Fic: and the night is enormous
This is sazzlette’s fault, but I made her beta, so it works out. ♥
Title: and the night is enormous
Author: guns_and_butter
Pairing(s): Sam/Dean
Rating: Adult (hard R)
Word count: 4,377
Summary: The boys head to Arizona to check out a string of disappearing children. It’s not about the job.
Note: Spoilers through Season 2-but unless Kripke is crazier than I'm giving him credit for, nothing past that. Title from the serendipitously named Brotherhood by Octavio Paz.
What you need to know is this: it’s not about the job.
+++
Her name is Blanca Ramírez Espinosa.
She was a young widow from a tiny town in western Mexico. Her husband died in a car accident two years after the birth of their third child. In the difficult year that followed, Blanca tried to find work, but there was none to be had. Half the town was already in the U.S., sending money back to those who stayed behind.
She couldn’t get work. She couldn’t get a visa. She couldn’t let her children starve.
She left her babies with her sister: her good strong boy, Miguel; her tawny-eyed mother’s helper, Guadalupe; and sweet little Araceli, just three years old. It took every ounce of her willpower to walk away from them. She swore she would return within the year.
It took her four days to make the trip to the border, and another two before she arranged to cross with a small group through the desert outside Douglas, Arizona. The guide would accompany them all the way to Phoenix, where Blanca had family waiting-cousins of her late husband, buena gente, who would help her find work as a domestic for some well-off family.
The rest of her story is unknown.
Maybe she got lost in the desert, separated from the group. Maybe she froze to death from the bitter night chill. Maybe she fell victim to the brutal July sun, organs rotting and blood boiling in her veins before her body got around to dying.
Maybe she was killed-by her pollero, a cocky young man from Hermosillo called El Rizos, or by any of the predators, beast and human alike, that lurk in the darkness of the Arizona desert.
Whatever happened, Blanca Ramírez Espinosa never arrived in Phoenix.
She was twenty-nine. Her body was never found. She had simply disappeared.
Her sister kept the children, of course, though she could barely manage to feed her own brood. Miguel is fifteen now, thinking about crossing himself. His uncle has crossed three times and promises to take Miguel with him once he turns sixteen.
Lupita is thirteen. She looks more like her mother every day-at least, that’s what everyone tells her. She thinks she’ll never be so pretty. Lupita is a good student; she wants to continue her education, but she knows as well as anyone that they don’t have the money. Miguel has promised he’ll send back money from el norte so she can go to school in the city.
Their baby sister, Blanca’s youngest, is eight. Celi doesn’t remember much of her mother-just little things, floating weightless things. The twist of her wrist as she laid tortillas on the comal. The scent of her perfume as she held Celi tight against her for the last time.
They are good children, the three of them. They obey their aunt and uncle. They work hard and come home on time. They are good-natured and dutiful.
They miss their mother every single day-when they play volleyball, when they stir the beans, when they light candles for the Virgin. They long for their father, of course, and they bring marigolds and tequila to lay on his grave in November, but it is their mother’s absence that coils raw and cold in their bellies as they lie awake in their beds at night.
She misses them too.
+++
They don't have to go to Arizona.
The highway stretches out in front of them, flat and bleak in the glare of the Impala's headlights. Dean's driven this stretch more times than he can count. He knows 80 like the back of his hand, like the back of Sam's hand-a hairline fracture clear across the country, Jersey to California. It'll take them anywhere they want to go.
They could keep going, cruise all the way to San Francisco, with its bright lights and bad memories-or turn around, head back through the rolling hills of Iowa, take in the first hints of spring pushing up through the snow. They could go anywhere, do anything. They could pull off at the next exit, find some ratty motel and hole up for a week, survive on sex and daytime TV and crappy food from the vending machine. They could swerve onto the shoulder and fuck in the backseat, fall asleep on top of each other and wake up achy and shuddering with the late-night cold. They could disappear.
"Running low on gas," Sam says. "We should stop soon."
"Yeah," Dean says. "Soon."
They keep driving.
+++
Nebraska smells like ass. Always has, always will.
They stop at a gas station with a tiny Subway tucked away in the corner. It's getting late and they haven't eaten all day, so Sam grabs some sandwiches while Dean loads up on Slim Jims, Mountain Dew, and a cheap lighter in the shape of a bigmouth bass. It'll probably end up tossed in a grave somewhere; Dean doesn’t make a habit of getting attached to the shit he picks up at Kum & Go.
They cram into one of the tiny booths to eat. Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam's extra purchase. "Sudoku? You’ve got to be kidding me. You don’t even like math."
Sam rolls his eyes, long-suffering. "It’s logic, Dean. Not that you have any previous experience with that."
Dean watches the distracted lines creasing Sam’s forehead, the grim set of his jaw as he concentrates on the little squares and numbers. It’s a familiar look. "This is like mental masturbation for you, isn’t it, geekboy?"
Sam doesn’t even look up. "Grow up, Dean."
They eat in silence.
When Sam gets up to take a leak, Dean snags the book to see for himself what’s so damn fascinating. He glances over the rows of Sam’s cramped handwriting, notes the method and patterns. It doesn’t look so hard.
When Sam comes back, Dean is chewing on the pen and idly jotting down numbers. In a rare display of generosity, Sam limits himself to a few noisy coughs and a badly hidden smirk. Dean ignores him, and pretty soon they gather their shit together and head out.
The door jangles behind them as they step out into the night. Sam sniffs and wrinkles his nose. "You ever notice how bad this stretch of highway smells?"
Dean grunts noncommittally, heads toward the car. "Motel?"
"Okay."
+++
They cross into Arizona a little after five the next day. The car is quiet, just the hum of the road and the muffled blare of John Fogerty singing about silver spoons and senators’ sons.
Sam is asleep, thank God. He was up half the night on the laptop, waking Dean up every couple hours with his cussing and pacing, and he’s been tired and pissy all day. He finally conked out somewhere past Albuquerque, and he’s barely moved since then, crumpled against the door like a little kid wiped out after a day at the amusement park.
The asshole Dean’s been tailgating scrapes together enough brain cells to shift over-about fucking time-and the left lane is blissfully clear in front of him. Nothing but sweet pavement for miles ahead, red dust and the glimmer of a distant mirage. Some unnamed tightness eases in Dean’s chest. He steps on the gas, urges his girl a little faster, and she leaps forward. He strokes a hand over her dash, praise and affection and more than a little helpless teenage adoration. She purrs.
Swear to God, if Sam doesn’t take care of his car, Dean’s going to manifest as fucking Pennywise and bind his spirit to the engine block.
He chuckles to himself, then glances over at his brother, like maybe he heard the traitorous thought-the way things have been going, Dean wouldn’t be surprised-but Sam is still out of it, practically comatose. His eyes are shut tight, squinting, whole face screwed up against the late afternoon glare like he’s really making an effort to sleep. Maybe he is. That’s Sammy for you, always making everything so much more difficult than it has to be.
He’s sleeping, though, so Dean will take what he can get. He seems okay, peaceful, no bad dreams or visions today. His hair flutters in the stream of air from the vent; one knee is wedged up against the glove compartment. He looks uncomfortable as hell, but Dean knows better. Soon as they get to where they’re going, Sam will unfold out of the car, pop his spine with a familiar grimace and grunt of satisfaction, and stroll away like he’d been dozing in a bed at the Marriott.
Sammy might have finally grown into those huge hands and clown feet, but he’ll never be too big for the Impala.
Sam’s mouth is open against the window, squished into a weird shape. He’s drooling a little. Dean wants to stick a spoon in his mouth and take his picture, fuck him screaming over the Impala’s sun-roasted hood, sit him down and feed him a thousand bowls of Lucky Charms. He wants everything-everything Sam will give him, everything they can do or take or scam, everything the world owes them.
What he’s got is his car, his economy-sized baby brother, and a little over two months.
It’ll do.
Sparing a token glance for the near-empty road, Dean gives in to temptation with not one shred of guilt, stretching an arm across the seat and sliding his fingers into the curls behind Sam’s ear. Sam’s hair feels soft and familiar on his skin, warm from the sun.
He stays like that for a few long moments, sweeping his thumb over the pulse under the hinge of Sam’s jaw, until finally Sam snorts in his sleep, bats at Dean’s hand with a loosely-curled fist the size of a catcher’s mitt. Dean grins and lets him alone. With any luck, he’ll sleep straight on through till Douglas.
Dean rests his arm on the back of the seat and whistles low with the music, taps out the rhythm against the wheel.
It’ll do just fine.
+++
Sam blinks awake just as they hit Douglas, right on schedule. His eyes are wet and unfocused with sleep, hazy dark green and muddy like Dad’s. Same color they’ve been practically his whole life, all the years Dean’s spent watching him wake up-the eternity since Dean looked down at his baby brother, screaming and flushed with the heat of the fire, and wondered how he hadn’t noticed when Sammy’s eyes had changed from blue to green. A lifetime, Sam’s lifetime-nine thousand and eighty-four days. Not that Dean’s counting.
Sam yawns, cracks his neck, checks out the hulking Wal-Mart as they pass. "Shouldn’t have let me sleep so long."
Dean shrugs and turns up the music.
They pull up to the first motel they find. Sam still looks dazed from his nap, so Dean leaves him and his freaky brain to finish waking up while Dean pays for the room.
The bored-looking girl at the desk pushes aside her magazine as Dean walks in. She’s cute-little and quietly curvy, poured into tight jeans, dark hair pulled back into a tight braid. She looks like she’d have a nice smile. "Room for the night?"
"Yep. Maybe a few."
Her gaze shifts past him, through the window to where Sam is probably falling ass-over-elbow out of the car. "Double?"
"Single, please. King, if you’ve got it."
She glances up from Dean R. Halford’s credit card, smirking a little and arching one thin, meticulously plucked eyebrow. He grins, doesn’t waste time explaining.
If he’s learned anything from the last year, it is that he well and truly does not give a fuck.
Besides, he’s tired. It’s been a long day, a long month, and he’s ready to fall into bed and let Sam cuddle to his big girly heart’s content. There are kids disappearing, some nasty monster or vengeful spirit that needs wasting, and he really doesn’t have the energy to explain the whole big gay V.C. Andrews love of his life…thing.
The girl doesn’t press it, thankfully, just hands over his card and two keys with no additional commentary. Dean glances at her nametag. "Thanks, Marta. You have a good night."
Marta softens a little, meeting his gaze again before turning back to her magazine. "Enjoy your stay."
Dean was right: she does have a pretty smile.
+++
He and Sam haven’t fit right in a bed since Sam was fifteen, the year his freakishly long legs and sharp elbows started lunging out at innocent bystanders. It got to the point where not a night would pass that Dean wouldn’t wake up with a knee jammed in his ribs, a heavy arm flung over his throat, until he threatened to make Sam sleep hog-tied in the trunk.
It didn’t really matter, not for long. By the time Sam left for Stanford, he’d started sleeping at the very edge of the bed, like he was trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and Dean, his family, their whole life. Dean got used to falling asleep staring at the back of Sam’s head.
Time is a funny thing, though, and these days Sam likes to cuddle up warm and suffocating like when he was a kid. After the years of turned backs and hunched shoulders, Dean thinks maybe the change of heart is worth a little personal hazard to life and limb.
It’s kind of ridiculous, two large men trying to share a bed, but they manage. Dean tends to sprawl on his stomach, and Sam usually ends up clinging to some outstretched part of him like a frigging barnacle-better-smelling and with a nicer ass, maybe, but no less persistent.
It works out okay.
+++
"Remember the time you’d just turned twenty-one and Dad finally let you go to the bar with him?"
Recently, Sam’s gotten chatty at night. Nostalgic. Every other sentence starts the same. Remember the time-?
Dean grins at the memory. Free at last. "That was a good night."
Sam lets out an unflattering snort. "Like you remember. Dad practically had to carry you back to the motel, you were so wasted. You fell over trying to take off your pants, pissed in the sink, then threw yourself on the bed and fell off. Got stuck between the bed and the wall."
That does sound familiar. "I did not."
"Did too. Dad laughed so hard he cried a little." Sam shifts, presses his pointy nose into the side of Dean’s neck. Dean lets him. "Not surprised you don’t remember. You were puking so hard the next morning you must’ve killed some brain cells. The whole room smelled like a roadhouse toilet till the day we left."
"Yeah, how about the billion times you got sick and puked all over me at four in the morning. That’s what I remember."
"Saint Dean of the Vomit Bed," Sam mumbles, predictably unsympathetic. "Your martyrdom stands as an example to us all." He yawns huge against Dean’s shoulder, all wet heat and sharp teeth. "Feast day’s pretty disgusting, though."
"Tell you what, sainthood’s the least I deserve for putting up with you," Dean says. "You and your food poisoning ruined my favorite Iron Maiden shirt."
"It was falling apart. Dad thanked me for hurling on it."
"Backstabbing heretics, both of you."
Sam burrows closer, slipping a damp hand under the waistband of Dean’s boxer-briefs. "Guess you should’ve learned to sleep naked."
"Guess so." Dean arches into the touch, abruptly forgetting to care about the shirt or Sam’s delicate stomach or anything else that’s not in close proximity to his dick.
Out of sight, Sam’s fingers trace little absent-minded circles over Dean’s fever-sensitive skin. "Remember the time those pixies stole the car and we had to break into the impound lot to get it back?"
Before long, Dean will roll over and pin Sam to the mattress, shut him up with sex like he always does. Sam will grumble a little and then yield with suspicious enthusiasm, like he always does, and that’ll be the end of anything resembling conversation-until tomorrow night, anyway.
Dean is starting to suspect that Sam has carefully orchestrated the whole ritual, conversation to fucking to smug exhaustion, and is just blabbing as some kind of weird nerdy foreplay. He’s going to have to stop playing into Sam’s devious hands, show him who’s really in charge here. Eventually.
Sam’s fingers are warm and sticky, stroking lazily along the rise of Dean’s hipbone. "Remember the time-?"
Dean does.
+++
They go for a run in the morning, early, before the Arizona sun has a chance to roast the pavement. It’s a good way to check out the town, stay under the radar a while longer in a city crawling with Border Patrol officers.
Douglas is smack-dab on the border, and it doesn’t take long to find a road that hugs the line. They jog shoulder-to-shoulder, casually glancing over at what counts for an international border in these parts: a chain-link fence, a massive ditch, then another fence-the fence, beige and no-nonsense. Dean can see cars and houses through the bars, paved streets and an ugly turquoise water tower.
After a while, they cut away from the border and head into the heart of the town. People are starting to wake up, get moving, but there’s still not a lot of activity. What traffic there is can be easily dodged. A jeep rolls by, green-striped and caked with dust. Border Patrol.
They pass fast-food joints and shopping centers, small houses and old brick storefronts. Small-town America: hundredth verse, same as the first.
"Looks pretty quiet," Dean says. "How many people did you say Border Patrol’s got here?"
"About six hundred in this area. Station’s a ways outside the city."
"Huh."
By the time they get back to the motel, the sun is officially up and they’re both flushed and sweating through their shirts. The room is cool and dark when they stumble in, and Dean doesn’t waste time. He presses Sam back against the door, breathless and loose-limbed with endorphins, and sucks the sweat from the hot lines of his throat. He slides a hand down Sam’s stomach, kisses his soft wet mouth, noses at the damp curls clinging to his face.
Sam squirms and sighs at the touch. He bites Dean all over, hard enough to leave a mark: his ear, his jaw, the ridges of his collarbones and the sweat-slick skin stretched tight over the gunshot stutter of his heart.
+++
Here’s what they know:
Something is taking the children of Douglas. They vanish in the dead of night, snatched right out of their beds-doors locked, windows closed, no sign of a struggle. The kids turn up days later, wandering half-dead and delirious through the desert, no memory of what happened to them. Sometimes they don’t turn up at all.
The first kid disappeared five years ago, right around the time people in the town started hearing the weeping cries of a phantom woman. The Border Patrol scoured the area after the first reports, but they never found her. She’s never tripped a heat sensor or motion detector, never been caught on camera or left footprints in the dust.
They say her wails float in from the desert on quiet nights. They say she’s looking for her children.
"Doesn’t make sense," Sam says, hunched over his laptop. "Everything seems to point to La Llorona, but I’ve never heard of one this far west. They stick to the Rio Grande, that’s the legend."
"Maybe they’ve decided to branch out."
"Or maybe it’s not her. Maybe it’s something else."
"Guess we’ll find out. What’s the last disappearance?"
Sam looks down at the computer. "Felix Garcia, three weeks ago. Ten-year-old son of Mario and Julia." He frowns at the screen. "Mario works for the Border Patrol. Pretty high up, looks like. They had a dozen guys looking for the kid until he showed up last week."
"Well, let’s go talk to the parents, then. See what the deal is."
Sam looks up, eyebrows raised. "Are you serious? No way. I just told you, the father works for the Border Patrol."
"So?"
"So, that’s Homeland Security, Dean. I thought we were going to try to maybe not get arrested this month."
"We’re not going to get arrested."
"No, you’re right. He’ll probably shoot you on sight." Sam’s on his feet now, wearing a hole through the carpet in front of the bed. Dean wonders if he should grab the smelling salts. "Jesus, Dean. You want to call up Hendrickson while you’re at it, see if he wants in on this?"
"Sam-"
"I just-I don’t get why we have to take these kind of risks. Why you have to barge right into these things and then just expect-" He stops, shakes his head like he’s trying to rattle the thought right out of his brain. "It’s not worth it, Dean. This job’s not worth it."
"Sam, it’ll be fine. We go talk to them, see what they know, then get the hell out of Dodge before Mario decides to run our prints. Hell, we’ve faked Homeland Security before. I don’t get why you’re freaking out about this."
"Yeah, well, the last time we pretended to be Homeland Security, we weren’t terrorists, Dean." Sam rakes a hand through his hair, blows out a breath. "Look, we don’t even have to be here. Bobby called, there’s another possession in Oklahoma, we could-"
"We’re not in Oklahoma. We’re here, and we’re going to stay here until we finish the job." Sam opens his mouth, ready to argue, but Dean talks over him. "Come on, Sammy. We’re not having this argument again. There’s always going to be another possession in Oklahoma or Louisville or Bumfuck, North Dakota. Bobby and Ellen have got every hunter in the country tracking these things down. You and me, we can’t take them all down. So we stay here, finish what we started. We finish the job."
"This isn’t about the job, Dean, and you know it," Sam says. He’s turned away from Dean now, not looking at him. "You know as well as me that it’s never been about the fucking job, so don’t fucking…" He swallows hard; Dean can see his throat working.
Dean moves closer, unable to not. "Yeah, Sammy. I know."
He grabs Sam’s shoulder, then his chin-pulls him close, stares him down. Sam clenches his jaw, muscles fluttering under Dean’s fingers. "Don’t," he says, so low Dean almost can’t hear him. He doesn’t close his eyes when Dean kisses him.
It’s sort of retarded how much Dean loves him.
Dean curls his hand around the back of Sam’s neck, squeezes hard. He speaks against the corner of Sam’s mouth, careful and quiet. "We can’t outrun this, Sam."
Sam pulls away, pushes away, steps back and out of Dean’s hands. His face is dark and furious, fierce and stone sober crazy-like he’s fixing to yell or shoot something, like he’s just pumped six rounds of consecrated wrought iron into his own killer and is itching to take on the rest of the world. "I’m not planning on it."
His brother’s eyes are dark hazel, Day 9085 and counting, but Dean’s starting to think maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s been looking for the wrong things this whole time.
Sam is wild, desperate. Sam has never let go of anything without a fight. Sam is more than their father’s son, more than a hunter or a brother or a lover, more than the sum of his parts.
Sam is alive, and the windows are rattling, and Dean just stands there in the millionth shitty motel room and listens to the roar of his own cocksure Winchester blood-the throb of the artery in his stomach, the tick tick tick boom of his stupid fragile heart that has never known when its time was up.
+++
No one will ever learn the truth behind the disappearing children. Two days after arriving in Douglas, Sam Winchester vanishes in the middle of the night-doors locked, windows closed, no sign of a struggle-and Dean drops the case and takes off in hot pursuit, following the trail his brother has left him like a bloodhound that’s caught the scent.
And there is blood on the air. Whether it’s Sam’s or his prey’s, demons’ or dealmakers’, good or evil-well, that’s hard to say.
Dean eventually catches up to his brother; that much is certain. What happens next-with the demons, with the hell hounds, with Dean’s soul and Sam’s-all that is open to speculation. All anyone can say for sure is that, after one final phone call to Bobby Singer in early May, the Winchester brothers are never heard from again.
The rest of their story is unknown.
Three years later, a group of humanitarian aid workers searching for lost travelers will stumble upon a brittle heap of sun-bleached bones in the Arivaca desert, forty minutes outside Douglas. The remains will eventually be identified as those of a young mother of three from the state of Michoacán, reported missing since 2003.
The Mexican consulate will send the bones back to the woman’s family, to be buried next to her husband. Her three children will be there to bury her: Miguel, who will have made the trip back from California to attend; Lupita, who will have skipped a week of school to help her aunt cook and scrub the house; and Celi, who will remember her mother’s tortillas but not her eyes.
They will all cry as the bones are laid to rest, even Miguel-in grief for what was taken from them; in gratitude for what they have been given; in relief at the conclusion of a long, painful journey-and Blanca Ramírez Espinosa will have finally found what she is looking for.
+++
The thing is, it’s not about the job. Maybe it never has been.
+++
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
Title: and the night is enormous
Author: guns_and_butter
Pairing(s): Sam/Dean
Rating: Adult (hard R)
Word count: 4,377
Summary: The boys head to Arizona to check out a string of disappearing children. It’s not about the job.
Note: Spoilers through Season 2-but unless Kripke is crazier than I'm giving him credit for, nothing past that. Title from the serendipitously named Brotherhood by Octavio Paz.
What you need to know is this: it’s not about the job.
+++
Her name is Blanca Ramírez Espinosa.
She was a young widow from a tiny town in western Mexico. Her husband died in a car accident two years after the birth of their third child. In the difficult year that followed, Blanca tried to find work, but there was none to be had. Half the town was already in the U.S., sending money back to those who stayed behind.
She couldn’t get work. She couldn’t get a visa. She couldn’t let her children starve.
She left her babies with her sister: her good strong boy, Miguel; her tawny-eyed mother’s helper, Guadalupe; and sweet little Araceli, just three years old. It took every ounce of her willpower to walk away from them. She swore she would return within the year.
It took her four days to make the trip to the border, and another two before she arranged to cross with a small group through the desert outside Douglas, Arizona. The guide would accompany them all the way to Phoenix, where Blanca had family waiting-cousins of her late husband, buena gente, who would help her find work as a domestic for some well-off family.
The rest of her story is unknown.
Maybe she got lost in the desert, separated from the group. Maybe she froze to death from the bitter night chill. Maybe she fell victim to the brutal July sun, organs rotting and blood boiling in her veins before her body got around to dying.
Maybe she was killed-by her pollero, a cocky young man from Hermosillo called El Rizos, or by any of the predators, beast and human alike, that lurk in the darkness of the Arizona desert.
Whatever happened, Blanca Ramírez Espinosa never arrived in Phoenix.
She was twenty-nine. Her body was never found. She had simply disappeared.
Her sister kept the children, of course, though she could barely manage to feed her own brood. Miguel is fifteen now, thinking about crossing himself. His uncle has crossed three times and promises to take Miguel with him once he turns sixteen.
Lupita is thirteen. She looks more like her mother every day-at least, that’s what everyone tells her. She thinks she’ll never be so pretty. Lupita is a good student; she wants to continue her education, but she knows as well as anyone that they don’t have the money. Miguel has promised he’ll send back money from el norte so she can go to school in the city.
Their baby sister, Blanca’s youngest, is eight. Celi doesn’t remember much of her mother-just little things, floating weightless things. The twist of her wrist as she laid tortillas on the comal. The scent of her perfume as she held Celi tight against her for the last time.
They are good children, the three of them. They obey their aunt and uncle. They work hard and come home on time. They are good-natured and dutiful.
They miss their mother every single day-when they play volleyball, when they stir the beans, when they light candles for the Virgin. They long for their father, of course, and they bring marigolds and tequila to lay on his grave in November, but it is their mother’s absence that coils raw and cold in their bellies as they lie awake in their beds at night.
She misses them too.
+++
They don't have to go to Arizona.
The highway stretches out in front of them, flat and bleak in the glare of the Impala's headlights. Dean's driven this stretch more times than he can count. He knows 80 like the back of his hand, like the back of Sam's hand-a hairline fracture clear across the country, Jersey to California. It'll take them anywhere they want to go.
They could keep going, cruise all the way to San Francisco, with its bright lights and bad memories-or turn around, head back through the rolling hills of Iowa, take in the first hints of spring pushing up through the snow. They could go anywhere, do anything. They could pull off at the next exit, find some ratty motel and hole up for a week, survive on sex and daytime TV and crappy food from the vending machine. They could swerve onto the shoulder and fuck in the backseat, fall asleep on top of each other and wake up achy and shuddering with the late-night cold. They could disappear.
"Running low on gas," Sam says. "We should stop soon."
"Yeah," Dean says. "Soon."
They keep driving.
+++
Nebraska smells like ass. Always has, always will.
They stop at a gas station with a tiny Subway tucked away in the corner. It's getting late and they haven't eaten all day, so Sam grabs some sandwiches while Dean loads up on Slim Jims, Mountain Dew, and a cheap lighter in the shape of a bigmouth bass. It'll probably end up tossed in a grave somewhere; Dean doesn’t make a habit of getting attached to the shit he picks up at Kum & Go.
They cram into one of the tiny booths to eat. Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam's extra purchase. "Sudoku? You’ve got to be kidding me. You don’t even like math."
Sam rolls his eyes, long-suffering. "It’s logic, Dean. Not that you have any previous experience with that."
Dean watches the distracted lines creasing Sam’s forehead, the grim set of his jaw as he concentrates on the little squares and numbers. It’s a familiar look. "This is like mental masturbation for you, isn’t it, geekboy?"
Sam doesn’t even look up. "Grow up, Dean."
They eat in silence.
When Sam gets up to take a leak, Dean snags the book to see for himself what’s so damn fascinating. He glances over the rows of Sam’s cramped handwriting, notes the method and patterns. It doesn’t look so hard.
When Sam comes back, Dean is chewing on the pen and idly jotting down numbers. In a rare display of generosity, Sam limits himself to a few noisy coughs and a badly hidden smirk. Dean ignores him, and pretty soon they gather their shit together and head out.
The door jangles behind them as they step out into the night. Sam sniffs and wrinkles his nose. "You ever notice how bad this stretch of highway smells?"
Dean grunts noncommittally, heads toward the car. "Motel?"
"Okay."
+++
They cross into Arizona a little after five the next day. The car is quiet, just the hum of the road and the muffled blare of John Fogerty singing about silver spoons and senators’ sons.
Sam is asleep, thank God. He was up half the night on the laptop, waking Dean up every couple hours with his cussing and pacing, and he’s been tired and pissy all day. He finally conked out somewhere past Albuquerque, and he’s barely moved since then, crumpled against the door like a little kid wiped out after a day at the amusement park.
The asshole Dean’s been tailgating scrapes together enough brain cells to shift over-about fucking time-and the left lane is blissfully clear in front of him. Nothing but sweet pavement for miles ahead, red dust and the glimmer of a distant mirage. Some unnamed tightness eases in Dean’s chest. He steps on the gas, urges his girl a little faster, and she leaps forward. He strokes a hand over her dash, praise and affection and more than a little helpless teenage adoration. She purrs.
Swear to God, if Sam doesn’t take care of his car, Dean’s going to manifest as fucking Pennywise and bind his spirit to the engine block.
He chuckles to himself, then glances over at his brother, like maybe he heard the traitorous thought-the way things have been going, Dean wouldn’t be surprised-but Sam is still out of it, practically comatose. His eyes are shut tight, squinting, whole face screwed up against the late afternoon glare like he’s really making an effort to sleep. Maybe he is. That’s Sammy for you, always making everything so much more difficult than it has to be.
He’s sleeping, though, so Dean will take what he can get. He seems okay, peaceful, no bad dreams or visions today. His hair flutters in the stream of air from the vent; one knee is wedged up against the glove compartment. He looks uncomfortable as hell, but Dean knows better. Soon as they get to where they’re going, Sam will unfold out of the car, pop his spine with a familiar grimace and grunt of satisfaction, and stroll away like he’d been dozing in a bed at the Marriott.
Sammy might have finally grown into those huge hands and clown feet, but he’ll never be too big for the Impala.
Sam’s mouth is open against the window, squished into a weird shape. He’s drooling a little. Dean wants to stick a spoon in his mouth and take his picture, fuck him screaming over the Impala’s sun-roasted hood, sit him down and feed him a thousand bowls of Lucky Charms. He wants everything-everything Sam will give him, everything they can do or take or scam, everything the world owes them.
What he’s got is his car, his economy-sized baby brother, and a little over two months.
It’ll do.
Sparing a token glance for the near-empty road, Dean gives in to temptation with not one shred of guilt, stretching an arm across the seat and sliding his fingers into the curls behind Sam’s ear. Sam’s hair feels soft and familiar on his skin, warm from the sun.
He stays like that for a few long moments, sweeping his thumb over the pulse under the hinge of Sam’s jaw, until finally Sam snorts in his sleep, bats at Dean’s hand with a loosely-curled fist the size of a catcher’s mitt. Dean grins and lets him alone. With any luck, he’ll sleep straight on through till Douglas.
Dean rests his arm on the back of the seat and whistles low with the music, taps out the rhythm against the wheel.
It’ll do just fine.
+++
Sam blinks awake just as they hit Douglas, right on schedule. His eyes are wet and unfocused with sleep, hazy dark green and muddy like Dad’s. Same color they’ve been practically his whole life, all the years Dean’s spent watching him wake up-the eternity since Dean looked down at his baby brother, screaming and flushed with the heat of the fire, and wondered how he hadn’t noticed when Sammy’s eyes had changed from blue to green. A lifetime, Sam’s lifetime-nine thousand and eighty-four days. Not that Dean’s counting.
Sam yawns, cracks his neck, checks out the hulking Wal-Mart as they pass. "Shouldn’t have let me sleep so long."
Dean shrugs and turns up the music.
They pull up to the first motel they find. Sam still looks dazed from his nap, so Dean leaves him and his freaky brain to finish waking up while Dean pays for the room.
The bored-looking girl at the desk pushes aside her magazine as Dean walks in. She’s cute-little and quietly curvy, poured into tight jeans, dark hair pulled back into a tight braid. She looks like she’d have a nice smile. "Room for the night?"
"Yep. Maybe a few."
Her gaze shifts past him, through the window to where Sam is probably falling ass-over-elbow out of the car. "Double?"
"Single, please. King, if you’ve got it."
She glances up from Dean R. Halford’s credit card, smirking a little and arching one thin, meticulously plucked eyebrow. He grins, doesn’t waste time explaining.
If he’s learned anything from the last year, it is that he well and truly does not give a fuck.
Besides, he’s tired. It’s been a long day, a long month, and he’s ready to fall into bed and let Sam cuddle to his big girly heart’s content. There are kids disappearing, some nasty monster or vengeful spirit that needs wasting, and he really doesn’t have the energy to explain the whole big gay V.C. Andrews love of his life…thing.
The girl doesn’t press it, thankfully, just hands over his card and two keys with no additional commentary. Dean glances at her nametag. "Thanks, Marta. You have a good night."
Marta softens a little, meeting his gaze again before turning back to her magazine. "Enjoy your stay."
Dean was right: she does have a pretty smile.
+++
He and Sam haven’t fit right in a bed since Sam was fifteen, the year his freakishly long legs and sharp elbows started lunging out at innocent bystanders. It got to the point where not a night would pass that Dean wouldn’t wake up with a knee jammed in his ribs, a heavy arm flung over his throat, until he threatened to make Sam sleep hog-tied in the trunk.
It didn’t really matter, not for long. By the time Sam left for Stanford, he’d started sleeping at the very edge of the bed, like he was trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and Dean, his family, their whole life. Dean got used to falling asleep staring at the back of Sam’s head.
Time is a funny thing, though, and these days Sam likes to cuddle up warm and suffocating like when he was a kid. After the years of turned backs and hunched shoulders, Dean thinks maybe the change of heart is worth a little personal hazard to life and limb.
It’s kind of ridiculous, two large men trying to share a bed, but they manage. Dean tends to sprawl on his stomach, and Sam usually ends up clinging to some outstretched part of him like a frigging barnacle-better-smelling and with a nicer ass, maybe, but no less persistent.
It works out okay.
+++
"Remember the time you’d just turned twenty-one and Dad finally let you go to the bar with him?"
Recently, Sam’s gotten chatty at night. Nostalgic. Every other sentence starts the same. Remember the time-?
Dean grins at the memory. Free at last. "That was a good night."
Sam lets out an unflattering snort. "Like you remember. Dad practically had to carry you back to the motel, you were so wasted. You fell over trying to take off your pants, pissed in the sink, then threw yourself on the bed and fell off. Got stuck between the bed and the wall."
That does sound familiar. "I did not."
"Did too. Dad laughed so hard he cried a little." Sam shifts, presses his pointy nose into the side of Dean’s neck. Dean lets him. "Not surprised you don’t remember. You were puking so hard the next morning you must’ve killed some brain cells. The whole room smelled like a roadhouse toilet till the day we left."
"Yeah, how about the billion times you got sick and puked all over me at four in the morning. That’s what I remember."
"Saint Dean of the Vomit Bed," Sam mumbles, predictably unsympathetic. "Your martyrdom stands as an example to us all." He yawns huge against Dean’s shoulder, all wet heat and sharp teeth. "Feast day’s pretty disgusting, though."
"Tell you what, sainthood’s the least I deserve for putting up with you," Dean says. "You and your food poisoning ruined my favorite Iron Maiden shirt."
"It was falling apart. Dad thanked me for hurling on it."
"Backstabbing heretics, both of you."
Sam burrows closer, slipping a damp hand under the waistband of Dean’s boxer-briefs. "Guess you should’ve learned to sleep naked."
"Guess so." Dean arches into the touch, abruptly forgetting to care about the shirt or Sam’s delicate stomach or anything else that’s not in close proximity to his dick.
Out of sight, Sam’s fingers trace little absent-minded circles over Dean’s fever-sensitive skin. "Remember the time those pixies stole the car and we had to break into the impound lot to get it back?"
Before long, Dean will roll over and pin Sam to the mattress, shut him up with sex like he always does. Sam will grumble a little and then yield with suspicious enthusiasm, like he always does, and that’ll be the end of anything resembling conversation-until tomorrow night, anyway.
Dean is starting to suspect that Sam has carefully orchestrated the whole ritual, conversation to fucking to smug exhaustion, and is just blabbing as some kind of weird nerdy foreplay. He’s going to have to stop playing into Sam’s devious hands, show him who’s really in charge here. Eventually.
Sam’s fingers are warm and sticky, stroking lazily along the rise of Dean’s hipbone. "Remember the time-?"
Dean does.
+++
They go for a run in the morning, early, before the Arizona sun has a chance to roast the pavement. It’s a good way to check out the town, stay under the radar a while longer in a city crawling with Border Patrol officers.
Douglas is smack-dab on the border, and it doesn’t take long to find a road that hugs the line. They jog shoulder-to-shoulder, casually glancing over at what counts for an international border in these parts: a chain-link fence, a massive ditch, then another fence-the fence, beige and no-nonsense. Dean can see cars and houses through the bars, paved streets and an ugly turquoise water tower.
After a while, they cut away from the border and head into the heart of the town. People are starting to wake up, get moving, but there’s still not a lot of activity. What traffic there is can be easily dodged. A jeep rolls by, green-striped and caked with dust. Border Patrol.
They pass fast-food joints and shopping centers, small houses and old brick storefronts. Small-town America: hundredth verse, same as the first.
"Looks pretty quiet," Dean says. "How many people did you say Border Patrol’s got here?"
"About six hundred in this area. Station’s a ways outside the city."
"Huh."
By the time they get back to the motel, the sun is officially up and they’re both flushed and sweating through their shirts. The room is cool and dark when they stumble in, and Dean doesn’t waste time. He presses Sam back against the door, breathless and loose-limbed with endorphins, and sucks the sweat from the hot lines of his throat. He slides a hand down Sam’s stomach, kisses his soft wet mouth, noses at the damp curls clinging to his face.
Sam squirms and sighs at the touch. He bites Dean all over, hard enough to leave a mark: his ear, his jaw, the ridges of his collarbones and the sweat-slick skin stretched tight over the gunshot stutter of his heart.
+++
Here’s what they know:
Something is taking the children of Douglas. They vanish in the dead of night, snatched right out of their beds-doors locked, windows closed, no sign of a struggle. The kids turn up days later, wandering half-dead and delirious through the desert, no memory of what happened to them. Sometimes they don’t turn up at all.
The first kid disappeared five years ago, right around the time people in the town started hearing the weeping cries of a phantom woman. The Border Patrol scoured the area after the first reports, but they never found her. She’s never tripped a heat sensor or motion detector, never been caught on camera or left footprints in the dust.
They say her wails float in from the desert on quiet nights. They say she’s looking for her children.
"Doesn’t make sense," Sam says, hunched over his laptop. "Everything seems to point to La Llorona, but I’ve never heard of one this far west. They stick to the Rio Grande, that’s the legend."
"Maybe they’ve decided to branch out."
"Or maybe it’s not her. Maybe it’s something else."
"Guess we’ll find out. What’s the last disappearance?"
Sam looks down at the computer. "Felix Garcia, three weeks ago. Ten-year-old son of Mario and Julia." He frowns at the screen. "Mario works for the Border Patrol. Pretty high up, looks like. They had a dozen guys looking for the kid until he showed up last week."
"Well, let’s go talk to the parents, then. See what the deal is."
Sam looks up, eyebrows raised. "Are you serious? No way. I just told you, the father works for the Border Patrol."
"So?"
"So, that’s Homeland Security, Dean. I thought we were going to try to maybe not get arrested this month."
"We’re not going to get arrested."
"No, you’re right. He’ll probably shoot you on sight." Sam’s on his feet now, wearing a hole through the carpet in front of the bed. Dean wonders if he should grab the smelling salts. "Jesus, Dean. You want to call up Hendrickson while you’re at it, see if he wants in on this?"
"Sam-"
"I just-I don’t get why we have to take these kind of risks. Why you have to barge right into these things and then just expect-" He stops, shakes his head like he’s trying to rattle the thought right out of his brain. "It’s not worth it, Dean. This job’s not worth it."
"Sam, it’ll be fine. We go talk to them, see what they know, then get the hell out of Dodge before Mario decides to run our prints. Hell, we’ve faked Homeland Security before. I don’t get why you’re freaking out about this."
"Yeah, well, the last time we pretended to be Homeland Security, we weren’t terrorists, Dean." Sam rakes a hand through his hair, blows out a breath. "Look, we don’t even have to be here. Bobby called, there’s another possession in Oklahoma, we could-"
"We’re not in Oklahoma. We’re here, and we’re going to stay here until we finish the job." Sam opens his mouth, ready to argue, but Dean talks over him. "Come on, Sammy. We’re not having this argument again. There’s always going to be another possession in Oklahoma or Louisville or Bumfuck, North Dakota. Bobby and Ellen have got every hunter in the country tracking these things down. You and me, we can’t take them all down. So we stay here, finish what we started. We finish the job."
"This isn’t about the job, Dean, and you know it," Sam says. He’s turned away from Dean now, not looking at him. "You know as well as me that it’s never been about the fucking job, so don’t fucking…" He swallows hard; Dean can see his throat working.
Dean moves closer, unable to not. "Yeah, Sammy. I know."
He grabs Sam’s shoulder, then his chin-pulls him close, stares him down. Sam clenches his jaw, muscles fluttering under Dean’s fingers. "Don’t," he says, so low Dean almost can’t hear him. He doesn’t close his eyes when Dean kisses him.
It’s sort of retarded how much Dean loves him.
Dean curls his hand around the back of Sam’s neck, squeezes hard. He speaks against the corner of Sam’s mouth, careful and quiet. "We can’t outrun this, Sam."
Sam pulls away, pushes away, steps back and out of Dean’s hands. His face is dark and furious, fierce and stone sober crazy-like he’s fixing to yell or shoot something, like he’s just pumped six rounds of consecrated wrought iron into his own killer and is itching to take on the rest of the world. "I’m not planning on it."
His brother’s eyes are dark hazel, Day 9085 and counting, but Dean’s starting to think maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s been looking for the wrong things this whole time.
Sam is wild, desperate. Sam has never let go of anything without a fight. Sam is more than their father’s son, more than a hunter or a brother or a lover, more than the sum of his parts.
Sam is alive, and the windows are rattling, and Dean just stands there in the millionth shitty motel room and listens to the roar of his own cocksure Winchester blood-the throb of the artery in his stomach, the tick tick tick boom of his stupid fragile heart that has never known when its time was up.
+++
No one will ever learn the truth behind the disappearing children. Two days after arriving in Douglas, Sam Winchester vanishes in the middle of the night-doors locked, windows closed, no sign of a struggle-and Dean drops the case and takes off in hot pursuit, following the trail his brother has left him like a bloodhound that’s caught the scent.
And there is blood on the air. Whether it’s Sam’s or his prey’s, demons’ or dealmakers’, good or evil-well, that’s hard to say.
Dean eventually catches up to his brother; that much is certain. What happens next-with the demons, with the hell hounds, with Dean’s soul and Sam’s-all that is open to speculation. All anyone can say for sure is that, after one final phone call to Bobby Singer in early May, the Winchester brothers are never heard from again.
The rest of their story is unknown.
Three years later, a group of humanitarian aid workers searching for lost travelers will stumble upon a brittle heap of sun-bleached bones in the Arivaca desert, forty minutes outside Douglas. The remains will eventually be identified as those of a young mother of three from the state of Michoacán, reported missing since 2003.
The Mexican consulate will send the bones back to the woman’s family, to be buried next to her husband. Her three children will be there to bury her: Miguel, who will have made the trip back from California to attend; Lupita, who will have skipped a week of school to help her aunt cook and scrub the house; and Celi, who will remember her mother’s tortillas but not her eyes.
They will all cry as the bones are laid to rest, even Miguel-in grief for what was taken from them; in gratitude for what they have been given; in relief at the conclusion of a long, painful journey-and Blanca Ramírez Espinosa will have finally found what she is looking for.
+++
The thing is, it’s not about the job. Maybe it never has been.
+++
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.