Breathing In - Chapter Seven
It's a California bungalow with dark wood siding that looks like it might be original to the house. The eaves cast the porch and windows all in shadow, making it hard to track the changeling's movements after it first enters.
The three of them are crouched down behind an unkept and prickly hedgerow. Sam's got the binoculars, keeping an eye on the house as Dean and Ernst assemble the short range flamethrowers.
(“I thought with the government footing the bill we didn't have to go the DIY route anymore,” Sam said before the mission. “Why not use the sniper rifle?”
Dean tossed another a gas canister into the bag. “That's for the Mother, once we've got her singled out. The kids are more erratic and move faster. We'll want to get in close-range.” He slapped a roll of tape to Sam's chest. “Come on, you used to love arts and crafts.”)
“I've got movement on the west side of the house,” Sam says. Dean stretches the last bit of tape over a canister and pauses. “It must be the kid's mother, the real one.”
Dean glances up. “She look okay?”
“Nervous. But still walking, which I'm taking as a good sign. Do you think she knows?”
Dean raises his head slightly to peer through the branches at the woman. She's wearing a flannel and hiking boots, her hair swept up into a pony tail and a backpack slung over her shoulders. He can just make it out when she calls out back to the house:
“One minute, honey. I'm just getting the mail.”
She doesn't look like she's just getting the mail.
“We need to move in now,” Dean raps out. “Ernst, grab a flamethrower and get her out of here, then circle back around to back us up.” He hoists two canisters and tosses one to his brother. “Sam, let's go flambé us a baby freak.”
-
They enter from the back, through a sliding door off the dining room. The table is a mess, covered in an assortment of half-eaten sweets and snacks, like the changeling had tried but couldn't find anything to sate its hunger. He doesn't know how much self-awareness the young ones have.
The room is dim, all the windows blinded and too quiet, even with the faint noise of cartoons drifting in from the other room. Dean lifts his weapon, checks all angles, and signals Sam to move forward.
“You're not my mommy,” a high, petulant voice says. The thing steps out behind the fridge and stares at them, incurious and unmoving. It cocks its head, and some other intelligence crawls forward and looks out at them from behind those large brown eyes. “Where's my mommy? Where is she?”
Dean grits his teeth and pulls the trigger, sending a spout of a flame at the creature. It ducks and throws itself under the table. Dean backs up and circles, trying to keep eyes on it, but somehow in the next second, moving too fast to see, it's on Sam.
Another burst of flame as Sam tries to light up before he staggers back with it clawing at his face and neck, mouth and eyes having given up all pretence at humanity. Sam's flamethrower goes bouncing and skids clear across the linoleum. Dean curses and shouts at Sam to get some distance.
Ernst appears in the doorway, panting heavily. He takes one look around and fumbles with his own canister.
Sam manages to push the thing away for second before it shoves him with superhuman strength and sends him crashing through the air. Later, Dean will probably laugh at the image Sam makes right now. David and Goliath and true to story, Goliath's getting his ass handed to him. Yeah, Dean's going to be all over that later.
But at the moment he's throwing himself on Sam and yelling at Ernst to fire, fucking fire at it!
He collides with his brother and rolls so he's on top, covering him from the geyser of flames. Somewhere behind them, the changeling is shrieking. The heat flares and coalesces into a sharp pain at his neck, where his stupid civilian clothes don't protect the skin.
The noise and heat cut off as if on a switch. Dean relaxes all at once, his straining muscles going liquid and heavy.
Underneath him, Sam groans. “Get off me.”
Dean coughs lightly and rolls off, and the three of them sit for a moment and take stock. There is no sign of the changeling, like it was torched straight back to purgatory, but two chairs are broken and the wall and linoleum have a good-sized scorch mark. All in all, could have gone worse, he figures.
A gentle touch to the shell of his ear. “Dean, your neck's burnt to shit.”
Dean unthinkingly reaches up to rub the skin and then immediately regrets doing so. He grimaces but shrugs both it and his brother's worry off.
Sam doesn't let it go, getting to his feet so he can tower over him with a frown furrowing his too-large brow. “You shouldn't've jumped in, I could have handled it.”
“If you're waiting for an apology, Sam, it's going to be a while.” He gestures to his neck. “This would've been your whole face.”
Sam shakes his head. “You've could have just told me to duck or cover my head. Or is it your plan to hold my hand through every mission?”
Dean's radio crackles to life and cuts short what he is sure would have been a tedious and pointless argument.
It's Hawthorne. "Hey, we got a lady in a pantsuit here, went a little postal a few minutes ago."
Dean palms the radio and smirks at Sam, who rolls his eyes. "Has to be the Mother. We just took out one of the children. She still twitchy?"
"Negative, but she's on the move, about to get into a car. Should we engage?"
Dean shakes his head. "Hold off. Put Kite on her tail her, but tell him to keep his distance. I want exact details of where's she's headed. I'm going to send Connolly and Gene your way and you three are going to go into the house and extract the real kids. They should be in the basement." The if they're still alive goes unspoken.
He relays the plan to Connolly and then he, Sam, and Ernst haul ass back to the jeep. If they're going to take out the Mother, they're going to need the sniper rifle.
-
An hour later Kite radios that the Mother's made the rounds of seven houses throughout town, knocking on doors and chatting each time for a few minutes with the women inside. She's sniffing around for them, Dean knows, and order everyone well out of sight.
The Mother's stolen house is so perfect, Dean thinks they would have just known it was the one they needed had they just seen it when they first entered town. It's at the bottom of one of the bluffs and earth bermed like a hobbit house. When the others went in, they didn't even need to look for a basement, just found the kids tied up in one of the spare bedrooms.
Dean sets up the rifle on the second rise overlooking the house, where he'll have a clear shot of any vehicle coming down the driveway. He lays out flat on his stomach, hands steady on the gun and eye intent on the scope. Sam acts as his spotter and lies just to the right and a little back. They don't speak except to trade observations about the wind and light and what approach she'll take when she returns.
With his vision sharply focused and his brother's voice steady and close, he nails the bitch on the first pull. Exploding bullet, center of the chest.
Conflagration on open gravel.
-
It's a rare unequivocal win. By the time they make their way down from the hillside, the others have gathered around the released children. For a time, Dean gives in to the whoops of his team, accepts the slaps on the back and the near-hysterical gratitude of the parents who've been reunited with their kids.
He's feeling a rare sense of lightness, a true this is why we do it moment, which has been a rarer and rarer occurrence in the war. He turns to look for Sam, automatic, and finds him gazing back from across the lawn, eyes crinkled and mouth stretched in an honest to god smile.
Looking at his white teeth and dimples and clear-eyed affection, Dean can almost imagine it's a hunt from before the awakening, when it was just them, together against the world.
-
They're off-detail the next day and so back at camp they celebrate like they so rarely can, with music and liquor and hot food.
A couple hours into it, Dean's got a good buzz going. He's standing back nursing another drink and watching Sam talk to Ernst. Of all the people to actually warm up to, of course he'd choose him. Dean should be annoyed, but he can't keep a hold of the emotion when Sam keeps glancing over at him, like he can't help but reassure himself that Dean's still there.
At some point Connolly slips up next to him and leans against the wall, shoulder a deliberate pressure against his own.
“Good hunt,” he says to Dean, gaze slanting over.
Dean tips back his beer and drains it. “Yeah,” he says. “it's nice to get a clean win now and again.”
“Seems to call for a celebration.”
Dean had noticed the heat in his gaze before, the way he had been watching keenly under heavy lids, but for the first time in weeks, the observation comes paired with an answering spark of interest. His blood's up, always is after a good hunt.
He looks back at Connolly, considering, and lets the slow simmer of arousal wash over him and show a little on his face.
Over Connolly's shoulder, Sam is leaning down to hear Ernst over the music. Hawthorne's joined the conversation and Sam is laughing, throwing his head back and exposing the long vulnerable line of his throat. He's flushed and sweating slightly, a clean warm sheen over tanned skin.
Dean looks away and nods to the door. Connolly's smirk grows and he follows Dean out close at his heels. Immediately attempts to shove him up against the shadowed side of the building.
Dean, expecting the move, pivots easily and pins the other man face-down instead. He presses up against the solid heat of his body and grins when Connolly curses a blue streak.
“This what you after?” he asks, voice calm and measured. He grinds his thickening dick against the firm curve of the man's ass.
Connolly exhales a laugh and replies a little breathlessly, “Just waiting for you to get bored of minding your brother. Man's got needs.”
Dean's grip on his arms tightens, turns bruising. His brother's right on the other side of this wall, close and safe and really smiling for the first time since Stanford. Dean's feeling the drink and that edge of satisfaction works its way into his blood, making every movement feel just a little bit richer than usual.
Connolly's moving his hips against Dean in agonizing, fluid little rotations. There's a heady burn spreading through his body, and it's been so long, every slow drag up against the front of his jeans sapping the structure of his thoughts, all his attention inexorably narrowing down to one goal.
But Connolly's still fucking talking. “What would Sam think, anyway, if he saw this? Does he know his big brother sometimes get his rocks off with other guys?”
“Jesus, Connolly,” Dean shakes his head and steps back. The cool late fall air rushes to fill the space between their bodies, but before Connolly has a chance to bitch, Dean's got him spun around and down on his knees. He pushes into Dean's grip on the back of his head and his mouth falls open a little, looking loose, hot and wet.
Dean says, “How about you put that mouth of yours to better use.”
In his heart of hearts, Dean knows the world isn't made for these moments, but he needs them just the same. He needs times when he can be present, just exist in his body and no where else. Not out in the darkness where the evil crawls ever closer and not in the eternal periphery of his family's eye.
The pleasure is fleeting, always is, but it's enough to keep him going. It's gotta be.