I'm the Thorn In Your Side | Sam/Dean | NC-17 | 14615 words
Title: I'm the Thorn in Your Side (Because That's Just What I Do)
Author: dragonspell
Artist: lightthesparks
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Summary: A trail of bizarre car wrecks have stretched across Wisconsin and Minnesota. In Alexandria, Minnesota, Sam and Dean finally catch up with the mayhem.
Word Count: 14615
A/N: Beta credits go to moragmacpherson and entropyrose. This fic was written for lightthesparks Love You Like Sin challenge. ...You know, the one that she had last year. >_> Um. Sorry about that. ^^ I'd like to thank lightthesparks for being so patient with me. RL and other commitments kind of got in our way on both sides. It's been a long time in coming but at least it's finally here. Check out more of lightthesparks's amazing, amazing art over at her journal here.
Part I | Part II | Art Post
A few hours back, the roads had been clear as a bell. They’d since entered Narnia and now they just needed to find Mr. Tumnus-preferably before Dean managed to kill them.
“Dean.” Sam Winchester glared at his brother across the length of the Impala’s front seat. Dean grinned irritatingly back, framed by the snow banks flashing by in the window behind him as he draped one wrist over the steering wheel, just enough to keep the car steady. He should have been gripping it with both hands, but that was an argument that Sam had long since given up on. Right now, Sam had other pressing concerns. Like the fact that Dean was stepping down on the accelerator a little bit more, jumping the car from 75 to 80, in pure defiance of the snow-covered road and the fact that the light in the intersection dead ahead was bright red.
Sam sunk down in the seat, one hand clawing at the Impala’s door for purchase like it was his only hope of salvation-if they crashed, he didn’t want to go through the damn windshield-and glared some more as he clutched the variety of newspaper clippings that were sitting on his lap. He’d just assembled them into some kind of order. “Dean, that’s a red light,” he said tersely, turning his head to stare at the oncoming intersection. In full daylight, it was shining loud and clear like a fucking airplane warning strobe, bright against the overcast sky.
Dean shook his head, still smirking. “That’s not a red light, Sammy,” he said, correcting him. The fuck it wasn’t. Just to be contrary, Dean punched it even harder, the side of the road flying by now as they got closer and closer. Sam fought his own instincts to curl up in terror-he wouldn’t give Dean that kind of satisfaction-but that wasn’t going to stop him from preparing for eventualities. He braced his legs against the foot well, convinced that Dean was playing a big huge prank and was no doubt thinking that it would be just hi-lar-ious to see Sam jerk forward when he slammed on the brakes.
“Really?” Sam snapped. “Because it looks red to me!” Dean didn’t make a habit of these kinds of ‘games’ but sometimes he got bored. All the driving got to him and he couldn’t help himself anymore. Sam hated them. …And considering that they were investigating a series of bizarre car accidents, Dean’s normal screwing around didn’t exactly seem to be the wisest choice at the moment.
“Sam,” Dean said, his grin widening as he glanced over at Sam, “just because it’s red, doesn’t mean that it’s a red light.” That made no damn sense. The intersection-a little pit stop on the outskirts of Alexandria, Minnesota-was coming up fast. They only had a few seconds left and Dean was still rocketing them straight at it. “That’s a ‘straight-on ‘til morning light.’”
Oh, God. He wasn’t going to stop, was he? “A what?” Sam stared at the rapidly disappearing strip of road in growing horror. “That’s ridiculous and Dean there’s a car coming!” He jammed his finger against the window at a fast approaching blue Toyota coming up from the east but Dean shook his head again like Sam was the crazy one. Sam abandoned dignity and dumped the papers off his lap, flattening himself against the Impala’s vinyl.
They blasted through the intersection with the needle of the Impala’s speedometer buried in the dash, zooming through just as the light turned green, and Sam thought that, for a brief moment, he honestly hated Dean. Just a little. He glanced at the side view mirror and saw the tiny Toyota was sitting peacefully at the now red light of the east side of the intersection. Dean crowed, slapping his hand against the wheel. “Beautiful!” he said. “Did you see that timing?” He glanced over at Sam and then started laughing. Jackass.
“I hate you,” Sam hissed, pushing himself upward. “We could have died…” What would have happened if the Toyota had decided to run that light instead of stopping?
“Aww, Sammy,” Dean said. “You didn’t have to worry.” He patronizingly patted Sam’s head and Sam firmly shoved down the warm little glow that the touch caused. He was supposed to be pissed, damn it. “You mean to tell me, you couldn’t see that yellow light on the other side, Sam? Come on, you knew that it was going to change. You had to.” Dean kept swinging his grin back as Sam before glancing out the windshield again to keep the car on the road like he was trying to get Sam to share in the joke. Sam ignored him and started picking up the clippings that he’d scattered back when he’d been convinced that they were going to die. The article that had brought them here-about a seven car pile up where every vehicle involved except for one had been totaled in increasingly bizarre ways-was underneath Dean’s feet. Sam bent over to grab it, his shoulder pressing up against Dean’s warm thigh. “You were the one complaining you were hungry,” Dean said with a shrug. “The sooner we get to town, the sooner you can eat.”
Sam huffed and his eyes cut over to Dean’s crotch. As close as he was, Dean would never know where Sam was looking and, pissed or not, Sam couldn’t ignore the fact that it would have been so damn easy to lean over Dean’s leg and run his mouth up the length of Dean’s fly-trace the hard ridge of the zipper and the bulge underneath.
But brothers weren’t supposed to do that kind of stuff. So Sam didn’t.
He hadn’t spent the whole of his awkward teenage years hiding his unbrotherly desires for Dean just to let them all spill out now-hadn’t spent years jerking off to thoughts of Dean and pretending that he was thinking of Dean’s porno mags if Dean caught him. If nothing else, Sam had self-will now. He grabbed the clipping and sat back up to coolly reorganize it in his pile of newspapers and insurance print-outs. He’d had them in chronological order, highlighting the distinct trail that stretched across Minnesota and Wisconsin, but now the mess in St. Paul was ahead of Madison and that just wasn’t right. “You know, Dean,” he said pointedly, “we are following a pattern of car wrecks. Charging through intersections like that is like waving a gigantic red flag.”
Dean snorted and patted the Impala’s dashboard, his fingers lingering on the vinyl in a fond caress. Sam forced himself to look away from Dean’s hand. “My baby knows I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. ...Unlike some other people I could name.”
“Yeah, well, your ‘baby’ doesn’t know anything until we figure out what we’re up against,” Sam grumbled, muttering under his breath. Dean rolled his eyes but otherwise let Sam get away with the dig and, feeling disappointingly unsatisfied about getting in the last word, Sam slumped in his seat to stare at the top clipping again. It didn’t tell him anything new. The article was full of vague little euphemisms, the author having sanitized the facts. The insurance print-outs and police reports, though, were more detailed. So the SUV that was listed as a case of ‘the driver losing control’ was really a case of the vehicle rolling over the three foot tall guard rail and up the nearest hill; the Dodge that had been buried underneath a sea of tennis balls before rear-ending the semi that had previously held the poorly packed pallets was wrote off as a victim of ‘unsecured cargo’-the same phrase used for the car that had been crushed by the runaway piano from the pickup truck. The truck-having been pounded into oblivion by a mini-storm of golf ball-sized hail according the insurance print-out-was merely listed as an ‘unfortunate event.’
It was unfortunate, all right. As far as Sam and Dean could tell, the drivers-and their vehicles-were all victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was nothing else connecting them besides the fact that they were on the highway west of St. Paul and apparently directly in the line of whatever was causing untold damage as it headed west. According to the newspapers that Sam had dug up, there was a trail of bizarre car wrecks stretching all the way back to Wisconsin-something the local press was blaming on the snowstorm that had blown through a couple of days ago. Sure, the six inches of snow had been bad, Sam thought, but he didn’t think that it had been bad enough to cause so many accidents. There were more unsafe drivers on the road than Dean, true, but the numbers were adding up. Too many for it to be just people driving too fast for conditions. After all, microbursts?
Dean was whistling tunelessly to himself, drumming his fingers against the wheel. “So after we get into town, what do you say we-Son of a bitch!” Sam slammed into the door, his head rebounding off the window, as his world spun. He clutched at his head, wincing at the pain as the world tilted crazily outside the windshield. Dean swore, his hands gripping the wheel and fighting for control as he furiously pumped the brakes. Sam grabbed the dashboard and quelled the urge to puke like a victim of an out of control carnival ride.
The Impala plowed into a snow bank, her nose burying into the high drift of white as gravity slammed Sam forward. Dean swore again and the car door squealed as he kicked it open. “Motherfucking, cocksucking…” His voice trailed off, caught and blown away by the wind. Sam shivered as the chill cut through the dwindling warmth of the Impala’s interior and zipped up his coat before he opened his door, too. The clippings and printouts were lining the floor again but Sam would pick them up in a minute.
Dean was on his back in the snow, crawled up underneath the Impala, checking for damage and Sam knelt down beside him. “Fucking rodents, running across the damn road… Should be fucking hibernating-”
“Dean?”
Dean pushed himself back out and glared at Sam. “What?” Sam cocked an eyebrow and Dean shook his head. “Fucking otter in the road. As near as I can tell, the car looks fine.” He stood up, dusting off his clothes, muttering about how he was going to “skin the little bastard.”
Sam didn’t bother to tell him that otters didn’t live this far south. “There’s ice on the road,” he said instead.
“Yes, Sam, I can see that.” Dean threw himself back into the car, slamming the door behind him. He waited until Sam was back in the car before continuing. “’There’s ice in the road,’” he mocked, shoving his voice up higher. Sam frowned; he didn’t sound like that.
But when they got back on the road, heading towards Alexandria again, Dean was driving slower. Sam took that as a win.
They had stopped by the scene of the accident, just a few miles before Alexandria but that didn’t tell them much beyond the fact that the police had been a little lax in gathering up all the pieces of the vehicles. Dean had picked up a sliver of chrome side molding and waved it at Sam, grinning, which had been about the highlight of their tour. Just like all the other accident sites that they had visited. No sigils carved into the ground, nothing special about the area, not even a lingering stench of sulfur-just a straight stretch of road. If there had been anything worth seeing, it was already gone.
The sun was starting to set on them as they reached Alexandria, the harsh light bouncing off the city limit sign. A bum sitting with his back up against the metal post waved as they drove by and Sam hesitantly gestured back before a fire truck cutting across the intersection up ahead caught his attention, the red flashing lights zipping by.
Dean picked out the cheapest motel that he could find-one that wouldn’t ask too many questions-or any questions at all, actually-and checked them in. The clerk held out the key for number 12 with a warning not to plug anything into to the electrical sockets on the south side (“Gettin’ those fixed next month”) and Sam quietly thanked the man. Chuckling, Dean slapped Sam on the shoulder and left to move their stuff in, grabbing a copy of the local newspaper on his way out, while Sam just hoped that there would be at least one working socket in the room for the laptop. The battery only lasted about a two hours and research always went faster with the computer than without it.
In the room-decorated circa 1974 with all the requisite oranges and browns and avocado greens and then never updated-Sam saw that there was exactly one outlet close to the Queen sized beds that lined the south wall. Unfortunately, it was occupied, filled by a lamp and an alarm clock. Sam shrugged and pulled the second plug free, blackening the red numbers. He’d always hated alarm clocks anyway. Alarm clocks had always meant drills again-wet, soggy drills in dewy grass and predawn light-unless Dad had been gone. If Dad had been MIA, then the alarm had represented teenage rebellion as Dean would just roll over and hit the snooze-buying another nine minutes again and again for over an hour until Sam got up and turned it off. Since then, alarm clocks had only gotten worse.
While Dean puttered around, setting up the usual salt lines and runes, Sam spread out the accumulated research on the rickety little table in the corner, separating them out to tack them up on the wall, one by one. He lined them up in the obvious pattern, setting them down along the map he’d put up first, pinning up the wrecks in St. Paul just below the large yellow chunk of metropolitan area. Dean eventually moved to stand beside him, taking a swig of beer from a long-necked bottle. He must have been hiding another six pack in the trunk. Sam watched Dean swallow, his eyes following every moment of Dean’s neck, and accepted the bottle that Dean thrust at him. He took a pull and stared at the map again. “It’s heading somewhere,” Dean said.
Sam nodded. “But where?”
“Fucked if I know,” Dean replied with a shrug. “But if it keeps it up, this town should be the next one hit. Probably already is.” Whatever they were following stopped in each major city or town along I-94 and wreaked havoc for a few days before continuing on. That meant that they had two to three days to track the thing down and kill it before it moved on.
Sam nodded and turned away from the board. He already had the words and pattern memorized. “We can visit the hospital tomorrow,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “Two of the drivers are still there.”
Dean chugged the rest of his beer and set the empty bottle down on the table. It wouldn’t be long before he started in on the Jack, now. Sam had seen the conspicuous fifth in Dean’s duffle. “Yeah, then we can go talk to Ms. Eye of the Storm.” Julie Wallace-the driver who had escaped the entire pile-up without even a dent in her fender despite being in the thick of it-had been released from the hospital soon after being admitted.
“Sounds good,” Sam replied. Three days. Hopefully they’d solve the case by then.
“Yeah, my fu-sorry-car was totaled. Totaled! I just bought the thing two years ago! But the insurance company says that it’s not worth paying for. I knew I shouldn’t have switched to Progressive!” Sam nodded sympathetically-at least he hoped it was sympathetically-at the middle-aged man in the hospital bed. The man’s legs were elevated, both broken and in thick white casts. “I mean, what am I supposed to do now? The wife won’t give her car up and I need to work but we won’t be able to afford another car! Not with Paul going to college! Worker’s Comp pays sh-I mean beans. It pays beans.” The man struggled up onto his elbows to try and peer at Sam’s notepad. It was futile but he was still trying. “Make sure you print that, okay? Real human interest story there. ‘Struggling Family Destitute Due to Freak Accident and Heartless Insurance Company!’ There’s a headline for you!”
Sam folded up his notepad. So far he’d learned that the man hadn’t seen anything but a flying piano and this was the first time that he’d ever been a part of anything like this-in between the ranting, of course. In other words: the man wasn’t going to be much help at all. “Thank you, Mr…”
“Jeffers. J-e-f-f-e-r-s. Remember to spell that right!” Mr. Jeffers tried to struggle into a sitting position but ended up flat on his back, panting. Sam smiled wanly.
“I will,” he assured him and backed out of the room before Mr. Jeffers could recover enough to try and demand more out of the ‘reporter’ in his hospital room. He’d already spent a half hour with Mr. Jeffers as it was and they still had other people to interview.
Sam nearly ran Dean over as he was waiting right outside the door, leaning against the wall. Dean caught himself before he fell, his hands flattening against the drywall. “Sorry,” Sam said, reaching out to steady him. “You’re done with Sarah Higgins?” Sarah Higgins had been the girl with the SUV that had rolled. Dean had called dibs when they’d walked into the hospital, taking the short list of names out of Sam’s hand.
Dean smirked. “We couldn’t do much, what with being in a hospital and the broken collar bone but-”
Sam rolled his eyes and cut Dean off. He didn’t need to hear about Dean’s exploits-fantasy or otherwise. “What did she say?”
“That since she was found ‘at fault’ her insurance company won’t pay for the car,” Dean said. “She’s also not a practicing witch, descended from a cursed ancestor, or a secret monster in disguise.” Smirking again, Dean leaned forward into Sam’s personal space to whisper. “I checked.” He winked mockingly and straightened back up. “I got nothing.”
Sam sighed. “Same story then.” They’d interviewed two other people involved in the accident and had come up empty-handed as well. They’d both only wanted to complain about how their cars were smashed to bits and the insurance company wasn’t going to pay for the damages-just like Jeffers and apparently Sarah Higgins. Dean and he had just lost two hours and not gained a thing.
“The other four were released yesterday, right? We could go check on them or-”
“Or we could go check on Julie Wallace,” Sam finished. Faced with interviewing some more clueless individuals who would undoubtedly be selling the same story or checking out the one aberration in the case, it was a no brainer.
Dean nodded, another smile crossing his face. “Let’s go check on Julie Wallace.”
Julie Wallace lived in an apartment complex on the East side of town and she bought their cover story hook, line, and sinker. “Coffee?” she asked brightly after setting Dean and him down on the living room couch.
“That’d be wonderful,” Dean said smarmily. He smiled at the young blonde, flirting with her. Sam elbowed him in the ribs.
“Actually,” Sam said, “we only have a few questions.” Dean glared but Sam kept his attention focused on Julie.
“Oh, all right,” she said, perching on the edge of the nearby armchair. “I don’t remember much, though. It’s all a little blurry.”
Sam smiled. “Yeah, that happens. Too much going on at once.”
“Oh, yes,” Julie agreed. “I mean, one minute, I was just driving along and the next it was just complete chaos all around me. I saw the semi stop and the one car that-that…rolled. And…the piano…” She trailed off and smiled hesitantly at Sam. “It all happened so fast.”
“You weren’t injured, though?” Dean prompted, cutting in and Julie swung her blue eyes over to him.
“Oh no,” she said. “It was a miracle. I thank Him, you know.”
“Him?” Dean asked.
Julie reached up to grab her necklace, her fingers wrapping around the small golden cross. “Jesus,” she said firmly. “He kept me safe.”
“Riiight,” Dean drawled.
Sam cut him off. “Julie, have you noticed anything else strange happening around you?”
Julie’s eyes widened. “Other miracles?”
“Miracles, unexplained events, anything out of the ordinary.”
“New neighbors, maybe,” Dean added with a smile. “That sort of thing.”
“Oh, well, Lucy next door did get a new cat…” Julie answered uncertainly.
Dean dropped his head, biting his lip and Sam let him take the time out, picking up the slack. “Anything like your accident?” he prodded.
“Um…” Julie paused to think, her hand raising to hide her mouth. “Well, the Mitchells’ satellite dish did fall off their house yesterday. Ruined their garage, but it didn’t leave a scratch on their car. Maybe Jesus liked their car, too.”
“Was the car in the garage?” Dean asked, staring at Julie again.
“Yes. Right underneath the hole where the satellite dish came through, too. Bad news is, though, their car would have covered by the insurance company but their house isn’t. State Farm is refusing to pay to fix the garage so Jeff and Jodi are looking to switch their house over to Allstate, too. I told them that that’s what they should do. Make it cheaper, you know?” Julie giggled. “I have Allstate on both the car and the house because they gave much such a good deal on the package.”
“Well, you know those good deals,” Dean said sarcastically, raising his eyebrows. Sam forced the smile to stay on his face because he knew that that particular brand of sarcasm would fly right over Julie’s head. Sure enough, she giggled again.
“Thank you, Miss Wallace,” Sam said, standing up.
“Oh, please, call me, Julie,” she replied, glancing between him and Dean before settling on Dean. “Are you sure that you can’t stay any longer?”
Playing it up, Dean winked. “The story can’t wait.” He smiled again, nodding his head. “But thank you for your time.”
“Of course,” Julie said graciously, standing as well. “I shouldn’t keep you.”
“Just…one other thing, Mis-Julie.” Julie turned her attention back to Sam. “What’s the address of Jeff and Jodi Mitchell?”
“It’s just up the street. Two blocks north. Two story blue house on the corner.”
Sam jotted that down and smiled again. “Thank you,” he said, heading towards the front door.
“If there’s anything else that you might need, you just let me know,” Julie called after him.
“We’ll be sure to do that,” Dean assured her and Sam resisted the urge to bodily drag him out of the house. A little bit of flirting helped grease the wheels sometime and he understood that. He also understood that gathering information was all that Dean was doing but that never made it easier to watch. The jealousy threatened to eat Sam alive every time. Like with every one of Dean’s hook-ups, Sam just had to bite the inside of his cheek and ride it out. What he felt wasn’t normal and he knew that; it was a product of his fucked-up childhood-he couldn’t expect Dean to feel the same way.
He walked out the door and waited impatiently on the sidewalk. His imagination was running wild again, picturing in full High Definition detail how Dean would coax Miss Julie Wallace into shedding her good girl exterior. It was ludicrous, of course. Julie Wallace was the type of girl to expect promises that Dean couldn’t make but that didn’t stop the irrational part of Sam’s brain from insisting that it could happen. When Dean finally emerged from the house, Julie Wallace was still watching them from behind her white lace curtains.
Dean waved his open notepad at Sam. “Got her phone number,” he crowed.
“Fantastic,” Sam growled.
“Aw, Sammy, don’t be that way,” Dean teased. “She might have a sister.” He smirked and shoved his notepad into the pocket of his slacks as he got down to business again. “I told her to call if she could think of anything else about the accident. So we found out that Allstate is Jesus’ insurance company and Julie Wallace has no idea what happened to her.”
“Sounds right,” Sam agreed, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably. Interviewing the witnesses and the victims hadn’t gained them anything, just like investigating the crime scenes. At this rate, they were just going to have to hope that whatever it was that they were hunting just stumbled across them in the middle of doing its thing, like an unwary deer into headlights. Sam snorted. They’d have a better chance at winning the lottery.
Dean cocked his head. “What?” Sam asked, Dean’s action automatically putting him on guard. He was too used to Dean pausing before screaming at Sam to run.
“You hear that?” Dean asked. “Sounds like…”
They were close enough for Sam to hear and coming up fast. “Sirens.”
“Yeah. Two different kinds.” The sirens were coming fast from the south. Wherever they were going, it might be worth checking out but that meant getting to the Impala fast enough to try and chase them.
“Son of a…” Sam frowned down at Dean and Dean pointed over Sam’s shoulder. “Look,” he said, pushing at Sam’s shoulder to turn him around.
Following Dean’s direction, Sam spun. And his jaw dropped. Just a few houses down from Julie Wallace’s, a two-story house was smoking, tiny flames licking at its window trim. As they stared, the sirens passed by them, the loud drone and red flashing light proclaiming a fire engine while the red and blue was a cop, speeding along after it. Sam touched Dean’s elbow and he nodded. Together, they jogged down the street toward the burning house.
The neighborhood was oddly peaceful considering the mayhem that was now going on. The trees lining the sidewalk blew gently in the breeze, ignorant of the mess of firefighters pouring out of and off the truck to yank the hose free. As Sam and Dean neared, one of the men barked at the others from the hydrant, yelling that they were ready and they opened it up, shooting a stream of high pressured water at the burning window. The flames had spread to the roof too, eating up the gingerbread trim of the gable and burning along the shingles. “Damn…” Dean said, staring at the scene. Sam nodded, his hands diving into his pockets uselessly. He felt an urge to help but he knew that he’d just be in the way.
A couple of the firefighters were entering the house now, pushing through the roiling smoke and he glanced away, unable to take the scene. The house was going up fast, like it was covering in gasoline and if there was someone in there…
Sam’s attention caught on the tall Oak tree across the road. Or, rather, it caught on the man in the tree, jumping up and down on a branch like an overgrown child, laughing to himself as he stared down at the parked Camaro underneath him. It was almost…like he was trying to break the branch off onto the car… Sam frowned, puzzled, and took a step towards the road. Dean caught him. “Sam?” Then he followed Sam’s line of sight. “What the fuck…?”
Yeah. That was what Sam was thinking. Dean darted across the road, his hand already reaching underneath his suit jacket for the gun he carried in his waistband, leaving Sam to chase after him. “Hey, you!” Dean said, once he reached the other side of the street, coming around to stand beside the Camaro. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The man in the tree froze, crouching on the tree branch as he smiled down at them. Sam cocked his head, trying to place the man because he was certain that he’d seen him before, he just couldn’t remember where… The man was shabby-his once expensive clothes were beat-up and torn in places, covered in dirt. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in at least a week, with bruises and scrapes covering his face, and one lone white bandage, running just underneath the starting line of his shaggy hair. As Sam stared, trying to remember where he’d seen that face before, the man in the tree waved and winked before taking off like a shot, leaping out of the tree to hit the ground running.
“Come back here!” Dean shouted, tearing after him. He dodged around the tree and dashed off into a front yard as the bum jumped the dividing fence.
“Dean!” Sam chased after the both of them. He had no idea who the man was but something told him that the stranger was important and Sam had stopped questioning his instincts on these sorts of things. Dean jumped and caught the top of the wooden fence, hauling himself up and over in one smooth motion. “Dean!” Sam was going to lose him!
Sam threw himself over the top of the fence as well, his stomach scraping on the wooden boards as he rolled over the top. Dean was already half-way through the backyard and the bum was even further, leaping over a sandbox as he headed toward another fence. Dean curved around the pit of sand, one foot twisting on the ground to turn him back around to face the man who was already scaling the back barrier. Dean still had his gun, holding it tightly in one pumping fist, but he was going too fast to even think about aiming. Sam jumped over the sandbox as well, unwilling to take the extra half a second to dodge it.
The man and Dean were already in another backyard, swerving around a slide. They ran towards a swing set, Dean closing the distance. As he got within reach, the man spun around, grabbing up the hard metal chain of the swing and tossing at Dean. Dean ducked it but it cost him ground. Sam pounded after him.
They jumped through two more yards-Sam catching up to Dean-before they managed to close the distance again and this time, when the man turned to look at them, Sam could see the manic grin covering his face. It was the only warning he got before Dean pitched to the ground, shouting in pain. “Dean!” Sam stumbled and skittered to a stop on the grass, looking back at Dean as Dean writhed, clutching his leg and ankle. The bum cackled and darted off, jumping over another fence and disappearing into the suburban jungle.
“Damn it,” Sam swore under his breath and jogged back to his brother. The man was undoubtedly long gone by now and he couldn’t leave Dean behind. Dean was panting, worn out from the run, but biting his lip to try and suppress his pained groans as he tried to get back on his feet. Sam hit his knees in the grass, just missing the small hole that Dean had evidently tripped into, his hands gripping Dean’s shoulders. Dean attempted to stand, getting his good leg underneath him and cussed a blue streak as he tried to put weight on his other. “What’s wrong?”
Dean gasped and then grimaced, trying to hold his mouth firm. “Think I-think I might have busted my leg, Sammy…” he whispered and Sam swore again. He carefully wrapped an arm around Dean’s waist and tried to figure out the fastest route back to the car.
Dean didn’t like to be coddled. Sure, he’d had no problems playing it up for the pretty nurses, begging for extra coos, but the second that he’d been released, he’d been nothing but a pain in Sam’s ass. Sam knew that he should consider himself lucky that Dean only had a sprained ankle-two to six weeks, the doctor had assured him-and not a broken leg like he’d feared but Dean was still on crutches for the duration and bitching up a storm because of it. Especially once he’d learned that, because his right leg was out of action, he was stuck riding shotgun. Sam wasn’t about to let him drive-at least not for a couple of days anyway. Hell, Dean was lucky that Sam hadn’t just picked him up in the parking lot and carried him to the car because watching Dean awkwardly maneuvering himself with the crutches was just painful.
Dean was starting to get the hang of them, though. It was all the pacing he was doing around the motel room. Well. Hobbling. “Would you sit down?” Sam finally snapped. Sam understood Dean’s frustration with not being able to move like he wanted to but if Dean kept this up, his ankle was never going to heal.
Dean glared at him. “Can’t,” he said.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Sit,” he ordered. “The doctor said that you shouldn’t be walking on it.”
“I’m gonna get a beer.”
Sam stood up and gestured to the seat in front of the computer. “If I get you a beer, will you sit down?” The last thing he wanted was to be Dean’s own personal butler but if it got him to stop pacing…
“Fine,” Dean said, flopping down in the chair. He stared at the laptop screen, his fingers resting on the keyboard and Sam smothered the urge to tell him not to look up porn. He knew that Dean would do exactly the opposite just to piss Sam off. Instead, he walked over to the far side of the room, grabbing a bottle of the cheap beer that Dean was favoring these days. “So what do we think this is?” Dean asked, pecking at the keyboard. “Some kind of humanoid gremlin? Manifested curse?”
Sam shook his head. He didn’t have a clue. “Could be a shifter,” he added but Dean shot that one down.
“One who takes an interest in cars? Nah. Not really their style, you know?” Sam agreed. He handed the cold beer to Dean who grinned. “Hey,” Dean said, waggling his eyebrows, “I think I could get used to this. Beer on demand.”
“Yeah, don’t count on it,” Sam snorted, sitting down in the opposite chair, watching as Dean took a long swallow. “Do you think that it’s a coincidence that he was in Julie Wallace’s neighborhood?” There was no doubt in Sam’s mind that the strange man from the tree was somehow related to the rash of accidents happening along I-94.
“Probably not,” Dean said, taking another pull and setting the beer down on the table. “I’m also thinkin’ that it might not be a coincidence that that house was burnin’ either.”
Sam frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Remember Julie talking about her neighbor’s car? How the satellite dish ruined the garage but not the car?” Sam nodded. “Yeah, well, I just checked the local newspaper of the last town we knew this thing hit. Check this out.” Dean spun the computer around so that Sam could look at it.
Arsonist In Melrose?
Sam scrolled through the article as it detailed a couple of suspicious house fires in the town. “There’s more, too,” Dean said. “And I’m guessing they go all the way back to Wisconsin.”
“This is bad…” How had they missed this? He brought up another newspaper, another couple of headlines. “It’s not a Gremlin, then,” Sam said, looking up at Dean. “Some of these things weren’t mechanical.” Gremlins notoriously liked to mess with mechanical things.
“No, it’s not,” Dean agreed. “So I don’t have a fucking clue.” He snatched up the remote for the TV and turned up the volume to cover up the sound of the wind howling outside while the local anchors bantered back and forth about the rash of accidents happening on the roads lately. The man tutted about unsafe drivers before the camera centered in on the woman as she began her report.
“The local weather is causing more than just delays. Major accidents are happening all over as people simply do not drive slow enough for the icy roads. Yesterday, a driver in an SUV ran off the road into the city limit sign. The driver claimed that a man had been walking in the road. Police are still investigating. Alcohol could be a factor. On Ridgewood Street today, another car was found overturned and officials think that the driver tried to take a corner too fast. A few other, non-vehicular accidents are happening due to the accumulating snow as well. One house’s roof caved in earlier today due to the excessive amount of snow and a large tree was brought down last night, a victim of the wind. Police are stressing for residents to use caution, stay off the roads whenever possible, and keep roofs clear of accumulated snow.”
“You know,” the man cut in as the camera panned back out to include him, “pedestrians walking across the street in weather like this is a major problem as well. With icy roads, cars can’t just stop. It’s best to use caution when crossing.”
“Yes,” the woman agreed, “Everyone should keep the weather in mind.” The roof above Sam groaned and he glanced up at it curiously. He hoped that tonight wouldn’t be too cold. Last night, the room’s lone heater had barely been enough to keep the room above freezing. If he could have assured himself that he wouldn’t let his hands wander, he would have crawled in with Dean just to preserve body heat.
As the anchors moved on to a local fluff piece, Dean flipped the TV off and opened his mouth. The ceiling creaked again and Dean paused, staring up at it. Sam squinted. Was it…bowing in the middle? The center light fixture looked closer that it had before…
The roof gave way with a shrieking of nails pulling free of their studs, wood and singles and mounds of snow coming crashing down into the center of the room. “Holy fuck!” Dean shouted, tossing himself out of the chair as snow gushed through the new opening. Sam caught him, dragging him to the side as beams started to crash onto the beds, smashing them to the floor. If they’d been over there instead of at the table…
Sam didn’t want to think about it. One of the heaviest beams had landed directly across Dean’s bed.
With one last gush of snow, the avalanche stopped and Sam was left clutching Dean, holding him up-Dean swaying awkwardly on one foot-as they both stared in disbelief at what was left of the room. It was covered in a solid layer of snow, with broken beams poking up towards the now visible night sky. The TV was sparking, having been hit by one of the beams, and snow was still sprinkling down.
Dean suddenly slapped Sam’s chest. “Guess we’re getting our security deposit back, Sammy.”
If Dean wasn’t depending on him for support, Sam would have shoved him.
Dean stared up at the bland, white ceiling of the motel room, wondering if this one would collapse, too. He probably shouldn’t be laying on the bed, just in case, but fuck it. His ankle hurt. ‘Sprained.’ If he’d been with Dad, Dad would have just told him to walk it off. Sam, though, Sam was forcing him to hobble around on crutches like he’d been crippled or something.
Dean couldn’t deny that it hurt like a son of a bitch to put weight on his right foot, though, so maybe Sam had a point. But he still didn’t believe Sam about the ‘no driving’ thing. They were going to have to talk about that. Dean could drive perfectly well-he’d use his left foot if he had to.
Dean had thought that the motel owner’s eyes were going to bulge out of his head when he’d surveyed the damage, taking in the fact that his paying customers had almost been crushed underneath his badly maintained roof. He’d quickly ushered Sam and Dean into a new room, even refunding their money which, hey, bonus. Almost get killed in a surprise avalanche and end up with a free room for a night. Dean could deal with that-it was a better deal than what they normally got. Sam was currently busy, though, digging all of their stuff out of the impromptu snowdrifts, seeing as how it had all been buried when the ceiling had collapsed. Dean had offered to help but Sam had just bitched at him to stay off the ankle again.
That was just fine with Dean. He didn’t want to go pawing through the snow anyway. Sam could do that by himself if he wanted. Dean would let him. Just as long as the damn ceiling didn’t collapse on top of him again. Dean glared at the ceiling and silently dared it to do its worst.
The door opened with a slight squeal of the hinges and Dean lifted his head to see Sam stepping inside. He smiled at Dean and dusted some snow off his hair and he looked so much like the little kid that Dean used to know that Dean had to grin. Sam might have shot up to gigantor-like height but Dean couldn’t forget that the giant was still his little brother. “It’s hot in here,” Sam said, stripping off his jacket.
Dean shrugged and laid back down. “I think there was a draft in the other room.” Plus, he’d cranked the heat up to 80 because he was tired of being cold but he wasn’t about to say that. The way that Sam had been acting lately, Dean would be lucky to not end up tucked in bed with some chicken noodle soup and a thermometer because Sam was convinced he was coming down with a cold or something.
The bed dipped beside Dean as Sam sat down beside him. “How’s the ankle?” Sam asked.
“Mummified. I can’t even wiggle it,” Dean replied with a sigh. You never realized just how much you used your ankles until you couldn’t anymore.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sam said.
Dean shrugged again. “’snot your fault. The nurse is the one that wrapped it.” She’d been pretty and sweet but obviously new. Dean had decided not to fault her for that latter based on the former two. The bed shifted again and Dean finally glanced at Sam curiously, wondering what Sam was doing. The bed was moving way too much for Sam to just be sitting.
Sure enough, Sam was up on his knees next to Dean, one hand pressed into the bed by Dean’s shoulder as Sam loomed over him. Dean cocked an eyebrow but Sam ignored his unspoken question; he leaned forward and bowed his head, giving Dean only half a second of warning before he gently pressed his lips to Dean’s. Dean forgot how to breathe.
Sam’s touch was hesitant, barely there, just a soft ghosting trace but it had the power to make the world stop spinning. Dean felt as if he were being slammed against the wall, as if he were being choked, as if someone had sucker punched him when his guard was down. Sam was kissing him. And despite the tentativeness of it, there was definitely intent behind it-intent and a half-asked question.
Dean found himself saying yes without even knowing what it meant. His only protest was the hand that he fisted in Sam’s hair but whether it was to pull Sam away or bring him closer, Dean wasn’t really sure. Sam, though, took Dean’s indecisiveness as permission and deepened the kiss, pressing harder, his tongue licking out to taste Dean’s mouth. Dean parted his lips instinctively, letting Sam in, and then he was wedging a hand against Sam’s shoulder and shoving him away. He panted up at Sam, wondering what the hell was wrong with Sam and what the hell was wrong with him for caving so easily. “What the fuck, Sam?” Dean whispered.
Sam stared steadily down at him but he showed his nerves in the hesitant way that he licked his lips. This wasn’t a game. This was for real. “Got tired of not having what I wanted,” he said quietly and the idea was so ridiculous, Dean shoved it right out of his head.
“What happened outside?” he demanded. Sam must have been brain-scrambled or something. Possessed.
But Sam shook his head and started to pull away. “Forget it.”
Dean followed him up, pushing himself onto his elbows. “You come in and kiss me and now you want me to forget it?” he asked. “What kind of fucked-up-”
“Right, Dean!” Sam snapped. “It is fucked up! I mean, I want my older brother-it doesn’t get more fucked-up than that!”
Dean’s jaw dropped. “Want?” he breathed. This conversation… This conversation couldn’t be… Real.
“Yeah, Dean, want. Biblically.” Sam moved to sit on the edge of the bed and scrubbed a hand through his hair as his shoulders slumped. “Can’t believe that I just…”
The wheels of Dean’s mind were spinning, stuck in the mud somewhere between ‘Sam’ and ‘want.’ He rolled himself onto his knees and stared at Sam’s back. Sam was right: this whole damn thing was fucked-up. But Dean couldn’t deny that, for half a second there, he’d been going for it. Right alongside Sam.
It was fucked-up. There wasn’t anyway around that. But if Sam… If Sam wanted… And, maybe, Dean did too…
They’d never not been fucked-up. Dean crawled forward on the bed until he was right beside Sam again. Sam wouldn’t meet his eyes so Dean took the choice away when he hauled Sam’s face around and kissed him.
Sam held absolutely still until Dean finally broke away. Then his brows furled downward in confusion and he opened his mouth. Dean cut off whatever he was about to say with another kiss. Fuck that. They didn’t need to talk about this. Sam had had the right idea in the first place. Gently, like he was afraid that Dean was going to break, Sam’s hand cupped the back of Dean’s head. Dean responded to the tentative touch with a nip at Sam’s lip and Sam shoved him backward.
Climbing on top again, Sam stared down at Dean, swallowing hard, and Dean tried to reassure him with a grin. He was going for his usual cocky bravado but it was shaky-easy, but shaky. Under the circumstances, he thought that he was allowed that. He was on a bed, making out with his kid brother, for crying out loud. It was a little outside the norm, even for them. But he still yanked Sam down by his hair, not even giving him a chance to say no. Sam was the one that had started this-he could see it through to the finish now.
Sam’s breath turned ragged-rough-and he made the kiss harder, more forceful-100 miles of passion, barely contained and coming straight at Dean. Dean swallowed a moan and held on for dear life, his hands burying in Sam’s hair to hold him back and keep him close at the exact same time. He accepted each rough kiss of Sam’s, meeting them and gentling them with one of his own. A hand was snaking up under his shirt, fingers dancing teasingly along his skin before gaining confidence and clutching at him like they were going to hold him there for the rest of his life.
Dean liked it.
He panted, pulling at Sam’s hair as he moved underneath of Sam’s body, arching upward and encouraging more. Now that he had given in, there was no sense in holding back. None at all. Sam’s elbow embedded beside Dean as Sam flattened himself on top of Dean.
Dean froze as he heard the motel room door opening but Sam kept on going, trying to coax Dean back into kissing him again. “Stop,” Dean hissed, pushing Sam back for some space. “Someone’s at the-” He twisted his head around and the words died in his throat because it wasn’t just someone at the door, it was Sam. Sam, who was staring back at Dean with big, wide eyes in sheer shock-staring at Dean who had been happily writhing underneath of another Sam like a two dollar whore. And, if Sam was over there, then who was…? Dean jerked his head back to stare at the man on top of him.
The stranger no longer looked like Sam and Dean felt more than a little sick-the nausea weaseled in with the hefty dose of fear and adrenaline and kept him frozen despite his instincts screaming at him to either run or fight. Sam’s familiar features had melted into a scruffy, beaten-up face with a white butterfly bandage right beside his eye. Dean’s blood went cold. He knew that face. It had grinned down at him from a tree branch above a parked Camaro earlier today. The man-their monster-smiled apologetically. “Really sorry about the ankle,” he said and then he was up off of Dean and charging at Sam.
Dean rolled off the bed, slamming into the floor as his ankle gave out underneath him. “Sam!”
The creature reached Sam and tossed him aside like he was a sack of potatoes, throwing him out of the open doorway. Sam rebounded off the door, catching himself on the knob, but his instincts were on and he twisted to pull the gun out of his waistband. Dean crawled toward him, cursing at the pain shooting up his leg. “Sam!” he repeated. Sam glanced at him, his lips firming, and then he was off, tearing after the creature, running outside alone.
“Sam!” Dean pounded his fist against the orange carpet and struggled to haul himself up. He tried to put weight on his ankle again and swore as another hot surge of pain dissuaded him. There was no way that he was going to be able to do a mad dash out into the darkening light of the motel parking lot after Sam. No fucking way. He’d be stuck hobbling along on crutches at best and this sucked.
A bright flare caught Dean’s attention and he jerked his head around to stare at the table against the far wall, where Sam’s laptop was sitting. A burst of flame had erupted along the power cord, licking at the dark plastic. “Fuck!” Dean threw himself to the side and rolled across the room to yank the cord out of the wall outlet, stopping the flow of the electricity and killing the fire’s source. He braced his right knee underneath of himself and stood on his one good leg to pull the jack out of the back of the laptop and chuck the entire cord outside the open door onto the cement sidewalk.
He glared at it, leaning on the table for support. If that hadn’t been another one of whatever the fuck they were hunting’s tricks, Dean would eat his left testicle. “What a douchebag,” Dean growled, letting himself feel pissed at just how much nerve the creature had had to just walk into a hunter’s lair and start setting shit on fire with freaky-deaky mind powers.
It was much easier to focus on that than to think about how much he’d just royally fucked himself.
Part I | Part II | Art Post
Author: dragonspell
Artist: lightthesparks
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Summary: A trail of bizarre car wrecks have stretched across Wisconsin and Minnesota. In Alexandria, Minnesota, Sam and Dean finally catch up with the mayhem.
Word Count: 14615
A/N: Beta credits go to moragmacpherson and entropyrose. This fic was written for lightthesparks Love You Like Sin challenge. ...You know, the one that she had last year. >_> Um. Sorry about that. ^^ I'd like to thank lightthesparks for being so patient with me. RL and other commitments kind of got in our way on both sides. It's been a long time in coming but at least it's finally here. Check out more of lightthesparks's amazing, amazing art over at her journal here.
Part I | Part II | Art Post
A few hours back, the roads had been clear as a bell. They’d since entered Narnia and now they just needed to find Mr. Tumnus-preferably before Dean managed to kill them.
“Dean.” Sam Winchester glared at his brother across the length of the Impala’s front seat. Dean grinned irritatingly back, framed by the snow banks flashing by in the window behind him as he draped one wrist over the steering wheel, just enough to keep the car steady. He should have been gripping it with both hands, but that was an argument that Sam had long since given up on. Right now, Sam had other pressing concerns. Like the fact that Dean was stepping down on the accelerator a little bit more, jumping the car from 75 to 80, in pure defiance of the snow-covered road and the fact that the light in the intersection dead ahead was bright red.
Sam sunk down in the seat, one hand clawing at the Impala’s door for purchase like it was his only hope of salvation-if they crashed, he didn’t want to go through the damn windshield-and glared some more as he clutched the variety of newspaper clippings that were sitting on his lap. He’d just assembled them into some kind of order. “Dean, that’s a red light,” he said tersely, turning his head to stare at the oncoming intersection. In full daylight, it was shining loud and clear like a fucking airplane warning strobe, bright against the overcast sky.
Dean shook his head, still smirking. “That’s not a red light, Sammy,” he said, correcting him. The fuck it wasn’t. Just to be contrary, Dean punched it even harder, the side of the road flying by now as they got closer and closer. Sam fought his own instincts to curl up in terror-he wouldn’t give Dean that kind of satisfaction-but that wasn’t going to stop him from preparing for eventualities. He braced his legs against the foot well, convinced that Dean was playing a big huge prank and was no doubt thinking that it would be just hi-lar-ious to see Sam jerk forward when he slammed on the brakes.
“Really?” Sam snapped. “Because it looks red to me!” Dean didn’t make a habit of these kinds of ‘games’ but sometimes he got bored. All the driving got to him and he couldn’t help himself anymore. Sam hated them. …And considering that they were investigating a series of bizarre car accidents, Dean’s normal screwing around didn’t exactly seem to be the wisest choice at the moment.
“Sam,” Dean said, his grin widening as he glanced over at Sam, “just because it’s red, doesn’t mean that it’s a red light.” That made no damn sense. The intersection-a little pit stop on the outskirts of Alexandria, Minnesota-was coming up fast. They only had a few seconds left and Dean was still rocketing them straight at it. “That’s a ‘straight-on ‘til morning light.’”
Oh, God. He wasn’t going to stop, was he? “A what?” Sam stared at the rapidly disappearing strip of road in growing horror. “That’s ridiculous and Dean there’s a car coming!” He jammed his finger against the window at a fast approaching blue Toyota coming up from the east but Dean shook his head again like Sam was the crazy one. Sam abandoned dignity and dumped the papers off his lap, flattening himself against the Impala’s vinyl.
They blasted through the intersection with the needle of the Impala’s speedometer buried in the dash, zooming through just as the light turned green, and Sam thought that, for a brief moment, he honestly hated Dean. Just a little. He glanced at the side view mirror and saw the tiny Toyota was sitting peacefully at the now red light of the east side of the intersection. Dean crowed, slapping his hand against the wheel. “Beautiful!” he said. “Did you see that timing?” He glanced over at Sam and then started laughing. Jackass.
“I hate you,” Sam hissed, pushing himself upward. “We could have died…” What would have happened if the Toyota had decided to run that light instead of stopping?
“Aww, Sammy,” Dean said. “You didn’t have to worry.” He patronizingly patted Sam’s head and Sam firmly shoved down the warm little glow that the touch caused. He was supposed to be pissed, damn it. “You mean to tell me, you couldn’t see that yellow light on the other side, Sam? Come on, you knew that it was going to change. You had to.” Dean kept swinging his grin back as Sam before glancing out the windshield again to keep the car on the road like he was trying to get Sam to share in the joke. Sam ignored him and started picking up the clippings that he’d scattered back when he’d been convinced that they were going to die. The article that had brought them here-about a seven car pile up where every vehicle involved except for one had been totaled in increasingly bizarre ways-was underneath Dean’s feet. Sam bent over to grab it, his shoulder pressing up against Dean’s warm thigh. “You were the one complaining you were hungry,” Dean said with a shrug. “The sooner we get to town, the sooner you can eat.”
Sam huffed and his eyes cut over to Dean’s crotch. As close as he was, Dean would never know where Sam was looking and, pissed or not, Sam couldn’t ignore the fact that it would have been so damn easy to lean over Dean’s leg and run his mouth up the length of Dean’s fly-trace the hard ridge of the zipper and the bulge underneath.
But brothers weren’t supposed to do that kind of stuff. So Sam didn’t.
He hadn’t spent the whole of his awkward teenage years hiding his unbrotherly desires for Dean just to let them all spill out now-hadn’t spent years jerking off to thoughts of Dean and pretending that he was thinking of Dean’s porno mags if Dean caught him. If nothing else, Sam had self-will now. He grabbed the clipping and sat back up to coolly reorganize it in his pile of newspapers and insurance print-outs. He’d had them in chronological order, highlighting the distinct trail that stretched across Minnesota and Wisconsin, but now the mess in St. Paul was ahead of Madison and that just wasn’t right. “You know, Dean,” he said pointedly, “we are following a pattern of car wrecks. Charging through intersections like that is like waving a gigantic red flag.”
Dean snorted and patted the Impala’s dashboard, his fingers lingering on the vinyl in a fond caress. Sam forced himself to look away from Dean’s hand. “My baby knows I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. ...Unlike some other people I could name.”
“Yeah, well, your ‘baby’ doesn’t know anything until we figure out what we’re up against,” Sam grumbled, muttering under his breath. Dean rolled his eyes but otherwise let Sam get away with the dig and, feeling disappointingly unsatisfied about getting in the last word, Sam slumped in his seat to stare at the top clipping again. It didn’t tell him anything new. The article was full of vague little euphemisms, the author having sanitized the facts. The insurance print-outs and police reports, though, were more detailed. So the SUV that was listed as a case of ‘the driver losing control’ was really a case of the vehicle rolling over the three foot tall guard rail and up the nearest hill; the Dodge that had been buried underneath a sea of tennis balls before rear-ending the semi that had previously held the poorly packed pallets was wrote off as a victim of ‘unsecured cargo’-the same phrase used for the car that had been crushed by the runaway piano from the pickup truck. The truck-having been pounded into oblivion by a mini-storm of golf ball-sized hail according the insurance print-out-was merely listed as an ‘unfortunate event.’
It was unfortunate, all right. As far as Sam and Dean could tell, the drivers-and their vehicles-were all victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was nothing else connecting them besides the fact that they were on the highway west of St. Paul and apparently directly in the line of whatever was causing untold damage as it headed west. According to the newspapers that Sam had dug up, there was a trail of bizarre car wrecks stretching all the way back to Wisconsin-something the local press was blaming on the snowstorm that had blown through a couple of days ago. Sure, the six inches of snow had been bad, Sam thought, but he didn’t think that it had been bad enough to cause so many accidents. There were more unsafe drivers on the road than Dean, true, but the numbers were adding up. Too many for it to be just people driving too fast for conditions. After all, microbursts?
Dean was whistling tunelessly to himself, drumming his fingers against the wheel. “So after we get into town, what do you say we-Son of a bitch!” Sam slammed into the door, his head rebounding off the window, as his world spun. He clutched at his head, wincing at the pain as the world tilted crazily outside the windshield. Dean swore, his hands gripping the wheel and fighting for control as he furiously pumped the brakes. Sam grabbed the dashboard and quelled the urge to puke like a victim of an out of control carnival ride.
The Impala plowed into a snow bank, her nose burying into the high drift of white as gravity slammed Sam forward. Dean swore again and the car door squealed as he kicked it open. “Motherfucking, cocksucking…” His voice trailed off, caught and blown away by the wind. Sam shivered as the chill cut through the dwindling warmth of the Impala’s interior and zipped up his coat before he opened his door, too. The clippings and printouts were lining the floor again but Sam would pick them up in a minute.
Dean was on his back in the snow, crawled up underneath the Impala, checking for damage and Sam knelt down beside him. “Fucking rodents, running across the damn road… Should be fucking hibernating-”
“Dean?”
Dean pushed himself back out and glared at Sam. “What?” Sam cocked an eyebrow and Dean shook his head. “Fucking otter in the road. As near as I can tell, the car looks fine.” He stood up, dusting off his clothes, muttering about how he was going to “skin the little bastard.”
Sam didn’t bother to tell him that otters didn’t live this far south. “There’s ice on the road,” he said instead.
“Yes, Sam, I can see that.” Dean threw himself back into the car, slamming the door behind him. He waited until Sam was back in the car before continuing. “’There’s ice in the road,’” he mocked, shoving his voice up higher. Sam frowned; he didn’t sound like that.
But when they got back on the road, heading towards Alexandria again, Dean was driving slower. Sam took that as a win.
They had stopped by the scene of the accident, just a few miles before Alexandria but that didn’t tell them much beyond the fact that the police had been a little lax in gathering up all the pieces of the vehicles. Dean had picked up a sliver of chrome side molding and waved it at Sam, grinning, which had been about the highlight of their tour. Just like all the other accident sites that they had visited. No sigils carved into the ground, nothing special about the area, not even a lingering stench of sulfur-just a straight stretch of road. If there had been anything worth seeing, it was already gone.
The sun was starting to set on them as they reached Alexandria, the harsh light bouncing off the city limit sign. A bum sitting with his back up against the metal post waved as they drove by and Sam hesitantly gestured back before a fire truck cutting across the intersection up ahead caught his attention, the red flashing lights zipping by.
Dean picked out the cheapest motel that he could find-one that wouldn’t ask too many questions-or any questions at all, actually-and checked them in. The clerk held out the key for number 12 with a warning not to plug anything into to the electrical sockets on the south side (“Gettin’ those fixed next month”) and Sam quietly thanked the man. Chuckling, Dean slapped Sam on the shoulder and left to move their stuff in, grabbing a copy of the local newspaper on his way out, while Sam just hoped that there would be at least one working socket in the room for the laptop. The battery only lasted about a two hours and research always went faster with the computer than without it.
In the room-decorated circa 1974 with all the requisite oranges and browns and avocado greens and then never updated-Sam saw that there was exactly one outlet close to the Queen sized beds that lined the south wall. Unfortunately, it was occupied, filled by a lamp and an alarm clock. Sam shrugged and pulled the second plug free, blackening the red numbers. He’d always hated alarm clocks anyway. Alarm clocks had always meant drills again-wet, soggy drills in dewy grass and predawn light-unless Dad had been gone. If Dad had been MIA, then the alarm had represented teenage rebellion as Dean would just roll over and hit the snooze-buying another nine minutes again and again for over an hour until Sam got up and turned it off. Since then, alarm clocks had only gotten worse.
While Dean puttered around, setting up the usual salt lines and runes, Sam spread out the accumulated research on the rickety little table in the corner, separating them out to tack them up on the wall, one by one. He lined them up in the obvious pattern, setting them down along the map he’d put up first, pinning up the wrecks in St. Paul just below the large yellow chunk of metropolitan area. Dean eventually moved to stand beside him, taking a swig of beer from a long-necked bottle. He must have been hiding another six pack in the trunk. Sam watched Dean swallow, his eyes following every moment of Dean’s neck, and accepted the bottle that Dean thrust at him. He took a pull and stared at the map again. “It’s heading somewhere,” Dean said.
Sam nodded. “But where?”
“Fucked if I know,” Dean replied with a shrug. “But if it keeps it up, this town should be the next one hit. Probably already is.” Whatever they were following stopped in each major city or town along I-94 and wreaked havoc for a few days before continuing on. That meant that they had two to three days to track the thing down and kill it before it moved on.
Sam nodded and turned away from the board. He already had the words and pattern memorized. “We can visit the hospital tomorrow,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “Two of the drivers are still there.”
Dean chugged the rest of his beer and set the empty bottle down on the table. It wouldn’t be long before he started in on the Jack, now. Sam had seen the conspicuous fifth in Dean’s duffle. “Yeah, then we can go talk to Ms. Eye of the Storm.” Julie Wallace-the driver who had escaped the entire pile-up without even a dent in her fender despite being in the thick of it-had been released from the hospital soon after being admitted.
“Sounds good,” Sam replied. Three days. Hopefully they’d solve the case by then.
“Yeah, my fu-sorry-car was totaled. Totaled! I just bought the thing two years ago! But the insurance company says that it’s not worth paying for. I knew I shouldn’t have switched to Progressive!” Sam nodded sympathetically-at least he hoped it was sympathetically-at the middle-aged man in the hospital bed. The man’s legs were elevated, both broken and in thick white casts. “I mean, what am I supposed to do now? The wife won’t give her car up and I need to work but we won’t be able to afford another car! Not with Paul going to college! Worker’s Comp pays sh-I mean beans. It pays beans.” The man struggled up onto his elbows to try and peer at Sam’s notepad. It was futile but he was still trying. “Make sure you print that, okay? Real human interest story there. ‘Struggling Family Destitute Due to Freak Accident and Heartless Insurance Company!’ There’s a headline for you!”
Sam folded up his notepad. So far he’d learned that the man hadn’t seen anything but a flying piano and this was the first time that he’d ever been a part of anything like this-in between the ranting, of course. In other words: the man wasn’t going to be much help at all. “Thank you, Mr…”
“Jeffers. J-e-f-f-e-r-s. Remember to spell that right!” Mr. Jeffers tried to struggle into a sitting position but ended up flat on his back, panting. Sam smiled wanly.
“I will,” he assured him and backed out of the room before Mr. Jeffers could recover enough to try and demand more out of the ‘reporter’ in his hospital room. He’d already spent a half hour with Mr. Jeffers as it was and they still had other people to interview.
Sam nearly ran Dean over as he was waiting right outside the door, leaning against the wall. Dean caught himself before he fell, his hands flattening against the drywall. “Sorry,” Sam said, reaching out to steady him. “You’re done with Sarah Higgins?” Sarah Higgins had been the girl with the SUV that had rolled. Dean had called dibs when they’d walked into the hospital, taking the short list of names out of Sam’s hand.
Dean smirked. “We couldn’t do much, what with being in a hospital and the broken collar bone but-”
Sam rolled his eyes and cut Dean off. He didn’t need to hear about Dean’s exploits-fantasy or otherwise. “What did she say?”
“That since she was found ‘at fault’ her insurance company won’t pay for the car,” Dean said. “She’s also not a practicing witch, descended from a cursed ancestor, or a secret monster in disguise.” Smirking again, Dean leaned forward into Sam’s personal space to whisper. “I checked.” He winked mockingly and straightened back up. “I got nothing.”
Sam sighed. “Same story then.” They’d interviewed two other people involved in the accident and had come up empty-handed as well. They’d both only wanted to complain about how their cars were smashed to bits and the insurance company wasn’t going to pay for the damages-just like Jeffers and apparently Sarah Higgins. Dean and he had just lost two hours and not gained a thing.
“The other four were released yesterday, right? We could go check on them or-”
“Or we could go check on Julie Wallace,” Sam finished. Faced with interviewing some more clueless individuals who would undoubtedly be selling the same story or checking out the one aberration in the case, it was a no brainer.
Dean nodded, another smile crossing his face. “Let’s go check on Julie Wallace.”
Julie Wallace lived in an apartment complex on the East side of town and she bought their cover story hook, line, and sinker. “Coffee?” she asked brightly after setting Dean and him down on the living room couch.
“That’d be wonderful,” Dean said smarmily. He smiled at the young blonde, flirting with her. Sam elbowed him in the ribs.
“Actually,” Sam said, “we only have a few questions.” Dean glared but Sam kept his attention focused on Julie.
“Oh, all right,” she said, perching on the edge of the nearby armchair. “I don’t remember much, though. It’s all a little blurry.”
Sam smiled. “Yeah, that happens. Too much going on at once.”
“Oh, yes,” Julie agreed. “I mean, one minute, I was just driving along and the next it was just complete chaos all around me. I saw the semi stop and the one car that-that…rolled. And…the piano…” She trailed off and smiled hesitantly at Sam. “It all happened so fast.”
“You weren’t injured, though?” Dean prompted, cutting in and Julie swung her blue eyes over to him.
“Oh no,” she said. “It was a miracle. I thank Him, you know.”
“Him?” Dean asked.
Julie reached up to grab her necklace, her fingers wrapping around the small golden cross. “Jesus,” she said firmly. “He kept me safe.”
“Riiight,” Dean drawled.
Sam cut him off. “Julie, have you noticed anything else strange happening around you?”
Julie’s eyes widened. “Other miracles?”
“Miracles, unexplained events, anything out of the ordinary.”
“New neighbors, maybe,” Dean added with a smile. “That sort of thing.”
“Oh, well, Lucy next door did get a new cat…” Julie answered uncertainly.
Dean dropped his head, biting his lip and Sam let him take the time out, picking up the slack. “Anything like your accident?” he prodded.
“Um…” Julie paused to think, her hand raising to hide her mouth. “Well, the Mitchells’ satellite dish did fall off their house yesterday. Ruined their garage, but it didn’t leave a scratch on their car. Maybe Jesus liked their car, too.”
“Was the car in the garage?” Dean asked, staring at Julie again.
“Yes. Right underneath the hole where the satellite dish came through, too. Bad news is, though, their car would have covered by the insurance company but their house isn’t. State Farm is refusing to pay to fix the garage so Jeff and Jodi are looking to switch their house over to Allstate, too. I told them that that’s what they should do. Make it cheaper, you know?” Julie giggled. “I have Allstate on both the car and the house because they gave much such a good deal on the package.”
“Well, you know those good deals,” Dean said sarcastically, raising his eyebrows. Sam forced the smile to stay on his face because he knew that that particular brand of sarcasm would fly right over Julie’s head. Sure enough, she giggled again.
“Thank you, Miss Wallace,” Sam said, standing up.
“Oh, please, call me, Julie,” she replied, glancing between him and Dean before settling on Dean. “Are you sure that you can’t stay any longer?”
Playing it up, Dean winked. “The story can’t wait.” He smiled again, nodding his head. “But thank you for your time.”
“Of course,” Julie said graciously, standing as well. “I shouldn’t keep you.”
“Just…one other thing, Mis-Julie.” Julie turned her attention back to Sam. “What’s the address of Jeff and Jodi Mitchell?”
“It’s just up the street. Two blocks north. Two story blue house on the corner.”
Sam jotted that down and smiled again. “Thank you,” he said, heading towards the front door.
“If there’s anything else that you might need, you just let me know,” Julie called after him.
“We’ll be sure to do that,” Dean assured her and Sam resisted the urge to bodily drag him out of the house. A little bit of flirting helped grease the wheels sometime and he understood that. He also understood that gathering information was all that Dean was doing but that never made it easier to watch. The jealousy threatened to eat Sam alive every time. Like with every one of Dean’s hook-ups, Sam just had to bite the inside of his cheek and ride it out. What he felt wasn’t normal and he knew that; it was a product of his fucked-up childhood-he couldn’t expect Dean to feel the same way.
He walked out the door and waited impatiently on the sidewalk. His imagination was running wild again, picturing in full High Definition detail how Dean would coax Miss Julie Wallace into shedding her good girl exterior. It was ludicrous, of course. Julie Wallace was the type of girl to expect promises that Dean couldn’t make but that didn’t stop the irrational part of Sam’s brain from insisting that it could happen. When Dean finally emerged from the house, Julie Wallace was still watching them from behind her white lace curtains.
Dean waved his open notepad at Sam. “Got her phone number,” he crowed.
“Fantastic,” Sam growled.
“Aw, Sammy, don’t be that way,” Dean teased. “She might have a sister.” He smirked and shoved his notepad into the pocket of his slacks as he got down to business again. “I told her to call if she could think of anything else about the accident. So we found out that Allstate is Jesus’ insurance company and Julie Wallace has no idea what happened to her.”
“Sounds right,” Sam agreed, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably. Interviewing the witnesses and the victims hadn’t gained them anything, just like investigating the crime scenes. At this rate, they were just going to have to hope that whatever it was that they were hunting just stumbled across them in the middle of doing its thing, like an unwary deer into headlights. Sam snorted. They’d have a better chance at winning the lottery.
Dean cocked his head. “What?” Sam asked, Dean’s action automatically putting him on guard. He was too used to Dean pausing before screaming at Sam to run.
“You hear that?” Dean asked. “Sounds like…”
They were close enough for Sam to hear and coming up fast. “Sirens.”
“Yeah. Two different kinds.” The sirens were coming fast from the south. Wherever they were going, it might be worth checking out but that meant getting to the Impala fast enough to try and chase them.
“Son of a…” Sam frowned down at Dean and Dean pointed over Sam’s shoulder. “Look,” he said, pushing at Sam’s shoulder to turn him around.
Following Dean’s direction, Sam spun. And his jaw dropped. Just a few houses down from Julie Wallace’s, a two-story house was smoking, tiny flames licking at its window trim. As they stared, the sirens passed by them, the loud drone and red flashing light proclaiming a fire engine while the red and blue was a cop, speeding along after it. Sam touched Dean’s elbow and he nodded. Together, they jogged down the street toward the burning house.
The neighborhood was oddly peaceful considering the mayhem that was now going on. The trees lining the sidewalk blew gently in the breeze, ignorant of the mess of firefighters pouring out of and off the truck to yank the hose free. As Sam and Dean neared, one of the men barked at the others from the hydrant, yelling that they were ready and they opened it up, shooting a stream of high pressured water at the burning window. The flames had spread to the roof too, eating up the gingerbread trim of the gable and burning along the shingles. “Damn…” Dean said, staring at the scene. Sam nodded, his hands diving into his pockets uselessly. He felt an urge to help but he knew that he’d just be in the way.
A couple of the firefighters were entering the house now, pushing through the roiling smoke and he glanced away, unable to take the scene. The house was going up fast, like it was covering in gasoline and if there was someone in there…
Sam’s attention caught on the tall Oak tree across the road. Or, rather, it caught on the man in the tree, jumping up and down on a branch like an overgrown child, laughing to himself as he stared down at the parked Camaro underneath him. It was almost…like he was trying to break the branch off onto the car… Sam frowned, puzzled, and took a step towards the road. Dean caught him. “Sam?” Then he followed Sam’s line of sight. “What the fuck…?”
Yeah. That was what Sam was thinking. Dean darted across the road, his hand already reaching underneath his suit jacket for the gun he carried in his waistband, leaving Sam to chase after him. “Hey, you!” Dean said, once he reached the other side of the street, coming around to stand beside the Camaro. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The man in the tree froze, crouching on the tree branch as he smiled down at them. Sam cocked his head, trying to place the man because he was certain that he’d seen him before, he just couldn’t remember where… The man was shabby-his once expensive clothes were beat-up and torn in places, covered in dirt. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in at least a week, with bruises and scrapes covering his face, and one lone white bandage, running just underneath the starting line of his shaggy hair. As Sam stared, trying to remember where he’d seen that face before, the man in the tree waved and winked before taking off like a shot, leaping out of the tree to hit the ground running.
“Come back here!” Dean shouted, tearing after him. He dodged around the tree and dashed off into a front yard as the bum jumped the dividing fence.
“Dean!” Sam chased after the both of them. He had no idea who the man was but something told him that the stranger was important and Sam had stopped questioning his instincts on these sorts of things. Dean jumped and caught the top of the wooden fence, hauling himself up and over in one smooth motion. “Dean!” Sam was going to lose him!
Sam threw himself over the top of the fence as well, his stomach scraping on the wooden boards as he rolled over the top. Dean was already half-way through the backyard and the bum was even further, leaping over a sandbox as he headed toward another fence. Dean curved around the pit of sand, one foot twisting on the ground to turn him back around to face the man who was already scaling the back barrier. Dean still had his gun, holding it tightly in one pumping fist, but he was going too fast to even think about aiming. Sam jumped over the sandbox as well, unwilling to take the extra half a second to dodge it.
The man and Dean were already in another backyard, swerving around a slide. They ran towards a swing set, Dean closing the distance. As he got within reach, the man spun around, grabbing up the hard metal chain of the swing and tossing at Dean. Dean ducked it but it cost him ground. Sam pounded after him.
They jumped through two more yards-Sam catching up to Dean-before they managed to close the distance again and this time, when the man turned to look at them, Sam could see the manic grin covering his face. It was the only warning he got before Dean pitched to the ground, shouting in pain. “Dean!” Sam stumbled and skittered to a stop on the grass, looking back at Dean as Dean writhed, clutching his leg and ankle. The bum cackled and darted off, jumping over another fence and disappearing into the suburban jungle.
“Damn it,” Sam swore under his breath and jogged back to his brother. The man was undoubtedly long gone by now and he couldn’t leave Dean behind. Dean was panting, worn out from the run, but biting his lip to try and suppress his pained groans as he tried to get back on his feet. Sam hit his knees in the grass, just missing the small hole that Dean had evidently tripped into, his hands gripping Dean’s shoulders. Dean attempted to stand, getting his good leg underneath him and cussed a blue streak as he tried to put weight on his other. “What’s wrong?”
Dean gasped and then grimaced, trying to hold his mouth firm. “Think I-think I might have busted my leg, Sammy…” he whispered and Sam swore again. He carefully wrapped an arm around Dean’s waist and tried to figure out the fastest route back to the car.
Dean didn’t like to be coddled. Sure, he’d had no problems playing it up for the pretty nurses, begging for extra coos, but the second that he’d been released, he’d been nothing but a pain in Sam’s ass. Sam knew that he should consider himself lucky that Dean only had a sprained ankle-two to six weeks, the doctor had assured him-and not a broken leg like he’d feared but Dean was still on crutches for the duration and bitching up a storm because of it. Especially once he’d learned that, because his right leg was out of action, he was stuck riding shotgun. Sam wasn’t about to let him drive-at least not for a couple of days anyway. Hell, Dean was lucky that Sam hadn’t just picked him up in the parking lot and carried him to the car because watching Dean awkwardly maneuvering himself with the crutches was just painful.
Dean was starting to get the hang of them, though. It was all the pacing he was doing around the motel room. Well. Hobbling. “Would you sit down?” Sam finally snapped. Sam understood Dean’s frustration with not being able to move like he wanted to but if Dean kept this up, his ankle was never going to heal.
Dean glared at him. “Can’t,” he said.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Sit,” he ordered. “The doctor said that you shouldn’t be walking on it.”
“I’m gonna get a beer.”
Sam stood up and gestured to the seat in front of the computer. “If I get you a beer, will you sit down?” The last thing he wanted was to be Dean’s own personal butler but if it got him to stop pacing…
“Fine,” Dean said, flopping down in the chair. He stared at the laptop screen, his fingers resting on the keyboard and Sam smothered the urge to tell him not to look up porn. He knew that Dean would do exactly the opposite just to piss Sam off. Instead, he walked over to the far side of the room, grabbing a bottle of the cheap beer that Dean was favoring these days. “So what do we think this is?” Dean asked, pecking at the keyboard. “Some kind of humanoid gremlin? Manifested curse?”
Sam shook his head. He didn’t have a clue. “Could be a shifter,” he added but Dean shot that one down.
“One who takes an interest in cars? Nah. Not really their style, you know?” Sam agreed. He handed the cold beer to Dean who grinned. “Hey,” Dean said, waggling his eyebrows, “I think I could get used to this. Beer on demand.”
“Yeah, don’t count on it,” Sam snorted, sitting down in the opposite chair, watching as Dean took a long swallow. “Do you think that it’s a coincidence that he was in Julie Wallace’s neighborhood?” There was no doubt in Sam’s mind that the strange man from the tree was somehow related to the rash of accidents happening along I-94.
“Probably not,” Dean said, taking another pull and setting the beer down on the table. “I’m also thinkin’ that it might not be a coincidence that that house was burnin’ either.”
Sam frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Remember Julie talking about her neighbor’s car? How the satellite dish ruined the garage but not the car?” Sam nodded. “Yeah, well, I just checked the local newspaper of the last town we knew this thing hit. Check this out.” Dean spun the computer around so that Sam could look at it.
Arsonist In Melrose?
Sam scrolled through the article as it detailed a couple of suspicious house fires in the town. “There’s more, too,” Dean said. “And I’m guessing they go all the way back to Wisconsin.”
“This is bad…” How had they missed this? He brought up another newspaper, another couple of headlines. “It’s not a Gremlin, then,” Sam said, looking up at Dean. “Some of these things weren’t mechanical.” Gremlins notoriously liked to mess with mechanical things.
“No, it’s not,” Dean agreed. “So I don’t have a fucking clue.” He snatched up the remote for the TV and turned up the volume to cover up the sound of the wind howling outside while the local anchors bantered back and forth about the rash of accidents happening on the roads lately. The man tutted about unsafe drivers before the camera centered in on the woman as she began her report.
“The local weather is causing more than just delays. Major accidents are happening all over as people simply do not drive slow enough for the icy roads. Yesterday, a driver in an SUV ran off the road into the city limit sign. The driver claimed that a man had been walking in the road. Police are still investigating. Alcohol could be a factor. On Ridgewood Street today, another car was found overturned and officials think that the driver tried to take a corner too fast. A few other, non-vehicular accidents are happening due to the accumulating snow as well. One house’s roof caved in earlier today due to the excessive amount of snow and a large tree was brought down last night, a victim of the wind. Police are stressing for residents to use caution, stay off the roads whenever possible, and keep roofs clear of accumulated snow.”
“You know,” the man cut in as the camera panned back out to include him, “pedestrians walking across the street in weather like this is a major problem as well. With icy roads, cars can’t just stop. It’s best to use caution when crossing.”
“Yes,” the woman agreed, “Everyone should keep the weather in mind.” The roof above Sam groaned and he glanced up at it curiously. He hoped that tonight wouldn’t be too cold. Last night, the room’s lone heater had barely been enough to keep the room above freezing. If he could have assured himself that he wouldn’t let his hands wander, he would have crawled in with Dean just to preserve body heat.
As the anchors moved on to a local fluff piece, Dean flipped the TV off and opened his mouth. The ceiling creaked again and Dean paused, staring up at it. Sam squinted. Was it…bowing in the middle? The center light fixture looked closer that it had before…
The roof gave way with a shrieking of nails pulling free of their studs, wood and singles and mounds of snow coming crashing down into the center of the room. “Holy fuck!” Dean shouted, tossing himself out of the chair as snow gushed through the new opening. Sam caught him, dragging him to the side as beams started to crash onto the beds, smashing them to the floor. If they’d been over there instead of at the table…
Sam didn’t want to think about it. One of the heaviest beams had landed directly across Dean’s bed.
With one last gush of snow, the avalanche stopped and Sam was left clutching Dean, holding him up-Dean swaying awkwardly on one foot-as they both stared in disbelief at what was left of the room. It was covered in a solid layer of snow, with broken beams poking up towards the now visible night sky. The TV was sparking, having been hit by one of the beams, and snow was still sprinkling down.
Dean suddenly slapped Sam’s chest. “Guess we’re getting our security deposit back, Sammy.”
If Dean wasn’t depending on him for support, Sam would have shoved him.
Dean stared up at the bland, white ceiling of the motel room, wondering if this one would collapse, too. He probably shouldn’t be laying on the bed, just in case, but fuck it. His ankle hurt. ‘Sprained.’ If he’d been with Dad, Dad would have just told him to walk it off. Sam, though, Sam was forcing him to hobble around on crutches like he’d been crippled or something.
Dean couldn’t deny that it hurt like a son of a bitch to put weight on his right foot, though, so maybe Sam had a point. But he still didn’t believe Sam about the ‘no driving’ thing. They were going to have to talk about that. Dean could drive perfectly well-he’d use his left foot if he had to.
Dean had thought that the motel owner’s eyes were going to bulge out of his head when he’d surveyed the damage, taking in the fact that his paying customers had almost been crushed underneath his badly maintained roof. He’d quickly ushered Sam and Dean into a new room, even refunding their money which, hey, bonus. Almost get killed in a surprise avalanche and end up with a free room for a night. Dean could deal with that-it was a better deal than what they normally got. Sam was currently busy, though, digging all of their stuff out of the impromptu snowdrifts, seeing as how it had all been buried when the ceiling had collapsed. Dean had offered to help but Sam had just bitched at him to stay off the ankle again.
That was just fine with Dean. He didn’t want to go pawing through the snow anyway. Sam could do that by himself if he wanted. Dean would let him. Just as long as the damn ceiling didn’t collapse on top of him again. Dean glared at the ceiling and silently dared it to do its worst.
The door opened with a slight squeal of the hinges and Dean lifted his head to see Sam stepping inside. He smiled at Dean and dusted some snow off his hair and he looked so much like the little kid that Dean used to know that Dean had to grin. Sam might have shot up to gigantor-like height but Dean couldn’t forget that the giant was still his little brother. “It’s hot in here,” Sam said, stripping off his jacket.
Dean shrugged and laid back down. “I think there was a draft in the other room.” Plus, he’d cranked the heat up to 80 because he was tired of being cold but he wasn’t about to say that. The way that Sam had been acting lately, Dean would be lucky to not end up tucked in bed with some chicken noodle soup and a thermometer because Sam was convinced he was coming down with a cold or something.
The bed dipped beside Dean as Sam sat down beside him. “How’s the ankle?” Sam asked.
“Mummified. I can’t even wiggle it,” Dean replied with a sigh. You never realized just how much you used your ankles until you couldn’t anymore.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sam said.
Dean shrugged again. “’snot your fault. The nurse is the one that wrapped it.” She’d been pretty and sweet but obviously new. Dean had decided not to fault her for that latter based on the former two. The bed shifted again and Dean finally glanced at Sam curiously, wondering what Sam was doing. The bed was moving way too much for Sam to just be sitting.
Sure enough, Sam was up on his knees next to Dean, one hand pressed into the bed by Dean’s shoulder as Sam loomed over him. Dean cocked an eyebrow but Sam ignored his unspoken question; he leaned forward and bowed his head, giving Dean only half a second of warning before he gently pressed his lips to Dean’s. Dean forgot how to breathe.
Sam’s touch was hesitant, barely there, just a soft ghosting trace but it had the power to make the world stop spinning. Dean felt as if he were being slammed against the wall, as if he were being choked, as if someone had sucker punched him when his guard was down. Sam was kissing him. And despite the tentativeness of it, there was definitely intent behind it-intent and a half-asked question.
Dean found himself saying yes without even knowing what it meant. His only protest was the hand that he fisted in Sam’s hair but whether it was to pull Sam away or bring him closer, Dean wasn’t really sure. Sam, though, took Dean’s indecisiveness as permission and deepened the kiss, pressing harder, his tongue licking out to taste Dean’s mouth. Dean parted his lips instinctively, letting Sam in, and then he was wedging a hand against Sam’s shoulder and shoving him away. He panted up at Sam, wondering what the hell was wrong with Sam and what the hell was wrong with him for caving so easily. “What the fuck, Sam?” Dean whispered.
Sam stared steadily down at him but he showed his nerves in the hesitant way that he licked his lips. This wasn’t a game. This was for real. “Got tired of not having what I wanted,” he said quietly and the idea was so ridiculous, Dean shoved it right out of his head.
“What happened outside?” he demanded. Sam must have been brain-scrambled or something. Possessed.
But Sam shook his head and started to pull away. “Forget it.”
Dean followed him up, pushing himself onto his elbows. “You come in and kiss me and now you want me to forget it?” he asked. “What kind of fucked-up-”
“Right, Dean!” Sam snapped. “It is fucked up! I mean, I want my older brother-it doesn’t get more fucked-up than that!”
Dean’s jaw dropped. “Want?” he breathed. This conversation… This conversation couldn’t be… Real.
“Yeah, Dean, want. Biblically.” Sam moved to sit on the edge of the bed and scrubbed a hand through his hair as his shoulders slumped. “Can’t believe that I just…”
The wheels of Dean’s mind were spinning, stuck in the mud somewhere between ‘Sam’ and ‘want.’ He rolled himself onto his knees and stared at Sam’s back. Sam was right: this whole damn thing was fucked-up. But Dean couldn’t deny that, for half a second there, he’d been going for it. Right alongside Sam.
It was fucked-up. There wasn’t anyway around that. But if Sam… If Sam wanted… And, maybe, Dean did too…
They’d never not been fucked-up. Dean crawled forward on the bed until he was right beside Sam again. Sam wouldn’t meet his eyes so Dean took the choice away when he hauled Sam’s face around and kissed him.
Sam held absolutely still until Dean finally broke away. Then his brows furled downward in confusion and he opened his mouth. Dean cut off whatever he was about to say with another kiss. Fuck that. They didn’t need to talk about this. Sam had had the right idea in the first place. Gently, like he was afraid that Dean was going to break, Sam’s hand cupped the back of Dean’s head. Dean responded to the tentative touch with a nip at Sam’s lip and Sam shoved him backward.
Climbing on top again, Sam stared down at Dean, swallowing hard, and Dean tried to reassure him with a grin. He was going for his usual cocky bravado but it was shaky-easy, but shaky. Under the circumstances, he thought that he was allowed that. He was on a bed, making out with his kid brother, for crying out loud. It was a little outside the norm, even for them. But he still yanked Sam down by his hair, not even giving him a chance to say no. Sam was the one that had started this-he could see it through to the finish now.
Sam’s breath turned ragged-rough-and he made the kiss harder, more forceful-100 miles of passion, barely contained and coming straight at Dean. Dean swallowed a moan and held on for dear life, his hands burying in Sam’s hair to hold him back and keep him close at the exact same time. He accepted each rough kiss of Sam’s, meeting them and gentling them with one of his own. A hand was snaking up under his shirt, fingers dancing teasingly along his skin before gaining confidence and clutching at him like they were going to hold him there for the rest of his life.
Dean liked it.
He panted, pulling at Sam’s hair as he moved underneath of Sam’s body, arching upward and encouraging more. Now that he had given in, there was no sense in holding back. None at all. Sam’s elbow embedded beside Dean as Sam flattened himself on top of Dean.
Dean froze as he heard the motel room door opening but Sam kept on going, trying to coax Dean back into kissing him again. “Stop,” Dean hissed, pushing Sam back for some space. “Someone’s at the-” He twisted his head around and the words died in his throat because it wasn’t just someone at the door, it was Sam. Sam, who was staring back at Dean with big, wide eyes in sheer shock-staring at Dean who had been happily writhing underneath of another Sam like a two dollar whore. And, if Sam was over there, then who was…? Dean jerked his head back to stare at the man on top of him.
The stranger no longer looked like Sam and Dean felt more than a little sick-the nausea weaseled in with the hefty dose of fear and adrenaline and kept him frozen despite his instincts screaming at him to either run or fight. Sam’s familiar features had melted into a scruffy, beaten-up face with a white butterfly bandage right beside his eye. Dean’s blood went cold. He knew that face. It had grinned down at him from a tree branch above a parked Camaro earlier today. The man-their monster-smiled apologetically. “Really sorry about the ankle,” he said and then he was up off of Dean and charging at Sam.
Dean rolled off the bed, slamming into the floor as his ankle gave out underneath him. “Sam!”
The creature reached Sam and tossed him aside like he was a sack of potatoes, throwing him out of the open doorway. Sam rebounded off the door, catching himself on the knob, but his instincts were on and he twisted to pull the gun out of his waistband. Dean crawled toward him, cursing at the pain shooting up his leg. “Sam!” he repeated. Sam glanced at him, his lips firming, and then he was off, tearing after the creature, running outside alone.
“Sam!” Dean pounded his fist against the orange carpet and struggled to haul himself up. He tried to put weight on his ankle again and swore as another hot surge of pain dissuaded him. There was no way that he was going to be able to do a mad dash out into the darkening light of the motel parking lot after Sam. No fucking way. He’d be stuck hobbling along on crutches at best and this sucked.
A bright flare caught Dean’s attention and he jerked his head around to stare at the table against the far wall, where Sam’s laptop was sitting. A burst of flame had erupted along the power cord, licking at the dark plastic. “Fuck!” Dean threw himself to the side and rolled across the room to yank the cord out of the wall outlet, stopping the flow of the electricity and killing the fire’s source. He braced his right knee underneath of himself and stood on his one good leg to pull the jack out of the back of the laptop and chuck the entire cord outside the open door onto the cement sidewalk.
He glared at it, leaning on the table for support. If that hadn’t been another one of whatever the fuck they were hunting’s tricks, Dean would eat his left testicle. “What a douchebag,” Dean growled, letting himself feel pissed at just how much nerve the creature had had to just walk into a hunter’s lair and start setting shit on fire with freaky-deaky mind powers.
It was much easier to focus on that than to think about how much he’d just royally fucked himself.
Part I | Part II | Art Post