Humble Pie [5/20]
Sam climbs slowly out of the van, stretching slightly and feeling his joints pop. It feels good to take a break, even if it does make him slightly nervous - whatever’s in the van, he’s under no illusions as to its being legal. If the cops turn up (which they have no reason to, but to be in Sam’s line of work you kind of have to be a bit paranoid), they’ll be totally up shit creek without a paddle, and that’s not a place Sam ever wants to be again.
He leans against the side of the van, looking up into the dark sky. They’re in the middle of nowhere here, several miles from the nearest town, and it feels kind of good to be so far from civilization. They don’t often get off the map like this, and it’s refreshing. Even if Sam’s not exactly comfortable working for Divinity Inc., he can certainly see the benefits.
He just wishes he knew what it was he’s driving around.
He’s done other jobs for people where he didn’t know everything about everything, of course, and he’s not exactly averse to doing illegal things (hell, he does them all the time). But it’s just… Something about Alastair makes him uncomfortable. Suspicious. There’s a fine line between what Sam will and won’t do, what he considers okay-illegal and you’ve-got-to-be-crapping-me-illegal. And something tells him that what Alastair is doing counts as the latter.
Sam glances over in the direction that Dean went; his brother’s still in the can. And Sam is here. With the van. And whatever’s inside it.
And suddenly he has the biggest urge just to open the van doors and see what the hell is going on.
‘Doing all that work, ferrying stuff about, and never knowing? It just always seemed strange to me.’
It would be so easy just to have one look … Dean would never need know …
And - oh god - it’s just so tempting …
When Dean comes back out of the can, he’s still rather uneasily thinking about this new development with Castiel. That is, until he sees Sam.
Or rather, until he sees what Sam’s up to.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he yells, running over to the van. Sam’s got the back doors open and is staring inside, and he’s pale and shocked and whatever it is he can see, Dean’s pretty sure it’s bad.
“Dean …” Sam can’t even finish what he’s saying, and that’s a seriously not-good sign.
“What the hell, man?” Dean says, still more angry than anything. Because this doesn’t only violate every single fucking rule in the fucking rulebook, it pisses on them, rips all the fucking pages out, burns the whole fucking thing and scatters the ashes to the four fucking winds.
There is one golden rule in Dean’s job, one single rule that, if followed, will pretty much stop you from getting yourself killed, and that rule is: if you’re not told, don’t ask.
So, to reiterate: what the does Sam think he’s doing?
“Dean,” Sam says again. “Dean, look. Dean, I’m sorry, but it’s bad, it’s like … I mean, I’ve seen some shit, but this is like …”
Dean finally arrives by his brother’s side, and now he can see what’s in the van, he can see what’s upset Sam so much, and-
People. There have got to be twenty, maybe thirty, people, and even though this van is big enough to move house in if you’re reasonably modest and haven’t got anything stupid, like a chandeliers or grand pianos or grandfather clocks or some shit like that, they’re still all packed in, shoulder to shoulder. They’re also all tied up, hand and foot, and -looking around at the way their heads loll slightly, how their chins are pressed to their chests, how their bodies look slightly deflated and rubbery - Dean realizes that they’re all unconscious.
He never thought of the slave trade as being like this. He never thought they were driving around actual slaves. He never thought …
There’s a movement, right at the very back, and Dean barely has time to register before a head moves upwards, and suddenly he’s looking into a pair of brown eyes, surrounded by long, straight hair as red as a nightmare.
Jesus fucking Christ, that’s-
He steps back and slams the doors shut, ignoring Sam’s feeble protests.
“Get back in the van,” he orders, and his voice is so flat it doesn’t sound like his own.
“Wh- Dean!” Sam exclaims, because Dean’s practically dragging his brother over to the driver’s seat of the van.
“Get in,” he says again, tonelessly. “We’re running late.”
“What the hell? You saw what we’ve got in there, Dean, you saw as well as I did, and you can’t pretend that we’re not in over our heads here. Smuggling slaves? C’mon, man, you’ve got to admit that’s not our usual gig.”
Dean shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”
“It doesn’t matter? How can you say that?! We’ve got people in there, Dean!”
“No, Sam,” Dean says forcefully. “We haven’t. We’ve got slaves in there. Sam, we’ve done some crazy shit - this is nothing compared. Or have you forgotten our job for Bela? We killed her fucking parents, Sammy! We took them out, and we made it look like an accident, and all because she paid us to. In what universe is this worse? They’re just slaves!”
“Are you sure about that, though?”
“What? Of course!”
“Dean, you saw! That was Anna Milton in there, you know that as well as I do.”
Dean’s fists clench, and he runs a hand over his face to stop it from hitting out at Sam, because they’ve been there before, they’ve exchanged blows and harsh words, and if there’s one person in the world Dean never wants to get into a fight with again, it’s his little brother. “Shut up. You’re wrong. Anna’s dead, she’s gone, forget it. You’re seeing ghosts. It was just some angel who looks like her. Now get in the fucking van!”
Dean can be stubborn, but when it comes down to it, Sam doesn’t just take the cake, he takes the entire fucking bakery. “No.”
“Fine. I will.” He chucks the keys of the Impala over to Sam. “Don’t fuck up my car.” And he’s inside the van and hitting the gas before Sam has another chance to argue.
Just when he thought things couldn’t get any more fucking complicated.
Anna Milton was Dean’s sometime girlfriend a while back, but - and he’ll never admit this - he really liked her. Not in the same way as he likes the random guys and girls he picks up at bars sometimes. Those he sleeps with, mainly because if someone starts hitting on him he’s not exactly going to pass up a chance to get laid, and sure, it’s good, but in the morning they go their separate ways and never see each other again, and he’s cool with that. But Anna … Anna was the last person he was actually sad to see go. She stayed in his life longer than most of the partners he hooks up with. They worked a couple of jobs together, too - her life was the same kind as his and Sam’s, only her reasons were different - and Dean doesn’t even know anymore.
And then they finally went their separate ways, because these things always happen. She went underground. Way, way underground, so far underground she had to cut all ties, move around a lot, sleep under bridges, that kind of deal, and all ’cause of something going wrong in the gang she worked for, some crapped-up chain of command where it turned out her superiors were out to get her just because she didn’t agree with what they were saying, the orders they were giving, or some shit like that. He can’t really remember the details, but they’re not important anyway.
The point is, she left, and that was cool with him.
But sometimes he does miss having sex with a person he actually gives a damn about. Sex that means something besides the physicality of it.
He shakes his head to clear it. Anna Milton’s long gone, that’s fine. If he ever needed to, he reconciled himself with that fact long ago. Which is why it’s completely impossible and unthinkable for her to be in the back of the truck he’s driving right now.
He leans over and flicks the radio on, and blares crappy country tunes all the way across the border.
It’s four a.m. and just getting light when they finally arrive at the drop-off point. It’s a pull-in on a country road in the middle of nowhere, and the only signs of life are Lilith and her partner, Tammi, leaning casually on her Ford Mustang and sharing a smoke.
“You’re late,” says Lilith, dropping her cigarette and scrubbing it into the dirt with her boot. She’s dressed smartlishly, as always, in a long white dress and cowboy boots, but there’s gun holster around her waist and a few red spots on her dress that Dean thinks look suspiciously like blood, and that kinda ruins the image of some kind of dental hygienist she has going. “What kept you?”
“Y’know, this and that,” Dean replies with a smile, but it’s all for show, because inside he just wants to go home and sleep, forget that tonight ever happened, because that angel with the red hair has dragged up all sorts of memories that he really doesn’t want to have to deal with right now.
“Trouble on the roads?” What she really means is, ‘trouble with the cops’ as in, ‘have we been compromised’ and ‘in which case, should we just shoot you’. Lilith was always good at the friendly greetings.
“Nah. Not as far as I can make out, anyways.”
“Good.”
Sam sidles up to them, his hands shoved in his pockets, clearly still preoccupied by their argument from earlier, as he keeps sending sidelong glances over at the back of the van.
“You got our money?” Dean asks Lilith, because it’s obvious that Sam, who usually deals with this kind of stuff, has his mind on other things.
“Of course.”
Tammi comes forwards and hands a sealed envelope to Lilith, who chucks it over.
“You’ll find it’s all in order. Hey, Sammy, what’s up? Seen a ghost?”
Sam’s jaw clenches. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh? Well, that’s too bad.” She bares her teeth in an approximation of a smile, and it’s distinctly reptilian, especially when she runs her tongue around her teeth in a faintly suggestive manner. Luckily it’s lost on Sam, who’s still preoccupied with the thought of what, exactly, is in that van. Lilith always did have a thing for Dean’s brother. Talk about creepy.
“We’ll be seeing you,” Dean says, tucking the money carefully away inside his leather jacket and watching the exchange between his brother and Lilith carefully. Dean never knows quite how to behave around her, so he settles for as least offensive as possible, because he’s always got the impression that she could easily flip from her ‘flirty-and-slightly-creepy’ mode to her ‘raging-tantrum-and-seriously-get-the-fuck-away-right-now-if-breathing-is-one-of-your-hobbies’ mode.
“Be sure and drive safe now, boys,” she calls after them as Dean gets into the Impala, and somehow she manages to make it sound like a threat.
Dean nods vaguely and starts the engine, executing a slightly sloppy three-point-turn (hey, he’s bushed, he’s allowed not to be on top form) before pulling back out onto the road again. In a few moments, they’re gone, over the horizon in a slight cloud of dust.
Behind them, Lilith pulls out her cellphone and dials.
“Winchesters have gone off-reservation,” she reports when she gets through to the other person. “As I predicted.”
A moment’s silence.
“They were late. Looked like shocked rabbits. Plus one of the locks on the back of the van is undone, and it certainly wasn’t like that when Ava dropped it off for the Winchester boys to collect. They opened it up. It’s the only explanation.”
Another pause. Tammi fiddles with the zip on her jacket.
“So, what? You’re just going to ignore it? I don’t think I have to tell you, sir, how dangerous this could be to our business. We’ve already got that cop sniffing around; this could be enough to-”
Lilith bites her words off and listens again for another moment. A car rumbles past, and Tammi checks her watch as the silence stretches on.
“Of course. Got it. I’ll lock them back up again and hit the road.” Another pause as the person on the end of the line says something, and then her face lights up with a smile, full of childish delight and mischief. “You’ll send Gordon?”
”For Christ’s sake, Sam, I’m too tired to argue about this anymore.”
They’re nearly home - thank God - and Sam’s been talking about Divinity Inc. ever since Lilith disappeared from their rear-view mirror. He’s managed to get himself so worked up that, not only is he sure it was Anna Milton they saw, restrained and sedated in the back of the van, but now he thinks that Divinity Inc. is running some grand scheme in which they kidnap people randomly, turn them into slaves and sell them.
Which, even in his sleep-addled state, Dean can tell is total bull.
“Then don’t argue,” Sam says back. “There’s nothing to argue about, anyway. We’re not doing any more jobs for them.”
He’s been saying this for the last fifty miles, too.
“The hell we are,” Dean says stoically, “unless you want to try explaining to Mr Shurley why we can’t pay him any more rent.”
“We’ll get other jobs. Jobs that don’t include illegally selling free American citizens into slavery.”
“Sam, you’re going all conspiracy-theorist on me, snap out of it. It’s okay, you’re freaked, I understand, but just shut the hell up about all the slavery thing, okay? You’re making it up, and it’s really fucking irritating.”
“Come on, Dean, we both know what we saw!”
Dean’s so tired he nearly misses their turning, and even so he only just manages to make it, swinging the wheel around sharply and forcing the Impala to make a tight turn - sorry, baby, it’s just ’cause he’s cross and tired - before coming to a stop in their usual spot in the alley and turning to face Sam.
“No, we don’t. We could’ve seen anything. You’re just jumping to conclusions, so just drop it, okay? I’m bushed, you’re bushed, neither of us are thinking straight, let’s just get some shut-eye and see about it in the morning, okay?”
“Whatever. Fine”’ Sam climbs out of the car and chucks the keys across to Dean. “You open up.”
Dean hides a smirk as he leads the way to the door of the apartment block. It’s an unwritten rule that, unless there is a very good reason, Dean always opens doors, because, as Sam insists, all locks hate him, and, as Dean insists, his brother is one clumsy son of a bitch.
They make it up to their floor with very little further conversation, which is a relief, because Dean’s brain feels like it’s melted into a pool of black goo and dripped out through his ear. By the time he’s fumbling with the lock on their apartment door, his eyes are actually refusing to remain open very much longer and he’s having to do it partially blind. Finally, they make it inside, and Dean disappears into his bedroom, mumbling something incomprehensible under his breath. Shortly afterwards, there’s a loud bang and the sound of Dean swearing murder as he knocks the bedside lamp onto his foot.
It’s all Sam can do to stifle a smile, lock up, and collapse onto his own bed.
”What are we going to do about the Winchesters?”
Alastair stands by the window, surveying the empire that he has helped to build. He has built it from the ground up, doing all the jobs that don’t exist on paper, ensuring that their underground network is always kept up to date, dealing with particularly pesky rivals, keeping Divinity Inc. at the top of its game through less ... legal means.
Luke Morgenstern, the face of the business, the man behind the dream, the man ostensibly in charge, second only to his brother Michael, sits casually behind his desk, pushing his swivel chair around so it makes a full circle while he thinks, hands clasped loosely together between his knees.
“Oh, you’ll think of something imaginative, I’m sure,” Luke says, gliding around to face Alastair for a moment before continuing on his 360 degree journey.
“Something imaginative …” Alastair smirks slightly. Imagination has always been one of the things he’s prided himself on.
“What about that cop?” Michael asks more seriously from the other side of the room, tapping his pen lightly against his knee. “Is he still looking into us?”
“Oh, he isn’t anything to worry about. Our men in the FBI can handle him.”
Luke looks thoughtful for a moment, allowing his chair to come to an almost complete stop before propelling himself around again. “No. No, let’s use him. Kill several birds with one stone.”
“The agent, the Winchesters ... Any other birds?” Michael asks.
“The techie,” Luke replies, smiling. “Don’t forget the poor little boy who got in over his head.” He presses a hand to his heart for a moment, face filled with emotion. “It’s tragic, really.”
Alastair looks at his master, and remembers why he loves his job. “We’re going to have a field day,” he says, his voice a nasal whine.
“All work and no play makes Alastair a dull boy. I wouldn’t let that happen to you. You’re my very best.”
When Alastair finally leaves the large office in the top of the Divinity building, he makes a single phone call to Stephen Groves, and his work is done.
In another part of town, Special Agent Victor Henricksen receives a call from his boss telling him that he has the go-ahead. And so a chain of events is set in motion.
And it is midday and everything has changed, and still Sam and Dean Winchester slumber on.