Supernatural fic: The Certain Knot (Gen, PG-13)
Title: The Certain Knot
author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG-13
Wordcount: ~4,200
Timeframe: set between Bloody Mary and Skin
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, but I love 'em like they were. They belong to Eric Kripke and the CW.
Summary: While investigating a haunted lumber mill, the boys try out a new twist on an standard ritual. But the real problem arises from a source they don't expect.
Written for the spn_gleeweek 2006 request fest: #19 I would like to see more gen fiction. I'd like to see a crisis like Home or Asylum or the aftermath of Shadow done without any Wincest at all -- just to see how the boys work out their problems without any nookie. Or not even one of those Big Crises(tm), but a random having-problems-getting-along story, resolved with work and love of the Platonic sort. requested by janissa11.
Many thanks to innie_darling for her swift and excellent beta rescue.
Skippable author's notes at the end.
Three nights after the mirrors shattered, Sam finally slept. Seven hours without waking once; if he had bad dreams, he didn't remember them. The morning light shone through the crack in the curtains as Sam lay on his back staring at the stained ceiling of the motel room.
His body practically ached with the relief of actually having slept.
As he drifted back into a light doze, he started connecting this peace with the breaking of the mirrors. As if that act had freed something trapped within himself.
Four days after the mirrors shattered, they ordered lunch at a diner that, miraculously, had free wi-fi and hand-cut french fries.
"The original mill burned down in 1919," Sam read off the laptop screen. He reached out to snag another french fry from Dean's plate, but his brother smacked his hand away.
"Hey. Mine."
"So anyway, there was a big fire, and a lot of the mill workers were killed."
"And..." Dean gestured with a french fry, raising an eyebrow.
"And...four of the bodies were never found. Another mill was built on the site during World War II. There were a number of accidents over the years, some fatal, until that burned down too. They built it again, and people keep dying. Last week was just the latest incident."
"Haunted lumber mill." Dean pursed his lower lip. "Interesting."
"Worth checking out, right?"
It was too early for the dinner crowd, and too late for lunch, so they had the diner to themselves except for the old guy at the counter reading the paper while he ate his roast beef sandwich and the middle-aged waitress who kept snapping her gum as she refilled the sugar shakers.
"Maybe," Dean said.
Sam turned back to the computer screen and kept cross-checking for more articles on the accidents, looking for something that would sell the hunt to Dean. It was a secret source of pride to him when Dean would nod and concede yeah, looks like a job.
Four nights after the mirrors shattered, Sam didn't sleep well.
He had no bad dreams, but kept waking up, confused about where he was, which town, which state.
It was worse than before, as if the full night's sleep he had gotten gave him a taste of what he'd been missing and weakened the barriers he'd built around himself to keep on functioning. But the they were paper-thin after all, and easily ripped open.
Five days after the mirrors shattered, they were on their way to Arkansas.
"Which exit do I take?" Dean kept his eyes on the highway ahead, while the windshield wipers slapped back and forth against the rain.
"I told you, 7A." Sam traced his finger along their route on the map. "No. Sorry. 8A."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Because I don't feel like winding up in Tennessee."
"What's wrong with Tennessee?"
"Nothing. There's just this one town where the sheriff's office may have my picture on file..."
"What did you do?"
"Is it my fault the mayor turned out to be a sonuvabitch? After I de-haunted their town hall, he cheated me at cards. So I helped myself to what was in the safe. Not like they were going to use the money for anything but Friday night poker games."
The rain traced shadow-lines over the dashboard. Sam let the rhythm of the windshield wipers lull him. It was almost like the baseline of some of the songs on Dean's mix tapes.
"Sam!"
His brother's voice jolted him awake.
The car had stopped. Through the rain-streaked window, Sam saw that they were parked outside a motel. With the rain, the late afternoon was almost as dark as dusk.
"Move it, sleepy-head. We've got work to do."
Sam rubbed his eyes with his fingers.
Five nights after the mirrors shattered, Sam had a nightmare.
It tumbled him from his bed in a panic before he remembered where he was, felt the cheap carpet scratching his bare feet, smelled the bland air freshener the motel used, noticed the chill in the air. The rain had stopped.
Dean was still asleep on his stomach in the other bed, one hand tucked under his pillow.
Sam sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned his elbows on his knees, watching the outline of his brother in the darkness for a while before he finally rummaged in his duffel bag for a flashlight.
He sat in a chair with his knees tucked up and continued reading from the book of incantations Dean had pinched from the rare volumes collection at Ohio State.
Sam had started studying it over dinner while Dean skimmed the local newspaper. They'd spoken less than usual.
He didn't fall back asleep that night.
Six days after the mirrors shattered, they wandered the small town, asking questions, but didn't make much progress.
The locals looked at Dean with suspicion. The grocery store clerk wanted to know why they were so nosy.
They exited the shop. The bell over the door jingled cheerily in the overcast day.
Sam tried to ignore the glance Dean shot him. He knew he'd been unusually quiet. Somehow it seemed to take too much energy these days to smile and charm and try to play the innocent.
"What?" Sam snapped.
"Nothing." Dean put his palm flat against the roof of the Impala a moment, almost like a ritual.
One part of his dream came back to him: the scent of sawdust. Sam was pretty sure he'd never smelled things in dreams. But the sawdust memory was insistent.
He waited until they were in the car and halfway back to the motel before he spoke.
"Dean, I'm not sure we should do this."
"Do what?"
"Cleanse the mill."
"Because letting the ghosts go on killing people is a better idea?"
They stopped at a red light. "We don't know how reliable this volume of incantations is," Sam said.
"That never stopped us before." There went the eyebrow again. "We could just use Dad's old standby if it makes you feel better."
The light changed. Dean started to pull out into the intersection.
"No, it's not that--" Sam began.
A pick-up truck barreled through against the light, horn blaring.
Dean slammed on the brakes. The Impala lurched to a stop. Sam put out his hands and braced himself against the dashboard as Dean reached out and grabbed Sam's shoulder.
"Crap," Dean said, the fingers of his other hand clenched around the steering wheel.
Sam's heart was beating so hard it ached. He put his palms on the dashboard and lowered his head.
"Sam? You hurt?"
"No."
A car honked behind them. Dean put both hands back on the wheel and continued through the intersection. Houses, the occasional small church, and trees half-bare of leaves slid by.
"If you really think it's a bad idea we won't do it," Dean said, like they were discussing whether or not to try the meatloaf special.
He shrugged, trying to match Dean's tone. "I think it's a bad idea."
"Okay. But if you have another plan, genius, give a holler."
Six nights after the mirrors shattered, Sam slept for two hours total. He kept jolting awake, not with a nightmare, but with the feeling that he'd forgotten something.
But each time he rolled over and looked at his brother's sleeping form in the other bed, the sense of forgetting went away, and nothing was missing.
Seven days after the mirrors shattered, there was another accident at the mill.
Sam conned his way into a conversation with the foreman. No one could explain the accident. The equipment was working correctly, but something slipped out of place.
"Al's lucky he didn't lose all his fingers." The foreman, a big guy with round, rosy cheeks and hairy hands shook his head. "Man's got a family of six to feed."
They met up at the car, which Dean had parked a short way down the road from the mill.
"EMF off the charts," said Dean, as he slid down from his perch on the Impala's hood. "We'd better do it tonight."
"But I thought we--"
Dean raised his hand, palm flat. "It's not as if either of us has come up with a better way to stop the accidents. No ritual's ever one hundred percent certain, you know that."
"Yeah."
He almost told him. But the memory of the nightmare was like trying to listen to a radio played quietly on the other side of the quad at Stanford--he could hear there was music, but not which song.
As for the scent of sawdust, he'd had lumber mills on the brain. That was all.
Seven nights after the mirrors shattered, the security guard at the mill slumped over into a drugged sleep after Dean spiked his coffee.
With the book of incantations in one hand and chalk in the other, Sam knelt on the floor of the mill, the scent of sawdust all around him. He copied the symbols while Dean aimed the flashlight at the floor.
When he was done he formed a salt circle around the symbols while Dean took two candles, a flask of holy water, and more chalk out of the backpack, and tucked them into the pockets of his leather jacket.
"Let's do this," Dean said, pulling out his handgun. He turned and strode, almost sauntered, off into the shadows of the mill.
He envied Dean that: as if he were casually flipping up his middle finger at the things that went bump in the night. Sam crouched inside the circle, clutching the book. He picked up the thermos resting on the concrete next to his shoe and drank some coffee.
Damn, he was tired. He blinked several times, worked his jaw, yawned.
His legs started to ache from crouching, so he cautiously lowered himself to the floor.
The book provided a variation on one of their father's favorite techniques, a ghost-summoning ritual that went against the advice of spiritualists in at least fifteen states. It was considered dangerous mostly because it pissed the ghosts off.
But that was the point: get them to chase you, lure them into crossing the circle, say the incantation, and disperse the spirits, releasing them to...wherever it was ghosts went next. It worked in a pinch if there were no bones to be found. Dad's spell had worked just fine over the years, except the few times when it had backfired spectacularly. Possibly this new ritual might be more reliable.
Or not.
Sam rolled his shoulders. Dean should be done setting up for his part of the spell by now. It had to be far enough away from the circle that the spirits didn't sense it until it was too late for them to stop.
He thought Dean always enjoyed this system a little too much, just like Dad. Sam never could understand it, the way they grinned like it was a game, as if it was never a question that Sam would say the ritual correctly, every single time.
His eyes burned, so he rubbed them again, then closed them, only for a moment, the bumpy, soft leather of the book against his finger tips and the taste of coffee lingering at the back of his mouth. With all the caffeine he'd had that day, he should be amped. It was coffee straight up, too, black with no milk or sugar, the way Dean drank it, nothing to make the drink kinder on the way down. Dad always took his with a little sugar, but no milk, and he hated instant, complained constantly when they had nothing else available.
The sound of the gunshot woke him.
Sam scrambled to his feet, knocking over the thermos and spilling dark liquid across the dusty cement floor. He kicked at the fluid to keep it away from the chalk markings even as he looked around for his brother, who should be--
Dean was past the circle, under the catwalk at the far end of the room. He should have just been heading towards Sam.
"Sam, what the hell?" Dean's angry shout echoed up into the rafters.
Four dark shapes swirled around Dean, thick black ribbons of smoke. Sometimes one, then another, flickered into the sharper details of flannel shirts, suspenders, boots, bearded or clean-shaven faces, all twisted more with misery than fury. Dean fired again, and one of the spirits dispersed, only to reappear again above him.
There weren't enough curse words in the world.
"Lead them across the circle," Sam shouted back. He got out the flashlight, opened the book, and flipped through the pages. Shit, where was that spell? He'd had his finger inserted to mark it, but that was before he'd dozed off like a complete asshat.
This was the time Sam had been dreading, when he screwed up an incantation.
He found the page, then looked up to see Dean dodging the spirits that rushed over his head, trying to get clear of them so he could run across the mill floor towards Sam and the circle.
The catwalk above Dean's head trembled.
"Dean!"
Dean looked over at Sam, then up as the catwalk creaked. In the darkness Sam read the slow realization most in the way Dean's posture changed, his shoulders and jaw lowering.
The catwalk emitted another creak and started to tear away from the wall. As Dean's body tensed to leap away, the ghosts swooped around him, distracting him.
Sam dropped the book and the flashlight and ran.
He brought Dean down and to the side with a full-body tackle. They slammed together onto the floor as the section of catwalk crashed down somewhere Sam couldn't see because his vision was filled with sawdust and darkness and part of Dean's sleeve. His knees and his elbows, even his teeth hurt.
He rolled over carefully and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Dean was lying on his back, jaw clenched, cursing steadily under his breath, which was good because it meant he was conscious.
"You okay?"
"That's the stupidest question you've ever asked, and I've know you your whole life." Dean sat up, shoulders twitching, shaking his head a little.
Sam got to his feet first and reached down to help his brother, who ignored Sam's hand. Once on his feet, Dean staggered a little and Sam almost reached out to take his arm but Dean had already moved away. His hand was still gripped around the gun.
"Incoming," Dean said calmly, and fired as the ghosts dove at them. "Sam, get your ass back to the circle and get ready to do that spell."
He gave Sam a shove and Sam obediently ran back, nine years old again because he couldn't think to do anything else now except follow orders.
Sam snatched the book off the floor with one hand and held his flashlight with the other. He glanced up and saw Dean running towards him, the ghosts streaming in his wake, their shapes going in and out of focus, alternating as recognizably angry men or just black wisps.
Dean ran past the circle. "Now, Sam!"
He began the incantation as the spirits ruffled him with an icy wind.
Something almost like the change in cabin pressure as an airplane ascended slammed up through the floor, up from the circle, up through him. The chalk markings flashed an incandescent red.
There was a sound like a muffled bang and the black wisps of the ghosts exploded outward with a white light that flashed across the length of the mill.
The incantation finished, Sam closed the book, letting the flashlight fall to the floor. In the quiet the clatter of it seemed loud.
Dean slowly straightened up from the crouch he'd gone into and lowered his gun arm.
"Holy shit," he said.
And that was that. It was over.
They began the usual routine of packing up, wiping the floor clean of markings, sweeping up the salt, putting the candles away. Sam shouldered the backpack and they walked out of the mill into the damp, chilly Arkansas night.
Chances were no one would know the place had been haunted, or that they'd ever been there, unless somebody noticed the melted wax stuck to the floor or perhaps a faded stray chalk marking. Rust in the catwalk supports would be blamed for the collapse.
The security guard might have a hangover.
They climbed the chain link security fence and dropped to the grassy verge on the other side.
"Dean..."
But his brother said, without sharpness, "Shut it."
A car rushed past them in the night, its wheels sending up a spray of water. Dean started walking along the verge, headed to where they'd parked the car, his shoulders rigid, striding rather than walking.
"No," Sam said, and quickened his steps to catch up. When Dean just walked faster, Sam grabbed his arm and turned Dean to face him. "Listen to me!"
"What?"
"I nodded off. I screwed up."
"Shouldn't go hunting sleep-deprived if you can avoid it," Dean recited under his breath. "Good rule of thumb. I should have forced you to--"
"Stay behind? Do you think I would have if you'd tried?"
"Doesn't matter now. Important thing is, you came through." He turned and kept on walking.
Sam stood a moment, trying to figure out what to say, what to do next. The unyielding back and shoulders grew smaller in the darkness along the road. He couldn't tell if Dean was angry. He couldn't tell what Dean was thinking at all.
Eight days after the mirrors shattered, they were driving across the Arkansas state line into Oklahoma because Dean overheard a trucker at a rest stop gossiping about an attack that Dean thought sounded like the work of goblins.
"Which exit?" Dean said, eyes on the coldly sunlit highway ahead.
"9B," said Sam immediately. He folded the map and tucked it onto the dashboard.
It was the first conversation they'd had in fifty miles.
Eight nights after the mirrors shattered, Dean sat on his bed in a motel room in Oklahoma and finished cleaning his shotgun.
Sam paged through Dad's journal, looking up what to do about goblins, but he wasn't really paying attention any more. Finally he put the journal down, stood up, and went to stand in front of Dean.
"I've made a decision," Sam said.
Dean looked up as if startled to find Sam suddenly at the foot of his bed, and Sam wasn't sure but there might have been a flicker of something like fear in his brother's face, gone so quickly he thought he likely imagined it, or misread some other emotion.
"I'm grounding myself," he continued.
"What are you now, Dad?" Dean snorted and set the bore brush down on the towel next to the cleaning rod. That might have been relief in his voice but again, Sam couldn't be sure.
"I'm serious. You'll have to hunt goblins without me."
"I don't think so." Dean reached for a rag.
"You can do it. You've hunted alone."
"I told you once before. Are you going to make me say it again?"
"I know you don't want to hunt alone. I'm pointing out that you're more than capable of doing it. Besides, you won't actually be alone. I'm giving you notes to take with you." Sam waved his hand towards the table. "We can stay in contact using the cell phones. You can use the handsfree and I can be here with Dad's journal. I'll be your four-one-one. Trusty geek boy, feeding you information while you're out in the field."
"First of all, you're not nearly as cute as that Oracle chick. Secondly...no."
"You're such a stubborn jerk sometimes, you know that?"
"Takes one to know one," Dean said.
"I fell asleep during a hunt, Dean. I could have gotten you killed. Sure, I pulled it together--hell, I saved your butt when that catwalk went. But it was too close. So I'm not going to hunt, for a few days. Maybe a week. Not until I've actually had some sleep and can think straight."
Dean fingered the oil-stained rag, then bunched it up in his fist. "I'd rather have a sleepy you watching my back than hunt by myself." He frowned.
It took Sam a moment to register that one. He finally decided it wasn't a compliment, but an admission. He felt a flash of irritation that Dean's loyalty and fear of being alone were so strong that he'd disregard common sense and safety. But that didn't sound like his brother, who wasn't reckless, not really. So maybe it came out to a compliment after all.
Sam sat down on the other bed, letting out the breath he'd been holding. "You know as well as I do that hunting with someone whose focus is off is dangerous."
Dean's eyes flickered to the journal, then back to the cloth in his hands. He tossed the cloth aside, wiped his hands on his jeans, and started putting the cleaning things away.
"So I'm grounded, for seven days," Sam said. "Agreed?"
It took a long time but Dean finally said, "Fine." Sam thought that was the end of it but then Dean went on. "But if you think I'm going to bust my ass while you sit around on yours, forget it. We could both use some shore leave."
That was unexpected. "Shore leave?"
"We could, I dunno, go to Nashville. The babes are hot."
"What about the town where you're on the most wanted list?"
"That sheriff's too lazy and slow to catch me."
"But...I don't want to stop looking for Dad."
"We won't. Maybe we'll pick up a lead someplace." Dean got to his feet and picked up his shotgun. "We have to take care of the goblins first, though. I'll do it. By myself."
"Check in every half hour," Sam said, as Dean shrugged into his jacket.
He expected Dean to say something snarky but instead he just said "Sure," then paused with his hand on the doorknob, the duffel holding his gun and other hunting goods slung over his shoulder. "You could have gotten yourself killed."
Then Dean went out into the night, closing the door behind him.
First Sam checked his email.
Then he got on the laptop and checked his regular websites.
At first check-in, Dean's ring was timed to the second, almost as if he were taunting him.
"Going in after them now," he said. "They're in a broken down barn, about twenty-two miles south of the motel. Six of the buggers. They're small."
"You're using iron rounds?"
"Duh, Sam." Dean hung up.
Sam turned on the TV but it annoyed him so he turned it off.
He tried to read.
He sharpened his knife.
Half an hour later he sat at the table and stared down at his cell phone.
Two minutes past second check-in.
"Come on, ring," he muttered.
Four minutes past check-in.
"Come on, you stubborn bastard."
Seven minutes past check-in.
His cell phone lit up and chimed. Sam snatched it and answered without even bothering to look at the ID first.
"Dean!"
"Yo, Sammy."
"Everything go okay?"
"Had a little trouble with one of them, little freak went invisible."
"Are you injured?"
"Nah. They're all bagged. See you in ten." There was a pause. Then, the tone unmistakably mocking: "You weren't worried about me, were you?"
Sam snapped the phone shut with an angry click.
He was so not in the right condition to go hunting.
Folding his elbows on the table, he put his head down and tried to relax, to breathe slowly and evenly to slow his heart rate. This kind of nervousness was frowned upon in the Winchester family. Watching each other's backs, that was the main thing, but anxious worrying, pacing, hovering over check-ins wasn't done. Dad used to say it showed lack of trust, not in their ability to be there for each other, but faith in each other's strengths. If one of them was in trouble, go help him, but hand-wringing was useless.
For all that, Sam remembered a number of nights when Dad had paced, and when Dean had finally come home, Dad'd been short tempered in a way only worry could produce.
With his cheek resting on his sleeve, Dad's journal blurry in his line of vision on the table, Sam smiled.
What felt like only a few minutes later the click of Dean's key in the lock, the sound of his brother's steps on the carpeting, and the thud as his duffel hit the floor, were like the cutting of a puppet's strings. Sam didn't even bother raising his head; he suddenly felt overwhelmingly sleepy, but not in the grainy, stretched way.
More in the he could actually sleep now for real way.
He felt something warm, scratchy, and smelling of cheap detergent drop over his shoulders.
"Hey Dean?" He mumbled, not opening his eyes, trying to keep himself poised just above the depths of sleep. Dean made a questioning noise from nearby. "Who's gonna save all the people while we're on shore leave?"
"We're not the only hunters out there." He heard a light clatter as Dean dropped his keys on the dresser. "And...more important things than huntin'."
Just as astonishment at what his brother had said hit him, and he was making a mental note to remember it later, Sam fell asleep.
~END
A/N:
*title is from the poem "Sleep" by Sir Phillip Sidney
*yes, that was a shout-out to Immunity. I couldn't resist using my own fanon to twist the knife a bit. Sorry, Dean.
*the lumber mill is based loosely on the Monohan lumber mill, which first burned in 1925 and was rebuilt, then burned again in 1944. It was in Washingston State, not Arkansas. To my knowledge there is no haunting involved.
*angelstart's timeline was helpful in figuring out the time of year for this story.
author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG-13
Wordcount: ~4,200
Timeframe: set between Bloody Mary and Skin
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, but I love 'em like they were. They belong to Eric Kripke and the CW.
Summary: While investigating a haunted lumber mill, the boys try out a new twist on an standard ritual. But the real problem arises from a source they don't expect.
Written for the spn_gleeweek 2006 request fest: #19 I would like to see more gen fiction. I'd like to see a crisis like Home or Asylum or the aftermath of Shadow done without any Wincest at all -- just to see how the boys work out their problems without any nookie. Or not even one of those Big Crises(tm), but a random having-problems-getting-along story, resolved with work and love of the Platonic sort. requested by janissa11.
Many thanks to innie_darling for her swift and excellent beta rescue.
Skippable author's notes at the end.
Three nights after the mirrors shattered, Sam finally slept. Seven hours without waking once; if he had bad dreams, he didn't remember them. The morning light shone through the crack in the curtains as Sam lay on his back staring at the stained ceiling of the motel room.
His body practically ached with the relief of actually having slept.
As he drifted back into a light doze, he started connecting this peace with the breaking of the mirrors. As if that act had freed something trapped within himself.
Four days after the mirrors shattered, they ordered lunch at a diner that, miraculously, had free wi-fi and hand-cut french fries.
"The original mill burned down in 1919," Sam read off the laptop screen. He reached out to snag another french fry from Dean's plate, but his brother smacked his hand away.
"Hey. Mine."
"So anyway, there was a big fire, and a lot of the mill workers were killed."
"And..." Dean gestured with a french fry, raising an eyebrow.
"And...four of the bodies were never found. Another mill was built on the site during World War II. There were a number of accidents over the years, some fatal, until that burned down too. They built it again, and people keep dying. Last week was just the latest incident."
"Haunted lumber mill." Dean pursed his lower lip. "Interesting."
"Worth checking out, right?"
It was too early for the dinner crowd, and too late for lunch, so they had the diner to themselves except for the old guy at the counter reading the paper while he ate his roast beef sandwich and the middle-aged waitress who kept snapping her gum as she refilled the sugar shakers.
"Maybe," Dean said.
Sam turned back to the computer screen and kept cross-checking for more articles on the accidents, looking for something that would sell the hunt to Dean. It was a secret source of pride to him when Dean would nod and concede yeah, looks like a job.
Four nights after the mirrors shattered, Sam didn't sleep well.
He had no bad dreams, but kept waking up, confused about where he was, which town, which state.
It was worse than before, as if the full night's sleep he had gotten gave him a taste of what he'd been missing and weakened the barriers he'd built around himself to keep on functioning. But the they were paper-thin after all, and easily ripped open.
Five days after the mirrors shattered, they were on their way to Arkansas.
"Which exit do I take?" Dean kept his eyes on the highway ahead, while the windshield wipers slapped back and forth against the rain.
"I told you, 7A." Sam traced his finger along their route on the map. "No. Sorry. 8A."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Because I don't feel like winding up in Tennessee."
"What's wrong with Tennessee?"
"Nothing. There's just this one town where the sheriff's office may have my picture on file..."
"What did you do?"
"Is it my fault the mayor turned out to be a sonuvabitch? After I de-haunted their town hall, he cheated me at cards. So I helped myself to what was in the safe. Not like they were going to use the money for anything but Friday night poker games."
The rain traced shadow-lines over the dashboard. Sam let the rhythm of the windshield wipers lull him. It was almost like the baseline of some of the songs on Dean's mix tapes.
"Sam!"
His brother's voice jolted him awake.
The car had stopped. Through the rain-streaked window, Sam saw that they were parked outside a motel. With the rain, the late afternoon was almost as dark as dusk.
"Move it, sleepy-head. We've got work to do."
Sam rubbed his eyes with his fingers.
Five nights after the mirrors shattered, Sam had a nightmare.
It tumbled him from his bed in a panic before he remembered where he was, felt the cheap carpet scratching his bare feet, smelled the bland air freshener the motel used, noticed the chill in the air. The rain had stopped.
Dean was still asleep on his stomach in the other bed, one hand tucked under his pillow.
Sam sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned his elbows on his knees, watching the outline of his brother in the darkness for a while before he finally rummaged in his duffel bag for a flashlight.
He sat in a chair with his knees tucked up and continued reading from the book of incantations Dean had pinched from the rare volumes collection at Ohio State.
Sam had started studying it over dinner while Dean skimmed the local newspaper. They'd spoken less than usual.
He didn't fall back asleep that night.
Six days after the mirrors shattered, they wandered the small town, asking questions, but didn't make much progress.
The locals looked at Dean with suspicion. The grocery store clerk wanted to know why they were so nosy.
They exited the shop. The bell over the door jingled cheerily in the overcast day.
Sam tried to ignore the glance Dean shot him. He knew he'd been unusually quiet. Somehow it seemed to take too much energy these days to smile and charm and try to play the innocent.
"What?" Sam snapped.
"Nothing." Dean put his palm flat against the roof of the Impala a moment, almost like a ritual.
One part of his dream came back to him: the scent of sawdust. Sam was pretty sure he'd never smelled things in dreams. But the sawdust memory was insistent.
He waited until they were in the car and halfway back to the motel before he spoke.
"Dean, I'm not sure we should do this."
"Do what?"
"Cleanse the mill."
"Because letting the ghosts go on killing people is a better idea?"
They stopped at a red light. "We don't know how reliable this volume of incantations is," Sam said.
"That never stopped us before." There went the eyebrow again. "We could just use Dad's old standby if it makes you feel better."
The light changed. Dean started to pull out into the intersection.
"No, it's not that--" Sam began.
A pick-up truck barreled through against the light, horn blaring.
Dean slammed on the brakes. The Impala lurched to a stop. Sam put out his hands and braced himself against the dashboard as Dean reached out and grabbed Sam's shoulder.
"Crap," Dean said, the fingers of his other hand clenched around the steering wheel.
Sam's heart was beating so hard it ached. He put his palms on the dashboard and lowered his head.
"Sam? You hurt?"
"No."
A car honked behind them. Dean put both hands back on the wheel and continued through the intersection. Houses, the occasional small church, and trees half-bare of leaves slid by.
"If you really think it's a bad idea we won't do it," Dean said, like they were discussing whether or not to try the meatloaf special.
He shrugged, trying to match Dean's tone. "I think it's a bad idea."
"Okay. But if you have another plan, genius, give a holler."
Six nights after the mirrors shattered, Sam slept for two hours total. He kept jolting awake, not with a nightmare, but with the feeling that he'd forgotten something.
But each time he rolled over and looked at his brother's sleeping form in the other bed, the sense of forgetting went away, and nothing was missing.
Seven days after the mirrors shattered, there was another accident at the mill.
Sam conned his way into a conversation with the foreman. No one could explain the accident. The equipment was working correctly, but something slipped out of place.
"Al's lucky he didn't lose all his fingers." The foreman, a big guy with round, rosy cheeks and hairy hands shook his head. "Man's got a family of six to feed."
They met up at the car, which Dean had parked a short way down the road from the mill.
"EMF off the charts," said Dean, as he slid down from his perch on the Impala's hood. "We'd better do it tonight."
"But I thought we--"
Dean raised his hand, palm flat. "It's not as if either of us has come up with a better way to stop the accidents. No ritual's ever one hundred percent certain, you know that."
"Yeah."
He almost told him. But the memory of the nightmare was like trying to listen to a radio played quietly on the other side of the quad at Stanford--he could hear there was music, but not which song.
As for the scent of sawdust, he'd had lumber mills on the brain. That was all.
Seven nights after the mirrors shattered, the security guard at the mill slumped over into a drugged sleep after Dean spiked his coffee.
With the book of incantations in one hand and chalk in the other, Sam knelt on the floor of the mill, the scent of sawdust all around him. He copied the symbols while Dean aimed the flashlight at the floor.
When he was done he formed a salt circle around the symbols while Dean took two candles, a flask of holy water, and more chalk out of the backpack, and tucked them into the pockets of his leather jacket.
"Let's do this," Dean said, pulling out his handgun. He turned and strode, almost sauntered, off into the shadows of the mill.
He envied Dean that: as if he were casually flipping up his middle finger at the things that went bump in the night. Sam crouched inside the circle, clutching the book. He picked up the thermos resting on the concrete next to his shoe and drank some coffee.
Damn, he was tired. He blinked several times, worked his jaw, yawned.
His legs started to ache from crouching, so he cautiously lowered himself to the floor.
The book provided a variation on one of their father's favorite techniques, a ghost-summoning ritual that went against the advice of spiritualists in at least fifteen states. It was considered dangerous mostly because it pissed the ghosts off.
But that was the point: get them to chase you, lure them into crossing the circle, say the incantation, and disperse the spirits, releasing them to...wherever it was ghosts went next. It worked in a pinch if there were no bones to be found. Dad's spell had worked just fine over the years, except the few times when it had backfired spectacularly. Possibly this new ritual might be more reliable.
Or not.
Sam rolled his shoulders. Dean should be done setting up for his part of the spell by now. It had to be far enough away from the circle that the spirits didn't sense it until it was too late for them to stop.
He thought Dean always enjoyed this system a little too much, just like Dad. Sam never could understand it, the way they grinned like it was a game, as if it was never a question that Sam would say the ritual correctly, every single time.
His eyes burned, so he rubbed them again, then closed them, only for a moment, the bumpy, soft leather of the book against his finger tips and the taste of coffee lingering at the back of his mouth. With all the caffeine he'd had that day, he should be amped. It was coffee straight up, too, black with no milk or sugar, the way Dean drank it, nothing to make the drink kinder on the way down. Dad always took his with a little sugar, but no milk, and he hated instant, complained constantly when they had nothing else available.
The sound of the gunshot woke him.
Sam scrambled to his feet, knocking over the thermos and spilling dark liquid across the dusty cement floor. He kicked at the fluid to keep it away from the chalk markings even as he looked around for his brother, who should be--
Dean was past the circle, under the catwalk at the far end of the room. He should have just been heading towards Sam.
"Sam, what the hell?" Dean's angry shout echoed up into the rafters.
Four dark shapes swirled around Dean, thick black ribbons of smoke. Sometimes one, then another, flickered into the sharper details of flannel shirts, suspenders, boots, bearded or clean-shaven faces, all twisted more with misery than fury. Dean fired again, and one of the spirits dispersed, only to reappear again above him.
There weren't enough curse words in the world.
"Lead them across the circle," Sam shouted back. He got out the flashlight, opened the book, and flipped through the pages. Shit, where was that spell? He'd had his finger inserted to mark it, but that was before he'd dozed off like a complete asshat.
This was the time Sam had been dreading, when he screwed up an incantation.
He found the page, then looked up to see Dean dodging the spirits that rushed over his head, trying to get clear of them so he could run across the mill floor towards Sam and the circle.
The catwalk above Dean's head trembled.
"Dean!"
Dean looked over at Sam, then up as the catwalk creaked. In the darkness Sam read the slow realization most in the way Dean's posture changed, his shoulders and jaw lowering.
The catwalk emitted another creak and started to tear away from the wall. As Dean's body tensed to leap away, the ghosts swooped around him, distracting him.
Sam dropped the book and the flashlight and ran.
He brought Dean down and to the side with a full-body tackle. They slammed together onto the floor as the section of catwalk crashed down somewhere Sam couldn't see because his vision was filled with sawdust and darkness and part of Dean's sleeve. His knees and his elbows, even his teeth hurt.
He rolled over carefully and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Dean was lying on his back, jaw clenched, cursing steadily under his breath, which was good because it meant he was conscious.
"You okay?"
"That's the stupidest question you've ever asked, and I've know you your whole life." Dean sat up, shoulders twitching, shaking his head a little.
Sam got to his feet first and reached down to help his brother, who ignored Sam's hand. Once on his feet, Dean staggered a little and Sam almost reached out to take his arm but Dean had already moved away. His hand was still gripped around the gun.
"Incoming," Dean said calmly, and fired as the ghosts dove at them. "Sam, get your ass back to the circle and get ready to do that spell."
He gave Sam a shove and Sam obediently ran back, nine years old again because he couldn't think to do anything else now except follow orders.
Sam snatched the book off the floor with one hand and held his flashlight with the other. He glanced up and saw Dean running towards him, the ghosts streaming in his wake, their shapes going in and out of focus, alternating as recognizably angry men or just black wisps.
Dean ran past the circle. "Now, Sam!"
He began the incantation as the spirits ruffled him with an icy wind.
Something almost like the change in cabin pressure as an airplane ascended slammed up through the floor, up from the circle, up through him. The chalk markings flashed an incandescent red.
There was a sound like a muffled bang and the black wisps of the ghosts exploded outward with a white light that flashed across the length of the mill.
The incantation finished, Sam closed the book, letting the flashlight fall to the floor. In the quiet the clatter of it seemed loud.
Dean slowly straightened up from the crouch he'd gone into and lowered his gun arm.
"Holy shit," he said.
And that was that. It was over.
They began the usual routine of packing up, wiping the floor clean of markings, sweeping up the salt, putting the candles away. Sam shouldered the backpack and they walked out of the mill into the damp, chilly Arkansas night.
Chances were no one would know the place had been haunted, or that they'd ever been there, unless somebody noticed the melted wax stuck to the floor or perhaps a faded stray chalk marking. Rust in the catwalk supports would be blamed for the collapse.
The security guard might have a hangover.
They climbed the chain link security fence and dropped to the grassy verge on the other side.
"Dean..."
But his brother said, without sharpness, "Shut it."
A car rushed past them in the night, its wheels sending up a spray of water. Dean started walking along the verge, headed to where they'd parked the car, his shoulders rigid, striding rather than walking.
"No," Sam said, and quickened his steps to catch up. When Dean just walked faster, Sam grabbed his arm and turned Dean to face him. "Listen to me!"
"What?"
"I nodded off. I screwed up."
"Shouldn't go hunting sleep-deprived if you can avoid it," Dean recited under his breath. "Good rule of thumb. I should have forced you to--"
"Stay behind? Do you think I would have if you'd tried?"
"Doesn't matter now. Important thing is, you came through." He turned and kept on walking.
Sam stood a moment, trying to figure out what to say, what to do next. The unyielding back and shoulders grew smaller in the darkness along the road. He couldn't tell if Dean was angry. He couldn't tell what Dean was thinking at all.
Eight days after the mirrors shattered, they were driving across the Arkansas state line into Oklahoma because Dean overheard a trucker at a rest stop gossiping about an attack that Dean thought sounded like the work of goblins.
"Which exit?" Dean said, eyes on the coldly sunlit highway ahead.
"9B," said Sam immediately. He folded the map and tucked it onto the dashboard.
It was the first conversation they'd had in fifty miles.
Eight nights after the mirrors shattered, Dean sat on his bed in a motel room in Oklahoma and finished cleaning his shotgun.
Sam paged through Dad's journal, looking up what to do about goblins, but he wasn't really paying attention any more. Finally he put the journal down, stood up, and went to stand in front of Dean.
"I've made a decision," Sam said.
Dean looked up as if startled to find Sam suddenly at the foot of his bed, and Sam wasn't sure but there might have been a flicker of something like fear in his brother's face, gone so quickly he thought he likely imagined it, or misread some other emotion.
"I'm grounding myself," he continued.
"What are you now, Dad?" Dean snorted and set the bore brush down on the towel next to the cleaning rod. That might have been relief in his voice but again, Sam couldn't be sure.
"I'm serious. You'll have to hunt goblins without me."
"I don't think so." Dean reached for a rag.
"You can do it. You've hunted alone."
"I told you once before. Are you going to make me say it again?"
"I know you don't want to hunt alone. I'm pointing out that you're more than capable of doing it. Besides, you won't actually be alone. I'm giving you notes to take with you." Sam waved his hand towards the table. "We can stay in contact using the cell phones. You can use the handsfree and I can be here with Dad's journal. I'll be your four-one-one. Trusty geek boy, feeding you information while you're out in the field."
"First of all, you're not nearly as cute as that Oracle chick. Secondly...no."
"You're such a stubborn jerk sometimes, you know that?"
"Takes one to know one," Dean said.
"I fell asleep during a hunt, Dean. I could have gotten you killed. Sure, I pulled it together--hell, I saved your butt when that catwalk went. But it was too close. So I'm not going to hunt, for a few days. Maybe a week. Not until I've actually had some sleep and can think straight."
Dean fingered the oil-stained rag, then bunched it up in his fist. "I'd rather have a sleepy you watching my back than hunt by myself." He frowned.
It took Sam a moment to register that one. He finally decided it wasn't a compliment, but an admission. He felt a flash of irritation that Dean's loyalty and fear of being alone were so strong that he'd disregard common sense and safety. But that didn't sound like his brother, who wasn't reckless, not really. So maybe it came out to a compliment after all.
Sam sat down on the other bed, letting out the breath he'd been holding. "You know as well as I do that hunting with someone whose focus is off is dangerous."
Dean's eyes flickered to the journal, then back to the cloth in his hands. He tossed the cloth aside, wiped his hands on his jeans, and started putting the cleaning things away.
"So I'm grounded, for seven days," Sam said. "Agreed?"
It took a long time but Dean finally said, "Fine." Sam thought that was the end of it but then Dean went on. "But if you think I'm going to bust my ass while you sit around on yours, forget it. We could both use some shore leave."
That was unexpected. "Shore leave?"
"We could, I dunno, go to Nashville. The babes are hot."
"What about the town where you're on the most wanted list?"
"That sheriff's too lazy and slow to catch me."
"But...I don't want to stop looking for Dad."
"We won't. Maybe we'll pick up a lead someplace." Dean got to his feet and picked up his shotgun. "We have to take care of the goblins first, though. I'll do it. By myself."
"Check in every half hour," Sam said, as Dean shrugged into his jacket.
He expected Dean to say something snarky but instead he just said "Sure," then paused with his hand on the doorknob, the duffel holding his gun and other hunting goods slung over his shoulder. "You could have gotten yourself killed."
Then Dean went out into the night, closing the door behind him.
First Sam checked his email.
Then he got on the laptop and checked his regular websites.
At first check-in, Dean's ring was timed to the second, almost as if he were taunting him.
"Going in after them now," he said. "They're in a broken down barn, about twenty-two miles south of the motel. Six of the buggers. They're small."
"You're using iron rounds?"
"Duh, Sam." Dean hung up.
Sam turned on the TV but it annoyed him so he turned it off.
He tried to read.
He sharpened his knife.
Half an hour later he sat at the table and stared down at his cell phone.
Two minutes past second check-in.
"Come on, ring," he muttered.
Four minutes past check-in.
"Come on, you stubborn bastard."
Seven minutes past check-in.
His cell phone lit up and chimed. Sam snatched it and answered without even bothering to look at the ID first.
"Dean!"
"Yo, Sammy."
"Everything go okay?"
"Had a little trouble with one of them, little freak went invisible."
"Are you injured?"
"Nah. They're all bagged. See you in ten." There was a pause. Then, the tone unmistakably mocking: "You weren't worried about me, were you?"
Sam snapped the phone shut with an angry click.
He was so not in the right condition to go hunting.
Folding his elbows on the table, he put his head down and tried to relax, to breathe slowly and evenly to slow his heart rate. This kind of nervousness was frowned upon in the Winchester family. Watching each other's backs, that was the main thing, but anxious worrying, pacing, hovering over check-ins wasn't done. Dad used to say it showed lack of trust, not in their ability to be there for each other, but faith in each other's strengths. If one of them was in trouble, go help him, but hand-wringing was useless.
For all that, Sam remembered a number of nights when Dad had paced, and when Dean had finally come home, Dad'd been short tempered in a way only worry could produce.
With his cheek resting on his sleeve, Dad's journal blurry in his line of vision on the table, Sam smiled.
What felt like only a few minutes later the click of Dean's key in the lock, the sound of his brother's steps on the carpeting, and the thud as his duffel hit the floor, were like the cutting of a puppet's strings. Sam didn't even bother raising his head; he suddenly felt overwhelmingly sleepy, but not in the grainy, stretched way.
More in the he could actually sleep now for real way.
He felt something warm, scratchy, and smelling of cheap detergent drop over his shoulders.
"Hey Dean?" He mumbled, not opening his eyes, trying to keep himself poised just above the depths of sleep. Dean made a questioning noise from nearby. "Who's gonna save all the people while we're on shore leave?"
"We're not the only hunters out there." He heard a light clatter as Dean dropped his keys on the dresser. "And...more important things than huntin'."
Just as astonishment at what his brother had said hit him, and he was making a mental note to remember it later, Sam fell asleep.
~END
A/N:
*title is from the poem "Sleep" by Sir Phillip Sidney
*yes, that was a shout-out to Immunity. I couldn't resist using my own fanon to twist the knife a bit. Sorry, Dean.
*the lumber mill is based loosely on the Monohan lumber mill, which first burned in 1925 and was rebuilt, then burned again in 1944. It was in Washingston State, not Arkansas. To my knowledge there is no haunting involved.
*angelstart's timeline was helpful in figuring out the time of year for this story.