(no subject)
Title: Full Tilt Boogie (3/6)
Authors: hansbekhart & essenceofmeanin
Artist: ladyvyola
Rating: NC-17 (Sam/Dean, Michael/Dean, Sam/Michael, Sam/Dean/Michael, Sam/OC)
Summary: There are only two kinds of secrets: the ones you keep, and the ones you shouldn't have at all. When Sam and Dean take Michel on his first hunt (that doesn't involve a shtriga), they end up on the psychedelic dance floor of a long-vanished motel where disco never died and no one is quite who they appear to be. What was supposed to be an easy salt and burn descends rapidly into a morass of temptation and gold lame, bell bottoms and lies. No one gets to choose what secrets stay buried.
Unless they don't mind checking in ... forever.
They get far enough away for the air to quit stinking of melted polyester and charred meat, and then Michael sinks to the ground, scoots his back up against a wall, and pulls his knees up to his chest. “Fuck,” he says. “Shit. Jesus cocksucking Christ. Motherfucking, cocksucking, tittyfucking Christ. Okay. Fuck.”
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Sam says. It’s reflex more than anything; it’s Dean, more than anything. Sam remembers a time when he didn’t have such a smart mouth, years and years ago. His shoulders hurt from holding Michael back, and he rubs absently at the muscle.
“What the fuck is wrong this place?” Michael asks. He stares up at Sam.
“Come on,” Sam says, extending a hand, and Michael scowls.
“I can do it,” he mutters, pushing himself back onto his feet.
“Fine,” Sam says.
“Shut up.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
"Whatever."
They both turn away from the other, a silent agreement to not talk about what just happened. Sam’s shoulders are starting to ache, an unexpected stiffness in the muscle right over his heart. He’s torn that muscle before, often enough to know that it’ll feel like someone’s stabbing him in the chest in the morning - if there was anything like morning in the Red Room. He had no idea that Michael was that strong.
Sam wants to apologize. He should apologize. He might still be mostly right about Michael, but he’s wrong about some of it and his dad always taught them to own up to things like that. He watches Michael out of the corner of his eye, pacing up and down the narrow hallway. They’ve got two options - going left will bring them into the main hallway of the hotel, the one that links all the rooms together. Going right will take them back to the restaurant. There’s a small, non-descript door a few yards away that probably leads to a broom closet.
“I hate this place,” Michael says under his breath. “I’d give just about anything to just be outside. I need to be out of here.”
I need my brother, Sam thinks. “What are you doing?” is what he says out loud; Michael’s turned on a heel and is striding purposefully towards the broom closet.
“Weapons,” Michael says. “Chemicals, maybe. Bobby showed me how to make bombs. Tools - sharpened broom handle - anything, really, we can MacGyver some shit up, maybe -”
The first thing that Sam thinks of, when Michael pulls the door open and they both get a look at what’s on the other side, is Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Room. The part in the movie where Gene Wilder opens up that little door and there’s all that crazy shit on the other side, chocolate rivers and huge candy mushrooms. The look on the kids’ faces. Sam read once that they didn’t tell the actors what they were about to see and that the shock on their faces was 100% real.
He’s relieved that neither of them laugh. Laughing’s the sort of response you have when something’s starting to really get to you. “Well,” Sam says. “Huh.”
The party room was underground and even if it wasn’t, they’re somewhere in the center of the hotel, and even if they weren’t, there’s no reason that a broom closet should open out onto a sunny Wisconsin day. The lawn is neatly manicured, wrapping around a center building, dotted with cheap-looking lawn games and cheap-looking lawn chairs. The grass, the hot blacktop smells are real enough but the colors are washed out in a way that’s starting to become annoyingly familiar. Another psychedelic postcard landscape.
Sam puts a foot out onto the grass carefully, testing it. Steps outside and takes a deep lungful of Midwestern air. There’s a breeze on his face but the flags, high over what should be the parking lot, are still. “Huh,” he says again.
“Dude,” Michael agrees.
“Does this feel a little … deus ex machina to you?” Sam asks, letting the door swing shut behind them.
“I don’t know what that means,” Michael says, shielding his eyes with a hand, squinting out into the bright.
“It means we’re being fucked with,” Sam says.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Michael says. “But on the bright side, I think that’s Dean.”
“Huh.”
The drums are quieter outside of the hotel, but Sam’s not going to fool himself. They’re still being watched. Most of the people around them seem to be fairly harmless, but Sam’s pretty sure that there are more active ghosts around - the woman he woke up with, the desk clerk - ghosts that not only saw Sam, but seemed to recognize him as a threat. The fact that he’s been wandering around all this time, essentially unmolested, is starting to become a disturbing thought. He wished for Dean, and here Dean is - and he’s pretty sure that that means that unless the Red Room guides him to Michael and Dean, he’ll never have a chance in hell of finding them on his own when they disappear again.
Dean is playing shuffleboard. That, in itself, is pretty novel. He’s standing off to the side, watching some pert blonde thing in slacks pushing her puck down the board.
“Come on, poodle,” he coaxes, voice carrying over the still lawn, “Saw you do better than this in Manila. Hit the 10 and I’ll buy you a whiskey sour in the bar.” His voice is rich and plummy, just like Sam’s old dormmate that asked him where he summered. Sam swallows around the misgivings stuck in his throat; he can almost feel them land in his empty stomach, but it’s easy enough to ignore with Dean finally in his sights.
Sam walks out of the shade towards the strange scene; the light is warm on his skin like a hand pressed against his face, stifling like he’s still inside the hotel. Michael trails him, his eyes fixed stubbornly on the ground when Sam turns to check on him.
Sam cups his hands around his mouth, yells “Hey, Angus!” He grins at the doofy surprise on Dean’s face when his brother about-faces. Their eyes meet, and Sam can feel the change ripple through the air when he shouts, “Angus Young!”
Dean jerks back, slapping the heel of his hand against his face. Sam jogs to a halt next to him, hands reached out to catch him if he stumbles. Dean waves him off, smoothing a hand down the front of his pink shirt. He's still got his necklace, the amulet nestled in behind the lion's fang and the saints' medals. He's still got the mustache, too. He meets Sam's eyes after a moment, and then turns to the blonde. She smiles up at him adoringly. He squeezes her elbow and says, gently, "Hey poodle, why’nt you meet me there?"
Sam watches her go without a word.
He’s looking right at Dean but still jumps when Dean throws the shuffleboard stick. It hits the chain link around the basketball courts hard enough that they rattle in the still air. He snaps an irritable “What?” when Sam flinches back.
"I wasn't gonna say anything," Sam says.
Dean glances over his shoulder and pauses, frowning. Whatever expression is on Sam's face, it's giving him away. Dean's eyes narrow as Michael sidles up to Sam. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Michael says, at the same time Sam says, "Waking people up isn't gonna work."
Dean's eyebrows lift. "Not gonna work? How come?"
"It's just not," Michael says hurriedly, glancing up at Sam.
Dean's looking genuinely worried, and he says again, "What happened?"
Michael stares at the ground. Sam answers for him. "They don't want to be woken up."
Slowly, Dean nods, his eyes hard. "All right," he says, pacing through them. Sam turns to keep his brother in sight. "Huh. Okay. If they don't wanna be woken up, then ... they don't wanna be woken up. What was the plan? Anybody remember? Feels like it's been fuckin' years since I've seen you guys."
"Get Bones," Mikey says dully.
"Yeah," Dean says, "It looks like that’s our only option, actually. You sure you’re okay?” He bumps his shoulder against Michael’s, casually, on his circuit back between him and Sam.
Michael meets Dean’s eyes, finally. “Yeah,” he says after a moment, “I’m okay.”
Dean nods, flicks a glance over to Sam. Clearly disbelieving. “What’d you guys find when I was out?”
They fill him in on the layout of the hotel, what Sam found in it. He tells Dean about the shadows eating in the restaurant, the smells in the kitchen. The drums in the back of his mind. That they still haven’t figured out the pattern of disappearances. Michael stays quiet while Sam talks, scuffing the toe of his wingtips over the grass, but chimes in when Sam tells Dean about the women, the ones who really see him.
"There's seven of them," he says, and shrugs when they turn and look at him. "There are seven women working for Bones."
"How do you know that?" Sam asks, and Michael shrugs again.
"They're the ones that died with him, in the fire."
Dean nods to himself like it's not a surprise, his gaze flickering over everything: sun, Sam, student. Michael studying his feet with a miserable look on his face. He's standing close enough that Sam can smell a whiff of charred meat in his hair.
Dean claps his hands together, startling them both. "Well," he says, "I don't know about you guys, but I'm sick and tired of being dicked around. If we assume we're being watched, then we can do whatever the hell we want, because they'll already know about it."
"That's stupid," Sam says. "That doesn't make any sense at all."
"Neither does disco," Dean says. "Look, new plan. Nobody's been able to find Bones yet, but we've got all these chicks around - more than one way to skin a cat, right? Hey, Mikey, Bobby ever teach you any summoning rituals?"
"Sort of," Michael says. "The theory of it, I guess. The, you know, the symbols. The array. Never actually, like, did it."
"We'll improvise," Dean says. "My bet's on the pool house - look for cloth, candles, chalk, things like that. Probably not going to find much more than that, so we're going basic and ghetto. More ghetto than usual. And nobody gets out of voice range or line of sight, you both understand me?" He sounds just like their Dad, prepping them for a hunt, and the only thing that stops Sam from rolling his eyes is the look on Michael's face.
"Maybe we'll find some new clothes," Michael says hopefully. "You look more ridiculous than ever, dude."
Dean groans. “I don’t even wanna look. Why am I always the one getting shafted in this fuckin’ place?” He quirks an eyebrow at Sam. “I can still see your nut sack, though, so I guess I win.”
The pool house roof is striped like candy or a circus tent, huge hanging blue-red-yellow rafters looking like a danger to kids jumping off the high boards. Michael wrinkles his nose as soon as they step into the vaulted room.
“Dude. It so smells like ass in here.”
It smells like every ancient YMCA they haunted as kids, like chlorine and pond muck and feet. This one has the added joy of rot, a sour reek like an old refrigerator; Sam wants to make a face too, but he doesn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction. Dean lifts two fingers and points them to his eyes, making the universal sign for I’ll be fucking watching you, before motioning silently to where he wants them to go. The water in the pool is slapping against the edges like there are people swimming in there, echoing off the walls. Sam doesn’t even see the phantoms that are barely more than wisps of smoke; there’s no one else here.
At first Sam thinks it’s his own blood rushing in his ears; it takes him a few minutes hunting for supplies to realize that the drums are back.
In the end, Michael finds some candles that are stashed inside of a decrepit emergency kit. No one finds chalk, but Dean emerges from a dank locker with a bar of Ivory in his hand and a grin. Sam smiles grimly back, thinking of SpongeBob SquarePants placemats. They can’t find matches, so Dean breaks into the light fixtures for a spark to light the candles.
Dean hunkers down without a word, soap in hand; his peach colored slacks creaking alarmingly even from Sam’s distance. Sam stops him with a hand on his shoulder, feeling the breath of the hotel on his neck.
“Dean. Let’s do this outside.” His own voice is hushed, less sure than he’d like. Michael’s on the look out, but Sam can see him watching them out of the corner of this eye. Dean looks up, his eyes unreadable. “This place is too…” Sam trails off. He can’t put it into words, just spins his hands uselessly until his brother raises an eyebrow.
Dean huffs a soft laugh at him. “It’s all grass out there, Sam. The only other option’s the basketball court, and the three point lines would just fuck up the symbols.” He puts the soap to the ground, pauses thoughtfully. “’Sides, do you think it really matters where we do it? It’s their world, Sammy, no matter what it looks like.”
Sam doesn’t recognize the signs that Dean scratches into the cement. The soap leaves clean smelling curls in concentric circles. The Latin is basic; they have no idea who’s going to answer, so there’s not really any need to get specific about who they’re trying to talk to.
There’s no warning before the light shimmering off the pool turns brilliant, blazing outward until there’s nothing else. Sam claps a hand over his face to keep from being blinded, the insides of his eyes and skull screaming in pain; all he can see is red. Dean shouts wordlessly next to him. It lasts maybe a second. Sam can feel the drums booming between his ribs, one hand pressed hard against his chest like he could reach in and still them.
Sam’s eyes are streaming when he pries them open. A low, throaty chuckle rolls through the air. A woman climbs out of the symbols chalked in the concrete like she’s stepping out of the pool: wet black hair lying slick against her skull and dripping water down full breasts haltered in a gold lame bathing suit. She’s beautiful in a way that’s almost surreal, just glowing to see them. Her smile is all teeth. She greets them like old friends.
Dean’s got Michael backed up protectively behind him. Michael’s blinking too fast, his eyes darting over the new arrival like he can’t quite focus on her. She looks solid enough to Sam, but Sam’s not sure they’re not all seeing something different.
“Who are you?”
She smiles at them kindly, a touch of Southern belle to her voice when she replies, “My name is Sunday, sweetie, and Mr. Bones sent me to talk to you.”
“Oh yeah?” Dean snorts. “And what does he want?”
Sunday reaches out like she could touch him. “What we all want, Dean - for you to be happy. To give you a fresh start.” Sam’s pretty sure she’s trapped inside the circle, but the air around her hands shimmers like he’s seeing her through steam. “We can see you’re unhappy,” she turns to him, “keeping secrets. No one likes that, Sam. We want to make sure you don’t have to.”
Michael pushes his way out from behind Dean. His voice is small in the echoing chamber. “Who were you when you were alive, Sunday?”
Her smile softens. “I was no one, Michael. Nothing. You’ll see. Come join us - we have a whole paradise built for you. You can have anything you want,” her voice drops as she turns back to Dean. “Anything at all, I promise.” Sam can feel the vibrations of it run right through him, and he takes a step forward before he can catch himself. He doesn't even notice, too busy watching Dean as closely as though he’ll vanish again at any second, close enough to see a drop of sweat from his brother’s hairline run down the beads of his spine. Michael’s looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye, already close enough to Dean to not have to look. Dean’s the only one watching Sunday, Sam realizes in a daze, but she can’t hurt them anyway. All that matters is Dean.
“Sorry darlin’,” Dean says roughly, “We’re not buying.” He turns to Sam and all that Sam can see is the green of Dean’s eyes, translucent like when the sun hits them. Dean snaps out his name like breaking glass, and Sam can move again.
He’s dangerously close to Sunday. She has both arms open to welcome him into her circle. Sam wants to backpedal, hide behind Dean and a gun but he’s got neither. He starts her last rites with gritted teeth. It’s been a long time since he’s exorcized a spirit like her - he’s used to demons and their animalistic grunts as each word he speaks drags them closer to the pit. Sunday just looks sadder and sadder, the smile gone from her face, until she winks out of existence like Sam’d blown out a candle.
There’s a bare second to savor it. Sam turns to Dean and Michael, and they can all hear something happen; it’s like a drawn-in breath. Sam can hear it whistling in his ears the moment before the ground starts quaking. The air wicks out of the hall sending Sam to his knees and he can hear the pool roiling, can feel the temperature jump like it’s a physical punch in the face.
He throws out his hands in sheer reflex but there’s no way to stop the gout of steam that rolls from the boiling water to send him tumbling across the concrete. Chlorine sears his throat. He can hear Michael coughing to his left and Sam stumbles to his hands and knees, scrapes skin from his palms when the ground heaves again. He can barely see through the churning mist, just glimpses as through a picture window of Dean struggling for his feet, Michael covering his face, his mouth twisted in pain.
Sam can hear the drums louder than ever, beating a crescendo in his temples until he thinks his head’s going to split in half. He can feel the shift a second before it’s going to happen; the drums repeat themselves like a scratch in the record, and he throws himself forward.
Dean and Michael grab for each other. Dean fists a hand in Michael’s collar, one thrown out for Sam, but it’s too late. They’re gone together, and all Sam can do is follow them down into the dark.
Chapter 2 ** Chapter 4
Authors: hansbekhart & essenceofmeanin
Artist: ladyvyola
Rating: NC-17 (Sam/Dean, Michael/Dean, Sam/Michael, Sam/Dean/Michael, Sam/OC)
Summary: There are only two kinds of secrets: the ones you keep, and the ones you shouldn't have at all. When Sam and Dean take Michel on his first hunt (that doesn't involve a shtriga), they end up on the psychedelic dance floor of a long-vanished motel where disco never died and no one is quite who they appear to be. What was supposed to be an easy salt and burn descends rapidly into a morass of temptation and gold lame, bell bottoms and lies. No one gets to choose what secrets stay buried.
Unless they don't mind checking in ... forever.
They get far enough away for the air to quit stinking of melted polyester and charred meat, and then Michael sinks to the ground, scoots his back up against a wall, and pulls his knees up to his chest. “Fuck,” he says. “Shit. Jesus cocksucking Christ. Motherfucking, cocksucking, tittyfucking Christ. Okay. Fuck.”
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Sam says. It’s reflex more than anything; it’s Dean, more than anything. Sam remembers a time when he didn’t have such a smart mouth, years and years ago. His shoulders hurt from holding Michael back, and he rubs absently at the muscle.
“What the fuck is wrong this place?” Michael asks. He stares up at Sam.
“Come on,” Sam says, extending a hand, and Michael scowls.
“I can do it,” he mutters, pushing himself back onto his feet.
“Fine,” Sam says.
“Shut up.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
"Whatever."
They both turn away from the other, a silent agreement to not talk about what just happened. Sam’s shoulders are starting to ache, an unexpected stiffness in the muscle right over his heart. He’s torn that muscle before, often enough to know that it’ll feel like someone’s stabbing him in the chest in the morning - if there was anything like morning in the Red Room. He had no idea that Michael was that strong.
Sam wants to apologize. He should apologize. He might still be mostly right about Michael, but he’s wrong about some of it and his dad always taught them to own up to things like that. He watches Michael out of the corner of his eye, pacing up and down the narrow hallway. They’ve got two options - going left will bring them into the main hallway of the hotel, the one that links all the rooms together. Going right will take them back to the restaurant. There’s a small, non-descript door a few yards away that probably leads to a broom closet.
“I hate this place,” Michael says under his breath. “I’d give just about anything to just be outside. I need to be out of here.”
I need my brother, Sam thinks. “What are you doing?” is what he says out loud; Michael’s turned on a heel and is striding purposefully towards the broom closet.
“Weapons,” Michael says. “Chemicals, maybe. Bobby showed me how to make bombs. Tools - sharpened broom handle - anything, really, we can MacGyver some shit up, maybe -”
The first thing that Sam thinks of, when Michael pulls the door open and they both get a look at what’s on the other side, is Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Room. The part in the movie where Gene Wilder opens up that little door and there’s all that crazy shit on the other side, chocolate rivers and huge candy mushrooms. The look on the kids’ faces. Sam read once that they didn’t tell the actors what they were about to see and that the shock on their faces was 100% real.
He’s relieved that neither of them laugh. Laughing’s the sort of response you have when something’s starting to really get to you. “Well,” Sam says. “Huh.”
The party room was underground and even if it wasn’t, they’re somewhere in the center of the hotel, and even if they weren’t, there’s no reason that a broom closet should open out onto a sunny Wisconsin day. The lawn is neatly manicured, wrapping around a center building, dotted with cheap-looking lawn games and cheap-looking lawn chairs. The grass, the hot blacktop smells are real enough but the colors are washed out in a way that’s starting to become annoyingly familiar. Another psychedelic postcard landscape.
Sam puts a foot out onto the grass carefully, testing it. Steps outside and takes a deep lungful of Midwestern air. There’s a breeze on his face but the flags, high over what should be the parking lot, are still. “Huh,” he says again.
“Dude,” Michael agrees.
“Does this feel a little … deus ex machina to you?” Sam asks, letting the door swing shut behind them.
“I don’t know what that means,” Michael says, shielding his eyes with a hand, squinting out into the bright.
“It means we’re being fucked with,” Sam says.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Michael says. “But on the bright side, I think that’s Dean.”
“Huh.”
The drums are quieter outside of the hotel, but Sam’s not going to fool himself. They’re still being watched. Most of the people around them seem to be fairly harmless, but Sam’s pretty sure that there are more active ghosts around - the woman he woke up with, the desk clerk - ghosts that not only saw Sam, but seemed to recognize him as a threat. The fact that he’s been wandering around all this time, essentially unmolested, is starting to become a disturbing thought. He wished for Dean, and here Dean is - and he’s pretty sure that that means that unless the Red Room guides him to Michael and Dean, he’ll never have a chance in hell of finding them on his own when they disappear again.
Dean is playing shuffleboard. That, in itself, is pretty novel. He’s standing off to the side, watching some pert blonde thing in slacks pushing her puck down the board.
“Come on, poodle,” he coaxes, voice carrying over the still lawn, “Saw you do better than this in Manila. Hit the 10 and I’ll buy you a whiskey sour in the bar.” His voice is rich and plummy, just like Sam’s old dormmate that asked him where he summered. Sam swallows around the misgivings stuck in his throat; he can almost feel them land in his empty stomach, but it’s easy enough to ignore with Dean finally in his sights.
Sam walks out of the shade towards the strange scene; the light is warm on his skin like a hand pressed against his face, stifling like he’s still inside the hotel. Michael trails him, his eyes fixed stubbornly on the ground when Sam turns to check on him.
Sam cups his hands around his mouth, yells “Hey, Angus!” He grins at the doofy surprise on Dean’s face when his brother about-faces. Their eyes meet, and Sam can feel the change ripple through the air when he shouts, “Angus Young!”
Dean jerks back, slapping the heel of his hand against his face. Sam jogs to a halt next to him, hands reached out to catch him if he stumbles. Dean waves him off, smoothing a hand down the front of his pink shirt. He's still got his necklace, the amulet nestled in behind the lion's fang and the saints' medals. He's still got the mustache, too. He meets Sam's eyes after a moment, and then turns to the blonde. She smiles up at him adoringly. He squeezes her elbow and says, gently, "Hey poodle, why’nt you meet me there?"
Sam watches her go without a word.
He’s looking right at Dean but still jumps when Dean throws the shuffleboard stick. It hits the chain link around the basketball courts hard enough that they rattle in the still air. He snaps an irritable “What?” when Sam flinches back.
"I wasn't gonna say anything," Sam says.
Dean glances over his shoulder and pauses, frowning. Whatever expression is on Sam's face, it's giving him away. Dean's eyes narrow as Michael sidles up to Sam. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Michael says, at the same time Sam says, "Waking people up isn't gonna work."
Dean's eyebrows lift. "Not gonna work? How come?"
"It's just not," Michael says hurriedly, glancing up at Sam.
Dean's looking genuinely worried, and he says again, "What happened?"
Michael stares at the ground. Sam answers for him. "They don't want to be woken up."
Slowly, Dean nods, his eyes hard. "All right," he says, pacing through them. Sam turns to keep his brother in sight. "Huh. Okay. If they don't wanna be woken up, then ... they don't wanna be woken up. What was the plan? Anybody remember? Feels like it's been fuckin' years since I've seen you guys."
"Get Bones," Mikey says dully.
"Yeah," Dean says, "It looks like that’s our only option, actually. You sure you’re okay?” He bumps his shoulder against Michael’s, casually, on his circuit back between him and Sam.
Michael meets Dean’s eyes, finally. “Yeah,” he says after a moment, “I’m okay.”
Dean nods, flicks a glance over to Sam. Clearly disbelieving. “What’d you guys find when I was out?”
They fill him in on the layout of the hotel, what Sam found in it. He tells Dean about the shadows eating in the restaurant, the smells in the kitchen. The drums in the back of his mind. That they still haven’t figured out the pattern of disappearances. Michael stays quiet while Sam talks, scuffing the toe of his wingtips over the grass, but chimes in when Sam tells Dean about the women, the ones who really see him.
"There's seven of them," he says, and shrugs when they turn and look at him. "There are seven women working for Bones."
"How do you know that?" Sam asks, and Michael shrugs again.
"They're the ones that died with him, in the fire."
Dean nods to himself like it's not a surprise, his gaze flickering over everything: sun, Sam, student. Michael studying his feet with a miserable look on his face. He's standing close enough that Sam can smell a whiff of charred meat in his hair.
Dean claps his hands together, startling them both. "Well," he says, "I don't know about you guys, but I'm sick and tired of being dicked around. If we assume we're being watched, then we can do whatever the hell we want, because they'll already know about it."
"That's stupid," Sam says. "That doesn't make any sense at all."
"Neither does disco," Dean says. "Look, new plan. Nobody's been able to find Bones yet, but we've got all these chicks around - more than one way to skin a cat, right? Hey, Mikey, Bobby ever teach you any summoning rituals?"
"Sort of," Michael says. "The theory of it, I guess. The, you know, the symbols. The array. Never actually, like, did it."
"We'll improvise," Dean says. "My bet's on the pool house - look for cloth, candles, chalk, things like that. Probably not going to find much more than that, so we're going basic and ghetto. More ghetto than usual. And nobody gets out of voice range or line of sight, you both understand me?" He sounds just like their Dad, prepping them for a hunt, and the only thing that stops Sam from rolling his eyes is the look on Michael's face.
"Maybe we'll find some new clothes," Michael says hopefully. "You look more ridiculous than ever, dude."
Dean groans. “I don’t even wanna look. Why am I always the one getting shafted in this fuckin’ place?” He quirks an eyebrow at Sam. “I can still see your nut sack, though, so I guess I win.”
The pool house roof is striped like candy or a circus tent, huge hanging blue-red-yellow rafters looking like a danger to kids jumping off the high boards. Michael wrinkles his nose as soon as they step into the vaulted room.
“Dude. It so smells like ass in here.”
It smells like every ancient YMCA they haunted as kids, like chlorine and pond muck and feet. This one has the added joy of rot, a sour reek like an old refrigerator; Sam wants to make a face too, but he doesn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction. Dean lifts two fingers and points them to his eyes, making the universal sign for I’ll be fucking watching you, before motioning silently to where he wants them to go. The water in the pool is slapping against the edges like there are people swimming in there, echoing off the walls. Sam doesn’t even see the phantoms that are barely more than wisps of smoke; there’s no one else here.
At first Sam thinks it’s his own blood rushing in his ears; it takes him a few minutes hunting for supplies to realize that the drums are back.
In the end, Michael finds some candles that are stashed inside of a decrepit emergency kit. No one finds chalk, but Dean emerges from a dank locker with a bar of Ivory in his hand and a grin. Sam smiles grimly back, thinking of SpongeBob SquarePants placemats. They can’t find matches, so Dean breaks into the light fixtures for a spark to light the candles.
Dean hunkers down without a word, soap in hand; his peach colored slacks creaking alarmingly even from Sam’s distance. Sam stops him with a hand on his shoulder, feeling the breath of the hotel on his neck.
“Dean. Let’s do this outside.” His own voice is hushed, less sure than he’d like. Michael’s on the look out, but Sam can see him watching them out of the corner of this eye. Dean looks up, his eyes unreadable. “This place is too…” Sam trails off. He can’t put it into words, just spins his hands uselessly until his brother raises an eyebrow.
Dean huffs a soft laugh at him. “It’s all grass out there, Sam. The only other option’s the basketball court, and the three point lines would just fuck up the symbols.” He puts the soap to the ground, pauses thoughtfully. “’Sides, do you think it really matters where we do it? It’s their world, Sammy, no matter what it looks like.”
Sam doesn’t recognize the signs that Dean scratches into the cement. The soap leaves clean smelling curls in concentric circles. The Latin is basic; they have no idea who’s going to answer, so there’s not really any need to get specific about who they’re trying to talk to.
There’s no warning before the light shimmering off the pool turns brilliant, blazing outward until there’s nothing else. Sam claps a hand over his face to keep from being blinded, the insides of his eyes and skull screaming in pain; all he can see is red. Dean shouts wordlessly next to him. It lasts maybe a second. Sam can feel the drums booming between his ribs, one hand pressed hard against his chest like he could reach in and still them.
Sam’s eyes are streaming when he pries them open. A low, throaty chuckle rolls through the air. A woman climbs out of the symbols chalked in the concrete like she’s stepping out of the pool: wet black hair lying slick against her skull and dripping water down full breasts haltered in a gold lame bathing suit. She’s beautiful in a way that’s almost surreal, just glowing to see them. Her smile is all teeth. She greets them like old friends.
Dean’s got Michael backed up protectively behind him. Michael’s blinking too fast, his eyes darting over the new arrival like he can’t quite focus on her. She looks solid enough to Sam, but Sam’s not sure they’re not all seeing something different.
“Who are you?”
She smiles at them kindly, a touch of Southern belle to her voice when she replies, “My name is Sunday, sweetie, and Mr. Bones sent me to talk to you.”
“Oh yeah?” Dean snorts. “And what does he want?”
Sunday reaches out like she could touch him. “What we all want, Dean - for you to be happy. To give you a fresh start.” Sam’s pretty sure she’s trapped inside the circle, but the air around her hands shimmers like he’s seeing her through steam. “We can see you’re unhappy,” she turns to him, “keeping secrets. No one likes that, Sam. We want to make sure you don’t have to.”
Michael pushes his way out from behind Dean. His voice is small in the echoing chamber. “Who were you when you were alive, Sunday?”
Her smile softens. “I was no one, Michael. Nothing. You’ll see. Come join us - we have a whole paradise built for you. You can have anything you want,” her voice drops as she turns back to Dean. “Anything at all, I promise.” Sam can feel the vibrations of it run right through him, and he takes a step forward before he can catch himself. He doesn't even notice, too busy watching Dean as closely as though he’ll vanish again at any second, close enough to see a drop of sweat from his brother’s hairline run down the beads of his spine. Michael’s looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye, already close enough to Dean to not have to look. Dean’s the only one watching Sunday, Sam realizes in a daze, but she can’t hurt them anyway. All that matters is Dean.
“Sorry darlin’,” Dean says roughly, “We’re not buying.” He turns to Sam and all that Sam can see is the green of Dean’s eyes, translucent like when the sun hits them. Dean snaps out his name like breaking glass, and Sam can move again.
He’s dangerously close to Sunday. She has both arms open to welcome him into her circle. Sam wants to backpedal, hide behind Dean and a gun but he’s got neither. He starts her last rites with gritted teeth. It’s been a long time since he’s exorcized a spirit like her - he’s used to demons and their animalistic grunts as each word he speaks drags them closer to the pit. Sunday just looks sadder and sadder, the smile gone from her face, until she winks out of existence like Sam’d blown out a candle.
There’s a bare second to savor it. Sam turns to Dean and Michael, and they can all hear something happen; it’s like a drawn-in breath. Sam can hear it whistling in his ears the moment before the ground starts quaking. The air wicks out of the hall sending Sam to his knees and he can hear the pool roiling, can feel the temperature jump like it’s a physical punch in the face.
He throws out his hands in sheer reflex but there’s no way to stop the gout of steam that rolls from the boiling water to send him tumbling across the concrete. Chlorine sears his throat. He can hear Michael coughing to his left and Sam stumbles to his hands and knees, scrapes skin from his palms when the ground heaves again. He can barely see through the churning mist, just glimpses as through a picture window of Dean struggling for his feet, Michael covering his face, his mouth twisted in pain.
Sam can hear the drums louder than ever, beating a crescendo in his temples until he thinks his head’s going to split in half. He can feel the shift a second before it’s going to happen; the drums repeat themselves like a scratch in the record, and he throws himself forward.
Dean and Michael grab for each other. Dean fists a hand in Michael’s collar, one thrown out for Sam, but it’s too late. They’re gone together, and all Sam can do is follow them down into the dark.
Chapter 2 ** Chapter 4