been holding. It showed him just inches away from the camera, sticking out his tongue and wearing an enormous camouflage hat, complete with ear flaps that went down past his shoulders.
“Dean. You didn’t.”
“Oh yeah I did.”
Jess crowed at the exchange and gasped out, “But this one is my favorite.”
Sam took one look at the photo she held out and spun around to face Dean.
“Dude. I am so turning you in as a pedophile.”
Dean just gave him a Cheshire cat grin, so Sam turned back to Jessica.
“Give me those,” he demanded in his most threatening tone and made a grab. Jess yelped and tried to twist away, but Sam knew all her ticklish spots, so the struggle didn’t last for long.
Sam glared down at the snapshot of his 2-year-old self, naked except for a pair of his dad’s boots and an enormous smile. He shook his head.
“This is so going into our next fire,” he said and began flipping through the rest. “And this one,” he said over Dean and Jess’s protests. “And this one and this one and this … ”
He stopped.
The next shot on the stack was a picture of his parents holding a 4-year-old Dean and what he knew to be an infant version of himself. He had seen the picture before, but it had been a long time.
Maybe that’s why he hadn’t immediately recognized the house and tree when it showed up in his dream.
It took a few seconds, but Jess and Dean eventually realized Sam wasn’t playing anymore and the laughter died down.
“Sweetie?” Jess ventured as she scooted across the carpet to where he was sitting. “You OK?”
She looked down at the photo in his hand. “Your parents, right?” she asked. Sam figured she recognized them from the picture on his nightstand. He nodded absently.
“Y’all make a beautiful family,” she said, softly. And Sam realized she had mistaken his confusion for introspection. She thought the sight of his parents made him sad.
Sam glanced up at Dean and saw he had not made the same mistake. He was frowning at Sam with an alert look that Sam recognized from hunts. When he caught Sam’s eye, he raised his eyebrows in silent question.
Sam just shook his head and looked back down. “Yeah,” he said in response to Jess’s statement.
“Hey Dean, this is our old house, right? In Kansas?” he held up the photo so that Dean could see.
Still frowning, Dean nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
“Uh,” he started, wondering what to say. “Nothing. It’s just … weird. I dreamed about it a few times a few weeks ago.”
Dean’s face cleared.
“Oh. Huh. Yeah, that is weird. I wouldn’t think you’d have remembered it.”
“Yeah,” Sam answered distractedly, and went back to his study of the photo.
That sent Dean back to frowning.
“What were you doing?” he asked. Sam looked up, confused by the question. “In the dream. What were you doing in the dream?”
Now Sam frowned. “I wasn’t in the dream.”
He didn’t volunteer any more information, which apparently didn’t satisfy Dean’s curiosity.
“Sam?” Dean asked. Sam blinked up at him. “Who was in the dream?” he asked slowly, as if speaking to a small child with ADD.
Sam glowered at him, but answered.
“I didn’t know her. It was this blonde woman - ”
“Hey!” Dean interrupted in his most lascivious tone. It earned him a glower from both Sam and Jessica.
“Dude. Mind. Gutter,” Sam said. “She was … I don’t know. In trouble or something.” He hated the way it sounded, so melodramatic and … weird. “But I couldn’t tell from what. She was banging on the window, trying to get out I guess? And she was yelling, but I couldn’t hear what.”
He looked up and saw that Dean was no longer in a joking mood.
“Was it … Mom?” he asked tentatively.
“No. I don’t think so,” Sam said. “I didn’t recognize her. It was … weird. Not like a normal dream.”
“Huh,” Dean grunted.
“But it was,” Jess comforted. “Dreams are always weird. You know what mine are like.” She grinned trying to lighten the mood.
Sam smirked at her. “Yeah, but this wasn’t a talking cat telling me to be sure and buy more toothpaste.”
She planted a kiss on his smirk.
Sam noticed that Dean was still staring thoughtfully at him. But when he saw Sam looking, he shook his head and pushed whatever he was thinking away.
“It’s pretty weird,” he said, grinning. “But I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, right? Look at the source: Your freaky-ass head.”
If the kiss hadn’t done it, that would have. Sam’s attention was pulled firmly away from the photo. He fixed Dean with a withering stare.
“And if my subconscious is permanently scarred, who do you think is to blame for that?”
Dean put on his most innocent smile.
“Nuh uh, man. You can’t blame that on me. I was nothing if not a doting big brother.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up at that.
“Doting, huh? Not exactly the word I’d have chosen to describe someone who convinced his little brother that he was adopted and that the kid in The Omen was his real older brother.”
“Heh,” was Dean’s only answer. His face clearly communicated his pleasure at the memory.
“Yeah, laugh it up,” Sam said. “It was about as funny as the time you convinced me I might be a witch and that to be safe, we needed to try out one of the Salem witch trial tests you’d read about in history. I almost drown.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t,” Dean said, still grinning unrepentantly. “And hey, how many people can say for sure that they’re not a witch? I bet you’re the only person in this room.” He looked questioningly at Jessica, who was trying to smother a smile so that she could shake her head solemnly.
Sam gave a cry of betrayal. “E tu, Jessica?” he said in feigned sorrow.
She gave him an apologetic look, but brightened.
“Hey,” she said, “at least I know my fiancé’s not a warlock. That’s a relief.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You’re as bad as he is.”
But he smiled and looked forward to the rest of the day with his two favorite people.
Chapter 15